The Master Magician (26 page)

Despite having her spells premade, Ceony found the time dragging. The room bore no clock, but she checked the windows after every spell to see how the sunlight had moved behind the blinds. She shook out the front of her blouse as she reached for her thirty-seventh spell,
Something to defend against a tramp
, in an attempt to cool her skin. She didn’t dare break the silence of her test to request that the magicians open a window.

After encircling her “Enlarge” chain spell around her torso, Ceony retrieved a “Ripple” spell from her tweed bag. The commands “Enlarge” and “Ripple” grew her to ten feet and distorted the room enough that Mg. Praff cried out for Ceony to stop, which she did immediately.

A nod from Mg. Bailey allowed her to bring forth her next spell.

Her forty-fourth spell, the flying starlights, managed to impress the impermeable Mg. Aviosky, whose eyes widened in childlike delight once Mg. Bailey closed the blinds and the starlights began
to glow. For item forty-five,
A way to be in two places at once
, Ceony defaulted to her paper doll.

Mg. Bailey frowned and folded his arms. “You cannot use the same spell for two different tasks, Miss Twill.”

Ceony’s heart missed a beat. Her tongue went dry, and she had to swish it around in her mouth before croaking, “Wh-What?”

The Folder leaned forward. “You cannot use the same spell. You’ve already showcased the paper doll. If you do not have an alternative solution, I will end the examination.”

Taking a deep breath and trying to keep her voice level, Ceony said, “I don’t recall that requirement being in the rules, Magician Bailey.”

The Folder’s face remained unchanged. “It’s there, Miss Twill.”

“Is it?” Mg. Praff asked. The two, simple words sparked some hope within Ceony. She was so close to finishing. She couldn’t flunk now!

Ceony glanced at Mg. Aviosky, meeting her eyes.
If I were a Gaffer, I could be in two places at once
, she thought. She wondered if Mg. Aviosky could read her thoughts, for a knowing smile touched her lips.

It vanished quickly. Mg. Aviosky pulled out a briefcase hidden behind her chair and opened it. She filed through the papers within until she pulled forth a booklet, which she then thumbed through without comment. The silence of the room pressed on Ceony from all sides. She reminisced traveling through the tight, hot valves of Emery’s heart. This felt very much the same.

Mg. Aviosky’s voice severed the quiet. She read from the booklet: “An apprentice cannot use the same prepared spell for two consecutive tasks. The perpetration of this will terminate the test.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Twill,” Mg. Bailey said.

Ceony’s heart splattered onto the floor.

“Don’t be, Magician Bailey,” Mg. Aviosky said. “The rule book says ‘consecutive.’ These two tasks are more than a dozen list numbers apart. Therefore, the paper doll is eligible.”

Ceony’s eyes widened and her hands flew to her heart. She bit down a loud
Thank you!
that threatened to break her teeth.

Mg. Bailey frowned all the deeper. “You realize that a simple reordering of the list would make the doll unusable, yes?”

“One does not simply ‘reorder’ the test list, Magician Bailey,” Mg. Aviosky said, placing the booklet back in her briefcase. “It has a set order determined by the Supreme Council of Magic. If you truly believe Miss Twill deserves to fail, you’ll have to send your request for reversal to them.”

Ceony felt a drop of sweat trace a path down her backbone.

The frown engraved itself onto Mg. Bailey’s features, but he nodded for Ceony to continue.

Ceony moved through her last spells with renewed energy, sprinting at the end of the marathon in a desperate attempt to reach the finish line before Mg. Bailey could cut the ribbon ahead of her. She demonstrated a vitality chain, the “Shred” spell, the illusion spell she had created of the night sky, even a cardboard box used to keep food from spoiling. For
#53. A means of escape
, she threw down two handfuls of navy-blue concealing confetti. She felt her body warp before it reappeared behind the judging table.

Finally, after what felt like hours, Ceony reached for the final spell in her bag, one that took up barely more space than her fist.

