by Webb, Holly
www.orchardbooks.co.uk
Lily reached out, and wrapped both hands around the strange soft stone of the dragon’s body. Scales itched and glinted against her fingers, even though she couldn’t see them, and the carving glowed brighter still. She could feel magic thrumming eagerly through the stone, like a warm little heart beating. And the eagerness! Something so wanted to break free.
But it couldn’t, quite.
Lily’s head swam, and Henrietta snarled. ‘Lily, stop!’
Half-fainting, Lily’s hands slid away from the stone, and she shook herself wearily.
Almost, something whispered gratefully. Soon!
ORCHARD BOOKS
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First published in the UK in 2012 by Orchard Books
This ebook edition published in 2012
ISBN 978 1 40831 641 2
Text © Holly Webb 2012
The right of Holly Webb to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Orchard Books is a division of Hachette Children’s Books,
an Hachette UK company.
www.hachette.co.uk
For Alice, who told me to hurry up and finish it
‘Is it not a real saw?’ Lily asked doubtfully, staring at it as Daniel held it up. It looked real. Cleaner and shinier than most of the stagehands’ tools, but just as sharp. It glinted wickedly.
‘Oh, no, it’s quite real,’ Daniel assured her sunnily. ‘It has to be: Georgie will walk amongst the audience carrying it, so they can check.’
‘Then how…?’ Lily stared at him worriedly. ‘You’re not asking me to do a spell, are you?’ she asked, her voice edged with suspicion.
‘Are you mad?’ Daniel raised his eyebrows. ‘After the Queen’s Men turning up to investigate us last week? We nearly got arrested for forbidden magic, Lily; I’m not that stupid. We’re on dangerous ground as it is. No, this is strictly a trick. An illusion. In other words, completely fake.’ He grinned, exchanging a proud look with Sam, the head stagehand who had constructed the Vanishing Cabinet that made their act famous. ‘It’s genius, it really is. This Saturday night, that’s when we’ll unveil it. Always a good audience on Saturdays.’ Then he sighed, stroking a hand lovingly over the polished wood contraption in front of them. ‘But it’s only going to work with someone as small as you, Lily.’ He eyed her sister, Georgie, measuring her up. ‘You might just fit in, but you’re a good bit taller than she is. And all the girls in the ballet troupe are too big; there’s no chance they’ll be able to do it, even though they keep asking me if I don’t want amore experienced assistant, now that we’re all popular. No, I’m going to have to look for someone your age.’
Lily sniffed. ‘And then not feed her, I suppose.’
Daniel nodded. ‘Or not much, certainly,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘It would be most unfortunate if she were to stick.’ Then he blinked. ‘Oh. You were joking.’
‘You haven’t found anyone suitable yet?’ Lily asked anxiously. ‘We need to leave soon. Next week, I thought. As soon as you find girls to replace us. There was no one at the theatrical agency?’
‘They were useless,’ Daniel said with disgust. ‘I interviewed five girls, and without exception, when I showed them the cabinets, all they did was giggle, and say that they couldn’t possibly.’ He frowned at her worriedly. ‘I wish you would stay. Both of you. And not just for the sake of the act. Or if you must go, I still don’t see why you can’t fly to the continent. I hate the idea of you somewhere in England by yourselves, when you could be discovered and arrested at any moment.’
Lily sighed. ‘We were on our own before, and no harm came to us.’
Sam snorted, and Daniel threw up his hand crossly. ‘Because you ended up here! You just happened to hit on a theatre, somewhere half of us hate the Queen’s Men even more than you magicians do.’ He stared at them anxiously. ‘Tell me I can stop searching for new girls for the act. Just stay with us, where you’re safe.’
‘But we aren’t!’ Georgie shivered. ‘Mama’s already sent Marten after us. It’ll be Mama herself chasing us next, I know it.’
