The Magic Thief

  “Hmmm,” Brumbee said. “How many years of schooling have you already had?”

  I didn’t say anything. This was a big mistake. I’d be better off going back to Heartsease and trying to persuade Benet to teach me how to read.

  Brumbee put down the pen. “Are you going to answer my questions, Conn?”

  I took a deep breath. Nevery wanted me to do this, so I would do it. “If I can,” I said.

  Brumbee looked at me, where I stood by the door. “Hmmm.” He nodded. “I think I understand.” He was silent for a moment, thinking. “Ah, I’ve got it,” he said to himself, then spoke to me. “How did you meet your master?”

  Now there was a question I could answer. “I tried to steal his locus magicalicus.”

  Brumbee’s eyes widened. “You did what?”

  “I did steal it, actually,” I said.

  “And it didn’t kill you?”

  I shook my head and stepped closer to the desk. “It tried to, after a while, but I stopped it. Nevery thought that was interesting, so after he took the locus stone off me, he made me his apprentice.”

  “Really!” Brumbee said.

  “Well, not exactly,” I said. I sat down in one of the comfortable chairs. “He took me on as his servant at first, but then he realized that I was supposed to be his apprentice.”

  “My goodness,” Brumbee said. “And so—let me see if I’ve got this right, Conn—he needs the academicos to teach you some things so you can get on with being a good apprentice.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Mainly, I need to know how to read.”

  “Ah. Yes, I see,” Brumbee said. “To read. We can, of course, teach you that here.”

  I felt a sudden relief. He wasn’t going to throw me out, after all. “Can I start today?” I asked.

  “It’s a bit late for today. But tomorrow, certainly,” Brumbee said. “You understand that most students, both the apprentices and the regular students, start at the academicos when they are quite a bit younger than you are?”

  I nodded.

  Brumbee spoke to himself, fidgeting with his pen. “But I don’t want to put you with the youngest children, do I?” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think that would work. Hmmm.” He fell silent. Then he asked me, “What have you learned already, Conn?”

  “A little bit about locus stones. And not to mix tourmalifine and slowsilver.” I thought back over the past few days. “And the embero spell, and all the key words for the gates leading to Heartsease, and a spell for making light.”

  “Good!” Brumbee said, smiling. “Would you mind showing me your locus magicalicus?”

  Oh. “I don’t have one yet,” I said.

  Brumbee stopped smiling. “Of course you do. You must. Or Nevery would not have taken you on as an apprentice.”

  “Well,” I said, “he did.”

  “This is most irregular,” Brumbee said. “Without a locus stone, how does Nevery—” He cut himself off. “I shall speak to him about it. He’ll have to help you find a locus stone—we have quite a large collection at the academicos; they tend to gather here. And he’ll have to present you at Magisters Hall. It is traditional for any wizard’s apprentice to be recognized by our governing body.”

  I nodded. I’d seen the magisters at work; I wasn’t afraid of them.

  “As for the reading,” Brumbee went on, “I think it would be best if you join a class of older students and receive tutoring on the side. You’ll have to work very hard to catch up.”

  That was all right. I would work hard, and I would catch up.

  * * *

  Frustrated by meeting with magisters.

  They had received my letter and would have spent next few weeks discussing my choice of paper and ink if I hadn’t arrived when I did.

  Fools.

  Yet in the end, despite Pettivox’s protests, magisters agreed I should lead them through crisis.

  Note to self: Send Benet to Sark Square for slowsilver. Must ask Brumbee if magisters have any to spare. Never known it to be so hard to come by.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 13

  The next day, Nevery told me I would be presented to the magisters so they could approve me as his apprentice. Then I’d be able to start school.

  On our way to Magisters Hall, Nevery seemed distracted. He walked fast through the tunnels, and I had to run to keep up with him. I knew better than to ask him any of the questions bubbling around in my head. What were the magisters going to ask me? Did they know I’d spied on their meetings? Would they care that I couldn’t read yet? Would they want to know about my locus magicalicus? Could they tell if I lied to them?

  What if they wouldn’t accept me?

