The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

by Galen Beckett

  That is what he meant to say. Instead, he had said, Give it to me, and I’ll see what I can do.

  Such was the look of gratitude in her eyes that he could not bear it, and he made a jest that if she heard a loud noise and saw a large column of sparks rising up from the vicinity of Warwent Square, then it was only him attempting to work a spell.

  This had won a laugh, and at the sound all his worries fled. They spent a pleasant hour walking in the garden, comparing the people they saw to flowers—shy Miss Primroses or grandiose Lord Peonies or old ladies in their bonnets, heads drooping like harebells. They parted with a promise to meet again soon, no matter the outcome of his experiment with the box.

  He returned to his home and wrote a note. When the reply came back later that same day, he was hardly surprised at its contents. Rafferdy was welcome to call at his earliest convenience.

  Footsteps echoed into the parlor. Rafferdy stood, tucking the box inside his coat. A moment later, Mr. Bennick entered the room, and the two men shook hands. As always, Mr. Bennick was dressed in black; the color emphasized the sharp lines of his face and the shadows around his eyes.

  “I imagine you were surprised to get my letter,” Rafferdy said.

  “Not in the least,” Mr. Bennick replied. “I knew it was only a matter of time until you came to visit with me.”

  Rafferdy was taken aback by the cool surety with which these words were uttered. “Indeed? Then I must presume you possess an enchanted mirror that shows you the future. In which case, I would very much like to see how I should bet at cards tonight.”

  “Magick cannot reveal things that have not come to pass—though there are some who hold it can open windows to the past. It was not a spell that told me you would come. It was that.” He gestured toward Rafferdy’s right hand.

  “The ring, you mean?” Rafferdy said.

  The taller man nodded. “I knew eventually you must come either wanting to know how to get it off or wanting to know why you were able to put it on in the first place. I confess, it was the latter result that I hoped for when I sent it to you. Would you care for a sherry?” He moved to a cabinet and took out a decanter.

  Rafferdy’s outrage was redoubled, and so agitated was he that it took him a moment to find his voice. “So you admit it, then! You admit you sent me this wretched thing.” He clenched his right hand into a fist. The gem on the ring winked like a blue eye.

  “Of course I sent it to you,” Mr. Bennick said as he filled a pair of glasses. “A fact I was certain you’d quickly deduce. Didn’t you?”

  Rafferdy stepped toward him. “Yes, I did. But why? Was it a punishment for that day I followed you? I was curious, that was all. It was a silly game, nothing more.”

  “It was not my intention to punish your curiosity, Mr. Rafferdy, but rather to reward it.”

  “Reward it? With a hideous piece of jewelry I can never remove in my life? You have a strange notion of a reward!”

  “It can be removed,” Mr. Bennick said, and handed him a glass.

  Rafferdy could only stare as the other man sat in a chair by the window. He motioned to the chair opposite him. Rafferdy drew in a breath, quaffed half his sherry in one swallow, then sat.

  “What did Mr. Mundy tell you about the ring?”

  “That a magician could remove it only with powerful enchantments, spells that would likely cost the magician—” Rafferdy drew in a breath. “Cost him his mind or his life.”

  Mr. Bennick smiled, but it was an unwholesome expression to Rafferdy’s eye, like the leer of a salacious faun in some ancient Tharosian comedy.

  “That sounds like our good Mr. Mundy.”

  “So it’s not true, then?”

  “On the contrary, it’s perfectly true. That is, it is true that a magician cannot remove a House ring without grave peril. But one who is not a magician—such a person can remove it easily.”

  “That makes no sense,” Rafferdy said, exasperated by this talk. “If one isn’t a magician, how can one put it on in the first place? Besides, I’m not a magician. I can’t do magick.”

  “But you have done magick, as you well know. Even if you had not, you would still be a magician, Mr. Rafferdy, for you were born one.” Mr. Bennick took a sip of his sherry. “You were a small child when I first met you at Lord and Lady Marsdel’s—four or five years old, no more. All the same, I thought I saw a glimmer of it in you, so I researched the Rafferdy lineage and discovered I was right. You are directly descended from one of the seven Old Houses—the House of Gauldren, to be exact.”

  None of this was truly new to Rafferdy, yet it disturbed him all the same. “Then that means my father is a magician as well. Why didn’t you give him a ring?”

  “Because he would not be able to wear it. All magicians are descended from one of the Old Houses, Mr. Rafferdy, but not all who can claim such ancestry are born magicians. Only in a few does the Old Blood run true.”

  Rafferdy slouched in his chair. “Lucky me.”

  “Some would say you are lucky, but that is for you to decide.”

  “What if I decide to remove the ring?”

  “That is your decision as well.”

  Rafferdy sat up. “How can it be done? You said it yourself—a magician can’t take it off without grave risk.”

  “It’s simple,” Mr. Bennick said. “You must make it so you are no longer a magician.”

  This was absurd. He was being toyed with. “You said I was born one. How can I make myself into something I’m not?”

  Mr. Bennick’s dark gaze went to the window. “There are spells,” he said at length. “Spells that, if performed carefully and worked by enough magicians acting in concert, can forever extinguish the spark of magickal talent within a man. He can remember what it is like to do magick, how it feels, can even speak the incantations and draw the runes of power, but the ancient words are ash on his tongue, the runes dead pebbles in his hands. Once the spell has been worked upon him, he is a magician no longer. Nor, once it has been done, can it ever be reversed. He is cut off from magick forever.” Mr. Bennick turned his gaze back. “Is that what you want, Mr. Rafferdy?”

  Rafferdy licked his lips. It made no sense; he had no desire to be a magician. All the same, Mr. Bennick’s words had set his stomach to churning, and a clammy sweat had broken out on his brow. It was as if someone had asked him to consider severing one of his limbs with a knife. He found himself looking at the hand with which Mr. Bennick held his glass. It was the right hand and was unadorned by any ring. But everyone said he had been a magician once….

  Mr. Bennick set down his glass and stood. “So which is it, Mr. Rafferdy? I wonder which reason has brought you here today. Do you wish to have the ring removed, or do you wish to know what it means to wear it?”

  Rafferdy looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Either way, why are you so keen to help me?”

  “It is as I said that night at Lady Marsdel’s house, Mr. Rafferdy—already the clouds gather on the horizon. A time will come again, perhaps sooner than we think, when Altania has need of great magicians.”

  “You think I can be one?”

  “That is entirely up to you, Mr. Rafferdy.”

  Rafferdy glanced out the window. Above the rooftops, the sky was a flawless blue. However, he saw a boy on a corner hawking broadsheets, and he knew Mr. Bennick was right. Clouds were gathering—clouds of ink, and paper that crackled like lightning. But it was only a storm of words that brewed. Besides, it was not for Altania’s sake he had come here, but for the sake of one person only. He drained his sherry glass and stood.

  “I want to know more about magick,” he said. “I want to learn more about the opening and closing of things.”

  For a long moment Mr. Bennick regarded him, eyes half hooded. At last he nodded. “Then let us begin.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ELDYN SET DOWN the broadsheet—the latest issue of The Messenger—and knew that, for the moment, they were safe.

  “I want to go out
,” Sashie said.

  She paced before the door, turning every few steps, for the room was cramped. Eldyn had not chosen this inn for its comforts but rather for its paucity of windows and their narrow breadth—insufficient for even a slender young woman to pass through.

  “Come and have an orange,” he said, taking a pair of fruits from his coat pocket. “I bought them for you. I know how much you like them. They came all the way from across the sea.” He held out one of the oranges.

  “I can’t breathe in here!” she cried, twisting her hair around a finger. “There’s no air. I’ll go mad if I can’t go out, I swear it!”

  She grabbed the door handle and tried to open it, but the door did not budge. Eldyn had locked it from within, and he kept the key on a chain around his neck. At first he had kept it in his pocket, until he woke one night to discover her trying to pilfer it.

  Now she came to him and flung herself on her knees by his chair. “Please, dear brother. Please, you must let me go out. I can’t bear it in here any longer. I’m suffocating.” She turned large, pleading eyes up to him. “I only want to see the sun, to feel the wind on my face. Just for a moment, that’s all. I’ll perish if I don’t.”

  She did look wan and faded. All the same, he shook his head. “You know that’s impossible, dearest. You can’t leave. Not until I am certain you understand—not until I can trust you to do what’s right.”

  “You can trust me, dear brother.” She rested her cheek against his leg. “I will do what you say. You must believe me.”

  He set down the orange and stroked her head. “I want to believe you, Sashie. I truly do. And I know you want to do what’s best.”

  “Then you’ll let me go outside?” She raised her head, her eyes wide and unblinking.

  Eldyn sighed, then shook his head. “No, dearest.”

  At once her eyes narrowed, and her fingers dug into his leg. “I hate you!” she hissed, and leaped to her feet. “I hate you more than I ever hated Father! At least he didn’t hold me prisoner.”

  She snatched up one of the oranges, then sulked to the little alcove that served as her bedchamber and jerked the curtain shut. Eldyn did not go to her; it was better she stayed in there, away from the one grimy window. Again he picked up the broadsheet, and for the first time in the days since they had fled the apartment over the shoemaker’s shop, he smiled.

  “Even he can’t be in two places at once,” he said.

  Earlier, he had dared to venture out to buy the oranges, hoping to cheer Sashie with them. On his way back to the inn he had passed a boy selling broadsheets, and a notice on the front page had caught his eye: HIGHWAYMAN MAKES OFF WITH MURGHESE GOLD. Eldyn had read the first lines of the story, and when the boy complained that only the large print was free, he paid his penny and took the broadsheet back to the inn.

  According to the article, the gold—a thousand crescents marked with the seven stars of the empire—had been on its way to a magnate in one of the western counties and represented the handsome profits from a trading venture. The shipment was heavily guarded, but one of the guards had been in a conspiracy with the highwayman. When the thief accosted the shipment, the guard turned on his fellows. One of the guards was shot dead, and the others were bound with rope while the highwayman and his accomplice made off with the Murghese gold.

  In the fray, a bullet grazed the highwayman’s head, knocking off his hat and sending his mask askew. While none of the guards got a good look at his face, enough was seen to be able to offer a general description of the highwayman: he was youngish, tall, and broad-shouldered, with hair as gold as the coins he stole. The thieves were last seen riding west and were certainly on their way to Torland with their ill-gotten fortune. That the gold would find its way into the hands of would-be rebels was a certainty.

  The incident had happened only two days ago. Again Eldyn calculated the possibilities. Even if Westen (and there was no doubt in his mind that he was the highwayman in the story) rode as hard as possible to Torland, handed off the stolen gold, and came back by the swiftest coach, it would still be eighty hours at the earliest before he could return to Invarel. Which meant it did not matter if Sashie showed herself in front of the window. And which also meant they had time to make their escape.

  They would book passage on a ship down the river, to County Caerdun in the very south of Altania. They could begin their life anew, far from Invarel—far from anyone that knew who they were. True, he did not quite know how they would live when they arrived in Caerdun. He had little more than the money to pay for their passage and no time to earn more before they left.

  Not that he would still have a job if he were to return to Sadent, Mornden, & Bayle. There was no point in going back to the trading company. When he did not show up several days ago, his chair would have been given to the next man waiting in line for a job. He hoped Chubbs was well and avoiding Whackskuller’s baton.

  He felt a momentary pang when he thought that he would never again see Chubbs, or his old college companions, or (with an even greater pang) the theaters on Durrow Street, but it was the only way they could be safe from Westen. It was the only way they could be free.

  Hardest to bear was the thought of not seeing Rafferdy again. While they had seen each other little of late, the thought of being so far away from his only true friend was painful. However, there was no choice. He would write to Rafferdy and tell him only that he was going away; he would not say where, for fear Westen might try to extort such information out of him. And perhaps someday, when Eldyn knew it was safe at last, he would be able to return to Invarel and tell Rafferdy all about it over a cup of punch.

