The Wizard’s Quarter hadn’t changed since Shadrak had last been there. It was still a hodgepodge of teetering townhouses buttressed like fortresses, and with precarious-looking jetties forming a misaligned canopy over the street. There were cones and minarets, saw-toothed crenellations, flags sporting pictures of animals or geometric designs. Windows were of stained glass or frosted, or blistered with whorls that refracted sunlight in prismatic bursts. The whole thing was an overgrowth from the Academy, a creeping contagion that warped whatever it reached, giving the impression the district was made of wax and melting.
The winding streets were empty, save for darting shadows that Shadrak kept his eye on, just in case they were more than a trick of the light.
“Don’t like it,” Nils grumbled. If he dragged his heels any more, he’d end up walking backwards. “Where is everyone?”
“Thought you worked at the Academy,” Shadrak said. “When have you known wizards to be up and about before the crack of noon?”
“Yeah, well I ain’t stupid enough to walk the streets at this time in the morning,” Nils said. “Normally, it’s bustling. I tell you, I don’t like it. Not that there’s ever anything to like about this district. Always makes me giddy, like I’m gonna be sick.”
He had a point there. The buildings looked distorted, twisted at unnatural angles. Just giving them more than a glance made Shadrak’s head swim. Anywhere else, they’d have collapsed into heaps of rubble, but not here. In the Wizards’ Quarter, things obeyed different laws, or if they didn’t, they had the appearance of doing so. That was the thing about magic: it was hard to tell the real stuff from smoke and mirrors. Often, the only way to know was when the illusory fist broke your jaw, or the phantom fire roasted your arse to a cinder.
He led Nils down a back alley just like any other: shaded, dank, and piled high with refuse. The fact that there were rats was just testimony that the wizards who lived there were too immersed in their work to notice. Either that, or they felt it added to the aesthetic.
When he reached the switchback iron staircase that led to Magwitch’s third-story apartment, he trod as silently as he could on the steps. Last thing he wanted was to give the meddling mage warning and have him slip away on his flying air-raft. Once they were face to face, Magwitch would be all smiles and offers of tea and truffles, but they both knew: the only reason Shadrak hadn’t already knifed the scut was because he was sometimes useful; and the only reason Magwitch hadn’t cursed him or rotted him or blasted him to the Abyss was that he was as incompetent as he was ingenious; the margin of failure was too great, and he knew what he could expect if he didn’t succeed the first time.
“You gotta be having a laugh,” Nils said, clanging up the steps behind him. “Magwitch the Meddler? You really think that old coot’s going to help you find Ilesa?”
“I don’t think it, I know it,” Shadrak said. He frowned down at Nils. “Thought you were a thief.”
“Yeah? So?”
“Then keep the shogging noise down.”
“Sorry.”
When they got to the top, Nils was wittering on about Magwitch owing him money for a sheet of scarolite his dad had smuggled in from Arx Gravis, the ravine city of the dwarves.
“Shut it,” Shadrak said. He was confronted with an iron door that looked like it could weather a blast from a hundred kegs of black powder. No doubt that was the point. Last time Shadrak had come calling, he’d blown the old door to smithereens and taken the mage by surprise.
“I was just saying—”
“Well don’t.”
Nils puffed his cheeks out and tried to look nonchalant. “What we got here, then? Last time I was here, the door was green-painted wood.” Before Shadrak could stop him, he knocked.
The resultant clang resonated like a gong that had been struck in a cathedral cavern. Shadrak covered his ringing ears and kicked Nils in the shin.
“Did I tell you to knock?”
“Eh?” Nils had his fingers in his ears.
Shadrak kicked him again.
The surface of the door rippled. First, an eye the size of a saucer appeared out of the metal, then beneath it, a mouth. The eye blinked rapidly, and in that moment Shadrak slipped to one side, where he hoped it couldn’t see. Nils, though, was too slow, and it locked him in its gaze.
“You knocked?”—A convivial voice, male, softly-spoken. Presumably the mouth.
“Uhm…” Nils said.
Shadrak rolled his eyes and signaled to Nils to say something before Magwitch got spooked and made a run for it.
“Magwitch,” Nils said.
There was an uncomfortable pause, Shadrak staring at Nils, wishing he could see through the lad’s eyes, know what was going on.
“No,” the mouth said. “I’m fairly certain you are not.”
“Not me, you plonker,” Nils said. “Inside. I’ve come to see him.”
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” the mouth said. “Excellent. And may I enquire as to who you are, Mr. …?”
“Tell him it’s Nils. Nils Fargin.”
“Mills?”
“Nils.”
“Could you please spell that for me?”
Shadrak tried to get Nils’s attention, but apparently the idiot couldn’t do two things at once.
“N-I-L-S.”
“N for nitwit?” the mouth said.
“Just ‘N’.”
“As in ‘numbskull’?”
Yes, Shadrak signed using the guild’s secret hand gestures. Nils glanced at him, and Shadrak mouthed, “Just shogging say ‘yes’.”
“‘N’,” Nils said testily. “As in ‘no’.”
“You mean, no it’s not ‘N’? So, it is ‘M’, then?”
Shadrak sighed through gritted teeth.
“N-I-L-S,” Nils repeated.
“Mills,” the mouth said.
And then Shadrak heard a creak from the roof, followed by a thud.
“You stay here,” he whispered to Nils. “I’m going up top. If Magwitch comes out, punch him in the face and hold him down till I get there. You can do that, can’t you? Punch without breaking your dainty little scholar’s hands?”
“Hello?” the mouth said. “Is there somebody with you?”
“What you saying?” Nils whispered back to Shadrak. “Writing ain’t all I use these hands for.”
“Yeah, I heard,” Shadrak said, grabbing hold of a cast-iron drainpipe and shimmying up toward the roof.
“Mills who?” the mouth said.
“Nils!”
The last thing Shadrak heard as the talking receded was the voice saying, “Bear with me one moment. I won’t keep you long.” And then came the sound of soothing music.