Found (7 page)

B
enet tied the boat to the last falling-down dock in the Twilight before the mudflats began. The air smelled of mud and dead fish, and of dirty drains. He put the oars together and lay them in the bottom of the boat. I started to climb out from under the tarp.

“Stay there,” Benet said. He checked his coat pocket, pulled his truncheon from under one of the boat seats, and climbed onto the dock. He glared down at me.

All right. I pulled the tarp back over my head and settled down in the bottom of the boat to wait. I didn’t want to be there. My feet kept twitching. I wanted to be off, following the finding spell. But Benet had told me to stay, so I would stay.

There was nothing in the boat to eat. The edge of the seat poked into my back. Just after midday the clouds drew in over the city and it started to rain. Not a misty rain, but a hard, straight rain like a curtain across the river. I was glad of my black sweater and apprentice’s robe. I huddled under the canvas tarp, staring at the rain-flattened, gray surface of the river and the mudflats, getting wetter and hungrier. After a while I fell asleep.

When I woke up it was dark and not raining. Benet had tossed a couple of sacks into the boat—
whump
—and climbed in after them. “You all right?”
he asked. His coat had big wet patches on it.

“Yes,” I said, pushing the tarp off me. “You?”

“Wet,” he said. “You hungry?” he asked.

I grinned at him. “I’m never hungry, Benet.”

He gave half a laugh, then put the oars in the oarlocks and untied the rope. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a package wrapped in damp, brown paper, and handed it to me.

As he rowed us out onto the darkening river, I opened the package. Mmmm. A sandwich made of bread and bacon and butter. “Want some?” I asked.

“No,” Benet grunted. He looked over his shoulder and took a stroke with an oar to straighten out the boat.

I ate the bread and bacon. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“That captain’s got her guards out looking for you,” he said. “Twilight’s crawling with ’em.”

“Is Nevery all right?”

“Dunno,” Benet said.

While waiting for Benet I’d had plenty of time
to think about what might happen. Nevery’d set it up so we’d done the pyrotechnics in an unused workroom. So even though Brumbee had seen me and he’d told Kerrn that he’d seen me, Kerrn might suspect Nevery was helping me, but she wouldn’t
know
. I hoped Nevery was staying quiet. He didn’t need to get into trouble over this.

Full night had fallen when Benet rowed us to a shadowy dock on the Sunrise side of the river. He didn’t tie up the boat, just held to the side of the dock, ready to push us off if somebody came along. I knew better than to ask what we were doing.

The night grew quiet, the only sound the river wavelets lapping against the side of the boat, and the seat creaking when Benet shifted himself. A fog rose up off the river, surrounding us. I stared at the bank, waiting.

There—a flash of white-bright light cutting through the fog, then another one. “That’s the lothfalas,” I whispered to Benet; as I pointed, the light flashed again.

“Come on,” Benet said. He grabbed the sacks and climbed out of the boat onto the dock, and I followed him. When we reached the street, which was lined by closed-up, dark shops, Nevery was waiting for us, holding a knapsack.

“Ah, good,” he said quietly. “Come along.” Off he went,
step step tap
along the cobbled street, me and Benet right behind. He led us along the misty, puddled street until we came to the park where Sunrise people came on sunny days to ride their horses and walk on the paths and get their pockets picked. We crunched along one of the gravel paths until we came to an iron-bar fence with a gate in it.

“
Lothfalas
,” Nevery whispered. In his hand, his locus magicalicus flared brightly; he whispered another word and it dimmed until it shed a faint circle of light around us. Fog swirled at its edge.

Nevery’s eyes were bright. He pointed at the gate. “Pick the lock.”

Right. I reached into the collar of my shirt and
pulled out my lockpick wires, then crouched in front of the gate. A simple double-down plunger. One-two and a snick-flick, and I had it open.

“I don’t know, boy,” Nevery said.

I stood and faced him. He didn’t know what?

“I don’t know why the finding spell effected the way it did,” Nevery said, answering the question I’d asked hours ago. Nevery pulled at the end of his beard, his eyes keen-gleaming down at me. “It is clear that you have some kind of connection to the magic of this city; I suspect that anytime you do a spell, it may have unintended consequences.”

