The Paper Magician (18 page)

C
HAPTER
14

S
HE PASSED THROUGH BLINDLY
,
pushing her tired limbs through the tunnel that constricted around her like the big snakes at the London Zoo. But as Ceony had decided with Shadow-Emery, she would not be the mouse. With a grunt and an extra shove with her left leg, she reached the other side of the valve.

Just like chamber three, the fourth chamber opened up already playing a vision, though this vision seemed . . . different. Ceony did not find herself in a room, garden, or city. She had a feeling that this place was not a memory, either. She had never seen this landscape before, and she had a distinct feeling that, outside of Emery’s heart, it didn’t exist.

Before her stretched miles and miles of dry ground—not quite desert, but not quite anything else, either. Just tired, bronze ground stretching in all directions, unbroken by mountains or rivers or forests. Not a single weed or mound marred its surface. It stretched forever until it met a gray-blue sky lined with pale cerise, a sky perpetually caught in the moments before sunrise. Nothing broke the sky, not a single cloud or strip of color, no birds or seedlings caught upon the wind. There was no wind.

Ceony smelled nothing, not even the scent of dust and earth, and she heard nothing outside of herself—no crawling creatures, no whistles, thunder, moans, threats. No weeping, no rain. No
heartbeat
. Silence surrounded her. Endless silence on an endless plane.

Only one thing disturbed the endlessness of the place. One thing, one very large thing that no heart-traveler could ever miss in her adventure.

A canyon. A giant crack zigzagged over the dry, bland ground far to her left. The . . . north, she supposed. It was as good a direction as any. No bridges spanned it; no rivers filled it.

Ceony approached the canyon carefully, testing the solidity of the ground around it as she neared. Bronze sand, the same color as the earth, filled its deepness. A deepness that Ceony could tell had once been much deeper than it was. As she thought it, she saw a handful of sand drop from midair and rain onto the canyon floor.

Crouching, Ceony felt the edge of the giant crack. None of it came away in her fingers, even when she scratched it with her nails. The rock stayed hard and firm. Another handful of sand dropped to the canyon floor, seeming to make no difference in the canyon’s depth whatsoever. But Ceony knew that enough handfuls would fill it, eventually. After all, it took time to mend one’s heart. Enough time could heal a heart as broken as this one. It was half-healed already.

“I’m dying, aren’t I?”

Ceony turned around to see Emery Thane standing before her in his indigo coat, looking just as he had at the banquet and the church, though more . . . tired. His shoulders slouched, and dark circles lined his eyes. He was a tad translucent, but Ceony didn’t point it out to him.

A sliver of the real Emery Thane. One she could interact with.

She answered, “Yes.”

He nodded once, solemn.

“But if you help me get out, I think I can save you,” she added, standing. “I’ve come all this way hoping there’d be a way out, at the end.”

Emery’s eyes scanned the expanse. “She’s too strong. I’ll never be able to stop her, or the others.”

“We can stop her if we work together,” Ceony assured him, and as she did, a realization struck her.
Doubts
, she thought. This chamber must be his doubts and regrets, just as the second chamber was his hopes. The heart had the dark to balance out the light, the uncertainty to balance the dreams. All carefully balanced, but with her caught in the middle. “But I need your help, Emery. I’m only an apprentice, and I haven’t been an apprentice for very long.”

“Hmmm,” he hummed, neither in agreement nor disagreement. His gaze fell to her bag. “May I see him?”

It took a moment of processing before Ceony understood the request. She carefully lifted Fennel from her bag and handed his broken body to Emery.

Emery examined the pieces, a slight frown touching his lips. He held out a hand. It took her a moment to understand what he wanted. Ceony reached into her bag and handed him paper, relishing the tingle it sent through her fingers.

He worked deftly, unsnapping the turquoise collar from about the crushed Folds and re-Folding, reconnecting pieces of paper. Ceony handed him a second and third piece of paper, watching with her hands clasped to her breast as Emery remade Fennel’s head, a perfect replica of what it had been before.

