Chapter 23
I saw nothing of Havelock over the next several days—another of his mysterious disappearances—and I missed him sitting at his worktable, muttering to himself or rubbing at his hair.
I was adding another empty crate to the pile when I realized, to my astonishment, that I’d nearly tamed the entire first floor of Havelock’s workshop.
There were now two tidy corridors running lengthwise from the stairs, each lined with shelves and cabinets.
I’d measured and constructed the shelves myself, which was why (I noted with satisfaction) Havelock’s Artefacts, which ranged awkwardly in size and shape, fit them so perfectly, not a one seeming out of place.
The spent Artefacts, which had previously been mixed in haphazardly with the enchanted ones, were stored in crates against the far wall.
At the centre of the middle row of cabinets was Havelock’s worktable, which now seemed almost an ordinary thing in its new context, the desk of some museum curator perhaps, rather than a precarious little raft about to be capsized by the teetering waves of treasure rising around it.
“It’s a new place entirely,” Yannick said wonderingly when he arrived the following morning. “You can see the floor. At times I wondered if the place even had a floor and wasn’t held up by spiderwebs.”
“We still have three more levels to work through,” I said with a sigh, though I was pleased by his praise.
I should not have been so comforted by what I saw, for a poorly organized hoard of dangerous magic was probably preferable to one where the magician in question could find everything with ease, but such was my fondness for a well-organized space that it overrode my moral qualms. Even better than the new shelves was the fact that I’d labelled and catalogued everything in a notebook, so that any Artefact could be located within minutes.
Because of Havelock’s extended absence, it came almost as a surprise when I descended the stairs one morning to find him at his worktable, taking apart a delicate music box with unhurried concentration.
“Still here, Mme. Hurricane?” he said without looking up.
“You look dreadful,” I said bluntly. His eyes were darkly shadowed, and he seemed even more slender than the last time I’d seen him. “Have you had breakfast?”
“Breakfast?” he repeated, and even his voice seemed weary, with even more of a rasp in it than usual—he had a proper magician’s voice, I’d always thought, as if he spent most of his time in a smoky cave.
“I’ve had a few spiders. Dark magicians confine our nourishment to arachnids and human blood, though sometimes—”
I walked away without bothering to listen to the rest. I went upstairs and made a pot of coffee, then brought it downstairs with cups and the paper bag of sesame bagels élise had supplied. I deposited the bagels in front of him and poured coffee for both of us.
He eyed me with a frown. “What are you doing?”
“It’s in both our interests if you don’t starve to death,” I said. “When was the last time you ate?”
He thought about it. “Yesterday.” Then, “I think.”
He helped himself to a bagel and I watched, because I was, in fact, curious about whether he ate or not. He devoured the first bagel in a half-dozen bites and began to work on a second.
“Thank you,” he said, all awkwardness again.
Satisfied, I went around his table, planning to return to the crate of Artefacts I’d brought up from the second floor, because I was elbow-deep in that mess now, then stopped.
Banshee lay on the floor beside Havelock’s chair, tail twitching in contentment.
She opened her eyes, blinking at me, then unfolded herself in a long stretch.
“Well!” I said, crossing my arms and smiling at him. “What’s this?”
“Nothing,” Havelock said emphatically, pointing his bagel at the cat. “She’s a fiend. A wraith in feline form. I can’t work out how she gets in here. I’ve chased her out twice already.”
“That was your first mistake,” I said. “Cats are inherently contrary. Now that she knows your workshop is forbidden, she’ll never stop breaking in.”
I didn’t say that I’d watched His Majesty shepherding Banshee around the workshop just the other day with the air of a tour guide. He’d shown her his secret passageway, I had no doubt.
Havelock leaned back in his chair and said plaintively, “She won’t leave me in peace.”
“You’re her type. Dangerous and unpleasant,” I said. “At least she’s a quiet cat,” I added, but he only snorted as if I’d made a joke.
I paused, examining him. His eyes, while shadowed, had no redness in them, and he wasn’t clutching at his handkerchief as he usually did when near one of the cats.
