The Magic Thief (12 page)

S
ixteen days left. I'd been wasting too much time being a student and an apprentice. From now on, I needed to spend all day, every day, searching for my locus magicalicus.

We were eating breakfast at the table in the
kitchen, me and Nevery and Benet.

“Nevery,” I said, after taking a bite of porridge and wiping my mouth.

“Use your napkin, boy, not your sleeve,” Nevery growled.

I looked at my sleeve. What did he mean?

Nevery held up his napkin, then used it to wipe his mouth.

Oh, that's what it was for. I used my napkin and then went back to my question. “Nevery, I need one of those password stones for the tunnel gates.”

“You need a haircut, is what you need,” Benet said.

I didn't have time for haircuts. “Can I have one, Nevery?”

“A keystone?” Nevery said, taking a drink and setting down his teacup. “Why, boy?”

The bite of porridge I was eating turned to ashes in my mouth. I swallowed it down. “I need to go out into Wellmet and search for my locus magicalicus,” I said.

“Yes, all right.” He pointed at me with his spoon. “But you go to the academicos every day.”

I didn't answer. I wasn't going to go to school. I didn't have time.

 

I was from the Twilight. So, I reckoned, I'd find my locus magicalicus in the Twilight.

And if I was going to search in the Twilight, I had to look like I belonged there. If I went in wearing my coat and hat and woolen scarf, and my stout boots, somebody—some thief or bagman—would jump on me, drag me into an alley, and pluck me like a chicken.

So after stepping onto the west side of the river, I found the nearest alley, where I took off my warm clothes and boots and hid them in a dry hole under a flat stone, and rubbed dirt on my face and in my hair and on my bare feet. Takes a while to work up a really good layer of grime, but it would do.

Then I went out and searched.

I started down by the river, sticking to the
shadows in the warehouse district, slinking past the docks and the dockside taverns. Nothing. Farther south, the docks ended and mudflats lined the river. When I'd lived in the Twilight I'd gone mudlarking, because you could find, washed up in the mud, metal to sell, and sometimes a copper lock or two on a rotting purse string, or a bundle of old clothes.

Mudlarking for my locus magicalicus was hopeless. All I got for my trouble was cold. And muddy.

 

Ten days.

I moved on from the riverside and tried the workers' tenements in the Steeps, but found nothing. Then I tried the area around Dusk House, the Underlord's mansion.

Late in the afternoon, I was searching in an alleyway, digging through a pile of garbage—rags and rotting wood, broken bottles and a dead rat—when I looked up and saw a man in a black wizard's robe stride past the mouth of the alley. Pettivox!

If he was going to see the Underlord again, he
was up to something, sure as sure, no matter what Nevery said.

I edged out of the alley. As he climbed the street, I followed, keeping to the shadows.

He veered off, cutting down a side street, toward the river, then down a steep set of stairs until he came out at one of the factories along the river. I lurked in a doorway until he went inside.

Tricky following him in there. But I had to find out what Pettivox was up to.

The factory was a huge building built of soot-stained brick, with belching chimneys and narrow windows painted black. I slid in the doorway, not far behind the wizard, glad it was dark and dusty. And noisy with the clatter-rattle of millworks; it was a factory for making cloth. Workers, coming and going past whirring machines for spinning thread, looked like sooty black ghosts. At the machines themselves, powered by magic brought in through huge, pulsing pipes overhead, rows of children bent their heads, threading spindles with quick fingers. Their hair was shaved short so it
wouldn't be caught in the machines and yanked off their heads. They didn't even look up as I passed.

Pettivox stood at the end of a row of whirling bobbins. Another man, a factory boss dressed in a black suit, spoke with him. They shouted to be heard above the rattling machines, so, even lurking deep in the shadows, I heard most of what they said.

“Can you get some more?” Pettivox shouted.

The factory man shook his head and muttered something.

Pettivox scowled. “…must have more slow-silver! If you don't get it, the Underlord will—” He leaned over and snarled something right into the other man's face; the man flinched away. Then he nodded.

At that, Pettivox whirled away and stalked down the dim-dark millwork rows, and I followed him out into the day, which, gray as it was, seemed bright after the factory.

Pettivox headed up the steep street again, me not far behind him. He turned a corner—still headed toward the Underlord's—and I hurried to
catch up, but he was striding along quickly.

Too far ahead, he turned another corner. I raced up the street and pelted around the corner into an alley, and he was there, waiting.

“Hah!” he said, and grabbed me. His eyes narrowed as he realized who I was. “You!”

Still gripping me by the arms, Pettivox shoved me deeper into the alley; I looked over my shoulder and saw, behind me, that the narrow alley led to a brick wall. Dead end. Trapped.

“Nevery's boy,” Pettivox said. I twisted out of his grip and backed up a step, trying to catch my breath. He stepped after me, forcing me deeper into the alley. “You were following me,” he said. “You're poking your nose in where it doesn't belong, thief. You should be careful a blackbird doesn't come along and snip it off.”

Underlord Crowe, he meant.

Pettivox gave me a nasty smile, his white teeth gleaming. “What would Nevery think if his little spy went missing? I wonder.”

He'd think I'd run away, was what he would
think. I couldn't let Pettivox drag me in to see the Underlord, because I'd never get away again.

As he reached out to grab me, I ducked under his hands and dove to the ground, rolling out of the alley. He turned, shouting something, but I was already on my feet, racing down the cobbled street. He didn't follow, but I kept running, around corners, down steep alley steps, until my breath was tearing at my lungs and my legs felt quivery and weak.

Finally I reached the alley where I'd hidden my coat and boots. Gasping for breath, I leaned against the brick wall. Stupid, almost getting caught like that. Stupid. I'd have to be more careful.

