Found Read online

  Tap, tap, tap at one of the slanted windows in the ceiling. I creaked up out of my blankets, still sore from falling down the stone steps in the minions’ place, went over to the window, and cracked it open.

  A black bird hopped in, shaking drops of misty rain from its wings.

  “Hello,” I said to it. A quill was strapped to its leg, a message from Nevery. The letter was written on a long, narrow piece of paper rolled up tight and tied with a piece of thread. Not a letter, I saw when I unrolled it, but the treatise on the lost city of Arhionvar.

  I’d read it, but first I had a note to write back. While the bird hopped around on the floor, I dug around in the mess the minions had made. They’d taken my paper and pens and ink bottle, and all my notes about pyrotechnics, but I found a rat-nibbled stub of pencil to write with and a blank space on one of the pages the minions had ripped out of a book.

  I tried to write neatly, because Nevery hated it when he couldn’t read my handwriting.

  * * *

  Nevery,

  I need to talk to you, and to Rowan, if you can get her. The magic is doing something strange in the Twilight. If you send Benet with the boat we can meet at Heartsease tonight.

  —Connwaer

  * * *

  I folded up the torn-out book page and slid it into the quill.

  “Off you go,” I said to the bird, and opened a window so it could fly away. It flapped off into the fog.

  After it was gone, I stuffed rags back into the cracks around the window frame and started cleaning up the mess the minions had left. It didn’t take long. Then I sat down against the wall, wrapped in my damp blankets, and read the Arhionvar treatise.

  Nevery’d told me about this treatise before, when I’d first become a wizard, but I’d been too distracted by Crowe’s device to read it.

  According to the treatise, Arhionvar had once been a city far away in the southern Fierce Mountains. For some reason the city had died. All the people had fled. It wasn’t in the treatise, but I could guess the rest: The city’s magic had left the mountains and had become a predator magic—a magic called Arhionvar after the city where it’d lived. I didn’t know why it had left its proper place to wander around attacking other cities, as it’d attacked Desh, and as it was about to attack Wellmet. It’d already partly succeeded against Wellmet; the magic was weaker now than it’d been before the device, Nevery said. Prey for the predator.

  After a while, the bird came back, tap tap tapping at my window. I creaked it open and the bird hopped onto my shoulder. In the quill, a message from Nevery.

  * * *

  Not tonight. Meeting with magisters later. Meet Benet at Tryworks warehouse dock tomorrow night just after dark. Don’t be late.

  And don’t tear pages out of books to write on, boy. If you need money for paper, ask for it.

  —N

  * * *

  Drats. I wrote him a quick note back saying I would meet Benet where he said, and that I had received the Arhionvar treatise he’d sent, and then I sent the bird off again.

  CHAPTER 5

  Late in the afternoon, as the clouds crowded in over the city for the night’s rain, I heard the clump-clump of heavy feet coming up the stairs. The footsteps stopped under the hole in my floor where the stairs had been.

  “Hoy there, blackbird!”

  The minion Fist. No point in pretending I wasn’t there. I put down the roll of paper with the Arhionvar treatise written on it, climbed out of my nest of blankets, and went over and lay down on my stomach so I could look through the hole in the floor.

  “You’re here, are you?” Fist asked, looking up at me.

  Where else would I be? I nodded.

  “Got something for you.” He held up a big, square package wrapped in brown paper. “Come down and get it.”

  Unless it was food, I didn’t want it. I shook my head.

  “No harm,” Fist said. “Just some books.”

  “Leave them there,” I said.

  Fist shrugged and, very gently, set the package on the floor. Then he turned and clump-clumped back down the stairs.

  I waited until I heard him go out of the house, then got the ladder and skiffed down for the package and lugged it back up to my room. The light had gotten too dim to see much, so I lit a nub of candle, set it on the hearth, and unwrapped the stack of books. A slip of paper was wrapped up with them. I recognized the neat handwriting; it was a note from Embre.

  * * *

  These books were found last winter in a cellar in the Twilight. You might find them interesting.

