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The first time I'd talked to the magics like this, when I'd settled Arhionvar in the city, they didn't want to let me go, and I hadn't found myself again for a long time. This time, especially with Nevery with me, I had to be extra careful.

Keeping my hand on Pip's paw, speaking slowly in the dragon language, I asked the Arhionvar magic if it would be the great wall and power of the Sunrise, and I showed it the river, a barrier that it could not cross. Then I told the Wellmet magic that it could care for the Twilight.

The magics talked back. We couldn't hear them with our ears; their voices rumbled in our bones, surrounding us with light and sound. They were like the huge shadows of dragons, if shadows were made of pure lightning and thunder. Slowly, with the feeling of enormous stones shifting, Arhionvar gathered itself and settled like a blanket of brilliant stars over the Sunrise. Glowing softly, the Wellmet magic eased gently into its own place over the Twilight.

There. Done. Settled.

I spoke the last words of the spell.

The magics were supposed to let me go, then—that's what the spell had asked them to do—but they kept their grip on me, swirling around me and pulling me away. They wanted me to be with them. At first, when I was a gutterboy thief, they had wanted me because I'd been alone, like them, and now, I guessed, they noticed me most because I had a dragon locus stone. They wanted me to become part of them, too huge and dragonish and too full of light to see or remember tiny Nevery or Benet or Rowan, or anyone in Wellmet. I gasped for breath against the pressure; my feet lifted off the ground.

Nevery's hand came down solid on my shoulder, steadying me, and maybe himself, too. His deep voice rang out, speaking sharp, spell-ending words.

The magics clung to me for a breath, then another, then
snap
—they let me go. The heavy, pressing weight of Arhionvar lifted, and the warmth of the old Wellmet magic seeped away. The bubble of silence around us popped, and we were left standing on the muddy riverbank, cold mist swirling around our ankles.

I lifted my heavy hand off of Pip's paw, blinked, and found Nevery holding tightly to my shoulder. Pip dropped off my other shoulder and landed splat on the ground. I staggered a bit and Nevery let me go, and I sat down. He leaned heavily on his cane. With a shaking hand, he put his locus magicalicus back into his cloak pocket.

I rubbed my hand across my eyes. That'd been close. Too close.

Nevery cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice sounded rusty. “So that's what happened when we lost you before.”

I nodded. When I'd brought Arhionvar into the city, the magics had taken me and hadn't given me back for a long time. I shivered, remembering it.

Tendrils of cold crept in with the fog. I picked up Pip, who was shivering, too, and climbed to my feet; then I snuggled Pip up against my woolly black sweater. Might as well test to see that it had worked. “
Minnervas
,” I whispered, and the spell effected exactly as it was supposed to. The little cat-Pip started to glow with warmth, clinging to the front of my sweater with its claws. I breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Hmph.” Nevery turned and led the way back onto the courtyard. “Well done, my lad,” he said.

I glowed a little from his words, too. “Thanks, Nevery.”

“But you know, Connwaer,” he added over his shoulder. “It is not a bad thing to ask for help now and then.”

He paused and I caught up to him. “What d'you mean?” I asked.

“You don't have to do everything yourself,” Nevery said. “Ask for help and perhaps you won't get yourself into so much trouble.”

 

C
HAPTER

15

T
hat afternoon, Sootle put two bulgy burlap bags into a boat and rowed us over to one of the magisters' islands. I carried one of the bags and he carried the other, and, followed by Pip, we went 'round the back of the house to the servants' door, where the housekeeper let us in.

“Right this way,” she said, leading us down a long corridor. “The fires is all out, on account of you swifts coming today. The one in here's been smoking something terrible.” She led us to a fancy bedroom, and I realized whose house it was. The carpet on the floor was spangled with little blue flowers, and a painting of a family crest—more blue flowers—hung over the fireplace. Periwinkle, one of the magisters, lived here.

Outside, Sootle had told me about the job. “We go in, we sweep the chimneys, we get paid, we leave. When you go up top, check the layout, be sure you can get in the chimney from outside.”

Then he'd handed me a piece of chalk and told me what to do with it.

In Periwinkle's bedroom, Sootle pulled a wire-bristle brush from one of the bags and handed it to me, checked to see the flue was open, and sent me up the chimney. I was to go up top first, then sweep out the soot on the way down. The soot would fall into the hearth and Sootle would catch it in a canvas cloth he'd spread there.

Up I went. Pip came, too, crawling up the bricks ahead of me, sending ticks of soot down into my face. The chimney grew narrower as I went up, squeezing my shoulders. My knees got sore from pressing against the bricks as I climbed. At last, coughing soot out of my lungs, I reached the top. Something was blocking the way. I reached up and felt twigs and straw—a nest. No wonder the chimney smoked. I pushed it aside and poked my head out. The nest—a swift nest, it must be—was empty, so I let it fall onto the rooftiles. Pip perched next to me on the edge of the chimney. I looked out and saw another seven chimneys poking up from the sloped rooftop. Would I have to sweep them all?

