Queen of faces, p.17
Queen of Faces, page 17
The impostor squeezed her hand, then another’s. ‘Give me your heart,’ she whispered. ‘Give me everything.’ She ladled heaps of rotten oatmeal from a bucket, pouring it into the swarm of mouths. It was like they were livestock, a swirling mass of disposable flesh. Humans, reduced to beasts.
I thought of Wes’s words during our briefing. Alter a Pith too much, and you get side-effects. Premature mental ageing. Like someone was eating your brain.
There were a hundred people here, at least. Permanently shattered. What kind of devil would commit such savagery? And for what?
I couldn’t even conceive of something like this.
A boy with red hair sat in the corner of the room, slumped against the wall away from the others. Before I could blink, I was sprinting towards him, my legs shaking, the cries of the victims echoing all around me. As I got closer, I made out his round face, his freckles. Kaplen. I threw up an illusion to disguise myself, making me look like a blonde girl my age. I used the new branch of my Codex, altering my voice as well.
‘Hi.’ I knelt beside him. ‘I’m Clara. Nice to meet you.’
Kaplen ignored me.
‘What’s your name?’
Silence.
My heart twisted into a knot, and I felt short of breath. Don’t panic. I needed all my wits to get us out of here.
Still, he wasn’t crawling on the floor, and he wasn’t whimpering over the fake Wetherses. That was a good sign. They must have drugged him with something.
I tried another question. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I like parties,’ he said in a hoarse monotone. ‘Lysender Evans had extra tickets.’
I had to keep him talking. I had to convince him to come with me and hide somewhere safe. Then I could help Wes. ‘Why do you like parties?’
‘When you go to sleep, you have to wake up and confront the next day. Parties are a great way to avoid that, for a time.’ He sucked in a deep breath and smiled. ‘But tonight, I found something that made me happy again. Something that turned on all the lights.’
My blood turned to ice. No. Please.
‘Do you know where Lyna is?’ asked Kaplen.
No, I thought. No. That was impossible. He wasn’t whimpering, wasn’t crawling on the floor and staring at the impostor. He couldn’t be hijacked by Wethers. He couldn’t.
‘Where’s Lyna?’ he asked again. ‘The ones in this room are fake. I overheard them talking. The real Lyna is somewhere else on the ship. I want to find her, but I’m not supposed to leave.’ He looked at me with vacant eyes. ‘Where’s Lyna?’
My vision went blurry. My chest rose and fell like waves on a seething ocean. It felt like I was floating, far away, watching my body move.
‘Please,’ said Kaplen, taking my hand. ‘Where’s Lyna? She’s my only chance.’
This was permanent.
He’d already had problems, and she’d broken the reward centres of his Pith.
My ears rang, the room muffled like I was underwater. My body stood, letting go of his hand. ‘Stay here,’ it said, distant. ‘I’ll go and find her.’
Then I sprinted out of the room. My chest pounded and sweat coated my suit jacket. My jaw clenched, and my feet ached as I rocketed down the hallway.
I reached the end of the passage and grabbed the radio, twisting the dials to the local police frequency.
‘Help,’ I whispered. ‘Please, Prophets, help. I’m on the Golden Moon yacht. There’s a mage here, and she’s hijacking everyone.’
‘Who is this?’ crackled the radio. ‘Identify yourself.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘The Golden Moon yacht. We’re out at sea somewhere.’
‘Sir, please stay on the—’
I turned off the radio. I’d mentioned magic and violence, which meant they would contact the Eldritch Guard. And that meant Carriwitch would know.
My feet carried me up the staircase, and I flung the metal vault door open, then blazed past the guards with an illusion of Wethers. I sprinted down the hallway, feeling dizzy, and went up the steps three at a time.
Outside on the deck, the music had stopped. Glass shards had been scattered on the wood, and partygoers gathered by the railing, gazing at something in the ocean.
Every eye was fixed on the Star Prophet building, the ruined metal tower jutting out of the water.
I followed their gaze, and staggered back.
The real Lyna Wethers stood on the second floor of the building, flanked by two guards with cattle prods. Blue light swirled over her hands, the telltale sign of a Whisper Specialist, straining their magic.
Wes lay on his back beneath her, twitching, his eyes shut. Blood stained his face.
