He was passing a locksmith’s shop in the next square over when he felt the tug. It was nothing like what he’d expected, but it was unmistakable; an urgent pressure on his mind, like the feeling in the air when a thunderstorm is long overdue, except that it was massively concentrated in the proportion of say, cider to applejack. The sides of his head began to ache.
He stopped at once, certain that the source of the feeling was inside the shop. A glance through the doorway revealed the locksmith, an elderly man Alexius had once bought a padlock from (not him, then) and a man and a woman who were obviously foreigners. Interesting; so Gannadius’ theory seemed to be correct after all.
The man was tall and thin, with high cheekbones and a friendly, slightly comical face. The woman, obviously his twin sister – he remembered something he’d read about twins and naturals a long time ago, an attractive theory about two minds with an inherent, spontaneous empathy somehow attracting the Principle, in the same way copper attracts lightning – was strikingly similar, yet at the same time beautiful where her brother was, at best, odd-looking. When Alexius glanced at her, the sides of his head throbbed painfully. So.
It would have been helpful, he realised, to have anticipated this moment and to have worked out in advance what he was going to say. There was, however, a reasonable chance that the locksmith would recognise him and greet him in a manner that would make it plain to a foreign visitor that they were in the presence of one of the local sights. He stuck his hand in his pocket, checked that he had some money with him and went into the shop.
It began well. The locksmith and the male foreigner had been engaged in some sort of complicated negotiation, and a distraction was apparently to the locksmith’s tactical advantage, for he immediately broke off and made a show of welcoming his distinguished visitor, pointedly asking Alexius if the padlock he’d bought from him had been satisfactory. The words By Appointment to the Patriarch of Perimadeia seemed to hang in the air like sea mist in the early morning.
The foreigners exchanged glances. It was working.
‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ Alexius said. ‘I’m in no particular hurry.’
After a moment’s hesitation, the foreigner and the locksmith resumed their duel, which seemed to be about a special rate for four dozen padlocks with keys and fixings. Alexius was just wondering how to start up a conversation with the female when he found it wasn’t going to be necessary.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but I was wondering. I’ve heard ever so much about you, and what you do. Is it really true you can do magic?’
It would have been better if his head wasn’t hurting so much, but he managed to tune out the discomfort. He smiled.
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It’s true that the philosophical and scientific researches we engage in offer us some rather abstruse insights into principles of nature that, generally speaking, the layman cannot observe for himself; in consequence, and purely incidentally to what we actually set out to do, we can perform certain, well, let’s call them effects, which lay observers confuse with magic. But we can’t change lead into gold or men into frogs, or fly through the air or hurl lightning.’
It took her a while to translate all that; then she looked a little disappointed. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet a real magician. Oh, I’m sorry. That sounded awfully rude.’
Alexius’ cue to smile avuncularly. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet one too. But the nearest I’m ever likely to get to a real magician is what we call a natural.’
‘Oh? What’s that?’
Out of the corner of his eye, Alexius observed the state of the negotiation; if anything, it was getting more entrenched. His head was splitting-
She’s doing this. She wants to talk to me without being interrupted, so she’s making the deal get complicated. How-?
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I wish I knew. You see, naturals are very rare, and the chances of actually encountering one are very small, at least here, in the city. We just don’t seem to produce them locally.’
‘I see. Where do they come from, then?’
Alexius raised an eyebrow. ‘Oddly enough,’ he improvised, ‘a surprising number of the documented instances appear to have originated on the Island. Am I right in assuming that you-?’
The girl beamed. ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘that’s where we’re from. Oh, I suppose it must be obvious,’ she added, ‘from our accents and clothes and such. It’s odd, though, because I’ve never heard of any of our people being able to do magic.’
‘That word again,’ Alexius said. ‘The point is that you could live in the same town as a natural for fifty years and never even guess. The most that a natural can do is make things happen – perfectly ordinary, everyday things, nothing anybody would notice; a slate sliding off a roof, two men falling out over the price of milk – but he would make them happen. Quite possibly,’ he added, involuntarily massaging his temples, ‘without even knowing it.’
‘Fancy,’ the girl said. ‘So I could be one myself and never even know?’
The pain was no longer an irritation; it was downright intolerable, and it was as much as Alexius could do to keep it from showing. Even so, he couldn’t help feeling that this was all too easy.
‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘Extraordinarily unlikely, of course, simply because there are so few-’
‘That you know about,’ the girl interrupted. ‘What I mean is, if what they do is just ordinary things, as opposed to raising storms and turning people into frogs, how would you know? Or could someone like you recognise one if you met one?’
Perhaps, Alexius wondered, the pain is a sort of diversionary tactic, to keep me so preoccupied that I won’t realise I’m being led by the nose. But why would she want to?
‘Never having met one, I wouldn’t know. That’s the point, you see; the phenomenon is so rare that next to nothing is known about it. For all I know,’ he added, all too aware that potentially he was walking into the most desperate ambush – but all he wanted was for this to be over so that he could take his head away and stop it hurting – ‘For all I know, every one in six Islanders, or one in twelve, or any proportion you like; perhaps all Islanders have the ability to a greater or lesser extent. It’s possible, but of course nobody’s researched the point yet. It would be an interesting study,’ he added, with as much conviction as he could muster.
‘Would it?’ The girl looked interested, pleased. ‘Then how’d it be if – No, please forget I spoke. I’m sure you’re very busy.’
As he replied to the effect that if she was volunteering herself and her brother as specimens for study, he and his colleague would be only too delighted, Alexius could almost feel the hook catch in his lip. It was too late now, of course, and this damned headache-
‘Assuming,’ he added, ‘that your brother could spare the time-’
‘Oh, we hadn’t got anything planned for this afternoon. Venart,’ she added, nudging him in the ribs, ‘we aren’t busy this afternoon, are we?’
‘What? Oh, no. At least, weren’t we going to have a look round the second city? I thought you wanted to see the Academy and-’
‘In that case,’ Alexius said, and he could almost feel strings pulling him, like a wooden puppet in a children’s show, ‘please allow me to be your guide. There are a number of features of interest not open to the general public-’
‘Oh, how wonderful!’ The girl’s eyes were shining, and the pain in his head-‘Oh, Venart, do let’s! It’d be such fun.’
Not long afterwards, Alexius escorted his two new companions through the second-level gate. Every time he took a step, it was like jarring a broken bone. One small consolation: fairly soon, Gannadius was going to have a bad headache as well. On balance, he felt it would serve him right.