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  “Diplomacy,” Rowan muttered. “Patience.” She shook her head. “I was going to ask if you two wanted to join me on a tour of a slowsilver mine.”

  I stood up so fast that my chair crashed to the floor. Yes, I wanted to join her.

  “Does he have to come?” Argent asked, getting to his feet.

  “Lord Jaggus invited him,” Rowan said, giving me a raised-eyebrows look. “I’ll meet you outside.” She left the room, slamming the door behind her.

  So the sorcerer-king wanted me along. Sure as sure he knew what I was up to. Maybe he wanted to keep an eye on me. Still, I wasn’t going to miss seeing a slowsilver mine.

  As I cleaned my pen and capped the bottle of ink, the lizard crept to the edge of the table and looked up at me with its sharp black eyes. “D’you want to come, too?” I asked. As an answer, it leaped off the table, landing on my sleeve, clinging with its sticky toes. I picked it off and dropped it into my coat pocket. Safer in there.

  To get into the mine we climbed into a big bucket on a chain that lowered us down into a dark shaft like a well but without the sparkle of water at the bottom.

  The air was hot and sooty. Creak-rattle-creak and we went lower and lower and the dark grew thicker. We stayed quiet, me and Rowan and Argent, two white-coated guards, Jaggus, and the minekeeper, a fat man with a beard and jingling bracelets on his wrists.

  “So!” said the minekeeper. His voice echoed in the darkness. “We go down a bit farther and a short way farther into the mine and we will show you the slowsilver extraction facility.”

  Creak-rattle and down we went for a long way, until we stopped with a jerk. I could feel the others close by in the bucket, and hear the rustle of their clothes and their breathing, but the dark pressed up against my face like a dusty pillow.

  “Ah,” muttered the minekeeper. “Here we are.” I heard stone striking stone, saw a spark, and then a candle flared. The keeper unchained the gate and we got out of the bucket. The candle flame pushed back the heavy darkness, and we stood blinking in a faint circle of light.

  “Why don’t you use werelights?” I asked, and —ights, ights, ights came back as an echo.

  They all stared at me. Jaggus’s eyes grew wide and dark, then turned blue again.

  “Oh, no,” the minekeeper said. The bracelets jingled on his wrists. “Werelights are unsafe in the mine. Use of magic is strictly forbidden here. The magic, ah”—he glanced aside at Jaggus and paused—“it ah, makes the mine very, very unsafe. I have an oil lantern just here, and it will give us more light.” Taking the candle with him, he went to fetch a lantern.

  As good a chance as any. In the darkness, Jaggus was just a shadow, his two guards looming up behind him. I edged closer and—quick hands—dipped into the pocket of his long-skirted coat. Empty. Drats. I reached around him and tried the other pocket. Nothing. He didn’t have his locus magicalicus on him.

  The keeper came back with a lantern. By its light I could see that we were in a tunnel with soot-blackened walls and a rock ceiling that slanted down over our heads.

  “This way, if you please,” said the keeper.

  We went through the tunnel, the keeper, Rowan and Jaggus, then the two guards, then me and Argent.

  Up ahead, the lantern light flickered against the walls. A faint thump, thump, thump came up through the ground, making my legs tremble. In the distance I heard the echoey sound of metal grinding on metal. It reminded me of the workroom under Dusk House—and of the device Crowe and Pettivox had made to imprison the magic. It wasn’t the same thing, but something about the mine wasn’t right. In my pocket, the lizard was trembling. And the high-pitched buzzing sound of Desh’s magic was gone. I’d gotten used to the buzz, just as I was used to the warm presence of Wellmet’s magic. But the minekeeper was right—the magic did not belong in the mine. Something was wrong here, but I didn’t know what.

  Beside me, Argent paced along with his hands shoved into his pockets and his head down.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  He flicked a look up at the ceiling and hunched his shoulders. “Be quiet, boy.”

  I shrugged.

  “Just a bit farther,” the keeper called from ahead, and—arther, arther, arther came the echo.

  “What is slowsilver for, anyway?” Argent muttered.

  For magic, I was about to say, when we came out of the tunnel and into the mine itself.

