City of Air (Lost Cities Saga 1)

10 Years Later...

No sooner than had the young magician completed the incantation than did the tiny gnome dart out of the incomplete summoning circle and into the waiting box that Leona had set up for just such an occurrence. As usual, he looked up at Leona with a broad grin that did not reach his eyes, full of flirtation and insincere apology, and said, "Oops, it seems to have gotten away from me again."

He stared at her, watching for a reaction much like one would imagine a cat with a mouse. Leona ignored him, as usual, and quietly removed the box so that he could start again. This was the third time this morning that he had allowed a gnome to escape, why, Leona could not fathom, but she was certainly tired of it. She suspected though, that if she asked him the young magician would say something along the lines of "your beauty is so distracting, my dusky maiden, my dark Circe, how could I not be dazed in your presence?" She had certainly heard it enough from various students over the past few months that she could practically phrase the sentence in her head word-perfect.

"Please try again, Mr Sinclair," said Leona, handing him the stick of chalk to redraw the circle. He grasped her fingers lightly as he took it from her, smiling widely all the while. Leona did not return it, but quietly resumed her position at the other end of the room to allow him to make his fourth attempt.

It was at times like these that Leona wished she could shove them aside and show them how a real magician summoned an elemental…but the master would not allow it. "No Leona," he would say, "When next you summon for an audience it shall be for the members of the Zodiac Society. Not even your examiners at the Exhibition, do you hear? No one else is worthy but the Zodiac Society!" This statement, among others about that organisation that governed the magicians of the Empire and its colonies, had led Leona to believe for many years that its members were monstrous gods who would eat her up if she dared perform a summoning before anyone else. It was Vincent, of course, who had cleared up that misconception though he had certainly laughed at her for days after she told him about her nightmares.

Listening to the master talk, also, one might even believe that he genuinely admired the Zodiac Society and everything it stood for. One would be wrong.

As the young magician bent to redraw the circle a fourth time, the study door opened and Master Opal walked in. Leona suppressed a sigh of relief as best she could. This time the young magician had no choice but to complete the summoning properly for he would not dare to show incompetence in front of the master. Of course, the lack of submissive gnome in the centre of the circle was far more damaging than any actual destruction to the room. While she was expected to correct the students when they went astray, Leona could not help it if some people took all that extra rope of leeway she gave and hanged themselves.

Master Opal, who had gone all grey in the last two years, his hook nose and wrinkling face even more birdlike than when they first met, took a moment to survey the room with his hawk's gaze. Then he asked, with the air of someone who knew the answer but would much prefer to hear it come rambling out his student's mouth, "Where is the gnome, Mr Sinclair?"

Mr Sinclair did not disappoint.

"W-well I've already managed to summon tw-three, sir. But I wanted you to see me at work, sir. I mean, I wanted to show you what I can do from the beginning, sir," the young magician stammered out. "The first tw-three were nowhere near appropriate, sir. I had to banish them immediately, sir, for I did not want Miss Ruby to be frightened, sir."

Master Opal levelled a glare at the boy that made him gulp nervously and replied, "Miss Ruby is my representative, anything you have to show me you can show to her and she will report to me. She is neither excitable nor delicate and certainly has been around magic long enough not to be frightened of a tiny gnome, and one that is a Lesser Earth Elemental at that. I also did not tell you that I wanted to see you perform the summoning; I wished to see the end result. So again I ask, where is the gnome, Mr Sinclair?"

The young magician turned to Leona now pale-faced and wide-eyed, expression devoid of all flirtation but instead sincere plea for aid. Leona stared blankly back at him, reflecting mildly that she should have just let the gnomes loose in the room the moment the young magician had begun speaking. But she knew all too well the danger of allowing an elemental loose in an uncontrolled environment and hardly wanted to relive that experience.

The magician now turned to Leona and said, "We are done for the day. I'll meet you in the steam car." He extended his hands for the box which she immediately handed over and left the room, not needing to be told twice. Leona could barely contain her excitement any longer anyway; Vincent could probably be at home right at that moment! And he had told her he was bringing along a friend from school, a real Imperialist and a magician just like her who was in town to see magic in the Colonies. She was so excited she had barely been able to sleep the night before.

The study door closed behind Leona just as the master began to scold the young magician, neatly cutting him off midway through "incompetent", though it could have been "imbecilic". Though he described Leona as "neither excitable nor delicate", Master Opal never scolded his students in front of her or raised in his voice that was expected to send women to the fainting couch. Leona could still hear them through the walls though as she made her way out of the house, determined to at least be outside rather than waiting awkwardly within beside the door. Besides, it was never a good idea for her to be standing around idle in an old house.

