“Where’s the other one?” Magnus cried. “There were three of you. It was Hemphill, wasn’t it?” Cellini couldn’t answer. He’d been knocked unconscious. When Magnus released him, he collapsed to the ground. “Do you know what he was going to do?” Magnus growled. He picked up the knife, blade gleaming in the moonlight, and tossed it away with a hiss of disgust. “Are you all right?” He helped me up off the ground and held me close.
“I’m fine.” I leaned into his embrace and felt him trembling.
—
WE PACED OUTSIDE THE LIBRARY, LISTENING to the muffled voices within. Once or twice, someone shouted, and then the murmuring returned. Magnus glared at the door, as if he could bore a hole through it with the strength of his will alone.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m not sure I could have kept them off on my own.”
“If it were up to me, they’d hang the pair of them.” Magnus hadn’t changed out of his bloody, torn clothes. His hair stuck wildly in the air, and part of me wanted to pat it down. “I can’t believe they let Hemphill go.”
“I can’t be certain he was there. What will happen now?”
“Excommunication. They’ll bind Lovett’s stave, and he’ll lose his position as heir to his father’s estate. Cellini will be shipped back to Rome to face their brand of justice.”
“Bind his stave?” I knew that excommunicates were sorcerer outcasts but didn’t know the details.
“They dip the stave in molten lead to bind its power and sever its connection. Sometimes the sorcerer doesn’t survive.” He looked pale. “There are those who consider execution a more humane punishment.”
The idea wrenched my heart. I touched Porridge in its sheath for comfort. “Even if Cellini hated me, why risk so much?”
Magnus shook his head. “I don’t know.”
I looked at my hands. “I know he was your friend. This can’t be easy.”
“It’s easier than you think, Howel. I could never let anyone hurt you.”
My hands prickled with energy. There was no time to discuss it further. Palehook opened the door, a rumpled, tearstained Lovett by his side.
“Miss Howel. I shall endeavor to see that every bit of justice is done. You’ve my word on that.” I noticed that Palehook didn’t quite look me in the eye while speaking, and he pulled Lovett away as soon as he was able. Agrippa exited next, his face pale. He took my chin in his hand.
“Are you all right, my poor, brave girl?” He looked me over, tilting my head this way and that. “You’ll have a few bruises, but I think that’s the worst of it. Go upstairs and let Fenswick look at you.”
“I want to see him.” I gazed toward the library door.
“No, I can’t allow that.”
“If you stay, Master, and I’m beside her, he won’t try anything,” Magnus said. He looked as if he’d adore one small excuse for another beating.
“Please. I won’t feel well unless I’ve seen him.” I didn’t need more opportunities for nightmares.
The door creaked open, and Cellini slunk into the hall. His face was swollen, both from the bruises and from crying.
“Why did you do it?” I said.
“I didn’t think they planned murder. We just wanted you to leave.” When he spoke, I saw the hole where his front tooth had been. He wept. No sight had ever made me sicker.
“You should have wanted to help me. Since I’m the prophesied—”
“Oh, enough of that stupid tapestry!” His tears vanished; his anger startled me. “I held my tongue because English ways are not our ways. If you believed you could find salvation in a girl sorcerer, who was I to disagree?” He sniffed and wiped his nose. “At first you were all right, Miss Howel, but now you’re dreadful.”
When Magnus started for Cellini, I put my hand on his arm to hold him back. Cellini noticed, and his fury grew. “Look at that! Ordering men about. The trouble is English sorcerers don’t study their Bible. Paul’s first Epistle to Timothy: ‘Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.’ In Rome, women aren’t even allowed inside an obsidian room.” He looked to Agrippa and Magnus. “She’s not one of us. She’ll destroy everyone if you let her, and it’s only lucky I won’t be here to see it!” Magnus grabbed Cellini and lifted him off the ground by his collar. Agrippa stepped in at once to separate them.
She’s not one of us. Cellini and I had always gotten along, or so I’d thought. We played charades on the same team together, laughed over breakfast. How could I not have seen this anger? Had I really done something to deserve it?
