“What a weasel Von Faber was.” Nell passed the page of newspaper to her brother. “I don’t see how he could blackmail you with it though.”
Thalia folded her hands and waited as patiently as she could until he handed the newspaper page back to her. “I know the envelope says Cutler, but I think that must refer to my father, not to me.”
“Von Faber might have planned to blackmail your mother. The day we met, he spoke of her with most unbecoming familiarity. He hadn’t seen you since you were a child.” Ryker dropped his voice to a mutter. “Which only makes his subsequent behavior worse.”
“It must have been ghastly. I am so sorry I missed it.” Struck by a new thought, Nell added, “Nat, I’m going to Sylvie’s for the afternoon. She’s planning a party. The entertainment will be staging a reading of Twelfth Night with Reggie and Bill and some of the others. She wants me to help her plan it.”
“Indeed.” Ryker’s eyebrows climbed. “What’s happened to your lessons in stage magic?”
Nell gave them both an apologetic smile and a little shrug. “I’m free now. I want to enjoy it for a bit.” To Thalia, she added, “Since I’ve canceled it at such short notice, I’ll pay you for today’s lesson, of course.”
“Certainly not.” Despite everything, Thalia couldn’t help smiling back at Nell. “I owe you my life, both of you. I can’t possibly accept payment for anything.”
“It was lovely, being your assistant,” Nell said. “Now I can truly say I’ve appeared on the stage.”
“Oh, yes. We still need to discuss that, you and I,” Nat said to his sister. “I know it is too much to expect that you should ask me before endangering yourself that way, but do you think you might ever consider telling me your plans first?”
“You wound me.” Nell’s pose was indeed that of the injured innocent, graceful hand on heart, reproachful eyes turned heavenward. “I’ve just finished telling you my plans for the rest of the day. You never listen.”
Ryker uttered a martyred sigh. Before he could reply, Nell sprang up and headed for the door. “I might not be home in time for dinner. I’ll make Sylvie feed me there. Don’t worry.”
“On the contrary,” Ryker began, “you will be home in time—” He broke off. Nell had already left them alone in the parlor.
Thalia said, “I’ll be home for dinner.”
Ryker’s expression cleared. “I’m going to let Nell do as she pleases. Shakespeare plays, stage magic, whatever she wants. As usual. But there’s no reason to wait dinner for her. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s do something. You need a distraction. Let’s go out to a restaurant. Miss Cutler, will you do me the honor of being my guest for dinner?”
Thalia welcomed the thought. Her first impulse was to accept, but she checked herself. How could she consider going out to enjoy herself with Ryker? She had letters to write. She had things she must do. The thought of how much she had to do caught up with her, followed by a burning wish to put it all aside for now. Fatigue swept over her. The desire for distraction won out. It was all too much for her to deal with now. She would lay her plans later. “I would be pleased to accept that invitation, Mr. Ryker.”
“Where shall we go? Oh, wait. I know.” Ryker’s smile flickered back in its brightest form.
They spoke in delighted unison. “Delmonico’s.”
“It’s ages until dinnertime,” Ryker continued. “What would you like to do with the rest of this afternoon?”
Thalia yielded completely to her wish to be distracted. “Now that I can do it safely, I would like to go outdoors. I would like to Trade and go for a flight—and a swim—in the Hudson.”
“What a good idea. When we’re not under siege by a manticore, I try to spend some time in the river every day.” Ryker offered her his arm. “Please permit me to show you the way.”
* * *
When Ryker led Thalia through the double doors into the Changing room, the place felt different to Thalia. The cold damp of the stone walls now comforted her. Thalia could tell the river was close. She might have Traded for the first time at Keith’s Vaudeville Theater in Philadelphia, but this room was where Thalia truly had learned how to do it. She simply hadn’t realized that the thread that bound the two sides of her nature wasn’t fear, but anger.
Ryker skirted the pool as he crossed the chamber to the door to the nursery stairs. Thalia stood close and watched as he opened a second door, this one so well concealed that Thalia had never suspected its existence. This door revealed another flight of stone steps, steeper and narrower, that descended into darkness. “No lights here, sorry. We go down by touch.”
Thalia drew in a deep breath. The air on the narrow staircase smelled of fresh water and living stone. “I can smell the river.”
Ryker smiled at Thalia. “I can smell the tide.”
They lost the light before they were four steps down the stairs. Thalia followed Ryker by touch and smell. Little by little, twenty steps farther down, daylight began. They kept descending.
At last, the steps came to an end at an arch blocked by a heavy wrought-iron grille. Set into the grille was a door like a bank vault’s, complete with a combination lock. Ryker turned the knob back and forth in the correct combination. There was a serious-sounding click, and he opened it. “My dear Miss Cutler, won’t you come out to play?”
Thalia followed him through the gate and waited, looking around, while he locked it and spun the exterior dial. Six feet on, the stone-lined tunnel ended. They were halfway down a grassy slope. Below them lay the Hudson River. Across the river were the wooded slopes of New Jersey, bright green with spring foliage. Behind them, the hidden steps climbed steeply up into the bedrock, back to the Ryker mansion on the hillside above, one mansion among many in Riverside. “How many years to make the tunnel, ten? Twenty? All so you could go for an afternoon swim?”
