“. . . don’t think it will work out,” Emery whispered. He stood with his hands clasped over his elbows and his eyes cast to the opposite wall. He wore a sage-green coat similar to his indigo one, but with more buttons. “I’ve neglected him. He’s only brought it up once, but at this point I’m delaying his certification. Edward is a bright young man. He deserves better, and I’ll hardly make him defer.”
“No, not defer,” Mg. Hughes agreed, rubbing his short white beard with his index finger and thumb. “But they’ll avoid transferring. It hurts the method of the thing, takes time to switch over lesson plans and readjust. You both would need to make a good case.”
“My marriage is falling apart, Alfred,” Emery said. He let out a long breath and slid his hands into his pockets. His voice carried such weight that Ceony withered against the wall.
Mg. Hughes rested a hand on Emery’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. On my third, myself. It’s a hard thing, but surely given a bit of time—”
“I think she’s an Excisioner,” Emery interjected.
The words were barely audible, but they rang like cymbals in the empty corridor.
Mg. Hughes mumbled something on a dry tongue before sputtering, “You . . . you can’t be serious.”
“I prefer not to be, in most cases,” he replied, “but I’ve seen the signs.” He hesitated. “Then again, I haven’t even seen her in four months.”
The two men quieted for a long minute. As Ceony turned to leave, Mg. Hughes said, “What you do know, Emery, could be of use. I know some people—not the police, per se—who work tirelessly to extinguish the dark magics from her ladyship’s domain. If you’re willing, I could introduce you . . .”
Mg. Hughes’s lips continued to move, but no voice filled the words, leaving him little more than a mime. Ceony’s eyes darted between him and Thane, waiting for more information to pass between them . . . but they had become two marionettes, and Ceony was a poor lip-reader. Groaning, she resisted the urge to stamp her foot.
Fennel huffed behind her, and Ceony blinked, eyes burning from staring. As she moved away from Thane and Hughes and under a granite archway, however, she found not Parliament, but crowded hallways and stairs beneath a pebbled ceiling. A shrill bell rang over her head.
She stood at the end of the main hallway of Granger Academy, her secondary school.
The hallways were filled with young people chatting, walking, and eating lunch. One particularly frisky couple kissed by the tennis trophy case—which had far fewer trophies than Ceony recalled it holding—until a man in a sweater vest smacked a ruler along the boy’s backside and told the couple to get moving. Behind her a trio of girls with high hairstyles and brightly painted lips whispered to each other with hands shielding their mouths. The shortest of the group laughed so hard she snorted, which caused her companions to snicker in turn. The trio shifted as a narrow-bodied woman holding a clipboard walked down the staircase behind them, a pair of spectacles balanced on the edge of her nose. The woman didn’t look up at anyone as she passed by, including Ceony.
Ceony pulled her eyes from the people and refocused her attention on the building itself. She recognized Granger Academy, though the school looked a little different than she remembered it—some sort of linoleum tiles comprised the floor instead of the stiff maroon carpet she had tramped between classes for four years. The stair railings were pine with faded stain instead of oak. Other than that, the building looked the same. Granger Academy had been Emery’s secondary school as well—perhaps this was what it looked like when he attended.
Thoughts of Anise Hatter surfaced in her mind. She pushed them away. Today she walked Emery’s heart, not her own.
A flicker of black hair made Ceony jump, but it was only another girl not much younger than herself, a young woman who looked similar to Lira but with a broader face and stronger nose. Still, Ceony grit her teeth and said, “Who knows what we’ll encounter here, Fennel.”
She had to admit that the casual nostalgia of the school didn’t quite match the mood the previous visions of the chamber had born. Still, she would stay on alert, and hopefully Fennel would catch anything unusual that she missed.
Ceony touched the shield chain around her chest. If the water and blood had damaged it, the shift to Parliament, and now the school, had restored it. Good. She thought to take the time to Fold more birds against the hard school floor, but decided against it. The feeble paper heart she’d given Thane only allocated her so much time. She would have to trust her shielding spell and the fan to protect her.
The Paper Magician
Charlie N. Holmberg's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene