The Paper Magician

Fennel squirmed. She hushed him. She didn’t need a paper dog reminding her what a fool brain she had inside her skull.

Her heart thrummed as she neared the back of the cave. She spied a pair of shoes set near the opposite wall. Someone else had been here, and recently, for the shoes looked fairly new and fairly clean, albeit not the ones Lira had worn at Mg. Thane’s home.

Pumpom . . . pumpom . . . A heartbeat. But not hers. No, this one beat much slower than her own.

Ceony inched forward, squinting in the dim light slinking in through the cavern’s mouth. The base of the back wall jutted forward, making an uneven shelf about four feet high. Something glowed along its ridge.

Ceony gasped. There, in a shallow bowl amid the black rock, gleamed a pool of wine-colored blood shimmering gold about its edges. Beating calmly in its center rested Mg. Thane’s heart, just as she had seen it clenched in Lira’s hands.

Gooseflesh prickled her skin as Ceony approached it. Mg. Thane’s heart. She had found it.

She had found it too easily.

Fennel huffed and jumped from Ceony’s arms just as Ceony spun around, clutching her pistol in both hands. There, a few paces in from the mouth of the cave, stood Lira.

She looked just as she had in Mg. Thane’s dining room, though her pants had been torn just above the left knee and the humidity caused her hair to hang heavier from her scalp. Her dark eyes narrowed beneath rows of long, dark eyelashes, very different from Ceony’s blond. They made her look both menacing and beautiful. She could not have been any older than Mg. Thane. Not so much older than Ceony herself.

“I thought I hadn’t hit you hard enough,” she said, eyes dropping to the pistol for only a moment. Lira wore no guns that Ceony could see, only several vials of blood strapped to one side of a leather belt, and a long dagger strapped to the other. “But it seems my generosity in letting you live has turned against me.”

She smiled as if she had told a joke.

“Lira, isn’t it?” Ceony asked, leveling her pistol. She hoped the woman didn’t notice how it trembled in her hands. “I’m taking this back. Don’t interfere, and I won’t shoot you.”

Shoot her. Ceony had never shot a real person in her life, only targets.

Lira took a step forward. Ceony’s palms sweat. Lira, smirking, asked, “Do you even know how to use that?”

Gritting her teeth, Ceony leveled the pistol and cocked back its hammer. She could never afford the enchanted bullets that always met their mark, but she prided herself on her aim regardless.

The Excisioner took one more step forward and paused. She slipped a vial of blood off her belt. Ceony struggled to hold the gun steady. Mg. Thane’s heart beat loudly behind her—or was that her own pulse?

“Put it down,” Ceony said. Clearing her throat, she repeated, “Put it down or I’ll shoot you, I swear I will. I’m taking this heart back with me.”

Lira’s face turned to a scowl so gradually Ceony hardly saw it change. “I’m not letting some ginger tart take what’s rightfully mine.”

With a thumbnail she uncorked the vial and spilled blood into her palm. She stepped forward.

Ceony stepped back. “I’ll kill you!” she cried.

Lira began chanting in that mysterious tongue. Ceony didn’t understand any of it—the spells were so different from the materials she had studied. Lira’s hand began to glow gold. She took another step forward.

Ceony fired.

The pistol jerked back in Ceony’s hands, its boom! filling the cavern and stinging Ceony’s ears. The sharp scent of gunpowder scoured her nose and slipped into her mouth. Fennel whined at her ankles.

Lira’s eyes widened as wetness, dark as dried rose petals, bloomed over her right breast. She grunted and dropped to one knee, her hand still glowing. Her lips muttered something too quiet for Ceony to hear.

Ceony lowered the pistol. Her eyes felt ready to pop from their sockets. Her mouth went dry and her hands turned cold. Thought fled her, swirled above her head, and returned just as Lira pressed her glowing palm to the wound on her chest.

The strange light spiraled under her hand for less than two seconds before flashing once and disappearing. Lira sucked in a deep breath and stood, then popped her neck once to the left and once to the right. She dropped something small and metal from her hand. It clinked against the cavern floor.

A bullet.

Ceony nearly dropped her gun. Had . . . had Lira just healed herself?

Her mind spun. Excision had power over flesh. Lira took a step forward, seemingly unscathed save for the stain on her dark shirt. Ceony had only one bullet. Only one, and it rested on the dark rock behind Lira.

Lira had started her healing spell before Ceony had fired. Lira had wanted Ceony to use up her shot. Fear had played Ceony right into the Excisioner’s hands.

And now all Ceony had was a bag full of paper, the least offensive material a magician could wield. Even rubber would have suited her better here.