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  A great deal more work, it appeared, than she had thought from her one stint in the sword-basket last night. Timing was everything, and so were balance and the ability to hold absolutely still. They managed to go through all of the big illusions twice—very shakily—when the magician called a halt.

  “I don’t want you two fainting of hunger,” he said. “Off with you. Be back in an hour and we’ll find Katie a mask before the first show.”

  The two girls hurried back to the dressing room, which was starting to fill with other girls. They changed into street clothes, Katie made sure she still had the handkerchief with the remains of her pound knotted into it, and they headed for the stage door.

  The doorman was at his post, of course, with a bottle of lemonade on his desk and a brown-paper-wrapped sandwich waiting beside him. “Can we bring you anything back, Jack?” Suzie asked, as they squeezed by a couple of men chattering in some foreign language.

  “I’m fine, thanks, dearie.” The doorman smiled warmly at Katie, who flushed a little and returned the smile. It occurred to her again that he was a handsome man, and that the strands of gray in his hair had probably been put there by pain, and not by years. “How did you fare, Miss Kate? Pleased enough with the job?” His eyes twinkled. “Reckon you’ll stay?”

  “It’s—lovely, thank you,” Katie stammered, shyly. “Really lovely!”

  “Just you watch out for them Eye-talian acrobats,” he cautioned her, as they stepped down into the alley. “They pinch!”

  “And how do you like being a magician’s assistant?” Suzie asked, as she guided Katie to the left and down the walkway, which had started to get a bit crowded, as compared with the morning.

  “It really is lovely,” Katie confessed. “I like bobbing about like a little ape, and making a bit of a Guy of myself. I really like being able to make things up to get into a character, and to make up my dances and acrobatic turns. Would Master Lionel be annoyed if I made things up when I take your part?”

  Suzie laughed. “Bless you, no, not as long as you hit your mark with the music. You can do anything you like in between your marks. And if for some reason the apparatus is being balky, he’ll signal the orchestra to repeat, you follow that. It’s only happened twice since I’ve been with him, and never with the Turk act, but having someone that can do more than prance about and pose the way I do would be jolly useful. Nothing like being able to tie yourself in a knot to distract people from apparatus troubles.”

  Katie skipped out of the way of a large man with a very red face who was evidently in a great hurry, and nodded.

  “How did he make that silk dance about, though?” she asked, furrowing her brow in puzzlement. “I could not work that out.”

  “I never have, and I’ve been with him two years, ducks,” Suzie laughed. “And he won’t tell me! Some things just have to remain a mystery.”

  • • •

  Jack felt Lionel approaching long before the magician appeared at the end of the corridor. At this point, people were arriving for brief run-throughs with the band—the group of musicians employed by the Palace was far too small to be called an “orchestra.” They would have to be a bit careful of what they said, but the two of them had worked together for so long that they were used to speaking in a sort of code that sounded perfectly ordinary to anyone who might have been listening in.

  “Satisfied with the new assistant?” he asked, when Lionel took up a spot just inside the doorway where there was a good breeze. He handed Lionel the second bottle of lemonade and another paper-wrapped sandwich, faithfully delivered by one of the lads that regularly ran errands for the hall.

  “Quite. She’s quick, observant, smart. She’ll never set the world on fire as a dancer, but she’s good, better than those goat-footed prancers in the chorus, she’s got fantastic timing and good musicality. She should have the tricks down within the week. I can’t ask more than that of an assistant.” Ah, the things that Lionel did not say. One of the most glaring was that he didn’t mention the “genie” illusion, which was no illusion at all. The bit of flying silk was manipulated by one of Lionel’s sylphs. And the girl hadn’t seen the little thing.

  Yet.

  “Perhaps when she’s settled in, I should take her to see the fireworks,” Jack said in measured tones. “Or out to a bonfire picnic.”

