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  My feet settled onto the floor in Nevery’s study. The wooden table thunked down next to me, and a last book found itself a place on the shelf. I reached out and touched the bricks of the fireplace. They felt solid and real.

  “And Nevery, too?” I asked the magics.

  Nothing, just silence. Tears started up in my eyes. I leaned my head against the cold bricks of the fireplace.

  Please, magics. Please. Just give Nevery back and everything will be all right.

  Then I heard a gruff cough and, “I am here, my lad.”

  I turned, and there he was, standing in the doorway. His beard looked a little singed, and he held to the doorframe to keep himself on his feet.

  “Nevery?” I whispered.

  He rubbed a sooty hand across his eyes, then smiled. “Yes, I believe so, boy.”

  CHAPTER

  32

  Rowan decided that the city needed a ceremony, with medals and speeches. We were in her office, me leaning against the wall by the door, Nevery sitting in one of the comfortable chairs, Rowan behind her desk, and Embre beside her in his wheeled chair. Pip was out hunting pigeons. Rowan had sent Miss Dimity away so we wouldn’t be interrupted.

  Everybody in Wellmet knew bad things had been going on. They’d heard about the locus stone thieves, and the gangs in the Twilight and the Sunrise, and about the chimney swifts and Crowe coming back. All the city’s people had felt the explosions and heard the fighting in the streets; they’d seen the ruins of Nimble’s house and the Night Bridge, and they’d been frightened.

  “A ceremony is a way of showing everybody that we’re all right,” Rowan said. “We tell the story about what happened, and then none of the magisters can blame you”—she pointed at me—“for stealing their locus stones, and my councilors can’t whisper that you”—she smiled at Embre—“were secretly working with Crowe, or something stupid like that. Do you understand?”

  Yes, I understood.

  “I think,” Embre said, “that at the ceremony I’ll tell the part of the story about the duchess’s bravery.”

  Rowan shot him one of her down-the-nose looks. “What are you talking about?”

  “That chimney swift would’ve killed me during the fight at Dusk House,” Embre said, giving her a sharp grin. “You saved my life, Ro. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  She blinked. “I did, didn’t I?” she said. She looked down at the desk as pink crept up into her cheeks.

  I’d already explained to Rowan and Embre how, after Nevery and I had settled the magics, I’d gone back out to the courtyard to look at Heartsease, to be sure it was back to normal. On the cobblestones I’d found Crowe’s clicker-ticker device, smashed into pieces. The magics had taken Crowe, that meant, and Nimble and Sootle, too, and with them gone forever, the city would be all right.

  Now the Night Bridge was being rebuilt. Sandera and Trammel, the magisters whose stones had been destroyed in Nimble’s pyrotechnic devices, were planning to leave the city, to travel and maybe look for new locus stones, though they weren’t happy about it. With Rowan and Embre’s new friendship, or whatever it was that had her blushing whenever he was around, and the two magics settled on each side of the river, the city was more stable than it’d ever been.

  Except for me. I was still out of place. I still wasn’t sure what I was.

  For the two days since Crowe and Nimble had been defeated, I’d been staying in the ducal magister’s rooms in the Dawn Palace. The servants were still afraid of me and Pip, and the rooms were still too grand, and the food was cold, and guards waited outside my doors anytime I wanted to go somewhere.

  “What about you, Conn?” Rowan asked, interrupting my dark thoughts.

  “What about me, what?” I asked back.

  She gave me her sly, down-the-nose look. “At the ceremony, how shall we honor the ducal magister?”

  Oh, not this again. “Ro, I am not the ducal magister,” I said.

  Ignoring my comment, Rowan glanced at Embre. “I think he should be awarded a medal.”

  Embre nodded. “A big, shiny one. And he’ll have to give a speech, too.”

  I stared at them.

  “Oh, yes,” Rowan said, very solemnly. “A speech. A long one.”

  “I am not—” I started, and then Nevery gave a bark of laughter.

  Rowan and Embre were laughing, too.

  Oh.

