by Webb, Holly
It was that seeming lack of talent that had saved her; Lily knew that now. She had escaped the spells, and when she’d found out what was happening to Georgie, she and Henrietta had persuaded her sister to run away. They had escaped from the old house on the island, and their mother, but Georgie couldn’t outrun the spells. They were inside her, and they were waiting, growing stronger in the darkness. Soon, Lily was sure, they would break out, and do – something. It made it worse that even Georgie didn’t know what it was she was meant to do. Only that it was something dark, and awful, and it was meant to bring the magic back.
They had been brought up believing the story – that Georgie was the child who would put everything back the way it should be, with magicians no longer shamed and hidden. It was her destiny, and it had sounded like something beautiful and noble. It was so obviously right! But neither of the girls had known how it was actually going to happen until they had chanced upon a list of spells, tucked away in the back of a photograph album. The album had held fading pictures of their older sisters, the ones who hadn’t survived Mama’s training. When Lily and Georgie had seen the list of spells, they’d understood why. All of them had been cruel, murderous things, designed to kill, and from the notes their mother had written, they were aimed at someone in particular.
As they read them, the awful truth had become clear.
The only way to bring magic back to the country was to get rid of the person who had banished it in the first place. Lily had no proof, but she was almost sure that her sister was going to kill the queen.
Their mother was part of a conspiracy, a band of magicians who were plotting to assassinate the royal family and take over the government, returning magic to power thirty years after it had been outlawed. She was so devoted to the cause that she was willing to use her own child as a weapon. All of her children, one after the other.
The killing spells were difficult to learn, and even harder to control. Mama had given up on Lucy and Prudence ever mastering them – she had let the older girls die, or she had killed them herself, Lily and Georgie weren’t quite sure. She was giving up on Georgie too, they had heard her say so. She planned to send her the way of her sisters, and begin to train the last child instead.
Lily.
After that, all they could do was run.
Lily stared angrily at the spell dancing over the faded plaster. A younger version of Peyton Powers stood behind the little girls now, his hand on Georgie’s shoulder. Lily looked at him, seeing the smooth face, and the springing golden-brown curls that were so like her own, and let out a breath of a sigh, her anger draining away.
She wondered if her father thought he still looked like that. He probably hadn’t seen a mirror since they’d dragged him out of Archgate. Now his curls were limp and greyed, and his face was tracked with lines and shadows. She could see the resemblance, but the man behind her was old.
‘I loved her,’ the younger version of her father said sadly. ‘I didn’t understand what she was doing. I’m sorry, Lily. I’m so sorry. I’ll do anything I can to heal your sister.’
‘She’s your daughter!’ Lily yelled, her fists clenching. ‘You should be looking after her, not me!’
Her father shook, his eyes brighter with tears. ‘I know. You should never have been left. I should have realised what Nerissa was trying to do to Georgie. What she’d already done, to our Lucy, and Prudence...’ His voice grated and growled, as though the words were hard to say, even though the image on the wall was only a spell, and it could have spoken any way he liked. He reached out a hand to Lily, shyly stopping before he touched her. ‘I shouldn’t have been so stupidly noble. I refused to give up my magic, and I left you all.’
‘Yes.’ Lily sighed. ‘But actually, I don’t think I could give mine up either,’ she admitted.
‘I wish you had been brought up here, Lily,’ her father told her, smiling sadly. ‘Here in London, the way it was before. You would have loved it.’
‘Was there magic everywhere?’ Lily asked him, sighing.
He shook his head. ‘No – and that was a mistake, I think. We magicians were too proud, and we asked too much money for our spells. Magic was only a plaything for the rich, and those without money hardly ever saw it. How could we expect them to fight for us, after the king was killed, and we were suddenly the guilty ones? We had never allowed people close enough to love us.’ He frowned out across the room, remembering, and the tired, old-looking man in the bed sighed angrily.
