Chapter Text
The Knock that changed Cassandra Muller's life came in the golden hours of a mid-afternoon not too different from any other kind of mid-afternoon in Prisca's early autumn. Only moments before, the sun was slanting down through the round window at the centre of their apartment, the air was drowsily warm, the streets still slick with morning dew and sea spray from the harbour.
Cass put down her book for a second, stretching luxuriously in the sun. She looked around, taking in the familiar sight of the living room in her flat. There was the tingling sense at the back of her neck, the feeling that something could happen. She dismissed it as boredom, a wandering mind on a trivial day. Soon, she supposed, she would be helping Gamma prepare dinner. Cass felt a surge of reluctance. It was finally the weekend, an end to the tireless drudgery of her studies and false cheerfulness of her work. A third dose of monotony was the last thing on her mind. She considered going out, enjoying her evening out on the town, dipping into the market stalls down the hill, but decided against it. It simply felt too good to be curled up in Gape's tattered armchair, a good book in her hands and golden light that caught the dust motes in the air warming her toes.
Cass was just considering a nap in the sunshine when the Knock came. She rose, stretched again, and made to go to the door. Her grandmother was already there. Gamma's yellow sundress rippled down the stairs like a desert snake. Cass followed, feeling the click in her bones as she disappeared. Cass had never liked her gift. Invisibility sounded fun until your grandfather sat down in a seemingly unoccupied chair or carriages didn't stop for you in the street. But today, when there was an adventure, it felt like the best gift in the world. Gamma looked through the peephole and opened the door.
"Melani!" The man standing in the doorway said, his face aglow.
Cass looked him over. He was short, with a friendly face, with light brown skin, dark hair and darker eyes. A white scar slithered over his knuckles. Cass's eyes flicked to Gamma. She seemed as puzzled by this man as Cass was.
"Do I know you?" Gamma asked.
The man frowned. "I'm your nephew. Bojan? We met at your younger sister's wedding, what, twenty years ago? I have some rather...delicate...information."
Bojan glanced in Cass's direction and her heart skipped a beat. She reminded herself she was invisible. Something about Bojan felt...off. Gappa joined them on the stairs.
"This is Bojan," Gamma said. "He is here to talk to us on a matter of importance, I take it?"
"Yes." Said Bojan. "Your sister— "
"Let's talk in my room," Gamma said, interrupting him. "We wouldn't want anyone to listen in, would we?" She stared intently at the chair Cass had just been sitting in, before disappearing into the spare room with Gappa, sweeping right past Cass's hiding place in the process. Cass peeled herself from the walls to follow them, feeling more like a shadow than a real person. On her way, she grabbed an empty glass from the kitchen cupboard and pressed it to the wall. She stopped. She didn't want to eavesdrop. And yet...and yet... Cass knew very little about her grandparents' lives before they had moved to Phisca. Or, for that matter, her parents' lives. All she knew about her mother and father was that they were both dead. She knew that her Gamma conceived at just sixteen. That she and Gappa had been exiled from their tiny, religious community. But after that part, Gamma always trailed off. She never mentioned what happened in the thirty years after. This might be Cass's chance to find out. She pressed her ear to the glass.
"We don't do that anymore," Gappa was saying. "Even for family."
"Especially for family," Gamma said.
"I know it's dangerous, but this is your sister we're talking about." Bojan sounded like he was on the edge of tears.
"Bo, if they find out that this happened, that she recovered because of Thema— "
"I know, Melani. But it's worth it."
Cass had the mental image of Gappa squeezing her Gamma's shoulder.
"Let's talk price." Said Gamma. Her voice sounded too flat to Cass, but she figured that Bojan wouldn't notice.
"How does Fifty thousand gens sound?"
Cass nearly dropped the glass. Fifty thousand gens could buy you a new flat and the ability to call lightning. They could actually live comfortably. After a moment of silent bliss where she thought about all of the things she would buy, Cass pulled away from the study wall. The conversation had turned away from world-altering sums of money and towards more mundane subjects.
"Sattoo? Sattoo? Where are you girl?"
The little terrier came scampering down the hallway, a bundle of happy energy. Cass scooped her up and held her close.
"Who wants a walk, hmm?"
The sun had sunk lower, and the air had lost its stifling edge. The recent heat had polished the buildings until the dusty adobe bricks gleamed. Cass felt as if she were in a massive ceramic vase. The cobbled streets clattered with carriages full of workers eager to get home. Cass saw one that belonged to a moving company and dreamed of their new flat. Cass led Sattoo down to her favourite part of the city, the invisible part. Most of Phisca had been built with an orderly street plan in mind. Careful grids and tall buildings. But there was a pocket of the city that had been built on the old plans; the plans of the people who had lived here before.
The streets in the Web were hooked and twirling. The buildings were organic, many fused together with dusty plaster. In the centre of the Web was a huge oak tree.
"Funny place to have a tree like that, in a city like this," Cass had said when she was eleven. Gamma had just smiled, her face crinkling like a dried date. Later, she had told Cass the story of the tree. It was old, as old as the first settlement thousands of years ago. It had seen the city rise and fall and rise again. It had escaped destruction. Somehow. Cass loved the tree, and she fancied that if it could feel, it would love her too. Now, Cass reached out a hand for the bark and touched it. It was smooth and warm under her palm. Already she felt more grounded. After a minute in silence, Cass and her dog made their way to the Grand Market. The plaza's market was just off to the side of the Web, but behind the main network of thoroughfares that constituted the town centre. As usual, the Grand Market was alive and dazzling. A makeshift stage had been erected, and a band was playing. Nearby, a performer twisted liquid around a suspended metal hoop. The air was alive with the smells of the food, as well. Fresh flatbread. Rosemary. Ripe fruits that sweated on open fires the vendors had somehow managed a permit for. A plethora of languages drifted on the breeze.