Holding the brush with one hand, I groped in my pocket for the chalk, pulled it out, and reached over the side of the chimney and marked the bricks with an X.

On the way down, I brushed choking clouds of soot off the walls.

“Do it again,” Sootle said, when I reached the bottom and climbed out. “Not enough soot. You haven't scrubbed it well enough.”

Back up I went, all the way to the top, and on the way down scraped even more soot off the chimney bricks. Then I did another chimney, and another one. Coughing up black soot, I reached the bottom of the fourth chimney, this one in a dining room, and Sootle was sitting in a chair unwrapping bacon and cheese in two slices of bread.

Oh, good. Time to eat. My stomach growled.

“None for you, Pip,” Sootle said. “You had a good breakfast, and we don't want our charboys getting fat. You'd get stuck up there, wouldn't you?”

I didn't think I would.

Sootle took a bite of his cheese-and-bacon. “Back up with you,” he said, his mouth full. “And do it proper-like this time.”

I took a deep breath and headed back up the chimney.

By the time we got to the last chimney, the eighth one, my arms and legs were quivering with tiredness and my fingers and toes were rubbed raw from clinging to the bricks. My eyes burned and every breath felt clogged with soot. I sat on the doorstep and coughed while the housekeeper paid Sootle. He threaded the coins onto a purse string and handed me a bag to carry.

 

That job was done, but the just-the-job was still waiting to be done. In the dead of night I was asleep in the charkids' cellar, Pip-cat curled next to me, when a bony hand shook me awake. “Up with you, Pip,” Sootle's voice said. He held a lantern turned low. Blinking, I followed him up the stairs into the dark, empty kitchen. “We've got a chimney to sweep,” he whispered.

A chimney to sweep in the middle of the night?

Without speaking, we left the house, winding our way through the quiet, dark streets of the Sunrise to the river. Sootle rowed us out to the magisters' island, to Periwinkle's house. There he tied the boat, then led me 'round the side of the house, which was a dark shadow against the darker night, no lights showing. Nobody awake inside, then.

Two other chimney swifts, Drury and the skinny one from the smokehole tavern, were waiting there. Sootle whispered with them while I yawned and rubbed sleep out of my eyes. The river flowed past with a quiet
rush-rush
, and the stars shone down. Over the island I felt the magics of the city, the stone strength of Arhionvar pushing up against the warmth of the old Wellmet magic. Still settled. Pip-cat climbed up to my shoulder and crouched there, its prickle-fluff tail curled around my neck like a scarf.

Sootle pulled me by the sleeve and I followed him to the side of the house. A rope ladder hung there. “Up,” Sootle breathed into my ear. “And quiet as you go.”

I started up, Pip climbing the stone wall beside me. I felt the ladder jerk, and then Sootle started up, too. I glanced over my shoulder and saw him below me, a dark lump against the side of the house.

At the top, Pip and I crouched at the edge of the roof until Sootle joined us. He had a knapsack on his back. “Which chimney?” he whispered.

Which one had I marked with the chalk that day, he meant.

The eight chimneys stuck up from the roof like dead tree trunks, all of them the same. “I think it's that one,” I whispered, pointing.

We climbed the sloping roof, the overlapping slate tiles cool and rough under my bare feet, to the chimney. Drats. No chalk-marked X on the bricks.

We checked another chimney, and then another, and found the mark, pale white in the starlight. My feet crunched on sticks, the remains of the swift's nest I'd pushed off the chimney that morning.

“Shh,” Sootle breathed. He pulled me down to crouch next to him, right beside the chimney.

Right. Now what?

Sootle took off his knapsack and set it on the roof. “Here's what you're going to do, Pip,” he whispered. He pulled a long, rag-wrapped package out of the knapsack. “Torryfine tongs,” he whispered. “Use them to pick up the lady wizard's locus stone. It'll be next to her bed, or somewhere nearby. It looks like an ordinary river stone.” He gripped me by the front of my black sweater and pulled me closer, his voice hissing into my ear. “Whatever happens,
don't touch the stone
. It'll kill you dead if you do, and that wouldn't do us much good, would it?”

I shook my head.

He let me go and pulled another package out of the knapsack and unwrapped it. A cage made out of wire mesh, about the size of my hand. In the starlight, the cage wires glimmered pearly green.

“It's made of torryfine metal,” Sootle whispered. “Use the tongs to put the wizard stone in here, and it won't hurt you. Then come back up.”

Torryfine?
Tourmalifine
, he meant. The little cage and the tongs were made out of tourmalifine.

