A shower of sound made Rafe look up. White flakes swirled down upon the open carriage, chiming as they fell. His skin tingled cold where they touched, though their taste upon his lips was sweet. Rafe caught one in his palm, feather-like, but it dissolved into nothingness when he poked it with a finger.
Isabella looked at him, white gleaming on her dress. “Welcome to Shimmer, where life is one big theater production. Mirados’ house is up ahead.”
A dark forest spread before them, with lanterns tangled among the trees. As the carriage continued along its way, the branches, thin and flexible, swept out of their way. They had no leaves, just lots of fine silky strands like tresses. They brushed Rafe’s cheek and smelled of rain and perfume.
“This is different,” Isabella noted. One tree-lock crept up coyly to her shoulder; Isabella absently yanked it off and tossed it on the ground.
The trees didn’t try flirting with her again.
“You’ve been here before.”
“My father brought me when I was a child, before he and Mirados had their falling out. Ah… here we are.”
Rafe looked around, expecting a grand edifice, but the carriage stopped in a small stone-paved circle. A narrow crack in a waterfall-clothed hillside was the only place to go.
Rafe hopped down onto the flagstones. Ka pin-pricked up his leg. It felt ticklish. He held out his hand gallantly to Isabella, who took it as she alighted.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
Isabella signaled with a finger, and a ka-powered servitor detached itself from the carriage and hovered obsequiously behind her. It looked like a fancy floating table with arms curving over its top. Sable’s flower was cradled between them.
They walked arm-in-arm through the water-bordered opening. Rafe looked dubiously at it. His senses felt something ponderous and heavy gathering beyond the gap. As Isabella tugged him through, static brushed his hair. The border between outside and inside felt slightly soapy and cool, like walking through a bubble.
When the film finally popped, a thousand fireworks exploded into shrieking color right in front of his eyes.
Rafe stumbled, and only Isabella’s grip on his arm kept him up. Half of those fireworks were just in his head, the colorful trails of a hundred little magics, tangling and kissing and parting with each other. The other half was an assault on his normal senses. Mirados’ vine-colored lobby was filled with flame-dripping birds, acrobats creating archways with their bodies, and chairs with their backs spread out in real feathers.
And that was just in the first few feet into the chamber.
“Too much ka,” he whispered to Isabella. “I can’t separate them all!”
Isabella squeezed his hand. “Give it a bit of time to get used to it. You know the scent of what you’re looking for. I’ll find someone to help us get close. Look sharp, here he comes.”
Rafe straightened and hoped that his sickened expression could be mistaken for a look of stunned astonishment.
“Welcome!” The man who strode up to them was broad-chested and black-bearded. A medallion of beaten gold lay on his bare brown chest and his only concession to decency was a loincloth around his hips. The thongs of his leather sandals snaked up his hairy muscular legs. Rafe noted for the first time that their host was not the only one in the room displaying a rather large expanse of naked flesh. “Lady Maerilla, what a pleasure to have such a beauty grace my little gathering.”
Isabella ducked her head and simpered, “Oh, Preceptor, you are too kind! Such a privilege… honor… oh, the sights…!” She trailed off breathlessly and fluttered fake lashes at Mirados, who had already turned to the rose and was crooning over it.
Rafe took the opportunity to whisper in her ear, “Laced that corset too tight, did you?” for which impertinence he was rewarded with a tap of her fan.
“Say, Uncle, where’s that dancer from last time? You know, the one with the chocolates down her…” The youth who interrupted was slender and unsteady on his feet, and he made a gesture towards his chest to indicate which part of the dancer’s anatomy had contained the delicacies.
“My boy, that was
last
time.”
“But, Uncle, I liked her.” The youth’s voice took on a nasal whine. His hair was purple and slicked back, and his dark-complexioned face sprinkled with glitter, but in tone and attitude, he could’ve been Tristan’s twin. Tristan. A pang tore through him. Tristan, who could be justly executed under the law for his treason.
“There are other dancers tonight, and more attractions besides. Come, my boy, here is Lady Maerilla all the way from Oakhaven.” Mirados turned his nephew by the shoulder, lights glistening off the youth’s mirrored vest, towards Isabella.
Isabella gave the youth a sultry look from under her lashes, one that she could’ve only learned from Sable. A come-hither look. From Isabella.
