The Threads of Magic

by Alison Croggon

  She closed her eyes, waiting for the faint sting that meant the spell was beginning to work. Her pulse quickened and she felt an uncomfortable sensation of heat in her eyeballs, as if they were being cooked inside her head. It passed quickly. She breathed out, and slowly opened her eyes.

  This spell always made her feel slightly nauseous. A sense other than sight kicked into focus, making her aware of every living thing in the building. Objects that had seemed solid were now blurred and insubstantial, colourless shadows that shimmered in a dim luminescence. She could see through walls, which made it hard to assess distance.

  The tenement was alive with blurred, silverish people. Some of them were sleeping, others were eating, two people seemed to be arguing. Other kinds of glows, cats, mice, rats… Up in the attic, a dead baby was lying in a crib. Two house sprites, mischiefs and ratterbags, were gathered around it. They were benign spirits who rarely meant any harm, but they were always curious about death…

  Oni shook herself. She had to concentrate because she didn’t have a lot of time. A Spectre, or anything else supernaturally hidden, looked different from both the living and the dead. She had never seen one before, but Amina had told her how to look for them. They weren’t easy to find, Amina had said, but they were unmistakable. She said you felt them as much as you saw them.

  Oni scanned the building carefully. It seemed clear, but some intuitive caution made her check again. No, nothing. Wait, there was a man near by. Oni guessed he was standing on the stairwell outside Pip and El’s room. Unlike everyone else in the building, he was utterly still. She waited for a while, seeing if he would move, but he didn’t twitch a muscle.

  It had to be an assassin.

  For a moment she regretted ignoring her mother’s warning. Nobody would blame her for not going in. But she was so close, and she had to check. Before she could talk herself out of it she unlatched the window, which to her relief opened inwards, and climbed inside. Every tiny creak, every muffled movement, seemed unnaturally loud. She crouched on the floor like a lizard that had been spotted by a snake.

  Hardly daring to breathe, she crept down the hallway to the main room. Pip had told her that the loose floorboard was underneath the chest. She pulled the chest as quietly as she could along the floor, her heart in her mouth, but still the man outside the room didn’t move. It took a little while before she found the right board and prised it up.

  She reached inside the hole in the floor and felt around. There was nothing there. She almost didn’t believe it, and checked again to make sure. No parchment, no will, no deed, nothing.

  She swore under her breath. And then she saw, out of the corner of her second sight, that the man was coming towards the door. For a moment she froze, and then she went to replace the floorboard. In her fear she dropped it and it clattered to the ground. Suddenly the man was moving fast. Oni scrambled backwards along the hallway. The spell had faded completely by the time she reached the bedroom so she couldn’t see the assassin, but she heard the door open. Did he have a key? Of course he had a key. Assassins could get into any room they wanted, everyone knew that.

  The window had swung shut on its weight while she had been in the other room, and somehow it had become stuck. Oni forgot about concealment: she was purely terrified now. Her fingers were clumsy, all thumbs, and she couldn’t yank it open. Oni was still struggling with it when the man stepped into the bedroom – tall, thin, dressed all in black; dim, pitiless eyes.

  She turned at bay, trapped and desperate, and drew her knife.

  The assassin strode the two paces across the dark room and grabbed her arm, making her drop the knife. Oni twisted and bit him as viciously as she could. He let go, cursing, and slapped her hard across the face. She fell down and he pulled her up, twisting her arm behind her back so she cried out.

  “Well, well, well,” said the man. “What filthy little thief do we have here?”

  Oni, bent over against the pain in her arm, felt hot tears of rage running down her face. Why hadn’t she listened to her mother?

  “Don’t think I’ll forget that bite, maggot,” he said. “But luckily for you, someone wants you alive.”

  “Let go of me,” said Oni. She kicked his shins with her heels and he jerked her arm up so she gasped. “Let me go.”

  “No more struggling,” he said. His voice was cold. “Or I’ll ignore my orders and slit your throat from ear to ear.”

