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  Right, then I would have to be more careful, that was all.

  Staying quiet, I pushed stewed greens around my plate with my fork. I thought about the spellword the magic had said to me. Damrodellodesseldeshellarhionvarliardenliesh. A warning, maybe. But a warning of what? I needed to learn the magic’s language. I’d have to look for the spellword in the academicos’s collection of grimoires. Or maybe parts of the spellword.

  Damrodell…

  Odesseldesh…

  Ellarhion…

  Varliarden…

  Liesh.

  I took a bite of bread and jam and washed it down with a gulp of water. Lady came curling around my feet under the table and I reached down and fed her a few bits of fish.

  When we finished dinner, Benet said, “Water,” so I carried the bucket out to the well in the courtyard and came back, and then helped him clean the plates. Nevery’d gone up to his study. I took an apple and climbed the wide, curving staircase to the next floor. I knew Nevery. Sure as sure, he’d want to shout at me some more about the pyrotechnics.

  He was at the table writing a letter. The room was cozy in the pinkish glow of werelights set in sconces on the walls. The ceilings were high and had bits of frothy plaster in the corners; the walls were covered with faded flowery paper. On the floor was a faded, dusty carpet, and the table in the middle of the room was covered with books and papers.

  “Nevery?” I said.

  “Just a moment,” he said, not looking up.

  I took a bite of the apple and went over to one of the tall windows. It looked out toward the Twilight, the part of the city I’d grown up in. The sky over the Twilight was purple, fading above to black. Only a few lights shone from the dark buildings stacked along the twisted, steep streets. Behind me, Nevery turned the page over and kept writing, the metal nib of his pen going scritch-scritch against the paper.

  I finished the good part of the apple, then ate the core and flicked the stem out the open window.

  Nevery set down his pen and held up the paper to let the ink dry. “You’ve been out of school since the Underlord business last winter.”

  I had. Because I didn’t have a locus stone, the magisters wouldn’t let me take apprentice classes at the academicos anymore.

  Nevery looked at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “You need something to do to keep you out of trouble, boy. I’m asking Brumbee to readmit you to the academicos for apprentice classes.” He folded the letter he’d been writing, pulled out his black and shiny locus magicalicus, and muttered a spell, sealing the letter. “If they’ll have you. Brumbee fears you are a bad influence on the other students.” He held the letter out to me. “I expect you are a bad influence on the other students. You’ve got your keystone?”

  The stone to open the magic-locked tunnel gates between the wizards’ islands, he meant. I nodded.

  “Good. Take this to Brumbee. Don’t talk to anyone else. And wait for an answer.”

  Brumbee was in the magisters’ meeting room, sitting at the long table with his locus magicalicus set in a dish for light, and papers and open books spread all around him. He was writing in another book.

  I stood in the doorway, waiting for him to notice me. I’d been in the magisters’ meeting room before. Once to spy on them, disguised as a cat; once when they accepted me as Nevery’s apprentice and gave me thirty days to find my locus stone; and once after we’d destroyed Dusk House and the terrible device Crowe and Pettivox had built to imprison the city’s magic. That time, they’d argued about what had really happened in Crowe’s underground workroom and they’d scolded me for losing my locus magicalicus. They didn’t seem to understand that destroying the device had made the city’s magic work again like they thought it was supposed to, though weaker than before, Nevery said. He measured the magical levels every day with the gauge he had built, and the levels stayed low. We were worried about that, thinking maybe Crowe’s device had hurt the magic somehow.

  Then I’d told the magisters that the magic was a living being that protected the city. It had been like a pyrotechnic experiment. Take a room full of old croakety-croak magisters, add a new idea, and it was just like combining slowsilver and tourmalifine. They exploded, saying I was an ignorant gutterboy who didn’t know any better.

  “I do know better,” I’d told them. “The magic talked to me. It’s always protected me, and it protects the city. It’s not just a thing to be used, and it needs our help.”

  They didn’t like that, either. They shouted and shrieked and said I couldn’t be an apprentice anymore.

