“So it’s flowing around the Viceroy right now,” Lucy says, shifting closer to Elgar. “So what? That doesn’t help us much.”
“But . . . okay, but hear me out here,” Elgar says, brain ticking over like a stalled engine just about to catch. “What if . . . I mean, you think it’s magical runoff, right? The reason your back is . . . and your nightmares? The magic is flowing into previously dampened channels, or trying to.”
“If we’re going with this analogy, then the dam is closed,” Lucy replies slowly. “I slammed it shut. To keep him out of my head.”
“But you can always open another, er . . . tap?” Elgar asks, then frowns. “No, listen, so the Viceroy is doing magic. He’s doing magic, just now. We don’t know what, or why, but he is, and that’s why you’re . . . glowing. The, uh, the waste-water of the sorcery nuclear plant.”
“Yeah?”
“Okay, I’m no hard science fiction writer, so correct me if I’m wrong, but . . . that water is still radioactive, isn’t it? Isn’t the by-product of nuclear fusion still nuclear, in and of itself? Isn’t that water still . . . wet? God, this analogy is really being stretched here. But can’t it . . . pool? Around you? In you? Can’t the evaporated atoms of it still . . . re-coalesce?”
Pip frowns at Elgar, working through what he’s trying to say.
“I wonder,” Forsyth adds, following along probably only marginally better than Lucy. He jumps up and crosses to the small table by the armchair. Forsyth tears one of the leaves off the pad of hotel stationery, and turns to face his rapt audience, the paper pinned between two fingers like a magician.
Then he takes a deep breath, and says a Word.
Elgar’s never heard Word magic before. He’s imagined what it might sound like—a gong in the deep, or high whistle on the wind. And that’s what he hears: a deep, resonating sound that vibrates in his bones. He gasps—he can’t help it. He’s moved near to tears almost immediately. The Word has no syllables, not really. No vowels; no consonants. No form. But he can hear it. Clear and easy. He feels like if he just purses his lips right, he could even repeat it. Close. It’s so close. It’s sitting there, just on the tip of his tongue.
He closes his eyes, inhales, sways, but he cannot echo what Forsyth has Said.
Because it’s not a word, not really.
Well, of course not. You never wrote down what the Words are. That’s the point of them. They aren’t silly spells in pseudo-Latin. They are Words of Power that you never tried to transcribe.
Silence rings heavy in the room. Elgar opens his eyes and looks at the paper expectantly. Nothing’s happened.
“Forsyth?” Lucy asks, but he shushes her gently, and then, carefully, reaches out and places a hand on her shoulder. Quietly, in the breathless, anticipatory hush, Forsyth says the Word again.
Elgar sucks down a sob, covering his mouth with his hand, stunned by the beauty of it, the deep buzz and whistle, the bells and the tinkle and the rushing roar that vibrates between his ears.
And then a small curl of smoke wafts in the gentle breeze of the air-conditioning. One edge of the page glows coal-red for a brief second, before curling in on itself, black and brittle. Forsyth’s startled gasp puts out the ember before it’s really caught, but it’s enough.
“Magic is leaking into the Overrealm around the Viceroy,” Forsyth says, setting the burnt paper carefully inside the otherwise empty wastebasket. “But it’s pooling around Pip, as well; a familiar, once-flowing river. And while Pip may never have learned any spells, cannot wield the magic that is beginning to pool within her, it appears that, as long as I am in contact with her, I can.”
“That’s beautiful,” Elgar whispers, reverent and feeling like he has just had, for the first time in his life, a religious experience.
Lucy jerks her head around, narrowing her eyes at him. “What?”
“The Word. It’s gorgeous. I never . . . I mean, I imagined, but . . . the magic looks just the way it should, but the Words—”
“You can hear them?” Lucy challenges, sounding hurt and envious.
“Well, yes?” Elgar says, scratching his palm. “Can’t you?”
Chapter 10 Forsyth
Once showered, caffeinated, and dressed, we eschew room service in favor of the hotel’s breakfast buffet, where—I hope—a villain might be less inclined to poison the food meant to be consumed by several hundred people. Once more, Elgar is difficult to disguise, but we find a table in the corner, where he can have two walls at his back, and I fetch a plate for him rather than sending him out into the masses.
“Juan would be pleased with you,” he complains when he sees said plate piled with fruit, avocado, scrambled egg-whites, and brown toast. To be fair, I’ve fetched the same for myself. Pip’s plate, when she takes her turn at the buffet (neither of us wanting to leave Elgar alone, a tempting target for either the Viceroy or Elgar’s fans), looks very similar, but includes bacon. I snatch away a slice and Elgar sighs wistfully.
“This is the worst,” Elgar says, as he picks at the avocado, mashing it with the tines of his fork like my toddler daughter. “Waiting sucks.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, my own toast partway to my mouth.
“I just wish the . . . wish he . . . son of a bitch, I am not treating my own damn villain like Jo’s—I wish the Viceroy would stop fucking around and just show himself.”
Pip snorts. “Your fault for writing the Viceroy as a Trickster Figure Gone Wrong.”
“Well,” Elgar says, straightening, “the next time I think up a villain who might slip his pages to
