Masque Ball: Chapter I

“Summer’s luck, how did those bastards make this fit?” A muted grunting came through the slightly open garage door, followed by an exasperated cry and a crash of metal against metal.

I cringed from my position outside and out of sight, and debated the wisdom of walking in now, or waiting a few minutes for Serah to calm down. I listened carefully at the door for a few seconds, but no more noises of anger came from within. Probably safe.

“Hello, the workshop,” I called, tapping lightly on the corrugated iron of the garage door and poking my head around to peer in. The old, rusted outer door rattled noisily, and Serah looked up.

The wrinkles on her brow smoothed as she saw that it wasn’t another customer come to bother her. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that she dislikes customers, exactly. Serah is, as I have said and will say again, a wonderful mechanic. She’ll fix anything, and do it happily…as long as she isn’t absorbed in one of her own projects. Which she all too often is. It was with little surprise that I laid eyes on the remains of the great beetle-like automat I had given her two weeks previous, having lugged it to her place from Annabella’s Fine Corner Bakery and Cafe, where Jedediah Millston had left it.

Serah’s shop and home is a half hour’s brisk walk from my own place above Annabella’s: through a busy market street, across one of the great steel bridges that leaps across the Corrobur, and several blocks deep into one of the many industrial sectors of Kestral.

For the unfamiliar, the Corrobur is the southern of two rivers that flow into Kestral from the east, merging into the Pike, that great river that spills out into the bay. The North Pike is the larger of the two, but the South Pike carries a sizable amount of traffic from the southeast. Down there, they call it the Corrobur, and I suppose that habit has stuck with me from my time away from Kestral. It’s just a more colorful name, is it not?

Serah’s shop, once you get to it, is an old and rusted two-story warehouse in a street full of old and rusted two-story warehouses. The outer doors stick, and rattle something terrible in a storm, and the roof drains poorly, collecting puddles that suddenly empty themselves over hapless passerby. The walls are all corrugated iron siding, stained with rust and bird droppings both ancient and fresh. It does not look like a place any respectable citizen would set foot in.

For as long as I’ve known her, Serah has never been much for appearances. She dresses in oil-stained overalls, roughly patched at the knees by her inexpert hand, with a blackened handkerchief sticking out of one pocket. A scarred leather tool belt, dotted with black fingerprints and laden with the tools of her trade, encircles her waist. She ties her hair back in a rough bun, or hides it under a kerchief, but these methods do little to prevent oil and muck from streaking her already dark blond locks, giving a rather new spin on the color “dirty blonde.” It’s rare that I’ll visit her and see a clean face, or even much of a face at all, often hidden behind dark goggles and a mask while she welds a component in place, or cleans grime-crusted parts with chemicals that could strip the lungs from a man’s chest.

But all that dirt and muck and outward carelessness encases a brilliant and curious mind, and it is this that has earned her something of a reputation in a city that, at times, seems to be drowning in amateur mechanics. The rich and the noble might never set foot in her shop, but among the rest of us, hers is not a name unknown.

Serah’s lodgings emulate her in many respects. From the outside, as I have described, the warehouse is decrepit and looks ready to collapse in the next storm, or to give some poor sap lockjaw if he rubs against a sharp edge. But once one has steeled oneself to pass through the wobbly iron doors, it is an entirely unexpected sight that greets the eyes.

Three wide berths take up the center of the floor, each large enough to cradle a heavy automobile, and adjustable to fit the smaller transportation and automats that make up a fair percentage of Serah’s work. The berths are a nest of steel beams and springs, well-oiled and clearly much newer than the building itself. The floor of the warehouse is smooth concrete, scratched and gouged and permanently stained, but solid and uncracked for all that.

Tool racks line the walls, keeping Serah’s vast collection clean and organized. Hammers small enough to split grains of sand vie for space among sledges that look impossible for Serah and I to lift, working together.

Above the shelves run several gas lines, carefully insulated against the occasional spark. A double ring of lamps hooks into this, shedding bright yellow light from the concrete floors to the high ceilings.

At the rear of the warehouse is a smaller attached room, where Serah keeps spare parts, personal projects, and her more expensive and exotic tools.

The upper loft of the main warehouse is where Serah makes her home. When she first bought the place, the roof leaked all over the loft, the floor had great gaping holes where someone could easily fall to their death, and the whole of it smelled of mildew and bat droppings.

I know this all second hand, of course. I didn’t meet Serah until well some time after she had moved to the warehouse, but looking at the outside, I can believe she is not exaggerating. I don’t know exactly what modifications she made, but ascending to the loft now brings one to a cozy single-room apartment with low ceilings, neatly encompassing a bed, a loveseat, a desk, and even a small gas oven, which taps into the lines for the gas lamps below.

When Serah is working, however, she relaxes somewhat on her usual fastidious habits. The destroyed shell of the beetle-like automat that had nearly brought down KAMA sat in Serah’s middle berth, surrounded by a haphazard array of cogs, springs, flywheels, pistons, and every other manner of mechanical device. It looked as if she had been methodically removing the broken components, and now was attempting to replace them. Which seemed to be a source of distress.

Serah turned a sudden glaring eye at me, and blew a stray strand of hair from out of her face. I quailed despite myself. “You’re not lying to me, are you Victor?” she asked sharply.

I stepped back, astonished. “Um,” came my eloquent reply. Lie to her? I would never!

“When you said this blasted thing worked, I mean,” she sighed and leaned back on her hands, letting her wrench clatter to the concrete floor.

“Ah,” I said, and fought the twin urges to sigh in relief and grit my teeth in annoyance. “Of course I’d not lie to you.” I kept my voice as level as possible. “You know that.” Except for one exception, I never lie. Not any more. I wish I could say absolutely never, but I still cannot bring myself to tell Mother and Father the truth about my years away from Kestral.

Serah glanced up sharply at my tone, and winced. “Oh, I’m sorry, Victor,” she said, shaking her head violently to clear it, then abruptly standing. She reached out to me, then looked at her hands and rubbed them on her overalls. The denim was already coated with grease, and at last she shrugged helplessly and gave it up as a bad job.

“I didn’t mean–”

I sighed. “I know, and I apologize. What are you doing?” I pulled one hand out of my coat pocket and pointed at the automat, both to change the subject and because I honestly was not sure. As I pointed, I realized that I was sweating, though outside it had been Kestral’s normal cool autumn weather. With all the machinery Serah works with, and the heavy insulation she had installed, her shop is usually several degrees warmer than the outside air. I pulled my long coat off and hung it on one of the hooks by the door, next to Serah’s own white trench coat. For a woman who deals with as much grease as she, she wears much lighter colors than one would think wise.

Serah glanced at the automat and pouted slightly, sticking her tongue out at the inert machine. “It came apart easily enough,” she sighed. “But I’ve been trying all morning to put it back together, and I can’t for the life of me figure it out. None of the components are standardized. It’s like trying to put together a puzzle when none of the pieces fit right, or they fit in half a dozen places just as well. I’m beginning to think Summer is laughing at me.”

Kristopher whistled at Serah and she threw a smile his way. “Hiya, Kristopher. Have you been keeping Victor out of trouble?”

“To be fair, Summer laughs at everyone,” I said. Summer was the trickster of the four gods, and friend and enemy alike to gamblers and risk-takers. I could well believe he would be snickering if he saw Serah’s predicament.

Kristopher sang some nonsense to Serah, who smiled appreciatively nonetheless. She can’t understand him, but she likes to listen to him, and he seems to enjoy singing for her.

I stepped closer to the automat. It looked much the same as I remembered: six legs, several of which were broken or severely stressed, held up the sad and battered body. Once, it had stood taller than I, but slumped as it was into Serah’s berth, its top rested below my chin level. From above, it might have looked a little like a deranged flower, armor panels having burst up and out when its boiler exploded. That had been my doing, two weeks previous, when I had been on the search for a little boy named Robert Withers. I hadn’t intended to stop the automat quite so spectacularly, but I wasn’t about to complain. It had worked, and who doesn’t like a good show, after all?

The boy is doing fine, by the way.

In the automat’s shadowed innards, I could see the hole where the boiler had once sat, and radiating out from that, shock waves in the metal components as the extreme pressures in the overstressed boiler had burst, bending cogs like leaves in the wind, unwinding springs, tearing through steel plating as if it were paper. Kristopher darted into the thing’s broken innards and began looping back and forth, touching upon each broken piece. I wondered if he was remembering the machine’s spectacular death, or if perhaps there was some lingering effect of the pains it had been linked to.

I’m no mechanic, but to my eyes, the automat would never take another step. But, on the other hand, I’ve seen nothing short of miracles come out of Serah’s shop. My autobike is a good example. It’s a certified junk heap, bought cheap when I returned to Kestral, and Serah–along with everyone else I know–has told me repeatedly to find a new one. But for all that, she keeps it running when, by all rights, it should have been scrapped years ago. It’s certainly not her fault that the bike spends more time in her shop than parked outside Annabella’s. I’d like to think it isn’t my fault either. I don’t drive it like a madman or a cabbie. Maybe it just doesn’t like me. Or at least, it likes Serah a lot more. And who could blame it, if so?

Still… “Do you really think you’ll get this running again?” I asked Serah skeptically, waving my arm to encompass the menagerie of broken pieces she had removed from the machine.

She rolled her eyes and began to retie her bun, ignoring the grease on her hands as it streaked into her hair. “I’ve told you before: it’s never a matter of if; only of when.” She frowned. “Though, I honestly don’t know what I’ll do with it once it is fixed. It’s only suited for one mission, and it’s already failed at that. And I’d have to scrounge up a new drill bit anyway to fit it out for that again.”

I raised an eyebrow. “If you wanted to bring down the academy, you mean?”

Serah shrugged uncomfortably. “I just like to get things working properly, is all,” she muttered, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“So, what brings you my way?” Serah asked, her voice muffled as she bent into the automat to begin removing yet another broken piece.

