Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(17)

She thought of unmasking him, but she knew better than anyone the importance of a good mask. What right did she have to take that comfort from someone else? She turned away from him and stumbled to his bag, which had fallen away from him when he’d flown backward. She rummaged through it. Inside was the book she’d given him and more gold pesos.

She wished the boy’s satchel had some tonic to cure the headache hammering behind her eyes. Her shadow swayed like a docked ship. Damn that stupid card and this stupid boy. From behind her, he moaned in pain. She turned to see him pushing himself onto his hands and knees.

“You don’t play fair,” he grunted, adjusting what remained of his mask before it slipped off his face. She watched him place his hand over his nose, probably doing some healing magic. It’d be nice to be able to do that herself instead of having to pay some back-alley, fake bruxo in the Pinch who swore they’d passed their bruxo examinations to heal her.

“Don’t kid yourself. I was never playing,” she said, dropping his bag as she stood.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” The boy raised his hand, and between his fingers was the card she’d used to knock out the players at the cambió game.

She shook her head, the movement making her nauseous. “You are a strange little fox.”

With a flick of his fingers the card flew through the air to her. She caught it reflexively.

Then she noticed something odd.

She herself had magicked the card, so it could only be controlled by her, no one else. She’d charmed it to expel that knockout smoke once in Rayan’s parlor. That was all. Yet she could feel the card pulsing with her own magic, as if she herself had commanded it to release the smoke again, right now, to attack her. But that was impossible; it had to be a trick.

“You said you wanted to be in bed at a decent hour,” the boy said. The card sent out a burst of that sweet smoke. Finn’s head swam. “Sleep tight.”

A fox would have let her hit the ground without intervention. A doe would have carried her somewhere safe. But Alfie was neither of those things, so he would do neither. As she fell, he spoke a word of magic to cushion her fall. He shakily rose to his feet and doubled over to clutch his stomach where she’d knocked the wind out of him. She really hadn’t been playing.

He transferred the books from her bag into his own. Then he grasped the thief under her armpits and pulled her into a dark alley between two shops. Alfie propped her against the alley wall. Now if a guard made their rounds they likely would not see her, and if she woke before sunrise she’d have plenty of time to get away. What happened to her would be up to her. He looked up, and the dark of the night sky was muddled with clouds. It looked like it might rain.

Alfie took off his cloak and draped it over her shoulders, fastening it around her neck. Then he was satisfied.

He stepped away from the thief and tossed his doorknob at the wall she leaned against. It sank in. He let the doorknob darken to his royal blue. For his propio magic to work for travel, he assigned each location a shade of magic and a special twist of the doorknob.

He turned it once to the right before murmuring, “Voy.”

The magic obliged, and the wall opened before him, inviting him into the colorful quiet of its channels. Alfie stole one last glance at the girl, still fast asleep. He thought of waiting for her to wake up. Then he thought of the hit he’d taken to the groin.

Neither a fox nor a doe, but do not be a fool, he thought.

He turned away from the girl and walked into the magic as if it were a road well-traveled.





6


The Chest


The tunnel of magic opened into Alfie’s bedroom. He grimaced in pain as he stepped out, then sat on the edge of his bed and took the books out of his bag.

There were five books instead of the four he’d expected. He must have accidentally grabbed something from the thief when he’d taken the books out of her bag. It was a small, palm-sized journal. He was surprised to find that the pages held fine sketches of more faces than he could count. They were drawn with such care that Alfie couldn’t imagine them coming from the person who’d punched him with a stone-cloaked fist. She must’ve stolen it. Alfie shoved it back in his bag and turned his attention to the four books from the game.

All but one were Englassen. The last was a slim, old book in traditional Castallano script.

Alfie thumbed through the pages and smiled at the familiar stories. It was a rare first edition of a famous book of Castallan myths and legends. The book even had his favorite childhood tale—“The Birth of Man and Magic.”

His exhaustion aside, Alfie couldn’t help but read it, remembering how enthralled he’d been when Paloma had read it to him and Dez when they were boys.

Before there was man and woman, sand and sea, sun and moon, there were only gods. One sunless day, or perhaps it was a moonless night, the gods grew ill. They sneezed, and through the fingers clasped over their noses, stars shot free, spreading through the sky. When they coughed, puffs of cloud pillowed the cosmos. They picked dirt from their nails and land flourished. They wiped the sweat from their brows and the salted puddles became oceans.

The gods decreed that the land they had birthed must be tended to. So, from the light of the stars, the silt of the ocean floor, and the breath in the clouds, they made man and woman to be the guardians of the earth. But creating mankind was not like creating oceans and stars. Men had hearts and the gods could not agree on what to fill their hearts with.