Chatper One: Illusion

The company performed twice a month, on alternate Tuesdays, and always at night. They never charged very much for the shows, and, more often than not, they charged nothing at all. It was the act of simply being together, of performing for a crowd, that made the performance worth it—the knowledge that if they were caught—if they were caught—they would all be hanged that gave their performance its extra edge.

Card tricks. Dancers. Sleight-of-hand magics. The traditional things, ones that had been slowly raised to an art form during the Victorian period, now closely monitored, anything that was too close to actual magic heavily regulated, outlawed. The prison system was full of people who did the same feats they claimed to be able to do, waiting for their last minutes outside, their dance with the hangman.

Most of their act had been cut down over the years. They'd had to stop guessing their audience's ages during intermission, for instance, after a government inquiry took away Robert, the one who'd done the guessing. He'd lied when he joined the company, said he had nothing of the real magic in him, but they all knew he had. He could read your mind, if he pleased—it was how he'd made his guesses (ninety percent accurate, with the ten percent margin of error being entirely a lie; he'd thought it would be enough to keep the officials away from him). He only lasted ten performances, and he was gone—a government agent had come to the show, in disguise, and had guessed that he was a clairvoyant; he'd been hauled off and executed without so much as a trial. Still, none of the company had sold him out; it had been entirely his own fault that he'd been caught.

Jed, the company leader, said he didn't care whether his members had any real magic in them or not. “If they lie whilst they're interviewing with me—well, that's your prerogative,” he'd often been heard to say during fights with his wife, who was the costumer for the troupe (and thought that the lot of them would hang together if the government found another real magic user in their midst). “I can't tell which ones do have it, and which ones don't, and as long as they put on a good show, and can hide it well enough that none of us can tell, well, I don't care.”

The truth was, there were real magic users in the company. No one knew quite who was and who wasn't, and to be honest, no one cared—but rumors spread, as they would, and there was always suspicion surrounding certain company members. Jed himself, for instance. He'd been interrogated by government agents three times, and once by the head of investigations himself, and they'd never been able to prove, conclusively, whether he was or wasn't a magic handler. His tricks were fantastic, to be sure, and if he'd survived interrogation three times (and everyone knew what methods they used, in the best interest of the people, as they put it), surely there had to be something magical about him. If not him, then Mary—the girl who did the vanishing trick during the second act; the one that no one could figure out how to replicate. She'd been interrogated too, and explained the trick to the government officials when they came 'round to investigate her, and while the method she used to explain it worked, no one quite believed that it was the only method she worked—when she did the trick, it went seamlessly, but using the method she described, the trick was anything but seamless. Surely there was some magic to that.

Even Gregory, the man that sold concessions, wasn't free from suspicion. His was said to be the best candy in the city, and while he gave the recipe out freely, no one was ever able to make it taste quite the same way his did. True, he was not part of the company, strictly speaking—he had a costume, and he hung around with them after the shows—but he never did anything remotely magical, and there had never been an investigation into his cooking. That didn't matter. When the rumors flew, even the wild ones somehow found wings, and so it was that no one was safe from talk.

One cool June night found the company performing for a larger audience than usual.

“Someone's birthday,” whispered the performers amongst themselves. “They've come to celebrate, and watch the performance.”

“We're being investigated,” worried Jed, as he prepared to go on stage. “The audience is full of agents, waiting for us to make one mistake, and it'll be my head on a pike if any of us slip up.”

The audience members themselves were quiet, for such a large crowd—something that only solidified Jed's fears.

“We really are being investigated,” he griped to his wife, Sarah, as she helped lace the soft leather boots that went nearly to his knees. “If anyone asks to come back here--”

Sarah, who more often than not served as both the costumer and the security, smiled thinly. “I'll be sure to tell them that they're not allowed back here during the performance, but if they like, they're welcome to come back afterward and talk to you.”

“And discover, after all my care tricks to hide it away, that I can use it. As can most of the company,” he said, and sighed. “Three investigations. Three agents that had to be charmed, love. I don't know that I can do it a fourth time. It was difficult enough to talk my way out the third.”

Her smile wavered for a moment, but she stayed resolute. “Remember, love, it's only smoke and mirrors. Should they ask, it's only smoke and mirrors.”

Smoke and mirrors—what everyone in the company knew to say, if anyone asked too pointedly about their tricks. Smoke and mirrors, and sleight of hand. Simple tricks and illusions.

“Still,” Jed continued, and hesitated. “If they find out--”

“If they find out, it won't be just you that goes down,” said Sarah tiredly. “We've fought about it enough. I know that you think if you sacrifice yourself for the company, that they'll be allowed to go their separate ways without being investigated, but we both know it—if one of us hangs, we all hang.”

“No,” he said tightly. “If one of us goes, it'll be me. The rest of you will be investigated, but I suspect even the real magic users have good explanations as to why they can do what they can, and so they won't be arrested. I'm the leader, though—if they found out what I can do . . .”

“Your head would be first on the chopping block, I'm sure,” she said mildly. “But if they found out, the other performers would let themselves be found out as well. Make a stir, go down as revolutionaries—remind the government that not all magicians are evil; that magic should not be outlawed. After all, we've been performing twice a month for how many years now, and we've never caused any problems.”

“Five years,” said Jed, and sighed. “You may have a point. Not that it would make any difference, if we all ended up arrested, but you may have a point.”

“Of course I do,” Sarah said complacently, and kissed his forehead. “Now, out. It's almost time for you to go on.”

“Beautiful woman,” he said, and slid out the door. “I don't know what I'd do without you.”

“Of course you do,” she said quietly, as she shut the door behind him. “You'd keep performing, same as always, without anyone to remind you to be careful.”

If Jed said anything in reply, she did not hear it.