Illusionarium by Heather Dixon Wallwork
“Lieutenant, please,” said Queen Honoria wearily, tearing her focus away from me. “You really are destroying your chances.”
“Chances for what?” Lockwood snarled, mid-punch.
“As captain of my masked guard, of course,” said Queen Honoria.
Lockwood kicked a masked guard in the face.
“Excuse me?” he said.
Queen Honoria smiled the long-suffering smile of a thousand saints.
“Stop. Stop fighting, please,” she said, and the masked guard fighting Lockwood immediately ceased. They remained in a ring around him, and Lockwood’s fists remained up, his eye darting to each of them, then stopping on Queen Honoria. She smiled, taut.
“Captain of my masked guard,” she said.
“What?” said Lockwood.
“Come, Lieutenant. We had our . . . disagreements on the Chivalry, but now is the chance to redeem yourself. Our last captain Rivened two months ago. We need someone with military prowess. Someone who is you.”
“Really?” said Lockwood. “Captain of the guard? Your guard? This same ruddy guard who murdered all those yeomen in Arthurise?”
“They had to,” Queen Honoria said coldly. “It hardly even makes a difference in your world. Your world will thrive notwithstanding. But Nod’ol—we need you, Lieutenant. You and Jonathan both. You can help me breech the doorway to Arthurise and bring Arthurisians to Nod’ol. This city can be great again.”
Queen Honoria had started to twitch in her fervent plea. Almost like the woman who had Rivened. I shifted uncomfortably in the grip of my guardsmen.
Lockwood’s eye narrowed.
“Pretty sure this city’s beyond help,” he said.
“Or I could have Constantine shoot you,” Queen Honoria said, cold as ice.
Masked guardsmen seized upon Lockwood before he could fight back. Constantine, who had just pulled himself to his feet in a misshapen lump, gripped the rifle that had fallen from his hands, fumbled, and pointed it at Lockwood’s head. He breathed heavily.
“No!” said Anna, struggling.
Sweat beaded on Lockwood’s face, which remained stonily staring at the barrel of the rifle. A drop coursed from his forehead, traveling down the seam of his eye patch until it dripped from his chin to the floor.
The tip of the sword clasp at his collar pricked his throat.
Lockwood spat at Queen Honoria’s feet.
Queen Honoria slowly closed her eyes.
“Shoot him,” she said.
Constantine pulled the trigger of his rifle. The pistons hissed:
BANG.
And in that ear-rending BANG, everything happened.
Anna writhed from the masked guard with sudden strength. In a blur of white she threw herself forward, grasping the barrel as the rifle discharged.
And slowly, with trembling hands, Anna released the end of the gun.
Constantine dropped the rifle.
“Anna!” he rasped.
A crimson stain grew over Anna’s side. She rippled to the floor like a cloudfall.
Before the room could even gasp, Lockwood fought the masked guard like a demon, pulled Anna into his arms and fled, bashing through the guard at the door. My guardsmen released me to fly after him, but I was faster, leaping to my feet and bounding after Lockwood and Anna, dodging the brush of crimson gloves. I careened through the doorway and into the hall.
My leaps up the spiraled stairs were weighted. I could only glimpse Lockwood’s foot and a trail of white skirt as he barreled through the door hatch and flew onto the deck. He kept running until he slammed into the railing and fell to his knees, his front stained with Anna’s blood.
I arrived at their side, chest heaving. The airship had drifted from the theater to over the tangled, abandoned maze. Nowhere left to run. Lockwood held her in his arms, tight against him.
“You’re a surgeon!” Lockwood snarled, grabbing me by the collar and throwing me down beside her. “Fix her!”
I’d already pulled off my jacket and rolled it into a bandage, pressing it to the bullet wound in her side. It soaked through. My hands became slick and red with blood, and horror numbed me. A mortal wound. I knew it. Still I pulled off my vest, wadded it, and pressed it hard over the jacket.
“Anna, Anna,” said Lockwood, stroking her hair back, his face as white as her skirt. His hands trembled.
“Lockwood,” Anna whispered.
