Flight of Magpies

by KJ Charles

  Crane shut the book as Stephen went to pour himself a drink. “What’s wrong?”

  Stephen filled the glass overgenerously with the excellent Burgundy. He felt he would need it. “To start with, Saint’s being accused of theft.”

  “Your Saint? Miss Saint?”

  “I’m afraid so. There’ve been jewels and so on stolen from high rooms, third and fourth floors, and a couple of witnesses claim to have seen a windwalker—or rather, to have seen a fair-haired woman running away through the air. And since Saint is the only windwalker in London that we know of, and probably the only blonde female one in all England…”

  “Just a moment. Can she do that?” Crane asked, eyebrows tilting. “I’ve seen her jump around impressively enough, but actually walk on thin air?”

  Stephen began to respond, and realised that Crane had only seen Saint in action in a cellar, never in the open air. “Yes. Windwalkers can, uh, pull the ether to a point strongly enough to take their weight for a second. They can’t stand still on it, they have to keep moving, but yes, she can walk on air.”

  “Practitioners,” Crane muttered. “Full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  “Indeed. Anyway, yes, Saint could very easily climb through the air to a high window, and break in safely, and run away afterwards. She could and, in the opinion of Councillor Fairley, she would, because she was born and bred on the streets, and once a guttersnipe, always a guttersnipe.”

  “Fairley. Is that the fellow I met in spring with the damp mouth and damper handshake?”

  “Grovels to anyone he can’t bully. Yes.” Crane had described him as an oleaginous prick, Stephen recalled. He made a mental note to repeat that pithy phrase to Esther. “He doesn’t like me, or Saint. Or Esther, actually.”

  “Mrs. Gold is something of a challenge,” Crane pointed out. “So, this windwalking is a rare skill? Not a talent you’ve been hiding under a bushel?”

  “Good Lord, no. It’s an extraordinarily rare ability. I know of Saint, a grandmother who has rheumatism now, a chap in Yorkshire with a terrible drink problem, and a poor devil on the South Coast who lost concentration over a cliff and shattered both his legs in the fall. There are doubtless more of them out there, but not many—”

  “And no fair-haired young women among them to your knowledge,” Crane finished for him. “It doesn’t look too good for Miss Saint.”

  That was, Stephen reflected, one of the reasons he loved him. Other men might have made reassuring noises, and Stephen would have been obliged to pretend to be reassured. Crane did not.

  He came to sit on the other end of the sofa, swinging his feet up so his legs rested on Crane’s lap. “No, it doesn’t look good. She’s not the most scrupulous person, and they pay us such a pathetic pittance, and…no. But I’m not going to see her convicted on that basis without hard evidence. Give a dog a bad name, and all that. We’ll keep an eye on her.” Stephen sighed. “What made it worse was that Esther had a blazing row with the Council about it. Fairley had already convicted Saint in his own head, but she put up John Slee’s back too—I told you about him, didn’t I, the idiot who campaigns against the justiciary. It wasn’t helpful. She was feeling rather poorly.” He took a gulp of wine, steeling himself. “Er, Lucien…”

  Crane frowned. “What is it?”

  “Esther. It’s why she’s not well. She told me today, after the meeting. She’s expecting.”

  “Expecting what? Oh, expecting. Well, that’s good news. Isn’t it?”

  Stephen made a face. “The thing is, she’s had three miscarriages so far, that I know about. And it seems as though the problem is related to using her powers on a large scale. The last time was just after the Underhill business last winter, and Dan made her promise that next time she’d stop work right away.”

  “And she’s expecting now.”

  “Yes, and sick as a dog with it.” Stephen had been obliged to hold her hair as she retched after the meeting. It was, he felt, a duty he could have been spared.

  “So…?”

  “So I’m on my own for the next year at least, assuming everything goes well. Even if she wasn’t ill, she can’t use her powers. If she did and lost the child— She shouldn’t risk it, anyway.”

  “No, of course. Well, give her my best wishes. So who replaces her?” Crane paused. “You will be getting some help, won’t you?”

