A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire #2)(52)

“Are you crying?” Maria whispered, noticing me.

“I’m fine,” I croaked, but had to look away. The heart of this room was gone now, and its absence was brutal.

Enough of this. Everyone else had already arrived. They’d moved furniture to clear space for practice. The green armchairs waited by the wall, silent and orderly as a row of soldiers. Mickelmas was coaching Dee, Strangewayes’s journal open upon a wooden desk for reference. Blackwood and Magnus watched while Magnus finished his sandwich.

Blackwood frowned at Maria and glowered at me. He said nothing about her presence, though, and proceeded to ignore me even harder than before. He’d not got over the other night. I had a feeling it would be a while before he was ready to speak to me again.

Mickelmas brought a flute’s mouthpiece to his lips. Wincing, I waited for that earsplitting scream. He blew into it and began playing the thing expertly, his fingers moving up and down the holes with grace. He looked as though he should be first chair in a concert hall, and in his capable hands the instrument was…well, silent.

“Is it broken?” Dee asked as he snatched the flute back.

“No, it’s merely being played properly. Handled correctly, it should emit vibrations that harm only those creatures. The trick is to melt the monsters’ brains and leave yours intact.” Mickelmas gestured to me. “Henrietta. You see these markings you noticed earlier in Strangewayes’s book?” He pointed to a crumbling page. Indeed, there were small black circles on the margins that seemed to have been drawn randomly.

“Yes, the dots,” I said.

“Wrong, as usual.” He looked pleased with himself. “Musical notes.”

No. But looking at it that way, the randomness of the marks suddenly became flourishes of music. How the hell had I not seen this before? Dee adjusted the book this way and that to read all the notes that had been jotted down.

“If you play an up-tempo version of ‘Greensleeves,’ that should be especially repellent to Molochoron. I hope you’re musical,” Mickelmas said, handing off the flute.

Dee read the passage over a few times, his fingers flying up and down the length of the flute in practice. Taking a deep breath, he put his mouth to the instrument and began to play. At first there was a slight squealing, enough to make everyone wince, but after a few more attempts, Dee made the instrument silent. He bobbed as he played, practically kicking up his heels. Finished, his face was a splotchy pink from exertion.

“How do you know about all this?” Blackwood asked as Magnus went for his own turn. “How can we be certain this is working?”

“Indeed, Your Lordship. A boy of seventeen’s knowledge is quite comparable to my own,” Mickelmas said, selecting a sandwich. “However, please trust that I can interpret Strangewayes’s shorthand at least as well as you. For example, those curlicue swords of yours are worked best when twirled abantis—counterclockwise.”

I’d wondered what on earth that term had been.

“Strangewayes created something like a new language among his followers, as a way to preserve magician secrets. There used to be whole histories of this sort of thing, you know. When I was a boy, they printed biographies of Strangewayes. Revered magicians even had their portraits replicated on pewter souvenir mugs.” He sighed. “I miss those days. Magician theory used to be a popular topic of discussion in London salons, passed around with the wine and finger foods.” Mickelmas seated himself in a chair, propping his feet on a gold-tasseled stool. “Enough chatter. Knee, let Haggis have a turn.”

While Dee and Magnus corrected him on their names, and Blackwood pretended he was anywhere but here, I followed Maria over to the fireplace. She studied Agrippa’s portrait with a look of intense concentration.

“That was my Master,” I told her. Agrippa’s face was younger in this painting, but his smile and his bright brown eyes were the same as ever they’d been.

Forgive me. His last words whispered in my mind.

“Thought he was the man who betrayed you,” Maria said.

“He saved my life before he tried to destroy it.” To my surprise, Maria scoffed.

“Strange you would remember him so fondly.”

Though I’d told her about Agrippa’s betrayal, I felt stung.

“He did what he thought was right.” What would Agrippa say if he knew we were here with Mickelmas right now, training with magician weapons? He’d probably demand we get these monstrosities out of his house, to begin with. Would he have understood, though? Or was that too much to hope?

“People do what they think is right, but that does not make it good.” Maria’s voice dropped lower, to that womanly, more musical tone. She rubbed her eyes, as if waking from a dream, then retreated to the window, curling up there to stare out at the garden.

I noticed that Agrippa’s prophecy tapestry still hung upon the wall. It had been months since I’d seen that blasted thing with its image of a white hand rising out of a dark wood, fingers tipped with flame. Agrippa’s seal, two lions flanking a shield, had been etched into the palm of the hand. I scanned over the “prophetic” lines woven by the Speakers in their priory:


A girl-child of sorcerer stock rises from the ashes of a life.

You shall glimpse her when Shadow burns in the Fog above a bright city.

You shall know her when Poison drowns beneath the dark Waters of the cliffs.