He handed the paper dog back to Ceony, who whispered, “Breathe.”

Fennel shook his head and squirmed in Ceony’s grasp, wanting to be put down. Ceony laughed and hugged the dog to her chest. Fennel licked her cheek twice before resuming his insistent squirming. Ceony set him down, and he ran in circles beside her, stretching out his legs.

“Thank you,” she said, grinning and wiping her eyes. “Thank you.”

He nodded, a slim acknowledgment of gratitude, and gazed over the expanse once more, toward the pink horizon. He didn’t seem to notice the canyon beside them.

“You might not live through this,” he said. “It will be my fault if you don’t.”

“Last I checked,” Ceony began, “I volunteered of my own volition to rescue you.”

“Yet you’re caught in your own curse,” he replied, gesturing to the nothingness before them.

Ceony pondered that for a moment before saying, “Emery.”

He glanced at her.

“I think you can break the spell holding me here,” she said, albeit with some hesitation. “After all, it’s
your
heart, isn’t it? You have more claim to it than anyone, especially Lira. How else could you be speaking with me if it weren’t true?”

She caught the slightest quirk to his lips—almost a smile, but the doubt that weighted the air prevented it from forming.

He didn’t reply, so Ceony asked, “Can you . . . see it? The spell? How it works?”

“No,” he answered. “But I can feel it. I suppose I could break it, though it will make me . . . tired.”

“Tired?” Ceony asked, the word reminding her of her own fatigue. “Will it . . . hurt you?”

Again, an almost-smile. This version of Emery Thane was more similar to the real one than the others, notwithstanding his pessimism. He said, “I think I’ll manage.”

Ceony beckoned Fennel to her. She felt light, invigorated, as if the last chamber hadn’t happened at all. As if her own chamber of hope had added this moment to its foundation. She could do this.

“I need you to teach me some new spells,” she said. “Anything that can help but won’t take much time. You taught me so much, but . . .”

“But it’s not much use against an Excisioner.” He nodded. “I know.”

Emery considered for a moment, a crooked finger tucked under his chin. “How much paper do you have left?”

She pulled the diminished stack from her bag and presented it to him.

He examined the paper, his eyes bobbing as he counted the pieces, and sighed, shoulders slumping. “I’m going to teach you something I really shouldn’t be teaching you.”

“But given the circumstances,” she urged.

He nodded. His lip quirked. “Given the circumstances. Just pretend to forget it once this is over . . . if either of us makes it past this.”

“We will,” Ceony assured him with a grin. “I know we will. I have some ideas of my own, but I’m not sure they will work.”

She knelt down, tucking her soiled skirt under her knees, and set the stack of paper on the hard earth beside her. Dirty paper should work just as well as clean, and she didn’t exactly have a table at her disposal.

Emery watched her for a moment, his eyes lacking their normal luster. Despite that, his expression still proved easy to read—curious. Doubtful, but curious. Finally he asked, “Why are you doing all of this?”

Ceony paused, one hand on the stack of paper. Fennel nuzzled her elbow. “Doing what?”

He gestured to the empty expanse surrounding them. “This. All of this. Why have you come so far to help me?”

She felt her cheeks grow warm and she looked away, stroking Fennel to occupy her hands. She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to tell this sliver of Emery Thane. She could never utter the words to the magician himself, but knowing the man she spoke to was only a figment pieced together by a suffering heart lent her courage.

“Because I think I’m falling in love with you,” she admitted, feeling her cheeks redden like the cerise sunrise. “I know I haven’t known you long, but after all this . . .” She lifted her eyes to the horizon where earth met sky. “I feel like I’ve known you forever. I don’t know how many women can claim to have walked a man’s heart, but I’ve walked yours, Emery Thane. And I like the dog.”

His expression didn’t change save for the tilt of his lips, which very nearly formed a smile before tuckering out and returning to their flat, doubtful line.

“Very well,” Emery said, kneeling across from her and pulling up his long, baggy sleeves. Not exactly the response she was hoping for, but a start. He continued, “I’ll start with the most complicated first, the one I shouldn’t be teaching you.”

