The Magic Thief (11 page)

T
wenty days left.

I hadn't bothered going through the academicos collection of locus stones. As a result, Brumbee was disappointed in me.

“My locus magicalicus isn't in there,” I said.

“But how can you be sure?”
Brumbee said. “You haven't looked carefully.”

“It just isn't.”

He shook his head and sent me away. He couldn't, he said sadly, spare me any more attention if I wasn't going to make an effort.

 

Eighteen days.

Rowan had told her teachers that I was ready to join the other students in the apprentice class. For some reason, she was in the class, too.

“Ordinarily,” she'd explained, “regular students don't need to know much about magic. But I'm interested.”

“Even though you're not an apprentice?” I'd asked.

“Even though, Connwaer.”

But Rowan wasn't always in class. When she wasn't, I missed her.

The apprentice class was held in a long room with a high ceiling and lots of windows to let in plenty of light. Dust floated in the air, sparkling
like tiny stars in the beams of weak winter sunlight.

Only five students, plus me, were in the class, and that day we sat in three groups of two, passing a spelltext back and forth, reading the spell out loud in quiet voices. The words must roll smoothly from the tongue, Periwinkle told us—she was our teacher—without hesitation or error, in order to invoke the magic.

Because I was the worst student, Periwinkle had put me with the best student. Keeston was a bigger boy who was very proud of his locus stone, which was shiny black like Nevery's, but splintery looking. The patch on his robe had a stone arch embroidered on it. He was also proud of his looks; he was tall and strong, and had wavy fair hair and dark blue eyes. He was Pettivox's apprentice, and he was proud of that, too.

He wasn't happy about working with me. I still couldn't read very well out loud. I was slowing him down, he said. Keeston sneered every
time I had to stop and put the runes together to make words.

And then we came to a spell I knew something about. The embero, the spell Nevery had used to turn me into a cat. Keeston had the book, and was reading the embero spell out loud. Then he made a mistake.

“It's
tark
olil,” I said, interrupting him.

Keeston gave me the eyeball. “It is not, new boy. It's
terk
olil. Says so in the book. Can't you
read
?”

“Yes, I can,” I said. “The book is wrong. It's
tark
olil.”

Keeston sat back in his seat and gave me a scornful look. “Magister,” he called.

Periwinkle, her gray hair straggling from its bun, came over. “You have a question, Keeston?”

“Not really, Magister,” Keeston answered. “The new boy thinks the embero spell has the word
tarkelel
in it.”

He'd gotten it wrong again. “
Tarkolil
,” I said.

“Look, Magister,” Keeston said, pointing at the book, which lay open on the table. “The new boy is being stupid about this.”

Periwinkle leaned over to peer at the book. “Ah, yes.” She cast me a silencing glare and straightened. “Keeston, you are correct and Conn is in error.”

I stared at her. I knew I was right.

Keeston smirked.

“Now, apprentices,” Periwinkle said to the class. “You may each open your books again and study the next chapter.” Then she leaned over to speak softly to me. “And you, Conn, will forget everything you know about the embero, if you know what's good for you.”

“The book is wrong,” I whispered back.

Periwinkle glanced up at the ceiling, blew out a breath, and looked back down again. “Of course it is. The book is intentionally in error. Our students would have no good reason to use the embero, which is a particularly dangerous spell.
So it was written down with a mistake in it, just so students don't effect it by accident and turn themselves into toads.”

Right, I got it. But I didn't have to like it. “That's a stupid thing to do with the magic. Why teach them spells they can't use?”

“Hush,” Periwinkle said, pointing at my book. “Keep quiet and read.”

Frowning, I opened my book and started reading.

Rowan came in late, then, and slid onto a seat beside me. “What did I miss?” she whispered. She was out of breath.

“Toads,” I said quietly. “Where've you been?”

She shrugged and opened her spelltext. “Affairs of state, my lad.”

Ha-ha. I showed her the page we were on and went back to piecing together the larpenti spell, for turning water into other liquids. I wondered where the mistake in the spell was, and if Nevery would teach me the real larpenti spell.

After class was over, I said good-bye to Rowan, slung my bag full of books over my shoulder, and headed for the stairs to the secret tunnels to wait for Nevery. I was thinking about where I was going to look next for my locus magicalicus when Keeston and three of his friends, a boy and two girls, appeared in front of me.

I started to walk around them, but they moved to block my way to the stairs.

“Magister Nevery is your master, is he?” Keeston asked.

Nothing wrong with that question. I nodded.

“But you don't have a locus magicalicus. So you can't be sure you're really a wizard, can you?”

I knew for sure that I was a wizard, but I didn't have to prove it to Keeston. I shrugged.

Keeston stepped closer. “
Can
you?”

“I'll find a locus stone.” Eventually.

Keeston stepped closer. “My master says he'd have you beaten, sneak thief, if you were his apprentice.”

I put my bag down, to keep my hands free. Only one way this kind of conversation was likely to lead. “What for, footlicker?” I asked.

“For disrespect, among other things,” Keeston sneered.