Or had I simply been proud? I remembered his anger when I’d flicked that little bit of fire at him, laughed at him. Perhaps arrogance in a woman was unbearable. I tried to find some apology in his eyes. There was only fury.
“Give me your stave,” Agrippa said.
As if it were torture, Cellini undid his hip sheath and handed it over. Part of me hurt for him. But the colder, angrier part won out.
“I will be commended,” I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts. “You can do nothing about that.”
“Someone will,” he muttered.
I had to wonder, as they escorted Cellini off and I wiped my eyes, if someone else would attack. Even with my progress, I knew he was right. In a woman, pride was unforgivable.
—
“TAKE THREE DROPS OF THIS IN a glass of water,” Fenswick grumped, handing me a vial of bubbling golden liquid that changed to pink when I turned it upside down. He flapped his ears as I helped him off the bed. “Anything else troubling you?”
“I still have nightmares.” The R’hlem dreams hadn’t come to me as much since I’d gained control of my powers, but they did return.
“Well, keep chewing willow bark.” He waddled to the door, when a housemaid entered with a tray for me. She wrinkled her nose at Fenswick and walked straight into him, bowling him over. He got to his feet, dusting himself off.
“Be more careful,” he snapped. She set down the tray and swatted at him with a napkin.
“Disgusting little thing. Shoo,” she said, driving a hissing Fenswick from the room. I sat up.
“Don’t you dare treat him like that,” I cried.
The maid scowled. Why was tonight Lilly’s evening off? “Beg your pardon, miss, but it don’t hurt him none. They don’t feel things as we do.”
“He’s a person,” I said.
“No, he ain’t, miss, if you’ll pardon me.” She sniffed. “He’s a beast.”
Once, I might have agreed with her. Now, as she handed me my tray, all I could hear were Cellini’s hissed words: She’s not one of us.
—
AFTER LESSONS THE NEXT DAY, I took to the library to read about hobgoblins. We didn’t have many volumes, but I found one passage in A Compendium of Faerie (Laurence Puchner, 1798) that said: A Mandrake Root or moldy Onion can be most instrumental in welcoming a subject of the Dark Fae Queen into a home.
Agrippa’s kitchen didn’t contain a single mandrake root. However, I found an old onion with green bits sprouting on it. This would have to do. I took myself to Fenswick’s corner of the house. He lived inside a chest of drawers in an empty servant’s room.
I found him relaxed in the bottommost drawer, his ears tucked behind him as he attempted a doze. “What is it?” he said. “Can’t you let me rest?” He rubbed his eyes with two of his four paws.
“I wanted to give you this.” I handed over the onion. He took it like he’d never seen one before in his life. “I thought it might make you feel more at home?”
For a moment, his expression didn’t change. This had been a grave mistake. Then his ears parted to the side. His black eyes glistened. He hugged the onion to his chest, sniffled, and said, “I’ve been in this house six months, and no one’s…welcomed me yet.”
I’d no idea how a sprouty onion made one feel wanted, but there were many things I didn’t understand. “I’m glad to have been the first.”
<
br /> “Why do you care?” His ears perked up.
“I suppose I know what it’s like to not quite belong.”
“You’re a lady sorcerer.”
“With the marks to prove it.” Touching a finger to a purplish bruise on my cheek, I made to leave.
“Er, wait. The willow bark doesn’t help with your bad dreams, does it?” Fenswick’s ears slid down his back.
“Not much.”
Later that night, I found a packet in a velvet pouch outside my door. It smelled of herbs and rose hips. A note, in a chubby, childish hand, read: For nightmares. Place under pillow.
From that night forward, I didn’t see R’hlem. He wasn’t missed.
My new boys’ clothes were a terrible fit. I had to roll the sleeves three times and tie a rope around my waist to hoist up the trousers, but racing across London rooftops was a job unsuitable for frocks. I lay on my belly and crawled forward. Hargrove pointed to the roof opposite us.
“Let’s see if you can place it…there,” he said, indicating the chimney stack. Careful to avoid tumbling, I pointed Porridge at my heart, twisted the stave while muttering a few key nonsense words, and then flung my arm toward the other rooftop. It worked. A vision of myself, a complete copy of my current trousered state, gazed back at me from the chimney’s base.
