The Lost Magic, page 2
“Reeves would have a heart attack the moment he stepped inside this place,” I said, then narrowed my gaze. “What disaster drove you to escape here again? Did the fairies return? I told you—”
“Not the fairies.”
He flopped onto my bed with a yawn that nearly popped his jaw out of its socket. He slung an arm onto his forehead. Baxter randomly showing up at my cottage wasn’t that unusual. He escaped castle life more often than he lived it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be orchestrating things at the castle?” I asked. “The East has arrived, and Niko Aldana doesn’t take kindly to poor social etiquette.”
“The initial dinner is underway. It buys me an hour reprieve.”
“Ah. The puzzle solves itself. You came here because everyone is trying to find you, you need a break, and no one hides from society better than me.”
He pointed to me, eyes already closed. “Precisely. Your cottage is remote, calm, and protected by magic.”
Despite his casual pose, he was pristinely put together. His freshly laundered shirt was pressed into crisp lines. A hint of stubble on his jaw and dull leather breeches that looked like new. Only his sandals, which I’d convinced him to try a year ago, appeared less-than-perfect.
His pulled-togetherness belied the exhaustion in his eyes. With the arrival of the final delegation came a massive amount of coordination and responsibility. As Papa’s Assistant, he bore a heavy weight.
“Also wanted to confirm the events you’ll be attending,” he murmured, a low drawl of sleepiness to his voice. “The Central Network Dinner in two evenings, of course. I’m rather proud of the Central Network covens that will be represented through a parade of food. Particularly because none of the food here makes any sense at all. Figs in bread? Anyway, you’ll also attend the ball. Your dance with Derek last year is still talked about now. Several delegations have mentioned looking forward to seeing another one.”
A grimace rose to my face. Despite a good experience at the Celebration ball the last two years in a row, I still dreaded the thought of another ball. I managed to make my voice not sound strangled when I said, “I’ll be there.”
“Good,” he mumbled, and then yawned again. “Oh, and Scarlett wants to know if you’ll be attending the opera review. With all the delegations milling around and calm, operatic music in the background, she’s hopeful Derek will speak with the North about a training swap. You could form your Sisterhood, they could learn from our Brotherhood.”
At the word Sisterhood, my spine immediately tensed. “I’ll follow up with her on that,” I said, then quickly added, “I tried to practice with the axe you found near the Southern Network border.”
“And?”
I shrugged and lifted the axe off the wall. Leather straps bound the head to the handle, locked in and tightened by spells. The pristine, sharp edge gleamed. Only craftsmen from the tribes in the South could work such skilled magic. They used to, at least. Now that all the witches in the Southern Network had lost their ability to do magic, that axe would be worth more currency than I’d know what to do with.
“Too unbalanced?” he asked.
“Not sure why I don’t like it.” I shrugged. “Just . . . wasn’t right.”
Baxter contemplated that, climbed to his knees, set the axe on the wall, and flopped onto his stomach. He rarely used magic for simple things, such as replacing a weapon on the wall, like the rest of us.
His sooty lashes closed as he stacked his head on his arms. “You’ll find the right one,” he said.
I scoffed. “When I’m eighty, at this rate.”
“And too grumpy to recognize it. What about something that you could throw?”
“What could I throw that would incapacitate like a sword?”
“Besides your attitude?”
I sent a burst of air his way that stirred his curls. “You have no room to talk about attitude.”
“Son of a god,” he murmured with a jaunty grin, his favorite joke whenever he was unnaturally good at something. His eyes closed again. While I split a strip of leather to re-lace one of my sandals, his breathing evened into a quiet sleep.
A small scroll appeared in front of me and whisked thoughts of the upcoming ball away. The crimson string that tied it closed told me immediately who had sent it. I plucked it from the air and rolled it open.
Bianca,
* * *
I would like to meet with you tomorrow evening after the initial Esbat, if possible. My office at 9:00 pm should suffice.
Also, you and I have discussed the possibility that you could give Leda a nudge if I didn’t hear from her. I haven’t heard from her. I would like a final answer. If the option of you speaking to her on my behalf is on the table, I’d be most grateful for your help.
* * *
Yours,
Scarlett
“Leda,” I murmured under my breath. “You silly witch.”
With a shake of my head, I sent the message into the fire. Baxter slept on with a peaceful expression. My magic carpet, or Volare, waited in a circular case that I flung onto my back. I tugged my dress sleeve back over a thin, short sword I kept on my forearm and ran a comb through my tangled black hair, which fell to my shoulder blades. I used a spell to put it into a braid that ran down either side of my head, then coiled in a bun at my neck.
Then I transported away, Leda heavy on my mind.
The Great Library of Burke was a massive building made of wood and stone. It loomed several stories high and extended seemingly without end into Letum Wood, where it had resided in the centuries of its existence. Despite being a library, no one knew when or where it began.
