The Magicians and Mrs. Quent (76 page)

At this the highwayman roared with laughter. “You’re no angel after all,” he said. “Go, then. I can wait—a little while. It will all be done soon enough. Then you will get exactly what you desire.”

“I am sure I will,” Eldyn said.

Westen sat then, thrusting his boots upon the table, and filled his cup again with wine. He leaned back, resting one hand on his thigh while with the other he raised the cup. His eyes were no longer yellow but a tawny brown. He looked handsome and at ease, a gold-haired king on his throne. Eldyn went to the door, unlocked it.

“A storm is coming,” Westen said, regarding the cup. “When it arrives, more than a few are going to get washed away by the floods. But when the clouds part, a bright morning will shine through, and you’re going to be there to see it. I promise you that.” He raised the cup. “For Altania.”

“For Altania,” Eldyn said.

Then he opened the door, leaving the highwayman to his drink and his thoughts, and went out into the light of day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

B
Y THE TIME the hack cab came to a halt before the iron fence, Ivy had already opened the carriage door. She made a leap from the running board and barely caught herself from falling to the cobbles of Durrow Street. Recovering her footing, she ran toward the gate.

“Hey there, miss!” the driver called out. “Do you want me to call the redcrests on you?”

Ivy hesitated—it was past their appointed meeting time—but at another angry shout from the driver she hurried back. Her hands shook, but at last she found enough in her coin purse to pay the fare.

“Everyone’s a thief these days,” the driver grumbled. “The rich as bad as the poor.”

Ivy had already turned her back on him. She ran up the path, then pushed through the iron gate—as before, it was not locked—and into the overgrown yard.

She looked all around but to her great relief saw no one in the yard. The high hedges muted the noises of the city, and the only sound was the murmur of the wind through the hawthorn trees. Dead leaves still clung to their branches along with the new, giving them a disheveled appearance that reminded her of the Wyrdwood. She drew close to one of the trees and ran her fingers over its twisted branches, breathing in the scent of leaves—

“There you are!”

Startled, Ivy looked up. A green mist seemed to clear from her eyes, and she saw Mr. Rafferdy walking to her from the direction of the house. He must have been standing by the door, behind the statues of the lions.

“You arrive late for an important—perhaps even perilous—task, yet you still take time to admire the garden,” he said, his expression at once amused and annoyed. “You are either the calmest person in the world, Mrs. Quent, or the most confounding.”

At once her urgency returned. She was anything but calm! “We can’t go into the house,” she said, gripping his arm. “We must leave here at once, Mr. Rafferdy.”

“Make that the most confounding then,” he said, his look becoming a scowl. “Do you mean to say I spent all those hours enduring the company of Mr. Bennick, mastering the pronunciation of that awful spell—which, by the way, I have done, for we got to the end of it today—do you mean that I have suffered all of this for nothing? Reason must have at last convinced you that your faith in me was foolish. All the same, I can work the spell. In fact, I’ll show you that I can do so by speaking it to you this very—”

“Mr. Bennick has betrayed us!” she blurted out.

He stared at her, gripping the handle of his cane. “By God, you’re not joking,” he said at last. “How can you know this?”

“I’ll tell you when we’re home. It isn’t safe to be here.”

“But aren’t we supposed to work the spell?”

She pulled on his arm. “We can’t—not now. He’s been using us, lying to us all this time. Don’t you understand? It’s because of him that my father went…that my father fell ill. It’s because of what
he
tried to do—what he’s still trying to do even now.”

Rafferdy resisted her efforts to move him. “What are you talking about? What is he trying to do?”

“I’m trying to open the door to the house,” spoke a deep voice.

Ivy and Mr. Rafferdy stared at each other, then together they turned. A tall figure in a dark coat stood on the path just beyond the open gate.

Mr. Rafferdy shook his head. “Mr. Bennick, you startled us. What are you doing here?”

Ivy dug her fingers into his arm. “He told you—he’s trying to get into the house. It’s what he’s wanted all along!”

He looked back at her. “Are you certain?”

