CHAPTER FIVE
It was still early afternoon. The meeting at the palace was not for hours yet. But Sy found himself incurably restless. After suffering a vision, unbidden, of Abigail Skeylor’s poor screeching parakeet, he huffed a sigh and approached his vanity.
“Get yourself together,” he muttered into the mirror.
He dabbed on a bit of scent, his favorite eau de toilette – lily-of-the-valley laced with jasmine, fern, and civet.
He also traded his plain, bed-rumpled shirt for one of his favorites, rarely worn, for its bohemian aura – an aura clients didn’t care for.
Sabina called it his carnival top. The upper torso was marigold yellow on one side, carnation pink on the other; the colors ran halfway down the sleeves, the rest of which were white.
The bottom quarters of the front were willow green and mauve.
David would scold him for leaving, for straining himself. He promised he was only going for a bit of fresh air, a dip outside and straight back, then remembered there was no one around to reassure but himself.
The tobacconist up the street was happy to see him when he stopped in to purchase a packet of cigarettes – pre-rolled. Outside, he lit one, pausing by a bench but not sitting, watching the passersby.
The cigarette was not half gone before he found himself circling the streets of Upper Bunting.
His walk took him past the riverfront, then Sangfeder, then the palace, then the Church of the Seven Skies, a blur of storied institutions, of gray and beige stone.
He wouldn’t go to the meeting, he decided.
If he was actually going to attempt this spell, his time would be spent more productively elsewhere, like in the library. Or the church.
But Sy didn’t pray. Though, to hear others speak of religion, it was supposed to open one up, the austere church had always made him feel flattened – less a soaring creature of the sky, more an ant crushed underfoot.
Would an ant be able to compose such a monumental spell?
Not likely. And he had composed spells on his own before.
One spell. Nothing so complicated, or impressive; just the one to still the motion of jittery clients (one he might, at this rate, need to use on himself).
But all spells followed the same basic elements, glyphs layered together in just the right order, with intent and precision.
If he could discern as much, anyone could.
By the third lap and fifth cigarette, he decided he was going to the meeting.
If anyone else was taking this seriously – and in all of ?bender, all of Gescany, someone surely was – he couldn’t let them have a leg up on him.
And since no one had yet answered his ad, he needed every leg he could get, whatever it took to get them.
A miracle, no doubt, he thought as he once more passed the Church of the Seven Skies, where service was letting out.
A bevy of ladies and gentlemen dressed in their finest spring furs made their way from the cathedral doors to the doors of the palace nearby.
When Sy visited the palace, it was never through the front doors.
His education, and the requisite respectability, had only taken him so far.
Once, only once, he’d refused Edgard. It was the first time he’d been called to answer for his debt. The first time the spell on his palm had been used to summon him.
When the king’s mark was carved into his palm, he was warned: when Edgard summoned him, it would hurt.
The greater the distance, the worse the pain.
This had been his first inkling that he may have gotten in over his head.
And, less dire, but disappointing nonetheless – he hadn’t planned on living close to the palace, but nearer Parrotfinch, the artists’ quarter by the river.
After years, he had grown used to the summoning, but the first time, the intensity of the burning had startled him. He’d arrived, annoyed but resigned, expecting to ease the overindulgence following a diplomatic feast, or cure a newly revealed venereal disease.
He’d taken one look at the girl, no older than him, and stormed out the door, furious, disgusted beyond reason – and more than a little frightened.
The spell on his palm burned him as he stalked away, but he ignored it.
Let it burn for eternity; though he pitied the girl, he would be no party to this.
No sooner had he stepped foot in the garden than the spell sent a burning pain from his palm, up his arm, through to his chest, to his heart.
The pain was so sudden, and so intense, he nearly collapsed.
Then, as he stumbled another step forward, he did.
It crushed him, pummeled him, as if someone pressed hard onto both his lungs, squeezed his heart like wringing dry a sopping wet rag.
Somehow, even as his mind could conceive of nothing but the pain he was in, his body understood, and he’d managed to crawl his way back inside.