  “You’re being stupid!” I’d shouted.

  Nevery’d sent me out, and I’d stood outside the door shaking and angry, feeling my missing locus magicalicus like a hole in the middle of me, listening to Nevery shouting and Brumbee’s worried voice and other sharp voices arguing.

  “What is it, Conn?” Brumbee said, looking up from his book and setting down his pen.

  I went in and handed him the letter from Nevery.

  He spelled it open and read it, shaking his head. “Oh, dear,” he muttered. He waved his hand at me, still looking at the letter. “You may sit down while I write a reply.”

  My dear Nevery,

  When you took Conn in as your apprentice last year, I thought you were doing a good deed, saving a gutterboy from the streets of the Twilight, but now I am not so sure.

  His ideas about the magic are simply shocking. The magic a living being? Spellwords a way of communicating with this being? Nevery, you must stop him from thinking about such things. We have enough to worry about at the moment with these strangers lurking around the Dawn Palace and these unexplained attacks on the people of Wellmet. You know as well as I do that something magical must be afoot, for people to be turned into living statues covered with dust! I have spent the last weeks poring over the historical records, seeking a precedent for this kind of magical attack. I have found nothing. It is a very great concern.

  But about young Conn. I can see that he feels badly for causing us so much unease with his strange ideas, and with the Underlord troubles last year. He is standing very quiet and subdued beside the meeting room door, waiting as I write this to you; I offered him a chair, but he refused to sit.

  I am afraid we cannot readmit him to the academicos at this time. His ideas are too unsettling to the other students. My new apprentice, Keeston, for example, has been talking in most alarming ways about the nature of magic. We cannot allow Conn to take classes with the other apprentices. And even if we do readmit him, he has no locus magicalicus and will never become a wizard.

  It’s a shame, really. He seems a good boy, despite his odd ideas and the trouble he caused us last year.

  Yours,

  Brumbee A., Magister,

  Master of Wellmet Academicos

  CHAPTER 3

  I gave Brumbee’s letter to Nevery and he spelled it open.

  “Hmmm,” he said, reading. “He won’t readmit you to the academicos, Conn.”

  Oh. I didn’t say anything.

  Nevery gave me a keen look from under his eyebrows. “Well, boy?” he asked.

  Not really well, no. I wasn’t a gutterboy anymore, and I needed to be going to school.

  “I will give you lessons,” Nevery said.

  All right.

  I sat up late in the study reading Nevery’s grimoire, looking for the spellword the magic had spoken. No luck. Maybe I could get Keeston to nick some books from the academicos library so I could keep looking.

  For my first pyrotechnic experiment, I’d nicked tourmalifine and the slowsilver from Nevery’s workroom. To do more experiments I’d need more pyrotechnic materials, and that meant finding somebody in the Twilight to sell them to me, and that meant getting my hands on some money. Nevery wouldn’t give it to me, sure as sure. I wondered if Rowan would.

  The problem with visiting the Dawn Palace, where Rowan lived, was that the guards, especially their captain, Kerrn, didn’t like me very much. The first time I’d b
een there I’d stolen the jewel from the duchess’s necklace because it was my locus stone. The duchess didn’t like me much, either. If I showed up without an invitation, they’d be likely to slap me in a cell and fill me up with phlister in order to find out what I was up to.

  Because I’d been a thief, I was good at getting in and out of places without being seen. I went over the wall at the back of the palace, then, evading more guards than usual, snuck across the formal gardens, through one of the terrace doors, and into the ballroom, which was empty. Rowan’s rooms were up two floors and down at the eastern end of the building. I stayed in the servants’ hallways, picked a lock to go through an empty room, then eased out into a hallway, down two more doors, and into Rowan’s rooms. She had a study, a dressing room, a sitting room, and her bedroom, which had a wide bed in it, and pillowy, comfortable chairs.

  She wasn’t there. I fetched a book off her bookshelves, flopped onto one of the chairs in the bedroom, and settled down to wait.