She was hijacking him. Wes would become like Kaplen. A half-dead thrall, choked from all joy but hers.
‘No,’ I whispered. The air felt like ice around me, shallow and painful in my lungs.
I could use Rainbow Veil on one of the guards here, get them to open fire on Wethers. But the building was far away. They might miss and shoot Wes. Wethers was standing far out of my illusion range, and I couldn’t swim, couldn’t use the chained lifeboat in time.
I leaned over the railing. The ocean looked so cold, so deep. A bottomless void. And my Water Walk could only last a few seconds. In my mind, I saw the black fireball tearing through the dam, a towering wave smashing into me. If I jumped over the edge, I would drown. The sea would pull me under, and I would never breathe air again.
A smart girl, a sane girl would wait for reinforcements.
But by then, Wes would be gone.
One of the guards shocked him, and he screamed, thrashing on the metal.
A thick pressure built in my eyes, like I was about to cry.
Then I leapt over the side of the Golden Moon, stretching my Pith below me.
Liquid–air interfaces. Cohesion. I willed the surface to harden, casting a Water Walk just like Wes had taught me.
My feet slammed into the water, and it bent beneath me like a trampoline. It was like an invisible cloth had been stretched over the top.
I used Rainbow Veil on the guards and partygoers behind me, hiding myself, conjuring a fake explosion on the far side of the ship. I added my second branch to layer sound on to the visual illusion, and the faint odour of sulphur. The crowd turned away from the ruin, away from me.
A splitting headache exploded in my skull, and blue light swirled round my legs, symptoms of the sheer effort on my Pith. I couldn’t keep this up for long.
I sprinted across the quivering surface. The water spread out beneath me, dark and endless. My heart felt like a snake was strangling it, and my brain felt like it was on fire. But I kept going.
Near the base of the tower, my control slipped. The water turned soft under my feet, and the ocean swallowed me like quicksand.
Then I started sinking.
Water flooded my ears, my nose, making my eyes sting. I reached out with my magic, spitting, gasping, but the liquid was so thick, so heavy. I couldn’t summon the energy to lift myself. My hands scrabbled on the rusty wall of the tower, finding no purchase.
I stretched my Pith above me and felt four other souls. Wes, two guards and Lyna Wethers. As I struggled in the water, I glimpsed them through a hole in the broken tower, and reached for them with everything I had, using Rainbow Veil.
My deception was simple. I layered an illusion over Wes, replacing his body with Lyna Wethers’s, making it look like she was getting kicked into his position.
Then I replaced Wethers’s image with another woman, a member of the Eldritch Guard aiming a fireball.
In real life, Wethers still stood, but to the guards, it looked like she was lying on the ground. It looked like someone was about to kill her.
Swapping their friends and enemies. The same trick I’d used against Nell Ebbridge.
A guard swung his baton into the real Wethers’s face, mistaking her for a threat. The woman fell back, toppling to the ground, and another guard smashed her with his cattle prod.
Lyna Wethers’s own guards were beating her to death. And they thought they were saving her.
There was no screaming, no splashing as I drowned. The only sounds were my gasping throat and the water pouring into my ears. My head dipped underwater, cutting off my breath as I writhed.
I made my illusion thrash on the floor like I was, spurting columns of fire from her mouth. My phantom wasn’t giving up. So, the guards kept hitting Wethers, again and again.
The dark ocean sapped the heat from my bones. Pressure built in my chest as my lungs struggled to breathe.
‘Wes,’ I croaked. Water filled my ears, muffling my voice. ‘Wes.’
I gasped. My lungs sucked in water, and I choked.
The moon spiralled around me. I sank out of range, and my Pith snapped back into my body. Far away, a voice shouted my name.
Then the world faded, and darkness swallowed my mind.
wes, i thought. kaplen.
I opened my eyes to a starless sky.
A black expanse stretched across my vision, visible through the broken roof of the tower. Back when this building was whole, the Star Prophets had walked its halls, and the heavens had been a glittering canvas.
But it was all dark now. Drowned and faded like their civilisation.
All dark.
I coughed up water, wheezing, my lungs burning. A chill breeze blew over my wet clothes, and I shivered.
‘I recommend changing soon,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Hypothermia can get rather unpleasant.’
