The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

by Galen Beckett

  It was only after a moment that Ivy realized the room had gone quiet. She turned to see her sisters and mother staring at her.

  “What are you talking about, Ivy?” Lily said with a frown. “Are you mad? Why in the world would we give our house to Mr. Wyble?”

  Ivy smoothed the papers in her hand. “I did not say we should give this house to him. Rather, we might…that is, Mother might sell her interest in it to him. I know he has a rather large sum saved away, and I have no doubt he would be willing to part with a good deal of it to win the right of dwelling in this house early. And with the proceeds, we would have income enough to live very well for years to come.”

  Rose’s expression was suddenly worried; she sat on the sofa and petted Miss Mew.

  “But where should we live?” Lily said. “You don’t expect us to move to Lowpark, do you? Mr. Garritt would never come visit us there.”

  Ivy started to reply, but Mrs. Lockwell was quicker. Her usually cheerful face became hard, as it had that night when the two men in dark capes came to the door. “I know what Ivy is thinking. She is seeking ways to economize. But our need is not that great. And even if it were, I would not hear of what I know she is proposing. When we left that house, I told Mr. Lockwell that I would never return there, and I will keep my word.”

  Ivy knew it was not prudent, but the topic had been broached, and she might never have another chance to speak of it. “I am only saying that the house on Durrow Street is not entailed to anybody. It is Father’s outright.”

  “Durrow Street?” Lily said, and it was clear she suddenly did not know what to think, and so she said again, “Durrow Street!” And she sat down on the sofa next to Rose.

  Before her mother could interject, Ivy finished her thoughts. “The house on Durrow Street is Father’s, and when…and in any event it will always be in our family. With the income earned from granting this house to our cousin, we could, if we lived modestly, dwell there as long as we wished and never have any fear of real want or need.”

  Lily was still visibly struggling with this idea. No doubt the notion of giving anything to Mr. Wyble was unthinkable for her, yet the name Durrow Street held particular enchantment, for it was on Durrow Street that the city’s theaters were to be found. At last she said, “If we need income, why do we not sell Father’s house?” Money, it had evidently been decided, was more likely than proximity to grant access to wonders such as theaters. “We could sell the house on Durrow Street and live very well here, I am sure.”

  And where should they live when they were spinsters and this house belonged to Mr. Wyble? However, Ivy did not voice this thought, and there were other constraints on that course of action. “The house on Durrow Street is Father’s alone,” she said. “Only he could make a decision to sell it.”

  They all knew such a decision was beyond his ability.

  Before Ivy could press her argument, Mrs. Lockwell stood. Her cheeks had a high color to them. “I will endure no more speech on this subject, Ivoleyn! Durrow Street is not a place where respectable families dwell. There is nothing for us in that old house. It is a horrid place, fit only for the likes of them.” She waved a hand at the darkened windows. “And they should go there, rather than show up on our doorstep, when they come for—”

  The color drained from Mrs. Lockwell’s face, and she sank down into the chair.

  “Mother, what is wrong?” Lily cried, rushing to Mrs. Lockwell’s side. Rose hurried after, a frightened look on her face, and Ivy as well. They patted Mrs. Lockwell’s hand, and fanned her to help her breathe, and brought her water to sip.

  Soon her color returned, and she said she had felt faint for a moment, but the moment had passed, and she was perfectly well now, so they could stop their fussing. She waved them away and stood again, for she needed to see what Mrs. Murch was doing in the kitchen, having developed a sudden certainty that something was amiss with the supper. Lily departed as well, humming the song she had played on the pianoforte earlier, though somehow she made it sound not doleful but light and cheerful.

  “Is there someone out there?” Rose said, and Ivy realized she had been staring out the window into the night.

  The words of the riddle came to Ivy’s mind, unbidden. When twelve who wander stand as one, through the door the dark will come….

  “No, dearest,” Ivy said, sitting down on the sofa and helping Rose to pet Miss Mew.