  Lanterns were hung up on wires along the walls, which arched up to a dark ceiling way above. To our right, built into the stone walls, was a huge rusty-metal device, all gears and pistons and steam; it groaned as a giant metal wheel turned ’round, then stopped. Water gushed from a pipe taller than I was; then the flow slowed to a trickle-drip. So this is where all the city’s water was—running the mine’s machinery. A few workers stood around the machine, their faces black with soot. They watched us; they’d shut down the machine while we were there, and would start up again when we left.

  Before us was a black pit so wide I could see the lanterns on the other side of it as tiny points of light like stars. A narrow path went around the edge of the pit, spiraling down into the darkness. Workers carrying packs loaded with stone plodded up the path; more workers with empty packs headed down.

  The minekeeper pointed at the pit. “This was once filled with slowsilver,” he said. “Imagine it if you will, like a silver lake here under the ground, with streams of slowsilver flowing through the cracks in the rock. So beautiful.” He kept talking, telling about other mines and other lakes beneath the city, and underground rivers of slowsilver.

  The lizard poked its head out of my pocket; I lifted it out and put it on my shoulder so it could see. I could imagine the lake the keeper was talking about. But it was gone, leaving behind an empty, echoing hole. The rivers of slowsilver had all run dry.

  What is slowsilver for, Argent had asked. I remembered a line from the Prattshaw book: Slowsilver is a contrafusive which is purposed for attracting and constraining or, that is to say, confining the magic.

  Pettivox had used slowsilver in the prisoning device to keep the magic in.

  To keep the magic in. Slowsilver attracted magic. Was the magical being of Desh tied to this place because of its slowsilver? And if the slowsilver was being stripped away by mining—wouldn’t the being’s connection to the city weaken? I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. Why would Jaggus, a wizard, want to weaken the magic of his own city? Surely he’d want it to be stronger, because that would make him stronger.

  Jaggus stepped up beside me. “It is an amazing operation, I think. What do you think of it, my shadow?” he asked.

  “I don’t understand it,” I said. “Why are you doing this?”

  He smiled and stroked one of his long white braids. “It is a mystery, is it not?” His eyes shifted and he saw the lizard on my shoulder. “Horrid creatures,” he said. “Little spies, always watching.” With quick hands he snatched the lizard off my shoulder, dropping it onto the stone floor. Before it could skitter away, before I could stop him, he lowered his foot and slowly pressed down. I heard the crack of tiny bones.

  No! I stared at him.

  He gazed back at me, his eyes gone wide and dark like the pit. He ground his foot harder against the rock floor. In my head, the buzz of the Desh magic gave a high shriek, then quieted. Then he scraped off the bottom of his shoe and walked away to where Rowan and Argent stood with the minekeeper.

  I stared down at the smear on the rock floor that had been the little lizard. A shivery chill crept down my neck. He’d killed one of his own city’s lizards. That would be like me or Nevery killing one of the black birds of Wellmet. We wouldn’t, not ever. The air in the cavern grew thicker. I stepped to the edge of the pit and stared down. Was there just the smallest sparkle of slowsilver down there in the darkness? I leaned forward to see better. No, it was just dark.

  I straightened and stepped away from the edge of the pit. Jaggus was killing Desh, his own city, the same as he killed the lizard. I di
dn’t know why. But I would find out. And I would stop him if I could.

  CHAPTER 27

  I’d have just one chance.

  After we got back from the mine, Jaggus went to dinner with Rowan and Argent, which meant I had time to sneak into his rooms and find his hidden workroom. Maybe his locus magicalicus would be there. Maybe I’d find a clue about why he was killing his own city with the slowsilver mining—and sending his Shadows after my city.

  Keeping an ear out for guards, I picked the lock to his rooms and eased the door open, then closed it behind me and relocked it. Through the rooms to the library, where Jaggus had snuck up on me.

  The secret door was easy to find, once I knew to look for it. Behind a tasseled, gold curtain was a low door. It wasn’t even locked. I turned the knob, ducked my head, and, bringing my lantern with me, went in.

  Jaggus’s workroom was long, narrow, and high-ceilinged. I couldn’t see down to the back wall of the room; it was too dark. Dust was scattered across the stone floor. I looked for Shadows but didn’t see any.

