Chapter Two
Yurei
Starlight gleams upon the rooftops, turning their tiles to a sea of pewter dunes. The wind whips over my mask and through my hair, fluttering the pages of the leather folio clutched under my arm. I run, bounding from eave to eave, fading as I fly over gondola-choked canals, lighter than darkness. A feeling I don’t know tugs at my mouth.
I’m smiling.
The thump of an aethership’s propellers vibrates in my bones. It soars from the wharf, low above the rooftops, long lines of decorative flags trailing from its stern. I reach the edge of a roof and leap, catching hold of a line. The aethership pulls me with it. Venice sweeps past below me, its sounds a cloud of colors, ribbons of gleaming light.
I clutch the folio closer. I won’t lose a page. It’s mine. If only for a night, it’s mine.
The gables of the Palaso Rurico come into sight. The aethership begins to bank, steering to the south, swinging me in a widening arc. I release the line and fall, slipping through the palaso’s roof, down through a garret, into the music room.
The world turns to gold. The music room shines with gilded moldings, furnishings, the frames of paintings of the angels and saints of music. The black pianoforte waits in its center, a mahogany cabinet opposite, hiding cases of other instruments. The ivory harp stands regally beside the draped window, strings glimmering. All poised, expectant.
I run to the pianoforte and set the folio on its lid. My fingers are clumsy, struggling with the loops and buttons that bind it. The room watches me with a held breath, a waiting.
I open the folio. A sheaf of stiff paper lies inside. I muddle through the Venetian alphabet, stitching together the title’s sounds.
La Condesa Dolingen
A Vampire Romance in Three Acts
by Sr. Marcelo Volpato
My hands hover over the page. The opera’s story is even more insane than Mircalla’s, but none of that matters to me.
All that matters is the music.
I lift the page. The one beneath is an explosion of ink. My eyes dart over ripples, jags, banners and bars and even words, adagietto, accelerando, doloroso. Dozens of bands of thin lines stack upon each other, studded with ovals, some black, some hollow, some adorned with stems and flags. More words hover above the beginning of each long ladder. Violini. Clarinetti. Celli. Timpani.
My breath comes fast. This is music, its sounds, its voices, the colors I see in my head crystallized but still living, yearning to burst through their ink bindings, to—
A pen slips from the folio and falls onto the keyboard. A sour note quivers out of the pianoforte, a rust-red jangle through my mind.
What?
I touch the key. The same twisted note sounds. I tap more keys, releasing more distorted notes, as though every string has come untuned.
But that can’t be. The instrument was perfect an hour ago—
“What’s that?”
The voice spins me around. My hand slaps the folio. It slips off the pianoforte and spills the entire opera on the floor. Pages slide over the wood to the doorway and stop at Ayanda’s feet.
I dive for the opera, snatching pages. Why didn’t I hear her, why am I always so damned clumsy whenever…why can’t I ever be—
“I’ll help.” Ayanda gathers up the pages and comes to kneel beside me, her black mourning gown pooling around her. Our hands knock together and tangle as we sweep papers back into the folio. I shovel them in until I see her carefully sorting them, frowning as she arranges them by their numbers.
I ought to do the same. But I can’t take my eyes from her.
My heartbeat quickens. She’s so close to me. She hasn’t been this close since Poveglia, and that was already a week ago, but we were even closer then…and she’s so close, and she’s so—
“Is this an entire opera?” Ayanda sets the first page atop the stack. I can only hope that she doesn’t notice the title. “How did you get it?”
She raises her eyebrows. “You didn’t—”
“I-I’ll return it! Before dawn! No one will miss it!”
I curse myself. The only time I can speak without sounding like a fool is when I’m dying.
Suddenly she stifles a yawn. She rubs her eyes and blinks hard, as though she hasn’t slept. A light clink draws my eyes to her belt. She wears her glaive and small botanical lantern. A sliver of golden armor glints beneath her collar, as though she’s ready for battle.
Fear prickles along my spine. “What is it?”
She glances at me and away again, straightening the stack of music. Her mechanical fingers drum against her knee.