Unintended consequences
. Trouble, that meant. I’d have to be careful, then, every time I did magic. Once I got back to Wellmet with my locus magicalicus. “Nevery, I need to go,” I said. I could feel the spell-line not far away, leading south. It pulled at me like a string.

“Yes, all right, my lad,” Nevery said. “Be careful.”

“Nevery, I’m always careful,” I said.

Benet snorted. He’d taken the knapsack from
Nevery and packed it with the stuff from his sacks; he handed it to me. A blanket was rolled up and strapped to it, too.

“Here,” Nevery said. He had my coat, the one with the shabby velvet collar. I took off my apprentice robe, handed it to Nevery, and put on the coat instead. Benet handed me a scarf, one he’d knitted. It was long and nettle-green and had a keyhole shape knitted into each end and a long fringe, and he’d stitched my name on it in runes. The edges were thick enough to hide lockpick wires in, I reckoned.

“It’s perfect,” I said, stroking the soft wool.

Benet nodded.

“Look, boy,” Nevery said. “Stay on the spell-line and it will pull you straight to your locus magicalicus. It cannot be too far away from Wellmet; you’ll only be gone for a few days. Send a bird when you’ve returned and Benet will fetch you, and we’ll decide what to do next about that cursed Arhionvar.”

I nodded. He was right. I needed to hurry.

Rowan Forestal

I simply do not understand how someone as clever as Conn can be so continually stupid. He’s been trying to hide from Captain Kerrn and the guards, yet he has called the worst kind of attention to himself. The Dawn Palace has been in an uproar as the guards have searched the city and come in to report. The magisters sent Nimble to complain about the damage done by Conn’s latest pyrotechnic spell, and Magister Nevery stormed in and shouted at my mother behind the closed door of her office until she summoned guards and had him taken away.

Then there was the hearing this morning to determine Conn’s punishment for casting a pyrotechnic spell. I don’t understand why they call it a hearing when no one listened and Conn wasn’t there to speak for himself.

I detest the hearing room; it is full of echoes and dark corners. The magisters, dressed in their colorful robes, were sitting at a long table; my mother, wrapped in furs yet still cold as stone, sat at the middle of the table, and I stood
just behind her. Magister Nevery sat to the side on a hard bench, with Captain Kerrn standing behind him.

Magister Nimble began. I have never liked Nimble, and now I hate him. He has a precise voice with a whiny edge, and in this horrid voice he went on about Conn’s so-called crimes, how he practiced illegal pyrotechnics and constituted a threat to the safety of the city and all who reside here. Then he ranted about Conn’s latest pyrotechnic spell. No one was injured or killed, thank goodness, but several buildings have been damaged and the Night Bridge was sliced in two.

Then Magister Nevery, glaring fiercely, got up from his bench and reminded them all that the dread magic Arhionvar, which had preyed upon Desh, was coming after Wellmet next—had they forgotten that?

The magisters shouted him down—they will not believe, as Conn believes, that the city’s magic is a living being, and so they cannot conceive of Arhionvar as a
threat. They said Magister Nevery was exaggerating the danger posed by Arhionvar in order to consolidate his own power. They don’t believe that Arhionvar was behind either Jaggus’s or Underlord Crowe’s attacks on Wellmet; they think they both acted alone, for human reasons, not magical ones. Nimble also accused Nevery of bringing up Arhionvar in order to deflect criticism of his criminal apprentice. Then he accused Nevery of being involved in Conn’s latest pyrotechnic disaster.

Nimble is quite right about that, of course.

But Magister Nevery refused to speak further on that subject.

Then Magister Nimble and the other magisters pretended to consult, and Nimble whispered their verdict against Conn into my mother’s ear. I protested, but she told me very coldly and stiffly to be silent. Then she pronounced the verdict.

I will never forgive her. Never.

I
n the morning I woke up under a bush with my stomach growling and frost covering my blanket. The sky was gray, tinged with pink off to the east, and Wellmet was a couple of hours back along the muddy path. The air felt thin, empty of magic.

