The Magic Thief (13 page)

Hearing her saying it out loud like that made my stomach leap up and wrestle with my throat for a minute.

I must have turned pale, because she went on, hurriedly, “Surely it's not more important than going to school.”

“It is,” I said.

She put her hands on her hips and glared. “You're being stupid, Conn. You'll find your locus magicalicus eventually. Until you do, just work for Magister Nevery.”

“I can't.”

“Why not? It seems the obvious solution.”

I just couldn't do it. I shook my head.

“Very well,” Rowan said. In the dim light, her red hair looked like a banked fire and her eyes flashed with annoyance. She spun on her heel and stalked away, up the stairs.

T
oday was the last day.

In the kitchen, Benet greeted me with a glare. “Listen, you. Stop messing about,” he growled. “Find the stone and be done with it.”

I didn't answer, just grabbed the bucket and went out for water. When I got back,
I left the bucket by the hearth and went down to fetch more wood for the fire. By that time, Benet had breakfast ready for Nevery and Keeston; two cups, a steaming teapot, and a basket of muffins. He pointed to the stairs, and I took it up. They weren't in the study, so I went up to the workroom. Knocked.

“Breakfast, Nevery,” I said.

After a long moment, he answered, his voice sharp. “Leave it outside the door, boy, and go away.”

I put down the tray. Then I leaned my forehead against the door. Maybe he'd lost count of the days. Right. He probably didn't remember that this was the last day. I wanted to talk to him before I left. But I couldn't go in there while he and Keeston were working on some experiment that couldn't be interrupted.

I went back downstairs to the kitchen.

Lady was there, purring before the fire. I crouched beside her to get warm before heading out to search. What I really wanted to do was go
back to bed. I was tired. I was starting to believe that I wasn't going to find a locus magicalicus. Maybe I wasn't a wizard after all.

“Here, you,” Benet said, interrupting my dark thoughts. I looked up. He was elbow deep in bread dough; he raised a floury finger to point at the table.

I went over to see. A black, high-collared woolen sweater. Warm looking. Benet had knitted it.

“See if it fits,” he said.

I took off my coat and put on the sweater. It was too big; the sleeves hung down over my hands. But it was warm. I put my coat on over it, and my scarf.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Hmph,” Benet grunted. “Take a biscuit with you.”

“Thanks,” I said again. I took a biscuit and some cheese and shoved them into my coat pocket. “I'll be back later,” I said, and left.

I'd be back when I found my locus magicalicus, is what I meant. And if I didn't find it, maybe I wouldn't come back at all.

A
fter I left Heartsease, using the keystone to pass the gates in the tunnels, I came out onto the Night Bridge and turned east. It was about midday, and, as I came out from the bridge and into the city, the Sunrise was bustling.

The streets were clotted with mud and horse manure, all churned with the snow that had fallen the previous night into a dirty, icy slush. My feet were wet within a few steps, and even with Benet's sweater under my coat, the wind was biting. I pulled my scarf up over my face—all the better to hide from the city guards, I reckoned—and headed deeper into the Sunrise.

Most of the buildings in this part of the city were built of gray stone, and the streets were paved with black cobbles. Shops lined the roads, their signs jutting out over the street and creaking in the wind. People, bundled to their ears in warm coats, rushed through the streets, but the richest people traveled in carriages or in hansom cabs pulled by high-stepping horses, whose breath steamed in the chilly air.

I decided to start near the river and work my way up, toward the center of the city, the hill the Dawn Palace was built on, where the duchess lived.

I paced streets and alleyways for the rest of the day. As I had before, I tried to keep myself open to the merest hint of a call from my locus magicalicus, but I felt nothing. I wasn't sure, anyway,
how
to keep myself open for the call. Was it like listening? Would I just
know
? Would it be, as Brumbee had said, like getting washed away by a wave of magic?

My feet were numb and my socks wet inside my boots, and an icy wind from the river kept knifing me in the back as I trudged along. As the night drew on and wizards came out to light the werelights along the streets, I found a house with a coal hole leading down to a cellar. I pulled my knife out of my boot and used it to pry open the window. Climbed in and found a dark corner to sleep in.

Except that I didn't sleep. I lay there all night, shivering and staring at the darkness, trying to make my thoughts stop whirling around. I still had the biscuit and cheese in my pocket, but I couldn't eat it.

As the light turned gray with morning, I
climbed out of the cellar, smudged all over with coal dust. Headed out into the city again.

Trudged. Up one street, down another. The cobbles felt like blocks of ice under my feet. The wind stuck cold fingers down my neck. Overhead, the clouds lowered and snow began to fall, icy pellets like little needles. I felt completely hollow. If somebody had hit me, I would have echoed.

Toward evening, the snowfall grew heavier and I headed up the hill to the center of the city.

I had my head down, scanning the snow-covered cobbles, with my scarf over my face. A big hand came down on my shoulder.

“Here, you.”

I looked up. A guard. I pulled my scarf down, just a little, to speak. “I'm running a message.”

“Oh, are you? Let's see it.” The guard held out a gloved hand.

“It's in here,” I said, pointing to my head.

“Where you going to?” the guard said, suspicious.

“The Dawn Palace.” Drats. But it was the only place in the Sunrise that I could think of, hollow as I was.

The guard frowned. “They're not going to let the likes of you in,” he said.

“Still, that's where I'm going.” Actually, now that we were talking about the Dawn Palace, I realized that I really did want to go there. Up the hill. Yes. A very good place to go.

The guard shrugged, evidently believing me. “Get on with you, then.” He took his hand from my shoulder and I skiffed off up the street.

