Masque of the Red Death

  The sunlight hurts my eyes, and my head pounds.

  I should ask Elliott if the poison has done any lasting damage, but I’m not sure I want to know.

  The lobby of the Akkadian Towers is as elegant as ever. Three guards sit in a semicircle, but today they are not throwing dice. They are staring across the room, at an armchair upholstered with gold-and-white striped silk. The girl in the armchair turns and smiles. April.

  Elliott’s arm, wrapped around my shoulder, goes rigid.

  “Can you stand on your own?” he asks under his breath.

  “Yes.” My voice is shaky.

  He lets me go, waiting until I’ve grabbed the back of another armchair for support, and then he takes three quick steps across the floor and pulls his sister out of her chair and into an embrace. She squirms away.

  My relief at seeing April alive is followed by frustration. Why couldn’t she have returned two days ago? Where has she been?

  “I’ve been waiting all morning,” she says to me, ignoring Elliott. “I didn’t think you were ever coming home.” I sway on my feet, and Elliott is instantly back at my side.

  “If I help you, do you think you can make it up the stairs?” he asks me.

  “I’ll help. I’ve had enough practice supporting her,” April says.

  She puts one arm around me and leads me into the stairwell. The left side of her face is bruised and swollen.

  “One of your concoctions?” she asks Elliott.

  “The prince poisoned her.”

  “Did you find a way to fix her? An antidote?”

  “Of course.”

  “You both need to be careful. There are terrible things happening in the city.” She says this earnestly. She’s worried about him, about us, but he doesn’t see it.

  “April, you have to tell me everything—” Elliott begins.

  “Yes. So you can use it. You’ll want to know who took me, and what they did to me. Your enemies.”

  Elliott flinches.

  April is staring up into his face. He looks away first, as if he can’t stand seeing the bruises.

  “Yes. I want to know all of that. But first I should take you to Mother. She’s worried sick. And Araby wants to spend some time with her parents, I’m sure. Shall we reconvene this evening, to make plans?”

  “Not in the secret garden,” April says. “In our living room.”

  “Of course,” he says. And we begin to climb again.

  It’s warm inside the stairwell, and I’m sweating. I push my hair back from my face.

  “Nice ring,” April says.

  “Thank you,” Elliott and I say at the same time.

  We pause at the top of the first flight of stairs, and Elliott puts his hand to his mask.

  “Sometimes I just can’t breathe through this thing.”

  “You have to force yourself. It isn’t safe—” I stumble, and Elliott grabs me. We teeter on the edge of the stairs. He pulls me back, and we fall against the wall. He laughs, and for some reason I laugh too.

  “That’s funny?” April asks. “Almost falling down the stairs?”

  “It’s funny because she was lecturing me about staying safe, and then she almost…” Elliott’s smile fades. He frowns at his sister. “I found it slightly comical. Absurd.”

  She puts her hands on her hips and glares back.

  “I bet you like the big words he uses,” April says.

  I could say a lot of things to her. “I don’t actually like him at all,” I say.

  We climb the rest of the stairs in silence. I want desperately to get away from April and Elliott for a few hours. To be safe in my home with my parents. I practice my apology in my mind, and then we’re on the top floor and home is right in front of me. I lift my feet, stumble forward. As we turn the corner, our courier opens the door. I dive through, away from conflict and conspiracies, and shut and lock the door behind me.

  “Mother? Father?”

  I am alone.

  I walk through each room, calling for them, surprised by the way my voice echoes through the empty spaces. Sinking to the floor of the living room, I put my head in my hands. Mother isn’t here to bring me crackers. Father isn’t here to look at me as if I’m a stranger. For all I know, the poison is still running through my veins, and without my parents, I cannot make amends before I die. I’ve put them in so much danger. I want them to comfort me, to tell me everything is going to be okay. Even Mother. Especially Mother.

  I hurry through Mother’s room, to the closet, and stare at her dresses. Are any of them gone? Maybe a leather trunk has been removed from her closet?

  How did Father negotiate his freedom, in this apartment that once belonged to the prince? Removing Father’s journal from my bag, I open to his words. Everything is my fault. I need to know what he meant. But the words blur, and I find that my head is pounding.

  The clock chimes. An hour passes, and my parents are still not here. I am beginning to suspect that they are never returning.

  The scent of the prince’s cologne clings to my dress.

  The light in my bedroom has changed. In the back corner, a small window looks into the garden. I’ve never paid much attention to it, as it’s always been covered with vegetation. But the tree branches have been pulled back and away. For the first time since I’ve lived here, I can see through the window. And anyone who is in the garden can see into my room.

  I turn to get a blanket, and that’s when I see the box, placed on my bed like a gift. Sometimes Father buys books for me and places them among my pillows, but this is larger than a book. It is a heavy box, and the wood is glossy and varnished. Inside there is a small mask.

  I catch my breath. My fingers find and trace the name that has been etched into the surface. It is engraved. FINN. Father must have commissioned this mask after Finn died.

  A mask for a dead boy.

