The Magic Thief (18 page)

W
hen I came down for breakfast the morning after my meeting with the duchess, Nevery and Keeston were sitting at the table, eating, and Benet sat with his chair tilted back against the wall, knitting something with red yarn.

Keeston had, clear as clear, spoken to his master, Pettivox, who had told him about my locus magicalicus. He stared as I stepped into the kitchen, pulling my sweater on over my head and combing my hair with my fingers.

Benet pointed toward the stove, where a warm plate of biscuits and bacon was waiting for me. I hung my scarf and my coat, with my locus magicalicus in the pocket, on a hook beside the door, then fetched my plate and joined them at the table. Keeston watched my every move.

“G'morning, Nevery,” I said, taking a bite of bacon and biscuit.

He glanced up from the book he had open on the table beside his empty plate. “Hmph,” he said, looking me up and down. “Benet is right; you do need a haircut.”

“After supper,” Benet said. His knitting needles went
click-tick
.

I ate for a while, thinking, trying to ignore Keeston's fascinated stare. I'd woken up curious
about something. “Nevery,” I said. “That guard captain from the Dawn Palace. Kerrn?”

Nevery nodded while continuing to read his book.

“Why does she talk funny?” I asked.

Nevery looked up. “What do you mean, boy?”

“She said ‘phlister' like this:
phlishterrrr
.”

“Ah.” Nevery nodded. “Because she's from Helva, in the far south, beyond the Peninsular Duchies.”

I didn't get it. “Why would that make her talk funny?”

“Because in Helva they speak Helvan, which leaves that accent when she speaks our language.”

Our language? “Helvan?” I asked. “You mean they have different words for everything?”

“Yes, boy,” Nevery said, going back to his book. I could tell what he was thinking:
I don't have time for stupid questions
. But I'd never met anyone before who spoke a different language. Not all that surprising, since most people traveled
away
from Wellmet, not
to
it.

Language. Different words for everything. The new idea washed over me like a wave. “Magic spells,” I said. Of course!

“What, boy?” Nevery said sharply.

“Magic spells are another language. When we say ‘
lothfalas
,' it means ‘light' in the language of magic.”

From across the room, my locus magicalicus, responding to the spoken spell, burst into flame, blindingly bright even through the cloth of my coat pocket. Keeston flinched away.

“Put the light out, boy,” Nevery said, blinking.

I did.

“Now,” he went on, “before you make any more wild claims, you must read more magical theory. It has been proven that magical spells are simply a string of linked word parts that focus the wizard's mind so he or she can, with the locus magicalicus, tap into the city's supply of magic and effect the spell.”

I shook my head. “I don't think so, Nevery. The spells are a language, and we use it to tell the
magic what to do.” It made perfect sense.

Nevery was shaking his head, frowning. “Nonsense. Read Jaspers's essay on the subject, boy, and then tell me what you think.” He snapped his book closed. He started to tell Benet to look for more slowsilver when he went to the marketplace at Sark Square that day.

I didn't listen, eating my biscuit and drinking tea, and thinking about magic and language and magical nodes and Wellmet. If magical spells truly were a language, whose language was it? What, or who, did the spells speak to? Was a magical node not an atmospheric convergence or an upwelling but a living, thinking being?

Oh, Nevery was going to hate this idea. He was going to grumble and tell me to read some treatise and some other book and to stop talking about things I didn't understand.

But I was sure as sure, down in my bones, that I was right about the magic.

“Well, boy?” Nevery said, interrupting my
thoughts. I looked up, blinking. He, Benet, and Keeston stood beside the table, waiting for me. I realized that I was sitting with my cup of tea in one hand and the biscuit in the other, staring at the wall.

Nevery shook his head. “You and Keeston will go to the market with Benet and help him carry the supplies back.”

