An Unkindness of Magicians

by Kat Howard

  “If you can’t hold magic, you can’t hold a House. And you have no magic.”

  The whispers of the crowd now an ocean of noise. “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “Prove me wrong.” Sydney held out a candle.

  “This is absurd,” Merlin said. He shoved his way forward and lit the candle. “See?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sydney said. “I meant light the candle without relying on any of the magic that you’ve spent years stealing from the Unseen World and collecting for yourself.”

  “Like this?” Lara said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small glass jar, silver-bound and humming with magic.

  “That cabinet was locked—” Merlin bit off his own words, but the damage was done.

  “House Merlin forfeits the challenge,” Lara said clearly. “On the grounds that it was improperly made, by someone with no right to hold a House. As heir, I serve notice that I intend to petition for immediate removal of Miles Merlin, both from his position as Head of House and from the Unseen World.”

  “House Prospero accepts your forfeit,” Ian said, and stepped off the dueling grounds, formally ending the challenge.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Miles said.

  “We’re not quite finished here,” Sydney said.

  The gathering of shadows nearest to Sydney thickened, solidified. Resolved into the shape of a woman. Grace Valentine stepped out of them.

  Miles stepped back.

  “Oh, don’t look surprised, Miles. That is what you sent me there to learn, isn’t it? How to be a Shadow? Wrapping ourselves in them, becoming one with silence and darkness and secrets, that’s one of the first spells we’re taught.

  “Although, I suppose you didn’t actually send me there to learn.” She raised her hands, and her scars shone silver. “All I was supposed to do was give up my magic and die. And not even for the Unseen World. Just for you. To pay a debt, you said.”

  Sydney stood at Grace’s shoulder. “Though not the usual debt, not the one each House here has agreed to, not the one that they pay. A personal debt—one you owed to Shadows so that you could modify the spell your family had created. So you could keep that power for yourself. Even then, even after you stole Grace and locked her away in there, it wasn’t enough. And now, not only is your power gone, but the spell is corrupted. Your actions caused the failures of magic.”

  Lara spoke up. “Which is why, as interim Head of the Unseen World, I formally renounce its ties to the House of Shadows. The link that we thought was to our benefit has nearly been our undoing.” She followed her brother, the noise around them both a roar of whispers and disbelief.

  “You can’t possibly prove that,” Miles blustered.

  “I have become increasingly weary of people telling me what I can’t do.” Sydney raised her hands, fingers moving as if she were playing a game of cat’s cradle, weaving and unweaving through the air. Not yarn, but magic—strands of magic that burned in the air. A spider’s web, with Miles Merlin at its center, a center that was a gaping, hungry hole, a drowning place for power to disappear into, the opposite end of each strand connected to a magician in the room—to a member of the Unseen World who had agreed to the bargain with Shadows, whose House had paid the required sacrifice.

  She dropped her hands, the magic disappearing with the motion.

  “Eventually, what this means is that all of you will lose your magic. Each and every one of you who tied your magic to that of Shadows—to make it easier, to make it hurt less, to make it whatever it is you told yourself you were doing so you could sleep at night. Each of you will have your magic fail and fail and fail again.

  “Or you could break from it, and I do mean break. I will undo the spells for you on the condition that Shadows—and anything like it—never happens again. Your choice.”

  “That’s not quite their only choice.”

  Grace went white with shock. “Shara.”

  “Sydney did tell me that I could do anything I wanted now that I was free. This is what I want. What I’ve always wanted—power here, among you.”

  As pale as a corpse that had clawed its way out of its tomb, hair tangled and dress tattered, Shara held power in her hands as she stood in the center of the room and spoke to the crowd. “I can undo my brother’s mess. Give everyone here back their power and the ease with which they used it. Give them even more, if they like—Shadows has always been held back in what it could be and do. Miles promised me a place in this world, and I am claiming it now.”

  “No,” Sydney said. “You’re not.” She looked out over the crowd. Laurent met her eyes, and when she nodded, said: “Candidate House Beauchamps challenges the House of Shadows, the challenge to have immediate effect.”

  “Oh, good,” Shara said. “I was so hoping.”

  This was different from fighting the House. This was different from fighting anyone.

  Unlike her brother, Shara was a powerful magician. And for all that Sydney had made herself, it was Shara who had trained her. She hooked power into Sydney’s magic, tied it to the spell Miles had used that had been anchored into the Angel of the Waters, that had pulled power from the sacrifices sent into Shadows. That was now pulling power from Sydney, and from the Unseen World itself. Shara let the spell do the work, a terrible black hole of magic, consuming everything in its path.

  Sydney felt like she was being pulled apart from the inside as that terrible hunger clawed at her magic, swallowing it down.

  There were screams from the watching magicians, gasps of pain and terror, as their magic pulled away from them, too. Everyone who had used the magic that came from Shadows was being drained—not only of the magic that Shadows had given, but of their own, the hunger in the spell finally loosed to consume everything.

