Masquerade Page 5

  ‘What’s that about?’ Drystan asked.

  ‘Dunno,’ I said, frowning. I surreptitiously linked his pinkie with mine, and we settled down for a long wait.

  When the light had almost gone, a familiar figure shuffled out from the hallway that led to the patients’ rooms. He crossed the waiting room, heading to the canteen.

  ‘Lord and Lady,’ I swore under my breath.

  Drystan followed my gaze. ‘Pricks in Styx,’ he agreed.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ I muttered, standing. My head swam from rising so fast, and I had to hold onto the chair’s arm.

  ‘You all right?’ Drystan asked, echoing my earlier question to Cyan.

  ‘I will be when I find out why my brother is here,’ I said, and followed Cyril’s blonde head to the canteen.

  I hovered nearby, but didn’t want to call his name – what if he wasn’t here as Cyril Laurus, the scion of the Lord Laurus of Sicion? Though pretending to be someone else wasn’t exactly my brother’s style – that was my role. But why was he here in Imachara, and why hadn’t he told me he was coming? Mind, university was starting soon, or perhaps he planned a surprise visit? My mind ran in circles.

  He took the mug of coffee from the overworked man behind the counter and turned to meet my curious gaze. He dropped the cup, which shattered onto the floor, while the man behind the counter groaned and dutifully grabbed a mop to wipe up the mess.

  ‘. . . You!’ Cyril said, unsure what to call me. I had gone by Lady Iphigenia Laurus, Gene, Micah Grey, and Sam Harper in the time he’d known me. Four names. Three lives.

  Then, the unexpected. My brother – my strong, stalwart brother – collapsed into tears and pulled me into an embrace. I put my arms around him, patting him gently on the back. He smelled of home – of his cologne and smoke from the fire and father’s cigars, of cloth of good make and my brother.

  ‘Cyril?’ I asked, whispering into his ear. ‘Why are you here?’ The few people in the canteen stared at our unseemly public display. Two grown men didn’t often fall into each other’s arms in such an open manner.

  ‘It’s Mother,’ he croaked. ‘She came with me to visit after I’d settled into my university apartments. They’re . . . just off the square. We were going for something to eat when . . . when the explosions happened.’

  Mother.

  ‘Oh, stars. You were by the Shroud barrier?’

  He nodded, unable to speak.

  ‘Cyril, is she all right?’

  He shook his head against my shoulder. ‘They don’t know yet. They don’t know.’

  I pulled away from him, peering into his face. ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘She . . . threw herself in front of me. To protect me, and she shouldn’t have. I’m bigger than her. She’s grown so frail. She was hit by debris. There was a lot of blood, Gene. And now they can’t wake her up.’

  The shock hit home – my lives, past and present, colliding in a single moment. First Cyan had been hurt, and now my mother.

  Admittedly, she and I had never really got along. She had always wanted me to be someone or something I wasn’t. She was so overly concerned about image, reputation – horrified that someone might find out about my secret and ruin my chance for an eligible marriage. So desperate had she become that she’d planned to get me ‘fixed’, even convincing my father that operating on me to make me a ‘natural’ female was the best possible chance for future happiness. Without, of course, bothering to ask me whether this was something that would make me happy, and I could never forgive her for that. But, almost a year after I’d first run away, I could understand her a little more. She’d tried to do what she considered was best for me, even if that meant she did things that were undeniably, irrefutably, the wrong thing to do.

  And now she was lying in a hospital bed.

  ‘Come on,’ Cyril said. ‘I’ll take you to her.’

  ‘But –’ Terror rooted me to the spot.

  ‘She’s not awake,’ he said. ‘Don’t you want to see her?’

  I did. I had seen her from afar a few months ago when she had come to one of Maske’s séances. Acting as the stagehand and hiding in the alcove behind the walls, I’d witnessed my mother asking the spirits about me. Cyan had passed along my messages to her. It was the closest thing to contact we’d had.

  Cyril took my numb hand and led me through the waiting room. ‘My mother,’ I mouthed at Drystan, and he met my eyes with surprise and sympathy, nodded in understanding.

