She needed something safe to carry the heart in, but as she considered her options the salty air began to burn her nose, and the blond hairs on her arms stood on end. Licking her lips, Ceony turned around to face Lira, whose dark hair fell in perfect, lush waves over her narrow shoulders, whose dark eyes narrowed to lightless almonds, and whose red lips curled into a sneer.
Setting her jaw, Ceony stepped away from the heart. She would allow no spell of Lira’s to miss her and strike it. She would keep Emery’s heart safe, especially from the woman who had treated it so very poorly.
If the Excisioner was surprised to see Ceony, she didn’t show it. Her pale skin flushed almost prettily with anger, or perhaps hate. Ceony couldn’t be sure—such loathing had never been directed at her before. Not to this magnitude.
Ceony took the first words for herself.
“Stand down, Lira,” she said, straightening as tall as her five-foot-three frame could straighten. “You want to escape? Then go while you have the chance.”
Lira smiled, looking distinctly like a cat gone half-feral. “Not when I have two hearts to take with me. Grath will find them such a handsome prize, even if I only let him keep yours.”
She lifted a bloody hand—her blood or another’s, Ceony couldn’t be sure—and with it rose from the ground three pairs of severed, undead hands that Ceony had failed to spot, as the uneven rock of the cave floor had concealed them.
Ceony’s windpipe constricted, reminding her of the bruises dotting her neck such hands had given her before. For a split second she felt herself paralyzed, but the whispered beating of Emery’s heart regrounded her. Forced her to move.
Her hands shot to her bag as Lira’s shot forward, sprinkling droplets of cold blood throughout the cave. The undead hands—fingers pudgy and swollen—rose like birds into the air and shot toward her on invisible wings.
Wings.
Birds.
Ceony grasped her paper birds in her fingers and yanked their Folded bodies from her bag. “Breathe!” she gasped as the hands charged her. “Attack them!”
Two birds fell crumpled to the cavern floor, crushed from where Ceony had landed on her bag after escaping the heart. She stiffened, but seven square-bodied cranes heeded her command and sprung to life in front of her—orange, yellow, maroon, white, white, white, and gray. Their quick flapping hummed through the cavern. Their long necks stretched forward as they sailed for Lira’s bodiless army, and Ceony could almost hear them caw a selfless battle cry just before striking their targets.
One bird collided with each hand, save for two who struck a half-rotten hand at the same time, one at the thumb, the other at the ring finger. The hands closed around the birds not four paces from Ceony and, as in the prison, fell to the ground.
Ceony’s mind spun. Adrenaline coursed up her neck and down into her legs, making her skittish. She had to get out of the cave—Emery’s heart rested too close to the battle. Lira blocked the entrance, conjuring her next spell.
Ceony already had hers set.
“Focus on your target,” Emery’s voice spoke in her memory as he had during his quick lesson in the new spell. “Feel it in your mind like your story illusions. If you do, the stars will hit their mark.”
Reaching into her bag, Ceony pulled free five tightly Folded, four-cornered paper stars, just like the ones Emery had worn going into that awful warehouse. She and Emery had Folded them so tightly they hadn’t been affected by the crushed bag. She locked her eyes on Lira’s muttering lips and bloodied hands, threw the stars, and ran for the cave mouth.
The stars spun through the air like pinwheels caught in a summer storm. Ceony didn’t watch to see them meet their target. Lira’s frustrated scream told her enough.
The morning sunlight, white behind thready clouds, burned her dry eyes and sizzled against the ocean that stirred about the black-rock coast below her. So deep, so hungry.
The water sprayed cool mist over Ceony as she darted over the uneven shore. A whip of amber kelp looped around her foot and fell away again, perhaps sensing Ceony’s urgency and deciding not to take part in it.
She didn’t get far before a crackling ribbon of gore circled around her. The shield chain encompassing her torso stiffened. The bubbling blood warped away from her body and crashed into the wet rocks, staining them in patterns like spiderwebs. The spell’s residue left a metallic taste in the back of Ceony’s throat.
Lira scowled and pulled a small vial of blood from the tight waistband of her slacks. It looked like her supply was getting low. “A parlor trick,” she said with a grin that was almost a grimace. “Do you really think a little paper sash can stop me?”
She advanced one step, uncorking the vial with a long thumbnail and dumping it into her hands. The blood coursed over her palm and dripped into the small, swirling streams of saltwater between jagged rocks under her feet.
“It has three times already,” Ceony countered, taking one step back for Lira’s every step forward. “So I’ll say yes.”
Lira smiled sweetly, and for a moment Ceony could see why Emery had been drawn to her, so many years ago. But the expression soured as Lira’s brows drew together, her forehead creased, and her nostrils flared. She said something in a bizarre tongue and waved her bloody hand as if she were throwing a cricket ball.
Ceony’s hand thrust into her bag. She braced herself for Lira’s attack.
It struck from behind.
The red-veined waves crashed into her like a blizzard wind, cold and blinding, nearly knocking her to the uneven ground. A jolt of alarm—as if she had been burned—shot from navel to crown. She ran from the wave so as not to be pulled into the ocean, but it had already done its damage, soaking her to her skin.
She felt the power drain from her shield chain. Two links between her shoulder blades gave out, and the chain flopped down to her ankles, nothing more than soggy pulp.
Ceony felt as though her own blood had been drained away with the wave. She searched her bag with white, shivering fingers, pulling out spell after ruined spell. Her paper fish, the elaborate confusion sphere Emery had Folded himself while she had made the stars. It had been meant as a distraction for . . .
Her hand touched the symmetrical rhombus beside Fennel. Dry, protected by the bodies of the crushed spells, as were Fennel and her binding chain. They all buzzed softly beneath her touch. The thin stack of unused papers had protected them, thank God.
Lira closed the gap between them, a cat stalking a grasshopper, as Ceony dropped wet spells at her feet. Ceony stumbled backward, trying to keep the Excisioner and her bloody hands at bay. Her heart hammered holes into her chest. Her skin itched. She swallowed against a dry throat.
She’d rather face Emery’s shadows again than be here, so unarmed. But she couldn’t run, not from this. Not back to Emery, cold and heartless.
“You’re weak, just like him,” Lira said with a sneer. “Worthless. All Folders are. Emery never had any real power, and neither do you.”
Ceony stopped retreating. She would not be a mouse, nor would she be a grasshopper. She dug her heels into the black rock. She had no confusion sphere, but she had other ways of distracting Lira.
“He signed the divorce papers the night he hid you,” she said, letting her face relax into the sort of smugness she couldn’t stand in other people. The sort of smugness Lira would have worn, had her anger not boiled so close to the surface of her skin. “You weren’t as in control of the situation as you think.”
Lira’s countenance didn’t alter, save for the slightest quirk of her left eyebrow, but Ceony noticed. Lira continued to advance. Ceony held her ground, trying to ignore the cold sweat beading down her spine.
“You weren’t in his heart, either,” she added. “Not how you are now. Not outside of a prison cell, at least. Or didn’t you notice?”
Lira paused eight or nine paces from Ceony, her eyes narrowed to slits. She looked like a snake—a coiled viper ready to spring. Ceony had insulted the flesh magician’s van
ity . . . or perhaps, deep inside the dark, hollow chambers of her heart, Lira still cared for Emery.
No. Not cared for. One didn’t rip out the heart of a man because she cared for him. No, to Lira, Emery’s heart was a souvenir, a trophy. Something to be owned. A sick sort of revenge for hunting Lira and her kind down. Emery may have been Lira’s lover once, but he had become her bane. Her nemesis. Her scourge.
And she hated it.
Swift as a falcon Lira drew her long dagger from her belt, her enthusiasm knocking its sheath askew. She held the knife out to her side like a broken wing and rushed Ceony. A distraction—Lira didn’t attack with the dagger, but with her crimson-stained hand.
“You must understand, Patrice, that Excisioners are a tricky matter,” Mg. Hughes had said. “They are wildly dangerous, and if they touch you, they can pull magic through your body. It is a killing magic.”