  There was a weight, a balance. Sydney could feel the scale, cold and merciless, could feel the weight on the opposite side as she had felt it that first time she had signed her name on the contract to Shadows. She was very good at sensing magic. And the balance was this: There would be magic, or there would not be.

  There was a choice.

  Magic rose like spring, like green beneath her skin.

  Sydney spoke a word, and the word was a knife, and with that word she cut a piece of her own shadow. She wrapped the shadow into the blade, sharpening its edge, until it was as cutting as life. She cut into her own skin and bone, following the scars that were already there. The scent of spring, heavy and thick and humid and full of life, rose into the air. Magic, amplified.

  And then she opened her hands and gave her magic back. Stopped fighting the spell, the hunger, the pain as it unmade her.

  “What are you doing?” Shara spat. “It’s too much.”

  Sydney spun, whip-fast, and stabbed Shara through the heart with the knife of shadows. “I know.”

  • • •

  It was not the normal end of a challenge. There was a victor and there was a body, and yet there was still a chaos of magic unweaving itself in the center of the room. Shara’s spell had not died with her.

  “Oh no,” Verenice said. “Oh, Sydney, what have you done?”

  “What’s happening?” Ian asked, tension in every line of his body, both hands curled in different spells. “Can you help her?”

  “Maybe, but—”

  “You are the only one in this room who might understand the magic Shara used—you were the only other one strong enough. Please,” Ian said, “if you can stop this, do it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “Please,” he repeated.

  Verenice nodded.

  Magic, spring and green, sparked like fireflies from Sydney as she stood in the center of the room, being unmade. “The spell just needs enough magic, and then it will end. Use the knife.”

  Horror on Verenice’s face. “Sydney, no.”

  “Verenice, you said you would help. You would see Shadows ended. I need you to do this for me.”

  Fast, fast enough that the motion
s left no time for thought, Verenice pulled the knife from Shara’s unmoving chest. She then gathered Sydney’s shadow, bundling it in her hand like fine cloth. She looked at Sydney one more time, and when Sydney nodded, she cut.

  Sydney screamed like a broken heart as her shadow was severed from her body.

  Verenice let go as soon as she finished the cut, and the terrible unweaving continued, each fragment of Sydney’s shadow being consumed. It flew in sparks, green like fireflies, green like spring, green like hope, and then it disappeared.

  And then the spell stopped. The shadow gone, the scales balanced, the debt paid. The assembled magicians felt their hands warm as their connection to magic returned.

  All of them except for Sydney.

  “Thank you,” she told Verenice.

  Verenice, weeping, looked away.

  “There’s a will,” Sydney said to Grace. “The House is yours.”

  And in the middle of their shock, she walked from the room, leaving magic behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sydney stood on the balcony of her apartment, looking down at a city that glittered and shone so brightly that some people called it magic. High enough above it all to be alone, in the night, in the dark, in air that smelled almost like spring.

  Nothing hurt. No backlash from the magic, no pain in the ragged ends of her shadow. There was simply nothing there, not even numbness. Not even a shadow.

  She dug her fingernails into her palms until her hands bled, needing the pain to focus.

  Things had worked almost, almost as she had planned. Shadows was gone. Magic remained in the world. There had simply been a sacrifice.

  Sydney did not look behind her, where the lights of the city were not casting a shadow. She did not reach to feel the green crackle of power running through her veins. But her bleeding hands moved through shape after shape, spell after spell. Not hope. Not precisely.

  She had known Shara would come back. Where else would she have gone, with her rage and ambition, but to the place she’d always thought should be hers? Sydney had just thought her spells would die when she did—Shadows and its avatar, both gone at once.

  Maybe the spell had been too corrupt by then or the magic too bound into the Unseen World itself, into all the other magicians. Maybe Shara truly had outplayed her. Maybe she had just been unlucky.

  Maybes didn’t matter—she was what she was, now.

  And the magic of the city, those bright and glittering lights, was all the magic that was left.

  Sydney went inside and crawled under all of her blankets. She didn’t sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The message arrived in a variety of ways. Email. Via text. Type-written formalities on plain, business-weight white. Handwritten letters in bordeaux ink, sealed with wax. In each instance, the words were the same.

  Fortune’s Wheel had ceased its Turning. The world had been remade.

  House Prospero—as led by Grace Valentine—would now head the Unseen World.

  Laurent had been made, as he had hoped, Head of a new House. Very little else of the Turning had turned out how he’d expected it. He poured himself a whiskey and toasted its end.

  Lara Merlin had been confirmed as Head of House Merlin. Miles had not been seen since the night of what proved to be the Turning’s final challenge.

  The House of Shadows was no longer in existence. The Angel of the Waters once again held only the magic inherent in art.

  There had been no further failures of magic.

  Fortune’s Wheel did turn. Some had risen, and some had fallen. It was a new beginning, and all would be different until it was time for the world to be remade again.

  • • •

  “I see,” Miranda said, lips tight and thin, knuckles white as they pressed against her skin. “You said you were good at sensing these things—is it completely gone? Not coming back?”

  She sat on the couch in her hotel room, tea growing cold in her hands.