“What, I can’t visit my lady without a reason?” I asked. I frowned. Why had I come again?

Kristopher bounced out of the automat’s innards and whistled in admonishment at me, before Serah called him back in to provide light. I’d protest at her using the salamander like a hand torch, but he seems amiable enough.

Ah yes. I eyed Serah out of the corner of my vision. She was standing again, examining a thin cylinder streaked with soot. I grinned. Her attention wasn’t on me, and before she could turn I was upon her.

“Wha–” she protested as I grabbed her hands in mine, stretching her left out and placing her right upon my shoulder. I pulled her close, then stepped back and spun to the left, and she came with me half willingly, half unsure. Another spin, a dip, and I was leading her around the room, spinning in stately circles and moving my feet just so, keeping them out of the way of her less certain steps. A grin spread across Serah’s face and she leaned back and spun with me, until with a sudden flourish, I let her back, so her head nearly touched the floor, then pulled her into me, holding her tight. She was laughing, and we were both panting with the sudden exertion.

“Victor, when did you learn to dance?” she asked, her pale blue eyes twinkling in the lamplight.

I couldn’t help a pleased smile stealing across my face. It had been years since I’d done that; it was good to know I hadn’t completely lost it.

“There’s a ball this weekend, on Saturday,” I said instead. “A celebration put on by the mayor and his wife. I’m to go as a Peace Workers representative, and I am allowed to bring a date.” I paused a beat. “Do you know anyone who I could ask? A friend of yours, perhaps?”

Serah pulled out of my embrace and hit me in the shoulder. “Yes, thank you, I would love to go, you lunk. And you’ve given me plenty of notice, so I’m sure I can find a gown in time.” She stuck her tongue out at me. It was Wednesday.

I winced. “Ah. Well. This time it’s not entirely my fault; I didn’t find out about this until just yesterday afternoon, myself. I’m not sure why; usually Hattie is much better about giving me notice.”

Serah raised an eyebrow. “She just told all of you yesterday that you need to find a tuxedo and a date by Saturday?”

“Actually, its just me. Well, Hattie and I. None of the other PWs are available for some reason.”

“Oh?” Serah frowned in question, and I briefly ran through what had happened with my superior the day before.

* * * * * * * *

It had been a little odd, really. A message had come by courier to my room at Annabella’s cafe, summoning me to speak with Hattie Morrison that afternoon. When I had arrived, the sergeant major was not looking well. Her skin was pale, her hair unkempt, and the bags under her eyes told loudly that she had not slept well in days.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She waved a hand to brush away my concern. “Just a lot of work catching up to me. Do you have plans this Saturday, Victor?”

I shook my head. I rarely make plans; I find things tend to work out better if I just let them happen. I spend a lot of time just walking around the city. And, as you might remember, recently I had done just that and ended up nearly meeting my end in fire and rubble. When life goes out of its way to make things exciting, why bother making plans?

“The mayor is hosting a ball to celebrate the news,” Hattie continued. I nodded; the whole city had probably heard by now. The mayor and his wife had been trying for years to have a child, and at last the mayoress was pregnant. Politically, it meant nothing, as the position of mayor was not hereditary, but it was a big deal to the family nonetheless. And as he was both very rich and in a position of influence, he could celebrate however much he wanted. So I had heard rumors of the ball, but no details. Why was Hattie bringing it up now?

“I want you to come with me to the ball, as a representative of the Peace Workers,” she continued.

I blinked in surprise and amusement. Had my superior just asked me to a dance?

Morrison must have seen my thoughts in my features, because her own clouded over and she glared at me. “Not like that, you idiot. We need at least two representatives of the Peace Workers there, and you’re all that’s available. You can bring one guest if you like.”

Well, that one guest was easy enough. Though technically I would be bringing two, but somehow I didn’t think Hattie counted Kristopher. Most people tend not to. I think if he was human, he might feel a bit slighted.

I frowned as the other thing she had said caught up to me. “Why am I the only one available?” I asked. “Where are the others?” The Peace Workers weren’t the largest branch of the army by any count, but nor were we insignificant in number. We had at least two dozen members in Kestral, and I couldn’t imagine that every one of them was unavailable. There couldn’t be that many PW missions going on at once. Had they all taken sick on the same day?

“Never mind that,” Hattie said impatiently. “You’re the only one around, so I need you.”

I shrugged. It wasn’t like I had anything against dancing, after all. “Not a problem, sir.”

Hattie nodded. I couldn’t tell if her eyes were relieved or upset behind the bags. “Good. The ball is this Saturday. I’ll meet you at the mayoral mansion at eight sharp. Good day!”

“Wait, this Saturday? Four days away?”

“I said good day, Victor,” and her secretary opened the door to show me out.

* * * * * * * *

Serah bustled around the shop as I told her the story, putting away tools, stacking the broken parts of the automat in neat piles, cleaning her hands with some strong-smelling abrasive soap. When I finished, she turned to me. “Why do you work for this woman again?” she asked, then banged on a wooden box under one of her many tool racks. The front popped open and out rolled a boxy, dog-sized automat with a vicious arsenal of brushes and sprays adorning its front. At a few prods from Serah, it began to roll methodically up and down the shop, brushing and cleaning the floor of dirt and muck.

“I don’t have much choice,” I reminded Serah as I watched Fido work.

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully, stepping past me to pull her white trench coat from its hook. She donned it and handed me my own coat. “We’ll have to talk about that some day.”

She pushed me out into the late afternoon sunlight and locked the rusted doors behind her.

“Where are we going, by the way?” I asked, as it finally registered that we were no longer inside. There were still several hours of daylight, and it was well before Serah usually closed shop.

“You are going elsewhere. I am going to find a gown for Saturday’s ball. I suggest you buy a tuxedo, because I am certain I haven’t seen one in your wardrobe.”

I frowned. “You don’t want me to help look for a dress?” I had been somewhat looking forward to watching her try on a number of ball gowns. I don’t dislike the way she dresses normally–usually in work shirts and some sort of denim pants or overalls–but it’s rare that I have the chance to see her in something even slightly womanly.

Serah laughed. “Congratulations, Victor, for being the only man in the city to say those words. But no, I don’t want you seeing me in the dress before Saturday.”

“Why not?” I raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like we’re getting married.”

Serah turned a particularly skeptical and dangerous eye on me, and I coughed and quickly amended “–on Saturday. We’re certainly not getting married on Saturday.”

She laughed again. She seemed in a remarkably good mood for having been cursing the automat not long before, and now having less than three days to have a gown tailored for the ball. But she didn’t relent, and I found myself wandering the streets alone once more, wondering just where I could acquire a tuxedo.

* * * * * * * *
<< Previous | Next >>

Illusion 1, Chapter VIII

The obvious first thing was to try all the doors leading from the chamber: three more besides the ones to the sewer and the university. I did this, racing from one to the other across that vast room, shucking off my coat as I ran.

I said earlier that the automat walked slowly, awkwardly. But now, with time against me, it seemed to be moving all too fast, racing forward at unnatural speeds so that I would glance away and it would have halved the distance to the door.

Robert took some prodding, but I got him to check the last door while I was examining the second. He seemed dull and almost lethargic, as if he had been poorly fed or hadn’t slept in the four days since his capture.

Which was probably not far from the truth.

Sometime in all this, I retrieved my pistol from where the kidnapper had thrown it. He had left it loaded, and I think he honestly hoped I would use it to give Robert a quicker passing.

I hardly ever use the weapon, but I felt better for having it back. It was a special-issue pistol for the Republic, designed for spies. It holds only two shots, in two side-by-side barrels, with an ivory grip embossed with the shield of the Republic. It’s not high-caliber, and hasn’t the range of most handhelds, but it fits anywhere. And as with all guns, it only takes one well-placed shot to do the job.

Though, there was no way I was going to shoot a nine-year-old kid. Even to save him. Was that selfish? I guess it doesn’t matter; I don’t think I could have pulled the trigger.

The exits were all locked, of course. More than locked; the combination dials to open them had been welded in place, so that one could enter or leave the chamber only by two doors: one to the sewers, and the other to the university. You’d think they would have remembered that when chasing my phantom, but maybe they thought I could just magic my way through it.

I checked in with the automat again and found that it was a scant dozen steps from the door to the university. Robert had slumped against a far wall and may have passed out, or just resigned himself to imminent death. Which phrase, when applied to a nine-year-old kid, is pretty disturbing.

I spun around, trying to take in the whole chamber at once, to see if I had missed anything. The doors, all impassable. The gas lamps could help detonate the automat sooner, perhaps, but would hardly help me. The automat itself…

There are times when I realize that I’m an idiot. The automat was heavily armored, and covered in high explosives. My mind had naturally shied away from it, from touching or getting anywhere near the thing. But that was the exact opposite of what I should have been doing. Armored though it might be, those who had built it were men, like myself. If it could be started by a solitary person, it could surely be halted by one.

I didn’t have time for more than a cursory inspection. The explosives were all attached carefully to the harness, with a common fuse attached to each, so that some internal mechanism could detonate the explosives at the right time. They didn’t seem the sort that would detonate on impact though, given the jarring steps the automat took. So I was only slightly apprehensive as I reached out to tug on the blast panels.

They didn’t budge, of course. The internal hydraulics held them tightly closed, waiting patiently until the moment they would deploy. I wished I’d paid more attention when the machine had been activated, but I had been too focused on not making any noise, and had not seen how it had been done. Probably there was a simple switch somewhere, but for the life of me I could not find it.

For the life of me. What an apt phrase.

“How in winter’s deepest hell do I stop you?” I muttered, tugging futilely on the panels yet again.

(It is a creature of fire,) a familiar musical tone caressed my ears.

“Kristopher!” I looked around wildly. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the salamander’s constant presence until he was there, circling slowly above the automat.

“Er, don’t touch it, please,” I added a moment later, suddenly nervous. I was happy Kristopher had found his way back to me, but if he got too near the wrong part of the automat–the fuse, as an entirely random first example–I wouldn’t be happy much longer.

