Stefan Kralefsky knew faces. It was almost a game to him, to examine a face, to search the glint of an eye or the set of a mouth, to look for what was within and determine whether it was worth looking at.
He did not look for morality, honesty or trustworthiness. He did not even look for strength, charm or beauty.
Kralefsky looked for interest, any quality outside the usual. He could spot it at once, on any face, sitting in on of his theaters, serving him in a shop, passing him on a street or across a restaurant table.
The woman with the dark, burning eyes and slight smell of metal emanating from her skin drew his eye, as did the man beside her with the proud, dark face and regal air surrounding him. There was something glittering beneath their surfaces, something he could not name, something that intrigued him.
It was so rare to find people such as them, especially so near each other. Most of time, the ones that caught his eye were separated by several rows, surrounded by the ordinary.
Kaspar, his daemon, was beckoning the two forward and they followed. The man was staring at the woman, while she kept her face forward, proud.
"What were you thinking?" the woman hissed.
"I wasn't thinking anything, as you should be aware, Marisa."
"Clearly you weren't."
The woman's daemon, a lustrous golden monkey, snarled. The man's, a larger, proud snow leopard, growled in response.
"You were the one who---"
They had reached the stage. Marisa put one finger over her lips.
It was time to be seen.
Lord Asriel watched her expression change, smoothing into something sweeter, more wide-eyed. The golden monkey climbed into her arms, docile. He wondered, for a moment, at these two Marisas and how she seemed to flow between them with such ease.
"Sit," Kralefsky commanded, gesturing to the chairs.
Mrs. Coulter crossed the stage, her movements calculated and sinuous, draping herself across the chair. Asriel followed, a king walking towards his coronation.
Kralefsky smiled.
Mrs. Coulter lifted her eyes to the ceiling, avoiding Asriel's gaze. She was sure it was still on her, she could feel it and she heard Stelmaria's low growl. She tried not to look towards the audience, towards Edward. The monkey turned away in pointed derision.
Kralefsky turned to the audience.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I must warn you, do not trust your eyes too closely tonight. We go through our lives depending on our eyes, taking in everything we see and accepting it as absolute truth. But sometimes the eyes lie to us, ladies and gentlemen, sometimes what we see is not the truth. Such is the power of illusion, when the mind screams one truth and the senses tell another."
He turned towards the pair.
"Tonight I will attempt to alter this gentleman and this lady's perceptions and your views of them, among other tricks. Stand, if you please."
They rose, each seeming at once conscious and unaware of the eyes on them. Asriel did not look at the crowd, barely seemed to care they were there. There was heat falling on Marisa's skin, the monkey shivering with some excitement she couldn't name.
Later, she decided it must have been sin.
Kralefsky looked over the two of them, deciding what to do next. Kaspar whispered something in his ear and he nodded, waving a hand to send Asriel back to the chair and draw Mrs. Coulter forward.
"Take a look at this lady. I do not think any one of you would deny that she is beautiful."
There was a general murmur of agreement. It might have made some women blush. Mrs. Coulter, however, stood straighter, a smile teasing her face and the monkey letting out soft laughter.
"Yet she is a delicate creation, she is ephemeral. I shall not ask her age but her youth is no secret. Time passes faster than any of us expect it will."
He touched Mrs. Coulter's arm, in a way so gentle, so lightly creeping it made her cringe, the closest thing to fear she ever felt from another human being.
"She will not always be as she is now. Before she realizes it, she will be forty, with nearly all her beauty intact, just beginning to fade."
He released her arm and there was a short gasp from the audience, straining to see her face better. When she looked down at her hands, she could see the very beginning of fine lines.
"Still, she will be almost as lovely as she is today. But time is set in motion. It will not stop, it cannot stop. She will then reach sixty."
He touched her arm once more and she recoiled from his touch, not bothering to conceal her displeasure as she did with Edward. The monkey hissed, a certain fear and vulnerability about his aspect that was not there before.
