Some accounts told that the Wyrdwood fought back against the invaders and that many men were lost within its dim groves. One of Ivy’s favorite tales as a child recounted how a great chieftain rode into a valley only to find a forest where his army had been encamped the day before. According to those stories, it was the witches who had awakened the power of the wood and compelled it to rise up. However, in time more and more trees fell, and at last the Wyrdwood’s fury was quelled by Altania’s first great magician, Gauldren. From that day on, the music of axes rang out freely.
At least, that was what the histories told. In these modern times, only a few ragged patches of the Wyrdwood remained. Ivy had never seen any of them herself, as most were far out in the country.
“Besides,” Ivy went on, “our own father is a magician, and he’s not wicked, is he? And it can’t be wicked for me to do what he did.”
“Yes, it can,” Lily said. “There are lots of things that men are free to do that women get in all sorts of trouble if they so much as try. Like act onstage in a play.”
Ivy hesitated. It was true that all of the magicians she had read about were men, and most of them lords at that, descended from one of the seven Old Houses (though a few gentlemen practiced the arcane arts, as her father once had). However, magick wasn’t like acting in a play. By its nature it was occult, a thing done in secret, away from prying eyes. Ivy would never do anything that might bring discredit upon her family. But how could there be even the appearance of impropriety if no one but her sisters saw her?
Resolved, she fixed her eyes on the book. “Don’t speak,” she said. “The incantation must not be interrupted once it’s begun.”
Before there could be any more protest, she began to recite the unfamiliar words on the page before her. Rose’s mouth hung agape in silent amazement, and though Lily squirmed in her seat, Ivy’s warning must have sounded suitably dire, for she made no more protests.
The words were harder to speak than Ivy had supposed. Her tongue seemed thick and heavy, as if she had just eaten a mouthful of honey. The language of magick was older than humankind itself, or at least that was what a book she had read once claimed.
She spoke the final words. A silence descended over the parlor, and it seemed to Ivy that a gloom seeped through the windows and pressed from all around. In the gray light, something dark and sleek darted across the room.
“I see a shadow!” Rose gasped.
Ivy shivered. Had the spell worked?
“It’s only Miss Mew,” Lily said, reaching under the table and picking up the little tortoiseshell cat. True to her name, the cat let out a noise of protest. Her fur was a mixture of cream and caramel and deep brown, but in the gloom it seemed darker.
“Was Mew chasing the shadow?” Rose said.
Lily rolled her eyes. “No, silly, she is the shadow.”
Rose smiled at Ivy. “Then the spell worked, for Miss Mew ran straight to you, Ivy.”
The cat squirmed from Lily’s arms and walked across the table, touching its nose to the runes drawn in the dust and smearing them with its paws.
Ivy did her best to disguise her disappointment and gave her youngest sister an arch look. “Well, it appears you’re right. It seems I can’t do magick after all. There is no need to suppress your gloating.”
Lily rose from her chair, then moved around to press her cheek against Ivy’s. “I’ll go down to the kitchen to see if Mother needs any help distracting Mrs. Murch. Come, Rose, you can help.”
“I’m sure she can do that quite well enough on her own,” Ivy said, but Lily was already bounding from the parlor, Rose in tow.
Ivy shut the book and wiped away the remainder of the runes with her hand. Perhaps Lily was right. Perhaps magick was something only for men. Just as so many things in the world were.
Miss Mew let out a plaintive sound and nudged her nose against Ivy’s dusty hands.
“I have no sympathy for you,” Ivy said with a laugh, scratching the cat’s ears. “You’re allowed to make your own livelihood. You may hunt mice with the tomcats whenever you wish, while we must…” Her mirth faded to gray, like the sky outside the window. “While we must sit here and wait for the Mr. Gadwicks of the world to stop paying attention to their hounds for a moment and look at us instead. Two thousand regals indeed! I would take a husband with far less income, as long as he had far fewer dogs.”