“Fix her!” Lockwood yelled again at me.
“Your jacket!” I said, blood-soaked fabric beneath my hand.
Lockwood hurriedly unbuttoned his blue uniform jacket, the sword clasp snapping off and skittering across the deck.
Anna reached up and touched his face before he’d gotten the jacket halfway off, her fingertips brushing his cheek, stopping him cold.
“You’re worth dying over,” she whispered.
“Anna—”
Anna closed her eyes. Exhaled; and the spark of life faded from her face.
She did not inhale again.
My soul screamed her name.
“Anna!” Lockwood cried, pulling her tightly into his arms.
The masked guard rose around us. Their long coats flapped silently in the propellers’ wind; the black holes of their masks bore down upon us. Constantine shoved his way through them, and when he caught sight of Anna, limp in Lockwood’s arms, he fell to his knees. He raised his snout to the air and howled an inhuman, feral banshee of a howl. It reverberated in the balloon and echoed to the Archglass.
The masked guard seized upon Lockwood. They dragged him away from Anna’s body. He fought with otherworldly strength, sending masked guardsmen hitting the deck, cracking masks. They cornered him against the railing.
Gritting his jaw, and without a backward glance, he flipped himself over the side of the ship in a graceful swoop.
I ran to the railing in time to see him catch—midair—one of the lines that still trailed behind the ship. He slid down it, pounced onto a roof below, and disappeared into the city.
CHAPTER 18
The masked guardsmen allowed me to wrap Anna tightly in my jacket, succumbing to the grief that welled in my throat. Queen Honoria commanded the ship’s navigator to steer back to the theater, and all the time Edward remained crumpled in a corner of the deck, wringing his hands and saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! What a horrible night this has been!”
The airship docked. The masked guard pried me away from Anna’s form and silently escorted me down the vertical dock—but not before I noticed the gleam of silver that lay by the anchor line. Lockwood’s Excalibur pin. I numbly slipped it into my pocket.
Ten minutes later, I’d been locked in my golden suite. Demons of regret plagued me, twisting webs of darkness over my soul. Your fault, they whispered. Every decision I’d made schismed into dozens of others in my head, all of them ending with Anna still alive. If I had bandaged her sooner. If I had stopped her from throwing herself at Constantine’s rifle. If I hadn’t tried to illusion the stupid doors, and done what Queen Honoria had told me to.
I sat on one of the spindly chairs, wishing Masked Virtue had already begun, just so I could breathe fantillium and just so I couldn’t feel anymore.
A clean set of clothes lay folded over my sitting-room screen. Gold tureens and lidded platters sat on every available surface in the room, tables and chairs and all of them steaming hot. They smelled of breads and soups and roasted bird.
In one stride I kicked and overturned a table, sending soup across the rug. I kicked the table next to it, and it bashed to the ground, tureens clanging and food splashing. I couldn’t stop. I overthrew a chair, sending it crashing, and commenced to destroy the room. I shoved the furniture on its side. I punched holes in the painted screen. I smashed the mirrors to pieces with a chair. I reduced my suite to shambles.
“Are you finished?”
Queen Honoria regarded me from the doorway. She wore new clothes—new for Nod’ol—which covered every inch of her. Her half-masked face
I reared back with the chair and bashed it across the last mirror. The glass shattered. Shards rained over the floor.
“And that’s enough,” said Queen Honoria. “You’re acting like a child, Jonathan.”
I threw the chair in the sitting room pool—it splashed and bobbed—and kicked a tureen lid across the room.
“Masked Virtue begins in three hours. You ought to at least use the time for rest,” Queen Honoria said.
“Masked Virtue?” I said, incredulous. “What in the world makes you think I’m still going to illusion for you?”
“Because you have nothing else,” said Queen Honoria. “Because your mother and sister will be dead by tonight, and Arthurise soon after, and Nod’ol will be all you have left.”
I lunged at her. The masked guard countered me midair and dragged me back. Queen Honoria stepped forward and gently tried to put her gloved hand on my head.
