The Paper Magician (10 page)

Ceony fired.

The pistol jerked back in Ceony’s hands, its
boom!
filling the cavern and stinging Ceony’s ears. The sharp scent of gunpowder scoured her nose and slipped into her mouth. Fennel whined at her ankles.

Lira’s eyes widened as wetness, dark as dried rose petals, bloomed over her right breast. She grunted and dropped to one knee, her hand still glowing. Her lips muttered something too quiet for Ceony to hear.

Ceony lowered the pistol. Her eyes felt ready to pop from their sockets. Her mouth went dry and her hands turned cold. Thought fled her, swirled above her head, and returned just as Lira pressed her glowing palm to the wound on her chest.

The strange light spiraled under her hand for less than two seconds before flashing once and disappearing. Lira sucked in a deep breath and stood, then popped her neck once to the left and once to the right. She dropped something small and metal from her hand. It clinked against the cavern floor.

A bullet.

Ceony nearly dropped her gun. Had . . . had Lira just
healed
hersel
f
?

Her mind spun. Excision had power over flesh. Lira took a step forward, seemingly unscathed save for the stain on her dark shirt. Ceony had only one bullet. Only one, and it rested on the dark rock behind Lira.

Lira had started her healing spell before Ceony had fired. Lira had
wanted
Ceony to use up her shot. Fear had played Ceony right into the Excisioner’s hands.

And now all Ceony had was a bag full of paper, the least offensive material a magician could wield. Even rubber would have suited her better here.

“No more games,” Lira snarled, taking another step, then another. Ceony backtracked, her gun slipping from her clammy fingers.

Her back bumped into the rock shelf, her elbow touching Mg. Thane’s heart.

The cavern twirled before her and Ceony felt herself fall, a sudden whoosh swooping around her. The sunlight at the mouth of the cave jerked from her eyes and she hit something warm and firm. A loud
PUM-Pom-poom
sounded all around her.

“Oh, the bane of the unprepared,” crooned Lira’s low-pitched voice around her, echoing between unseen walls.

She broke the echo with a heinous cackle that unsettled every nerve in Ceony’s body. “Now I have Emery and his suckling brat.”

C
HAPTER
8

A
STEADY THREE
-
BEAT DRUM
s
urrounded Ceony, vibrating in the very floor itself. When her eyes adjusted, she saw a crimson-cast room, its walls more bowed than straight. The one to her right appeared concave, and the one to her left looked convex. Even the floor wasn’t flat. She could see via a muted light, but when she searched she found no candles, lanterns, not even a single electric wire. The room’s heat pressed into her, and when she tried to stand she stumbled, the constant
PUM-Pom-poom
beat shaking her already shaky legs.

Fennel barked beside her—it seemed Lira’s trap, whatever it was, had caught him up as well.

She spied a narrow river of what looked like blood flowing between the wall and floor to her right, and she gasped. She had seen something like this room before, only it had been very small and had lain out on a metal table enchanted to stay cold. She had seen it after she had removed it from a dead frog.

This was Mg. Thane’s heart, and Ceony stood inside it.

PUM-Pom-poom
.
PUM-Pom-poom
. Ceony couldn’t tell if she heard the throbbing walls or her own chest. She breathed hard and deep and spun around, examining the strange chamber, feeling as though her body couldn’t get enough air.

Something dark caught the corner of her eye and she turned to see Lira, who held the Tatham pistol in her hands like a child’s toy. She slipped the trigger guard over her index finger and spun the gun around her knuckle.

Fennel growled a soft, papery growl, and Ceony scooped him into her arms, trying not to look as terrified as she felt. The muscles in her legs had turned to icicles.

Lira smiled. “Emery surrounds himself with fools. The heart trap was only a backup. Someplace I could put you where you wouldn’t run away.”

She stilled the pistol and clasped it in her right hand, looking as if she could crush it. “Did you really think you could beat
me
with
this
?”

Ceony gaped. She trembled. She had to get away. She couldn’t face Lira, not like this. She wasn’t prepared. She knew nothing of the dark arts, what to expect or how to combat them. She hadn’t thought this through at all!

She took a step back, and Lira took two steps forward. Sweat beaded on Ceony’s back, gluing her shirt to her skin. Ceony stepped back once more—

—and the entire chamber shifted around her.

She nearly dropped Fennel as the red, fleshy walls morphed into a blue sky speckled with wispy clouds, the bloody streams transformed into carpets of lush, green grass. The distant beat of Mg. Thane’s heart dulled to a quiet echo. Ceony smelled clover and sun-heated leaves, felt a warm summer breeze on her face. A few thick-boughed, leafy trees sprang up some ways away from her, one dangling an umber birdhouse from its second-lowest branch. Numerous gray boxes occupied the space between the trees and herself. Each stood about four or five feet high and seemed to be made of shorter weathered boxes.

