Captive Magics

10 - A Bureau for the King

Moving stacks of paper became Leander's life whenever they returned to her debris-cluttered workplace, which was unfailingly dull exercise. He saw very few of Lissy's co-workers and thought disparagingly that none of them could bother being at their job long, which would never have been permitted in his department at the civil service. Lissy herself kept irregular office hours, attending her desk only to look over schematics of mysterious machines of war and furiously scribble down her thoughts whilst flicking through dusty books. When her in-tray was empty she seemed quite at her leisure, and Leander rather felt she could use that time to speed up the process of moving documents upstairs. She did not though, instead spending it in the workshop he had yet to see and leaving him alone in the house as she went to various appointments, about which he was not informed. This pattern broke one day when Leander found his hands putting down the dusting rags in the drawing room though his task was far from finished. To his shock he found himself heading for the closed door of Lissy's workshop.

"I need you to carry something," she explained as he entered. The room was cluttered, but purposefully so. There were cork tiles on one wall to which she had pinned thousands of diagrams and notes, all in neat columns. Leander moved past shelves of several dozen complex brass instruments and tools and his eyes rolled up in his head to try and look at the miniature hot air balloon which floated near the ceiling emitting the occasional puff of smoke. "Quite good, don't you think?" she said. "A shame I have never found anything to do with it."

"What magical purpose does the parrot serve?" he asked, looking at the bird in the tall corner cage.

"Nothing, it's a parrot," she said, and then was business-like. "I have finally worked out which runes create paper, which was really complicated-" there were rolls of ink-drenched paper cluttering up one corner as testament to her failed attempts. "-and I used them to convert this pretty little cabinet thing."

"To what end?" Leander asked probingly, wondering why she was showing it to him. It was an elegant lacquered portable writing bureau with a self-filling paper drawer and an ink pot. He thought he saw some of the same symbols from the printing press discretely incorporated into the pattern running across the surface, and inset in the centre was a little red ruby, glistening like a boiled sweet which had just fallen from someone's mouth.

"Well, I feel I really ought to have some small gift to give the King when we see him today," she said absent-mindedly, brushing dust off the top of the bureau before looking at Leander. "Ha! I think I shall give you free rein over your facial expressions from now on: that one is terribly entertaining!" Leander quickly closed his dropped jaw.

"We are going to see the king? I'm not...I'm not coming too? Am I?"

"Yes of course, I cannot possibly carry the bureau on my own."

"I think you like parading me before people whom you know will never guess I am merely your puppet," he replied bitterly. She giggled.

"Maybe that too. It is quite funny that none of them will guess and I cannot possibly tell them. I would tell you to be careful handling the bureau but I'm not giving you the choice." She skipped from the room and with a sigh he hefted the bureau, which was heavier than it looked. He was sweating when he had got it to the front steps of the house and into the waiting hansom. By the time he had carried it to the doors of the room the king's receiving room he felt on the verge of expiry.

"His Majesty is discussing with one of his bishops at present," the door attendant told them through his elevated nose. "I'm afraid you may have a hu-while to hu-wait."

"Marvellous," Lissy sang. "It looks like we need time to prepare. Your hair is a disgrace, Leander. Normally I expect to see that wavy bit falling over your forehead but today your whole head is a disgrace."