“I need you, Jonathan,” she said, giving up and pulling her hand away as I struggled. “I’ll need you to illusion doors back to Arthurise for me. There will be so many people looking for a new life, here in Nod’ol. We can revive the city again with Arthurisians. That’s why I infected your world with the Venen. I had to make them see—”
“You what?” I screamed.
And everything screeched and ground together, the gears sorting themselves out into a macabre mechanism. The Venen, a strange and unknown disease, originating in Old London. Queen Honoria had brought the Venen to Arthurise.
“You’ve ruddy killed Arthurise!” I yelled, writhing against the guard.
“I had to!” Queen Honoria pled. “I had to, Jonathan. I had to make them see how much they needed Nod’ol! I’m not a murderer! It was all for Nod’ol!”
“My mother and sister—”
“Are soon dead,” Queen Honoria finished. “And Nod’ol is your home now.”
I broke free of the guard with a burst of strength and charged at Queen Honoria.
Constantine arose from nowhere and stopped me short with a box across my head, disorienting me enough for the masked guard to pull me back into their gloved tentacles.
“Leave me with Jonathan,” he growled to Queen Honoria. He wore a mask with a protruding snout, several rows of fangs on both top and bottom. “I’d like to give him some . . . tips. For Masked Virtue.”
Queen Honoria waved her hand dismissively and swept from the room without a backward look. Constantine slammed the door. The masked guards’ fingers tightened around my wrists and I was brought to my knees.
Constantine knelt in front of me, his long coat-of-many-coats brushing my face. He placed his gloved finger under my chin and lifted my face to meet his. His eyes had been dyed again; one yellow, the other red. The clumps of hair that stuck out from beneath his hood had been dyed lurid white. He pulled off my glasses and threw them into the pool behind us with a little ploosh.
Then he brought his arm back, balled his fingers, and slammed me in the cheek with the hardest punch I’d ever gotten in my life. Bone and cartilage crunched. White glittered in my vision. And when it cleared, Constantine’s snout was in my face with rancid breath.
“You killed Anna,” he seethed.
“Sorry?” I coughed, spitting blood. “You killed Anna. Pretty sure. The rifle was in your hands—”
He slammed his fist into my head again. The world turned black.
“Why didn’t you just do what Queen Honoria told you to do? Anna would still be alive!”
“She’d still be alive if you hadn’t shot her,” I snapped back as the world regained colors.
Constantine stood, walked away, then made a running start. It ended with him kicking me so hard I lost the air in my chest. The masked guardsmen set me back on my knees, readying for another of Constantine’s blows.
“I, at least, had the decency,” he said, “to make sure she’ll be laid to rest where the rest of her family is buried. Unlike you.”
I coughed.
“Constantine,” I said, “I really don’t get you, you know?”
“She was all I had,” he said. Rivulets of sweat ran down his neck from beneath his mask.
No, I realized. It wasn’t sweat.
They were tears. From his other eyes.
The rain of blows continued. Constantine beat me across the head, knocking it against the floor, kicked me in the chest and throat, produced a whip and struck it across my back and face. Blood specked the floor.
I struggled, but couldn’t fight back. Anger, instead, grew within me like a demon. If I’d ever had a compass, it had broken and disintegrated thoroughly, leaving only razor shards of hate coursing through my bloodstream.
He finished just as the sun rose in the windows, leaving me in a heap on the suite floor.
“I’ll kill you, Constantine,” I said hoarsely, too broken to move. “I’ll kill you. I’m ten times the illusionist you are. I’ll make you feel death the way you made Anna feel it, but a thousand times slower, until you are screaming in agony and begging to die.”
Constantine stared coldly at me from the doorway.
“I’d like to see you try it,” he said, and left.
Hours later, it seemed, I gathered enough strength to pull myself to my feet, holding my hand to the stinging cuts on my face. I didn’t dare pull my glasses from the pool, because I didn’t have the strength to swim. I knew I needed to find bandages, at least, because I was leaving a trail of blood, but instead I set to finding Constantine, hate flaring in hot tendrils through my veins. I staggered into the hall, and collapsed.
“Oh, you poor thing.” Divinity’s voice whispered above me.