  It will probably be a little big for Henry. That’s one reason that the poor don’t always buy masks for their children. They grow into and out of them.

  I need to get this mask to Will. This can’t wait. I watched Finn as he came down with the infection. I know how fast it can strike. I put the mask carefully back in the box, pull a leather satchel from my closet, and place the box inside.

  I take off my dress quickly, kicking it across the floor, and pull on a favorite, velvety black, appropriately tattered, with a skirt beneath that nearly reaches my knees and a corset top that is easily laced. The dress is comfortingly familiar but not warm. I pull on a coat that is long and sheer so that my legs are visible, and I put Father’s journal in the pocket.

  Hurrying though the interior rooms, I almost expect to see Elliott watching me from the garden.

  Our courier was sitting in his chair outside the apartment when I arrived. He undoubtedly lives in the lower city. We can walk together at least part of the way to Will’s apartment. It’ll be light for another hour, so Will and the children will be there. The children never go outside, after all. The courier smiles tentatively when I open the door.

  “Did my parents leave any messages for me?”

  “I wasn’t here this morning. They sent me to search the carts again, to look for the young lady’s body.”

  I shudder.

  “Did you have to touch the … bodies?” I can’t help asking, thinking of the horrible black carts, the arms and legs.

  “I had to turn them over, if the faces weren’t visible. There were several nicely dressed young ladies.” His voice is conversational. Is this what passes for small talk now?

  “During the hours when you were here, you didn’t see anything suspicious, people who would wish my father harm?”

  Something flickers behind his eyes before he shakes his head. Whatever he is withholding, it makes me feel less guilty about lying.

  “They left instructions that you were to escort me. I have an errand to run in the lower city.”

  “The lower city?” He sounds as if he’s never heard of the place.

  ??
?Isn’t that where you live?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “You may walk with me, and then go home early. I don’t expect we will need your services tonight.”

  He stands. “You’re sure that your parents gave permission for me to leave early?” He doesn’t want to call me a liar, but he’s certainly thinking it.

  “Yes. You are delivering me rather than delivering groceries.” I try to smile, but it’s difficult.

  “The lower city is dangerous. If we are attacked, I will not be able to protect you.”

  “We won’t be attacked.” I say this with more authority than I could possibly have, but he seems to trust me.

  I hold the leather satchel close to my body and hurry down the stairs, through the lobby, and out a side door, with the courier following close behind. The streets are deserted. The only people we see are workers cleaning the front of the old opera house.

  As we pass by, I reach out and touch a gilded molding, turning the tip of my finger gold. On the side of the building, someone has painted a black scythe. It’s smeared right over the fresh gold paint that hasn’t had a chance to dry.

  “They say the prince may put on an opera and force people to attend.”

  It sounds like something the prince would do. Or a lie that Malcontent might spread. I’ve seen the seats in the opera house. The thought of so many people in one place is enough to make anyone panic.

  We continue on. With each step we take down the broken sidewalk, the buildings become more dilapidated. We pass easily through the checkpoint. The soldiers don’t stop people who are leaving the upper city.

  Every dirty window seems capable of hiding an unfriendly face.

  Maybe Elliott is right. There is something inhumanly sinister about masked faces. A man makes obscene gestures toward me from a doorway.

  We walk faster.

  Since the horses are dead and steam carriages are rare, the side streets have returned to muddy paths. The sidewalks that line the taller buildings are better than the street, but still deep with debris that would make it difficult to run.

  I watch for cloaked figures, but instead I keep seeing a group of teenage boys, trailing us by half a block.

  “Do you live nearby?” I ask.

  “I live a few streets to the west,” he says.

  My eyes catch a flash of red. A young man in a red shirt. I tell myself that just because the streets are mostly abandoned doesn’t mean that every person on the street is suspicious. As we turn a corner I see a row of brick buildings, long and squat. I repeat the number of Will’s building over and over in my head. It can’t be far.

  We round one more corner, and I get a better glimpse of the group following us. They are young. Wiry youths carrying makeshift weapons.

  “Why are they following us?”

  “You’re dressed too elegantly for this area of town.”

  I almost laugh. My skirt is so worn that I doubt anyone could really tell that it was once expensive. Perhaps they covet the corset itself. Has whalebone become a sought-after commodity?

  It’s likely that they are following because I’m a female, which is more frightening. I glance back again, re-evaluating their ages. They may be older than I first thought. They wouldn’t be the first boys to have their growth stunted by malnutrition.

  I watch for a tree at the edge of the sidewalk near the door of Will’s building. I remember it from when I walked with Will. A pendant flutters from a window we pass. Another black scythe. I’ve stopped seeing the red ones that mark the doors of the dead, but the black ones scare me.

  “What is your daughter’s name?”

  “Leah.”

  One of the boys is carrying a heavy wooden cudgel. I can’t help imagining it coming down, breaking my mask, here in the street where the air must be vile. Crushing the precious mask that I’m carrying.

  “We’re near my friend’s building. See where that tree stands, near the front door? In a few steps, we will separate. You keep walking forward. I will go in through the front door and straight to my friend’s apartment. Once I’m gone, they won’t follow you.”