Ceony nodded as he reached for a sheet of sea-green paper.

His eyes met hers. “Do you know what happens when paper vibrates very, very fast?”

“Something I’m not supposed to know,” she guessed.

“Correct,” he replied. “But allow me to explain . . .”

C
HAPTER
15

C
EONY FINALLY TUCKED HER
last paper spell into her bag, careful not to disrupt the organized chaos within. Organized chaos—many necessary things all needing careful placement. Ceony understood Emery’s method of interior decorating just a little better now. She and Emery had not used every piece of paper, just most of them, and their many intricate Folds made the bag bulge at Ceony’s hip.

Her fingers fluttered over the shield chain around her torso, pinching each link to test its security. After checking the entire chain twice, she called Fennel with a whistle and a snap.

Emery stepped aside to let the paper dog pass. Fennel’s expertly crafted paws left four-toe prints in the thin layer of dust covering the dry, flat earth, but the prints vanished nearly as quickly as they appeared.

“I need you to fold up, Fennel,” Ceony said. Fennel whined and she added, “I don’t want you to get hurt again, and it’s wet outside. Just for a little while.”

“Will it be?” Emery asked, once more scanning the expanse. “Just a little while?”

Ceony gave him a soft smile before commanding Fennel, “Cease.”

Fennel stilled in her arms, and she folded him softly in her freckled hands. “Your doubtful side isn’t very strong,” she remarked. “You must be sure about a great many things.”

Emery didn’t answer.

Tucking Fennel far down into her bag, she said, “I think mine would look much different. More cliffs and surging rivers, or lots of roads with unexpected turns. Maybe even some lions. I’ve been doubtful about a lot of things in life.”
Including you.

“But no cracks,” Emery commented.

Ceony glanced over her shoulder to the chasm rupturing the land, wondering for a moment how much more sand had fallen into it since her hurried paper lessons. “Plenty of cracks, but no canyons. Not yet,” she affirmed.
I guess it all depends on how this goes.

She stood, brushed off her skirt—for what good it did her—tested the shield chain for the third time, and checked the stitches of her bag’s strap. She had memorized the location and number of all the spells within the bag already, should she need to retrieve them quickly.

“Good luck,” Emery said.

“Thank you,” she replied. “But how will you—”

Ceony turned to him, but met only the stretch of empty, predawn space beyond the canyon. The paper magician—at least this version of him—had disappeared.

She barely had time to recognize Emery’s absence before the ground began to quake. Ceony reached out for something to steady herself with, but of course she found nothing amidst her barren surroundings.

The land shook in broader and broader patterns, bucking back and forth like a rodeo bull. Ceony took two steps away from the chasm before she stumbled to one knee and skinned her palm on the hard earth, which had begun to fade, revealing deep red flesh beneath it.

The vision slowly collapsed. The sky broke like shards of glass. The heart’s
PUM-Pom-poom
drummed so loudly Ceony felt it in her lungs. The pulse accelerated and the last of the vision faltered.

The walls of Emery’s heart throbbed and rippled. The beat grew uneven, and Ceony’s breath quickened. It didn’t sound right; it didn’t feel right. If Emery’s heart destroyed itself trying to free her . . .

Her hands turned cold. A world without Emery Thane. Her entire world up until a month ago had existed without him, but to go back to it now . . . The thought made Ceony sick. It crushed her.

The rivers of blood lining the perimeter of the chamber engorged and rose. The air grew thicker and hotter, as if she hung over a pot of boiling water, ready for cooking. The heart wrenched one way, then another, and Ceony felt herself fall.

She landed on her side, her left cheek pressed to wet, rough rock. Damp, cool air encircled her, clinging to her clothes and skin. Tasting of salt. She heard the sounds of swishing and spurting nearby—waves crashing against rocks.

Pale sunlight filtered through the mouth of the black cave. The sharp cry of a gull startled her to alertness.

She was free.

“You did it,” Ceony whispered, pushing herself to her feet and spinning to the rocky shelf that still held Emery’s beating heart in its pool of enchanted blood. Still beating, but even weaker than before. She could still save him, if she hurried.

