The Magic Thief

by Sarah Prineas

  The streets of the Twilight were dark and deserted. A freezing wind shrieked down the steep, empty streets, driving snow before it. The factories by the river were silent and still. As I crept through the cramped, twisty back alleys, closer to Dusk House, I kept my eyes and ears open but saw nothing, heard nothing, just the wind.

  Finally I was close enough. I found a dead-end alley piled with trash and slick with ice; in the corner farthest from the street, I knelt down and dug a little cave in a dirty snowbank. The freezing air bit at my bare fingers as I pulled my locus magicalicus from my pocket and placed it into the little cave.

  Then, after checking that the alley was still empty, I put my hand on the jewel and whispered the embero.

  The spell seeped out of my locus magicalicus and crept into my hand. With a pop, everything went black.

  I opened my eyes; the alley had grown large. I got shakily to my four feet, the icy cobblestones cold under my paws. The wind ruffled my fur. I checked on my locus magicalicus. The spell had melted the snow around it, and it sat in a little puddle of water that was quickly turning to ice. With a paw I patted it, then headed out of the alley, toward the Underlord’s mansion.

  * * *

  Confronted boy with his perfidy; he has run away. Expected it. Reporting to Crowe, no doubt, that he has been found out.

  Didn’t want apprentice in the first place. Should have remembered from the start what he is—thief. Liar and spy. Stupid of me to forget that. Curse him.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 31

  Blending with the night, I slunk through the alleys until I arrived at Dusk House.

  Even though it was the middle of the night, the barred windows were bright with lights. The air felt like it was full of invisible needles; it pulsed and hummed and made my fur stand up on end. Something was going on in there, sure as sure.

  I padded up to the gate and slid through the bars, then went down the edge of the graveled drive and around the back of the mansion, where I found a cluster of sheds and a small, dirty courtyard. A door opened and closed, and I heard footsteps crunching across the frozen snow. Another door creaked; somebody visiting a privy, I guessed. I slunk closer. When the person—a minion with a knife in his belt—crunched toward the back door again, I followed him inside. He didn’t notice me.

  I headed down the dark corridors, slinking through open doors, glad for my black fur, which kept me hidden in the shadows, until I came to the room with the bookcase and the stairway, the room where I’d seen Pettivox when I’d spied during Nevery’s visit. The room was empty, the bookcase propped open. Behind it loomed the dark doorway.

  I padded across the room to the top of the narrow, dark stairs. I paused at the opening. My whiskers twitched; I smelled something bad, something wrong. If I really were a cat, I might have known what it was, but all I knew was that the smell made my tail bristle and put my ears back.

  But I had to get down the stairs. I crouched on the edge of the step, my tail twitching, and peeked over. Nothing but darkness. I hopped down three steps and paused. From below, I heard clanking and the scrape of gears. Men shouted. The air pulsed. Then came a roar, like wind and thunder in the middle of a storm, and then a crack like lightning striking. My paws trembled against the stone steps. What were they doing down there? I had to go on, to find out. I jumped down a few more steps and peered into the darkness below.

  Two red points of light, low to the ground, looked back at me. All my fur stood on end. I went down another step.

  From out of the gloom, dragging itself up the stairs, came an enormous rat, bigger than I was, with a scaly, naked tail, ragged gray fur, and sharp teeth. The rat lowered its head and hissed. Its red eyes gleamed.

  It was a minion, I realized; one of the Underlord’s men who had attacked Benet and me in the alley. Did it know who I was, that I had changed it from a man into a rat?

  The rat climbed up another step until it was just below me. Then, in a whirl of snarl and lashing tail, it leaped.

  As it came at me, its teeth bared, I rolled onto my back and raised my four clawed paws. We tangled together, slash-gnashing, and bumped down two steps. I swiped a paw across its snout and it lunged at me, hissing. I darted out of its way, landing on four paws, crouched growling, my tail whipping back and forth.

