The Paper Magician

CHAPTER 7



CEONY FLEW UP FROM the yellow cottage disguised by spells and into the sky itself, gaze locking onto the little green bird that banked hard to the west.

Ceony, her knuckles white from gripping the handholds on the glider and her right elbow latched securely around Fennel’s neck, attempted to follow. She leaned in with the glider and pulled the right handhold harder than the left, but she oversteered and went veering hard to the south, then hard to the north, then hard to the southwest. Trying to force herself to remain calm, even as the glider rose higher and higher into the sky, Ceony guided the massive spell back and forth until its nose pointed toward the distant speck of green that was her guide. Then she lay low—wind blowing strand after strand of orange hair from her braid—and zoomed toward it.

With the help of currents and updrafts, the glider flew faster than the bird, so Ceony had to reel it in with care every few minutes. Pulling too hard on the handholds made the glider climb, and pushing made it descend, but switching between the two and lifting her body higher off the paper seemed to slow it down fairly well.

When she finally took a moment to look around her, she gasped with surprise. One would think a girl who attended the top-ranking magic school in the country would have had some spell or another take her high enough for the view she saw now, but that was not the case. She had never seen London in such great expanse.

The city, in which Mg. Thane lived on the far, far south side, stretched before her in a motley assortment of colors that grew less and less sharp the farther she flew. It took on the shape of a triangle, and Ceony swore she could see the Masters’ Tower of the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined beyond a line of trees that must have been Dulwich Park. Streets like slick eels wound through the city, none of them quite straight, and many of them looking quite lost. She saw the Mill Squats where she had grown up, mostly brown buildings too close together for her to discern her house, as well as Steelworks Avenue, which led to the catering house that had employed her before her accident with one of its most prestigious customers—something that Ceony didn’t regret, but didn’t like to ponder.
     



Homes, shops, trees, even the smokestacks all grew smaller and smaller as she looked over her shoulder, sailing away on the air the way a sea captain might sail on the sea. How foolish of her to ever think Folding was pointless. Surely no Smelter would be able to fly like she did! Mg. Thane needed to patent the glider. That was, if he ever got the chance to.

The thought sobered her. Ceony faced forward, catching the green bird in her vision. Mg. Thane would have the chance. Ceony would make sure of it. However, she had to admit that once the little green bird got to where it was going, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Fortunately the sights below—roads diverging for thick forests and country cabins, rivers weaving in and out of the trees—and the wind singing loudly in her ears made it difficult to think of the consequences of her rash actions.

On and on the little bird flew, its wings never tiring, though on occasion a sudden gust would send the poor thing off track, and it had to flap relentlessly to get back on course. The morning sun turned the sky light blue, then a solid cerulean as it reached and passed its peak. Fennel huffed softly under her arm, thankfully not squirming. Ceony’s fingers felt ready to break from her hand, and her stomach rumbled, but she dared not release the handholds long enough to either rest her fingers or fish her lunch from the heavy bag at her hip.

They flew until Ceony smelled brine flies and seawater, and she saw the great azure expanse of the English Channel ahead of her. Judging by the coastline, the bird had directed her right to the edge of Foulness Island. Adequately named, given the circumstances.

Her stomach churned and her white grip on the glider’s handles brightened as she squeezed all the harder. Please not the ocean, she thought. She didn’t know if she could follow Lira past the coast. The ocean was so endless, so vast . . . and she couldn’t swim. Ceony hadn’t stepped foot in water any deeper than what a bathtub could hold since she was a little girl, and she never would, if she had any say in the matter. She could still taste the algae of the Hendersons’ fishpond in her mouth, hear the silence of water in her ears.

She swallowed against a dry throat and prayed.

Thankfully the small bird began to descend, sea-spray splotching its wings and slowing it down. Ceony pushed her glider faster until she came up beside it. Daring to release one handhold, she snatched the bird from the air and tried to determine how to land without breaking every bone in her body.

“Here, is it?” Ceony shouted over the whistle of the wind, her voice only cracking once. The bird pulsed beneath her.

Ceony circled the glider around a dozen times, taking each loop lower and lower, aiming for a spot well away from the water.

“I don’t suppose I can command you to land, can I?” she asked the glider. “Take me to the ground, softly?”

The glider seemed to heed her as the birds had last night. It arched its wings up and dropped in altitude, making Ceony’s stomach lurch, but its speed slowed and it glided almost smoothly onto a length of dirt patched with crabgrass.

