The Masked City

‘Athanais the Scarlet,’ the man murmured. He rose to his feet and swept a bow.

‘Turn and apologize to your brothers and sisters for wasting their time with such a foolish question,’ Aunt Isra ordered him. ‘Think yourself lucky that I do not whip your hands to help you remember the lesson.’

Still standing, Athanais turned to Irene and the others. ‘I apologize for wasting your time with a foolish question,’ he murmured, bowing again. ‘Please forgive me.’

Amid the general embarrassed mutters of Apology accepted, think nothing of it, Irene mentally slapped herself. She’d been so preoccupied by Silver’s over-the-top libertine persona that she’d never really bothered to think about Fae who liked other sorts of roles when constructing their stories. They might still be the centre of their own narrative, but that didn’t mean they had to be the ‘hero’ or the ‘villain’ of the overarching tale. There were other roles for them to take, roles that were probably quite not so immediately destructive to those around them. (Though she’d hate to make a mistake in any class run by Aunt Isra. It looked as if it would be painful.) But she’d been unconsciously assuming that they’d all play out their games in the same way that Silver did his, always casting themselves as the main protagonist.

Aunt Isra was Fae, but she was also a teacher and a storyteller by nature. There had to be a way in which Irene could use this.

Aunt Isra nodded. ‘Be seated again. Well now, as I was saying, you will have had little to do with the great among us, nor will you have spent time in a sphere of high virtue - or so I was told?’ She glanced around the group and, when everyone nodded, Irene joining in, she smiled thinly. ‘Ah, this will be a new threshold for you all!’

The woman in the suit raised her hand. ‘Aunt Isra, may we ask questions?’

‘As long as they are intelligent ones,’ Aunt Isra said, not very helpfully.

The woman nodded. ‘We’ve all lived in the wake of our patrons, Aunt Isra, and followed their paths. We therefore have some understanding of what it is to be caught in the “story” of another of our kind - at least, that was the phrasing my superior used. How much … um, bigger is the effect when facing one of the great—’ She was clearly looking for some diplomatic way to say how much worse, and Irene herself dearly wanted to know the answer to this one.

Aunt Isra sniffed. The harsh light now coming in through the windows cast her features into strict lines of contrast and shadow. ‘Certainly you can flee, young woman, and retreat back to whatever sphere you came from. No doubt there will be humans there who will feed you sufficient adoration to keep you alive. But it will be no more than living. Once you have tasted the full wine of following in the steps of the great ones, nothing less will content you. Once I - I myself! - was but a humble maiden who bore her sword in the service of the great Caliph al-Rashid. All things seemed possible to me then. I will admit that I had lovers - nay, even friends - among the humans. I could live within that petty sphere because I did not realize how much was to be had outside it.’

Beyond the window was desert, punctuated by cacti, tumbleweeds and thin stony paths. The sun burned down on it from a cloudless sky.

Aunt Isra’s voice had shifted into the rising and falling patterns of a story. ‘But then I told a tale that set a Djinn free, and I travelled thrice across the shifting sands with friends to answer its questions. I walked the paths that lead from Paradise to Hell, and I made five choices at their doors. I gave a hero the reins to a horse that galloped faster than the wind. I knelt at the feet of an emperor who ruled five worlds, and I told him a story that brought doom on one of them, but saved another. I lay in the arms of the ocean and bore her a child. And once I had done all these things, my children, I saw how little it was worth to be - to be merely a person who had the name that I once had. What are humans, compared to the wine of life, which is found by living as we do? I am what I am, and now I have no desire to be less.

Is ‘less’ really the word? Irene wondered, then thought It is for her.

‘Cast aside your uncertainties,’ Aunt Isra went on. ‘Be who you are. It is the way forward, my children, the way to power, the way to life. And the greater the virtue of the place where you walk, the easier this will be. I see from your clothing and your habits that you are all well established in your own spheres, which is good. But the great among us can walk in any sphere and will appear in the dress and style appropriate to their nature. They can speak, and they will be understood in any language. They are unchanging, because they have utterly become themselves, and will never be otherwise.’

Irene tentatively raised her hand.

‘Yes?’ Aunt Isra said. She seemed a little less brittle now, more lyrical storyteller than sharp teacher. ‘What have you to say, Clarice?’

‘Aunt Isra,’ Irene said carefully, her stomach clenching at the risk of drawing more attention to herself, ‘when I entered the train, I noticed the driver. But he was difficult to see clearly. I saw many different faces and styles of clothing, but each one was appropriate in its own way. He is one of the great ones, isn’t he?’ Nervousness prickled down her back like an echo of her Library brand, as other people in the carriage looked in her direction.

The train came to a smooth stop. Stagecoaches were waiting outside. From the corner of her eye, Irene could see men in white suits and top hats, and women with parasols and ornate gowns, being helped down from the stagecoaches. They were approaching coaches further down the train.