  On a table were four wide glass bowls, each with a curving lip around its inside edge. In three of the bowls was slowsilver, swirling like melted mirrors. Pieces like snails broke off from the shiny surface and crept up the sides of the bowls like they were trying to escape, but they couldn’t get past the lip and flowed back down again.

  In the fourth bowl was something else. The glass had darkened, as if it’d been smoked. I leaned over the table to peer in. In the middle of the bowl was Jaggus’s locus magicalicus.

  It was a jewel stone, like mine had been, but round and polished, and the deep red of old blood. It sat in the middle of the bowl in a puddle of sizzling purple-black darksilver. In a ring around it was slowsilver, pulling away as if repelled by the stone, and straining toward the edge of the bowl. As I watched, a slowsilver snail was sucked away from the ring and pulled in toward the locus magicalicus. When it touched the surface of the stone, it shimmered and tried to writhe away, and then darkened to tarnished black. After a moment, it oozed into the sizzling puddle and started to glow purple-black.

  He was making darksilver.

  At the edge of my vision, I caught a glimpse of something, and I looked quickly up. At the other end of the room, Shadows rose up out of the darkness and hovered there, watching me. Clouds of dust seethed around them. I stared back at them and held my breath. Their purple-black eyes pulsed. But they stayed back, like they were behind a glass wall. No orders, I guessed. Or maybe afraid of the locus magicalicus.

  So he was making Shadows, too.

  This was proof, then. He was using magic to come after Wellmet, maybe after he finished off Desh. No more diplomacy. I had to do something, and do it now.

  Trying to ignore the Shadows, I peered more closely at Jaggus’s locus stone. Its surface was smooth, but at its center was a black, rotted heart.

  Without a locus stone, Jaggus couldn’t make any more Shadows to send to Wellmet.

  Taking a deep breath, I reached down into the bowl and snatched the locus stone out of the puddle of darksilver.

  A wave of sickness flowed out from the stone and up my arm. I dropped the stone, and went down on my knees, dizzy and retching. Black spots swam before my eyes.

  Good thing I hadn’t had any dinner. I wiped my mouth and looked ’round for the stone. It had rolled into the middle of the floor.

  I got shakily to my feet. This was a powerful stone, and I knew I couldn’t destroy it now.

  I’d have to steal it. I searched the room until I found a drawstring leather pouch full of shredded leaves. After emptying out the leaves, I brought the pouch close to the locus stone where it lay on the floor and opened its mouth wide.

  Taking a deep breath, I picked up the locus stone and dropped it into the bag. Then I had another round of coughing up my stomach.

  After the dark spots had cleared away and my stomach decided to go back to its usual place, I got to my feet.

  I had to get out of there quick, before Jaggus came in. And then away from Desh as fast as I could.

  Rowan—

  I know you didn’t want me to do it, but I stole Jaggus’s locus magicalicus, and I’m leaving Desh tonight. I had to, Ro. The magic of Desh is very thin and faint. I think Jaggus plans to use his locus stone to destroy Desh, and Wellmet will be next, sure as sure. He was using his locus stone to make darksilver for the Shadows, I saw them in his workroom.

  I am going south, away from Wellmet. You need to leave Desh as soon as you can. Go back to Wellmet and warn them about Jaggus.

  —Conn

  CHAPTER 28

  In the darkest part of the night, I set off into the desert wearing a sand-colored robe over my shirt and trousers, a head scarf wrapped over my face, my knife in my pocket and Kerrn’s knife in my boot, a couple of copper locks on a fraying purse string that I nicked from Argent, and a canteen slung over my shoulder. I didn’t have time to steal any food.

  I put the leather pouch with Jaggus’s locus magicalicus in it into my pocket.

  I didn’t head down the road toward Wellmet, figuring that would be the first direction Jaggus would search. Instead, I went through the dried, brown fields and then onto a rutted caravan track leading away from the city, toward the south.

  Desh fell away behind me, its lights getting fainter as the sky above me turned gray. Before long, the sun leaped up into the sky.

  The sorcerer-king would send trackers after me, sure as sure. They would come this way eventually. But I couldn’t go off the road or the thorns would cut me to pieces. I walked fast. And I tried not to think of what Nevery would do if he could see me now. I hadn’t gotten a chance to send my last letter. He’d be furious when it didn’t arrive on time. More trouble than you’re worth, he’d say. And Rowan. She would be even more furious, and she’d be right to be angry. But I hadn’t had much of a choice.

