The Glass Magician

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  The tall door behind her shut, underlining the fact that she was forbidden from attending the meeting with Criminal Affairs, to which both Emery and Mg. Aviosky had been invited. She frowned, the exile itching under her skin. She had dealt with Excisioners firsthand, she was the target of all this horrid hoopla, and yet she wasn’t permitted to sit in on the discussion that would determine the Cabinet’s plan of action! She would never understand the workings of the Cabinet, and she had still not forgiven Emery for not arguing on her behalf.

  For not trusting me, she thought.

  She passed a scornful glance to the new set of textbooks on the table beside her that Emery had instructed her to read: From Pulp to Paper: The Making of a Master Craft, Advanced Geometry, and Mammals of the Cold North, which she assumed tied into advanced animation. She harrumphed. At least she had grabbed a copy of The Railway Magazine from the reception area. The article “How Smelted Tie Plates Can Make Your Trips Smoother and Faster” looked somewhat interesting. She wondered if the writers would actually give away the new spells in the article.

  Delilah, a fellow exile from the meeting, strolled over from the politician’s statue. She had been reading the plaque with apparent interest. Her hands were clasped behind her back and her yellow skirt bounced about her calves. Today she had pinned her bobbed hair behind each ear and wore lipstick. Ceony felt rather plain in comparison with the always-flamboyant Delilah, which only upset her more.

  “It’s not so bad, waiting,” Delilah said.

  From behind the closed doors, someone—it sounded like Mg. Hughes—shouted something unintelligible.

  “See?” Delilah offered with a half smile.

  Ceony sighed and gestured to the chair on the other side of her. “No, I don’t. Grath talked to me just yesterday, Delilah. I should be in there. If Magician Thane hadn’t overheard everything, I probably would be.”

  Delilah’s dark eyes bugged. So, Mg. Aviosky hadn’t told her of the events in the twelfth-floor flat.

  Mg. Aviosky had arrived at the apartment with Mg. Hughes yesterday afternoon, looking more disgruntled than Ceony had ever seen her. She’d confirmed that Grath shouldn’t be able to pinpoint the flat’s precise location from the mirror-to-mirror communication, though he would know they were hiding in London. Ultimately it had been Emery’s decision not to move.

  It took a great deal of convincing to get Mg. Hughes to believe that Grath Cobalt had indeed revealed himself as a Gaffer. Ceony suspected the Siper’s ego still hadn’t healed from the blow. After all, if anyone should have discovered Grath’s secret, it should have been the head of Criminal Affairs.

  Leaning forward and whispering, Ceony told Delilah everything, short of the stiff conversation she’d had with Emery afterward, from which she still reeled. Ceony told Delilah about the tapping, what Grath had said—verbatim—the rippling of the glass, and the blind boxes.

  “And he definitely can’t find me, right?”

  Delilah looked pale, but she nodded. “You can track a person down through mirror-to-mirror communication, but not so as you’d find them on a map. He knows the mirror’s signature without knowing its exact location, if that makes sense. And I think you’re safe enough now that the mirror has shattered.”

  “Signature?” Ceony repeated.

  Delilah nodded and rubbed gooseflesh from her arms. “It’s like how each person has a name; each mirror has its own identity, and you can randomly mirror-hop by changing that identity. It took me three months just to learn that, so I don’t know if I can explain it to you in one sitting. But knowing a mirror’s location helps immensely, as does having a mirror that belonged to the person you wish to find. Grath probably knew to look in London, and with that makeup compact . . . Oh, Ceony, how frightful. This is a bad bedtime story come to life! I don’t envy you at all, not one bit.”

  “I’ve had worse,” Ceony said, and so far, the statement had proved true. But Ceony was gradually learning that Grath was far different than Lira, and while facing a Gaffer and an Excisioner seemed less terrifying than facing two Excisioners, Ceony was beginning to wonder if she’d finally dug in too deep.

  “He’s the Gaffer,” Ceony said. “There was no one in the room with him. But a man doesn’t have to have dark magic to do dark things.”

  “At least you broke the mirror before he transported,” Delilah offered.

