The Master Magician (22 page)

The red, iron-scented smoke filling the room broke off Ceony’s sentence. Emery stiffened and reached for her just as a sharp and resounding
thud
echoed through her skull, and the room went dark.

The first thing Ceony sensed was the smell of dust—metallic and rotten and dry. Then she registered the throbbing at the back of her head, the stiffness in her neck, the tight, bruise-like pain encircling her arms and torso. Dim light prodded at her eyelids, and she pulled them apart, blinking. A groan escaped her throat.

She was in a long rectangular room with tall windows draped in long, muslin cloths. Large brown tiles. Two folded hospital beds had been pushed into a corner near a door. Two rows of support pillars cut through the room, and it was to one of these that Ceony
had been tied. On first glance, the room appeared to be empty apart from her.

She struggled against her slick bonds, realizing after a few futile attempts that the rotten scent came from them. She studied them in the dim light, their sackcloth-like color, flatness, translucency. Almost like sausage casing.

Bile rose up in Ceony’s throat, and she barely managed to swallow it down. Her sinuses burned from the effort.

Intestines. And they couldn’t be from a pig or cow. Only humans were man-made. Excisioners could do spells with only humans.

Saraj.
Ceony lifted her head to search the room, spying the tiny, floating orbs that provided light. About the size of an infant’s fist, each bore a ring that didn’t glow: green, blue, brown. She bit her lip upon realizing they were eyeballs. It took all her willpower and a silent prayer to keep the contents of her stomach down.

The entrails bound her arms tightly to her sides, but Ceony could move her wrist just a little, back and forth. She clawed at her skirt pocket, slipped in a thumb and forefinger . . . but found it empty. The other, too. Her bag, missing.

And she realized one more thing, looking down at her rotting bonds. To tie her up . . . to bring her to the hospital . . . Saraj had
touched
her.

The thought sprung tears and turned her skeleton to ice. She shivered. Acid clawed at her throat.
Oh Lord in heaven, he touched me. I’m dead. I’m dead.

Emery.

She pulled against her bonds. Her breathing quickened as she rescanned the room, searching for the paper magician. Two tears etched trails down her cheeks. Had Saraj killed him? Had he escaped? Emery . . . where was . . .?

She spied him on the other row of columns kitty-corner to her. Saraj had bound him the same way, but he faced the windows.
Ceony could see only a sliver of his person. His head drooped forward. Unconscious. Saraj had taken his coat and turned out the pockets of his slacks.

“Emery!” Ceony cried, trying to keep her voice low. “Emery, please wake up!”

The paper magician stirred, and so did the Excisioner.

“The game isn’t fun when you cheat, kitten.” Saraj’s accented voice sounded from Ceony’s right. She strained against the entrails as she watched him enter the room through another door, one that led to a staircase. He’d changed his clothes since Reading; he wore a narrowly tailored gray suit without the jacket. A splatter of crimson stained his shirt where it tucked into his slacks, and another dark stain coated his left knee.

He muttered something under his breath, a spell, and the slick entrails binding Ceony to the pillar shifted, moving her to its right side so that she faced Saraj. He grinned at her and said, “There’s no pleasure in the chase when you come to me.”

Ceony swallowed, searching for the voice trapped somewhere in her shaking body. “I guess y-you’re not used to p-people playing back,” she said, but there was no confidence in it.

“Saraj,” came Emery’s voice—Ceony could see even less of him now—“your fight is with me.”

Saraj laughed. “Oh, no it isn’t. You’ll be discarded in a moment, Thane.”

Ceony writhed against her bonds, her heart hammering. “Saraj, no! Deal with me; leave him out of this!”

“Don’t change the rules, kitten,” Saraj said, holding up a scolding finger. “Now”—he reached into his pocket and pulled out Ceony’s necklace—“tell me your little secret, hm?”

Ceony froze.

“Grath had been so . . . What is the word? Adamant? Adamant about breaking his bond to glass. Obsessed,” Saraj said, strolling
between the lines of pillars, fondling the charms on the necklace. “I didn’t know he’d succeeded. Unless you figured out the secret on your own?”