  He picked up his orange, turning it over in his hand, marveling that it had come so far from the place it grew, on a ship all the way from some sun-drenched orchard in the Principalities across the sea, on the eastern edge of the empire. He peeled the orange and ate it, savoring its sweetness. Then he left the chamber, locking the door behind him, and went to book passage for himself and his sister on a ship of their own.

  THE DOCKYARDS WERE down in Waterside, and since the weather was fair (and since he wasn’t certain exactly how much passage on a ship down the river would cost), Eldyn forwent a hack cab and walked instead. The night had been short, the lumenal was to be longish, and the air was already growing sultry. As he walked in the sunlight, he could imagine he was already basking in the gentle climes of southern Altania, beginning his new life there.

  Perhaps it was thinking of the future that made him nostalgic for the past. Besides, he was walking through Waterside already, and it was hardly out of his way. He turned down a narrow lane and walked past the fuller’s and the brewery. Then he rounded a corner, and the Golden Loom came into view.

  The inn looked drabber than he remembered. Had Mr. Walpert’s health taken a turn for the worse so he could no longer keep the place up? No—it was only that Eldyn’s memories of the place were overly kind. For a time, he and Sashie had been happy there. After what they had endured of late, it was no wonder seeing the Golden Loom filled him with fond thoughts. But far gladder times lay ahead of them, in Caerdun in the south. Besides, his thoughts would not be nearly so fond if Miss Delina Walpert were to come out the door and see him there! Eldyn hurried on, giving the inn a wide berth.

  Just ahead, on the other side of the street, a tall figure appeared from around a corner.

  The capacity to move, to breathe, fled Eldyn. The soles of his boots adhered to the cobblestones of the street. It could not be that he was here. He was in Torland, gloating over his ill-gotten gold. That was what the story in The Messenger had said.

  Westen walked toward the Golden Loom on long legs, his boots and the brass buttons on his coat gleaming in the sun, his gold hair loose about his shoulders. He moved not furtively like a criminal but like a lord in his own land. A few more strides and he would be even with Eldyn. All he had to do was turn his head just a little to the left. The street was neither wide nor crowded, and nothing would hide Eldyn
from the highwayman’s gaze.

  Even if he could have moved, Eldyn dared not for fear the motion would attract attention. Westen reached the door of the inn. He started to open it—he was going to go inside.

  The highwayman paused. Perhaps it was some feral, robber’s instinct that let him know he was being observed. He stepped back from the door, then turned around.

  Night fell.

  The sun was extinguished in an instant, but there was no moon, no stars, no streetlamps or glowing candlelit windows. All was black as the Abyss. Eldyn staggered, hands groping before him. Had fear struck him blind?

  A hand fell on his shoulder. “This way,” spoke a voice in his ear.

  He was aware of a slender silvery shape beside him.

  “Quickly now, follow me,” the voice said.

  Who or what the silvery figure was, Eldyn did not know, only that it was not Westen. The shimmering form held out a hand. He grasped it in his own, then lurched after the other as he was led through darkness.

  Eldyn felt them turn left and right, and several times his boots caught on something rough and hard, but each time the silvery figure kept a grip on him and pulled him onward. At last he could run no further. He staggered to a halt, his sweating hand slipping from the other that grasped it.

  “It’s all right,” the voice said. “I think we’ve gone far enough.”

  A silvery hand moved, and the sun appeared, burning the darkness away in an instant. The light dazzled Eldyn’s eyes so that for a minute he was as blinded as he had been in the preternatural dark. At last he blinked the tears away, and he saw the Lowgate just ahead up the street. They had come farther than he thought, to the edge of the Old City.

  “Are you well?” said the voice beside him.

  He turned and saw that his companion was not some shimmering wraith but rather a young man in a black coat. He was of a height and age with Eldyn, but light where Eldyn was dark. His eyes were sea-colored, and his hair was bound with a red ribbon behind his neck. His features were fine, but a squared-off jaw, pronounced brows, and a short blond beard lent him a manly look.