  Still smiling, Ro got up from behind her desk and came around to give me a hug. Then she stepped back and leaned against her desk. “What reward do you want, Conn?” Embre wheeled around to face me, too. Nevery, in his chair, was watching me and pulling at the end of his beard.

  What did I want? Not medals and speeches, sure as sure. “Ro?” I asked.

  “Connwaer,” she said. Her lips twitched as if she was going to start laughing again.

  “Well, Ro . . .” I tried again. Heartsease was my home, not the grand, damp, lonely Dawn Palace rooms.

  Embre and Rowan exchanged a sparkling glance. “Oh, this must be important,” Embre said.

  I shot him a glare. Be quiet, Embre. Right. I took a deep breath. “Ro, I’m not a gutterboy, I know that. I can’t live by myself in the Twilight anymore.”

  “Would you even want to?” she asked, quirking her eyebrows at me.

  “No, not exactly,” I answered. “I just . . . I don’t . . .”

  “It’s hard for you to let anybody look after you, is that it?” my cousin Embre asked. “Because you looked after yourself for such a long time.”

  I nodded. “Yes, that’s it.” I took a deep breath. “And I can’t live in the Dawn Palace. I’m not a gutterboy, but I’m not the ducal magister, either. I don’t want any reward except to go home.” I glanced over at Nevery, who nodded. “Back to Heartsease.”

  “Hm,” Rowan said. “I’ll consider it, Conn. On two conditions.” She held up a finger. “One, you have to accept a reward.” She reached behind her and picked up a clinking bag from her desk, and held it out. More money, to go with the other bag she’d given me.

  “Some of that is from me,” Embre put in. “You saved the Twilight part of the city too. Will you take it?”

  I nodded, and Rowan handed me the bag of money. It was heavy. “What’s the other thing?” I asked.

  “The second condition,” Rowan said, holding up two fingers. “Is this. If you’re not the ducal magister, you’ll have to decide what you are.” She looked suddenly serious. “It’s for the good of the city.”

  I nodded.

  Rowan went on. “You are very powerful, Conn, and your power affects all of us. You don’t fit properly into any category, and it makes a lot of people nervous, especially the magisters. We need to know what you are. Do you see what I’m talking about?”

  I knew she was right. “Can I have some time to think about it?” I asked.

  “You can,” Rowan said. “And yes, you can do your thinking in Heartsease.”

  My heart lifted. I grinned at her. “Thanks, Ro.”

  She grinned back, and suddenly she didn’t seem duchessly at all. “You’re welcome, Conn.”

  “Hmph,” Nevery said gruffly, getting to his feet. “That’s settled, then. Come along, boy. Let’s go home.”

  After supper, we sat in the study drinking tea, Benet with his chair tilted back against the wall, knitting something with blue yarn, Nevery reading in a chair pulled up to the fireplace, and me sitting on the hearthstone. Lady-the-cat curled up next to me, purring. Pip sat on my shoulder with its tail around my neck like a scarf, asleep.

  Suddenly, with a startling thump, Benet tipped all four legs of his chair back onto the floor. “More tea?” he asked, getting to his feet and setting his snarl of knitting on the table.

  “Yes,” Nevery said, still reading.

  Instead of going down to the kitchen, Benet waited until Nevery looked up from his book. “Tell him now, sir,” Benet said, pointing at me. Without waiting for Nevery to answer, he went out, and I heard the sound of his footsteps thumping dow
n the stairs.

  Oh, right. Benet had said that Nevery had something to tell me.

  “Well, boy,” Nevery said, and then fell silent.

  “Well, Nevery?” I asked. It couldn’t be that important, not if he’d waited this long, whatever it was.

  Nevery set his book aside and got up from his chair. Then he paced across the room to the table and back again. He folded his arms and looked down at me, where I sat on the hearthstone with Lady-the-cat and Pip. “Here it is, boy,” he said gruffly. “I made a mistake sending you away from Heartsease. I missed you while you were gone, and I was worried when you ran away to the Twilight. The thing is . . .” He frowned, but I could see that he wasn’t angry, it was something else. “It’s this, boy. This is your home. You know that.”