  Stephen rather wished his lover wasn’t quite so acute at identifying problems that might otherwise have gone unmentioned. “From whom? There are seven justiciars in London, including me and Es, and four of them are juniors, and one of those is Saint. The Council have refused to appoint any more in ages, even though we lost Arbuthnot the summer before last. Esther’s been asking for someone to take her place but she can’t go on any more. She’s been sick four times a day for the last week.” Stephen opened his palms helplessly. “There’s not much I can do except pick up her workload.”

  “On your own?” Crane’s brows drew together. “What about Christmas? Rothwell?”

  “It, uh, might not be possible.”

  “Oh, for—” Crane shoved Stephen’s feet off his lap and sprang up, stalking over to pour himself another glass of wine.

  “Look, I want to go,” Stephen appealed to his back. “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than up there with you. But I have to support Es.”

  “At the expense of your own life. Again.”

  “She’s bent over backwards for me, and you know it.” Stephen’s temper flared, though he knew he should be apologising. Crane was obviously chafing at the restrictions of London life and his enforced presence in good society. Stephen was well aware how much he needed the trips to Rothwell and its privacy, the freedom to live without looking over his shoulder that he had enjoyed for the last twenty years and that Stephen had never had. He wanted that time as much as Crane did, but for God’s sake, this was Esther. “She’s lied her hair into curls to persuade the Council not to pursue me for a warlock. She’s covered for me every night I’ve spent here, so Saint and Joss aren’t constantly wondering why I’m never in my own bed. I owe her this, and I’m not letting her down for lack of trying.”

  “Yes, I see that, but you don’t owe her your whole life, and I certainly don’t. This affects me too, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I don’t want to let you down either.” Stephen got to his feet and took a conciliatory step closer. “I can’t see getting away for a fortnight, but I’m not going to disappear into work altogether, I promise. I will be here as much as I can. Please, don’t make this harder than it is. I don’t have any choice.”

  “You do. You choose to martyr yourself on the altar of the bloody judiciary. You choose to defend the world at the expense of your own life, and now you’re doing it at my expense as well.”

  “Yes, but if I don’t do it—”

  “Somebody else will. Nobody’s irreplaceable, and it’s pure arrogance to think you are.”

  Stephen threw his hands up. “What do you want me to do, then? Tell Esther to get back to the job and risk losing the baby? Work eight to five and be damned to everything that happens outside counting-house hours? Just let the warlocks and abusers and thieves do as they please? What do you want?”

  “I want you to get on a boat with me.” Crane set down his glass with a forceful clink. “Come away from this miserable island, go somewhere warm. Greece, maybe. We can get through the winter there, head for Constantinople, then follow the Silk Road overland from there to China. Or somewhere else if you’d rather. Anywhere. Open an atlas, pick a place. There’s an entire world outside this bloody damp self-righteous rock in the sea. Let’s go to some of it.”

  Stephen realised his mouth was hanging open. He shut it. Crane gave him a wry smile. “Well, you did ask.”

  Oh God oh God oh God. Stephen felt sick to his stomach. “Lucien…” He hoped Crane would interrupt, but the blast
ed man simply waited. “I’ve never been abroad,” he managed, and cringed at how pathetic that sounded. “I mean—I would like—I would like to, but…” But what? His mind was full of vague images from storybooks: sand and silks, mosaic tiles and pointed turrets, the sun glittering on the sea. Stephen had never even set foot on a boat, and the temptation was so strong that he struggled for a moment to remember why he shouldn’t simply say yes and let Crane sweep him off on an adventure. “It’s—I can’t just walk away from my duties. People need me to do this job. You do see that, don’t you?”

  Crane’s eyes hooded over. “Oh, I see all right. What’s that phrase of Blake’s? Mind-forged manacles. That’s what I see.”

  Stephen couldn’t reply. He managed, at last, “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it? You’re going to give the fucking justiciary everything of yourself, and it will use you up and spit you out, if it doesn’t kill you first. The job doesn’t give a damn about you. I do.” Crane swept a hand through his hair, disarranging its sleekness. “Of course you want to support Mrs. Gold. I understand that. But there’s always a reason, Stephen. There is always someone you have to support or something you have to do that you consider more important than your own life. I disagree.”

