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The south tower of the Guild’s headquarters was situated such that Dalia de Wyck could just see the tops of the trees beginning to bloom at the edge of Central Park. Although her apartment further south provided a much more expansive view, there was something more satisfying about the view here. Perhaps it was because that while hundreds, if not thousands, of people could say that they had apartments that abutted Central Park, only Dalia could say that she overlooked the park from an actual fortress.
The tower’s windows, along with the rest of the windows of the building, were coated with sheets of a particularly remarkable material. It had all the benefits of a two-way mirror, allowing Dalia to look out onto the street below and points westward, while blocking all passersby from peering into the seemingly abandoned Madison Avenue Armory.
The Guild’s previous headquarters, an unassuming brownstone on East 68th Street, had outgrown its suitability after a developer bought up the rest of the block and tore everything down in the late 1950s. The Armory too had almost been torn down completely, but the Guild had managed to whip up a number of frenzied protests, which was enough to sway the Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the remaining portion of the building as a landmark in October 1966. The Guild moved in later that month and had been there ever since.
Dalia walked away from the window and over to the magnificent wooden desk on the other side of the room, and sat down in the cushioned chair. Two identical wooden boxes rested on the middle of the desk’s top surface, one of them empty and one of them full. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen the two vessels together, but that was by design.
A design that had worked too well, unfortunately, resulting in layers of setbacks that only now Dalia had just managed to undo.
Well, almost.
The door to the study opened and Gilbert walked in.
“We have a problem,” he said.
“What? One of our new recruits had a fake token? I could have told you that without having to call roll. But you insisted that-”
“Yes, but it’s more than that. The fake, it was laced with alkahest. Would have blown up the north tower and everyone in it if I hadn’t screened it first.”
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“Oh,” she said. “That is a problem. And yet, you waited until the morning to come tell me? I assume you have the bitch stashed somewhere so we can interrogate her?”
“Not exactly. She fled almost immediately.”
“Of course,” said Dalia. “Do you think that was one of her designs?”
“Beatrice? She’s quite capable, but not of something like this. No, I think it’s more likely the handiwork of-”
“Will you take off that ridiculous glamour?” said Dalia. “You know I can’t stand looking at him.”
“Fine, fine,” said Gilbert, who pulled the stone out from underneath his shirt and squeezed it.
The visage of Gilbert crackled like the static on an old television set, and Ty stood in his place, dressed in a blue blazer and grey slacks.
“Happy now, Mother?” said her daughter.
“Yes. And honestly, I think it’s nearly time to retire those glamours. The other one ended up doing a number on Doug, it would seem.”
“That and you made me keep him confined to the Mooney House basement for several years,” said Ty.
“Enough. It’s over now. Next time you plan on taking on such an ambitious project, take a day or 30 and really think it all the way through.”
“Deal,” said Ty, whose eyes drifted to the silver ring on her desk. “Is that…”
“Yes, it is. From 1815 if I’m not mistaken. But the diary will know for sure.”
Dalia rose from the chair and scanned the volumes on the third shelf of the massive bookcase behind the desk, before finding the one she was searching for. She placed the book down on the desk and opened to an empty page about two-thirds of the way through. The ring began to wobble before shooting forward onto the page. After a few seconds, it dissolved slowly into a circle of silver liquid, and then began rearranging itself into neatly-written words that filled the sheet.
Dalia lowered her head toward the page and sank into the past.
“Mother?” said Ty, when she re-emerged from the memory and slowly sat back up, her head pounding. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just … I’d forgotten how it feels. It’s a strange experience, reading about what I did back then. It’s almost like Rita was a completely different person, that these just are the missives of a woman long dead. But the memory in that ring, that is as raw as if it happened to me yesterday. And it was something I really didn’t want to relive ever again.”
Dalia opened the lid of the box that had been locked for so long, before tilting it on its side, and watched as hundreds of silver rings spilled onto the desk.
“Incredible,” said Ty. “It’s all there. The Compendium.”
“Not quite,” said Dalia. There remains the matter of the physical book itself.”
“I’m sure Beatrice has it. She did have the one entry you left unhidden.”
“I agree,” said Dalia. “But luckily our newest Guild member is perfectly positioned to help us recover it from her former partner. And once we do, it is only a matter of time before the full might of the Guild resonates across the continent.”
“Wait, how did you know she didn’t take the money and run?”
“I didn’t,” said Dalia, smiling. “But there’s enough of Larissa in her daughter that I was confident that she wouldn’t run from her birthright. Even if she doesn’t know it yet.”
To be continued in book 2, Guild of Magic.