The Paper Magician (14 page)

C
HAPTER
11

E
VEN 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?”

“Get off of me!” Lira shouted back.

Emery conceded only a few inches of space. Still clutching the folded Fennel in her hands, Ceony edged toward them.

“Three days with no word. No word!” Emery hissed, his hands flying through the air like striking cobras. His shoulders tensed and made his neck look shorter. “And now you’re a suspect in the Fräulein’s disappearance!”

Lira’s eyes widened.

Emery grabbed fistfuls of his hair and looked away for a moment—those boiling eyes passed over Ceony, but didn’t see her. Unlike the Emery Thane in the Anglican church, this one was fully incorporated into the vision, unaware of Ceony’s presence. Spinning back on Lira, Emery said, “And you don’t even know. How have you not heard, Lira? Where have you been?”

“Does it matter?” she asked, her voice just as sharp as his, but her words touched the air with frost, not fire. “I’m not your dog, Emery!”

“Do you think it’s not my business when my wife vanishes without a trace?” Emery asked, flabbergasted. A loud crash made Ceony jump, and it wasn’t until she squinted that she saw Emery’s fist against the wall, the paint cracked around his knuckles.

“Emery,” Ceony whispered.

He pulled his hand back, wincing, and turned to Lira. “It’s Grath Cobalt, isn’t it?” he asked, half angry and half hurt. The emotions rolled over him like thunder, the lightning flashing behind those fierce eyes. He rubbed his sore knuckles like they were his own heart.

“Leave him out of it,” Lira snapped.

Emery grabbed Lira’s shoulders and shook her. “This is Excision you’re dabbling in, Lira! Damn it, it’s Excision! What excuses could you possibly assign it? Have you turned your back on everything good and right in the world already?”

The room heaved as Lira’s hand sailed across Emery’s face. Ceony’s shoulder hi
t the office door—she had retreated from them and had run out of space, gaping as silvery light from the office’s one window highlighted their persons. This wasn’t the Emery Thane Ceony knew—his motions so sharp, his voice so commanding and hard. It scared her.

She fumbled for the doorknob behind her with a clammy hand, turned it, and fell onto her back.

She landed on cool, wet grass, a murky, overcast sky spread in even swathes above her. Soft half droplets of rain pelted her face and she quickly rolled over, protecting Fennel from the moisture. Cold air made her skin prickle and sent chills through her upper arms. Tucking Fennel beneath her shirt, Ceony pushed herself onto her knees, swiped a mess of rain- and sweat-dampened hair from her forehead, and took in her surroundings.

A flat lawn with no trees or gardens greeted her. A redbrick building that almost looked like a schoolhouse without a bell loomed far in the distance. No path led to it, but Ceony spied a cobbled road winding through the landscape far to her right. To her left stood several gray slate buildings with gabled roofs and no windows or chimneys. Too small to be homes. They looked like sepulchers, the homes of the dead.

Ceony found her legs and stood, her bag tugging at her shoulder. She switched it to the other side.

Standing gave her enough height for her eyes to find rows of neatly spaced indentations in the ground, each with its own cement plaque engraved with names and dates. Some had soggy or dead bouquets of flowers resting upon them. One had a small stuffed lamb, no larger than Ceony’s hand, soaked through with rain.

Ceony did not frequent cemeteries. They were such sad places. Even the heavens thought so, for they wept steadily above her.

Nearly five years had passed since Ceony last trod among graves.

Ceony reached back for the office door, despite knowing it wouldn’t be there. A chill in her arms drilled into her breast and stomach. “Not here,” she whispered, shivering. She hugged herself. “I don’t want to know what’s here, Emery. Please.”

But the scene didn’t warp or shift. The cemetery awaited her, quiet as snowfall, the accompanying drizzle soaking through her blouse.

Chewing on her bottom lip, Ceony trekked to the cobbled road and followed it up a shallow hill. Fatigue finally dragged at her legs. What time was it? How long had she been inside Emery’s heart? How long did she have left? She had no pocket watch, nothing to answer her questions. She imagined, by her weariness, that it had grown late . . . though her run-in with Lira and her scramble between chambers would be enough to tire anyone.

She pulled some cheese from her bag and ate it slowly, her stomach too tight for anything more. In the back of her mind she heard Emery’s voice looping like a disc stuck in a phonograph, betrayal and anger lacing his words. If this chamber turned out to be what she thought it was, Ceony wanted to leave as soon as possible.

The cobbled road stretched up and over a small hill, and off to its left side Ceony spied a small gathering of people dressed all in black—two men in black suits, a preacher with a white-and-black collar, and four women in long black dresses, three of whom wore broad hats and netted veils over their faces. She approached them slowly, sore legs trudging up the wet slope. One of the men turned to a woman and whispered something in her ear. Ceony knew the man—the beekeeper—though he looked different. Perhaps it was merely the sorrow lining his features that changed him, but he looked drawn. Tired. The beekeeper. Emery’s father. A jolt of panic shot through Ceony’s torso.

Finding a new store of energy, Ceony jogged the rest of the way to the gravesite. Surely this wasn’t Emery’s grave! No person’s heart could know the future, could it?

She froze mid-stride, only a few paces from the gravesite.
Unless this isn’t the future
, she thought. What if she was too late? What if Emery had already . . .

Biting her lower lip, Ceony phased through the women, none of them sensing her presence, and faced two clean graves above two fresh mounds of dirt.