There was a gasp from the house.
Marisa looked up, for the first time, at Edward, from his seat in the audience. His eyes were narrowed, critical, displeased with her.
Stefan Kralefsky also knew fears. He was an expert at pinpointing them, after examining the face, to determine what people ran to and from, what they wished and what they feared.
He could not always find the deepest, most genuine fear but he could always find at least one, one that moved powerfully within his subjects.
The best shows induced fear.
The heat of the naphtha lights was pricking Marisa, making her feel dizzy. The monkey perched himself on her hip, clinging to her and attempting to keep her awake.
Her bones and skin felt no different, so he must have been casting an illusion. Must have!
"Eighty."
Again the touch came and went, the audiences making more noises and straining closer. Marisa had never disliked being watched before.
She did not look behind her at Lord Asriel.
"Of course, I do not know the lady's future, my magic does not extend that far. Perhaps her airship will crash tomorrow, freezing her as she is today in all memories but her own. Perhaps she will live to be over one hundred, older than I shall take her here. Perhaps she will be taken by another epidemic, such as the cholera of years past or perhaps, like many women, childbirth will have her, exchanging one life for another. I can say, however, for absolute certain, that one day she will die, snuffed out like us all. She has few ways of predicting it and no way of avoiding it."
Kralefsky touched her arm once more and Marisa, dream-like, felt her limbs stiffening, her body involuntarily falling in on itself, the monkey still free and moving but unable to assist his mistress.
She was falling backward, powerless, and before she hit the cold, hard stage, hands pushed her up and lifted her into a chair. They were strong hands, warm, Lord Asriel's. There was no tenderness or gentleness in the gesture, only a barrier between her and the ground. He did not want her to fall. That was all and enough.
"Thank you," she murmured, finding herself able to speak.
Asriel gave her a quick, curt nod and Mrs. Coulter turned towards the stage, twenty-three once more.
Stefan Kralefsky knew fears. He and Kaspar bowed to the applause.
"Yes, you may applaud now," he grinned, something menacing in his expression, "But I am not yet finished. Sir, I daresay you have been feeling excluded." He turned to Lord Asriel.
"I've survived," Asriel snorted, Stelmaria raising a paw in regal, laconic boredom.
"The next illusion involves both you and the lady. I did not call you to the stage for no reason, sir."
"I assumed not."
"Stand next to her, if you please."
Marisa noted that however imperious Kralefsky behaved around most in the theater, he seemed to reserve a sort of nervous courtesy for Lord Asriel.
"It makes sense," the monkey noted.
Lord Asriel appeared to hold power over everyone, no matter how commanding or forceful they were. One look and they were silenced.
This rule applied to her as well, in a different way, one she did not know it yet.
Asriel rose and stood next to Marisa. He was not near enough to touch her but she could imagine it, tensing. She felt a strange heat, something she could not name.
The monkey shivered.
She found images running through her mind, the two of them entwining. his skin, her skin, things she hadn't wished for before, not with anyone.
There was so much heat.
"Everyone has magic in them, some stronger than others. It is a strange, explosive mixture of force and will. This next trick does not involve myself. Sir, if you will take the lady's hands?"
Kralefsky had not once referred to them by their names, never even asked for them. They were "sir" and "the lady", his curios, his marionettes.
Marisa admired the dignity with which Asriel held himself, regal even while partly the magician's puppet. She wondered whether she could ever be like that.
"I think so," the monkey whispered.
Asriel took each of Marisa's hands, holding them firm. She felt there was a sort of anbaric current running through them, from him to her and back again. She felt faint but stood taller.
She was not afraid.
"Close your eyes."
She obeyed. The two of them could have been standing anywhere, far from the crowd that surrounded them, the eyes she was sure were watching them (Edward's eyes, most of all).
"I want each of you to muster every bit of force in your minds and souls. Your daemons should do so, as well. Every part of your strength and concentration you can put to anything, to any effort, any task, you must take and use now."
