Free City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte Page A

Lobkowicz Palace sipping beers from the Lobkowicz family’s brewery. Here, as elsewhere in the palace, construction was in full swing, and Sarah sat on a stepladder while Suzi chopped vegetables. Sarah offered to help, but it was clear that Suzi had extremely precise ideas about slicing and dicing.
    After Miles and Bernard had left them, Suzi led Sarah through a whirlwind tour of the rest of the rooms, moving at top speed despite her five-inch heels, and chattering a mile a minute.
    Then they had gone to Suzi’s room so Suzi could change, although first Suzi asked Sarah to take her picture—smiling primly by a window—so Suzi could send it to her mother in Dallas. “She likes to see me looking all ladylike,” Suzi explained. “I had a meeting with the Minister of Culture, so I hauled out the old war paint. My mom’s a real typical Texan. I think she’s still hopin’ I’ll go back to pageants ando pd a mee twirling.”
    “Twirling?” Sarah laughed, as Suzi stripped down to a g-string, pulling out a pair of karate pants and a Pokémon T-shirt and tossing them on the bed.
    “Rifles! That’s where it all started for me. I was seven, eight years old and twirling these old guns: the Winchester Model 1866, British Enfield 1853, the Sharps Rifle. People freaked out, watching this little Japanese kid hurling these big ole rifles around. Man, I loved those guns. I won every pageant I entered. They probably thought I would shoot ’em down if they didn’t give me the tiara.”
    Now, as Suzi chopped, Sarah sipped her beer and tried steering the conversation away from firearms toward the other academics at the palace. Unfortunately, Suzi had spent most of her time at Roudnice, the massive family ancestral home fifty kilometers north of Prague where the weapons were stored. Suzi did, however, have a little bit of gossip to share about (Prince) Max.
    “I had a girlfriend who knew him at Yale,” Suzi said, picking up a meat cleaver, tossing it up in the air, catching it neatly by the handle, and bringing it down with a swift thunk on the chicken she was dismembering. “He was in her Dostoevsky seminar. She thought he was a freaky loner type, you know, the kind who’s memorized
Crime and Punishment
? I’d stay away from him if I were you.”
    “Not my type,” said Sarah.
    “Oh yeah?” Suzi asked, leering at Sarah and flipping her cleaver again. “I’m glad to hear it.”
    “Not my type of
guy
,” Sarah amended firmly.
    “C’est la fuckin’ vie,” Suzi sighed. “It’s gonna be a long hot summer.”
    Sarah was glad they had gotten that cleared up. She liked that the team here at the palace was clearly a little unusual. Suzi was a force to be reckoned with. The girl had dismantled four chickens in about three minutes.
    “Anyway,” Suzi chattered on. “You’re gonna be up to your pretty eyes in Beethoven, right? Too bad about the other guy. He was some kind of a drug addict, I heard.”
    “What?” Sarah almost did a spit-take with her lager. “Professor Sherbatsky a drug addict? No way.”
    “That’s what Douglas told me.” Suzi leaned over her cutting board confidentially. “The Croll paintings guy? Douglas Sexton. Or was it Daphne who told me? Anyway, I’m glad you’re here, girl, even if you ain’t on my team exactly.” Shuziko set down her cleaver. “You’re about to meet,” she said dramatically, “just about the craziest group of people you can imagine. And there’s something . . . going on here. Something . . . kind of
off
, if you know what I mean.”
    “Please don’t start in on the hell portals.”
    “Hell portals?”
    “I am so glad you have no idea what I’m talking about.” Sarah was about to ask Shuziko to explain what it was she
did
mean, but Suzi grabbed an enormous copper dinner bell and informed Sarah that if she wanted to take a shower, now was the best time to grab a free bathroom. Shuziko swung the bell in a wild arc above her head.
    “Half hour till chow