‘You, Rupert and myself are protected by my wards across the city,’ said Theodora. ‘It was an easy tweak becauseweare not daft enough to leave our blood behind on a Beleustian wall. From Mourners’ all the way to Commerce, you are completely safe.’
Theodora threw out her arm and up kicked an uncanny wind and the scent of woodsmoke, incense, gunpowder and lilac.
‘Why lilac?’ asked Dot, and Theodora faltered ever so slightly but did not answer. The witch rearranged her features into her usual smile and offered her hand to Dot, and off they stepped through the portal and out into the city of Alliaster.
The Grand Central Post Office was located in the King’s District, not far from Saint Penelope’s Cathedral. Dot stumbled out of the portal and onto the wide footpath, and she would have toppled over entirely were it not for Theodora taking her arm and righting her. Immediately, Dot was overwhelmed by the passers-by who jostled her, the pigeons pecking underfoot and the cacophony of the motor cars. The sun was hot. It was all so loud. She glanced down and saw the monstrousness of her left hand, bandages abandoned, the scales and the long talons where bitten nails should have been, allof it contrasting so extremely with her pretty new clothes that she almost turned to Theodora to cry that she had made a mistake and that they should go back, but Theodora noticed and gently said, ‘This way.’
The witch guided her inside. Dot took a heavy breath and shook her head, focusing on the bounce of her newly short curls, and named all she could see and feel and smell as they crossed the brown marble floor and joined the line at the telegraph desk.
No one is looking at my hand,she promised herself, although peripherally she caught a little boy glancing, and she made to tug her sleeve over her strange, scaly fingers.
‘What a beautiful building,’ said Dot to distract herself.
Indeed, it was beautiful. The ceiling stretched at least three storeys upward, doming here and there, adorned with ornate metalwork. The pigeonholes behind the three grand counters – marked ‘Post’, ‘Parcels’ and ‘Telegrams’ respectively – were crafted of polished walnut and stretched up to the ceiling against the back wall. Human postal officers climbed up the impossibly tall ladders, surrounded by floating spirits, as flying parcels slotted into boxes.
‘How does that work?’ asked Dot.
‘When they slot the post in,’ said Theodora, ‘each letter is delivered to the satchel of the postal worker in whichever neighbourhood of whichever district. Little portals, each of the wooden slots.’
Dot’s eyebrows knitted.
‘What is it?’ asked Theodora.
‘But isn’t that a bit unfair? Article Thirteen and all?’
‘Unfair?’ asked Theodora. ‘That the Royal Postal Service uses magic to gluttonous degrees, but the ordinary Alliastran would have their hand cut off for trying? Careful, Dorothy. You’ll get arrested.’
The spirit ahead of them in the line – a large, burgundy fellow who resembled a chimney – glanced over his shoulder, and Dot shut her mouth. When they made it to the front of the telegraphline, Dot was a little disappointed to discover that the process here was entirely un-magical.
‘First nine words are forty-one coppers,’ said a bespectacled officer without looking at them. ‘Every word after that’s an extra ten. Fifty maximum. STOP is free. There’s a twenty-copper surcharge, as it is a Sunday, and a thirty-copper surcharge if you want priority. Have you written down what you want to say?’
Dot handed over the slip of paper.
MR ARCHIBALD WALCOTT = PORT OFFICE I, SEAFARTHING, SOUTH CALLÉUM
MY ILLNESS HAS WORSENED GRANDAD STOP PLEASE COME TO CORNER OF WREN CT AND ETHEL AV AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE STOP I HAVE QUESTIONS AND I BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE ANSWERS STOP I MISS YOU STOP END
DOROTHY LOUISE WALCOTT
The officer took it briskly and a few minutes later, Theodora and Dot were walking back out of the Grand Central Post Office.
‘A letter would have been a quarter of the price,’ said Dot.
‘But three times as slow,’ said Theodora, as she conjured another portal. ‘And this is certainly better than using the telephone.’
They spent the day together running errands across the city. They collected potion ingredients from the Port District: scale of sunfish, eye of coelacanth, tail of trout. They delivered packet spells to Theodora’s factory on Stirrup Street. After, Theodora took Dot to a chocolatier on Mieunetti Road. They came away with a large box.
‘Truffles?’ Dot asked.
‘I’m going to give them to the customers.’
‘Whyever for?’
‘Good business.’
Dot’s eyes narrowed. ‘I know by now that whenever you say “good business”, you mean something else entirely.’
‘I suppose you’ll find out eventually,’ said Theodora. ‘Some of the customers have gone missing. Could be a terrible coincidence, or it could be our aged friends from Caelin Forest.’
