“The book is wrong,” I whispered back.
Periwinkle glanced up at the ceiling, blew out a breath, and looked back down again. “Of course it is. The book is intentionally in error. Our students would have no good reason to use the embero, which is a particularly dangerous spell. So it was written down with a mistake in it, just so students don’t effect it by accident and turn themselves into toads.”
Right, I got it. But I didn’t have to like it. “That’s a stupid thing to do with the magic. Why teach them spells they can’t use?”
“Hush,” Periwinkle said, pointing at my book. “Keep quiet and read.”
Frowning, I opened my book and started reading.
Rowan came in late, then, and slid onto a seat beside me. “What did I miss?” she whispered. She was out of breath.
“Toads,” I said quietly. “Where’ve you been?”
She shrugged and opened her spelltext. “Affairs of state, my lad.”
Ha-ha. I showed her the page we were on and went back to piecing together the larpenti spell, for turning water into other liquids. I wondered where the mistake in the spell was, and if Nevery would teach me the real larpenti spell.
After class was over, I said good-bye to Rowan, slung my bag full of books over my shoulder, and headed for the stairs to the secret tunnels to wait for Nevery. I was thinking about where I was going to look next for my locus magicalicus when Keeston and three of his friends, a boy and two girls, appeared in front of me.
I started to walk around them, but they moved to block my way to the stairs.
“Magister Nevery is your master, is he?” Keeston asked.
Nothing wrong with that question. I nodded.
“But you don’t have a locus magicalicus. So you can’t be sure you’re really a wizard, can you?”
I knew for sure that I was a wizard, but I didn’t have to prove it to Keeston. I shrugged.
Keeston stepped closer. “Can you?”
“I’ll find a locus stone.” Eventually.
Keeston stepped closer. “My master says he’d have you beaten, sneak thief, if you were his apprentice.”
I put my bag down, to keep my hands free. Only one way this kind of conversation was likely to lead. “What for, footlicker?” I asked.
“For disrespect, among other things,” Keeston sneered.
That didn’t make sense. “But I respect Nevery.”
“See, right there?” Keeston glanced aside to his three gray-robed friends, and they nodded. He looked back at me. “You called your master—” He couldn’t bring himself to say Nevery’s name.
The other apprentices were frightened of Nevery. I saw how they quivered like jelly on a plate whenever he was around. I’d heard them tell stories among themselves; they’d heard them from their masters, I reckoned. Like that twenty years ago Nevery had been banished from Wellmet for attempting to kill the duchess, which I didn’t believe, and for trying to burn down the Dawn Palace, which, knowing Nevery, could be true.
At any rate, Keeston was still worked up about it. “You call your master by his right name,” he said.
I nodded.
“You should call him ‘Master.’”
I nodded again. “Yes, he told me that, too. But we agreed that if I taught him to pick locks, I could call him Nevery.”
Keeston drew himself up and spoke triumphantly. “See there?” His friends, lined up like little dolls in a shop window, nodded again. “Right there. My master would have you beaten for that, gutterboy.”
“Like he beats you, crawler?” I asked.
And then he went for me.
I wasn’t expecting it yet, so he got in one punch, right in my face.
Keeston was bigger than I was, but you don’t last long in the Twilight without learning how to fight. Shaking off the blow he’d given me, I ducked under his next swing and gave him a sharp elbow under the ribs. As he bent over, gasping for breath, I kicked him in the collops. He fell to the ground, howling.
His friends, if that’s what they were, backed away, eyes wide.
Drats. I’d probably get in trouble for this. And my face hurt where Keeston had hit me. Oh well. I heaved up my book bag, walked around them, and headed for the stairs.
That night, before supper, Nevery and I sat in the study, he in his chair at one end of the table, me at the other end with my books and papers. I had a lot of reading to do, and Rowan had insisted that I work on my handwriting, which she said was atrocious.
