“But you will.” Falk raised his dusty left hand and lightly traced a symbol across Jason’s brow. Then Falk leaned close. Jason smelled the earthy aroma of his skin and saw silver light flash between his lips as he whispered, “Faerie dust, deceive all eyes. On this stately form lay August’s dour guise.”
Jason tensed, feeling the tingle of a spell pass over him. But it faded in an instant. He glanced down at his hands and arms. Nothing seemed different. But then how would he know, he wondered.
“Did it work?” Jason asked.
“Like a charm. Now you just have to remember to keep looking unimpressed—” Falk lifted his head slightly as if catching a scent on the air. “I think our ride is rumbling into the station. Let’s leg it.” Falk drew Jason through the port-o-let door. When he opened it again, an entirely new world spread out before them.
***
Jason did his best not to gape at the vastness of his surroundings. He stood only a foot from the edge of a dark, watery canal that flowed between long alleys of densely packed and ornately carved stone buildings. Brilliant banners and strings of gold bells hung from the upper floors of the buildings. Below, crowds of odd, eerie, and beautiful creatures hustled past Jason, conversing in a cacophony of strange languages. The air felt hot, smelled exotic, and pulsed as if filled by hundreds of foreign radio stations.
Two small creatures that looked very much like goats from a children’s book—complete with beribboned aprons and prim bipedal gaits—bleated loudly in Jason’s direction. When he glanced to them, they lifted their aprons to display bulbous pink udders. They both let out shrieks of laughter at his shocked reaction but then raced away when Falk turned his attention to them.
“The Pepper Sisters,” Falk told him. “I think you just got an eyeful of the new ad campaign for their dairy.”
“Were those the owners or the producers?” Jason asked.
“Both. It’s an employee-owned co-op. Chemical-free too now that Pickle’s quit smoking.” Falk moved ahead into the tight confines of the crowd. Jason followed him, still trying to take everything in.
Overhead a cluster of gold birds took wing from a windowsill, and higher in the clouds, Jason thought he sighted something that looked like a fighter jet—but with wide, gaping jaws. Rays of light flashed off its silvery body and fell across the cobbled streets like streams of sunlight.
Despite the sinister coils and huge, serpentine heads of sea creatures breaking the surface, a fleet of small boats skimmed across the deep, dark canal waters. As Jason watched, three beautiful youths lifted their faces from the waters and then hefted their muscular torsos and long fish-like tails onto the deck of a moored boat. They pulled nets filled with wriggling eels up after them.
Commerce fueled it all, Jason soon realized. Beneath every banner and in every doorway displays of ludicrous, luscious, and glittering goods abounded. Jason glimpsed pungent fruit, gaudy baubles, skeins of feathers and fabric, oily bicycle chains, and steel cages brimming with glassy-eyed teddy bears. Merchants called from both the surrounding streets and the canal waters and shoppers bartered with them through a din of competing transactions.
Only the ubiquitous flocks of tiny, bright gold birds seemed to have nothing to buy or sell. They flitted between buildings and watched the populace passing below with dark indigo eyes. What Jason could catch of their songs sounded like quiet laughter.
“Do you know what kind of birds those are?” Jason asked.
“Birds?” Falk glanced between a large raccoon selling blood sausages and two plump women offering a variety of felt hats.
“The little gold birds flying all around us.” Jason started to point one out, but Falk caught his hand.
“It’s not polite to point,” Falk said. Then he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Especially not at spies no one else can see.”
A nervous thrill rushed over Jason and he quickly averted his gaze from the nearest of the birds. Falk quickly drew him down a narrow, dark alley.
“Spies?” Jason asked under his breath.
“Shadow Snitches, they’re called,” Falk replied. “Are any of them following us?”
“No. They’re fluttering around all over the place, but none seem interested in us.” Jason tried to appear casual as he scanned the lichen-crusted bas-relief of the surrounding walls and peered up at the azure sky. “Who do they spy for?”
“Anyone with a few pounds of pumpkin seeds,” Falk replied quietly. “The bazaar’s famous for its gangs of invisible informants. Some may even be on the lookout for you. I should have mentioned them, but I didn’t think it would matter with the glamour protecting you.”
Jason felt the blood draining from his face. He didn’t think he could stand another encounter like the one that had taken place at the HRD Coffee Shop yesterday.
“Don’t look so worried,” Falk told him. “As far as anyone here can see, you’re an Irregulars agent who dresses far too nicely for the company you’re keeping. That’s all. The only thing that might give you away is if you started pointing out Shadow Snitches and the like.”
“Right,” Jason agreed, though he wasn’t certain how he was supposed to know what everyone else wasn’t seeing.
“Here. These should help.” Falk dug down into his coat pocket. “They’re pretty scuffed up, but I think the glamour on you will disguise the worst of it.” He held out a pair of plastic sunglasses that looked much like the ones he’d given Jason when they’d first met. One of the lenses bore hairline cracks along the edge and the black frames were scratched, but otherwise they appeared to be intact.
“You lost them in the shade lands and I picked them up before we left.”
Jason slipped them on and all at once the stone walls lining the alley took on the luster of abalone shell. The flocks of gold birds blinked out of sight, as did several doors and windows. Bright signs filled with flashing gold script popped into existence over numerous doorways. Simple boats bobbing in the canal transformed into resplendent gondolas.
Jason also noted his clothes—yellow T-shirt, hooded jacket, jeans, and old sneakers—had upgraded into a tailored charcoal suit, a white dress shirt, and tastefully expensive-looking leather shoes.
Beside him, Falk dulled. His eyes cooled to a washed-out blue; wrinkles and shadows weathered his naturally luminous flesh. For the first time Jason wondered why Falk disguised himself in such a manner. Had he, like Gunther, been transformed?
“Are you wearing a glamour too?” Jason asked.
Falk snorted derisively. “I don’t know just how bad I look to you without the glasses, but I promise you, if I bothered to doll myself up with a masking spell, I’d certainly aspire to be better than hobo handsome.”
“But there is something…” Jason insisted quietly. “It’s like a shadow over you—”
“The long dead leave their mark,” Falk cut him off briskly and then started walking. “Red Ogre’s isn’t far, but we’ll want to get there before the tide comes in.”
“All right.” Jason let it go and followed Falk in silence down ever narrowing alleys and across a series of badly eroded bridges, until they reached a slum of dank, half-flooded catacombs, crumbling temples, and what looked like the wrecked remains of a fleet of galleons. Strange figureheads of monstrous creatures leered from the deep shadows of the surrounding buildings while huge, glossy red centipedes sheltered beneath cracked portholes and under the eaves of roofs. Heaps of tiny bird bones littered the moss-damp ground and barnacles studded the flagstones of the largely abandoned streets.
The air smelled oddly fragrant. Jason recognized the scents of malt and yeast but couldn’t identify the clean floral perfume that drifted to him from what looked like rotting masts and collapsed rafters.