Before he could finish, Kibo cleared his throat. “Half—”
“Half a percent! Thanks, I was getting there. Half-a-percent failure rate. Now listen, I may not be the absolute best gambler out there, but someone shows me a deal that’s 99.5% a sure thing? I’m there. We’re there,” he amended, reaching out and taking both Amanda’s and Kibo’s hands in his own. “We worked hard to get there so far. Let’s not be timid now.”
Kibo nodded and clasped right back on Tillby’s offered hand. “I’m still in, don’t worry. I want to know what happened with the girl, but it’s not going to interfere with my work.”
Amanda sighed. “It’s going to bother me, too, but I’m a professional. The spell works most of the time; that it went wrong exactly once doesn’t mean too much, I suppose. I’m in, too.”
Tillby chuckled, an encouraging sound. “Good! Good,” he repeated, his voice heavy with what sounded like genuine emotion. “We can do this. Tomorrow, after the last show, we’ll get outta this dump. If we do good enough, we’ll be able to retire to the country and live the rest of our days as landed money.”
“That’s what you said about Herzeschal.” Amanda’s voice was similarly more subdued than before.
“We got unlucky in Herzeschal. Luck won’t abandon us again; I’m sure of it. Not now. Not after all the work we’ve put into it. My dad always said that luck favors the prepared. Well, none can say that’s not us, right? Girl!” He was shouting, and it made Skate jump. “Another round for this table, and fast.”
He paid for the drinks, and each of them took one of the three and lifted it high above the center of the table. “To the bold!”
“To the prepared,” Amanda corrected, and when Tillby laughed, the three flagons thudded together. As they drank, the vision began to fade.
Skate pulled back up to a standing position and rubbed her eyes; she hadn’t been blinking. Belamy sat back and brought a hand up to stroke his beard.
“You managed to find Kibo the Magnificent,” Skate said as moisture found its way back to her eyeballs. “Was that on purpose or an accident?”
“Both, oddly enough.” Belamy stood and opened a drawer in his desk. While rummaging through its contents, he said, “I was trying to find the trio of performers you told me about, and decided to start with the least likely to succeed and work my way down to the others. Imagine my surprise when I found our beloved stage magician within a few moments! There was no resistance whatsoever; it was as if I were trying to scry on some yokel peasant.”
“So he ain’t a proper wizard. It’s just an act. Wait,” Skate said as she thought of what she knew of the strange man, “that can’t be right. The only thing I remember from the show was him doing some magic. And after the show, too, when he tossed me away. So what gives?”
“You’re right, first off. I don’t think the premise that he is an actual wizard is incorrect; his fellow performers seemed to assume him to be the one knowledgeable about magic, and to be the one responsible for the spell for…whatever it is they’re doing.” Belamy leaned into the drawer he’d pulled open, all the way up to his waist, despite the fact that the drawer could only have been half a foot deep at most. When he spoke again, he sounded like he was speaking from within some small nearby room rather than from within a simple wooden drawer in a desk. “I think the best explanation for the ease of my search with Mr. Kibo is that he’s not exactly a ‘proper wizard’ after all, as you said. He’s self-taught.”
With some effort, Belamy pulled himself from the drawer, and in his hands were two bright blue gemstones, each as small as her pinky nail. “No wizard with adequate training from a skilled teacher could possibly have failed to have mastered the simplest attempts at blocking clairvoyant eyes of others. I believe our stage magician is an autodidact. He didn’t have his protections in place because he doesn’t have any—because he doesn’t know about them.”
Skate did not see any particular importance in this new information. She was more focused on the fact that it sounded like the Ink knew of these three and wanted them gone.
Belamy put down the two gemstones with a soft tic and brought his hand back to his beard in thought. “Self-taught practitioners are dangerous, both to themselves and to others. Trial and error ends all too often in the latter, usually with disastrous consequences. It’s entirely unpredictable who will succeed in learning magic that way, and it’s equally unpredictable what magic they’ll teach themselves in the process. It is not unheard of for amateurs fumbling in the dark to find something new and truly unique. It’s possible Kibo has done something of the like and is now using it toward some dishonest purpose. Of course, I won’t know for sure until I see it for myself tomorrow.”
“That’s probably not a good idea.” Skate said the words without thinking and immediately wished she’d said nothing at all. Belamy’s confused expression demanded an answer. She improvised. “Aren’t you worried that whatever it is they’re doing will take your senses away like everyone else?”
Belamy stared a moment before his expression melted into a sloping, wry smile. “I appreciate the concern, but I should be fine. If it is some mind-altering magic, it won’t bother me. The half-dead like myself are unbothered by such attempts.”
Skate nodded and smiled, hoping that she appeared as relieved as she genuinely was without revealing why. He bought it. In truth, she was hoping he’d stay away from such an event because she planned, at the first available opportunity, to report to Boss Marshall when and where these three were performing their last show before skipping town. The Ink wanted them out, and Skate planned to help make that happen. “What were you searching for those three for, anyway?”
“To help Jack Gherun. I assumed these three were in league with the criminals who’d tried to extort money out of him. Based on that conversation, though, I’m inclined to think otherwise. Our performing band has come into conflict with these others. Which means,” Belamy finished with a sweeping wave toward his two gemstones, “they might have some information for me about who these thugs are.”
“You’re gonna trade gems for info on the thieves you’re after?”
“Not exactly, no. But I plan to get the information just the same.”
Okay, gotta make time today to get to the Boss. “Good luck, I guess.”
Rattle opened the kitchen door with a bang, and carried over a plate full of scrambled eggs, jelly, and toast. It set the large plate (Almost a platter, really, she thought) on the floor in front of the fire, and then returned to the kitchen for the inevitable clean-up. Skate went and began her meal, using the toast as a shovel to get the warm yellow fluff down faster. Belamy swept past her toward the hidden door to the basement laboratory. The click of the false book opened the way, and he disappeared through the hole in the wall. Skate finished her meal, leaving the plate on the floor, and went down the stairway after her teacher. The familiar acrid odor stung her nostrils again.
“What are you doing?” The ever-glowing lamps were illuminating the room, and Belamy was gingerly taking several heavy bottles from the high shelf.