If I followed the path toward
the south it’d cross the spell-line, I figured, and then I’d follow that, instead, until I found my locus magicalicus. It’d only take a day or two, as Nevery’d said.

I crawled out from under the bush, rolled up the blanket, strapped it to the pack, and put the pack-straps over my shoulder and set off. I’d walk for a bit, and then stop to eat some breakfast. I kept Benet’s scarf wrapped warmly around my neck.

I’d seen maps—Rowan had shown them to me. Wellmet was far away from most of the other Peninsular Duchies, the other cities of the land. Right outside Wellmet to the north were fields and pastures; here, to the south, were forests. I’d been out of the city before, when I’d gone to Desh to meet Arhionvar. That muddy road had led through gray, dead forest.

The forest here felt more alive. Winter had begun, and in the morning sunshine the air stayed cold, but the frost sparkled like thousands of jewels on the ground and bare tree branches. Ahead
of me I felt the spell-line; if I closed my eyes, it was a silver thread in the darkness, leading from the warm glow that was the magic of Wellmet off into a darker distance.

I walked faster to catch up to it.

At midmorning I stopped to eat. Next to the path was a flat gray rock the size of a door. I climbed up and opened the knapsack to see what Benet had packed for me. Brown-paper-wrapped packages of food, a small canteen full of water, a toothbrush wrapped up in a washcloth, and a flat wooden box with a sheaf of thin paper and three pencils in it. For writing letters.

And a small book that Nevery must’ve put in, covered with cracked brown leather, a little larger than my hand. An Advanced Spell Practicum, it was called. I opened it. The pages were yellow, with black mold spots on them. On the first page was a list of chapters, each one for a different kind of spell.

Transformative

Simulative

Refractoratory

Luminative

Directive

I flipped through the pages to “Simulative.” There it was, the remirrimer, the spell Nevery had used to make the shadow-me to distract the guards at the academicos.

I went back to the beginning of the book, and reading the introduction, I ate a biscuit and bacon and some dried apple. When I was done I sat for a minute with my eyes closed. The spell-line was very close. I felt it humming, calling to me.

I packed everything back into the knapsack, hopped off the rock, and headed down the path. Overhead, the sky was bright blue and cloudless. Even though the pack was heavy, and even though the thought of Arhionvar lurked in the back of my head, I felt lighter than a spark given off by a pyrotechnic spell. With a locus stone, I’d be a wizard again, and able to talk to the magic and help protect it, and the duchess and Captain Kerrn and the magisters
would see that I belonged in Wellmet and shouldn’t be exiled. I’d get to live in the rebuilt Heartsease with Nevery and Benet, where I belonged.

Up ahead, the path curved ’round the base of a low hill covered with bare-branched trees. I followed the path, the tingling from the spell-line getting stronger. Then I saw it.

The finding spell had burned a wide line over the hill, cutting trees in half, leaving branches hanging in tangles. The line rolled down off the hill and, ahead, went across the path. There, three black birds, like black lumps, perched in a tree, watching.

The knapsack bumping on my back, I ran along the path until I reached the spell-line. The black birds flew up squawking. I slung my pack on the ground and crouched down to look.

The spell-line was about as wide as my two arms spread apart, and it’d scorched the ground black like burnt toast. I looked along where it led. Into the forest, away from the path, burning
through brown-leafed bushes and trees and snaky vines hanging down. Wide enough for me to walk along.

Testing, I rested my hand on the spell-line.

It was like putting my hand into the river after a heavy rainfall. The line pulled at me and shot tingles of excitement up my arm and into my head. I tugged out my hand and the spell dripped off of it like silver water, shining in the sunlight. I blinked the brights from my eyes and got to my feet.

I looked up into the sparkling blue sky, then into the forest where the spell-line led. “All right, locus stone,” I said. “I’m coming.”

I picked up my knapsack and got ready to step onto the spell-line.

Then, from behind me, around the low hill, came the jingle-clop sound of horses and voices talking.

Someone was coming.