Not that she had any prospect of marrying a gentleman like Mr. Gadwick. While the Lockwell name might be old enough to warrant such a match, it was far from rich enough. They could barely afford to keep the house here on Whitward Street, let alone grant a generous portion to a would-be suitor. However, that was something her mother had a tendency to forget. Lately she had been filling Lily’s head with the notion that each of the sisters would marry a well-off gentleman, or even—if they were very lucky and made themselves very charming—a baronet. Ivy knew that was unlikely. They would do well to win the attention of far more humble suitors, if they won any at all.
SOMETIME LATER, WILBERN limped into the parlor to light the candles; outside the window, the long twilight finally gave way to night. Ivy shut her book; reading by candlelight made her eyes ache. Besides, candles were too expensive to waste. According to stories Mrs. Murch had heard, the Crown was buying up great quantities of them, hoarding them for some unknown purpose, and driving up the cost. Ivy waited for Wilbern to leave, extinguished all but one of the tapers, then went upstairs to return the book to the shelf where she had gotten it.
Ivy had just reached the third landing when she heard a thudding noise from above. She halted, gripping the banister. The sound was repeated once, then twice.
“Ivy!”
She glanced down the stairs. Lily was on the landing below her.
“What was that sound?” Lily said in an exaggerated whisper, such as an actor might use onstage in a critical scene.
“I believe it’s Father.”
Lily nodded. “That’s what I thought. It was very loud, and Rose isn’t that clumsy. You’d better go to him, Ivy. You’re the only one who can make him calm again.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is so. You know it is. Even Mother says it.”
Ivy started to protest, but then another thud emanated from above.
“Please!” Lily implored. “Do it before Mother hears. You know how upset she gets.”
Tucking the book under her arm, Ivy turned and dashed up the stairs. She made a quick survey of the fourth floor, but all the rooms were empty, so she ran around back to the servants’ stairs and up the steps to the attic.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust, for the only illumination came from the streetlamps below. She moved forward, stumbling as her foot struck something. It was a book. She bent down to pick it up and saw more books scattering the floor.
Another thud. She hurried to the far end of the attic and around a tall bookcase. Mr. Lockwell stood on the other side, muttering as he ran his hands over the volumes that crowded the shelf.
“I can’t find it,” he said. His blue felt waistcoat was askew, and his white hair was a cloud about his head.
“It’s all right, Father,” Ivy said, touching his arm. “I’m here.”
She might have struck him, given his reaction. Mr. Lockwell recoiled from her, mouth agape and eyes wild.
Ivy gripped his wrist. “It’s me, Father. It’s Ivy. Do you see?”
He tried to pull away, but the motion was weak, and she did not let go. Finally he shuddered, and the feverish glint of terror faded from his eyes. He turned back to the bookshelf, pushing his spectacles up his nose. “It’s here somewhere, but I can’t find it.”
“What can’t you find?” she said, even though she had asked the same question a hundred times before. “What are you searching for, Father?”
He pulled a book off the shelf and let it drop to the floor without looking at it.
Ivy took a breath. “I’ll get a light.”
She ran down to the
third floor and found on the landing a lamp Wilbern had lit, then hurried back up the stairs, so that by the time she reached the attic she was panting. Mr. Lockwell was on his hands and knees now, picking through the books. She lit candles all around—light always seemed to help him—then pulled him to his feet.
“It’s not here,” he said, scowling.
She smoothed his hair with a hand. Years ago it had been dark and thick, just like Mother’s and Rose’s and Lily’s; Ivy was the only one in the family who had light hair and eyes. Then, almost overnight, Mr. Lockwell’s hair had gone from black to white. That had been years ago, when Ivy was younger than Lily was now. Her father had not left the upper floors of the house since.
“Come, Father. Show me your globe.” She gave his arm a tug, and he followed as a child might, feet shuffling against the floor.
In a corner, on a carved stand with clawed feet, rested the globe. It was a fabulous artifact, larger than Ivy could put her arms around, fashioned from various spheres wrought of crystal and silver and lacquered wood. Some of the spheres were arranged concentrically, one nested inside the other, while smaller orbs were mounted on arms and could be swung around the whole.