Between them stood a little boy no older than three holding a tiny bowler hat to his stomach. Rain weighed on his loose black curls and plastered the strands to his forehead, temples, and ears. He stared forward with little thought or expression, save for the pucker of his tiny mouth.

Ceony knelt beside him and tried to brush wet hair from his eyes, but of course her hand passed through him. Then she read the tombstones: “HENRY THANE, 1839–1874” and “MELODY VLADARA THANE, 1841–1874.” Both had doves in mid-flight carved beneath the names, along with the image of two overlapping wedding rings.

Ceony pressed both hands to her chest.

“These are your parents,” she whispered, glancing to the little boy, then to the beekeeper behind her. He had to be an uncle, judging by the family resemblance, slight as it was.

Anger. Infidelity. Death. Dark times—that’s what these memories were. Ceony had passed through Emery’s goodness and his hopes; it made sense to see his darkness, too. To see his hurts and his vices. To see the shadows cast behind those bright eyes.

The rain in the grass seeped into her skirt where her knees pressed the fabric to the ground. The little boy looked through her to an unmarked spot between the tombstones, the lids over his large eyes drooping. Raindrops clung to his dark eyelashes and pattered against his round cheeks.

“Please let me,” Ceony whispered. “I know you’re somewhere in here, Emery. Let me help him.”

Ceony tried to push soggy hair back from the boy’s face once more, and this time her fingers felt a glassy solid. Not skin and hair, but at least she could touch him.

She wrapped her arms around the little boy’s shoulders and hugged him to her. “It will be okay, I promise,” she murmured. “I’ve seen your future, and you accomplish a lot. Your parents would have been proud. It will get better. You’ll be happy again.”
I’ll make sure of it.

She kissed Emery on his forehead and pulled his hat from his fingers so she could set it on his head. The storm had already drenched him, but at least the hat would keep the water from his eyes. Standing, she searched for something dry to wipe her face with, but she had few options. She needed to get away from the rain—if she soaked through, so would Fennel, and she didn’t think she’d make it much farther without him. Not in this dark place.

Reverently stepping over the graves, Ceony slid between the beekeeper and the priest and moved away from the funeral service and the path altogether, rubbing chills from her shoulders and neck. The cemetery seemed to stretch on forever, past all horizons, until the very sky seemed filled with graves.

Onward she trudged.

She reached a stone wall only as high as her knees and stepped over a portion that had weathered and crumbled. The grass grew shorter and harder beneath her feet until her shoes clacked on wide black and white tiles. An arching ceiling nearly three stories above her head replaced the clouds and rain. Ceony’s hair and clothes instantly dried, and the air warmed to room temperature.

She took several seconds to absorb the massive atrium—no, a hallway—into her brain. Copper-colored columns lined the walls to her left and right, and between them pear-shaped alcoves showcased different treasures: painted vases, old and yellowed documents framed in thick glass, portraits of the queen or busts of queens past. One bust, oddly enough, looked especially worn on the nose.

Long rows of square windows let in sunlight through the ceiling itself. Something about the place seemed familiar to Ceony, but she couldn’t pinpoint what. She had never been in this particular spot before. Or, perhaps, just not seen it from this angle.

She retrieved Fennel from the confines of her blouse. If the rain from the cemetery had gotten to him, then the change of scenery had dried that as well.

She unfolded the dog, who immediately popped to life and began scratching behind his paper ears with his back leg. Ceony laughed and rubbed his chin. “Stay close, boy.”

She began walking, her footsteps sounding particularly loud, Fennel’s especially quiet. The dog trotted off to a fern against one of the columns, sniffing the edge of its ceramic pot.

Faint whispers brushed Ceony’s ears. She paused, listening. They came from ahead and around the corner. Given her recent interaction with the characters of Emery’s heart, she approached the whispers with caution.

She recognized both voices—the first was Emery’s. The second, which she strained to hear, belonged to Mg. Hughes.

She spied around the corner to see them both leaning against a wall outside a room with double doors. Those doors jogged Ceony’s memory; this was Parliament. She had toured it once many years ago, back when her father still worked as a chauffeur.

“. . . don’t think it will work out,” Emery whispered. He stood with his hands clasped over his elbows and his eyes cast to the opposite wall. He wore a sage-green coat similar to his indigo one, but with more buttons. “I’ve neglected him. He’s only brought it up once, but at this point I’m delaying his certification. Edward is a bright young man. He deserves better, and I’ll hardly make him defer.”

“No, not defer,” Mg. Hughes agreed, rubbing his short white beard with his index finger and thumb. “But they’ll avoid transferring. It hurts the method of the thing, takes time to switch over lesson plans and readjust. You both would need to make a good case.”

“My marriage is falling apart, Alfred,” Emery said. He let out a long breath and slid his hands into his pockets. His voice carried such weight that Ceony withered against the wall.

Mg. Hughes rested a hand on Emery’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. On my third, myself. It’s a hard thing, but surely given a bit of time—”

“I think she’s an Excisioner,” Emery interjected.

The words were barely audible, but they rang like cymbals in the empty corridor.

Mg. Hughes mumbled something on a dry tongue before sputtering, “You . . . you can’t be serious.”

“I prefer not to be, in most cases,” he replied, “but I’ve seen the signs.” He hesitated. “Then again, I haven’t even
seen
her in four months.”

The two men quieted for a long minute. As Ceony turned to leave, Mg. Hughes said, “What you
do
know, Emery, could be of use. I know some people—not the police, per se—who work tirelessly to extinguish the dark magics from her ladyship’s domain. If you’re willing, I could introduce you . . .”