“You should listen to her,” Mr. Bennick said. “She has her father’s mind. I could never win an argument with Lockwell—his logic could never be assailed. Nor can Mrs. Quent’s. Everything she has told you is true. I have been using you to gain entry to the house of my former associate—to
this
house. It has been my intention from the start.”

With that, Mr. Bennick started toward the gate.

Before Ivy could move, harsh words sounded on the air. Mr. Rafferdy raised his cane, thrusting it toward the gate, and spoke rapidly in the tongue of magick. The ring on his right hand flared, and tendrils of blue fire coiled down the length of the cane. The gate flew closed, shutting with a
clang
.

Mr. Bennick gripped the iron bars and gave a push. The gate did not budge. He raised an eyebrow. “You exerted your will from a distance, and you’ve bound an object far larger than any you have before. I’m surprised.”

Mr. Rafferdy lowered his cane and glanced at Ivy. “You aren’t the only one.”

Ivy felt both dread and wonder; indeed, the feelings were one and the same. She looked at the cane. The blue fire had faded, but the ring on his hand still winked brightly. “You really are a magician,” she murmured.

“Yes, he is,” Mr. Bennick said. “One of considerable talent. If he had not been, I would never have wasted my time with him. All the same, impressive as this display might be, it is for naught. Mr. Mundy told me you purchased items for a spell of binding. That’s how I knew you were coming here today. However,
they
don’t need anyone to tell them. They will know when you enter the house, and they are far more adept at enchantments than you are, Mr. Rafferdy, no matter your natural ability.” He let go of the gate. “Against them, this binding won’t hold for long.”

“It won’t have to,” Ivy said. She grasped Mr. Rafferdy’s hand and pulled him toward the house. “Come on!”

The two ran across the yard. Mr. Bennick did not call out, though they felt his eyes on them as they went. They halted before the heavy wooden door of the house. Ivy glanced at the stone lions to either side, almost hoping she would see them yawn and stretch. However, they were motionless stone. Whoever the man in the mask was, he was not here.

Ivy took out the key and fitted it in the lock. For one awful moment she feared it would not turn. However, it did so easily. There was a grinding noise. She laid a hand on the door.

“Go on,” Mr. Rafferdy said.

Ivy realized she had been standing there, as motionless as the lions. She drew in a breath, then pushed on the door. It swung open with a whisper, like an echo of an ancient word murmured in a forgotten tongue. Beyond was a gray dimness.

“Do not gaze into the eye,” a voice called out.

Ivy glanced back over her shoulder. Mr. Bennick still stood at the gate, watching them from the other side of the bars.

“No matter what you do, no matter what you think you see, you must not look into it.” Then he retreated from the gate and was gone from sight.

Ivy shivered, then stepped over the threshold. Mr. Rafferdy followed after. They turned to shut the door, and Ivy used the key to lock it again.

“Something happened when you did that.” He laid a hand on the door. “I heard it, like the sound of another door closing. Did you hear it?”

Ivy withdrew the heavy key, weighing it in her hand. “No, but I think it’s the binding on the door. When I locked it again, the enchantment must have been restored.”

“Yes, it’s as if there’s a sheet of glass over the door. Only…” He ran a hand over the wood. “There are cracks in it. I can feel them.”

Despite her fear, she could not help but marvel at him. “What you did out there—your cane, the way it shone.”

He grimaced. “It was nothing. You heard him—they’ll break it soon enough. I can only suppose they’ll break through this as well now.” He looked at her. “The binding’s not strong anymore, not after you used the key. If they’re really coming as he said, then it won’t take them long to gain entry.”

“Then we’d better hurry.”

Ivy left the door and moved through the dimness of the entry hall. Sheet-draped furniture stood all around like ghosts. The house was silent except for their own footfalls.

“How long has it—” Mr. Rafferdy winced as his voice echoed; he lowered it to just above a whisper. “How long has it been since you’ve been here?”

“A long time. I was only four or five when we moved to Whitward Street.” She reached the foot of the stairs. The knobs atop the newel posts were carved to look like shut eyes, just as she remembered. She touched one, then put a foot on the first step.

“Where are you going?”

She looked back at him. “Upstairs. He said in his letter the door was in the room behind his study.”

He swallowed. “Right, then.”