  We arrived at Magisters Hall, and I followed Nevery down a long, echoing hallway. When we got to the big double doors at the end, he said, “Wait out here, boy, until you’re called for.”

  Before I could answer, he’d already swept into the magisters’ chamber, slamming the door behind him.

  I shouldn’t have been too nervous. But I was shivery with it. I jittered before the door for a while, waiting for it to open and one of the magisters to drag me in for a wrangle. But no one came. I sat down on the floor to wait.

  Finally, the door creaked open and I jumped to my feet. The wizard named Periwinkle stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. I peered at her through the ragged fringe of hair hanging in my eyes. She wore the same gray robes as before, with a patch on the sleeve with a blue flower stitched on it, over a plain dark blue dress; she was broad and strong looking with gray hair in a messy bun.

  She looked me up and down. “You’re Nevery’s boy?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Well.” She didn’t look happy. “You’re not what I expected.”

  I wondered what she had expected. Somebody taller, maybe.

  “Curse Nevery, anyway,” she muttered. “Boy looks like a gutter rat.”

  I looked down at myself. “But I’m wearing boots,” I said. And my brown coat, a mostly clean shirt, a woolen scarf, and trousers with patches on the knees, not holes.

  “Hmmm. Never mind, lad. But tell Nevery to give you a haircut. Now. One thing, before you go in.” She lowered her voice. “Nevery is not—” She paused and looked at the ceiling, rubbing her chin. “He is not universally popular among the magisters. Because of that, some of our members may seek to withhold approval of your apprenticeship.”

  Politics, she was saying. Some of the magisters might reject me in order to get at Nevery. Even so, I was Nevery’s apprentice, whether the magisters liked it or not.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Do you understand? Tread carefully, if you can.”

  Right, I understood. I nodded.

  “Very well.” She turned, pushed the door open wider, and motioned for me to go into the meeting chamber.

  The room was as I remembered it, except not as big as it had seemed to the cat me. The table ran the length of the room and had lots of empty seats, as if there had once been more magisters than there were now. On the walls were grimy oil paintings in tarnished frames and a few bookshelves crammed with dusty books that looked like nobody ever read them. At the other end of the room was a wide fireplace with no fire in it.

  As I walked into the chamber, the wizards around the table stared at me. They’d been arguing; I could tell by the smoke coming out of Nevery’s ears and the snarl on the face of the wizard sitting opposite him at the table.

  This had to be Pettivox. He was very tall, taller even than Nevery, and broad, with white hair and beard, gleaming white teeth, and red lips.

  And I’d seen him before. He was the wizard I’d seen at the Underlord’s, the wizard in the secret underground workroom. I swallowed down my surprise and tried not to stare.

  Pettivox wore black wormsilk robes with rows of gold braid at the cuffs and the collar, and a patch on the sleeve with gold-threaded runes stitched on it; he also wore heavy gold rings on his fingers, and had a cloudy white crystal about the si
ze of a thumbnail hanging from a gold chain around his neck. His locus magicalicus. Interesting that he wore it right out in the open like that. Must be proud of it, wanting to show it off.

  I didn’t like him. He didn’t like me, either. He looked at me like you’d look at the bottom of your shoe after you’d stepped in something squishy and smelly.

  “Stand over there,” Periwinkle said, pointing to the end of the table. I obeyed, and kept still while the seated wizards inspected me. Nevery gave me a quick glance and looked away, scowling, as if he didn’t like what he saw. Periwinkle sat down beside him.

  Around the rest of the table sat Brumbee, plump and comfortable in his yellow wormsilk robes; the keen-looking lady, Sandera; the sour, sharp one, Trammel; and, sitting beside Pettivox, a small skinny wizard who looked like a bat.

  Brumbee cleared his throat. “Ah, Nevery?”

  Nevery, still looking furious, gave a curt nod. “All right, Brumbee, we’ll do this according to the forms.” He pointed at me, but glared across the table at Pettivox. “I, Nevery Flinglas, present to my fellow magisters for their approval this boy, who would be my apprentice.”

