The Master Magician

Saraj smiled and lowered his hands. Emery’s bonds loosened, barely. The paper magician’s next breath came as a gasp.

He’ll kill him. Ceony panicked. She breathed hard and fast. The ceiling started to spin above her. He’ll kill him. Oh, Emery. Not him. She could not even bear to contemplate . . .

But she couldn’t tell Saraj, either. She couldn’t give him that power. How many more people would die once Saraj knew her secret?

Emery, or them?

She never should have come after Saraj. She never should have tested her knowledge in the first place. She never—

“Ticktock,” Saraj said.

“Tell him nothing!” Emery shouted.

Ceony pressed her lips together. Tears trickled down her face.

Saraj chuckled and walked toward her, his gait unhurried. Once close enough, he placed a hand on the pillar beside her head.

Emery struggled against his bonds—Ceony could see his legs kicking. “Saraj!” he shouted, his voice filling the room. “Touch her and I’ll have your head for a mantelpiece!”

“This is the strange thing about Englishmen,” Saraj murmured to Ceony, his breath caressing her forehead. It smelled like cardamom and some kind of meat. “They make threats they cannot carry out.”

He smiled without teeth and slid his fingers into the hair above Ceony’s ear. She winced and pulled her head as far away from him as she could, but Saraj simply wound a lock of her hair around two fingers and, with a growl, yanked it from her head.

Ceony yelped.

Dangling the orange hair from his fingers the same way he did the necklace, Saraj ignored Emery’s cursing. “I don’t joke,” he said. “I’m not a funny man.”

“I think you’re hilarious,” Ceony spat.

He smiled. “Oh? Then you’ll love this.”

He strode away from Ceony. Toward Emery. The entrails holding the paper magician shifted and turned him about so that Saraj—and Ceony—could see his full person.

Ceony barely recognized him. He looked so pale, so wide-and white-eyed. There was a trail of blood on his neck, likely drizzled from where Saraj had hit him, too.

Saraj muttered under his breath for several seconds—Excision spells tended to be longer than other spells, unless pre-prepared—and the hair in his hands stiffened and straightened. It looked sharp as glass.

“How much blood must be spilled before the kitten sings?” Saraj asked, tracing Emery’s jaw with the hair. It split the skin open, leaving an angry red trail. Saraj hesitated. “But kittens don’t sing, do they?”

“Stop it! Stop!” Ceony cried.

Emery’s eyes were locked with the Excisioner’s, but he said, “Tell him nothing, Ceony.”

“Don’t hurt him!” she wailed, wrenching back and forth. The entrails didn’t budge. Whatever enchantment Saraj had placed on them held tight.

Saraj jammed the hair-blade into Emery’s shoulder. Blood welled around the wound, seeping through his shirt. Emery bit back a scream.

Ceony’s eyes darted back and forth, scanning the room. Searching for her bag, her things, anything that might help her. She pressed her hands to the pillar, but she could do nothing with stone. Nothing with the entrails, with her clothing. The rubber was still on the bottom of her shoes! She felt a rush of hope for a moment, but she was a Pyre now, with no way of changing that. She feebly patted her pockets, studied her blouse buttons—

“Please!” Ceony begged, blinking through tears. She had to tell him—she couldn’t live in a world without Emery. She couldn’t!

Saraj retracted his hand and patted Emery twice on the cheek as though he were a dog. Emery scowled at him.

“Did you know, kitten, that Excisioners can break a man’s fingers, one at a time, without even touching him?” Saraj asked, glancing at Ceony over his shoulder. He reached into his pocket and drew out a pair of rusted pliers. “All I need is one nail. I don’t even have to be in the same room to make the bones bend.”

He opened and closed the pliers in his hand, returning his focus to Emery. “I like the thumbnail, myself. Call it a . . . what’s the word? Quirk.”

Ceony wrenched herself back and forth, squirmed, loosening pieces of hair from the twist at the back of her head. The locks stuck to her tear-moistened skin. Not Emery. Emery wasn’t supposed to be here! He wasn’t supposed to be part of this!

Saraj turned to her one more time. “I might be willing to kill him mercifully with, say, a piece of glass instead of bone by bone, but of course, you’ll need to tell me what you know.”

Her body trembled against the entrails. Visions of Anise lying in a pool of bloody water and Delilah hanging white and limp against her own bonds flooded Ceony’s mind. Drowned her.

“I—”

“Ceony,” Emery warned.

But I’m here, she thought, another tear cascading down her cheek. I’m here this time. I can’t watch you die. I’m here.

Shrugging, Saraj reached for Emery’s hand.

“I’ll tell you!” she blurted, stopping the Indian man’s hand. Tears trickled down her throat, making her voice husky. “I’ll tell you, but only if you let him go!”