It was startling to see myself outside a mirror. My copy’s mouth hung wide open, like mine. I lost my balance and slipped toward the roof’s edge. Hargrove pulled me back by the collar of my coat, and the vision opposite us disappeared.
“Don’t be a bloody fool, girl. No need to go tipping your balance over a good reflection. Now I want to see you fly. Due south, aim for the edge of the ward. By the docks, where we had that pork pie last time.” With that, Hargrove swept his cloak around his body and floated into the sky. I’d be damned if he beat me. The last time I lost a race, I had to buy him a bottle of gin and massage his temples.
Summoning the wind, I took off across the rooftops and above the labyrinthine alleyways of London. How marvelous it was, to have a bird’s-eye view of the evening goings-on and lamp-lightings. I was glad to be able to stay this long. Agrippa had gone to Surrey overnight on business for the Order, and no one else felt the need to check on my whereabouts. I arrived at the meeting place and dropped gracefully to the ground.
I heard a rush of wind and turned to welcome Hargrove down from the sky, but it wasn’t his face that greeted me. It was hers.
She fell to the earth, lacking the company of her terrifying friends. The shadow rider dismounted from her monstrous black stag, and even before she unrolled her smoke hood, I knew she would be the one with sewn-up eyes. She was no dream or illusion this time. The girl unsheathed her dagger and swung toward the screaming crowd. Men dropped their wares and ran; women scuttled inside their houses and slammed the doors. I prepared to open fire when she whirled away from the people. Sniffing the air, she turned to face me.
“Not dressed properly,” she muttered to herself. Tilting her head, she sniffed again, deeply. “But the same smell. And a stave.” Her face scrunched up, a momentary flash of pain. “Little lady sorcerer.”
“What are you doing here?” I readied myself for an attack. The rider threw her head back and laughed.
“Follow your scent. The bloody king wants to know how you fight.” R’hlem. She swung her dagger in the air twice, testing. “He wants to see if you’ll die.” Leaping, she brought her blade in an arc toward me. I struck her with a gust of wind and rolled to the ground. I stood with my back against the ward as she drew herself up and hissed. This time, I fell aside as she attacked, and her dagger dug into the pale yellow outline of the barrier itself. The place of impact glowed bright green for an instant, then began to fade. She turned for me, nostrils flaring. “Good, good. Not afraid. He likes those with courage.”
“What does he want?” I said.
She struck again, and I met her with my warded blade. She was good, but Magnus’s training had helped. We crossed swords a few times, and then I leaned back and kicked her in the stomach. You could accomplish so much in trousers and boots! Men didn’t know how lucky they were.
Before she could regain control, I blasted her with a tunnel of wind and twirled a spell that sent the earth up around her like a hand, to catch and drag her down. She was chest-deep next to the ward when Hargrove alighted beside me.
“I’ve never seen that before,” he said, eyeing the trapped rider.
“A blend of the two styles,” I muttered as the girl shrieked and thrust her hands upward. It was as if she became smoke and bled through the earth to free herself.
Hargrove and I unleashed a volley of magic. I called down the wind to dissipate the still-smoke Familiar, and he shrank her demonic steed to the size of a small dog. She re-formed into her solid state and fell to the earth with a piercing screech. The rider stared stupidly at her dwarfed mount, which bleated like an angry lamb. Grabbing the stag under her arm, she held up a hand in a signal of surrender.
“Leave.” I pointed Porridge with more confidence than I felt. “Or I’ll fire.”
Hissing, she reached out and touched the ward. “Soon,” she croaked, giving a small, hideous giggle as she slid her fingertips down the glowing surface.
The stag ballooned back to its normal size, and she climbed atop it. They galloped into the sky and vanished before we could attack again.
“We should go,” I whispered, tipping my cap over my eyes.
“Indeed. After a hard day of protecting the city, I should think we’d earned a meat pie.” Hargrove didn’t seem as carefree as his words implied. We looked to where the Familiar had sliced the ward. When I put my fingers to it, I found the smallest cut in the surface.
