I was ready.
The light-flower drew in its petals, gave a blinding flash, and blasted through the window; shards of glass flew outward, sparkling in the darkness.
Nevery and I leaped for the windowsill to see where the spell pointed.
It blazed a trail from the window, shedding sparks as it flew through the night. South. I got ready to follow it.
“Wait,” Nevery said. He grabbed my arm. “It’s gone wrong.”
The finding spell was supposed to point like a giant finger made of light. But this wasn’t a beam of light, it was a blazing knife that sliced through the dark city, cutting a wide scorch line south, through the wizards’ houses on one island, through the middle of Magisters Hall on the next island, boiling through the river water and then cutting through the Night Bridge. The spell kept going, blazing a path across a corner of the Sunrise and out of the city.
I saw a glow in the distance as the spell sped away. Then darkness.
For a moment, all was silent. Beside me, Nevery stared out at the city. Then came shouting, and lights blazing up in the sliced buildings. From the first floor of the academicos came the sound of doors slamming, and more shouting.
Nevery went to the door and flung it open. “Lothfalas,” he muttered, and at the sound of the spell his locus magicalicus flared. He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Go, boy,” he whispered, and swept-stepped away, his locus stone filling the stairway with light.
CHAPTER 8
Nevery went down; I went up.
The stairway was wide and built of soft stone worn down in the middle of the treads from academicos students going up and down to their classrooms. I ran on feather-feet, hearing shouts and running feet from below. Only guards from the Dawn Palace were that noisy; Captain Kerrn must have them stationed nearby.
Up one floor, and I’d need to cut through to another stairway to get off the main level and into one of the towers. I came to a landing lit by a werelight lantern turned low. A door leading off it was locked. I snick-picked the lock and went through. Shelves of rolled-up papers—I was in the scroll room of the academicos library.
I was halfway across the dark-dim room, heading for the door on the other side, when somebody opened it and stepped in.
Plump, wearing a yellow robe, holding an egg-shaped locus magicalicus flaring with light. Brumbee.
I skidded to a stop and stared at him.
He stared back at me. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Is that you, Conn?”
Drats!
I whirled and raced back the way I’d come, slamming the door closed and locking it, then standing on the dim stairway, listening. I expected to hear Brumbee shout for the guards, but he didn’t.
Quick as sticks I skiffed away, up a narrow, round stairway that snaked up to the very top of one of the four towers on the four corners of the academicos building.
When I reached the roof, I eased the trapdoor closed and stood up, catching my breath. The sky was just turning gray with dawn over the Sunrise part of the city. Where I stood was a flat, square roof covered by lead tiles, with a low wall and clusters of stone spires taller than I was all along its edges.
A black bird perched at the top of each spire.
“Go away, you birds,” I whispered. Captain Kerrn knew the magic’s birds followed me around. She’d know exactly where to look for me if she saw them up there. I waved my arms at them, but the birds didn’t move from their perches.
I edged into the shadows beside one of the spires and crouched down to wait. If I kept quiet, Kerrn and her guards might not find me. I peered around another spire and looked out over Wellmet.
There, the spell-line, a wide burnt-black slash that led from the workroom in the academicos, across the courtyard, and through the islands and the city like a fat line drawn on a map with black ink, headed straight south. The spell-line still smoked.
Across the roof from where I hid, the trapdoor creaked open.
I held my breath.
A pair of black birds spiraled down and landed on the spire I was hiding behind.
“I know you are here, thief,” said a low voice.
Captain Kerrn. I pressed myself farther into the shadows.
I heard her climb out the trapdoor and the sliding skff skff of her footsteps on the roof.
I glanced quickly around. Nowhere else to hide. Unless…
Yes, at the very edge of the tower, between the spires and a five-story drop to the paved courtyard, was a narrow ledge.
Moving slowly, holding tight to the stone spires, I edged from behind my spire hiding place and out onto the ledge; it was just as wide as my foot.
Clinging to the spire, I looked down over my shoulder. The ground was very, very far away. I saw guards crossing the courtyard, and there was small, fat Brumbee in his yellow robes, and small Nevery with guards. None of them looked up.
