Chapter 24
Yannick came downstairs then, and Havelock absented himself, still muttering at the music box, to barricade himself in his library, where he need not listen to us thumping about. I watched him go, frowning.
I turned to find Yannick eyeing me with a look of understanding. “What?” I demanded.
He held up his hands. “Nothing!”
“Yannick, I know what you’re thinking. In case you didn’t realize, I always know what you’re thinking.”
He looked away. “I—It’s just—you’re not the only one. That’s all.”
“What do you mean?” I said, though I could already guess. But I liked Yannick, and I wanted us to be honest with each other.
Yannick chewed his lip for a moment, then said in a rush, “There are at least two magicians and one collector who visit Havelock’s shop on a regular basis for purposes other than perusing his wares. None have succeeded in turning his head, nor am I certain he’s even aware of their feelings.”
I eyed him. “And can the same be said for you?”
“Oh!” Yannick gave me a surprised smile. “That’s not—I don’t have an interest in romance, with Havelock or anyone. Just not my thing. And as for Havelock, I’m not sure he’s capable of it.”
He sighed. “I do care about Havelock, though. He took me on as an apprentice when I had nowhere else to go.”
I nodded. Like many parents of magicians, Yannick’s had been horrified to discover what he was.
He had been handed off from relative to relative until he turned eighteen, when he’d been turned out without a penny to his name.
After living on the streets for several months, struggling to find employment, he’d followed another magician to Havelock’s shop, more out of desperation than anything else.
And Havelock, with much sarcastic commentary and complaints, had let him stay as his apprentice, and assigned him mostly simple, useful enchantments—not spells to poison one’s enemies, as Yannick had expected—and even paid him a salary.
“Havelock isn’t always himself these days,” Yannick said. “He’s seemed—on the edge.”
“Of what?”
He was quiet, thinking, and a chill seemed to settle in the air. “I don’t know how to put it. I don’t know precisely what happens to a magician when they’re taken over by the Rivenwood, only the—aftereffects.”
I suddenly didn’t want to pursue the subject. “So far as I’ve known him, he rarely seems to fit the definition of evil villainy. Unless evil is defined by pettiness and snark.”
“He seems almost human when you’re around,” Yannick said, smiling. “I’ve never seen anybody intimidate him like you do.”
“Intimidate him!” I exclaimed.
“Well, you’ve been ordering him about since you got here,” Yannick said. “Havelock pretends to be aloof. But at the core, I think he hasn’t changed much since he was a boy.”
“And what was he then?”
Yannick shrugged. “Quiet. He was always reading, Valérie said. He didn’t make friends easily.”
“Valérie?” I exclaimed. “You’ve met her?”
“Once, in the early days of my apprenticeship,” Yannick said.
“In New York. Havelock would send me down there periodically to run errands and keep up the pretence he still lived there. Havelock has always had enemies, even before the world nearly ended, and a need to throw them off the scent. Valérie found me in one of his old haunts—she wanted me to convince him to speak to her again.”
“Really?” I was surprised. “She didn’t threaten you? How polite.”
“Their relationship has—deteriorated over the years,” he said.
“But I’m not sure Havelock was closer to anyone than Valérie in his youth.
I’m not sure he had anyone except her. Their mother died when they were young; their father was barely present.
Havelock was sickly as a child and Valérie took care of him.
She came into her power much younger than Havelock did, which is unusual in twins. ”
“Twins!” But the truth of it was so obvious that I wondered why I hadn’t guessed it before. Valérie and Havelock looked remarkably alike—the sharpness of their features, their colouring, even the timbre of their voices.
The thought made me uncomfortable. I hadn’t known I was superstitious about twins, but it was difficult not to be superstitious about magical twins.
I wondered if Havelock and Valérie could read each other’s minds, or shared some sort of supernatural connection—and yet, if they did, it didn’t seem to have aided Valérie in tracking him down.
“From what I can tell,” Yannick said, “Valérie was fiercely protective of her brother. But as her power grew, along with her following, she had less time for him. If you ask me, I think jealousy played a part—it was clear from the day Havelock discovered he was a magician that his power was greater than hers. She began hunting for Vortigern’s book not long after I took up with Havelock, and eventually grew convinced he had it and was keeping it from her out of possessiveness or spite. Now they’re—this.”
Yannick paused, frowning. “I don’t think Havelock has ever learned to see Valérie as a rival, let alone an enemy. It’s his greatest weakness.”
I pondered this. There was an unsettling symmetry between Valérie and myself: I had been both mother and sister to élise when we were orphaned shortly after my sixteenth birthday. How bitter, how fundamentally incongruous it would have been to be anything other than the dearest of friends now.
“What else did Valérie tell you?” I said.
“Not much. Havelock spent his childhood obsessed with stories about magic and adventures in other worlds. He didn’t realize he was a magician until he was seventeen, which is unheard of. But then, often it’s the case that the stronger the magician, the later they come into their power.”
I pondered this image of Havelock in his youth, alone in his bedroom, glasses sliding down his nose as he pored over his novels. On the one hand, I couldn’t picture it; on the other, I couldn’t imagine him any other way. “What happened?”
Yannick frowned. “What you might expect if you suddenly granted a child like that a monumental amount of magic,” he said. “He got carried away.”