 

“Any luck?” Nevery asked when I brought him tea late that night.

I shook my head. “Nevery, I saw Pettivox in the Twilight.”

“Not now, boy,” Nevery said. “And you didn't put any honey in the tea.”

Without saying anything, I took the tea down
to the kitchen, put honey in, and brought it back up. Nevery said an absentminded thank-you, his nose deep in a fat book, some long-dead wizard's grimoire he'd borrowed from the academicos library. Clear as clear, he didn't want to be bothered with anything else. I left quietly and went up to my attic room. By the light of a candle, I read Micnu's treatise. When it got late enough, I blew out the light and wrapped my blankets around me. But I couldn't sleep.

 

Nine days. Eight. Seven. Six…

I spent all day, every day, wandering through the cold, damp streets of the Twilight, searching for my locus magicalicus. I hoped that I'd be walking along and I'd accidentally kick a rock and a tingle of recognition would run through me, and I'd feel compelled to pick up the stone, and it would be mine—my locus stone, proof that I was a wizard, my reason for staying at Heartsease with Nevery.

But as the days passed, I got nothing except bruised toes.

 

Five days.

I came back late to Heartsease, dirty, cold, and hungry, slinking from the secret tunnel and across the dark courtyard, trying not to wake the birds in the black tree. I didn't want to hear them scold. The mansion stood tall, a ragged shadow against the night, except for the warm golden glow of the windows.

I went inside and climbed wearily up to the kitchen, tired down to my bones. Benet was there. His knitting, a snarl of black yarn, sat on the table. Nevery had gotten him a stove, so he was busy setting it up, angling the stovepipe so it would carry the smoke out a window. He'd knocked out a pane and stood on a chair, trying to plug the gaps between the window frame and the pipe so the cold air couldn't come in. Lady sat watching him, her tail curled over her paws, and a bright fire burned in the hearth.

Benet glanced at me as I came in. “Anything?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Huh,” he grunted, and turned back to the window.

I sat down, folded my arms on the table, and put my head down to rest, just for a moment.

I woke up with a crick in my neck and Benet poking my arm. He pointed at the ceiling. “Tea.”

Right. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It was late. Nevery would be wanting tea.

Benet handed me the tray. There were two cups on it, a teapot, and a plate of bread and butter. I looked blankly at it. “He's not going to have time to drink tea with me, Benet,” I said.

“It's not for you,” Benet said gruffly.

Not for me. Who, then?

“He's taken on a secretary,” Benet said. “Student from the academicos. To help him with the reading and writing.”

A secretary, right.

I trudged up the stairs to the study and went in with the tea tray. Nevery was there with his new secretary.

Keeston.

I stopped inside the door, frozen. Keeston and Nevery were sitting at the table surrounded by books and papers. A fire burned in the hearth. Very companionable and cozy.

Keeston looked up from his work and gave me a nasty smile. “Your servant has brought tea, Magister Nevery,” he said.

I thawed out enough to go in and carefully pushed aside a few books to put the tray on the table. “I'm not his servant.” Crawler toady.

Nevery looked up. I didn't expect him to add anything, but he did. “He is my apprentice, Keeston.”

“Yes, of course, Magister,” Keeston said quickly, turning a little pale.

I turned to leave.

“Wait, boy,” Nevery said. I turned back. He pointed at Keeston. “Go down and tell Benet we'll need more tea later. It's going to be a late night.”

“Yes, Magister,” Keeston said, scrambling to
his feet and hurrying from the room.

As the door closed behind him, Nevery turned his gaze on me. “Well?”

“He's Pettivox's,” I said. And I was certain, now that I'd seen him again in the Twilight, where he had no business going, that Pettivox was working for the Underlord.

“We've spoken of this before, boy. Pettivox is a magister, as I am, and he has done well to offer me his apprentice's services.” Nevery scowled. “We are working together to solve the crisis facing the city.”

“The Underlord has something to do with it,” I said.

Nevery gave me an exasperated look. “This has nothing to do with Underlord Crowe.”

I had a feeling that it did have something to do with Crowe, and with his underground workshop, and with Pettivox. But Nevery didn't want to hear about it. And I was too tired to argue. Couldn't seem to think straight about anything.

“Now, boy,” he said, pointing at the door. “You're obviously exhausted. Go to bed.”

To bed, right. I stumbled toward the door. Paused. “Just be careful what you tell Keeston.”

“I am not a fool, boy,” Nevery said. “Keeston is useful to me.”

And I was not, he was saying. Drats.

I went to bed.

 

Four days left.

Still nothing.

I decided to stop off at the academicos to see if Brumbee had some maps of the city. I was just about finished with the Twilight and was going to have to face crossing the river to search the Sunrise, the duchess's part of the city.

I used the keystone to pass through the tunnel gates. The air was cold and damp, the walls dripping with slime, the floors covered with a shallow film of water. Slippery. Like being on the inside of a snake.

As I reached the academicos gate, I saw a dark, hunched figure; somebody was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs leading up.

Rowan. She got stiffly to her feet, arms folded, looking impatient. “What are you up to, young Connwaer?”

I wondered how long she'd been sitting there. A while, maybe; she looked cold. “Hello, Rowan.”

“Yes, hello and all that,” she said crossly. “I've waited for you every morning, and you never come. You've stopped coming to school, have you?”

I nodded. “I need to talk to Brumbee.”

“About coming back to the academicos?”

“No,” I said, stepping around her. “About finding my locus stone.”

She stepped to the side, blocking me. “Yes, Magister Brumbee told me about that. And you're almost out of time, are you?”