A Matter of Magic (35 page)

“That’s normally,” Kim said, recognizing the tone. “What’s weird about this?”

Mairelon’s smile broadened. “Whoever made it was exceedingly clumsy; it’s as if he put the spell together from bits and pieces. And not all the bits and pieces went off when the wizard invoked it.”

“ ’E’s a beginner, then?” Hunch said.

“Mmm. Possibly. But Kim’s a beginner, and she could do a better job than this.”

“Well, are there enough bits left that you can tell what it was supposed to do?” Kim said, trying to decide whether she should be pleased or insulted by the comparison.

“Let’s find out, shall we?” Mairelon pointed the piece of rod at the nearest bookcase and muttered something under his breath.

Nothing happened. Mairelon frowned and said something longer that sounded like Latin to Kim. As he spoke, he waved the rod in a slow circle.

Several of the books began to glow with a soft, golden light. Mairelon gave an exclamation of satisfaction, then began muttering rapidly, moving the rod in a rapid, complex pattern. The glow dimmed, then steadied. After a moment, Mairelon relaxed and set the rod on the table.

Kim looked down. The books that lay scattered about the floor were all glowing as well. “This is crazy! He couldn’t of sherried off with all those.”

“If it were that simple, we wouldn’t have books all over the library floor,” Mairelon said. “I’ll wager he was looking for one or two particular volumes. The question is, which ones?”

“If you was to clean up a bit o’ this ’ere mess, you might ’ave an easier time figuring it out,” Hunch said.

“An excellent notion.” Mairelon stepped forward and lifted the little table back onto its crocodile paws. “Put the books here, and we’ll have a look.”

Hunch picked up the scattered volumes, while Kim rather gingerly helped Mairelon pull glowing books from the shelves. When they were all piled on the end table, they made an impressive heap.

“Now, what have we here?” Mairelon murmured.
“The Mountains of Doubt, Collegium Sorceria, Discoverer, Après Cinq Cents Ans, Fire Keepers Vol. VI
—I wonder why he didn’t want the first five?—
A Pottery Pigeon, Reflecting Quadrille, Maturing Without Heaviness. . . .
Our housebreaker appears to have excellent taste.”

“Well, ’e can just taste things somewheres else next time,” Hunch muttered.

“I am inclined to agree with your recommendation, Hunch,” Mairelon said. “I don’t suppose you got a look at his face during all the excitement, Kim?”

“No,” Kim said with regret. “I got a piece of his coat, though. He’s a toff, or someone as wants to be.”

“Really?” Mairelon looked at Kim with interest. “How did you deduce that?”

“He was wearing a silk waistcoat. I felt it. And this isn’t homespun.” Kim pulled the torn piece of wool from her pocket. Two buttons came with it and bounced off under the settee.

“Ripped his coat, did he?” Mairelon said. “How lucky for us.”

“Lucky?” Kim said, mystified.

“Yes, of course.” He crossed to the heavy table in the middle of the library and studied it a moment, frowning. “Help me move this closer
to the center of the room. Hunch, get me the blue chalk and a pot of ink. Oh, and an unused candle for Kim.”

“You ain’t doing nothin’ dreadful now, Master Richard,” Hunch said in a stern tone. “Not in Master Andrew’s ’ouse.”

“Hmm? Oh, not at all, Hunch,” Mairelon said as he and Kim shifted the table. “It’s only a spell Shoreham’s been working on for a while—an adaptation of the standard scrying spell. He showed it to me the day before yesterday; it’s quite clever. You’ll see.”

“All right, then,” Hunch said, though he continued to frown. “Lord Shore’am is a proper gentleman.”

Mairelon shot his servant an amused glance and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Carefully, he spread it over the tabletop, smoothing the creases with his fingertip. The corners of the handkerchief hung over the center of the table’s sides, so that a triangle of bare wood was left in each corner.

“Yes, but what is this spell supposed to
do
?” Kim said.

“Help us catch our burglar, with luck,” Mairelon replied. “Hunch, where’s that ink? Thank you. Give Kim the chalk.” He set a small ink bottle on one of the bare corners of the tabletop.

“Mairelon—”

“You’ll see in a minute. Now, what can I use—ah, yes, this will do nicely.” He plucked a small silver salver from a shelf beside the door and positioned it carefully in the exact center of the handkerchief. “There. Hand me that scrap of cloth you found.”