Ceony dashed to the side. Her right foot caught between two rocks, causing her to pitch forward. Lira’s outstretched hand swiped the air where Ceony’s head had been. Struggling, Ceony jerked her foot free, leaving her shoe wedged in its place. Jagged rock bit into her sole through her soaked and soiled stocking, but Lira didn’t allow her any time to dwell on it.
Lira spun, dagger windmilling through the air. Ceony leapt back, barely avoiding the tip of the blade as it whistled past her breast. Darting into a few inches of water between teethlike stones, Ceony yanked a paper glider from her bag.
The Folds fell apart in her hands. Too much water damage.
Lira charged. Ceony shrieked and scrambled to higher ground, dodging the hand that sought to enchant her own skin. Ceony rifled through the bag until she found a spell she could use.
“Breathe!” she commanded the paper bat, who took to the air with a two-sheet wingspan. It needed no more instruction than that, perhaps sensing its surroundings the same way Fennel did. The bat flew straight for Lira’s nose.
Ceony’s fingers grasped the binding chain, a chain woven with tight double rows of V-shaped links. The second spell Emery Thane had taught her in the chamber of doubt.
Ceony whirled around, hair fanning around her neck.
Lira snatched the bat from the air and crumpled its right wing.
“Bind!” Ceony ordered the chain.
Like a shark in deep waters, the chain darted from her hands toward Lira—
—who cut it into two uneven fragments with a broad sweep of her dagger. The binding chain’s pieces flopped to the rocks like fish out of water.
“As I said,” Lira spoke, only somewhat breathless, “no power at all.” Advancing, she took the last vial of blood from her waist and threw it at her feet. A cyclone of scarlet smoke enveloped her—the same spell she had used to escape the dining room after stealing Emery’s heart.
Only instead of fleeing, Lira reappeared a foot in front of Ceony.
Ceony’s exhaling breath dug claws into the soft flesh of her throat. Her hand shot into her bag for the rhombus, her last spell—
Lira grabbed her elbow—skin on skin—and held the dagger’s edge just below Ceony’s chin.
Lira grinned.
Ignoring the blade, Ceony shoved Lira away with all the strength her fatigued arms could muster and yanked the simple diamond-Folded paper from her sack.
“Do you know what happens when paper vibrates very, very fast?”
Lira growled and rammed into Ceony, shunting her into an eroded rock shelf opposite the ocean. Lira’s hand clutched Ceony’s neck. The point of the dagger pressed into her ribs. Lira smelled like blood and old, rusted coins.
Lira began to chant, and Ceony felt warm. Eerily warm. Too warm. Lira’s ancient spell seemed to coax Ceony’s very spirit from her bones.
She couldn’t get away. She clutched Emery’s spell in her hand, but she couldn’t get away.
She had to use it. Here. Now.
“Burst,” Ceony whispered, releasing the paper.
The rhombus began to quiver, faster and faster, buzzing like a hornet as it slowly, leisurely fell toward the ground. The buzz grew louder, higher, louder, higher . . .
The diamond-Folded paper exploded in a burst of fireworks and flame, blasting outward like a pistol with a blocked barrel.
The explosion flung Ceony sideways against the cliff. The ragged rocks cut through the fibers of her blouse and into her skin. She fell onto her elbow and hip, the taste of ash filling her mouth.
For several heartbeats everything looked white and bright, like the morning sun itself. As color, shape, and shadow gradually returned to her eyes, a high-pitched note rang in her ears, a tuning fork struck and never stilled.
She pushed herself up, arm aching, hip stiff. The rocky beach swished back and forth. Her temples throbbed with her pulse: PUM-Pom-poom.
Emery.
Across the rocks, nearly to where the ocean lapped at the shore, Lira sputtered and weakly tried to push herself onto all fours. Ebony drapes of damp hair hung over her cheeks.
Ceony forced herself up, clinging to the rock shelf. The morning spun and tilted. That constant note—perhaps a high B-flat—continued to ring inside her skull.
She had to act. Lira had touched her—all it would take was a quick recovery to recast whatever heinous spell the burst had interrupted.