While most globes depicted the world, this one was different; it depicted the heavens instead. The spheres represented the celestial orbs, which held the sun, moon, and stars in a substrate of crystalline aether, along with the eleven wandering planets, each of which was named for a figure from ancient Tharosian mythology. Inside the globe was a profusion of gears and pulleys, and the stand offered knobs that could be used to turn the spheres in different directions.
It was like some fantastical clock. Indeed, from what Ivy had read, the movements of the heavens were like the workings of a great clock. Each of the celestial spheres spun at a certain rate, moving about the others in whirling revolutions and subtle epicycles. It was by studying these patterns that men of science were able to predict the length of days and nights and when eclipses and other heavenly events would occur.
“Yes, very good,” Mr. Lockwell said, growing excited as he turned the various knobs with trembling hands. “I can use this to calculate when the conjunction will occur. I must set Dalatair to retrograde, and Anares must be in phase with Loerus…”
While her father worked the globe, Ivy began picking up books. Some of them were about magick, but other volumes discussed Tharosian philosophy, or the taxonomy of snails, or the making of mechanical engines; a few were books of poetry, and there was even what appeared to be one of Lily’s romances (the only kind of book her youngest sister would bother to open), which had somehow found its way up here—no doubt by means of Cassity and her haphazard methods of straightening.
A metallic sound interrupted her, and she looked up to see Mr. Lockwell’s hands slip from the globe’s knobs and levers. Two of the smaller, outermost orbs had collided. Now they were lodged against each other, so that the knobs would not turn.
Ivy rose and went to her father. She moved the two orbs apart, freeing them, and replaced her father’s hands on the knobs, but they slipped off again, falling to his sides. His lips moved, but no sound escaped them.
A heaviness came over her, a sensation of oppression, as if she could feel the night outside weighing down on the roof and straining to creep inside the windows, through cracks in the ceiling, pressing on the very air so that she could hardly draw a breath. It was like what she had felt in the parlor when she tried to work the incantation, only the feeling was more distinct now. It was as if the darkness wanted to suffocate her, or rather, it was as if it wanted to replace her, wanted to consume everything she was.
You’re tired and dusty from putting away the books, that’s all, she admonished herself.
Only it wasn’t just that she was tired. Because maybe it didn’t matter how many books she read. No number of them would ever be enough, not if Lily was right. Not if a woman could never do magick.
She took Mr. Lockwell’s hand and gazed into his eyes, willing him to look back at her with affection and intelligence as he did when she was a child. He stared as if he did not see her and instead looked on some far-off place.
“Tell me, Father,” she said, tightening her grip on his hand. “Please, tell me what spell will help you. All you have to do is show me the right book, and I will find a way to work the magick. I will!”
Mr. Lockwell’s lips continued to move, but he made no answer that she could hear. Lily might be the only one indecorous enough to say that it was too many books that had made Mr. Lockwell like this, but she was not the only one to think it. Mrs. Lockwell would not speak of it—and even Lily had prudence enough not to press their mother on the matter—but they all knew the truth of it.
They all knew he had been doing magick when he went mad.
A sob rose up in her, but Ivy suppressed it. She would not give up, not if she had to read every book in this attic a dozen times over. Her father had been a respected doctor and a man of science; when she was a girl, he had taught her that any problem might be solved if one applied sound logic and diligent investigation. It stood to reason that if it was magick that had altered him, then it was magick that would set him right again. The answer was there, somewhere in the books; it had to be.
“I can see them,” Mr. Lockwell said suddenly, his voice hoarse, but whether with fear or excitement she could not say. “I can see them through the door!”
“Who do you see, Father?” she said, but she expected no answer and received none. He was tired, she could tell by the droop of his shoulders and the way he followed her—docile as a lamb—as she took his hand and led him downstairs to his room. She sat him in a chair; Wilbern would come soon to make him ready for bed. Ivy kissed his brow, then went back up to the attic to finish putting away the books.
