Page 57

I glanced at the apprentices standing behind her. Unlike the magicians who passed through Havelock’s shop, their expressions had an uncanny flatness, and I had the strange sense that their feelings, their very personhoods, were somehow rooted in shallow soil. I thought of what I knew of the Rivenwood, and of what happened to magicians who strayed too deep in search of magics they hadn’t the strength to wield, and felt my stomach twist at the horror of it.

“Is obstinacy a family trait?” Valérie said, her gaze shifting from Élise to myself. “Will you also refuse to give me the Artefact, even if the alternative is the destruction of your home?”

“I didn’t refuse,” Élise snapped, and I felt a rush of pride at the coldness in her voice. “I told you we don’t have it.”

Valérie only raised her eyebrows a millimetre, as if Élise were a willful child. “You think I would be foolish enough to waste my time here if I wasn’t certain that my brother has the Artefact somewhere in his magpie nest of a shop?”

She unbuttoned her coat collar and withdrew the compass I had glimpsed around her neck the last time she broke into Havelock’s shop. It was a humbler thing than most Artefacts I had seen, being simply carved from dark wood, but it was no ordinary compass. For one thing, it had too many hands, some of gold or jade, others that seemed made of glass. One of these glass hands flickered into motion, darting back and forth a few times before pointing squarely at the shop.

I could only stutter and stare—I didn’t have Élise’s bravery, in that moment. When it was clear neither of us would reply, Valérie smiled and turned away.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I’d rather do it this way. I never could resist an audience.”

Her apprentices were also smiling. Valérie brushed her fingers over one of the necklaces she was wearing—it had three pendants, each in the shape of a tiny, intricately painted carousel. She cupped it in her hand and shouted an enchantment at the swirling clouds.

“That’s what she did before,” Élise said, seizing my arm and dragging me back. “The door—”

She was too late. The clouds descended towards the street, then burst like overripe fruit, spilling a strange conglomeration of limbs, reins, and trailing hair, which eventually shaped itself into a herd of phantasmal horses. They seemed made from snow and ice, and were imperfectly formed, their limbs bearing only the suggestion of hooves, their manes fading into cloud. They looked like the carousel horses, hints of silver sparkling here and there—some even had thin poles jutting from their backs—and were of indeterminate size, ranging from overlarge to immensely large.

I had only a moment to take in the horror and beauty of them—because they were undeniably beautiful—before they flew towards the shop, dashing themselves against the windows.

I shrieked and fell backwards, off-balance from Élise’s grip, landing with a thump that knocked the wind out of me. The horses exploded like the lip of a massive wave striking shore, flinging a cloud of snow into the air, and screams filled the street. The cats yowled and hissed.

I dragged myself to my feet, still struggling to find my breath. I gave a gasp of laughter, because the shop seemed intact—Havelock’s wards had held.

Or almost intact. One of the windows had shattered, the glass scattered across the floorboards in a fine dust, as if it had not merely broken, but disintegrated. And upon the threshold, just inside the shop, were a handful of snowflakes and what looked revoltingly like a severed hoof, already beginning to melt.

One of the apprentices laughed, and several others applauded. “Oh, hush,” Valérie said. Her hands were in her pockets again and her expression was full of mischief. One of the other magicians called something to her in a teasing tone, and she turned to smile at him. She came forward in a casual lope, stopping at the threshold and reaching a hand out to brush the empty air.

“Not yet,” she murmured. “Almost there. He didn’t think I’d come at him with magics from the Fourth Fathom—poor Havelock. He likes to be the only living magician to have ventured there.”

Her expression was one of barely contained ecstasy, and I understood: Valérie loved magic as much as Havelock did. No doubt she could have thrown magic at the shop in a far more utilitarian fashion, without bothering to shape horses out of snow, but she could not resist making her enchantments beautiful. Yet in Valérie, this ecstasy was paired with a hunger that was almost bestial. Like her apprentices, there was a sense of absence about her, a hollowness behind her eyes, but in Valérie, this absence seemed filled with something dark, uncanny, and insatiable.

