The Magicians and Mrs. Quent (2 page)

Ivy set down her book and hurried forward, taking the tray from her sister and setting it down. “Thank you, Rose.”

Rose was seventeen and the tallest of the three sisters, though she was younger than Ivy by five years. Of course, even Lily was taller than Ivy now, and she was only fifteen. Ivy poured a cup of the tea and took a sip. It was stone cold.

“Is it good?” Rose said.

Ivy smiled. “It’s lovely. Thank you.”

Rose smiled too, then sat at the pianoforte. She never pressed the keys, but she liked to run her fingers up and down the keyboard, touching first only the black keys, then only the white.

“Here, Rose, I’ll play for us,” Lily said, rising from the sofa and parading to the pianoforte. She alighted on the bench, scooting Rose to one side, and opened a book of music. “You can turn for me.”

Rose shook her head. “I won’t know when to turn.”

“I’ll make a signal when I’m ready. Like this.” Lily gave a grand nod, as a queen might when greeting a courtier, then placed her hands on the keys. A brooding music filled the parlor. Their mother complained that Lily only ever played gloomy songs, and Ivy would not argue that her youngest sister had a proclivity for rumbling and dissonant pieces. However, even Mrs. Lockwell had to admit that Lily’s skill was great.

Rose tilted her head, staring at the keys, fascinated by the music—so much so that, when Lily reached the end of a page and her flamboyant nod resulted in no noticeable effect, she was forced to give her sister a nudge. Rose hastily turned the page, and the music continued.

To that portentous accompaniment, Ivy picked up her book and resumed her reading. And soon her pacing. In Ivy’s experience, books about magicians always went into great detail about
what
the magicians did but never
how
they did it. This book was different. After recounting the events of the battle of Selburn Howe, the author went on to describe the means Slade Vordigan used to conjure the shadow army, which the narrator claimed to have witnessed firsthand. Her pace quickening, Ivy read the account again.

“Oh!” she said, and the music stopped.

Ivy bent down, rubbing her smarting shin. She had struck one of the drawers of the secretary, which someone—Cassity, likely—had left pulled out. She shut the drawer and sat at the table in the center of the parlor.

“What are you up to?” Lily said, turning around on the bench.

“Nothing,” Ivy said. “Keep playing.” She opened the book before her, making certain she had the sequence correct and sounding out the strange words in her mind.

“You
are
up to something,” Lily said, moving to the table.

“I need a candle,” Ivy murmured, not realizing she had spoken the words aloud until Rose set a silver candlestick on the table. The candle was burned halfway, which was exactly what the spell called for.

She was supposed to use the dust from a crushed carbuncle to draw runes of binding around the candle, but she had no idea where to acquire such a substance. However, Cassity had neglected to clean the parlor, and Ivy settled for drawing the symbols with a finger in the dust on the table. She supposed that wouldn’t be as good, but she didn’t want to conjure an entire army anyway, just a small bit of shadow.

Lily sat at the table. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Magick,” Ivy said.

“But you can’t do magick!” Lily’s eyes grew large. “Can you?”

“Yes, I can,” Ivy said, checking to make sure she had copied the runes precisely. “At least I
think
so. I’ve been reading about it for some time now, and I’m ready to try something myself.”

“The candle isn’t lit,” Rose said.

Ivy smiled at her. “It’s not supposed to be. It’s extinguished as a sympathetic representation of darkness. I’m going to summon a bit of shadow to me.”

“But you
can’t
do magick,” Lily said again. “Not if you hope to marry a gentleman. Everyone knows it’s dreadful wicked for a woman to work spells.” She lowered her voice ominously. “They burn witches, you know.”

Ivy gave her a stern look. “Lily! You shouldn’t say awful things.”

“Why shouldn’t I say them when they’re true? They
do
burn witches, in Greenly Circle.”