  My palms grew clammy with sweat as Cyril and I walked down the white corridors before turning into the ward. There she was, tucked into the bed, covered in bandages. She’d always been such an imposing figure – larger than life, looming over me, chastising me for not embroidering enough, or sullying my pinafore, throwing up her hands in despair at my lack of womanly charms. She’d always had a cutting remark, a way to make me feel I’d never be good enough for her.

  But since I’d left, she’d diminished. She’d lost weight, sharpening her features. Her hands resting on the coverlet looked so small, so delicate. They weren’t covered by their customary white gloves. Rosacea bloomed on her cheeks due to the drink and laudanum. Was this my fault, or was it her own guilt eating at her?

  A nurse bustled over. ‘Only one visitor per patient, please. We’re far too crowded as it is.’

  ‘Please, I’ll just be a few moments. She’s my mother.’ My voice was raspy.

  The nurse’s face relaxed. ‘I understand.’ She checked my mother’s chart.

  ‘How is she?’ I whispered.

  ‘Broken ribs, broken clavicle, but the most worrying is the head trauma. We’re hoping she’ll wake up soon.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t?’

  Her eyes filled with pity, and that was answer enough. She left us.

  I sat next to my mother, taking her hand in mine as I’d never been able to do before. She had raised me. She wasn’t my mother by blood, and Lord and Lady knew we didn’t have a deep bond of love and affection. But she was my mother just the same. I’d sometimes imagined returning to the Laurus home, successful and happy as Micah Grey, and fantasised that my parents would apologize for all they’d done and love me unconditionally for who I was, male and female, Gene or Micah. Yet I knew they were nothing but passing fancies, a wish as delicate as a butterfly’s wing.

  But if my mother never woke up, any chance to salvage a relationship and find any sort of closure or forgiveness would be gone. I squeezed her hand, leaned over and kissed her scraped forehead.

  ‘When you wake up, we’ll make everything right. I promise,’ I whispered.

  There was no response.

  Cyan was discharged an hour later, bandaged and woozy. Maske sprung for a hansom cab to take us home, the engine running as the driver unbuttoned his coat in the rising heat. Cyril came with us. He couldn’t stand the thought of being surrounded by strangers, and so we offered to let him stay with us for a few days. Sirens still echoed as we navigated through the twining streets.

  Arriving home, Maske led Cyan to her room while Drystan and I showed Cyril his temporary accommodation. It smelled of dust and a hint of mould, as it’d been left unoccupied for so long and we hadn’t yet started refurnishing the spare rooms. I took the covers off the furniture and Drystan found some spare linens.

  ‘Sorry it’s, ah, not in the best shape,’ I said, brushing away a cobweb from the vanity mirror.

  ‘This is wonderful. It’s twice as big as the one in the university apartments I’m sharing,’ he said, admiringly. ‘Maybe I could rent it from you, if Maske wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘I’ll check with him once everything’s settled down. I’d love it, but Mother and Father might wonder where you are.’ The thought of having him here filled me with a fierce happiness, cutting through all the fear and exhaustion. To have my brother back, all the time, would be wonderful. I gave him a hug, and he squeezed me until the vertebrae in my back cracked.

  As he hugged me, I wondered what Cyan had seen, right befo
re the Celestial Cathedral fell.

  We all met on the roof again.

  Cyan, pale and wrapped in a thick robe despite the heat, leaning on her crutch. Drystan and me, our hair still damp from our baths. I had stayed in the nearly scalding hot water until my fingertips pruned, scrubbing until all the dirt and dried blood had swirled down the drain.

  The sun set, the sky stained red, orange, and yellow. How cruel, for the sun to mirror the death and destruction that had happened just a few hours before.

  I brought Anisa forth from the Aleph again.

  ‘The Foresters did this,’ Cyan said, with no preamble. ‘More specifically, it was Timur. Someone working on his orders.’ She paused. Took a deep breath. ‘It was Oli.’

  ‘Come again?’ Drystan asked. I was similarly flummoxed. Oli was her beau. They met in Riley and Batheo’s Circus of Curiosities, and he knew about her power but wasn’t afraid of it. Or hadn’t been. He was a sailor, and so was often away. He’d helped us with the magician duel, performing as one of our stagehands. We had eaten meals with him, laughed with him. I could not imagine him doing this. It made no sense. Dizziness spun through me, and I hoped it was shock rather than another coming faint.