Ceony’s gaze shifted back and forth, fear and confusion coating each other in her thoughts. She wiped her hands on her skirt.

Laughter touched her ears.

She whirled around and saw four children before her, their heads sporting broad-brimmed canvas hats with tightly woven nets draping over their faces and necks, and long gloves pulled up past their elbows. Their ages looked to range from three to twelve, or so Ceony guessed.

Fennel wriggled from under her arm and jumped down on the grass, running about to join the children. He ran quickly for having legs made of cardstock.

A round honeybee buzzed by her, and by instinct Ceony swatted it away. It wasn’t until that moment that she noticed the buzzing speckles surrounding each of the gray boxes, swarming and churning like humming clouds.

Ceony’s lip parted in surprise. Was this a honey farm?

In the middle of Thane’s heart?

A tall, thickly built man approached a buzzing box behind the children. He wore sturdy canvas over his entire body, tucked into his shoes and drawn with a string under his chin. Ceony had a difficult time seeing his face through the netted veil hanging from his hat, especially when honeybees began crawling over it.

Rubbing her eyes to ensure what she saw was real, Ceony stepped forward and called out to the canvas-clad man.

“Excuse me!” she shouted, but the man didn’t turn, even when she repeated herself. The eldest boy ran an uneven circle around her, but his eyes never saw her, only peered
through
her. He didn’t notice her presence at all. None of them did.

And Lira . . . where was Lira? Ceony moved around the bee boxes searching for her, the insects ignoring her as readily as the people did. She scanned beyond the trees to shallow, rolling hills, but saw no sign of the Excisioner.

She pulled a white sheet of paper from her bag and held it between both hands. It made her feel safer.

“You’re it!” shouted a girl of about eight, two auburn pigtails peeking out from beneath her face net. She ran away from the eldest boy, laughing even as bees swarmed from half a dozen boxes.

“Don’t touch the hives!” the adult shouted as he pawed at his bee box. He had a low, brawny voice, deep and rugged. He pulled a tray from the box’s top, and Ceony marveled at the thick, amber honeycomb clinging to it. The man brought it to a wheelbarrow, bees crawling all over his protected arms, and scraped honey into a tall bucket. Ceony’s mouth watered, but still she wondered,
How did I get here?

More importantly:
Where
is
here?

Surely Lira’s spell hadn’t whisked her away. Why would a practitioner of the forbidden arts ship Ceony to a remote—and rather jolly—honey farm?

Fennel stood on his hind legs as he tried to get a better look at a particularly fat bee flying about his head. Another bee buzzed about Ceony but never landed, never tried to sting her. At least, if it did, she didn’t feel it.

“Emery, get me that spoon, will you?” the man shouted, pointing to a long metal spoon in the grass.

The name made Ceony’s eyes dart to the second-youngest child, perhaps six years old, running between hives to the spoon. Still clutching the paper, Ceony ran to him and peered through the pale netting over his face. The child didn’t notice her at all, even as she crouched in front of him. She saw uneven patches of black hair sticking out from under his hat and bright, green eyes.

“Magician Thane,” she whispered. The eyes gave him away. The child phased through her like a ghost and handed the spoon to the man whom Ceony could only assume was his father. The man patted Mg. Thane’s head—Emery’s head—and the boy grinned a wide grin before returning to play with his siblings, darting between boxes with a precision that told Ceony he could do so blindfolded.

Mg. Thane’s family . . . 
, Ceony thought. But why did she see this . . . memory? Dream?

Didn’t he say he was an only child?

“Magician Thane!” she called out to him, but as she did she spied a shadow beyond the hives, where the grassy ground dipped down into a hill and a tire swing hung from a tall tree. Dark locks of hair caught on the breeze.

Lira.

Ceony’s breath caught in her throat. Her fingers turned cold, but she managed to snap them and call Fennel. The dog followed her as she ran in the other direction, away from the Excisioner and the bees, and away from the young Emery Thane. All she could do now was run . . . and figure out how to defeat an Excisioner who couldn’t be killed.

The view warped, darkened, and Ceony found herself assaulted by thunderous applause that nearly made her jump from her skin.

Fennel yapped at her heels as rows and rows of men and women Ceony didn’t know clapped around her in the auditorium of what looked to be the Royal Albert Hall in West London. Scarlet carpet lined the tilted aisles, and chandeliers filled with candles—not electric bulbs—hung unlit overhead. Ceony spun, her eyes landing on a heavyset woman in a fur coat clapping in a nearby chair. Approaching the woman, Ceony asked “What’s happening?” over the applause, but the woman didn’t answer. Didn’t look at her. Ceony found herself once more a ghost, though the vision unfolding around her seemed far more ghostly than she herself did.