  “Both,” Lionel decreed. “If she doesn’t enjoy those, she’s not the girl I think she is. Actually on that note, I’d like you to see if you can draw her out on the subject of her past, because she wants to wear a mask onstage.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow in surprise. Most performers preferred not to go masked onstage. It was, quite frankly, dangerous, especially for a dancer. Masks, however unrestrictive and closely molded to the face, still obscured one’s vision. And it was not just the danger of a misstep that made performers shun masks, it was the danger of getting too close to the footlights. Performers had been burned, and even killed, doing so.

  “I’ll do my best, but wouldn’t Suzie be better suited to that?” he asked.

  “I’ll put a word in with Suzie myself,” Lionel promised, finally popping the cork on his lemonade and taking a long drink. “But you never know. She might feel safer confiding in you.”

  I’d like her to confide in me, Jack thought, a bit wistfully—surprising himself with the thought. “Well then, I’ll see what I can do,” he promised.

  “And I’ll go find the girl a mask and get into my rig.” Lionel tilted the bottle at his fellow Elemental Mage in salute, and headed back down into the bowels of the theater, leaving Jack to wonder what it was about the new girl that had made him think of her as a girl, and not a performer . . .

  • • •

  Katie pelted after Lionel in a feigned rage, feeling a bit giddy with the shouts and cheers that followed her offstage. Of course, she was used to applause—but this somehow seemed—bigger.

  Maybe it was the size of the audience. When she performed in the sideshow tent with Dick, the audiences were not very large. When she’d performed with her parents at fairs and market-days, although there were a lot of people, the number who could actually see her at any one time was smaller still. And when she performed under the main tent, she was never the star, she was never even close to being the star, she was just one dancer among the half dozen, and more often than not, they were all in support of one of the thrill acts.

  So that might have been it. But whatever the reason, the cheers and shouts left her feeling breathless and flushed and very excited.

  Suzie caught her shoulders as she tumbled into the wings, and the two of them hopped up and down for sheer excitement for a few moments. “That was brilliant,” Suzie crowed. “Really, really brilliant! I was actually a little afraid of you out there!”

  Lionel had found her a fez and a soft leather mask that looked a bit like a monkey. It fit very well, and scarcely restricted her vision at all. She had dredged up all of her memories of the circus monkeys—a vile-tempered lot, not that she blamed them, given how their trainer seemed to think that “training” meant “tormenting”—and had put every bit of her heart, soul, and energy into acting the Turk’s demented “pet.” She’d done so well that not only had she caught a couple of whispered “well dones” during the act, but the limelight had actually followed her and not Suzie while they were supposed to be distracting the audience.

  “I am an evil little monkey,” she giggled back, then fanned herself with her hand, and pushed the mask up onto her forehead. “Oh, I need a breath of air after that.”

  “Remember, you can’t change,” Suzie warned her. “And don’t forget curtain call. I have to go change for the dancing-act.”

  Actually getting changed was the last thing on Katie’s mind; the costume was cooler than her street clothing. But she was perishing for a drink of water, and she desperately needed a loo!

&nb
sp; Surely one didn’t “go” out in the alley . . . she turned to ask Suzie, but her mentor was already gone, running off to change into a fluffy gown for her turn in the chorus behind one of the dancing acts.

  Jack will know, she decided, and made her way to the stage door.

  • • •

  They always wanted to know because somehow that was always the one thing everyone else forgot to mention; Jack knew the moment that he saw Miss Kate slipping her way past hurrying performers exactly what she needed. “Down the spirals, past Wardrobe. There’s a Gents and a Ladies,” he said, before she opened her mouth. “And if you go to the other side of the stage from here, and take what looks like a door into the orchestra pit, it actually comes out at the bar. Water’s free, beer’s not.”

  A look of gratitude suffused her face, and she beamed at him before turning and hurrying back the way she had come. He chuckled.

