Unpleasant Spirit
From THE DAILY CRIER, Monday, Foreign Intelligence
From Veldra. The Chancellor, addressing the Diet on Saturday, said that the Empire would not for ever buy at Meridian what it might dig at home, and was cheered for some minutes. From the Alliance. The envoy at Meridian has been recalled for consultations. No reason has been given and none is expected. From the Municipal Observatory. The cloud over the College District is unchanged.
There were two petitions left, and the first of them was an old man with a mirror. The gallery knew him, and it went quiet before the clerk had finished the name.
“Mr. Oswin Pyke.”
“Twenty-one years,” said somebody in the row behind. “He comes every year.”
“What does he bring?”
“A mirror. He always brings a mirror.”
Two porters in green aprons wheeled the mirror down the aisle on a trolley. It was taller than either of them, in a black frame carved with fruit that somebody had gilded a long time ago, and the glass was old and gone brown at the edges. They stood it up on the platform and went away, and Mr. Pyke came down after it on his own, slowly, with a stick.
He was seventy or more, and he had dressed for it. The collar was new, but the coat was not, and it had been brushed so often the nap had gone. His face was long and grey, and he had cut himself shaving.
He had walked down this aisle twenty-one times, and every time he had told himself on the way down that this was the year. This year he believed it. He stopped at the platform, looked at the row behind the table, and bowed.
“Headmistress. Gentlemen. I shall not keep you long. I have never kept you long.”
Nobody at the table laughed. That was something, because in other years they had.
He turned to the mirror and drew a spell knot on the glass with his finger, then a second, over the first. Then a third, which took him some time, because his hand shook and he had to wait for it to stop. He was ashamed of the hand, but there had been nothing he could do about it for three years.
The glass went dark. It was not black; it was deep, and there was no bottom to it. Mr. Pyke put his arm into the mirror up to the shoulder, felt about, and brought out a brass candlestick.
“I put this in last night,” he said. “It has been in there since. There is room in there for a great deal more than a candlestick. I have not found the end of it.”
Two chairs at the table leaned forward. The man at the far end turned and looked at the woman behind him, who was looking at the mirror. Mr. Pyke saw her look at it, and twenty-one years came off his back all at once.
Storage, said one of Lucian’s minds. A vault nobody can open.
He has not found the end of it, said another. Somebody should ask him what else is in there.
Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, a spirit came out of the mirror behind Mr. Pyke, and nobody had to ask. It was grey with no proper shape, and most of it was mouth.
Suddenly, it screamed.
It was a sound spell, and it went straight into people’s heads and wrecked them. Three hundred students and guests broke into hysteria at once; they went for every aisle and over every seat.
Croft went sideways into the rail with both hands on it and held on. He did not know why he was holding on; he only knew that if he let go he would be on the floor with the rest. Mr. Grey was beside him and had not moved, and somehow that made it possible to stay standing.
Two rows below, Clara had Penny by the collar. Penny was not screaming; Penny was trying to see. Clara was trying to make her stop trying to see, and in the end pulled her down behind the row in front by main force.
Lucian did not move.
Eight of his minds went to the noise, because the noise took everything it touched. One did not; it kept looking at the platform, and so it saw everything.
It saw Mr. Pyke on his knees with his hands over his ears. Twenty-one years, and he had got so close.
It saw the table, a long one under a green cloth, with the five black gowns behind it. Each gown had a strip of colour at the collar, mostly silver and one gold. Four of the five judges were half out of their chairs, the same as everybody else. The fifth, the man at the near end, had put his head down on his arms.
And it saw the woman behind them stand up. She did not hurry, and she was not afraid. She raised one hand, white glove, and the air in front of it thickened. Mist came out of nothing and took the shape of fingers, which closed over the spirit on the platform, gently, hardly touching it.
The scream stopped in the middle of a note, and after it the Hall was very quiet. People stopped climbing over each other; they stood where they were, on seats and in aisles, and got their breath back. Some of them began to be embarrassed.
Then the spirit tore itself in two.
Half of it stayed in the mist, while the other half went straight up the tiers of the Hall, fast and low over the heads. It was running for its life.
Lucian opened his right hand, palm up, the glove on it. Suddenly the other half of the spirit was pulled into his palm. It thrashed, a small angry mass of smoke that did not know where it was, but it stayed in the gloved hand, and it did not try to leave. He closed his fingers, and it was gone.
“Poor manners,” he said, to nobody, and put the hand back at his side.
Croft was staring at him. He had a great many questions he wanted to ask and could not think how to start any of them.
Down on the platform, the mist opened, and there was nothing in it. Lara Allard lowered her hand, sat down, and folded both hands in her lap.
She looked toward the back row for a moment, then returned her attention to the platform. There was a small pause in the way her spirit sight passed over Lucian, as though she had noticed what ordinary eyes could not. Lucian noticed the pause.
Interesting, said one of his minds.
She saw it, said another.
He did not look at her again. If Lara Allard had noticed that his spell was working while what she expected to see was absent, there was no reason to make the matter easier for her.
And she is not asking, said a third. That was perhaps more interesting than the question itself.
Up in the fourth tier the man in the brown coat had not moved from his seat, and he had watched all of it. He was the only person in the Hall, apart from the woman behind the table, who had not looked at the door.
They cleared the Hall in ten minutes, and the porters put a cloth over the mirror. Mr. Pyke was still on the platform, sitting on the edge of it with his stick across his knees. The man at the near end went and spoke to him; then the woman in the second row did, and whatever she said took less time.
The last petition was heard to a Hall half empty, and Lucian did not follow it. At a quarter to twelve the clerk stood up with a paper.
“The Faculty has heard the petitions of this morning,” he read, “and is pleased to offer appointment to the following. Mr. Roan Steelheart. Mr. Barnaby Croft. Mr. Lucian Grey. Mr. Oswin Pyke. Mr. Gerald Croft. The Faculty thanks all who presented.”
He sat down, and what was left of the gallery made the sound a gallery makes. Down on the platform Mr. Pyke had not heard, and somebody had to tell him, twice. Croft had not heard either, so Penny told him.
“Mr. Croft. Barnaby. They said your name.”
Croft took his spectacles off and held them. He did not polish them; he put them back on.
“Well,” he said.
Lucian was halfway down the aisle when Lara caught up with him. “Mr. Grey, I hear you are good with spirits.”
Lucian turned. “I have had a little practice.”
“Then you may be useful tomorrow. The professor assigned to the new students’ spirit-summoning ceremony has taken ill, and I would rather not leave them waiting for someone to be found.”
It was a remarkably convenient illness. Lucian considered her for a moment. “That is rather sudden.”
“It is. You have already shown that you can handle an unpleasant spirit without making a great deal of noise about it. That seems a useful quality in a teacher.”
“You make it sound as though I am being interviewed.”
“Perhaps you are.”
There was just enough amusement in her voice to make the answer difficult to challenge. Lucian gave a small nod. “Very well. What time?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“I shall be there.”
Lara turned to leave, then paused. “There is one other thing. I could not see your grimoire.”
Lucian looked at her. “That is unusual?”
“For a Circle Four mage, yes. I found it rather interesting.”
She said it lightly, without accusation, as though she had commented on an unusual piece of apparatus. Lucian smiled. “I suppose I shall have to disappoint you again tomorrow.”
“I rather hope you do.”
She left before he could decide whether that had been a joke. Lucian watched her go.
So that was what she had noticed.
Lara had spirit sight. She should have been able to perceive his grimoire as naturally as she perceived the working itself. She had not found it, yet she had seen him cast.
She was curious.
For the moment, that was all.