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

suspected this, they’d want to destroy Pip as well as Clovis. He glanced around the table, feeling hunted, and briefly caught Oni’s eye. She was watching him closely. He was suddenly sure that Oni suspected the same thing.

“Maybe we don’t have to lock up the Heart,” he said hoarsely. “Maybe we just need to . . .” He trailed off.

“Need to what?” said Amiable. “Tell it to be nice to us? Tell it to stop being a Specter?”

“He’s not a Specter, though, is he? And maybe he just needs, you know, to be looked after . . .”

Amina spoke gently. “I understand what you feel, Pip. Sometimes we have to do unjust acts so even more terrible things don’t happen.”

“But that’s not fair. How are witches any better than Specters if that’s how they behave? I mean, that’s what Old Missus Pledge did, and look what happened!”

El was sitting up very straight. Pip could hear her breath rasping. “Everything is horrible since you found the Heart, Pip. Maybe Amina knows best.”

“Nobody knows best!” said Pip angrily. “And especially not witches.”

“I think Pip has a point,” said Oni. “If we can’t destroy the Heart, and the other alternative is to imprison it with spells, that doesn’t solve anything. Even if we hid it now from Oswald, who’s to say that another Specter mightn’t come along later and use it? We got to think about that, too.”

“But there is no other way,” said Potier. “We already went through all this. There’s no magic anyone knows that can solve this.”

“Maybe we don’t need magic,” said Oni. She had on her stubborn look. “Maybe we need another way.”

“What way?” said Helios.

“Maybe we need to think about the First Law,” she said. “First, do no harm. Forgetting that got us into this mess in the first place.”

“Yes, I know,” said Helios. “I agree with you. But now that we are in this mess, it’s too late. Sometimes there are only bad choices.”

Pip stirred uneasily. He was liking this conversation less and less. “Maybe we should just be kind,” he suggested. It sounded pathetic even to his ears.

Juin laughed straight out, but without mirth. “Witches always used to be kind,” he said. “And then we got betrayed. I think we’re already being too kind, letting all these day people into the Undercroft. Bad mistake.”

Missus Clay told Juin to be quiet, and then she leaned over the table and took Pip’s hand. “I realize this is upsetting,” she said. “But these are bad times, and maybe there is no good choice. If the Specters find the Heart, we will all suffer, whether we are witches or not. There will be no escape. Not for anyone.”

“Yes, but . . .”

It was no use. Pip couldn’t argue against that logic. He fell silent, listening to Oni arguing that they had to find another way. He already knew that she was losing.

I told you, said Clovis. Didn’t I tell you?

Oni gave Pip a curious look, and he wondered if she could still hear Clovis talking to him.

Pip stared at the Heart. It lay on the table, black and shriveled. A horrible thing, as El had said when she first looked at it. Evidence of a terrible act.

Let them have it, said Clovis inside his head. It doesn’t matter anymore. We have to run away. If we don’t, they’ll do the same thing to you as they did to me.

The witches were now arguing about how best to break into the Office for Witchcraft Extermination and search for the casket. All they seemed to do was argue.

Pip met Oni’s eye. He was almost sure she knew what he was going to do. He wanted to tell her to look after El, but he didn’t dare say anything of the kind out loud.

“Where’s the privy?” he said.

Helios told him it was at the other end of the Undercroft and offered to show him the way.

“I’ll be all right,” said Pip, standing up. “I’ll find it on my own.”

AN ORDER FROM THE PALACE HAD SAID THAT KING Oswald required a formal guard of assassins to accompany him on a visit to a private club that was popular with nobles in the city. Today, Ariosto thought, he would take care of the guard duty himself.

He changed into his best livery and walked slowly to the palace. He arrived half an hour early and requested a personal interview, which earned him a puzzled glance from Oswald’s private secretary.

“This is a rare honor,” said King Oswald, as he entered the guest chambers.

Ariosto bowed. “At your service, Your Grace.” He took the liberty of looking directly at Oswald and blinked. He hadn’t looked into his eyes before, and they were deeply unsettling.

“I hear that it has been an unusually busy time at the Office for Witchcraft Extermination,” said Oswald.

“Yes, sire. The cardinal has been most anxious.”

Oswald turned toward the window. “I hear that witches are abroad. I don’t know why this should alarm Lamir so much. After all, isn’t witchcraft his domain?”

“I’m sure, Your Grace, that you have your own ways of dealing with witches in Awemt.”

“We are . . . very efficient. Perhaps Lamir could take a few feathers from our cap. But he is sadly incurious. He seemed to believe there was no problem in Clarel at all.”

Ariosto’s heart was beating fast, but he showed no sign of it. “For all that, he is deeply interested in witchcraft. Certainly, some of the artifacts we have secretly recovered seem to me of a dubious nature.”

“Really?” Oswald looked amused. “I thought you believed that he was merely professionally interested. What kind of artifacts do you mean?”

“In recent years, it’s been an item he called the Stone Heart.” Out of the corner of his eye, Ariosto saw Oswald stiffen. “We managed to track it down through the offices of a young witchcraft expert called Sibelius d’Artan. But then it was lost.”

“Lost?”

“Our men were returning to the office when they were, apparently, robbed by some