The Magicians and Mrs. Quent (16 page)

Like a dark bird, he flew on through the night.

The sign of the Sword and Leaf flickered in the grimy light of a streetlamp. A large fellow stood watch in the doorway, arms crossed, for it was after nightfall. “Pardon me,” Eldyn said when the man did not open the way.

“Who’s there?” the big fellow said, squinting into the gloom. “Show yourself.” He made the sign against ghosts and curses, two fingers splayed before his heart.

The shadows—Eldyn had forgotten to release them. He did so now, casting them off like a cloak, and made a motion as if stepping into the pale circle beneath the streetlamp. The big fellow gave him a startled look, then shook his head and opened the door.

“Damnable Siltheri,” he muttered as Eldyn passed through.

These words sent a shiver up Eldyn’s back. He thought of the band of illusionists he had seen the last time he was here, recalling their shimmering attire, their pale necks. Surely he could not be mistaken for one of
them.
Nor were they inside the tavern this night. However, Rafferdy was, waving at him from his place in the corner, and Eldyn went to join him.

Rafferdy seemed in a fine mood. He laughed and announced he was delighted to see Eldyn, and now they could order punch. He signaled a man, who delivered them a crock, two cups, lumps of sugar, spoons, and a lemon. The fellow held out a hand.

“Garritt, you wouldn’t mind paying our bill this time, would you?” Rafferdy nodded toward the man.

Eldyn winced. What sort of cruel fate was it that Rafferdy’s pockets should be empty and his own full? God mocked him. But then he smiled despite himself, as if comprehending the divine joke. The money he had gotten today could not buy him a future; it might as well buy them a drink. He pulled a coin out.

“A regal!” Rafferdy said, eyes alight. “Our amusement is assured tonight.”

“I thought
your
amusement was always assured,” Eldyn said. The punch was sweet and strong.

“Only because I go to great lengths to assure it. Amusement is a challenging business, Garritt. If one does not concentrate, if one lets up even for a moment, the risk of suffering something boring or tedious is immediate and dire. As you are no doubt well aware, given your glum looks. What’s the matter? How is that business of yours going?”

There was no use speaking of it. “I am still working to arrange things,” he said, and downed the contents of his cup. “But what of you, Rafferdy? You seem in fine spirits. What has propelled you to such great heights?”

“Propelled? No, it is rather that nothing has weighed me down. The natural progression of my spirit is ever upward, even as yours is always directed down. But let us see who will tug the harder tonight, Garritt. By God, I would drag you up if I could.” And he refilled Eldyn’s cup.

“So you’ve seen her again,” Eldyn said with a laugh, feeling a heady warmth from the spirits. “Miss Lockwell.”

“It was a chance encounter, over on Warden Street.”

Eldyn raised an eyebrow. “A chance encounter? After your driving halfway across the city and lying in wait, you mean?”

“As I’ve learned at dice, sometimes it helps to give chance a nudge when no one is looking.”

“And as I’ve learned, you’re a pauper tonight,” Eldyn said, refilling Rafferdy’s cup. “No doubt from losing at gambling. I’d think you’d be more careful.”

“What was there to be careful of? I simply spied Miss Lockwell and her sisters as they left a shop, greeted them, much to their obvious delight, and walked with them awhile. You should have joined me, Garritt. They are all three pleasing to look at.”

Eldyn shrugged. “Perhaps, though I cannot say I find them so fetching as you do. The youngest is lively, it is true. And I warrant you, there
is
something about the eldest. I can’t quite describe it. She is pretty, I suppose. And she carries herself well, though she is too short to be a beauty. And did you notice her freckles? Does she never wear a bonnet?”

Rafferdy said he had indeed noticed Miss Lockwell’s freckles. He did not seem to find them properly abhorrent.