  “Very good,” Brumbee said quickly, looking nervously around the table. “This is just a formality, obviously. Can we move to accept Conn as Nevery’s apprentice?”

  “I reserve the right to pose certain questions,” said Pettivox. Even though he was a big man, his voice was high-pitched and sharp.

  Brumbee sighed. “Of course, Pettivox.”

  Of course, I thought. Pose away.

  Pettivox leaned forward, vulturelike, his hands folded on the table. “So. Tell us, Conn, where you lived before coming to your master.”

  Hmmm. Not the question I’d been expecting. “In the Twilight,” I said.

  “I see. And you had people looking after you?”

  I shook my head. What was he getting at?

  Pettivox gave me a false smile. “Then how did you earn your living in the Twilight?”

  I thought about the answer before I gave it. Pettivox was working with Crowe, I guessed, so he might know more about me than he should. Maybe he wanted me to lie so he could catch me out. “As a thief, mostly,” I said. “Sometimes I picked pockets, but I’m better at picking locks.”

  The magisters didn’t like that answer. Periwinkle frowned, and Brumbee fidgeted with his pen. But they would have liked it even less if I’d lied to them.

  Pettivox leaned back in his chair and gave Nevery a triumphant look. “A thief, Nevery? Only you would dare introduce such a person as an apprentice.”

  Nevery folded his arms but did not answer.

  Sandera spoke up for the first time, her voice clear. “Isn’t it likely, Pettivox, that this boy has already demonstrated his ability to Nevery, which is why he took him on, and why we should accept him?” She looked kindly at me. “Will you show us your locus magicalicus?”

  Drats. I’d been hoping they wouldn’t ask about a locus stone. “I haven’t found one yet,” I said.

  Pettivox snorted. “This is ridiculous.” Brumbee, who already knew that I didn’t have a locus magicalicus, shook his head. Periwinkle’s frown deepened.

  Go on, Nevery, I thought. Set them straight.

  But Nevery didn’t say anything. He sat with arms crossed, scowling down at the tabletop.

  Pettivox said, “Well, Nevery?”

  Nevery remained silent. I shivered and clenched my hands to keep myself still. He was going to change his mind about me.

  Finally, he looked up and nodded, as if coming to a decision. “I do accept him. And you will have to accept him, too, on my word. Or deal with the consequences.”

  Pettivox slammed his fist onto the table. “A threat! Typical! What can Nevery possibly achieve by forcing us to accept as an apprentice a boy thief who has no locus magicalicus and is probably reporting everything he learns to the Underlord.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Brumbee said hurriedly. “Conn is not a spy, I don’t think.” He shot me a quick glance. “Not for the Underlord, at any rate. I think we ought to give him a chance, for his own sake, and not just because Nevery asks us to. I propose that we accept him as an apprentice—”

  Pettivox opened his mouth to protest, but Brumbee went on quickly, “Conditionally. If he can find a locus magicalicus in, shall we say, thirty days? Is that enough time, Nevery?”

  Nevery nodded. “It will have to be.” He pointed to the door. “We’re finished with you, boy. Wait outside.”

  He didn’t have to ask me twice. I skiffed out to wait in the hallway.

  I closed the door behind me and leaned against it because my knees were shaking. It hadn’t gone too badly, had it? The magisters had accepted me, sort of. I just had to find my locus magicalicus. I had thirty days. But where was I going to start?

  CHAPTER 14

  After the meeting with the magisters, Nevery and I walked home to Heartsease through the tunnels. I kept quiet, having a lot to think about. Thirty days should be long enough to find a locus magicalicus, shouldn’t it? And what about Pettivox? He was a magister. What was he doing working with Crowe?

  “Well, boy,” Nevery said, striding along. “You have provoked my curiosity. I wonder how you survived the Twilight.”

  “I have quick hands,” I said. “And I was lucky.”

  “Hmph,” Nevery said, pausing to open a tunnel gate. “Maybe so. But that’s not all of it. Luck and thievery didn’t raise you from a baby. Who did?”

