Chapter Five #3
Jasper followed her gaze. With a grace she hadn’t expected from him, he sprang up the spiral staircase and leapt up onto the mezzanine railing to inspect the ceiling more closely.
He was more lithe than Thea could have guessed; the fabric of his breeches taut across his thighs as he balanced on the railing.
His fingers wove in the pattern that Thea had come to recognise as fate’s skeins were revealed to them both.
He deftly examined the threads binding the Magic Quarter in protection, preventing its older buildings from crumbling, and keeping everyone safe.
‘This will hold for now, but it is related to a much greater problem,’ he said solemnly, jumping down from the railing and walking back down the stairs.
Thea kept her gaze averted as he adjusted his tailored jacket and breeches.
‘You’re right; the wards are malfunctioning. I must investigate this further.’ There was something in his voice that Thea didn’t recognise. She disliked it at once; if Jasper could not fix the wards, what chance did the rest of them face?
Shifting his attention back to her, Jasper drew himself out of his own thoughts. ‘Are you certain that you have been taking a price for all of your workings with fate? The balance—’
‘Must be kept, I know,’ Thea said, shoving her guilt away before Jasper read it on her face. ‘It was nothing I did; Wojslav’s windowpanes went missing days before our ceiling cracked.’
She looked up, checking the crack hadn’t split further. That the apothecary wouldn’t come raining down on her.
Jasper’s frown was more impressive than she’d seen in a while. ‘I see,’ he said, glancing back at the ceiling. ‘Well, the day Pan Novak sets foot in here, you must send me a raven at once.’
‘I will.’ She would not; she could handle herself. ‘Though I presume you were invited to attend the meeting along with the rest of us? If you wanted to be kept updated, you ought to have attended.’
‘I have other means of keeping updated.’
‘Right,’ Thea said sceptically, unsurprised that Jasper hadn’t come.
Jasper remained standing in place, waiting. Thea stared back at him.
‘Are you going to make today’s guess, or must I wait here until sunset?’
Oh. ‘Gisela.’ Today, it lacked hope.
A softer frown wandered across Jasper’s brow. ‘No.’
Thea nodded. ‘Would you even tell me if I guessed correctly?’ she asked bitterly.
Jasper looked uncertain. For once, his height seemed an encumbrance as he stood there, awkwardly considering her. Usually he delighted in stalking about, tall and dark and imposing. ‘Of course,’ he told her. ‘A deal is a deal.’
‘And you do love your bargains, don’t you?’ Thea snapped back.
‘Is there—’ Jasper cleared his throat. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘Why would anything be the matter?’ Thea swung an arm out, impassioned.
Too impassioned, for an apothecary stacked with delicate glass bottles and jars.
She sent the nearby display of blackberry ink crashing down.
Purple ink spattered the floorboards. Jasper eyed the mess warily.
‘I have no heart, no memories and no name. I can’t leave this apothecary permanently.
’ Whatever she’d signed in that contract had her bound to stay there until she guessed her true name.
‘You do have a name.’ Jasper bent to one knee and started gathering the broken bottles, piling shards together on one palm. His hands were strong from years of fate-weaving. A sudden image of him reaching for Thea’s hand fell into her head. She shook it straight back out.
‘Right.’ Thea snorted. ‘A name that I cannot remember. A name before you looked at me that first day, standing outside this apothecary, missing my heart and memories, and called me Theodora with no rhyme nor reason, simply assigning it to me as if I were a butterfly you had pinned to a cork board.’
Jasper paused, looking down at the pooling ink. His dark curled hair was tied at the nape of his neck with a black velvet ribbon. An intimate view. For some reason, she found herself unable to look away. ‘I happen to like the name Theodora,’ he said quietly.
‘Did it ever cross your mind that I might not?’
Jasper rose to his full height, dwarfing Thea once more. In silence, he placed the broken glass on the side, withdrawing into another of his moods, his attention drifting like smoke. ‘Perhaps I’d better take my leave.’
‘Fine, go.’ Thea huffed out a weary sigh.
With a doff of his hat, Jasper left. As the door swung shut behind him, a damp misty scent leaked through the apothecary. It smelt like mouldering book pages and broken promises. It smelt like sadness.
There was something about starting a new journal, being confronted with that first blank page.
As impressionless as a fresh snowfall. Thea balanced her inkwell and quill beside the new journal she’d opened on her bed, and consulted her Compendium of Magic.
If she was to make the key Malek had requested, she needed to make a start as soon as possible.
If Jasper wasn’t such a pain, she’d ask his advice, but she’d become quite adept at potion-making over her years at the apothecary and the idea of combining that with fate-weaving was more exciting than handing out bottles of fire-ginger to sneezing witches in cold season.
She flipped through the pages of ingredients. Some couldn’t be found in this world, others were found deep in the forest, where the strangest and most magical ingredients tended to grow. Others could be procured in the Rose Basket or Paní Dagmar’s haberdashery. She ran her finger down the text:
Fungi are connected, forging a living, breathing map through the forest. If your intent is to locate or find something, then a mushroom or toadstool will enhance your potion. None are more potent than the silver spot-dapples.
This was accompanied by a rendition of said silver spot-dapples. Thea carefully copied both the text and the drawing into the second page of her journal. On the first she wrote: Silver spot-dapples? Excellent for locating and finding – like a key that draws you to the correct spot.
After skimming through another few pages, she jotted down – A firebird’s breath?
Could remove all trace of being there? – then scribbled it out on discovering that it would also remove Malek without a trace.
Yawning several times in succession, Thea put her inkwell and quill on her bedside table and curled up in her blankets to read another snippet of the Compendium’s love story before she slept:
Storm season is setting in, hard and fast. Mother and Father are bolting the shutters and casting stronger wards over our sprawling roof, lest a tree comes crashing down.
Such are the perils of living this deep in the forest. Worse will be surviving the season trapped inside with them, an atmosphere that promises to be colder than the forest.
I ought to stay inside. Though I am haunted by my dreams of him. Making a last dash to the market before our doors lock and do not open for the rest of the season, I took his cloak and ran through the squalling wind and hunting birds, searching for a glimpse of his face.
He was not there. I am bereft.
At least his cloak still smells of him.