She imagined task number fifty-eight had been meant as the most challenging, one intended to make the apprentice reflect on her years of training and ponder her future years as a magician.
A means of living
. Unspecific, yet inspiring. As a paper magician, she could easily have written an inspiring essay on how Folding had changed her life, how it would shape her career as a magician. She could have orchestrated an army of animated spells, creating a room full of magic-induced life. She could have created a wall-to-wall illusion grander than the junglescape in Mrs. Holloway’s mansion, displaying an abundance of wild, perceived life.

But she hadn’t.

She’d used the first idea to bloom in her mind upon reading the last task. She’d set it aside at first and pondered on more clever and striking things, but her thoughts always returned to this one, simple spell. She could defend it with pretty words and tear-filled emotions if need be, but with Mg. Aviosky on her panel of magicians, she doubted she’d need to utter a single syllable.

Her fingers wrapped around the paper heart sitting in the corner of the tweed bag. She straightened and held it before her, cradled in both hands, and whispered, “Breathe.”

The heart pumped softly in her hands, it’s
PUM-Pom-poom
rattling gently against her skin.

A means of living. The greatest spell she had ever crafted.

She said nothing. Even Mg. Aviosky didn’t offer an explanation, which made Ceony wonder how far word of Emery’s near demise had reached.

Mg. Bailey stared at the beating heart in Ceony’s grasp.

And smiled.

C
HAPTER
19

“M
AGICIAN
E
RNEST
J
OHNSON
, Siper, District Four.”

Ceony’s hands sweated beneath her white gloves. She wrung them together as she watched the newly appointed Siper, garbed in a black magician’s uniform, rise from two seats to her left and approach the podium on the other end of the stage, where Tagis Praff himself shook his hand and handed him a framed magician’s certificate. The audience that filled the Royal Albert Hall applauded, the noise sounding like crashing ocean waves in Ceony’s ears. She could feel the stage shake with it.

“Magician John Frederick Cobble, Smelter, District Three.”

The words summoned the man sitting beside Ceony, dressed in the light-gray uniform of a metals magician. He left Ceony alone in a row of four chairs.

She felt eyes on her but couldn’t see into the audience for the bright Pyre lights lining the stage. She knew where the watchers sat, though, having spied them from behind the red velvet curtains before the ceremony. Her mother, father, sisters, and brother occupied the second row in the middle set of seats. Emery sat beside Mg. Aviosky in the first row in the leftmost seats. She wondered what they thought of her, sitting up here.

“Magician Ceony Maya Twill, Folder, District Fourteen.”

Magician
. The word expanded inside her, spreading a sugary warmth to her fingers and feet. Her legs, half-numb, managed to pick her up off her chair. Her white skirt fluttered about her ankles, and the silver buttons of her blazer glimmered in the enchanted light. She moved across the stage toward the podium that bore the magician’s seal on its face.

Tagis Praff extended his hand. Ceony didn’t remember lifting hers to meet it, but suddenly the man’s fingers were clasped around hers. In his other hand he held a crisp white certificate, lined with gold leaf and signed in dark ink.

Its printed letters read her name.

Magician. She had finally made it.

The applause sounded louder than before, as though it came from all sides. As though it poured from the ceiling and bubbled up from the floor. Ceony’s hand closed on the black frame embellishing her certificate.
Magician Ceony Maya Twill, Folder, District Fourteen.

She shook Tagis Praff’s hand with renewed vigor, blinking tears from her eyes.

A few choice words from Tagis Praff closed the ceremony. The Pyre lights dimmed, and folk began to rise from their seats. Ceony hurried down the stage stairs. Her foot had not firmly touched the carpet before her father’s broad arms clasped about her. He swung her in a circle, laughing heartily in her ear.

“That’s my girl!” he chortled. “A real magician. A Folder!” He set her down and plopped heavy hands on her shoulders. “Look at her, Rhonda, all grown up and working magic.”

Ceony’s mother dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and tugged Ceony from her father’s grip, then kissed her on the cheek. “I’m so, so proud of you,” she croaked. “You’re really making something of yourself.”