  He was bigger than she was, and stronger. There wasn’t any point fighting. Oni let herself go limp, and the man relaxed his grip so only the threat of pain was there.

  “Good boy,” said the man. “Certain people are very interested in you. If you’re helpful, you might even get through this with a whole skin.”

  Oni realized the assassin thought she was Pip. “I’m not a boy,” she said scornfully. “You got the wrong person.”

  He grabbed her chin and pulled her face into the dim light. She saw surprise and chagrin in his eyes.

  “See?” said Oni. “You might as well let me go.”

  “Oh, I’m not doing that,” he said. “I’m curious, see? I have so many questions. Why would an Eradian be creeping into this particular apartment on this particular day? What are you looking for?”

  While he spoke, Oni was trying to think what spell she could make with her hands behind her back. You can’t just think spells, you have to make them with your lips or your fingers or your breath. You need time and space. She had neither. And her mind was blank; everything she knew had been wiped away by panic. Her mother was right: she wasn’t ready, she had too much to learn…

  But something was altering in the room, as if there were a spell happening already. She could feel magic lifting the hairs on her arms. A cold magic, cold as the assassin’s eyes, but there was a strange heat in it. No, it was luminous … something was glowing … a green glow, getting brighter and brighter every instant.

  The assassin saw the light reflected in Oni’s eyes and turned around, letting her go. He straightened up, staring, his back to her. Oni came out of her trance and leapt for the window, wrenching it open. Even then the assassin didn’t react; he seemed to have forgotten all about her. She scrambled over the ledge, almost falling out head first, and saved herself at the last moment by grabbing the pipe. There was a blinding flash and then the room went dark.

  Oni knew, somehow, that the room was now empty.

  She didn’t remember how she got down the pipe, how she hurtled along the tiny alley out into the street. Her next memory was of being three blocks away, bent over, trying to catch her breath.

  That was bad magic. Very bad magic. Cold like something dead, like an absence that shouldn’t be there. She felt it with every hair on her body, deep down in the marrow of her bones.

  But whatever it was, it had saved her life.

  Chapter Twenty

  WHEN ONI TOLD THE OTHERS THAT THE PAPERS HAD gone, El started to cry, but not for long because there wasn’t a lot of point.

  “What are we going to do, Pip? We got nowhere to go now.”

  “We still got our place,” said Pip stoutly. “Everybody knows it’s ours.”

  “But Missus Pledge, she said we needed the deed, so no one could take it away.”

  “We can’t go there now, anyway.”

  “I wish you never took that box. I wish I never saw that Heart. It’s all spoiled.”

  “What, our beautiful lives?”

  “It was all right,” said El. She sniffed and went to wipe her nose on her sleeve and then stopped herself and took out a clean handkerchief. Amina had given them both new clothes, and she didn’t want to dirty her dress.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  The siblings started to argue. Oni rolled her eyes and for the first time looked at Amina. Their gazes locked and she went quiet for a while, and then flashed her mother a rueful smile.

  “I’m sorry, Ma,” she said. “You were right.”

  “Next time, listen,” said Amina. “I’ve only got one of
you.”

  “What do you think that magic was?”

  Amina frowned. “I don’t want to guess,” she said.

  “It was bad, Ma. It made me feel all sick inside.”

  Amina was silent for a few moments, staring at the wall. “I think it’s a Rupture,” she said. “And if it is, it would most likely have been caused by the Heart.” She looked at Pip. “Pip?”

  Pip was still in the middle of listing all his grievances, and didn’t hear her.

  “Shut up, Pip,” said Oni, cuffing him gently. “Ma’s asking you something.”

  “Has the Heart done anything odd today? Did anything change while Oni was out?”

  “It went really cold this morning, just for a little while. Sometimes it feels like this ball of ice.”

  “When was that?”

  “When we were shelling the beans.”

  Amina thought. “About an hour ago,” she said. “That would have been about when Oni was in your place.”

  “You think the Heart saved Oni?”

  “Maybe.” Amina directed her gaze at her daughter. “Did you touch it?”

