Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

The clock in the workroom struck the half hour, and she was always summoned to dinner precisely at seven—the one meal she and Magnus ate together. Since her free time was so limited, she’d had to work her way around the room a bit each day. At first, she found nothing—not even cobwebs. But as she teetered on the stack of trunks beside her bed, she noticed a scattering of dust on the top of the red brocade canopy. She would have thought nothing of it except that the room had been scrupulously cleaned. And then she noticed a thin strip of daylight above. With the handle of the fireplace poker, she gave the underside of the attic floorboards an experimental poke. One shifted slightly, enough to tell her that the end closest to the wall wasn’t tightly nailed down. Pushing it loose would be easy, and from there she could begin to pry up its neighbors. Her insides squeezed with excitement. It’s not much, but it’s something!

Then a noise made her stop and listen, and crane her head toward the door. Footfalls . Magnus was early. A rush of hot panic flooded Evelina and she scrambled down, replacing the poker and dismantling her makeshift ladder. She had the first and smallest trunk back in place by the time the key was in the lock. The second was larger, requiring her to bump it onto the floor and drag it against the wall just as the door rattled open. Evelina jumped away from it at the last second, breathing hard and with the contents of two trunks strewn across her bed.

“Tidying?” Magnus inquired, eying the chaos. “Quite a noisy occupation.”

“I am moving my things around,” Evelina said, trying to hide the fact that she was still puffing. “Trunks are hardly the same thing as a proper chest of drawers.”

Magnus looked nonplussed. “Perhaps we can find you something more to your liking. In the meanwhile, perhaps you could join me for a practical demonstration before we sit down to eat. Bring your wrap.”

He led her up the stairs to the level above—it was indeed used for no more than storage—and then up a final flight of steps. A door in the tower opened onto a parapet that stretched across the entire castle, interrupted only by the tops of the other, smaller towers. A battlement provided some shelter from the constant wind, but the air was still bitter as the sun dipped toward the horizon. Evelina pulled her shawl close, teeth clenched so they would not chatter.

Magnus walked toward a piece of ornate wrought-iron scrollwork that was mounted on the west side of the battlement, rusted bolts piercing the stone. It stretched between two of the merlons, forming an ornate grill. “One of the themes of magic is illusion. We are all guilty of it, some of us even gifted, but the truly powerful are those who have the gift—or curse—of seeing through such spells.”

He pulled an object from the pocket of his dark tailcoat and held it out. It was a plain, flat stone, entirely unremarkable except that there was a hole at its center. Evelina nodded, suddenly more willing to endure the cold. “My grandmother gave me one very like that, except that someone has painted it.”

“I recall the piece. Painting the stones is quite common among the folk practitioners. If one finds a good seeing stone, it becomes an object worthy of celebration.” He placed the stone into a holder at the center of the grill, so that the hole was at the exact middle of the ironwork. “The way these work is to catch the light at the precise moment of dusk or dawn. For an hour, or two, or twelve after that—much depends on the stone and the user—that eye will have the gift of true sight.”

“It is that simple to use?” Evelina exclaimed.

“There is nothing simple about the truth, my dear. But yes, the mechanics are no more complex than that.” He swept his arm toward the grill, an echo of his theatrical past. “Step forward and look, if you dare.”

Evelina approached the grill, which was made for Magnus and too tall for her comfort. The first thing she saw was the blaze of the fading sun on the water, shocks of pink and orange mirrored on the sea and sky. Then she stood on her toes, stretching up to peer through the stone with her left eye. The magic struck her like a firm tap that echoed from head to toe. The view of the sea itself didn’t change, and she watched as the silver-blue edges of the water faded to a deep indigo. She backed away with a final shiver. “I’m more than ready to go inside.”

“Very good then,” Magnus said, collecting the stone and leading her down to the workroom, where their dinner would be spread out.

She looked around curiously, half expecting to see that the dinner was rotten or the books nothing but old leaves, as from the pages of a fairy tale. But everything inside the castle looked the same, even Magnus. He looked haggard, but had not sprouted horns or a second head.

They sat down to eat. The cold had pricked Evelina’s appetite and she gratefully selected a warm roll and broke it apart. “So what precisely was the point of that exercise?” she asked.

Magnus toyed with his spoon. Dinner was a fish stew, as it seemed to be every other dinner, and they were both growing a little weary of it. But he also looked apprehensive. “What do you think is the truth?”

That I want to go home. That I’m afraid of you and myself . “Should it be that subjective?”

Magnus didn’t answer, so she bit into the bread and chewed. But the moment she began to eat, she realized the demonstration had affected her nerves badly. Magnus never did anything without a point, so why all this talk of truth? Was there something hideous that should be revealed? She couldn’t keep herself from glancing into the corners, looking for the Others. She’d caught glimpses of them often enough, usually in the corridors or creeping around the bailey, but they rarely approached the rooms she lived and worked in.

Magnus finally summoned up a reply. “I think the truth should be obvious. I am a sorcerer and, willing or not, you are my student.”

“And you’re a master of illusion,” she said sharply. “And you’re a mesmerist. I’ve seen you hypnotize an entire theater into believing a lie.”

“Just so,” he replied, putting down his spoon. “You’re growing closer to the answer, kitten.”

“What are you hiding?” Evelina jumped up and began a circuit of the room, looking at everything.

“Nothing. I’m attempting to teach you to see through deception.”

She stopped dead in front of the sherry decanter. Rather than the clear amber she’d seen before, now it looked like liquefied decay. She snatched the crystal stopper away and reeled back from the smell. “Bloody hell, what’s in there?”

“You read the recipe earlier today,” Magnus replied, blotting his lips with his napkin.

She dropped the stopper from nerveless fingers. “That potion in the appendix. The one that enables a person to feed from the living.” She rapidly calculated the number of days, the number of doses. She’d had more than enough to do the job. “You tricked me into drinking it! You left my bracelets on just to set the stage to give me the first dose!”

Magnus gave a short laugh. “Trust me, this was kinder. I wish I’d thought it was a top-drawer liquor when I was a student. The taste is indescribably bad.”

Evelina rounded on him, rage making her feel eight feet tall. “This is the way you confess to what you’ve done? By turning it into a practical demonstration?”

“What I’ve done?” He rose from his chair in a single swift move. His dark eyes were bright with anger of his own. “You simper and you snap and I let you. I bestow my knowledge freely, all the while putting up with your puling conscience. I endure you, Evelina, but make no mistake. You will do as I say.”