The Midnight Queen Read Online Free PDF

a pause, and Gray waited for Sophie to elaborate; instead she said, “Still, I should think it must have been better to have it than not.”
    â€œWell,” said Gray, “magickal talent is sometimes less helpful than you might suppose.”
    She tilted her head, politely sceptical, but made him no reply.
    Pellan, the Professor’s head gardener, emerged from the potting-shed and directed Gray to the thinning and weeding of a floral border on the far side of the house. Sophie, instead of retreating indoors, fell into step beside him.
    Which were plants, and which weeds, Gray could not reliably determine, and the floral border seemed interminable. Sophie observed his efforts with every appearance of interest, and from time to time she reached out a slim brown hand to pluck up some small green thing; he wondered how much she must detest her sister’s company to prefer his, and made Herculean efforts not to utter ill-bred imprecations with every other breath.
    â€œI fear I am quite out of my depth,” he confessed at last.
    Sophie’s brown eyes danced, but she refrained from smiling. “I had begun to suspect it,” she said kindly. “You had only to ask. Look: This one is hawkweed, you know, and
that
is calendula. Can you not—that is—
magick
the weeds away?”
    â€œNo, indeed,” said Gray. “Living, growing things . . . their magick is like healing—a very specialised one. Which is not where my talent lies.”
Assuming that I have still any real talent to speak of. Am I doomed now to spend my existence summoning teacups and mending hats?
    â€œWhich explains, of course, why the Professor has put you to work in the garden.” Sophie cast up her eyes. “He means to show you that he has the whip hand of you, and can exercise it as he likes.”
    So precisely did this assessment echo Gray’s own that he cast a sidelong glance at her, wondering whether, after all, she did have some magickal talent—of the sort, which he had once read of but never seen, that can be used to hear other people’s thoughts.
    Catching his glance, she further startled him by saying, “That was no magick. Only, I have known the Professor all my life, you see. It is not only you and I who know what he is, but most people have not the temerity to say it.”
    â€œBut you have?”
    â€œThat,” said Sophie quietly, appearing to scrutinise her fingernails, “depends very much on who might be listening.”
    There was a pause, in which only the sound of Gray’s mattock could be heard.
    â€œAnd what do
you
think of him?” asked Sophie.
    Gray snorted. “It is not my place to think anything. He is my tutor; I follow his advice on what I ought to be reading, and how to pass my examinations for Mastery. And at the moment I am beholden to his hospitality. Hence the gardening.”
    Sophie frowned. “You must have an opinion,” she said. “Being so very much cleverer than he is.”
    She spoke with perfect gravity, and appeared surprised by Gray’s hoot of derisive laughter.
    â€œIt is quite true,” she said. “The Professor is an old fraud. Only so blessed
distinguished
and
well connected
, and so full of sage aphorisms and pronouncements, that nobody thinks to ask whether he really knows what he is talking of, or can
do
anything at all. But you”—she nodded slowly, eyes narrowed—“
you
can do things. I’m sure of it.”
    Gray put down the mattock and sat up straight, stretching out his arms above his head. “Nonsense,” he said. “I am a hopeless ignoramus of no learning and very little talent. Has not your father told you?”
    Sophie made a most unladylike noise.
    â€œSophie, take care,” Gray said then, his voice low and urgent. “Whatever he may lack, he has influence and ambition—mind you do not underestimate him. He is not kind to his