It was somehow outside her will. Marisa felt her spirit, the fire inside her going into her hands. His hands grew hotter under her touch.
They were burning.
"Do you have it? Good. Keep your eyes closed. I want you to fill your minds with one word. Up. Picture yourselves higher and higher, pulled by force that is not your own."
Up. Up. Up.
She rarely did what she was told but now it was as if she had been hypnotized, forces pulling her form, her mind.
Up. Up. Up.
Marisa could see their bodies and daemons, suspended above the crowds, little specks below her.
Up. Up. Up.
She could hear distant voices in her mind. Asriel's, Stelmaria's, Kralefsky's, his firebird's, her monkey's. And she heard her own voice, icy and strong, without a trace of the sweetness she laded on it in for most people.
"Up. Up. Up," they chanted, their voices running together and overlapping.
Marisa felt her feet lift, pulled as though by a marionette string, and an involuntary laugh left her, burning with the power of it.
"Do you feel it?" she asked the monkey.
"Yes. I am lifting as you are."
She gripped Asriel's hands tighter, filled with an intense, greedy joy.
"Do you feel it?" she inquired.
He said nothing, grasping her hands.
"Remember," Kralefsky commanded, "do not fear. Do not resist. I will tell you when you may open your eyes. If you let each other's hands loose, you will fall."
Her feet were swinging in her air, the monkey gripping Stelmaria's fur as if to pull it out, his fierce joy apparent.
The marionette string drew them further and further.
Marisa had wanted to be a witch when she was a child, enchanted by the idea of the power, the beauty, the near-immortality and most of all, the flight. She thrived on this.
"But we're not flying," the monkey breathed, "We're powerless. He's the one propelling us."
"Ignore it," Marisa hissed, "We're here. Up."
She wondered how Kralefsky was doing it, whether he had somehow fixed transparent strings to her body without her noticing, whether he had commanded some magnetic force. Or perhaps he had been lying to the Church, avoiding heresy charges and prison. Perhaps it was real.
Marisa could feel the top of her head brushing the stage ceiling and her body was being pulled to the side with excruciating gentleness, to the higher ceilings of the main theater. There were gasps below. She wondered what Edward was thinking, watching as she and Asriel were drawn higher and higher as he remained bound to earth, stuck in his seat.
Marisa laughed once more, high, rough and a little wild. This was her real laugh, not the tinkling silver noise she put on.
"We've stopped moving," the monkey noted and though she still felt the pull of the imaginary string, it was moving her no longer.
"You may open your eyes now," called Kralefsky's distant voice.
She must have been a hundred feet above the audience. Their eyes, miniature black beads, were fixed on the figures above. She could not find Edward in the crowd. He was not real. Nothing was real.
"Keep your hands tight!" Kralefsky shouted.
Asriel had a fierce half-smile playing on his face, as if to show that the display pleased him, merely pleased him. His eyes swept the room and the smile widened only slightly.
"Look at them, Marisa," he breathed into her ear, looking at the masses below, "They're dead, every one of them. We're alive."
It was what she had been thinking herself.
"I expect you've seen far greater things in the North."
"I have, if only by virtue of their reality."
"I see."
She did not say that she wished for him to show them to her, that she wanted to see everything that she had never seen, that petty society influence could never be enough.
"It's nothing," the monkey whispered, "It's sin."
She quieted him, not sure whether the sin he spoke of was the future she was entertaining or the touch of Asriel's hands or the unnatural way she had been plucked from the stage.
Or perhaps it was the wish for more than simply their hands touching and to fly higher than the top of a theater.
Back when she had lived with her father, still half-civilized, he had taken her to church every Sunday.
She would daydream during sermons, letting only a few lines creep into her mind.
She remembered only one now.
"The Authority has given each of us everything that we need. It is the gravest, lowest sin to wish for more."
She did want more, though, she wanted more at that moment, more than her hands in his and needing marionette strings to fly.
