The Magic Thief (20 page)

D
espite the new windows, the air in my attic was freezing. An icy draft blew down the chimney and swirled around the room. Even wrapped up in my blankets and all my clothes, I was too cold and empty to sleep. Finally,
I took my blankets and went down to sleep in the study, on the hearth.

In the middle of the night I woke up to Nevery standing over me, nudging me with his foot. It reminded me of my first day as an apprentice—though I hadn't really become Nevery's apprentice until later. It seemed like a long time ago.

Nevery took off his hat and cloak and flung them on a chair. Then he stepped around me and flung a shovelful of coal onto the fire, which snapped and hissed as it flared up.

I yawned and sat up, my blankets still wrapped around me, and leaned against the wall beside the fireplace. He must have just returned from the meeting at Magisters Hall. From the looks of it, the meeting hadn't gone well. “What did you tell the magisters?” I asked.

Nevery paced to his chair and, shoving his hat and cloak out of the way, sat down. “Interesting that you should ask that, boy. If I told you about the meeting, who would you report to?”

I blinked. “Nobody.” I unwrapped myself from my blankets and climbed stiffly to my feet.

“I have realized, boy, why you are so keen to convince me that Pettivox is involved with the Underlord.”

“Because he
is
involved with the Underlord.”

Nevery looked angry, his brows drawn, frowning down. “At the meeting, Pettivox told me of something I should have realized before.”

Oh, no. A feeling of dread started to gather in my stomach.

“First,” Nevery said, “Pettivox admitted that he has been going to the Twilight. But that is because he is the magister assigned as liaison to the duchess, and the duchess sent him to keep an eye on the Underlord. And he told me something else.”

The room was silent for a long moment. In the fireplace, little flames licked over the pile of coal; outside, the wind moaned.

“Your name,” Nevery said, finally. “It is a true name.”

I nodded.
Connwaer
. It made me think of black feathers and bright, yellow eyes.

“Crowe. Also a true name.”

The feeling of dread spread from my stomach and down my legs and arms, and I started to shake. “Nevery,” I said, and my voice was shaking, too.

Scowling, Nevery got up from his chair. “Pettivox told me that long ago Crowe identified you, his
nephew
, as his successor, that you lived in Crowe's house and were trained by him in spying and sneaking. Can you deny it?”

I shook my head. No, I couldn't.

Nevery scowled and jabbed his finger toward the door. “Get out. You are no apprentice of mine.”

“Yes I am,” I said, clenching my fists.

“Out!” he roared.

I went out, slamming the door behind me.

Heading down the dark stairway, I realized that my knees were shaking, so I sat down on a step and put my head in my hands.

So Nevery had finally realized that the Underlord and I shared a true, family name. That
was enough for Pettivox to convince him that I was a liar and spy. I hadn't been Crowe's for a long time, but Nevery would never believe that. Meanwhile, Nevery and the other wizards were going to study the situation and wait for the magical levels to improve. But that wasn't going to happen. I had a feeling that things would get worse very soon.

Hearing footsteps, I looked up. Somehow, tears had gotten onto my cheeks, so I wiped them quickly away.

Benet was coming up the stairs, carrying a tray and candle. “What,” he said.

I shifted aside so he could get past. But he stopped a few steps below me, waiting.

I wasn't sure what to tell him. I trusted Benet completely, but he was Nevery's man.

“I have to go out for a while,” I said. Nevery wouldn't believe anything I said, so I would find proof. I could get into the Underlord's mansion. Crowe and Pettivox were up to something there. If I spied on them, I'd have the proof I needed.

“Out?” Benet said. “Into the city?”

I nodded.

Benet glared. “Don't be stupid, you.”

“I'll be careful,” I said.

Benet shook his head and went on up the stairs.

 

When I used my locus stone to go through the tunnel gate, the magic arced into the lock and sputtered, and the gate creaked open and stayed open. No sparks, no crashing and slamming.

In the dark tunnel, I inspected my locus magicalicus. Its glow seemed dimmer than usual. The magical level must have dropped very low. The night felt empty, and colder than ever. I didn't have much time.

The streets of the Twilight were dark and deserted. A freezing wind shrieked down the steep, empty streets, driving snow before it. The factories by the river were silent and still. As I crept through the cramped, twisty back alleys, closer to Dusk House, I kept my eyes and ears open but saw nothing, heard nothing, just the wind.

Finally I was close enough. I found a dead-end alley piled with trash and slick with ice; in the corner farthest from the street, I knelt down and dug a little cave in a dirty snowbank. The freezing air bit at my bare fingers as I pulled my locus magicalicus from my pocket and placed it into the little cave.

Then, after checking that the alley was still empty, I put my hand on the jewel and whispered the embero.

The spell seeped out of my locus magicalicus and crept into my hand. With a
pop
, everything went black.

I opened my eyes; the alley had grown large. I got shakily to my four feet, the icy cobblestones cold under my paws. The wind ruffled my fur. I checked on my locus magicalicus. The spell had melted the snow around it, and it sat in a little puddle of water that was quickly turning to ice. With a paw I patted it, then headed out of the alley, toward the Underlord's mansion.

B
lending with the night, I slunk through the alleys until I arrived at Dusk House.

Even though it was the middle of the night, the barred windows were bright with lights. The air felt like it was full of invisible needles; it pulsed and hummed and made my fur stand up on end.
Something was going on in there, sure as sure.

I padded up to the gate and slid through the bars, then went down the edge of the graveled drive and around the back of the mansion, where I found a cluster of sheds and a small, dirty courtyard. A door opened and closed, and I heard footsteps crunching across the frozen snow. Another door creaked; somebody visiting a privy, I guessed. I slunk closer. When the person—a minion with a knife in his belt—crunched toward the back door again, I followed him inside. He didn't notice me.