  At midday, I stopped to rest in the shade of a tall cactus and drank half of my water. As I sat there, a black bird swooped down and landed on the ground next to me.

  “Hello,” I said.

  It didn’t have a quill strapped to its leg.

  “Thirsty?” I asked.

  It hopped up to perch on my bent knees, gripping the cloth of my robe with its claws, and drank water from my cupped hand, dipping its beak in and tipping its head back. It hadn’t brought a letter, but it was a Wellmet bird, sure as sure. Maybe it was the magic’s way of saying that I’d done the right thing, stealing Jaggus’s locus stone.

  I went on with the bird on my shoulder.

  After a few hours of head-down trudging, I came to a tiny village made of mud and palm leaves and set on a crossroads. The sun was setting, a gold coin hanging over the distant mountains, and long shadows lay across the village square. I walked across the dry, packed ground to the public well, a covered hole in the ground with a leather bucket on a rope sitting next to it. The black bird fluttered off my shoulder to the ground beside the bucket. I shoved the cover aside and dropped the bucket down, then pulled it up and scooped up a palm full of water, then another.

  Something bumped against my fingers—smooth, cool skin. I tilted the bucket to get a better look at whatever it was.

  “Two coppers to drink, young sir,” said a creaky voice.

  I looked up. An old person wrapped in brown rags stood beside the well. She—I reckoned it was a she—poked a wrinkled old claw of a hand out of her tattered robe.

  I nodded at the bucket. “Is that a frog in there?”

  She cackled. “This is Frogtown. Frogs in the water is good luck. Two coppers to drink.”

  I dug my purse string out of the pocket of my robe. I had four copper locks; well, I had nothing else to spend them on. “If I give you four, will it buy some food?” I pointed at the bucket. “I’m so hungry, I could eat that frog.” In a pot pie with gravy and carrots and peas, like Benet made.

  The water-crone cackled again. “Hah!” She cocked her head, and I saw a beady blue eye peeking out of the
shawls covering her head. “Somebody after you?”

  Sure as sure, somebody was after me. My feet were getting itchy, needing to go on.

  “Trackers?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Hah.” She whirled and scuttled away, across the dusty square, to one of the mud houses. I crouched by the well and drank more water, and filled my canteen. I held out more water to the bird, and it drank.

  After a short while, she came back. “Here.” She handed me a little package made of palm leaves; peeking inside, I saw flat bread and goat cheese and a few plump green olives threaded on a string.

  I nodded thanks and handed her the coins.

  “Four more,” she said, stowing the money in her ragged robe, “and I’ll tell the trackers I didn’t see you.”

  “That’s all I’ve got.” I stood up, looking toward the horizon. The sun had gone down behind the mountains and the shadows were turning purple. Time to get going.

  “Full moon tonight,” the water-crone said. “Good traveling.”

  “Thanks,” I said. The bird flapped up to perch on my shoulder.

  The old woman turned away. “Frogs in the bucket is good luck,” she said over her shoulder.

  I hoped they were. I put the packet of food in the pocket of my robe with my knife and my empty purse string, and headed out of the village, into the growing darkness.

  I walked all night, until morning came, soft and rosy. By midday, I got to a place where the road narrowed and pressed up against an overhang of the soft, orange stone. On the other side of the road, a bare rock face sloped downward to a cliff, which in turn dropped away to a ravine far below. If I slipped off the road here, I’d slide straight to the edge and then fall to the bottom of that cliff. As I walked, one hand on the rock wall to guide me, pebbles slid beneath my feet and fell tumbling down the slope. I shook the tiredness out of my head and went on.

  At last, as the sun was setting in a bonfire over the distant mountains, I followed the caravan road out of the orange rocks and back onto the desert floor. I went on, limping, as the sky grew darker. The flat bread and olives were long gone, and I was hollow with hunger. I missed Nevery and Wellmet. I imagined that each step took me closer to home, that I was walking through the dark tunnels to Heartsease, that I would come up the stairs and across the courtyard and into the kitchen, where Benet would have biscuits and bacon waiting for me.