CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next morning, Dot knocked upon Theodora’s attic door. The witch opened it, dressed in her usual lavish blouse, as if she were yet to sleep at all. She raised her eyebrows in question.
‘I need to learn more about my affliction,’ said Dot. ‘I’m going to the telegram office with Belchamber today but, afterwards, I was hoping you might sneak me into the Royal Institute library? Surely I am not the only one to have these scales.’
‘Why to the telegram office?’ asked Theodora, yawning.
‘I need to contact my grandad. You said this magic has been in me for a long time. Perhaps he remembers something I don’t. I need to know how he found the ambergris and why it helps me.’
‘Finally. We’ll leave in forty minutes.’ Theodora slammed the attic door shut.
Dot stared at the wood for a moment, a touch surprised, and then climbed down the stairs.
As her feet met the floorboards, the door was yanked open again and the witch cried, ‘Dorothy, did you cut your hair? Oh, look at you. How stunning!’
They met in the living room. Dot was dressed in one of her new blouses and a brown tweed skirt.
On her feet were a pair of wingtips that were truthfully not as comfortable as the brogues she’d borrowed from Theodora, but were so beautifully polished she did not mind.
What had happened to her old shoes, with the newspaper stuffed into the soles, abandoned in the foyer of Saint Penelope’s Cathedral? She felt a pang of guilt for them.
‘Ready?’ asked Theodora.
‘We should wait for Belchamber,’ said Dot.
‘He’s in the workshop,’ said Theodora. ‘Said to tell you, “Have fun, Miss Dorothy”.’
‘Why should he stay behind?’
‘To keep the house company.’
Dot peered out the window.
‘Acanthi won’t come for us, will they?’
The witch shook her head.
‘You, Rupert and myself are protected by my wards across the city,’ said Theodora. ‘It was an easy tweak because we are not daft enough to leave our blood behind on a Beleustian wall. From Mourners’ all the way to Commerce, you are completely safe.’
Theodora threw out her arm and up kicked an uncanny wind and the scent of woodsmoke, incense, gunpowder and lilac.
‘Why lilac?’ asked Dot, and Theodora faltered ever so slightly but did not answer. The witch rearranged her features into her usual smile and offered her hand to Dot, and off they stepped through the portal and out into the city of Alliaster.
The Grand Central Post Office was located in the King’s District, not far from Saint Penelope’s Cathedral.
Dot stumbled out of the portal and onto the wide footpath, and she would have toppled over entirely were it not for Theodora taking her arm and righting her.
Immediately, Dot was overwhelmed by the passers-by who jostled her, the pigeons pecking underfoot and the cacophony of the motor cars.
The sun was hot. It was all so loud. She glanced down and saw the monstrousness of her left hand, bandages abandoned, the scales and the long talons where bitten nails should have been, all of it contrasting so extremely with her pretty new clothes that she almost turned to Theodora to cry that she had made a mistake and that they should go back, but Theodora noticed and gently said, ‘This way.’
The witch guided her inside. Dot took a heavy breath and shook her head, focusing on the bounce of her newly short curls, and named all she could see and feel and smell as they crossed the brown marble floor and joined the line at the telegraph desk.
No one is looking at my hand, she promised herself, although peripherally she caught a little boy glancing, and she made to tug her sleeve over her strange, scaly fingers.
‘What a beautiful building,’ said Dot to distract herself.
Indeed, it was beautiful. The ceiling stretched at least three storeys upward, doming here and there, adorned with ornate metalwork.
The pigeonholes behind the three grand counters – marked ‘Post’, ‘Parcels’ and ‘Telegrams’ respectively – were crafted of polished walnut and stretched up to the ceiling against the back wall.
Human postal officers climbed up the impossibly tall ladders, surrounded by floating spirits, as flying parcels slotted into boxes.
‘How does that work?’ asked Dot.
‘When they slot the post in,’ said Theodora, ‘each letter is delivered to the satchel of the postal worker in whichever neighbourhood of whichever district. Little portals, each of the wooden slots.’
Dot’s eyebrows knitted.
‘What is it?’ asked Theodora.
‘But isn’t that a bit unfair? Article Thirteen and all?’
‘Unfair?’ asked Theodora. ‘That the Royal Postal Service uses magic to gluttonous degrees, but the ordinary Alliastran would have their hand cut off for trying? Careful, Dorothy. You’ll get arrested.’
The spirit ahead of them in the line – a large, burgundy fellow who resembled a chimney – glanced over his shoulder, and Dot shut her mouth. When they made it to the front of the telegraph line, Dot was a little disappointed to discover that the process here was entirely un-magical.