Eldyn would be the first to admit that their visit at the house on Whitward Street had gone better than he had feared. It had been long since Eldyn had known any society besides that of his sister and Rafferdy, and he had found the Lockwells engaging. The middle sister was too mild, of course, and their mother too loud. But he enjoyed discussing plays with the youngest sister, and there could be no faulting either the wit or the manners of the eldest.

“Well, it hardly matters how fetching they are,” Eldyn said. “They are beneath you, Rafferdy.”

“Indeed!” Rafferdy said with a laugh. “Their connections are hopelessly inferior, at least to one in my situation. And what society they keep—their cousin is a lawyer with all the manners of a leech. They are completely beneath me. And I can assure you, Miss Lockwell is very aware of this fact.”

“Is she?” Eldyn said over his cup. “Has she said this to you?”

“No, of course not. It would be uncouth to be so direct. But she is clever. She has so much as said it in a dozen subtle ways. I have no fear of untoward attachments on her part. No one is more sensitive of the gulf between us than she.”

“If that is so, then do you not think that your encounters with her might cause her distress?”

This idea was unfathomable to Rafferdy. “I enjoy her wit, as she does mine. There is a freshness about her speech—a way of being sharp without being cutting—that I never will encounter at a party in the New Quarter. She is utterly without affectation. Given that affectation is all I have, I naturally find her fascinating. Besides, they may be beneath
me,
but for you, Garritt…”

“As for me, I fear I am beneath
them,
” Eldyn said, and quaffed his punch.

“Nonsense! Not
beneath
you. You are the grandson of a magnate, after all. And you’re not so broke as you’d like me to think. I saw your pocketful of money. Either of the younger two would do well to catch you.”

Eldyn did not bother to argue. That a marriage between him and any one of the Lockwell sisters could result in anything but misery was impossible. When both sides wanted for money, a match was doomed.

Besides, there was already one he might marry to assure himself a living. He felt the lump of bread in his pocket. His stomach had gone sour; he should eat more. Instead, he filled their punch cups again, and after that they put all their attention into getting drunk.

T
HE BRIEF UMBRAL was nearly done when he returned to the Golden Loom. As he stumbled through the streets of the Old City, he had forgotten to gather the shadows around him, and he had nearly been parted from what remained of his money by a group of men in ragged clothes who appeared from behind one of the buttresses of St. Galmuth’s. However, fear had cleared his mind, and with an instinct as natural to him as drawing a breath, he had spun the darkness into a concealing garment and had darted down a dark lane, losing the robbers.

By the time he reached the inn, the clarity imparted by a brush with peril had faded, leaving his head dull and throbbing from too much rum. He nodded to the doorkeeper, then headed for the stairs, wanting only to go to his room, to throw himself in a chair and not move, not even think—that is, to enjoy the blissful, insensible hours of a drunken stupor. However, before he could start up the stairwell, a tall form stepped from a doorway.

“You have something of mine,” the other said in a deep voice. “You have had it for days, and yet you have not returned it to me. Did you think to keep it for yourself?”

Eldyn gripped the newel post. A man stepped into the circle of tarnished light cast by a lamp that hung from the ceiling. He was tall and broad, clad in a coat of russet velvet. His lion’s mane of hair was loose about his shoulders.

“You have something of mine,” Westen said again, prowling closer.

At first, in a mad thought, Eldyn thought he was speaking of Sashie. Then his foggy mind recalled the handkerchief tucked into his coat pocket. He fumbled for it, pulled it out, and the half-eaten hunk of bread came with it, tumbling to the floor.

“My apologies,” Eldyn said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “I would have returned this to you sooner. However, I have not seen you about of late. Yet now that you are here, you must take it back.” He held out the silk cloth and cursed himself for the way it betrayed the trembling of his hand.

Westen did not reach for the handkerchief. Instead, he took another step nearer. “I do not give a token of myself lightly. I give it only to one who will keep it in good faith. It is a spell of sorts, a charm, one that protects me in my work. Always the spell has kept me safe on the road. Yet I have been much harried by the king’s redcrests of late. At first I did not suspect the reason—until
she
told me that you had taken it from her.”