She hoped.

Her eyes shot back to the cave’s mouth. Morning. Early morning. But had it been one night, or two? Exhaustion pinched the center of Ceony’s muscles and the edges of her brain, but it could not tell her how many hours had accumulated.

Ceony swallowed, realizing for the first time just how thirsty she was.

She approached the heart like a priestess to an altar. Would it need its pool of gold-rimmed blood to survive the trip back to London? It had beat in Lira’s hand after she had pulled it from Emery’s chest without a spell—at least, without any Ceony could see. Then again, she knew little of the working of magicians’ hearts, and almost nothing of Excision.

She needed something safe to carry the heart in, but as she considered her options the salty air began to burn her nose, and the blond hairs on her arms stood on end. Licking her lips, Ceony turned around to face Lira, whose dark hair fell in perfect, lush waves over her narrow shoulders, whose dark eyes narrowed to lightless almonds, and whose red lips curled into a sneer.

Setting her jaw, Ceony stepped away from the heart. She would allow no spell of Lira’s to miss her and strike it. She would keep Emery’s heart safe, especially from the woman who had treated it so very poorly.

If the Excisioner was surprised to see Ceony, she didn’t show it. Her pale skin flushed almost prettily with anger, or perhaps hate. Ceony couldn’t be sure—such loathing had never been directed at her before. Not to this magnitude.

Ceony took the first words for herself.

“Stand down, Lira,” she said, straightening as tall as her five-foot-three frame could straighten. “You want to escape? Then go while you have the chance.”

Lira smiled, looking distinctly like a cat gone half-feral. “Not when I have two hearts to take with me. Grath will find them such a handsome prize, even if I only let him keep yours.”

She lifted a bloody hand—her blood or another’s, Ceony couldn’t be sure—and with it rose from the ground three pairs of severed, undead hands that Ceony had failed to spot, as the uneven rock of the cave floor had concealed them.

Ceony’s windpipe constricted, reminding her of the bruises dotting her neck such hands had given her before. For a split second she felt herself paralyzed, but the whispered beating of Emery’s heart regrounded her. Forced her to move.

Her hands shot to her bag as Lira’s shot forward, sprinkling droplets of cold blood throughout the cave. The undead hands—fingers pudgy and swollen—rose like birds into the air and shot toward her on invisible wings.

Wings.

Birds.

Ceony grasped her paper birds in her fingers and yanked their Folded bodies from her bag. “Breathe!” she gasped as the hands charged her. “Attack them!”

Two birds fell crumpled to the cavern floor, crushed from where Ceony had landed on her bag after escaping the heart. She stiffened, but seven square-bodied cranes heeded her command and sprung to life in front of her—orange, yellow, maroon, white, white, white, and gray. Their quick flapping hummed through the cavern. Their long necks stretched forward as they sailed for Lira’s bodiless army, and Ceony could almost hear them caw a selfless battle cry just before striking their targets.

One bird collided with each hand, save for two who struck a half-rotten hand at the same time, one at the thumb, the other at the ring finger. The hands closed around the birds not four paces from Ceony and, as in the prison, fell to the ground.

Ceony’s mind spun. Adrenaline coursed up her neck and down into her legs, making her skittish. She had to get out of the cave—Emery’s heart rested too close to the battle. Lira blocked the entrance, conjuring her next spell.

Ceony already had hers set.

“Focus on your target,”
Emery’s voice spoke in her memory as he had during his quick lesson in the new spell.
“Feel it in your mind like your story illusions. If you do, the stars will hit their mark.”

Reaching into her bag, Ceony pulled free five tightly Folded, four-cornered paper stars, just like the ones Emery had worn going into that awful warehouse. She and Emery had Folded them so tightly they hadn’t been affected by the crushed bag. She locked her eyes on Lira’s muttering lips and bloodied hands, threw the stars, and ran for the cave mouth.

The stars spun through the air like pinwheels caught in a summer storm. Ceony didn’t watch to see them meet their target. Lira’s frustrated scream told her enough.