“Mairelon, I’m never going to learn any magic if you don’t give me any explanations,” Kim said in exasperation as she gave him the piece of wool.

“And you’ll never be a great magician if you can’t make half an understanding do for a start,” Mairelon said, dropping the scrap into the salver. “A competent one, perhaps, but not a great one. The chalk, if you please.”

Sighing, Kim handed him the chalk. He sketched three careful crosses in the remaining corners of the table, then drew an unsteady circle around the salver on the handkerchief. Absently, he stuck the chalk in his coat pocket as he surveyed the setup. Then he looked up at Kim.
“Now you may demonstrate the results of your studies for me. I want you to set the ward.”

“Me?” Kim stared at the candle in her hand, suddenly appalled. The warding spell was nearly always set when a complex or dangerous enchantment was being attempted; in theory, it protected the mage from outside interference, and any bystanders from the consequences of a spell gone wrong. In practice, the degree of protection such a spell afforded was directly related to the skill of the spellcaster. An apprentice’s ward was unlikely to stand up to more than an apprentice-level mistake. And Mairelon wanted Kim to set a ward while he worked a new spell.

“Don’t worry,” Mairelon said. “This is a relatively simple enchantment. Normally, I wouldn’t bother with a ward at all, even though this is the first time I’ve ever cast it. But you can use the practice, and it will keep our work from disturbing anyone. Or from attracting attention outside the house,” he added as an afterthought.

Only partially reassured, Kim nodded. She thought for a moment, to make sure she had the steps of the warding spell clear in her mind. Then she took a deep breath.
“Fiat lux,”
she said, concentrating on the candle.

The candlewick burst into flame. Kim held it still for a moment, until the smell of melted beeswax reached her and the tingly pressure of a spell in progress ran up and down her arms. Then, keeping her eyes fixed on the candle, Kim turned and walked in a slow, clockwise circle around Mairelon and the table. As she walked, she recited the words of the warding spell four times, once for each side of the table. She had more difficulty than she had expected in judging her speed correctly so that the words came out even, but she managed it. When she reached the spot where she had begun, she turned to face Mairelon and said the final
“fiat.”
With considerable relief, she felt the ward rise around them like an invisible curtain.

“Very good,” Mairelon said softly. “I couldn’t have done better myself. Now, watch carefully, and try to split your concentration so that you can still hold the ward while you watch. You may not always have someone handy to cast a ward for you when it’s needed, so you’ll need to learn to hold it without even thinking about it.”

“Sort of like picking a lock and listening for the nabbing culls at the same time,” Kim said, nodding carefully. She felt the ward shift as she spoke, and hastily returned her attention to it. When it was steady again, she whispered, “Only trickier.”

Mairelon laughed. “Yes, I imagine it would be. Very well; it’s my turn.”

He picked up the scrap of cloth and concentrated for a moment, then crumpled it and dropped it into the salver. The springy wool flattened out immediately, but the scrap was too small to cover much of the salver. Uncorking the bottle of ink, Mairelon poured it slowly over the cloth. The ink soaked quickly into the wool, then rose around it in a flat black pool. Mairelon studied it a moment, then picked up the salver and tilted it this way and that until the ink coated the bottom with shiny blackness.

When he was satisfied at last, he set the salver on the handkerchief once more. Holding his left hand over it, he began speaking, too rapidly for Kim to follow. The tingling sensation of a spell in process struck her with renewed force, and she had to concentrate to keep control of the ward. Mindful of his instructions, she tried to pay attention to Mairelon’s spellcasting, but her Latin and Greek were still rudimentary. She recognized perhaps one word in twenty, but even the unintelligible phrases had the hard-edged feel that only came with magic. They hung in the air around Mairelon’s hand, building the invisible, dangerous structure of the spell.

Kim suppressed a shiver. She did not want to distract Mairelon; even a small mistake would send razor-edged words flying like shards of shattered glass. She wondered whether she would ever be sure enough of her control to risk building a spell around her own hand. It seemed unlikely, but a year ago the thought of learning magic at all had seemed not merely unlikely, but impossible.

Mairelon finished speaking and, without moving his arm, folded his outstretched fingers in toward his palm. The hovering spell slid past his hand onto the ink-covered salver. “Now, we look,” he said.

Puzzled, Kim stared at him; then she realized that he meant for her to look at the salver. She lowered her gaze, and saw that a picture had
formed on the surface of the ink, like a reflection in a mirror or a puddle of water.