It took me a moment longer to remember that he had said something. “And what do you mean, a creature of fire?” I asked.

(It is a being of fire, like myself. Water harms me, therefore…)

I shook my head in frustration. As I’ve said before, Kristopher interprets and senses things differently than we do. To a human, an automat is clearly a non-sentient object, a machine and no more alive than a rock. To Kristopher, however, the automat was something that moved under its own power, that had a purpose and, in the loosest sense, a desire to fulfill that purpose. This made it as alive as any other creature to him. And since it ran on steam power, it was a “creature of fire,” no different from him.

But that wouldn’t help me. A glass of drinking water will just about do Kristopher in. The automat would just laugh it off.

Or would it?

It ran on steam, but to Kristopher, that would make it a creature of water. Its boiler, though, was powered by fire. And that was another story entirely.

The automat had reached the door by now, and I was momentarily distracted as it thumped into the steel panels, struggled for a few seconds, then was suddenly still. It stood motionless for a moment, then its left side rattled and the oddly-mounted drill began to extend, wobbling and creaking forward on a rusted steel truss. The drill bit spun up into a high-pitched whine, which turned into a sudden scream as it bit into the locking mechanism of the door to KAMA.

Upstairs, I knew, a dozen and one alarms would be going off. Faculty and students would be rushing every which way to figure out what was going on, who was breaking in where, or whether a student had just opened the wrong door. By the time they knew where to look, the automat would have fulfilled its purpose of hamstringing the university. And I wouldn’t be around to regret it.

“Quickly, where can I get enough water to drown it?” I asked Kristopher, who was still circling lazily above the automat. He didn’t respond right away, beyond taking on a slight wobble in his path, which could have been worry at my mention of water, or just his way of frowning in thought. I don’t think he understood my urgency. The automat had not yet done anything, after all, and as I mentioned before, salamanders are not very good with the concept of time. He might understand my distress right after the bombs detonated, but that would of course be too late.

He carried on above the machine for a few seconds, as the drill slowly penetrated the heavy steel door, then he shot up toward the ceiling.

A thick series of pipes flowed along the roof of the chamber, coming in from every which way like a bizarre fungal growth, converging in a sudden orderly conduit that penetrated the wall to the university some feet above the door.

There were at least ten or twelve pipes in that bundle, each of which could carry one of many chemicals. One would certainly be gas, to power the stoves and lamps and the hundreds of boilers inside the university. Some probably carried dangerous chemicals for experiments, while others might contain nothing but clean air, cycled down to the basements to keep the atmosphere fresh. But at least one of them carried water. Hot, cold, purified or not, it didn’t matter much to me.

But which one? It would have to be one of the wider ones, carrying the absolute essentials to the university. As I peered upward, trying to spot a label or symbol on the pipes, a droplet of water fell onto my forehead. I jumped, and then I smiled. Condensation, dampening one of the pipes, causing the surface to drip and reflect the light from the gas lamps, so that the pipe almost seemed to glow. That must be the cold water pipe. And it was indeed quite large.

A crash distracted me, and I pulled by gaze back down to see the automat’s rear disappearing through the door. The drill bit remained behind, skewered through the door where the lock had once sat, like a bee’s sting left as a memento of the insect’s final act in life. Like a bee, the automat would soon expire. It was up to me to determine whether it died on its terms, or on mine.

The door opened into another enormous chamber, a storage room of some sort. Boxes lined the walls, and stacks of wooden shelves held beakers and jars, some full of curious, luminescent powders or liquids, others empty and coated in dust.

The automat ignored the shelves utterly, and I winced a little as it crashed through them, the sudden breaking of glass echoing from the distant walls. The room was dark, but the gaslight from behind us illuminated a wide column at the back of the room. One of the foundation pillars of the university.

The pipes ran in a straight line along the center of the chamber, the occasional branch springing into existence to rush some important resource off to another part of the university. The water pipe branched several times, but the main trunk of it kept straight along the automat’s path. Perfect.

I pulled my pistol from my pocket and hefted its small weight in my hands. It felt familiar to have it in my grip again, like an old friend. Or an old enemy that you can’t get rid of.

The automat must have sensed that it was near its destination–perhaps a pace counter somewhere among its innards–and its skin rippled suddenly as blast panels rose up and locked into place. The automat was primed and ready, and less than a minute from its goal. Near as I was to it, I could feel the heat from the boiler within as it struggled to move the enormous bulk of the machine. A dose of cold water would do it a world of hurt.

It would make for a rather more dramatic story if I missed with my first shot, and had to sweat and worry over the final bullet. But the range to the pipe was laughable, and without bragging, I am a very good shot.

I had expected the pipe to spring a leak when my bullet struck it, pouring a steady stream into the automat’s innards. Instead, it exploded violently and showered its contents over the automat’s back. I jumped back as a wave of sudden cold enveloped me, and a few droplets splashed up and struck my arm and face.

The liquid burned like fire and I raised my pistol in a reflexive action, though there was nothing to defend against. The temperature in the room continued to drop, and as the automat took another step, one of its spindly legs snapped clean off, the broken ends encrusted with frost. It took another step, and something cracked loudly within. A third step, and a muffled boom sounded as its boiler exploded, enveloping the automat in a sudden cloud of hot steam. The cloud expanded, filling the room with a dense and rapidly cooling fog, so that I could not see more than an arm’s length in any direction. I felt a sudden stab of worry.

“Kristopher!” I shouted. Steam is far less dangerous to him than water, but so much of it, in such an enclosed space…

He didn’t respond, and though I scanned the misty darkness for his telltale orange glow, I couldn’t see him. I gritted my teeth. No time. Was the automat truly stopped?

I held up my hand, and forced my mind away from my missing friend. It took a second of concentration, and a cold blue flame flickered into being in my palm, cutting through the fog just a little. The flood of liquid nitrogen had slowed to a trickle as some control valve up the pipe noted the drop in pressure and shut off the flow.

In the aftermath, the automat stood motionless and lilted to one side, unbalanced by the missing drill bit and its broken legs. The armor plates had bulged outward from within, stretching and stressing the chains that held the bombs in place. No glow of fire shown from inside, and my light revealed the jagged edges of a thick cylinder that had once been the boiler. Below it, the fire pan had shattered under the thermal stresses, strewing dark coals everywhere. Not a single spark remained. The automat was dead.

I backed out of the room, shivering, and looked back from the doorway. The fallen machine looked like nothing so much as the carcass of an impossibly large beetle, found in the early morning in some dark forest, shrouded in mist and cold. It had been a beautiful machine, really. I rather think those mechanics could have made something of themselves, if they were able to take such a haphazard collection of parts and create this monstrosity that had yet functioned so well. That it would have succeeded in pulling down the university, I had no doubt now. I turned and left it to its grave, to be dealt with by someone else.

“Kristopher!” I called, blinking as I stepped back out into the light. “Kristopher!”

I couldn’t see him anywhere in the chamber, but a tiny voice from the far wall said, “Here,” and Robert held out his hands, encasing a warm orange glow.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Of course. Kristopher was attracted to pain; it was what had led him to finding Robert in the first place. Naturally he would gravitate toward the boy. And Robert could use the comfort, small as it was.

I staggered over to Robert, retrieving my coat from where I had dropped it earlier. I was suddenly exhausted, as if I had run a marathon, drained physically and emotionally after the excitement. I dropped next to Robert and leaned back against the wall, throwing an arm around the kid and pulling my coat over us like a blanket. He leaned into me as if it was perfectly natural, the salamander still cupped warmly in his hands.

Robert soon fell into a gentle sleep, and it was like this that Jedediah Millston found us half an hour later, storming out of the destroyed storage room with eyes ablaze, the fury of a thousand hells upon his heels.

* * * * * * * *
<< Previous | Next >>

Illusion 1, Chapter V

Scott and I had a disagreement at this point.

“We need to go and get backup,” Scott hissed at me from the darkness to my right.

“We need to find out who these people are, first,” I returned. “We don’t know anything–”

“Yes, exactly! We don’t know their numbers or capabilities. We’re just two men, Victor–” Kristopher whistled softly. “Fine,” Scott said. “Two men and a singing firefly. We need the police down here to back us up.”

“I thought you were the police,” I returned, and moved a few steps further down the tunnel. The voices were still going while Scott and I held our whispered argument, but they could stop at any moment. And once they did, it’d be near impossible to find them. Though we had been following one of the main concourses of the sewer, smaller tunnels branched off at random intervals, snaking under the city in a wild and unmapped mess. Unmapped to me, at least–it was a fair bet that whoever was down here probably visited more often than Scott or I, and it’d take only a marginally better knowledge of the sewers to leave us, well, up shit creek.

Not even Kristopher would be able to follow. At least, not quickly. He could probably track Robert, if indeed these people were holding the kid, but it would be uncertain at best.

“I’m serious, Victor. We can’t charge in there without knowing what we’re getting into.”

“I know,” I said, nodding though he couldn’t see me. “And that’s why I’m going to go see what we’re getting into. This is–was–my job, if you’ll recall.” Scott didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t know me when I worked for the Republic, but I had told him the barest details when we’d first met, after he had seen and recoiled from the blue-and-green armband I wore.

Scott sighed. “Fine,” he said after a moment. “But looking only; don’t touch.”

I grinned. “Come on, Scott, you know me.”

“You’re damned right I do,” he grumbled, but followed behind as I continued down the tunnel.

Kristopher glows, but his tiny light doesn’t do much to illuminate things around him. I summoned a dim red light that floated like a mist around my ankles, the better to see where I was stepping. The sewer walkways were mostly clear of things that would make much noise, but all I needed was step on a discarded tool, or slip on a patch of mud, and any sound I made would echo down the tunnel to warn our quarry. They hadn’t heard us so far, which was a good sign, but there was no sense in taking any chances.

