The beginning of a beautiful friendship

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes has been in Darrow for two weeks, and the days have begun to blend together. Some days, he stays up so late that it’s nearly early, other times he rises before the sun. Most days he works on theorems that have begun to wallpaper his apartment, or sips tea in Gideon’s kitchen, or surrounds himself with a citadel of books in some corner of the public library. Darrow has yet to give up its secrets, but Palamedes is still determined, and he often pontificates at Gideon about his latest theories. Sometimes he talks to the kitchen table instead, since it’s less likely to talk back.

“Warden, you need to get out more,” says the voice in his head—the one he thinks of as Camilla’s—as he paces his apartment restlessly. She’s right, of course. Camilla usually is. On impulse, he picks up his phone and texts one of the few people he actually knows in this strange city.

Mr. Darlington,

Do you like tea? I would be very interested in meeting up to learn more about these portal magicians of yours.

I promise, I’m slightly less of a raving lunatic these days, though my furniture may believe otherwise.

I look forward to your response,

Palamedes Sextus.

Comments

[hellonspectacles]

The pride just radiates off Darlington, and Pal can't help but grin as well. Darlington looks like a boastful parent--a relative, at least, and maybe that's accurate. For all he loves the Library, Palamedes has never considered that a place could be a sort of family, but that's clearly what this house is to Darlington.

"Is there anything magical about it?" he asks. "Not that a house needs magic to be precious."

[more_magic]

"Nothing overtly magical," he says. "The wards on the house, I set myself, and planted protective species along the borders of the garden, but there was nothing there to precede it."

Black Elm looked like it should carry some kind of enchantment--a portal to another world at the back of the hall closet, a shelf full of ancient and arcane tomes in the library or a chest of strange artifacts in the corner of the attic. That had always been its blessing and Darlington's curse, the thing that molded him as solidly as anything his grandfather did or that the Layabouts hadn't. If he'd grown up in the sun-soaked West like Alex, in a house of clean lines or suburban conformity, maybe his life would have taken a different track. He'd never really know, and he hadn't ever wanted to.

"The magic of it is in the history, really," he adds. "That it was built, and lived in, and imbued over the years with everything my family was and is. And could be."

[hellonspectacles]

“That’s always where the real magic lies.” Palamedes makes a face. “Which sounds awfully sentimental, but I think there’s some truth to it. Sometimes I think we rely too much on psychometry, back on the Sixth. Some junior scholars are so caught up trying to read a thalergenic signature that they don’t even look at a manuscript.” He gives a disappointed sort of sigh. “Looking for molecular traces, they forget the people. At least with a place like this, that’s a little more difficult to do.”

[more_magic]

"No, I agree with you," he says, a knowing smile on his face when Palamedes sighs like that. Their friendship had seemed an inevitability long before this, but if he'd had any doubts, they'd be gone now. "All the tricks in the world, magical or scientific or otherwise, can't tell you everything about an object or a place. They can't make you see how it matters."

It sounds just as sentimental as anything Pal had said, but just as true. Huffing out a laugh, he shakes off the last threads of it. "Want a tour?"

[hellonspectacles]

"You know I would." Pal rises from his chair, checking his pockets to make sure that his notes are still there. One wall of his apartment is already covered in pasted-up bits of paper filled with observations, necromatic and otherwise. His observations here will make a good addition.

But first, he longs to see more of Black Elm, which is nearly as grand as Canaan House, but with none of the horror lurking beneath. "Lead on."