Spellmaker, page 8
part #2 of Spellbreaker Series
An older gentleman strode by, glancing once at her and Ogden before continuing on his way.
“Here.” Ogden pointed in the direction from which the man had come, to a wall full of tiny wooden drawers. Elsie had to remind herself not to run as she approached. There were drawers organized by date, by region, and—
“By author,” she whispered, touching the handwritten surnames on one of the drawers. She quickly reviewed the display, dropping to her knees to reach the C’s. She pulled out one that read, Calladine–Cook.
Ogden crouched beside her. The drawer was much longer than she had thought. Hundreds of cards were crammed into it, all handwritten, some in different penmanship and colors of ink. It made her think of aspecting, but there were no spells to be found here. She carefully separated the cards with her nails, one by one. She found what she was looking for fairly quickly, thanks to the magic of alphabetizing.
Her name, Camden, Elsie, was scrawled along the top. She pulled the card out. It wasn’t very full, boasting only three article titles. But locations were listed for each, and she and Ogden quickly divided them and began their hunt. Elsie ended up in a section for Irish newspapers, and in the time it took her to find the correct one, Ogden had already pulled both English papers. Instead of moving to one of the tables near the entrance, they set the papers atop the card cabinets.
“Here,” Ogden said, pointing to an article. “It’s on the front page.”
Elsie leaned close to him, reading, Valuable Items Stolen from American Estate.
“Hmm,” she hummed.
Ogden glanced at her.
“Why would that make the front page of a London newspaper?” She pointed to the large letters spelling out the Manchester Guardian. It was dated April 5, 1887. Eight years ago.
Both of them hushed as they read the article. It was short, not even continued on a later page. And it was incredibly vague, never actually stating what had been stolen from which estate. One line was curious, however: The inquirer would gladly pay a high price for the black birds. It felt like it meant something. There was nothing else about birds in the article. The effect was jarring.
Ogden pulled out the other newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, in which Elsie’s name was printed on the second page, under a headline reading, Spiritual Aspecting Across the Pond. Again, the article was brief unto the point of meaningless. It had been published last year and had a typo in it: A shame if things were to take a Turner and end entirely.
“I could have written something better than this,” Elsie commented, flipping back to the front page.
“For such bad journalism written by a nobody—no offense,” Ogden offered, “the author, presumably Lily Merton, must have paid a good sum to have the articles put at the front. To make them more noticeable.”
Elsie pulled up the News Letter, the Irish paper, and sure enough, the article with her name was on the front. The Dangers of Intercontinental Travel, it read, the headline accompanied by a photo of a wealthy person’s home, though the photo had no caption. This article was the briefest of them all. It spoke of dangerous voyages from Boston, but there was little else of substance. It was four years old.
Elsie tapped her fingers against the cabinets. “This isn’t helping at all.”
Ogden pulled a sketchbook from the satchel at his hip. “Let’s copy them down.” He tore out a page for her and then took the Irish article for himself, going as far as to sketch out the faded photograph of the house. Elsie copied the aspecting article in pencil, reading over it thrice to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, and then transcribed the American estate article beneath it.
“There have to be more.” She carefully folded the page, not wanting to smear the graphite. “There has to be something that made him come find me. Some kind of code. Something we’re not seeing.”
“We need to look further. American newspapers, perhaps.”
Elsie shook her head. “It will take a month for a letter to reach a repository over there.”
“I’ll use the spirit line.” Ogden closed his sketchbook.
The spirit line was a messaging system developed by spiritual aspectors in the seventeen hundreds, shortly before the American Revolution. Aspectors across the sea—Iceland, Greenland, Canada—could link up with one another, casting spiritual projections that could carry news faster than a ship, or even a telegraph network.
“It’s so expensive, Ogden,” she whispered.
But Ogden shook his head. “It’s an expense I’m happy to make. You just might not be getting much pin money this month.”
