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"Oh my little saint, what have you done to me?"
Grief wasn't her only gift, but how could he tell her? Mara had said the women in her family had been able to do other miracles, and Saint Anea had been able to perform all of them.
He needed to know more about miracles, saints, and those damn curses Mara was sure that she had. She was helping him with Melbourne's magic and his own horrible heartache.
Augustus believed in repaying kindness, and he was racking up a sizable debt to Mara Corvo. If it had been anyone else, the debt would have ground against him like salt in a wound, but knowing it was to Mara, it didn't bother him half as much as it should.
Augustus touched his lips again. Had he kissed her? She might not have taken that well. He had definitelythoughtabout kissing her—that was undeniable—but he'd hate it if they had, and he couldn't remember it.
Maybe she kissed you? No. Augustus dismissed it at once. She had been very clear that she thought he was an idiot, and he could hardly blame her after his failed attempt at rescuing her.
Watching Mara in a brawl had been a violent kind of magic. She didn't need his help, not in that way. She didn't need him to mediate some magical disputes or deal with the effects of Melbourne's magical flux.
Augustus cycled through the last six weeks, trying to find something he could offer as a repayment. She could have whatever books she wanted. She just had to come and take them. Then his mind turned back to curses.
"That's it," he said to the tiles of his shower. "I'm going to break the Corvo curse so Mara will be remembered."
That pronouncement was optimistic of Augustus because, as it has already been established, he had no fucking idea how to understand, much less manipulate, the wild magic that surrounded Mara and the teashop.
Without the burden of two of the three great failures of his life weighing him down, Augustus was at least willing to attempt the impossible.
Augustus cleared a space on his overflowing desk, and for the first time in far too many years, he was focussed on something other than the hole in Melbourne's magic.
After some rummaging, he found a new journal and wrote down all his observations of Mara's miracles. If she'd known how accurate and precise his observations were, it would have caused considerable embarrassment.
Augustus was no trick peddling, street corner sorcerer. He was one of the highest performing sorcerers to graduate from the Academy. If he hadn't gotten tangled in the events of 1892, he would've probably had a long and illustrious career, developed countless new theories, and made sizeable contributions to the profession. That's not to say he'd beenidle.
If Augustus had been bothered to share any of the studies he'd done on the structure of the magical energy with his peers back in England, he would've found out that he'd made more leaps in the field than anyone had since ley lines were first discovered. But he had been too busy for such things.
Augustus had been approaching the problem in the classical, analytical way he'd been taught, which is why Mara's suggestion that the magic was trying to heal the hole had made him at first incredulous and then upset that he hadn't thought of it first.
Her theory that he was a conduit to it, and healing him would thus heal the hole, was also proving true, and that forced Augustus (with all of his excellent education) to admit he didn't know shit about shit.
What hedidknow was that it was finally getting fixed, and that freed him up to study miracle energy.
Augustus made coffee and breakfast downstairs, wondering when the hangover would kick in and wanting to be prepared for it. He ended up burning his bacon and eggs because he'd had an idea halfway through, had gone upstairs to write it down, and had forgotten about breakfast cooking until he'd smelled smoke.
Annoyed and distracted, he'd turned the stove off and unceremoniously tossed the smoking skillet out of the back door and onto the rain-soaked grass. He made toast instead and went back upstairs, the incident already forgotten.
He wrote lists and theories on pieces of paper, scrunched them up, and dropped them on the floor. Every now and again, he'd retrieve one, smooth it out, read it, and either scrunch it up again or paste it into his journal for further thought.
Augustus went through the bookshelves in the study, rejecting most after a cursory flick through the pages. Once he was done with those, he started on the bookshelves that lined his hallways. He put one or two aside, thinking that Mara might enjoy them.
For a man studying Mara herself, Augustus tried not to think of her too much and distract himself further. In his journal, he referred to her only as 'The Saint' when noting observations and theories down.
Some people would consider this a cold and dehumanizing way to approach a magical mystery, but those people were not on the cusp of an infatuation with one and trying to ignore that fact with all of their might.
When Augustusstillhadn't produced any information on saints or wild magic, he decided he needed to visit the Old Library.
When he decided to immigrate to Australia in 1891, he thought it would only be a temporary move, and he'd be back in England within five years.
The library at the Vance family estate was far too extensive to take with him, but the thought of not having access to it when he needed it was so irritating that he'd come up with a simple solution. He created an illegal portal.
If he'd gone with a traditional portal, the Academy would've sensed a wormhole being created, tracked the magical energy to him, and shut the whole thing down.
Luckily, Augustus wasn't always one for tradition. He narrowed down all the portal theory, stripped away all the complicated bells and whistles and arrows of time nonsense, and created a simple door instead.
This was, of course, the door with the golden sigils that had caught Mara's attention on her first visit. If she'd given in to her instincts to open it, she wouldn't have found any unquestionable secrets but a library in England.