A man muffled in a scarf, top hat, and long cloak hurried along a narrow street. The shop windows behind him were dark and shuttered, and the wind whipped his cloak out behind him. “Well, well,” Mairelon murmured. “It looks as if you were right, Kim. Our housebreaker is a gentleman. Let’s see. . . .”

The picture in the ink wobbled, then shifted so that the man was hurrying directly toward them. His head was down, and one hand gripped the brim of his hat; between that and the scarf, little of his face was visible. Gold gleamed on his middle finger, and Kim leaned forward to look more closely.

“Blast!” said Mairelon. “I wanted a look at his face. Perhaps if we try another angle—”

The image wobbled and distorted, like a reflection in water when a pebble drops into it. Kim got a brief impression of blue eyes and a damp wisp of hair plastered wetly to a high forehead, and then the picture was gone. The shiny surface of the ink reflected only a glimmer of light from Kim’s candle.

Mairelon scowled at the salver, then reached for the ink-soaked wool. As he lifted the cloth, the ink slid off like hot oil running out of a pan, leaving the threads clean. “You can drop the ward now, Kim,” he said as he pocketed the scrap.

Obediently, Kim recited the closing phrase and blew out the candle. Hunch collected it and the empty ink bottle and carried them off. Mairelon continued to frown at the salver. “That was not nearly as useful as I’d hoped,” he said. “Perhaps I should have waited; we might have gotten a glimpse of his rooms. But I was hoping to see his face, and I didn’t want him to have a chance to change his coat.”

“Well, if you’d waited much longer, he wouldn’t of had the coat at all, I’ll bet,” Kim said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Why else would a toff be on Petticoat Lane at this time of night, unless he had something for the togs-men?”

Mairelon blinked. “Petticoat Lane? You’re sure?”

Kim snorted. “I spent enough time there. He was just down from Flash Annie’s, by where Willie Bast used to lay up. It’s a good job for him that it’s a mucky night out, or he’d be rid of more than his coat.”

Hunch returned and picked up the salver with a disapproving look. “Are you done with this, Master Richard?”

“What? Yes, of course. Did you notice anything else, Kim?”

“He has blue eyes,” Kim offered. “And he wears a gold ring with a flower on it and a ruby in the center.”

“And he has his boots from Hoby,” Mairelon said. “It’s not much to go on, but it’s a help. Now, let’s make a list of these books and see what we can tell from it.”

The pile of books on the table had stopped glowing sometime during Mairelon’s scrying spell. Mairelon sat down and began sorting through them, while Hunch brought him a pen, paper, and a fresh bottle of ink. As Mairelon wrote titles, Kim shifted books so he could see the ones he hadn’t written down yet, and in ten minutes the list was complete.

“There,” Mairelon said, and glanced around the library. “I believe that’s all we can do tonight.” He picked up his list and, in the absence of a blotter, blew gently on the ink to hasten its drying.

“What about tomorrow?” Kim said.

“Tomorrow, I’ll take this over to the Royal College and see whether Kerring has any thoughts on it.”

“Who’s Kerring?”

“Lord Kerring is head archivist at the Royal College of Wizards,” Mairelon replied. “If there’s a connection among all these titles, he’ll spot it. He might even have some idea which wizards would be likely to know a bit about burglary.”

“That cove didn’t know the first thing about the crack lay,” Kim said. “I wouldn’t of heard him at all, if he had.”

Mairelon looked thoughtful. “Possibly he’s more of a magician than I’d been thinking. If he was depending on magic to pull off his theft—”

“He was still a clunker,” Kim said firmly. “And I didn’t notice any spellcasting.”

“He invoked the spell he had stored in this,” Mairelon said, holding up the broken rod.

“Then why didn’t I notice it?”

“Because it was
invoked
, not
cast
,” Mairelon replied. “The spellcasting took place when the spell was originally stored in the rod, which could have been hours ago, or even days. When the spell is invoked, you wouldn’t notice anything unless you were touching either the storage container or the object the spell was intended to affect.”

“I think I see,” Kim said.

“If our burglar had another trick or two like this, he could have used them without alerting you,” Mairelon went on, fingering the rod. “Rather a good precaution to take if you’re going to burgle a wizard’s house, now that I think of it. I believe we should set a few wards around the house tomorrow, just in case he comes back.”