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Chapter 1 — Flashing Tricks

"Something's bound to go wrong. It always does, when you're left to 'andle anything your own self."

I turned to Hunch, silk scarf in hand, attempting a newly-invented expression of bemusement. Perhaps I should have stuck with my customary feigning of innocence, but my manservant is convinced that particular look means I am about to do something highly dangerous. The fact that he is generally right is neither here nor there. "What is it you imagine will occur, Hunch? A repeat of the incident with the chickens?"

"I was thinking something more along the lines of one of your toff friends turning up an' recognizing you. Not to mention the Runners."

I experimentally passed the scarf from hand to hand, flexing my fingers. "Nonsense. The Runners have far more to worry about in Covent Garden than errant magicians hopelessly trying to persuade skeptical passersby that they are performing real magic, and their assistants that they can stay out of trouble for more than five seconds."

"I ain't your assistant," Hunch grumbled. "You ain't 'ad a proper 'un since that thieving Frog."

"I haven't had one at all since then," I pointed out. "Where did I leave the interlocking rings?"

"In your pocket, most likely. An' it ain't a matter of your needing an assistant none. You just get to feeling sorry for the strays."

"You never know who might be useful. If Shoreham's organization chose people based on looks rather than skill, I'd still be acting the respectable gentleman and being bored out of my mind. And where would the British intelligence service have been then?"

"Responsible for the deaths of a few less chickens, the way I see it," Hunch said unrepentantly.

"You assume everything that happens in my immediate vicinity is my fault. Isn't it time for you to go set up the stage?"

"I'll get on it." Hunch stopped chewing on his mustache for a moment, which was his version of a fond smile. "Reckon you could do this show in your sleep now. You were plenty nervous the first time."

"Why, Hunch, I'm wounded. I can't imagine why you would interpret a sleepless night and a green pallor as signs of nerves."

"Oh, it weren't that gave it away."

"What did?"

"For the first time since I'd met you, you weren't convinced you'd gone an' done exactly the right thing." Then Hunch was gone, lanterns and matches in hand.

I chuckled and fished in my coat pocket. Yes, the interlocking rings were there. Probably I had put them there, but, as Hunch knew well, that didn't really mean much in terms of my locating anything later.

My manservant might not realize it, but I hadn't been joking when I'd said I was bored. Even if I hadn't been accused of the theft of the Saltash set, I might have taken Edward up on his request to spy in France. The man himself had seemed to think running around a foreign country bristling with Napoleon's own special brand of paranoia would be some kind of onerous task to be endured. I personally had found it delightfully entertaining. Yes, there had been a rather nasty detection spell that had kept me up four nights trying to create a simulacrum good enough to fool it, and we'd gotten into a spot of trouble when an amateur wizard fleeing oncoming troops had managed to animate an abandoned pistol, but really, I didn't know what cause Hunch had to be complaining. His hair had only caught on fire twice.

Hunch climbed back into the wagon. "It's time, Master Richard. You got a good crowd out there, but if you don't 'urry up they'll lose interest real fast."

"Of course." I twisted my hand, activating the prearranged spell infused in the floor of the stage, which created the illusion of smoke and flame so I could enter unnoticed. It was one of the only pieces of real magic I used in this show, and I'd chosen to infuse it so no one would notice any spell-casting. I wasn't really worried about any adepts coming here, unless they were some of Shoreham's people, but Hunch bothered me about it until I agreed.

I slid onstage in the chaos. "Come one, come all! Prepare to be amazed and astonished by the one, the only—Mairelon the Magician!" The smoke cleared and I took a moment to observe my audience. I could see a haddock-seller craning her neck from the stall at my left, several workmen standing around with mugs of ale, a flower-girl in a bonnet, a chestnut seller flaunting his wares, and a skinny boy in a tattered coat tucked up against the tailor's stall at my right. The owner of said stall was paying no attention, apparently not the curious type. Beyond that I saw only a vague sea of faces.

"I am Mairelon the Magician!" I pronounced with a flourish. "Lend me your attention and I will show you wonders. The knowledge of the East and West is mine, and the secrets of the mysterious cults of Africa and India! Behold!" It occurred vaguely to me, as I reached in my pocket for the handkerchief with which I would begin this show, that it was doubtful that the Africans and Indians were interested in sharing their secrets with us. Being colonized had that effect on people.

"A perfectly ordinary handkerchief—as ordinary, that is, as the finest silk may be. Stuff of such worth should be kept close." A few in the crowd chuckled. Excellent, an audience with a sense of humor. One more thing the lower class had in abundance but that participants in the Season mysteriously lacked.

Overall, it went quite well, even the trick with the egg and the man's hat, which had always been a bit of a stumbling block for me. My first show, I'd been so nervous I hadn't managed the sleight of hand properly, and had been left holding a formerly fine hat filled with sticky bits of eggshell. Now that was one of the very few times I had regretted having Hunch around. He had never let me forget it.

Back in the wagon afterwards, I grinned at Hunch. "And another show gone, with no one dead or dying or horribly embarrassed. There was no need to worry."

"Hmm. Still the afternoon show to go."

I shook my head and began removing my false moustache, which itched a great deal. Sometimes I think Hunch just hasn't any faith in my ability to stay out of trouble. After all, no sane person would.

As I prepared for the evening show, I made up my mind to see if there was word from Shoreham tomorrow. He was usually fairly regular with his correspondence, and there was no call to accuse me (as Hunch had a few times) with sending him simply so I could have an excuse to go looking for him.