I nodded and gulped down the rest of my tea and biscuit. After Keeston had put on his apprentice's robe and I'd put on my coat and wound my scarf around my neck, we went down the stairs and joined Benet, who was dressed warmly and had a truncheon in his belt.

When we stepped out the door, the wind attacked us with icy teeth, tearing at our clothes. Shivering, we crossed the courtyard. In the big tree, the birds hopped up and down on their branches, talking excitedly.

Benet led the way down the tunnel stairs. The tips of Keeston's ears were pink from the cold.

When we got to the gate, we stopped. I waited
for Benet to pull out his little gray keystone. But he didn't; he folded his arms and waited, without saying anything.

Keeston glanced nervously at me. “Don't you want to open it?”

Oh. “I can do it if you want, but I'm not very good at it.”

“One of you do it,” Benet growled.

Keeston wore his locus magicalicus on its golden chain outside his gray apprentice robe. Quickly he grabbed it, pointed it toward the lock, closed his eyes—concentrating—and pronounced the opening spell. Nothing happened. He gripped the stone even tighter and tried again. After a sullen moment, the lock turned over and the gate creaked open.

We went on through the damp and chilly tunnels and up the stairs to the Night Bridge.

I glanced aside at Keeston, at his locus stone on its fancy chain. “You'd better put that away,” I said.

“Why should I?” he said. He was feeling proud of himself for opening the gates, and the sneer had crept back into his voice.

“Why d'you think?” I said.

We stepped from the bridge and into the Twilight. Fleetside Street twisted up the hill before us, covered with packed-down snow and ice, lined on both sides with dirty, broken-down tenement houses and trash; the air smelled of smoke and open cesspits; ragged people watched us from dark doorways.

Quickly Keeston shoved his locus magicalicus on its chain inside the collar of his shirt and buttoned his robe up to his neck.

We started up the hill, trudging into the wind. Benet went first, his hand on the truncheon at his belt, and Keeston and I came behind. I put my head down and shoved my hands into my coat pockets.

Questions and half-thought ideas swirled around in my head. If the spells were the magical
being's language, could I learn to speak to it through my locus magicalicus? Would it listen? Could it talk back, tell me what was going on?

I thought back to the question the duchess had asked me the day before: Why had the jewel come to me, a gutterboy and a thief?

Nevery had asked me once about how I had survived the Twilight. I had told him that it was because I had quick hands and I was lucky, and because my mother didn't die until I was old enough to take care of myself. But that didn't really explain it.

Maybe, all along, when I was growing up in the Twilight, the magic of Wellmet had made sure I didn't get sick or end up drudging in a factory or fighting off misery eels in a damp cellar or freezing to death in an alley. The magic had protected me, and when I was ready, it had led me to Nevery, and then to my locus magicalicus.

I knew, sure as sure, why the magic had done all this. It had chosen me. It had saved me so I
could save it. I had to do something about the magical decay.

Keeston said something, interrupting my thoughts. “What?” I said. We were just turning onto Strangle Street, cutting off the worst of the wind. I stepped around an icy pothole.

“I asked you how you dare talk to your master like that,” Keeston said.

“Like what?” I knew Keeston didn't like me calling Nevery by his right name, but we'd already been through that.

“You interrupted him reading and he snapped at you, but you weren't afraid, and then you contradicted him. ‘I don't think so, Nevery,' you said.” He swallowed. “If I'd said that to Magister Pettivox, he would have beaten me until my bones ached.”

I shrugged. “Nevery wouldn't.”

“How do you know?” Keeston looked truly interested. “Everybody's terrified of Magister Nevery, even the other magisters. He's got this”—
he lowered his voice—“this brutal mercenary bodyguard working for him. And he was banished for blowing up his mansion, and he's very fierce.” He shivered.

“He just wouldn't.” I shrugged. “Not me, and not you, either.”

Keeston shook his head.

“And Benet's not so bad,” I added.

A pace ahead of us, Benet looked over his shoulder and snorted.

And then we were attacked.