The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Series, Book 1)

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Ceony paused just at the edge of the blanket. The woman . . . she wasn’t a woman, not really. She had no face, only the start of one, and her hair seemed to have no definite length or color. The lines of her body curved enough to show her womanhood, but not enough to define weight, height, or shape. Beside Thane—who watched the setting sun with such peace, with such light in his eyes—the “woman” seemed imaginary.

  Because she is, Ceony realized, a second breeze tickling her skirt and blowing loose flower petals across her vision. These are the things Thane—Emery—hopes for.

  She studied him, his peace and his contentment, the eyes that seemed to radiate life. She studied the shadowy woman beside him from head to foot. He wants to fall in love again.

  Though she knew he would not see her, Ceony waved her hand before Emery Thane’s face, hoping he would blink and look up at her, wanting those eyes to notice her the way they had noticed Lira amidst cherry trees and gossamer. Because she needed his help. She needed Thane’s help to escape him, for if she didn’t escape him, she’d never save him, and Ceony felt she’d be doing both herself and the rest of the world a great disservice to let such a life-filling gaze vanish from existence.

  And if Emery Thane died, some other poor chap with dreams of bespelling metal would be assigned to paper out of necessity, and Ceony certainly couldn’t let that fate fall onto anyone else’s shoulders.

  She twisted her messy braid around her index finger. Hope. She wondered what her hopes looked like now.

  She stepped onto the blanket, just at its edge, and knelt down, massaging her throat. She’d have bruises, surely, but nothing worse than that. Nothing she couldn’t manage. I’ve managed worse.

  The warm breeze twirled about her shoulders before scooping up the seeds of an aged dandelion and tossing them into the plum tree’s dark leaves. The wind reminded her of the stickiness of her hair and stiffness of her clothes, the aftermath of pushing through the valve between chambers.

  Taking a deep breath in an attempt to encourage herself, she slipped the paper chain over her head and studied it. Though she knew the version of Emery Thane beside her was not the real one, she felt safe in his presence. Safe as she could feel, sharing his heart with a practiced Excisioner, who could be anywhere . . .

  A quick survey of the scene showed that Lira was nowhere to be found, so she turned her attention back to the Folded paper she held. Ceony passed the links of the chain slowly through her hands, studying each until she found one just a bit wider than the others—that must have been the error. Pulling a half sheet of paper from her bag, she began to create a replacement.

  Laughter touched her ears, but not cold laughter. Not Lira’s. She heard a child’s laughter, light and happy. Fennel barked in response.

  Ceony turned and saw a shapeless child that matched the woman beside her—a child no older than three, but without a definite face or solid coloring. A boy, Ceony thought. He ran through the wildflowers with his small, nondescript hands stretched high over his head. A moment later a second child joined him, a little taller. A girl. They laughed and twirled about one another, parading up and down the hill in their own little game. Their play woke an orange butterfly from the grass at their feet. Its wings looked like fire in the setting sunlight.

  Ceony couldn’t help but smile to herself as she finished Folding the link. “So you want a family,” she whispered. “I do, too. Someday.”

  She replaced the bad link in her chain and stowed it under the blanket, where Lira—should the woman be tracking her—wouldn’t find it. This time, when Ceony placed the chain around her, it stiffened and tightened like a belt. Hopefully that meant she had done the spell correctly.

  As Ceony stood, she realized she didn’t want to leave this vision. This hope buried deep in Emery’s heart, so crisp and real that she could smell the sugar welling deep within the flowers’ stems and feel the lingering heat of the sun that seemed frozen in its descent. It was such a peaceful hope. Ceony wondered if her own heart could create something even half as stunning as this.

  She touched Emery’s hand where it rested on the blanket, and found that, for once, she didn’t immediately phase through it. Instead, it felt like touching glass. “I’ll take care of you,” she said. “You’ll have this day. I promise.”

  She and Fennel stepped off the blanket and back to the grassy door Ceony had stumbled upon on the last flowery knoll. She pulled the brass handle, and the sunset melted away into stone and wood.

