Page 69 of The Trick of It

In the end, Merlin laid out five identical cork balls and firmly slapped each urn over one singular ball, stepping back and shaking his head, his hands resting on his hair. “A five-eyed god,” he murmured. “One must learn to always expect being watched, and to never think with such hubris, that any skill or trick could turn one’s primordial powers away. I will accept them, I think, these five eyes!”

And then, one by one, he lifted the urns from the outer edges. One, two, three, four, revealing that even while he had stepped away from the table, the balls inside had vanished.

People were already applauding before he got to the final urn, which Rhys knew would either have all five balls under it or none whatsoever.

“Tell me,” Merlin said, looking at them one at a time, “do you feel you have been watched? Do you feel the gods have seen you too? If they can lay eyes on us, why not hands? Hm?”

He waited to see if anyone would answer, but no one did. The guests and staff were all leaning forward a little, watching him toy with the final, upside-down urn on the table. “Did you feel the gods’ eyes or hands on you tonight? Madame Ivanova? Mr. Caradoc? Master Yuri?”

“Certainly not!” Yuri sniffed.

“No, sir,” Madame Ivanova replied.

“Not yet, anyhow,” Rhys answered.

Merlin grinned. He gripped the urn firmly in two hands and gave it a little wiggle, as though the things inside its beveled neck had gotten compacted.

All five balls, then, Rhys thought.

But when Merlin pulled the urn up, a clinking rattle of metal sounded instead as an assortment of jewelry fell out of the thing in a glinting pile at the middle of the table, gold and silver and brass melded together along chains and hoops.

“My ring!” Madame Ivanova gasped, suddenly flashing her wide-spread fingers up in front of her, realizing that her ruby had somehow traveled to the table.

“My pocket watch,” Rhys added, nodding to the dented brass timepiece in the center of the pile. He glanced down at Seph, whose hand had gone around her throat in search of the ribbon she’d been wearing there all day, charmed with the little oval tiger’s eye.

That was on the table too.

Somehow.

“But then,” Merlin said with a twinkle, “where have the eyes gone? Ah, Father Wheeler, you found one. How odd. It was right in your lap.”

One by one, the rest of them looked down at themselves, each one finding a painted cork ball somewhere about their seat, their own personal god’s eye. Then, from the rear, one of the maids gasped, pulling a ball from her apron pocket and holding it up to her colleagues. Each of them patted themselves down the torso, and each of them produced a little ball.

It had to have been over a dozen, all in all.

And truly, the only thing one could reasonably do in the face of such utter mastery was applaud.

So, applaud they all did, as Merlin the Magician took his final bow in costume, grinning widely, as though this were always the final turn he had imagined. He bowed thrice, in each direction, and folded his hands in front of him with a little sigh of contentment.

It was, as far as Rhys was concerned, the best finale people like them could ever dream of.

Part VII

Choreography

Chapter Twenty-Three

Seph had gone up first, at Rhys’s insistence, to soak for a little longer in the bath.

“I just want to ask a few questions and move those two extra frames down here,” he reasoned with her as they stood among the little crowd of contemporaries in the wake of Merlin’s performance. “Besides, we moved around a lot today and I didn’t have to do it in stays. Go enjoy the hot water. I’ll be up presently.”

And, to her surprise, she hadn’t even had the urge to argue. Instead, she’d given his hand a discreet squeeze and spun on her heel, eager to do exactly as he’d suggested.

For close to half an hour, she’d floated in the hot water, scrubbed the road from her skin and hair, and idly thought about the odd house party she’d found herself attending. She crawled into her favorite pajamas, warm from having been draped over the chair by the fire, and sat in the same chair to comb out her damp hair and let it dry, loose around her shoulders, as she unpacked one of the books she’d bought in the Twittens two days prior.

Rhys had mentioned that he hadn’t gotten a chance to look at her choices at the bookshop. That had been intentional. She’d been embarrassed by choosing this particular book at the time, which was odd, because she couldn’t even feel the shame or panic in memory now, in the aftermath of just the last day and a half.

Changelings, read the title, with a small post-script underneath that promised: Strange and curious accounts of those altered.