This Isn't What It Looks Like (6 page)

T
he Double Monocle gave her a headache.

Cass wasn’t sure what she’d expected—to see all those ghosts the Seer was talking about?—but all she got was the dizzying
experience of seeing double through a single eye.

Holding the monocle tight, she turned in a circle, surveying the world around her. As one object exited her vision and another
took its place, the first object—a pitchfork, a donkey, a bale of hay—seemed to leave an afterimage. Like when you wave your
hand through the air and it appears to leave a trail in its wake. A curious effect but hardly paranormal.

This is just double vision, she thought. Not second sight.

But when she put down the monocle, she noticed something rather surprising. Some of the things she’d been looking at were
much farther away than they’d appeared through the monocle. To the naked eye, they were mere specks in the distance. She looked
into the monocle again and confirmed that, yes, it functioned like an exceptionally powerful pair of binoculars.

As she moved the monocle away from her eye and then back again, she noticed something else: some things she was seeing through
the monocle weren’t visible at all otherwise. They were blocked by
walls, by animals, by people. With the monocle she could see almost everything around her, no matter how far away or how covered
up. Maybe not as exciting as seeing spirits, but to Cass thrilling nonetheless. And more useful.

Certainly, it would make finding someone much easier.

She turned in the direction in which she’d last seen the Jester. The crowd had not yet fully dispersed. With the monocle,
she could see through the throngs of people at the market and yet she still could not see him. The box he’d been standing
on was bare.

A quick glance around through the monocle was sufficient to confirm the bad news: he was gone.

Despair threatened to overtake her, but she stifled it with an act of will. She had been in plenty of situations more difficult
than this, she reminded herself.

Of course, in most of those situations, Max-Ernest had been with her. More often than not she complained that he was just
getting in the way, but now that he wasn’t by her side, she suddenly felt helpless. She depended on his logical mind to solve
puzzles and crack codes.

If he were here with her, what would he say that would help her find the Jester?

Well, what do we know about the Jester? she imagined Max-Ernest asking.

Dutifully, she started making a list in her head:

1. The Jester was the founder of the Terces Society.
   

2. He liked to rhyme and tell jokes.
   

3. He wore a silly hat with bells.
   

4. He worked for the King (if you could call being a jester
   work
   ).
   

5. He had pointy ears like hers and he was her great-great-great- (she wasn’t certain how many
   great
   s) grandfather.
   

6. He lived in a tent.
   

7. He knew the Secret.
   

Most of these things Cass knew from talking to her friend, the late great homunculus, Mr. Cabbage Face. Being five hundred
years old, he’d known the Jester personally. He also was only two feet tall (or nearly) and born in a bottle, but that’s another
story—a story told in “The Legend of Cabbage Face.”
^*

On the list, Number 4,
He worked for the King
, and Number 6,
He lived in a tent
, seemed to be the only items of information that might help at the moment.

The King, Cass assumed, lived not in a tent but in a palace or castle. (What was the difference, anyway?)
^*
This palace or castle, Cass could hear Max-Ernest saying, would be the logical first place to look for the Jester. If the
Jester wasn’t there, she might find him in his tent nearby.

So the question was: where was the palace? (She dropped the words
or castle
for the sake of brevity. And because Max-Ernest wasn’t really listening to her thoughts—not that she was aware of, anyway.)
Being invisible, she couldn’t very well ask for directions.

There were no signs, unfortunately. The market might have looked like a Renaissance faire, but there were no helpful markers
stuck in the ground with arrows pointing one way to the King’s palace, the other way to Ye Olde Pizza Stand.

Which way had she come from? That would be a place to start. Since she hadn’t seen a palace on her way into town, maybe she
should try the opposite direction?

Before she could start retracing her steps, a trumpet sounded.

“Make way! Make way! The Duke is on parade and he brings gifts for the King!”

All at once the crowd of people in the market divided in two. Some grumbled in annoyance, others chattered with excitement,
but everyone stepped aside as if there were no option but to obey.

A moment later, a long procession started passing through.

Cass surveyed the participants through the Double Monocle. First came a series of soldiers on foot—
footmen
, she presumed, unless the word had a more specific meaning? They held curving swords and wore puffy pants—
knickers
, Cass wanted to call them—that ended at the knee.

Then there were the knights on horseback. They were in full armor and gleamed in the sun. Long swords and longer javelins
hung at their sides, ready and waiting for the next joust.

“Whoa, boy!” “Tally-ho!” they shouted to their horses.

Also on horseback were several finely dressed men and women who would simply be called
lords
and
ladies
in a Renaissance faire, but who in actuality, Cass figured, had more specific names and titles.
They did not call out to the crowd but rather chattered and gossiped among themselves, teasing one another and cooling themselves
with fans, their stiff ruffled collars moving only slightly in the breeze.

Who were they? The Duke’s family? Princes and princesses? Watching them pass by was like looking into a history book without
being able to read the text. The images meant nothing without captions explaining them.

In the very middle of the procession was a large wooden chest studded with brass on all sides and held aloft by four muscle-bound
soldiers. They grunted with effort and counted rhythmically—“one two three four, one two three four”—to synchronize their
steps.

Around Cass, peasants grumbled at the sight of the chest:

“Gifts for the King, he says? More like duty for the King.”

“’Tis not a gift if you demand it!”