  It came at me again, slashing at my side with its sharp teeth, but I ducked past it and sank my own teeth deep into its tail—it tasted terrible. The rat whirled to rake me with its claws. I spat out its tail, leaped onto its back, and swiped my claws across its red eyes, then I sprang off. Squealing, shaking its head, the rat backed away, blinded.

  Watching it carefully, I eased away. It crouched on the step, pawing at its eyes, hissing. Quietly, I hopped down a step, then another.

  My fur settled and I went on down the steps to the first turning. I looked back, but the rat had not followed. I slunk around the corner, then down to the second turning in the stairway. The sound of clanking and gears had gotten louder, almost deafening. I sat on the step and peered around the corner.

  Like when I’d been here before, I saw a huge, bright space, men, glinting metal gears. I pulled my head back and blinked, then looked again, more carefully.

  The workroom, which was huge and cavernous, had been dug out of the rock. It was lit with flickering werelights set along the rock walls and hanging from the ceiling. I saw men hunched over papers—diagrams or plans—at a long table, and other men wrestling with a fat, pulsing hose. Along the edge of the room were more tables covered with glass jars and vials and copper odds and ends, tubes and wires and boxes of screws.

  And in the middle of the workroom, taking up most of the space, looming up to the ceiling, squatted a huge, sprawling, gleaming geared device. Its middle was a huge tank, stitched across with rivets and bristling with tubes and dials. On one side it had a series of gears, gnashing together; on the other were copper coils, swollen hoses, and crystal tubes dripping with slowsilver. The device pulsed and heaved.

  As I watched, a long piston near the floor groaned forward and an immense gear turned; the men shouted, steam hissed out in smoky clouds, and there came a crush-rushing of wind, of something being sucked in toward the device. A vent in the side gaped. Gears shrieked, thunder crashed, and the lights went out, and deep inside I felt a sudden empty, lonely ache.

  The lights flickered on. A few men went to the machine to check the dials; other men went back to looking at the diagrams. The air settled and the machine hummed.

  I backed away from the turning and went up a few steps. Then I crouched down, shivering. In the darkness, on the step, I realized what they were doing. They were sucking in all of Wellmet’s magic and storing it. The device was a capacitor, like the melted machine I’d found in Heartsease, but huge. A prison for the magic. What would they do with the magic, once they had it all? Would they kill it?

  I licked my paw and washed it across my face and whiskers. Enough worrying. I had the proof I needed; now I had to get out, change myself back into a boy, and tell somebody what was going on. It wasn’t too late.

  I raced up the stairs, past the place where I’d fought the rat. After reaching the top of the stairs, I got halfway across the room before I realized that I was surrounded.

  The rat, its snout bloody and its teeth bared, was waiting for me, and it had brought help: two more rats.

  Three against one. Not a fight I could win. I didn’t pause, just leaped for the door. Squealing, the rats scrabbled and leaped after me.

  I pelted down a hallway, skidded around a corner, and found myself faced with three closed doors, a dead end. The rats swirled ’round the corner and stopped. Snarling, they paced closer, lashing their tails. One of the rats bared its fangs and then leaped forward; at the same time, the other rats swarmed over me, biting. I bit back, and clawed, and squirmed away as teeth slashed my foreleg. I rolled onto my paws and darted away.

  I raced down the corridors and around corners, the rats right behind me, until I got to the mai
n entryway. My paws skidded on the slick stone floor as I raced for the front door.

  A minion was coming in, just closing the door; he stared as I raced toward him and darted between his legs and outside, into the cold, dark night. Behind me, the door slammed, closing the rats inside.

  I tumbled to the bottom of the front steps and crouched on the freezing ground, shivering, trying to catch my breath. The slash on my front leg burned, and I had rat bites on my back and sides. Limping, I crept away into the night.

  * * *

  Stayed up late monitoring magical level with gauge. Several times, level fell abruptly. Alarmed. Almost no magic left in city.

  Went to study to check notes. Read until early morning. No new conclusions. Tired. Benet came up with tea.