  “How does it work?” Ceony asked, scooting forward in her chair. “How can a person step from one mirror into another?”

  Delilah frowned, but she sifted through her large purse and pulled out her own compact makeup mirror, then another small, rectangular mirror, about the length of Ceony’s hand. Ceony heard the clinking of glass beads in the bag, and she wondered how much glass the Gaffer apprentice carried with her. Paper had its downfalls, but at least it transported easily.

  She handed the rectangular mirror to Ceony. “I’m already familiar with that mirror, so this will be easy,” she said, opening her makeup compact. She said, “Search, quad three.”

  “That’s the signature?” Ceony whispered as she looked at the mirror. Her reflection swirled until the glass showed Delilah’s face instead. Ceony glanced over and spied herself in Delilah’s mirror. The mirrors reflected each other.

  “I renamed it for the sake of ease,” Delilah said. “Otherwise it’s more of a thought.”

  Ceony nodded, not quite understanding. Glass magic seemed far different from Folding.

  Another raised voice, this one unfamiliar, echoed behind the closed doors, but Ceony ignored it.

  “So that’s that,” Delilah said, her voice sounding from both her physical body and the small mirror in Ceony’s hand. “Transport is trickier,” she explained, and she traced the tip of her right index finger around the compact mirror clockwise, then counterclockwise, and finally clockwise again. She said, “Transport, pass through.”

  The two mirrors rippled as the vanity room mirror had done yesterday. Delilah pushed her index finger through the glass of her mirror. It bulged out of Ceony’s mirror, protruding like a severed limb. Delilah wiggled it, and Ceony laughed.

  “It doesn’t work with imperfect mirrors,” Delilah said, withdrawing her finger. She said, “Cease,” and the mirrors returned to their normal states. “You can get trapped trying to use an imperfect mirror. Scratches, breaks, even tiny bubbles can act as boulders and nooses when you try to pass through. Aviosky only lets me transport using Gaffer mirrors, because it’s not safe otherwise.”

  “She sounds like a strict teacher,” Ceony said, handing the rectangular mirror back.

  Delilah stowed both mirrors in her purse. “She is, but it’s been good for me. I need some structure in my life.” She smiled. “I think I’m going to try and test for my magicianship at the end of the year. I think I’ll pass if I study hard between now and then.”

  “I think so, too,” Ceony said.

  Delilah nodded, then grew oddly quiet. Quiet enough that Ceony could hear stifled mumbling from behind the closed doors. She wondered just what aspect of her problems the magicians were discussing.

  After a long moment, Delilah said, “They’re going to focus their search on Saraj, not Grath. I overheard Magician Aviosky on her mirror this morning. I think she was talking to Magician Hughes or one of his associates. Magician Cantrell, maybe.”

  Ceony drew her brows together. “But Grath is the ringleader! He’s the one who—”

  “They’re awful stories, Ceony,” Delilah interrupted, her voice half a whisper. She glanced to the closed doors before leaning in and saying, “I looked them up at the library, after your buggy accident. Magician Aviosky wouldn’t tell me anything, so I did some research of my own. The news articles alone . . .”

  Delilah shivered. “They don’t say everything, but they say enough. Whole families murdered, strange runes drawn in blood, and . . .” She paled. “Saraj has killed babies, Ceony. He attacked an orphanage and killed twenty-three kids, but he only”—she swallowed—“harvested five of th
em. He just killed the others for sport. He’s like a rabid animal. Grath takes credit for a lot—and yes, I think he’s sort of in charge—but he’s not even an Excisioner. I think . . . I think that’s why they’re going after Saraj. Whoever Magician Aviosky talked to this morning thinks he’s the one who’s responsible for the mill and what happened to your buggy. He’s too much of a public threat to leave alone. He said Grath is ‘containable.’ ”

  Ceony’s pulse pounded in her ears, and for a moment she heard nothing else. So much death, so much horror. She thought of the buggy driver, an innocent stranger. How easily the man in the night—this Saraj Prendi—had killed him. Saraj probably followed all the buggy drivers, touching each one, to make sure his spell would work the night of the accident.

