Shadowplay (7 page)

He walked us through the very basics – how to hold the cards just so, and how to shuffle in different ways. We did these easy steps for over an hour, until we could do them without hesitation. Drystan far surpassed me with his fancier shuffles and flourishes. Half of the time I seemed to drop the cards. I decided it was the awkward angle I shuffled due to my sling. In fact, I was surprised Drystan did not comment on the fact I could shuffle at all. The bruising around my thumbs was almost gone, and they no longer hurt and only felt stiff.

We broke for lunch, and then the afternoon was spent amongst books. Maske brought us to the library, a dusty room filled to the brim with books and furnished with overstuffed armchairs. He chose some books and left us to it, saying he was going to his workshop.

“What is he doing in there?” I asked.

“No idea. Magic.”

I rolled my eyes.

Ricket wandered in to join us, curling up on a small bed made of old rags in the corner.

Drystan chose a book –
Magick
, by a Professor Cynbel Acacia. He settled down into a chair, opening the tome and reading. His long fingers curled around the pages, the shadows of his eyelashes on his cheeks.

Not wanting to be caught staring, I picked a book entitled
The Secrets of Magic
by a name I recognized – the Great Grimwood, one of the most famous magicians from a century ago. The book looked to be about the same age, and I turned the crumbling pages gingerly. The type was small and difficult to read, but the voice engaging. The Great Grimwood, whose real name had been Adem Risto, had been born in the village of Niral. An incredible inventor, he transformed magic from sideshow entertainment into a show fit for nobility and royalty.

Ricket moved from his bed to my lap. I stroked his head idly as I read, his purring a calming sound. It occurred to me in that moment how very lucky we were to be here. Maske hadn’t turned us in, we were warm and fed and learning a trade. I could only hope that this relative peace would last, even if it did mean hiding behind drawn curtains and locked doors.

The book had a brief overview of magic from its beginning: as basic illusions that priests would wield to cement their followers’ beliefs and sway the cynical. Vestige artifacts were considered holy and proof of the divine. Yet when scientists deduced that Vestige might be technology and not magic, believers grew more cynical of the priests’ effects. Magic for a long time was street entertainment, often married to vaudeville or circuses.

Grimwood also listed many of his tricks, from sleight of hand to grand illusion. Diagrams explaining the placement of mirrors and the position of fingers were difficult at first, yet when I understood, I felt a glow of triumph. I took a coin from my pocket and tried one of the tricks in the diagrams, frowning as the coin kept dropping from my fingers.

Drystan looked up from his book. “What are you trying to do?” I showed him the page. He studied the drawing before setting it aside.

He clasped my hands and walked my fingers through the trick, showing me how to hide the coin between my fingers. His hands were warm, and I watched his fingers on mine, trying to quell the feelings his touch stirred. A blush crept up my neck. Drystan met my eyes. We were inches apart. Everything in me seemed to stop – my breath, my heartbeat, my ability to blink.

Drystan made the smallest sound in the back of his throat. My breath left in a rush and we looked away from each other, confused and guilty.

Drystan’s face was impassive as he focused on the trick. He performed it for me with no hesitation. His hands were steady.

“There,” he said. “You try.” It was if nothing had happened.

I took the coin from him, the metal warmed by our skin. I took a deep breath, and performed the trick, trying to copy Drystan’s movements. I made the coin disappear. Drystan clapped and I smiled sadly.

“That’s not too sore for your hands?” he asked.

Now he noticed.

“They’re alright,” I said, swallowing. “I heal… quickly.”

“I’ll say,” Drystan shook his head. “I dislocated a shoulder once. I couldn’t move it for weeks.”

“How’s your book?” I asked, to change the subject and distract me from thoughts that had nothing to do with magic tricks.

Drystan let the subject drop. “Good, though academic. All the salacious bits have been made as uninteresting as possible. Yours seems better. I’ll read it when you’re done.” He set the book aside and stretched, the joints in his neck cracking, before standing and scrutinizing the bookshelves. He reached up for a book on the top shelf, and his shirt was short enough to reveal a flash of pale skin.
Pricks in Styx!
I stood and ran my hands down the thighs of my trousers.

“Fancy a pot of tea?” I asked, striving for nonchalance but sure I sounded slightly panicked.

“Please,” Drystan said, taking his book back to his seat. For a moment I glared at the top of his head. He was so infuriatingly calm.

Or maybe he didn’t feel what I felt. And what right did I have to feel anything, with our lives still in ruins, and Aenea gone?

I made my way to the kitchen. Far away, I could hear the whine of a drill against metal coming from the direction of Maske’s workshop.