  However, she could sense the darkness slinking in through the window, as if the sash were raised and the gloom a living thing, and she knew the words she had spoken were false. There was someone out there. They were out there, the magicians who had come here looking for her father. Looking for something. Yet Ivy was now certain that, whatever it was they wanted, they would not find it in this house. And if she wished to gain their aid—in helping Mr. Lockwell, or in deciphering his riddle—then she must go to where she was more likely to find them.

  She sat with Rose in the parlor, passing the time quietly. An hour later Mrs. Lockwell called everyone to supper, and by then Ivy had formulated her plan. There was only one thing to do.

  As soon as possible, she must go to Durrow Street.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ELDYN’S MEETING WITH Mr. Sarvinge and Mr. Grealing was not so heartening as on the previous occasion.

  He met them at Mrs. Haddon’s coffeehouse in Covenant Cross, in request to a note he received at the Golden Loom. Their manner remained polite, yet he could feel a sort of unseen lightning crackling back and forth on the air while the coffee he had bought them with the scant coins in his pocket grew cold. There was a sharpness to their words that—however courteous—gave everything they said an urgent tone.

  They had gone out of their way to accommodate the peculiar demands of his schedule, they informed him. Now the ship was ready to sail for the New Lands, and he had left them in an awkward position. In order to hold a place for him, they had put off other investors. It was an unfortunate situation; there was nothing else that could be done to resolve it. They must have the money he had promised them. If he did not deliver a hundred regals to them by sunset of the next day, they would be forced—regretfully, of course—to spread word among all men of business in the city that Mr. Eldyn Garritt could not be relied upon; no one would enter a contract with him ever after. Both of them despised the idea of doing this, yet there would be no choice. It would—rather, it must—be done.

  “You know we hold you in the highest esteem, Mr. Garritt,” said Mr. Sarvinge as he rose from the table. He was long-limbed and thin as a whip, with a long face, a blade-thin nose, and long black hair that draped over very thin shoulders.

  “Indeed, the highest esteem,” said Mr. Grealing, who was short and in every manner soft and round where his companion was lean and angular, and who bore a single patch of hair atop his round, soft head. “We know you will not disappoint us, Mr. Garritt.”

  They smiled and bowed, they gave him sharp looks, they smiled again, and the two departed, leaving their coffee cups untouched. For a time Eldyn could do nothing but sit at the table and tremble as if he was chilled to the bone, though the atmosphere in Mrs. Haddon’s was, as always, close and stuffy and boisterous.

  What was he to do? He fretted over this question again and again. But there was nothing to do; he was ruined, and his sister with him. Mr. Walpert would evict them from the inn, and Sashie would be forced to live on the streets. She would become a servant, a slattern. Or far worse. A vision came to him of her lying in a dank lane in Waterside, her once-pretty face dirty and slack, insensible to what the coarse men who passed by did with her, save whether they put another bottle of gin in her hand.

  He dug the palms of his hands into his eyes, trying to grind away the unspeakable vision.

  “Hello there, Garritt!” a voice called out. “Quit staring at your cup and come over and join us!”

  Eldyn looked up. Orris Jaimsley, Curren Talinger, and Dalby Warrett sat at a table across the crowded shop. As usual, Talinger was banging a
fist on the table, expounding upon some treatise or another, while Warrett grabbed for their cups to keep them from flying.

  Jaimsley waved a skinny arm. “Talinger still seems to think we need a king for some reason,” he called out. “Nor will he listen to me. I need you to come talk some reason to him, Garritt.”

  Had he been more in his right mind, Eldyn might have flinched at so brazen an advertisement. Only days ago, in The Fox, Eldyn had read how the White Lady had accused the proprietor of a tavern not five hundred paces from this spot of harboring conspirators against the Crown. The Fox had decried this as a falsehood and another example of the injustice rampant in Altania. All the same, the man had been swiftly convicted by the Gray Conclave—which had the luxury of convening its own courts—and the broadsheets might as well have been printed in the tavernkeeper’s blood. Next week, in Barrowgate, he would hang.

  Jaimsley gave him another wave. Eldyn granted him only a shallow nod, then headed for the door. He caught a puzzled look from his friend, then he was outside, into the coolness of the early twilight. The day had been short, the umbral was to be even briefer, and tomorrow would be a lumenal of no more than middling duration. The next sunset would come all too quickly. In a few hours, hope would be at an end.