  She sat back in her chair, cold. How long had he watched the cottage to ensure he was there when Ceony and Emery left? How many more people could be hurt—killed—because of her involvement with Lira?

  The list of casualties from the paper mill surfaced in her mind, and she reminded herself of each and every name. Had she not gotten involved with Lira—had she not frozen her—Grath and Saraj wouldn’t have come to London, to Dartford. All those people would still be alive. Though Ceony hadn’t set off the bomb or killed the driver of her buggy, all the violent deaths weighed on her shoulders. She was the reason these two murderers had infiltrated England.

  Her glance passed to the closed doors. Emery could have been killed in that accident. He could have been hurt at the mill, had he come, or at the flat, had Grath’s timing been different. It was a miracle either of them still breathed.

  It was her fault. And she hated it.

  The two apprentices sat in silence for a long moment, Delilah staring out the window, Ceony drumming her fingers on the velvet armrests of her chair. She mulled over her conversations with Grath and everything that had happened with Lira, from when the Excisioner nearly broke her back in Emery’s kitchen to the end, when Ceony read those fateful words from the bloodied paper in her hands: “Lira froze.”

  Now Lira had as little life in her as the statue of the politician that stood staring at Ceony from across the room. Ceony had done that. By chance, but she had done it. Because Emery had been in trouble. Because Emery hadn’t deserved to die. Because, maybe, some tiny part of her had loved him from the first moment they met. But she had done it, and she had done it alone.

  A chill coursed up Ceony’s arms. “It’s my responsibility to fix this,” she whispered.

  Delilah turned from the window. “What?”

  “My fault, my responsibility,” Ceony mumbled, withdrawing her arms from the armrests and folding her hands in her lap. “I defeated Lira; I should be the one to handle Saraj and Grath, too.”

  She’d faced an Excisioner before and won, hadn’t she? Couldn’t she do it again?

  Delilah yelped, a sort of strange hiccup. She clapped one hand over her mouth, wide-eyed, then dropped it back into her lap. “No, Ceony. You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m not much of a comedian, I’m afraid,” she replied. Her fingers trembled, but she curled them into fists and took a deep breath. “I don’t know about Saraj, but I think I could contact Grath. Lure him out. He’s only a Gaffer, after all. I’ll need your help, Delilah. Can you trace the mirror he used to contact me?”

  Delilah’s expression turned wan and colorless. “I . . . I wouldn’t even know where to start! And I’m only an apprentice—”

  “The mirror from my vanity room,” Ceony said in a hushed voice. “The pieces are all still there. Could you trace him through that?”

  Delilah opened her mouth to respond, then closed it. She glanced at the closed doors that concealed the Criminal Affairs department.

  Voice like a frog’s, she said, “I think so, but we’d have to get a ride there—”

  “Not if we transport,” Ceony said, courage beginning to form in her chest. She couldn’t afford to sit and wait for something else to happen. She had to fight. She had to stop Grath before any more tombstones went up on her behalf. “Surely Parliament wouldn’t install flawed mirrors. There’s one in the ladies’ room. We could use that to transport to the lobby of my apartment.”

  “But Magician Aviosky—”

  “If anything goes amiss, we can form a new plan,” Ceony said. She scooted forward and grasped Delilah’s hands. “You can stand out of the way, so Grath will never see you, only me. I just need to talk to him. He wanted to negotiate with Lira, remember? Well, I’ll make him think I’m ready to negotiate. And if we contact him through one of the shards of the mirror I broke at the apartment, he won’t be able to transport through it.

  “Don’t you see, Delilah?” she asked. “I need to wrap up this mess before anyone else gets hurt. I can do it. I know I can. But we have to leave now, while there’s still time.”

  “What do you plan to say to him?”

  “I guess that depends on what he says to me,” she confessed. “I want to know his plans. I’ll say all the right things, and hopefully he’ll reveal a weak spot, a way for us to thwart him.”

  Delilah bit her lip, but nodded. “You sound like a real magician. Okay. But we have to hurry.”

  Ceony jumped up from her chair and linked arms with Delilah, pulling her toward the ladies’ room.