Ivy turned to start up the steps—and gasped. The eyes atop the newel posts were no longer shut. Now they were open and staring, their pupils slits rather than circles.

“One gets the feeling we’re being watched,” Mr. Rafferdy said.

Ivy steadied herself. What reason did she have to fear an enchantment that her father had surely known of—had perhaps created himself? No,
she
was not the intruder here. She made herself continue up the steps, and Mr. Rafferdy came after. The eyes seemed to follow them as they went.

Ivy did not stop at the second landing, instead leading the way to the uppermost floor. While before her memories of the house on Durrow Street had been dim and murky, now that she was here it was as if a black veil had been lifted. She went directly to the end of the upstairs corridor. They came to a thick door into which was carved a single eye. As she touched the doorknob, the eye opened like those atop the newel posts below.

Mr. Rafferdy gave a nervous cough. “So much for nipping in unseen.”

“I think this house sees everything we do,” she said.

The door was locked, so she took out the iron key. It turned easily in the lock, and the door swung open. As it did, she braced herself for the wailing of some magickal alarm.

There was only silence. Ivy gathered her courage, then entered the room she had never set foot in before and into which she had seen just once all those years ago. The eye in the door blinked as they passed, and a shower of dust fell from its lid.

The room was very dark. Creeping slowly, not sure what she would run into, Ivy moved to the window and drew the curtains, letting in the light of the swift-passing afternoon through the dusty glass.

“There’s nothing here,” Mr. Rafferdy said.

Ivy turned around. In her mind she could still picture the crowded, cluttered room she had glimpsed through the crack in the door as a girl—a chamber full of mysterious trunks and unknown artifacts draped in black velvet. However, the room she saw now was utterly bare, save for the cobwebs that hung from the ceiling like gray moss. She had known the magick cabinet would be gone, but where were all his other things?

Somewhere safe, of course, somewhere hidden. She paced the perimeter of the room.

Mr. Rafferdy frowned at her. “What are you doing?”

“My father said it was in the chamber behind his study.”

“But there aren’t any doors in here—only the one window.”

He was right. Ivy left the room, stepping back into the corridor. However, her examinations only confirmed what she already knew. The study was at the very end of the corridor; the only way to reach something behind it was to go
through
it. She returned to the study. There had to be a way.

“Mr. Rafferdy, would you lend me your cane, please?”

He gave her a puzzled look, then shrugged and did as she asked. She took the cane and, walking around the edges of the room, rapped the handle against the wall every few inches. Each time the cane made a solid
thump
—until she reached the center of the wall opposite the door. Here, when she tapped the cane, it made an echoing noise.

He gave her a startled look. “Well done, Mrs. Quent. Yet may I ask how we are to get in if there isn’t a door?”

“There must be a way to open it,” Ivy said, running her hands over the wall, feeling for a latch or crevice. Except that was foolish; she needed to think like a magician. She stepped back.

“Mr. Rafferdy, can you…?” She handed him the cane.

He gripped the silver handle. “I suppose it can’t hurt. That is, unless I misspeak the spell. In which case I imagine it might hurt quite a bit. You see, Mr. Bennick told me of an apprentice who once muddled an enchantment so badly he turned himself inside—”

“Mr. Rafferdy,” she said gently. “The spell.”

“Right.” He gripped his cane and pointed it at the wall. “Though you may want to step back just in case.”

He drew a breath, then uttered the same words of magick he had when he bound the front gate shut; however, this time he spoke the words in the reverse order. As before, tendrils of blue light coiled up and down the length of the cane. Ivy had the uncomfortable sense that the air in the room rippled like dark water or, rather, that the very space the room occupied was folding in upon itself, as if it were a picture drawn on paper.

The strange sensation ceased. Mr. Rafferdy lowered his cane. “That didn’t seem to do anything at all. Perhaps if I speak the spell again—”

Ivy laid a hand against the wall and pushed. There was a
click,
then a section of the wall swung inward.

“Or not,” Mr. Rafferdy said, and cleared his throat.

Ivy stepped through the opening. The chamber beyond was not large. One could have lived in the house for years and never known it was there, tucked behind the other room. There was no window, but daylight spilled in through the study.