I got right down to it, putting my elbows on the table, propping my head in my hands, and working through a history book. It was very interesting stuff, about the origins of magic in the Peninsular Duchies, of which Wellmet was one. Each city was part of a loose…
I had to stop and take the word apart. Con-fed-er-acy. I got up and fetched the lexicon from the bookshelf and brought it back to my place at the table. Looked up the word. Confederacy: An alliance of different groups or people for a common purpose. What was that purpose, I wondered. I kept reading to see if I could find out.
Wellmet, the text went on, was one of a loose confederacy of cities, each built on a magical node. A magical node, the lexicon said, was a place where, for some reason yet to be determined, magic gathered. Between the nodes, in places where there was little or no magic, were vast wildernesses and deserts and, closer to the cities, farmland, mines, and forests.
I’d never thought about any of these things before. Before coming to Nevery, I’d never really thought about anything beyond finding enough to eat and a warm place to sleep. It was fascinating. Magic was the life of a place, and attracted people, so the cities grew up on magical nodes. It made perfect sense.
“—Are you listening, boy?” Nevery asked loudly.
I looked up, blinking. What?
He pointed at my face. “You’ve been fighting again, have you? Benet?”
Oh. I felt the place where Keeston had hit me. A bruise, probably nice and purple by now, under my eye. “No,” I answered. “Keeston. A boy at the academicos.”
“Hmmm,” Nevery said. “Pettivox’s apprentice, I think.”
I nodded.
He gave me a stern look. “I won’t tolerate fighting, boy.”
“I know. But I don’t like him.”
Nevery raised his eyebrows. “Really.”
“Really,” I answered. “Look, Nevery, it doesn’t bother me that Keeston calls me gutterboy and sneak thief, because that’s what I am. But he jumped on me when I called him what he is.”
“Indeed.” Nevery leaned back in his chair and pulled on the end of his beard. “And what is that?”
“Footlicker and crawler.”
“Ah.” He looked at me, lips twitching. “And he blacked your eye for you.”
Yes, he had.
“Well, boy. Don’t let it happen again.”
Typical Nevery comment. Did he mean don’t let Keeston black my eye again? Don’t fight with him again? Don’t let him call me gutterboy again? Don’t call him crawler again?
I bent my head over my book, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept going over the fight—and it hadn’t been much of a fight, really—and thinking about what Keeston had said and why he had said it. Hmmm. Maybe Keeston hadn’t jumped me because I called him a crawler, but because…
“Nevery?” I said.
He looked up from his book. “What, boy?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I think Keeston’s master beats him.”
Nevery studied me. “Are you worried that I’d have you beaten for something?”
The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. I considered it. “No.”
“You wouldn’t stand for it, would you,” Nevery said.
Not even from Nevery, no. I shook my head.
Nevery nodded. “That is why you, boy, are not a gutterboy or sneak thief.”
Ah. That made perfect sense. Still, I decided, I’d keep my eye on Keeston. I wasn’t so sure he was a bad sort. I’d likely jump on people, too, if I had a mas
ter who beat me.
Of course, if I didn’t find my locus magicalicus soon, I wouldn’t be an apprentice anymore. I wasn’t sure what I’d be. Nothing, maybe.
* * *
At dinner, after evening of studying, boy asked about nature of magic.
Question every apprentice asks, eventually.
Explained Micnu’s theory on magical emergence.
—Micnu wrote a treatise explaining that magic most likely emerges from some kind of geological and atmospheric convergence.
—Atmospheric convergence, boy repeated slowly.
Explained further.—GEOLOGICAL, having something to do with the way the ground below our feet behaves, and ATMOSPHERIC, having to do with the air above, including the weather. You need to read more widely, I said.
—I don’t have time, boy said.
—Make the time, boy. Now, Micnu’s theories are widely accepted, but they are not the only ideas about the nature of magic. Carron’s writings, which are over five hundred years old, argue that magic underlies the land as water does and wells up in some places.
Boy nodded.—What would Micnu and Carron say about the magic leaving Wellmet?
A good question.—What do you think? I asked.
Boy thought for few minutes. Benet served out fish and stewed greens, passed biscuits around. I ate and waited.
—Right, boy said.—I figure Micnu would say there’s been a change in Wellmet’s weather or maybe an earthquake, and that’s changed the con…the convergence. And Carron would say that the well is running dry.
I nodded. Essentially, this correct.
—But, Nevery, boy said.—I don’t think that’s it.
Benet, adding more biscuits to basket, snorted.
—Well, boy, I said.—What is it, then?
—I don’t know, boy said. He took a bit of fish from his plate, fed it to his cat, under table. Sat up, said,—I need to think about it some more.
Need to think about it, too. Interesting conversation. Tend to agree that neither Micnu or Carron’s ideas explain what is happening to Wellmet. After dinner, took boy to study, gave him first book in Carron’s annals and Micnu’s treatise to read.
Meet tomorrow with advanced student from academicos; someone likely to have skills to assist me.
* * *
CHAPTER 18
Sixteen days left. I’d been wasting too much time being a student and an apprentice. From now on, I needed to spend all day, every day, searching for my locus magicalicus.
We were eating breakfast at the table in the kitchen, me and Nevery and Benet.
“Nevery,” I said, after taking a bite of porridge and wiping my mouth.
“Use your napkin, boy, not your sleeve,” Nevery growled.
I looked at my sleeve. What did he mean?
Nevery held up his napkin, then used it to wipe his mouth.
Oh, that’s what it was for. I used my napkin and then went back to my question. “Nevery, I need one of those password stones for the tunnel gates.”
“You need a haircut, is what you need,” Benet said.
I didn’t have time for haircuts. “Can I have one, Nevery?”
“A keystone?” Nevery said, taking a drink and setting down his teacup. “Why, boy?”
The bite of porridge I was eating turned to ashes in my mouth. I swallowed it down. “I need to go out into Wellmet and search for my locus magicalicus,” I said.
“Yes, all right.” He pointed at me with his spoon. “But you go to the academicos every day.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to go to school. I didn’t have time.
I was from the Twilight. So, I reckoned, I’d find my locus magicalicus in the Twilight.
And if I was going to search in the Twilight, I had to look like I belonged there. If I went in wearing my coat and hat and woolen scarf, and my stout boots, somebody—some thief or bagman—would jump on me, drag me into an alley, and pluck me like a chicken.
So after stepping onto the west side of the river, I found the nearest alley, where I took off my warm clothes and boots and hid them in a dry hole under a flat stone, and rubbed dirt on my face and in my hair and on my bare feet. Takes a while to work up a really good layer of grime, but it would do.
Then I went out and searched.
I started down by the river, sticking to the shadows in the warehouse district, slinking past the docks and the dockside taverns. Nothing. Farther south, the docks ended and mudflats lined the river. When I’d lived in the Twilight I’d gone mudlarking, because you could find, washed up in the mud, metal to sell, and sometimes a copper lock or two on a rotting purse string, or a bundle of old clothes.
Mudlarking for my locus magicalicus was hopeless. All I got for my trouble was cold. And muddy.
Ten days.
I moved on from the riverside and tried the workers’ tenements in the Steeps, but found nothing. Then I tried the area around Dusk House, the Underlord’s mansion.
Late in the afternoon, I was searching in an alleyway, digging through a pile of garbage—rags and rotting wood, broken bottles and a dead rat—when I looked up and saw a man in a black wizard’s robe stride past the mouth of the alley. Pettivox!
If he was going to see the Underlord again, he was up to something, sure as sure, no matter what Nevery said.
I edged out of the alley. As he climbed the street, I followed, keeping to the shadows.
He veered off, cutting down a side street, toward the river, then down a steep set of stairs until he came out at one of the factories along the river. I lurked in a doorway until he went inside.
Tricky following him in there. But I had to find out what Pettivox was up to.
The factory was a huge building built of soot-stained brick, with belching chimneys and narrow windows painted black. I slid in the doorway, not far behind the wizard, glad it was dark and dusty. And noisy with the clatter-rattle of millworks; it was a factory for making cloth. Workers, coming and going past whirring machines for spinning thread, looked like sooty black ghosts. At the machines themselves, powered by magic brought in through huge, pulsing pipes overhead, rows of children bent their heads, threading spindles with quick fingers. Their hair was shaved short so it wouldn’t be caught in the machines and yanked off their heads. They didn’t even look up as I passed.
Pettivox stood at the end of a row of whirling bobbins. Another man, a factory boss dressed in a black suit, spoke with him. They shouted to be heard above the rattling machines, so, even lurking deep in the shadows, I heard most of what they said.
“Can you get some more?” Pettivox shouted.
The factory man shook his head and muttered something.
Pettivox scowled. “…must have more slow-silver! If you don’t get it, the Underlord will—” He leaned over and snarled something right into the other man’s face; the man flinched away. Then he nodded.
At that, Pettivox whirled away and stalked down the dim-dark millwork rows, and I followed him out into the day, which, gray as it was, seemed bright after the factory.
Pettivox headed up the steep street again, me not far behind him. He turned a corner—still headed toward the Underlord’s—and I hurried to catch up, but he was striding along quickly.
Too far ahead, he turned another corner. I raced up the street and pelted around the corner into an alley, and he was there, waiting.
“Hah!” he said, and grabbed me. His eyes narrowed as he realized who I was. “You!”
Still gripping me by the arms, Pettivox shoved me deeper into the alley; I looked over my shoulder and saw, behind me, that the narrow alley led to a brick wall. Dead end. Trapped.
“Nevery’s boy,” Pettivox said. I twisted out of his grip and backed up a step, trying to catch my breath. He stepped after me, forcing me deeper into the alley. “You were following me,” he said. “You’re poking your nose in where it doesn’t belong, thief. You should be careful a blackbird doesn’t come along and snip it off.”
Underlord Crowe, he me
ant.
Pettivox gave me a nasty smile, his white teeth gleaming. “What would Nevery think if his little spy went missing? I wonder.”
He’d think I’d run away, was what he would think. I couldn’t let Pettivox drag me in to see the Underlord, because I’d never get away again.
As he reached out to grab me, I ducked under his hands and dove to the ground, rolling out of the alley. He turned, shouting something, but I was already on my feet, racing down the cobbled street. He didn’t follow, but I kept running, around corners, down steep alley steps, until my breath was tearing at my lungs and my legs felt quivery and weak.
Finally I reached the alley where I’d hidden my coat and boots. Gasping for breath, I leaned against the brick wall. Stupid, almost getting caught like that. Stupid. I’d have to be more careful.
“Any luck?” Nevery asked when I brought him tea late that night.
I shook my head. “Nevery, I saw Pettivox in the Twilight.”
“Not now, boy,” Nevery said. “And you didn’t put any honey in the tea.”
Without saying anything, I took the tea down to the kitchen, put honey in, and brought it back up. Nevery said an absentminded thank-you, his nose deep in a fat book, some long-dead wizard’s grimoire he’d borrowed from the academicos library. Clear as clear, he didn’t want to be bothered with anything else. I left quietly and went up to my attic room. By the light of a candle, I read Micnu’s treatise. When it got late enough, I blew out the light and wrapped my blankets around me. But I couldn’t sleep.
Nine days. Eight. Seven. Six…
I spent all day, every day, wandering through the cold, damp streets of the Twilight, searching for my locus magicalicus. I hoped that I’d be walking along and I’d accidentally kick a rock and a tingle of recognition would run through me, and I’d feel compelled to pick up the stone, and it would be mine—my locus stone, proof that I was a wizard, my reason for staying at Heartsease with Nevery.
But as the days passed, I got nothing except bruised toes.
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