Bits of half-soaked papers lay scattered over the ground, fallen from Ceony’s bag. Lira’s dagger lay on its side halfway between them, its hilt resting in a patch of lichen. Several gulls cried as they flew over the ocean, abandoning the site of the explosion.
Though the ocean still swayed in her vision, Ceony ran for the blade. Lira, peering up through her hair, staggered to her feet and sprinted for it as well.
Both their hands lunged for the knife.
Ceony’s fingers grasped it first.
Hefting the surprisingly heavy blade, Ceony shouted an unintelligible cry and arched the blade up and over her in an imperfect crescent. She felt something tug back on her swing, but not hard enough to stop it. The sharp blade pulled clean through.
Lira screamed.
Blood rained over the shore. Lira stumbled back, both hands rushing to her face to stanch the steady flow of red water pouring from a split cheek and gouged eye.
Ceony dropped the dagger, feeling her stomach flip inside out. Lira cried again and lashed out, backhanding Ceony across the jaw.
Ceony fell, catching herself on raw palms. Lira dropped to her knees, gasping and cursing, blood pouring between her fingers. She tried to chant her healing spell but choked on every other word. Her blood had spilled everywhere—it dyed the tiny pools and streams of high tidewater, stained the lichen, painted crimson streaks across rocks and paper.
Paper. Crumpled, damp, and torn paper, wet with blood.
Numb, Ceony reached for a drier piece singed about the edges. Lira’s blood sluggishly soaked through its fibers.
Her mind felt detached, her thoughts vacant as she touched the blood—the body’s ink—with an index finger. Her mind didn’t really process the idea; it merely materialized behind her eyes like a thread of nostalgia, as though it had always been there. It and nothing else.
She wrote nine letters and, with a shaky but strong voice, read them aloud.
“Lira froze.”
And she did.
Ceony stared at the still image of Lira hunched over and cradling her ruined face, tendrils of ice climbing up her legs and hunched back. Her grunts and gasps vanished, her lips parted midbreath. Strands of wild hair hung in the air free from gravity’s hold, as though someone had molded them in place with glue.
Ceony gaped. She had read the paper like an illusion. Like Pip’s Daring Escape. But this wasn’t a story. Or, rather, it was her story. Not an illusion at all.
She stared at her bloody finger, but her thoughts—her ability to process—remained far from her. She returned to the page, wrote, and read, “. . . and never moved again.”
The statue of Lira remained unchanged.
Ceony stood, letting the bloody pape
r fall to the rocks. A small whirlpool of hungry saltwater lapped up the words, sucking them back into the ocean. She backed seven steps away from Lira before a spot of brown on the ocean drew her eyes, close enough that she didn’t need to squint to make out its shape.
A boat. It held two men, their features too distant to be distinct. One rowed, oars flapping in sync on either side of the boat. The other knelt at the boat’s helm, peering toward the coast.
Ceony thought of the morbid seagull she had seen upon her arrival and tensed. The creature had been sent by someone, why not these two? Only the boat’s nearness pushed her legs to move.
She turned back for the cave. Her soul yearned to run, but her body refused. It wasn’t broken, only felt broken. Exhausted. Distant.
She stumbled into the cave, followed its wall with one hand until she reached the bowled shelf that held Emery’s heart, still beating strong.
She checked her bag, empty save for Fennel. She spoke to the dog silently in thought, thanking him, promising to restore him as soon as she was able. Then she picked a few pieces of him apart, careful not to damage the greater part of his body, and tiredly Folded the links for a vitality chain, just large enough to encircle a grown man’s heart.
Ceony fled the cave and climbed up the rocks before the boat reached the shore. She didn’t look back.
She found the enormous glider where she had left it and flew to London, carrying Emery’s heart next to her own.
CHAPTER 16
AS WIND RUSHED OVER her aching body and numb hands, Ceony’s mind drifted back to Emery’s home. Her home. What if he had passed on while she had been away? What if she had been too slow? Could an animated heart revive an inanimate body?
His heart fluttered weakly against hers, having lost much of its lingering strength since she lifted it from the enchanted pool.
The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Series) Page 18