  But it is not yet, he told himself. The brisk air revived him after the torpid atmosphere of the coffeehouse. There has to be a way. But where could he get a hundred regals?

  Once more he considered asking Rafferdy, but as quickly dismissed the notion. It was highly unlikely his friend would have such a sum about him. There was only one possibility Eldyn could think of. He reached into his coat pocket, touching the carnelian brooch and the pearl earrings—the last of his mother’s jewels. He had taken them from their hiding place at the inn that morning with the intent of selling them, for he was running low on funds to pay Mr. Walpert. They were worth far less than a hundred regals, but if he could fetch a good price for them, he might be able to offer the money to Mr. Sarvinge and Mr. Grealing as a token of his good faith. Surely if he did that they would give him more time; they were honorable men.

  Eldyn quickened his pace, hurrying to reach Gold Row before the shops closed.

  AN HOUR LATER found him walking the streets of the Old City. Shadows gathered around him, soft, unbidden. Earlier, Eldyn had gone to every shop on the row, showing the brooch and earrings, and the best price he had been offered for the lot was five regals.

  Five regals! It was an insult. No, it was a crime. The jewels were the last things in the world he had of his mother, save for the memory of her face, her gentle touch. When he was a boy, her hands had been like a balm against his face, soothing the scrapes and bruises his father gave him.

  He fingered the coins in his pocket. Five regals. That was all he had left of her now. It would do nothing to help his cause with Sarvinge and Grealing. Such a small sum could be only an affront to them. It was hardly enough to keep him and Sashie at the inn for another month.

  A ghostly face appeared in the darkness. Eldyn stopped and looked up. Behind iron bars, an angel hovered in the gloom, dark tears streaking his pale, beautiful face. Only it wasn’t an angel. It was just the statue of St. Andelthy. Eldyn’s feet had led him again to the old chapel of St. Adaris, at the end of its narrow lane in the Old City.

  He gripped the bars and peered through, but the churchyard beyond was empty and silent. There was no sign of the priests.

  Eldyn reached into his pocket and took out a coin: not one of the regals from the sale of his mother’s jewels but rather a circle of silver. One side depicted the moon as a smiling face, while the other showed a similarly humanized sun, framed with a radiant mane yet stern of expression. He spun the coin in his hand and saw the faces in alternation: moon, sun, moon. Yet never both faces at once, just like in the sky above.

  Why the illusionist at the Sword and Leaf had given him the coin, and what it was for, Eldyn did not know. He might as well cast it into the gutter. The coin would not pay his way at the inn or buy an investment in the trading company. It was a thing of beauty: worthless.

  He slipped the coin into his pocket with care and continued on his way to the Golden Loom, leaving the darkened church behind.

  Another message was waiting for him at the inn, this one from Dashton Rafferdy. His friend thirsted for drink only slightly more than he did for company. Eldyn went upstairs to check on Sashie, but even as he opened the door to their little rooms, the door to hers slammed shut, nor could he elicit any answer from her through its wooden panels.

  How long she would refuse to speak to him he did not know, but he was growing weary of this behavior. Couldn’t she see that what he had done had been for her benefit?

  And how exactly have you benefited her? He looked around at the cramped room, with its rickety chairs and the hard bench where he made his periodic attempts at sleeping.

  He glanced again at Rafferdy’s note, then leaned his head against the door to her bedchamber. “If you do not need me tonight, dearest, then I will go out for the evening.” He caught the sound of the bed creaking; she had thrown herself upon it. She had heard him.

  Eldyn brushed his coat—though in some places there was little coat left to brush—then returned downstairs. The scent of food wafted from the kitchens. His stomach uttered a noisy complaint; he had not eaten anything that day. He ordered a meal to be sent up for Sashie, but forwent anything for himself. He had already spent too much on the coffee.

  Distracted as he was, Eldyn did not see Miss Walpert until he neared the door. By then it was too late, for she was coming in from the public room, a basket in hand, and there was no way to duck beneath the stairs before she saw him.

