The Master Magician (5 page)

Ceony read through another eight chapters in the Folding dissertation Emery had given her, occasionally pinching herself to keep her mind alert and attentive as she read each long-winded, dry-as-toast paragraph about spells she already knew. Regardless, she refused to skim, and she studied the diagrams as though she had never heard of a full-point Fold. At least the artistic style in which the dissertation had been illustrated was new to her.

She later assigned herself complex animation for practice, picking an animal she had never before created: a turkey. With a few pictures for reference, she carefully Folded tail feathers and crimped paper to form a spherical body. She used three square pages for the neck, another for the head, and carefully cut and morphed a beak and snood. It took her the better part of the day to create and animate the fowl. The next day she Folded a larger turkey using more paper, carefully interlocking each piece to ensure safe mobility. After two days of working on that, she worried her knees would permanently indent with the lines of the floorboards she’d knelt on for hours.

Knowing the importance of her test, Emery seemed content enough to keep to himself, but he did pop in on occasion to offer advice, persuade Ceony to take a break, or, oh, maybe cook something. Ceony could only smile at the veiled requests.

By the end of the week, however, Ceony had thoroughly burned herself out on dissertations and animation, so she retreated to her closet to study up on Siping, the magical manipulation of rubber.
She crafted the rubber buttons into paw pads, though she had to discard the first two after cutting them wrong, then used affixing spells to adhere the pads to the bottom of Fennel’s feet. This way his paws wouldn’t wear out as often, and if he stepped in a very shallow puddle, his paws wouldn’t crumple into soggy wads. After studying her finished work for a moment, she nodded to herself, satisfied that Fennel’s feet could pass as a mere craft project—nothing that would make a magician look twice.

Utterly tired of all things magic, Ceony went to bed early that Friday night, only to be woken a few minutes past midnight. Not by a nightmare, thank goodness, but by the faintest
click click
sound heard through the wall, just loud and familiar enough to pull Ceony from the space between dreams.

She lifted her head from her pillow, holding her breath to be sure she had heard right. The noise continued:
click click click
,
click
,
click
. The telegraph.

She sat up in bed, careful not to rouse Fennel, who dozed on her mattress tonight, curled up near her feet. She rubbed her eyes and put her bare feet to the floor. Who would be sending a telegram this late at night? The weather was clear; why not send a paper bird instead? Was Prit as opposed to normal rest as Emery was? Was this a message to cancel their arrangement? Ceony wouldn’t mind if it were.

She stepped out of her room. The cracks around Emery’s door were dark, so she padded to the library and opened the door.

The telegraph clicked steadily from its place on the table. It stopped before Ceony took two steps into the dark room, leaving her alone in an eerie silence.

Ceony reached for the switch for the electric lights and flipped it. The bulbs hanging from the library ceiling flickered on for a moment before their light fizzled out, recasting the library in shadow. Blinking purple spots from her eyes, Ceony flipped the switch back and forth a few times to no avail. Had the power gone
out again? Being so far from the main city, Emery’s circuitry had a habit of turning sour.

She padded across the room, avoiding the loudest floorboards out of habit. She reached the table and tried the lamp, but it too stayed dark. She lit the candle beside it instead and picked up the curling telegram. The brief message seemed scrambled for a minute. She scanned the words, but they didn’t stick in her head. She tried again, slower.

prendi escaped en route to portsmouth for execution stop thought you should know stop alfred stop

Her fingers went numb holding that slip of paper. It didn’t tingle beneath her touch as it should. It felt dead, limp. Heavy.

Alfred. She hadn’t seen Magician Hughes since her ordeal with Grath, which had finally brought her entwinement with Criminal Affairs to an end, or so she had believed.

Ceony’s eyes fixated on the telegram’s first word.
Prendi
. Saraj Prendi. Grath’s dog. The Excisioner who had tried to kill her twice, all for the sake of convenience. The man who had threatened the lives of her family and her love.

And now he was loose.

C
HAPTER
4

T
HE ELECTRIC LIGHTS
came on, burning spots into Ceony’s vision, temporarily blotting out the name Prendi in her hands.

The candle flickered. The door hinges creaked.

“Ceony?” Emery asked, punctuating her name with a yawn. “What are you . . . Telegram?”

Ceony didn’t answer. Her thoughts danced around her family’s home and down into the river that had swallowed a buggy and its driver whole, almost claiming Emery and Ceony, too. They zoomed east to Dartford, to the paper mill’s newly rebuilt walls.

Emery’s hand touched her shoulder. Handing him the telegram, she turned and walked away, the distance from the telegraph to her bedroom passing beneath her without notice. She flipped on the light. Fennel stirred. She crossed the room to her desk and pulled out a square sheet of white paper and a pencil. She wrote furiously, her words unaligned. She had just started her second sentence when Emery’s soft voice asked, “What are you doing?”

“Warning my family.”