  Stephen made himself take another step forward, and after a horribly long second Crane’s arms went round him, gently. “I can’t walk away, Lucien. Not when Esther needs me. But…could we talk about this again, when she’s on her feet? About going somewhere? If I just get through this period—”

  “There will be something else to worry about by then. Oh, very well. Fine, we’ll talk later. Leave it there.”

  Stephen slipped his arms around Crane’s waist, holding on, trying to control his plunging sense of fear at the annoyance in his lover’s voice. He wanted to take it all back, to say yes, let’s just get on the boat, to be braver and wilder and less constrained, and free of it all. He didn’t want to disgust Crane with his timidity, or exasperate him with his continual absences, or weary him with ties to a land he hated.

  He had duties. He couldn’t go. It wasn’t fair of Crane to ask.

  It wasn’t fair he had to refuse.

  “I’d like to see Constantinople,” he said into Crane’s shirtfront. “I think. I don’t actually know anything about it, I don’t think I could find it on a map, but it’s a beautiful name.”

  “Then you’ll love the Silk Road. Constantinople, Antioch, Trebizond, Tyre. Damascus, Baghdad and Samarkand.” Crane stooped to kiss the top of his head. “One day, Stephen, and not a far distant day. For the moment, I shall take you to Paris.”

  The authoritative note in Crane’s voice gave Stephen a familiar quiver, a sensation that lay somewhere on the line between anger and arousal. He did not appreciate Crane’s tendency to be domineering, except on those occasions when he did. “Will you?” he enquired.

  “Yes,” Crane said, stating a fact. “It’s a day’s journey. Three days altogether. You will be able to take three consecutive days off at some point in the next month.”

  Stephen had grave doubts about that, but he nodded. “Of course I will. As soon as I can. I’ll ask for help. I’ll tell the Council I need more support.”

  “And will you get it?”

  Stephen didn’t want to answer that. An unfortunate incident in Limehouse eighteen months ago had left the justiciar Arbuthnot in a madhouse and Macready without a partner, but the Council, ever penny-pinching and led by John Slee, had obstinately refused to pay for a replacement, citing the cost of Arbuthnot’s care and maintaining his family. Stephen found it highly unlikely that they would fund another justiciar merely to cover Esther’s absence. That was not a conversation he wanted to have now.

  “Of course I will,” he repeated with total assurance. “I’ll get help, and we’ll go to France.” He might as well say Constantinople, since the one was as likely as the other, but it was worth the lie to see Crane’s little nod of satisfaction, and surely to God he could find some sort of solution, given a few weeks.

  “I’ll hold you to that.” Crane took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. “Come on, let’s eat. I can’t afford to waste any of your time, after all.”

  “Yes, all right, point made. The Coal Hole?” Stephen suggested, naming a place that was modest and inexpensive.

  “Simpson’s Divan,” said Crane, naming one that wasn’t.

  Dinner at Simpson’s was, as always, well cooked and well served. Stephen was conscious that he and Crane dined there often, but then the place was probably full of men dining together without consideration of what a degenerate mind might read into their perfectly normal friendship. They didn’t talk of work, instead discussing Leonora Hart’s wedding plans, and political events, and Stephen drank in Crane’s sharp silver presence from the ether and felt the tension ebb from his body, just a little.

  Eventually, Crane pushed away his coffee cup and said, “Well. Home?” A lazy smile widened on his finely shaped mouth, and Stephen plucked up his nerve. He had fantasised about this often enough, and it had been a long, bad day. His body was crying out for violent release, so he leaned his elbows casually on the table and reached out through the ether, firming and shaping the air round Crane’s cock into the smooth pressure of a grip.

  Crane’s eyes went wide. Stephen kept his face still and sent a current of force coiling round the other’s balls, squeezing gently, setting up a rippling motion that worked up and down Crane’s rapidly hardening prick.

  “Are you doing that?” Crane demanded hoarsely.

  “Who else?”

