Circus of Killers

Chapter 1 | Esryn

Gina put my makeup on tonight. Her hands were quick as they painted my skin into hard, defined lines, brushing sparkle, then thick black, over my lids. By the time I looked up I was almost clown-like; my face was a blend of sparkle and contour and dark lines, and were I headed anywhere but stage, I would have complained. Gina brushed my hair away from my face, her fingers gentle and soft as she drew my red curls into a high ponytail. Her breath rolled over the tip of my right ear. "Focus, Essie. You're on in five." She kept her tone calm, but when her hands ran through my hair again, pulling a few locks free to hang around my face, they were tense and shaky. When I turned the chair to face Gina, her face was tired and her blue eyes had faded to an exhausted grayish color. I'd known her through each one of my twenty-two years, and most days I forgot that she was just as trapped in the circus as I was.

"I'll be fine, G. I've been doing the same routine for eight years." I rolled my eyes, then blinked rapidly as the thick layer of stage makeup that had been caked on my lids crashed painfully into my eyes. "What I wouldn't give for a night off." Gina's arms wrapped around me, clenching comfortingly. I sighed, my shoulders slumping. "Unfortunately, food is a necessity and cash is required to obtain it." No matter how much I wanted to leave this place sometimes— okay, all the time— I had a mother and little brother who depended on me, and I refused to let them down. Working at the largest circus in Cai paid well, especially for someone of my skill set, but even the decently sized cheque I got at the end of the month wasn't enough to give my family the lives they deserved.

Gina rolled a hand over my cheek, silently but effectively bringing me back into the present. "You're on." I gave a hearty sigh and stood from the chair in front of the mirror, then walked past Gina and behind the Circus stage. I could see the outline of Elan Mercel's thin but toned body from behind the translucent black curtain. Elan was a Magnetician, someone who could manipulate the magnetic pull between objects, allowing him to engross the slack-jawed audience with the way he enthralled the iron wires that lay limp at his feet, rattled the metal in the audience's chairs, and crashed various pieces of iron and nickel into each other. With a pointed finger Elan increased the magnetism between two objects sitting on either side of him until they flew at each other, crashing into shiny metallic powder. Had the audience known anything about how magic was classified, or how absolutely normal Elan's abilities really were, they would have felt ripped off.

Fortunately for performing practitioners like Elan, the circus industry had done a most excellent job of covering up the truth about those who held magic: that most of them didn't hold much of it, just enough to make life's most mundane moments more interesting. Most practitioners with powerful magic went off to work for the High King of Cai. Those who didn't were killed, which is why I was so very careful and diligent. When I was on the stage, I had to keep my magic under total control, and no matter how it tempted me, I had to be careful to not reveal my primary practice. Almost all practitioners have at least two practices: a primary and a secondary. The secondary, for me the Folding, is what I perform. Boring as it sounds, Folding— the ability to fold human perception at will— is one of the more classically exciting practices. I could distort how people saw the world, turning their world into a kaleidoscope or making them believe they were flying. I'd only done the latter on one occasion, and the results had been disastrous enough that I refused to repeat it.

Elan emerged from the stage after introducing me as Esryn Csorival and passed me the timer we all used to judge how much time we had left. It vibrated lightly once every ten minutes and buzzed fiercely five minutes before it was time for the next act, giving us an indication of how much time we had left to finish our acts. Sometimes when working magic, performers got too caught up in the performance and lost track of time, and using a vibrating timer was the perfect precaution to take. I clipped the timer onto the interior of my neon green vinyl pants, pulled down the hot pink fishnet top that had begun to slide up, and skipped onto the stage. The bold colors made me more visible to the crowd and more interesting to watch than if I had just worn a suit or dress.