“Time to go,” he said, and stepped to his desk. He opened the third drawer down on the right and placed the infinite ledger inside. Then he shut the drawer and touched his finger to it, murmuring a command. A lock clicked shut. The ledger was locked away with magic.
I committed the drawer to memory.
Alastair pushed the wolf-capped inkwell down his pocket and held out an arm. “Follow me, Jani Lafayette. You’ll begin the search for the ring tonight.”
Alastair led me deep into the first floor through a hall filled with a thousand paper globes, lit like lanterns, that stretched to infinity, then through a series of smaller rooms, each with its own history.
Gesturing to a settee, he spoke of the famed poet, Antoine-Martin, who would lounge there for hours surrounded by his entourage while he penned odes to everything from pastries to bespectacled women. He told me about the marmalade heiress, Colette La Rive, who once entered a soirée with lit candlewicks sparking across her shoulders for effect, only to leave early when her earlobes caught fire. He spoke of dignitaries, musicians, and queens who had graced these halls. Then he spoke of more dignitaries, musicians, and queens who would soon kiss his feet for a chance to experience magic. Not once did he mention his staff.
Alastair went silent as he took me through a hall where three liveried men sat hunched over desks like tannery workers.
One tossed a set of carved sticks, watching as they fell into a complex configuration. Another sat motionless over a scarab-shaped bowl filled with water. The third grazed bandaged fingers over a table of sharp metal chips etched with letters. They looked up as we passed by and I noticed they each had one eye slightly lighter than the other, no doubt glass.
I tried to see what the three suminaires were doing, but Alastair gripped my arm and jerked me along.
We climbed a circular set of stairs and arrived inside the small map room from a doorway opposite the main door, a doorway that wasn’t there the last time I was in this room.
“How do you do it?” I asked, mystified.
“How do you think?” He patted the pocket that held the inkwell. “All the enchantments inside are written down in ink. Most are enacted with a command. As long as I’m holding the inkwell and say the correct words, I can enact whatever enchantment I wish.”
He muttered a command and waved a hand. The doorway disappeared, melting into the wallpaper. But the wall didn’t stop moving. It pushed back. The floor creaked. A tiny bed and tinier dressing table billowed up from nothing, turning the small map room into a modest suite.
He spoke another command and the cold hearth burst into colorless flames, lighting up the painting of the woman above it. The woman’s eyes welled with tears. One dripped down the wall, sizzling when it hit the flames.
I realized where I’d seen the cosmolabe before; the woman in the painting wore it around her neck. “Who is she?”
“A suminaire who was able to use many powerful artéfacts,” he said, his voice clipped.
She was someone important, that much was certain.
In that ripped page in the society’s handbook, she had clutched the wolf-capped inkwell. Alastair had just admitted this woman could use other powerful artéfacts. She clearly used the inkwell and probably knew what magic went into voiding contracts.
“Where is she now?” I asked as innocently as possible.
“She died,” Alastair said, his voice sharp. Well, that discussion wasn’t going anywhere.
He opened the giant atlas. “Before she died, however, she used your artéfact to draw each of these maps. We haven’t been able to add any since she passed away.” He looked from my face to the cosmolabe. “Until now.”
He wanted me to draw a map? “But I’ve never drawn in my life.”
Alastair’s eyes flicked to the painting. More tears tumbled down the woman’s face. “She hadn’t either, but with the cosmolabe, she could scribble maps to anything, so long as she had something to reference. She could pinpoint the geographical origin of an object that we already had, or track down the exact location of an object itself. She drew me a map to the jade-needled compass using nothing but a crude sketch in an ancient journal. I do hope you’ll figure it out as quickly as she did.”
“Are you threatening me?”
He didn’t answer. He placed the page of catalogued artéfacts on the table and tapped the entry for the signet ring. Then I understood exactly what the cosmolabe did, how I would be useful.
“I won’t help you,” I said.