The Magic Thief (4 page)

T
he box was full of magical things, all wrapped up in dusty silver paper. Another ten or eleven boxes were just the same. I wanted to unwrap them and find out what they were, but I figured Nevery would want to do it himself.

So I cleaned out the rest of the ground floor, dragging empty boxes and broken barrels
out to the courtyard, and I found a mouse-chewed broom and started sweeping the spiderwebs and mouse droppings from the walls and floors; the ceiling was too high to reach.

Then I went upstairs to find Nevery. He was on an upper floor, sitting in a dusty chair in a very dusty room reading an even dustier book.

“Nevery,” I said.

He looked up and snapped closed the book. A little cloud of dust flew up and he sneezed. “What,” he said crossly, rubbing his nose.

“There's boxes of magical stuff downstairs. D'you want me to bring them up?”

“No,” Nevery said. “Benet will do it.”

He went back to reading his book. I looked around the room. The high ceiling had plaster flowers and curlicues in the corners, all dust-crusted. The room contained a few other chairs, covered with faded, ripped cloth, and a long table with a scarred surface and heavy, carved legs. A threadbare carpet lay on the floor.

Leaning against one wall was an oil painting, about half as long as I was tall, with a tarnished gilt-gold frame around it. I crouched down to have a look. The paint was crusted over with dirt and smoke; maybe it had hung over a fireplace. I wiped away some of the spiderwebs and dust that covered it.

“What is this, Nevery?”

“A painting,” he said without turning around.

Well, I could see that. “A painting of what?” I asked.

“A dragon.”

I stepped back to look over the picture. “It's a kind of animal?” I asked.

Nevery closed his book. “You
are
ignorant, boy.”

I was, true.

“The dragon was a species of giant reptile,” Nevery said. “Winged, horned, and crested, often with the ability to breathe fire.”

As he spoke, I saw, in the smoke and grime,
the kind of creature he was talking about, just its outline.

“Dragons are extinct,” Nevery said. Before I could ask him what
extinct
meant, he said, “It means they've all died out, boy. You won't ever see a dragon.” He opened his book again and nodded at the bookshelves that lined one wall of the room from floor to ceiling; they were all crammed with books and dust. “Dust the shelves. Quietly. Let me read in peace.”

I found a cloth and got to it. The books were old and moldy. I opened one to see what it looked like inside, and it made a crackly-crack sound that made Nevery look over at me and scowl. Carefully, I closed the book again, wiped it down, and put it back on the shelf. The cloth got dirty after a few minutes and I was covered with dust from my hair to my feet. But I kept working at it.

Finally Benet came back from whatever job he'd been doing and Nevery sent him down to fetch the boxes full of magical things.

“Put them here for now,” Nevery said, and Benet set down the box he was carrying and went downstairs for the rest. I went over to watch.

Nevery started by opening each box and handing me the tops, which I dumped in a pile by the door. Then he pulled one of the silver-paper-wrapped objects from the first box and unwrapped it.

Inside was a glass globe about the size of a fist. He held it up. In the grayish light, its surface glimmered with rainbows, like oil on water.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Scrying globe,” Nevery answered. “You'll keep it polished. Use only wormsilk cloth or it will become clouded and unusable.”

I nodded. Right. I'd keep it polished. Good job for an apprentice.

Carefully, Nevery set the globe on the carpet beside his chair and unwrapped three more, each one larger than the next. I knelt down and peered at them. Scrying globes? “What do they do?”

“Escry,” Nevery said.

That was not a very good answer.

He picked up the largest globe and examined it closely. Unlike the others, its surface was scorched black, as if somebody had toasted it with flames. He handed it to me. “Useless,” he said.

Its surface felt gritty. I polished it on my sleeve, but it didn't get any cleaner. I wanted to look at it more carefully, but Nevery was unwrapping another object, a bowl made out of a turtle shell. Then he unwrapped a little tarnished silver knife in a leather sheath. After looking closely at the blade and testing it with his thumb, he tossed it aside, pronouncing it useless, so I picked it up and put it in my pocket. Next was a box of metal parts, tiny gears and pistons and springs, all of them rusty. “Hmmm,” Nevery said. He handed the box to me. I put it next to my scorched scrying globe and gathered up an armful of crumpled silver paper and dumped it with the other junk by the door.

The first box empty, Nevery moved on to the
next. The first thing he brought out and unwrapped was a small, dead alligator, stuffed, with glass eyes and yellow teeth. He regarded it for a moment, then handed it to me. “Junk.”

I put it with the rest of my things. By this time I was hungry, and I pulled out the biscuit I'd stashed in my pocket and gnawed at it, watching as Nevery unpacked the rest of the boxes. Finally, he sat in his chair in the middle of the room, covered with dust and surrounded by magical things, empty boxes, and crumpled silver paper. He held a huge book from the last box.

The book had a worn leather cover and raggedy-edged pages and bulged with paper markers, dried leaves, diagrams in faded ink, fragments of maps—all bound together by a thick leather strap with a lock in it.

“Well, well,” Nevery muttered to himself. “I thought they would have burned this.” He pulled out his locus magicalicus, whispered a spell word, and, with a little
pop
, the lock opened.