Part of being a thief meant being good at climbing. I wasn’t going to fall.
A black bird landed on the ledge beside me. I kicked at it with my foot and wobbled a little.
Awk, said the bird.
Drats, Kerrn was going to find me. I didn’t want her chaining me up in a prison cell and giving me phlister; I had to go find my locus stone.
Over the Sunrise part of Wellmet the very edge of the sun peeked up, sending beams of golden light across the city. The beams looked like long arms, reaching out from the sun.
Carefully I turned around until the spire was at my back. My heels were on the ledge, but my toes rested on nothing but air. I looked down. Way below, the wide courtyard was empty now, except for Nevery. The guards and Brumbee had gone in, probably searching for me. Nevery stood still, gripping his cane, staring up at me. Then he pulled something from his cloak pocket—his locus magicalicus. He held it up, his lips moving, saying a spell, I guessed. He pointed the stone at me, and a flash of white light darted from the stone and over me, then reflected back to Nevery. He turned and pointed the stone at the courtyard stones and said the rest of the spell. An image of me, dark like a shadow, sprang up next to Nevery. He said another word, and the shadow-me started running across the courtyard toward the tunnel entrance.
At the same moment, Brumbee and the guards burst from the academicos door. Seeing the shadow-me, they waved their arms and shouted, and a couple of the guards started across the courtyard.
I heard footsteps clatter across the lead-tiled roof, then just along the ledge from me, Kerrn poked out her head. If she turned just a little bit, she would see me. I held my breath. The bird on the ledge beside me didn’t move.
One of her guards shouted, and the shadow-me disappeared down the tunnel steps.
“Flaet,” Kerrn said, a curse word in her own language, I guessed, and then she was gone, her footsteps pounding across the rooftiles and the trapdoor slamming closed behind her.
Down in the courtyard, Nevery shoved his locus magicalicus into his cloak pocket and headed toward the corner of the building. He was going ’round the back.
Quick as quick I slid off the ledge so the guards wouldn’t see me if they looked up, and cat-footed over to the trapdoor.
I skiffed through the shadowy hallways and stairways and classrooms of the academicos to a window on the ground floor, unlatched it, and climbed out, and there was Nevery.
We were at the back of the academicos, a narrow strip of deserted courtyard leading to the steep stone bank that ran all around the edge of the island.
“Brumbee saw you, boy,” Nevery said.
I caught my breath. “I know.”
“I’ve signaled Benet.” Nevery’s cloak swirled as he turned away and started toward the stone bank.
“Nevery, d’you know why the finding spell didn’t work the way it was supposed to?” I asked, running to catch up.
He didn’t answer. “Hurry, boy,” he said. His cane went tap tap on the paving stones.
We came to the edge of the island. The stone bank where we stood was about Nevery’s height above the rough, gray water. Belo
w us, Benet waited in the rowboat, holding on to an iron ring that was set into the side of the wall.
Nevery nodded at the boat. “In you go.”
I dropped down into the boat.
“Steady,” Benet said. He looked up at Nevery, standing above us on the wall. “Tonight? Dory-down dock?”
“Yes. Make haste.” Nevery looked over his shoulder, back at the academicos.
“Nevery, aren’t you coming?” I asked, getting to my feet. The boat sloshed, tipping me back onto my seat. Benet pushed us away from the wall and set his oars in the oarlocks.
Nevery didn’t answer; he turned around and swept-stepped away, back toward the academicos.
What was he doing? He needed to come with us or he’d get into trouble. Brumbee had seen me. They’d know Nevery’d been with me. I stood up again.
“Get down,” Benet growled. “He can deal with ’em.” He pointed with his chin at the canvas tarp I’d hid under before, and took a stroke with his oars. We shot away from the island, headed downstream. I scrambled under the tarp and pulled it over my head. Hidden.
CHAPTER 9
Benet tied the boat to the last falling-down dock in the Twilight before the mudflats began. The air smelled of mud and dead fish, and of dirty drains. He put the oars together and lay them in the bottom of the boat. I started to climb out from under the tarp.