  Ceony stood in the middle of Parliament Square.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE SLOPE OF WILDFLOWERS changed instantly into cobblestone in all shades of gray—charcoal, ash, slate, and steel. Big Ben—the bell in the tall, pointed clock tower to the north—rang out nine o’clock. The great statue of Sir Ryan Walters gripping the reins of his frenzied warhorse stood proudly in the center of the square. Its detail was so infinitesimal that the statue looked ready to come alive on all sides, but of course it never did. Sir Ryan Walters and his steed had been carved in stone, and since man had not created stone, no magician could enchant it.

  People milled about Ceony on all sides of Parliament Square, seeming to give her a great deal of space without actually noticing her presence. They passed by numerous shops that all had doors facing the statue, and a few shuffled in and out of a six-story apartment building wedged between a dumpling shop and a post office, with narrow alleys on each side. Ceony had never been inside the building, but she imagined seeing the bill for one room’s rent would hurt her eyes for all the digits it would have.

  Many of the square’s shops had CLOSED signs over the doors—Wickers, the candle shop; Her Ladyship’s Arms, a custom firearms dealer where she could have been contracted had her path to magic gone differently; and St. Alban’s Salmon Bistro included. Ale for You, the liquor store, and Fine Seams, the tailor Ceony had patronized a few times, still boasted OPEN signs on their shops. It must have been a Sunday. Most businesses closed on Sundays.

  Ceony loved Sundays. They were her favorite time of the week—the only break the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined allotted its students, outside of feast days and Parliament Day. Sunday was the one day when, if Ceony did not have homework to catch up on, she could go into the city and enjoy herself. Indulge in a nice walk, soak in the sounds of life, savor a simple sandwich, or read by the three-tiered water fountains opposite Big Ben in Parliament Square. Those fountains did have an enchantment, for when they had been constructed, a Polymaker—a plastics magician—had designed a special lining for each tier that made the falling water cascade in different patterns every five minutes. There were a few months of Ceony’s life when she considered becoming a Polymaker, if only to create something similar to that fountain.

  She idly wondered if Emery—Mg. Thane, that is—enjoyed Sundays as well.

  Skimming her surroundings, Ceony found an odd archway ten paces to her right, wooden and painted red. She neared it, touched its side—

  Ceony blinked and found herself standing in a different spot on Parliament Square, the far-east side, her nose only inches from an old wooden door bound with ironwork rusted along its edges. A particularly long splinter pointed at her right between the eyes.

  She took a step back as a bell pealed through the air—not Big Ben, but the brass bell that hung somewhere within the building before her. This place was a church—the faded sign above the door read “Collegiate Church of St. Peter at Westminster.” She vaguely remembered the building from her passes through the real Parliament Square. Fennel scratched the bottom of the door with his paw.

  Though a thorough scan of the crowd brought no signs of Lira, Ceony Folded a paper jay and commanded it, “Breathe.” Holding one wing so the creature couldn’t flit away, she added, “Keep an eye out for a woman in black, with long hair and bloody nails. Peck at the windows if you spot her.”

  The bird hopped in Ceony’s palm an
d she released it, letting it fly high over the square.

  Ceony grabbed the church door’s thick iron handle and heaved the door open. She stepped into a dim hallway. On her third step she felt herself whisked away once more, and on her fourth she appeared on a narrow balcony in the back of a wide congregation hall, sandwiched between two circle-top windows trimmed with stained glass. Two rows of white Y-shaped pillars stretched before her, between which rested two rows of brown-lacquered pews. More circle-top windows let in sunlight, and three-tiered chandeliers with looping arms provided more light yet. At the front of the chapel the largest window took up almost the entire wall and had such minute stenciling in its stained glass that, from where she stood, Ceony couldn’t decipher the images. She did, however, have a good view of the church’s attendees.

