Steadfast (16 page)

But when she got to the theater, and onto the stage for the usual rehearsal, the last
thing she expected was Lionel waiting for her just inside the door. “Come with me,”
he said, before Jack had a chance to say anything more than a simple “good morning.”
He grinned and crooked his finger at her. “You know the act now as well as Suzie ever
did, so this morning, you and I are going to go plan our next act.”

She looked at him, confused, as others pushed past them on the way to their own tasks.
“But—”

“But the acts change in the fall, and while I normally would just make some slight
alterations in this one—since at this season, the odds that anyone outside this theater
would even
know
that mine is the only act that doesn’t change are very slim indeed—you are exactly
the sort of assistant I have been needing for
quite
some time, and I want to put an entirely new routine together. I’ve been working on
some new illusions, and it is time to invent another persona and retire an old one
for a while. Down to the basement, Katie. I have everything we need down there.” Lionel
turned and headed for the little spiral staircase, and Katie really had no choice
except to go.

Not that she minded. The basement was the coolest place in the building, and right
now, any place that was cool was on the top of her list for places to be.

The basement, besides being the home of the Wardrobe Mistress, was the site of storage
room after storage room, and even a couple of workshops. One of them—the largest,
as Katie later came to find out—belonged to Lionel. There were some distinct advantages
to being the only performer who remained with the theater year round, it seemed.

“Here we are,” he said, opening a door on a room lit by windows up near the ceiling.
“This is where I store my large-scale apparatus, and where I construct new apparatus.
Two of the scenery carpenters and I have a very good arrangement in that way. Anything
I can draw out in neat plans, they can make.” He brought her to a shabby willow armchair
and sat her down in it. “Now, Jack tells me that he had a long and serious discussion
with you last night. I hope I am not going to have to try and talk you out of that
delusion that you were having hallucinations. Magic
is
real, my dear, and I make my living based on that fact.”

Despite being told multiple times last night by the doorman that Lionel, too, was
one of these . . . magicians . . . and that he, too, had odd little creatures about
him, Katie hadn’t quite believed it. And she still might not have believed it, if
at that very moment, she had not seen a tiny, mostly-naked winged lady flit down through
one of the open windows above and hover above Lionel’s head, looking interested. She
was gorgeous, like a little bit of animated jewelry, and quite as shameless as Eve.

Katie managed not to shriek. But she did gasp “What is
that?”
and point at the tiny thing.

Lionel tilted his head up; his eyes lit and he smiled, for once showing a bit of his
age as the skin around his eyes crinkled. “Oh, that is a sylph. She’s an Air Elemental,
just as the salamanders and firebirds and phoenixes are Fire Elementals. I get sylphs,
mostly, some pixies, a zephyr or two. The Air Elementals that
I
seem to attract are all very like the illustrations of a fairy tale book, except that
they are quite without shame. Their idea of suitable garments is not to wear any at
all, so get used to it, no point in being shocked. They simply don’t understand why
the rest of us bother with clothing.”

Well, being in the circus, and now the music hall as she was, Katie could hardly afford
to be shocked. The girls didn’t exactly change their costumes under sheets, after
all. In fact, it was more of a surprise when they managed to make it to the stage
with everything properly fastened up. Katie peered up at the sylph, who peered down
at her with equal curiosity. Her little rainbow-wings fluttered and her hair drifted
all about her as if it were made of smoke, or spider-web, and not like hair at all.
Katie smiled up at the sylph tentatively, who reacted with a giggle, clapping both
her hands over her mouth, before zooming up into the rafters.

Lionel waggled his fingers at her, getting her attention again. “Now then. Let’s get
down to business, shall we? As my assistant, you are something of a partner in my
undertakings, and since you are also a magician, I should very much like you to be
a more active partner than Suzie was. So to begin with, we need a theme. Something
that will allow us to use your salamanders to effect.”

“Wait,” she said, confused now. “I thought only you and I and Jack could see them.”

