The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy, #1)(30)

“Magician Thane,” she whispered. The eyes gave him away. The child phased through her like a ghost and handed the spoon to the man whom Ceony could only assume was his father. The man patted Mg. Thane’s head—Emery’s head—and the boy grinned a wide grin before returning to play with his siblings, darting between boxes with a precision that told Ceony he could do so blindfolded.

Mg. Thane’s family . . . , Ceony thought. But why did she see this . . . memory? Dream?

Didn’t he say he was an only child?

“Magician Thane!” she called out to him, but as she did she spied a shadow beyond the hives, where the grassy ground dipped down into a hill and a tire swing hung from a tall tree. Dark locks of hair caught on the breeze.

Lira.

Ceony’s breath caught in her throat. Her fingers turned cold, but she managed to snap them and call Fennel. The dog followed her as she ran in the other direction, away from the Excisioner and the bees, and away from the young Emery Thane. All she could do now was run . . . and figure out how to defeat an Excisioner who couldn’t be killed.

The view warped, darkened, and Ceony found herself assaulted by thunderous applause that nearly made her jump from her skin.

Fennel yapped at her heels as rows and rows of men and women Ceony didn’t know clapped around her in the auditorium of what looked to be the Royal Albert Hall in West London. Scarlet carpet lined the tilted aisles, and chandeliers filled with candles—not electric bulbs—hung unlit overhead. Ceony spun, her eyes landing on a heavyset woman in a fur coat clapping in a nearby chair. Approaching the woman, Ceony asked “What’s happening?” over the applause, but the woman didn’t answer. Didn’t look at her. Ceony found herself once more a ghost, though the vision unfolding around her seemed far more ghostly than she herself did.

Ceony glanced behind her, but didn’t see Lira anywhere. She sucked in a deep breath of relief. The applause died down, and Ceony crouched in the aisle between seats to Fold a paper bird.

“And Magician Emery Thane, Folder, District Fourteen,” boomed a voice from behind her. Ceony blinked at the brightly lit stage lined with velvet curtains. A man who looked like a younger Tagis Praff with a mustache stood stage left behind a broad podium with the Magicians’ seal painted on its front. He clapped his hands loudly together, and the audience followed suit.

A row of eleven chairs lined the stage opposite the podium, all empty save for one with a young man in a white magician’s dress uniform, complete with high collar and golden buttons. Ceony’s hands froze mid-Fold as Magician Emery Thane, barely older than herself, crossed the stage to accept his magician’s plaque—the same one that hung in his study.

She felt herself blush. He did look excellent in that uniform—it fit much more snugly about his shoulders than that awful indigo coat. It narrowed at his waist, and the sharp creases in the legs made him appear taller. Taller than Tagis Praff, anyway. Ceony hardly recognized Mg. Thane, especially with his hair cropped short enough to hide its wave. It was enough to make her forget Lira. For a moment, anyway.

Fennel sniffed at the half-formed bird beneath Ceony’s fingers, and Ceony sat in the aisle, watching the newly appointed Mg. Thane shake gloved hands with Tagis Praff.

“I’m in his heart,” she said to Fennel. “I never left it, so this must be part of it. I’m seeing his heart, but . . . how do I get out of it? I can’t help him from in here!”

But saving the paper magician’s life wasn’t her only predicament. She peered over her shoulder again, but Lira hadn’t followed her here. The fact didn’t make her feel safer. If I don’t get out, I’ll die, too.

Tagis Praff began bellowing a speech over the podium, but Ceony forced herself to focus on her bird and finish Folding its head, tail, and wings. What she would use it for, she didn’t know, but birds were one of the few things she knew how to make. What she wouldn’t give to be a Smelter right now, to have a gun with enchanted bullets that never missed their mark. She might have a chance against Lira if she only had one of those.

Shoving the white bird into her bag, Ceony ran down the rest of the aisle to the stage. Mg. Thane began walking down the stairs beside the podium. Ceony hurried in front of the unaware spectators toward him. She had to try.

“Magician Thane!” she called, but he didn’t turn. She ran up to him and grabbed his arm, but it merely passed through her, a phantom. He took a seat in the second row, alongside other materials magicians in their designated uniforms.

Ceony tried once more to grab him—his shoulder—but it did no good. “Magician Thane, can’t you hear me?” she asked, waving a hand in front of his face. “How do I get out?”

The young paper magician leaned his cheek on his fist, suddenly bored with the procession in his honor.

Ceony pursed her lips somewhat in imitation of Mg. Aviosky. Then she ran up the scarlet aisle toward the doors leading out of the auditorium, Fennel at her heels.

A woman screamed at her as soon as she stepped through them.

The noise startled Ceony so much that she fell back, but no doors or auditorium walls caught her. Instead she hit old, wooden floorboards rump first, not the marble tiles of the Royal Albert Hall. A dull, boney feeling shot up her back.

“Breathe, Letta: in and out,” a midwife in uniform instructed a young woman lying on the floor of a sparsely furnished room—the one who had screamed. The woman, her belly bulging with pregnancy, puffed through pursed lips. She held herself upright on her elbows. Towels surrounded her. A tin bowl of bloody water sat near her ankles. Blond hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. Outside, rain hammered onto the windows, and a flash of lightning boasted before the nearly spent candles. Thunder shook the house three seconds later, and the staccato report of raindrops hitting the roof drowned out the distant sound of the paper magician’s heartbeat.