The morning sunlight, white behind thready clouds, burned her dry eyes and sizzled against the ocean that stirred about the black-rock coast below her. So deep, so hungry.

The water sprayed cool mist over Ceony as she darted over the uneven shore. A whip of amber kelp looped around her foot and fell away again, perhaps sensing Ceony’s urgency and deciding not to take part in it.

She didn’t get far before a crackling ribbon of gore circled around her. The shield chain encompassing her torso stiffened. The bubbling blood warped away from her body and crashed into the wet rocks, staining them in patterns like spiderwebs. The spell’s residue left a metallic taste in the back of Ceony’s throat.

Lira scowled and pulled a small vial of blood from the tight waistband of her slacks. It looked like her supply was getting low. “A parlor trick,” she said with a grin that was almost a grimace. “Do you really think a little paper sash can stop me?”

She advanced one step, uncorking the vial with a long thumbnail and dumping it into her hands. The blood coursed over her palm and dripped into the small, swirling streams of saltwater between jagged rocks under her feet.

“It has three times already,” Ceony countered, taking one step back for Lira’s every step forward. “So I’ll say yes.”

Lira smiled sweetly, and for a moment Ceony could see why Emery had been drawn to her, so many years ago. But the expression soured as Lira’s brows drew together, her forehead creased, and her nostrils flared. She said something in a bizarre tongue and waved her bloody hand as if she were throwing a cricket ball.

Ceony’s hand thrust into her bag. She braced herself for Lira’s attack.

It struck from behind.

The red-veined waves crashed into her like a blizzard wind, cold and blinding, nearly knocking her to the uneven ground. A jolt of alarm—as if she had been burned—shot from navel to crown. She ran from the wave so as not to be pulled into the ocean, but it had already done its damage, soaking her to her skin.

She felt the power drain from her shield chain. Two links between her shoulder blades gave out, and the chain flopped down to her ankles, nothing more than soggy pulp.

Ceony felt as though her own blood had been drained away with the wave. She searched her bag with white, shivering fingers, pulling out spell after ruined spell. Her paper fish, the elaborate confusion sphere Emery had Folded himself while she had made the stars. It had been meant as a distraction for . . .

Her hand touched the symmetrical rhombus beside Fennel. Dry, protected by the bodies of the crushed spells, as were Fennel and her binding chain. They all buzzed softly beneath her touch. The thin stack of unused papers had protected them, thank God.

Lira closed the gap between them, a cat stalking a grasshopper, as Ceony dropped wet spells at her feet. Ceony stumbled backward, trying to keep the Excisioner and her bloody hands at bay. Her heart hammered holes into her chest. Her skin itched. She swallowed against a dry throat.

She’d rather face Emery’s shadows again than be here, so unarmed. But she couldn’t run, not from this. Not back to Emery, cold and heartless.

“You’re weak, just like him,” Lira said with a sneer. “Worthless. All Folders are. Emery never had any real power, and neither do you.”

Ceony stopped retreating. She would not be a mouse, nor would she be a grasshopper. She dug her heels into the black rock. She had no confusion sphere, but she had other ways of distracting Lira.

“He signed the divorce papers the night he hid you,” she said, letting her face relax into the sort of smugness she couldn’t stand in other people. The sort of smugness Lira would have worn, had her anger not boiled so close to the surface of her skin. “You weren’t as in control of the situation as you think.”

Lira’s countenance didn’t alter, save for the slightest quirk of her left eyebrow, but Ceony noticed. Lira continued to advance. Ceony held her ground, trying to ignore the cold sweat beading down her spine.

“You weren’t in his heart, either,” she added. “Not how you are now. Not outside of a prison cell, at least. Or didn’t you notice?”

Lira paused eight or nine paces from Ceony, her eyes narrowed to slits. She looked like a snake—a coiled viper ready to spring. Ceony had insulted the flesh magician’s vanity . . . or perhaps, deep inside the dark, hollow chambers of her heart, Lira still cared for Emery.