Illusionarium

  Time slows when panic’s in the blood. I felt as though I ran forever. I pulled up sharply, light-headed and breathless, amid a mass of old pipes and crumbling walls, to see a little boy standing all alone, huddled over the door of a hovel. He was a grimy little thing, wearing a patched vest and breeches. His face was pinched from hunger, his hair matted. He looked up at me and my gold coat with wide eyes. Far too wide for his face.

  “Hello,” I said, looking around for parents. There were none. It was strange to see a child here in Nod’ol—this one, in fact, was the first I’d met. Didn’t exactly seem like a prime place to raise a child, Nod’ol. Or even fall in love. I buried my splitting hands in my coat pockets. A sliver of gold glinted from one of them.

  The boy’s eyes lit when he saw my hand touching the golden mask. Slowly, he reached into his vest and produced a makeshift stick with a grimy yellow ribbon tied to the end. He waved it.

  “I say!” I said, affection filling me. I lifted him up into a giant hug.

  He stumbled against the wall of his house when I released him, blinking, but not running away. He seemed too frightened to speak.

  “Boy,” I said. “I bet you keep an ear to the ground, eh? Have you seen a soldier about my age around here? He wears an eye patch? No mask?”

  The boy blinked at me with wide brown eyes.

  “He’s wearing a blue uniform,” I said. “Rows of buttons? A belt? Stripes on the sleeves?”

  The boy blinked at me.

  “He’s a devil with a gun,” I said.

  The boy broke into a giant grin. He took off running like mad, jumping with reckless abandon over pipes and across walls. Up the sides of stairs, even through a pipe. My muddy coat slopped against me, chasing after him.

  “Well done!” I said happily. “Well done, go on!”

  He stopped moments later at an airship that hung just a few feet over us. It was so low flying it nearly scraped stone. A frayed rope kept it docked to a small set of stairs. Like the other airships, it had continued to bob upright in the gravity change. A sign above the half-broken door of the hull read THE THREE-EYED KING. A pub.

  A gunshot sounded from beyond the door. If a gunshot could sound crisp and cold, this one did in spades. Lockwood!

  “Thanks!” I said to the boy, who stared at me with wide, wistful eyes. Without hesitation, I pulled the golden mask from my pocket and offered it to him.

  “Bet you can trade that for food or something,” I said.

  He nipped it from my fingers, leapt from the stairs of the dock, and disappeared into the dark mists of the city, waving his grimy ribbon stick all the way.

  I entered the pub, hopping through the door from the protruding stairs into a large room that filled the entire hull of the ship. The walls were bowed. Glowing in dim lantern light stood a wreckage of tables and chairs. Classical Nod’olian style. Which meant: everything was falling to pieces. Broken orthogonagen lanterns, torn curtains, rotting wood floors and walls, shards of glass everywhere.

  Men wearily sat in some of the chairs, talking, lower-class Nod’olians with years of Riven scars across their faces, and some with extra noses. Their clothes were faded gray, fabric of colors that had washed out years ago, and it made them blend in with the walls. They didn’t, I noted, wear orange or green. In fact, they didn’t even seem to care about Masked Virtue or the world beyond, but for two men in the corner.

  “Ooo, this nooothin’,” one was saying, nodding to a grimy nearby window. “Why, when I woos a boy, they’d have proper illusions, great rivers of blooood, plagues, locusts, that’s the ticket. O’course, that was when there were more people in the city—”

  “Aye, but I’ll remember this one too. . . .”

  No one in the pub noticed me enter. They all were too preoccupied with the person in the middle of the dank room, who had a row of glasses lined up in front of him. It looked like they held water, but from what I could smell, didn’t. A water-logged prune26 rested in the bottom of each glass. The person they stared fixedly at had a mess of blond hair, an unbuttoned uniform jacket that flapped around his white linen shirt, and a Nod’olian steam pistol at his side. Lockwood.

  He took a glass, drank the liquid in one gulp, then threw it into the air. In a blur he drew the pistol from his belt and shot the glass without even looking at it. It exploded into a firework of shards and rained over the men.