‘But still, magic would have been all around you, Lily, from the very day you were born. You would have grown up with other magician children, and tried out your first spells together.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I set fire to the drawing-room curtains once, trying to conjure up a fire sprite.’
Lily nodded, her eyes hungry. ‘I wish it had been that way too,’ she murmured. ‘I do understand. I couldn’t let my magic go. But Georgie would, in half a second.’
Her father’s nose wrinkled in surprise, and Lily suddenly giggled. Georgie did that too.
‘I know. She’s the strangest thing. She’d rather sew.’ Lily shook her head. ‘And I think she’d be like that even if her magic worked properly. She says she never liked it.’
‘But you do?’ her father asked her hopefully, and this time he took her hand.
Lily nodded. ‘I love it. I can’t imagine not having it. It must have been wonderful, when you were allowed to use magic whenever you liked.’
‘You don’t use it now?’ her father asked. He frowned wearily. ‘How did you come to be here, Lily, in the theatre? I heard some of the stagehands talking about spells – magic on stage. I didn’t understand what they meant. Magic is allowed in the theatre now? Is it safe?’
‘It isn’t real!’ Lily chuckled. ‘It’s just very, very clever. Daniel designs the tricks – illusions, he calls them. Georgie and I were his assistants, before Mama’s awful servant Marten found us. She was made out of magic, did you know that? I suppose you must have done.’
‘Nerissa finished a construct?’ Her real father’s face paled, and the picture leaned forward, as though he might step out of the wall. The younger Georgie held onto the full skirts of his coat, as though the thought terrified her. Baby Lily only smiled, and chewed her fat fingers. ‘I never thought she’d bring one alive...’ he muttered.
Lily nodded. ‘It must have been after you – left. There were at least two. The one she has now is a horrible parrot, or it was when we saw it. She took it with her, to New York. She’s gone to find more magicians to join the plot against the queen,’ Lily added, when she saw his frown of surprise. ‘Everyone on the ship couldn’t stand that parrot, but they all believed it was real.’
‘She’s grown stronger then. She tried so many times – I hated the things, but she was determined to make them work. It’s old, old magic.’ He sighed. ‘Lily, you promise me there’s no real magic in these tricks your friend does?’ A rush of scarlet flooded across his bony cheeks, and the picture father gave an apologetic cough. ‘I know I don’t really have the right to ask you such things. I’ve been away too long. But I can’t bear the thought of you being found out, and shut up somewhere like Archgate.’
He meant it. Lily could feel him shaking next to her, and his fingers were almost hurting her arm.
‘I promise. They’re all just made with cunning hiding places, and Daniel waving his arms around, and doing all sorts of clever little tricks so people aren’t looking in the right place.’
‘Timing is very important,’ Henrietta added smugly. ‘I have naturally excellent timing. Daniel hasn’t been able to replace me, since we became too well known to be safe. We were in the newspapers, you know.’
Lily laid her hand over her father’s bony fingers. ‘Actually, I should think you could give Daniel some very good ideas. Would you talk to him about it?’ She caught Peter’s sideways, hopefu
l glance, and added quickly, ‘With Peter too?’
The mute boy looked up at her, his eyes shining, and Lily smiled. She’d seen the careful little drawings at the back of his notebook, delicate diagrams of new cabinets, and clever electrical devices. They looked like death traps to Lily, but she would never have said so. And they had to be safer than trying to catch a bullet.
Her father’s eyes were brighter, and he looked intrigued, as Lily seized Peter’s notebook and shoved it into his hands, riffling through the pages to find the drawings.
Peter gave a little moan of horror, but Peyton Powers shushed him with an upheld hand, tracing the drawings admiringly, and nodding.
Then he looked up at Lily, and smiled. The strange, too-young figure on the wall said, ‘Yes.’
Lily was sure she heard her father whisper it too.
‘Esss...’
‘You spoke!’ Henrietta pointed out, climbing up his legs, so she could stare at him properly with her round black eyes. ‘Will your voice come back, then?’
