“This has gotten out of hand,” the man in the grey suit says. “This venue was always too exposed.”
“That’s what makes it fun,” Hector says, waving an arm over the crowd. His hand passes through a woman’s shoulder and she turns, surprised, but continues walking when she sees nothing. “Did you not use enough of your concealment techniques, even after ingratiating yourself with Chandresh to control the venue?”
“I control nothing,” the man in the grey suit says. “I established a protocol of secrecy disguised as an air of mystery. My counsel is the reason this venue moves from location to location unannounced. It benefits both players.”
“It keeps them apart. If you’d put them together properly from the beginning, she would have broken him years ago.”
“Has your current state made you blind? You were a fool to trap yourself like that, and you are a fool if you cannot see that they are each besotted with the other. If they had not been kept apart it simply would have happened sooner.”
“You should have been a damned matchmaker,” Hector says, his narrowed eyes vanishing and reappearing in the undulating light. “I have trained my player better than that.”
“And yet she came to me. She invited me here personally, as you—” He stops, a figure in the crowd catching his eye.
“I thought I told you to choose a player you could tolerate losing,” Hector says, watching the way his companion gazes after the distressed young man in the bowler hat who passes by without noticing either of them, pursuing Chandresh through the throng of patrons. “You always grow too attached to your students. Unfortunate how few of them ever realize that.”
“And how many of your own students have chosen to end the game themselves?” the man in the grey suit asks, turning back. “Seven? Will your daughter be the eighth?”
“That is not going to happen again,” Hector responds, each word sharp and heavy despite his insubstantial form.
“If she wins, she will hate you for it if she does not already.”
“She will win. Do not try to avoid the fact that she is a stronger player than yours and always has been.”
The man in the grey suit lifts a hand in the direction of the bonfire, amplifying the sound that echoes from beyond the courtyard so that Hector can hear his daughter, repeating Friedrick’s name over and over in increasing panic.
“Does that sound like strength to you?” he asks, dropping his hand and letting Celia’s voice blend into the din of the crowd.
Hector only scowls, the flames of the bonfire further distorting his expression.
“An innocent man died here tonight,” the man in the grey suit continues. “A man your player was quite fond of. If she had not already begun to break, this will do it. Was that what you meant to accomplish here? Have you learned nothing after so many competitions? There is never any way to predict what will come to pass. No guarantees on either side.”
“This isn’t over yet,” Hector says, vanishing in a blur of light and shadow.
The man in the grey suit walks on as though he had not paused, making his way through the curtains of velvet that separate the courtyard from the world outside.
He watches the clock by the gates for some time before he departs the circus.
Beautiful Pain
LONDON, NOVEMBER 1, 1901
Marco’s flat was once plain and spare but now it is crowded with an assortment of mismatched furniture. Pieces that Chandresh became bored with at one point or another and were adopted into this purgatory instead of being discarded entirely.
There are too many books and not enough shelves to hold them, so they sit piled on antique Chinese chairs and sari-wrapped cushions.
The clock on the mantel is a Herr Thiessen creation, adorned with tiny books flipping through their pages as the seconds tick toward three o’clock in the morning.
The larger books on the desk are moving at a less steady pace as Marco goes back and forth between handwritten volumes, scrawling notes and calculations on loose sheets of paper. Over and over he crosses out symbols and numbers, discards books in favor of others, and then returns to the discarded ones again.
The door of the flat opens of its own volition, locks falling open and hinges swinging wildly. Marco jumps from his desk, spilling a bottle of ink across his papers.
Celia stands in the doorway, stray curls escaping her upswept hair. Her cream-colored coat hangs unbuttoned, too light for the weather.
Only when she moves into the room, the door closing automatically and locking with a series of clicks behind her, does Marco notice that beneath her coat her gown is covered with blood.
“What happened?” he asks, the hand that had been moving to right the bottle of ink halting in midair.
“You know perfectly well what happened,” Celia says. Her voice is calm but already the ripples are beginning to form in the dark surface of the ink pooled on the desk.
“Are you all right?” Marco asks, trying to move closer to her.
“I most certainly am not all right,” Celia says, and the bottle of ink shatters, raining ink over the papers and splattering Marco’s white shirtsleeves, falling into invisibility on his black vest. His hands are covered in ink but he is still distracted by the blood on her gown, scarlet screaming across the ivory satin and vanishing behind the black velvet fretwork that covers it like a cage.
“Celia, what did you do?” he asks.
“I tried,” Celia says. Her voice breaks on the word so that she has to repeat herself. “I tried. I thought I might be able to fix it. I’ve known him so long. That maybe it would be like setting a clock to make it tick again. I knew exactly what was wrong but I couldn’t make it right. He was so familiar but it … it didn’t work.”
The sob that has been building in her chest escapes. Tears that she has been holding back for hours fall from her eyes.
