A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire #2)(41)
While Maria sucked gravy from her fingertips, I led us down Piccadilly toward Bond Street. The arched entrance to Burlington Arcade soon appeared on our right. It was a long, covered walkway with shops on either side. It had been a fashionable destination before the ward fell, where ladies shopped for perfume or candied fruits. Now the elegant stores shared space with panhandlers and oyster sellers.
“Let’s see,” I said, pulling out the flyer and threading my way through the crowd with Maria in my wake. The paper said shop fifty-nine, but when we arrived, all we found was an empty ruin. The windows were broken, the door boarded up. Paint peeled in long, curling strips. No one had entered in years.
I chewed my lip in frustration. Had I deluded myself into thinking that the magicians had risked everything to set up shop in their old home? The chest had malfunctioned, most likely. That, or I’d misunderstood what it had wanted to tell me.
“You’ve got the squinty-eyed look.” Maria jabbed me with her elbow. “Shouldn’t be so quick to give up.”
“What would you suggest we do?”
“Try the blade bit.” Maria tugged a thread from her skirt. She thought there was a glamour here, though I felt no magic. Well, why not? I took Porridge, sliced myself much less deeply this time, and coated the thread in blood. Maria held it as I concentrated, cut, and…
My hands tingled as a gash appeared in the air by the door. Maria clapped her hands in delight.
“I love that blade bit,” she crowed, stepping through the cut. I followed, and behind me the tear sealed itself back up. What had once been a deserted shop was now a long, crooked alleyway. Magicians, it seemed, had a Burlington Arcade all their own, and it thronged with people.
The place made me think of a house that had long been shuttered and abandoned, and whose windows were only just now being thrown open, its hallways swept, the cloths taken off the furniture.
Stalls had been crammed up against one another, faded velvet curtains separating each shop. Tents and tarps were hoisted on poles, newly painted signs advertising wares beside them. Copper pans, glass vials and jars, brass cages that rattled with gaudy-colored creatures lined the walls. There was the sizzle of a cooking pan, the smell of fat and onion wafting toward us.
The men and women who argued with one another were not unlike the people we’d seen outside, haggling over flour or soap. But here, they were discussing gizzards, the tongues of flamingos, shark-tooth powders, and potions for the liver. One woman stumped across the way, her gait lopsided and odd. She’d a glass bottle in place of her lower leg, with the cork used as her foot.
“These are magicians?” Maria sounded both amazed and appalled. “They’re so…so…”
“Odd,” I finished. But my breath caught to see so many of them, ten or twenty, all working together. If the war had never come, if my parents had been alive, I might have spent time in this place. I might have called myself a magician.
We attracted some frowns and attention. Strangers who appeared in the middle of an illegal market would be suspicious. Perhaps we should have thought this through better.
As if to illustrate my point, an arm snaked around me from behind and put a blade to my throat.
“What’ve we here?” a voice whispered.
The voice belonged to a girl. I stilled as Maria pulled out her ax.
“Let her go,” Maria spit. The girl only pressed harder, the blade cutting into my skin. Threatening her was clearly a bad plan.
“There’s no need to fuss,” I said. It was hard to think with a blade to your throat. My eyes darted over the people watching us, eagerly waiting to see what would happen.
My attacker moved the blade slightly, enough to give me an opportunity. Blue fire rippled over my body, and the girl fell.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to lay hands on another magician?” I extended a hand to help her up. “I’m Henrietta Howel.”
Giving my name was a bit of a gamble. We’d attracted a great deal of attention by now, and a crowd was gathering. The girl pushed herself to her feet, dusting off her knees. Absurdly tall, she wore a bright yellow gown with a green sash. Her black hair hung loose to her shoulders. Her cheekbones were high, her eyes dark and brilliant as she stared at me in surprise.
“Wait. Howel?” She whistled. “You’re the sorcerers’ chosen girl, ain’t you? Why didn’t you say so?” She clapped a hard hand on my shoulder, and I stifled a cry of pain. “You could’ve asked for the Orb and Owl, you know. Be happy to show you,” she said conversationally.
“Er, yes. We’d like to see it,” I said, sharing a baffled glance with Maria, who finally put her ax away.
“Name’s Alice Chen,” the girl said as she led us down the alleyway. I glanced at the wary faces all around me and tried to catch their whispered words. The crowd dispersed, though I still felt everyone’s gaze.
Turning a corner, we came to a wooden sign hung over a plain brick wall that said THE ORB & OWL. The sign was carved with a tawny owl alighting on a crystal ball.
There was no doorway. Instead, Alice walked us over to a pair of old, hole-ridden boots and kicked one of them.
With a puff of smoke and dust, the hazy image of a slouching, thin-faced man appeared before us. “Password?” His voice sounded like a sigh on the wind.
I’d read of “ghosts” like this in one of the books from Mickelmas’s chest. They weren’t the actual souls of dead people. Rather, these were more like echoes of ownership attached to objects, and they could be made to act as guards or enforcers. Not the most skillful of creatures, but useful in their own way.