“Well,” he said as we landed on a rooftop to catch our breath, “now you see the challenges of defeating one of the Shadow’s pets. They always were the trickiest to destroy. The best Familiars to kill, of course, are Molochoron’s slugs. You remember that fat, slimy fellow last week in Hoxton? The one we exploded?”
“What’s happening to the ward?” I whispered. “It feels like rubber on the inside, and fragile glass without.”
“The ward usually wears down the closer we get to the solstice,” Hargrove said, cracking his back and wincing. “It’s at its strongest around Christmas.”
“Why?”
“Some believe the Ancients are tied to the pagan calendar, so Midsummer Eve is a particularly wonderful time for them. I think there’s truth to it. Of course, the sorcerers used this concept to attack the witches.” He sounded bitter.
“Did you know any witches?”
“Before the burnings, you mean? Yes, one or two.” He snorted and spit off the roof. “A bunch of ladies with flowers and rye in their hair, farming and making potions to help with a toothache. Truly the most fearsome magical practitioners of all.”
“If they’re so innocent, why were they outlawed?”
“Many believe that magical women are difficult to control,” Hargrove said. “As you are well aware.” The memory of Cellini and the knife returned in vivid color. “While we’re talking, have you payment for another evening’s lesson?” He snapped his fingers. Groaning, I dug into my pocket and produced two sovereigns. Handing them over, I muttered, “Try to spend it sensibly.”
“This makes ten pounds and four shillings. Almost there. And the rest?”
“Next time.” Agrippa now gave me two pounds a week for spending money, so he unwittingly paid for my lessons. That made approximately five weeks of sneaking off to visit Hargrove when I could. I swung my legs over the roof and looked to the ward, a glowing bubble in the night. “What happens if the barriers don’t hold?”
“What do you think? Total pandemonium. Hopefully when that happens, I’ll be an ocean away.”
“What? Where are you going?” Surprisingly, the thought of losing him hurt. Hargrove had never been exactly warm, but he knew my secrets. That was something.
“Where you’re sending me with t
hat twelve pounds. Or to be more exact, ten pounds and four shillings. The rest of Europe won’t take in a refugee from England, but America might.”
“You’ll never get out to sea.”
“I know the right person,” Hargrove said.
“Who?” Then I recalled Magnus’s mention of smuggler ships that charged money for a clandestine voyage.
“Better if you’re not privy to the whereabouts and who-is-its. All I need is the money, which I’m about to have in full.”
“You’ll leave me? What of the children?”
“The commendation’s in less than two weeks. You won’t need me anymore. I didn’t say I wouldn’t take the children, just that I’d only need one ticket.” Of course, he’d store them inside the magical trunk. “I’m not a total bastard, you know.”
“I thought you wanted to see magicians come back into power.”
His face lost all traces of joviality. “I’ve sacrificed enough for this bloody cause. Let the young fight, if they’ve the will.”
“Did you train me to feel like you’d done your share?” I asked quietly.
“Perhaps. I believed there was a debt I needed to acknowledge.”
“To whom?” I scooted back from the roof’s edge and stood, dusting my trousers.
“Not to anyone in particular,” he said. “Now I consider it paid, because of you.” He smiled. “You’re my last laugh. The sorcerers will honor an upstart magician’s daughter as the answer to their precious prophecy.” He spit once again.
—
“CINDERELLA’S WICKED STEPSISTERS HAD TO WALK behind the wedding party, sulking. The birds, who had seen all the cruelty in their hearts, flew out of the sky and plucked the sisters’ eyes from their heads.” I hissed at the children, bundled up for bed, and they gasped. “But Cinderella, who had been good and true, ruled with her prince for many years.” They sighed at this revelation. Charley’s little sister clung to my skirt and wouldn’t let go. Gently, I took her into my arms and went to sit at the table with Hargrove. He looked pleased and drunk.
“Taste of the spoils?” he said, offering me the bottle. I declined. “Where was I, before you had to change your clothes and tend to these ragamuffins?”
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