That didn't make sense. “But I respect Nevery.”

“See, right there?” Keeston glanced aside to his three gray-robed friends, and they nodded. He looked back at me. “You called your master—” He couldn't bring himself to say Nevery's name.

The other apprentices were frightened of Nevery. I saw how they quivered like jelly on a plate whenever he was around. I'd heard them tell stories among themselves; they'd heard them from their masters, I reckoned. Like that twenty years ago Nevery had been banished from Wellmet for attempting to kill the duchess, which I didn't believe, and for trying to burn down the Dawn Palace, which, knowing Nevery, could be true.

At any rate, Keeston was still worked up about it. “You call your master by his right name,” he said.

I nodded.

“You should call him ‘Master.'”

I nodded again. “Yes, he told me that, too. But we agreed that if I taught him to pick locks, I could call him Nevery.”

Keeston drew himself up and spoke triumphantly. “See there?” His friends, lined up like little dolls in a shop window, nodded again. “Right there. My master would have you beaten for that, gutterboy.”

“Like he beats you, crawler?” I asked.

And then he went for me.

I wasn't expecting it yet, so he got in one punch, right in my face.

Keeston was bigger than I was, but you don't last long in the Twilight without learning how to fight. Shaking off the blow he'd given me, I ducked under his next swing and gave him a
sharp elbow under the ribs. As he bent over, gasping for breath, I kicked him in the collops. He fell to the ground, howling.

His friends, if that's what they were, backed away, eyes wide.

Drats. I'd probably get in trouble for this. And my face hurt where Keeston had hit me. Oh well. I heaved up my book bag, walked around them, and headed for the stairs.

 

That night, before supper, Nevery and I sat in the study, he in his chair at one end of the table, me at the other end with my books and papers. I had a lot of reading to do, and Rowan had insisted that I work on my handwriting, which she said was atrocious.

I got right down to it, putting my elbows on the table, propping my head in my hands, and working through a history book. It was very interesting stuff, about the origins of magic in the Peninsular Duchies, of which Wellmet was one. Each city was part of a loose…

I had to stop and take the word apart.
Con-fed-er-acy
. I got up and fetched the lexicon from the bookshelf and brought it back to my place at the table. Looked up the word.
Confederacy: An alliance of different groups or people for a common purpose.
What was that purpose, I wondered. I kept reading to see if I could find out.

Wellmet, the text went on, was one of a loose confederacy of cities, each built on a magical node. A magical node, the lexicon said, was a place where, for some reason yet to be determined, magic gathered. Between the nodes, in places where there was little or no magic, were vast wildernesses and deserts and, closer to the cities, farmland, mines, and forests.

I'd never thought about any of these things before. Before coming to Nevery, I'd never really thought about anything beyond finding enough to eat and a warm place to sleep. It was fascinating. Magic was the life of a place, and attracted people, so the cities grew up on magical nodes. It made perfect sense.

“—
Are
you listening, boy?” Nevery asked loudly.

I looked up, blinking. What?

He pointed at my face. “You've been fighting again, have you? Benet?”

Oh. I felt the place where Keeston had hit me. A bruise, probably nice and purple by now, under my eye. “No,” I answered. “Keeston. A boy at the academicos.”

“Hmmm,” Nevery said. “Pettivox's apprentice, I think.”

I nodded.

He gave me a stern look. “I won't tolerate fighting, boy.”

“I know. But I don't like him.”

Nevery raised his eyebrows. “Really.”

“Really,” I answered. “Look, Nevery, it doesn't bother me that Keeston calls me gutterboy and sneak thief, because that's what I am. But he jumped on me when I called him what he is.”

“Indeed.” Nevery leaned back in his chair and
pulled on the end of his beard. “And what is that?”

“Footlicker and crawler.”

“Ah.” He looked at me, lips twitching. “And he blacked your eye for you.”

Yes, he had.

“Well, boy. Don't let it happen again.”

Typical Nevery comment. Did he mean don't let Keeston black my eye again? Don't fight with him again? Don't let him call me gutterboy again? Don't call him crawler again?

I bent my head over my book, but I couldn't concentrate. I kept going over the fight—and it hadn't been much of a fight, really—and thinking about what Keeston had said and why he had said it. Hmmm. Maybe Keeston hadn't jumped me because I called him a crawler, but because…

“Nevery?” I said.

He looked up from his book. “What, boy?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I think Keeston's master beats him.”

Nevery studied me. “Are you worried that I'd have you beaten for something?”

The thought hadn't even occurred to me. I considered it. “No.”

“You wouldn't stand for it, would you,” Nevery said.

Not even from Nevery, no. I shook my head.

Nevery nodded. “That is why you, boy, are not a gutterboy or sneak thief.”

Ah. That made perfect sense. Still, I decided, I'd keep my eye on Keeston. I wasn't so sure he was a bad sort. I'd likely jump on people, too, if I had a master who beat me.

Of course, if I didn't find my locus magicalicus soon, I wouldn't be an apprentice anymore. I wasn't sure what I'd be. Nothing, maybe.