The Threads of Magic, Alison Croggon [uplifting novels txt] 📗

insubstantial, colorless shadows that shimmered in a dim luminescence. She could see through walls, which made it hard to assess distance.

The tenement was alive with blurred, silverish people. Some of them were sleeping, others were eating, two people seemed to be arguing. Other kinds of glows: cats, mice, rats . . . Up in the attic, a dead baby was lying in a crib. Four house sprites, mischiefs and ratterbags, were gathered around it. They were benign spirits who rarely meant any harm, but they were always curious about death . . .

Oni shook herself. She had to concentrate because she didn’t have a lot of time. A Specter, or anything else supernaturally hidden, looked different from both the living and the dead. She had never seen one before, but Amina had told her how to look for them. They weren’t easy to find, Amina had said, but they were unmistakable. She said you felt them as much as you saw them.

Oni scanned the building carefully. It seemed clear, but some intuitive caution made her check again. No, nothing. Wait, there was a man nearby. Oni guessed he was standing on the stairwell outside Pip and El’s room. Unlike everyone else in the building, he was utterly still. She waited for a while, seeing if he would move, but he didn’t twitch a muscle.

It had to be an assassin.

For a moment she regretted ignoring her mother’s warning. Nobody would blame her for not going in. But she was so close, and she had to check. Before she could talk herself out of it, she unlatched the window, which to her relief opened inward, and climbed inside. Every tiny creak, every muffled movement, seemed unnaturally loud. She crouched on the floor like a lizard that had been spotted by a snake.

Hardly daring to breathe, she crept down the hallway to the main room. Pip had told her that the loose floorboard was underneath the chest. She pulled the chest as quietly as she could along the floor, her heart in her mouth, but still the man outside the room didn’t move. It took a little while before she found the right board and pried it up.

She reached inside the hole in the floor and felt around. There was nothing there. She almost didn’t believe it and checked again to make sure. No parchment, no will, no deed, nothing.

She swore under her breath. And then she saw, out of the corner of her second sight, that the man was coming toward the door. For a moment she froze, and then she went to replace the floorboard. In her fear she dropped it, and it clattered to the ground. Suddenly the man was moving fast. Oni scrambled backward along the hallway. The spell had faded completely by the time she reached the bedroom, so she couldn’t see the assassin, but she heard the door open. Did he have a key? Of course he had a key. Assassins could get into any room they wanted; everyone knew that.

The window had swung shut on its weight while she had been in the other room, and somehow it had become stuck. Oni forgot about concealment: she was purely terrified now. Her fingers were clumsy, all thumbs, and she couldn’t yank it open. Oni was still struggling with it when the man stepped into the bedroom — tall, thin, dressed all in black; dim, pitiless eyes; a small white scar on his chin

She turned at bay, trapped and desperate, and drew her knife.

The assassin strode the two paces across the dark room and grabbed her arm, making her drop the knife. Oni twisted and bit him as viciously as she could. He let go, cursing, and slapped her hard across the face. She fell down and he pulled her up, twisting her arm behind her back so she cried out.

“Well, well, well,” said the man. “What filthy little thief do we have here?”

Oni, bent over against the pain in her arm, felt hot tears of rage running down her face. Why hadn’t she listened to her mother?

“Don’t think I’ll forget that bite, maggot,” he said. “But luckily for you, someone wants you alive.”

“Let go of me,” said Oni. She kicked his shins with her heels and he jerked her arm up so she gasped. “Let me go.”

“No more struggling,” he said. His voice was cold. “Or I’ll ignore my orders and slit your throat from ear to ear.”

He was bigger than she was, and stronger. There wasn’t any point fighting. Oni let herself go limp, and the man relaxed his grip so only the threat of pain was there.

“Good boy,” said the man. “Certain people are very interested in you. If you’re helpful, you might even get through this with a whole skin.”

Oni realized the assassin thought she was Pip. “I’m not a boy,” she said scornfully. “You got the wrong person.”

He grabbed her chin and pulled her face into the dim light. She saw surprise and chagrin in his eyes.

“See?” said Oni. “You might as well let me go.”

“Oh, I’m not doing that,” he said. “I’m curious, see? I have so many questions. Why would an Eradian be creeping into this particular apartment on this particular day? What are you looking for?”

While he spoke, Oni was trying to think what spell she could make with her hands behind her back. You can’t just think spells; you have to make them with your lips or your fingers or your breath. You need time and space. She had neither. And her mind was blank; everything she knew had been wiped away by panic. Her mother was right: she wasn’t ready; she had too much to learn . . .

But something was altering in the room, as if there were a spell happening already. She could feel magic lifting the hairs on her arms. A cold magic, cold as the assassin’s eyes, but there was a strange heat in it. No, it was luminous . . . something was