He paused, held the necklace up to his face. “You have some strange things on here. Wood for paper, sand for glass. Oil . . . and a match? So the foundation of the material is part of it. But how?” He lowered the necklace and met Ceony’s eyes. “Tell me how it works, kitten.”

“Ceony!” Emery shouted, but with a wave of Saraj’s hand, Emery’s bonds tightened around him, choking out any ensuing words. Choking out his air.

“Stop it!” Ceony screamed.

Saraj smiled and lowered his hands. Emery’s bonds loosened, barely. The paper magician’s next breath came as a gasp.

He’ll kill him
. Ceony panicked. She breathed hard and fast. The ceiling started to spin above her.
He’ll kill him. Oh, Emery. Not him.
She could not even bear to contemplate . . .

But she couldn’t tell Saraj, either. She couldn’t give him that power. How many more people would die once Saraj knew her secret?

Emery, or them?

She never should have come after Saraj. She never should have tested her knowledge in the first place. She never—

“Ticktock,” Saraj said.

“Tell him nothing!” Emery shouted.

Ceony pressed her lips together. Tears trickled down her face.

Saraj chuckled and walked toward her, his gait unhurried. Once close enough, he placed a hand on the pillar beside her head.

Emery struggled against his bonds—Ceony could see his legs kicking. “Saraj!” he shouted, his voice filling the room. “Touch her and I’ll have your head for a mantelpiece!”

“This is the strange thing about Englishmen,” Saraj murmured to Ceony, his breath caressing her forehead. It smelled like
cardamom and some kind of meat. “They make threats they cannot carry out.”

He smiled without teeth and slid his fingers into the hair above Ceony’s ear. She winced and pulled her head as far away from him as she could, but Saraj simply wound a lock of her hair around two fingers and, with a growl, yanked it from her head.

Ceony yelped.

Dangling the orange hair from his fingers the same way he did the necklace, Saraj ignored Emery’s cursing. “I don’t joke,” he said. “I’m not a funny man.”

“I think you’re hilarious,” Ceony spat.

He smiled. “Oh? Then you’ll love this.”

He strode away from Ceony. Toward Emery. The entrails holding the paper magician shifted and turned him about so that Saraj—and Ceony—could see his full person.

Ceony barely recognized him. He looked so pale, so wide- and white-eyed. There was a trail of blood on his neck, likely drizzled from where Saraj had hit him, too.

Saraj muttered under his breath for several seconds—Excision spells tended to be longer than other spells, unless pre-prepared—and the hair in his hands stiffened and straightened. It looked sharp as glass.

“How much blood must be spilled before the kitten sings?” Saraj asked, tracing Emery’s jaw with the hair. It split the skin open, leaving an angry red trail. Saraj hesitated. “But kittens don’t sing, do they?”

“Stop it!
Stop
!
” Ceony cried.

Emery’s eyes were locked with the Excisioner’s, but he said, “Tell him nothing, Ceony.”

“Don’t hurt him!” she wailed, wrenching back and forth. The entrails didn’t budge. Whatever enchantment Saraj had placed on them held tight.

Saraj jammed the hair-blade into Emery’s shoulder. Blood welled around the wound, seeping through his shirt. Emery bit back a scream.

Ceony’s eyes darted back and forth, scanning the room. Searching for her bag, her things,
anything
that might help her. She pressed her hands to the pillar, but she could do nothing with stone. Nothing with the entrails, with her clothing. The rubber was still on the bottom of her shoes! She felt a rush of hope for a moment, but she was a Pyre now, with no way of changing that. She feebly patted her pockets, studied her blouse buttons—

“Please!” Ceony begged, blinking through tears. She had to tell him—she couldn’t live in a world without Emery. She couldn’t!

Saraj retracted his hand and patted Emery twice on the cheek as though he were a dog. Emery scowled at him.

“Did you know, kitten, that Excisioners can break a man’s fingers, one at a time, without even touching him?” Saraj asked, glancing at Ceony over his shoulder. He reached into his pocket and drew out a pair of rusted pliers. “All I need is one nail. I don’t even have to be in the same room to make the bones bend.”