“That’s true,” he replied. “But as you saw, they can both
make
fire, and protect you from fire. So . . . I should like to do something that makes
use of that.”

She thought about that. “You already have the Turk costume. Could you be a Djinni?”
she hazarded. “I thought Djinnis were always appearing and disappearing in a flash
of fire. I know you said your flashpots are unreliable which is why you don’t use
them much, but would they be more reliable if my salamanders were to ignite them?”

“I had considered a demon or devil, but many magicians use that theme. I like this.”
He picked up a pencil and a notebook and began writing. “You could be my assistant
Djinni, then . . . we could use the floating illusion, make it a flying carpet, and
your salamanders could set fire to the hoop I circle you with. That might make a very
effective ending.”

“You could start by just setting things spontaneously on fire,” she observed. “Candles
to start with, then those flashpot things.” She sighed. “It’ll be awfully hot on stage,
though.”

“But it won’t be summer then, it will be fall. At least our costumes will be light.”
He was making more notes, furiously. “We can use a great many fire effects, since
the salamanders will be triggering them, and I won’t have to rely on mechanicals.
People love fire effects.”

“But . . . can we actually count on the salamanders to do all this?” she asked, now
worried, because Jack had made it very clear that the Elementals came and went when
they chose and could not be coerced.

But Lionel laughed. “Bless you! They’re natural showmen. They love being on the stage,
and they adore setting off bursts of paraffin oil, flash paper and flash powder. Well
look, there’s one of them on the back of your chair, just ask him.”

Katie swiveled her head so fast she nearly did herself a mischief, and sure enough,
there the little lizard was, flicking a flame-tongue at her. “Well?” she said to it,
not sure if she should be feeling foolish about addressing a lizard as if it was a
human. “Would you like to be in the show? More than one of you? Would you like to
set a lot of things on fire for me?”

The lizard bobbed its head comically at her, and with obvious enthusiasm.

“You see?” Lionel said, and went on with his notes. She held out her hand to the lizard,
who scuttled onto it and curled up in her palm, eyes blinking sleepily. “The trick
for us who are mere magicians is to make things interesting for our Elementals, so
they enjoy being partners. Yours are easy to reward, actually, the mere fact of being
able to trigger real fire is in itself the reward for them. Be good to them, and they
will be good to you.”

She ran a finger along the salamander’s back. It was quite warm, though not painfully
so, and it seemed to enjoy the caress.

“I believe,” he continued, still scribbling, “that my rusty juggling skills—”

“Oh, I can juggle three balls,” she offered, still absorbed in examining the salamander
in her palm. As she peered closely at it, it seemed to her as if every scale on its
body was rimmed in a thin thread of fire. “Not more, but if three will do—”

“Then you will juggle three balls of fire,” he replied with glee. “I’ll pull fire
out of hats and other containers instead of rabbits or doves. Possibly we can do something
with an escape from a box surrounded by fire. I’ll look into that. Floating first,
then a fire-based escapist trick, should put quite the cap on the show.”

He put the notebook away. “Now what we need to think about at this point is how we
are going to change the current act. Air magic is known for illusions. I’ve been using
some all along—mostly at the end, where I make you vanish from the top of the rope.
But now that you know what I do, we can—well, we can do what I did with the last assistant
I had who was a mage. We can cut you in half, and separate the boxes—that usually
needs a second lady, or some rather unconvincing clockwork feet—but I can make an
illusion of moving feet. It would be madness to try and teach you new tricks in the
middle of the season, but what we’re doing is going to be
my
illusion, and all you will need to learn are your new cues.”

She nodded. After all, she already knew how to fit herself into his apparatus, this
wouldn’t take that long to learn.

“We’ll add an escapist trick in couple of weeks. It’s a version of the ‘liberated
dove’ illusion—and in our case, it really will be an illusion. The ‘you’ that will
be in the cabinet that collapses will be an illusion, you’ll actually be in the other
one . . .” At her puzzled look, he laughed. “I’ll show you with the doves on dark
day, and we’ll start work on it the day after.”

