The Glass Magician - Caroline Stevermer Page 0,98

a manticore, I try to spend some time in the river every day.” Ryker offered her his arm. “Please permit me to show you the way.”

* * *

When Ryker led Thalia through the double doors into the Changing room, the place felt different to Thalia. The cold damp of the stone walls now comforted her. Thalia could tell the river was close. She might have Traded for the first time at Keith’s Vaudeville Theater in Philadelphia, but this room was where Thalia truly had learned how to do it. She simply hadn’t realized that the thread that bound the two sides of her nature wasn’t fear, but anger.

Ryker skirted the pool as he crossed the chamber to the door to the nursery stairs. Thalia stood close and watched as he opened a second door, this one so well concealed that Thalia had never suspected its existence. This door revealed another flight of stone steps, steeper and narrower, that descended into darkness. “No lights here, sorry. We go down by touch.”

Thalia drew in a deep breath. The air on the narrow staircase smelled of fresh water and living stone. “I can smell the river.”

Ryker smiled at Thalia. “I can smell the tide.”

They lost the light before they were four steps down the stairs. Thalia followed Ryker by touch and smell. Little by little, twenty steps farther down, daylight began. They kept descending.

At last, the steps came to an end at an arch blocked by a heavy wrought-iron grille. Set into the grille was a door like a bank vault’s, complete with a combination lock. Ryker turned the knob back and forth in the correct combination. There was a serious-sounding click, and he opened it. “My dear Miss Cutler, won’t you come out to play?”

Thalia followed him through the gate and waited, looking around, while he locked it and spun the exterior dial. Six feet on, the stone-lined tunnel ended. They were halfway down a grassy slope. Below them lay the Hudson River. Across the river were the wooded slopes of New Jersey, bright green with spring foliage. Behind them, the hidden steps climbed steeply up into the bedrock, back to the Ryker mansion on the hillside above, one mansion among many in Riverside. “How many years to make the tunnel, ten? Twenty? All so you could go for an afternoon swim?”

Ryker held out his hand to her. “My family built it long ago, but not just for swimming.”

“Smuggling?” Thalia took his hand and they started down the slope, picking their way through the young trees.

Ryker chuckled. “I’d much rather call it free enterprise.”

“Definitely smuggling, then.” Thalia liked the feeling of Ryker’s hand in hers. “So when you take your daily swim—?”

“Yes, this is how I come down to the river.” Ryker scanned north to south and back. “Sometimes I don’t want to come back.”

Thalia frowned. “You want to stay in your other form?”

Ryker shook his head. “No, not yet. But at times it’s a lot of responsibility, being the Ryker, running the Ryker Trust, managing the Ryker businesses, helping the extended Ryker family, and watching out for Nell’s welfare.”

“That last responsibility would be a lot all on its own.”

They fell silent. Thalia let Ryker steady her when they reached the big rocks that made the breakwater at the river’s edge. They balanced, still hand in hand, on the boulders as they watched the water passing. Somehow, it soothed Thalia’s inner turmoil. “It has run like this forever,” she murmured. “It will never stop.”

“Not so.” Ryker gazed out across the river to the New Jersey heights beyond. “The Hudson River is younger than it looks. The gorge was cut when the glaciers melted during the ice ages, most recently only a few tens of thousands of years ago. Think what it must have looked like when the ice was melting, full from edge to edge.”

For a moment, in her mind’s eye, Thalia could almost see the river as it had been at its height. The water had been far cleaner; she knew that without knowing how. The air had been far purer. The world, even then, had been far from empty, but then there had been no taint of a city here. This part of the world had been wild, with only ancestors of the First Nations to watch over it. Thalia breathed, “Lovely.”

“Lovely,” Ryker echoed, but now he was gazing not at the river, but at Thalia.

Thalia gazed back. Her swan self recognized something in him, not identical, yet something akin all the same. “Is that you? Is that your seal half I see?” she whispered.

Ryker’s smile had never been brighter. “I don’t know what you see exactly. Let’s find out.” He Traded.

Thalia had a moment to admire Ryker as a seal, balanced beside her on the rocks. Then with a lithe twist he was in the water, and all that gleaming strength was on display as he dove and swam. She called, “Wait for me,” and Ryker stayed near the rocks, but he moved effortlessly in and out of sight in the current.

In her eagerness, Thalia gathered all she had learned of Trading, yet she did not Trade. She stood alone on the rocks and let anger and fear run through her, but she felt none of the signs she’d learned to associate with her Trades, no chill, no tingling in her hands. If anything, anxiety ran cold down her spine, keeping her from Trading.

Wary of outside threats, Thalia turned in place, scanning the hillside behind her. There, at the brow of the hill, stood Tycho Aristides, the Skinner of New York. He was wearing his slouch hat and his big coat. At this distance, Thalia could not see what weapons he carried, but from his stance, she could tell he was well armed. As Thalia watched, Aristides sketched a wave to acknowledge her, then resumed his vigil.

The next breath Thalia took had a clear taste, but no scent she could perceive. Her hands were pins and needles, and a welcome chill slid through her. Eyes wide and arms open, Thalia Traded. She let herself move forward and down, sliding gracefully from the rocks to the river. The current bore her up. At first, Thalia swam in circles near Ryker, setting each feather in her wings to rights as he played in the current beside her. When she was finished, Thalia arched her neck. Ryker moved out to the center of the river, where the current was strongest. Thalia kept up with him. Together they let the river take them down to the harbor. Together, they ventured down to meet the sea.