Zacharias proceeded to busy himself with preparations for the next day’s work, as though he had not already begun to feel unwell—a pretence that would not have deceived Sir Stephen even before he possessed the intuition of the dead.
“Does it hurt you much?” said Sir Stephen.
“Not much,” said Zacharias. This line of inquiry made him uneasy, and when he spoke again it was to divert the conversation:
“Do you have any notion what Edgeworth desires of me on Wednesday?”
It was not necessary to explain to Sir Stephen anything that had happened, now that he hovered between the mortal and celestial realms. He seemed to know every detail of Zacharias’s days as well as Zacharias did himself.
“I expect he will want a spell,” said Sir Stephen. “It will be some outrageous overturning of nature that he wants—a tripling of the Navy’s ships, or the undoing of some military reversal. The Government can never ask for a simple chantment—an illumination, say, or a glamour to enable Members of Parliament to doze unnoticed in the Commons.”
“I shall have to decline to assist, then,” said Zacharias. He paused, glancing sideways at Sir Stephen. “What ought I to say to him? TheGovernment has habitually overestimated our powers, but it cannot be wished that it should be disabused of its notions of our abilities.”
“No, indeed!” said Sir Stephen. “No monarch has ever liked a sorcerer, and it is only wariness of how we might revenge ourselves for any incivility that has kept our Government in line. It is a delicate point, and will require finesse.”
But he cast a knowing look at Zacharias, who had assumed an ingenuous air of attention.
“Very well!” said Sir Stephen. “You know I like nothing so well as to be asked my opinion. But mark, Zacharias, your reprieve is but temporary. I shall not forget our quarrel!”
2
THEREISNOTHINGso prolix as a committee of magicians. It was six o’clock when Zacharias’s colleagues had done opining on thaumaturgical standards, long past the time he would ordinarily have sat down to his dinner.
He was engaged to dine with a colleague, but fortunately his friend kept polite hours, and would not deem even half past six too late for his meal, so that Zacharias mounted the broad white steps of the Theurgist’s Club with nothing but his own appetite to quicken his pace.
The Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers regulated the affairs of English thaumaturgy, but it was within the less stately and more modish corridors of the Theurgist’s Club that thaumaturgy took its ease. In the Theurgist’s handsome rooms congregated augurers, alchemists, diviners, warlocks, soothsayers, invocators, tempestarians, mages and even the occasional sorcerer. The only conditions of membership were that the candidate possess somesoupçonof magical ability, and that he pass for a gentleman.
In recent years the requirement of birth had assumed rather moreimportance than that of magic, as England’s magical resource began to dwindle and thaumaturgy lost some of its lustre as a profession. In truth magic had always had a slightly un-English character, being unpredictable, heedless of tradition and profligate with its gifts to high and low. Save in the grand old thaumaturgical families—the Burrows, the Edgeworths, the Midsomers and their ilk—magic-making was now really only deemed a desirable profession for younger sons.
In consequence the dining rooms of the Theurgist’s were swelled with gentlemen who cared more for whist than wizardry. Serious-minded unnatural philosophers fled for the refuge of the Society’s august halls and hushed libraries.
It might have been expected that Zacharias would join them, but in fact he found the Theurgist’s young bucks and dandies more congenial company. He had not been admitted as a Fellow of the Society, despite fulfilling all the requirements of learning and ability, until he had taken up his staff, and even then the Society’s acceptance of its new Sorcerer Royal had been grudging at best.
Boisterous as the Theurgist’s dining rooms were, within them, at least, Zacharias could trust that his colour was no bar. There he was merely Zacharias Wythe: “Gentlemanly fellow, Wythe, even if he does talk like a book.” Zacharias always experienced a sense of relief upon stepping over its threshold, a relaxation of his guard he could enjoy nowhere else in public.
A group of thaumaturges was busy spell-making in the grand front sitting room of the club as Zacharias passed through. They were reflected in tall looking glasses, so that it seemed as though the room were full of dozens of lounging magicians.
Josiah Cullip stood among them, wobbling on his feet, and declaring, in the deliberate, portentuous manner of the foxed:
“All this talk of Puffett’s impenetrability is humbug! Any middling thaumaturge could cast it. All that is needed is a modicum of ability—and a candle, of course.”
“Well, we have an abundance of candles here,” said an associate. “Perhaps you would condescend to demonstrate Puffett’s for us, since it is so straightforward.”
The exchange was nothing remarkable. The execution of trifling illusions and glamours was the accustomed dinner entertainment at the Theurgist’s, so commonplace that Zacharias would be deemed very eccentric for raising any objection to it. He might nonetheless have remonstrated with his colleagues for their extravagance—Puffett’s fireworks in miniature was in fact rather a ticklish spell, requiring a significant expenditure of magical resource—but that speaking would entail reproving Cullip. In the common way of men, Cullip’s guilt led him to resent Zacharias for having been kinder to him than he deserved, and Zacharias had no wish to increase the ill feeling between them.
The footman who greeted Zacharias knew whom he was there to see:
“Mr. Damerell asked to be put in the Blue Room, sir, being quieter than the main hall. Will you be having the lobster as well?”
“A boiled fowl will suffice for me, thank you, Tom,” Zacharias was saying, when there was the most extraordinary noise behind him. It sounded like nothing so much as a thousand deep resonant voices saying at once,“Blurp.”
Zacharias turned to see Cullip brandishing a silver candlestick above his head, like a sword. It held no candles, but Cullip now wore a top hat, made not of beaver or silk plush, but of pure white wax. Small orange flames blazed on wicks sprouting from his ears, illumining his baffled countenance.
Tom tutted. “I knew he would come a cropper! I never saw a man that could carry off Puffett’s when he was in his cups. I doubt whether even Sir Stephen could have done it!”
The thaumaturge who had egged Cullip on said drily:
“I doubt that is quite what Puffett intended! But I am sure you areright, Cullip, and I vastly overrated the difficulty of the spell. I should think it is a problem with the candles.” Noticing Zacharias, he cried:
