CHAPTER TWO #3
After changing her eyes from cherry blossom pink to sunrise pink, to fuchsia (alarming), to amethyst (romantic), to cerulean (not sky) blue, and back to cherry blossom, with multiple hair changes to match – and, just to be safe, crafting spells for the tickle in her throat, the dulled sheen of her fingernails, a bout of indigestion she’d been dealing with for days, she swore it, and the suggestion of sunspots on her cheeks from her jaunt to the seaside earlier in the spring – Duchess Abigail finally relented, handing Sylas his new coin purse, a check for services rendered, and a cold cake from the kitchen because, as she informed him in her sweetest voice, he looked “quite pale.” He ate it dutifully, he fingers shaking slightly when he attempted to grasp the handle of his teacup.
Escorting himself to the doorway, he secured the check in his satchel.
Enough to get him through the summer.
But what, he wondered, if he did not need enough to get him through another summer?
What if he had enough to be free of this life for good?
What if Edgard’s request, mad though it was, was possible?
There was no spell for such a thing. Complete transformation, into a magical being, at that. But all spells were new at one point.
Couldn’t one be crafted?
The prize. It was enough to get him out of his indenture. He could start saving. He could anticipate a future. He would never have to answer to Edgard again.
And what will you do, he chided himself.
Paint? He couldn’t even remember the style of the painting in Duchess Abigail’s sitting room, and though she was quite concerned with appearing to be fashionable, she was hardly the barometer of trends in artistic expression.
He still sketched from time to time, but ten years had passed since he’d last put brush to canvas; he was sure he was at least half a dozen movements behind now.
Perhaps he could take up calligraphy.
The new footman held the door open for him, but Sy stopped in the doorway. “Your leg. Does it pain you?”
The footman hesitated. “At times.”
“From the war?” Sy prodded, pulling out his kit.
In his stints in Lower Bunting over the last year, he’d treated his share of veterans of Edgard’s latest gamble against the Marchess Empire.
If the footman’s limp was from an injury, it would be taxing to heal, but not impossible, particularly if it was recent.
“No, no, you must not expend yourself.”
Sy regarded him dryly. “I’m quite beyond that point, my good man. It won’t take a moment.”
“I’m sure my lady wouldn’t like it,” the footman protested.
Sy paused, his sleeve half-rolled. “Why ever not?”
“She says she admires how hard I work despite my limp. It reminds her of her vast privileges and keeps her humbled with gratitude. It was why she hired me.”
Stunned, Sy dropped his arm. The footman ushered him out the door. “It’s alright, sir,” the footman went on, his voice formal, and now a little louder. “I couldn’t ask for a better position.”
“Call me Sy,” he attempted, reluctantly rolling down his sleeve. “We’re to become quite familiar with one another.”
“It isn’t my place, Mr. Cassirer,” he said, shaking his head. “And you do me no favors by pushing the subject.” He lowered his voice. “Be sensible, man. She’ll insist on paying you for the service and take it from my earnings before she puts me on the street.”
“My apologies,” Sy managed, now on the pavement. “May I have your name, at least?”
The footman regarded him carefully. Though Sy was hardly a gentleman by pedigree, he was by education, and the man could not refuse him. “My name is Geoffrey, sir.”
He made to shut the door, then paused. “And…it wasn’t from the war.”
With that, the door closed.
Sy took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the syrupy smell of cherry blossoms, which now made him rather sick. The sun was setting; he’d been there all day. He would not be back here until late in autumn, when the cherry trees were nearly naked. But he would be back.
He stuffed his hand into his pocket, feeling his two copper bits.
Just enough to put an advert in the paper.
To make it to the offices of the ?bender Chronicle before they closed, he had to dip into his new purse to take a trolley. On the way, he composed the advert in his head.
Wanted: skilled tracker to aid in finding an uncommon beast. Uncommonly dangerous. Pay commensurately uncommon, and uncommonly commensurate.
Vaguely worded enough, he hoped, as he scrawled the message for the clerk, that he would not alert anyone to his true purpose, but specific enough – and enticing enough – to attract only the best of the profession.
Not anyone too dangerous, he hoped, or else double-crossing them for the prize money would be far more unpleasant than it needed to be.
He couldn’t afford to share it. Neither could he afford to risk this gamble alone.
He would promise them a third of the prize, perhaps more if they were shrewd, then…
well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
Satisfied, he checked the time. The others would be gathering for dinner soon. He had time to stop home and freshen up – perhaps add a bit of color to his cheeks, he thought, pinching them distractedly, or there were sure to be comments, questions about how he’d spent his day.
But as he stepped outside the office, the paraglyph carved into his palm began throbbing with pain. Like the leftover heat of a harsh burn, it radiated from his palm and up his wrist, making his arm, already weak from the day’s labor, ache.
He curled his fingers into the leather of his glove, as if to calm it. But there was no calming it. Nothing would calm it but answering.
Edgard was calling.