The Price of Magic Read online

  “Hello,” said Baxter, coming down the stairs.

  “Hi,” said Peter. “I hear that dinosaur riding was fun.”

  “We had to cut it short because of the weather… and because they were a bit scary.”

  “I won’t say I told you so,” said Peter.

  At that moment, Cheery stepped into the room and announced tea.

  “Go upstairs and let the lady of the house know, won’t you?” Baxter asked the lizzie.

  Tea consisted of quite a large spread of food, because apparently everyone but Peter had skipped their lunch. There was squash soup, cheese and chutney sandwiches, sausages, canned fruit, and a very large teacake. On the other hand, Peter was still stuffed full of saurolophus tail. He sat sipping his tea. Baxter and Sen took their seats, the man filling up a plate for the girl before filling one for himself. The two of them had been eating for several minutes, and Peter drinking his tea, when Senta walked into the room from the back and wilted into her chair. She was still in her dressing gown.

  “Are you feeling ill, Sister?” Peter asked.

  “She’s fine,” said Baxter.

  “Well, I’ve made a decision,” continued the young wizard. “I need to do something. I’m going to find some kind of employment.”

  “If this is about our discussion this morning,” said Baxter, “again, I wasn’t criticizing your spending.”

  “No, it’s not really about that. It’s just that I’m a grown man, and I need to be a part of something like a grown man. Getting a job seems the obvious thing. I’m a wizard after all, and there should be plenty of employment for someone of my talent.”

  “You’re not working in manufacturing.” Senta seemed to suddenly wake up. “No half-brother of mine is going to spend all day enchanting iceboxes or dressing wands.”

  “I was thinking of maybe working with the police.”

  “I won’t have you consorting with that lot either. Two of their wizards tried to kill me, lest you forget.”

  “I haven’t forgotten at all, since I was in line of fire too,” he replied. “They have new wizards working there though, in addition to Wizard Bell.”

  “You will work for me,” Senta said, sitting up straight. “It just happens that I need an agent.”

  “Like a secret agent?” asked Peter.

  “More like a business agent, but one with magical knowledge and skill.”

  “That sounds perfect. What will I be doing?”

  “We’ll talk later. It’s on a need to know basis,” she waved toward the other two diners, “and these two don’t need to know.”

  “Excellent.” Peter poured himself another cup of tea.

  The others finished their meals. Senta announced she was taking a bath and padded off toward the back of the house. Baxter took Sen to the library. Peter followed.

  “I do have something I’d like to discuss with you,” he told the older man.

  “Can it wait about ten minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  Peter took a chair against the wall and picked up the day’s Birmisia Gazette from the occasional table. Baxter pulled Mrs. McKeeb’s Big Book of Childhood Admonitions from the bookcase, gathered Sen into his lap, and began reading softly to her. A few minutes later he stood up, and Peter saw that the girl was asleep.

  “I’ll be right back,” said Baxter.

  When he had returned from delivering the girl to her bedroom, he looked questioningly at the young wizard.

  “Your words of this morning turned out to be prophetic,” said Peter. “It’s like you scried right into my day.”

  “Please,” said Baxter, holding up a hand. “No magic talk.”

  “Okay. But what you were saying might happen, happened. Abby’s sister saw me out to lunch with another girl and she gave me a proper dressing down, right there in the café. And it was only then that I realized that maybe I don’t really want to go out with a bunch of different girls. Maybe it was Abigail that I wanted to be with the whole time. And now, she’s going to hate me.”

  “You say Gabby saw you, but not Abigail?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, that’s good. Women tend not to trust one another’s word. That’s especially true for sisters. Abby won’t want to see things the way her sister saw them. All you have to do is lean them in your favor.”

  “What? Should I lie about her seeing me?”

  “Of course not. You don’t want to get caught up in lying. It’s too complicated. Just send her flowers and chocolate and tell her that you went out with another girl, but you’re tired of other women and you want only her.”

  “But that’s the truth.”

  “Of course it is,” said Baxter. “That’s why it’s so believable.”

  “I’ll go get the flowers and chocolates now.”