A spark of anger ignited in Eldyn’s chest. “I fear that you made a mistake. It was—it
is
—impossible for my sister to keep it in any sort of faith. If you had hoped to elicit any protections in granting it to her, you did so in vain.”

Again Eldyn held out the cloth, but the highwayman did not take it. His tawny eyes were still on Eldyn, and Eldyn could feel a power radiating from him: the aura of a man who was strong, and handsome, and rich, and who knew it. All at once a grin spread across Westen’s clean-shaven face. It was a perilous expression. The spark in Eldyn’s chest collapsed to a cinder.

“Perhaps you are right,” the highwayman said. “Perhaps I did give it to the wrong keeper after all.” And with that he took the handkerchief.

The sweat cooled on Eldyn’s brow. He turned to ascend the stairs.

“I understand you need regals, Garritt.”

Eldyn’s fingers tightened on the railing.

“The sum of a hundred regals, to be exact.”

Eldyn turned from the stairs. “How can you know that?” However, even as he said this, he understood. Westen must have eavesdropped on one of his conversations with Mr. Sarvinge and Mr. Grealing. “You have been spying on me.”

The highwayman shrugged. “I can give you the gold you need.”

Despite his tiredness and dread, Eldyn laughed. “Give? You would
give
it to me? I should think not. You are not much one for giving but rather
taking,
are you not? Would that I had a mask and pistol, Mr. Westen, if that is indeed your name. For then I could elicit your charity just as you do of those you waylay on the roads.”

“Do not think you know me,” Westen answered, his voice low. “Though I will grant you, there is some truth to your words. And you are right. I offer no gift. For I want something in return.”

Fear was gone, as was weariness. For all his present uncertainty, there were some things that caused Eldyn no doubt. “If you think I would sell my sister to the likes of you, think again.”

The highwayman laughed. “So you
would
sell her, you mean, but only to the right man. How like a true gentleman, who thinks nothing of love but only of money, and who, from his female kin, would gladly steal any hope of the former in order to gain the latter. For what is marriage but whoremongering for the wealthy? And they say I’m a thief.”

Eldyn’s cheeks burned, and his hands became fists. “I would do anything to assure her happiness.”

“Would you, Garritt? I am curious: what exactly would you do in order to assure your sister’s future?” Westen reached inside his jacket and took out a leather purse. It was heavy, by the way he held it. “I have it here, Garritt—a hundred regals. Is that not what you need to make what you dream come to pass?”

Eldyn licked his lips. A few hours ago, in this very spot, he had taken bread from Miss Walpert. Now he felt a different sort of hunger. He meant to tell Westen to sod off, to turn away and march up the stairs.

Instead, he said, “What do you want?” The highwayman smiled, led him to the corner, and spoke in the lowest of voices.

The thing was not difficult, and that was what first let Eldyn know it was wrong. There was a village at Hayrick Cross, three miles north of the city. There was a blacksmith’s shop in the village. There was a man in the shop with red hair. Eldyn was to ask the man for nine nails and to pay him with three pennies. After buying the nails, he should go to the public house in the village. He should order an ale. He should take a quarter hour to drink it, no more, no less. Once finished, he should go to the old well east of the village. He should look for a loose stone in the rim and pry it up. Under the stone would be a slip of paper. On the paper would be a word. He was to memorize the word, then tear up the paper and throw it in the well.

Upon returning to Invarel, he was to read
The Fox
every day it was published, particularly the advertisements on the last page. When he saw an advertisement listing pewter candlesticks, silver snuffboxes, and gold thimbles for sale, he was to go to the street printed in the advertisement but not to the house number. Instead, the address he must go to could be derived from the number of candlesticks, snuffboxes, and thimbles listed in the advertisement. Once there, he should knock. A man would ask him his name. He should give it as Mr. ____, with the surname being the word he had read on the paper at the well.