At last the only book that remained was the misplaced romance. Ivy had not seen this one before; Lily must have brought it into the house. It was entitled The Sundering of Vaelus and Cyrenth and appeared to be a retelling of the Tharosian myth of ill-fated lovers, whom the gods cast into the sky for a crime they did not commit, dooming them to never meet again. It seemed just the sort of gloomy fare Lily would favor. Ivy blew out the candles, retrieved the lamp, and carried the book down to the third floor to the room she shared with Lily. She put it on the shelf beneath the window, then reached up to draw the curtains against the night.
Her hands froze. The window looked out over Whitward Street, in the direction of Downhill. The street, so busy earlier, was dark and empty now. Then, as she leaned closer to the glass, they stepped into the circle of light beneath a streetlamp, reappearing to view. She could not see their faces, for they wore dark hats with broad brims. Black capes billowed out behind them, shadows summoned in their wake.
A thrill passed through her as the men paused before the front gate. Ivy could imagine black-gloved hands reaching out, taking the latch, raising it. The figures passed through the gate, and she lost sight of them, for she could not see directly into the yard below.
Ivy rushed from the room and down the stairs. As she reached the first landing, a breath of night air wafted up, and voices rose with it. They were deep and sonorous, and she halted, listening. While she could not make out the words they spoke, there was a questioning tone in them. They wanted something.
Before Ivy could wonder what it might be, she heard her mother exclaim, “And good night to you!” Then came the sound of the front door shutting. Ivy raced down the last steps.
“There you are,” Mrs. Lockwell said as Ivy reached the front hall. “Supper is nearly ready, though I must say it was nearly ruined instead. Mrs. Murch was on the verge of putting peppercorns in the sauce rather than cloves. Cassity had mixed up the jars!”
Ivy looked past her mother, but the front door was closed, and there was no sign of the dark-caped visitors. “Father is in his room,” she said. “I’ll ask Wilbern to bring up a plate for him. Are Lily and Rose downstairs?”
“Lily already fetched Rose to the di
ning room,” Mrs. Lockwell said. She started toward the stairs, then paused with a sigh. “He was the one who started calling you by those names, you know. Ivy, Rose, and Lily.” Her voice, usually pitched at a volume that could be heard two floors away, had gone low. “I always wanted to call you by your proper names—Ivoleyn and Roslend and Liliauda. Names suited for proper young women. But Mr. Lockwell said you were all so beautiful you were like a garden.”
Mrs. Lockwell turned her gaze on Ivy, and it was filled with affection. “His garden, he called you. And I daresay you’re all beautiful enough, though Lily tends to sway this way and that in whichever wind is blowing, and I fear our Rose is a tender bud that will never quite unfurl. And then there’s you, my dear Ivy.” Mrs. Lockwell took her eldest daughter’s hands in her own. “It’s you who binds us all together. Without you, I fear we should all fall apart. Or go to seed, more likely!”
These words left Ivy without a reply. She couldn’t imagine she was the one who held them all together; she only did what a daughter should. And it wasn’t nearly enough.
Yet perhaps there were others who could help her—others who knew her father and who knew far more about magick than she did. Perhaps, if she could speak to them, they could tell her what she had to do. Her eyes strayed to the front door.
“Who was that calling, Mother? Were they…acquaintances of Father’s?”
Mrs. Lockwell’s eyes, so warm a moment ago, turned cool, and she pulled her hands back. “They had the wrong house,” she said. For a moment she appeared uncertain, even frightened. It seemed she wanted to look back at the door, only she held herself from doing so.
“Come, Ivy!” The strange moment had passed, and Mrs. Lockwell was back to exclaiming as she started up the steps. “We had best hurry. I fear what Mrs. Murch might try next if I’m not there.”
Ivy didn’t move. I can see them through the door, her father had said. A longing came over her to fling the door open, to go out into the night. To go searching for them.
The Magicians and Mrs. Quent Page 2