  “Yes,” I said quietly.

  Nevery sighed. “So apparently I must tell you the rest. It’s this. You’re as dear to me, Conn, as any son to his father.”

  I stared up at him. My lips moved as I whispered what he’d just said.

  . . . as any son to his father.

  “Yes, boy,” Nevery said.

  It hadn’t been easy for him to say. It wasn’t easy for me to say, either, because I wasn’t used to it. But I said it. “I love you too, Nevery.”

  He smiled. “All well, boy?”

  “Yes, Nevery,” I said, grinning back at him. “All well.”

  “Good.” He sat down again in his chair and picked up his book.

  And that was that. We were settled, just like the city’s magics.

  After a while, Benet came in with the tea tray. He looked us over, then nodded and set the tray on the table with a clatter.

  I got up and poured myself another cup of tea, then sat cross-legged on the hearthstone and set myself to thinking about Rowan’s condition. If I wasn’t the ducal magister, what was I, exactly? It made me remember when I’d first met Nevery, when I’d picked his pocket because the night was cold and empty and I hadn’t had anything to eat since the day before. Back then I’d been just like the gutterkids and mudlarks and charkids. Now I had plenty to eat, and shelves full of books, and people who cared about me—who loved me, like father to son. And bags of money I didn’t know what to do with.

  “Nevery,” I said. “D’you think I could—” I set down my teacup, thinking.

  “What, boy?” Nevery said, looking up from his book.

  “You know when I was a gutterboy?” I asked.

  Nevery shook his head. “You never talk about that time.”

  I shrugged. “There’s nothing to talk about. It was boring, mostly. I never thought about anything interesting.” I glanced over at him. He was watching me with his keen-gleam eyes. “That’s the thing, Nevery,” I went on. “I was just a stupid gutterboy. I didn’t even know how to read.”

  “You never had the opportunity to learn,” Nevery said quietly.

  No, I hadn’t. “I would’ve wanted to,” I said. I thought about it some more. The gutterkids and mudlarks and charkids. All they thought about was mudlarking or thieving or sweeping chimneys, and finding a warm place to sleep and enough to eat. None of them knew how to read. “Nevery, d’you think I could use the money I got from Rowan and Embre to help the gutterkids learn how to read?”

  “You’d like to open a school?” Nevery leaned back in his chair, pulling on the end of his beard.

  Hmmm. Maybe I did. I gazed into the fire. I didn’t like people looking after me, and the mudlarks and the charkids and the other gutterkids in the Twilight were maybe the same way. They were used to being on their own. They didn’t want anybody telling them what to do. But sometimes being looked after wasn’t a bad thing. The gutterkids might come to a school to learn to read. They could have something to eat there, too, biscuits, maybe; that’d make them come, sure as sure. And they’d get warm now and then. I nodded. Yes, I wanted to start a school in the Twilight.

  “It is a very good idea, Conn,” Nevery said.

  We sat for a few moments, watching the fire flicker in the fireplace and listening to the click-click of Benet’s knitting needles.

  “D’you know, Nevery,” I said, realizing something. “I think I know what I am.”

  Nevery looked up from his book and raised his eyebrows.

  “A wizard is nothing like a fine gentleman,” I told him.

  “Oh, indeed, boy?” he said with a snort.

  Indeed, Nevery! I wasn’t a fancy speech-giving, meeting-attending, fine-gentleman wizard. The city didn’t need a ducal magister like that, and neither did the magics. And I wasn’t a ragged gutterboy, either. I was Nevery’s boy, and I was friends with the duchess and the Underlord. Hmm. “The same way Rowan and Embre put the city first,” I said, “I put the magics first.”

  Nevery nodded. “Yes, that is true.”

  I laughed. Oh, this was perfect. “Nevery, I’m supposed to look after the magics!”

  I would be a new kind of ducal magister—the magics’ magister. I would talk to the magics and protect them, and learn everything I could about them. I would help the old Wellmet magic settle into its place over the Twilight, and the stronger Arhionvar magic stay over the Sunrise. To do that I had to live in the middle of Wellmet, between the Sunrise and the Twilight, and that meant I would always stay right here in Heartsease with Nevery. The very center of the city.