She had done that once, the first time she had started accompanying the master to his lessons and was treated to the horror of being chased out by a late matriarch screaming about "dirty monkeys tracking filth into the house". The master had found her later, hiding under the house with an air elemental for company and, well, air, while she waited for him to come out. She learned after that not to stick around until she learned to control the way she drew spirits to her, especially the ones that were formerly living humans.

As she got to the front door the family butler, a tall, dark-skinned man with a head of thick, iron-grey hair parted on one side looked down his nose at her and asked, "Where the master case?"

Leona never carried any of the master's materials, not even when he was exhausted and she insisted. Sometimes she wondered if she would receive such treatment if she was a boy, but the servants never seemed to notice the distinction. As long as she was as dark as them, she was no different. Sometimes this meant that she made wonderful new friends, and sometimes she did not. This particular butler, trained in the Empire's capital, mind, was not a friend.

"With the master," she replied, opening the door. Of course he would not do that for her. "He'll be bringing it out when he's done with Mr Sinclair. That boy is one fool, though, I swear." And then she slipped out before he could snap at her. So what if he served a well-to-do family in the colonies? She lived with one and that did not make her feel like she was better than anyone else.

The rain had been falling since the day before and now the wind was wet and cold, and seemed to go straight through her cotton dress as if it was not there. It certainly did not help that she was yet to get into floor-length skirts as the master insisted that fifteen was still under the age of womanhood. If he had his way, Leona suspected, he would have her frilly pantaloons exposed until she was twenty-one and since she was a bit short, having grown no taller than five feet over the last ten years, he would most certainly get away with it.

George, Master Opal's android butler was at the steam car checking the engine. Made of gleaming bronze polished to a high shine in the approximate shape of a human body or a suit of medieval armour and dressed in human clothes, he looked enough like a man that some people barely noticed that he was not one. The sound of cogs turning and the whirring of gears with his every movement were a bit of a giveaway. As was the hollow sound of his voice. But Leona often wondered herself if he really did have a human soul, for she could sense an energy source within him that did not feel like a Greater Air Elemental.

She tapped him on the shoulder and he turned to look at her. Then he tipped his hat at her and said, "Are we done for the day?"

His grey eyes were a little too real for Leona's liking. She looked past him at the steam car's opened engine compartment and replied, "Yes. He should be out in a little while." George turned back to the car, closed the engine and began wiping the coal-dust off the shiny metal cover. The steam car itself was also a marvel of Tinker engineering, but one powered by a Lesser Fire Elemental no bigger than Leona's hand and fed on less than a pound of coal. Leona loved to drop in the coal for it but Master Opal always scolded that it was not a pet and George refused for it would dirty her hands. Then she asked, hands clasped behind her back, heartbeat picking up a little, "Do you think Vincent and his friend are home yet?"

There was a lilt of amusement in George's voice as he replied, "Yes, Miss Ruby. The last report stated that his ship had docked safely at the savannah. Mr Vincent would not wait to get home after that."

Fighting the blush spreading across her face, Leona murmured her thanks to George and hopped up into the steam car before her smile became a full-blown grin. Vincent was home! If only the master did not take forever when disciplining their students, they could be well on their way to the house and Vincent who must be waiting and wondering where exactly his father and Leona had gone off to on the day that they knew he would be coming back. After all, it was nearly two years since he had left for the capital and school and Leona had spent much of that time afraid that he would meet some fair Imperial maiden and fall in love. Thank goodness he had not. Or at least, nothing in his letters suggested that he had so it was alright for her to believe that he had not…

Leona took a deep breath and released it slowly, slightly embarrassed by her thoughts. Of late, most of what she thought of Vincent John Opal embarrassed her. Vincent had been nine to Leona's five years when they had first met, a handsome little boy with a head of the whitest blond hair she had ever seen, very pink cheeks and lips, and clear brown eyes. He had taken one look at the little freedman girl, with her light brown complexion, dark brown eyes and braided black hair, her body overly-thin from years of malnutrition, and promptly decided that she was to be his little sister, to make up for the brothers she had been forced to leave behind. Leona had fallen in love with him instantly.

It was Vincent who sat up late with her at night helping her learn first how to read and write, and later to play cricket and rugby and football with him and his friends. They would climb trees in the parks, sneak into the stables at the Queen's Park Savannah and, during the school holidays in December and April, ride the tram west to go to the seaside. He would see her off when she went back to her parents in July and August and be waiting at the station when she returned, anxious to hear everything she had done while she was away. He never treated her as anything other than a fellow playmate, even if she was his father's ward and a freedman at that. It never seemed to bother him too, the snide remarks and rumours of their neighbours who firmly believed her to be the master's illegitimate child. It was impossible of course, for Leona had been two years old when the master and Vincent arrived in the colonies from capital, but then no one really cared about that when gossiping. Vincent was a good boy and he had grown into a good man.