Eternal hallways drifted into the shadows of the forest and disappeared into the trees. It grew year by year as it collected more literature, articles, and other items of cultural significance. Most of it was, at any given time, closed off to witches. But the librarians would open several wings in rotating shifts, revealing areas that no one in memory had seen. Now that borders were open after almost a hundred years of isolation, literature poured in from all over Alkarra. Expansion had been continuous.
Librarians with impressive magical power wandered the halls. The lesser-regarded Underlibrarians followed them, all of their magic maintaining the books, shelving, and general air of pompous intelligence. To maintain order and prevent theft, the Head Librarian of hundreds of years ago had designated a transportation room and blocked transportation within any other area. It kept the vast place as still as a tomb.
A hush fell on the world when I entered the library through glass double doors. Swirls of stained glass decorated the entrance in an image of Letum Wood. Panes of cerulean blue topped it. Beneath, swirls of emerald gave way to umber tree trunks.
Several witches milled inside, under the smell of ink and decaying scrolls. A female witch with silky black hair sat at a sprawling reception desk made of twigs and leaves. Birds fluttered in and out, building nests. She beamed when I walked up in the ropey sandals I’d bought from her family in the West.
“Merry meet, Sanako.”
“Merry meet, Bianca.” Sanako tucked a monocle away, into a pocket of her dress. “How is your part of Letum Wood?”
“Quiet. Yours?”
She brightened. “Normal.” Her eyes sparkled when she leaned forward and whispered, “I believe I may have met a goddess the other day. It’s hard to tell, but I have my suspicions.” She waved a hand around my face. “You can see it in their eyes. Queer.”
“Really?”
Her eager nod amused me, but I schooled it. Sanako collected history with serious intent. No one but Sanako thought about the goddess paradigm anymore, which earned her an official and coveted Librarian badge. While Underlibrarians like Leda scrounged for any notice or praise from their Librarian overlords, Sanako breezed her way right to the title of the Librarian Expert on Historical Folk Tales in the Division of Goddess and God History.
Something that had sent Leda into an annoyed smolder for weeks.
“Where did you meet a goddess?” I asked.
Sanako pointed out the doors. “On the water in the West. Where else?”
“And which goddess is water again?”
“Prana is the sea goddess.” Her sharp reprimand sounded like every other Librarian here. Did they train them to admonish patrons with the same tone? If so, they succeeded. “If we don’t remember both gods and goddesses, one day we’ll feel their wrath. It behooves all of us to invest education in their ways and their preferred appreciation for all they’ve given. For Prana, it’s blatant and pointed adoration.”
I matched her sober tone with great effort. “Of course, Sanako. Thank you for your reminder. Is Leda in her usual office?”
She nodded. “Waiting for you, I believe.”
“Thank you. Merry part.”
Sanako waved and pulled her monocle back out to study a book sprawled open in front of her. A bird twittered by and landed on her shoulder. Several other patrons approached with questions about lost scrolls in the Ancient Scrolls and Grimoires of the Kukkan Time division. I left with a wave, but she’d already turned her attention.
Stacks of books, hallways, offices, and more passed as I headed toward the west wing of the library. A few months after the War of the Networks, Leda had left her job as Scarlett’s Assistant. She’d hidden away at home with her siblings for weeks to try to recover from everything that had happened. A month passed before she couldn’t handle her family and their chaos anymore and desperately applied to the Great Library of Burke for a position.
They gave her the groveling position as assistant to a group of ten Underlibrarians—the very bottom of the Great Burke job ladder. She’d been working her way through the library hierarchy ever since. She currently resided as Underlibrarian in her course to achieve the supposed greatness of a titled Librarian . . . preferably in the Languages Division.
I navigated to a small closet with a book-sized window that overlooked the forest. It had been given to her as an afterthought, and only after she’d promised to improve it and make it more functional. Inside was barely enough space to turn around in.
Tentatively, I knocked.
One annoyed huff later, the door creaked open and a pair of differently-colored eyes peered out. On seeing me, Leda straightened. The last few months after gaining Underlibrarian, she had become even more insufferable. Happy in her own way, but occasionally oppressive to those of us less intelligent than her.
“Merry meet, Bianca,” she said, then turned back around to face her desk. The door would only open a few inches when she sat in her chair, so I leaned against the doorframe outside.
The closet was utilitarian at best. A candle sputtered near her elbow as the only light, except the window. She hadn’t decorated the closet at all, but she did make it functional. An inkpot holder had been nailed to the wall over her desk because there wasn’t sufficient space for one. She’d attempted something similar with a candle holder, but it had fallen and nearly caught her hair on fire. Several new shelves had been repurposed from broken boards cast on the ground. Books and scrolls filled them, organized by size and color.
“Merry meet,” I drawled. “Can you take a break for our weekly dinner?”
Her gaze dropped to my bare legs with a reproving eye-roll. Instead of lowering all the way to the floor, my summer skirt tapered up to my knees in the front, then dropped in the back to hover just above the ground. It left my knees and ankles bare and was, in her terms, a ghastly representation of women these days. Leda could always brighten my day with her unflappable annoyance.
“Don’t you have any other dress?” she muttered.
“Several, but my other dress doesn’t make you as angry as this one, so it’s not as fun.”