“Nonsense,” Ivy chided her, conscious of Rose’s worried expression. “There hasn’t been a witch in Greenly Circle in two hundred years. And even if there was, a magician is not the same thing as a witch.” Ivy laid a hand on the open book. “The magicians fought the witches long ago, during the time of the Risings.”

When Ivy was a girl, Mr. Lockwell had told her stories about the Risings. Long ago, the island of Altania had been covered by the Wyrdwood: a primeval forest tangled with green shadows. For eons its rule was complete—until the day ships landed on the shore of Altania, bringing men who wielded iron and fire. They cut down the Wyrdwood and burned it to make room for their settlements.

Some accounts told that the Wyrdwood fought back against the invaders and that many men were lost within its dim groves. One of Ivy’s favorite tales as a child recounted how a great chieftain rode into a valley only to find a forest where his army had been encamped the day before. According to those stories, it was the witches who had awakened the power of the wood and compelled it to rise up. However, in time more and more trees fell, and at last the Wyrdwood’s fury was quelled by Altania’s first great magician, Gauldren. From that day on, the music of axes rang out freely.

At least, that was what the histories told. In these modern times, only a few ragged patches of the Wyrdwood remained. Ivy had never seen any of them herself, as most were far out in the country.

“Besides,” Ivy went on, “our own father is a magician, and he’s not wicked, is he? And it can’t be wicked for me to do what he did.”

“Yes, it can,” Lily said. “There are lots of things that men are free to do that women get in all sorts of trouble if they so much as try. Like act onstage in a play.”

Ivy hesitated. It was true that all of the magicians she had read about were men, and most of them lords at that, descended from one of the seven Old Houses (though a few gentlemen practiced the arcane arts, as her father once had). However, magick wasn’t like acting in a play. By its nature it was occult, a thing done in secret, away from prying eyes. Ivy would never do anything that might bring discredit upon her family. But how could there be even the appearance of impropriety if no one but her sisters saw her?

Resolved, she fixed her eyes on the book. “Don’t speak,” she said. “The incantation must not be interrupted once it’s begun.”

Before there could be any more protest, she began to recite the unfamiliar words on the page before her. Rose’s mouth hung agape in silent amazement, and though Lily squirmed in her seat, Ivy’s warning must have sounded suitably dire, for she made no more protests.

The words were harder to speak than Ivy had supposed. Her tongue seemed thick and heavy, as if she had just eaten a mouthful of honey. The language of magick was older than humankind itself, or at least that was what a book she had read once claimed.

She spoke the final words. A silence descended over the parlor, and it seemed to Ivy that a gloom seeped through the windows and pressed from all around. In the gray light, something dark and sleek darted across the room.

“I see a shadow!” Rose gasped.

Ivy shivered. Had the spell worked?

“It’s only Miss Mew,” Lily said, reaching under the table and picking up the little tortoiseshell cat. True to her name, the cat let out a noise of protest. Her fur was a mixture of cream and caramel and deep brown, but in the gloom it seemed darker.

“Was Mew chasing the shadow?” Rose said.

Lily rolled her eyes. “No, silly, she
is
the shadow.”

Rose smiled at Ivy. “Then the spell worked, for Miss Mew ran straight to you, Ivy.”

The cat squirmed from Lily’s arms and walked across the table, touching its nose to the runes drawn in the dust and smearing them with its paws.

Ivy did her best to disguise her disappointment and gave her youngest sister an arch look. “Well, it appears you’re right. It seems I can’t do magick after all. There is no need to suppress your gloating.”

Lily rose from her chair, then moved around to press her cheek against Ivy’s. “I’ll go down to the kitchen to see if Mother needs any help distracting Mrs. Murch. Come, Rose, you can help.”

“I’m sure she can do that quite well enough on her own,” Ivy said, but Lily was already bounding from the parlor, Rose in tow.

Ivy shut the book and wiped away the remainder of the runes with her hand. Perhaps Lily was right. Perhaps magick was something only for men. Just as so many things in the world were.