The sudden light that burst out from my left was shockingly bright after the darkness, and I was sure someone had flashed a lamp at us and was about to start shooting. I leapt backward and crashed into Scott, who grunted but managed not to curse aloud. Which saved us, as I realized a moment later what I had seen.

A side tunnel had opened to our left, a smaller offshoot of the sewer. And off of that tunnel, hidden until we had passed the corner, was yet another opening. Not a sewer, but some sort of underground walkway that ended in a rusted-open steel door at the side of the sewer tunnel. The light shone through that door, wan lamplight that wasn’t nearly as strong as it had first seemed.

When no one appeared in the light to challenge us, we crept closer and saw that the tunnel was barely larger than the dimensions of the door that fronted it, a narrow corridor of concrete with pipes jostling each other for space at the top, so that I felt I’d have to duck if I walked under them.

Some distance down, yet another opening led to the right, and it was through this that the gentle glow of a gas lamp spilt. The light that had so startled me in the tunnel had been twice reflected, and would been nigh invisible in daylight.

I let my eyes fully adjust to the light and started through the door from the sewer, only to have Scott grab my arm. “Wait,” he hissed.

I turned, frowning. Were we going to have this argument again? Then, as I opened my mouth to respond, I realized that we were close enough to make out the occasional words the group was speaking. I closed my eyes and strained my ears, not for the first time wishing I knew any sound magic, or at least had one of those brass horns for the elderly.

“–told you, we’re not gonna do anything of the sort,” a voice said in an weary tone.

A lower and softer voice responded, ending in a slightly higher pitch as if asking a question.

“We’ve had this discussion, Rod. It’s over. Don’t bring it up again.”

Well, winter blast it all. Why couldn’t they repeat that conversation now that Scott and I were in a position to hear it?

Rod grumbled a reply, but must have complied because the other voice–the leader, I assumed–made no more comments. There came the sound of metal clanging on metal, a lot of scuffling of feet, or maybe the moving of heavy boxes, and the occasional garbled phrase. I couldn’t tell how many people were in the room. Two at a minimum, but from the noises they were making, it was either a very active two, or a group of at least four or five.

I itched to get closer. I hated being so near, but still knowing nothing. I was certain that we had found the people responsible for Robert’s disappearance, but for all I knew it was just a bunch of guys having some beers and banging on pipes with spanners. Admittedly, the location was a little strange, but . . . well, you hear of odder things in my profession.

I stepped through the doorway from the sewers, ignoring Scott’s hissed protest. There was another, dark opening leading off to the left a few yards down that I could duck into, as long as no one decided to pop out of the lit doorway while I was moving. From there, I figured I might be able to see a little into the other doorway, or at least hear more clearly.

Scott followed me a second later, and we made a beeline for the door, ducking into the darkness and the relative safety it provided. It wouldn’t help us if someone decided to look into the room, but I was banking on them expecting no visitors.

Once we were sure no one had heard us, I took a quick look around, and though I couldn’t make out many details I realized at once that we weren’t in the sewers at all anymore.

“This is part of the undercity,” I whispered to Scott in surprise.

“Obviously,” he returned, focusing intently on the room across the narrow hallway. Which was, I had just realized, exactly that: an old hallway in the ground floor of a building some decades in Kestral’s past.

Remember how I said that, in the early days of the city, parts of it sank below the surface of the marshlands? Many of those sections sank whole and solid, though horribly water-damaged and sometimes tilted at crazy angles. Now that I recognized where we were, I realized that the floor sloped slightly downhill, away from the sewer lines, though no doubt it had been built level.

No one used the undercity for anything anymore. Or I should say, no one used the undercity for official, legitimate purposes. There were still plenty of access points, from buildings stacked on top of the sunken floors, to doors like the one we’d found. The sewers had been built much more recently in Kestral’s past, and whenever the walkways intersected the sunken basements of the undercity, they just opened up into them. No doubt the city planners had thought it might be useful to someone, but you usually only hear of criminals, the homeless, and madmen using the undercity. I think the only legitimate use I’ve heard of was when the city tried to install subways. They’d planned to use some of the larger sunken rooms that were still in decent condition as subway stations, since it saved having to mine out a whole new space. But that project had been abandoned like so many others, and now the undercity was home to rats and those who didn’t fit in the city proper.

Now that we were closer, I could understand more of what the group was saying to each other. Much of it was along the lines of “hand me that drill,” or “careful, you dolt!” There was also the occasional, “this is gonna be great, boss,” a sentiment often met with boisterous approval. I didn’t know what they were planning, but I couldn’t help feeling it would be rather less than great from my side of things. That feeling intensified when, during a more prolonged period of silence, a muffled nasal sound pierced through the occasional grunt. At first it was unfamiliar to me, but then Kristopher did an agitated figure-eight in the air and I recognized the sound as about the only noise a gagged child could make.

Scott started next to me, and I knew he recognized the sound as well. There was a sloshing sound as the oil in his lamp shook, and he put it down quickly. I couldn’t blame him; the man has a wife and a daughter. The latter of whom, I realized suddenly, was nine years old, the same as Robert. No wonder he was a little shaky.

I wasn’t feeling too steady myself, but for different reasons. While Scott found the sound frightening because he was imagining his little Kelley in Robert’s place, I was remembering.

It wasn’t little boys or girls that I had bound and gagged and stowed away in some dark bunker. But some of the soldiers I had captured hadn’t been much more than kids, many of them younger even than I at the time. I had been an . . . “information specialist” for the Republic. My job was to gather intelligence, and I did so. Using any and all means at my disposal.

Like I said earlier, I’m not proud of my part in recent history. No, that’s not right. “Not proud” is a passive state, a sort of “ho hum, I could have done better.” I was ashamed. Angry. Sickened. I hadn’t killed, at least not outside of battle. But I had been responsible for many deaths all the same. For many pains, for–

Kristopher whistled sharply, and I jerked my head up in surprise.

“Shh!” I hissed at him automatically, and with that my mind snapped back to the present. “. . . Thank you,” I added after a moment. I didn’t look at Scott, but I could feel him staring at me.

When he spoke however, he was all business. “I think it’s time we left, Victor.” It was just not the business I had been expecting.

I blinked. “What?”

“We need to get more help. We don’t know if these men are armed, and I don’t trust the two of us to take them on.”

“Exactly,” I said, frowning. “We don’t know anything yet. The only thing we’ve learned is that they have Robert, and I thought we’d already come to that conclusion. There’s no point in going back up until we know what we need backup against.”

“And how do you propose we find out? Just waltz in and look?”

“Um,” I said, with my usual eloquence and forethought. Scott waited patiently. “Well, maybe if one of them comes out, and if we can knock him out without alerting the others, and if I can pass myself off as him . . .” I stopped when I realized I was spouting nonsense.

My memory is very good. It has to be, to make an illusion with any sort of realism. I need to hold every aspect of the image in my head, in three dimensions, concentrating constantly to make an illusion that’s both consistent and realistic. There’s no way that, just briefly glancing at an unconscious man, I could mimic his appearance well enough to fool his companions for more than a few minutes at the outside.

(Can’t you see around corners?) Kristopher sang softly, making lazy circles in the air.

I blinked in surprise, then groaned and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m kind of an idiot,” I said to Scott.

“Certainly,” he agreed amicably. “But why this time?”

If there’s one problem I have, it’s that I sometimes make things more complicated than they need to be. It’s not that I can’t make myself look like someone else temporarily. I used to do it on a fairly regular basis, after all. It’s hard, but it’s a remarkably effective way to get information, as long as you can keep up the facade. Just, it’s not always the simplest approach.

Illusion is, as I mentioned, just applied light magic. And light magic is all about creating and manipulating light. Making it brighter, changing colors, focusing or dispersing it, and bending it. The periscope effect is one of the earliest skills a light mage masters, and for a while it’s the greatest new toy. You can peer around corners before you reach them, or cheat at cards, or follow the intricacies of a gopher hole or anthill, or peep through a girl’s bedroom window while she’s changing.

Er, that last of which, of course, I never did. Never. Not at all.

Well, maybe once.

It was a simple trick to reach out and grab on to the light pouring out of the room, and to pull a section of it toward me, bending it such that, instead of impacting on the far wall like it should have, it curved in a wide arc and opened to a small circle floating in front of our faces. Scott whistled approvingly, and together we peered through the opening in the air.

The room rippled slightly as if we were watching a reflection in a bowl, but it was plenty clear for all that. It was as if the door had been shut and we had somehow cut open an eight-inch hole without being detected.

There were four men in all, three dressed in dark shirts and pants, one in overalls. The clothing of all four was covered in grime and grease stains, so that it was hard to tell the original colors. The reason for the mess was fairly obvious: taking up much of the cramped space was an automat, but unlike any I had seen before. It was insect-like, standing easily as tall as a man, with six legs that each seemed to have been pulled from a different source. Some were thick hydraulics with many joints, others barely more than hollow pipes with a single elbow, and all were different lengths, so that it was a wonder the machine stood level. I couldn’t imagine how it might walk.

Plates of various metals, from copper to steel to what might have been brass, covered most of the machine, with steam vents rising from random and unlikely spots. The boiler, it appeared, was entirely internal, shielded by these armor plates which were riveted and welded crudely together.

Though the construction of the machine would have made Serah–or any legitimate mechanic–cry out in anguish, at least one of its functions was obvious. Supported by struts, and by the two forwardmost legs on its left side, the automat sported a great drill that looked salvaged from a disused mining vehicle. Clearly, whatever this group planned, it involved making large holes in something. Though, the construction of the machine would make it horribly inefficient to use the drill for any length of time, or to drill anything very deep. Given the haphazard build of the rest of the thing, I almost wondered if it wasn’t ornamentation. Maybe these people were just mad but harmless gearheads, cobbling together mechanical nonsense in this disused portion of the undercity.

Except that, seated against the wall and half hidden by one of the spider’s mismatched limbs, arms and legs clamped in steel manacles and a blindfold and gag covering much of his face, was a boy who could only be Robert Withers. He wriggled and shivered, and occasionally let out quiet whimpers that seemed more audible now that we could see him.

