He set the scroll on a pile of old jobs and propped open his tiny window, casting the paintings and sketches on his walls in pink-gold light and filling the small space with gently lilting late spring air. A rose-colored day. He leaned over the sill and tapped the end of his cigarette, sprinkling ash over the fine fur and feathered hats of the passersby on the street far below.
“I don’t think it’s impossible,” Sy said, half to himself, pulling on his cigarette. He glanced at David. It was a competition, after all.
David didn’t seem the least interested in Edgard’s offer. Probably wise. The request itself was madness.
Madness, and maddeningly alluring. The prize, yes, but also the puzzle. Eternal life? Metamorphosis? The stuff of vivid legend, and a scribe who brought them into stark reality would surely earn his place among legend himself.
“A phoenix,” he said, the word itself tasting of gold and light. “Do they even exist?”
“You’re not truly entertaining this,” said David. When Sy did not respond, he sat up straighter. “Sylas. Be serious. What would such a spell even entail? Beady eyes and crooked feet? It isn’t as if you can give him wings. And king or no, it’s hardly ethical. A borderline violation of the spellscribe’s oath if ever I’ve heard.”
Sy was barely listening, his thoughts drifting among the pink clouds outside his window.
“The Lichtenwald,” he ruminated. “That large forest between here and Preule. It’s said to be full of strange magic, is it not? Strange, hermetic magicians? Strange creatures, perhaps?”
David’s incredulous laugh brought Sy back to the ground. “Set aside Edgard’s obvious lunacy, and yours. You’ve never stepped foot outside Äbender in your life. You’d have your throat cut by brigands within an hour.”
“You’re right. A madman’s ravings.” Even disregarding David’s infuriating logic, and indifference, all he said was true.
But whatwouldsuch a spell entail?
After a final, thoughtful inhale, he carefully tamped out the cherry of his unfinished cigarette on the windowsill, saving the remainder. He’d need it later.
Beside the bed, the apartment’s lone armchair embraced his clothes, where, the night before, he’d carefully laid them to await his return. He pulled on his shirt – white, with dusky gray embroidered stripes radiating from the stiff collar like a gloomy sunburst – then his favorite pair of rust-colored trousers. His uniform, as much as their profession required one, rust as ostentatious a color as their profession allowed.
David took the hint, gathering his own clothes from the floor with his cigarette still in his mouth.
“Will you go to the meeting?” Sy asked offhandedly as he buttoned his shirt. “A week from today, is it?”
“Of course. With a prize this preposterous, every scribe and scam artist in the kingdom will be there. It’ll be the talk of all Äbender for weeks.”
Sy nodded, fastening the buttons on his cuffs. Though the sun had barely risen, he was sure Edgard’s request currently spread through the city like her own rays of light, enlightening eyes more eager, and less dismissive, than David’s.
Or than he pretended. “It does make you think he’s serious,” Sy prompted.
“The opposite. He’s gone stark raving. I wouldn’t miss this for the prize itself,” David concluded, tamping his cigarette, the tantalizing gleam of scandal in his eyes.
Yes, in certain quarters of Äbender, scandal was worth its weight in gold and silver, and traded most by those who had no need of either.
Sy had dire need of both. Atop his behemoth vanity, which doubled as his desk and took up most of the small apartment, sat another disagreeable correspondence. Wanly, he plucked his latest job offer from under a piece of practice paper. He’d been over it a dozen times since it arrived almost a month ago, but he skimmed it yet again, as if hoping, this time, the words would rearrange into a friendlier shape.
No luck.
The letter floated to the vanity-top as he peeked in the dusty mirror and pushed his lank, chin-length blond hair behind his ear to affix his favorite earring, the finest thing he owned. Gold-plated and cut in the shape of a laurel, each leaf made of carnelian, it climbed up his ear from lobe to tip. It accentuated his amber, gold-flecked eyes – eyes which, when deployed artfully, tended to make difficult clients more amenable. Clients such as Duchess Abigail Skeylor.
He drew a long breath, then, holding it, announced boldly, “I’m paying the duchess a visit.”
For the barest second, David paused buttoning his shirt. “Careful with that one. The season’s ending. She’ll suck you dry.”
“I know how to handle her.”
“Isthatwhy you’ve been putting her off for weeks?”
“I must once more insist you stop snooping through my mail.”
Before his words had died, David grabbed his wrist. With practiced fluidity, he unbuttoned Sy’s cuff and rolled up his sleeve, exposing the puncture mark, a perpetual wound on his inner elbow, never healed long enough to scar. A wound David shared. As of late, Sy’s seemed to heal a bit slower each time.
Frowning, David ran a thumb over the yellow and violet bruise, still mottled from his last job.