  —Conn isn’t back yet, sir, Benet said.

  Told him cursed boy isn’t coming back at all. Benet asked why. Told him boy is spy for Underlord.

  —No he isn’t, Master, Benet said.

  Told him I had proof: boy and Underlord share a family name.

  Benet looked interested.—Do they? Then he shrugged.—Still, Conn’s not a spy for Crowe.

  —How do you know? I asked.

  —He wouldn’t, Benet said. He stood in doorway with arms folded. Seemed very certain.—Sir, when we were attacked in the Twilight, it was Crowe’s men. They were after Conn.

  Why would Crowe send men to attack his own spy? Not sure what to think.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 32

  I went straight back to the dark alleyway where my locus magicalicus was hidden. The cave of ice had frozen around it, so I had to paw it out of the snow onto the ground. Then I put my front paws on it and thought the reversed embero spell.

  In the darkness, my locus stone gave a feeble glow; almost all the magical being was imprisoned in the Underlord’s device. I thought through the reverse embero again. Slowly, I changed back, part of me cat, part of me boy. I said the spell over and over again until every claw and whisker had disappeared. And the tail.

  When I looked up, morning had come. On my arm was a long, bloody gash from one of the rats’ teeth. It stung, but it hadn’t bled much. Stiff from crouching, I got to my feet and put my locus magicalicus in my coat pocket. Overhead, clouds hung low and gray, and flecks of snow blew down the street beyond the alley. I peered around the corner. Nobody was about.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. The best thing would be to go to Nevery and try to convince him that I’d seen the device. But Nevery…

  I took a shuddery breath. Nevery was furious with me, and he wouldn’t believe anything I told him. I didn’t have time to argue with him.

  I could try going to Brumbee. But what could he do? He’d wring his hands and worry, and then he’d call a meeting of the magisters. And besides, Pettivox had told the other magisters that I was Crowe’s spy. Drats.

  Then I remembered what Rowan had told me. Her mother, the duchess, was clever. She knew something was going on. I had a feeling she would listen to me if I told her about the Underlord’s device.

  That decided, I headed for the Dawn Palace.

  I ran as fast as I could from the Twilight, across the Night Bridge, and up the hill toward the Dawn Palace, stopping now and then to catch my breath, then running again.

  It was early morning and barely light, and the streets were deserted. Too quiet. The magic level had gotten so low, even people who weren’t wizards could feel it, and they’d shut themselves up inside their snug houses, frightened of what was happening outside.

  Finally I got to the Dawn Palace. As I crunched down the icy driveway, my breath steaming in the air, the two guards on duty at the main doors caught sight of me.

  One of them was Farn, the guard from the cells, the one who had given me the phlister.

  He started down the steps toward me.

  I stopped.

  Farn called over his shoulder to the other guard. “Tell Captain Kerrn that the wizard’s thief is here.” He ran a few steps, then reached out to grab me.

  The duchess wasn’t expecting me this time, I realized. Curse it, Kerrn had warned me not to come back, or she’d throw me in the cells again. She’d chain me up and force me to drink phlister. She sure as sure wouldn’t let me talk to the duchess.

  I ducked under Farn’s reaching hand. He lunged after me, slipped on the ice, and fell. “Come back here, you,” he grunted, getting to his feet. Two more guards burst out of the front door of the palace and hurried down the stairs.

  I backed away. “Tell the duchess to send men to the Twilight,” I shouted. “The Underlord is stealing Wellmet’s magic!”

  I didn’t have time for more. Farn lurched after me again and the other guards reached the bottom of the steps.

  They chased me out the front gate and down the hill, shouting. One of them split off from the others to cut down another street.

  I pelted down the hill as fast as I could. Went ’round corners, down alleyways, still heard the shouting. They had plenty of men to call on, and they knew this part of the city better than I did.

  Finally I got clear and ducked into a cellar coal hole. Trying to catch my breath, I crouched in the darkness. My legs quivered with tiredness from all the running. Outside, the chase faded into the distance.