Ceony’s fingers stubbornly held to their pained, crooked positions even as she unhooked them from the handholds. The glider continued to slide along the ground, and she looked over the sides, checking for puddles to ensure her ride would stay dry. “Cease,” she commanded it, and the glider drooped and teetered onto its left side. “Cease,” she told the little bird, and it too went still. She tucked it into the large crease along the center of the glider’s body, hoping to give it time to dry off without being blown away.

Fennel in her arms, Ceony gazed out onto the rocky coast along the sea edge made purple and orange by the lowering sun ahead of them, which cast a golden road across the seawater as it considered its set. Ceony looked about the unfamiliar place ridged with black rocks of all shapes and sizes and free of trees. No sandy beaches comprised the coast here, just steep cliffs formed by the bellies of long-dead volcanoes. One wrong step on those and she’d drown.

Ceony sucked in a long breath and pulled a piece of cheese from her bag.

“Stay quiet, Fennel,” she instructed as she set the dog down on the ground. “Stay away from puddles and let me know if you smell anything sour.”

Ceony nibbled on the cheese as she walked toward the rocks, searching for a safe way down. She thought Lira very smart. If Ceony were a criminal, she would try to escape England as quickly as possible after committing such a heinous deed. Straight for the coast, where a ship of her accomplices could pick her up. The only faster way out of the country seemed to be by paper glider, and Ceony greatly doubted Lira had one of those.

Ceony pulled her Tatham pistol from her bag and held its wooden and steel barrel against her breast, pointing the muzzle over her shoulder. She found a drop between two large crags that did not look too steep and carefully climbed her way down. Fennel sniffed all about it before following after, slipping only once. Down on solid rock, much closer to the water, Ceony smoothed her skirt and continued forward. She didn’t need to muffle her footfalls; the crashing of waves against yet more rocks below hid her presence, even if they did make her hands shake. She stayed close to the cliffs. Her heart quickened, and while the ocean air made her skin cold, her blood pulsed hot and her insides grew taut as guitar strings.

A burst of salty wind tossed the last locks of her hair from her braid. She snatched the whipping strands from the breeze and hurriedly tied them at the nape of her neck before climbing downward once more, where droplets of water from those crashing waves pattered her cheek. She tried to stand between them and Fennel, who began to huff excitedly—perhaps he had smelled something.

A loud, uneven cry pulled her attention toward the ocean. Whirling around, she pointed the pistol not at a person, but at a squatting seagull staring at her with red-veined eyes. Half-molted feathers and stitches speckled its neck. Pieces of dried, blanched skin hung off its face and legs in strips, and the top of its beak had been broken in half.

Ceony froze, clutching the pistol in her hands. A dead bird. A living dead bird. The work of an Excisioner.

The gull cried once more and flew out over the ocean. Ceony’s heart started beating again when it was out of sight.

Her teeth chattered. She told herself it was from the ocean’s cool mist.

Could Excisioners truly reanimate the deceased? The thought made Ceony shudder inside and out. But why a bird? Was it a messenger? Ceony hadn’t seen a note tied to its mangled legs . . . Perhaps it had already dropped its message off, or it was a spy of some sort. Ceony didn’t know enough about Excision to know. Perhaps someone was trying to contact Lira. Someone trying to help her escape.
     



The cheese she had eaten grew heavy in her stomach. Ceony scooped Fennel into her arms and turned him away from the ocean, as much for her own comfort as anything.

Ceony picked her way along the rocky coast for perhaps a quarter mile before she saw a dark half oval ahead of her—a cavern of some sort. A splendid place to hide, for sure. Clutching Fennel and readying her pistol, she crept toward it.

The sun had sunk one-third of its majesty behind the horizon when she reached the cavern. There were no lanterns or torches to light, but the cavern didn’t look too deep. Spying about and seeing no one, Ceony moved inside the cave, keeping her back to one of its rough walls.

Fennel squirmed. She hushed him. She didn’t need a paper dog reminding her what a fool brain she had inside her skull.

Her heart thrummed as she neared the back of the cave. She spied a pair of shoes set near the opposite wall. Someone else had been here, and recently, for the shoes looked fairly new and fairly clean, albeit not the ones Lira had worn at Mg. Thane’s home.

Pumpom . . . pumpom . . . A heartbeat. But not hers. No, this one beat much slower than her own.

Ceony inched forward, squinting in the dim light slinking in through the cavern’s mouth. The base of the back wall jutted forward, making an uneven shelf about four feet high. Something glowed along its ridge.