Carriwitch stood over me, dressed in his flowing blue robes. Moonlight shone off the scar on his neck. Wes sat behind him, staring blankly at the wall. Dried blood stained his cheek, but he looked otherwise unscathed.
My suit jacket and hair dye had come off in the water, and my dress shirt clung to my skin. I felt my pockets, fumbling without my left pinky. Miraculously, my knife and pillbox were still firmly secured at the bottom, the Kraken’s Bone pills still dry. Not that it mattered now.
I crawled to a sitting position, wheezing, leaning against a rusty metal wall. ‘I’m alive,’ I croaked. ‘How?’
‘I pulled you out of the water,’ said Carriwitch. ‘I received your signal just in time. You’re rather fortunate.’
I chuckled, sending stabs of pain through my chest. ‘Fortunate.’ I glanced through a gap in the wall behind me. Three white patrol boats surrounded the Golden Moon. Cops swarmed over the yacht, both Humdrums and the Eldritch Guard, herding slack-jawed party guests into rows.
I looked down. A corpse lay next to me, wearing a bright green dress. Blood pooled under it, dripping through a hole in the floor. A wrinkled blue party mask lay on what was left of its face.
Lyna Wethers, I thought.
Then: I did this.
‘Wethers has hijacked most of the yacht’s guests,’ said Carriwitch.
‘And Wes?’ Did I make it in time? Or had it all been for nothing?
Carriwitch knelt next to Wes. His voice was soft. ‘Speak the truth. Did Lyna Wethers use her Codex on you?’
Wes shook his head. ‘No.’
Carriwitch nodded. ‘If he was lying, I would know.’
I sagged over, letting out a breath. Honeypot hadn’t touched him.
‘Are we fired?’ I said. Without Carriwitch, my money would run out in two days. I wouldn’t be able to buy canned lentils, much less a working body. And in less than eleven months, I would be dust in the ocean, just like the Star Prophets.
Carriwitch floated a thick yellow envelope next to me. I pulled it open, revealing stacks of notes.
‘A thousand is my usual starting number,’ he said. ‘But this was a tough one, so I gave you eight times that.’
‘You thought it’d be zero,’ I said. ‘You thought we’d be dead.’
‘I thought you’d refuse the job,’ said Carriwitch. ‘Failing that, I thought this lead would go up in smoke, and you’d get a free paycheck.’ He half-smiled. ‘Instead, you did the impossible.’ He gestured at the corpse. ‘That woman spent eighteen years in the field, killing and hijacking. Now she’s a puddle. Frankly, it’s astounding.’ He glanced at me. ‘Those fake Wetherses jumped in the ocean when they realised she had perished. I saved you, instead of them. Did they tell you anything about the Black Wraith?’
I wiped salt water from my face. ‘They said Khaiovhe called. Ordered Lyna Wethers to use her Codex on a bombmaker. Korin Nameless, a prisoner. He’d found something for her. Something important. Something he regrets discovering. And now he’s escaped from Commonplace.’
Carriwitch’s face darkened. ‘I see. We can discuss that later.’
I glanced back at the yacht. The cops carried a line of stretchers on to their boats, men and women with ragged clothes and glassy eyes. I managed a single word at the parade of horrors. ‘Why?’
Carriwitch closed his eyes. ‘Revenge. An old quarrel over her lover, soon to be forgotten. Most likely, she threw this party as a step in that aim, though I don’t doubt Khaiovhe had deeper plans for her.’
‘Deeper plans,’ I murmured.
‘We’ll find out sooner or later. It will most likely be your next assignment.’
‘Her Codex,’ I said. ‘Is it truly permanent? Is there really no cure?’
He nodded. ‘She spent two decades trying to grow a second branch, trying to find a way to heal the effects of her own power. To no avail. No one else was qualified to even attempt such a feat.’
‘But surely, you – you were the strongest mage alive. You made the Babel Curse. You wiped an entire language out of reality.’
‘I have seen many Whisper spells, child,’ he said. ‘And made many attempts to save my friends. Always, it ends the same. You can burn down a house, but you can’t rebuild it using the ashes. You can’t turn a scrambled egg back to an unbroken ovum, no matter how much you might want to.’
I pulled my knees to my chest, shivering.
‘I’ll fly you back to the city,’ said Carriwitch. ‘Do you wish to return to your sleeping pod?’
I glanced towards the yacht, and the stretchers being carried off. Kaplen was there, somewhere.
‘Where are the victims being taken?’ I asked.
I walked down a chilly, bone-white hospital corridor. It brought back old memories, of months in a bed with scratchy sheets, enduring migraines while my mother worked. I’d stared at the grey walls for hours, wondering what I’d done to deserve this.
Carriwitch and Professor Inwood walked in front of me. Oddly enough, Ori Ebbridge was holding my arm, still dressed in a lilac nightgown like she’d been dragged out of bed. Even at three in the morning, she boasted a perfect face of make-up. I’d thought she was just his maths tutor, but maybe she and Kaplen were actually friends. Or maybe he didn’t have anyone else.
I smoothed my grey trousers. Carriwitch had pulled the salt water out of my clothes and hair, removing the smell to prevent unwanted questions. But my lungs still ached, and my eyes still stung.
A nurse opened a door, beckoning us in. Kaplen lay on the bed. There were no bruises, no blood, not a single blemish on his body save for the dark circles under his eyes.
Professor Inwood floated a wicker basket on to the table. ‘Hi, Kaplen. It’s Professor Inwood, from physics class.’
‘Where’s Lyna?’ asked Kaplen.
‘I brought some goodies to cheer you up. Hospital food always disappoints.’ Professor Inwood unwrapped his gift basket. ‘Pomegranate cider. Peanut taffy. And a few other treats.’
‘Where’s Lyna?’ asked Kaplen.
Professor Inwood swallowed. The room seemed to get colder.
‘Where’s Lyna?’
Inwood bowed his head and stepped out, leaving his basket.
Carriwitch opened his mouth, like he was about to launch into a speech. But he sighed and just gave Kaplen a weary look. ‘Be well. Stay warm.’ And then he was gone.
Ori and I stood alone with Kaplen.
I squeezed his hand. Ori raised a finger, and a cookbook slid out of her backpack.
‘The hospital has a kitchen downstairs.’ She pointed behind her. ‘Want to teach me the secrets of pie-making? I hear it’s all about butter temperature.’
‘Where’s Lyna?’ asked Kaplen.
‘A-also,’ Ori stuttered, ‘I sneaked a very special guest out of Canis Hall.’ A pair of fuzzy green cat ears popped out of her backpack.
Cardamom. I squinted at her. This isn’t like Ori at all. She was a smug, haughty noble, not a girl who cared for some boy she tutored.
Cardamom crawled out of her bag and leapt to the floor. He ran to Kaplen’s bed and jumped on to the mattress, nuzzling the boy’s cheek. Kaplen flinched, recoiling.
The cat persisted, curling up beside Kaplen’s neck and purring.
Kaplen shoved Cardamom off the bed. The cat dropped like a sack of bricks and landed on his paws with a thud.
A second later, he crouched, ready to jump back up. Kaplen threw his water glass, and it shattered on the floor. The cat backed away, meowing.
Something jerked in my torso, like my chest was about to tear itself open. A pressure built behind my eyes.
‘That’s Cardamom.’ Ori picked the frightened cat back up, stroking his fur. ‘Kaplen, that’s Cardamom; he’s just trying to say hello.’
‘Where’s Lyna?’ he asked.
There was no healing from this. No cure. Rebuilding a burnt house using the ashes. It was an impossible feat. A miracle. And miracles were too good for a drowning world.
‘I want to talk to David alone.’
Ori’s face sagged like a deflating balloon. She rubbed her bloodshot eyes, wiping away tears.
Then she stepped out of the room, cradling Cardamom. The door clicked shut behind her. For a few minutes, neither of us talked. Outside the hospital, a lone streetlamp flickered over the dark pavement.
Kaplen broke the silence. ‘Where’s Lyna?’
I couldn’t bring myself to lie to him. He’d find out sooner or later.
‘She’s dead.’ I killed her, I thought.
A small sigh escaped Kaplen’s lips. ‘Ah.’
‘You’re not in your right mind,’ I said. ‘It’s hard to believe, but there are solutions to this stuff.’ I tried not to think about Carriwitch’s words. ‘They’re going to try—’