  Cheers erupted throughout the pub. The men around him gathered money and placed more bets among one another.

  “He hasn’t missed one!” said one man, noticing me advance. “Care to make a wager? We reckon he’ll drink hisself to death before he misses.”

  “Another! Ha-ha!” a man yelled.

  Lockwood took a drink, but before he could lift it to his lips, I’d reached the table, placed my hand over the cup, and pressed it back down. Lockwood tugged at it, then his cold blue eye met mine. He blinked in bleary recognition.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Lockwood tugged on the glass. His hand slipped and he stumbled back.

  “You done here?” I said as he regained his balance.

  “Get out!” he said, shoving me away and grabbing for another glass. He drank half of it, the other half splashing onto his uniform, spat the prune out, threw the glass up into the air, drew his pistol, and shot it again. It rained glass and prune alcohol.

  Everyone cheered and passed money around.

  “Lockwood,” I said, maneuvering around the table to meet his eye again. “I need your help. There’s not much time. I have one last chance to find the cure and get us home.”

  “Home?” said Lockwood. “Ha! Why don’t you go home, Johnny? You have one.”

  “I ruddy well won’t if you don’t help!” I snapped. “Isn’t that part of an oath you took? To fight and defend Arthurise? I thought you were an Arthurisian knight!”

  “And I thought you were only one person,” Lockwood fired back, smiling nastily and grabbing another drink. “Because unless I’m very drunk, you’re splitting into several.”

  At Lockwood’s words, I quickly examined my hands, and my stomach sank. Breathing in all this fantillium had split them even further. My thumbs each had split down to the knuckle and stuck out in misshappen digits. My schisming fingertips had widened and split, fusing together at the second knuckle. My hands had deformed into fleshy spiders.

  I hurriedly felt my face, probing the bridge of my nose under my broken glasses. It had grown wider. I had three nostrils now. I felt higher and to the side and discovered a rim of hair growing along my temple—an eyebrow. The indent below it had become deeper and tender to the touch.

  Horrified, I made to desperately hide myself. I dug into my coat pocket for the mask, and when I grabbed nothing, remembered I’d given it away to the boy. Instead, my fingers closed around a tiny metal sword.

  The Excalibur medal. That was right—I’d kept it from the deck of Edward’s ship, and had slipped it into the coat when I’d changed, earlier today. And here it was. The tip of it pricked my finger.

  I slowly wrapped my hand around it. Resolve solidified in my chest.

  With lightning speed I grabbed Lockwood by the front of his uniform and slammed him down across the tabletop, knocking glasses to the floor. The men of the pub cried out in indignation. Lockwood blinked at me. I was surprised myself. Lockwood was so heavy he must have been made entirely of compressed muscle. I shoved him down when he tried to get back up.

  “Now you listen to me, you rudderless rankless twit,” I said. “I’ve turned this city sideways looking for you! D’you expect me to just let you slosh yourself to death? Especially after all that talk about airships and navigation and compasses? What, suddenly it’s all right to not steer if there’s a storm? You make me sick!”

  In a blur, Lockwood grabbed my wrist with such strength he could have snapped it. My numerous fingers opened, and the sword clasp fell out and clattered onto the table.

  Lockwood stared at it.

  I yanked my hand from his grip
.

  “Find me when your rudder isn’t broken,” I said.

  I stormed from the pub, leaping from the door back to the stairs. One last glance at Lockwood—he still stared expressionlessly at the sword clasp on the table—and I was on my way. I didn’t have time to wait around for him.

  I peered forward into the misty sideways sky. Above and below, beyond the cliffside buildings, airships hung. I’d have to fly to the theater. Once again I was running across brick walls and storefronts to the nearest vertical lift, where a small airship with green pennants was docked. Too small for weaponry or importance. This airship was mean for quick flight. Perfect.

  I couldn’t just climb out on the now-horizontal dock to reach it—I’d have to take the lift, so when the illusion ended, I’d actually be in the airship, not clawing at the dock, thinking I was in an airship. In spite of being illusioned sideways, the lift still worked. I paced impatiently on its wall as it groaned and moved forward.

