Good. Along her neck, down her arms, the fever began to rise, burning and powerful.
Not a fever, she told herself as she set the type. My magic.
MES AMIS
When the magician was seized upon by a mob and hanged from the great white oak,
did you laugh?
Cheer?
Turn away?
Or say, loudly or in a whisper: he deserved it?
Had he done something to deserve this fate— or was it because he was a magician?
The people and their king have agreed that there is nothing lower than a magician. Nothing worse to be feared, no snake sooner to be stepped on. After all, for centuries they tormented us— don’t they deserve what they get? How dare they?
We shrug. Perhaps they do deserve it.
OR
HAVE WE ONLY CREATED
A NEW
TYRANNY?
A French revolutionary said:
SOMEONE MUST DIE, IF WE ARE TO LIVE
Some must be
SACRIFICED for the GREATER GOOD
FOR
OUR
PROGRESS
What progress is worth the sacrifice of another human being?
FOR THAT IS WHAT A MAGICIAN IS
What if the person who died were YOU?
In your heart, ask yourself:
ARE YOU READY TO DIE FOR AN IDEA?
ARE YOU CERTAIN
IT IS THE RIGHT ONE?
It took one long day, but then they were finished.
Across Paris, in the soft morning hours before dawn, the pamphlets went out. They were tied and knotted with rough twine and bundled into wagons while half-sleeping horses waited drowsily, one leg cocked. They were swung into doorways. Piled and stacked. Knives slipped under twine to shear it off so that the pamphlets could be settled onto shelves or counters or folded into bags for selling on the street.
To be read, consumed.
Sheets of paper, like feathers from a burst pillow, lofted into the city’s tangle of streets. Floating away on the slightest breeze, landing in stores and squares and cafés. Paper passed from hand to hand to hand. A stream of words, wending its way through the city’s heart and out through all its arteries, until Camille’s defense of Blaise and of magic was on everyone’s lips.
And then came the response. Swift, unambiguous.
Clothing stuffed with straw, heads shaped from a pillowcases or sacks. Features painted on, bright crimson lips. A ruff of dried leaves for a cravat. On every face were blue tears, spilling from hastily drawn eyes. Tears, fat and heavy like rain. Some effigies had hands made of gloves, the fingertips blackened with tar.
They were shaped out of hatred, hatred itself fashioned from the fabric of fear.
And all of them, strung up like pheasants, were effigies of magicians.
42
“You were right to stand up for magic,” Adèle said the next morning, when she brought Camille a breakfast tray.
She rubbed at her aching temples. “All night the Comité threatened me in my dreams. I can only imagine what is happening in the city.”
“It had to be said. And besides,” she said, a note of pride in her voice, “they cannot get in here.” She handed her a small cup of coffee and set the letter tray beside her chair.
A small package lay on it. It was dirty, as if it had passed through many hands. Brown paper enfolded it, bound with red string. The careful handwriting was only vaguely familiar. As she untied the string, the wrapping fell open. There seemed to be nothing in it except for a card that tumbled out onto the coverlet.
On it was written:
A scant five minutes after you left the bookstore, I came across a copy of the book you are looking for. I nearly sent it but changed my mind. Instead I’ve set it aside for you. Come to the store as soon as you can. If I am not here, take it with you.
And as to what is enclosed, consider it a gift from someone who struggled with his heritage just as you have.
Ton ami,
Blaise Delouvet
Beneath he’d sketched a mountain. One side was shaded with inky hatch marks, the other side illuminated by a sun.
He had done this for her. He hadn’t been afraid when she’d told him what she suspected about herself. He hadn’t reminded her that magic was wrong, or treated her like a fool who clung to something that was forbidden by law, a magic that could kill you in more ways than one. He’d reassured her that magic itself was not bad. That it might even be good, necessary.
She imagined him opening one of the crates of books and seeing the flash of green and silver, setting the book aside for her. Writing this note. And then letting the customer in, through the store’s wards. Soon after the mob broke down the door—or