The Smoke-Scented Girl (18 page)

“Really? I prefer a good straightforward
adventure novel in which the men are heroes and the women are
grateful,” Piercy said. He sat on his bed and began taking off his
boots. “No concerns about whether or not it’s true.”

“You don’t think Alvor really existed?”

“Oh, I think he did.
Somebody
killed
Murakot, after all. But no one man, or even three men and a woman,
or two men, a woman and a whatever Wystylth was, could possibly
have done everything they’re meant to have done.”

Evon rolled off the bed and began to undress.
“Don’t you ever feel as if we’ve wandered into one of these old
stories? Ancient spells, a wandering quest...though I have trouble
picturing you as Alvor.”

“I’m Wystylth, the sneaky one, and since
you’re a magician that makes you Dania. I’m just as happy not to be
living in those times. No indoor plumbing anywhere, for one
thing.”

“Put out the light, would you? I’m saying,
suppose one of those old stories found us. That spell is pretty
old.”

“As old as Alvor?”

“Maybe.” Exhaustion overwhelmed him. If the
spell were as old as Alvor...the thought reminded him of something,
but he was too tired to dig it out of memory. He sank into sleep
and dreamed of a faceless man fighting his way out of the
underworld, towing Kerensa behind him.

***

Evon flattened himself on the floor and
peered under the bed, then summoned a light and looked again.
Nothing but hardened dust clinkers and a deserted spider web. No
pen knife. He searched under Piercy’s bed, then dragged the
dressing table away from the wall and looked there. The movement
sent drifts of pages sliding to the floor. Evon put the table back
with more force than necessary, knocking over the rest of the pages
and jostling the wall mirror. He hadn’t spoken to Miss Elltis in
five days; between the arrival of Mrs. Petelter and her people, and
the increased urgency to decipher the spell, there hadn’t been
time. He was lying to himself, of course. He didn’t
want
to
talk to Miss Elltis. What he wanted was to find the damned pen
knife. Someone must have taken it.

“Evon—you look awful. Let me help.” Kerensa
came through from the bathroom and bent to help him pick up
papers.

“I’m trying to find my pen knife,” he
muttered. “No, I need those in order. Thank you.”

“You loaned it to me yesterday, to cut the
pages of that new book,” she said.

“Why didn’t you say so? I need it!”

“I didn’t know that. Here, I have it right
here.”

He snatched it out of her hand. “Finally.
Couldn’t you have returned it immediately? Sometimes I think no one
cares about this undertaking but me.”

Kerensa went very still. “You’re probably
right,” she said. “The Gods forbid it could possibly matter to
anyone else.”

Evon’s heart sank. “Kerensa, I’m sorry,” he
said. “That was thoughtless and insensitive and untrue and I should
never have said it. I’ve become caught up in my work again...but
that’s no excuse. Please forgive me.”

She surveyed his face, her eyes
expressionless. “I’m going down to breakfast,” she said. “You
should probably clean yourself up before you do the same. You
wouldn’t want to get so caught up in research that you forget to
eat. Again.” She turned and left, slamming the door behind her.

Evon threw the pen knife at the dressing
table and heard it slide and clatter to the floor. He sat on his
bed and covered his face with his hands. He needed to stop thinking
about this. He couldn’t afford to stop thinking about it. That look
on her face...she wasn’t going to forgive him for that for a long
time. The thought made his chest ache.
When am I going to learn
to think before I speak?
He found he’d lost his appetite, or
maybe it was just that he couldn’t bear to meet her empty eyes
again.

He stood and retrieved the pen knife, which
was now chipped from its encounter with the table. It could be a
reminder to him to stop being so caught up in his work that he
forgot to be a decent human being. He moved most of the pages to
the bed and spread fresh paper on the table, then drew up the
chair. There was a tangle of runes he thought might be the key to
the spell, if only he could work out which of their many
configurations meant something instead of being gibberish. Knowing
this was how ancient magicians had worked was different from seeing
the technique in action. Evon picked up his pencil and began
writing the runes on the blank pages, large and bold and separate
from one another. Then he cut the paper so he had dozens of
smaller, square-ish bits of paper, each with a single rune on it.
He shuffled the papers and dealt them out as if he were playing a
particularly fiendish game of patience. There was a combination
that made sense, and he would find it.