‘We can’t stay in one place much longer,’ Lily agreed. ‘And we need to be able to fight back against Mama.’ She swallowed. ‘When she does find us.’ She was almost certain that Mama would, one day soon. ‘Staying here doesn’t help us lift the spells Mama put on Georgie, Daniel.’ She shivered. ‘Now I’ve seen Queen Sophia, Mama’s plan seems even worse. I half understand her – I mean, I hate what the queen has done. It isn’t just that she’s imprisoned our father, she’s made me and Georgie and all the other magician children into something we’re not. She’s stopped us being ourselves, we’ve had to deny what’s most special about us, because of the Decree. But I don’t want to kill her. Mama means to use Georgie to kill the queen, Daniel. She wants the magic back. Magicians back in power, the way it was centuries ago, when our kind were flying around on dragons and all as rich as anything. She’s not going to stay quietly shut away at Merrythought House any longer. Mama’s mad, I think,’ she added in a small voice. ‘It’s driven her that way, being penned up on the island all this time. She really does mean to kill the queen, and somehow those spells are going to make Georgie do it for her. She won’t give up on her without a fight.’
‘Or you,’ a small, gruff voice added. ‘She has her plans for you now too, remember.’
Until they’d escaped, Lily and Georgie had lived shut away from the rest of the world, with only their mother and a few very well-paid servants. The girls had fled Merrythought after they realised that their mother had kept Georgie under a spell for years, while she trained her in strange magics, which they still didn’t understand. The dark spells Georgie had been learning were all still locked inside her, but they hadn’t been working as well as Mama wanted. She had been getting angrier and angrier with Georgie, who’d grown sadder, and quieter, as the spells stole her spirit away.
Then the girls had overheard their mother saying to Marten, her maid, that she had no use for Georgie any more. She was planning to get rid of her – as she had the others. The two sisters hadn’t known what this meant, but then they’d found a photograph album, with a sad little collection of pictures of their two older sisters – who never grew older than Georgie. Their magic had failed to satisfy Mama too. Georgie and Lily had no choice but to run away.
Lily picked Henrietta up, and held her close. There was something comforting about the black pug dog’s sleek fur, and the certain ticking of her heart, even when she was saying the most uncomforting things. Even the existence of Henrietta made Lily feel happier – she had created the dog herself, or summoned her, she wasn’t really sure which, from the portrait of her Great-Aunt Arabel that stood in the passage at home. It looked decidedly unbalanced now, without the small black dog Arabel had been holding. Arabel’s expression had changed too. It strongly suggested that if she could get out of the painting, and get her hands on her great-niece, she would be wringing her neck.
‘I know…’ she murmured. ‘I bet she’d rather use Georgie if she can, though. With me she’d have to start all over again.’
Henrietta sniffed. ‘She wants you because Georgie isn’t good enough.’
Georgie coughed. ‘I am here, in case you’d forgotten,’ she said sweetly. She didn’t always get on with Henrietta, who thought she was feeble. Unfortunately, sometimes Lily had to agree. She adored Georgie, but her big sister had a definite feeble streak.
>
‘I hadn’t.’ Henrietta waited, staring at her, in case Georgie was planning to deny it, but Georgie only went pink and looked miserable.
‘The spells might not have worked when we were back at Merrythought, and Mama was teaching you them, but they work now! That’s the problem!’ Lily pointed out. ‘They work too well. That wolf-thing you made was so good it nearly ate you, as well as tearing Marten to bits.’
‘And me.’ Henrietta nodded.
Lily had always hated Marten, her mother’s maid, without really knowing why. It had been horribly unsurprising to learn that the black-clad creature wasn’t human. Marten had been a construct of thousands upon thousands of intricately layered spells. Her mother’s work of art.
The work of art had followed them to London, like some sort of magical bloodhound. Marten had been sniffing for traces of the spells that the girls’ mother had woven into Georgie. She had been sent to drag them back. Mama had been on the point of giving up on Georgie, but the magic was starting to work in her now, seeping out whenever Georgie gave it a chance. Which wasn’t often. Georgie had locked her own magic away deep inside, frightened of what she might let out with it.