Elsie let out a long breath. “I’m more than happy to contribute. Thank you.”
They returned home later than planned, as they had to stop in London to make arrangements for the spirit line. Ogden sent messages to the Library of Congress in the United States, as well as libraries in a few select European countries. Elsie winced at the number of pounds he exchanged for it; they might be eating cabbage for dinner the next few weeks. The sooner I become a profitable spellbreaker, the better, she thought.
And it seemed Irene Prescott agreed, for Elsie found a telegram from her on her bed when she arrived home. Miss Prescott wanted to meet in London tomorrow—she really didn’t heed the fact that Elsie had to work—to begin their training. There was a second message on her nightstand from the enchanted pencil. Her stomach did a little flip at the familiar penmanship.
I’m hoping to interest you in dinner tomorrow at Seven Oaks. More interrogation from the duke and duchess is to be expected, but I guarantee Mrs. Abrams will be conspicuously absent.
Elsie smiled.
“Emmeline, would you do me a favor?” The newspaper articles weighed on her, and she ached to examine them again, more closely.
“Sure, what is it?”
“Run to the post office and reply to Miss Prescott.” She handed Emmeline the telegram. “Ask her if she’d be willing to meet me at Seven Oaks in Kent for training. Tell her I can provide an aspector.”
Emmeline grinned knowingly. “Gladly. And what about that?”
She pointed at the newest novel reader sitting on Elsie’s pillow. Elsie had completely missed it.
She paused, thinking of the story of the baron and his rubies. “You take it, Em,” she offered, and the maid’s eyes lit with delight. “I have a few personal things to see to first.”
CHAPTER 8
Bacchus, being the gentleman he was, sent a carriage for her just after lunch the following day. Elsie put on her second-best dress, as Bacchus had last seen her in her best dress, and she certainly couldn’t repeat the fashion twice in a row. She polished the buttons down the front and put on a smart hat, hoping she would look presentable for the evening’s dinner with the duke and duchess. She had bumped up in society—or she would once she completed her spellbreaker training—but the promotion still felt pathetic when cast in the light of the true peerage. She still worried over bumbling the details of the engagement as well. What if she said something contrary to the story Bacchus had laid out? What if the duke and duchess discovered Elsie was marrying their dear Master Kelsey only to spare herself from the gallows?
Guilt gnawed at her as she rode to Seven Oaks, and she did her best to push it down. The housekeeper escorted her to a drawing room, where Miss Prescott and Bacchus already awaited her. Their small talk ceased upon her entrance. Elsie’s eyes went first to Bacchus, who stood from his chair, polite as always. He was wearing the same blue waistcoat he’d stripped off in Ipswich so she could remove the temporal and physical spells embedded into his chest. Her cheeks warmed at the memory. The sun was high and not coming directly through the windows, and the lighting made his skin look darker. His hair was pulled back into a folded tail just above the nape of his neck.
Miss Prescott wore a smart violet visiting dress that was notably finer than what Elsie had donned, and her light hair was meticulously curled and pinned.
“I do hope I’m not late.” Elsie spared another glance to Bacchus.
“Not at all,” Miss Prescott replied. “I was early. I always am.” She clapped her hands together and turned to Bacchus. “Master Kelsey, where would you like to begin?”
He simply gestured to the low table between them. “Here is fine.”
“Excellent.” Miss Prescott dug through a large bag on the floor, and Elsie, feeling awkward, crossed the room to stand beside Bacchus.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“I’m interested to see what you can do,” he replied, and though he didn’t laugh, she could hear the sound of it edging his words.
Elsie rolled her eyes. “I beg your pardon, but this is hardly funny—”
“Here we are.” Miss Prescott set a small tin dish and a bottle of water on the tabletop, then knelt beside it. Bacchus pulled up a chair for Elsie, who gratefully sat, before kneeling across from Miss Prescott.
