Hunt the Ever Wild

CHAPTER ONE

When Sy Cassirer received a summons from the King of Gescany, it rarely came in the form of a letter, and never painlessly.

Fortunately, the only pain he felt when David informed him of the letter’s contents was the beginning of a tension headache.

“The king wants to be turned into a bird,” said David, who was better in the mornings and had answered the door.

He rolled up the gilded scroll and handed the court page a copper bit.

The page, blushing at David’s silk robe – actually Sy’s, on David; and that, barely – accepted the copper and scurried away.

“Will you dress before you open my door?” Sy rolled over and fumbled around the top of his nightstand, pushing aside several pencil stubs and a pile of empty ink cartridges before finding, under his trusted leather gloves, a pouch of tobacco.

He drew it open; nearly empty. He fell back against the pillow, squinting against the soft morning light. “In your own clothes, preferably.”

“If you’d let me keep mine here, I would.”

“But then you’d never leave.” He meant it playfully, but it came out acrid as stale coffee. He blew a stray lock of hair off his mouth. “And stop opening my mail.”

“It’s a form letter,” David dismissed, clicking the door shut. “I’ll have received the same thing.”

With a grunt, Sy rose. Where were his rolling papers?

He dug under a pile of overdue bills – this one from the grocer, that from the laundress – and pushed aside a stack of books on the floor.

As his morning fog cleared, he plucked the top book from the stack and found the packet marking the page of the spell he’d been studying, one for altering the eye.

“Then you could have waited, couldn’t you?”

“Did you even hear me?” David waved the scroll. “King Edgard wants to be turned into a bird.”

“Scintillating,” Sy murmured, sprinkling the scant tobacco into the paper, careful not to spill a single leaf.

David folded his arms over his chest. “You never listen to me.”

“You never speak sense.”

“He’s inviting every scribe in the kingdom to create a spell to turn him into a…” David unrolled the scroll and squinted. “A phoenix.”

Sy carefully rolled his cigarette. “As I said.”

“How’s this for sense? The prize is enough to pay off the rest of your indenture.”

Watching him, Sy licked the edge of the rolling paper. “Read it aloud.”

David unfurled the scroll again while Sy dug under his pillow for his lighter. The tobacco was stale, but he savored the taste – likely his last until the pay for his next job came through.

As he inhaled, he watched David read, eyes lazily wandering from his mouth to his handsome jaw and finely cut cheeks, to his own emerald green silk robe melting over David’s hipbones.

David’s morning briskness was poor company after a late night, but his pelvis was an excellent companion, by sun or by stars.

But as David read, Sy’s attention shifted to his words.

Before he could finish, Sy rose and took the scroll, his cigarette between his lips.

Stamped, To the Honorable King’s Wizard.

Then, scrawled hastily in a clerk’s hand, Sylas Cassirer.

The remainder of the letter was machine-printed.

And nonsensical. Yet there was no other way to interpret the arrangement of the words on the page.

“The king wants to be turned into a bird,” he repeated, blowing smoke on the paper.

“He’s finally lost it,” David surmised, plopping back down on the bed.

Bending, he reached for the pocket of his trousers on the floor.

He pulled a cigarette – hand-rolled by ?bender’s premier tobacconist – out of his solid gold, engraved case.

The bold smell of Preulian tobacco overtook Sy’s dull domestic blend.

“Keep him looking young, yes, to our eternal glory; but there’s no spell for unscrambling an addled mind. ”

True, Gescany’s king was never renowned for his even temperament, and it had not improved with age.

Most famously, even almost three quarters of a century later, reflected in the disaster of his forty-fifth birthday party, involving a dancer, a (supposedly) trained owl, untold bottles of Preulian armagnac – and, by the end of the night, three duels, a near declaration of war with the kingdom’s oldest ally, and the dancer’s missing toe found at the bottom of a champagne glass and reattached by a spellscribe.

All this Sy had gathered despite the night’s mention being punishable by tongue-tying.

At the thought, Sy rolled his tongue against the roof of his mouth. One of the spells he refused to scribe, despite the price it commanded, or the price it commanded to disobey Edgard.

But Sy had learned his own way around Edgard’s foul temper. As spellscribes, both he and David knew his strange moods better than most. As Edgard’s indenture, called to take care of his most private requests, Sy knew better than anyone.

Asking to be turned into a bird – a phoenix, a creature lifted straight from myth – was a bit much, even for Edgard.

