King Ellarde Custre IV smiled at Dot. ‘You did not name the daemon.’
‘Salamander,’ said Dot.
‘The very same,’ said the King, in a gleeful hush. At last, Ellarde Custre IV nodded for Dot to turn around. As she did, her eyes landed on that very creature she had seen photographed in the newspaper.
Salamander leered from the shadows, long, amphibian, with glistening, translucent skin that was almost white. His newt-like body stood tall on two legs, his short arms crossed. He gazed regally over Dot’s head to the King.
And Dot clapped her hands over her mouth to stop herself shrieking.
‘I am a busy daemon, Ellarde. Have you my cages ready?’
‘I have more than that,’ said the King. ‘I have a specimen of great interest.’
The King snatched Dot’s afflicted hand and raised it in the lamplight.
Whatever discomfort Dot had hitherto felt was multiplied beyond belief, for now the daemon Salamander gazed at her affliction with more than a gentle interest – in his eyes was a hunger insatiable. Dot made to pull her hand away.
‘Now, now,’ said the King. ‘This is the very daemon you did your research on, child. The inventor of the puppet master’s charm, no less. Salamander is, like myself, a creature of science. He has a right to his examinations.’
‘What is the puppet master’s charm?’ whispered Dot.
‘She’s curious,’ said Salamander, drawing closer. The reek of pond water thickened. ‘A woman after my own heart. I will tell you about it – the conduence charm ismyname for it, Miss . . .?’
‘Knox,’ said Dot.
‘Miss Knox,’ said Salamander with an uncanny smile. His head tilted sidewards at her, his gaze fixing Dot in place. ‘The conduence charm is a spell of my own invention. I expired just about every spirit I tried it on; in my clumsiness, I stole the magic right out of them.’
The King laughed at this. ‘How humble. Salamander here is over a thousand years old. It was far less your clumsiness, than your power, dear Sal.’
‘Today, I am your dear,’ said the daemon. ‘Yet, at your convenience on any other day, I am the “hubris” which caused your downfall.’
The King chuckled uncomfortably and turned back to Dot. He cast an aged hand at the daemon, who still stared at her. ‘Publicly, I oppose him,’ the King said. ‘Politically, I resent him. Privately, I am in awe. Salamander’s curiosity is much like yours, it seems, child, and mine. I, too, hunger for magic.’
‘So, these cages?’ asked Dot.
‘Perceptive,’ hissed the daemon.
‘As soon as the Severed Magic reform is pushed through the House of Representatives and Article Thirteen is amended, I shall have my own zoological gardens,’ said the King. ‘Very soon daemons, ex-Magicians, every kind of strange and bizarre creature will populate this room, examinable for the purposes of the Sorcerous Sciences. Salamander, I believe, aspires to his own imitation of my menagerie.’
‘Imitation,’ said the daemon, ‘is not my aspiration. Now, girl. Show me your skin.’
Salamander lurched forward, his eyes so extremely fixed on Dot’s affliction that she began to cry out – until a calm hand swept her back and away.
‘Right shame,’ said Theodora, now at Dot’s side, ‘that Minister De León keeps thwarting those proposals.’
The witch bowed deeply and, without another moment, steered Dot from the room.
‘Apologies, your majesty,’ called Theodora over her shoulder. ‘Apologies, daemon Salamander. Knox and I have a prior engagement.’
It wasn’t until Dot was once again sat in her favourite armchair in the living room, hands around a mug of tea, that her ragged breath slowed at last.
‘Remind me,’ said Theodora, ‘never to abandon you in a hallway again.’
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
The summer rains ended in a fit of fireworks. New Year’s Eve came and went. The twenty-ninth year of King Ellarde Custre IV was upon them and Lio found himself sitting more and more often in the courtyard beside the hydrangeas. It was an unrelenting season, and Lio wallowed in it, glaring up at the clouds, hoping a typhoon would scrape away all of the greyness and smog.
What a perverse limbo he had found himself in, locked in the tea shop, forced to work for free, trapped by the gaze and judgement of the person who despised him the very most of any being alive. What a naive fool he had been to fall for Acanthi’s trap.
