The Paper Magician

They’re hiding in the packing warehouse. Send your men around to the north. I’ll meet you there.

“This is what you did. What you do,” Ceony said, looking up at the police chief’s haggard face, though she didn’t address the words to him. He looked scared, confirming what Ceony had deducted. “You’re hunting them down. The Excisioners. Lira. But when? When is this? When am I?” Are you safe?

The police chief blew his whistle, making Ceony’s ears ring. He ran northeast, two new officers joining him at the next crossroads.

Ceony took a step forward, then stopped, turning to the path the glider had taken to reach them. Emery would be in that direction.

Body hurting and lungs dry, Ceony sprinted.

She didn’t know where the factory was, but she didn’t need to—the city unfolded itself before her just as every other vision had, directing her toward Emery Thane, for she ran through the secrets of his heart. She passed over the bridge of a sluggish canal with olive-colored water, around a bakery with a faded sign and boards nailed over the windows. She climbed another snowbank where the road narrowed, adjusting Fennel carefully in the crook of her elbow as she went. Above her, over an apartment building and a tavern, she saw the expanse of a large square building with a flat roof and a single cylinder chimney. It was a tan-brick warehouse with dark broken windows. An abandoned bird’s nest hung off its southern ledge.

She saw him before a heavy sliding door rusted on its handle and around its edges—he wore all gray that matched the city and sky. Dirt smudged his face and he looked haggard, his hair longer and more unkempt than in past visions. Ceony saw him, but only for a moment before he, armed with a strangely complex paper sphere and a belt filled with tightly Folded paper stars, pulled open the heavy, creaking door and vanished into the shadows within.

She realized the police bells had ceased. But not just the bells—everything around her had fallen into silence. No footsteps, no birds, no chatter or buggies or wind. Fennel felt heavy in her arms. Her bag felt heavy on her shoulder.

Ceony didn’t call Emery’s name or run after him. It seemed somehow wrong to break the perfect hush that enveloped her. Instead she walked, each short step especially deliberate and soundless against the wet cobblestone. The rusted door seemed too far away, and yet impossibly close. When she reached it, the door opened of its own accord.

The smell of sodden meat—fresh and spoiled—wafted like a cold song over her. She shivered, the warehouse temperature even cooler than the wintry outside. Her feet crunched on rock salt spilled across the cement floor. Setting Fennel down, Ceony whispered “Stay close” between chattering teeth.

Dull, slate-colored light filtered through high windows, many cracked and patched with cardboard or wooden slabs. They illuminated metal walkways protruding from the walls overhead. Ceony gripped her paper fan in her right hand and the strap of her bag in her left. This place would be a perfect setting for Lira—the real Lira—to exact her revenge. Ceony only hoped that she would not be added to the odor of meat that grew more pungent the deeper into the warehouse she traversed.

She stepped into a second, larger room, the metal walkways winding above her. Here the dimming light illuminated dozens of steel racks bearing meat hooks. Every third hook held half a pig’s carcass or the long side of a cow. The bodies hardly looked like animals anymore, save for an occasional snout or de-hoofed foot. The white-and scarlet-marbled hunks of muscle dangled over foul-smelling grates and drains in the floor.

Fennel sniffed about the carcasses with a wagging tail. A rat scurried past. Ceony hissed at him and waved her hand to draw the dog’s attention back to her. Unfortunately, she did so with her right hand, which still clutched the paper fan. A gust of stale, stinking wind burst from the fan’s tips, moaning as it sailed over Fennel’s head and filled the room. Ceony closed the fan quickly in her left palm and bit down on a shriek as a slab of beef nudged her in the back, creaking as it swayed on its hook.

All the meat swung now, back and forth, squeaking on the metal beams that suspended them. The movement made them look alive. Forlorn.