The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy, #1)(33)

The cherry trees grew thicker until Ceony found herself facing a copse of them, too thick to pass through save for a wrought-iron fence wedged between two of the smaller ones. She pushed open its narrow gate and ran until the sod turned firm and a book-lined wall stopped her from running any farther. A dead end.

Ceony found herself in the midst of a library.

It was similar to the one Mg. Thane had now, albeit smaller and with more windows and a second table, over which stooped a younger Emery Thane than the one who had been getting married. He wore his dark hair short and had rolled his white shirtsleeves up to his elbows.

Paper covered the tabletop in neat piles, all white and off-white, all varying thicknesses. A pile of half-Folded, half-crumpled papers formed a sizeable pile on the floor, and beside them stood a secondhand dressmaker’s dummy tacked about with dozens of papers rolled and Folded to form a rib cage around the torso, a collar across the shoulders, and a spine along the back. Ceony recognized the structure as Jonto’s—this must have been his creation, or part of it.

“Here’s the paperboard,” said an unfamiliar voice from the hallway. “That was just the carrier dropping it off.”

Ceony shifted her attention from Thane and his skeletal project to the man entering the library. He carried two giant cardboard totes of paper that looked heavy enough that Ceony doubted she could even lift one without pulling a muscle.

Yet the totes seemed almost tiny in this man’s arms, a man whose boyish face put him only a few years Ceony’s senior. He had to be six and a half feet tall and looked wide enough that Ceony felt sure she could fit inside him at least three times. Everything about the man was simply . . . big. Big shoulders, big stomach, big hands. Each of his calves looked like a feast day ham.

“Excellent, Langston,” Thane said, glancing up from his work for only half a second. Ceony couldn’t tell what he was working on—it looked almost like a bent-up crescent roll roughly the length of his hand. Fortunately, Thane’s next words answered the unspoken question: “I want to try integrating thick and thin together for this one—thick at the jaw’s joints and at the chin, thin in between. Maybe that will work.”

“Maybe,” Langston replied with a slowness and drawl that had Ceony suspecting he hadn’t grown up in England. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon, Magician Thane. My ma always said the word damn came from beavers who gave up on their houses one stick short.”

“Your mother says many things,” Thane replied offhandedly. “See if you can’t duplicate that hip, hm?”

Ceony marveled as Langston pulled out a chair nearly too small for him and took a seat across the table from Thane. He hardly had space to set down his giant elbows.

“Is this your apprentice?” Ceony asked, not expecting an answer. Judging by Thane’s age, Langston had to be the first . . . though he could have been the “half.” Ceony could understand firing an apprentice like Langston. Those monstrous hands could never form the minute and intricate Folds required by intermediate and advanced Folding.

Yet Ceony found her own jaw dropping as Langston picked up Jonto’s right hip with a fairylike touch and turned it over in his hands, examining its components. Setting it down, he picked up a square parchment of medium thickness and, with his tongue pinched in the corner of his mouth, began carefully Folding it to reflect the hip’s smallest part.

“Astonishing,” Ceony commented as the two worked. “I wouldn’t mind having a fellow his size with me right now.”

Rubbing a chill from her arms, she murmured, “I wouldn’t mind either fellow with me right now.”

Fennel pawed at her leg. Ceony absently reached down to pet his head.

Surely Langston had been certified as a Folder by now. She wondered how long his apprenticeship had taken. She wondered if he had been happy to arrive at Mg. Thane’s abode. If he had been polite upon meeting his teacher. If he had been grateful, as she should have been.

“We need to go,” she said to Fennel, tearing herself from her ruminations. She gave a last fleeting look to Jonto—and to Thane—and hurried for the library’s unpainted door. She had to throw her shoulder into it to nudge past a half-rusted lock—

Ceony found herself stumbling over lush beige carpeting. The sun had vanished, replaced by the lights of hundreds of electric bulbs centered between violet-painted alcoves studded with thick gold tiles, enchanted by Gaffers—glass magicians—to spread light outward in nearly prismatic rays. Soft music from multiple instruments touched her ears, alongside the clinking of wine glasses and unintelligible murmurs of too many people idly chatting.

Ceony paused, taking in her new surroundings. Fennel ran a few yards more before skidding to a halt.

Ceony knew this place—she had catered multiple dinners here with her old employer. This was Drapers’ Hall on Throgmorton Avenue, the finest hall in London, if not in all of England. At least, the finest Ceony had ever visited.

She stood on the balcony between wide gold-leafed pillars, their chapiters carved in tiers. Beyond them a great mural of wingless angels surrounded by flora painted the ceiling. She ran a hand over the balcony’s gold-leaf railing. Though this was only a vision, little more than a dream, this one felt as though it were real.

She peered to the floor below. Round, white-clothed tables filled it in neat rows, while men and women in black carried silver trays and glass pitchers to and from the kitchen tucked away in the northeast corner. A string quartet played soft melodies in the southwest corner. Ceony recognized all of it, though her memory had a more up-front view. She had donned that same black dress and frilly apron before.