  Oni nodded slowly. “When Pip showed me. I felt sorry for it,” she said. She glanced at Pip. “It was warm, like it was skin.”

  “Then maybe it has a connection to you,” said Amina.

  “But Pip touches it all the time!” El said. “What does that mean? Is it going to hurt him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Amina. “It’s a powerful magical artefact, which means danger. I think Pip has to be very careful. What do you feel about the Heart, Pip?”

  Pip, his attention arrested, thought it over. “I feel … that it likes me,” he said slowly. “Like it’s a person. It wants to be looked after. It doesn’t want to be left alone, because it’s lonely.” His hand automatically went to his hip, where the Heart now lay in the deep buttoned pockets of his new breeches. “I think it’s on our side.”

  “It’s not on anybody’s side,” said Amina sharply. “You remember that.”

  Pip nodded, but he didn’t agree. If the Heart was making assassins disappear, it was definitely on their side.

  “So who do you think stole our will?” he said, to change the subject. “And why? What would assassins want with our place?”

  “I don’t think it is a will,” said Amina.

  “It is so!” said El hotly. “Missus Pledge told us! She showed us the words and everything, the squiggly shapes that meant Eleanor and Pipistrel, so we’d know what it said.”

  Amina smiled. “Maybe it’s a will as well,” she said. “Things can have more than one purpose.”

  “It’s just an old parchment, in red and black ink and special writing,” said El. “It didn’t look magic. Just important.”

  “It might be the instructions on how to use the Heart,” said Amina. “Missus Pledge might have had it from Old Missus Pledge.”

  “Maybe it’s just what El and Pip think it is,” said Oni.

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” said Amina. “But we won’t know until we get it back.”

  El looked up, her eyes shining with hope. “Are we going to get our papers back, Amina?”

  “If the assassins took them, they would have given them to Cardinal Lamir,” said Oni.

  “Exactly.”

  “But how would you get them back from him?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Amina. She drummed her fingers on the table, thinking, and then reached a decision.

  “I’m going out. I need to talk to the Witches’ Council. All of you, stay here – even you, Oni. I don’t want you going back to your place, or to work. Don’t make any noise. And don’t answer the door.”

  “When will you be back, Ma?”

  Amina, putting on a bonnet and coat, didn’t answer. Instead, she turned to Pip. “Think good thoughts, boy. It might make the Heart behave itself.”

  As the door swung shut behind her, Pip stared at Oni. “Think good thoughts?” said Pip. “What sort of good thoughts?”

  “I don’t know,” said Oni. “But think them anyway.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  THERE WAS GOING TO BE A STORM. SIBELIUS FELT THE oppressive airs bearing down on him, and he had the slight headache he always got behind his eyes when the weather changed. He stood up from his desk, stretched his arms and walked to the window, unlatching it and opening it wide. From here, an attic room on the fifth floor of the Cardinal’s palace, he could see over the roofs of the city, past the smoke-stained churches and crumbling palaces of the centre of Clarel to the tangled streets beyond. The sun hung blindingly in the sky, bleaching it white.

  All afternoon, since he had finished his duties at Clarel Palace, he had been staring at a grubby length of parchment. It appeared to be the Last Will and Testament of one Mistress Prunelissima Arabella Pledge, spinster and seamstress of Omiker Lane of the Chokally Quarter. She left all her worldly goods, including the key and deed to her rooms, Apartment IV on Floor III of Number II Omiker Lane, to Pipistrel and Eleanor Wastan, citizens.

  There followed a list of items: a silver cream jug, thirty needles of sundry sizes and fifteen packets of pins, an itemized store of silks and velvets, a set of china missing three plates, a purse that held the money for her funeral, which was to be simple and dignified… Signed and witnessed. It was written on the back of what appeared to be the deed to the apartment. The document was very wordy for a deed, and included a plan of the apartment with its dimensions painstakingly rendered, from the heights of each wall, to the size of the bedroom window.

  The will had been taken from the apartment the day before by one of Cardinal Lamir’s minions. The Cardinal seemed certain it contained a clue to the workings of the Stone Heart. The document was slightly eccentric, perhaps, but it was hardly evidence of witchcraft. The woman used no witch codes; everything was written in conventional script.

