The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy, #1)(25)

Then, with Fennel at her heels, Ceony gathered what she needed.

She took a small stack of paper from each pile in the library and set it aside, then went into Mg. Thane’s bedroom for the larger pieces, which she rolled together and fastened with a hair tie. In her room, with the door closed, she retrieved her Tatham pistol and stashed it at the bottom of the bag. She barely had time to so much as look at it over the past weeks, but she had made sure to keep it clean. The heft of it in her bag felt . . . soothing. Back in the library, she found an atlas and ripped out two maps, one of England and another of the entire continent of Europe, just in case. As she shoved the maps into her knit bag, Ceony had a sinking feeling that, if it came down to using the Europe map, she would never find Lira. It was far too big . . . and Mg. Thane had only two days, at most, to live . . .

She shook her head once. “I’ll find her,” she said, half to herself and half to Fennel. “I’ve got to.”

When Ceony had everything packed save the food downstairs—where she dared not go—she reluctantly turned in for bed, though sleep came only in discomforted spurts. At dawn she rose and trudged downstairs.

Only Mg. Aviosky had stayed, and she slept on the couch in the front room. Leaving her, Ceony grabbed cheese, bread, and a chunk of salami for her pack. Enough to survive two days. Then she knelt beside Mg. Thane’s still body. He breathed slow, raspy breaths.

She pressed an ear to his chest, which one of the magicians had had the decency to clean up. The only telling sign of the accident now was the blood around his ripped collar.

Pft . . . pft . . . , the heart pattered. The second beat sounded so faintly Ceony couldn’t hear it.

Looking at his pale face, a knife of fear passed through Ceony’s own heart. The Excisioner, Lira, had taken Mg. Thane down so easily. What chance did Ceony have against her?

Just don’t touch her, she thought, remembering the Cabinet’s discussion the night before. Ultimately, Ceony knew her only chance would be the element of surprise.

“Please live,” she whispered to Mg. Thane. “I don’t mind being a paper magician if you’re the one to teach me, so please live. Otherwise I’ll be ornery for the rest of my life and no good to anyone.”

She touched his hair, took a deep breath, and retreated back up the stairs to wait. She thumbed through the library, picking out books on Folding and flipping through their pages, pausing wherever something looked important or interesting, then staring at the pictures—or the text—until she felt the information write itself in her memory. She listened for Mg. Aviosky’s stirring downstairs, hoping the woman would sleep long.

Instead, her ears picked up the faintest tapping on the library window.

She turned and saw a paper bird in the morning light, its tail bent at an awkward angle and the tips of its right wing ragged, as though it had experienced a bit of a stir. Opening the window, the green bird flapped in. It was the first of the six she had crafted.

Ceony cupped the paper creature in her hands. “Tell me you found her. Tell me you saw something, please.”

The bird hopped.

“Is that a yes?”

The bird hopped.

“Could you take me there? If I mended you?”

The bird hopped.

Growing jittery, Ceony set the bird down and straightened its tail, then shuffled through Mg. Thane’s things until she found some glue, which she used to seal the tiny tears on the bird’s wings. It pecked at the stuff, getting glue on its paper beak.

“Stop that,” Ceony said, hefting her heavy bag onto her shoulder. She scooped up the bird, stepped into the hall, and then stopped.

What would she do, hire a buggy? How would she explain? Could she even afford one? How far out was Lira? The paper bird couldn’t tell her.

And what if Mg. Aviosky had woken and was waiting for her to come down? She had no time to argue her way out! She had to move swiftly, before Lira did . . .

Pausing, Ceony turned about and looked at the stairway behind her, the one that led to the mysterious third floor. The “big” spells, as Mg. Thane had put it. Even during Mg. Thane’s absence, she hadn’t ventured up there. Could something useful be up there?

Swallowing hard, Ceony took the stairs two at a time. The top seven all groaned in protest of her weight. She wondered if the knob would be locked, but when she reached out and clasped it, it turned with only mild resistance.

She smelled old dust and mildew, and the temperature felt decidedly cooler than downstairs. The third floor looked to be all one room with an extraordinarily high ceiling from which dangled a rope that opened a door facing the sky.

Ceony gaped at the two things the morning light streaming through dirty windows revealed to her. Fennel hopped up the stairs behind her and sniffed her shoes.

The first was a giant paper glider, the sort that boys folded at their desks and threw at girls they liked when the teacher’s back was turned. The second looked very similar to the bird Ceony held in her hand, albeit unfinished.

Both were three times the size of the buggy that had dropped Ceony off at the house just weeks earlier.

“You are mad,” she whispered, walking toward the glider. It had a thin coat of dust on the top, and two handholds near the nose. No seat to sit in, no belt to strap in.

Surely Mg. Thane hadn’t flown in this. No one could fly! It must have been a prototype. Surely a man couldn’t find groceries a bothersome chore if he could retrieve them in this!