  “Go pick some winter blooms from the garden and have Cheery deliver them with a note,” said Baxter. “Take her the chocolates when you visit her tomorrow morning. Invite her to dinner. Ask if she’ll bring her sister as chaperone.”

  “But Gabby hates me now.”

  “Maybe you can win her over. If not… well, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

  “Kafira, Baxter, you’re a genius!”

  Chapter Five: The Sorceress’s Family

  When Senta woke the next morning, she assumed it was very early, as there was hardly any light coming in, even though all the curtains were open. Then she heard the distant rumble of thunder and looked at the clock. It was almost eleven. She stretched decadently across her bed. That bed had cost as much as the average working man made in a year, and was the only one she’d even been in, at least since she’d been fully grown, in which her feet didn’t hang over the bottom. As her hand stretched across, she felt the other side—the empty side.

  She really didn’t expect Baxter to be there. He almost never was by the time she got up. But when he was there, he was a horrible, insatiable monster. She smiled slyly at the memory of last night, and yesterday afternoon, as she rolled over.

  On the far side of the room, Aggie, the lizzie dressing maid, was carrying hangers full of dresses to the closet.

  “Bring me my foundations,” she said.

  The lizzie started and hissed.

  “I’ll wear that green walking dress. Yes, the one with the white underdress.”

  Aggie bobbed her head up and down to indicate she understood. The lizzies were surprisingly good at helping human women get dressed. Senta had been to a number of lizzie villages and two of the great lizzie city-states, and she knew how they festooned themselves with paint, feathers, and beads. She supposed it really wasn’t all that different than dressing in gingham, lace, and make-up.

  “Paint,” she said to herself.

  Mistaking her meaning, Aggie rushed over to the vanity, where on rare occasions, Senta applied rouge, eye shadow, and lip color.

  “No, not now. After.”

  When Senta stepped off the bottom of the staircase, she found her lover and her child in the parlor. The former was reading the paper and the latter was pushing herself along on a two-foot-tall, three-foot-long wooden iguanodon. Each of the creature’s four feet was attached to a pair of small wheels. A miniature saddle was fixed into the creature’s back, making it just high enough that little Senta could reach the ground with her tiptoes and propel it.

  “What’s this then?”

  “Brilliant, isn’t it? Mr. Dokkins made it. I thought it was a wonderful idea, since the real ones proved too scary.”

  “Lift your feet a moment, Pet.” The little girl did so. “Uuthanum tachthna. Now just think where you want to go, and you’ll get there without having to push.”

  Within moments, Sen was zooming around the room, nowhere near the speed of a baby iguanodon, but much faster than she would have been able to on her own power. Senta dropped down into a plush chair and draped her left arm and her head over the chair arm.

  “Come and give kisses,” she ordered.

  Sen
raced by, crashing into the coffee table, backed up a bit, and turned to kiss her mother on the cheek. Then she was back to zooming around the room.

  “I take it the morning post has arrived,” said the sorceress.

  Baxter lifted the paper he was reading in reply.

  She walked to the foyer and retrieved the stack of letters from the small silver plate on the table by the door. Flipping through them, she found among several bills, a letter addressed to her from Dr. Agon Bessemer. She smiled, as she picked up the silver opener and cut through the envelope. Back in the parlor, she plopped back into the overstuffed chair and read through the message.

  “I have a letter from Bessemer,” she said.

  “I saw that,” Baxter replied without looking up.

  “He’s invited us to spend some time at his fortress. We will be leaving in four days time.”

  “We who?”

  “Why, all of us.”

  “Traveling overland through unexplored wilderness, presumably on foot, through wild lizzie territory, with vicious dinosaurs all around?”

  “I’ve made the journey before. We’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “It’s not safe for a child. Even if we all arrive in one piece, that fortress is no place for her either—surrounded by lizzies, without another human face.”

  “Nonsense, we’ll be there.”

  “For that matter, I don’t think it’s a safe place for Zoey.”

  Senta let out an exasperated sigh. “They worship dragons as gods!”

  “You told me how they treated Bessemer before. Even now, not all of the lizzies have accepted him. But he’s big enough to take care of himself.”