He opened and closed the pliers in his hand, returning his focus to Emery. “I like the thumbnail, myself. Call it a . . . what’s the word? Quirk.”

Ceony wrenched herself back and forth, squirmed, loosening pieces of hair from the twist at the back of her head. The locks stuck to her tear-moistened skin. Not Emery. Emery wasn’t supposed to be here! He wasn’t supposed to be part of this!

Saraj turned to her one more time. “I might be willing to kill him mercifully with, say, a piece of glass instead of bone by bone, but of course, you’ll need to tell me what you know.”

Her body trembled against the entrails. Visions of Anise lying in a pool of bloody water and Delilah hanging white and limp against her own bonds flooded Ceony’s mind. Drowned her.

“I—”

“Ceony,” Emery warned.

But I’m
here, she thought, another tear cascading down her cheek.
I’m here this time. I can’t watch you die. I’m
here.

Shrugging, Saraj reached for Emery’s hand.

“I’ll tell you!” she blurted, stopping the Indian man’s hand. Tears trickled down her throat, making her voice husky. “I’ll tell you, but only if you let him go!”

“Ceony!” Emery shouted.

Saraj grinned and retracted the pliers. “A fair bargain. I’m listening.”

“Let him go first,” Ceony pleaded.

“You English and your bartering,” Saraj quipped. He folded his arms, took a few steps away from Emery. “You don’t have leverage, kitten. But I’m in a pleasant enough mood. I already have one magician’s heart; I don’t need another yet. I might let him go. You, on the other hand—”

“Ceony, don’t you dare say another word!” Emery yelled. “It’s not worth it!”

“But you’re worth it,” she cried, though the words came out so quietly she didn’t think he heard them. Swallowing, she said, “The secret is yourself.”

Emery wilted against the entrails holding him.

Saraj raised an eyebrow. “You’ll need to be specific.”

“That’s what Grath discovered,” Ceony said, feeling her body hollow out with each confessed word. She’d be little more than a bag of skin in a moment. “You bond to your material’s natural substance, then to yourself, then to the new material. That’s how it’s done.”

The Excisioner smiled. “Interesting. The words?”

Ceony swallowed against a dry throat. “Material made by earth, your handler summons you. Unlink to me as I link through you, unto this very day. It starts with that.”

Saraj lifted the charm necklace, his eyes glancing over each charm. Then he studied them with his hand, pinching and turning. He frowned. “And what, pray tell, do I bond to?”

Ceony paused, looking at her necklace. Glanced at Emery. Refocused on Saraj. She had never considered that question, since she had never dreamed of dabbling in Excision.

Excisioners became Excisioners by bonding to a person—Ceony had seen Grath do it to Delilah. But what was the natural material of a person? People made people. They were one and the same. Unless Excisioners bonded to their original victims’ parents?

But that didn’t make sense. Even if an Excisioner managed to track down both parents of the person he murdered to gain his magic, he couldn’t bond with
both
of them.

Ceony blinked and licked her lips. “You . . . can’t.”

Saraj’s countenance darkened. “What?”

She shook her head. “You can’t. By definition humans are man-made, but they don’t have a natural substance. They merely . . . are.” A smile spread on her lips, and she added, more to herself than to Saraj, “Once a person becomes an Excisioner, they’re stuck. They can’t change.

“Excisioners can’t use the other magics.”

Emery lifted his head, his eyes reflecting the unnatural light hovering overhead. He actually smiled.

Ceony laughed. “You can’t use it, Saraj. You can’t, and neither can the others. No Excisioner can have those powers. You’re
stuck
. Forever.”

Saraj’s face darkened and contorted until he hardly looked a man anymore. His brow crinkled, his lip lifted, and his cheeks sunk into the spaces between his teeth.

“Well, then,” he said, his voice dark and thick. He shoved the necklace into one pocket and pulled the pliers from the other. He turned back to Emery.

All smugness drained from Ceony, leaving her cold and empty. “No, no!” she cried, but the words didn’t slow Saraj in the slightest. She had no leverage. Not anymore.