  A salamander zipped up the side of his desk and curled up in the empty inkwell, blinking glowing eyes at him. He cupped his hand over the top of it, and felt it vibrate with pleasure. “So you like her, then, eh?” he whispered to it, when he was sure he wouldn’t be overheard in the general din.

  The salamander nodded. Jack smiled a little. That was a good sign. He hoped this girl would stick around and not go get herself married. Or at least, if she was going to get married, it ought to be to someone in the theater. Not one of the other acts—that would just take her away after the season. But maybe one of the stagehands, or the barkeepers, or a musician. Davey the piano player would be a good choice, he was a steady lad. Lionel himself—well, he was long in the tooth, but you never knew with women. Sometimes they favored men old enough to be their fathers.

  He laughed at himself then. He was really turning into an old woman, sitting here, trying to be a matchmaker just so Lionel could keep the new assistant! They didn’t need to get her married off to keep her. They only needed to get her to understand that there was real magic out there, and once she got a taste of it, the only way she would leave would be if she got called away by the Old Lion—which had happened to the first of Lionel’s assistants with the gift of magic—or if she fell in love with another Elemental Mage—which was what happened to the second.

  Third time is the charm. We’ll hang onto this one, I’m sure of it.

  • • •

  By the end of the second performance, Katie was limp with exertion, but practically fizzing with excitement. This was the first time she’d actually enjoyed performing since her parents had died.

  She took the final bow with the entire company, holding hands with one of the Italian acrobats on one side, and Suzie on the other, with the footlights blazing up in their faces and the band thundering out the overture as hard as they could. Applause at the circus had never been like this.

  They all ran offstage, and then milled a bit while people filed into the corridor for the dressing rooms. The Italian paused for a moment in the wings with her as she caught her breath.

  “You are a fine tumbler, signorina,” he said graciously. “Not so good as the Famous Fanellis, but good!” And before she could thank him, he pinched her bottom and scampered off before she could squeal.

  “I warned you!” Suzie laughed from behind her. “Didn’t I warn you? Never let those lechers get within reach of any part of you!”

  “Well, that was my lesson learnt,” Katie replied ruefully, as they joined the crush heading for the dressing rooms. “Oh, but I am knackered. Is it going to be like this every night?”

  “You did twice the work I did,” Suzie pointed out. “All that tumbling and dancing and running about. The only time I do anything that strenuous is when I go up the rope.” They squirmed their way into the dressing room; since Katie had her mask, she didn’t need to use greasepaint, so she left the stool and dressing table to Suzie while she wiggled her way into her street clothing using as little space as humanly possible. “Honestly,” Suzie continued, “That is the worst part of the act. I am always terrified when I go pulling myself up that rope. I don’t know how you managed to do it without fainting in rehearsal today.”

  “I was in the circus,” Katie replied, as some of the other girls muted their chatter a bit, the better to overhear her. “I had a notion I might try rope dancing—you know, the sort where you climb a rope and do contortion and acrobatics on it? So my father used to string a rope in the trees when we camped for me to practice on. I didn’t like the fast unwinds, though, and you have to do those if you’re going to have a good act.”

  “Fast unwinds?” one of the other girls asked.

  “You know, where you wind the rope or the silk around your waist, then let go and unspool yourself like string on an unwinding bobbin and stop just short of the ground.” She mimed it with her hands. “It made me dizzy, and I never wanted to go as fast as you have to if you are going to have a good act. So all I kept out of it was the ability to go up a rope like a monkey.” She shrugged. “That was useful, still, since I could always help with the tightrope and trapeze rigging.”

  Suzie shuddered. “I could never do that,” she declared, wiping the greasepaint from her face with a lotion-soaked cloth. “Not ever.”

  Katie just shrugged again, and hung up her costume in its proper place. The other girls seemed a bit impressed, though, at her daring. But it hadn’t seemed like daring at the time; she’d been enthralled by the rope and silk-dancers, and had longed with all her heart to be able to do what they did. To dance in mid-air, free from the earth! She would have loved that.

