A Proper Wizard

  “Aletho’s gone off, Kees,” Bre said. “It’s hopeless without him.”

  “I know,” Keeston said. “This is Verent. From Danivelle. Sent to get help with a magical problem from the great wizard Connwaer. But he doesn’t want to stay. He thinks, what?” He glanced at Verent for confirmation. “That Conn is too young?”

  Verent nodded. “Indeed.”

  “Too young to know anything,” Keeston said. “He was expecting somebody with a gray beard. And what else? Too scruffy?”

  “Too short?” Bre added.

  “He’s taller than you are,” Keeston shot back.

  “He has the wrong accent,” Bre said. “Lower-class.”

  Verent nodded. All those things were true. The students were looking at each other, grinning.

  “What did he ask you to read?” Bre asked.

  “Pyrotechnics,” Verent said disdainfully.

  “Prattshaw,” Keeston added. “And the Jaspers treatise.”

  The girl groaned. “You’d better read it.”

  “Carefully,” Keeston added.

  “Memorize it,” Bre said.

  Verent looked down his nose at them. “Oh, is he going to test my knowledge of the text? He is years younger than I am. I am an apprentice at the finest academicos in Danivelle. I have been taught by the best teachers in the Peninsular city-states. Surely I am a more qualified wizard than he is.” He didn’t add that he’d barely passed his own exams, and that Master Poulet regularly berated him for his clumsiness. They didn’t need to know about that.

  “Oh, you’re in for trouble,” Bre said.

  “Indeed?” Verent asked.

  Bre nodded. “He’s read an amazingly lot of books, and he remembers everything.”

  “An amazingly lot?” Keeston repeated, eyebrows raised.

  Bre stuck her tongue out at him.

  Grinning, Keeston hoisted himself onto one of the high stools at the table. “Conn has some very strange ideas about magic. It makes the city’s magisters furious. You should hear the shouting at their meetings.”

  Bre asked, “Did he ask you to join him in the morning?”

  Verent nodded.

  “Be ready before sunrise, then,” she said. “I don’t think he ever sleeps. He certainly works us hard when we’re here.”

  The wizard Connwaer sounded precocious and awful, Verent thought. “You must hate him very much,” he said. He hated most of his strict teachers at the Danivelle academicos.

  The other two stared at him. “No, not at all,” Keeston said.

  “He studies things the other wizards are afraid to even think about,” Bre said. “I’m not his apprentice, and neither is Kees, but he helps us with magical experiments that our regular teachers would never allow.”

  Keeston shrugged. “You’ll see, if you decide to stay.”

  If? Verent shook his head but kept his thoughts to himself. As soon as he could arrange it, he was leaving this dirty, uncivilized place and going back to Danivelle. Yes, it would mean he’d failed his mission, but that’s what his master was expecting, wasn’t it?

  Still, the next morning Verent found himself wide-awake before sunrise in a bed that was too short for him and creaked every time he turned over, so he got up and finished reading the pyrotechnics book. Then he dressed in his finest suit, polished his locus stone, neatly combed his hair, and buffed his shoes.

  D’you think the magics care what kind of robe I’m wearing? the boy had said the day before.

  The magics probably didn’t care, Verent had to admit. Still, he needed to look his best. If he looked presentable, maybe they wouldn’t notice how clumsy and stupid he was. Ready, he went down to the kitchen where he’d had dinner the night before with the surly manservant, Benet.

  They’d had biscuits. He’d eaten six of them, with butter and jam.

  As he hesitated in the kitchen doorway, Benet, at the stove, gave him a glare; at the table, an old, gray-bearded man looked up and narrowed his eyes. “Verent, is it? I am Nevery.”

  “Ah. Uh. Good morning, sir,” Verent stammered. Collecting himself, he gave a careful bow. Unlike Connwaer, Nevery looked like a proper wizard.

  Nevery nodded at the other chair. “Sit.”

  Verent sat. The kitchen was warm and smelled deliciously of bacon frying. Verent’s stomach gave a hungry rumble.

  The servant, Benet, set a cup of steaming tea before him with a clatter.

  “Thank you,” Verent said, but Benet ignored him.