Ryker held out his hand to her. “My family built it long ago, but not just for swimming.”
“Smuggling?” Thalia took his hand and they started down the slope, picking their way through the young trees.
Ryker chuckled. “I’d much rather call it free enterprise.”
“Definitely smuggling, then.” Thalia liked the feeling of Ryker’s hand in hers. “So when you take your daily swim—?”
“Yes, this is how I come down to the river.” Ryker scanned north to south and back. “Sometimes I don’t want to come back.”
Thalia frowned. “You want to stay in your other form?”
Ryker shook his head. “No, not yet. But at times it’s a lot of responsibility, being the Ryker, running the Ryker Trust, managing the Ryker businesses, helping the extended Ryker family, and watching out for Nell’s welfare.”
“That last responsibility would be a lot all on its own.”
They fell silent. Thalia let Ryker steady her when they reached the big rocks that made the breakwater at the river’s edge. They balanced, still hand in hand, on the boulders as they watched the water passing. Somehow, it soothed Thalia’s inner turmoil. “It has run like this forever,” she murmured. “It will never stop.”
“Not so.” Ryker gazed out across the river to the New Jersey heights beyond. “The Hudson River is younger than it looks. The gorge was cut when the glaciers melted during the ice ages, most recently only a few tens of thousands of years ago. Think what it must have looked like when the ice was melting, full from edge to edge.”
For a moment, in her mind’s eye, Thalia could almost see the river as it had been at its height. The water had been far cleaner; she knew that without knowing how. The air had been far purer. The world, even then, had been far from empty, but then there had been no taint of a city here. This part of the world had been wild, with only ancestors of the First Nations to watch over it. Thalia breathed, “Lovely.”
“Lovely,” Ryker echoed, but now he was gazing not at the river, but at Thalia.
Thalia gazed back. Her swan self recognized something in him, not identical, yet something akin all the same. “Is that y
ou? Is that your seal half I see?” she whispered.
Ryker’s smile had never been brighter. “I don’t know what you see exactly. Let’s find out.” He Traded.
Thalia had a moment to admire Ryker as a seal, balanced beside her on the rocks. Then with a lithe twist he was in the water, and all that gleaming strength was on display as he dove and swam. She called, “Wait for me,” and Ryker stayed near the rocks, but he moved effortlessly in and out of sight in the current.
In her eagerness, Thalia gathered all she had learned of Trading, yet she did not Trade. She stood alone on the rocks and let anger and fear run through her, but she felt none of the signs she’d learned to associate with her Trades, no chill, no tingling in her hands. If anything, anxiety ran cold down her spine, keeping her from Trading.
Wary of outside threats, Thalia turned in place, scanning the hillside behind her. There, at the brow of the hill, stood Tycho Aristides, the Skinner of New York. He was wearing his slouch hat and his big coat. At this distance, Thalia could not see what weapons he carried, but from his stance, she could tell he was well armed. As Thalia watched, Aristides sketched a wave to acknowledge her, then resumed his vigil.
The next breath Thalia took had a clear taste, but no scent she could perceive. Her hands were pins and needles, and a welcome chill slid through her. Eyes wide and arms open, Thalia Traded. She let herself move forward and down, sliding gracefully from the rocks to the river. The current bore her up. At first, Thalia swam in circles near Ryker, setting each feather in her wings to rights as he played in the current beside her. When she was finished, Thalia arched her neck. Ryker moved out to the center of the river, where the current was strongest. Thalia kept up with him. Together they let the river take them down to the harbor. Together, they ventured down to meet the sea.
Acknowledgments
Patricia C. Wrede and Susan Wolkerstorfer have made this book possible. I owe them more than I can say.
Stephani Booker, Charlotte Boynton, Fiona Clements, Kelly Jones, Jody Kaplan, Catherine Lundoff, Hal Peterson, and Catherine Schaff-Stump have contributed in countless ways. The mistakes are all mine.
Finally, credit where credit is due. Thank you, Penn and Teller, for the seven basic principles of magic tricks.
ALSO BY
Caroline Stevermer
A College of Magics
A Scholar of Magics
When the King Comes Home
About the Author
CAROLINE STEVERMER is a multiple-award-winning author, best known for her historical fantasy novels—particularly the Scholarly Magic series (A College of Magics, A Scholar of Magics, and When The King Comes Home), which Terri Windling said had “sly wit and sparkling prose that have earned her a cult following.” Stevermer graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in art history and currently lives in Minnesota. You can find her online at carolinestev.ag-sites.net, or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Acknowledgments
Also by Caroline Stevermer
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE GLASS MAGICIAN
Copyright © 2020 by Caroline Stevermer
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Esther Kim
Cover art by Chris Gibbs
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3504-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-2083-8 (ebook)
eISBN 9781466820838
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: April 2020
The Glass Magician Page 25