  But there had been no one to teach her properly when she was young, and that was a skill that needed learning very young indeed.

  Still, who would have thought that her rope climbing would come in so handy!

  She and Suzie chattered away about the act all the way back to the boarding house, where Mrs. Baird presided tonight over some sort of delicious white bean dish. Katie couldn’t remember having eaten anything with beans in it that tasted this good.

  Scrubbed clean and pleasantly exhausted, Katie had only time to reflect on her incredible, almost supernatural good luck in getting this job, and this place, before she dropped like a stone into a well into a deep, dark, and dreamless sleep.

  • • •

  “There’s a sort of gentlemen’s agreement among the music halls,” Suzie explained, as they hurried to the theater the next morning. “The good ones, anyway. The bad ones never close, but the good ones give us one day off a week. It depends which hall you are at, which day off you get.”

  Katie nodded at that; the circus did that too. It was called “going dark,” probably for the logical reason that none of the evening illuminations were done that lit up the tents, or the front of the music hall.

  “At any rate, our dark night is tomorrow, so we’ll have a day off. I’m going off with my boy, but did you have any notion of what you would like to do?” They had just reached the stage door as Suzie said that, looking at her a bit anxiously.

  Truth to tell, Katie didn’t have the slightest idea of what she wanted to do. She knew she was going to have to live frugally; that salary was not bad, but things were more expensive in the city, even if she had been gifted with an entire wardrobe for nothing.

  “Actually, Lionel wanted me to tender an invitation to join him at his house for luncheon, Miss Kate,” Jack said, putting a hand briefly on her forearm to make her pause for a moment. “I generally join him there on our dark days. It’s quite pleasant, we have a nice card game, his housekeeper joins us if we have three to make a fourth.”

  Katie had hesitated until he mentioned the housekeeper; she felt some relief. A girl alone with two men—well, if the housekeeper joined them, that wouldn’t be so bad.

  “I’ve gone over heaps of times,” Suzie said with relief. “If we don’t play cards, we go over what we’ll do in the next season, and make changes just t
o keep the act fresh from the last time we did it.” She winked at Katie. “I guess he’s going to keep you, if he’s asking you to luncheon!”

  “I will, then,” she said decisively, and when they got to the stage for rehearsal she told the magician herself.

  “Beef or ham?” was all that Lionel asked, as he set up the sword-basket.

  Goodness! She hadn’t had either in such a long time—except for wafer-thin slices of ham, now and again, between thick, thick slices of bread, as a treat. “Ham?” she said tentatively, hoping she was choosing the cheaper of the options. She didn’t want to appear greedy.

  “Ham it is,” said Lionel, and sent her into the basket again.

  As she fitted herself in where the swords wouldn’t reach her, she realized she was smiling in the hemp-scented gloom. This was unexpectedly—fun. She had been overjoyed at the job, pleased to be dancing and tumbling and not trying to set up at the seaside with her acrobatics and a scrap of cloth, and the last several days of the show had been the most glorious she had ever experienced as a performer. But the last time she had actually had fun in performing had been had been when she was a child, and had no idea that the occasional hard times she and her family went through were anything but adventures. There had been no anxiety about making enough money to eat, or repair the caravan, or buy the wool and cloth so that her father could have a warm winter cloak and jumper, his old one could pass down to her mother, and her mother’s could be cut down for her.

  Now, this was fun. Amazing fun. The magician was gentle in his corrections, and enthusiastic in his praise. She was almost as good at most of the tricks as Suzie now, and better at the climactic rope trick at the end. The hardest one for her was the flying carpet; it was very hard for her to lie perfectly still and trust that the stranger on the other end of the apparatus was going to be able to lift her up and down safely. It felt entirely too much like being at the mercy of Dick’s strength.

  This time, at last, she fitted herself through the swords with perfect ease when Lionel was going at full speed. When she popped out of the basket, Lionel was very pleased.