Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [167]
“I’m so sorry,” Jannit murmured. “I really am.”
Sarah took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “It’s not your fault, Jannit. You were very good to Nicko. He loved working for you. But of course you must find another apprentice, although I would ask you one thing.”
“Of course,” replied Jannit.
“When Nicko returns, will you renew his apprenticeship?”
“I would be delighted to.” Jannit smiled, pleased that Sarah had asked for something she could readily agree to. “Even if I have a new apprentice, Nicko would step straight into Rupert’s shoes and become my senior apprentice—or journeyman as we call it down at the yard.”
Sarah smiled wistfully. “That would be wonderful,” she said.
“And now”—this was the part Jannit had been dreading— “I am afraid I must trouble you to sign the Release.” Jannit stood up to pull a roll of parchment from her coat pocket, and the pile of towels, suddenly losing their support, fell down and took her place.
Jannit cleared a space on the table and unrolled the long piece of parchment that formed Nicko’s apprentice Indentures. She secured it top and bottom with whatever came to hand—a well-thumbed novel called Love on the High Seas and a large bag of biscuits.
“Oh.” Sarah caught her breath at the sight of Nicko’s spidery signature—along with her own and Jannit’s—at the foot of the parchment.
Hastily, Jannit placed the Release—a small slip of parch-ment—over the signatures and said, “Sarah, as one of the parties who signed the Indentures, I have to ask you to sign the Release. I have a pen if you . . . if you can’t find one.”
Sarah couldn’t find one. She took the pen and ink bottle that Jannit had taken from her other coat pocket, dipped the pen in the ink and—feeling as though she was signing Nicko’s life away—she signed the parchment. A tear dripped onto the ink and smudged it; both Jannit and Sarah pretended not to notice.
Jannit signed her own signature next to Sarah’s; then she took a needle threaded with thick sail cotton from her bottomless coat pocket and sewed the Release over the original signatures.
Nicko Heap was no longer apprenticed to Jannit Maarten. Jannit snatched up the hat balanced behind her and fled. It was only when she reached her boat that she realized she had taken Sarah’s gardening hat, but she stuffed it on her head regardless and rowed slowly back to her boatyard.
Silas Heap and Maxie the wolfhound found Sarah in her herb garden. Sarah was, for some reason Silas did not understand, wearing a sailor’s boater. She also had Jenna’s duck with her. Silas was not keen on the duck—the stubble gave him goose bumps when he looked at it and he thought the crocheted waistcoat was a sign that Sarah was going a little crazy.
“Oh, there you are,” he said, heading along the neatly tended grass path toward the bed of mint that Sarah was absent-mindedly poking at. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Sarah gave Silas a wan half smile in reply, and as Silas and Maxie plowed through the defenseless patch of mint, she did not venture even a small protest. Silas, like Sarah, looked careworn. His straw-colored Heap curls had recently acquired a gray dusting of salt and pepper, his blue Ordinary Wizard robes hung loosely from him, and his silver Ordinary Wizard belt was pulled in a notch or two more than usual. Accompanied by the heady smell of crushed mint, Silas reached Sarah and launched straight into his prepared speech.
“You’re not going to like this,” he said, “but my mind is made up. Maxie and I are going into the Forest and we’re not coming out until we’ve found him.”
Sarah picked up the duck and hugged it tightly to her. It let out a strangled quack. “You are a pig-headed fool,” she said. “How many times have I told you that if you would only get Marcia to do something about this horrible Darke Magyk that has trapped