I leaned forward to watch, my biscuit forgotten.

My movement distracted Nevery, and he glanced over at me. “You have work to do, boy. Go do it.”

Jumping to my feet, I shoved the half biscuit into my pocket, grabbed a cloth, picked up a book from the shelf, and wiped it down.

“Not in here,” Nevery growled. He nodded at the door. “Out.”

I went.

We spent the rest of the day cleaning and moving into Heartsease. By nightfall, we were all tired and cold. Benet had found a chest full of moth-eaten blankets. I pinched a few of them, bundled up my burnt scrying globe, the box of gears, the stuffed alligator, and the painting of the dragon, and headed up to the top of the mansion house.

The ladder up to the attic was missing half its rungs, but I managed to climb to the top. I shoved my stuff up and poked my head through the trap
door in the floor. The attic room was smaller than the others below, with a low, sloped ceiling and little windows with no glass in them, but it was snug enough. I climbed up and looked around. Except for me and my stuff, the room was empty. A thick layer of dust lay on the floor, and cracked plaster covered the walls. The room smelled of dust and dry rot.

I made a bed out of my blankets and snuggled up inside, nibbling at my biscuit. It had been a good, long day, and I was tired. I ate the last crumb and fell asleep.

I
woke up on my third day as Nevery's apprentice hungrier than a pack of rats.

The air blowing through the windows in my attic room was icy cold. I wrapped myself in one of the holey blankets, climbed down my ladder, and headed downstairs. The
marble steps were freezing on my bare feet, and I was shivering by the time I made it to the second floor. Benet was there, building a wood fire in the wide fireplace.

He gave me a glare as I came in and pointed to a bucket standing by the stairs. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to—I knew what he wanted me to do.

I grabbed the bucket and scurried down the stairs and out to the well in the courtyard. The birds in the huge black tree watched me without stirring from their perches. After filling the bucket, I started to head back to the warm kitchen. Drats. Nevery would notice if I hadn't washed.

I went back to the well and, putting my bucket down, used the water in it to wash my face and neck and my hands and feet. Brrr. Even with my blanket wrapped around me, my teeth were chattering as I dipped the well bucket down, filled it again, and hurried back to the kitchen. There, Benet pointed to a kettle on the hearth, so I
poured the water in, then huddled up next to the fire to get warm.

“Is there any breakfast?” I asked.

Benet didn't answer.

After a while, I got warm enough to look around. The room was not meant to be a kitchen. Maybe once it had been a drawing room, because it had tall windows and wallpaper and plaster flowers, just like Nevery's study upstairs. The fireplace was framed by white plaster ladies in draperies holding up a marble mantelpiece. Benet had moved in kitchen furniture—chairs and a sturdy table with a knife-scarred top and, by the hearth, a kettle, an iron trivet, and a three-legged stool. A closet door stood open; I guessed we'd use it for a pantry.

The kettle boiled. Benet took it off the fire and put it on the trivet, then added, from a small box on the table, a handful of tea leaves. When that had steeped for a while, he poured out the tea into a cup with a chipped gold rim and flowers painted
on it. He gave me a glare and pointed up.

I got it: take the tea up to Nevery.

Leaving the blanket by the hearth, I brought the cup upstairs to Nevery's study. He was sitting in his dusty chair reading the fat book he'd found the day before.

I waited in the doorway until he looked up.

“Here's your tea,” I said.

“Well, bring it here,” Nevery said. He sneezed. The magical things were still scattered across the floor, so I picked my way across the room to his chair and gave him the tea. He took it and inhaled the steam rising up from the cup, then sneezed again and wiped his nose with a handkerchief. I went back to the door but hesitated before going out.

“What, boy?” he asked.

“Should I dust some more?” I asked.

He frowned at me.

“So you can stop sneezing,” I explained.

“I'm sneezing, boy, because I've caught a nasty cold.”

“You're sick?” I asked.

“Obviously I'm sick,” he said crossly. “Surely you've had a cold once or twice; you know what it's like.”

A cold? I was cold all the time in the winter, but I'd never
had
a cold. I shook my head.

“Hmmm,” Nevery said. “Ever had a stomachache? The runs? A fever?”

“No,” I said.

“You've never been sick, then. Odd. Very odd.” He set down his teacup. “Come here.”

I picked my way back across the room and stood before him. He pulled my head down and looked through my hair.

“No vermin,” he said to himself. “Hmmm.”

I stepped back.

Nevery looked me over. “You're probably wondering about breakfast, boy.”

Yes, indeed I was.

“Go with Benet into the city. He will buy supplies and you will help carry them back here.”

All right. No breakfast because there was likely
no food in Heartsease. I nodded and shivered back down to the fire in the kitchen. I only had a moment to get warm before Benet was ready to go. He led me down to the ground floor, stopped to put on a warm coat and stuff a string of copper locks in his pocket, and we were off.

I wondered how we were going to get through the magical gates, but Nevery had thought of that. Benet pulled from his pocket a small stone wrapped in a piece of cloth. It wasn't a locus magicalicus, because Benet wasn't a wizard, but something else not as powerful. He put the stone up against the lock and it clicked open.