"Now, I want you to fill yourselves with the idea of lowering. Not falling, lowering. Picture your bodies and daemons being moved by gentle force, never crashing or being hurt. Do not let go. Close your eyes once more."
The leaving disturbed Marisa, filling her with a an icy, sinking sensation. Still, she was pulled, until she felt her feet touching the stage.
"You may release each other now. Open your eyes."
Mrs. Coulter smiled for the audience, making sure to weave traces of relieved fear into her expression. The monkey was still wound like a clockwork toy, rubbing his hands together and jumping round.
Marisa shot Asriel a triumphant smile.
"There is one last trick I will perform before sending the two of you back to your seats."
Kralefsky drew a hand forward and the large mirror from the back of the stage was being pulled towards them.
"Can everyone in the audience see what is reflected in the mirror?" he inquired, Kaspar worked into a passionate agitation.
There were general, affirmative sounds.
"Good. Now, sir and madam, please stand in front of the mirror."
They moved to the mirror. Marisa eyed the two of them in the mirror. They were opposites. She was delicate, small, pale, polished. Her features were unreadable, as if they had been carved from ice. He was tall, strong, rough, tanned. Fire played across his face.
Their identical dark eyes were burning.
"Can every one of you still see the reflections in this mirror?" Kralefsky asked.
There was a chorus of agreement.
"I should warn you, this is no ordinary mirror. I found it in my travels through the Indies. I wish I could provide explanation for the images it shows and what they mean. I have spent considerable time pondering it myself."
There were sounds of excitement and disappointment from the house.
"Sir and madam, I wish you to place your fingers lightly on the frame of the mirror. Do not touch the glass."
Her fingers felt tense and heavy as she lifted them, an odd nervousness coursing through her.
"Wait. It does not take long," Kralefsky explained.
Was she imagining things or was there a frightening gleam in the firebird's eyes, like he wished to see the monkey hurt, perhaps Stelmaria as well?
Stelmaria turned her eyes to the firebird and gave a sharp, short growl. Both man and daemon looked somewhat pacified. Kralefsky was not malevolent, not truly. He was not capable of the same acts as the two subjects on his stage. He loved magic, fed on applause, lived to impress. He was a showman.
Marisa and Asriel watched the mirror, both unmoving. They waited, seeing nothing unusual.
Minutes passed.
The mirror began to cloud, swirling with smoke, though the air around them was clear. The crowd leaned forward, evidently seeing it as well.
When the glass cleared, there were two figures, nearly identical to the people looking in the mirror. There were only a few differences between them. Their faces were stiffer, a touch frozen and their clothing was old-fashioned, him in a swirling black and red cape, something metal glinting from near his belt, and her in a floor-sweeping dress, a black and red veil falling down her back. There was one difference that eclipsed all others, however. They had no daemons.
There was a horrified gasp from behind them. Marisa gazed at this other self, the monkey clinging to her leg in shock. Despite the absence of their daemons, their mirror-selves did not appear bothered or affected, as much life in them as their physical selves.
Marisa glanced at Asriel. He appeared fascinated with the picture, though Stelmaria had backed away in slight disgust, though not fear. Never fear.
Mirror-Asriel turned to Mirror-Marisa and held out his hand. She accepted it, her limbs jerking a little, like a clockwork figurine. They began to dance without music, a pleasant little waltz neither seemed to put much feeling into. The way they watched each other told of something else, some unseen cruelty nobody but the real Marisa and Asriel seemed to notice.
There was hollow clapping, everyone too disturbed by the missing daemons to care for the dance.
Marisa was transfixed by her other self, watching her twist and turn, plans glittering in her eyes.
Cunning as she seemed, she was afraid as well, darting glances behind her at some invisible onlooker. There was a mechanical stiffness beneath her grace.
The two of them were alone.
Mirror-Asriel was watching Mirror-Marisa in much the same way he did in life, intense. There was something else in this man, though, like a hunter. This Asriel, never blinked or hesitated, turning Marisa in an endless dance. Their eyes were locked.