  After a while, I climbed up out of the coal hole and into a deserted alleyway. I had to get back to Heartsease. Maybe Nevery would listen. Keeping my head down and my scarf wrapped around my face, I eased along a street of closed-up shops. I turned a corner, and someone grabbed me and yanked a black bag down over my head.

  * * *

  Trying to work. Distracted. Benet so certain that boy not a spy. Benet a good man, not easily fooled.

  Decided to try scrying for boy. Expected to see him with Crowe.

  Scrying globes sensitive to presence of magic. Boy’s locus magicalicus, magical abilities, should make him appear bright as a shooting star against a night sky within scrying globe. Polished largest globe with wormsilk cloth, set it in bowl of warm water, said anstriker spell.

  Nothing. Not enough ambient magic for spell to effect. Scrying globe stayed dark, useless.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 33

  Captured. Not by Kerrn’s men, though. They weren’t black bag types.

  I struggled, but the men who’d jumped me gave me a couple of thumps, wrapped a rope tightly around the bag, then one threw me over his shoulder. I tried shouting, but the bag muffled my voice. And the streets were empty, so nobody would hear.

  They went quickly through the streets, me with my head hanging down, bumping up and down in the bag. It was completely dark and the cloth pressed up against my face smelled moldy and a little like rotten potatoes.

  The one carrying me paused for a moment, then stepped up. I heard the sound of a door opening and then closing.

  “Want me to take him?” a deep voice said.

  The man carrying me answered. “Nah. Doesn’t weigh anything.”

  “He’ll be here in a moment,” another voice said.

  They stood around waiting. I tried wriggling, and the man carrying me set me on my feet, but kept a tight grip on my shoulders.

  Someone else came into the room. He walked with a heavy tread. Silence. Inside the bag, I felt prickly, like somebody was looking me over.

  “Are you sure it’s him?” he said. Pettivox. I recognized his high-pitched voice at once.

  “Yes, sir,” one of his men answered. “The lockpick. Underlord’s had a word out on him. We know him.”

  “Good. He will be very pleased.” Pettivox paused for a moment. “I think we shall put him in one of the storage rooms, downstairs. He will want to have a look at him later. Don’t let him get away; he’s slippery.”

  Who was “he”? Underlord Crowe? That was someone I definitely didn’t want to see. I wrenched myself out of the man’s grip. But the rope was wrapped too tightly around me, so all I did was topple over. One of the men laughed.

  They picked me up again and carried me down
some stairs, then along an echoing corridor. They unwrapped the ropes, pulled off the bag, and before I could find my feet, they shoved me into a dark place. The door slammed behind me and locked.

  After a moment catching my breath, I picked myself off the floor, pulled my lockpick wires out of my pocket, and felt over the door for the keyhole. Found it. It was gritty, maybe rusty. Still, if a key could open it, so could I. Just as I was probing the lock with the wires, I heard the scrape of a boot on stone. A guard was stationed outside the door.

  I put the wires back into my pocket. The room was completely dark, without a glimmer of light. I paced across it with my hands raised until I got to a wall. I felt in my pocket for my locus magicalicus and brought it out; it glowed very faintly, a soft-edged bit of dawn in my hand. The light wasn’t enough to see much by.

  The room was small, maybe three paces across. Low ceiling, no windows. The walls were clammy stone that radiated cold. Not the kind of biting cold that takes your breath away, but the kind of damp cold that seeps down into your bones and makes you miserable.

  For hours I paced, gripping my locus magicalicus, pausing once in a while to listen at the door for the guard. I had to get out. The magic was in trouble; if Pettivox and the Underlord were going to do anything, they were going to do it soon.

  I bounced off one wall and whirled to pace, step step step across the cell to the door. Outside, two deep voices were talking. Then, right at the door, I heard the jingling of keys in the lock.

  I backed away from the door, a hand in my coat pocket holding my locus stone, and put my back against the cold, clammy wall. The door cracked open, swung wide. A dark shadow stepped into the cell.