  “Miss!”

  “Think of your daughter. We’ll part in four steps, and you will be safe.”

  I count the steps precisely in my head, my mind racing.

  One.

  Now that we’re farther down the street, I can see the apartments stretching into the valley. And I see that there is a single tree in front of this building and the next. Both trees stand alone, and both are slightly bedraggled.

  Two.

  I read the brass number on the side of the building.

  Three.

  I’m walking away from the courier, and it’s too late to tell him that this is not the right building after all.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  THE INTERIOR OF THE BUILDING IS LIT ONLY by the sunlight that trickles through filthy windows and empty window frames. Glass litters the floor. I hurry down a hall and up a staircase, trying not to gasp for breath, trying not to let my fear take over. Maybe they’ll think that I went into an apartment. Maybe they won’t follow me in here.

  As I’m entering a stairwell, desperate for a place to hide, I hear the door opening. I pause, afraid the stairs will creak and give me away. There are heavy footsteps in the entranceway. Some of them go in one direction, and some in another. I have to risk the noise of the stairs. If I don’t, they will find me for sure.

  When I reach what must be the top floor, the hallway has no windows, so it is completely dark. I shuffle forward, touching the wall with my left hand and holding tight to my bag with the other. I barely wince and don’t stop as a sliver of wood from the wall lodges itself under my fingernail.

  The wall ends abruptly, and I feel my way into an alcove. At the end there is a door. I turn the handle, but it is locked. My entire body is shaking. Collapsing to the floor, I pull my legs to my chest to make myself as small as possible, praying that no one will come into this alcove, that they don’t have torches.

  I graze the carpeting with my fingertips, searching for something to cling to. The texture of the carpet is surprisingly spongy, and I imagine that my fingers are green with mold from some unidentifiable fungus that probably carries noxious germs. I ease the box with the mask from the satchel and slide it to the back of the alcove. The box is dark wood. Perhaps, even if they find me, they will overlook it.

  I grab my skirts, trying to stop shaking.

  I can hear heavy footsteps echoing from the floor below.

  What will they do when they find me?

  Voices carry from the stairwell, and I hold my breath, afraid that the tiniest noise will give me away.

  “The top floor is abandoned.”

  “She could be hiding up there. Did you get a good look at her? Was she carrying a purse?” a crackling adolescent voice asks.

  I shiver. They have no idea of the value of the thing I carry.

  I hope they have let the courier go. I try to focus, try to think. It feels like Elliott’s drugs are still in my system, or the poison. Or the antidote. A wave of nausea washes over me. I focus on soundless breathing. Throwing up now would be a very bad thing.

  I wish I had stayed on my feet, but I can’t think how to stand without making too much noise.

  It has to be nearly evening. Soon it will be dark, and even if I get away from these attackers I will not be safe in the lower city. I have to get to Will’s before he leaves for the Debauchery Club.

  A voice startles me. “Maybe she went out onto the roof.”

  He’s so close that I can hear him breathing. I hold my own breath, so scared and sick that tears are running unheeded down my face.

  There is a sliver of light as they open and pass through a door to the roof.

  I lurch to my feet. The bag flaps against my knees. Empty. If I go now, I might make it down the stairs and outside. The door has been closed for less than a second. I stumble out of the alcove, leaving the box behind.

&n
bsp; I run as hard as I can down the stairs. I hear someone behind me. Something crashes into my shoulder, and the cudgel clatters under my feet, tripping me. With all the drugs in me, what I feel is not exactly pain. The guy grabs my arm, but I’m falling, and he doesn’t have a good grip. I land at the bottom of the stairs, cursing my impractical heeled shoes, and start running again.

  The boy behind me calls to his friends, but they are on the roof.

  I’ve had plenty of time to guess the distance to Will’s building. If the numbers on this one are correct, then it is two blocks away.

  I see two more boys come out of the building. They look down an alley, and then pull back quickly. I don’t want to know what has frightened them in that alley.

  Pulling the shreds of my sheer coat around me, I feel the weight of my father’s journal and clutch it to my body while I run. Soon I can see the door to Will’s building. I focus on the door. It represents safety.

  And then my ankle twists beneath me, and I fall to the cold sidewalk.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  PAIN SHOOTS FROM MY ANKLE TO MY KNEE. SO much for the dulling effect of whatever is still in my body.

  The sidewalk is very cold. I am not wearing enough clothing, and I know without looking that something is emerging from the shadows between the buildings. Figures in black cloaks.

  I scramble to my feet and up three stairs into Will’s building, slamming the door behind me.

  The interior of Will’s building is not that different from the one where I was hiding, except that the windows are unbroken and mostly clean. His apartment is on the top floor, so I limp up a flight of creaking stairs. I stand outside the door for a moment, unused to one without a courier or at least a doorman, before I hit it several times with my fist and then abandon courtesy and try the knob. It’s locked, of course.

  After a long pause, my heart begins to beat in my throat again. What if they aren’t here?

  As I am abandoning all hope, a wooden slat on the door opens and a pair of blue eyes peers out.