I tapped my fingers against the table, antsy. I still had not settled into this new life. Sometimes, I didn’t know if I’d even settled into life as Micah Grey. Every now and again, it almost felt as though it was not my life I was living. I was not dressing as a boy, standing in a kitchen to run away from a blonde boy in the library with blue eyes and long fingers. As if inside, I was still Iphigenia Laurus and none of the events that had happened after she ran away had touched her.

But at the same time, I knew that wasn’t true. If I woke up tomorrow in my old bedroom, with Lia singing her song to wake me up, if I dressed in skirts and found myself back in that life as a girl, I’d chafe even more than before.

I thumbed through a pile of old newspapers on the table while I waited for the hiss of the kettle. It was all the usual doom and gloom – prices would rise on glass due to a temporary shortage of shipments from Kymri. The Foresters lobbied Parliament for more seats on the council again and were angry that they lost, threatening more protests. Infected meat had caused sickness in one of the southern coastal towns. The Royal Physician was set to return from a brief sabbatical in Byssia and there’d be a banquet in his honor.

A scandal caught my eye. Lord Chokecherry had been caught having an affair with several young women from the docks. I closed the newspaper, my gaze lingering on the headline of the article about Drystan and me. Questions haunted my mind. Did Maske truly trust us? Could we trust Maske? What would become of us? No answers came.

Without a thought, I threw the newspaper on the fire, watching the edges of the paper curl like the dying leaves of autumn.

 

That night after dinner, my injuries ached, so I made my way to the loft, away from the quiet magician and his former apprentice.

I thought that as soon as I reached my bed I would fall into a dead sleep, but my mind would not rest. The shadows in the room were long and dark, and so I lit a candle and dragged my pack onto the bed. I took out my small treasures, laying them side by side. The soapstone figurine of the Kedi, given to me by Mister Illari, the spice merchant who took me in briefly after I ran away. I ran a fingertip over its rough face, remembering the two visions of the Phantom Damselfly where she had called me by that name.

A Kedi was worshipped as a minor deity in Byssia, a possible Chimaera born both fully male and female. Looking at the figurine again though, I wondered if a Kedi was actually a Chimaera. It looked human. It was not furred or scaled. Though its face was reminiscent of Alder features with its high cheekbones and long neck, like the Phantom Damselfly.

I held up the disc that contained her to the candlelight, rainbows flickering across the surface of the strange metal. I turned the disc over. A small clasp or button was on the bottom center. I did not press it.

I settled back onto the pillow, staring up at the rough ceiling beams. What did I hold in my hand? She was more than an apparition, more than an ancient recording. She spoke to me in the circus and met my gaze. I remembered the tilt of her head as she regarded me, the thoughtful pulsing of her wings. She told me that it had been so long since anyone had seen her or spoken to her. How long? Since the Alder Age?

I sighed. I tormented myself with questions I did not know the answers to. Maybe the Phantom Damselfly had those answers, but I was too afraid to ask.

I rummaged in my pack until I found my crumpled sheets of paper, an old stub of a graphite marker and a thin, ratty paintbrush. I took the lemon I’d claimed from the kitchen the other day out of the bedside table drawer. I squeezed the juice into a bowl, dipping the paintbrush into the juice in order to write a real, hidden letter to my brother:

 

 

Once the juice was dry, very carefully, I wrote an extremely boring letter in pencil to Cyril on the other side of the paper, pretending to be his friend Rojer, who never wrote letters. I sealed the envelope with drops of candlewax. I would ask Drystan to write the address tomorrow for me, to lessen the chance of my parents recognizing the hand.

I had not spoken with my brother since the night he came to see me perform at the circus and tried to convince me to come home. Perhaps I should have gone with him. If I had, Aenea would still be alive, Bil would still be alive, and Drystan would not be a murderer. My eyes burned with tears, and a sharp pain bloomed in my chest. I pressed the backs of my hands to my face.

I stifled my sobs in the pillow. Aenea’s face kept coming to me. The way she looked after we kissed. Her pink lips. The feel of her fitted against my side as we lay side by side, speaking softly as I rested my chin on her shoulder, her hair tickling my face. The sight of her flying off the trapeze, flipping and catching the bar at just the right moment. All the little facets that made her Aenea. Gone in an instant.

A long time later, my tears finally ran dry. I picked up the Phantom Damselfly again, turning it over, my fingertips following the snaking designs etched into the metal. I fell asleep with the secret held in my hand.

 

I awoke, the Phantom Damselfly’s disc thumping to the floor. Outside, it was the full Penmoon, the blue light filtering through the stained dragonfly window of the loft. I felt a longing to go outside and touch the glass, to see the soft glow. To find out its secrets. I didn’t know why I felt this sudden urge – the last time I touched Penglass, it had caused pain and suffering. But the feeling lingered still, as I sat there bathed in the soft cobalt glow.

I did not sleep the rest of that night.

7

THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE FOOL

The Tyndall Philosophy, Alvis Tyndall