“Master Kelsey and I have discussed his repertoire, and I think we’re set.” Miss Prescott poured a third of the bottle into the dish. “Now, Elsie, I want to discuss runes with you. You see, every spell has a rune.” She reached down and pulled out a thin book, passing it to Elsie. She flipped the cover open, and an assortment of runes peeked up at her. They were organized by color: blue for physical, red for rational, yellow for spiritual, and green for temporal. Elsie recognized nearly every single one—hardening spells, softening spells, emotive manipulation, luck, aging of plants, and so on.
And then remembered she had to act like this was all new to her.
“Aspectors can’t see these runes”—Miss Prescott gestured to Bacchus—“and technically we can’t, either, unless it’s a physical rune. Each discipline of magic has its own flavor, so to speak. Physical runes you can see, which makes it that much better for our first lesson to be with a physical aspector. Spiritual runes are auditory, temporal runes are olfactory, and rational runes are tangible, in a sense. You’ll understand what I mean when we get to those.”
Elsie glanced at Bacchus, who seemed interested in the lecture, but perhaps he was simply better at pretending. I know, Elsie wanted to say, yet she forced the words into her stomach, where they boiled and popped. Miss Prescott was going to cover every single basic premise of spellbreaking, and Elsie would have to take it all in without complaint. Because if she complained, then her story was flawed, and she would go to prison.
“Miss Camden?”
Elsie’s eyes shot to Miss Prescott. “Oh, yes, it’s incredibly interesting!”
Miss Prescott smiled. “Now, I’ll show you what I mean. Master Kelsey, if you would freeze this.”
Bacchus leaned over and touched his hand to the dish. Magic tickled Elsie’s senses as the water froze and pulsed with a glimmering blue rune. Changing the state of water was a novice-level spell. Bacchus could have placed a stronger enchantment on it—a more complicated rune that would be more difficult to break—but he’d gone for the simplest option, knowing Miss Prescott would expect to start with something elementary.
Elsie could have untied that rune with a sneeze. Instead, she said, “It’s so lovely.”
“Isn’t it? I’ve always thought so.” Miss Prescott slid the dish to Elsie and then began explaining how the rune held, and how spellbreaking could be applied to it, and how all spells were like an algebraic equation—
Algebraic . . . what? What nonsense. Elsie had always seen runes as knots to be untied, not numbers to calculate. Miss Prescott was making it far more complicated than it needed to be. The sum of this and the division of that to determine where to start . . . Elsie just tugged at the thing until she found a loose end. She highly doubted counting and equating would make the process any faster.
She’s still talking, she thought with dismay. She was overexplaining. Even Bacchus would know how to pull the spell apart at this point.
“Now, find the same rune in the book,” Miss Prescott said.
Trying not to grit her teeth, Elsie opened the book. She found the novice freezing rune right away, but acted like it took her a moment. “Here is it.”
“Very good. Now, I want you to study the rune, do the calculation, and tell me where you think you should start.”
Elsie resisted the urge to grumble. Top right, she knew. But she paced herself, her remaining patience slowly unraveling, and played along.
It took another quarter hour, a quarter hour, before Miss Prescott let her try breaking the rune. And again, Elsie purposefully made a mistake and started over before turning the ice back to water.
And then she had to do it again. And again. And again.
Elsie was going to lose her mind.
The lesson lasted two hours, with Bacchus hardening a tea cake and turning a coin translucent, all novice physical spells. Each and every time, Miss Prescott explained how it all worked, and each and every time, Elsie played the unknowing yet fascinated child, enough so that Miss Prescott praised her as she cleaned up her supplies. They bid farewell, and Elsie waited several minutes after the spellbreaker’s footsteps left the room before crossing to the far corner, where a tapestry of a field of sheep hung along the wall.
Bacchus followed. “Bravo,” he said.
“That was the most maddening thing I’ve ever had to do,” she hissed. “Even as a child, I would have thought it ridiculous.”
