The Threads of Magic by Alison Croggon (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

to me more than twelve hours later, by which time it is impossible to put any inquiries into motion with any guarantee of efficacy.”

Sibelius didn’t even dare to nod. There was a long, agonizing silence.

It was often said of the cardinal that he was like a snake. This was a little defamatory against snakes, who are, on the whole, timid, sun-loving creatures that would have to work hard to attain the cardinal’s air of Arctic implacability. But at this moment the comparison seemed more apt than usual. His thin, reptilian face was pinched with fury, and his eyes glittered venomously. His black robes, stiff with golden embroideries of fleurs-de-lis, stood out from his shoulders so that he looked like nothing so much as a huge cobra, poised to strike.

“I don’t suppose that you actually remember the urchin you saw?” said the cardinal emotionlessly.

“I — I got a very quick glimpse of — That is,” said Sibelius, recollecting that his life hung by a thread, “I’m sure I’d recognize him if I saw him again.”

The cardinal let his cold eyes rest on Sibelius’s back, which was shaking visibly. The man was probably lying, but he might yet be of some use and, after all, the cardinal needed his skills. It made little difference whether he had him killed now or later.

“You are dismissed.”

Sibelius shuffled out backward on his knees, scarcely able to believe that he was alive.

Taking up this work for the Office for Witchcraft Extermination had been the worst mistake of his life. The cardinal had recruited him shortly after he arrived at the Palace of Kings to tutor the princess. He had been a gentleman scholar with a modest but growing reputation when the Crown had summoned him. Back then he certainly could not afford golden buckles for his shoes. Now he had two pairs, one studded with emeralds, plus four pairs of silver buckles for second best. Yet increasingly he wished he had been able to remain in his comfortable house in the country, where he had spent most of his time staring out the window, pursuing his research into arcane scripts and writing execrable but terribly correct poetry.

Five years before, when Cardinal Lamir had first approached him, Sibelius had been flattered. He’d had a heady sense that he was entering a mysterious world of real power, that he would be privy to dark secrets only known to the initiated. But as time passed, doubts began to creep in.

Secretly Sibelius had begun to wonder if the people the Office arrested and tortured were witches at all. But now he was trapped: if he refused the work, it would be considered at best suspicious and at worst treacherous. And the cardinal, an intimidating figure even at a distance, became much more frightening on closer acquaintance. He was incalculable and ruthless, with a seemingly uncanny ability to read the minds of his subordinates. While the rewards for those who did well were enormous, the punishments for displeasing the cardinal were horrifying.

When the door shut behind Sibelius, the cardinal tugged at a bellpull. Shortly afterward a man entered the room.

Like the cardinal, he was dressed entirely in black, but unlike the cardinal, his clothes were not relieved by a dull sheen of gold. He looked as if he were cut out of sheerest night. All that was visible beneath the hood that covered his head was a cruel, sensual mouth.

His name, Milan Ariosto, was incongruously gentle, bestowed on him by his despairing mother in the few hours she lived after he was born. Since that moment, gentleness had not been a feature of Ariosto’s life. Anyone who saw him knew instantly that his business was death. When he passed people in the street, they crossed themselves, even if they did not know that Ariosto was the most senior and most feared of the cardinal’s assassins.

“Have Sibelius d’Artan watched,” said the cardinal. “And summon your spies from the Choke Alleys.”

THE PRINCESS WAS BORED. SHE WAS TOO WELL trained to fidget; instead her mouth pursed in an attractive moue of discontent and her blue eyes misted with a hazy aura of inattention. Her tutor droned on in the background, his mustache drooping disconsolately. Like the princess, he was having trouble concentrating on his work.

Sibelius glanced mournfully out the open window, through which he could hear the clack of croquet balls on the lawn and irregular puffs of laughter. “Marcus Candidus told us in his Geographica that the seas of Oceania swirl in a whirlpool around Continentia before plunging into the eternal void off the edges of the world,” he said. “And as we well know, he calculated that the city of Clarel is at the center of the kingdom of Clarel, which is itself at the center of Continentia, and thus constitutes the very fulcrum of the world. And the Palace of the Kings is at the center of Clarel, and the Most Royal Family of the Avergons is at the center of the palace. Which makes Your Royal Personage the fulcrum of all fulcrums, upon which turns the fate of the entire world.”

The princess nodded absently, and Sibelius suppressed an irritation that even his carefully turned compliments could not lift the fog that so charmingly veiled those aristocratically blue eyes.

“Hence the history of the Avergons is of supreme importance, not only to yourself, but to lesser mortals. Now, as we know, it was your grandfather, the Lion of Avergon, Axel the First, who established his line in the city of Clarel, famously also known as the City of Five Rivers . . .”

Why does he keep telling me things I already know? wondered Georgette. She thought vaguely of her grandfather, who had died when she was six. She hadn’t liked him much: he hadn’t been very keen on washing, and he had a fondness for garlic and beans. Her few memories of him were somewhat pungent.

Georgette had an inconvenient memory, because this did not accord with the stories,