Chapter 29
Laurent and I were to meet at a park beside Lachine Canal, where the market was held.
Dozens of wooden stands like tiny chalets had been erected around the central fountain, which was frozen solid, icicles draped from the tiers like the fronds of a frozen willow.
I shivered and drew my scarf tighter around my neck—the wind was sharper than I’d felt all winter, the stars cold and crystalline.
A bonfire had been lit, and I went towards it gratefully, removing my gloves so that I could warm my hands.
I didn’t notice Laurent at first—he stood in the line for mulled wine, his red hair muted by the darkness, the bonfire picking out only a few strands of gold. When I recognized him, he was already coming towards me, a warm smile on his face, holding two paper cups.
I smiled back. I had been nervous about seeing Laurent, but nothing in his expression suggested he had changed his opinion of me, and I was reminded of how much I’d always liked him.
It wasn’t just that I was determined to like everyone, as élise was often complaining; Laurent, I was certain, had a fundamental goodness in him.
He was the sort of person who wanted to do the right thing.
“Good evening,” he said, handing me one of the cups. His face was flushed from the cold, and in his well-tailored coat of dark wool, he looked startlingly handsome. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting—the line.”
“That’s all right,” I said, a little nervously, because a part of me was now occupied with pondering élise’s suggestion.
Could I trust Laurent? Not with everything that had happened, of course—he couldn’t know that Havelock was my landlord.
But what if I told him that Valérie was convinced that we were hiding some Artefact we’d never seen before?
It was certainly the truth, or at least a part of it.
Would Laurent—would the police—protect us?
Laurent took a sip of his mulled wine and winced. “I always forget that I find these too sweet,” he said. “Yet every time I visit the market, I can’t stop myself from ordering one. Why don’t I learn?”
“Perhaps you simply enjoy tormenting yourself,” I said. “Speaking of which, I have some calamitous news.”
Laurent raised his brows, but at the sight of my expression, a smile tugged at his mouth. We had wandered onto one of the bridges that spanned the canal, below which several children were skating. “Shall I hold on to something?” he said.
“You’d better.” I allowed a pregnant pause to elapse. “Lynx has been adopted.”
“No!” he said, looking genuinely dismayed. He set his drink on the bridge’s railing and leaned over it on his forearms. “That’s unfortunate. My fault, of course—I should have made up my mind sooner. I confess I wasn’t so set against adopting her as I implied.”
“I know you weren’t,” I said, knocking my shoulder against his. “You expressed your affection by cruelly spurning her, just as she expresses hers by attacking whatever appendage is nearest. You would have made a perfect pair.”
Laurent laughed, but then a shadow seemed to fall across his face, and he looked back at the frozen water.
“I have another potential suitor for you,” I said. “She’s not half as wild as Lynx, but the family who adopted her not one week ago returned her yesterday, claiming she’d deconstructed their favourite rug.”
Laurent nodded. “I’m not daunted,” he said. “My apartment has no carpeting at all, you see.”
“You’ll need to move fast. No dawdling this time. I doubt it will be long before Mairesse is spoken for.”
Laurent turned to face me, still leaning one elbow upon the railing, so that we were much closer in height. “Yes, your shelter has become quite popular.”
His tone was casual, but with an undercurrent that made me pause, and which disrupted our easy banter. “You’ve heard the rumours, I’m sure,” I said, trying to summon up a little of élise’s airy guile. “The Daily Gazette will print anything.”
Laurent looked thoughtful. His gaze drifted, and he appeared to watch the snow fort some university students were constructing in the park on the other side of the bridge. I turned to gaze at it too, and was about to remark on its size when he said, “You could tell me, Agnes.”
His tone was so casual that I at first assumed it was some continuation of our banter. “Could I?” I said teasingly. “Tell you what, precisely?”
His posture was casual, his expression still thoughtful, but when I looked at him I could tell that something had shifted behind the easygoing mien he wore like a cloak, so comfortably I hadn’t even noticed it before. I went still.
“About Havelock,” he said in the same tone.
“Ah,” I said, deciding to pretend I hadn’t noticed the shift, that I was as relaxed as before, when I felt as if the breath were being squeezed from my throat.
“He was in Rue des Hirondelles, outside the shelter. élise and I saw him duel those other magicians—surely you don’t need another bystander report? ”
He gave a polite grimace that sent a shiver through me. “About the magic shop he operates beneath your shelter,” he said.
“I—What?” I spoke with genuine confusion—I still didn’t understand how abruptly the conversation had shifted. I set my cup down on the railing, for my hand was shaking.
“We’ve suspected he was there since before you moved in,” Laurent said.
“His associates have been seen coming and going at all hours. Yannick Abrams, for one—we know he’s been buying and selling Artefacts on Havelock’s behalf, even if we don’t have enough proof for the courts.
As well as Wesley Juma, Antoine Lasalle, Bette Carrington.
And, of course, Valérie Renard, his sister, with whom he’s had some mysterious falling out.
We’ve been unable to confirm the particulars. I’m guessing you might know, though.”
My mouth was too dry to even attempt a response to this, so I simply stood there, my mind working frantically.
élise could have found a way out of this, I was certain, but my faith in myself did not match my faith in élise.
Laurent was so self-assured that he was like a looming storm, its course impossible to alter—one could only wait to see what it would unleash.
“I’m sorry,” he said, standing up straight so that his height was abruptly all that I could see. “I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s not germane, anyhow.”
“Why did you ask me to meet you here?” I finally said.
The same shadow fell across his face then, and I knew he regretted some part of this. Somehow that made it worse than if he’d lured me here out of pure heartlessness.
