INTERLUDE #2
‘Ellarde Custre IV is a king in name only,’ said Belchamber.
‘After Calléum lost the war, the United Allies couldn’t execute him.
Calléans are not terribly fond of their monarch, but proud enough to riot should someone chop off his head.
So, the Allies stripped him of his power and gave that power to the Prime Minister, and lo and behold, that terrible man kept his palace and gold and charms and Grand Magician.
’ The spirit shook his little head. ‘Three years ago, we were a nation so poor you could not find a dozen eggs in a single corner shop. Now, they open specialty egg shops! We all forget domestic horror so quickly. I feel as if I am howling into the abyss, Miss Edwina. Where did the eggs go during the war? What were the chickens doing? I want to understand everything and I understand nothing, and now here we are with a daemon selling false packet spells to the very soldiers who went to war because of the offence caused by his punishment.’
‘Who is this daemon?’ asked the girl.
‘Salamander,’ said Belchamber.
‘And he has a poor reputation?’
‘To those who know and remember,’ said the spirit.
‘To many I am sure he has a wondrous reputation – the newspapers like to imply as much. He was the Minister for Sorcerie and Magic until it was discovered that beneath his department store – Hemmington’s, that is – he was keeping a depraved menagerie of caged spirits.
He was doing tests on us. Thousands of us.
The United Allies – those are the affluent countries, Edwina, on the north side of the continent – it was their eldest spirits who performed his daemotion. ’
‘They took away this Salamander’s magic?’ asked the girl.
‘Most of it,’ said Belchamber. ‘He is a thousand years old, now relegated to the kind of power a decade-old spirit might have. I, myself am only two hundred and fifty-three. I was born a tiny, flickering thing, out of a speck of dust from an old church tower in a small town in East Calléum.’
The spirit smiled as if he recalled it.
‘I digress. The United Allies threw the very first stone by calling for our Minister for Sorcerie and Magic, Salamander, to be daemoted. They sent their spirits to do the job and so our King, in a terrible tantrum, humoured that ridiculous little political group, the Radical Spokes, and introduced The Prohibition on Magic and the articles within it; the King thought that if his friend Salamander could not use magic, then none shall! So, the Mass Exodus eventuated because our spirits were offended and terrified of facing such a rare punishment themselves. Then this politician committed espionage and then that duchess was assassinated and the United Allies took retaliatory offence and our ridiculous King started offering licences to the elite students of the Royal Academy so long as they signed binding contracts of obedience, and quite suddenly, we are in the middle of a war against the rest of the continent and there go the eggs!’
The spirit stuck his little hands in the remaining rosewater and patted it over his face.
‘And now,’ said Belchamber, ‘Salamander runs a department store and several factories and sells shoddy packet spells so that he can pay scads of silver to the United Allies – he means to make friends of them. He wants their political support. He wants his daemotion reversed, I fear, and he seems to believe that his copious “donations” to the countries that once occupied ours will serve his goal to change the constitution.’
‘He would be making a lot of money,’ said the girl.
The spirit scoffed. ‘That is not the point.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘He exploits the vulnerable.’
‘The vulnerable who can pay,’ said the girl, thoughtfully. The dullest edge of an idea warmed her. ‘Belchamber, do you know what would make more money than selling shoddy packet spells?’
‘What?’
‘Selling real ones.’
It was something to do. Someone new to be.
Ambition was a foreign gust to her but once she took flight in it, she soared.
The girl bought for herself a silk blouse and a set of trousers, and she learned to finger-wave her raven hair.
She walked right into Salamander’s department store and, following the instructions of the spirits who worked there, came before a young man with a hooked nose and dark tattoos of runes, who said his name was Casimir. He took her to Salamander.
She spun a tale – she was Edwina, the daughter of a faraway sorcerer.
The daemon gave her silver and a contract.
Weeks later, she would find herself in Casimir’s bed.
Her first packet spell was made for him to quieten the memories of the bombs and blasts of magic.
St John’s Wort, chanterelle, valerian root, all powdered and placed in a purple envelope on his nightstand.
Weeks after that, she spotted him in a bistro on Starling Street, kissing the neck of some bright young thing and she did not blame him.
She’d never loved him. Yet again and again she went back to him, breathed in the sickly smell of musk and incense and cigarettes and listened to his mournful tales of the Battle of Arranfol and his life after the war and the conduence charm.
Again and again he led her to the elevator and down into the dark with the daemon.
With the money, she bought a cast-iron cauldron and stacks of envelopes and she powdered elixirs for warts and miscarriage and apple harvest. Quickly, her customers grew and soon they needed a shopfront, but every time she made to sign her name on the purchase of a building, she paused.
Did she want to be Edwina, really?
One rare and chilly night off during the winter, she wandered down Grand Boulevard wearing the overalls of Maz Bircham.
She had started a second occupation. Somehow, she needed even more silver.
Exhausted and strolling along, her eyes were caught by a poster.
It was of a dancer in a midnight blue coat.
She reread the name several times before, at last, trundling down into the depths of the sawdusted public house where the burlesque and music would begin.
It was a cheap place; they served oysters.
She ordered a bee’s knees and the barman, in his oily voice, said, ‘Drink it while it’s laughing at you. ’
She sat in the corner and a husky voice called, ‘Lads and ladies, we welcome back the vivacious, the dazzling, Theodora.’
And as her name was cried out, the burlesque performer twirled onto the stage, wearing only lingerie and that midnight blue coat.
It was a thing of gold, embroidered stars and scholar’s sleeves and ivory buttons.
The dancer was a mock Magician, and she came to the microphone, clasped it like a champagne glass, and sung a low, rocking tune.
She took off the coat. She took off more.
The girl was entranced. The woman was perhaps in her late thirties: long-limbed, wide-waisted, with pretty golden skin and a mole painted above her pencilled eyebrows.
‘I will show you magic,’ said the dancer, her emerald eyes landing on the girl.
And the girl found herself nodding along with the small, dirty crowd.
She came back every night that week and, when she at last brought Belchamber, the little spirit turned up his nose.
‘There’s no use creating idols out of individuals,’ he whispered at the end. ‘This woman, this Theodora, in each of our eyes is a different creature entirely. In yours, a sorceress. In mine, a hack.’
Suddenly, the girl noticed the alcoholic tremor to the dancer’s fingers. She glimpsed the cracks in the woman’s heels. She tried to cling to the bewitchment but with a few scathing words from Belchamber, the spell had been broken.
The girl waited for the dancer that night in the alley outside the pub.
‘You’re the little minx who keeps coming back,’ the dancer laughed.
The girl pointed to the poster. ‘Is that your real name?’
‘Not after tonight, love. Next week, I’ll be Rebecca. The month after, Allysandra, and the month after that, who knows?’
She took out a cigarette and lit it. Ash fell upon the midnight blue coat.
The girl nodded at the garment and asked, ‘How much?’ And when she and Belchamber were stood at last on the corner of Wren Court and Ethel Avenue and the broker asked what name to write upon the deed, the girl did not pause before she said:
‘Theodora.’