I headed down the dark corridors, slinking through open doors, glad for my black fur, which kept me hidden in the shadows, until I came to the room with the bookcase and the stairway, the room where I'd seen Pettivox when I'd spied during Nevery's visit. The room was empty, the bookcase propped open. Behind it loomed the dark doorway.

I padded across the room to the top of the
narrow, dark stairs. I paused at the opening. My whiskers twitched; I smelled something bad, something wrong. If I really were a cat, I might have known what it was, but all I knew was that the smell made my tail bristle and put my ears back.

But I had to get down the stairs. I crouched on the edge of the step, my tail twitching, and peeked over. Nothing but darkness. I hopped down three steps and paused. From below, I heard clanking and the scrape of gears. Men shouted. The air pulsed. Then came a roar, like wind and thunder in the middle of a storm, and then a
crack
like lightning striking. My paws trembled against the stone steps. What were they doing down there? I had to go on, to find out. I jumped down a few more steps and peered into the darkness below.

Two red points of light, low to the ground, looked back at me. All my fur stood on end. I went down another step.

From out of the gloom, dragging itself up the
stairs, came an enormous rat, bigger than I was, with a scaly, naked tail, ragged gray fur, and sharp teeth. The rat lowered its head and hissed. Its red eyes gleamed.

It was a minion, I realized; one of the Underlord's men who had attacked Benet and me in the alley. Did it know who I was, that I had changed it from a man into a rat?

The rat climbed up another step until it was just below me. Then, in a whirl of snarl and lashing tail, it leaped.

As it came at me, its teeth bared, I rolled onto my back and raised my four clawed paws. We tangled together, slash-gnashing, and bumped down two steps. I swiped a paw across its snout and it lunged at me, hissing. I darted out of its way, landing on four paws, crouched growling, my tail whipping back and forth.

It came at me again, slashing at my side with its sharp teeth, but I ducked past it and sank my own teeth deep into its tail—it tasted terrible. The
rat whirled to rake me with its claws. I spat out its tail, leaped onto its back, and swiped my claws across its red eyes, then I sprang off. Squealing, shaking its head, the rat backed away, blinded.

Watching it carefully, I eased away. It crouched on the step, pawing at its eyes, hissing. Quietly, I hopped down a step, then another.

My fur settled and I went on down the steps to the first turning. I looked back, but the rat had not followed. I slunk around the corner, then down to the second turning in the stairway. The sound of clanking and gears had gotten louder, almost deafening. I sat on the step and peered around the corner.

Like when I'd been here before, I saw a huge, bright space, men, glinting metal gears. I pulled my head back and blinked, then looked again, more carefully.

The workroom, which was huge and cavernous, had been dug out of the rock. It was lit with flickering werelights set along the rock walls
and hanging from the ceiling. I saw men hunched over papers—diagrams or plans—at a long table, and other men wrestling with a fat, pulsing hose. Along the edge of the room were more tables covered with glass jars and vials and copper odds and ends, tubes and wires and boxes of screws.

And in the middle of the workroom, taking up most of the space, looming up to the ceiling, squatted a huge, sprawling, gleaming geared device. Its middle was a huge tank, stitched across with rivets and bristling with tubes and dials. On one side it had a series of gears, gnashing together; on the other were copper coils, swollen hoses, and crystal tubes dripping with slowsilver. The device pulsed and heaved.

As I watched, a long piston near the floor groaned forward and an immense gear turned; the men shouted, steam hissed out in smoky clouds, and there came a crush-rushing of wind, of
something
being sucked in toward the device. A vent in the side gaped. Gears shrieked, thunder
crashed, and the lights went out, and deep inside I felt a sudden empty, lonely ache.

The lights flickered on. A few men went to the machine to check the dials; other men went back to looking at the diagrams. The air settled and the machine hummed.

I backed away from the turning and went up a few steps. Then I crouched down, shivering. In the darkness, on the step, I realized what they were doing. They were sucking in all of Wellmet's magic and storing it. The device was a capacitor, like the melted machine I'd found in Heartsease, but huge. A prison for the magic. What would they do with the magic, once they had it all? Would they kill it?

I licked my paw and washed it across my face and whiskers. Enough worrying. I had the proof I needed; now I had to get out, change myself back into a boy, and tell somebody what was going on. It wasn't too late.

I raced up the stairs, past the place where I'd
fought the rat. After reaching the top of the stairs, I got halfway across the room before I realized that I was surrounded.

The rat, its snout bloody and its teeth bared, was waiting for me, and it had brought help: two more rats.

Three against one. Not a fight I could win. I didn't pause, just leaped for the door. Squealing, the rats scrabbled and leaped after me.

I pelted down a hallway, skidded around a corner, and found myself faced with three closed doors, a dead end. The rats swirled 'round the corner and stopped. Snarling, they paced closer, lashing their tails. One of the rats bared its fangs and then leaped forward; at the same time, the other rats swarmed over me, biting. I bit back, and clawed, and squirmed away as teeth slashed my foreleg. I rolled onto my paws and darted away.

I raced down the corridors and around corners, the rats right behind me, until I got to the main entryway. My paws skidded on the slick
stone floor as I raced for the front door.

A minion was coming in, just closing the door; he stared as I raced toward him and darted between his legs and outside, into the cold, dark night. Behind me, the door slammed, closing the rats inside.

I tumbled to the bottom of the front steps and crouched on the freezing ground, shivering, trying to catch my breath. The slash on my front leg burned, and I had rat bites on my back and sides. Limping, I crept away into the night.