  “Hmph,” Nevery said, and went back to his book.

  Verent sipped his tea and then dared to speak. “Um, Senior Wizard Nevery,” he began. “Sir, I have come all the way from Danivelle for help with a magical problem that is troubling my city. I am wondering if perhaps you could—”

  “No, I could not,” Nevery interrupted. “Benet,” he said sharply. “Has the boy been down yet?”

  “No, sir,” the servant answered. He turned from the stove and set a tray on the table; on the tray was a teacup and teapot, a basket of muffins wrapped in a napkin to keep them warm, a plate of fragrant crispy bacon, and another plate of hot fried eggs. “Here,” he said. “Breakfast.”

  “Thank you,” Verent said, feeling brighter. The big man could bake; he knew that much. If the muffins were as delicious as his biscuits . . .

  “It’s not for you,” Benet growled, turning away.

  Nevery nodded at the tray. “Bring it up to Conn. Top floor.”

  Verent was used to taking orders from his own master. “Yes, sir!” he said, lurching to his feet, bumping the table, earning another glare from the old wizard when tea slopped from his cup. Quickly he picked up the tray and left the kitchen, climbing four floors to the top of the house, where Keeston had shown him the wizard Connwaer’s workroom the night before. Balancing the tray with one hand, he knocked at the door.

  There was no answer.

  Verent leaned in and put his ear against the door. He heard nothing.

  Hah. The so-called wizard Connwaer was probably sound asleep in his bed. Time to catch him lazing the morning away. Seizing the knob, Verent flung open the door and strode into the room.

  The boy, wearing the same holey black sweater he’d had on the day before, sat with his back to the door, staring at something on the tabletop. “Shhh,” he whispered.

  Verent froze. The air smelled of acrid smoke and of something sharp and metallic. Some sort of experiment. From his late-night reading of the Prattshaw treatise, he knew enough to guess that it had something to do with pyrotechnics.

  At the table, Connwaer bent to peer into a mortar. He seemed to be counting under his breath, and he held a glass rod ready, as if to stir whatever he was cooking. The room felt thick with magic. A stuffed toy dragon about the size of a kitten, with green scales and glittering glass eyes, rested on the tabletop. Next to it was a saucer of what looked like slowsilver and a glass vial of green crystals.

  Verent held his breath. Despite his best intentions, he was curious. Still holding the breakfast tray, he edged closer to the table. Peering over Connwaer’s shoulder, Verent saw a mortar full of a bubbling thick green liquid. “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  As he spoke, the stuffed dragon on the table moved, turning its head to fix Verent with a flame-bright eye. Startled, Verent bumped the table; the mortar wobbled and burped out a puff of black smoke streaked with purple that rolled up to the ceiling and burst into a shower of blue and red sparks.

  Verent gasped and staggered back but managed to keep the muffin basket and teapot and plates of bacon and fried eggs from spilling off the tray. An eye-wateringly foul smell filled the room. Coughing, the wizard Connwaer went to the window and opened it, and then returned to the table, where he checked the now-empty mortar. Then he looked at the ceiling, which was slightly scorched.

  “Well, that could’ve been worse,” he muttered, and turned to face Verent.

  Verent stared as the dragon climbed up Connwaer’s arm to perch on his shoulder, wrapping its
tail around the boy’s neck like a scarf. “What—” Verent stuttered. “What is—” He pointed.

  “Pip,” Connwaer explained. “My locus magicalicus.”

  “Ah—I—ah . . .”

  “Dragon,” the boy added, with a grin.

  “I—I see,” Verent got out. None of the stories he’d heard about the wizard Connwaer had mentioned that his locus stone was a live dragon, of all things.

  “Breakfast?” Connwaer asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Verent said quickly. With a clatter, he shoved the mortar and the glass vials out of the way and set the breakfast tray on the table. Then he turned to leave.

  “Wait,” the boy wizard interrupted. “Benet sent enough for both of us. And I want to talk to you about the magical problem in Danivelle. It sounds interesting.”

  Slowly Verent approached the table again. He brushed down the front of his fine coat and straightened his collar, and then heaved himself onto one of the high stools, trying not to bump the table again. Connwaer nudged the baby dragon so that it hopped from his shoulder to the tabletop; then he poured Verent a cup of tea and fetched himself a dirty teacup from the clutter on the tabletop, cleaning it on the hem of his sweater before pouring his own tea.