He’d have never believed it possible if he hadn’t seen it.
“My nephew, Raman.” Mirados pushed him toward Isabella, and duty done, turned towards Rafe. “First time for you, too, Lord… Oldmine?”
“Oldmill, actually, and gosh, yes, it’s just grand…” Rafe let his eyes stray towards the acrobats in scanty red leotards with fabric cut away from the sides as they changed formation in a shiver of movement and were still again. “Just grand,” he finished lamely, employing the inarticulate eloquence of the young man whose identity he’d assumed for the evening.
Mirados followed Rafe’s gaze. “You will find, young man, that we are a very free and accommodating people. Go on and find a friend, like your young lady companion did.”
Isabella had vanished with Raman, and in the time it took for Rafe to sweep the room for her, Mirados, too, stalked away, the servitor bobbing at his side.
Mindful of his role, Rafe meandered the room, stopping to gawk at every exhibit like any tourist. It wasn’t all that difficult to maintain that look of slack-jawed bemusement. Mirados’ entertainment consisted not only of the gravity-defying and tireless acrobats, but also miniature horses spreading gem-studded wings and trailing flames from their tips; a castle as tall as Rafe made from gleaming confectionary, with spun sugar towers, fountains of wine, and walking sentries made from pastry; and many more besides. Mirados’ guests were about as bizarre as the entertainment with their hair and skin in rainbow hues, moving tattoos on their faces, and multiple piercings. As he stared at each curiosity, more marvelous than the last, Rafe began to tease out the separate threads of ka that wrapped against his skin in sticky spider threads and pinged his nerves with bursts of color. That gold-orange strand created the illusion of flames, an outlining band of pale green kept the fire’s shape. Whorls of pastel colors maintained the open, perfect blooms in the vases.
And all of that energy came from quartz. Plates of quartz hung on the wall, chunks of it studded furniture, still more was set in the floor, and besides all that, there was quartz below, underground where Rafe could only sense it. His feet thrummed with the radiant ka as it flowed into his bones.
This tamed ka was so different from the white heat that assaulted him in the agri-caves. In fact, if he reached out with mental hooks and pulled that greenish-yellow strand there…
One of the marching sentries on the confectionary castle stiffened and toppled off the battlements. Rafe drew back, guiltily, but no one else seemed to have noticed. The ka strand flapped loosely and Rafe clumsily tied it back to the miniature sentry. The pastry man lay on his side, flailing his arms and kicking feebly. He looked a lot like a fellow quartz-sickness sufferer, and none of Rafe’s attempts succeeded in getting the poor chap on his feet. He finally left the exhibit before anyone realized what he had done.
It was highly unlikely that the Renat Key was in the lobby. Rafe joined a party overflowing into the next room, and eavesdropped shamelessly as one of its members—a person of indeterminate sex with a cap of sleek ice-blue hair, silver rings at the corner of enormous slanted eyes, and a rail-thin figure—spoke to a companion in a husky voice.
“ … got the last one of Carisa’s moving paintings, damn the man…”
“… I’d love to see it…”
“If we can get into Mirados’ private gallery. He has one of his automatons on duty there and you know what they’re like…”
“Damn right, I do. Can’t bribe, seduce, or make ’em drunk!” Both broke out into hiccupping giggles.
Private gallery. That sounded promising.
Beyond the lobby, the rooms were arranged like clearings in a forest and the ways between them meandering dimly-lit paths, with nooks and overlooks. Rafe stepped off the path and through a curtain of lacy vines whose sweet smell lingered on his hands. He stood looking down at a golden-hued waterfall. The liquid at the bottom splashed itself into foam against the inside of a giant shell. Partygoers scooped up in the foam and ate it off their fingers.
Another guest, this one whose only eccentricity was green hair, turned to Rafe. “Flavored foam. Pretty amazing, huh?”
“Oh, well. It is impressive, in a showy way. I was hoping for something more, though.” The ka fueling the waterfall looked tenuous somehow, interlaced in a web of colors so pale they were hardly there. Rafe wondered if the foam was at all filling, or just a tasty illusion. There was no end to the abundance of food, artfully incorporated into the exhibits, but the guests were abnormally thin.
The young man gave Rafe a knowing wink. “Well, there are some very accomplished body performers further in.”
“No, I meant more historically and culturally valuable artifacts.”