Ceony glanced behind her, but didn’t see Lira anywhere. She sucked in a deep breath of relief. The applause died down, and Ceony crouched in the aisle between seats to Fold a paper bird.

“And Magician Emery Thane, Folder, District Fourteen,” boomed a voice from behind her. Ceony blinked at the brightly lit stage lined with velvet curtains. A man who looked like a younger Tagis Praff with a mustache stood stage left behind a broad podium with the Magicians’ seal painted on its front. He clapped his hands loudly together, and the audience followed suit.

A row of eleven chairs lined the stage opposite the podium, all empty save for one with a young man in a white magician’s dress uniform, complete with high collar and golden buttons. Ceony’s hands froze mid-Fold as Magician Emery Thane, barely older than herself, crossed the stage to accept his magician’s plaque—the same one that hung in his study.

She felt herself blush. He
did
look excellent in that uniform—it fit much more snugly about his shoulders than that awful indigo coat. It narrowed at his waist, and the sharp creases in the legs made him appear taller. Taller than Tagis Praff, anyway. Ceony hardly recognized
Mg. Thane
, especially with his hair cropped short enough to hide its wave. It was enough to make her forget Lira. For a moment, anyway.

Fennel sniffed at the half-formed bird beneath Ceony’s fingers, and Ceony sat in the aisle, watching the newly appointed Mg. Thane shake gloved hands with Tagis Praff.

“I’m in his heart,” she said to Fennel. “I never left it, so this must be part of it. I’m
seeing
his heart, but . . . how do I get out of it? I can’t help him from in here!”

But saving the paper magician’s life wasn’t her only predicament. She peered over her shoulder again, but Lira hadn’t followed her here. The fact didn’t make her feel safer.
If I
don’t get out,
I’ll
die, too.

Tagis Praff began bellowing a speech over the podium, but Ceony forced herself to focus on her bird and finish Folding its head, tail, and wings. What she would use it for, she didn’t know, but birds were one of the few things she knew how to make. What she wouldn’t give to be a Smelter right now, to have a gun with enchanted bullets that never missed their mark. She might have a chance against Lira if she only had one of those.

Shoving the white bird into her bag, Ceony ran down the rest of the aisle to the stage. Mg. Thane began walking down the stairs beside the podium. Ceony hurried in front of the unaware spectators toward him. She had to try.

“Magician Thane!” she called, but he didn’t turn. She ran up to him and grabbed his arm, but it merely passed through her, a phantom. He took a seat in the second row, alongside other materials magicians in their designated uniforms.

Ceony tried once more to grab him—his shoulder—but it did no good. “Magician Thane, can’t you hear me?” she asked, waving a hand in front of his face. “How do I get out?”

The young paper magician leaned his cheek on his fist, suddenly bored with the procession in his honor.

Ceony pursed her lips somewhat in imitation of Mg. Aviosky. Then she ran up the scarlet aisle toward the doors leading out of the auditorium, Fennel at her heels.

A woman screamed at her as soon as she stepped through them.

The noise startled Ceony so much that she fell back, but no doors or auditorium walls caught her. Instead she hit old, wooden floorboards rump first, not the marble tiles of the Royal Albert Hall. A dull, boney feeling shot up her back.

“Breathe, Letta: in and out,” a midwife in uniform instructed a young woman lying on the floor of a sparsely furnished room—the one who had screamed. The woman, her belly bulging with pregnancy, puffed through pursed lips. She held herself upright on her elbows. Towels surrounded her. A tin bowl of bloody water sat near her ankles. Blond hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. Outside, rain hammered onto the windows, and a flash of lightning boasted before the nearly spent candles. Thunder shook the house three seconds later, and the staccato report of raindrops hitting the roof drowned out the distant sound of the paper magician’s heartbeat.

“Thane!” Ceony shouted, spying her teacher kneeling at the pregnant woman’s legs, his sleeves rolled up nearly to his shoulders. He looked older, more himself. His forehead wrinkled in determination. His bright eyes shined with hope.

“That’s it,” he said. “Bear down. Push again!”

The woman cried out, her nails raking against the floor.

Ceony paused, ogling the woman in her labor. Was she related to Mg. Thane?

Ceony crawled to Mg. Thane’s side and waved a hand in front of his face, but he too didn’t see her. Even if this vision had been real, he wouldn’t have seen her. His attention focused solely on the delivery at hand.