“Stay there,” Benet said. He checked his coat pocket, pulled his truncheon from under one of the boat seats, and climbed onto the dock. He glared down at me.
All right. I pulled the tarp back over my head and settled down in the bottom of the boat to wait. I didn’t want to be there. My feet kept twitching. I wanted to be off, following the finding spell. But Benet had told me to stay, so I would stay.
There was nothing in the boat to eat. The edge of the seat poked into my back. Just after midday the clouds drew in over the city and it started to rain. Not a misty rain, but a hard, straight rain like a curtain across the river. I was glad of my black sweater and apprentice’s robe. I huddled under the canvas tarp, staring at the rain-flattened, gray surface of the river and the mudflats, getting wetter and hungrier. After a while I fell asleep.
When I woke up it was dark and not raining. Benet had tossed a couple of sacks into the boat—whump—and climbed in after them. “You all right?” he asked. His coat had big wet patches on it.
“Yes,” I said, pushing the tarp off me. “You?”
“Wet,” he said. “You hungry?” he asked.
I grinned at him. “I’m never hungry, Benet.”
He gave half a laugh, then put the oars in the oarlocks and untied the rope. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a package wrapped in damp, brown paper, and handed it to me.
As he rowed us out onto the darkening river, I opened the package. Mmmm. A sandwich made of bread and bacon and butter. “Want some?” I asked.
“No,” Benet grunted. He looked over his shoulder and took a stroke with an oar to straighten out the boat.
I ate the bread and bacon. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“That captain’s got her guards out looking for you,” he said. “Twilight’s crawling with ’em.”
“Is Nevery all right?”
“Dunno,” Benet said.
While waiting for Benet I’d had plenty of time to think about what might happen. Nevery’d set it up so we’d done the pyrotechnics in an unused workroom. So even though Brumbee had seen me and he’d told Kerrn that he’d seen me, Kerrn might suspect Nevery was helping me, but she wouldn’t know. I hoped Nevery was staying quiet. He didn’t need to get into trouble over this.
Full night had fallen when Benet rowed us to a shadowy dock on the Sunrise side of the river. He didn’t tie up the boat, just held to the side of the dock, ready to push us off if somebody came along. I knew better than to ask what we were doing.
The night grew quiet, the only sound the river wavelets lapping against the side of the boat, and the seat creaking when Benet shifted himself. A fog rose up off the river, surrounding us. I stared at the bank, waiting.
There—a flash of white-bright light cutting through the fog, then another one. “That’s the lothfalas,” I whispered to Benet; as I pointed, the light flashed again.
“Come on,” Benet said. He grabbed the sacks and climbed out of the boat onto the dock, and I followed him. When we reached the street, which was lined by closed-up, dark shops, Nevery was waiting for us, holding a knapsack.
“Ah, good,” he said quietly. “Come along.” Off he went, step step tap along the cobbled street, me and Benet right behind. He led us along the misty, puddled street until we came to the park where Sunrise people came on sunny days to ride their horses and walk on the paths and get their pockets picked. We crunched along one of the gravel paths until we came to an iron-bar fence with a gate in it.
“Lothfalas,” Nevery whispered. In his hand, his locus magicalicus flared brightly; he whispered another word and it dimmed until it shed a faint circle of light around us. Fog swirled at its edge.
Nevery’s eyes were bright. He pointed at the gate. “Pick the lock.”
Right. I reached into the collar of my shirt and pulled out my lockpick wires, then crouched in front of the gate. A simple double-down plunger. One-two and a snick-flick, and I had it open.
“I don’t know, boy,” Nevery said.
I stood and faced him. He didn’t know what?
“I don’t know why the finding spell effected the way it did,” Nevery said, answering the question I’d asked hours ago. Nevery pulled at the end of his beard, his eyes keen-gleaming down at me. “It is clear that you have some kind of connection to the magic of this city; I suspect that anytime you do a spell, it may have unintended consequences.”