I awoke in a soft green aura not long after. I lay on a pale green sofa in Divinity’s sitting room. The broken vases and strewn flowers from the night before had been cleaned up and replaced, the broken windows covered with a screen. I pulled myself up against the arm with agony; I ached and throbbed all over.
Divinity arrived, wearing a dress with gauzy bits and a black corset, carrying rags of bandages. She sat on the edge of the sofa, just touching my side, and began to gently nurse my wounds, touching ointment to the stinging cuts on my cheek and cooing.
I hated Divinity almost as much as I hated Constantine. I grabbed her wrist just as she was about to touch my face again.
—and recoiled. The fingers I gripped her with had split at the ends. The illusion on Edward’s ship must have progressed my schisming. My thumb was coming apart down to the knuckle now, giving me an extra piece of thumb I could wiggle freely. My fingers had each widened into extra fingertips that melded together at the first knuckle. I hurriedly felt my face.
A thorough examination revealed the bridge of my nose was so wide it was almost two bridges. One of my nostrils was wider than the other. I had an indentation in my temple. I kneaded it, feeling a cavity in the bone. It was tender to my touch. An extra eye. I was growing an extra eye.
I gagged.
“It’s always worse around Masked Virtue,” Divinity said soothingly, stroking a hand through my hair and pressing her other hand to my chest. “You’ll heal. We all do. Well—I’m not sure Constantine does, anymore. Don’t illusion again after M.V. for a few weeks, and you’ll be fine.
“What?” I said.
“Unless, of course, you’ve started seeing demons,” said Divinity, rather peevishly. “That means your brain is splitting, and you’ve become a Riven.”
I grasped Divinity’s slender, delicate, perfect hand.
“You don’t have extra fingers,” I accused.
A strange smile curved over Divinity’s face, as though to say, You have no idea where I’m schisming. . . .
Appalled, I pushed her away and got to my feet. My vision sparkled with lack of blood and I fell back to the sofa.
“Hush,” Divinity said, pressing me to the pillows as I tried to get to my feet again. “Hush. You’re in a bad way. Here, I’ve brought you something warm to drink. It’ll cal
She fetched a mug of steaming tea from a small room at the side of her suite, then gently sat down next to me and held the mug full of black liquid to my lips.
I immediately recognized the familiar, sweet, and rather chemical smell I’d known from Dr. Palmer’s medicine cabinet. I stood sharply and shoved Divinity away, sending her knocking against ornamental tables and chairs. The mug hit the floor and sent liquid everywhere.
“Trithyloform, Divinity?” I said, anger logarithming inside me. Divinity scrambled back, flower vases tumbling behind her. She cowered. “You know,” I said, “we use that stuff in the infirmary in Fata Morgana, Divinity. Dip a rag in it, press it over the patient’s face, and if it doesn’t put them right to sleep, it makes them good and sluggish. Trying to drug me, are you, Divinity? In time for Masked Virtue, Divinity?”
She squeaked, faltering to her feet and then backward, tripping over her dress as I bore down on her. Fumbling, she grabbed a fallen vase of flowers and brandished it at my head.
“You stole my airship ticket!” she cried.
“Boo-hoo!” I snarled, snatching the vase from her hand and smashing it to the floor. Shards rained over our feet.
“You made Queen Honoria’s illusion a thousand times larger!” she said, cowering against the wall. “How am I supposed to compete with that? I can’t! I don’t want to die again!”
“You’d better get used to it,” I said. “You and Constantine both are going to die at my hand and I cannot wait, you little piece of garbage.”
I strode unevenly from the suite, leaving Divinity a mewling little mess among the broken vases and strewn flowers.
The rumble of Masked Virtue emanated through my suite. Endless airships docked around the theater, unloading their passengers. The clang of bells and drums, and an organ grinder’s tune that prickled and stuck like taffy to the air. Such jolly music for a massacre.
A masked guard arrived, presenting me with a gold coat. It was the only new piece of cloth I’d seen in Nod’ol. They fished my glasses from the pool and also offered me a new gold mask.