  They filled about half of the pews. A man dressed in a white robe and a long, dark stole over his shoulders stood at the front of the congregation holding a heavy-looking and worn Bible in his hand, but what he read Ceony couldn’t hear.

  “I envy them,” said a familiar baritone beside her.

  Ceony jumped. Emery Thane stood beside her, not quite touching the balcony railing, his arms folded across his chest. He looked as he did when he appeared at the banquet where Ceony had lost both her scholarship and her job. His dark brows pulled together just slightly, but not enough for true consternation, anger, or whatever he might have been feeling. The rest of his face and posture remained calm. Ceony couldn’t see enough of his eyes to read them, as they were downcast and watching the minister below.

  Tingles like the trails of soft feathers coursed down her neck. If he looked the same, would she be able to talk to him?

  “Thane!” she exclaimed. “I need your help!”

  But the paper magician didn’t respond, only held his gaze. Ceony chewed on her lips before trying something else.

  “Envy who?” she asked, stepping closer to him.

  “Them,” he answered with a slight jerk of his chin, directed to the faithful audience in the pews. It relieved Ceony that he replied to her at all. It seemed this Emery Thane, while outside the vision, was only a sliver of his true self—a sliver that existed in the second chamber of his heart. “All of them, really. I envy their faith.”

  Ceony glanced to the men and women in the church. “You want to be Anglican?”

  Her friend Anise Hatter had belonged to the Church of England, one of the sects that embraced the use of material magics. Ceony had only been to the Church’s Mass once.

  “I think life would be much . . . simpler . . . if a man could believe in one solid thing,” he answered, still not looking at her. “Bits and pieces here and there do no good for a man’s soul. Thinking all of it is right or all of it is wrong does no good, either. Just as a magician cannot work all materials. He must choose one. But how does he know? How do these people believe in this faith, but not the others? Yet they are happy.”

  Ceony touched his elbow, finding it solid—more proof that this Emery Thane stood separate from the vision. “You just have to learn, I suppose,” she said. “Explore until you know which one’s right for you.”

  He glanced at her, his green eyes deep in thought and wondering in a subdued sort of way. “Do you believe in one thing, Ceony?”

  Her heart sped as he said her name.

  She considered the question. “I’ve never given it a great deal of thought. I suppose I don’t. I think I understand what you mean, about there being good in all faiths. In all gods, in all beliefs. When I think about it . . . I guess I’ve just taken what bits and pieces I felt were right for me and made my own faith with them. Faith is a very personal thing, really. Just because you don’t meet with a group of people once a week who believe everything exactly the way you do doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something.”

  He nodded, but his expression didn't waver.

  Ceony studied him, the set of his jaw and the lines of his profile. She would never have guessed that a paper magician such as Emery Thane would have hoped for a faith. She had fit him into a one-dimensional mold during their first meeting, and had done so with ease. Langston, too. How many others had she judged and set aside like that, thinking them no more than a one-sided piece of paper?

  In the lull of their conversation Ceony heard the distant PUM-Pom-poom of Emery’s heart, but it sounded . . . tired. A shiver coursed down her back. She scooped Fennel up in her arms and turned away from the balcony. She had to keep moving, keep progressing. She had to reach the real Mg. Thane before either of his hearts gave out.

  She found the stairs that led off the balcony and took them quickly. They wound round and round, far longer than they should have been to reach the main floor only a story below. After what felt like four stories, Ceony spied a shimmering door at the stairs’ end—a white door rimmed with scarlet, without knob or handle.

  Holding Fennel tightly to her chest, Ceony reached one hand forward and pushed it open.

  The church vanished around her, and with it Parliament Square. Ceony once more stood in a tall, fleshy chamber lined with blue veins and pulsing arteries, the constant PUM-Pom-poom that echoed throughout Emery’s visions drumming in her ears and vibrating through the floor, a little slower than she remembered it.

  Not ten paces from her she found another shallow river of blood and a valve—a different valve than the one she had come through. It led to the third chamber of Thane’s heart. It had to.

