The Master Magician

“He was recruiting for his textile company in Virginia,” Ceony stated. “He brought in that huge pin board full of product and knocked it over with his hip when he bent down to pick up his handkerchief.”


Bennet chuckled. “I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. I don’t think anyone took him seriously for the rest of the lecture.”

Letting her ledger close, Ceony asked, “What brought that up?”

He shrugged. “Just thinking, I guess. Folding makes for good thinking. I wanted to be a Polymaker, you know.”

“I didn’t.”

“I only decided the month before graduation,” Bennet admitted. “So much has yet to be discovered in Polymaking, and it would be interesting to find new spells for a new magic. Before that, I had thought rubber would be an interesting trade. Or, rather, my father did. He works facilities at a Siping factory.”

“Is he a magician?”

“No. Just me. But I have a sister-in-law who’s a Smelter.”

He paused, turning his link over in his hand.

You can still be a Polymaker, Ceony thought. She touched the collar of her blouse, feeling the charm necklace hidden beneath it.

“You wanted to be a Smelter, didn’t you?” Bennet asked.

She met his gaze. “I’m surprised you remember that.” When did I tell Bennet about Smelting? Her memory spun. Back at Tagis Praff, the Christmas dinner.

“Are you . . .” He hesitated. “Are you disappointed? About Folding?”

“I was at first,” she admitted, “but not anymore. I’m glad things worked out the way they did.”

“Me, too, I think,” Bennet replied. “I mean, I guess I can’t really know without having a Polymaking apprenticeship for a comparison, you know?”

She nodded.

“I’m worried about leaving,” he added, resting his chin in his palm.

Ceony wove her fingers together over her ledger. “You’ll make a fine magician.”

“Not that,” he said. “I’m worried about leaving Magician Bailey. He . . . doesn’t have many friends. Hard to believe, I know.”

Ceony snorted.

“I’m sure he’ll get another apprentice quickly, but he takes a long time to . . . acclimate. As you’ve witnessed. But deep down he means well. He’s misunderstood. I think he’s had it hard, you know?”

Ceony thought back to her journey through Emery’s heart, where she’d first seen Mg. Bailey, or Prit. She wondered how many people had bullied him and for how long. Would she behave the same way if she’d suffered his fate?

“I know, a little,” she said. “But you can’t let that hold you back.”

“I won’t. It’s just something I think about.”

Ceony reopened her ledger. A paper slipped out from its back pages and onto her lap—a half-sheet of paper, roughly torn along one of its long edges. The second half of the mimic spell she’d left with Mg. Aviosky. Its face remained blank. She wondered if Mg. Aviosky knew about the anonymous tip on Saraj and suspected her. That was, of course, assuming anyone had bothered to relay the information to the Head of Education. Emery obviously hadn’t fact-checked with Mg. Aviosky, or they’d both be pounding down Mg. Bailey’s door.

Bennet clasped his hands together. “Ceony, I—”

“Could you excuse me?” she asked, standing from the table. “I need some of that ‘thinking’ time.” She held up the ledger. “I have a lot more work to get done.”

Bennet nodded. “Of course,” he said, but he looked disappointed.

She offered the man a smile before exiting the study. It had not been her intent to cut him off—the words had already been in her throat—but she was grateful for it. Bennet was a wonderful friend and, admittedly, a wonderful specimen of a man, but she worried over his friendliness. At that moment, her name had sounded especially friendly on his lips.

“I’m awful,” she mumbled to herself, letting her feet carry her a ways down the hall before slipping the mimic spell onto the cover of her ledger. Leaning it against her left palm, she wrote, Have you heard anything? to Mg. Aviosky. She didn’t need to explain what she meant.

She leaned back against the wall, holding the mimic spell in front of her, waiting for Mg. Aviosky’s scrawl to appear below hers. Seconds passed. A minute, two minutes, but the half page stubbornly remained blank. Of course, the mimic spell had no chimes or lights to alert its holder when writing appeared on it; Ceony would have to wait until Mg. Aviosky looked at her half of the spell. Her only hope for hearing word faster was to use a telegraph. She assumed Mg. Bailey owned one, as he owned a ridiculous number of things, but finding one and asking permission to use it didn’t rank high on the list of things she was eager to accomplish.