I hadn't eaten anything the previous day, not even the biscuit and cheese, which had disintegrated into crumbs in my pocket, and I hadn't slept during the night and only a few hours the night before, but for some reason I suddenly felt just fine. The worry that had been gnawing at me for the past thirty days took its teeth and went elsewhere. What a relief.

As I went up the hill toward the Dawn Palace,
twilight fell and a cloaked wizard with a locus stone went along the street before me making the werelights lining the streets flicker on. The lights gleamed in the growing darkness, making the snowy streets and the gray buildings glow pink. Several carriages passed me as I walked, the horses' breath steaming in the air, their hooves kicking up clots of muddy slush, the wheels rattling over the cobbles.

At last, at the top of the hill, I reached the Dawn Palace, where the duchess lived and governed the city. The carriages had been heading here, too: the duchess was having a party.

At the front of the Dawn Palace was a low wall about half my height topped with a tall, black-iron fence. I gripped the bars, looking in. The palace was a huge rectangular structure built of stone colored the rosy pink of dawn. All along the front were pillars and frothy carvings; it looked like a cake, frosted and ready to eat. The carriages rolled down the snow-covered drive and pulled up
before the front doors, which were reached by going up a broad flight of stairs decorated at the sides with pink stone statues. Werelights flared in sconces at the front, and in their glow I saw fine fur-wrapped ladies and frock-coated gentlemen scurrying from the warm carriages, up the icy steps, and into the warm palace.

My thirty days was up. I would never find my locus magicalicus. I wasn't Nevery's apprentice anymore. I would never be a wizard.

Which meant I was a thief.

Where there were fine ladies and gentlemen, I reckoned, there would be fine jewels and gold and pearls. I would have to find a way in and steal some of them.

Also by the front door were guards, outfitted in thick, dark green woolen uniforms and high leather boots; a few more guards stood at the gates at the head of the driveway, and I was starting to attract their attention, hanging around the fence as I was.

So I eased off down the street to find a nearby alley to wait in until later, when the night would be darker.

I leaned against a wall in an alley for a few hours. Fat snowflakes sifted down from the sky and settled on the ground, and every once in a while a blast of wind came along and stirred the snow into a whirling white frenzy. I jittered while I waited, bouncing up and down, talking to myself.

“I'll go 'round the back,” I told myself. “And peek in the windows. The guards won't see me. I'll find somebody wearing jewels. And I'll steal them when they aren't looking.”

It seemed like a very good plan.

At last I could wait no longer. It was late, close to midnight, I reckoned, and the party would be in full swing. I crept out of my alley and climbed up the hill to the Dawn Palace.

Away from the front gates, the palace wall got higher and was topped with metal spikes, each
spike wearing a little cap of snow. Following the wall around a corner, I found myself in a quiet alley about two paces wide made by the palace wall and a brick building with no windows. A perfect place; no guards in sight. The wall was made of big stone blocks with nice cracks between them. I took off my boots, tied the laces, and hung them around my neck, then climbed up.

At the top of the palace wall, I crouched for a moment, clinging to the spikes, to survey the other side. Blinking snowflakes from my lashes, I saw what looked like a formal garden with snow-covered lumps that were probably hedges and flower beds and winding paths. Across the garden was the side of the palace. All the windows were lit up; it looked like a bright ship sailing on a foamy ocean.

I swung down to hang from my fingertips from the top of the wall, then let go, landing with a crackling of branches and a whump of snow in a bush. Quickly I climbed out, brushing the snow
from my coat, and crouched behind the bush, putting my boots back on and tying the laces. Ready, I peered out. Silence, except for the faint sound of music and voices coming from the palace.

I was facing a wide terrace with a low stone wall around it. Along the ground floor were doors made of small windows, which opened right out onto the terrace. The windows were steamed up, so I couldn't see much but bright lights and colors, and movement. It looked warm, inviting.

I crept closer to see.

One of the windowed doors cracked open. A wisp of bright, happy music leaked out and was muffled again as somebody slipped out the door and closed it behind her.

Rowan?

She didn't see me at first. Even though she was only wearing thin slippers, she scuffed through the snow to the terrace wall, where she brushed off the snow and sat down with a tired sigh. She wore a deep green velvet dress with long sleeves
and lace at the collar and cuffs. On her hair she wore a wide green velvet band, and she also wore a pearl necklace and eardrops.

I didn't consider even for a moment stealing her jewelry.

I climbed up the wall and dropped onto the terrace in a little cloud of snow.

“Hello, Ro,” I said. “You look nice.”

She looked startled for a moment, and then she gave me her down-the-nose smile. “Connwaer. How lovely to see you.”

It was good to see her, actually. I grinned back.

“I suppose I ought to ask you what you're doing here,” she said, her breath steaming in the freezing air.

I shrugged and sat beside her. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Mmm, I expect you would, Conn.”

“It's a very fancy party,” I said.

Rowan gazed at the bright windows. “Very fancy.”

“Lots of fine ladies and gentlemen,” I said.

She shot me a sharp sideways glance. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just curious.”

“Oh, I imagine so. Would you like to see better?”

I definitely would. I nodded.

Rowan got to her feet. Snowflakes had settled on her flame-colored hair and on her dress. “Over here.”

She led me across the terrace to a long window at the end, which wasn't as steamed up as the others. I peeked in. Chandeliers, whirling couples, green trees in pots, garlands of flowers.

And then, across the ballroom, on a necklace worn by a woman sitting on a carved, fancy chair, I saw it. A jewel, green and sparkling. The most perfect jewel in the entire world.