  The tiny dragon inspected the breakfast tray. A wisp of smoke drifted up from its nostrils.

  “You hungry, Pip?” the wizard Connwaer asked. He scooped a fried egg onto a plate and set it out for the baby dragon. It put its front paws on the edge of the plate and slurped up the egg.

  “Senior Wizard Connwaer,” Verent began, keeping an eye on the dragon. It was small, but it looked dangerous. “I don’t—”

  “Just Conn,” the boy interrupted. “Did you read the Prattshaw?”

  Verent blinked. “Yes, I did. Pyrotechnics is against the law in Danivelle.”

  “It’s against the law here, too,” Conn said. “Sort of. Have a muffin.” He took a piece of bacon and held it up. “D’you want bacon, Pip?” he asked.

  The dragon looked up from its plate, egg yolk dripping from its snout. It gave its scaled tail a twitch.

  Conn added the bacon to its plate. Then he climbed onto a stool. “Your master wrote in his letter that you’re having magical troubles in Danivelle. What’s been happening, exactly?”

  Verent hesitated. To answer was to admit that this extremely strange boy might actually be able to help him, and Danivelle. Maybe he should stay silent. But he’d come all this way . . .

  While he thought, he ate a muffin—a particularly delicious muffin—and then dusted the crumbs from his fingers. When he’d washed it down with a long drink of tea, he started describing what had been happening in Danivelle for the past few months. The odd gaps in the city’s magic—random werelights going dark, a street corner where all magic-powered vehicles rolled to a stop, certain rooms in certain houses where no magic could be found. “As if, in these small areas, the magic has disappeared,” Verent concluded. “Then, after a while, it returns again, and disappears somewhere else.”

  Conn was listening intently. He set down a half-eaten muffin. “How big are the dead spots, d’you think?” he asked.

  Verent shrugged. “Oddly, they are all about the same size. A few feet across, perhaps.”

  “In random places around the city?”

  “As I said,” Verent said. It was highly unlikely that this boy wizard would be able to help.

  “I think I know what the problem is,” Conn said. “You know how the magic of any city was once a dragon, right?”

  “Yes, I have read the disquisition on the draconic nature of magic,” Verent answered. The one this boy claimed to have written.

  “Well, dragons are living creatures like any others, and they can have the usual sorts of problems that living creatures have.”

  “What is your point?” Verent asked, growing impatient.

  Conn grinned. “You have fleas.”

  Verent frowned. The very idea! He took a bath every single day! “I do not!”

  “Not you,” Conn said. “The magic of your city.”

  On the table, the baby dragon eyed Verent and then, deliberately, lifted a hind leg to scratch its ear. Verent’s own ear suddenly felt itchy, and he forced himself not to scratch it. “Fleas?” he asked.

  “Well, not fleas, exactly,” Conn said. “It’s a kind of magical thing like a flea that sucks small amounts of magic out of the magical being of your city.”

  Verent leaned forward, his breakfast forgotten. “Like a kind of parasite, you mean?”

  “Right,” Conn said, with a nod.

  Verent shook his head. “It sounds serious. Could these parasites drain all the magic from Danivelle?”

  “Not any more than a couple of fleas could drain all the blood from a dog. They’re just a nuisance. We should be able to figure out something to help.”

  “We’ll do experiments with pyrotechnics?” Verent asked, feeling a surprising jolt of excitement. His master would scold him for such interest, but he couldn’t help it.

  Conn grinned at him, his eyes sparkling. “Yes, pyrotechnics. But,” he said, looking around his workroom, “not in here.”

  After Conn had handed him an armful of supplies to carry, Verent followed him down the stairs and out to the courtyard that lay before Heartsease. The cobblestones were slick with rain and dotted here and there with muddy puddles. It smelled of murky river and of baking biscuits from Benet’s kitchen.

  “That’s the Sunrise over there,” Conn said, pointing with his chin, as his arms were full of bottles and a sack. The tiny dragon clung to the boy’s shoulder, further shredding his knitted sweater with its claws.