Lily hadn’t wanted to ask him. She supposed that his voice had been taken, somehow, to make him less dangerous. That if he couldn’t say ‘magic words’ he was less frightening. She was pretty sure that was nonsense. That those without magic didn’t really understand how it worked. He was a very powerful magician – if he couldn’t make a spell in his head, or with a few passes of his hands, there would be something very wrong. But it had definitely weakened him.
‘One day...’ The figure in the wall was fading as it smiled, and the little girls were waving at her. ‘Soon, I hope. Maybe you can help me. Must rest now.’
Lily nodded, and moved to get up, and leave him in peace. Then at the last minute, she darted shyly back to kiss his cheek, and he beamed wearily at her.
Come back soon...
Lily wasn’t entirely sure how he had said it – in her head? Georgie had managed to speak to her silently once. Or was it just the remnants of the spell on the wall? She knew she had heard him, anyway. He had spoken to them like this in the rush of magic around the rescue, but Lily hadn’t realised the magic would carry on.
What shall we do to help him? Peter scribbled in his notebook as they stopped in the passageway outside. Why can’t he speak?
Lily frowned, and hesitated. She felt a little odd discussing it with Peter, since he couldn’t speak either. When he had been abandoned as a child, the servants at Merrythought had tried to get him to tell them who he was, but he could neither speak, nor hear them asking. That was why his family had left him, Lily had assumed. They were frightened of his silence. They had thought he would fit in on the island of strange magicians.
JUST SAY! he scrawled, in cross, untidy capitals. It was his way of shouting.
‘It must have been a spell,’ Lily told him, being careful to look at him, and shape the words properly. ‘But something very strong, or maybe just very unusual. If he can still make illusions like the one he just showed us, he can’t have lost his magic, or not all of it anyway. And the guard spell, on his room! That was really clever. So only a very powerful spell would work on him, don’t you think?’
Peter nodded thoughtfully, and then grabbed her hand, dragging her back along the passage towards the stage. With his free hand he made a sort of flapping motion, and Lily nodded. He was right – they needed Argent. The dragon knew all kinds of strange little scraps of magic. There was no telling what he might come out with. He probably did have a spell for restoring stolen voices, if only he happened to remember it at the right time. Lily didn’t think his great age was making him forgetful, it was more that he had so many hundreds of years’ worth of memories and magic, all bound up together. Sometimes he had trouble untangling the bit he wanted.
But at the edge of the stage, they pulled up short. Argent was there, of course – he didn’t fit easily into many other parts of the theatre, so he tended to stay draped decoratively across the back of the stage. When he wasn’t wanted for a scene, a plain drape was let down to shield him from the audience, and when the drape was lifted, he did a remarkably good imitation of an automaton, lifting his head in stilted, clockwork twitches, and allowing the very thinnest column of smoke to spiral out of his nostrils. The scene painters were extremely proud of him, and several of them polished him daily. They had been photographed standing in front of him for a stage paper, and a number of them had been offered money in the local dives, by rival theatre companies after the secrets of his manufacture. Luckily, the dragon’s obvious ability to burn to a crisp anyone who blabbed had stopped them all talking – combined with his own particular charm.
Argent wasn’t alone. He was stretched sleepily out on the wooden boards with his head resting on his front legs, rather like an enormous dog. His eyes were half lidded, as he watched his companions, who were all seated on a long velvet cushion which had been placed along the end of his tail, turning it into an unusually scaly bench. Lily’s sister Georgie was curled up next to Princess Jane and Rose, the elderly magician they had brought back with them from New York. In her day, she had been one of the most powerful magicians in the country, part of the ancient Fell bloodline, which Lily and Georgie and their father were distantly related to as well.
Lily and Peter stared at them in disgust. They were sewing, of all the stupid things. Princess Jane almost always had a delicate little embroidery basket with her – it was all the princess had taken with her when the girls rescued her from Fell Hall. Georgie and Rose seemed to be working on a dress, quite a plain one, so it must be for Georgie, or maybe even Lily herself. The theatre costumes were always covered in spangles and feathers and never, ever came in a sensible shade of middling grey.