We watched for several minutes, as the men bustled around the enormous machine. A pair were working underneath, calling out tool requests to the one other man who was doing any work. The fourth just leaned against the wall, supervising, and I felt certain that this was the man who had told Rod that their discussion was over. He said little now, watching the progress and keeping what almost looked like a nervous eye on both the boy and on a stack of wooden crates against the far wall, mostly covered by a large canvas tarpaulin thrown casually over.

As my surprise at the sight of the automat lessened, I looked more closely at the men and began to realize that there was something very off about them. One of the men under the machine had only one functioning leg, the other transitioning at the knee into a perfect stone facsimile. The other appeared to have two hands on at least one of his arms, both sprouting from the same wrist, both scarred and burnt horribly, though all ten fingers seemed functional. The man in overalls, standing and handing the other two tools, had horrible red boils across half his face, and he gripped the tools with hands that were little more than clubs, several fingers on each hand melted together like wax. He limped when he walked, and blinked constantly though the room was not overly bright.

The leader looked fairly normal, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he, too, harbored some terrible disfigurement. I felt sick at the sight; those wounds and mutations had not been caused by ordinary weapons. They were almost certainly caused by magic, which meant . . .

I looked closer and saw that both the leader and the man with the boils had pistols strapped to their sides. A pair of rifles leaned up against the wall, and though they were covered in mud and filth, it was not hard to make out the insignia of the Kestral Armed Forces emblazoned on the stocks. Which, given the nature of their injuries, meant that these men had almost certainly served in the Mage Wars, on the opposite side as I.

Before I could fully wrap my mind around the implications of this, the leader of the group turned his wandering gaze toward the door, and I remembered all too late the reason I didn’t use the periscope technique anymore.

When I bend light, it’s not a one-way effect. Let’s assume–hypothetically, of course–that I had once peeped at a girl changing in her bedroom. I would have thought myself oh-so-clever, since I could sit at the base of the wall and look straight forward, and find myself peering into a room on the second story. But if that girl were to look at the window, she’d see, just as clearly, an image of my lecherous face peering at her from somewhere amid the window panes. She might think it a ghost, and she might recognize the magic for what it was, but either way, she would know she had been seen, and she might throw her shoe at the face, shattering her window and causing shards of glass to rain down around me.

It was the same in this case, sans shoe. The man would have seen my and Scott’s faces, clearly illuminated by his room light, peering at him from a patch of stone wall. I released the magic, shrinking back into the dark room Scott and I had hidden ourselves in, and at once our faces were no longer poking out of the wall. But the damage had been done.

“A spy!” the leader roared, and was answered in an instant by the shouts of the other three members. No, by five shouts at least. From the far end of the hallway, a door banged open as what must have been two more kidnappers burst in.

The sound of pounding feet and angry yells filled the small space, and I saw that our clever, sneaky hiding place was now little more than a cramped barrel, with Scott and I the fishes to be shot.

* * * * * * * *
<< Previous | Next >>

Illusion 1, Chapter IV

Traveling with a cop can have certain perks. They can use the station vehicles, many of which are fast and sturdy, and have loud, clanging brass bells to warn others out of the way and bright rotating lights. On the other hand, you could travel with Scott. He took out a four-legged spider walker from the station’s garage, a tall gangly thing that towered over me even, with two bucket seats and a boiler at the back like a giant tumor. Serah would have had fits at its construction. Too tall and unbalanced, she’d say, and four legs limits it to a speedy pace or stationary; anything in between and the ridiculous thing would tip over and spill its occupants onto the hard cobblestones. I was glad it wasn’t raining; there wasn’t even a canopy. The contraption was minimalism to its extreme, and smelled strongly of oil, to boot.

“I said,” shouting over the clanking of its many-jointed limbs as the walker lurched out of the garage and down the street. “Why did you choose this junker?”

“It’s fast, and no one cares if we break it,” he shouted back. A fly zipped past and I ducked out of the way before it smacked into my face.

“What, are you worried we’ll run into some rough business?” I almost wished we would; this piece of garbage had no business being on the streets, let alone in one piece. It’d look a whole lot better dismantled and stored in Serah’s enormous and varied scrap piles in her back room. It would at least be less hazardous then.

“Are you kidding?” Scott called, and I swear he was suppressing a laugh. “I’ve seen you around machines, Victor. You look at the buggers cross-eyed and they break. Where’s your autobike, by the way?”

“…You know? I think this thing is too loud for conversation,” I shouted and sat back. Kristopher gave a little musical tinkle that was almost certainly a snigger. I glared at him.

I’ll give Scott one thing: rude though he might be, he was right about the walker’s speed. It wasn’t so much that it could move any faster than an automobile or standard eight-legged spider, but being so narrow and tall, it could squeeze through small gaps in traffic, or just step over a car or person. Scott was a skillful driver, and no one had to jump out of the way of the walker’s thin limbs as they stabbed back down into the road.

Our route took us past Candlepark Station, the largest transport hub in the city. The station spans a space the size of a city block: a confused mess of buildings, rail tracks, and airship mooring spires. The station was once a railway station on the corner of Candlepark Avenue and Twenty-Second Street. It had grown as more and more rail lines crisscrossed above the hub, expanding out and up, so that it became a convenient airship docking station as well. The park had once occupied much of the rest of the block, but had been swallowed up as the station expanded like a virulent moss, growing over grass and trees, replacing them with steel girders, enormous gas and steam pipes, boilers the size of houses and maintenance hangers that could swallow the gigantic cargo walkers like they were flies.

The streets around the station were perpetually congested, and the walker slowed down as we passed by. Conversation became truly impossible as trains roared overhead constantly, a dozen of them arriving, departing, switching, and just barely avoiding collision. The station also handled much of the intercity traffic, and we could see a number of the much wider-gage tracks that spanned the spaces between cities, carrying enormous worms of steel that could–and sometimes did–carry seaships manufactured further inland to the port city of Kestral for their maiden launches.

As we wove slowly through the crowd, Scott working furiously to keep the walker from tipping over at the slow pace, I recognized a tall, domed shape in the distance: KAMA. The school was easy to spot, taking up more space even than Candlepark Station. It lay between Annabella’s and our destination near Emelia’s home, and occupied its own university district in the city, a sort of mini-town within Kestral proper. I couldn’t see any at the moment, but I knew that the tall spike atop the main dome of the university also doubled as yet another airship spire, reserved though for university traffic.

It was past five when we reached Emelia Withers’s neighborhood, though I admit that had we taken a larger walker or automobile, it would have taken us much longer to bypass the station. So score one for Scott, I suppose. The clouds still covered the sky above the city, but an orange glow was beginning to shine to the west. To the east I could see a light fog beginning to move in, melding with steam clouds that rose from a thousand points in the city, from walkers to autos to small businesses and most homes. The largest clouds hovered above Candlepark Station and KAMA, sending cloud signals into the sky that shouted Here Be Activity. Within a few hours, the sun would be gone and the city would be blanketed in a bed of nighttime fog, and these markers would vanish.

“They live on that street,” Scott called out suddenly, pointing down a narrow lane lined with identical single-story homes. This was a much more residential district than where I lived, and lacked the plethora of independently-run businesses and the ever-present street vendors. It was much less crowded as well, to the point of being a little disconcerting. I’ve never lived in such a neighborhood, at least not since I first came to Kestral. The flat I’d shared while attending KAMA had been only a few blocks from Annabella’s, and when I’d been stationed south during the war, I’d been either on the move or living in the districts the army had effectively claimed as their own. And one thing the armed forces was not, was quiet.

Scott kept the walker going another block or so, to a five-way intersection where the narrow streets opened up by necessity into a pentagonal region, currently devoid of all but the occasional foot traffic. The walker lurched to a halt, and tilted alarmingly before its internal gyros compensated and it settled in place, its many-jointed limbs slowly folding in on each other until the main body of the spider rested on the ground. Collapsed like that, the blasted thing didn’t look nearly so rickety, but I wasn’t looking forward to climbing back aboard later.

“So this is where they were playing?” I asked. Scott nodded, and pulled a lamp from a tiny cargo box under the front seat of the walker. The lamp was a small enclosed metal box with a compartment for oil and a number of mirrors that directed the light through a focusing lens, producing a bright light that could be shuttered or allowed to shine full strength. A second compartment at the top held magnesium shavings, which could be dropped into the flames to create an incredibly bright flash, suitable for temporarily blinding or at least startling a suspect. Scott pulled out a flint striker, but Kristopher beat him to it, darting into the lamp and emerging a second later, the wick alight with a gentle yellow glow.

“Thanks, spook,” Scott said, pocketed the flint and lifting the lamp by its handle.

“What’s the light for?” I asked, a little miffed. If it’s light he wanted, I don’t see why he needed a lamp. I specialize in illusion, after all, which is just applied light magic.

“To see things in the dark,” Scott said, frowning. Then he blinked in understanding. “Oh, I see. Habit, then. Not everyone makes light of out nothing, Victor. And this way you can concentrate on what I’m showing you, not on your hoodoo.”

I could have told him that just making a general light takes next to no concentration, but I didn’t bother. Let him do things his way, and I’ll do things my way. It’s the differences in our approaches that make us work well together, not conforming to each others’ expectations and preferences.

Scott led me away from the walker and down one of the five streets that led off the intersection. Street lamps were starting to come on around us, as the gas began to flow more copiously to the pilot lights in their glass bulbs. By their light, and the much more directed beam of Scott’s lamp, we examined the steel garbage bin Robert had hidden in. It was half full of rubbish and smelt like rotten fruit, but there was nothing about it that gave any clue as to where a little boy could have vanished to. The automobile Robert had hidden under had since gone, and left behind no clues. There was a storm drain grill set into the cobblestones near there, but without tools, Robert couldn’t have gone through. And I doubt many kids in this neighborhood walked around with spanners and crowbars. The railway support truss was the third and final place Robert had hidden, and though we found some footprints in the dirt within the truss, we had no way of knowing if they were Robert’s or not.