  Verenice pushed away the memory of Sydney’s shadow in one hand and a knife in the other and explained to Miranda. “I told you that our binding to Shadows wasn’t over when we left—that we paid a debt.”

  Miranda nodded.

  “That debt was paid in small pieces of our shadows.” She gestured to hers, moving so the torn and ragged ends were easier to see. “It’s very akin to the way magic collects in the bones of the hand. Symbolic, but a symbol powerful enough to be made real.

  “When the spell went wrong, Sydney asked me to cut her entire shadow off, to give back all the magic in it at once, in order to keep magic in the world.”

  “How could one person possibly contain that much?” Miranda asked.

  “You’ll remember the Four Seasons duel, early in the Turning, where there was a failure of magic,” Verenice said.

  “Yes. I was there. It was an excess of spring, as if the spell was flooding the room with magic. Terrifying.” She shuddered once with the memory.

  “When Sydney stopped the spell, she channeled the magic that had been contained in it. She’s been holding it ever since. That excess was enough.”

  “But the cut—the removal of her magic like that. It’s survivable?”

  “Yes. People live without magic all the time.” Most of them didn’t die of it. Most of them.

  “I am aware of that,” Miranda said. “I’ve lost mine as well.”

  Verenice didn’t tell her that it wasn’t the same, not at all. Miranda would believe what she needed to.

  “But what I don’t understand is why she would possibly give up her magic in that fashion. She made very clear that she hated magic, hated Shadows, hated the entire Unseen World. Why not just let the spell continue, let everyone lose their magic and be mundane?”

  Verenice leaned over, gently took the cup and saucer from Miranda’s shaking hands. “She hated Shadows, yes. Hated what magic had become in the hands of the Unseen World. But hate magic? No, that wasn’t it. Not at all. She loved magic, and she saw it leaving, and so she did what she had been made to do—she became a sacrifice.”

  She watched Miranda break then, her eyes close, her face slide into lines of mourning.

  “If you see her, if you think it will help her to hear it, please tell her that I’m proud of her,” Miranda said.

  “If those conditions are ever met,” Verenice said carefully, “I will.”

  • • •

  “Anything for me today, Henry?” Sydney asked as she walked back intSydney walked through Central Park with Madison. Theyo her building.

  “There’s a gentleman over there, waiting, miss.”

  Ian stood by the elevators. “Verenice gave me your address. Do you mind if I come up?”

  “Sure. Fine.” She shrugged. “Thanks, Henry.”

  The silence in the elevator was thick enough to suffocate.

  “I’m not sure why you’re here,” she said as she unlocked the door.

  “You know, I’ve never been in your apartment. It’s nice,” Ian said.

  “I didn’t want people to know where I lived. Doesn’t matter now.” She started making coffee, bumped a mug off the counter with her elbow. Her hand flicked out, and she spoke a series of words that ended with the shattering of the mug and a loud, “Oh, fuck this!”

  She slammed the other mug to the floor.

  “Sydney?” Ian asked.

  “Just get away from me. Just go.” She slumped down to the floor, sitting among the wreckage.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said. “Your hand.”

  She laughed, sharp and harsh, and tilted her head back to rest against the cupboard. “I don’t even have Band-Aids. I never needed them. I had magic.”

  “I can—”

  “Leave it. A little blood won’t kill me.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I hate being like this.”

  “I’d be surprised if you didn’t,” he said.

  “Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “The worst part is I can still light a ca
ndle. Like some fucking mundane who knows just enough to be dangerous. It gives me a bloody nose, and yet every morning when I wake up, it’s the first thing I do. And then the second thing I do is try to cast something else. Anything else. I can’t, of course, but I try.

  “I can’t not try.” Her voice was suffused with loss.

  Ian moved his hand just enough that he was barely touching hers. “I know.”

  “I feel like I’m not me anymore. And don’t you dare give me some bullshit platitude about how I still am and how nothing important about me has changed, or I swear, magic or not, I will figure out a way to throw you off my balcony.”

  “Mine’s better. The balcony.”

  Sydney looked at him. Laughed. It sounded almost like an actual laugh this time, not bitterness given voice. “Why do you think I’m always on yours?”

  Then, quieter. “Magic was who I was. I felt it in my blood and my bones, Ian. It was me, and now it’s gone, and I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” he said. “Who you are now. And I’d really like to stick around and see who that is, if you’ll let me.”

  She blew out a breath and leaned her head onto his shoulder. He wasn’t a solution, not at all, but he was an ease in the loneliness. A moment of warmth. For right now, that could be enough. “Do you want to stay and watch me light a candle tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The elevator doors to Laurent’s apartment slid open. Sydney hesitated for a moment, then stepped into his offered hug, held on. “It’s really good to see you.”

  “How’ve you been?” he asked. “I got some of those macarons you like—flower flavors for you and chocolate for me—so we can eat while we catch up.”

  “It’s really, really good to see you.” She smiled and sat down at the long table, facing the windows, looking out over a city that still looked magical. “And I’d rather hear how you are—how’s being an official Head of House?”