The Master of Misrule (29 page)

Yet as Blaine and Cat flung themselves down the avenue, their weariness almost overwhelmed the fear. I’m worn out, Cat thought resentfully. It isn’t
fair
. Then one of the cadavers lunged out, sweeping an emaciated hand so close to her arm that she could almost feel the breeze of its passing. Suddenly it was as if she had been the one sleeping. Beside her, she heard Blaine’s breath rasp.

Many of the dead had worked free from their monuments by now, and were joined in a shambling pursuit. As Cat and Blaine reached the last ten feet or so before the mausoleum’s doors, they were close to being surrounded by a ring of cadavers who advanced slowly but persistently,
oozing foulness. Some even had the power of speech. More recent corpses, who were still in possession of their tongues, gave soggy cries of rage and threat. Others gibbered with blackened gums.

Blaine lashed out with his torch. Cat, meanwhile, brandished her sword in a series of clumsy thrusts.

The sudden attack seemed to disconcert their pursuers. More by luck than skill, a shove of Cat’s sword and a flaming swipe of Blaine’s torch managed to fell two of the corpses at the same time. Their fellows drew back a little.

“Quick,” Blaine panted. “Now’s our chance.
Run
.”

A
STAGEHAND SHOWED
T
OBY
and Flora to a cramped dressing room along the corridor, and informed them that their curtain call would be in fifteen minutes. The room was stuffy, and smelled of sweat and cigarettes. A froth of discarded costumes—chiffon, tulle and lace—littered the floor.

Toby tried on a feathered hat. “I can juggle a bit. At any rate, I don’t usually drop the balls more than a couple of times.”

“I doubt that and my collection of dumb-blonde jokes are really going to cut it,” said Flora crisply.

“What about a vanishing act? One of us could disappear through a threshold.”

“It would be rather an anticlimax when that person failed to appear again. Besides, we’ve already lost Cat and Blaine; I don’t think we should risk splitting up.”

“You’re probably right.” Toby turned to finger a set of
silver-and-blue pom-poms. “Flora … Don’t you think it’s strange we haven’t seen any sign of Misrule since the Tower?”

She sighed. “If Eternity’s the Great Triumph, and the only one he can’t meddle with, it’s quite possible he can’t interfere with our search for it, either. His trick with the threshold coins didn’t work, did it? Not now that we’re kings and queens.”

“I suppose. I just thought he’d put up more of a fight.”

“Don’t speak too soon. There’s still time for him to appear in a puff of smoke and start throwing thunderbolts.” Flora sat down in front of the mirror. The dressing table was littered with garish cosmetics; automatically, she began to sweep a cleansing wipe over her face. “Right now, though, worrying about what Misrule is up to is a distraction we can’t afford.”

“The Show Must Go On.”

“Yes. And we have to find a way of starring in it.”

Toby snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it.”

Flora waited.

“And?”

“Seems obvious, really. It’ll be a risk, of course. It has to be. That’s what makes a performance exciting. But if we can pull it off …”

“
Toby
. What are you talking about?”

He doffed the feather hat. “A card trick.”

Flora drummed a hairbrush against the table in exasperation. “Are you being deliberately stupid? Do you honestly think Catwoman is going to be impressed by a bit of fancy shuffling? We need magic and spectacle and—”

“Exactly. That’s why it’ll need to be an
Arcanum
card trick.”

Toby drew up his cards, skimming expertly through the deck. “I was remembering what the High Priestess said in the Tower, about the boundaries between the moves breaking down. How characters from one card can now stray into another.”

“So?”

“So how about we bring something exciting from another card into this one? Something magical and spectacular, like you said.”

“Can we do that?” Flora asked, trying not to sound too hopeful. “How would it work?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he confessed. “But I think we could raise a threshold, draw a card ready for the next move and … tear it? That’s how you play an ace. Of course, there’s a risk that it won’t work and we’ll have destroyed a card with nothing to show for it.”

“Or else we unleash something much worse than a few lions.” Flora frowned. “I don’t know. It’s a clever idea, Toby, but …”

“It’s our
only
idea. We’re nearly out of time, let alone options.”

There was a sharp rap on the door. “Two minutes, please,” said a voice outside.

“There you go.” Toby rubbed his hands. “Let’s pick a card. And, Flora, don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe you should put on a bit of lipstick or something. You’re looking awfully washed out.”

The stage was even larger than they remembered: acres and acres of empty space. High above them was a bewildering web of furled-up backdrops, grids and pulleys. Immediately in front, the glare of the lights made it difficult to view their audience. Toby found this a relief, but for Flora, the fact that she couldn’t properly see the hundreds—thousands—of eyes fixed on her only made her feel more exposed.

Toby cleared his throat and heard his microphone crackle.

“I’m the King of Pentacles,” he announced.

“And I’m the Queen of Cups,” said Flora.

There was a stirring in the stalls. Somebody coughed. Several people laughed.

Toby’s face burned. “Ladies and gentlemen, erm, honored guests, tonight is your lucky night. Yes. Because we’ve got something very special for you. In fact, we’re going to perform a card trick.”