“Your allergy’s fading,” I said triumphantly. “I knew it would. You can get used to cats if you’re around them enough.”
Havelock swallowed another mouthful of bagel. “Is that like mithridatism?”
I made an exasperated sound and gave his shoulder a shove. I’m not sure where it came from; it was a childish gesture I had used with Robin, who was always teasing me. I drew my hand back immediately.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” he said.
“What?”
His dark hair had fallen over his brow, partly shielding his eyes. “I’m not actually going to turn you into a sparrow.”
“I know that,” I said, and frowned. “I only wish I knew why I know that.”
“So do I.” He gave me a sharp look. “Even the most arrogant magicians cower in my presence. I always assumed it was your obstinate humanitarianism. You’re like an altruistic bull.”
“It would help if you were more forthcoming,” I said.
“About what? The apocalypse incident?”
I suppressed the urge to wallop him over the head with a bagel. “Yes. That. Among other things.”
“Not much to tell.” His rings flashed as he fiddled with the music box. “I created the enchantment. Then it almost destroyed the world.”
It took me a moment to digest the fact that he was actually answering me with something other than a deflection.
“It seems there’s a great deal more to tell than that,” I said cautiously, because I didn’t know how long this small window of sincerity would remain open. “You created the spell. But you didn’t cast it, did you?”
He didn’t answer immediately. “No.”
“Someone stole it from you,” I said.
He gave a quiet laugh. “That’s the most charitable explanation, isn’t it? What was I just saying about obstinate humanitarianism?”
“Is it not the truth?” I pressed. “Was it Valérie?”
He went still, which was answer enough.
“I thought so,” I said, feeling self-satisfied. “Well, it wasn’t difficult to work out. I hope this doesn’t offend you, but your sister is more frightening than you are.”
“I created the spell when I was nineteen,” he said.
“I put it in one of Klinger’s globes, a particularly rare specimen from the 1700s.
After that it sat on a shelf for years. I kept meaning to take it apart, but the spell was so powerful, I knew doing so would be difficult and dangerous.
So I put it off, then put it off again.”
He set the music box aside, toying with his half-empty coffee cup.
“I told Valérie about the spell. I wanted to impress her, as I often did back then. She seemed more irritated than impressed, and I assumed she was angry that I had been so irresponsible.” He paused.
“She seemed to forget all about it until three years ago, when she said she wanted us to destroy it together. I thought it was strange, this sudden interest of hers, but I trusted Valérie, and I thought—I still wanted to impress her. So I brought it to her in New York, where I was still pretending to live.”
I shuddered—it seemed the only logical reaction. And yet there was something painfully human about the whole thing. “And she released the enchantment,” I said.
“She didn’t want the world to end, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said.
“She resented my skill with magic, but at the same time, she never believed I’d really done it.
That I’d been able to create something so far beyond her own abilities.
She took the Artefact to the home of one of her rivals, a magician who had everything she wanted: followers, a real dragon’s hoard of Artefacts.
I think that she assumed the effects would be devastating but limited; she could claim credit for whatever chaos ensued, and her other rivals would be too terrified not to give her whatever she wanted.
Above all else, Valérie is reckless. The type to jump from a precipice without knowing the depth of the water. Her luck had always held before.”
“But,” I murmured, when he didn’t go on.
Havelock turned away from me and picked up the music box again. “You know the rest.”
“Do I?” But it seemed he was finished; the window had closed. He took up one of his notebooks and scribbled something. Sweat prickled my brow, and I felt slightly ill. Nevertheless, I forced myself to ask the question I most wanted to ask. “Why did you make the spell in the first place?”
I was surprised by how easily he answered.
“No one had ever created a spell to end the world before,” he said.
“Not even Vortigern. Most magicians thought it wasn’t possible.
That’s the thing about magic—presumably it has limits, but we don’t know what those are.
Magicians are like explorers unravelling the map as they go. ”
Silence fell again, and I wondered if that was it. “I wanted to see if I could do it,” he said at last, still looking down at his work.