  “We will discuss it after dinner,” said Senta, standing up. “Now I have business elsewhere.”

  “You’ll be home for tea, at least?”

  “Probably not.” She exited through the foyer, taking her handbag from the hook as Cheery opened the front door for her. Outside, she stopped and looked at the overcast sky. It was windy and it was cold. She held her hand out—no rain and no snow. There probably wouldn’t be any more snow this year.

  She plucked one of the glowing gem-like items that orbited her head. Only she could see them. They were glamours—magic spells cast earlier and placed in storage for when she needed them. The gem she had plucked from its orbit and crushed between her fingers was a spell that protected her from the elements.

  No longer cold, she looked around. Even though the temperature wouldn’t bother her, it just didn’t look like the kind of day one wanted to be walking around in, walking dress notwithstanding. It was certainly unseemly for a sorceress to walk a mile to hire a rickshaw. Raising her hands above her head, she said, “Rezesic idium uuthanum tortestos paj.” And with a quiet pop, she disappeared.

  With an equally quiet pop, Senta reappeared some ten miles away. She swayed for a moment, nauseous. Maybe she should have eaten something first. Zurfina had always made teleportation look so easy. Looking around, she realized that she was in the yard, just in front of the home of her childhood friend Hero Hertling. She had intended to visit Hero this morning. The only thing was, Hero was now Hero Markham, and no longer lived in the tiny house. In fact, all of the three Hertling siblings had grown up, married, and moved. As she was thinking about all this, the sorceress spotted a small face peeking out the front window. She waved and it disappeared.

  “Bother,” she said, stepping out to the sidewalk and walking east.

  “Senta!” she heard, after having taken no more than a dozen steps.

  She looked just in time to see Benny Markham pull his steam carriage to a stop next to her.

  “Are you on your way to visit my wife?”

  “I was.”

  “Let me give you a lift.” When she seemed hesitant, he said, “I assure you it’s quite safe.”

  Benny stretched out a hand, and she let herself be hoisted up into the front passenger seat. After pulling levers and pushing pedals that seemed unnecessarily complicated to Senta, he pulled away from the curb and sped down the street. Benny Markham was an extremely average man, with brown hair and a pleasant, round face.

  “You should really get yourself a steam carriage,” he said. “They’re really convenient.”

  “I’m a sorceress, Benny,” said Senta.

  “Yeah, all right. So, how come you were walking?”

  “Why not, on such a lovely day?”

  He glanced up at the sky, but didn’t contradict her.

  A few minutes later, they pulled up in front of the Markham home. It was a fine, two-story house with red and yellow stonework on the face. A pair of lizzies came out to take charge of the car, but as soon as they saw the passenger, they seemed to disappear.

  “What the hell?” growled Benny as he went around, first to release the steam, and then to help Senta down.

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to coax them out once I’ve gone inside,” she said.

  The Markham’s majordomo, usually present at the front door, also seemed to have gone missing. The lizzies were forgotten however, once they entered the parlor. Hero Markham jumped to her feet and wrapped Senta in a great hug. About a head shorter than the sorceress, and quite plump, Hero had long dark hair and large brown eyes.

  “Senta, why didn’t you tell me you were stopping by?”

  “I’m going out of town, and I wanted to visit before I did.”

  “You’re not going to Mallontah, are you? It’s really not safe for you there.”

  Two and a half years before, while in St. Ulixes, Senta had been shot by a sniper. The common theory was that it was in retaliation for the magic battle she had been involved in eight years before that, which had burned down more than a few blocks of the city. Senta didn’t hold to the common theory.

  “No, I’m not going that far, but I will be gone for a while, so I wanted to visit with you and your sweet family.”

  The Markham’s oldest daughter, one of many eponymous Sentas in Birmisia Colony, was a five-year-old that looked very much like her mother had as a child, with thick cascades of curly black hair. Sitting primly in her white dress next to the spot her mother had just vacated, she had her hands entwined with yarn, which they together had been forming into a ball.

  “How are you, Sweetie?” asked the Senta, stepping behind the chair and leaning over to kiss the child on the cheek.