  Embre

  * * *

  The books were old and spotted with mildew, and they had titles like Pyrotechnics for Industrial Purposes and Further Notes on Explosive Ratios. The book on the bottom of the stack was covered with crumbling black leather, and even though some of the letters had flaked off, I could make out the title, printed in gold:

  TH

  GRIM RE

  OF

  A

  NAM LE S

  ZARD

  AND

  ANON MOUS

  PYRO NIST

  My hands shaking a little from excitement, I opened the book. The binding cracked, and more bits of leather flaked off the cover. The pages inside were yellowed, and the tiny, messy handwriting had faded to gray. Holding the book closer to the candle, I peered at the words. Magic spells and strange ideas about pyrotechnics, it looked like.

  I started reading. In the second chapter, at the top of the page, was written Some Notes on Finding Spells w/Absolute Stoichiometrical Pyrotechnic Effect.

  Stoichiometrical. What did that mean, exactly?

  One of my torn-up books was a lexicon. I looked up the word, but it wasn’t there. Nevery would know, though. I went back to the book.

  A long time later, my last candle guttered and went out. I sat up, blinking. The room was completely dark. The book. It was full of information. I didn’t understand any of it.

  Except that in chapter two were special pyrotechnic instructions and a spell for finding a locus magicalicus. A finding spell!

  I stood up and stretched. Carefully, I felt my way to a shelf and set down the book so the rats couldn’t get at it. Words from the book swirled around in my head.

  Magical interference effects.

  Metal jelly.

  Absolute stoichiometric control must be maintained!

  Solution will be vertuminous blue.

  Hot filament ignition.

  I was too excited to sleep. This was a lot more complicated than making blackpowder, or combining slowsilver and tourmalifine. But the results! What if I could do this spell? I might find a new locus magicalicus in a few days! Then I’d be able to do a lot more to protect the Wellmet magic from Arhionvar.

  For the rest of the night I paced in my black-dark room, listening to the rats scrabble in the walls, waiting for daylight so I could see to read. As soon as the sky turned glimmer-gray, I stood by the window with the book open, reading.

  All day I read, getting hollower with hunger, but filling up with ideas.

  When I finished the book, I lay on the floor and stared up at the slanted ceiling. Rain pattered on the roof and leaked in through the windows. So many instructions. And a list of ingredients, and things called solutions and reagents. Words that weren’t in my lexicon. Maybe Nevery would understand it.

  The sky outside my attic window was dark gray.

  Dark gray.

  Meet Benet at Tryworks warehouse dock tomorrow night just after dark.

  Drats, I was going to be late.

  Quickly I put on my coat. One of its pockets was ripped on the inside, so I slid the book in so that it went down through the pocket into the lining of my coat, where it would be safe.

  As darkness fell over the Twilight, I ran through puddles until I arrived at Ten Crane Street, panting, my head spinning from having nothing to eat except half a biscuit for two days. Down here the air smelled like the river, fishy and muddy. Thunder grumbled ove
rhead and the rain got heavier, running down my neck like cold fingers.

  There, the Tryworks warehouse, looming out of the mist and rain like a barge on the river. ’Round the back on the side nearest the river was a doorway where I could wait for Benet. As I rounded the corner, a big hand reached out from the shadows and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck.

  “You’re late,” a rough voice said.

  I caught my breath. “Hello, Benet.”

  Benet was Nevery’s bodyguard, and his cook and housekeeper. He was big and broad, with bristly brown hair, a face like a fist full of knuckles, and a scar across his forehead. He wore a plain brown suit and a red waistcoat he’d knitted himself.

  He kept ahold of me, glaring. “What’re you up to?”

  I grinned. “I found a spell in a book.”

  “Spells, is it?” He let me go. “Come on, you. Boat’s tied at the end of the dock.”

  I followed him out to the dock and into the rowboat he’d tied up there.

  “Underneath,” he said, pointing with an oar.

  I crawled under a sheet of canvas to hide, just in case anybody was watching from shore. It was dark under there and smelled like rotten fish, but it was out of the rain.