As he did, the pain subsided, and he could breathe freely once more.
Those breaths came in short, panicked gasps as he twitched on the floor.
He barely registered Edgard’s boots in the corner of his vision.
“Your debt was a promise to our nation, and to me,” said the king. “You must answer for it.”
He thought he knew his body’s limitations; thought Sangfeder had forced him and every other student to understand exactly how many drops of blood he could stand to lose. They hadn’t. Nor had that first night.
Last week, though.
He had no intention of answering for his debt with anything short of a miracle ever again.
Cigarette finished, memories circling him like a vulture, he stubbed the butt under his heel. The clock struck six. The meeting would begin in half an hour. He peeled off his left glove and studied his palm. It bound him to his past, to Edgard. There was no other spell like it.
Not yet, anyway.
The gilded throne room was packed like a flock of geese, and as noisy as one.
Scribes mingled and palace servants darted among porcelain-potted fig trees and tables topped with decadent pastries and linens threaded with gold.
Only those with letters were admitted, but it seemed Edgard was casting his net as wide as possible.
Scanning the sea of faces, Sy spotted every spellscribe he knew, and many more he didn’t.
As expected, Claude and Sabina were present, laughing, likely over something inane. He didn’t see David.
He did spot a face he saw rarely, but would never forget: Bertrand, one of his Sangfeder cohort who had failed training.
Elegant and dark-haired, strikingly handsome, he drew the eye even without the gaudy red glove on his right hand.
Sy wondered at his presence, since he was not a king’s wizard, nor was he licensed as a spellscribe, and couldn’t pen spells, legally – or physically.
When he failed, like all those who failed before him, his writing hand had been crushed, each bone pulverized and left to heal without so much as a splint.
If he was ever caught penning spells, using magic he had not earned the right to use, the succeeding punishment would be far worse. The first one was usually enough.
Bertrand felt Sy staring and, unsmiling, lifted his crushed right hand, wrapped in his bright red leather compression glove, in a wave. Sy nodded back, flexing his own leather-encased fingers as he did, before turning back to the crowd.
There was an electric thrill in the air.
Most were there only to gawk at the mad king, he was sure, but the lure of the prize, and what its promise might mean, was as intoxicating as poppy smoke.
What if Edgard had finally lost his mind?
What would happen to the kingdom of Gescany if he had?
He was unmarried and he had no heirs. What would Preule, Gescany’s closest ally, do?
The Marchess Empire? His court? His advisers?
And, fluttering above it all, the whisper of the truly earth-shattering: what if what he asked was actually possible?
“Sylas!” Sabina had spotted him and parted from Claude. Her curly chestnut fringe nestled prettily above her twinkling, and newly violet, eyes. She wore a smart violet suit dress to match and a grin like a cat handed a plate of cooked chicken. She pinched one of his cheeks. “You look dreadful!”
“And you look beautiful. One of your own?” he asked, indicating her eyes.
“I had Claude do it, of course.” They both turned to Claude, who smiled and waved in their direction before slipping into a circle of scribes they knew from Sangfeder.
Most scribes paid others to alter their appearance for them.
Sy had made his own slight alterations himself.
Nothing too extreme, or risky – a spell that prevented him from growing facial hair and one, penned fresh out of the academy, that had made him a couple of inches taller.
“You’re wearing your carnival top,” she said fondly.
“I wanted to dress for the occasion.”
Sabina’s violet eyes gleamed. “A carnival for the ages. Can you believe this?”
“It’s quite something,” he said noncommittally. Then added, with excruciating nonchalance, “Have you seen David?”
“Isn’t that him with Terrence? Are you two on the outs again?” She paused. “Is that why we haven’t seen you all week? You know you two quibbling doesn’t affect anything with the rest of us, Sy. It never has.”
“Of course.” Far easier to let her think he’d been avoiding them over a lover’s spat.
Scanning the crowd surreptitiously, he found Terrence towering over the rest, with his gleaming smile and his boring conversation and his monotone voice.
With his family name and fortune. David stood close to him, laughing at something he had just said.