by C. J. Archer
"I can help him solve those puzzles while living elsewhere and visiting every day."
"It ain't the same. Sometimes urgent business comes up and you'll be too far away."
I acknowledged the point with a nod. "And after tonight? Why do you want me to stay now?"
"Because of this." She indicated the table, the empty crystal decanter and glasses.
A weight settled into my chest.
"Well?" Duke prompted. "You going to stay, India?"
Cyclops gathered up the glasses in one big hand. "It'll only be until this is over and Matt's watch is fixed," he said, depositing the glasses on the tray. "Then we'll go home and you can do as you like."
I folded my arms against the chill but it inched up my spine anyway. "I'll think about it."
I didn't have a chance to speak to Matt in the morning. He left directly after breakfast to call upon Police Commissioner Munro at New Scotland Yard. Before he departed, he suggested Chronos and I work in his study, away from prying eyes and ears.
I saw to Miss Glass's comfort first and after Cyclops promised to keep her company, I made my way to the bedroom Mrs. Bristow had assigned to Chronos. He followed me from there to Matt's study, where he sat on Matt's chair behind the desk, leaving the other chair for me.
His gaze brushed over the contents of the desk and, seeing nothing of interest, said, "Show me your watch."
"Why?"
He sighed. "So I can see what magic you put into it."
"I told you, I didn't put magic into it. Magic simply found its way in. Somehow." It sounded absurd but neither of us laughed.
He stretched his arm across the desk. "Show me the watch, India. I need to see what you're capable of before I can teach you what you don't know."
"I don't know anything. That's the point. Anything I have done is entirely by accident." Nevertheless, I placed my watch in his palm.
He dropped it on the desk surface and shook out his hand. "Blimey!"
"Careful!" I snatched up the watch and inspected the silver case for dents. "My parents gave me that watch. It's my most valued item."
"It's a relatively inexpensive hunter," he said absently as he inspected his palm.
"It may be relatively inexpensive to you but it's priceless to me. Not that I expect you to understand. It would seem you only see value as a monetary thing."
"Not quite." He looked up from his hand. It was red. My watch had done that. Or, rather, my magic in the watch. Of all the times I'd touched an object that had been handled by a magician, I'd only ever felt warmth, not a burning sensation that left a mark. Chronos must be more sensitive to it.
"You're angry with me," he said.
"How astute of you."
He sighed. "I didn't ask for this."
"So you said last night. You didn't ask to be a husband, father or grandfather. I know you expect that to absolve you from blame for leaving the family when you did, but I won't forgive you."
"I left because my life was in danger. I didn't seek you out when I returned because my life is still in danger. Do you want me killed?"
"I haven't yet decided."
He chuckled. "You have a lot of your grandmother in you. She was a fire cracker. We clashed terribly."
I hadn't always been a fire cracker. I used to be meek and mild, and sometimes I still was. That was the woman Eddie had liked, and so I didn't particularly like her anymore. Still, that side of me often surfaced. Chronos, however, brought out my inner shrew.
I held my watch by its chain. "Do you want me to open it for you?"
He pulled out a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and used it as a barrier between his skin and my watch then he retrieved his portable cloth case of tools. With his magnifier in place, he opened my watch's casing and used tweezers to remove a spring. "How many times have you worked on this?"
"A hundred or more. It's something I do to calm myself when I'm upset. Working on it soothes my nerves. That sounds silly," I added.
He made no comment, merely continuing to extract parts with his tweezers. I was not concerned. It was easy enough to put them back again.
"That explains why it's so hot," he said.
I leaned forward, thinking he'd found the explanation among the watch's workings. But there was nothing unusual among the innards laid out beside the device. They were ordinary parts of an ordinary watch. "What do you mean?"
He returned a spring to the housing. "Each time you've worked on this, you've added another layer of heat. The clock in the drawing room was also hot to touch, but not as hot as this."
"I've worked on that perhaps three or four times."
"Because it was slow?"
"No."
He smirked. "Because you needed to work on a timepiece."
"It's a compulsion." I rubbed my hands together in my lap and told myself I did not need to help him put the parts back.
"That's normal. Any magician, no matter his or her discipline, will tell you their craft calls to them."
I nodded, remembering Oscar Barratt the journalist and ink magician saying the same thing.
"What I don't understand," Chronos went on, "is why there is heat in this watch and the clock when you didn't use a spell. In my experience, magic heat should only be present after a spell casting."
"Could the watch's heat be from my father's magic? He gave it to me, along with my mother, who you say was also a magician." A rawness opened up inside me like a wound. I rarely thought about my parents, thanks to being so busy helping Matt lately, but when I did, I felt their loss keenly. My mother had been gone for years yet I still missed her, still cherished the memory of her gentle hands arranging my hair, her comforting arms around me, her smile. And her delicious baked goods. Father's death was more recent and my memories of him fresher and sometimes so painful I could burst into tears. I closed my fist around my watch and drew in a deep, steadying breath.
"It doesn't explain that much heat," Chronos said. "Not unless he worked on it hundreds of times too. And it doesn't explain the clock downstairs." He stood and moved to the mantelpiece where a crystal regulator clock ticked quietly. He touched one of its gilt feet only to quickly let go again.
I joined him and touched the clock too. "It's warm," I admitted.
"Hot," he corrected. "It's likely you can't feel the strength because it's your magic causing it." He shook his head at me. "Remarkable," he said softly. "You're powerful indeed."
I stared down at my hands. It was somewhat thrilling to be called powerful, until I remembered what it meant—almost nothing. Granted, my watch and some clocks had helped me, and for that I was grateful, but if I didn't own a shop or factory, what use was the magic? Even if I did own a shop and sold timepieces, what would my magic's purpose be?
"A goldsmith magician once told me—"
"Goldsmith!" he said, sitting in Matt's chair again. "How fortunate for him."
"He's dead and was likely the last of his kind. Besides, he couldn't make gold, only detect magic in gold that had been worked by a magician in years past. It was he who told me that magicians use magic to achieve the thing they want most from their craft. For a doctor, it's to save lives, for a builder, it's to have their structures stay up, for a mapmaker it's to locate things, timepiece magicians want our devices to run efficiently."
He held up a hand for me to stop. "Your point?"
"Magicians only have a single trick."
"Not all. I have two, for instance. Making a timepiece run efficiently, and extending the length of others' magic."
I leaned forward. "Go on." Finally, I might understand the purpose of magic.
"Let me clarify. I've met quite a few magicians in my endeavors, and most believe, as you do, that magic is pointless. But listening to the tales from other magical cultures older than ours, more remote and untouched than ours, I think it used to serve a greater purpose."
"I did hear one story about maps coming to life and rivers bleeding off the edge and flooding villages." I shook my he
ad. "Fairytales."
"Are you sure?"
I snorted in a most unladylike manner. "Have you ever heard of a village drowned by a line drawn on a piece of paper?"
His lips twitched with another supercilious smile. "Do you read the bible?"
"I go to church regularly. More than you, I'm sure."
"That's highly probable, but wasn't my question. If you read the bible, you'd recall the stories of plagues, floods and miraculous events."
"Are you saying those events were all caused by magic?"
"There are other legends and myths too. Flying carpets, hair made of snakes, beautiful gardens that require no water, or water that flows upstream."
"I ask again—do you think magic explains them?"
"Why not? It makes sense to credit them to magic. Some of them are seemingly impossible and yet we have evidence of them today. Ancient structures, for example. Pyramids, aqueducts, tunnels, viaducts… Many still stand after thousands of years. How, if not for magic?"
"You're mad."
"You wouldn't be the first to call me that. Not even the first of my relatives." He picked up his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. "But I've lain my hands on the stones of an Egyptian pyramid and I can swear to you, they were warm."
"Egypt is a hot place."
"Magical warmth feels different than heat from the sun. Even you know that. Stop trying to be deliberately provocative, India."
"I am not!"
"You are. You're like me in that regard," he said with a wry twist of his mouth.
"I wish you'd stop saying that," I mumbled. "I'm not like you at all."
"You don't know that yet. You hardly even know yourself."
"Of course I know myself, and better than you do. What an absurd thing to say."
"Learning who you are and your place in the world doesn't come to one fully until one is about forty."
I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. "For you, perhaps. Anyway, I am not going to make watches or clocks, or use my magic in any way other than to occasionally tinker. All of those myths you talk about are just stories now. If spells once made a carpet fly then the spell is lost. Perhaps it's for the best. Anyway, magic is not allowed to be practiced. Perhaps that is for the best too."
"You've never considered what the world would be like if we magicians could use our magic freely? If the artless accepted us? Even came to us to fix their imperfect artless creations?"
I kept my focus on the watch still in my hand. "The artless tradesmen and women would lose their customers, their livelihoods."
"And magicians would have a better one. So?"
I looked up sharply. "Are you so heartless that you would wish thousands upon thousands of people out of employment? You would want their children to starve?"
"They would find other work."
I clicked my tongue but didn't bother to argue with him. I would not change his mind with a few words.
"Now you sound like your father," he said with a shake of his head. "And your mother, your grandmother—"
"Stop it! Stop talking about them as if they were merely mutual acquaintances. They may have meant nothing to you—"
"I never said that!" He shot to his feet and strode to the door but he did not leave. The clock on the mantel chimed the hour, its high, delicate tune loud in the dense silence. "I'm not sure I can teach you."
"Pardon?"
"I'm not sure I can teach you anything, India. You already seem to know how to fix watches and clocks."
"Not all. There were two in my father's shop that eluded me. One ran slow and the other fast."
He turned to look at me, white eyebrow raised high. "You tried fixing them?"
"Once, yes, when I was young. Father didn't want me touching them after that. He said their faults made them interesting, unique. He never did try to sell them."
He sighed. "I never understood Elliot."
He plucked the clock off the mantel and signaled for me to join him on the other side of the desk. He pulled my chair around too and we both sat, the clock on the desk in front of us.
"Teach me the accuracy spell," I said in case he had a mind to talk about something else.
He did. It was rather simple, just a few lines in a foreign tongue that sounded quite musical.
"What language is that?"
"Magic."
"That's not a real language."
"If you can find it in a book with a neat label to describe its origins, then by all means, call it that if you like. But I will call it the language of magic as I have always done, and how every magician I've ever met has called it."
If he wasn't so arrogant I'd be glad to call it the language of magic. It sounded rather romantic. I wouldn't tell him that. I doubted he had a romantic bone in his body. He would only mock.
"Now the other spell," I said. "The one that extends the length of other magic when joined. The one you used on Matt's watch. Teach me that."
He fidgeted with the clock, taking his time closing the housing at the back.
"Go on," I prompted, sliding the clock to my side of the desk, out of his reach.
"It's a more complex spell."
"Teach it to me."
"I was going to, India," he said with an exasperated sigh. "Some patience wouldn't go astray. You've got as much of it as—" He cleared his throat. "Never mind."
There were many more words in the extending spell and I had trouble remembering them all. Chronos wouldn't let me write them down, however, saying it was too dangerous to have them lying around. Few magicians wrote down their spells, preferring to pass them on orally. It explained why so many spells had been lost, and I wasn't sure it was a good way to insure the longevity of magic, but I did understand the need for secrecy. Dr. Millroy seemed to be the exception, having written the spell in his diary.
Even after I remembered the words in the correct order, Chronos said I hadn't got the spell quite right. There were nuances, some words were meant to be spoken softly and others harsher. I also needed to get the accent exactly right.
"I think you have it," he said after half an hour of repetition. "You picked it up quickly. Of course, we won't know if it worked until you try combining it with another magician's spell, and even then you must wait to see if the other magic wears off or stays."
I repeated both spells again, paying particular care with the extending one.
"Very good." Chronos dragged his hands through his wisps of hair, making them dance above his head.
"Now I just have to remember it."
"You will, with practice. We'll say the words every day, several times a day, until you do." He tapped his temple. "It'll sink in, soon enough. For now, we should stop and rest. My head aches."
I followed him to the door. "How did you learn the extending spell?" I asked.
"My grandfather taught my father, who taught me. My grandfather was a powerful magician. There wasn't a watch he couldn't fix, a clock he couldn't make run on time. Quite a feat with the rudimentary scientific knowledge of his day."
"Did he ever use it to extend someone's life as you have done?"
"I don't know. I never asked him, and he never mentioned it. It wasn't until after his death that I began my experiments, and it was years after that when it occurred to me that the spell might work to save a life when combined with a doctor's magic. I sometimes wonder what he would have thought."
"Was he a good man, or was his moral compass as skewed as your own?"
His gaze narrowed. "For someone who needs my help, you've got sass, as the Americans say."
"Ah, but I don't need your help anymore. You've given me the spells." His face fell and a bubble of satisfaction rose within me. "Don't worry, Grandpapa, I won't ask Matt to throw you out. We are family, after all, and family must look after one another, no matter how cantankerous."
I strode down the corridor ahead of him, wishing I had eyes in the back of my head to see his face. I refused to turn around and look. Let him think I had no inte
rest in him.
I wish I did have no interest in him. But that was very far from the truth.
It became apparent as the morning wore on that Chronos was a man who preferred action to sitting with ladies in drawing rooms. Hardly five minutes had passed in Miss Glass's company when he suggested going for a walk. Cyclops, standing by the door, shook his head.
"That's not a good idea," he intoned.
Chronos threw his hands in the air. "I won't try to escape. I have an agreement with Mr. Glass."
"Escape?" Miss Glass said, setting aside her correspondence.
Chronos looked trapped. I'd told him not to discuss magic in the presence of Matt's aunt for the sake of her fragile mind. As far as she knew, he was my long lost grandfather come home to see his granddaughter.
"A figure of speech," he said. "I don't like to be cooped up inside for long."
She folded her letter and returned it to the portable writing desk on her lap. "I'll amuse you with conversation."
His gaze darted to Cyclops, as if he had a mind to tackle him and run out.
I smiled and settled into the sofa. "An excellent notion, Miss Glass. What shall we discuss? Your friends? The new fashion for puffed sleeves? Oh, I know. Tell Chronos all about your nieces. I'm sure tales of the Glass women will quickly banish thoughts of escape from his mind."
If looks could kill, Chronos would have had me hung, drawn and quartered.
Miss Glass made a disgusted sound in her throat. "Nobody wants to hear about those silly girls, India. You are in an odd humor today." To Chronos she said, "Tell me about your travels. My brother, Matthew's father, traveled extensively. Matthew did too when he was young. I always wanted to see the Continent but my father and eldest brother would not allow it."
"A pity," Chronos said. "Travel improves the mind and broadens one's view. I find the thinking of people who've never traveled to be narrow and staid."
Miss Glass smiled but I did not. "I've never traveled," I told him. "Am I staid and narrow-minded?"
"I hardly know you well enough, but in my experience, you probably are." He lifted one shoulder, as if a shrug could soften the blow.