The Bronze King Read Online Free Page B

case, fishing out the money. Boy, what would people have given him if they’d seen the Princes of Darkness dancing to his tune? I felt like that was my secret I shared with him (and the rotten Princes, of course, assuming they even knew what had happened), and that gave me the nerve to walk right up and talk to him.
    â€œHi,” I said.
    â€œHello,” he said. He had a slow voice with a foreign touch to it, and he sounded surprised and pleased to see me. He carefully set the instrument and the bow into the case’s blue velvet lining and draped a square of bright colored silk over them.
    â€œThanks for helping,” I said. “Yesterday. In the subway.”
    â€œGood thing you got in touch,” he said. He definitely had an accent. “We knew there was something wrong, but we didn’t know where.”
    Now, the funny thing was I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about, but I had this perfectly sure feeling that it would all make sense pretty soon. I also knew I was in something weird up to my neck, enough to make my hair prickle when I thought of the three Princes, and it made me feel a lot better to be here talking to this guy with the violin. Because he knew something. And he was going to tell me, as if I were another human being, not just a kid that you don’t tell anything to until it’s all over.
    I knew this because as soon as we sat down together on the low wall that rims the terrace on three sides, he pulled a beat-up package of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and offered me one. No big deal, he just held out the pack with this inquiring look.
    I’ve tried smoking. My throat closes up and I gag. It’s very inelegant, and I could tell from his clothes—everything worn and a little frayed but fadedly clean and pressed into sharp edges, socks and shoes almost the same rust brown as his corduroy suit—that this was a very elegant person. But I loved him for making the offer.
    I smiled and shook my head, and he said, “You mind?” And I said no, so he lit a smoke for himself and stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and looked at me, squinting past the smoke and a swipe of his hair that curled down his forehead on one side.
    â€œI didn’t know I got in touch,” I said. “How did I do that?”
    â€œThe way your granny taught you,” he said.
    Make a wish by running water and seal it with silver .
    â€œOh shit,” I said—I didn’t mean to; it just jumped out of me, and I had this ripply feeling of mixed-up delight and terror inside—“you must be from Sorcery Hall!”
    See, when I was little, Granny Gran used to do sort of magic things. She could find anything I had lost and tell me what I was getting for my birthday and heal up my canary when it was walking in the hall one afternoon and Mom didn’t see it and accidentally stepped on it and semi-squished it (which she said was the canary’s fault because it was a bird and was supposed to be flying, not walking around in the dark hall). Whenever I asked Granny Gran how she did those things, she’d say, “Oh, it’s something I learned in Sorcery Hall.”
    That’s why I said, “You must be from Sorcery Hall!” The violinist just nodded and blew smoke out of his nose.
    I said, “Are you looking for my Granny Gran? She’s in New Jersey.”
    He shook his head. “I don’t want to bother her. I’m looking for you.”
    â€œMe?”
    â€œYou’re the one who got in touch.”
    â€œActually,” I said, “what I asked for was Jagiello.” And there was no way this medium-short, wiry person in corduroy could be that huge, clunky warrior in armor come down magically off his horse to answer me. “I mean,” I added, feeling stupid for the way I said it—as if I was rejecting him for not being exactly what I asked for, that is—“you’re not him,