  Verent saw, on the east bank of the river, a set of neatly laid-out city streets leading to a fine palace on a hilltop.

  “And the Twilight over there,” Conn added.

  Ah. A much smaller and darker part of the city, on the other bank of the river. That was where his ship had landed. “The Twilight is full of thieves and other riffraff, I suppose,” Verent said with a sniff.

  For some reason, that made Conn smile. “And pickpockets, sure as sure,” he said. He looked up at the tree that spread its black branches over their heads and set down the things he was carrying. “This is a good place.” The little dragon hopped to the cobblestones and cocked its head, watching.

  Being extra careful not to drop anything, Verent set down the wooden box he was carrying. Then he laid one of his scented handkerchiefs on the cobblestones and knelt on it—to protect his trousers from the damp and mud. “Why must we do the experiment out here?” he asked.

  Connwaer was pulling vials and bottles from the box. “Oh, well.” He paused. “I blew up Heartsease.”

  “Blew it up?” Verent repeated, aghast.

  “More than once,” Conn said, with a wry shrug.

  “That’s terrible,” Verent said. The doubts were rising again. A proper wizard would never take such dangerous risks, would he?

  The boy’s keen blue eyes were studying him again. “D’you think wizards never make mistakes, Verent?”

  Verent blinked. “I wouldn’t think— I mean . . .”

  “Your master never makes any mistakes at all?” the boy went on.

  Verent thought of stern, gray-bearded Senior Wizard Poulet, who scolded every time Verent put a foot wrong. “No,” he said bleakly. “I don’t think he does.”

  “Well, then he doesn’t ever do anything interesting,” Conn muttered.

  “My master is a very great wizard,” Verent said stiffly. Trusting this young scamp with the health of his city—it was not a good idea. He knew what Master Poulet would say: This was a terrible idea, and Verent was being an incompetent fool—as usual—for going along with it.

  “Hold this,” Conn said, and handed him a glass vial. Verent inspected it. Inside the vial was some kind of black liquid, or extremely fine powder, and the slightest movement sent it swirling into smoky eddies. “And this,” Conn said, handing him another vial that was icy cold to the touch
but filled with what looked like purple sand.

  “Right,” Conn said, sitting back on his heels and surveying the pyrotechnic materials he’d set out on the cobblestones. “This could be interesting.”

  What did he mean, exactly, by interesting? “I’m—I’m not sure—”

  “Don’t worry,” Conn reassured him. “We’ll be careful.”

  Careful, was it? From a boy who’d blown up his own house more than once? Still, even though he knew his master would not approve, Verent watched with growing interest as Conn assembled the pyrotechnic spell, trying to follow the boy’s explanation of what he was doing. They wanted a small explosion, he said, precisely controlled, just enough to get the parasite’s attention, and then a banishing word—but not enough to alarm Danivelle’s magic in any way. It was all highly esoteric and difficult to follow. Verent pulled a small notebook and pencil from the pocket of his apprentice’s robe and started jotting down hurried notes, his handwriting worse than usual. Hopefully he’d be able to make sense of it later. “You put the shadowbane in next?” he asked.

  “No!” Conn said, and gave Verent a wide-eyed look. “That would be, well, not a very good idea.” With scarcely a pause for breath, he rattled off a paragraph of explanation that was, Verent realized, straight from the Prattshaw book on pyrotechnics. The other wizard Keeston was right—he really did have it memorized. “And don’t worry,” Conn added quickly. “I’ll write it all down for you.” He paused. “Or maybe Keeston will do it.”

  With a sigh of relief, Verent put his notebook away.

  “Ready?” Conn asked, and held up the vial full of purple crystals. “D’you want to add the last ingredient?” He pointed to a silver bowl on the cobblestones, where the rest of the pyrotechnic materials bubbled and smoked.

  Verent blinked. “Well, I suppose . . .” He was only pretending to hesitate, though. This really was interesting, and he did want to try it. Master Poulet would never trust him to complete a spell like this.

  “Good,” Conn said, handing him the vial. “Just a—”

  As he spoke, Verent tipped the vial, emptying a stream of scintillant crystals into the silver bowl.