Ceony gasped. There, in a shallow bowl amid the black rock, gleamed a pool of wine-colored blood shimmering gold about its edges. Beating calmly in its center rested Mg. Thane’s heart, just as she had seen it clenched in Lira’s hands.

Gooseflesh prickled her skin as Ceony approached it. Mg. Thane’s heart. She had found it.

She had found it too easily.

Fennel huffed and jumped from Ceony’s arms just as Ceony spun around, clutching her pistol in both hands. There, a few paces in from the mouth of the cave, stood Lira.

She looked just as she had in Mg. Thane’s dining room, though her pants had been torn just above the left knee and the humidity caused her hair to hang heavier from her scalp. Her dark eyes narrowed beneath rows of long, dark eyelashes, very different from Ceony’s blond. They made her look both menacing and beautiful. She could not have been any older than Mg. Thane. Not so much older than Ceony herself.

“I thought I hadn’t hit you hard enough,” she said, eyes dropping to the pistol for only a moment. Lira wore no guns that Ceony could see, only several vials of blood strapped to one side of a leather belt, and a long dagger strapped to the other. “But it seems my generosity in letting you live has turned against me.”

She smiled as if she had told a joke.

“Lira, isn’t it?” Ceony asked, leveling her pistol. She hoped the woman didn’t notice how it trembled in her hands. “I’m taking this back. Don’t interfere, and I won’t shoot you.”

Shoot her. Ceony had never shot a real person in her life, only targets.

Lira took a step forward. Ceony’s palms sweat. Lira, smirking, asked, “Do you even know how to use that?”

Gritting her teeth, Ceony leveled the pistol and cocked back its hammer. She could never afford the enchanted bullets that always met their mark, but she prided herself on her aim regardless.

The Excisioner took one more step forward and paused. She slipped a vial of blood off her belt. Ceony struggled to hold the gun steady. Mg. Thane’s heart beat loudly behind her—or was that her own pulse?

“Put it down,” Ceony said. Clearing her throat, she repeated, “Put it down or I’ll shoot you, I swear I will. I’m taking this heart back with me.”

Lira’s face turned to a scowl so gradually Ceony hardly saw it change. “I’m not letting some ginger tart take what’s rightfully mine.”

With a thumbnail she uncorked the vial and spilled blood into her palm. She stepped forward.

Ceony stepped back. “I’ll kill you!” she cried.

Lira began chanting in that mysterious tongue. Ceony didn’t understand any of it—the spells were so different from the materials she had studied. Lira’s hand began to glow gold. She took another step forward.

Ceony fired.

The pistol jerked back in Ceony’s hands, its boom! filling the cavern and stinging Ceony’s ears. The sharp scent of gunpowder scoured her nose and slipped into her mouth. Fennel whined at her ankles.

Lira’s eyes widened as wetness, dark as dried rose petals, bloomed over her right breast. She grunted and dropped to one knee, her hand still glowing. Her lips muttered something too quiet for Ceony to hear.

Ceony lowered the pistol. Her eyes felt ready to pop from their sockets. Her mouth went dry and her hands turned cold. Thought fled her, swirled above her head, and returned just as Lira pressed her glowing palm to the wound on her chest.

The strange light spiraled under her hand for less than two seconds before flashing once and disappearing. Lira sucked in a deep breath and stood, then popped her neck once to the left and once to the right. She dropped something small and metal from her hand. It clinked against the cavern floor.

A bullet.

Ceony nearly dropped her gun. Had . . . had Lira just healed herself?

Her mind spun. Excision had power over flesh. Lira took a step forward, seemingly unscathed save for the stain on her dark shirt. Ceony had only one bullet. Only one, and it rested on the dark rock behind Lira.

Lira had started her healing spell before Ceony had fired. Lira had wanted Ceony to use up her shot. Fear had played Ceony right into the Excisioner’s hands.

And now all Ceony had was a bag full of paper, the least offensive material a magician could wield. Even rubber would have suited her better here.

“No more games,” Lira snarled, taking another step, then another. Ceony backtracked, her gun slipping from her clammy fingers.

Her back bumped into the rock shelf, her elbow touching Mg. Thane’s heart.

The cavern twirled before her and Ceony felt herself fall, a sudden whoosh swooping around her. The sunlight at the mouth of the cave jerked from her eyes and she hit something warm and firm. A loud PUM-Pom-poom sounded all around her.

“Oh, the bane of the unprepared,” crooned Lira’s low-pitched voice around her, echoing between unseen walls.

She broke the echo with a heinous cackle that unsettled every nerve in Ceony’s body. “Now I have Emery and his suckling brat.”