Marco rushes across the room to reach her, pulling her close and holding her while she cries.
“I’m sorry,” he says, repeating it in a litany over her sobs until she calms, the tension easing in her shoulders as she relaxes into his arms.
“He was my friend,” she says quietly.
“I know,” Marco says, wiping away her tears and leaving smudges of ink across her cheeks. “I am so sorry. I don’t know what happened. Something threw off the balance and I cannot figure out what it was.”
“It was Isobel,” Celia says.
“What?”
“The charm Isobel put over the circus, over you and me. I knew about it, I could feel it. I didn’t think it was doing much of anything but apparently it was. I don’t know why she chose tonight to stop.”
Marco sighs.
“She chose tonight because I finally told her that I love you,” he says. “I should have done it years ago, but I told her tonight instead. I thought she took it well but clearly I was wrong. I haven’t the slightest idea what Alexander was doing there.”
“He was there because I invited him,” Celia says.
“Why would you do that?” Marco asks.
“I wanted a verdict,” she says, tears springing to her eyes again. “I wanted this to be over so I could be with you. I thought if he came to see the circus that a winner could be determined. I don’t know how else they expect it to be settled. How did Chandresh know he would be there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what possessed him to go there, and he insisted that I not accompany him so I followed him instead, to keep an eye on him. I only lost track of him for minutes when I went to speak with Isobel and by the time I caught up with him again … ”
“Did you feel as though you had the ground removed from beneath you as well?” Celia asks.
Marco nods.
“I was trying to protect Chandresh from himself,” he says. “I had not even considered he might be a danger to anyone else.”
“What is all this?” Celia asks, turning her attention to the books on the desk. They contain endless pages of glyphs and symbols, ringe
d in text ripped from other sources, affixed to one another and inscribed over and over. In the middle of the desk there is a large leather volume. Pasted inside the front cover, surrounded by an elaborately inscribed tree, Celia can barely make out something that must once have been a newspaper clipping. The only word she can discern is transcendent.
“This is how I work,” Marco says. “That particular volume is the one which binds everyone in the circus. It’s the safeguard, for lack of a better term. I placed a copy of it in the bonfire before the lighting, but I’ve made adjustments to this one.”
Celia turns through the pages of names. She pauses at a page that holds a scrap of paper bearing the looping signature of Lainie Burgess, next to a space where an equal-sized piece has been removed, leaving only a bright blank void.
“I should have put Herr Thiessen in there,” Marco says. “I never even thought of it.”
“If it had not been him it would have been another patron. There is no way to protect everyone. It’s impossible.”
“I am sorry,” he says again. “I did not know Herr Thiessen as well as you, but I did admire him and his work.”
“He showed me the circus in a way I had not been able to see it before,” Celia says. “How it looked from the outside. We wrote letters to each other for years.”
“I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.”
“But you built me dreams instead,” Celia says, looking up at him. “And I built you tents you hardly ever see. I have had so much of you around me always and I have been unable to give you anything in return that you can keep.”
“I still have your shawl,” Marco says.
She smiles softly while she closes the book. Beside it, the spilled ink seeps back into its jar, the glass fragments reforming around it.
“I think this is what my father would call working from the outside in rather than the inside out,” she says. “He was always cautioning against it.”
“Then he would despise the other room,” Marco says.
“What room?” Celia asks. The bottle of ink settles as though it had never been broken.
Marco beckons her forward, leading her to the adjoining room. He opens the door but does not step through it, and when Celia follows him she can see why.
It may once have been a study or a parlor, not a large room, but perhaps it could be referred to as cozy were it not for the layers of paper and string that hang from every available surface.
Strings hang from the chandelier and loop over to the tops of shelves. They tie back upon each other like a web cascading from the ceiling.
On every surface, tables and desks and armchairs, there are meticulously constructed models of tents. Some made from newsprint, others from fabric. Bits of blueprints and novels and stationery, folded and cut and shaped into a flock of striped tents, all tied together with more string in black and white and red. They are bound to bits of clockwork, pieces of mirror, stumps of dripping candles.
In the center of the room, on a round wooden table that is painted black but inlaid with light stripes of mother-of-pearl, there is a small iron cauldron. Inside it a fire burns merrily, the flames bright and white, casting long shadows across the space.
Celia takes a step into the room, ducking to avoid the strings that hang from the ceiling. The sensation is identical to entering the circus, even down to the scent of caramel lingering in the air, but there is something deeper beneath it, something heavy and ancient underlying the paper and string.
Marco stays in the doorway as Celia navigates carefully around the room, mindful of the sweep of her gown as she peers into the tiny tents and runs her fingers delicately over the bits of string and clockwork.
“This is very old magic, isn’t it?” she asks.