He spread the papers, rearranged them,
gathered them up and spread them again. He took notes on the
configurations that didn’t work. It was going to take forever.
Shuffle and spread. Fragments of sentences took shape and dissolved
again. More notes on his failures. His fingers became gray and dry
with pencil lead.

And then, almost without him realizing it,
the sentence took shape in front of him. He held his breath, afraid
to disturb the light slips of paper, afraid that it was another
dead end that simply took longer to reveal itself. But there it
was. He read down the line of runes, consulted his notes and read
on. A growing dread filled him the further he went, until he
reached the end and found that his hands were numb from his having
clenched them so tightly. He read through it again.

No.

But there’s no mistake.

I can’t tell her this. Not now.

“One day, I won’t bring you food, and they
will find you starved to death in some garret, a pencil clutched in
your bony fingers,” Piercy said, pushing open the door. He held the
only food he was capable of making, a fried egg sandwich with two
slices of bacon that was more a matter of assembly than actual
cooking. He held it out to Evon, then said, “What’s wrong?”

Evon accepted the sandwich wordlessly. He
took a bite and nearly spat it out. “Where did you get this?”

“I admit the eggs are a little hard, but I
thought the pepper might liven it up,” Piercy said. “Evon,
something’s happened, I can see it. Did you learn something?”

“Shut the door, Piercy.” Evon took another
bite of too-peppery egg and choked it down, though his stomach
churned with anxiety and he wasn’t sure how long it would stay
down. “And stand in front of it. I don’t want Kerensa coming
in.”

“You did learn something, and it’s bad news.
Tell me.”

Evon set the sandwich down on the last clear
spot on the table. “There is a part of the spell I’ve been trying
to decipher. I knew it had something to do with the people the
spell targets and I hoped it would be the key to breaking that
cycle. It’s not, Piercy, it’s so much worse.” He gathered up the
small pieces of paper and tapped them together into an irregular
stack. “The spell is looking for someone in particular. One person.
All these other deaths, they’re
mistakes
. Similar to the
real target in some way, but mistakes. It has this—there’s this
element of the spell that does a sort of, of assessment of the
world—I don’t know how it manages it—right after it explodes. If it
finds evidence that the person still exists, it resets itself.
Rebuilds Kerensa so it can try again. If it doesn’t...” He couldn’t
finish the sentence.

Piercy didn’t need him to. His face was
white. “Who is it looking for?”

“I have no idea. It could be anyone. The next
time she feels drawn to...by the Gods, Piercy, we can’t tell her
this. She’s only just gotten used to the idea that she might have a
future.”

“I agree, dear fellow. Isn’t there anything
you can do?”

“I could remove that element right now if I
wanted. But the magician who created the spell, may he be damned to
burn eternally, set it up to destroy itself, and its host, if any
piece of it was taken out. Apparently he didn’t want anyone using
his spells for themselves.” He laughed, and it sounded hollow in
his ears. “It never occurred to him that someone could just copy
the spells and make new ones.”

“You have to find a way to stop it.”

“Elegant statement of the obvious, Piercy.”
He absently took another bite of the sandwich and winced. “You
didn’t think to bring anything to drink?”

“I’m not your serving girl, Evon.” Piercy
leaned heavily against the door. “We can’t tell Mrs. Petelter
either. She might decide it’s worth the risk taking Kerensa back to
Matra, if the alternative is losing the spell entirely.”

“And it won’t disturb her that it would mean
losing Kerensa too,” Evon said bitterly.

The door thumped. “Evon, other people need to
use this door,” Kerensa said.

Piercy and Evon looked at each other. “You
look terrible. She’s going to know something’s wrong,” Piercy
said.

“You don’t look much better. Try to think of
something cheerful.” Kerensa banged on the door again. “And open
the door.” Evon picked up his now-cold sandwich and took another
bite. Maybe she would mistake the anguish he felt for disgust at
Piercy’s offering.

“
Thank you
,” Kerensa said, pushing
past Piercy into the room. “Evon, I told you—what’s the matter?”
Her irritation was replaced by a look of concern that made his
heart break. That
she
might be worried about
him
—the
Gods were certainly playing with him.

“He doesn’t appreciate the breakfast I
brought him,” Piercy said, sounding exactly as if nothing were
wrong.

“Because it’s disgusting,” Evon said. He
couldn’t meet Kerensa’s eyes, so he turned toward Piercy and added,
“Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture.”

“If you keep bringing him food, he’ll never
leave this room,” Kerensa said to Piercy. “You shouldn’t encourage
him. Especially since being alone makes him say stupid things.” She
smiled at Evon, her hazel eyes clear and untroubled, and he managed
a weak smile in return. “I’m ready to begin when you are.”

“I...actually want to go over my existing
notes,” Evon said. “You should enjoy your morning. Go to the shops,
perhaps. Buy something nice.”

“You’re behaving awfully strange. Are you
sure nothing’s wrong?”

“Upset stomach,” Piercy volunteered. “We
should leave him to it. Would you care to take a turn with me? It’s
good for the digestion.”

“I suppose,” Kerensa said, but she was still
looking at Evon with concern. “Do you want to work more this
afternoon?”

“Yes, I should be ready by then.” Evon
realized he was still holding the stack of little papers and
crushed it in his hand. “Enjoy your walk, both of you.”

When they were gone, he dropped the crumpled
papers onto his unmade bed and stared at them. He could try again,
see if there was another meaning...but no. No, he was certain he
had the right interpretation. The spell would eventually find its
true target, and it would kill Kerensa permanently. He picked up a
handful of pages of notes from the table, but instead of reading
through them, he paced the room, seeing not the pale blue walls but
the too-smooth oval of her face, the hazel eyes that hardly ever
looked dead or despairing anymore. Telling her would do nothing but
make her miserable. The secret had certainly made him miserable
enough.

Paper brushed his thigh. He’d forgotten he
was carrying the pages of notes. He sat at the table and sorted
through them. Somewhere in all this morass of paper was the secret
of freeing Kerensa from the spell. Failing that, there might be a
way to keep it from activating without the devastating side effects
of a delay. It was also possible that his notes contained the
secret of creating the intense fire, though Evon wasn’t surprised
to learn he no longer cared very much about that. Miss Elltis would
be furious if she knew, but since he didn’t intend to tell her, her
potential anger was irrelevant.

The mirror clouded over, startling him.
“
Evon Lorantis
eloqua,” said Miss Elltis’s voice. She
sounded as angry as he’d just imagined, making him wonder if she’d
been spying on him. No, if she had, she would have made an
appearance much sooner. He tidied the dressing table, took a deep
breath, and said, “
Eloqua
.”

The fog cleared, revealing Miss Elltis’s
face, ruddy with anger. “Mr. Lorantis, why have you not reported
for five days?”

“I had nothing to report, Miss Elltis. I
didn’t want to waste your time.”

“I decide what is a waste of my time, Mr.
Lorantis. How can you have nothing to report? You told me you were
making great progress, last we spoke. I begin to think you have
deliberately misled me.”

“Miss Elltis,” Evon said, making a great
effort not to stand and shout at her image, “this is a complex and
ancient spell that even I can’t unravel in a day. It’s true I
haven’t learned the secret of the fire yet, but—”

“Improving that shield spell of yours is
merely a side benefit. The fire is what matters.” Miss Elltis’s
perfectly coiffed flaxen hair seemed straggling a little today.
“Mr. Lorantis, I have received an unpleasant communication from
Home Defense today. They say they were misled as to your
qualifications for investigating this spell. I assured them I had
every faith in your ability. Do you realize how it pained me to
have to lie to the government?”

“Are you saying you
don’t
have faith
in my abilities? After all these years?”

“You have been unable to make progress—”

Evon snapped. “I, make no progress? Miss
Elltis, I defy you to do better! I have done nothing but try to
take this spell apart for days and I can assure you that no living
magician knows more about it than I do! I don’t know what notions
you’ve taken into your narrow-minded brain about the spell’s
capabilities, but I am making progress as quickly as
anyone
could.”