Page 17 of A Tower of Half-Truths
No, “ordinary” was doing her a disservice. She’d managed to bypass his wards long enough to knock. No one, not even anyone from the University, had managed that over these past months.
Without the wards in place, the air was eerily still. There was no familiar, steady rhythm of magic—a sensation so subtle, it wasdetectable only by spending years learning to attune oneself to it. Or, by nature of being a Senser, like the woman who had just exited his apartment.
The woman he had justhired.
He considered throwing open the door, running down the corridor, stopping her before she reached the lift. He’d apologize profusely for his momentary lapse in judgment, but he had no business taking on a new assistant. Though she claimed to have no intention of becoming a wizard, he was certain he would find some other way to fail her, just as he’d failed all the others before her.
He wasn’t ready for this. Definitely not now, and potentially never again.
But it was likely too late to catch up with her now.
He turned away from the door and returned to his armchair. With shaking hands, he seized his teacup and drained it. The liquid had gone cold, but it calmed his nerves enough to allow him to think practically about what had just transpired.
Mave Reynard—if that was actually her family name—was more than a talented Gardemancer. She was aSenser.He couldn’t pass up an opportunity that had so serendipitously arrived at his doorstep. She would return on Onisday, and today was…
For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. Before she returned, he would need to reacquaint himself with a calendar.
He picked up his notebook and skimmed the notes he’d recorded during their interview. The end result of his hastiness was dreadful penmanship accented with inkblots, but he couldn’t blame himself for being excited. This was the first spark of inspiration he’d had in ages. Not since—
Gods, no. Of all the things to dwell on, don’t dwell onthat.
He instead forced himself to refocus on his notes. When he reached the final unfinished sentence, he let loose a sigh of…satisfaction? Relief?
Mave’s testimony aligned with everything he already knew about arcane hypersensitivity—a subject that had long fascinated him, if only because the body of literature on it was so sparse. Most scholars approached Mave’s condition with a heaping dose of skepticism, as they tended to do with anything that didn’t fitneatly into one of the eight Schools of Magic. But where others saw anomalies, he saw possibilities.
Already, ideas were beginning to form. They would either lead to the break his career needed—or the final nail in its coffin. Regarding the latter, he doubted it was possible to tarnish his reputation in the wizarding community any further.
And so, with nothing left to lose, he would give this new assistant a chance, see where his ideas led. He would have started his research right then and there, had he any clue where he’d left his books on Sensing. He looked around the room and sighed again. This time, it was out of frustration with himself. He’d grown so used to living in these conditions, he’d forgotten how dire he’d allowed them to become.
Months ago, he’d attempted to tidy up the place. But no matter how hard he tried, it seemed the piles always continued to multiply, the dust always continued to thicken. At some point, he’d decided it was easier to simply live with the mess than to attempt to mitigate it. Even if Mave stayed in his employ for only a week, she was bound to make more progress than he’d done in nearly a year.
But he had a more pressing matter to attend to: he had to put an end to those blasted newspaper ads. He ripped a blank page from his notebook, then found his spare pen at last. It had been with him all this time, lodged between the cushions of his armchair. He spared a single laugh at his own foolishness, then set to work.
He was halfway through writing his letter when he realized he’d never given Mave his name.
Six
Over the next few days, Mavery reacquainted herself with Leyport. By Onisday morning, she’d rented a room in the cheapest boarding house she could find, identified the bakery with the least expensive bread, and patronized the taverns with the least watered-down ale. Though her first week’s wages would allow her to live a bit more comfortably, it was still too early to indulge in frivolous things.
She arrived at Steelforge Towers promptly at nine. She waved to Bertie at the front desk, tossed a chunk of baguette to the kutauss—whose name she learned was Klaus—and ascended to the sixth floor. This time, she wasn’t inundated with thoughts to leave, though the rest of Aventus’s magic was still in place. She repeated the trick she’d pulled the other day.
Several minutes passed before he finally answered the door. His dressing gown was open, revealing a sleeping shift that hung below his knees. His hair was even more tousled than before, as though he’d come straight from bed.
“You’re early,” he yawned.
“I’m on time, actually. For a moment there, I thought you’d forgotten all about me.”
“No, I overslept, is all.” He glanced at his stockinged feet. “Come in while I put on something more presentable.”
She returned to the sofa as he walked around it and into the bedroom. He stumbled into a stack of books, toppling them over, and muttered something under his breath. His incoherent ramblings continued until he closed the door behind him.
Clearly, he was not a morning person. Nine o’clock was late for Mavery, who had awoken at dawn as usual. She chewed her baguette while she picked at a loose thread in her new blouse. Well, it was new toher,not the woman who’d left it in the boarding house’s washroom. It was several sizes too large, and its oatmeal color made her look like a walking corpse. At least it was better than the shirt with the bullet hole and bloodstains. With the advance on her wages, she could have bought some nicer clothes, but that seemed like another frivolous indulgence.
When Aventus reappeared, she recalled from the newspaper ad that he was a professor. Now, in his tweed trousers and matching vest, he finally looked the part. Though his clothing was made of quality fabrics, not a single article fit him properly. His trouser legs were baggy, his sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, his vest hung loosely despite being completely buttoned. But he was still the better dressed between the two of them.
“Well,” he said, “shall we begin?”
She polished off her baguette as she followed him to the bookshelves. The books here had been arranged by subject—to an extent—while the ones on the floor had been lumped together at random.