On reflex, Cass picked apart each phrase and committed it to memory, even if she had no clue what it meant. Sometimes she felt that the cadences of spoken words were part of a secret code only she could unlock. She knew the notion was ridiculous—there were professors who had studied conversation their whole lives and surely people with gifts who could understand and manipulate it. But even so, voices felt like a secret treasure.
Cass bought Sattoo some treats and herself sea salt and rosemary flatbread and a little cup of olives. Cass settled them on a bench and ate. Fifty thousand Gens. She wondered if she'd be able to sleep that night. Cass wasn't poor exactly, but she had never lived in anything close to grandeur. Their flat was comfortable, but small and sparsely furnished. She and her grandparents paid the bills through running the pub on the ground floor.
The pub. Her shift would be on soon. She needed to find Robin. Robin was the closest thing Cass had to a best friend. He lived in the flat a floor above her with his mother. They had grown up together, and worked the same hours at the pub. He had been her first kiss two years ago, when they thought they might have felt something more than friendship. By now they both knew that was ridiculous. Cass wasn't remotely interested in a relationship with Robin, and he wasn't attracted to her either. Cass supposed she was happy about that. Though she sometimes wished for a companion. It must be nice to have someone who could fill your heart with their own.
Cass got up and threw away her paper napkin. She figured that Robin would be finishing his work at the library before rushing back to his job at the pub. Robin worked almost all the time, every day. Sometimes, Cass wondered if he was drifting away, off into his own world of bustle and labour. His jobs were good, however. He brought in money for his mother and for himself. Cass suspected that to him, it was more than that. Keeping busy was a way for him to heal. The world was cruel to him when he was young, cruel in a way she wondered if she could ever understand. Cass left the bustling plaza and cut down a back alley, winding up on Water Street. The wide lane ran along the sides of the Tavat, a great blue dragon of a river that had birthed the city upon its banks. The water had once been safe to swim in, but now it was polluted by industry and sewage runoff. Still, the trees planted in the boulevards that ran along it cast a pleasant, dappled pattern on the water. Cass paid a quarter-gen to the ferryman and took the boat to the Westbank Library. She could have snuck onto a boat with her invisibility, but Cass had never been one to get where she needed to go illegally.
The library was a massive building that overhung the river. It reminded Cass of an overstuffed bag: distended and lumpy. The initial design might have been attractive once, but new extensions had been added on so many times that she thought the building might burst its confines between two wealthy mansions and roll right into the river. Still, for all its ugliness, Cass loved the library. The inside was packed with knowledge. And not in a sterile and organized way either, the kind of way that forbid members of a certain age and class from touching. It was messy and open. If you knew it well, you could navigate and find which texts you wanted. If not, it was a labyrinth of stacked books and tacked-on rooms, impossible to escape. Luckily, Cass knew the library about as well as she knew her own body. Robin would be on the third floor. It was there, in the Blue Section, that he would be tidying. The Blue Section was the name given by the library's inhabitants to the rooms with the saddest books. A lot of those books were also the best in the library, if not the world. Robin shared Cass's passion for reading. He loved it in there.
Cass hitched Sattoo to a nearby lamp post and went inside. She climbed the once-elegant stairs to the Blue Section and made her way through tearstained copies of The Last Chill and The Doctor's Mountain. She found him sitting on the battered old couch at the back of the room, reading.
"We have to get back to the pub, remember?" Cass said, clearly startling him.
"Oh. Yes. I'll be back in a tic, just have to finish this chapter. Julio's mother has just been killed and his sister is to blame. He's so conflicted." Robin sighed, obviously in love with Julio. He shut the book. "Anyway, there's actually another job. I have a shift at Darla's Pie Shop."
"Okay. I'll cover for you. Just be back to sweep up and close down for the night."
Robin gave her a mock salute. "Will do."
Cass left the library, inwardly groaning at all the extra work she needed to accomplish. She untied Sattoo from where she had tied her and decided that she didn't want to pay another ferry. Instead, she skirted the Tavat, crossing through the Canal District to the Royal Bridge. Bridge was an understatement. It was seventy feet wide and a hundred long. The edges were dotted with copper sculptures of fantastical creatures. Below the curling wings and snarling muzzles were tents and stalls, temporary but beautiful. If she wasn't trying to make her shift on time, Cass might have considered getting her portrait painted. She wondered with a sudden pang of sadness if they would even see her enough to try. She might pay a Gen for a blank canvas. Cass cut back through the market, though now the day vendors were packing up and the night vendors, wild as wolves, were moving in.
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The sun was setting over the palace as Cass returned to her neighbourhood. It was a beautiful sunset. Red and gold and purple fanned out over the castle like silks in the wind. Cass allowed herself to stop for a moment and study the beauty of the scene. The castle that housed the Royal Family and their many legions of wealthy relatives sat on the hill of the Royal Island. Now, the ancient stones, held together by pewter, glowed with golden light as the sun kissed them. It was almost enough to take her breath away.
Reluctantly, Cass turned and headed up the cobbled hill that led to the pub. Tawny houses glowed with the setting sun, lighting her way. The streets were almost quiet, save for a descending carriage, marked with the royal crest. Phisca's police. Cass smelled smoke and thought of the food she would have to serve—double the usual amount, because she'd been such a pushover with Robin. Really, she did have to learn to stand up for herself, didn't she!
But when she saw her flat, Cass forgot all of her problems. Because there was a much bigger one.
Cass's flat, the pub, the only home she'd ever known, all of it was on fire.