Кэтрин Фишер: Sapphique

L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle.

DANTE

The alleyway was so narrow that Attia could lean against one wall and kick the other.

She waited in the dimness, listening, her breath condensing on glistening bricks. A flicker of flames around the corner sent red ripples down the walls.

The shouts were louder now, the unmistakeable roar of an excited crowd. She heard howls of delight, sudden gales of laughter. Whistles and stamping. Applause.

Licking a fallen drip of condensation from her lips she tasted its salty grit, knowing she had to face them. She had come too far, searched too long, to back out now. It was useless feeling small, and scared. Not if she ever wanted to Escape. She straightened, edged to the end of the alley, and peered out.

Hundreds of people were crammed into the small torchlit square. They were squeezed together, their backs to her, the stench of sweat and bodies overpowering. Behind the mob a few old women stood craning to see. Halfmen crouched in shadows. Boys climbed on each other’s shoulders, scrambling up on to the rooftops of squalid houses. Stalls of gaudy canvas sold hot food, the pungency of onions and spitting grease making her swallow with hunger.

The Prison was interested too. Just above her, under the eaves of filthy straw, one of its tiny red Eyes spied curiously on the scene.

A howl of delight from the crowd made Attia set her shoulders; she stepped out deliberately. Dogs fought over scraps; she edged round them, past a shadowy doorway.

Someone slipped out behind her; she turned, her knife already in her hand.

‘Don’t even try.’ The cutpurse stepped back, fingers spread, grinning. He was thin and filthy and had few teeth.

‘No problem, darling. My mistake.’ She watched him slide into the crowd.

‘It would have been,’ she muttered. Then she sheathed her knife and barged in after him.

Forcing a way through was tough. The people were tightly packed and eager to see whatever was going on up front; they groaned, laughed, gasped in unison. Ragged children crawled under everyone’s feet, getting kicked and stepped on. Attia pushed and swore, slipped into gaps, ducked under elbows. Being small had its uses. And she needed to get to the front. She needed to see him.

Winded and bruised, she squirmed between two huge men and found air.

It was acrid with smoke. Firebrands crackled all around; before her, an area of mud had been roped off.

Crouched in it, all alone, was a bear.

Attia stared.

The bear’s black fur was scabby, its eyes small and savage.

A chain clanked around its neck, and, well back in the shadows, a bearkeeper held the end, a bald man with long moustaches, his skin glistening with sweat. Slung at his side was a drum; he beat it rhythmically and gave a sharp tug on the chain.

Slowly, the bear rose to its hindlegs, and danced. Taller than a man, lumbering awkwardly, it circled, its muzzled mouth dripping saliva, its chains leaving bloody trails in its pelt.

Attia scowled. She knew just how it felt.

She put her hand up to her own neck, where the welts and bruises of the chain she had once worn were faded to faint marks.

Like that bear, she had been a manacled thing. If it hadn’t been for Finn she still would be. Or, more likely, dead by now.

Finn.

His name was a bruise in itself. It hurt her to think of his treachery.

The drum beat louder. The bear capered, its clumsy dragging at the chain making the crowd roar. Attia watched grim—faced. Then, behind it, she saw the poster. It was plastered on the damp wall, the same poster that had been pasted tip all over the village, everywhere she had looked.

Ragged and wet, peeling at the corners, it invited gaudily.

COME ALL YOU GOOD PEOPLE.

SEE WONDERS!

SEE THE LOST FOUND!!

SEE THE DEAD LIVE!!!

TONIGHT SEE THE GREATEST MAGICIAN IN INCARCERON

Wearing the DRAGON GLOVE of SAPPHIQUE!

THE DARK ENCHANTER

Attia shook her head in dismay. After searching for two months through corridors and empty wings, villages and cities, swampy plains and networks of white cells, for a Sapient, for a cell-born, for anyone who would know about Sapphique, all she’d found was a tacky sideshow in a back alley.

The crowd clapped and stamped. She was shoved aside; when she’d pushed her way back she saw the bear had turned to face its handler; he was hauling it down, alarmed, prodding it away into the darkness with a long pole. The men around her roared with scorn.

‘Try dancing with it yourself next time,’ one of them yelled.

A woman giggled.

Voices from the back rose, calling for more, something new, something different, sounding impatient and scathing.

Slow handclaps began. Then they faded, to silence.

In the empty space among the torches a figure was standing.

He came from nowhere, materializing into solidity from shadows and flamelight. He was tall, and wore a black coat that glistened strangely with hundreds of tiny sparkles; as he raised his arms wide the sleeves fell open. The collar of the coat was high around his neck; in the gloom he looked young, with dark long hair.

No one spoke. Attia felt the crowd shock into stillness.

He was the image of Sapphique.

Everyone knew what Sapphique had looked like; there were a thousand pictures, carvings, descriptions of him. He was the Winged One, the Nine-Fingered, the One who had escaped from the Prison. Like Finn, he had promised to return. Attn swallowed, nervous. Her hands were shaking.

She clenched them tight.

‘Friends.’ The magician’s voice was quiet; people strained to hear him. ‘Welcome to my ring of wonders. You think you will see illusions. You think I will fool you with mirrors and false cards, with hidden devices. But I am not like other magicians. I am the Dark Enchanter, and I will show you true magic. The magic of the stars As one, the crowd gasped.

Because he raised his right hand and on it he was wearing a glove, of dark fabric, and from it white flashes of light were sparking and crackling. The torches around the walls flared and sank low. A woman behind Attia moaned in terror.

Attia folded her arms. She watched, determined not to be overawed. How did he do it? Could that really be Sapphique’s Glove? Could it have survived? Was there some strange power still lingering in it? But as she watched, her doubts began to slip from her grasp.

The show was astonishing.

The Enchanter had the crowd transfixed. He took objects, made them vanish, brought them back, plucked doves and Beetles out of the air, conjured a woman to sleep and made her rise slowly, unsupported, into the smoky acrid darkness.

He drew butterflies from the mouth of a terrified child, conjured gold coins and threw them out to desperate, grabbing fingers, opened a door in the air and walked through it, so that the crowd bayed and howled for him to come back, and when he did it was from behind them, walking calmly through their frenzy so that they fell away, awed, as if afraid to touch him.

As he passed Attia felt the brush of his coat against her arm; her skin prickled, all the hairs on her skin standing up with a faint static. He gave one glance to the side, his eyes bright, catching hers.