Miss Mew let out a plaintive sound and nudged her nose against Ivy’s dusty hands.

“I have no sympathy for you,” Ivy said with a laugh, scratching the cat’s ears. “You’re allowed to make your own livelihood. You may hunt mice with the tomcats whenever you wish, while we must…” Her mirth faded to gray, like the sky outside the window. “While we must sit here and wait for the Mr. Gadwicks of the world to stop paying attention to their hounds for a moment and look at us instead. Two thousand regals indeed! I would take a husband with far less income, as long as he had far fewer dogs.”

Not that she had any prospect of marrying a gentleman like Mr. Gadwick. While the Lockwell name might be old enough to warrant such a match, it was far from rich enough. They could barely afford to keep the house here on Whitward Street, let alone grant a generous portion to a would-be suitor. However, that was something her mother had a tendency to forget. Lately she had been filling Lily’s head with the notion that each of the sisters would marry a well-off gentleman, or even—if they were very lucky and made themselves very charming—a baronet. Ivy knew
that
was unlikely. They would do well to win the attention of far more humble suitors, if they won any at all.

S
OMETIME LATER, WILBERN limped into the parlor to light the candles; outside the window, the long twilight finally gave way to night. Ivy shut her book; reading by candlelight made her eyes ache. Besides, candles were too expensive to waste. According to stories Mrs. Murch had heard, the Crown was buying up great quantities of them, hoarding them for some unknown purpose, and driving up the cost. Ivy waited for Wilbern to leave, extinguished all but one of the tapers, then went upstairs to return the book to the shelf where she had gotten it.

Ivy had just reached the third landing when she heard a thudding noise from above. She halted, gripping the banister. The sound was repeated once, then twice.

“Ivy!”

She glanced down the stairs. Lily was on the landing below her.

“What was that sound?” Lily said in an exaggerated whisper, such as an actor might use onstage in a critical scene.

“I believe it’s Father.”

Lily nodded. “That’s what I thought. It was very loud, and Rose isn’t
that
clumsy. You’d better go to him, Ivy. You’re the only one who can make him calm again.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is so. You know it is. Even Mother says it.”

Ivy started to protest, but then another thud emanated from above.

“Please!” Lily implored. “Do it before Mother hears. You know how upset she gets.”

Tucking the book under her arm, Ivy turned and dashed up the stairs. She made a quick survey of the fourth floor, but all the rooms were empty, so she ran around back to the servants’ stairs and up the steps to the attic.

It took her eyes a moment to adjust, for the only illumination came from the streetlamps below. She moved forward, stumbling as her foot struck something. It was a book. She bent down to pick it up and saw more books scattering the floor.

Another thud. She hurried to the far end of the attic and around a tall bookcase. Mr. Lockwell stood on the other side, muttering as he ran his hands over the volumes that crowded the shelf.

“I can’t find it,” he said. His blue felt waistcoat was askew, and his white hair was a cloud about his head.

“It’s all right, Father,” Ivy said, touching his arm. “I’m here.”

She might have struck him, given his reaction. Mr. Lockwell recoiled from her, mouth agape and eyes wild.

Ivy gripped his wrist. “It’s me, Father. It’s Ivy. Do you see?”

He tried to pull away, but the motion was weak, and she did not let go. Finally he shuddered, and the feverish glint of terror faded from his eyes. He turned back to the bookshelf, pushing his spectacles up his nose. “It’s here somewhere, but I can’t find it.”

“What can’t you find?” she said, even though she had asked the same question a hundred times before. “What are you searching for, Father?”

He pulled a book off the shelf and let it drop to the floor without looking at it.

Ivy took a breath. “I’ll get a light.”

She ran down to the third floor and found on the landing a lamp Wilbern had lit, then hurried back up the stairs, so that by the time she reached the attic she was panting. Mr. Lockwell was on his hands and knees now, picking through the books. She lit candles all around—light always seemed to help him—then pulled him to his feet.