We went on down the tunnel and through each of the gates, one after the other, until we came to the stairs leading up to the Night Bridge. Benet led the way and I followed, out onto the bridge and the busy morning traffic.

He turned left, toward the Twilight.

“We going to Sark Square?” I asked. Benet would be able to buy supplies there, cheaper than
anyplace else in the Twilight. As we went along the dirty cobbled streets, I kept my eyes open. Underlord Crowe had a word out on me, which meant his minions would take me off the streets if they could get their hands on me.

But I didn't see anything that made me jumpy. Maybe it was too early in the morning for minions to be about.

I followed Benet up a twisting side street. Suddenly, he stopped, and I bumped into him. Glaring, he pulled out the string of copper locks Nevery had given him, pulled off a few coins, and held them out to me.

I put my hands behind my back. What was he up to, giving me that much money?

He spoke without looking at me. “Master Nevery says you're to get some new clothes.” He pointed at a shop door. “Make it fast.”

New clothes! I grabbed the coppers and skiffed into the shop. It was a used clothing place, jammed full of bins of odd socks, stained petticoats, and
patched shirts. Blinking in the dim light, I edged up to a rack of coats and pulled one out, holding it up to myself. Too big.

A hand came down on my shoulder. I looked around. The shop lady stood there, scowling. “What d'you want here, boy?”

“Got anything else like this?” I asked, holding up the coat. “But a little smaller?”

“Get out. I know your kind. You're a gutterboy.” She grabbed my arm, pulled me toward the door.

“No, I have money, see?” I jingled the coins in the palm of my hand.

She paused. I shook the money again. It made a bright sound in the dark shop. She shook her head. “All right, long as you've got money.”

Then she found me some warm trousers and socks and a shirt to go with the too-large coat, a woolen scarf, and a cap. And boots, I told her. Good stout boots for walking fast in. So I could keep up with Nevery.

The shopkeeper wanted to haggle, but I didn't have time—Benet had said to hurry. So I paid her
price, took off my old rags, put on the new warm clothes, and laced up the boots. Stowing my knife and lockpick wires in my new coat pocket, I ran out to meet Benet.

He was standing outside the shop looking impatient.

The new clothes made me feel different, and not just less frozen. When I was dressed like a gutterboy, I felt like a gutterboy and sneaked around in the shadows. But wearing new clothes, it seemed like walking around in the daylight wasn't such a frightening thing. Well, I was the wizard's apprentice now, after all.

I still had one of the copper locks from the money Benet had given me, so when we got to Sark Square, I stopped at a stall to buy—not steal!—a sausage in a biscuit, then ran to catch up with Benet.

“Want some?” I asked, holding out my breakfast. I was half afraid he'd take the whole thing, but he just ignored me, as usual.

We walked through Sark Square's market
stalls and tents and their meager pickings. A few people, wrapped in rags and shawls, were shopping. At the end of one row of stalls stood an Underlord's minion holding a club, keeping an eye on things. My feet twitched and wanted to run, but my new apprentice clothes tricked him and his gaze slid right past me. I kept my head down, munching my biscuit, and followed Benet.

Using money Nevery had given him, he bought supplies, loading them into a wheelbarrow he paid a copper lock to rent.

I was curious about the keystone he'd used to unlock the gates in the secret tunnel, so when he was busy arguing with a stallkeeper about the price of eggs, I picked his pocket—
quick hands
—to have a look at it. The stone was gray and smooth, about the size of a thumbnail, and didn't seem magic in any way. I wondered how it worked. I wondered if it would open other locks, not just magical ones. I slipped it back into Benet's pocket as we walked to the next stall.

When the wheelbarrow was full, we headed back toward the Night Bridge. Fleetside Street snaked down to the river, and from the top of the steep hill I could see out across to the east side of Wellmet, the Sunrise, where the duchess ruled, and the streets were clean, and where I'd only been a few times, at night, to pick locks for burglars.

From where I stood I could also see out over the river to the chain of islands where Wellmet's wizards lived. The largest island, where the academicos was located, was just upstream from the Night Bridge. The academicos was a huge building topped with spires and towers. The next island was where the magisters had their meeting hall, which was fortified with a stone wall just above the waterline. Nevery's Heartsease was the most northern island in the chain. I pushed the hair out of my eyes to see better. The big hole in the middle of the mansion house's columns and windows looked like a bite out of a piece of cake.

I ran to catch up with Benet, and followed him
back to Heartsease, I helped him drag the wheelbarrow up the stairs to the island; we were both panting with the effort by the time we got it to the top.

Benet unloaded the wheelbarrow, handing me things to carry up to the kitchen. After several loads, we were done and the kitchen was full of bags and boxes and packages. Benet stood looking at it all with his hands on his hips.

“Are we going to have dinner?” I asked.

Benet looked over at me and growled. I edged farther away from him in case he decided to thump me.

“You want to eat?” he said.

I nodded.

He pointed at the supplies. “Then cook.”

Hmmm. I'd never cooked anything before. But I bet I could learn.