  Crane swallowed hard. Stephen steepled his fingers and intensified the etheric force, gently probing between Crane’s thighs, feeling the intensifying pulse of his blood in his rigid shaft, the quivering of arousal.

  “All right, stop,” Crane said through his teeth. “Too close.”

  Stephen gave him a flicker of a provocative glance. Terrifying though it was to do this in public, he was enjoying this moment of control just as much as he would enjoy the inevitable retribution.

  “Stop it.”

  “Make me,” Stephen murmured.

  “I will tell you what I’ll make you do if I spend in this suit, you—” Crane broke off as the waiter approached, managed a curt nod. “The bill, please. —I’m not joking, Stephen, I need to walk across this room.”

  “Say please,” Stephen said, pushing his luck far, far beyond the confines of safety.

  Crane looked at him, eyes dark with dangerous promise, and leaned forward so there was no risk of being overheard. “I am not going to say please. I am going to take you apart piece by piece to pay for this, you little slut, and if we’re not back in the flat in ten minutes, I’m going to do it to you in the street. Now get off.”

  Stephen let go. Crane took several deep breaths and adjusted his suit, in a way that probably included a painful squeeze to quell his rigid erection. They left the restaurant and headed back to the flat without speech, the icy air crackling with anticipation.

  A nod to the doorman. Four flights to the top floor. A moment on the landing as Crane realised it was Merrick’s night off and he had to unlock his own door, another moment waiting in the hallway while he turned on the gas lamp. Stephen ignited the gas with a thought and pulled off his heavy coat and suit jacket, hands a little clumsy. Then Crane turned, picked him up, and slammed him against the wall, hard body grinding painfully into Stephen’s as the shorter man wrapped his legs round his lover’s lean hips.

  “You fucking pricktease,” Crane hissed, breath hot on his ear. “I think I need to remind you who’s the master here.” His hand found Stephen’s cock and gripped, savagely tight, just to the right side of pain. “Go and get naked. I want you bent over the bed and waiting for it.”

  “You are getting respectable, aren’t you?” Stephen said thickly. “All the way to the bedroom when there’s a floor right here you c
ould fuck me on.”

  Crane’s eyes met his, read them, and then there was a surge of movement that left Stephen face down on the hallway carpet, arms pulled behind him, Crane with one knee on the small of his back to hold him down. Crane leaned forward and, with a single violent jerk, ripped Stephen’s shirt open, sending buttons flying, and pulled it inside out over his arms, so that the cloth caught and pinioned him, held on by the gold and amber cufflinks that had been a birthday gift.

  Crane wrenched Stephen’s trousers off without hesitation, reached for the table drawer, and then Stephen felt the hard press of slim, oiled fingers sliding into his body, one hand finger-fucking his arse with practised skill, the other pressing down on his tailbone so Stephen’s erection was jammed against the rug. Crane was working fast, readying Stephen briskly and mercilessly, and Stephen gasped as he withdrew his hand.

  Crane stood. “Stay.” A foot pressed onto Stephen’s back, keeping him on the floor, while Crane removed the Hawkes and Cheney suit with care and precision and laid it on the hall table: jacket, waistcoat, trousers.

  “Right,” Crane said at last. “Did you just call me respectable?”

  Stephen lay, abased and aroused, taut with anticipation, as Crane shoved his legs apart and knelt between them. He gasped again as Crane grabbed his hips and lifted the lower half of his body right off the floor, so that he was utterly helpless and exposed. Crane’s cock, slick with oil, pushed at his entrance, and Stephen whimpered.

  “What was that?”

  “Please,” Stephen whispered. “Please, my lord…”

  “Too late for please. I did warn you.”

  Crane thrust as he spoke, hard, and Stephen bucked, twisting his back, at the invasion. He cried out, a mock protest, safe in the knowledge that it would be ignored, and felt Crane pull him further up off the ground. Crane was really using his size and strength now, taking him to the hilt. Stephen was overwhelmed by awareness: the slide and burn of penetration, the jolting impact of each thrust that set the ring he wore round his neck swinging violently on its chain, and the storm of magpies gathering in the ether around them as the power in Crane’s blood was sparked into life by Stephen’s own magic.