  I looked up later when Rowan came in. “Have you been waiting long?” she asked. She was wearing a black wormsilk dress and a student’s robe; she’d been at the academicos, where she studied magic, even though she wasn’t a wizard. She was the duchess’s daughter and needed to know about magical things. Her red hair was tangled, and her fingers were smudged with ink.

  I sat up and put the book down. “Hello, Ro,” I said.

  Rowan tossed her bookbag onto her bed and flopped onto the chair next to mine. She glanced sideways at me. “Are you coming back to school, Connwaer?”

  “No,” I said.

  “They’re still upset with you, then.”

  The magisters would never stop being upset with me. I shrugged.

  “Mmm. I have a swordcraft lesson in a few minutes.” She bent to untie the laces of her boot.

  Get to the point, she was saying. “Can I have some money?” I asked.

  She looked up. “We-ell, I don’t know. What do you need it for?”

  I took a deep breath. “Charcoal and colophony, sulfur and saltpeter. And slowsilver.”

  “Explosive materials, I believe.” She sat up straight and gave me her sharp, slanting look. “From what I hear, my lad, wizards are not supposed to have anything to do with that sort of thing.”

  Right, true enough. “Ro, I don’t have any choice.”

  “Really,” she said, her voice dry; it made her sound like her mother. “What are your choices?”

  “I have to make some explosions.”

  “Indeed,” Rowan said.

  “Small ones,” I said.

  Rowan pulled off her boot and tossed it toward the door of her dressing room. “You do have another choice, Connwaer.” She started on the other boot.

  “No, I don’t,” I said.

  “You do,” she said. “You could choose not to do any pyrotechnic experiments.”

  I couldn’t abandon the magic like that, not when it needed my help. “Ro, I’m a wizard. I don’t have a locus stone, so I have to find some way to talk to the magic.”

  She pulled off her other boot. “Pyrotechnics?”

  I nodded. I knew she’d understand, better than anyone except for Nevery.

  There was a knock at the outer door. “Lady Rowan,” a deep voice called. “Are you there?”

  Rowan sprang up from her chair. “Just a minute, Argent. I’m just getting ready.” She turned to me. “My lesson,” she whispered.

  Right, time for me to leave. “Will you give me the money, then?”

  She nibbled on her thumbnail, deciding. “How much do you need?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe eight silver faces,” I said, knowing it was a lot to ask for.

  “Is that all?” Rowan said. “All right. Wait a moment.”

  She went into her dressing room. I heard rustlings and the thump of a drawer opening and closing, and then Rowan came out wearing plain brown trousers, a white shirt, a long black coat, and, under the coat, a sword in a scabbard.

  Her friend banged at the door again. “Lady Rowan, are you coming?”

  She smiled at me. “Not today, Argent,” she called. “I’ll meet you at the salle tomorrow afternoon.”

  What was she up to?

  “I’ll give you the money,” she said, showing me a heavy purse string, which she put into her pocket. “But I’m coming with you.”

  Brumbee correct. Boy’s ideas about magic shocking. But though boy is stupid about some things, is not stupid about magic. Is likely correct that magic is living being, protector of city, spellwords its language. Magic certainly protected boy when he was living on streets of Twilight. Boy was never sick, had no vermin, did not freeze in the winters; only explanation is that magical being has some kind of bond with him. What that bond is, I do not know.

  Twenty years ago, when I conducted my own experiments to see if pyrotechnics enhanced magical spells cast with a locus stone, explosion ripped Heartsease in half. At time, did not understand how I survived. Now think likely that magic protected me as it protected boy when Underlord’s device exploded. Wrote treatise at the time about magical effects, sounds heard when explosion occurred. Wonder if it was magic trying to speak to me.

  CHAPTER 4

  Once Rowan and I had snuck out of the Dawn Palace, we headed down the hill toward the Night Bridge. “Pyrotechnics is illegal,” I said. “We’ll have to go to the Twilight to get what I need.”

  Rowan’s eyes brightened. “I’ve never been there before.”

  “Really, never?” I asked.

  “My mother says it’s too dangerous.”

  It wasn’t that dangerous. You just had to know where it was safe to go, and where anybody smart would stay away from.

  “You’ve heard about the strange attacks in the Sunrise?” Rowan asked.

  Attacks? No. I shook my head.

  “The magisters think they have something to do with magic. People have been found covered with dust, turned to stone in their beds, or outside their own front doors. It’s dreadful. Surely Nevery’s working on a plan to deal with them?” When I didn’t answer, she shrugged. “I suppose you’ve had your nose in a book and didn’t notice.”

  I had been busy, true.

  We stepped from the cobbled street onto the bridge over the river. Overhead, the sky was gray and the air felt thick with the coming rain. The houses crowded onto the edges of the bridge made the road dark, like a tunnel. A wagon loaded with coal bumped past us, and Rowan shifted to stay out of its way.

  “My mother has a point about the danger,” Rowan said. “Strange shadows have been seen lurking around the palace walls at night. Maybe they have something to do with the killings, but the magisters don’t seem to know for sure. The guards chase them, but they always get away.” She glanced at me. “Captain Kerrn is worried—she’s even set two of her guards to look after me when I go across to the academicos. Kerrn’s worried that my mother is in danger, too. She thinks the lurkers could be assassins.”

  So that’s what Nevery had been worrying about; he’d said the magisters didn’t want distractions. People turned to stone in their beds sounded something like misery eels, maybe. But I’d never heard of misery eels attacking people out in the street, not even in the worst parts of the Twilight. And shadowy lurkers. What were they, minions maybe? Had Underlord Crowe come out of exile, back to Wellmet? I shivered; I hoped not.

  We came off the bridge and onto Fleetside, the main street leading to Sark Square. A shift was just changing at the factories along the river, so crowds of workers were heading home or in to work at the looms and bottle mills and spinneries.

  We wouldn’t find anybody at the marketplace who could sell us pyrotechnic materials. I’d have to find somebody to ask, who might know somebody else who might know something about some stranger who might have a bit of blackpowder on hand.

  So we turned off the main street onto one of the side lanes in the part of the Twilight called the Deeps. The narrow street was clogged with mud and garbage, the houses crowding toget
her, and a grimy tavern sign creaking in the autumn wind. Not many people were about—there never were—just a couple of dirty kids, an old woman wrapped in a shawl, and a man carrying a broken-down bedframe on his back. Rowan stared at it all. I had to take her hand and guide her around a muddy pothole, or she would have stepped right into it.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I didn’t realize it would be this bad,” Rowan said. She was staring at a soot-stained brick house with broken-out windows and a chimney spilling down the side of the roof. A little barefooted girl wearing a raggedy smock stood in the front door, sucking on her finger and watching us with big eyes.

  It wasn’t so bad. The little girl probably had a mother or father who worked at a factory and brought home money for food. When she got big enough, she would work in a factory, too.

  “Come on,” I said. This part of the Twilight was safe enough, but we didn’t need to stand around looking like we wanted our pockets picked. I led Rowan down a narrow alley, turned a corner—

  —and somebody picked my pocket.

  I turned back and—quick hands—grabbed the little ragged kid who was trying to slide past me and Rowan. He wriggled and kicked, but he was smaller than I was and not very strong. I held him by the shoulders and shoved him up against the crumbling brick wall to keep him from squirming away. He was a gutterboy, barefoot, dressed in tattery trousers and a man’s nightshirt tied with a rope ’round his waist.

  “What’s the matter?” Rowan asked. She had her hand on the hilt of her sword, under her coat.

  “Get anything?” I asked the gutterboy.

  He looked down at his hand. A couple of lockpick wires. That’s what he’d gotten for his trouble. He looked blankly at them and dropped them to the ground. Stupid. A swagshop would’ve given him a copper lock for them. Oh well; he was probably being stupid because he was hungry.

  “If you’re going to pick pockets,” I said, “you have to have quick hands.”