  The boat jerked as Benet pushed us away from the dock, and I heard him drop the oars into the oarlocks, and the squeak and splash as he started to row. We had to go upstream for a while to get to Heartsease.

  I settled down against the curve of the boat, my warm coat wrapped around me, and closed my eyes. As long as I was with Benet I was safe. The river wavelets lapped against the boat, and the rain went patter-pat on the canvas just over my head.

  I woke up with Benet poking my shoulder with the oar. He stood on the rocky shore of Heartsease island, glowering down at me.

  I rubbed my eyes and sat up, then stood up, the boat tipping as I stepped onto one of the slippery black rocks that lined the island. For just a second my head felt light, with hunger most likely, and I wobbled a little. Benet grabbed my arm and pulled me to shore, then gave me a sharp look. “Come on, you.”

  Once Heartsease had been Nevery’s home, and the home of his family for years and years. But I’d blown it up. The explosion was where Benet had gotten his scar. Nevery was trying to rebuild Heartsease to be a home again. Maybe it’d be my home again, too, someday.

  I could see that the workers had put up a foundation and four brick walls with rows of tall windows.

  “In here,” Benet said. He led me through an empty doorway into a room scattered with piles of brick and canvas bags of dry mortar, and slabs of slate for the floors, and builders’ tools. In one corner Benet had rigged up a canvas roof, and in the new hearth he’d lit a fire.

  Nevery was there, a shadow in the firelight, sitting on a barrel of nails. “There you are,” he said. “You’re late.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was reading.”

  “Ah.” Nevery nodded. He understood how hard it was sometimes to stop reading.

  Benet set down the lantern and leaned against a wall with his burly arms crossed. I sat down on the dirt floor with my back against the wall. “Nevery, d’you have anything to eat?” I asked. I’d been hoping for a pan of bacon sizzling in the hearth, three or four fried eggs with pepper, maybe some biscuits dripping with butter.

  “Set aside your preoccupation with food, boy,” Nevery said. “What is the trouble with the magic you had to tell me about on this miserable night?”

  Drats. My stomach gave a hopeless growl. “The magic’s at Dusk House,” I said. I stared at the glowing-gold embers in the hearth. And Embre. I needed to tell Nevery about the book Embre had given me.

  “And?” Nevery said.

  Right. “It’s at Dusk House,” I said. Had I said that already?

  “Boy…,” Nevery began.

  “Should’ve realized, sir,” Benet said, from where he was leaning against the wall. “He looks peaky.”

  “Hmmm,” Nevery said, and then he reached down and took my chin in his hand, turning my face so he could see me. “Benet is right, my lad. What’s the matter?”

  I shrugged.

  Nevery knew me well enough to wait for an answer.

  “I’m having a little trouble with the minions,” I said.

  “Curse it,” Nevery said fiercely. He let me go and looked across at Benet, who nodded and went out. “What kind of trouble, boy?”

  “They found out my hiding place,” I said.

  Nevery muttered angrily into his beard.

  “They showed me the magic thing,” I said.

  “Magic thing?” Nevery asked. “At Dusk House, I assume.”

  I told him about the magic welling up from the pit and lifting me off the ground, then draining away.

  “Hmmm,” Nevery said, and stared into the fire. “Extraordinary. Never heard of magic behaving so strangely. Not a pyrotechnic effect, clearly. Nothing to do with a locus magicalicus. Very odd.”

  A chilly wind from off the river swirled through the open door. I edged closer to the fire. Inside the lining of my coat the book Embre had given me bumped against my leg. I pulled it out. “Here, Nevery,” I said, holding it out to him.

  He glanced at the title, then opened the book to the first page. “Where did you get this, boy?”

  “From Embre.”

  Nevery shot me a glare from under his bristly eyebrows. “A friend of yours?”

  I wasn’t sure if Embre was a friend or not. “He’s a pyrotechnist in the Twilight. His aunt’s name is Sparks.”

  “Ah.” Nevery nodded. I wondered if he knew Sparks from when he’d done his own pyrotechnic experiments. He turned a page. “Hmmm,” he muttered, and turned another page.