  The hairs on Ceony’s arms stood on end and she whisked around, searching for Lira’s dark hair, half expecting more severed hands to rise from the floor and seize her. Her heart beat just as loud as Emery’s, thinking of the Excisioner. How long did she have before Lira caught up to her? Unless the woman waited in the next chamber . . .

  She swallowed hard. Fennel licked her chin with a dry paper tongue.

  “Fold up, boy,” she whispered, trying hard not to tremble. She’d never trembled so much in life as she had in the last twenty-four hours! Curse Emery Thane for being such a difficult man to rescue!

  Fennel did as told and folded up into his lopsided pentagon, and Ceony gingerly placed him between paper stacks in her bag. She eyed the valve and cursed again. She still remembered exactly how it felt to pass through those suffocating walls, unable to breathe and barely able to move. Too hot, too dark. Bitter fear on the back of her tongue tasted like unripe radishes. What if she didn’t make it through this valve? What if it caught her up between its tight walls and . . .

  She swallowed the fear and it formed a noxious lump in her throat. Still, it tasted better than failure. If Ceony lost Emery now, she’d never forgive herself. She had invested in this too deeply to go back.

  Grinding her teeth, Ceony approached the tight valve sideways, pushing one arm between its thick walls, clutching her bag to her hip with another. She counted to three in her head.

  On count two, she shouted, “I deserve a stipend after this!” The words echoed offbeat with the pulsing walls.

  On count three she sucked in a deep breath and pushed herself between the walls.

  The shield chain around her torso hugged her, and the hot walls of the valve pulled a few inches away from her, allotting her space to breathe. She sighed in relief, until she realized what an open valve would do to the rest of the heart.

  Blood flooded around her feet, reaching clear to her thighs. The PUM of every PUM-Pom-poom shook her, freezing her every first beat of three. Her hair looped around her neck like a noose. Her own blood danced on her tongue from where she had bitten it.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe.

  She forced her feet forward, her guiding hand searching for something to grasp. She squeezed her eyes shut as sweat from her forehead trickled into them.

  Ceony felt empty space on the other side of the valve just as her lungs threatened to burst. She clutched the edge of the valve and pulled herself into
a dark chamber, sputtering and gasping for air. Wiping her face on her dirty sleeve, she lifted her head and looked around. She stood in some sort of dark office. The only light came through a two-paned square window about three feet across, without blinds or curtains. Outside, a few stars glimmered in a deep-blue night. Was this the same office where Emery had finished his book? Wondering, Ceony pulled Fennel, still folded, from her bag.

  Shuffling feet drew her attention away from the window. She scoured the room, searching for its source, but the shadows hid the perpetrator.

  She clutched the folded Fennel to her breast. “Who’s there?” she asked.

  The shadows moved, and someone flew at her, ramming into her like a train. Ceony sailed backward into a wall, her head slamming against the boards, her newly found air expelling from her lungs. Her attacker pinned her with a forearm across her collar. For a second the dark room spun. Lira!

  But as Ceony’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she realized it wasn’t Lira who had thrown her back. It wasn’t Lira who scowled at her with bright emerald eyes.

  It was Emery Thane.

  CHAPTER 11

  EVEN IN THE DARKNESS she could see the anger blazing in those eyes, feel them pierce her like two jagged shards of glass. Emery’s forearm pressed even harder into her collar with an almost painful strength. Black hair like shadows drooped over his forehead. The shield chain must not have recognized the pressure, for it did nothing to help her.

  And suddenly Ceony stood on the other side of the office, Emery’s arm gone from her chest. She gripped the side of a long desk for support. She had moved, but Emery remained where he had been, only instead of Ceony pinned against the wall, it was Lira—a younger Lira, her dark hair in loose ringlets over her shoulders, but her face still held a touch of familiar hardness.

  “How dare you!” Emery seethed, almost shouting. The venom in his words hit Ceony’s ears like hammers and shook her bones. It jarred her to hear such harshness from the paper magician’s lips. “Do you even understand what all this means?”