The Paper Magician

The door creaked loudly as she opened it. Emery lay still atop his bed, two blankets covering him. Curtains drawn.

She opened them halfway to give him some sunlight. He looked healthier, ruddier.

“I’m not sure what to do,” she admitted, watching his chest rise and fall with every steady breath. “I have to tell Magician Aviosky where. I don’t want to talk to the Cabinet. But . . . I left her there on the rocks. I didn’t know if writing it would work, but the blood made some sort of connection, and it did,” she said, rubbing her left arm absently. “But I’m not like her. Please don’t think I’m like her.”

Moving to his bedside, she squeezed his warm hand briefly before making her way to the lavatory to clean up. She never wanted to look at another’s blood again, if she could help it.

Before she went to bed she pulled an old-edition atlas from one of Mg. Thane’s many bookshelves and telegrammed a rough span of coordinates to Mg. Aviosky.

She had a hard time sleeping after that.





CHAPTER 17



THE NEXT DAY CEONY rose early, started a fire in the front room’s hearth, and rested her curling iron beside the coals.

Mg. Aviosky had apparently cleaned up the broken dishes and turned the dining room table upright, but Ceony, after hunting through cupboards for cleaning supplies—swept and mopped the floor and wiped down all the counters. She washed the dishes in the sink, dried them, and set them carefully onto their respective shelves. She browsed through the icebox to get ideas for lunch and dinner. She had milk and an apricot for breakfast.

Upstairs in the lavatory—which had the best mirror in the house—Ceony carefully curled her locks and pushed a headband into her hair. After examining herself, she took the headband out and instead pinned back the sides of her hair and set a simple olive barrette over them. Her mother had always said olive looked best with red hair, even if Ceony’s hair was far more orange than it was red.

She took a kohl pencil from her makeup bag and carefully lined her eyes, then smudged some of the kohl between her fingertips and pinched her blond lashes to darken them. She thumbed a bit of rouge on her cheeks as well and changed into her second-best set of clothes: a navy-blue skirt that cinched just above her hips, and a peach-colored blouse with frilled collar, which she tucked into it. She considered, briefly, wearing her best clothing—a sage-green dress with short sleeves and slim fit—but she didn’t want to overdo it.

Content with her appearance—even confident with it—she stepped into Emery’s room to check on him. He was unmoved, but she thought his breathing sounded a bit easier.

She sat on the bed beside him and ran her fingertips through his dark hair, then traced her pinky finger over his brow. Felt his temperature. Normal. She fetched him some broth and carefully poured it bit by bit into his mouth. There was little for her to do beyond that.

Downstairs she made cucumber sandwiches and potato salad, despite doctor’s orders. Enough for two, but with Emery unchanged, she ate alone and stored the rest in the icebox for later. After suffering a few stomach cramps, she cooked sausage gravy, biscuits, and asparagus for dinner. Again she made enough for two and waited until eight o’clock. Emery didn’t wake, however, so she let the food grow cold while she fed him more broth and wiped his face and neck with a damp towel. She ate quickly—standing at the table rather than sitting—and afterward retrieved Pip’s Daring Escape from her bedroom. She pulled the chair from the library into Emery’s room, sat on it, and read the book with all the feeling and charisma she had. Images of the small gray mouse and his adventure through a cat-strewn garbage dump to retrieve a beloved toy played out in ghostly apparitions over Emery’s torso. Still, he didn’t wake.

Ceony washed her face, hung up her clothes, and went to bed late.

She rose with the sun the next day, bathed, and set her curling iron by the fire as she swept the front hall and dusted the front room, even picking up Jonto’s collapsed form to reach the windowsill. Back in the lavatory she curled her hair with a little more flare and fastened it with a tie behind her left ear, so that the curls hung neatly over her shoulder. After applying some kohl and rouge, she changed once more into her peach blouse and navy skirt. She skipped breakfast and got to work on her few pieces of dirty laundry.

Her white blouse—the one she had worn through Emery’s heart—was ruined, but the skirt only needed some patchwork to be wearable. She scrubbed it and hung it outside to dry beneath a clear, sunny sky and set to work on lunch. She made cucumber sandwiches once more, but ate them alone. For dinner she planned rosemary chicken.

She pulled the chicken from the icebox, a shriveled onion from a cupboard below the sink, and some dried rosemary that hung on a string opposite the dining room door. As she cut into the chicken breasts, however, her hands stilled as watery blood dribbled from the meat.