Shoreham would want to take the bowl, now that he'd gotten my letter saying I'd finally managed to buy the thing from that stubborn Baron (and for a man to be called stubborn by me, he really must be something special). He'd say, probably correctly, that it was far too dangerous for me to carry the bowl around, since possessing it and the other pieces of the set was the crime I'd been accused of in the first place. But it would make the platter and spheres that much more difficult to find, and I was determined to recover those myself. I was fairly sure that only under those circumstances would my family believe that I was not the original thief.

And therein lay the root of the problem, of course. My family, especially my brother. It had hurt more than I had thought possible when I realized he believed all the evidence against me. I had always known that my admittedly eccentric tendencies rather prejudiced Society against me, and would make them inclined to believe the worst. But I'd assumed that that though most people would cast me off without a thought, my family and friends would give me the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't above breaking the law when King and Country called for it, but I would never betray the Royal College that way.

But apparently Andrew, at least, would rather put his trust in the apparent solidarity of the evidence than in the brother he'd known all his life. Shoreham, Hunch, and Renee D'Auber were the only people I knew from my old life who believed my innocence. And the break with my family when I was arrested had made me more determined than ever to return the set and catch the true thieves, though Shoreham kept suggesting that I let him clear my name. There were days, though, when I wasn't sure it wasn't more than that. The world I was a part of now, the world of magical espionage, had changed me enough that there were times I wondered if I could ever go back to being Richard Merrill.

Well, I had to find the platter and other spheres before I could worry about that. Therefore, the show. Should I begin with the introduction I had used this morning or change it? I had always felt a little silly talking about the mysterious cults of Africa and India, knowing that since many of the African languages were solely oral and contained sounds not used in the Roman alphabet, recording the spells in those languages would be notoriously difficult. Unfortunately, 'knowledge of the mysterious cults of ancient Greece and Rome' was out. Ancient magical cults from those cultures tended to meet in bathhouses and do, well, Greek things. I would probably burst out laughing, and Hunch would be scandalized.

I checked the spell I'd placed on the chest that held the bowl, just to be safe. I was feeling protective of it after the endless hours spent haggling. Not to mention that plenty of people would be glad to pull it out from under my nose, even if they didn't know about its magical properties. The spell would need renewing soon; I made a mental note to do just that when I had a free moment. For now, Hunch had finished setting up, and I had a performance to do.

My series of tricks that afternoon were as uneventful as those of the morning, unless you count nearly dropping the queen during one of my last card tricks, but every show has its little quirks. Hunch came out with the tambourine, and I grinned at the crowd's awe. Of course, anyone who knew anything about true magic would be less than impressed by the glamour-like tricks I was doing here. But to these people, I had learned, it mattered little enough if I was a real magician or not. My skills in their hands would have spelled an opportunity to get out of poverty, and that was more magical than any flash of light or puff of smoke. I stored that in my mind to think about later, and went into my last card trick.

Suddenly, magic flared in my awareness, behind me in the wagon. I could sense my protective spell on the bowl going off, and whirled around towards the curtain. It hadn't occurred to me that anyone would be foolish enough—or determined enough— to take advantage of the brief time when Hunch and I were both out of the wagon. Not even bothering to salute the crowd, I ducked around the curtain, a spell on my lips. The ward on the bowl should have knocked out whoever had managed to break into my chest, but it never hurt to be prepared. No one was going to get their hands on that bowl. Returning it meant too much. Besides, if Hunch ever found out I'd gone in without taking extra precautions, I would never hear the end of it.

As it turned out, my spell was completely unnecessary. The enchantment on the chest had done its work, and had deposited unconscious on the floor—

I blinked. It was the boy in the tattered jacket I'd seen earlier. Now, that was interesting. Not that I wasn't sanguine about the reality of thieves breaking into my wagon, but I was positive that an ordinary housebreaker would not be able to get into my chest. The lock had held its own against skilled lock-pickers many a time.

Well, first things first. I pulled a few loops of cord out of my pocket and began securing the lad's wrists and ankles as Hunch threw open the door and hurried in. "Master Richard! You ain't—who's that?"

"Our unexpected houseguest. He managed to break into my chest and set off the trap spell I put on the Saltash Bowl."

"He take anything?"

"Search the cupboards and find out. I'll do the chest."

"I thought you said no one could get into it."

Taking inventory of the contents of my chest, I grimaced. "So I believed. If he was sent to search for the bowl specifically, he might have been given something to make access easier. Well, at least it appears nothing is missing here."

"Don't look like 'e took nothing from them cupboards neither. Not that there's anything in there worth the stealing."

"Point taken. The question is, of course, if we've got ourselves an opportunistic attempted thief, or someone targeting us specifically."

Hunch chewed the end of his mustache. "Pro'bly some cull as reckoned there was coin to be found in 'ere, what with you being dressed like a toff an' all. I s'pose we can't 'ardly call the Runners."

"Quite out of the question. And even were it not, I consider that course of action a last resort. Not to insult His Majesty's justice, but the Runners always insist upon focusing on the most mundane aspects of a person, such as if they have committed a crime or not."

"Law being mundane is a sensible person's last worry," Hunch muttered.

Why Hunch still believes I am in any way susceptible to what is known as 'common sense' is a mystery I shall never solve.

To be continued. Reviews are helpful and encouraging!