  But Sibelius had to find something. His life depended on it.

  He had requested that someone verify the measurements of the room, just to be certain, since the numerals were likely the most fruitful place to start. He had no word back, but he was sure they would match. Doors and windows and ceilings in such buildings were generally about those sizes.

  He was familiar with how cunning witches could be in hiding their nefarious practices. Perhaps this document was particularly cunning. He had no idea why Cardinal Lamir was so convinced of the sinister purpose behind the humble parchment, but he was afraid of what might happen if he reported that it meant nothing. He had to investigate every possible secret hidden in these spidery words.

  Perhaps there was an invisible script which required some treatment before it became manifest. Some appeared when you heated the parchment, some when you soaked it in milk. If it was a magic text, he would need a spell to unlock it. But he didn’t know any spells.

  He gloomily watched the clouds gathering on the horizon. When he turned back to his desk, he realized he was hungry. He irritably rang for a servant to bring him food, and sat down with a sigh, mopping his brow.

  He had to find something. Anything.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  AMINA RETURNED AT DUSK. SHE LOOKED PLEASED, but wouldn’t talk about what she’d said to the Witches’ Council, although El was burning with impatience. “You’ll find out in good time,” she said. “And for now, there’s food to make. Get peeling those turnips.”

  “Did you find out how to get our will back?” asked El.

  “Maybe,” said Amina. “Maybe not. I’ve found somewhere for you to sleep for now. You can’t stay here. I have work to do.”

  Pip, who was chopping carrots into randomly sized pieces, was interested. “Where?”

  “Keep your eyes on your work, or it will be your finger that gets sliced.”

  Even Oni’s wheedling didn’t work, so they all did what they were told, and watched as Amina threw the results of their labour into an iron pot and swung it over the fire.

  “Now,” said Amina, and gathered the scent
ed candles she had used the night before. She had just put the last one in place when there was a knock on the door. Everyone froze.

  “Out into the garden,” Amina said, sweeping up the candles and stuffing them into a drawer. “And be quiet. It’s probably one of my officials wanting a window fixed or something, but I don’t want you seen.”

  Oni, El and Pip sat on a bench against the wall, hidden from the view of the window. Out of the cool of Amina’s kitchen it was stuffy and breathless, even though the sun had already set. Swarms of midges danced in the shadows. El, who didn’t like the heat, sat fanning herself, uncomfortably flushed. She opened her mouth to complain and Oni put her finger over her lips. “Ma said hush, right?”

  El pouted, but obeyed. Pip had a bad feeling in his gut, but he wasn’t going to say so. Mind you, he had had a bad feeling ever since El had told him about old Olibrandis.

  Nothing happened for a while. Then they heard muffled voices in the kitchen – men’s voices. El watched Oni creep to the window and crouch beneath it so she could hear. The voices grew louder, and then there was Amina’s voice, raised in indignation. Pip still couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, but he was suddenly aware that the Heart was growing cold against his hip.

  Oni looked over to El and Pip, her eyes wide, and then flung herself at them and began pulling them towards the little gate in the garden wall. She muttered something as she opened the latch, and the gate, which usually creaked impressively, made no noise at all. She pushed the others outside and closed it behind her. They were now in the park of the Old Palace, in the suffocating darkness under the tangled trees.

  “What happened?” whispered Pip.

  “Ssssh,” said Oni. “We got to get out of here.”

  “Oni, I don’t feel good,” said El. “It’s bad here. I can’t breathe…”

  “Hold hands so we don’t lose each other,” said Oni. “Quickly. Come on.”

  It was hard to move quickly. Oni led them through the undergrowth, avoiding open spaces. At first the Heart was so cold against Pip’s hip that it hurt his skin, but the further they moved from the Old Palace the warmer it became. He felt sure they were going in circles, but at last they found the fence and, after a little difficulty, the hole in the railings. Oni pushed them through the gap and into the street.