The Paper Magician

“Envy who?” she asked, stepping closer to him.

“Them,” he answered with a slight jerk of his chin, directed to the faithful audience in the pews. It relieved Ceony that he replied to her at all. It seemed this Emery Thane, while outside the vision, was only a sliver of his true self—a sliver that existed in the second chamber of his heart. “All of them, really. I envy their faith.”

Ceony glanced to the men and women in the church. “You want to be Anglican?”

Her friend Anise Hatter had belonged to the Church of England, one of the sects that embraced the use of material magics. Ceony had only been to the Church’s Mass once.

“I think life would be much . . . simpler . . . if a man could believe in one solid thing,” he answered, still not looking at her. “Bits and pieces here and there do no good for a man’s soul. Thinking all of it is right or all of it is wrong does no good, either. Just as a magician cannot work all materials. He must choose one. But how does he know? How do these people believe in this faith, but not the others? Yet they are happy.”

Ceony touched his elbow, finding it solid—more proof that this Emery Thane stood separate from the vision. “You just have to learn, I suppose,” she said. “Explore until you know which one’s right for you.”

He glanced at her, his green eyes deep in thought and wondering in a subdued sort of way. “Do you believe in one thing, Ceony?”

Her heart sped as he said her name.

She considered the question. “I’ve never given it a great deal of thought. I suppose I don’t. I think I understand what you mean, about there being good in all faiths. In all gods, in all beliefs. When I think about it . . . I guess I’ve just taken what bits and pieces I felt were right for me and made my own faith with them. Faith is a very personal thing, really. Just because you don’t meet with a group of people once a week who believe everything exactly the way you do doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something.”

He nodded, but his expression didn't waver.

Ceony studied him, the set of his jaw and the lines of his profile. She would never have guessed that a paper magician such as Emery Thane would have hoped for a faith. She had fit him into a one-dimensional mold during their first meeting, and had done so with ease. Langston, too. How many others had she judged and set aside like that, thinking them no more than a one-sided piece of paper?

In the lull of their conversation Ceony heard the distant PUM-Pom-poom of Emery’s heart, but it sounded . . . tired. A shiver coursed down her back. She scooped Fennel up in her arms and turned away from the balcony. She had to keep moving, keep progressing. She had to reach the real Mg. Thane before either of his hearts gave out.

She found the stairs that led off the balcony and took them quickly. They wound round and round, far longer than they should have been to reach the main floor only a story below. After what felt like four stories, Ceony spied a shimmering door at the stairs’ end—a white door rimmed with scarlet, without knob or handle.

Holding Fennel tightly to her chest, Ceony reached one hand forward and pushed it open.

The church vanished around her, and with it Parliament Square. Ceony once more stood in a tall, fleshy chamber lined with blue veins and pulsing arteries, the constant PUM-Pom-poom that echoed throughout Emery’s visions drumming in her ears and vibrating through the floor, a little slower than she remembered it.

Not ten paces from her she found another shallow river of blood and a valve—a different valve than the one she had come through. It led to the third chamber of Thane’s heart. It had to.

The hairs on Ceony’s arms stood on end and she whisked around, searching for Lira’s dark hair, half expecting more severed hands to rise from the floor and seize her. Her heart beat just as loud as Emery’s, thinking of the Excisioner. How long did she have before Lira caught up to her? Unless the woman waited in the next chamber . . .

She swallowed hard. Fennel licked her chin with a dry paper tongue.

“Fold up, boy,” she whispered, trying hard not to tremble. She’d never trembled so much in life as she had in the last twenty-four hours! Curse Emery Thane for being such a difficult man to rescue!

Fennel did as told and folded up into his lopsided pentagon, and Ceony gingerly placed him between paper stacks in her bag. She eyed the valve and cursed again. She still remembered exactly how it felt to pass through those suffocating walls, unable to breathe and barely able to move. Too hot, too dark. Bitter fear on the back of her tongue tasted like unripe radishes. What if she didn’t make it through this valve? What if it caught her up between its tight walls and . . .