Unintended consequences. Trouble, that meant. I’d have to be careful, then, every time I did magic. Once I got back to Wellmet with my locus magicalicus. “Nevery, I need to go,” I said. I could feel the spell-line not far away, leading south. It pulled at me like a string.
“Yes, all right, my lad,” Nevery said. “Be careful.”
“Nevery, I’m always careful,” I said.
Benet snorted. He’d taken the knapsack from Nevery and packed it with the stuff from his sacks; he handed it to me. A blanket was rolled up and strapped to it, too.
“Here,” Nevery said. He had my coat, the one with the shabby velvet collar. I took off my apprentice robe, handed it to Nevery, and put on the coat instead. Benet handed me a scarf, one he’d knitted. It was long and nettle-green and had a keyhole shape knitted into each end and a long fringe, and he’d stitched my name on it in runes. The edges were thick enough to hide lockpick wires in, I reckoned.
“It’s perfect,” I said, stroking the soft wool.
Benet nodded.
“Look, boy,” Nevery said. “Stay on the spell-line and it will pull you straight to your locus magicalicus. It cannot be too far away from Wellmet; you’ll only be gone for a few days. Send a bird when you’ve returned and Benet will fetch you, and we’ll decide what to do next about that cursed Arhionvar.”
I nodded. He was right. I needed to hurry.
* * *
Rowan Forestal
I simply do not understand how someone as clever as Conn can be so continually stupid. He’s been trying to hide from Captain Kerrn and the guards, yet he has called the worst kind of attention to himself. The Dawn Palace has been in an uproar as the guards have searched the city and come in to report. The magisters sent Nimble to complain about the damage done by Conn’s latest pyrotechnic spell, and Magister Nevery stormed in and shouted at my mother behind the closed door of her office until she summoned guards and had him taken away.
Then there was the hearing this morning to determine Conn’s punishment for casting a pyrotechnic spell. I don’t understand why they call it a hearing when no one listened and Conn wasn’t there to speak for himself.
I detest the hearing room; it is full of echoes and dark corners. The magisters, dres
sed in their colorful robes, were sitting at a long table; my mother, wrapped in furs yet still cold as stone, sat at the middle of the table, and I stood just behind her. Magister Nevery sat to the side on a hard bench, with Captain Kerrn standing behind him.
Magister Nimble began. I have never liked Nimble, and now I hate him. He has a precise voice with a whiny edge, and in this horrid voice he went on about Conn’s so-called crimes, how he practiced illegal pyrotechnics and constituted a threat to the safety of the city and all who reside here. Then he ranted about Conn’s latest pyrotechnic spell. No one was injured or killed, thank goodness, but several buildings have been damaged and the Night Bridge was sliced in two.
Then Magister Nevery, glaring fiercely, got up from his bench and reminded them all that the dread magic Arhionvar, which had preyed upon Desh, was coming after Wellmet next—had they forgotten that?
The magisters shouted him down—they will not believe, as Conn believes, that the city’s magic is a living being, and so they cannot conceive of Arhionvar as a threat. They said Magister Nevery was exaggerating the danger posed by Arhionvar in order to consolidate his own power. They don’t believe that Arhionvar was behind either Jaggus’s or Underlord Crowe’s attacks on Wellmet; they think they both acted alone, for human reasons, not magical ones. Nimble also accused Nevery of bringing up Arhionvar in order to deflect criticism of his criminal apprentice. Then he accused Nevery of being involved in Conn’s latest pyrotechnic disaster.
Nimble is quite right about that, of course.
But Magister Nevery refused to speak further on that subject.
Then Magister Nimble and the other magisters pretended to consult, and Nimble whispered their verdict against Conn into my mother’s ear. I protested, but she told me very coldly and stiffly to be silent. Then she pronounced the verdict.
I will never forgive her. Never.
* * *
CHAPTER 10
In the morning I woke up under a bush with my stomach growling and frost covering my blanket. The sky was gray, tinged with pink off to the east, and Wellmet was a couple of hours back along the muddy path. The air felt thin, empty of magic.
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