The Threads of Magic by Alison Croggon (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📕

swallowed hard. She wasn’t supposed to, but she knew what happened in the torture chambers of the Office for Witchcraft Extermination.

“If they’ve put her in the dungeons, I don’t think she can get out,” she said, so quietly that she was almost inaudible. “Nobody does. It’s too late . . .”

“Missus Bemare is more than able to deal with prisons,” said Amiable scornfully. “We’re not worried about that.”

“Oh.” Georgette remembered that Amina had said that Cardinal Lamir was a Specter himself. “But isn’t the cardinal a . . . a . . . ?”

“She’s more than a match for a Specter,” said Amiable, and sniffed. “If he is a Specter. Which he probably is.”

“One Specter, anyway,” said Missus Clay. “We must hope that she doesn’t have to deal with any more of them. My concern is that if Missus Bemare is forced to use her powers, it will expose us.”

“And that’s bad,” said Juin, nodding gloomily. “That’s very bad indeed.”

“Maybe it isn’t,” said Missus Clay. “Maybe it’s time we stepped out of the shadows. Maybe we’ve lived too long dominated by fear.”

Bottomly, who had been playing knucklebones all through the discussion, looked up at this and gave a tiny cheer. Georgette glanced at him involuntarily, and he vanished at once but almost immediately reappeared again. This time, Georgette remembered to avert her eyes.

“It’s rules to disappear,” he said with a touch of defiance. “Ratterbags aren’t supposed to be seen.”

“Of course it’s rules,” said Helios. He looked as if he were trying not to laugh. “But my name means the sun. I am supposed to never live in the shadows. And all my life, I have never lived anywhere else.”

AMINA SHUT HER EYES. THE TORTURER LIFTED HER middle finger from the arm of the chair and attached the pliers to her nail.

Even after all the hours she had spent in this cell preparing herself, Amina didn’t feel quite ready. She plucked some stolen moments out of the flow of time.

She wanted to think about her aunt Tobia.

Aunt Tobia had taught Amina the rules of magic when she was knee-high, counting them off on Amina’s stubby little fingers. “First,” she would say, “Do No Harm. Second: Everything Is Connected. Third: Never Use Magic for Selfish Ends.” Then she’d pause. “The Fourth Law. Well, that is more difficult. This is a law that takes a lifetime to understand. Fourth: You May Break the First Three Laws, but Only If You Follow Them with All Your Mind and All Your Heart.”

Like all simple things, magic is deeply complex. Amina bent her mind to the Fourth Law.

Amina’s craft came from a different tradition than that of most of the witches in Clarel. Her Eradian ancestors were master weavers who had moved north on the trading routes hundreds of years before, bringing with them spices, amber, gold, and silk. Some settled in Clarel, which was then an important trading center. It was less important now, since the wealth had moved elsewhere, but the Eradian weavers of Clarel were still famous throughout Continentia. Every Eradian child was taught the secrets of textiles.

Weaving the fibers of reality into new patterns: that, for both good and ill, is what magic is.

“It can be hard to see, because it will often cloak itself in honey and spice, or wall off eyes with deceptive words,” Aunt Tobia had said once. “But if a witch makes horror where once there was beauty, and suffering where once there was pleasure, and shame where once there was innocence, then you will know it as bad magic. Beware the bad magic.”

From the moment the cardinal had entered the room, Amina could smell the bad magic in Lamir. It was rotting underneath his robes, like decomposing meat. Until that moment, Amina had never been completely sure whether Lamir was a Specter. It was a persistent rumor among witches, but it was always possible that Lamir was merely an ordinarily cruel and ambitious man.

Her stolen moments were slipping past.

Amina cleared her mind, permitting her thoughts to drift where they desired. She remembered the sweet golden air of a summer dawn. She remembered the first time she had ever kissed a boy she loved, the first kick of her daughter inside her womb. All moments of profound change, in which sadness was knitted up into joy. Joy. That was what she needed.

At last. Now I know what to do.

Amina reentered the river of time and opened her eyes.

The torturer was still lightly holding her middle finger. He was extending the moment of apprehension, letting his victim know that he was about to inflict unbearable agony. The iron clamp held her wrist to the arm of the chair. His eyes flickered to her face, again with that almost imperceptible smile.

Amina smiled back, as radiantly as the early sun.

The torturer blinked and hesitated, taken aback, and turned to Cardinal Lamir. As Amina smiled, the torture chamber filled with the golden light of dawn.

Cardinal Lamir looked astonished, and Amina realized then that he hadn’t really believed she was a witch at all. None of the poor souls who had been tormented in this chamber of horrors had been witches. Lamir had known that, and he had tortured them anyway. As the light poured out of her, Amina’s witch senses opened: she could hear voices, the vibrations of unimaginable suffering that had soaked over years and years into the naked stone walls. She felt a surge of bright, merciless fury.

She concentrated briefly and the clamps on her arms and legs snapped open, releasing her. The torturer paled and stepped back, crooking his fingers by his temples in the sign against the evil eye. Her gaze swept over him with contempt, and he became rigid and fell voicelessly, like a block of wood, to the floor.

Lamir overcame his shock almost at once and began to shout for the guards. He lifted his hands, readying himself to cast some kind of spell. Amina almost choked on the magical aura around