But the prize. Fifty thousand sovereigns. It was enough to entice the most skeptical mind to creativity.

And Sy possessed no skeptical mind. He’d never have made it this far if he had.

He set the scroll on a pile of old jobs and propped open his tiny window, casting the paintings and sketches on his walls in pink-gold light and filling the small space with gently lilting late spring air.

A rose-colored day. He leaned over the sill and tapped the end of his cigarette, sprinkling ash over the fine fur and feathered hats of the passersby on the street far below.

“I don’t think it’s impossible,” Sy said, half to himself, pulling on his cigarette. He glanced at David. It was a competition, after all.

David didn’t seem the least interested in Edgard’s offer. Probably wise. The request itself was madness.

Madness, and maddeningly alluring. The prize, yes, but also the puzzle. Eternal life? Metamorphosis? The stuff of vivid legend, and a scribe who brought them into stark reality would surely earn his place among legend himself.

“A phoenix,” he said, the word itself tasting of gold and light. “Do they even exist?”

“You’re not truly entertaining this,” said David.

When Sy did not respond, he sat up straighter.

“Sylas. Be serious. What would such a spell even entail? Beady eyes and crooked feet? It isn’t as if you can give him wings.

And king or no, it’s hardly ethical. A borderline violation of the spellscribe’s oath if ever I’ve heard. ”

Sy was barely listening, his thoughts drifting among the pink clouds outside his window.

“The Lichtenwald,” he ruminated. “That large forest between here and Preule. It’s said to be full of strange magic, is it not? Strange, hermetic magicians? Strange creatures, perhaps?”

David’s incredulous laugh brought Sy back to the ground. “Set aside Edgard’s obvious lunacy, and yours. You’ve never stepped foot outside ?bender in your life. You’d have your throat cut by brigands within an hour.”

“You’re right. A madman’s ravings.” Even disregarding David’s infuriating logic, and indifference, all he said was true.

But what would such a spell entail?

After a final, thoughtful inhale, he carefully tamped out the cherry of his unfinished cigarette on the windowsill, saving the remainder. He’d need it later.

Beside the bed, the apartment’s lone armchair embraced his clothes, where, the night before, he’d carefully laid them to await his return.

He pulled on his shirt – white, with dusky gray embroidered stripes radiating from the stiff collar like a gloomy sunburst – then his favorite pair of rust-colored trousers.

His uniform, as much as their profession required one, rust as ostentatious a color as their profession allowed.

David took the hint, gathering his own clothes from the floor with his cigarette still in his mouth.

“Will you go to the meeting?” Sy asked offhandedly as he buttoned his shirt. “A week from today, is it?”

“Of course. With a prize this preposterous, every scribe and scam artist in the kingdom will be there. It’ll be the talk of all ?bender for weeks.”

Sy nodded, fastening the buttons on his cuffs. Though the sun had barely risen, he was sure Edgard’s request currently spread through the city like her own rays of light, enlightening eyes more eager, and less dismissive, than David’s.

Or than he pretended. “It does make you think he’s serious,” Sy prompted.

“The opposite. He’s gone stark raving. I wouldn’t miss this for the prize itself,” David concluded, tamping his cigarette, the tantalizing gleam of scandal in his eyes.

Yes, in certain quarters of ?bender, scandal was worth its weight in gold and silver, and traded most by those who had no need of either.

Sy had dire need of both. Atop his behemoth vanity, which doubled as his desk and took up most of the small apartment, sat another disagreeable correspondence.

Wanly, he plucked his latest job offer from under a piece of practice paper.

He’d been over it a dozen times since it arrived almost a month ago, but he skimmed it yet again, as if hoping, this time, the words would rearrange into a friendlier shape.

No luck.

The letter floated to the vanity-top as he peeked in the dusty mirror and pushed his lank, chin-length blond hair behind his ear to affix his favorite earring, the finest thing he owned.

Gold-plated and cut in the shape of a laurel, each leaf made of carnelian, it climbed up his ear from lobe to tip.

It accentuated his amber, gold-flecked eyes – eyes which, when deployed artfully, tended to make difficult clients more amenable.

Clients such as Duchess Abigail Skeylor.

He drew a long breath, then, holding it, announced boldly, “I’m paying the duchess a visit.”

For the barest second, David paused buttoning his shirt. “Careful with that one. The season’s ending. She’ll suck you dry.”

“I know how to handle her.”

“Is that why you’ve been putting her off for weeks?”