“And you’re sure he didn’t hide anywhere else?” I asked Scott as we returned to the square. Well, the pentagon.

“Well, no, I’m sure he did hide somewhere else,” Scott returned. “But where? I can’t tell you. Which is the problem.”

I sighed. I didn’t know what I had been expecting to find, really. But finding absolutely nothing was still a let-down. We were left with no more than we ‘d started with.

Scott glanced at his pocket watch. It was past six. “What’re you thinking, Victor?” he asked, shuttering the lamp so that we stood in a pool of semi-darkness in the middle of the intersection.

Before I could answer, Kristopher drifted from my side and floated toward the center of the intersection, circling around as if sniffing for something.

“What is it, spook?” Scott called. He unshuttered the lamp and cast a beam of light in the salamander’s direction.

The cobbled surface of the intersection sloped down slightly toward the center, ending in another grill like the storm drain, but a round one that was not bolted down. A maintenance access cover, then.

“Did you–” I asked, and Scott answered before I finished.

“Of course we checked. Robert ran right over it a couple times, but he never went down. No one’s gone near that thing in weeks, from what we could tell. Nice try though.” He shut off the light and began to turn away.

I frowned. Kristopher never had hunches; if he thought there was something worth looking at with the manhole cover, then there was something worth looking at. “Hold on,” I called after Scott and walked closer to Kristopher. Scott followed me, letting the beam loose again.

“I thought you said spook here couldn’t sense anything any better than we can,” Scott said, though he sounded slightly hopeful.

(Someone suffered here,) Kristopher sang, and I shivered. Salamanders are attracted to suffering and trauma, in the same way that will-o’-the-wisps are attracted to the lost, and puddle jumpers are to innocence and joy. It’s what brought him to me in the fire swamps in the first place, curious and hungry to see who or what was feeling such pain so near his nest.

“You’re sure nothing has disturbed the cover?” I asked Scott in a hush. I don’t know why I was whispering. There wasn’t anyone else nearby to hear. Somehow it felt appropriate.

“Certain,” he replied, his frown heavily shadowed behind the lamp he held. “The dogs didn’t smell anything nearby, and we even went into the tunnels a bit. No scent trails anywhere.”

“Well, Kristopher says something happened here recently,” I said. I didn’t even think to question Kristopher. A salamander is as infallible in matters of suffering as a dolphin is in matters of the sea. It wasn’t a question of if he was right, only whether the pain he detected was related to the missing boy.

“How recently?” Scott asked.

I shook my head. “Salamanders don’t do time the same way we do. A day doesn’t really mean anything to Kristopher any more than a minute does.”

(Recently,) Kristopher sang. (It’s still strong.)

Which still didn’t mean much to us humans. It could have been a pricked finger a minute ago, or a mass slaughter a year previous, and it’d feel the same to him. Though, the time and location fit the case of the missing Robert Withers a little too well for me to believe either of those scenarios.

“Well,” I said, turning to the cop. “How do you feel about an evening stroll through the sewers?”

He grimaced. “Lydia will kill me when I get home.”

I grinned. “I’m sure she’ll understand. Just bring her some roses to balance out the smell.”

Scott snorted and set the lamp on the ground to roll his pant legs up. “Clearly, Victor, you are a man who knows women.”

The cover was lighter than it appeared, enough for a boy to pull it up and out of the way if he was determined enough. The ladder was cleaner than I expected, spotted with rust but relatively free of grime. Scott couldn’t turn the lamp on its side to shine down into the tunnel, so I called up a soft blue flame to light his way while he climbed. He’d insisted on going first, and since these would be my last clean breaths for some time, I was all too willing to let him.

About twenty rungs down, the shaft opened into a wide tunnel ten feet in diameter, with two narrow walkways lining the sides. The center of the tunnel was a wide river of water and filth, only a foot or so below the cobbled walkway. A mass of rusted pipes of varying sizes ran along the top of the tunnel, carrying water, gas, oil, and any of a dozen other substances around the city. Some of the pipes had clearly been patched numerous times, and it looked like a minor earthquake would rattle them apart, spilling their contents into the sludge below to flow out to the bay.

The state of the pipes and the build-up of sludge near the edge of the walkway made it clear that no maintenance workers had been down there for some time. I opened a valve on the wall, but heard no hiss of gas, and the lamps that lined the wall remained dark.

Scott shone his lamp first one way, then the other, illuminating the dank tunnel, a sight that really should have remained in darkness.

“You’re sure something happened here?” he asked, doubt creeping in his voice. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been down here in ages.”

I frowned. I was a little less confident myself. Could it be that Kristopher had just sensed some old but powerful hurt that had happened here, completely unrelated to the current case?

But the salamander took no notice of our doubts, and after circling in place for a few moments, he began to drift along the northward span of the tunnel. I looked at Scott and shrugged, then followed Kristopher. Behind me, Scott sighed and swung the lamp around to light our way.

(Here,) Kristopher said suddenly, stopping at a section of wall that looked like any other.

“Here, what?” I asked. I tapped on the wall, but it sounded as solid as the rest of the concrete that lined the pipe.

(The first pain was here,) the salamander clarified. I frowned. First?

Kristopher kept drifting along, moving slower as he savored the taste of whatever he sensed. It was a little disturbing, to be honest. Salamanders aren’t evil or sadistic, despite the stories you hear about them. They’re simply attracted to pain in the same way a buzzard is drawn to a corpse, or we’re attracted to the smell of a really good rump roast.

The sudden sound of voices stopped us cold, and Scott’s light snapped off instantly. We stood frozen in the darkness, the only light the red glow of Kristopher making figure-eights in the air. I couldn’t tell what the voices were saying, but I had no doubt that they belong to no-one we wanted to see us. Who hangs about in a sewer at dusk, but maintenance workers and shady folk?

I was convinced we’d found what we were looking for. That they had nothing to do with Robert’s disappearance seemed unlikely, given Kristopher’s senses and the timing. The only question remaining was just who had we found, and in what way were they related to the missing boy?

* * * * * * * *
<< Previous | Next >>

Illusion 1, Chapter III

There were still three or four hours of sunlight left when Emelia took her leave. Plenty of time to at least get started with Scott.

“Coming?” I asked in the general direction of the fireplace. Kristopher popped out of the flames and floated over to hover above my shoulder, a tiny glowing spark that was never quite still, dancing in the air like his cousins the will-o’-the-wisps of the swamps and forests.

The police have a number of small stations located throughout Kestral, with four headquarters in each of the cardinal directions. These are where the big cases get sent, and where criminals are kept for long-term internment. I could usually find Scott at the eastern HQ, too far from my flat to walk and my autobike is, as usual, holed up in Serah’s shop for repairs.

Rail or cab? If this was an army job, I’d probably just take a taxi and let the city pick up the tab. But this wasn’t official by any means, and I hadn’t had the heart to mention payment to Emelia. So I didn’t know how much of this was going to come out of my own pocket, which meant I’d better take the trains. At least it was still early; you can meet some strange characters on the trains after dark.

The nearest rail stop is only a few minutes’ walk from my flat. It occupies its own little delta where three roads intersect sloppily, leaving a space large enough for a three-story building and some change. The lower floors are mostly just support structure, ticket sales, and waiting areas. The third is the station proper, a great hanger where two of the steel monorail tracks cross, one soaring above the other so you have to take a rickety lift to board the upper train.

Some of the southern cities I lived in had subways: trains that run beneath the city through a complex network of tunnels. Kestral tried to introduce subways a few times in the past, but the city was built on unstable marshlands and before proper foundations were laid, parts of the city actually sank beneath the surface of the ground. A subway was never practical, and since the city couldn’t build down, they went up.

On a clear day, the rails make for an impressive sight. In more populous areas, you might see half a dozen tracks soaring overhead, supported on steel trusses, or skating across the roofs of tall buildings, crisscrossing, interchanging, and passing so close to one another that it feels like only a matter of time before two trains collide midair and rain debris on the streets below. Like much of Kestral, the rails grew organically, sprouting from immediate need rather than careful planning. The rail lines twist and turn as they please, forming loops over some sections of city, or simply doubling back on themselves so they get briefly lost in their own steam clouds. The tracks are supported off whatever structures are convenient, so that some buildings look to be sprouting some strange steel growth that protrudes at an odd angle, shaking violently whenever the train rumbles through.

Because of this, it took me three trains and over half an hour to get to the police HQ. The rail station is kitty-corner to the police station, connected both by the intersection above and a concrete tunnel below the street. This makes it easy for the police to get anywhere in the city quickly, but with the trains constantly rattling and rumbling overhead, I haven’t yet figured out if it’s more convenience or annoyance.

I didn’t bother with the tunnel, and strode across the busy intersection. I took a moment to check my appearance in the tinted glass windows that fronted the station, then burst through the door, shouting “Fetch me Officer Casterly!”

I think I made a rather dramatic sight, if I say so myself: standing in the doorway, coat flapping in a light breeze, Kristopher glowing like an ember above my head. I kind of wished I’d had a hat I could doff, just to finish off the image.

“I, um, I’ll get him. Right away,” the receptionist stammered, as everyone in the busy lobby turned and stared. The station isn’t any less active on weekends, and people crisscrossed the lobby in all directions, lodging petty complaints, propelling handcuffed perps before them, carrying stacks of paperwork from one office to another. I felt a little bad for startling the receptionist, who already looked overworked. She must have been new; most of the old hands were used to ignoring me by now.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling, and sat in a vacant chair to wait. She smiled back hesitantly and scurried through a door to the station proper.

