The Glass Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy #2)(4)
Ceony sat across from him—the position she took for most of their lessons. Emery shuffled the cards rather expertly, which made her wonder what sort of employment he had taken before becoming a Folder. Her journey through his heart hadn’t revealed those secrets, and so she decided it best not to ask.
“You remember the File-location spell I taught you, yes?” he asked.
Ceony did, as she remembered nearly everything that occurred in her life, whether she wanted to or not. For the most part, her photographic memory was a gift. Emery had taught her that spell the day after his recovery from losing his heart—the same day Ceony had begun calling him by his first name.
She recited the lesson. “So long as I have made physical contact with the papers in question, I can use a ‘sort’ command and then recite, verbatim, the written terms I am looking for.”
It would have been a useful spell to know while studying for midterms at the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined.
“Precisely,” Emery said with a nod. “With playing cards—unless they’re from a tampered deck—you can do the exact same thing. And you can assign a card a gesture instead of a name, so that the gesture will call it forward in a game. Allow me to demonstrate.”
He fanned out the cards, perhaps to ensure he had, indeed, touched each of them, and then said, “Sort: King of Diamonds.” One of the topmost cards pulled out of the deck toward him. He plucked it up with his other hand and turned it so Ceony could see that it was the King of Diamonds.
He then turned the card away from Ceony and, as though talking to the king himself, said, “Re-sort: Gesture,” and tapped the right side of his nose once. Emery slipped the King of Diamonds back into the deck and shuffled it, dealing Ceony and himself five cards as though they were playing poker, which they had gotten into the habit of doing most Tuesday nights at a quarter past seven.
“Now,” Emery said, holding up his cards. “So long as I mumble ‘sort’ under my breath, or somewhere where the cards can hear me, I can signal the King of Diamonds by tapping my nose. I usually find it best to say the word before I enter the room where the game is being held. But mind that you must repeat the ‘sort’ command for each card you intend to steal.”
He coughed—Ceony thought she heard the word “sort” in the act—and tapped the side of his nose. The King of Diamonds flew out of the deck and right into Emery’s waiting hand.
“How deceitful of you,” Ceony said, though she couldn’t help but smirk. How angry Zina would be if Ceony used this trick against her the next time they played Hearts!
“It’s easiest to disguise what you’re doing when you’re shuffling or dealing,” Emery explained, “or when your opponent is distracted by something that’s cooking in the kitchen.”
Ceony opened her mouth to protest, but instead closed it and shot him a disapproving look. He had won the game last Tuesday when Ceony had cinnamon rolls in the oven. She had been worried they would burn. Perhaps that’s why Emery never kept the money she lost, regardless of the amount. The cheater.
“And how do I tamper with the deck?” she asked.
That amusement rekindled in his eyes. “A lesson for another day. I can’t give away all my secrets at once,” he said. He handed the deck to her, and Ceony tried the spell herself, only with the Queen of Spades. To her relief, a quick tug on her braid summoned the card on her first try.
“Now we shall see who wins at cards,” Emery said, chuckling to himself. He gathered the deck and returned it to the recesses of his coat. For the next spell, he stood and retrieved two white, 8?" by 11" sheets of medium-thickness paper and set them down on the Folding board. His eyes met Ceony’s for a long moment as he settled back into his seat, but Ceony couldn’t read his thoughts. Emery had gotten better at hiding them these days.
“I’m going to teach you the Ripple spell, but this is one that can’t be rushed,” he explained, dropping his gaze to the rectangular paper in his hands. “The thickness of the paper does affect the spell—the thicker the parchment, the stronger the ripple.”
“What ripple?” Ceony asked, brows drawn together. “I haven’t read anything about Ripple spells.”
Emery smirked and did a square Fold—a triangular Fold that formed a square when opened, after cutting off the excess paper. He sheared the excess strip off with a rotary cutter and performed a full-point Fold to turn the Folded triangle into a smaller, symmetrical triangle.
“Cutting off the excess is necessary,” he explained. “Don’t start with a square piece of paper. Would you hand me the ruler?”
Ceony snatched the ruler from the top drawer of the table. She heard a few pencils roll around inside the drawer as she closed it, and Emery frowned. He would probably reorganize that drawer before he left the library today. For a man who was more or less a pack rat, Emery preferred his belongings to be in perfect order. Perfect to him, at least.
Emery set the ruler down on the paper to measure the width, then laid it out across the length. “Five-eighths of an inch is the magic number. Remember that,” he said. He dragged the rotary cutter across the line, but stopped short of shearing off the base of the triangle entirely. He then flipped the paper over and measured again, cutting from the other side, five-eighths of an inch up.