That meant . . .

Oh, it was clever! Tourmalifine repelled magic; I'd read all about that. This was how the chimney swifts were stealing and hiding the locus stones without getting killed by them. Because tourmalifine repelled magic, the tongs and the cage protected the thief from the effects of touching a locus magicalicus. Had Sootle thought that up himself?

He put the rag-wrapped tongs and cage into the knapsack and handed it to me. “My other charboy lost his nerve,” Sootle said. “Nearly bunged things up last night thieving another lady wizard's stone. He's no use to me anymore. You going to be useful, my intrepid young Pip?”

I nodded.

“Right, then,” he whispered. “Off you go.”

Right. I slung the knapsack on my back and climbed into the chimney.

Down I went, my arms and legs aching from all the sweeping I'd done earlier in the day. As I went lower, the bricks grew warmer and the air grew thick with smoke. Looking down the shaft of the chimney, I saw below me the red glow of a dying fire in the hearth. A cough tickled in my throat, and I covered my face with my sweater-sleeve and choked it back down again. Pip climbed past me, flicking me in the face with its tail. I blinked the smoke out of my eyes and watched as Pip-cat climbed down to the hearth and then snapped up the dying embers, swallowing them until only ash was left and the smoke cleared.

Well done, Pip. I climbed the rest of the way down. At the bottom, I lowered myself quietly into the ashy hearth. I crouched there, surveying the room. Pip crouched next to me, its red eyes glowing.

The room was completely dark. The wide, canopied bed was against one wall, I knew, and there was a wardrobe and another chair somewhere around, and a small table that I didn't want to bump into. I didn't dare use the lothfalas spell to kindle a light.

Oh, but I did have a way to see better.

I rested my hand on Pip's back and, my voice the barest breath of a whisper, said “
Tallennar
,” and blinked, and through Pip's eyes the room was shining with light, everything in it edged with ember-bright flame. I heard with Pip's ears, too, the wind
rush-shush
ing over the top of the chimney, way overhead, and the soft huffs of the sleeper in the bed, breathing.

As I lifted Pip onto my shoulder, the room shifted and I saw the room from my level. There, the table beside the bed. Sure as sure, the locus stone was there. My feet feather quiet, I crept out of the hearth and across the room. On the table, a stack of books, a dark werelight lantern, and no locus stone. It was more a cabinet than a table, I realized. I crouched down. There, a door. In Pip's fire-vision its keyhole sparkled.

I had just the thing for it. I fished my lockpick wires out of my pocket and—
quick hands
—picked the sparking lock. The door swung open, silent. Inside, on a little velvet pillow, was a locus magicalicus stone. It was a plain, rounded, gray river stone, but to Pip's eyes it burned brighter than a star, a blaze of dazzling light in the dark cave of the cabinet.

I didn't bother with the tourmalifine tongs. I already knew I could touch the locus stone without being hurt by it. I reached in to pick it up. Then I froze, my fingers not quite touching the stone, the light from it so bright I could see the dark shadows of my bones inside the glowing skin of my hand.

Should I do this? Steal a locus stone from a wizard? I'd done it once before, when I'd been a gutterboy and had picked Nevery's pocket. Then, I hadn't known what I was doing. Now I did. I knew what it was like for a wizard to lose a locus magicalicus.

It was awful. When I'd lost my first locus magicalicus, it'd been like being desperately hungry and never finding a bite of something to eat. A horrible, empty, aching feeling.

But I had to do this. My hand shook a little as I lowered it and picked up the stone. My fingers tingled, and the stone flashed, filling the room with sudden light. It was light that only Pip could see, and me, seeing through Pip's eyes.

Blinking the brights out of my eyes, I paused, listening. The sleeper in the bed didn't stir.

I pulled the tourmalifine cage out of the knapsack and unwrapped it. The wires felt cold. I put the locus stone inside the cage. As it touched the wires, the stone snapped and flared, giving off sparks and sizzles of magic. It didn't like being in there. Quickly I wrapped it back up again. Then I crept back across the room to the chimney. After whispering the spell to get my own vision and hearing back, I climbed up, the knapsack scraping against the brick walls. At the top I climbed out.

Sootle was waiting. “You've got it?” he whispered.

I crouched next to him beside the chimney, and nodded. Yes, I had it. Periwinkle's locus magicalicus. “What're you going to do with it?” I asked.

Sootle gave me a keen look. “None of your business, is it?”

True, it wasn't charboy Pip's business, but it was wizard Conn's. I kept hold of the knapsack. “Are you going to get money for it?” I asked.

His hand shot out and cuffed me on the ear. “Give me the bag, Pip, and no more questions.”

All right. I handed over the knapsack.

Sorry, Periwinkle. She wouldn't like losing her stone. I would get it back for her. Sure as sure, I would.