My first indication that Scott was coming was a loud, echoing voice that sounded even through the heavy steel door. “Tall, ponytail, long brown coat? It’d bet my wife’s mother it’s that damned Vict–”

Scott shoved through the door and glanced quickly around the room before his eyes settled on me and narrowed. “It’s that damned Victor,” he sighed, and dismissed the receptionist. Scott strode over and stood in front of me, hands in his coat pockets. For the moment, he towered over me. He was already a good deal stockier, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. I’ve never seen the man touch a pastry, and I knew he ran regularly to keep in shape.

“Victor,” he said by way of greeting. “Kristopher.”

“Scott,” I returned, standing and stretching.

“So, Emelia Withers must have come to see you, I take it?” he said, the sternness fading from his posture. I nodded. “Thanks for coming, Victor. I know you didn’t have to.”

I snorted. “I wasn’t required to, maybe, but come on Scott. A little kid’s missing. Of course I had to.”

Scott cracked a smile. “I knew there was a reason I sent her to you. What do you know so far?” He turned and led me back through the lobby toward the steel door behind the receptionist’s desk. I nodded cordially to her as we passed, and she smiled back just a little more warmly this time.

“His mother said Robert has been missing since Wednesday afternoon. Went out to play with friends and never came home. She said you’ve been looking for him, but haven’t found him yet, and sent her to me.”

Scott grimaced. “It’s not that I think this is Peace Worker stuff, Victor,” he started, leading me into an empty break room. He pulled the door shut behind us and punched a button on the coffee maker on the counter. Pipes rattled on the wall behind the machine, and a pressure gauge began to creep slowly upward as valves opened to the main boiler in the basement. A section on top began to spin, grinding coffee beans to powder.

“But,” Scott continued, pulling a pair of stained mugs from a cupboard. “There’s something fishy about this case, and you seem to specialize in fishy.”

I sighed. “I kind of figured as much. So what can you tell me?” It was a dual-meaning question. There was what he knew, and then there was what he was officially allowed to share with someone like me, who was technically a civilian in this case.

Scott shrugged. “It’s not a high-profile case. I trust you, and whatever the rules say, no one here is going to enforce them. This is a little boy we’re trying to find, not another murderer.”

“Good. So, what’ve we got then?”

“Not as much as we need. I spoke with all the boys who were playing with Robert on Wednesday. They all agree that, yes, Robert Withers came out and played with them, and no, they don’t know where he went. Everyone just assumed he’d gone home early.”

I frowned. “Are these really his friends we’re talking about? He went to play with a group of kids, and not a single one cared enough to wonder where he went?”

Scott shook his head. “It’s not that they didn’t care. They were playing hide-and-go-seek. When someone hides and doesn’t reappear, everyone just assumes he had to go home for dinner. Of course, that didn’t happen, so–”

“So what if Robert hid somewhere he couldn’t get out of?” I finished. Scott nodded.

“It’s a reasonable guess. There are plenty of hiding places where they were playing, most of them are safe enough during the day. But we can’t find him. Took the dogs out, searched the entire damned neighborhood. Nothing.”

I frowned. “So, maybe he went somewhere the dogs couldn’t follow? Climbed a roof, maybe?”

“And what? Flew like a bird to the building in the first place? The kid had to leave a scent trail, and we followed every damned one we found. Robert hid himself in a garbage bin, under a parked automobile, behind a railway truss, and just ran around a lot. But he didn’t climb any roofs, or pull any other tricks. At least, not that we found. For all I know he had a jug of ammonia with him and soaked his tracks, and is at the moment holed up in an abandoned house with a group of homeless bums, smoking rats over a trash fire.”

I blinked at the image of a tiny nine-year-old dressed in rags, sharing stories around a hobo fire. “Would that work?” I asked. “The ammonia, I mean.”

A bell atop the coffee machine clanged, and Scott rose to pour two mugs. He shrugged and spoke over his shoulder. “Maybe, maybe not. The whole area is confused enough with the kids running everywhere, so it might’ve. Doesn’t matter; the point is we have no idea where this kid went. All we know is he left home, played tag, and vanished without a trace.” He sat back down, handing me a steaming mug of black bitterness. I took a sip and made a face, then rose to rummage in the cupboards for sugar and milk. Scott just drank the stuff straight. “Wuss.”

“Yep,” I agreed. “So, vanished without a trace?” I found the sugar cubes and took a handful back to the table. I unwrapped a pair and dropped them in.

“Right. Which is where the fishy part comes in,” Scott said. “If the kid just went missing by accident, there should be a trail we can follow. Unless he’s trying not to be found, or worse, unless someone else doesn’t want him found, we should be able to find something.”

“But you didn’t,” I said, and dropped a few more sugar cubes in. Who drinks this garbage? “So there goes any hope that it’s an accident.”

“Not any hope,” Scott cautioned. “But yeah, it’s looking less likely.”

“Dammit. You have anything else?”

Scott nodded, and raised an eyebrow as I dissolved yet another cube into my coffee. “I went to his school and had a chat with his teachers, and some students in his class. Didn’t find anything though. It doesn’t sound like he had any enemies, but–”

“Whoa, hold on a moment there.” I stared at him, incredulous. “Enemies? This kid is nine years old, Scott.”

The cop rolled his eyes. “Schoolyard bullies, antagonistic teachers. Enemies to a grade school student, Victor. Obviously I’m not talking pirates or gangs here. But regardless, Robert seems like a safe kid. No enemies, a few close friends. Your average everyday quiet type.”

“So, you’re saying there was no one who would want to hurt him, no dangerous places he could have gotten lost in, and no traces of him after a certain point.” A though struck me. “Do you know when he vanished?”

Scott shook his head and took another sip of coffee. “He left home at four, and his mother contacted the police at nine. He was supposed to be home by six-thirty. He hid in three places, so that’s three games, and with the number of kids playing that could easily have taken an hour or so. So our best guess is he vanished some time after five, but before six.”

I glanced at my pocket watch. Just after four. Robert vanished in about an hour, four days ago. Call me superstitious, but. . . “Well if you have nothing else right now, are you game to come look the site over one more time?”

In answer, Scott drained the last of his coffee and stood. “I was planning to take you there anyway. Not that that we haven’t scoured the place half a dozen times already, but even we can miss things.” He glanced at Kristopher, darting to and fro over the surface of my coffee, and added, “Maybe your spook can find something we missed.”

Kristopher stopped dancing and stared at Scott. Well, I say stared, but he has no face. I just got the impression he was focusing on Scott. “Kristopher’s hardly ‘my’ spook,” I said, rolling my eyes.

(And I can’t sense humans any better than you two can,) Kristopher added. I relayed this to Scott, who shrugged.

“Say what you want, spook. I think you’re full of it. I doubt Victor’s half smart enough to solve some of the cases we’ve come across on his own.”

“Hey!” I said. They both ignored me. Typical.

“You coming or what?” Scott asked, and I stood and looked down my nose at him. I’m a good two inches taller than Scott, and used this to my full advantage. He didn’t seem impressed.

“Fine,” I said, and followed him out, leaving my coffee undrunk on the table. I made sure to pocket the remaining sugar cubes, though. “Let’s do this.”

* * * * * * * *

<< Previous | Next >>

Illusion 1, Chapter I

Hanging above the door to the building where I live, on the corner of Second Street and Lowering Way, and near enough to the eastern airship tower to hear the clacking of enormous rotors as the ships set sail in the night, is a wooden sign that flaps in the breeze. This sign is painted in dark forest green on white, and reads: Annabella’s Fine Corner Bakery and Cafe.

This is not me.

Annabella is a short, middle-aged woman with a smile on her face, usually found wearing a flour-dusted and coffee-stained apron. I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen her otherwise. She has owned and run that bakery for as long as I can remember, which isn’t saying terribly much, as I first came to Kestral eleven years ago, and I lived further south for nearly half of those in the meantime. But even when I was a young lad first attending university, Annabella’s bakery was already a well-known landmark, a convenient place to grab a quick breakfast on the way to class, or a mug of strong coffee before final exams.

The inside of the cafe tends to be hot and noisy, what with the soft hissing of the gas ovens that run from dawn to dusk, the periodic clacking and whistling of the ceiling-height, steam-powered coffee machines, the hum and crackle of the roaster spinning in the background. And of course Annabella herself, who greets everyone who comes in the door with a hearty welcome and, for friends, a hug that raises a cloud of flour and crushes your breath away.

If you were to walk inside the bakery, weave past the haphazard arrangement of little wooden tables, sneak by the ovens and avoid the rattling and anxious pipes that feed the coffee makers, and finally pass through the tiny wooden door shoved in a corner behind the counter, you would find yourself at the base of a narrow and poorly-lit–but much quieter–flight of stairs. Climb this, past the creaky step and the dusty window that looks out into an alley choked with pipes and weeds, and through the door at the top which sticks in winter, and you’d find my flat, and in most evenings, me.

That is, me: Victor C. Haas. Peace worker with the Kestral Armed Forces, humble master of illusion, and friend to cops, dogs, children, and other strange creatures. And, though I’m not proud of this part I played in recent history, ex-soldier and spy for the fledgling Republic, which of course no longer exists.

I first moved into the flat above Annabella’s Fine Corner Bakery and Cafe when I returned to Kestral, two years ago. I got lucky. Immediately after the wars–commonly and inaccurately referred to as the Mage Wars–there was no housing to be found for a magic user, let alone one who had served the Republic for much of the war. Not many would deny me outright to my face, for fear of some arcane retaliation, but everywhere I went I found closed doors and barred windows. Though, honestly, what was I going to do to them? The scariest illusion I can summon goes away the moment I stop concentrating. Illusion magic is only frightening if you don’t know it is happening.

Why Annabella was not only willing to let me live above her shop, but even helped me move in and defended me with her sharp tongue and blunt rolling pin, I still don’t know. Maybe she remembered me as one of many gangly youths who bought a bun and a coffee nearly every morning, downing both in a tongue-burning rush before calling a quick thanks and rushing off to class. Or maybe she’s just not the judgmental sort. I’ve never asked; seems a little ungrateful to question someone’s good will. I just help her where I can and try not to think about the debt I would owe her if she wasn’t half so kind as she is.

