Clockwork Twist : Trick (13 page)

After a long late lunch—a very traditional display of British cooking that Twist had no trouble identifying or enjoying—and a short rest, Tasha was persuaded to give a show of her talents in the gilding afternoon light that streamed in through the windows of the parlor.  The mouth of the Nile glided by beneath them as the ship began its journey across the brilliant blue Mediterranean Sea.  The air that whispered in through the open front door began to cool and feel considerably more moist, increasing everyone's comfort.

Tasha took a place before her seated audience and clasped her black-lace-gloved hands before her, her eyes closed.  She had changed into a simple but elegant gown of sapphire sateen that clung to her middle but billowed about her legs like the bell of an hourglass.  Her pale shoulders were bare, down to the top of her elbow-length black lace gloves, and she wore a bright star sapphire in a black setting, on a black chain around her neck.  Her black hair hung—deceptively loose—in a tumble of curls down her back.  For a moment, Twist almost forgot about the magic act as he gazed at her silent but arresting beauty.

Then, after a long pause in total silence, she opened her eyes and held out her empty hands.  With a snap of her fingers and a subtle smile she turned her wrists and the deck of black-and-silver playing cards appeared suddenly in one hand.  Without a moment of pause for the applause at the appearance of the cards, she flipped the loose cards in an arc into her other hand and then back in a flowing motion that challenged the laws of physics.  The cards continued to fly, one following another closely, in arc upon arc, from hand to hand, until she was juggling the thin cards in the air before her without losing control of even one of them.

The applause broke out again as she dropped one hand while the display continued in the other.  Tasha smiled more broadly but again didn't turn her attention away from her cards.  In another moment, she began to catch and toss fewer and fewer of the cards as they all danced in the air above her fingers in wide, high arcs.  Eventually she stopped touching them at all and the cards turned in more and more complex circles, now totally unaided by her touch.  As the audience stared in silent amazement, Tasha finally looked to them and curtsied deeply while holding her open hand just below the flying cards.  Applause broke the tension of wonder in the room, more true and heartfelt than it had been before.

“Thank you,” Tasha said sweetly.

She snapped her fingers again and then held both hands open together as the cards fell into a neat pile in her hands.  Once the last one had fallen, and the applause had finally begun to die, she smiled wickedly and turned the deck over, fanning out the cards, to reveal that they had fallen into prefect order, from ace to King in each respective suit.  The applause roared up again with laughter as well.

“How did she do that?” Twist asked Jonas, who had watched the trick with uncovered eyes and smiled broadly the whole time.

“Say a word, and I'll turn you into a toad,” Tasha snapped, pointing at Jonas warningly.

Jonas put up his hands in surrender. “It was magic,” Jonas said loudly. “I saw it, pure and elegant magic.  I swear it.”  Twist narrowed his eyes at Jonas.

“Good man,” Tasha said, smiling.  She snapped the fanned cards against one hand and they disappeared from her fingers in a shower of shining black-and-silver specks of confetti, while a black-and-silver Spanish fan of exactly the same size appeared in her hand.  She fanned herself with it and eyed Jonas critically.  He smiled back, watching the fan, but said nothing.

“Oh wonderful!” Hector said, clapping again.  “My dear, you are simply a marvel.”

Twist glanced at him, but then his eye was drawn to Niko.  Unlike all the others, Niko didn't seem to be in awe.  He was frowning and writing quickly in a small notebook.  Myra, meanwhile, bounced with pure excitement on the couch beside Twist, with a huge smile.

“I've never seen magic like yours before,” Myra said excitedly. “I've seen a lot, too.  My father used to collect magicians from all over the world because I liked them so much.”

Tasha looked at her directly for a moment before giving another deep curtsy. “From you, my dear, that is quite a compliment.”

“Seriously, tell me how she did it,” Twist said to Jonas softly. “I can't figure it out.  I can always figure things out.  I'll go mad if you don't tell me.”  Jonas listened to Twist, and then looked to Tasha.

“I hope you like the taste of flies,” Tasha said smoothly to him.  Niko glanced up at Jonas.

“Sorry, Twist,” Jonas said, shaking his head. “I like being human too much.”

“Can you really turn him into a toad?” Twist asked Tasha with a disbelieving tone.

She smiled slyly. “Can't I?”

“Either way, I'm not pushing her,” Jonas said, crossing his arms. “I learned my lesson with wizards long ago.” He looked seriously at Twist. “Trust me.  Never taunt a warlock.”  Myra giggled while Twist tried desperately to find some sign of truth or lies in his eyes.

“You do attract the most … interesting of people,” Hector said, watching Twist and Jonas.

“I'm blessed that way,” Tasha said with a nod as she came to sit with them.

“Can I see that?” Niko asked, holding out a hand.  Tasha gave him the fan before she sat down and he immediately closed and re-opened it slowly in his hands, staring critically at it before writing in his book again.

Gregory, who had been standing at the back of the room throughout the magic show, left quietly and returned with a tray of coffee and butter cookies.  Hector, meanwhile, had begun to talk again, about all the shows he had seen Tasha perform in the past.  Although it was interesting to hear of her other tricks, something about Hector's way of speaking made it very hard for Twist to stay focused.

Niko got to his feet and left the room without a word after a while, and Twist was somewhat surprised to find that Hector didn't ever seem to notice.  He considered his options, the possible pros and cons, and then finally decided to try it himself.  Without a word, he got to his feet and walked out of the room to find no notice take whatsoever by Hector.  Myra met him in the hallway a moment later, looking at him curiously.