  ‘I can’t . . . I don’t want to retell the whole story. Give me your hands. I’ll send it to you. Easier that way.’

  Drystan and I each took one of her hands. Anisa drifted closer, a gossamer wing resting on Cyan’s shoulder.

  Cyan’s eyes flashed the bright blue of Penglass before she closed them, her head falling forward.

  Cyan sat up in the hospital bed. I could feel the pain of her cuts and scratches, the low throbbing of her ankle. She hadn’t broken it, but it was a nasty sprain. The pain medicine made her feel sleepy.

  Oli had returned and wouldn’t leave the waiting room until she saw him. Maske was puzzled – why didn’t she want Oli to visit? But she couldn’t tell him. Not yet.

  ‘Can you leave for a few minutes for a coffee?’ she asked. ‘I need to speak to him on my own.’

  ‘Of course, Cyan.’ He leaned forward and pecked a kiss on her forehead. The paternal warmth he felt for her flowed from his thoughts, and she took strength from it.

  ‘Thank you, Maske.’ He did not call her by any endearments, and she did not call him Father.

  After he left, Oli entered. She stared at him, cold as ice. He stepped back from that glare.

  ‘How much do you know?’ he asked.

  ‘Enough. How did you keep it from me?’

  He reached beneath his clothes, brought out a small, mechanical Cricket on a golden chain.

  ‘Someone told me if I turned it on, no one could sense anything from me. My mind was my own. They wouldn’t even realize I was blocked.’ He sounded miserable, but Cyan hardened, refusing to feel pity.

  She held out her hand, and he gave her the Cricket, no complaints, no hesitation. Once in her pocket, she could feel the power of it through the cloth, against her thigh.

  ‘Yet you let me sense you in the square. You told me what was happening. You told me to stop it. Why?’

  He swallowed. Opened his mouth, closed it again. Cyan was tempted to delve in his mind, uncover all the pieces all at once. Yet the thought of going into that mind she thought she knew so well, seeing how it had twisted away from her, was too raw.

  ‘I should call for the Policiers right now.’

  ‘Why haven’t you?’ he whispered, hoarse.

  ‘I want to understand why.’

  ‘I thought you suspected. Even though he told me it was Vestige, I thought you’d still snip through it like paper.’

  ‘I’ve long given you your privacy. Maybe if I’d tried, I could have pushed back, but it never occurred to me. Lord and Lady, I wish it had, for I could have maybe saved lives.’

  Oli’s eyes darted to the others in the ward, but it was so loud, no one noticed their words.

  ‘I had to, Cyan. I didn’t have a choice. And I thought you were sympathetic to the Forester cause. You came to meetings.’

  ‘I went to exactly one meeting and never returned. There’s always a choice. And I’m sympathetic to the people having more rights. I’m not remotely sympathetic to killing people on the order of some mad hat evangelical with a personal vendetta against the Snakewoods and Chimaera. You do realize I’m one, right? That if I’d gone up on the pulpit with the other three, I’d be dead, too?’

  ‘You’re not like those monsters!’ he said.

  Cyan recoiled. ‘You think I can just read minds because . . . ?’

  He shook his head again, refusing to believe. He was closing down, hunching his shoulders, trying to shut her out. Enough.

  Cyan leaned forward and grabbed Oli’s hand. He tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let him. Ruthlessly, she entered his mind.

  Oli had been going to Forester meetings faithfully. Timur himself invited him to an exclusive meeting. His most loyal, Timur called them, and all attendees were sworn to secrecy. There’d been a few rituals, a little blurred – perhaps he’d been drinking. Timur ranting how the Royal Snakewoods were dangerous, were vipers, would protect monsters over their own people. He told them of the Chimaera, claiming all legends were wrong, that they were truly the stuff of nightmares. That, centuries ago, the world had nearly ended entirely because of them, and soon another threat was looming. It was eerily similar to Anisa’s warnings to me.

  This new group called themselves the Kashura, after the Alder of old who had also worked against the dangers of Chimaera.