As for my flat itself, it’s a single room deal with a tiny attached bathroom, but spacious for all that. The door opens from the south wall, so the first thing you’d see upon entering would be my desk, underneath the window that faces north across Second Street. Another window opens east over Lowering Way, with a sill wide enough to sit on and watch the traffic pass by, of which there’s always plenty. Lowering is a busy street, which makes for some loud nights when the cargo transport walkers come out, too large to easily travel in the day.

My bed is on the west wall, a fold-down sort that I can push up and out of the way during the day. I don’t really need the extra space, but I do it to make the place look nicer for guests, and on the rare occasion that my superiors drop in. Near the foot of the bed is a dual-burner gas range, though if I want an oven, I have to go downstairs.

I placed my mother’s grandfather clock in the corner, which tolls the time for all the square to hear, and a small fireplace takes up another corner, with a fire crackling at almost all times. It’s nice in winter, but stifling in summer, even with the windows open. I keep the flames lit though, as a favor to Kristopher.

Ah, but you don’t know who Kristopher is, do you? You barely know who I am. My name, as I mentioned before, is Victor Haas. I’m with the Peace Workers, which is part of the post-war reconstruction and reconciliation effort. It really serves two purposes: to showcase the enemy troops working to better the community, and to investigate and clean up remnants of the wars. It’s this second one that makes the job interesting, but I can get into that later.

As for Kristopher, he–at least, I consider Kristopher a he–is the salamander to whom I owe my life and my sanity. He found me in the fireswamps to the southwest near the end of the wars, and he’s stayed with me the two years since. I figure the least I can do is keep a fire burning for him to nest in while we’re at home.

* * * * * * * *

The Peace Workers keep me busy, but in spurts. Occasionally, I’ll have a few days off between jobs, and I spend a lot of that time wandering the city. Though I guess I never really stop working, since I always wear the green and blue armband that marks me as a member of the organization. And since most Peace Workers are, like me, former members of the Republic, it doesn’t take much of a leap for most people I meet to recognize me as such. It’s been two years, and most folk are at least accepting of my presence now, especially those who live near Annabella’s.

I like wandering around the city. I live in an older part of town, well overgrown with independent businesses and practices. The rails run overhead, the frequent trains crushing any hopes of conversation until they pass. Airships are constantly docking and departing from the tower, one of the the tallest structures in all of Kestral. The streets are always crowded with pedestrians like myself, the occasional privately owned automobile or walker, a plethora of bicycles, autobikes, monowheels, and some wilder contraptions that look hacked together in some garage. There are also the taxis, which are a whole class unto themselves. Anything that moves can become a taxi, from horse-drawn carriages to autos to spider-like automats that convey a single rider, who’s forced to sit cross-legged atop the machine to avoid its many legs. And there are the golems, rare though they are. Clockwork automats that, honestly, make me a little uncomfortable. Anything that’s not alive but can think for itself–or has a spirit thinking for it–is something to be wary of.

And of course, there are the people. Everyone in my neighborhood knows me by now, and most of them are friendly. There’s the grocer who refuses to sell me anything but his finest produce, and speaks with an accent so thick I can only understand one word in three. I think he assumes I make a lot of money since the army cuts my checks. I can assure you this is a mistaken assumption. Then there’s the clockmaker, never without a pair of multi-lens goggles, an array of tiny screwdrivers, and an insult on the tip of his tongue. He calls me that winter-blasted untrustworthy mage, I call him that cranky old bastard. We get along all right.

There are always the street vendors, too, who come out before sunrise and often stay out until late into the night, hawking food and jewelry, crafts and drinks. A couple of booths are run by handymen who’ll work minor repairs on small automats and golems for less time and money than it takes to go to a proper shop. Though you always have to worry about getting what you’ve paid for. Most of these guys are friendly, and half of them are drunk by nightfall. The street markets are always a party it seems; it’s a wonder they manage to make a living.

And of course, there’s Serah, who is one reason I never take my autobike to those street handymen. Or any other garage. I don’t think Serah’s jealous of other women I talk to, but she’d smack me good with a wrench if she found I went anywhere else for repairs. Women. I’ve learned a lot since I met Kristopher, but women–or rather, Serah–I still don’t understand. What sort of woman couldn’t care less for a bouquet of sweet-smelling flowers, but will gush with pleasure over a new monkey wrench or set of well-oiled planetary gears? Though, perhaps that’s why I like her so much.

* * * * * * * *

It was a Saturday, and a cloudy one. It didn’t look like rain, but it was a sunless and chilly day, weather for coats and scarves. I own several of the former, but my favorite of the lot is a knee-length frock coat, light brown rather than black. I also wore a thick grey scarf to keep my neck warm. It wasn’t really cold enough to warrant both, but one thing about living with a salamander: you get used to warmth.

I took a stroll through my usual neighborhood, thinking maybe I’d stop by and see Serah. The streets were just as crowded as ever, and several times I had to squeeze to one side to let a bicycle or autobike by. I snuck past the grocer’s, intent on avoiding being forced to buy yet another basket of fine prunes. Because, honestly, regardless of how fine they are, who ever has a need for a basket of prunes? Let alone one of the blasted things?

“Mr. Haas! Mr. Haas!” A shrill voice called above the murmur of the crowd, and I sighed.

“Hi, Rudolph,” I said, turning. The boy beamed and skidded to a halt in front of me, cheeks red from the cold and exertion. A girl about his own age lagged behind and came to a stop a moment later.

“This is Hester,” Rudolph said proudly, and the little girl waved shyly. Then she turned and smacked Rudolph on the arm.

“I told you to wait up!”

The kid had the grace to at least look abashed, for a second. “Sorry. But I wanted you to meet Mr. Haas!” He turned and looked up at me. “Do a trick, Mr. Haas!”

I sighed. “Come on, Rudolph. You know my rules.” I flicked my hand and held forth a white card that hadn’t been there a moment before.

Well, let’s be clear: it wasn’t there, period. And though Rudolph “took” it from me and “handed” it to his little girlfriend, neither of them felt a thing, though Hester could shake the little card and watch it bend. I went through a lot of real cards before I had the motions and images memorized well enough to mimic them through illusion.

Neither of them read the card, sadly. I’d clearly printed on it in block letters:

Victor C. Haas, Illusionist

No Parties, No Entertaining, No Tricks

This Means YOU, Rudy

“Can I keep it?” Rudolph asked, as he does every time.

“It’s not real, stupid,” Hester said, and the card obligingly vanished as I let go of my concentration. “See?”

“Aww.” Rudy scuffed the ground with his foot, more because the girl he wanted to impress had called him stupid than because he couldn’t keep the card.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. Rudy’s a good kid. Sometimes, those are worth breaking a few principles for. It had been a long while since I had last sat in a clearing in the forest and just watched nature pass by, so it took me a moment to find the right memories.

The cobblestones around the two children vanished beneath a thin layer of mossy green fuzz, which rapidly grew forth into a small field of grass. I heard a gasp, and couldn’t help smiling. Next came flowers, tiny buds creeping upward, then unfolding all at once into a rainbow of yellows and whites, blues and purples, reds and oranges. The grass continued to grow until it ran waist high and the flowers towering over the childrens’ heads, filtering the wan light from the clouds into pastel colors.

“Wow,” Hester breathed, and I opened my eyes to see her standing very close to Rudolph, gripping his arm tightly enough to hurt, but he was beaming at me. I winked and held the illusion a moment longer before letting it fade away.

“See?” he said to Hester once the world had returned to gray clouds and dusty cobblestones. “I told you he was the world’s best mage!”

“That…was okay,” she forced out finally. I rolled my eyes. Never try to get praise from a kid.

“Thanks, Mr. Haas!” Rudy called as they ran off toward the next big thing he wanted to share with her.

(Heads up,) Kristopher said, in the musical language of the salamanders. I can’t actually understand what he says, so much as get a general impression of his meaning. It’s a side effect of the bond between us, a bond I don’t understand and Kristopher has never bothered to explain.

“Mr. Haas?” another voice called tentatively from behind me. An older voice this time, a woman, and one I didn’t recognize.

“Yes?” I said, turning. I blinked.

She wore a long yellow dress, though it was the beginning of autumn and she looked chilly in the cool breeze. Her dress was clean but rumpled and unkempt, as if she had not changed in days, and her eyes were stained with lack of sleep and tears.

“You are Victor Haas, yes?” she asked, and there was a quaver to her voice that might have been from the chill, and might have been from something else entirely. Somehow I suspected the latter. “That illusion…you surely must be Victor Haas?”

“I am,” I said gently. “How can I help you, ma’am?” I almost added “aren’t you freezing in that?” but managed to restrain myself. Let it be known I do have some class, despite what Jedediah Millston will have you think.

The woman glanced around at the crowd passing us by, and a few idlers snapped their gaze back to their path, as if they hadn’t been eavesdropping. “Is there somewhere…” she started, and I nodded.

“My office isn’t far from here,” I assured her. “We can talk there. Please, come with me.” I offered her my arm, which she clung to with more force than strictly necessary, and I led her briskly back to Annabella’s. My “office,” of course, is just my flat. But it sounded much better to say “my office” than “my bedroom.” And with the bed folded up against the wall, a welcoming fire in the hearth, and a stack of meaningful-looking papers sitting neatly in a corner on my desk, the place looks professional enough.

I seated the woman–whose name was Emelia Withers–in the easy chair I keep for visitors by the fireplace and sat myself at my desk, readying a quill to take notes.

“What can I help you with, Ms. Withers?” I asked when she had settled in. She had started to looked a little better by the fire, color returning to her cheeks as she warmed up. But when I asked her that, her face fell and she looked down, clasping her hands tightly in her lap.

“I, um. My son,” she said, and stopped as if upset by the sound of her own voice. She coughed and started again. “My son, he is missing.” And then she began to weep.

* * * * * * * *

| Next >>