“Something…happened,” she murmurs.
“What? What did?”
“It sounds mad. I know.” Her fingers drum harder. “But it wasn’t a dr—”
A stream of dust pours from above and spatters the pages.
We look up. A crack splits the ornate ceiling. Before my eyes the plaster begins to fracture like an eggshell, tilting the paintings, crumbling their molding.
What the—
Lightning blazes behind the drapes. Thunder roars, rattling the windows.
The sky was clear moments ago.
I cross the room and open the drapes. Orange light fills the glass, strange, nauseous, the color of tainted amber. Instead of stars a black, fire-tinted cloud churns above the rooftops like liquid stone. Flakes of ash flurry through the air, raining down onto the canal.
The window-glass cracks. The smell of hot rock and sulfur leaks into the room. I reel back and knock into Ayanda, but her eyes don’t leave the window. “It’s happening again.”
“What is—"
The window shatters. A gust of hellish air tears into the room. Black mildew sprouts from the sill like spreading rot, crawling over the harp, leaping to vases and marble busts. The floor beneath us creaks.
Ayanda grabs my arm. “Run!”
The door breaks off its hinges as she pulls me through, into a ruin.
The Palaso Rurico is dead. A pelt of dust swaths a corridor that’s aged a century. Only faint pinpricks burn inside chipped alchemical sconces, casting the barest light over cobwebs and a thicket of cracks. The once wine-colored paper curls from the walls in strips. Dust and grime coat the collection of portraits, blotting them out.
This can’t…
The filth-coated runner crunches under my shoes as I go to the nearest painting. I brush my hand over its surface. Grime comes away on my palm, not a smear like dust but gritty, a handful of powdered rock. Tangible.
This is impossible. A boiling storm can’t erupt from nothing. A palaso can’t decay before our eyes…
An illusion.
It must be, but nothing like one of mine. I’d have heard and seen a voice slithering into my ears, no matter how subtle. Whatever did this is nothing like me.
A distant explosion shakes the walls, knocking plaster onto our heads. I dodge the portrait as it topples. “What was that?”
“Um…” Ayanda wipes dust from her eyes. “A volcano, I think.”
“A what?”
A quake rattles my teeth in my head. The floor bucks and tilts, throwing us both into the wall. “It’s an illusion,” I gasp. “It’s not re—"
A flash of light and heat sends us reeling. A flaming boulder tears through the corridor like a meteor and plunges through the floor, spraying splinters and ash. Streaks of fire rip across the walls, setting cobwebs ablaze.
Ayanda grabs my wrist. “It’s real enough!”
We sprint down the corridor. Explosions, thunder, the crash of rocks against the roof merge into an unending roar. But it’s an illusion, it must be an illusion, unless we’ve been transported to another realm, a burning version of ours…
Searing air engulfs us as we run into entrance hall. Another quake throws us forward. The staircase shatters behind us as we stumble down the steps, and halt.
A shaft of burnt light streams from the half-moon window crowning the door, illuminating a figure within it, a black stain against the marble. He’s dressed as finely as a patron of the opera, in a fine suit, a tall hat, a long black cape thrown back over his shoulders. He faces away, head upturned, gazing into the light.
So you’re the illusionist.
Ayanda yells, a silver firework. “Who are you?” Her hand goes to a pouch on her belt. “Stop this!”
Another quake shakes the hall. Ayanda and I clutch each other, but the figure doesn’t so much as stagger. He begins to turn, unnaturally smoothly, as though his feet aren’t touching the floor.
He faces us. He wears a mask, one nothing like mine but a shield of black metal, with slits where a mouth ought to be and a pair of round black lenses for eyes. It covers his entire head, hiding any trace of flesh or hair. Armored black gloves sheathe his hands, scaled like the skin of a metallic snake.
I use my voice, so softly that only Ayanda can hear. Dead?
She gives the barest shake of her head. Her gaze flits to me, and I can read what’s in it.
He’s Unnatural.