An ember of resentment kindled within me.
He had used deception to bring me here, playing the role of suitor.
And I had come, partly out of fear that he might do something of this nature if I didn’t, but hoping that I could place my trust in the kindness I’d seen in him.
I had come though I hadn’t wanted to, though I’d wanted nothing to do with this world of illegal magics and spying and power struggles, and had, in fact, been up crying over His Majesty half the night, which had left my eyes slightly swollen.
I was tired and heartsick, and yet I couldn’t simply go home and curl up by the fire with the cats—no, I had to deal with yet another crisis.
“We can’t go after Havelock’s shop yet,” Laurent said.
“But soon—quite possibly tomorrow—the city council will pass their bylaw granting us special powers to search any place where we suspect Artefacts are being trafficked, with or without evidence, and to use our magicians in our investigations. I can assure you we will be in your shelter not one hour after the last councillor raises their hand.”
This was interesting—I hadn’t known there were magicians among the police rank and file. It was difficult to imagine them joining any human organization—while I knew not all magicians were as depraved as Valérie, nor as complicated as Havelock, they struck me as solitary creatures by nature.
When I showed no reaction to this, Laurent went on, his voice slightly louder, “Agnes, Havelock is a criminal. A dark magician of the worst order. He—do I truly need to explain this to you? No, I can see I don’t. Then how can you—”
He stopped, and seemed to put away some part of himself. “I’m giving you a choice. If you help us, I’ll do what I can for you. If you don’t, I’ll have to place you under arrest.”
“He isn’t a dark magician,” I said. “There’s no such thing, it’s redundant. You’re trying to track the world’s greatest magician, yet you know nothing about magic?”
He blinked at me. “Did you—”
“I’m sorry, Laurent,” I said. “I know you are attempting to be intimidating, but given the company I’ve been keeping lately, you’ll forgive me for not finding you very frightening. Also, it’s cold. Would you mind arresting me a little closer to the bonfire?”
“Agnes, I don’t think you understand—”
“Oh, I see.” I folded my arms, tucking my hands beneath them for the warmth.
I wasn’t at all nervous about Laurent anymore—it wasn’t possible to be.
Despite the fact that he represented the ruination of everything I had worked for, or maybe because of it, I had never felt more fed up with a person in my life, and I wanted to lash out at him—not because I thought it would get me anywhere, but for the satisfaction of it.
Perhaps it was no longer élise I was drawing inspiration from, but His Majesty.
“I’m supposed to be terribly surprised by this betrayal, am I?” I went on. “Laurent, contrary to what élise is always saying, I don’t actually believe that everyone is good. What I believe is that the good usually wins out over the bad, unless a person is possessed of a particularly weak nature.”
He flinched as if I’d struck him. “Agnes—”
“I’m going back to the bonfire,” I said. “You can arrest me there, or en route—whenever you’re ready. Or you can feel free to continue standing here—you can loom over the snowman, I suppose.”
I turned and walked away. As I’d expected might happen, two people who I had taken for a couple admiring the view moved to block my path.
“Would you mind—” Laurent sounded off-balance, which was some satisfaction, at least. “Agnes, if I could see your coat—”
I didn’t care why he wanted it. I removed it and threw it at him, then folded my arms and pointedly shivered.
He pulled it off his head, flushing, his hair mussed. I thought one of the other two officers suppressed a smile. He rooted around in the pockets for a moment.
“That isn’t Havelock’s,” I said. “Nor do I carry him around in my pocket.”
Laurent’s expression was distracted. He found the inner pocket and pulled a small object out.
It was the pen. The enchanted pen that I’d been using to catalogue Havelock’s Artefacts. I’d been down there yesterday, in my coat because Havelock kept the basement too cold for my liking, claiming that the spiders preferred it that way. I must have tucked it away and forgotten about it.
I kept my expression as blank as possible, though I wasn’t élise; I no doubt evinced some reaction. But there was no reason for Laurent to recognize it as an Artefact.
And yet. He examined it closely, tapping it with a fingertip, and there was something odd about the way he gripped it between thumb and forefinger of his other hand, as if he wanted to touch it as little as possible.
“What does it do?” he asked me. He motioned to one of the other officers, who pulled what looked like a cloth bag from his coat and placed the pen inside it.
I couldn’t have answered him even if I’d wanted to. I felt numb from the shock of it. For a moment I felt as if there were two Laurents before me, and I couldn’t work out which was true.
“We’ve found that oilcloth can prevent an enchantment from leaking from its Artefact, which has happened on rare occasions,” Laurent said. “Some property of the linseed oil, we suspect.”
“You’re a magician,” I murmured. “But you don’t—you haven’t got—”
I was too overwhelmed to describe it articulately, that uncanny chiaroscuro they all had, but which was absent from Laurent—who, apart from his uncommon good looks, gave every appearance of being an ordinary man. He seemed to understand, though.
“I’ve never been to the Rivenwood,” he said. “And I never will.”
He pronounced the words as if they repulsed him, which I could well understand.
And yet I could not help feeling perversely sorry for him.
If Havelock was correct, all magicians were drawn to the Rivenwood; it was part of them, even those who’d never been there.
Even if it did make monsters of them in the end, seeing Laurent’s repulsion was like seeing a cat shudder over its lust for birds.
“Come with us, Agnes,” Laurent said. His composure had cracked a little, and his voice had a pleading note. “Please.”
I almost wanted to force him to manhandle me, just for the guilt it would give him, but I had no interest in being wrestled to the ground in all that snow. He gave me my coat back, and I went with them.