M Is for Magic by Neil Gaiman Read Free Book Online

know,” he said, as if speaking to the skull, “this could be my chance to get one up on the the rest of the bleeders on the Guild High Council. Dead-blood aristocratic half-wits.”
    â€œThere speaks the son of a slave,” said Aathia. “If it wasn’t for my name you would never have made council membership.”
    â€œShut up.” His expression was vaguely worried, which meant nothing at all. “I can show them. I’m going to show them. You’ll see.”
    He hefted the skull in his right hand as if testing the weight of it, reveling in and computing the valueof the bone, the jewels, the fine-worked silver. Then he spun around, suprisingly fast for one so big, and threw the skull with all his might at a far pillar, well beyond the field of play. It seemed to hang in the air forever and then, with a painful slowness, it hit the pillar and smashed into a thousand fragments. The almost-musical tinkling sounds it made as it did so were very beautiful.
    â€œI’ll go and change and meet this Glew Croll then,” muttered Carthus. He walked out of the room, carrying the scroll with him. Aathia stared at him as he left, then she clapped her hands, summoning a slave to clear up the mess.
    The caves that honeycomb the rock on the north side of the Bay of Dawn, down into the bay, beneath the bridge, are known as the Undercliffs. Carthus took his clothes off at the door, handing them to his slave, and walked down the narrow stone steps. His flesh gave an involuntary shiver as he entered the water (kept a little below blood temperature in the aristocratic manner, but still chill after the heat of the day), and he swam down the corridor into an anteroom. Reflected light glimmered across the walls. On the water floated four other men and twowomen. They lounged on large wooden floats, elegantly carved into the shapes of waterbirds and fish.
    Carthus swam over to an empty float—a dolphin—and hauled his bulk up onto it. Like the other six he wore nothing but the Jewelers’ Guild High Council pendant. All the High Council members, bar one, were there.
    â€œWhere’s the president?” he asked of no one in particular.
    A skeletal woman with flawless white skin pointed to one of the inner rooms. Then she yawned and twisted her body, a rippling twist, at the end of which she was off the float—hers was carved into the shape of a giant swan—and into the water. Carthus envied and hated her: that twist had been one of the twelve so-called noble dives. He knew that, despite having practiced for years, he could not hope to emulate her.
    â€œEffete bitch,” he muttered beneath his breath. Still, it was reassuring to see other council members here. He wondered if any of them knew anything he didn’t.
    There was a splashing behind him, and he turned. Wommet, the council president, was clutchingCarthus’s float. They bowed to each other, then Wommet (a small hunchback, whose ever so many times great-grandfather had made his fortune finding for King Emmidus the jewels that had bankrupted Ponti, and had thus laid the foundations for the Ruling Enclave’s two-thousand-year rule) said, “He will speak to you next, Messire Carthus. Down the corridor on the left. It’s the first room you come to.”
    The other council members, on their floats, looked at Carthus blankly. They were aristocrats of Ponti, and so they hid their envy and their irritation that Carthus was going in before them, although they did not hide it as well as they thought they did; and, somewhere deep inside, Carthus smiled.
    He suppressed the urge to ask the hunchback what this business was all about, and he slipped off his float. The warmed seawater stung his eyes.
    The room in which Grew Croll waited was up several rock steps, and was dry and dark and smoky. One lamp burned fitfully on the table in the center of the room. There was a robe on the chair, and Carthus slipped it on. A man