“It worked,” Twist said softly, smiling at her. “I wish I'd known I could do that earlier.”

“Oh, you're escaping the blabbermouth,” Myra whispered back, relieved.

“That was pure genius!” Jonas hissed as he too appeared in the hallway. “All three of us just left, and he didn't notice a thing.”

“I saw Niko do it,” Twist said with a shrug.

“What a relief,” Jonas said, moving down the hallway. “I mean, he's not a bad guy or anything, but the man could out-talk a politician.”  Twist nodded in understanding as they walked.

The rest of the airship looked just as much like a house as Twist had expected.  There was a thin stairway leading up to the second floor with a railing of dark wood running along it, under a gaslight chandelier hanging in the center of the hallway.  He knew that the dining room was down the hall to the left, and that the door in the back led out to the porch, but had no idea where the other doors led to.

Jonas ambled down the hallway with no apparent purpose, but he came to a stop outside a door behind the base of the stairs, near the back door.  When Twist and Myra joined him they heard Niko's voice wafting up along the short flight of stairs that led into the false basement of the airship.

“That's why I just don't like mercury,” Niko was saying.

“But imagine what you could do with a liquid that moves in response to heat,” Gregory responded as Jonas, Twist, and Myra all crept down into the shadows.

Niko was sitting on one of the many barrels that were set against one wall while Gregory stood before a hissing, grinding, strange machine that filled up much of the center of the shallow room and reached up to the ceiling with clawing limbs of rough pipes.  He held a wrench as he gazed thoughtfully at the mechanical beast, while Niko still toyed with the Spanish fan.  Niko glanced up at Twist, Jonas, and Myra as their faces appeared in the dim electric light that glared out of lanterns that hung from the corners of the room.  He smiled.

“You didn't know you could just get up and leave, did you?” Niko asked them.

“It would've been nice if someone had told us,” Jonas
grumbled.

“Don't feel bad,” Gregory said, looking back to the machine. “Niko only figured it out after sitting through four days of solid speech.”

“Don't remind me,” Niko said, rubbing at his brow. “I still have nightmares of that.”

“Ah ha!” Gregory exclaimed suddenly.  Without a moment of warning or apparent cause, he hit his wrench hard against the machine, in the center of a junction in the many reaching pipes.  The machine gave a whining, gurgling sort of sound for a second and then fell noticeably quieter than it had been before. “That's better,” he said, putting down the wrench and turning to the others as he wiped his hands on a rag.  Twist, Jonas, and Myra had all jumped at the unexpected attack on the machine, but Niko hardly seemed to notice it at all.

“What is that thing?” Twist asked hesitantly.

“It’s rather temperamental in dry air,” Gregory said. “It always acts up when we've been to a desert,” he added, walking to a workbench at the side of the room that was strewn with papers and tools.

“Greg is an inventor,” Niko offered to Twist's confused expression. “He's pretty good too.  It’s a shame he wastes his talent on steam.”

“I told you to stop that,” Gregory muttered, glancing warningly at Niko over a shoulder. “Steam is the future.  Your pretty little lightning is no match for simple, hardworking, steam.”

“Uh huh,” Niko muttered, looking back to his fan.  He turned a tiny wire at the hinge and a bright spark flashed up one of the ribs, making him jerk in surprise.

“It's bloody unpredictable and dangerous as well,” Gregory added with some satisfaction.  Niko gave him a sour look.

Twist had trouble keeping his attention off of the fan.  No matter how he tried to distract himself from it, his mind continually returned to Tasha's flying card trick.  He could feel the answer to his questions, to the core method of the trick, flashing before his eyes like a taunting nymph: ever present, well within his reach, but impossible to grasp.

“Can I see that for a moment?” he asked Niko, pointing to the fan.

“No,” Niko said, raising an eyebrow at him. “You could understand the whole trick if you touched this, couldn't you?”

“I could understand how that fan works,” Twist answered shiftily. “But maybe not the whole trick...”

“Why do you want to know so badly?” Niko asked. “You already know it's a trick.”

“I hate puzzles,” Twist answered, rubbing at his eyes to get his gaze off the fan. “I can't stand knowing that I'm capable of understanding something, and still not getting it.  It’s like I can see the answer dancing in front of me, mocking me.”

“You suddenly make more sense,” Jonas toned thoughtfully. “Hey, you're a girl, do something confusing to him,” he said to Myra with a grin.  Myra crossed her arms and looked at Jonas coldly.

“How about if I just touch it for a second?” Twist asked Niko.

“How about if I told you that the cards are magnetic?” Niko offered instead.

Twist reconsidered the entire trick, factoring in the new information, and slowly began to nod to himself.  Then he frowned and shook his head.  “But she wasn't moving, wasn't doing anything to direct their movements.”

“The movements were predetermined,” Niko said.

“Then there would have to be some kind of device to send the commands,” Twist said. “And I couldn't imagine how you could make something like that, or how you would store the information...”  His voice drifted off as his thoughts sped too fast for his words.  Then, it all fell together, fitting perfectly into logic.  “It was the necklace,” Twist said, his eyes shooting up to meet Niko's suddenly startled gaze. “That's brilliant.”

“Thank you...” Niko said, staring at him with slight alarm.

“It only looked like they were flipping around over her hand, when they were suspended in the air in front of her the whole time,” Twist continued, smiling at his own understanding.

“Are you an inventor too?” Gregory asked, moving closer.

“Me?” Twist asked, looking to him. “No, I just mend clocks.”  Gregory looked surprised.