  “Look at chapter two,” I said. Then I put my head down on my knees and closed my eyes.

  “Hello, Connwaer,” Rowan said.

  I looked up. Rowan was tall and had a proud face, gray eyes, and red hair that was sparkling with raindrops and floating around her head like wild fluff. Across her cheek she had a thin scar, fading from pink to white, got from her fight with the sorcerer-king’s Shadows and guards. She was the duchess’s daughter and she was my best friend, and, except when she was furious with me, I was hers. She wore an embroidered black wormsilk dress with a green woolen cloak over it and black button-up boots. She stood beside Nevery, who glanced up at her, nodded, and went back to the book.

  “I can’t stay long.” She sat on the floor next to me and rested her elbows on her knees. “Argent rowed me across from the Sunrise. He’s tying up the boat now.”

  Argent. Or Sir Argent, as he liked to be called. Rowan’s friend.

  Nevery looked up from the book. “This finding spell,” he said, tapping the page.

  “Can you make sense of it, Nevery?” I asked.

  He nodded, pulling at the end of his beard. “I can, yes. But I am not sure that working with pyrotechnics is a good idea at this particular moment.”

  Because of our other pyrotechnic preparations, he meant. But we had to do the finding spell. We had to. “I can fight Arhionvar a lot better with a locus stone than without one,” I said.

  “You’re talking about doing a pyrotechnic spell to find your locus magicalicus?” Rowan asked. She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming in the firelight. “Don’t be stupid, Connwaer. It’s too dangerous. What if you’re caught? You fought Arhionvar in Desh, and you did it without a locus stone.”

  True, I had. But the dread magic had almost gotten me then. It wanted me to be its wizard, to take me over as it’d done to the wizard it’d found in Desh—Jaggus. The sorcerer-king had been lost to Arhionvar because he’d been alone, with no one to turn to for help. Arhionvar had corrupted Jaggus until he’d attacked his own city’s magic. Arhionvar wanted to do the same to me so it could attack Wellmet’s magic. I’d fought it off once because I knew I had friends and I wasn’t alone, but I’d need a locus magicalicus if I was going to face it again.

  “Nevery—” I said. My voice shook a little bit.

&n
bsp; “All right, boy,” Nevery interrupted. “But you won’t be able to work this spell in some Twilight attic. We’ll have to use a workroom.”

  We, he’d said. So he would help me.

  “Some of the techniques described here…” Nevery shook his head. “Stoichiometry, hmmm,” he muttered. “Hot filament ignition. Have to tune the dock pendulum.” He went back to the book.

  “What exactly is a finding spell?” Rowan asked me.

  I turned to her. “A spell I can use to find my locus magicalicus. Nevery can’t cast a finding spell for me because it’s my stone we have to find. I have to do it.”

  “I see,” Rowan said. “And your locus stone is somewhere in Wellmet?”

  I glanced at Nevery to see what he would say.

  “It is, almost certainly,” Nevery said without looking up from the book.

  “It won’t be one of my mother’s jewels again, will it, Connwaer?” Rowan asked, smiling.

  “No,” I said. Probably not. Hopefully not. A wizard’s locus magicalicus called to him or her. It could be anything, a pebble on the road, or a rounded river stone, or a piece of gravel. My first locus stone had been a leaf-green jewel, the center jewel in the necklace of Rowan’s mother, the duchess of Wellmet. To get my hands on it, I’d stolen it.

  This time, finding my locus magicalicus was not going to land me in trouble, or in jail.

  * * *

  Rowan Forestal

  Captain Kerrn’s guards are watching me all the time, waiting for me to lead them to Conn. Kerrn has asked me several times if I know where to find the thief. I don’t know where he is staying, so I can say with perfect truthfulness that I do not. I think she suspects me of helping Conn escape from the Dawn Palace. I didn’t, but I wish that I had. I have tried to tell my mother and Kerrn that Conn had to return to Wellmet from exile, that in defeating Arhionvar he showed more bravery than any palace guard, but they both still see him as the thief who stole the most valuable jewel in the city from the ducal regalia.