The Paper Magician

Ceony whirled around, half-expecting the Excisioner—Thane’s wife—to appear behind her at any moment, but she saw only happy wedding guests, including that same beekeeper and his wife. Men and women Ceony didn’t know. The memories moved so quickly—perhaps Lira wasn’t able to keep up. Perhaps she didn’t want to be here. Ceony didn’t, either.

Ceony pinched herself. She needed to stay alert. Mg. Hughes had said an Excisioner could pull magic through another’s body with just one touch, which meant it wouldn’t take much time for Lira to destroy her, should the crazed woman catch up to Ceony. Touch was one advantage Ceony didn’t want to give the psychotic woman chasing her through a stolen heart.

She had to find the next chamber.

She ran from the wedding with Fennel at her side, not bothering to give the ceremony a second glance. Something about it . . . bothered her. Pink cherry blossoms blew across her path, lacing the air with their subtle, lustful scent. The song of crickets muted to her ears.

The cherry trees grew thicker until Ceony found herself facing a copse of them, too thick to pass through save for a wrought-iron fence wedged between two of the smaller ones. She pushed open its narrow gate and ran until the sod turned firm and a book-lined wall stopped her from running any farther. A dead end.

Ceony found herself in the midst of a library.

It was similar to the one Mg. Thane had now, albeit smaller and with more windows and a second table, over which stooped a younger Emery Thane than the one who had been getting married. He wore his dark hair short and had rolled his white shirtsleeves up to his elbows.

Paper covered the tabletop in neat piles, all white and off-white, all varying thicknesses. A pile of half-Folded, half-crumpled papers formed a sizeable pile on the floor, and beside them stood a secondhand dressmaker’s dummy tacked about with dozens of papers rolled and Folded to form a rib cage around the torso, a collar across the shoulders, and a spine along the back. Ceony recognized the structure as Jonto’s—this must have been his creation, or part of it.

“Here’s the paperboard,” said an unfamiliar voice from the hallway. “That was just the carrier dropping it off.”

Ceony shifted her attention from Thane and his skeletal project to the man entering the library. He carried two giant cardboard totes of paper that looked heavy enough that Ceony doubted she could even lift one without pulling a muscle.

Yet the totes seemed almost tiny in this man’s arms, a man whose boyish face put him only a few years Ceony’s senior. He had to be six and a half feet tall and looked wide enough that Ceony felt sure she could fit inside him at least three times. Everything about the man was simply . . . big. Big shoulders, big stomach, big hands. Each of his calves looked like a feast day ham.

“Excellent, Langston,” Thane said, glancing up from his work for only half a second. Ceony couldn’t tell what he was working on—it looked almost like a bent-up crescent roll roughly the length of his hand. Fortunately, Thane’s next words answered the unspoken question: “I want to try integrating thick and thin together for this one—thick at the jaw’s joints and at the chin, thin in between. Maybe that will work.”

“Maybe,” Langston replied with a slowness and drawl that had Ceony suspecting he hadn’t grown up in England. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon, Magician Thane. My ma always said the word damn came from beavers who gave up on their houses one stick short.”

“Your mother says many things,” Thane replied offhandedly. “See if you can’t duplicate that hip, hm?”

Ceony marveled as Langston pulled out a chair nearly too small for him and took a seat across the table from Thane. He hardly had space to set down his giant elbows.

“Is this your apprentice?” Ceony asked, not expecting an answer. Judging by Thane’s age, Langston had to be the first . . . though he could have been the “half.” Ceony could understand firing an apprentice like Langston. Those monstrous hands could never form the minute and intricate Folds required by intermediate and advanced Folding.

Yet Ceony found her own jaw dropping as Langston picked up Jonto’s right hip with a fairylike touch and turned it over in his hands, examining its components. Setting it down, he picked up a square parchment of medium thickness and, with his tongue pinched in the corner of his mouth, began carefully Folding it to reflect the hip’s smallest part.

“Astonishing,” Ceony commented as the two worked. “I wouldn’t mind having a fellow his size with me right now.”

Rubbing a chill from her arms, she murmured, “I wouldn’t mind either fellow with me right now.”

Fennel pawed at her leg. Ceony absently reached down to pet his head.

Surely Langston had been certified as a Folder by now. She wondered how long his apprenticeship had taken. She wondered if he had been happy to arrive at Mg. Thane’s abode. If he had been polite upon meeting his teacher. If he had been grateful, as she should have been.