“Why you feel joy from irritating me,” she growled, “I will never understand. I’m just about finished here.”
Scrolls bearing ancient languages littered a desk which was little more than a single board nailed to the wall. Her legs barely fit when she tucked them underneath, which forced her to sit at an uncomfortable angle. I gazed at the scrolls with a nauseous feeling. Leda had always found refuge in closets, which made sense with as many siblings as she had. But it was her willingness to stay in closed spaces for so long that always amazed me.
When she finished packing the scrolls into a neat line organized by length and width, closed the book she made notations in, and capped her inkwell with a lid, she stood. A cleaning incantation took care of the ink stains on her fingers while she slipped out, perfectly presentable. Her white-blonde hair was pulled back in a tasteful bun that looked exactly like every other Underlibrarian.
Maybe they trained for those as well.
“So,” I said as we walked down the hall together. “How has your project on ancient languages been going?”
“Thrilling,” she cried. “There’s something so fascinating about diving into history through language. The Declan language, for example, is one of the most developed languages of which we have notation. If I keep studying it, and that old man in the Language Division finally joins his family in Halla, I could be promoted to Librarian over the Declan Language Division within the next . . . five years!”
Forced brightness filled her tone. Under it, she sounded dreadful.
“Sounds . . . very exciting,” I managed to choke out. “I know some Declan words, and their spells are . . . interesting.”
Leda said nothing, rolled her eyes again, and huffed impatiently. “They’re more than interesting, but I wouldn’t expect a witch like you to understand.”
Her words a witch like you rang through my head with a suppressed chuckle. Leda’s exasperation toward me always held an affectionate note, although she sometimes buried it very deeply.
We turned a corner, then pushed outside into a circular garden open to the forest. Other offices stacked four stories high peered down on us. Letum Wood created a ceiling of thick branches and boughs overhead, but the library’s walls protected this garden from errant creatures. Leda liked her outdoors with a side dish of heavy magical protection and control.
She set the pail of food she’d brought with her on a stone table, and I slid into the bench across from her. The Volare remained on my back. Even though I’d already eaten a little, I still felt famished after an afternoon of running. As usual, she brought enough for both of us. Apparently, her time after work was hard to fill, since she did her favorite pastime—reading—as a job. She’d taken up baking as a new hobby.
An oblong-shaped cold pie, filled with an assortment of greens and what must have been minced lamb, filled the inside. I tore off a bite and savored each morsel.
“Delicious, Leda. As usual.”
“Thank you.”
A few moments of quiet passed before I dared break it. “So . . . have you responded to Miss Scarlett’s request?”
Leda stiffened like a board. Her nostrils flared, but she maintained a calm mien with her usual dignity.
“As I said last week,” she said carefully, “I will not be responding. I am not interested in working at the castle again or with . . . I will not be working for Scarlett.”
“She needs you, Leda. Her team is still untrained and young and not ready for the political realm. She fired two of them, and I think she has one Assistant now. It’s been terrible for her since you left. She’s never been able to replace you. Besides, Assistant to the High Priestess is far above an Underlibrarian here. It’s one of the highest positions in the Network.”
And you’ve already given it up, I thought, but knew better than to voice.
Leda’s nostrils flared. “I’m well aware, thank you.”
Until now, I hadn’t pressed her on Scarlett’s offer to be her Assistant. I figured Leda would fight it for a week and then give in—because when had a second chance like this ever presented itself? Never. Not in a political structure at Scarlett’s level, anyway. But no, Leda had dug her metaphorical heels in yet again.
“Why not?” I asked, my tone laced with exasperation.
Her light eyes flickered to mine, then back to her pie. For the first time in awhile, she appeared discomfited. Leda had gained absolute control over her life in the last three years. She lived the exact same routine, which allowed her to forget our deceased friend Camille and her lost brother. In fact, she hadn’t set foot in the castle since the dissolution of the Almorran magic that almost destroyed all of Alkarra.
“You know why,” she muttered. “I won’t go back there after . . . after . . .”
“The battle?”
“Yes. It was hard enough those first few months.” She shivered. “To return?”
“Camille doesn’t haunt Chatham Castle, Leda. I’m sure she’s moved onto better things in the afterlife than following you around.”
She cut me a sharp glare. She hated it when I said Camille’s name. Her head tilted back a little, just enough to be haughty, with her pert nose in the air.
“That’s not why.”
“Liar.”
The back of her neck flushed red, but she’d perfected her placid expression. Leda and I had held onto each other in the grief that followed the fracturing of Almorran magic. Only lately had the ever-changing circumstances of a post-war climate started to fade. Papa had brought consistency back, and that bred life instead of desperation. Living through war was brutal. Recovering from war was heart wrenching.
“I don’t want to be at the castle, Bianca. You know that. This isn’t a topic that’s up for discussion.”
“I think you’re making a mistake.”
In an unusual move for both of us, I reached across the table and put a hand over hers. Leda tolerated touch from her mother and no one else. She sucked in a sharp breath, but didn’t pull back.