His lip quirked into a smile. “But you performed well.”
Elsie folded her arms, annoyed at the way her wrists were starting to itch. They hadn’t broken any large spells, but she’d unwoven more small ones than she could count. “She said years, Bacchus. That I’d be training for years. I can’t do this for years.”
“Perhaps you will be a very quick learner.”
“But I can’t.” She dropped her arms. “I can’t be a quick learner, Bacchus, because I can’t give them any reason to suspect.”
The smile faded. “I suppose that’s true.”
Sighing, Elsie looked out the window. There was a nice walking path down below, along with a garden sporting orange and pink flowers. Beyond that, Elsie knew, were the woods she had crept through the night Bacchus had caught her in an act of illegal spellbreaking. The assignment had been to break a spell on the servants’ door. She’d thought she was freeing them from an oppressive master, but in truth Merton had sent her there to strip the house of protections, probably with the intention of killing Bacchus. Thank God he’d stopped her. Thank God he’d given her a chance to redeem herself instead of turning her in to the authorities.
“But why did she want you?” she wondered aloud.
“Pardon?”
“When the Cowls—Merton—sent me to dis-spell the servants’ door.” She gave in and scratched her wrists. “You were only an advanced aspector, and a new arrival. You didn’t know her previously. So why was she after your opus?”
Leaning forward, Bacchus set his elbows on his knees. “Perhaps she wasn’t. The duke has an opus. Passed down from . . . his great uncle, I believe. A temporal one, in a locked glass case in the library. If Merton was collecting opuses to strengthen her hand, that might have been her target.”
Elsie nodded. “She must have seen it when she was visiting with Miss Ida.”
“Perhaps. All opuses are documented by the atheneums; she might have viewed the records there. We may never know for sure.”
She rolled her lips together, trying to imagine an alternate history to the one that had played out. Would she still be a pawn beneath Merton’s thumb if Bacchus hadn’t stopped her that day? She shivered at the thought.
“I’m glad you caught me.” She studied a vase on a nearby table, so she didn’t see his reaction. “Even more so that you let me barter my way out.”
He snorted, drawing Elsie’s eyes back. “You were certainly unexpected. And wily.”
She smiled at him.
He waited a beat before carefully saying, “The other option for your spellbreaking predicament is leaving.”
Elsie glanced at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we could hire a spellbreaking tutor in Barbados. Fudge the timeline. Wait a few years for your certification. Skip the rudimentary stuff.”
Elsie blinked. Barbados. She’d never been anywhere tropical. What would it be like to live there?
What would it be like for Bacchus to have her live there? With him? In truth, she’d never considered it. She’d never allowed herself the fancy of marrying Bacchus before the whole jail conundrum unfolded; she’d been sure he’d sail off without her and that would be that. And now . . . now she was so concerned about their ruse and about the possibility that he might hate her for it that she hadn’t considered anything beyond the marriage ceremony.
“We couldn’t.” She turned away. “Not while Merton is still at large.”
He nodded.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose, a sudden headache starting there. Now she was keeping him from his home, too. “Bacchus, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
But the door opened just then, revealing the butler. “If Miss Camden is ready, the duchess would like to meet with her.”
Elsie threw an apologetic look to Bacchus. One she hoped read, I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. I’m so sorry I’m a burden. I’m so sorry you’re stuck with me.
But Bacchus said, “She is,” and took Elsie’s hand in his. Her stomach warmed in response. “I’ll see you when you’re done.”
He kissed the back of her hand, the press of his lips sending sparks like a fire spell up her arm. Her voice got lost somewhere between her throat and her tongue, so she simply nodded and allowed the butler to see her out, her hand pulling too slowly from Bacchus’s.
Once in the hallway, she checked the back of her hand for a spell; she could swear she felt something powerful pulsing against her skin, but there was nothing. She rubbed it, hoping to diffuse the aching that had begun just over her breastbone, but it was no use.