  I mentally broke the steps down in my mind as I carefully climbed out of the lift onto the side of the docking platform, praying my actual self was leaping onto the ship’s deck as well. I fell kneecaps first, hitting on all fours. I hadn’t kept balance on my feet. By the feel of it—and my painfully tight shoes—my fingers weren’t the only things schisming.

  “Don’t move.”

  The rasping voice came from behind me. It was the voice of someone who decidedly had a weapon. I didn’t move.

  “Stand up, illusionist.”

  I stood, hands up, catching a glance behind me. A lone airman in a green mask stood by the docking gear. He held a pistol level to my head. I reluctantly turned and looked ahead at the balloon envelope, riggings, and mist.

  “Right,” said the airman in guttural tones, and then he screamed. “Captain! Captaaaaaaa—”

  THWUMPF.

  The sound was followed by more sounds: the thump of a body hitting the floor, the clunk of a mask hitting the wood face-first, and the skitter of a pistol across the deck.

  “Shut up, shut up,” came a familiar voice. “You little Nod’olian worm!”

  I twisted about. The airman lay in a heap on the deck, knocked unconscious. Above him stood Lockwood, wincing, one hand holding a pistol, the other pressed against his head as though he had a massive headache.

  “Lockwood!” I said.

  “Hullo, Johnny,” said Lockwood, and he smiled. Pinned haphazardly to his open uniform jacket was the Excalibur medal.

  CHAPTER 21

  I couldn’t describe how I felt, seeing Lockwood on course again. I almost wanted to hug him.27

  Instead, we raced to the small navigation room at the forecastle, Lockwood growling at me the entire way.

  “You made this illusion?” he seethed. “This complete sideways nightmare? Do you know what a ghastly piece of mind-twist it was to try walking up a vertical dock and have gravity jerk you both ways? Do you? When we get back to Arthurise, remind me to break your neck!”

  “I’m glad you understand the gravity of the situation, ha-ha,” I said, breathless. “I was afraid things were taking a wrong turn. . . .”

  “I don’t get your jokes!” Lockwood snapped.

  “Look,” I said. “We still have a chance to save Arthurise. My mum and sister, even. We’ve only got a few minutes—we’ve got to get to the theater and find Lady Florel. Can you fly one of these things?”

  “Of course I can fly one of these things! Even these stupid, outdated pieces of rubbish I could fly ten times as drunk as I am now with one arm, my eye put out, and both my legs chopped off, what do you think, you sober two-eyed twit?”

  “Three-eyed,” I corrected, running up the forecastle stairs after him.

  “That’s even worse!”

  We arrived at the navigation room, silent as a snowfall. Lockwood opened the door slowly with a soft click. It was an enclosed room with glass along the sides, giving us a full view of the mist and airships above and below.

  A balding man in a scuffed green uniform and scuffed green mask sat in the captain’s seat, hands at the engine and rudder wheels. And behind him stood Divinity, drawing her fingers nervously through her golden hair. They argued at the scene of sideways rooftops and tangled hedges before them.

  “I’ll fly wherever you want,” said the captain with strained patience. “But it would be nice if you could turn the city right so I’m certain we’re not actually crashing into anything.”

  “I can’t illusion it away,” Divinity snarled. “No one can! It’s not a normal illusion! It’s—it’s that idiot JonathEeee!”

  Divinity leapt backward as Lockwood cocked his steam pistol and pressed the barrel against the back of the captain’s head. The captain stiffened.

  The windows around us bowed of their own accord, creating nebulous blotches of light, before building and gathering into a long whip of glass. It snapped past our faces and knocked the pistol from Lockwood’s hand before breaking from the window and crashing to the ground in shards.

  Glass! Divinity! In haste she illusion-pulled the glass from the window again. A large arm formed with fingers the size of fuel cells. Lockwood and I dodged it as it, too, broke over us and smashed to the ground.

