with more clarity than you do, and you had her for five years. Time is a peculiar thing.
You’ll learn that eventually.”
He returns his attention to his papers.
“What about this challenge you’re supposedly training me for?” Celia asks. “Or is that just another way for you to make money?”
“Celia, dearest,” Hector says. “You have great things ahead of you, but we have relinquished control of when they will begin. Our side does not have the first move. We will simply be notified when it is time to put you on the board, as it were.”
“Then why does it matter what I do in the meantime?”
“You need the practice.”
Celia tilts her head, staring at him as she puts her hands on the table. All of the papers fold themselves into elaborate shapes: pyramids and helixes and paper birds with rustling wings.
Her father looks up, annoyed. He lifts a heavy glass paperweight and brings it down on her hand, hard enough to break her wrist with a sharp crack.
The papers unfold and flutter back to the surface of the table.
“You need the practice,” he repeats. “Your control is still lacking.”
Celia leaves the room without a word, holding her wrist and biting back tears.
“And for Christ’s sake, stop crying,” her father calls after her.
It takes her the better part of an hour to set and heal the shards of bone.
*
ISOBEL SITS IN A RARELY OCCUPIED ARMCHAIR in the corner of Marco’s flat, a rainbow of silk ribbon twisted around her fingers as she attempts in vain to form it into a single elaborate braid.
“This seems so silly,” she remarks, frowning at the tangle of ribbon.
“It’s a simple charm,” Marco says from his desk where he sits surrounded by open books. “A ribbon for each element, bound with knots and intent. It’s like your cards, only influencing the subject instead of simply divining its meaning. But it won’t work if you don’t believe it will, you know that.”
“Perhaps I am not in the proper mood to believe it,” Isobel says, loosening the knots and putting the ribbons aside, letting them cascade over the arm of the chair. “I’ll try again tomorrow.”
“Help me, then,” Marco says, looking up from his books. “Think of something. An object. A significant object that I cannot possibly know about.”
Isobel sighs but she obediently closes her eyes, concentrating.
“It’s a ring,” Marco says after a moment, picking the image out of her mind as easily as if she had drawn him a picture. “A gold ring with a sapphire flanked by two diamonds.”
Isobel’s eyes snap open.
“How did you know that?” she asks.
“Is it an engagement ring?” he counters with a grin.
She clasps her hand to her mouth before she nods.
“You sold it,” Marco says, picking up the fragments of memory attached to the ring itself. “In Barcelona. You fled an arranged marriage, that’s why you’re in London. Why did you not tell me?”
“It is not exactly a topic of proper conversation,” Isobel says. “And you hardly tell me anything about yourself, you could have fled an arranged marriage of your own.”
They stare at each other for a moment, while Marco tries to come up with an appropriate response, but then Isobel laughs.
“He probably looked for the ring longer than he looked for me,” she says, glancing down at her bare hand. “It was such a lovely thing, I almost didn’t want to part with it but I had no money and nothing else to sell.”
Marco starts to say he can tell she received quite a good price for the ring, but then there is a knock on the door of the flat.
“Is it the landlord?” Isobel whispers, but Marco puts a finger to his lips and shakes his head.
Only one person ever knocks upon that door unannounced.
Marco waves Isobel into the adjoining study before he answers.
The man in the grey suit does not enter the flat. He has never entered the space since he orchestrated the transition, pushing his student out into the world.
“You will be applying for a position to work for this man,” he says without greeting, taking a faded business card from his pocket. “You will likely need a name.”