‘Sewing, again.’ Henrietta snorted quietly. ‘What a waste.’
Rose’s familiar, the large white cat Gus, glanced up, and yawned at Henrietta, showing quite as many teeth as the dragon, though admittedly his were smaller.
‘So rude!’ Henrietta hissed. She was very jealous of Gus, who had been a familiar for a great deal longer than she had, and made sure she knew it.
‘Are you all right?’ Georgie asked, looking up at her anxiously. Lily and Peter were practically seething with impatience, and they looked most put out.
‘Yes. We wanted to talk to Argent.’ Lily frowned. ‘But actually, Rose...’ She still found it hard to call her that. The older magician was so famous. ‘You might know too,’ she added shyly. It was, after all, what they had gone all the way to America to fetch her for. She had helped to set the spells on the prison where their father was held, and the girls had been desperate to free him. Not only for his own sake, but for Georgie’s.
Lily looked critically at her sister, as she set delicate stitches in the grey fabric. Georgie was paler and thinner than ever. Since they had encountered their mother on board the steamship, and then in New York City, the spells she had put into Georgie were wakening again. Lily was convinced that Georgie was having to fight against them all the time now, although she wasn’t sure if Georgie knew that too. The dark magic had been part of her sister for so long that she kept the spells buried inside her without a conscious effort.
It meant that she could never use her own magic now, without releasing those darker spells. She had used them, a few times, when they had been a last resort. But each time they were harder to shut away, and in New York, so close to their mother, who had cast them, they had almost overpowered Georgie, leaving her faint and sick.
Lily had been sure that their father would know how to remove the spells – it was his own wife who had set them, after all. And Georgie was his child. He had to be able to.
But only if he recovered, and surely the first step was to bring back his voice.
‘It’s Father,’ Lily began, and Georgie glanced up at her sharply.
‘Is he any better? I looked in on him this morning – or at least, I think I did...’ She frowned.
>
‘Better enough to have set a very complicated guard spell on his room. You probably meant to visit him, and then you remembered something terribly important that you had to do instead.’ Lily smiled. ‘But the funny thing is, it didn’t stop Peter.’ She nudged his arm to show him she was talking about him. ‘I’m wondering if he might be immune to some magic now, after recovering from all those spells at Fell Hall.’
‘It’s possible,’ Argent murmured, lifting his head, and sniffing interestedly at Peter. Peter stood very still, and tried to look as though it wasn’t worrying to be sniffed by a house-sized mythical beast. ‘How intriguing. Sit here, boy, so I can look at you properly.’
‘Sit on him. On his leg, look.’ Lily pushed Peter closer to the dragon. Since Argent didn’t speak in any human fashion, and didn’t have lips, Peter couldn’t understand what he was saying.
Peter cast a panicked look at Lily, but did as he was told, sinking hesitantly onto Argent’s foreleg, so that the dragon could stare into his eyes.
‘What about Father?’ Georgie asked impatiently. ‘What’s happened, Lily?’
‘He’s starting to speak again. Not properly – he used a spell, making figures on the wall of his room. But then he almost spoke, I think. I heard him in my head. I’m almost certain he will be able to talk, one day. If only we could break whatever it is that’s stopping him, then I’m sure he’d recover more quickly. And then...’ She ducked her head, trying not to look at Georgie too hopefully.
‘They’re getting stronger every day,’ Georgie murmured, gazing down at her sewing. ‘I think Mama is on her way back from America. The spells can feel her getting closer. And we don’t know what’s happening with the rest of the plot. The Dysart girls, and any others there are, who have these same spells. I – it sounds strange, but part of me wants to go and find them all...’
‘You see,’ Lily said miserably. ‘We haven’t got long to free you, before those spells start doing whatever it is they were meant for. We must get Father better.’