It was Mama’s own fault she had lost Marten, Lily thought, smiling to herself. It was almost funny now, a few days afterwards. But at the time, when she’d had to stand and watch her sister being dragged away, with Marten’s blackish claws stabbing into her throat, it had not been funny at all. Then Georgie’s terror had let the spells come slinking out, and it was Mama’s own magic that had destroyed her servant. A huge wolf, made from London dust, and a trickle of blood from Georgie’s scratched neck. The grey-red beast had turned on Marten, tearing away lumps of greenish spell-flesh, until she was only a pile of black clothes, and rustling dust.
Henrietta, however, had been rather put out by the wolf, as it was basically a much larger dog than she was, which offended her pride. ‘The spells are there, inside her, no question. But she doesn’t know what she’s doing with them! Do you?’ she added to Georgie, with a little snap at the hem of her skirt.
‘Don’t you dare bite that! This dress is new!’ Georgie hissed back. She wasn’t at all feeble about her clothes. Being at the theatre, and let loose in the costume wardrobe, she had discovered that she infinitely preferred sewing to spells. ‘I can’t help not being to control the magic. It was made that way, wasn’t it? I’m not supposed to be able to control it. Mama has the key, somehow…’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Ugh, how horrid. Like a sort of wind-up doll…’
‘But if we find our father,’ Lily explained to Daniel, ‘there’s a chance that he will have the – the key, too. Or at least, he’ll be able to help us work it out.’ She sighed. ‘Well, he’s the only other magician we know about, apart from Mama. He’ll have to help. And we have to find him.’ She sighed.
‘If he isn’t part of the plot as well,’ Henrietta muttered.
Lily glared at the dog disapprovingly. She was trying to cheer Georgie up, not make her worse.
‘He isn’t. I’m sure he isn’t. The letter, remember? He said he wasn’t!’ But Georgie was wringing her hands together worriedly. She wasn’t sure at all, and neither was Lily. Their father was their only hope – but it was a slim one.
‘How are you going to find your dad?’ Sam asked slowly, and the girls looked up in surprise. They had almost forgotten he was there. Sam was never talkative, but he had been one of the first people in the theatre, apart from Daniel, to learn their secret, and they trusted him. Henrietta adored him, and he made a special fuss over her, saving her bits of his lunches. He had liked her even before he knew she could talk, and now he regarded her as a little wonder – much more exciting than the girls, even though Henrietta couldn’t do magic herself.
Lily and Georgie looked at each other, and Georgie shrugged. ‘He’s in prison…’
‘And the prison might be in London – that’s where the letters to Mama came from. That’s all we know. Really everything.’ Lily sighed. Then she glanced at Daniel. ‘Do all magicians end up in the same prison?’ she asked him, frowning. ‘I suppose it can’t be just any old prison, can it? There must be special defences. Or guards who can stop spells. That’s what Father’s letter seemed to say. Although…that would probably mean they were using magic themselves, which is illegal, so I don’t see how…’ She swallowed, feeling suddenly a little sick. ‘Unless they do something to the prisoners, to stop their magic working. Cut the magic out of them, or something horrible like that…’
Daniel hugged her. ‘If they could do that, I think there would have been more fuss made about it. The old queen would have had it trumpeted from the rooftops.’ He held Lily’s shoulders, so he could look her in the eyes. ‘They couldn’t do it, Lily. There would have been problems from abroad, as well. It’s only here that magic’s illegal, remember. Magicians are flourishing in most of the rest of the world. Even here, if they renounce their magic, the way your mother swore to the Queen’s Men she had done, magicians are free. Under suspicion, always, and watched, but free. Your father must have refused to give his magic up.’
Lily smiled. She could understand that. She couldn’t imagine living without hers, even though Georgie seemed not to mind. She loved the permanent sense of tingly, sparkling possibility inside her. The way it rushed into her fingers so eagerly as soon as she called it. Even the cross, jumpy feeling under her skin when she’d cooped it up for too long, and it was aching to be set free. And she could put up with spells always making her hair curlier, although she would have loved sleek, straight hair like Georgie’s.
