The Hexologists (The Hexologists, #1)

by Josiah Bancroft

The king wishes to be cooked alive,”

was almost entirely insensible to pleasantries, especially the parentheses of polite conversation, preferring to let the drumroll of her heels convey her hellos and her coattails say her goodbyes.

Isolde Wilby

Four primary streams split from magic’s ancient wellspring: wizardry, necromancy, alchemy, and hexegy.

As is often the case with so many old towns, Berbiton seemed to have been assembled by accident and as an afterthought.

When a break in the onslaught came, he charged at the plate window and the ashen sky beyond.

Warren

The letter, which she read while her mother stoically pondered the kitchen window, accomplished two things: It introduced Isolde to the arcane magic of the portalmanteau and its fabulous holdings, and it convinced her that her father was truly gone.

People who tell you not to be afraid of things are usually the first to get eaten by tigers. Fear helps us to prepare. I say, gather your supplies, arm yourself, and make the dark afraid of you.

Do not neglect to live your life. No cause, no matter how noble, will ever love you.

The person who puffed upon the pipe had graying temples, polished spectacles, a clean white shirt with sleeves rolled, and a kindly face that seemed at odds with the trumpet-mouthed blunderbuss he leveled at Warren’s head.

dragon reared before Isolde like a rampant horse—his short, muscular arms scrabbling upon the empty air with the talons of a raptor.

Isolde Wilby climbed from her grandfather’s satchel. Wiping the corner of her mouth, she smiled and said, “What a fine canapé! Now, who wants to be the main course?”

Warren Wilby hummed in his kitchen as he arranged sprigs of parsley about a cake of butter-capped goose liver. He was in a superior mood having spent the main of the previous evening sequestered in the bedroom with Iz.

Pretend that you are worth the trouble until you convince yourself that you are.”

Wilby had never been overly fond of cemeteries.

Lamps don’t work where we’re going.” “How do you see?” Iz descended onto the first step, and turned again, her eyes sparkling, her dark hair frosted with hoary moonlight. “That’s what the ghosts are for.”

Much as a lonesome child soothes herself with her thumb, so did Isolde’s vision embellish the abyss with nervous fireworks.

Warren gave an aborted squawk. She turned in time to see the nithe-grim follow its probing arm from the floor. It seemed to be pulling itself up by Warren’s hand. Its ghostly feeler wound up his wrist, snaking under his shirt cuff. War looked to his wife, who felt her face loosen with the torpor of dread. His mustache twitched, and his eyes grew bright. He grasped his belly as if he’d been gunshot, collapsed to his knees, and roared with euphoric glee.

Pornography was parody without a greater purpose. It turned tender intimacy into an eerily detached ritual; it transformed the human body into alien anatomies. It made the familiar utterly inexplicable.

Iz snatched open several more of the secretary’s drawers until she at last found what she was looking for: a stick, some six inches long, roughly broken at one end, and warted with the nubs of pinched-off buds. “There you are.” Pocketing the twig, she hurried out the door before second thoughts or her conscience could stop her.

would’ve loomed over her day and night, yielding his post only to bolster her spirits with the smell of cardamom tea or lemon cake or frying back fat. He would’ve made himself her blanket, her bolster, her mattress; he would’ve summoned every doctor, quack, and conjurer in a hopeless effort to assist her revival. He would never have accepted that there were some wounds that only time and the spirit could heal.

Warren

Isolde had always found the aesthetic impersonal and sterile. While her home could absorb clutter with aplomb, contemporary decor would be entirely spoiled by the presence of a dropped scarf or abandoned saucer. Its beauty relied upon its emptiness, and so followed its soul.

“Should I place my bet or should I retire? What do you think, Wilby?” Still on her perch at the bar, Iz’s gaze darted about, searching for what had given her away. And then she found his face, reflected and distorted in the polished planet that hung over the wheel of chance. From that heavenly orb, Obelos stared back at her, eyes blazing like boiling craters on an alien moon.

peace offering.” Isolde presented the broken twig through the allée of the parted crowd. Rather than turn to face her, Obelos beckoned with a raised and curling hand. “Put it on the board.” “I don’t gamble,” Iz said. “If you win, we will talk. If you lose, you will wish you had not come. Or you may turn around and go home, if you like.”

“I trust you shan’t call on me again.” He twitched his finger, and the tentacle sprang from the water. She scarcely had time to gasp. The monstrous arm wrapped around her, jerked her into the air, and dragged her into the fathomless deep.

Exoris uthidae

Warren possessed so much humanity and stood in such proximity to her that it was sometimes easy to imagine his ample compassion was her own. But seeing Alexander again after so many years, and perceiving the resentment that he obviously still carried, reminded her that one could not be human by association nor live with a borrowed heart. Were this the end of her, perhaps a sea monster was the confessor she deserved.

Isolde

So, any chance your wizard friend likes to potter with mandrakes or talkative birds?” “No, he’s not our man. He just wants to be left alone, especially by the likes of me.” Dragging her blankets along like an unwieldy cape, she crawled onto his lap. “How are you feeling? Still overfull?” He smiled. “Oh, you know me, dear—always a little peckish.”

nothing short of a miracle that Warren had been able to secure a brief audience with Duke Atterton the very next day. Though Isolde’s name carried some cache, the nobility did not particularly like her, nor did they wish to appear to hearken to a commoner’s whim.

Magic, my eye! You’re charlatans—plain and simple. You’re swindlers! And if I discover that Elbert sent you here to stir up trouble, or if I find out that you’re working for one of those tawdry rags, I will see you both in chains! Now, get out. Get out!”