  Oh. “My mother,” I said.

  We reached the gate leading to Heartsease. Nevery opened it and went through, and I followed him up the stairs to the courtyard. I stopped at the tree and looked west. In the branches above our heads, the black birds stirred, like leaves in a breeze. The sun had just gone down, and, in the distance, the sky over the Twilight was stained with yellowish streaks. A few dim lights shone, like stars through clouds.

  Nevery tapped his cane against the cobblestones. “Well, boy? Tell me about her.”

  And he called me nosy! “Her name was Black Maggie,” I said. “She had black hair and black eyes, and she taught me how to pick locks.” Maggie had taught me how to calm my breath and make my fingers still and quick, no shaking, and she’d taught me how to lift a purse string from a pocket with a feather’s touch.

  “She’s dead?”

  I nodded. Killed dead. Crowe had done it. Not himself, he paid minions to do it, to break Maggie’s legs so she couldn’t walk and then, after a while, she had died. I wasn’t going to mention Crowe to Nevery, though, because I didn’t want Nevery putting me and Crowe together in the same thought.

  “How long ago?” Nevery asked.

  The wind gusted. I hunched into my coat, shivering. “It was the same summer we had all the rain. And the river flooded and all the docks were washed away, remember?”

  “No,” Nevery said. He started across the courtyard to the house, whose warm windows were looking out at us. “I’ve been banished from Wellmet for twenty years, boy. But there was an exceptionally wet summer about seven years ago, in all of the Peninsular Duchies. Does that seem about right?”

  I thought about it. Seven years ago. And I’d been old enough to take care of myself when Maggie had been killed. When she had died. I nodded.

  But I didn’t want to talk any more about my mother. “Nevery?” I asked.

  “What,” he said over his shoulder.

  I ran a few steps to catch up. “I’ve seen Pettivox before.”

  “Have you? Where?”

  “At the Underlord’s.”

  We reached the door to the storeroom, and Nevery stood on the step, looking down at me. “Explain yourself.”

  “I had a look ’round while you were talking to the Underlord,” I said.

  “Your cursed nosiness will get you into trouble, boy, if you’re not careful,” Nevery said.

  Probably. “I think Pettivox is working for the Underlord,” I said.

  Nevery scowled. “And Pettivox happens to be the magis
ter most set against you becoming my apprentice.”

  “That’s not it, Nevery,” I said.

  Nevery turned away, crossed the dark storeroom, and headed up the narrow stairs. “Listen, boy,” he said, removing his broad-brimmed hat. “I suspect Pettivox of many things but not of colluding with the Underlord. He is a magister; it is not in his interest. If you did, in fact, see Pettivox there, which I doubt, it was because he was consulting with the Underlord about the decay of magic in Wellmet. He is as concerned with the loss of magic as any of the magisters are. Now, do not speak of this again.”

  All right. I wouldn’t.

  CHAPTER 15

  The next day, Nevery was in a hurry to get to Magisters Hall. He had called a meeting with the Underlord, he said.

  “You’re asking the wrong person for help,” I said.

  “Stay out of it, boy,” Nevery said, sweeping along the tunnel to the academicos. “You have other things to worry about. I can’t help you look for a locus magicalicus. You’ll have to find it yourself.”

  I had thirty days. Twenty-nine, now. Plenty of time. Still, I wasn’t sure, exactly, how I was supposed to find my locus stone. Would it just appear one day? Would I bump my foot on it and just know that it was mine? Would it come to me, or would I have to go out into the world to find it?

  When we arrived at the academicos, Nevery stopped at the top of the staircase. A student was there, waiting.

  “Greetings, Magister Nevery,” she said with a bow. “Magister Brumbee sent me to meet you here, sir. He said you have an apprentice who needs tutoring?”

  He nodded. “This boy, here.” He pointed at me.

  The girl seemed older than I was—she was taller, anyway, and she had catlike gray eyes and bright red hair cut short like she’d hacked it off with a knife. Right from the start, I didn’t like her.

  “Very well, sir,” the girl said. To me, she said, “Follow me.”