She had hoped, more often than not as she grew older, that one day he would stop treating her like a little sister. She was not his sister and she did not want to be. But when he left she had been thirteen to his seventeen and he had pulled on her plaits before he left and grinned and promised that he would bring her back a doll. And then while he was away he had sent her books of fairy tales and dolls and even a carved pony.

So the "not-treating-her-like-a-little-sister" part had not exactly worked in her favour yet, but Leona could wait. It was only a matter of time anyway once Vincent returned to the colony for good. They had almost always been together from their first meeting and so she knew that this was the way until the end.

If only the master would hurry so that Leona could show Vincent how much she had grown! She had even picked out the dress she would wear to greet him, one with a floor-length skirt that she had secretly begged the seamstress to make, and how she would fix her hair and everything. But at this rate by the time they made it home, Vincent would have already gone to bed to rest!

And then, finally, the door of the Sinclair home opened and the master emerged. He called to George as he made his way down the front steps, "We're going home, George. I believe Vincent and his companion should be there by now."

Leona felt a thrill of excitement in her chest and once again had to suppress a grin that she could not help. She took care to compose herself though before the master climbed into the steam car. If he ever found out what she thought about Vincent before she wanted him to she thought she would just die.

Once settled into the seat beside her, and George began driving them through the quiet street to the busy main road, the master began, in his usual business-like manner, "When we get home, after we've had lunch with Vincent and his friend, I want you to review Paracelsus' research on the Golden Magicians of the Orient. I know I told you before that I want you to complete all the work on the Western Method before we begin with the East but I need you to show that Imperial magician that unlike everything else in this colony, our magical practices are up to date and perhaps even ahead of whatever he's learned."

"Yes, sir," said Leona, quietly. Inside she felt as if she had had a bucket of freezing water dumped over her. But of course the master would want to limit her contact with Vincent and his friend to prevent the Imperial magician stumbling across her secret before the master wanted anyone to.

"And don't allow yourself to be alone with him at any time," Master Opal continued. Then there was a pause, he coughed and looking everywhere but at her, he said, "Though he may only be interested in learning about how powerful you are…as you have had some experience with here…some of these Imperialists are of the opinion that freedwomen are there for their…entertainment and would not hesitate to make inappropriate advances towards you."

Leona felt her own cheeks heating, but replied firmly, "Yes sir, I'll be careful, sir."

"Good," said the master, and then he cleared his throat again and began, "What did you think of Mr Sinclair's efforts this morning?"

Safely in more familiar territory, Leona replied, "He's a fool. He intentionally made errors in the summoning twice this morning and the third time was just his bad luck, I think. I don't know why you're wasting time with him, all the money his family has is not going to help him pass the Exhibition. Thank goodness for that…" And so they continued for the rest of the half-hour steam car-ride from the Sinclair home in the St Ann's area of Port-of-Spain to the master's home in Woodbrook. It was a helpful distraction, Leona thought all the while, to keep her from bursting from her excitement before they even got to the house. Not that it stopped her heart from trying to pound its way out of her chest.

Her composure did not last long. When they got to the Opal house, a white, three bedroom Victorian structure that looked little different from any of its neighbours on the quiet street, Leona was the first out of the steam car and up the steps. But before she could throw open the front door, it was opened from the inside and standing there at long last after two years of absence was...

"Vincent!" Leona shrieked in delight and then found herself dragged forward, lifted into the air and spun around, by strong arms that felt as if forged from iron.

"Leona? Is this Leona Alice Ruby? Is this the little girl who cried like a baby when she waved me off at the port? It can't be! Who is this heavy person?" Vincent teased her lightly, laughing.

At this last bit she whacked him on the arm, and he stopped spinning her about, though he still held her up off the ground, her legs dangling between his. When she noticed this she scowled, though his grin grew broader, and scolded him, "I'm not heavy!"

"So you say, Miss Ruby," and here he put her down again. "But I remember that you were much easier to lift when I left you. You haven't been missing any meals then, I take it?" he asked with a mischievous grin and poked her in the stomach.

Leona hit him again to cover her blush at the way her stomach had trembled at his touch and snapped, "Enough of that! What did you bring me? It better not be a doll!"

Suddenly, Vincent's smile dropped away, his gaze over her head and he said, "Good morning, Father."

With a start, Leona remembered that Master Opal was behind her and that they were having this rather exuberant reunion on the front steps of the Opal home in broad daylight. She did not have to turn around to know that they were being watched, disapprovingly, by their neighbours and strangers on the street.

Leona grasped hold of Vincent's arm then and immediately dragged him into the house with the master on their heels as he replied, "Good day to you, Vincent. You look well, I take it your journey was uneventful?"