“Ah, don’t shed a tear for the Duke! He can afford it.”

“’Course he can—he takes all our profits!”

I wonder what’s inside that chest, Cass thought, edging closer to the procession. She examined the
chest through the monocle. There was something about the lock—it was large and ornate and resembled a coat of arms—that told
her more than simply money lay inside. In any case, the chest was headed for the King. So she would follow it to the palace.
And, with any luck, to the Jester.

Her invisibility gave her great freedom of movement, and she was about to fall into place behind the last footman when a funny
thing happened in front of her: a head—a man’s head, to be more precise—peeked out of a barrel of onions that sat, seemingly
abandoned, at the edge of the market.

Surprised—and momentarily overwhelmed by the scent of onions—Cass exhaled loudly.

The man wheeled around and looked straight in her direction. He was wearing a black mask over the top half of his face while
the bottom half was covered by some rather angry-looking whiskers. He held a large axe in his hand. Were it not for the sticks
of hay and assorted onion skins sticking out of his hair, he would have looked very sinister.

Cass tried not to flinch, reminding herself he couldn’t see her.

Frowning, the masked man turned back and quietly stepped out of the barrel. He gestured silently to his right and Cass saw
another man step out of a
sack of potatoes. Still another man stepped out from behind an apple cart.

Afraid to make a noise, Cass watched, transfixed. It was clear that these three men were about to embark on some kind of illicit,
probably criminal activity—but what activity in particular, she had no idea.

Suddenly the sound of a galloping horse drowned out all the other noise in the market.

Looking over her shoulder, Cass saw another masked figure thundering toward her on a tall black steed. The horse’s neck was
bent low, his long black mane flying in the wind. Matching the horse’s posture, the rider was also bent forward, long dark
hair flying. Around them, carts overturned, cages sprung open, people scattered, but horse and rider seemed to occupy their
own universe, so fast-moving that in comparison, the rest of the market seemed to exist in slow motion. And yet with her monocle,
Cass could see every inch of horse and rider as if time had stopped altogether.

The horse came closer—a living cyclone of clattering hooves, flared nostrils, and gleaming muscles—and for a brief second
Cass caught a glimpse of the masked rider. It was a woman, a beautiful woman, her lips pursed in concentration.

“Anastasia…! Anastasia…!” The name rippled through the crowd, repeated like an incantation.

A moment later, the horse was hurtling toward the procession.

It all happened so fast, nobody seemed to know where to turn. There were screams and shouts and commotion. Soldiers waving
swords. Horses spinning in circles. Ladies (and even a lord or two) fainting in fright.

Within seconds, the big wooden chest was on the ground. The bewhiskered bandit, a few onion skins still stuck to his hair,
dropped his heavy axe down on the lid of the chest, breaking the big brass lock. The soldiers who’d been carrying the chest
watched helplessly, their hands tied behind their backs.

Quickly and deftly, the masked woman—Anastasia—tossed ruby rings and emerald necklaces, silver goblets and golden candlesticks,
to each of her masked cohorts in turn. Now on horseback themselves, they caught the glittering booty with outstretched hands,
then urged their horses away from the market, in the direction of the neighboring woods.

“What’s this—?” Her axe-wielding companion opened a small wooden box and held up a jagged black rock. The rock was about the
size of a cantaloupe and had thin veins of gold running through it.

“It is ugly, but it must be very valuable,” said Anastasia, ripping open a heavy bag and finding it full of gold coins. “Otherwise
the Duke would not dare send it to the King.”

As she spoke, coins started flying out of the bag and landing on the mysterious rock. Reins, spurs, chains, every bit of metal
in the vicinity seemed to be drawn to it. Soon the rock was covered with a small mountain of metal.

Cass watched from the crowd. Through the lenses of the Double Monocle, the rock had a unique bluish glow. It seemed almost
to pulsate. Was she imagining it, or could she feel the monocle being tugged in the rock’s direction?

Anastasia stared at the rock. “I have never seen the like….”

Experimentally, her bandit colleague brushed away coins, making a clear patch. He brought his axe close to the rock—it stuck
to the rock with a clang.

“What power!” he said, pulling them apart. “It is the stone of a sorcerer—do you think it is cursed?”

“Nonsense. There is a much simpler explanation, I am sure,” said Anastasia. “Put it away, Thomas—there will be time to play
later. Take the chest with you. It’s nearly empty now.”

Eyeing the rock with more than a hint of nervousness,
the masked man—Thomas—carefully placed it inside his rucksack. Then he strapped the big wooden chest onto the back of the
nearest horse, jumped on, and galloped away.

Meanwhile, Anastasia had raised another bag of coins above her head.

“And now I give back to the people what is theirs!” She spun the bag around with a flourish, raining gold coins on the cheering
crowd.

“Anastasia…! Hooray for Anastasia…!” they chanted.

Her horse reared, tossing his thick black mane in the air so that it was backlit by the sun. As she brought her horse down
onto four legs, the mysteriously generous thief tossed her own black mane in similar fashion. Then she, too, galloped away,
following her bandit comrades into the woods.

Cass watched wistfully through the Double Monocle. She felt an unexpected yearning to follow after this daring woman and her
band of thieves. But her job lay elsewhere.

With a sigh, she lowered the monocle. She turned back toward the procession—or what remained of the procession after the robbers
had done their work—and prepared to follow it to the palace.