The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy, #1)(24)

“What of Emery Thane?” Mg. Aviosky asked, almost too soft to hear.

Another long pause before Mg. Hughes said, “We make him as comfortable as we can.”

No! Ceony’s mind screamed, and she clamped both hands over her mouth to keep herself from shouting. How could they? How could they let him die?

Ceony shivered. Standing, knees creaking, she tiptoed her way up the stairs, unable to bear any more words from the Cabinet. At the top of the stairs her tears started anew, only these ones felt very cold.

He was going to die. Magician Emery Thane was going to die, and without his own heart in his chest. It seemed so very wrong.

Soft padding announced Fennel coming down the hallway. He paused and stretched as a real dog would, then scratched at the turquoise collar around his neck.

Ceony scooped him up in her arms and held him delicately to her chest, careful not to cry on him.

So very wrong.

She paused at her room, but rather than go in, she continued walking until she reached Mg. Thane’s. Cradling Fennel in one arm, she pushed the door open, lit a candle on the dresser, and took a look.

It was all as she had left it, minus the laundry on the bed. Feeling a chill, Ceony hugged Fennel closer and walked past the dresser, the bookshelves, the window with its darkening light. She paused by the closet and hamper and absently sifted through Mg. Thane’s clothes, some of which had been in her washbasin just days ago. In the back of the closet she found Mg. Thane’s white dress uniform—white, as that was the color that represented paper. The double-breasted jacket, gold-polished buttons, and thick cuffs all looked new and neat, as though the uniform had never been worn. Ceony couldn’t help but think that Mg. Thane would look rather dashing in it. A good thing he had not worn it at their meeting yesterday, or Ceony may have found herself tongue-tied and very flustered.

She frowned. A pointless thing to think.

She pulled away from the closet. Fennel wriggled in her grasp. She set him down and dug her cold hands into her skirt’s pockets. Something brushed the knuckle on her right hand.

From her pocket she pulled a tiny snowflake, the one she had stowed there after her first day as a Folder. She rubbed her thumb over its tiny, delicate cuts, grateful she hadn’t yet washed this particular skirt. The snowflake still felt frosty, just like real snow. Snow he had made for her. All of it had been for her in one way or another, hadn’t it?

In the glow of the candlelight she said, “I have to do it. I have to save him.”

For she knew no one else would.

Biting her lip, Ceony hurried from the room, protecting the light of the candle with her hand as she went, quietly calling Fennel to follow. She went across the hall to the library and set the light down on the table under the window. Sitting down, she grasped a green square of paper of medium thickness and began Folding, leaning on her memory until she made a bird. The Folds hummed beneath her fingers.

Taking a pink piece of lightweight paper, she Folded another, then another with white. She imagined Mg. Thane’s hands over her own, guiding her Folds, and squinted in the candlelight to ensure all her edges aligned and all her creases were straight.

When she had six birds, she commanded them, “Breathe,” feeling a confidence above her station.

Five came to life. The pink one, the second she had made, remained still and lifeless, as a folded piece of paper should be. Somewhere in the folds of its body Ceony had done something wrong, but now was not the time to determine what.

Two of the five living birds took off into flight, one began grooming itself, one watched her without eyes, and the last hopped about the table, making Fennel growl. Ceony shushed the dog and, finding a pen, pulled a white piece of paper over to her.

She began writing, the pen’s ink flowing in quick strokes over the parchment. She wrote quickly, but cautiously enough not to misspell anything. She didn’t know if this trick would work, but she couldn’t afford to have something as simple as bad grammar mess it up.

When she had finished, she called to the birds, “Come here. Come here, please!” and whistled to them in her best birdsong.

The two escapees flew down. The others came closer. They stood in two rows before her on the table.

Taking a deep breath to keep her voice smooth and calm, Ceony read, “A woman stormed into the dining room, her dark chocolate hair nearly black and her eyes almost as dark.” She pictured the scene in her mind—Lira’s confident stature, the curl to her red-painted lips, the length and sharpness of her fingernails as she dipped them into her vial of blood. “She was an evil woman and wore it in her face and clothes. She had a sneer that could sober any drunkard, and her dark arts left blood on her fingertips.”

The story, at least the beginning of one, formed in ethereal colors before the birds, forming the shape of Lira just as Ceony remembered her, and Ceony credited herself as having a picture-perfect memory. The dining room formed around the image of Lira, but Ceony concentrated on Lira, which made the background fade to mottled blurs while Lira’s face became sharp.

“I need you to find her,” Ceony said, letting the illusion slowly dissipate. “Find her and come back to me. Can you do that?”

The birds hopped in place. That was as much of an affirmative as Ceony expected to get.

Nodding, Ceony moved to the window and, with a great heave that seemed to rock half the room, opened it high enough for five paper birds to fly out. The wind felt cool, but no rain threatened the sky. At least Mother Nature was on her side tonight.