The audience rustled and hummed, discontentedly. He pressed on.

“First off, my beautiful assistant will prepare the Magic Rites and Incantations.…”

Flora gritted her teeth but decided that now was not the time to dispute job titles. Instead, she shone her best party smile over the footlights, and bobbed a curtsy.

Her hand shook as she rolled the die along the stage. For added effect, Toby waved his arms in what he imagined were mystic gestures as a threshold wheel appeared on the
floor, its patterns cast by a spotlight’s lens. “Abracadabra! Hocus-pocus! Supercalifragilisti
carcanum
alidocius!”

Watched by the faceless, murmuring crowd, Flora held up the card they’d selected.

The Magician would have been the obvious choice, but neither she nor Toby possessed the triumph. Instead, Flora had taken her idea from the Eight of Cups; much as she had loathed the marsh and its treacherous mists, it occurred to her that now was the time to turn the Arcanum’s trickery to their own advantage. And so she had suggested the card immediately preceding it. The Seven of Cups showed a figure watching a billowing cloud in which fantastical visions appeared: a serpent and dragon, a castle, a ghost … an angelic head and wreath of laurels … a chalice spilling jewels. Its formal title was “Reign of Illusionary Success.” They would just have to hope that their own chance of victory wasn’t about to vanish into thin air.

“With this card,” Toby was saying, “we are going to conjure marvels for you. A world of mystery and miracles! Prepare yourselves to be amazed!”

At his signal, Flora tore the Seven of Cups.

Nothing happened.

Toby licked his lips nervously. “Any moment now.” Nothing.

“Sometimes the, er, magic needs a while to take effect.…”

The silence of the waiting, watching spectators was stifling.

“L-ladies and gentle—gentlemen,” Toby tried. “Ladies and—ladies—”

Laughter now. And grumblings. Far back, somebody booed. Then somebody else did, much closer.

“If you’ll just be patient, I’m sure …”

He shot an agonized glance at Flora.

Flora didn’t return it. Her eyes were fixed on the threshold, where, at last, something was happening.

The threshold was growing. The flat patterning of the wheel—bright white light on shadowed ground—stretched out, from a circle the size of a bicycle wheel to a disc wide enough to encompass the whole stage. Dry ice began to rise from each long spoke.

Flora and Toby retreated to the side of the stage, their backs against a length of velvet curtain.

In the wheel’s axis, where the four spokes of light met, something was thrusting and wriggling. Out of the center of the threshold, a knot of smoke-snakes began to coil and uncoil across the stage. The reptiles’ bodies were almost transparent, their skins as thin as a soap bubble. Gasps of consternation rose from the stalls as the reptiles squirmed toward the footlights.

“Remember,” Flora had told Toby as they left the dressing room, “whatever happens, this time we know that nothing’s to be trusted. Whatever or whomever we see, none of it’s real.” Now it was Toby’s turn for instructions. “Don’t look so startled,” he told her through the side of his mouth. “We’re supposed to be in control of this show. Keep smiling.”

Multicolored sparks were shooting from the wheel’s axis, followed by puffs of much denser smoke. And suddenly there was a new creature onstage, its ghostly body scaly and horned, with wide, hooked wings: a smoke-dragon that pounced on the smoke-snakes and gobbled them whole, beating its wings in triumph before taking to the air and swooping into the auditorium.

The theater heaved with excitement and alarm.

Back onstage, the misty turrets and pinnacles of a fairy-tale castle had risen out of the threshold. The dragon swooped back toward the stage—where Flora and Toby ducked, clutching at each other for support in spite of themselves—and blew a plume of its breath at the battlements. More sparks flared from its mouth, and the hazy towers began to crumble, then melt away. So did the dragon.

Out of the dry-ice swirls of the ruined castle, a ghost emerged. It led a host of featureless fog-specters, wringing their hands and wailing piteously, who swept across the stage to float upward and outward into the theater. Their lamentation was so loud that Flora had to put her hands over her ears; the audience, too, cowered from the howling advance.

It was another vision that came to their rescue: an angel crowned with a garland of leaves, and with wings nearly as large as the dragon’s. As the whirling ghosts ranted and sobbed, loud enough to make the chandeliers shake, the angel drew a cloudy sword and cut through the throng.

Ghosts and angel alike then dissolved into a shower of jewels, their sparkles falling thickly as confetti through the
air. People leaped to catch the gemstones, clambering over their seats and scuffling in the aisles. But all they grasped was handfuls of smoke.

The dry ice ebbed away. The spotlight wheel switched off. The stage was once again bare. Silence fell.

Shakily, Flora and Toby walked to the footlights to take their bow. The entire building seemed to be holding its breath.

Then, from far away, high in the back of the upper circle, somebody started to clap. Three slow, deliberate smacks that echoed around the theater like the shots of a gun.

As abruptly as a switch being flicked, the theater erupted into applause.

T
HE DOORS TO THE MAUSOLEUM
were closed. Cat and Blaine both hurled themselves against them at the same time, hardly daring to hope they would open. But the two of them got inside and bolted the doors behind them, shutting out the horror.