“He doesn’t know where they live now, Ceony,” he said, gentle as a summer breeze. He entered the room slowly, his footsteps like a deer’s on the forest floor. “And Alfred will make them a priority. He probably already has.”

Ceony shook her head.

The paper magician’s hand found her shoulder again, the fingers curling gently around her. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

Ceony slammed the pencil onto the desktop, breaking off its point. She turned to Emery and felt tears sting the corners of her eyes. “Why haven’t they executed him yet?” she asked, the question burning her tongue. “They’ve had two years. All the people he’s hurt . . .”

Emery cupped either side of her face, wiped a thumb under one of her eyes to catch a tear. “They lost Grath and Lira. Saraj was the only means of obtaining information for the underground.”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” he said, voice faint. He pressed his forehead to hers.

Ceony dropped her eyes and pulled from his touch, but then leaned forward into his shoulder. His arms encircled her, his warmth providing some amount of comfort. “What if he’s still after them . . . us?” she whispered.

“He won’t get far. We’ll leave it to the Cabinet. They’ll take care of it.”

“If we left everything to the Cabinet, we’d both be dead.”

He stroked her hair. “Regardless, Saraj’s primary concern will be to escape. He has no reason to chase you anymore, and I doubt he cares to torment me. He’ll be heading for the coast in the hopes of crossing the channel. If Alfred has time to send word to us, we can assume it’s because he already has men on Saraj’s tail.”

Ceony let out a long breath, trying to wrap Emery’s reassurances around her like a warm blanket. She calmed a little, relaxed, but a ping of worry still warped her pulse. Nothing Saraj did was ever direct or predictable. What if her family still lay in his sights?

Grath’s voice licked her thoughts as she heard him repeat her mother’s and father’s names. She shuddered.

At least Emery wouldn’t be involved in this mess. He hadn’t worked with Criminal Affairs since Saraj’s arrest. With his ex-wife out of the picture for good, Emery no longer had a reason to deal with Excisioners, and the Cabinet had accepted that.

She stayed in Emery’s arms a moment longer before pulling back. Emery kissed her softly.

“I can try to find out more in the morning if it will help,” he offered. “The best thing we can do now is rest.”

“And ward the house—”

“The house is warded.” He managed a faint smile. “You are safe, Ceony, and so are they. I promise.”

She nodded. Emery lingered a moment, then pressed his lips to her forehead and excused himself without words. She could stay with him again tonight. To hell with propriety. Still, she decided against asking. She trusted Emery, of course, and she didn’t want him to think otherwise. But how could he really know where Saraj Prendi would go, what he would do?

Fennel lifted his head and offered a papery bark. Sighing, Ceony picked up her half-finished message and crumpled it in her hands, then tossed it into the dustbin with the command, “Shred.”

She shut off the lights and climbed into bed, beckoning the paper dog to lie by her head. Yes, the best thing she could do now was sleep.

She didn’t sleep well.

“Oh, bugger!” Ceony cried the following afternoon as sour smoke funneled up from the oven door. She waved a dish towel back and forth in a futile attempt to clear the air. Coughing, she pulled open the oven door. Smoke assaulted her and burned her eyes, but Ceony reached through it and pulled out a well-charred brisket, black
down to its juice. Hacking, she set the smoking dish on the stove and retreated for the back door, yanking it open and savoring the clean, late-spring air. Tendrils of smoke wafted over her head, dissipating into the outdoors. The smell lingered between the cabinets.

Leaning against the door frame, Ceony took several deep breaths, hoping they would clear her head and calm her nerves. She hadn’t burned brisket since she was eleven. At least Emery wasn’t home to witness the catastrophe; he’d gone to Dartford that morning to inspect a new line of paper products designed especially for Folders, and he likely wouldn’t be home until after dinner.

Ceony slid along the door frame until she crouched at the bottom. Fennel’s dry paper tongue licked her knee, but when she didn’t respond to him, he hopped outside after the smoke, padding about the lawn with his new rubber feet. They gave more spring to his step, letting him run a little faster, closer to the speed of a flesh-and-blood dog.

Ceony rubbed the bridge of her nose where the cartilage met her forehead. She’d been upstairs reviewing written spells—paper magic accomplished with a pen or pencil—all while writing down next week’s grocery list when the burned brisket made itself known with the foul stench of dying food. Having formed a pact with herself that morning to keep busy, she’d barely allotted herself time to use the washroom, and she’d forgotten about the brisket, which she had cooked hours before dinner just to give herself something to do. Now, crouching in the smoke-laced air, her troubled thoughts caught up to her.

Emery had taken the telegram, but it didn’t matter. Its blocky letters had already inscribed themselves into her mind. Saraj had loosed himself on the world, and though Ceony would like to believe he would flee England and be done with them, she did not trust it would happen that way. There was something broken inside Saraj, something crucial. That’s what Emery had told her, not long after
Grath Cobalt’s death. Emery didn’t like talking about Excisioners, but Ceony had insisted.