Captive Magics

20 - Servants and Masters

Leander woke in a panic and came to realise, as his breath slowed to regular ebb and flow, that there was nothing to worry about. Anticlimactically, his dream of a theatre trip turning into the war again had ended with the same conclusion as their thwarted burglary: no one had died. It was just a dream.

But the burglary itself had not been a dream. They had returned to Upper Church Street, far away from Sir Quislin's home and their disastrous invasion of his privacy, and Leander woke in the little bedroom, remembering that he had given Lissy his word they would return for a second attempt. The dream hanging about him along with his promise, he dressed while staring through the window without really seeing the overcast day outside and went downstairs. He needed to check if Lissy was alright.

Striding down the corridor with these thoughts clustering in his head, he flung open the kitchen door and stopped dead.

The room was rosy and warm from the lit range and across the floor a broom twirled, shepherding a cloud of dust across the flags and into a waiting dustpan. It lifted itself into the air, sailed to the open window and tossed the dirt out with an irritable flick. The window slammed shut of its own accord and Leander had to jump sideways as the fire tongs danced to the range and began adding coal to the glowing fire. There was a creak of door hinges behind him and Leander whipped around to find Lissy bouncing in.

"Good morning!" she told him cheerfully. She looked extremely healthy, apart from the injury to her head.

"Hello," he replied distractedly, and she stopped dead to look at him.

"What's wrong? You look upset about something. Are you about to say you've changed your mind about breaking into that house again? Is it the ordeal with the blood? Are you still cross about it?"

"No not at all. Well yes, the blood thing is horrific...no, it's none of those things. I'm not upset. The broom is moving by itself-"

"Yes, the house is filthy, so it's doing what it does."

"No. It doesn't normally."

"Oh. Well, maybe you haven't seen it before."

"I held that broom, I swept with it, it didn't give me any assistance beyond what one usually expects of a brush. Look! Those cloths are wiping the table by themselves!"

"They always do, I just let them get on with it."

"But that was what I did for ages-"

"Yes, but you have more important things to do now, we have a housebreaking to prepare for, which is hardly a small thing."

"You can just...you can have your entire house clean itself? Do you have to even think about it to make it happen?"

"No, it's easy," she sounded unhappy. "Go ahead, I invite you."

"What?"

"I know what you'll say. Petty, selfish, extremely trivial – don't hold back, Leander," Lissy told him defiantly, then looked away with her lips pressed together.

"It's amazing," he said, watching the dish brush scrub the sink slowly as if it were daydreaming. "Does it really require so little effort of you? Could you do several rooms at the same time?"

"I expect they're doing so now," her head shot up from examining her feet and she looked startled. "I haven't checked, but everything gets cleaned, so I assume..."

There was a long pause as Leander stared, transfixed, at the utensils dancing around the room and occasionally picking fights with each other.

"Really, it was more effort to stop them working," she said quietly. "Years of the same spell...well it sticks, eventually."