  “Fine,” came the meek answer.

  Benny Jr., a rough and tumble boy of four watched the sorceress from the hall doorway, only to run quickly away whenever she looked at him. Hannabeth, a curly-haired girl of three sat beneath an occasional table playing with a rag doll. The youngest Markham child was not in evidence.

  “Where is Little Honor?”

  “The nurse is dressing her.”

  “How many lizzies do you have?” wondered Senta. “That’s not a criticism, mind, I was just wondering.”

  “We have six,” said Benny, just returning to the room after putting away his coat. “They’re all from the same house.”

  “That was Benny’s idea,” said Hero, proudly. “He wanted to make sure that they would all get along and work together.”

  Senta nodded, though the gesture hadn’t anything to do with the household lizzies. While they had talked, she had been examining the magical wards that only she could see, ensuring that the protective magic she kept on the Markham family was in place. Though they knew nothing about it, they were wrapped in magical protection like no one else on the continent save Baxter, and of course Sen.

  “Sit down,” said Hero, pointing to a plush chair.

  “I’ll go get Honnie,” said Benny, on his way out of the room again.

  “So where are you going?” asked Hero, as the sorceress poured herself into the seat.

  “I’m going to visit Bessemer.”

  “In that horrible place?”

  Hero, and everyone else in Port Dechantagne, knew about Dragon Fortress only from the description in the travel journal Journey to Tsahloose by Isaak Wis
singer, who had, many years earlier, stopped there with Senta and a few others.

  “He says he’s fixed it up nice,” countered Senta.

  “You’re not taking little Senta, are you? That’s no place for a child!”

  “She’ll be perfectly safe. She’ll be with me,” said Senta.

  “And Mr. Baxter is going with you?”

  “He may. In any case he’s all for Sen going.”

  “I think you’re lying,” said Hero, “though I can never tell for sure.”

  “Now, now,” said Benny, entering carrying miniature version of his two other daughters. “Let’s not have cross words.”

  “She is so sweet,” said Senta. “She’s not a baby anymore. When are you going to have another one?”

  “Oh, I think we’re done,” replied Hero. “Four children are plenty.”

  “I think I’d like another boy, just to round things out,” said Benny.

  “Sure you think that. You don’t have to carry him.” Hero glared at her husband and then turned back to her friend. “How about you? When are you having another?”

  “I have one too many now,” replied Senta.

  Hero opened her mouth in shock.

  “I’m just kidding.”

  Senta stayed for lunch with the Markhams, though she ate only a few bites of sausage and a buttered crumpet. While they ate, they talked of nothing important, but reminisced. The two women laughed about their days growing up, when they, along with Hero’s brother Hertzal and Graham Dokkins had been a fearsome foursome. Benny talked of the time he had served as Senta’s guard in the wilderness when she was hired to scry for coal. Finally, the sorceress stood up.

  “Well, time for me to be off.”

  “Would you like me to drive you somewhere?” asked Benny.

  “Not necessary.” She lifted her hands above her head. “Rezesic idium uuthanum tortestos paj.” And she disappeared with a pop.

  From her perspective, what changed were her surroundings. She was standing on the corner of Clark and Forest, just steps away from J.D. Kinney’s 5 and 10 Pfennig Dry Goods and Sundries. She could hear startled exclamations from customers of the Pfennig Store, Doreen’s Millinery, and Friese and Son’s Imported Foods and Beverages. She noticed that she didn’t feel dicky at all. Maybe she was getting the hang of it. Or maybe it was better when people were watching. Zurfina certainly made a habit of popping in and out in front of a crowd, which now that Senta thought about it was odd, considering how much of a recluse Zurfina usually was. She walked down the sidewalk, past the storefronts, and then across a narrow alleyway, paying no attention to those gawking at her. Turning on a heel, she walked up to the front of the building that contained Buttermore’s Photography, Mademoiselle Joliet’s Dress Shop, Tint’s Haberdashery, and McCoort & McCoort. She stopped for only a moment to admire a teal dinner gown in the dress store window before entering the bookshop.