  The captain threw himself from the chair and attacked Lockwood, pulling a revolver from his holster. Divinity illusioned the glass forward from the window again—and without a second thought, I nullified it from her fingers with an anti-glass illusion. I’d learned something from The Illusionist’s Handbook after all.

  Divinity tried to enliven the glass again, shaping it into tentacles. I nullified them all, again, and the glass bowed back to its window port. Divinity stared at her fingers with wide eyes.

  “What did you just do?” she cried.

  “Divinity,” I said, dodging a stream of glass once more and nullifying it. “Sorry. I know it’s a bad time to say it, but—really, I’m sorry.”

  Divinity gave up illusioning and dove at me with clawed hands. I ducked out of the way. She tripped over the captain’s chair and stumbled into the wall.

  “I’m sorry I took your airship ticket, and I’m sorry I said those things. About hurting you.”

  Divinity struck me with sparks flying from her fingers. She screeched and made an effort to gouge my eyes out.

  “Admittedly,” I said, shoving her hands away from my face, “I’m a whole lot less sorry when you’re trying to kill me!”

  Lockwood pulled a dagger from his boot and lunged at the captain.

  “Lockwood!” I yelled, drawing him short. I inhaled, pulling together the chemical formula I’d known on Fata. I pushed it from my head and fingers to Divinity and the captain in a glistening, swirling flow of thought.

  They folded up and hit the floor with a thum-thumpf and lay there gracefully sprawled in a dreamless sleep.

  Lockwood stared at me with a wide eye.

  “What did you just do?” he said.

  “Trithyloform,” I said sheepishly. “Surgeons use it.”

  “Ha! Maybe I should become a surgeon!” he said. He threw himself into the captain’s chair and shoved the gear sticks forward. The engine deep inside the ship ground and whined and rumbled, and we dropped down into the expanse of airships. I turned Divinity over, carefully, and gently set her by the wall, where she wouldn’t get stepped on.

  “I really am sorry, Jane,” I said, remembering her real name. “If I could, I’d stay and help make a world where you could visit Sussex, anytime you wanted.”

  She exhaled gently.

  Spires and the rooftops of towers whizzed past us as Lockwood lowered the ship along the length of the city, narrowly avoiding other airships. The theater appeared from the mist below us. Lockwood maneuvered the ship with surprising dexterity, his face grim, until we were flush with the theater side. The side that faced up was the same side we’d broken through the night before. The windows were still broken, even.

  I explained to Lockwood the difficulty of getting from the ship into the windows—the gravi
ty in the real world had the final say, and if we didn’t make certain we were careful at all angles, in real life we’d end up falling to our deaths on the marble below and not realizing it until the sudden black.

  “What a dear little sunshine you are,” he said, navigating the ship so close that the hull scraped the marble veneer, shaving away little curls of wood. He jammed the wheel with the captain’s belt and we raced down the stairs and over the deck. Of all the airships above us, only one descended itself after us to the theater. The giant red of Queen Honoria’s airship.

  “O-kay, I say we have maybe fifteen minutes, at most,” Lockwood yelled, and he jumped into the broken window, grabbing the ledge and swinging himself through. I followed after with much less grace.

  Green curtains swished past me as I slid down the length of the room and smashed into the wall, sending vases and more flowers crashing around me, breaking the arrangements and furniture all over again. I ran along the wall, jumping over mirrors and leaping over the edge of the doorway into the hall.

  I gasped sharply. Here, beyond the broken windows of the suite, the air lacked the icy chemical flavor of fantillium. My stomach upended. The world flipped. My head spun. In the unsettling moment when gravity pulled me every direction and none, I saw monsters.

  Demons made of glass and spiders, crawling over me in a thousand delicate clickety click clicks, their feet puncturing my skin as they split and split again into a plague of hundreds more. I yelled aloud and tried to shake them off.

  Lockwood burst from Divinity’s suite, kicking off a green swath of curtain.

  “On your feet, up up up!” he barked, yanking me to my feet. I stumbled and jerked my head so hard it knocked against the wainscot.

  “Jonathan!” he said, shaking me. “You’re—you’re not a Riven yet, are you? They—shake their heads like that, yeah?”