“It’s the only kind I know,” Marco responds. He tugs a string by the doorway and the movement reverberates throughout the room, the entire model circus sparkling as bits of metal catch the firelight. “Though I doubt it was ever meant for this purpose.”
Celia pauses at a tent containing a tree branch covered in candle wax. Orienting herself from there, she locates another, gently pushing open the paper door to find a ring of tiny chairs representing her own performance space.
The pages that comprise it are printed with Shakespearean sonnets.
Celia lets the paper door swing closed.
She finishes her tentative tour around the room and rejoins Marco in the doorway, pulling the door closed softly behind her.
The sensation of being within the circus fades as soon as she has crossed the threshold, and she is suddenly acutely aware of everything in the adjoining room. The warmth of the fire fighting against the draft from the windows. The scent of Marco’s skin beneath the ink and his cologne.
“Thank you for showing me that,” she says.
“I take it your father would not approve?” Marco asks.
“I don’t particularly care what my father approves of any longer.”
Celia wanders past the desk and stops in front of the fireplace, watching the miniature pages turning through time on the clock upon the mantel.
Next to the clock there sits a solitary playing card. The two of hearts. It bears no sign that it was once pierced with an Ottoman dagger. No evidence that Celia’s blood has ever marred its surface, but she knows that it is the same card.
“I could speak with Alexander,” Marco suggests. “Perhaps he saw enough to provide a verdict, or this will result in some sort of disqualification. I’m certain he thinks me a disappointment at this point, he could declare you the win—”
“Stop,” Celia says without turning. “Please, stop talking. I don’t want to talk about this damned game.”
Marco attempts to protest but his voice catches in his throat. He struggles against it but finds he is unable to speak.
His shoulders fall in a silent sigh.
“I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held,” Celia says when he approaches her. “Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.”
She leans against his chest and he wraps his arms around her, gently stroking the back of her neck with an ink-stained hand. They stay like this for some time, alongside the crackling of the fire and the ticking of the clock.
When she lifts her head, he keeps his eyes locked on hers as he slides her coat from her shoulders, resting his hands on her bare arms.
The familiar passion that always accompanies the touch of his skin against hers washes over Celia and she can no longer resist it, no longer wants to.
“Marco,” she says, her fingers fumbling with the buttons on his vest. “Marco, I—”
His lips are on hers, hot and demanding, before she can finish.
While she undoes button after button, he pulls blindly at fastenings and ribbons, refusing to take his lips from hers.
The meticulously constructed gown collapses into a puddle around her feet.
Wrapping the unbound laces of her corset around his wrists, Marco pulls her down to the floor with him.
They continue to remove layer after layer until nothing separates them.
Trapped in silence, Marco traces apologies and adorations across Celia’s body with his tongue. Mutely expressing all the things he cannot speak aloud.
He finds other ways to tell her, his fingers leaving faint trails of ink in their wake. He savors every sound he elicits from her.
The entire room trembles as they come together.
And though there are a great many fragile objects contained within it, nothing breaks.
Above them, the clock continues to turn its pages, pushing stories too minuscule to read ever onward.
*
MARCO DOES NOT REMEMBER FALLING ASLEEP. One moment Celia is curled in his arms, her head resting against his chest as she listens to his heart beatin
g, and the next he is alone.
The fire has died down to smoldering embers. The grey dawn creeps in through the windows, casting soft shadows.
Upon the two of hearts on the mantel, there sits a silver band engraved in Latin. Marco smiles, slipping Celia’s ring onto his pinkie, alongside the scar on his ring finger.
He does not notice until later that the leather-bound safeguard that had been on his desk is gone.
Part IV
INCENDIARY
There are tents, I am certain, that I have not discovered in my many visits to the circus. Though I have seen a great deal of the sights, traveled a number of the available paths, there are always corners that remain unexplored, doors that remain unopened.
—FRIEDRICK THIESSEN, 1896
Technicalities
LONDON, NOVEMBER 1, 1901
Celia wishes she could freeze time as she listens to the steady beat of Marco’s heart against the ticking of the clock. To stay forever within this moment, curled in his arms, his hands softly stroking her back. To not have to leave.
She only succeeds in slowing Marco’s heartbeat enough that he falls deeply asleep.
She could wake him, but already the sky outside is brightening, and she dreads the thought of saying goodbye.
Instead, she kisses him gently on the lips and quietly dresses as he sleeps. She takes her ring from her finger and leaves it on the mantel, resting between the two hearts emblazoned on the playing card.
She pauses as she puts on her coat, looking at the books scattered across the desk.
Perhaps if she better understood his systems, she could use them to make the circus more independent. To take some of the weight off of herself. Allowing them to be together for more than a few stolen hours, without challenging the rules of the game.
It is the best gift she can think to give him, if they are unable to force a verdict from either of their instructors.