Theodora’s eyes darkened.
‘The daemon, Salamander.’
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
Robert Liutprand Lashkari had started, in spite of himself, to enjoy his shifts at the Raven’s Attic. They reminded him of his more raucous evenings in Kölldin, after work, gin in hand, conversing between booms of the trombones with women named Aleksa or Poppy or Winnifred. They had been passing amusements to him, and he to them, and he had told himself, each time, that he was not meant for any kind of lasting love. His chance for that had come and gone.
Lio thought himself a tragic figure in three central ways.
First, as the abandoned child of a wealthy lineage so infatuated with prestige and profit that they had begged a coven of witches to take away their youngest son and teach him in secret. His parents had been promised that he would be educated in sorcerous skills that would, for decades, pay dividends to the family. They had meant to skirt the Prohibition, and the restrictions of the Royal Institute, and the draft for the war – instead, they simply skirtedhim, and he was raised in a strange faraway forest, and never truly came home.
Second, as the victim of a terrible act of violence, his first love slain, his opportunity for youthful folly gone and, with it, his desire to use magic.
Third, as the lonely foreign poet in his lavish apartment in Kölldin, funded in part by his father’s generous, consolatory contributions, whiling away year after year, in love with a ghost.
For there was no one who had ever loved him as Opal had.
The first woman he had kissed.
The first person in perhaps a decade who had hugged him.
She had made him laugh, made him cry, taught him about magic; they had discussed politics and music and the events of the day. He had loved even her sharp-tongued friend, who was better than him at magic but, in her own way, was kind and listened to him and, although she mocked him, never really showed him malice.
He and Opal had planned to run away together. He wanted to marry her. To have three little children, each of them with iridescent eyes like hers, and dark hair, and clever little countenances.
She had loved him. Better than that, she hadknownhim.
In the ten years since, Lio had taken to visiting his parents’ home in West Calléum once or twice per year and having dinner with his elder brother and going on dates with women and participating in empty conversation with strangers. Yet, every interaction after Opal caused him to feel utterly misunderstood. He wasn’treallymisanthropic, snobby, irritable. He was heartbroken. He was grieving.
And Dot, who was enamoured with him for almost no reason at all, did not help.
And Theodora, with whom he had hoped to find friendship and share mutual grief, but who instead despised him, did not help.
Rupert – Rupert helped.
‘You going to do anyrealwork, boss?’
They were in the Raven’s Attic. The red-haired boy poked him in the ribs, and Lio dropped his order book. Rupert ducked away into the revelry of the club, laughing as he weaved through a crowd of spirits and politicians and magnates. Earlier that day, theboy had gone with Dot and Theodora to telephone Dot’s grandfather. Rupert had regaled Lio at length with an account of his helpfulness, his new friendship with Dot, his short conversation with Dot’s younger sister Celia, and his surprise at Theodora and Dot’s plan to visit the daemon the following morning. Lio smiled as Rupert disappeared into the crowd. He had been that age, once.
The countess whose order Lio had been about to take looked at him with scathing eyes.
‘My apprentice,’ explained Lio, retrieving his order book from the ground. ‘He is spirited.’
‘So it seems,’ she said.
As Lio wiped glasses and fetched packet spells, he thought of the life he had built for himself – how he greatly looked forward to his magic lessons with Rupert, the small garden he tended in the courtyard and the meals he cooked with increasing joy for the inhabitants of the house.
And for the second time, Lio grieved Opal. Again, he accepted her death. Each day after the revelation of the false letter, he felt a little less distraught, and he went about his business in the tea shop and the Raven’s Attic, cleaning tables, collecting packet spells, humouring austere faces who, through the smoke, eyed him with judgement or lust or intrigue.
That night, a set of these eyes fell upon Lio.
A man and a spirit sat in a corner of the Raven’s Attic. The man watched Lio with a strange, knowing look. That was the moment Rupert returned to Lio’s side with a fresh box of packet spells.
‘Why is Casimir staring at you?’
‘Who’s Casimir?’ asked Lio.
‘Ask Theodora,’ said Rupert. ‘She tells me something different every time. I don’t like how he looks at her.’ The boy was protective; Theodora was, to Rupert, family. ‘And the spirit next to him is the opposition minister of Sorcerie and Magic, Marcidus.’
