The Glass Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy #2)(57)
And her food. Good heavens, everything that woman touched turned to gold in his mouth. She’d make him fatter than Langston before her year mark passed.
A smile touched his lips. He had grown accustomed to living on his own. The two years he’d spent alone in that cottage with just Jonto for company had never bothered him, save in retrospect. Perhaps it was some great fortune or—God forbid—an act of karma that had brought Ceony into his life to light up a house that he hadn’t realized had gone dark. A light he wouldn’t have been able to see if not for her utter stupidity in following an Excisioner clear to the coast for the sake of saving his life. She’d barely known him then. Now she knew everything.
Almost everything.
Emery refocused on the landscape flying by his window. Had he already passed Caterham? Perhaps time had finally decided to catch up to him. He only hoped it wouldn’t move too fast when he needed it most.
A man in a brown suit sat in the far seat across from him. Emery ignored his presence.
Emery had only faced Saraj personally once in his life, shortly after Lira had thrown her soul to the wind and run off with Grath and whoever else the Excisioner—no, Gaffer—had enchanted at the time. The Saraj was vermin, twisted like taffy and more insane than the world’s worst criminals. A man who would kill countless people for sport, who raped women and boasted about it to his pursuers. A man who stood outside society and fished into it with a jagged spear.
Grath was the only man Emery knew of who could befriend—and possibly control—Saraj, and if Hughes succeeded in capturing him, who knew what Saraj would do next, where he would go. The thought of him taking one more step toward Ceony drove Emery mad, made his fingertips itch and his stomach writhe. And so Emery had agreed to this last hurrah, this careful attempt to capture Saraj before he went wild. Emery wondered how much wilder the Excisioner could become.
He didn’t plan to find out. The train headed toward what he hoped would be Saraj’s last stand. Emery would see the man caged, and Emery would survive. He had to.
He finally had someone worth going home to.
The train arrived in Brighton near noon. Emery hired an automobile to Rottingdean, and then walked from there to Saltdean, on the coast.
Saltdean had once been known for smuggling, thanks to its high, salt-crusted cliffs and the hidden trenches that made unlicensed docking easy and discreet. Emery could taste the salt in the air, but not the sea. To him, it tasted too much like blood.
Off the coast and far into the English Channel, he saw a storm sweeping off France. He wondered if it would reach him today. He would need to be careful about where he laid his spells. Hughes had said the others wouldn’t arrive until the next day.
Suitcase still in hand, Emery took a stroll around Saltdean, examining its cliffs. He headed into the town, eyeing its sparse buildings and scattered homes. He needed to find somewhere large, but uninhabited. Such parameters shouldn’t be hard to come by in a town like this one. He wanted to stay away from the town’s north end, where the common people had begun to turn the land into something profitable.
He found a medium-sized factory, three floors, still intact and in decent condition, albeit weathered from storms. It smelled like it had been a shoe factory, but most of its interior had already been gutted. It would do.
Emery started the trek back to Rottingdean. He had a great deal of paper to buy.
Emery slept little, thanks to a friendly version of insomnia that often let him choose when he did and did not suffer from it. He spent most of the night carefully Folding papers large and small, both for his personal use and in preparation for the showdown at the factory. His calloused fingers worked four-pointed stars, links for a shield chain and a snaring chain, and anything else his mind could conjure. As for the factory . . . he could only hope Juliet managed to keep up her end of the plan and had successfully driven Saraj to Saltdean. If she didn’t, it would all be for naught.
In the morning Emery went to a back alley by a condemned tackle shop near the factory, the place he had designated as the rendezvous point. Two automobiles pulled in shortly after nine, carrying Mg. Cantrell and several police officers. Juliet, a Smelter, was roughly the same age as Emery and had joined Criminal Affairs two years ago after a successful—albeit short—career as a deputy inspector in Nottingham. A pretty woman and tall, she walked with a military-type stride and a chronic stiffness to her shoulders. Like Patrice, she wore her dark hair pulled into a tight bun, which emphasized her square jaw. Four policemen whose gait and posture implied a background in the military accompanied her.
“I’d say you’re looking well, Emery,” she said as she approached, hands clasped behind her back, “but I’m afraid you aren’t. Poor sleep? Perhaps it’s the lighting.”
She glanced up at the overcast sky.
Emery didn’t bother with small talk. He liked Juliet well enough, but it felt like a waste of breath. “Is he coming?”
“Everything seems to be on schedule,” she said, walking up the road. The policemen followed in their auto at a crawling pace. “We’ll need to set up quickly, be prepared. Saraj Prendi doesn’t run a tight ship.”
“I’ve made preparations. An old shoe factory, up this way.” Emery gestured. From within his coat—the sage-green one—he pulled free a shield chain and offered it to her.
Juliet shook her head and held up a hand; the automobile stopped behind them. “Thank you, but it’s unnecessary,” she said, circling back to the trunk of the auto. Emery followed her. She opened a latch and, from a thick cardboard box, pulled free a steel-cast chain, the links forming a wide band. “Wear this,” she said. “It won’t crumble if it gets wet.”