How could she be expected to think while wrapped up like a mummy? She turned to complain to Warren—intending to say that they would either have to visit another clothier or join a nudist colony—just in time to see him dart into the mouth of an alley.

Isolde

people are shameless. We are different beasts when we think no one is looking. We are strange and frightening things.”

Conversing with Jessamine was like strolling a boardwalk in summertime. She was dazzling, unceremonious, and wholesome. In her memory, De Lee saw the young woman in the washed-out pinks and pellucid blues of a seaside watercolor. Jessamine Bysshe smiled often and with such disarming bonhomie.

“Only a moment? Can’t even pencil me in for half an hour?” She crossed her leg over his knee. Curling his arm around her, he squeezed her close and touched her nose with his own. “I could pencil you in for the rest of the night.” “All right, but I’d hardly call it a pencil…”

Warren and Charlotte

hole had to be closed.

He decided to introduce a distraction. “Did I mention we received a copy of Mr. Magnussen’s new book in the post this morning? The publisher sent it over for comment or endorsement, should you feel so inspired.” Isolde’s cheeks brightened with amused umbrage. “Oh, did he? Did he really? Well then, I simply must write Mr. Magnussen an approbation, one that will make the angels sing! His editor will weep tears of gratitude! The Publisher’s Guild will declare a moratorium on publication to give his magnum opus room to breathe!

Despite her lingering doubts about the results of her royal inquiry, Isolde found herself quickly absorbed by the piles of correspondence she had so long deferred.

She pressed her chest to his. “You are the only man I’ve ever known who wears his suits and not the other way around. Most men wilt into their coats. You bloom.” She kissed him on the chin, then charged into the hall, shouting over her shoulder, “And just to prepare you: I expect this evening will be a disaster!”

alchemist’s bolts, which cracked like thunder over Isolde’s head, began to crash nearer and nearer to her feet. If the lightning spared her, the scab-hided spider surely would not. She couldn’t imagine which demise she would prefer, though the point was moot because fate had yet, over the course of her short and foolish life, to ever ask for her opinion.

Like a wishing well swallows a coin, Isolde fell into her shadow puddled upon the floor.

Having mastered the ability to dive between shadows like an arctic seal traverses holes in the ice, the Umbrists could pass under the noses of entire armies, cross moats, and slither beneath barred doors. They seemed to simply materialize under the beds of their noble quarries, who they’d strangle or carve open before departing as they’d come.

“You have nothing to offer me. I’m insulted by the invitation and offended by your offer.” “Quite the threat, coming from a burglar.” She scoffed. “Call the police. The only thing I’ve robbed you of is your pretense.” Cholmondeley’s gaze flattened. “Well, there’s that famous tongue. Sharp as ever.” “I haven’t even whetted it yet. Give me a drink.” “I think we’ve both had enough. I’ll have a car brought around.”

The alchemists stormed toward Warren from either end of the corridor, brandishing spiral-headed croziers and speaking in the strong terms of nervous drudges. “You, there! You’re coming with us!” the foremost said. Tightening his necktie like a man preparing for court, Warren discreetly stuffed Ms. Eynon’s note into his shirt. Then he raised his hands, presenting a man eager to surrender. In answer, a pair of Cholmondeley’s guards roughly grasped his arms. When Warren looked again to Ms. Eynon, she seemed as distant as a steeple.

Isolde walked ahead of her husband despite the fact that he was the one carrying the map.

She had stumbled upon an implausible savant. A once-in-a-generation confluence of genius and physiology. Or as they were more commonly known, a sorcerer. Oh, how Iz loathed surprises.

Warren had grown up dreaming of swings. He could scarcely think of a more glamorous, urbane, genteel thing than a smooth plank lashed to the stout limb of an oak by a twist of jute. A swing was a carnival ride in your own back garden, a miraculous indulgence upon which you could animate yourself just by kicking wind. In the storybooks young Warren had read, children who had swings took tea on vast, weedless lawns, wore unstained pinafores, and had private tutors who taught them improbable instruments like the bassoon. Mounted upon ivied swings, those blessed youths laughed and shrieked and wheed at their tantalizing proximity to flight. How he had wanted a swing!

“What a mess. We should go home. Regroup.” “Absolutely not. The only good thing about an ambush is it tells you you’re on the right track. If anything, I’m more determined than ever to speak with Ms. Morris.” Warren deflated with a sigh, then plumped his chest again with a laugh. “Aye, Captain. But perhaps we should start by finding you another shoe.”

door bore so many layers of dappled and flaking paint that it resembled a topographical map. The stenciled number that centered it was eroded, but legible. Still, Warren checked and rechecked his crumpled note.

Henry bowed and blinked and seemed as aloof as a camel. I’m sure it was a test, a test of how convincing his transformation was. I admit, it was startling: He was taller, fuller framed, not handsome exactly, but striking.” “And what was the name of this familiar stranger?” Iz asked. Ms. Emma Morris hacked her spectacles up her nose once more. “Mr. Horace Alman.”

I’m not surprised Mr. Alman didn’t mention the possibility that the king had been poisoned, because I suspect he is the one who did it. And I believe I know the cure.”

wind flowed over the inflamed coal that was King Elbert III, though he appeared insensible to his fever, his servants, and the strangers who had invaded his sanctum.

Alman raised a whisper of a smile. “It doesn’t seem fair that a man should live long enough to disappoint two fathers.” “Your mother loved you very much,” she said quickly as his head fell against her cheek. His last breath fled over her pulsing throat as she hearkened to the approaching roar of belated sirens.