“Like, you mean, paintings and such? Oh, Mirados has thousands of them. Keeps them guarded, though I don’t know why he bothers. I’ll show you the way to his galleries, they’re close to where the skins are.” The youth drew Rafe out of the waterfall chamber. The young man’s chatter fall on Rafe’s ears like a prattle of rain.
They parted ways at the entrance to the skins’ area—skins, Rafe surmised, being those who performed naked. The youth found Rafe’s tastes sadly lacking, but he didn’t try too hard to persuade Rafe to join him.
Rafe strolled through a doorway half-hidden behind a screen of potted trees, and entered another world. A smooth white marble corridor, clear of any clutter or decoration, led to a shiny round metal door. White light shone from recessed squares in the ceiling. Rafe felt the powerful pulse of ka coming from the door.
“No guests allowed.” The being who blocked the corridor to Mirados’ art collection appeared to have been dipped in molten silver and frozen. Blank eyes looked beyond Rafe.
“Ah, I’m sorry to trouble you, sir.” Rafe flashed a smile. “I was hoping to use the facilities quickly, and someone mentioned that there was a privy just back here.”
His charm had no affect on the metallic man. “Turn around, down the stairs to your left, two doors to the right.”
“Couldn’t I nip in there for a little bit?” asked Rafe. “It’s rather urgent.”
The guard made no reply. It apparently went deaf after a basic exchange, and there was no way Rafe could wrestle his way past. Bunches of ka, like bundled cord, lay within it. Rafe wondered which one would turn the automaton off, but any experimentation was just as likely to raise an alarm.
And even if he disabled the automaton, there was the door to deal with. Wires of green ka permeated the metal. Rafe didn’t think the purpose of that bit of magic was to shower visitors with bonbons and songs of welcome.
“Darling, you
have
to see Mirados’ new paintings. They are simply splendid, divine!” Raman, now thoroughly drunk, staggered in, held up only by the woman on his arm.
Isabella rolled her eyes at Rafe, but her tone was all breathless sweetness. “I would adore it of all things!” She fluttered her lashes at Raman
Isabella, flirting. What next? Was the Mage Renat going to rise up out of the floor, waving a pink wand, and save them all the trouble of finding the Keys?
Raman waved at the metallic guard. “Let us through, old chap.” The automaton stared bleakly at the youth, then stepped aside in one well-oiled motion.
The door opened, its whorls retracting into the walls. Isabella gave Rafe a significant look; he returned it with a bland expression. Somehow, as the couple came up and Rafe turned to head back to the lobby, he managed to trip over Raman. The man staggered impressively, pulling Isabella off-balance.
“Steady there,” Rafe took hold of Raman’s free arm. “Need some help, old fellow? I’m afraid your lovely companion isn’t as strong as she could be.” He grinned at Isabella over Raman’s head.
Raman clutched at the lace ruffles of Rafe’s borrowed finery and hauled himself upright. Stitches ripped, and Rafe wondered if he could write the mending off as a business expense.
“Th-thank you. Why, it’s the outsider, again. Still. Since you haven’t left, of course. Unless we’re talking about leaving the ball—”
Rafe interrupted before Raman could talk himself into more tortuous syntax. “May I be of assistance?”
“I do seem to be clumsy tonight, don’t I?” said Raman frankly. “I suppose I could use some help. No hard feelings about stealing the lady?” He peered up into Rafe’s face.
“None at all,” said Rafe smoothly. “I’m glad she found a friend. I was only trying to be kind.”
“Good, because she’s promised to be
my
special companion, haven’t you, dear?” He patted Isabella’s hand.
Rafe thought about commenting on the implications of special companionship, but Isabella’s bright smile had gotten noticeably brittle and he thought he’d rather not goad her.
“Ah, I need to use the privy,” complained Raman.
Even better.
“This way.” Rafe gestured past Metal Man, through the opened doorway.
The threesome lurched their way into a circular chamber, with passageways radiating out from it like spokes from a hub. Raman gave Metal Man a cheery wave as the door spiraled shut behind then. Another of the same doors stood directly opposite. It was, of course, closed. Raman tugged them in the direction of a less formidable-looking door to the left. This one was only rectangular.
Isabella slipped her hand from Raman’s arm. “I’ll wait for you two here.”