  This is my fight now, she thought, hurrying from the lobby, my chance of atonement. It’s time to end this, once and for all.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE WOMEN’S LAVATORY, WHICH was composed of two rooms, looked just as elegant as the lobby. The entry opened onto a small sitting area illuminated by a frosted window dressed in maroon drapes, as well as a small white-crystal chandelier buzzing with electric lights. Wallpaper adorned with yellow cowslips covered the walls, trimmed at ceiling and floor by a narrow maroon border. A glass makeup stand rested in the corner with a rosewood bench and small, round mirror, and a narrow dresser sat against the west wall between two cushioned chairs. Above the dresser hung a large, rectangular mirror in a gold frame. Exotic ferns decorated the other corners of the room. The next room held a few modest stalls.

  Ceony approached the larger mirror, checking its surface for any flaws, though she felt sure she was looking for all the wrong things. Delilah chewed on her thumbnail, looking even more distraught than she had in the lobby.

  Ceony turned to her. “Will it work?”

  Delilah approached the mirror and gave it a quick perusal. “Well, it should, but . . .”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, only reached out and tapped her nails against the glass, first in the center, then on the edges.

  “Please, Delilah,” Ceony begged. “Can you find the mirror in the lobby of my complex?”

  Delilah nodded. “I might as well act like a real magician, too,” she said. She pressed her hands to the glass and closed her eyes. “Search,” she said, and the mirror fogged beneath her touch. The image began to flash from image to image. Ceony could only suppose they were reflections of other mirrors in the city; she saw a white dust cloth, a cluttered attic, two little girls sitting in a pink-painted room having a tea party. She saw the startled face of a man, a woman desperately trying to zip up the back of her dress, and then the staircase in the lobby of her block of flats.

  “There, there!” Ceony cried, and Delilah ripped her hands from the mirror, taking a step back to see for herself.

  Ceony recognized the walnut-glazed staircase, the short table holding both a telephone and a telegraph, the slip of hallway on the edge of the picture that led back into the landlord’s rooms. The mirror hung on the wall near the receiving desk. If Ceony could stick her head through it and look to the left, she’d see the front doors of the building.

  “Can they see us?” Ceony asked.

  “Anyone who walks by will,” Delilah said. She heaved a deep breath and said, “Well, come on. Let’s hurry before we’re caught.”

  Delilah pulled over one of the cushioned chairs and stood on it, then traced the tip of her right index fing
er just inside the mirror’s gilded frame clockwise, counterclockwise, then clockwise again. She said, “Transport, pass through.”

  The image of the lobby shivered and faded, and the glass of the lavatory mirror started to ripple.

  “I hope the mirror on the other side is big enough,” Delilah said.

  “It is,” Ceony promised.

  Delilah grabbed her hand, sucked in another breath, and held it. She stepped up on the dresser—pulling Ceony onto the chair, their hands still linked together—and slowly slipped through the silvery glass.

  Ceony squeezed her friend’s hand tighter and gasped at the coldness of the glass as her hand, arm, and shoulder squeezed through it. She closed her eyes as the rest of her body slipped onto the other side. It felt wet, yet the wetness didn’t stick. The lighting around her changed to a more orange tone, and she tripped as she tumbled down from the frame of the lobby’s mirror. Delilah steadied her.

  Ceony opened her eyes and parted her lips in wonder. She really was standing in the lobby of her block of flats!

  Whirling back to face the mirror, Ceony saw it ripple for only half a second before the glass returned to normal, reflecting her image and Delilah’s, not the Parliament lavatory.

  Ceony cried out and flung her arms around Delilah.

  “Amazing!” she said, stepping back just as quickly. “I can’t believe you can do that! How remarkable to be a Gaffer, Delilah!”

  Delilah smiled. “Not a Gaffer yet, technically.”

  Ceony grabbed Delilah’s hand and pulled her past the stairs to the lift, ignoring the wide-eyed stare of a man who had obviously witnessed them pop out of the mirror as easily as if it had been a door. She drew the lift doors shut, but as it slowly climbed to the twelfth floor, her excitement about mirror-to-mirror transport gradually slipped away, replaced by a stirring anxiety.