  He claimed he knew the best way to protect Ellada. Cyan caught flashes of Timur. Persuasive, charming, charismatic. Oli fell under his spell. Cyan never knew, never even suspected. If he was quiet, she assumed he simply missed the sea. When he was away for weeks, claiming to be on short fishing trips to Girit and back, she had believed him. Timur had him do small things for him at first. Trusted him to keep a secret. Oli did, and basked in the praise, and eventually, he came clean about Cyan’s ability to read minds.

  Cyan jerked back out of his mind. ‘You what?’

  ‘Not by name, and I didn’t say we were courting.’ He swallowed. ‘I said I knew you and had to work with you sometimes. So he gave me the Cricket.’

  Cyan’s rage filled me. It was hot, full, dangerous. Without another word, she took his hand and fell into his memories again.

  Only three nights ago, Timur said he knew a way to protect Elladans. He took Oli aside, one on one. Said he had a plan, and there was only one person he could trust. And so Oli had gone along with the plan to destroy the Celestial Cathedral. It was Oli who had set the bombs in the tower, just before the Chimaera came to speak. He had been lurking, just beyond the Shroud, waiting, watching. Yet just before, he second-guessed himself. Wondered if that Shroud would really hold. He turned his head, and across the square he saw Cyan standing on the scaffolding. He took off the Cricket and let Cyan in, while he stood frozen in fear.

  She had come running, but it was too late.

  ‘He lied to me!’ he hissed. ‘Timur said that he’d do it after the speech was finished and that he’d sound an alarm so the cathedral and the square would be evacuated. Blowing up the empty building was his goal – a symbol of the wealth the monarchy squandered. Later, when I thought perhaps he would target the Chimaera, I still thought that Shroud would hold. I believed no one would be harmed. He’d promised me that.’

  ‘Yes, and you were stupid to believe a word he said.’ She turned from him. Her heartbreak hurt me. She loved him, but love cannot erase evil, intentional or not.

  ‘If I were you, I’d turn myself in,’ she whispered. ‘I should turn you in, but I . . . I can’t.’ Her voice broke. ‘I don’t want them thinking I’m involved with your fringe Kashura. You tell the Policiers what you know, and you can stop any of this happening again. Go, Oli,’ Cyan said. ‘I never want to see you again.’

  His jaw worked. His opened his mouth, but then simply thought: I’m sorry.

  It’s not me you should be apologizing to,
she sent back. It’s all the innocent victims here in the hospital and all those in the morgue.

  He closed his eyes. She stood.

  ‘Send in the Policier in the lobby,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll tell him everything.’

  ‘You’ll tell him everything except about me and the others.’

  She held his eyes and used just a little of her power to force the suggestion on him more firmly. If only she could have trusted him to do the right thing on his own.

  He squared his jaw, nodded once.

  Cyan left. She would never see her sailor again.

  Cyan let go of our hands.

  Her eyes were dry, but pain radiated from her. ‘If I’d known, I could have stopped it. I tried, but couldn’t get there in time.’

  I didn’t want to say that if she’d been any closer at all, she would have died.

  ‘We can’t know everything, one who was Matla,’ Anisa said. ‘I did not sense it either.’

  Drystan pulled a face. He thought she never sensed anything of use, and at times, it was hard to disagree.

  Anisa caught the look. ‘I can sense almost nothing of the future any more. There are too many possibilities. I feel blinded. It is most disconcerting.’

  ‘Welcome to how most of humanity feels,’ I said, echoing words I’d once said to Cyan when she couldn’t read Doctor Pozzi’s mind.

  ‘To call themselves the Kashura, the group that nearly ended the world all those years ago, is . . . brash. They do not even know what they invoke with that name.’ Anisa looked sick. I felt the same.

  ‘Did Oli come clean, then?’ Drystan asked.

  ‘I lingered in the hallway, listening. He told them everything, except about us. He’s at the Constabulary headquarters now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Cyan,’ I said, taking her hand.

  She squeezed. ‘I am, too.’

  Anisa looked out over the growing darkness. ‘The sun has set on a terrible day. Let us hope that more like it do not follow.’