“Is it your sylphs that make the little silk-creature fly?” she asked.

He nodded. “They can’t lift much, about as much as a breeze can. They’ve been assisting
with your levitations, and no one the wiser, although that stagehand does keep asking
me where I get such thin assistants.” They both laughed at that.

“Feeling more comfortable with all of this?” he asked.

She considered that for a moment; considered the salamander in her hand. It blinked
up at her, contentedly. “I—am!” she said, a little surprised at herself.

“Well, that is the best thing I have heard next to your turning up in the first place,”
he chuckled. “Now, let’s get back upstairs. We still have time to get a run-through
in.”

•   •   •

Now that she knew what Lionel was doing, she was a little amazed that she had been
so blind to it. The gasp when she disappeared at the top of the rope—it always came
before
the stagehands grabbed her wrists and hauled her up into the flys. How could she
have missed that?

Well there it was; now she knew, he was concealing her with a flash of illusion where
another magician would have used some sort of mirror-trickery. That actually made
her far less anxious than she had been before; it didn’t all depend on
her
to pull off the trick.

It was payday, so once she had changed after the evening performance, she made her
way to Lionel’s dressing room. He would get his pay packet from the owner, who also
served as his own accountant, and he would pay her out of his pay. It was an equitable
arrangement, and convenient for the owner. At this point, Katie had been doing this
for weeks, and she wasn’t expecting anything more than to get her packet, perhaps
exchange a few pleasant words with Lionel, and be off to the boarding house.

She certainly wasn’t expecting to find the music hall owner half-collapsed into one
of Lionel’s chairs, and lamenting at the top of his lungs, shaking what looked to
be a letter in one hand and beating his fist on his knee.

“I’m
ruined,
I tell you!” Charles Mayhew cried. “All the advertising expense! All those playbills!
And what will I have to show for it? Nothing! A cancellation notice and an empty top-spot
on the bill! I’m
ruined!”

“Get him a beer, will you?” Lionel begged her as soon as he spotted her head poking
cautiously in the door. “And run right back. Oh! Bring Peggy. The more old heads we
have on this, the better.”

She did as she was asked, fetching a beer from the bar before it closed out, and getting
Peggy from her dressing room still in her dressing gown. At this point Mayhew’s lamentations
were approaching epic proportions, as he could be heard down the hall. Peggy took
charge of the beer and shoved her way inside, as the rest hovered at the door.

The noise had attracted others—mostly old hands—and from one of the stagehands, Katie
finally got the whole story.

It seemed that this spring the arrival in London of a lot of Russian dancers had made
everyone go mad for that sort of thing—and if you wanted any sort of popular show,
well, you had to at least have someone with an “ov” or an “aya” or an “ova” at the
end of his or her name, and a claim to be from that part of the world. Mayhew had
secured for himself a “Russian ballerina” for the rest of the summer season, and had
expected to pull packed houses even though the heat would otherwise lead folks to
seek their entertainment somewhere cooler.

Now, however, the “Russian ballerina” had canceled. . . .

She had pled injury, but Katie had a notion that she was just going to change her
name, book through another agency, and collect a larger pay packet than she could
command from Charlie Mayhew.

This left Mayhew with what really
was
a disaster. His top act—one he was counting on being there in two weeks—was gone.
This late in the game, he was never going to get a really
good
act to take the ballerina’s place. He couldn’t ask the current top act to stay on—well,
he could ask, but of course, the Italian acrobats were already booked elsewhere.

Her heart went out to him . . . and sank. This was going to affect all of them. The
box office was going to suffer. They were all going to suffer . . . even the acts
that were moving on in two weeks could wind up suffering, for a bad box-office in
the summer would have a knock-on effect for quite some time. Mayhew might not be able
to afford them next summer. They’d likely have to take jobs somewhere less pleasant,
or less lucrative.

No wonder so many of the performers and staff were crowding around the dressing room,
looking worried.