“She’s
made
something,” her father corrected.

Ceony grinned until her cheeks hurt and puffed her chest with the praise.

“Ceony!” Margo, Ceony’s youngest sibling, called, tugging at the fine white wool of Ceony’s skirt. “This means you’ll make us a paper house!”

Ceony laughed. “Why would anyone want to live in a paper house?”

Margo crossed her eyebrows, off-put by the question.

“Nice work, sis,” Zina said from behind Margo. She clutched a sketchbook to her chest and eyed Emery warily, tracing his person from foot to head. Ceony didn’t know what to make of that, but she was relieved Zina had come. “Not that I’m going to
love
trying to live up to this.”

“Oh, Zina,” Ceony’s mother sighed.

“What?” Zina asked. “I’m congratulating her. It’s called satire, Mom.”

“Can we get cake now?” Marshall, Ceony’s brother, asked, his eyes following the lines of people exiting the hall. “You said we’d get cake, right? I’m hungry.”

Ceony didn’t hear her father’s reply; a warm hand on her shoulder drew her attention away from her family and to Emery. He wore a pale button-up shirt and well-ironed slacks instead of his magician’s uniform, and had forgone the usual long coat.

He cupped her face, said, “You are magnificent,” and kissed her on the forehead. She felt herself flush under the crystal light of his gaze . . . and under the gaze of her parents. She glanced to them, but her mother appeared unsurprised and her father had busied himself with negotiating desserts with Marshall. Zina had already headed for the exit.

Don’t worry about what they think anyway
, she thought to herself, allowing her smile to fully encompass her mouth.
What any of them think. This is right. This is where I’m meant to be.

Emery entwined the fingers of one hand with hers and pulled her close so he could whisper in her ear, “No need to be bashful. You’re not my apprentice anymore.”

Ceony laughed softly, trying to rub pink from her cheeks. “I’m almost disappointed,” she murmured back.

Her father refocused on her and said, “All right, Ruffio’s Bakery it is, unless you’d like something different?”

Ceony shook her head. “Sounds wonderful.” She turned to Emery, hopeful, and said, “Will you come? It can’t be
too
crowded.”

“I can bear it,” he replied, a smile dancing across his lips. He lifted Ceony’s knuckles to his mouth and kissed them.

Ceony beamed. From the corner of her vision she spied Mg. Aviosky speaking to an unfamiliar man. The conversation ended and the man walked away, leaving the Gaffer free.

“One moment, please,” Ceony said to both Emery and her parents. “I’ll meet you in the hallway.”

Releasing Emery’s hand, Ceony walked toward Mg. Aviosky. As her family shifted toward the exit behind her, she heard Emery say, “Mr. Twill, I have a favor to ask of you—”

“Magician Aviosky!” Ceony called before the glass magician could get away. Mg. Aviosky turned her attention on Ceony, her expression soft but unsure.

Glancing about to be sure they stood alone, Ceony asked, “Have you thought about what I told you? What we should do?”

The Gaffer sighed and removed her glasses from her prominent nose. She rubbed the faint red mark they’d left on the bridge. “It’s all I’ve thought about, Ceony. There are times when I think we should take an oath to never repeat the information, and there are times I think we should offer a multiple-material magics course at Tagis Praff.”

Ceony nodded slowly. “What are you thinking now?”

Another sigh. “I may tell Magician Hughes, but I’m still undecided. Something like this can’t be handled rashly. It could change the fundamentals of magic as we know it—the entire governing structure.” She replaced her glasses. “And if the information leaked out to unsanctioned magicians, we could have real problems on our hands. Magic, even easily obtainable as it is, isn’t meant to be in the hands of everyone. Imagine what would happen to the crime rate if every John and Jane in this city knew how to break through locks and conjure fireballs with a snap of their fingers. There would be no limits.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t mention it if I apply for Criminal Affairs, then.”

Mg. Aviosky smiled, but it didn’t feel genuine. “No, not now. Though I recommend building some experience before you apply for such a position. And I would urge you to also consider the consequences.”