‘First nine words are forty-one coppers,’ said a bespectacled officer without looking at them.
‘Every word after that’s an extra ten. Fifty maximum.
STOP is free. There’s a twenty-copper surcharge, as it is a Sunday, and a thirty-copper surcharge if you want priority.
Have you written down what you want to say? ’
Dot handed over the slip of paper.
MR ARCHIBALD WALCOTT = PORT OFFICE I, SEAFARTHING, SOUTH CALLéUM
MY ILLNESS HAS WORSENED GRANDAD STOP PLEASE COME TO CORNER OF WREN CT AND ETHEL AV AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE STOP I HAVE QUESTIONS AND I BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE ANSWERS STOP I MISS YOU STOP END
DOROTHY LOUISE WALCOTT
The officer took it briskly and a few minutes later, Theodora and Dot were walking back out of the Grand Central Post Office.
‘A letter would have been a quarter of the price,’ said Dot.
‘But three times as slow,’ said Theodora, as she conjured another portal. ‘And this is certainly better than using the telephone.’
They spent the day together running errands across the city.
They collected potion ingredients from the Port District: scale of sunfish, eye of coelacanth, tail of trout.
They delivered packet spells to Theodora’s factory on Stirrup Street.
After, Theodora took Dot to a chocolatier on Mieunetti Road. They came away with a large box.
‘Truffles?’ Dot asked.
‘I’m going to give them to the customers.’
‘Whyever for?’
‘Good business.’
Dot’s eyes narrowed. ‘I know by now that whenever you say “good business”, you mean something else entirely.’
‘I suppose you’ll find out eventually,’ said Theodora. ‘Some of the customers have gone missing. Could be a terrible coincidence, or it could be our aged friends from Caelin Forest.’
‘Acanthi? Why?’
Theodora’s expression darkened. ‘I could guess, but I like none of my theories.’ She rattled the box.
‘Blood magic is Moira’s talent, that’s all I’ll say.
These are to ward the customers. I developed these not long after I worked out how to trick Cate.
A temporary fix, and a weak one if I am being honest, but I haven’t the time to alter each of the city’s wards properly.
If the customers take these, they should be temporarily protected. ’
‘How are Acanthi locating your customers in the first place?’ asked Dot, chewing on her fingernails.
‘How would you do it?’ asked Theodora. She stepped off the busy footpath and into an alley. Deftly, she threw the box upward and it disappeared with a small pop, presumably landing on the workshop table back in the tea shop.
‘Sympathy?’ said Dot. ‘I’d take something that belonged to you, and use it to find others who you had connected with. It would need to be customers who had formed strong attachments to you and your businesses.’
‘You are a quick study, Dorothy. Bloody shame your magic is blocked.’
For luncheon, Theodora took Dot to a sandwich shop with wiry black chairs and a board advertising poached eggs on toast. Theodora bought for herself a cup of coffee, for Dot a mug of black tea, and for the pair of them a tomato sandwich each.
They ate outside in the gentle summer sun.
Dot chewed happily, feeling the warmth on her face.
‘You seem content.’
‘I am,’ said Dot, clutching the soft bread with both hands. Her eyes landed on a young man in a paisley suit – he had a cloud-shaped birthmark along his chin and she was certain she had seen him in the tea shop. ‘Theodora?’
‘Mm?’
‘What happens if a tea shop customer spots you here?’ Then she thought for a moment longer and, with a sudden realisation, said in a rush, ‘And why has the King of all people never realised that Bianca De León and Valiente are the same person? He sees you every week in the Raven’s Attic, and more at the palace. ’
‘Does he?’ asked Theodora, wiping her mouth. ‘You presume too much.’
‘Who does he see then if not you?’ asked Dot.
‘Whoever he wants to,’ said Theodora. Dot gave her a look of scepticism and so the witch went on. ‘Do you ever wonder if the shade of blue you see is the same shade of blue others see?’
‘Yes,’ said Dot.
‘To every person in the tea shop or the Raven’s Attic or out on the street,’ said Theodora, leaning back in her chair, ‘I am perceived differently. The venue in which I stand, the clothes I wear, how I hold myself – all of these things affect that perception, but what is far more significant is the individual, their biases, their preconceptions. I use my magic to embellish these and I let their imagination adorn me however they wish: proud, snide, enchanting. To the workers on Stirrup Street, I suppose my hair is as dirty as theirs is. To the King? I shudder to guess. He has told me before that it is a shame that I am so old, so perhaps that’s an indicator. ’