  “Why, Mr. Garritt, there you are!” Miss Walpert exclaimed, and at once was upon him. She reached a hand up to her bonnet but succeeded only in making it more crooked yet. “Every time I look for you, you aren’t there, but somewhere else. I should hardly think you lived at my father’s inn anymore for how seldom I see you.”

  He made some soft, useless reply, then started toward the door.

  “You are always in such a hurry to fly away, Mr. Garritt. I’d think you were a kind of bird if I didn’t know otherwise.” She laughed, a sound not unlike what a horse might produce. He gave a tight smile and moved again toward the door, but she said, “You have not eaten! Papa told me to send a meal up to your rooms, but just one, and Miss Garritt is there, I know she is, and so I thought to myself, Mr. Garritt can in no way have eaten properly, it is not possible, and he is so thin, so awfully thin. I’ve often said to myself, I could thread him and sew stitches with him, he’s that thin.”

  Miss Walpert was herself somewhat plump, having a tendency to sample from whatever plates she was bringing from the kitchen.

  Eldyn could not help but be touched by so genuine a concern, however crudely expressed. “Thank you, Miss Walpert, but I am well.” He adjusted his coat, which indeed had grown looser of late. “I am going out. I shall find something later.”

  “You won’t, though,” she said. “You’ll be thinner when I see you next, and one day I won’t see you at all. You’ll step in a crack in the street and slip right through, and no one will ever know what became of you.” She fumbled with the basket and pulled out half a small loaf. “Here, Mr. Garritt.” She pushed the bread into his hands. “Go on, now, let me see you take a bite. Right this moment.”

  He hesitated, but the bread smelled good, and she was watching him. Eldyn took a bite; the juices flowed in his mouth, and his stomach let out a triumphant roar. Now that he had tasted food, it was beyond him to stop; he took several bites, gulping each down.

  God in Eternum, was he some mangy animal scrounging in the street? He willed himself to lower the bread, to slip the remainder in his pocket. “I will pay you for this.”

  She shook her head. “But you needn’t. You could have all the bread you wished and never pay for a thing. Your sister too. My father says his knees do him no good. He says he wishes there was a young m
an about, one to help him with things around the inn. You wouldn’t have to be so thin, Mr. Garritt. You wouldn’t have to fly like a bird no more.” She smiled, a lopsided and yellow-toothed expression; even so, for all its flaws, it might have seemed a kindly gesture, save for the hunger in it—a hunger as fierce as any Eldyn had felt while consuming the bread, and one just as unsatisfied.

  “Good night, Miss Walpert,” he stuttered, and before she could speak again, he was out the door.

  He hurried down the lane, not knowing if she followed, wrapping the shadows around him just in case.

  You could have all the bread you wished and never pay for a thing.

  Yes, he understood now. He could ease his own kind of famishing, and Delina Walpert hers. Mr. Walpert would gain the son he never had. It would not be such an awful existence. It would be far from the life of a gentleman, to be sure. He would have no fine clothes, no fine house or fine carriage. The work would be tedious and endless, but not without its securities and comforts. Mr. Walpert appeared well fed; he smiled at times. And Sashie would be provided for. A life of work at the inn would quickly fade the flower of her beauty; she would become drab. No bright world of masques and balls would await her; no baronet would sweep her away. But nor would she be reduced to dwelling in gin alleys. It would not be such a terrible thing—it would not.

  Like a dark bird, he flew on through the night.

  The sign of the Sword and Leaf flickered in the grimy light of a streetlamp. A large fellow stood watch in the doorway, arms crossed, for it was after nightfall. “Pardon me,” Eldyn said when the man did not open the way.

  “Who’s there?” the big fellow said, squinting into the gloom. “Show yourself.” He made the sign against ghosts and curses, two fingers splayed before his heart.

  The shadows—Eldyn had forgotten to release them. He did so now, casting them off like a cloak, and made a motion as if stepping into the pale circle beneath the streetlamp. The big fellow gave him a startled look, then shook his head and opened the door.