"Nothing to complain about, though Sebastian had a rougher time of it. He's not good with heights and there was some turbulence once we got to the Indies," Vincent replied, plucking his hand out of Leona's grasp, then reaching down to hold her hand as he had so often done when they were children.

Leona found herself struggling against the sudden and irrational urge to rip her hand out of his before her palms began to sweat and he noticed her nervousness. Her heartbeat still would not settle and now she was finding it a little difficult to breathe. No, she reminded herself forcefully, it was just Vincent and she was used to him and in time they would be more familiar than this.

Then the master asked, "And where is this Imperial magician, Mr Tyne?"

"Master John Opal, I presume," said a voice from the parlour door and Leona and the others turned to greet Vincent's guest.

Leona's breath caught in her throat.

Sebastian Tyne, the young magician Vincent had brought with him from the capital, was nothing like she had expected. Tall with black hair and bright blue-grey eyes, pinkish-white skin and a slender build, he looked no older than sixteen, one year Leona's senior. Yet there was an air of…something about him that gave Leona pause. He stood straight in the doorway in a light grey suit of some material clearly ill-suited to his new climate, and highly-polished black riding boots accessorised with what looked like sapphire cufflinks and a tie pin of an elaborately-carved letter M. It was the symbol for Virgo, "the virgin", an Earth sign on the zodiac of the four favoured by magicians who specialised in earth elementals. From Master Opal's teachings, Leona also recognised it as a symbol of the Zodiac Society, specifically of those who had passed their Exhibition and had dedicated their life to following a specific type of elemental magic craft. No doubt the master noticed and would be commenting on it at the earliest opportunity.

But Leona just could not get past that feeling that made her breath stop. This was a powerful magician, more so than Master Opal, more so than anyone she had ever met and yet he stood there looking no more dangerous than a teenage boy. In all of her fifteen years, and especially under the first five being shunned and hated by her neighbours at the Miller plantation no one had ever really made her feel, well, threatened. She, born a free woman in the colonies where "freedom" had been a relative term from the day Columbus and his Spaniards had set foot in Hispaniola, was a human being as much as Master Opal and his son and this magician. Being a woman meant that people thought that she was weak, "delicate" and "prone to hysterics", and a free woman was especially considered "prone to wanton behaviour" but as a female magician she was considered above that. No one expected a female magician to faint at the sight of a charging fire elemental and Leona only ran from ghosts because they could touch her and some of them were not nice. But this magician, he set the hair of the back of her neck on end…and the worst part was he had not even looked at her. No, instead his attention was focused wholly on Master Opal.

"Yes, and you are Sebastian Tyne. You are younger than I anticipated, and Vincent tells me that you are his classmate?" asked Master Opal, who remained in the doorway with his hands together, staring at Sebastian with one raised eyebrow. Leona wondered if he could sense it too, this magician's power.

Sebastian's face reddened and he ducked his head a little as if shy, then swept one hand against his side as if to dry them and said, "Ah yes, that is, I am. I managed to skip a few years with my tutors at home but they were all rather lacking, I'm afraid, which is why I'm here." Then, at last, he noticed Leona and, smiling now, said, "And you must be Miss Ruby, Vincent speaks fondly of you quite often."

He did not seem surprised to find that she was a freedman. Leona somehow managed to pry her lips apart to reply, and forced her voice to be steady as she replied, "I am Leona Ruby, nice to meet you."

Vincent gave her hand a little squeeze then and said, "Yes, this is Leona." She turned to him to find him looking down at her with a soft smile and then he released her hand to give a playful tug on the end of her single braid. She swatted his hand away and felt around to see if it had come loose. Vincent just laughed at her and said, "I do so love to tease her but if I'm not careful I'm sure she's learned enough to turn me into something ghastly."

"Those are children's stories, you dolt!" snapped Leona, her blood hot. She felt irrationally irritated...or maybe it was the other magician making her uncomfortable.

Sebastian gave them a gentle smile that did not entirely reach his eyes and then turned his attention to Master Opal again, continuing from where he left off before noticing Leona, "As I was saying. I don't know if Vincent told you or not, though I begged him not to, but I came here on a little falsehood."

Ah, here it is. Leona wondered how quickly she could summon some sort of fire elemental. Master Opal did not react, as if expecting as much but not willing to let the young magician know this, and asked, "A falsehood? How so?"

Sebastian smiled lightly again, replying, "I did not really come here on tour on whatever excuse I forced dear Vincent to give you. Rather, it is because I was searching for a teacher and after hearing him boast that you were one of the best teachers in the Caribbees who blended the traditional and modern styles, I decided that I must meet you." At this he bowed formally, from the waist and said, "I wish to become your apprentice, Master Opal."