She felt closer to her father than she ever had, realising that he must have been the same way. He had curly hair too, she remembered, thinking of the wedding portrait in her mother’s green leather photograph album. He had been in prison for most of her life, and she had no memories of him.
‘Can you visit prisons?’ Lily asked Sam, rather doubtfully.
Sam snorted with laughter. ‘If you pay the guards. Or if you’re bringing in missionary tracts. But like you say, Miss Lily, it might all be different in a magicians’ prison.’
Daniel was scowling, running his fingers through his black hair, so it stood up on end even more than usual. ‘I must say, it would be a weight off my mind if you were to find him. You’re too young to be without anyone, the way you are.’
Lily smiled. Daniel sounded like a respectable old man with side-whiskers. Not the seventeen-year-old owner of a scandalous theatre.
‘Magicians’ prison. All I know about it is that it’s a secret. Closely guarded – no one knows where it is. The kind of thing you can be imprisoned for even asking about. Although you’d think there would be something about it in one of my books,’ Daniel murmured now. Books on magic were outlawed just as magic itself was, but Daniel had done a great deal of research for his conjuring act, and owned several banned volumes. He wandered towards the steps at the front of the stage, muttering to himself, and making for his office by the grand entrance to the theatre.
‘If you want this trick ready in two days’ time,’ Sam called after him, ‘don’t you think we ought to see if she fits? I know Miss Lily won’t be the one doing it for long, but you did tell that journalist that was here yesterday that there was to be a new trick, remember? The Devil’s Cabinet is old hat now, you said. Vandinovksi at the Ottoman Palace has the trick almost as well as we do. This weekend, you said. Come to the show on Saturday, you said.’
Daniel turned round, red-faced. ‘Yes. I quite forgot.’ He sighed. ‘And to be honest, Lily, I don’t think I’ll be able to find out what you need in any of my books. I’d have remembered, I’m sure. I’ve read them all so many times.’ He pushed up his shirtsleeves in a businesslike sort of way. ‘So. Here we are.’
Lily looked at the wooden cabinet in front of them, and nibbled her top lip doubtfully. She still didn’t see how it was going to work. Admittedly, she never could see through Daniel and Sam’s contraptions before they were explained to her, but then they�
��d never involved very sharp saws, till now. She was particularly anxious to make sure this one worked. She did wish Daniel wasn’t quite so butterfly-minded. When one was going to be sawn in half, one liked to know that the person with the saw was really paying attention.
‘Now, there is a very, very slight risk with this trick,’ Daniel explained, as he undid the shiny brass catches on the cabinet.
‘Of being cut in half?’ Lily asked, taking a step backwards.
‘No! Of course not. Just – well, it’s possible we might catch your toes. If you’re not quick enough.’ Daniel smiled at her winningly. ‘We’d only nick them…’ he said, in an earnest sort of voice.
‘She isn’t doing it!’ Georgie and Henrietta both snapped, at practically the same time. Then they glared at each other.
‘How would you cut my toes, when you’re sawing through the middle of me?’ Lily peered at the cabinet. Daniel had undone it now, so that it looked like a table, with two hinged boxes that folded down over it. The table had chains, and looked most unpleasant.
‘I’ll show you. Look, lie down here.’ Lily stared at the table suspiciously, and Daniel sighed. ‘I won’t even pick up the saw. I promise. Here, Henrietta, sit on it.’ He laid it on the floor, and the black pug planted her paws firmly on the handle.
‘Go on. I want to see,’ she commanded. ‘Hurry up, Lily.’
‘You lie down here – smiling, and waving, you know, so that the audience sees you aren’t afraid.’ Daniel ignored Henrietta snorting here. ‘And we put the chains around your arms, and your feet. The feet are very important.’
‘I know!’ Lily hissed. ‘Which is why I’d like to keep my toes!’
Daniel exchanged a look with Sam, a rolled eyes sort of look, but Lily didn’t care. ‘Lily, I haven’t even got the saw – let me just explain how it works!’