Ayanda takes a breath and screams, “I told you to—”
A grip clamps around me, an invisible jawed trap, slamming shut with a force hard enough to crack every bone. Air bursts out of my lungs. I try to speak, to make any sound at all, but I can’t gather the breath, I can’t even turn my head…
A strangled noise comes from beside me. I can move only my eyes. Ayanda stands just as rigid, arms pinned to her sides, hands locked into trembling fists.
The floor releases us, as though we’ve become weightless. The force constricts like the coils of a python, squeezing the breath out of me with each contraction. The Unnatural turns away. The door of the Palaso Rurico creaks open. The palaso crumbles around us as the Unnatural moves towards the entrance, step by gliding step, carrying us after him towards a blazing, smoking hell…
Then, drifting beside me, Ayanda opens her fist.
A glinting glass marble falls from her hand and plings against the floor. A light grenade.
I shut my eyes an instant before it erupts. A brilliant white flash burns against my eyelids. Red lightning explodes inside my head as the Unnatural screams, not with the pain of aching eyes, but the howl of a gutted beast.
The force releases us. Ayanda and I fall to the floor as the Unnatural stumbles, doubling over, gloved palms pressed against his lenses. I ripple my fingers to engage my weapon. The weight falls into my hand and I fling it, straight at the Unnatural’s bowed head.
The head cocks like a snake’s. My weapon freezes in midflight, a half-uncoiled ripple in the air.
The weight hurtles back at me. I dodge. My own weapon grazes my scalp. The momentum jerks my arm and throws me off balance. Before I have a chance to straighten an invisible fist punches into me like a locomotive. The back of my head crashes against stone. My legs fail me and I crumple forward, barely catching myself on my hands as Ayanda runs for me…
And stops.
The unseen force seizes her and spins her about. The Unnatural swings up his arm, his hand locked in a claw, dragging her to him and into his grasp.
Ayanda!
Darkness pulses at the edges of my vision. I climb to my feet, but the invisible blow strikes me again and pins me against the wall. The pressure of it weighs on my chest, clamps shut my jaw, stifling my scream…
The Unnatural faces Ayanda, dangling from his hand. A shudder rattles her, and she falls limp.
AYANDA!
He holds out his hands. The force that carries her turns her in the air, settling her into his arms. They tighten around her.
Mask…my mask…take off the mask…
But I can’t lift a hand, I can’t twitch a finger…
A thundering roar deafens me. The roof rips away. The walls crash down as the Palaso Rurico collapses in a rain of stone and fire as a surge of ash and heat rips through the wreckage, choking and blackening…
I fall, slamming into cold marble, every bone in my body loose. The infernal heat dies away. The smells of smoke and ash dissolve. Silence pours into my ears like a balm.
It seems an eternity before I can lift my head. The hall of the Palaso Rurico is as pristine as it’s ever been, unscarred. Nothing crumbles. Nothing shines but alchemical lamps and the cold beaming light of the moon.
“Ayanda,” I croak.
I stumble across the hall and slip through the doors, into a deserted lane. “Ayanda!”
The black fire of my voice is dim, unheard. Still palasi loom over me, windows glaring like eyes, empty of anyone, everyone…
Gone. They’re gone, she’s gone, he took her, the bastard took her…
“Ayanda!”
I run, wild, unfaded, searching for a trace of them, a hint of decay, an echo of a scream…
But I see nothing, no one, no one as I run into a square, spinning, my fingers clenching the roots of my hair, my breath wheezing, invisible claws inside me tearing me in two, the threads of my soul snapping one by one. The square whirls around me, a mocking, crowing phantasmagoria of a maze with a dozen, a hundred escapes…
The spire of a church spikes into the sky. I throw myself at the church’s wall, its drainpipe. Metal bangs and tears at me as I climb bleeding to the roof and haul myself to the point of the spire. Venice unfurls, a sea of roofs, of light, of gliding aetherships, an eternal winding labyrinth—
My voice erupts, a shriek, a wail. “Ayanda!”
But no one, nothing answers. There is nothing but the city, the night, and the watching, pitiless stars.