  Home.

  A GUIDE TO

  PEOPLE AND PLACES

  PEOPLE

  BENET—A rather scary-looking guy, but one who loves to knit, bake, and clean. His nose has been broken so many times, it’s been flattened. If he were an animal, he’d be a big bear. His hair is brown and sticks out on his head like spikes. You wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, but you would want to eat his biscuits.

  CONNWAER—Has shaggy black hair that hangs down over his bright blue eyes. He’s been a gutter-boy for most of his life, so he’s watchful and a little wary; at the same time, he’s completely pragmatic and truthful. He’s thin, but he’s sturdy and strong, too. He has a quirky smile (hence his quirked tail as a cat). Conn does not know his own age; it could be anywhere from twelve to fourteen. A great friend to have, but be careful that you don’t have anything valuable in your pockets in reach of his sticky fingers.

  EMBRE—The Underlord of the Twilight. A young man about nineteen years old. He is very thin and has a sharp face with dark eyes and black hair, and he might have smudges on his hands and face from working with blackpowder. Everything about him is sharp, including his intellect.

  NEVERY FLINGLAS—Is tall with gray hair, a long gray beard, shaggy gray eyebrows, and sharp black eyes. He’s impatient and grumpy and often hasty, but beneath that his heart is kind (he would never admit it). Mysterious and possibly dangerous, Nevery is a difficult wizard to read, but a good one to know.

  NIMBLE—A magister and rather weak wizard. He looks like a bat and is a pen-pushing, officious man. He dislikes Conn very much.

  PIP—As Conn says, Pip is an “it,” not a “he.” Pip is a small dragon, no bigger than a kitten, but it has a very big attitude. Pip does not trust Conn at first—why should it? Conn stole it from its cave in the mountains, after all. Still, one thief should be friends with another. . . .

  ROWAN FORESTAL—The Duchess of Wellmet. A tall, slender girl of around sixteen, with red hair and gray eyes. She is very intelligent with a good, if dry, sense of humor.

  PLACES

  DAWN PALACE—The home of Rowan. The palace itself is a huge, rectangular building—not very architecturally interesting, but with lots of decorations crusted on it to make it fancy.

  HEARTSEASE—The old Heartsease, the mansion house with the big hole in the middle, was destroyed in a certain pyrotechnic experiment, so Nevery is building a new Heartsease. When finished, it will have plenty of room for Nevery and Benet and Conn to live there. Conn might even get his own workroom!

  MAGISTERS HALL—Seat of power for the wizards who control and guard the magic of Wellmet. It is a big, imposing gray stone building on a
n island with a wall built all the way around it at the waterline.

  WELLMET RUNIC ALPHABET

  In Wellmet, some people write using runes to stand for the letters of the alphabet. In fact, you may find some messages written in runes in The Magic Thief: Home.

  Papers

  THANKS TO . . .

  Loads of thanks to this novel’s first readers: Greg van Eekhout, Jenn Reese, Ingrid Law, Robin LaFevers, Deb Coates, Lisa Bradley, and Dorothy Winsor. Wow, there are a lot of you.

  To my genius editor, Antonia Markiet, and her editorial assistant, Abbe Goldberg. And the always-outstanding publishing team at HarperCollins Children’s: publisher Susan Katz, editor-in-chief Kate Jackson, senior production editor Kathryn Silsand, senior art director Amy Ryan, senior designer Tom Forget, and production manager Esilda Kerr.

  To my agent, Caitlin Blasdell, of the Liza Dawson Associates literary agency.

  To readers Edie Parsons, for getting Benet together with Captain Kerrn, Toby Barnes, for the extra bacon, and Tasha Kazanjian and Nancy Fink.

  To my mom for the eggplant surprise.

  Ingrid, we have to try again for lunch!

  And thanks to all my dear families, especially my mom and dad and the memory of my dear old Sparks-like grandma, Anne Hudson Hankins.

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