The Magicians and Mrs. Quent Read Free Page B

“Do it before Mother hears. You know how upset she gets.”
    Tucking the book under her arm, Ivy turned and dashed up the stairs. She made a quick survey of the fourth floor, but all the rooms were empty, so she ran around back to the servants’ stairs and up the steps to the attic.
    It took her eyes a moment to adjust, for the only illumination came from the streetlamps below. She moved forward, stumbling as her foot struck something. It was a book. She bent down to pick it up and saw more books scattering the floor.
    Another thud. She hurried to the far end of the attic and around a tall bookcase. Mr. Lockwell stood on the other side, muttering as he ran his hands over the volumes that crowded the shelf.
    “I can’t find it,” he said. His blue felt waistcoat was askew, and his white hair was a cloud about his head.
    “It’s all right, Father,” Ivy said, touching his arm. “I’m here.”
    She might have struck him, given his reaction. Mr. Lockwell recoiled from her, mouth agape and eyes wild.
    Ivy gripped his wrist. “It’s me, Father. It’s Ivy. Do you see?”
    He tried to pull away, but the motion was weak, and she did not let go. Finally he shuddered, and the feverish glint of terror faded from his eyes. He turned back to the bookshelf, pushing his spectacles up his nose. “It’s here somewhere, but I can’t find it.”
    “What can’t you find?” she said, even though she had asked the same question a hundred times before. “What are you searching for, Father?”
    He pulled a book off the shelf and let it drop to the floor without looking at it.
    Ivy took a breath. “I’ll get a light.”
    She ran down to the third floor and found on the landing a lamp Wilbern had lit, then hurried back up the stairs, so that by the time she reached the attic she was panting. Mr. Lockwell was on his hands and knees now, picking through the books. She lit candles all around—light always seemed to help him—then pulled him to his feet.
    “It’s not here,” he said, scowling.
    She smoothed his hair with a hand. Years ago it had been dark and thick, just like Mother’s and Rose’s and Lily’s; Ivy was the only one in the family who had light hair and eyes. Then, almost overnight, Mr. Lockwell’s hair had gone from black to white. That had been years ago, when Ivy was younger than Lily was now. Her father had not left the upper floors of the house since.
    “Come, Father. Show me your globe.” She gave his arm a tug, and he followed as a child might, feet shuffling against the floor.
    In a corner, on a carved stand with clawed feet, rested the globe. It was a fabulous artifact, larger than Ivy could put her arms around, fashioned from various spheres wrought of crystal and silver and lacquered wood. Some of the spheres were arranged concentrically, one nested inside the other, while smaller orbs were mounted on arms and could be swung around the whole.
    While most globes depicted the world, this one was different; it depicted the heavens instead. The spheres represented the celestial orbs, which held the sun, moon, and stars in a substrate of crystalline aether, along with the eleven wandering planets, each of which was named for a figure from ancient Tharosian mythology. Inside the globe was a profusion of gears and pulleys, and the stand offered knobs that could be used to turn the spheres in different directions.
    It was like some fantastical clock. Indeed, from what Ivy had read, the movements of the heavens
were
like the workings of a great clock. Each of the celestial spheres spun at a certain rate, moving about the others in whirling revolutions and subtle epicycles. It was by studying these patterns that men of science were able to predict the length of days and nights and when eclipses and other heavenly events would occur.
    “Yes, very good,” Mr. Lockwell said, growing excited as he turned the various knobs with trembling hands. “I can use this to calculate when the conjunction will occur. I