She removed a ring from her hand. The ring was lovely, a gold-and-emerald coil of vines and roses that had stretched from her first knuckle to her second.

“Élise,” I said, pulling her to her feet, for she too had fallen over backwards when the horses charged. “Find Banshee and throw her out the back door. I’ll—”

I was about to say that I would open the cages and release the shelter cats, who would hopefully follow Banshee’s lead and flee through the back. I didn’t know what Valérie was planning, but it didn’t matter—whatever it was, she was convinced she would succeed. But I had barely reached the first cage before Valérie’s enchantment exploded through the remaining windows.

They were wild roses, shaped from ice and snow like the horses, and they clambered hungrily through the windows, spreading across the ceiling and burrowing into it with their thorns, unleashing a hail of plaster upon us.

I had opened the first cage, though its occupant, a grey tabby named Brume, only spat at me and crouched in the corner, but Élise had been struck by a piece of plaster and had fallen against the counter. I dashed to her side and helped her up, brushing her dust-covered hair from her face. But she didn’t even look at me.

“What is that?” she cried, staring through the broken windows. The view was partially obstructed by the roses, which swayed gently in the winter wind, a wind that was now funneling through the shop, heedless of Havelock’s wards. Did any of the wards remain? I had only a sliver of a second to wonder about it before I saw what Élise did.

We lurched forward and gazed upon the window of darkness that had opened in the sky, through which a landscape of dark trees and forbidding mountains was dimly visible. From this, Havelock emerged in his spectral form, trailing shadows like a nightmare, and landed—far too gracefully—upon the snow, whereupon he became himself again.

Screams erupted from among the crowd—which was, remarkably, still a crowd, though the more sensible half had fled—and a cry of “The Witch King!” followed by more screaming. I wondered at that for a moment, given how few knew what Havelock looked like, before recognizing the absurdity of my confusion. Havelock’s horrifying manner of making an entrance was introduction enough.

One of Valérie’s apprentices raised a heavily ringed hand and shouted an enchantment. Something flew towards Havelock—a fierce wind, laced with fallen snow and shards of ice. And yet it did not blast him backwards, as I would have expected; it passed through him, as if he were not wholly there. Havelock’s mouth moved as he touched one of his earrings, and it was as if the apprentice’s human guise were wrenched from her like a cloak, revealing another monster of shadow and ember. Havelock spoke another word, and the wind pummeled her, snuffing the embers and scattering the shadow like ash.

“They’re vulnerable when they’re like that,” I murmured.

Havelock did the same to the next apprentice, and then there were only three, in addition to Valérie—who had, bizarrely, turned away from the threat posed by her brother, and was staring down at a small, dark shape that had lunged at her leg.

“Your Majesty!” I shouted, but the cat paid me no heed. His fur stood straight up, swelling him to twice his already intimidating size, so that he seemed closer to an actual panther than a house cat, and he lunged at Valérie again, hissing and snarling. The woman fell back with a cry, and I saw that she was limping—His Majesty had clawed through her trousers below her knee, spilling her blood upon the snow. He looked entirely unhinged, but I understood his motive: the shelter was his territory, and he would defend that territory from anyone foolish enough to threaten it, even if that person was one of the world’s most powerful magicians.

I hurled myself towards the door, desperate to grab hold of His Majesty before Valérie threw some dreadful enchantment at him, but Élise had anticipated me. She wrenched me back and pinned me against the window frame, yelling something. One of Valérie’s apprentices seemed to have been inspired by her, and he unleashed a spell that ensnared Havelock in a towering thornbush of ice. But Havelock only touched another one of his earrings in an almost absent gesture, and the man was drawn up into the storm clouds, screaming. The thornbush collapsed, and for a moment Havelock stood amongst a swirl of ice crystals, as if he were caught in an overturned snow globe.