The audience saw a pleasant waltz, two music box figures twirling round.
Round and round, they went. Marisa began to feel dizzy, though she herself was not moving. The monkey grasped her arm, comforting her.
Mirror-Marisa wrenched herself from her partner's arms. There was a childlike, pouty aspect in her expression, unlike her earthly counterpart. She stalked to the other side of the stage. Mirror-Asriel followed, none of her clockwork jerkiness in his movements.
They began a silent play-quarrel. He pleaded with her with an odd sincerity, looking more like his true self. As Mirror-Asriel grew more lifelike, Mirror-Marisa became still more stiff, doll-like, emotionless. She turned her head away in a calculated, petulant movement, giving him a pretty, false slap once.
There was nothing underneath her teasing, not fear, hope or even cruelty.
Mirror-Asriel was resembling the man still more, so much as to reach down and stroke an imaginary Stelmaria once. He began to shake Mirror-Marisa, trying to wake her. His predatory actions were gone. He seemed almost anguished.
"It's horrible," Marisa breathed.
"It's only a silly trick. He probably does the same routine for everyone." The monkey gave a hollow laugh.
Mirror-Marisa smiled, the corners of her bow lips pulling upwards in perfect motions, coy and false. Occasionally, there was a glimmer of some form of reality trying to escape in her face but it would vanish in an instant.
Mirror-Asriel had turned away, growing angry. There was no way he could move the woman opposite him. She was frozen in her mechanical cruelty. She was not human. His face twisted with hatred.
Marisa looked over at the real Asriel. His fixed intensity betrayed no emotion.
Mirror-Marisa was growing weary, her arms limp, even her face more lifelike, if only in its bitter fatigue. She attempted to keep up her marionette motions but could not. Little tears pricked her cheeks. Mirror-Asriel had not changed, either not noticing or not caring about the shift in Mirror-Marisa.
The real Marisa thought it more likely he did not care.
His hatred was more intense by the second, a furious passion on his face. When Mirror-Marisa collapsed on the ground, weeping, he ignored her. He drew the dagger (Marisa had always known, somehow, it was a dagger) from his belt.
The real Marisa shut her eyes.
When she opened them again, Mirror-Marisa was lying on the ground, a red mark on her ribcage. Mirror-Asriel was examining, as though he could not decide whether to spit on her corpse or cradle her, weeping.
The dream broke and the mirror was filled with smoke once more. When the image cleared, it was only a mirror.
Marisa moved away, not looking at Lord Asriel.
The applause was polite and disturbed, somehow empty. Kralefsky bowed, delighted.
"I am done with you, sir and madam."
Marisa stepped off the stage, rushing up the aisle. Asriel followed, keeping pace with her even when he did not rush.
"When we have returned to the box," Marisa whispered, "Do not sit next to me."
The monkey pulled at Stelmaria's fur, then released it.
"Why not?" Asriel inquired, Stelmaria taking the monkey's head in her paws, forcing him to face her.
"You know why not."
Did he? Was it the mirror, the sinister illusions in their cruel dance? He had murdered her in the image. Was it the new, tense, hunger she had felt before? Was it Edward's suspicion?
"Does it matter?"
"It is my wish. Please," Marisa pleaded.
"Then I will stand in the back."
"Thank you," she sighed, relieved yet somehow regretful.
As they moved down the aisle, Kralefsky lifted a hand and they were in their seats, without needing to move further.
Asriel rose, moving to the door at the back of the box and Edward placed one hand over Marisa's arm, proprietary and worried.
All was as before.
The curtain fell.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
As of this chapter, there is no longer any tie-in in this story to my other pieces. The scene shown in Weakness will be written in a different way that fits this story and plot and there will be some events in Torn Masks that don't happen in His, His, His and vice versa. Expect the unexpected, as Kralefsky would put it.
By the way, this chapter owes a special nod to Philip Pullman's Clockwork.