Illusionarium by Heather Dixon Page B

the main theater. It had a wood floor and mirrors for walls, glistening lamps, and spindly white chairs. It was beautiful and sparse. A girl’s voice rose from the inside of the room, delicate and chiming, and it made me pause a moment.
    â€œQueen Honoria says he’s good. Very good. She says he’s already illusioned the Quickening Formula.”
    They were talking about me. My haste faded a milligram as I listened at the doorway. Another voice, muffled and guttural, rasped, “He’s a scag.”
    The girl’s voice, impatient: “You think everyone is a scag, Conny.”
    â€œThat’s because everyone is a scag, Divinity,” the raspy voice said. “And you’re the scaggiest of them all, you little piece of garbage.”
    I’d never heard anyone speak to a girl like that. Vexed, I followed Lady Florel into the room of mirrors. Myreflection repeated in long rows of mussed, soot-streaked Jonathans.
    A . . . thing . . . stood in the center of the room. I could only tell he was human by the general form. He wore layers upon layers of leather and linen, all in varying shades of orange and brown, thick nobbled gloves, a long coat with a hood, under which peeked a mess of blood-red hair. He also wore a mask shaped like something between a jaguar and a wolf. His eyes shone black through the mask’s eyeholes, because over all this, he wore a fantillium mask. It buckled awkwardly over his mask’s snout.
    He seemed to be illusioning by himself. With quick, violent gestures, he was creating things I couldn’t see. Turning, he swiped his hand at a girl about my age, who lay on a white settee, reading a book. She shook her head and laughed a sweet chiming laugh.
    â€œIllusioned sticks and stones won’t break my bones,” she sang.
    They both noticed us enter at the same time, and the boy quickly stopped his gestures. The girl stood, and they both bowed to Lady Florel. Lady Florel raised a hand, and they straightened.
    I looked at the girl with the chiming laugh as she straightened, and couldn’t stop looking.
    Golden hair, with little diamonds in it, cascaded overher shoulders. She wore a strange combination of long green skirts and black corset and jackets in a stitched sort of piecemeal that, unlike Lady Florel’s, worked. She looked like a fallen queen. Her hair bounced as she straightened and smiled—at me! —with white teeth and deep red lips and long lashes and delicate features that put such a fizz in the air my knees nearly gave way. I’d never seen anyone so beautiful. I wanted to touch her, just to see if she was real.
    â€œDivinity and Constantine,” Lady Florel introduced us, “this is Jonathan. Our newest illusionist.”
    I held my hand out to the boy with two masks, Constantine, and smiled tightly.
    He didn’t shake it. Letting out a feral scream, he leapt and shoved his arms out in illusioned fervor, sending a blast of invisible, illusioned something at me.
    It was almost amusing. I didn’t move a hair. Constantine, breathing heavily, had landed in a crouch, his gloved hands outstretched. They had claws at the tips.
    â€œSticks and stones,” I said coolly.
    â€œHe can’t hear you,” said the girl.
    I glanced at her, then at Constantine, whose all-pupil eyes appeared to be staring straight through me, to the mirror on the wall behind.
    â€œIn the illusion, he’s thrown you back against the wall,” she explained. “At least, I think so. That’s what he’sstaring at. He illusioned something at me, too. That’s why he can’t hear me. I’m probably in pieces across the floor.”
    The girl laughed a bright, chiming laugh. I smiled weakly.
    â€œWatch,” she said. She swept to Constantine’s side in one smooth, graceful motion, dug her delicate fingers underneath his fantillium mask, and tore it from Constantine’s face, revealing his mask’s