The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy, #1)(40)
The warm breeze twirled about her shoulders before scooping up the seeds of an aged dandelion and tossing them into the plum tree’s dark leaves. The wind reminded her of the stickiness of her hair and stiffness of her clothes, the aftermath of pushing through the valve between chambers.
Taking a deep breath in an attempt to encourage herself, she slipped the paper chain over her head and studied it. Though she knew the version of Emery Thane beside her was not the real one, she felt safe in his presence. Safe as she could feel, sharing his heart with a practiced Excisioner, who could be anywhere . . .
A quick survey of the scene showed that Lira was nowhere to be found, so she turned her attention back to the Folded paper she held. Ceony passed the links of the chain slowly through her hands, studying each until she found one just a bit wider than the others—that must have been the error. Pulling a half sheet of paper from her bag, she began to create a replacement.
Laughter touched her ears, but not cold laughter. Not Lira’s. She heard a child’s laughter, light and happy. Fennel barked in response.
Ceony turned and saw a shapeless child that matched the woman beside her—a child no older than three, but without a definite face or solid coloring. A boy, Ceony thought. He ran through the wildflowers with his small, nondescript hands stretched high over his head. A moment later a second child joined him, a little taller. A girl. They laughed and twirled about one another, parading up and down the hill in their own little game. Their play woke an orange butterfly from the grass at their feet. Its wings looked like fire in the setting sunlight.
Ceony couldn’t help but smile to herself as she finished Folding the link. “So you want a family,” she whispered. “I do, too. Someday.”
She replaced the bad link in her chain and stowed it under the blanket, where Lira—should the woman be tracking her—wouldn’t find it. This time, when Ceony placed the chain around her, it stiffened and tightened like a belt. Hopefully that meant she had done the spell correctly.
As Ceony stood, she realized she didn’t want to leave this vision. This hope buried deep in Emery’s heart, so crisp and real that she could smell the sugar welling deep within the flowers’ stems and feel the lingering heat of the sun that seemed frozen in its descent. It was such a peaceful hope. Ceony wondered if her own heart could create something even half as stunning as this.
She touched Emery’s hand where it rested on the blanket, and found that, for once, she didn’t immediately phase through it. Instead, it felt like touching glass. “I’ll take care of you,” she said. “You’ll have this day. I promise.”
She and Fennel stepped off the blanket and back to the grassy door Ceony had stumbled upon on the last flowery knoll. She pulled the brass handle, and the sunset melted away into stone and wood.
Ceony stood in the middle of Parliament Square.
CHAPTER 10
THE SLOPE OF WILDFLOWERS changed instantly into cobblestone in all shades of gray—charcoal, ash, slate, and steel. Big Ben—the bell in the tall, pointed clock tower to the north—rang out nine o’clock. The great statue of Sir Ryan Walters gripping the reins of his frenzied warhorse stood proudly in the center of the square. Its detail was so infinitesimal that the statue looked ready to come alive on all sides, but of course it never did. Sir Ryan Walters and his steed had been carved in stone, and since man had not created stone, no magician could enchant it.
People milled about Ceony on all sides of Parliament Square, seeming to give her a great deal of space without actually noticing her presence. They passed by numerous shops that all had doors facing the statue, and a few shuffled in and out of a six-story apartment building wedged between a dumpling shop and a post office, with narrow alleys on each side. Ceony had never been inside the building, but she imagined seeing the bill for one room’s rent would hurt her eyes for all the digits it would have.
Many of the square’s shops had CLOSED signs over the doors—Wickers, the candle shop; Her Ladyship’s Arms, a custom firearms dealer where she could have been contracted had her path to magic gone differently; and St. Alban’s Salmon Bistro included. Ale for You, the liquor store, and Fine Seams, the tailor Ceony had patronized a few times, still boasted OPEN signs on their shops. It must have been a Sunday. Most businesses closed on Sundays.
Ceony loved Sundays. They were her favorite time of the week—the only break the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined allotted its students, outside of feast days and Parliament Day. Sunday was the one day when, if Ceony did not have homework to catch up on, she could go into the city and enjoy herself. Indulge in a nice walk, soak in the sounds of life, savor a simple sandwich, or read by the three-tiered water fountains opposite Big Ben in Parliament Square. Those fountains did have an enchantment, for when they had been constructed, a Polymaker—a plastics magician—had designed a special lining for each tier that made the falling water cascade in different patterns every five minutes. There were a few months of Ceony’s life when she considered becoming a Polymaker, if only to create something similar to that fountain.
She idly wondered if Emery—Mg. Thane, that is—enjoyed Sundays as well.
Skimming her surroundings, Ceony found an odd archway ten paces to her right, wooden and painted red. She neared it, touched its side—
Ceony blinked and found herself standing in a different spot on Parliament Square, the far-east side, her nose only inches from an old wooden door bound with ironwork rusted along its edges. A particularly long splinter pointed at her right between the eyes.