Flight of Magpies

by KJ Charles

  Chapter Six

  Stephen spent the cold, miserable walk back to his rooms with his thoughts furiously circling. A voice in his head was screaming at him that he should run back and apologise, beg for forgiveness, but it was drowned out by the unhappy, frustrated anger. To be constantly pushed around by the Council was barely tolerable. To have his lover join in the chorus of demands and harassment and guilt, two minutes after that whole damned business with Merrick and Saint that Crane appeared to consider so trivial… He was not going to go back. He was an idiot ever to have believed this could work. Why had he let himself get tangled up with a Vaudrey in the first place?

  Because you fell in love with him, said the rational voice that refused to be silenced, and that was a worse thought than all the rest.

  Stephen’s lonely, half-abandoned home was freezing, with the icy air of disuse. He needed to get the fire going, fast. He sent a line of force through the ether with savage strength, much as a normal man would slam doors or kick the furniture, and nearly took the chimney out as the coal ignited with a massive whoomph.

  He dragged the heat back into the room before he did any permanent damage, cursing himself. That had been uncontrolled. He was never uncontrolled. Except with Lucien.

  He sat on the bed with his face in his hands, and as the anger faded, the misery grew, and along with it, the sick sense that one way or another he’d made the worst mistake of his life.

  He’d spent so much of his life learning not to indulge his emotions—undersized boys did well to keep quiet, and his powers had come on him when he was just thirteen, meaning endless exercises in self-control, and then it hadn’t been long before he’d become aware of his attraction to men, and that had been yet another thing to hide. The power that prickled through his hands had made it impossible for him to take lovers who weren’t practitioners unless he wore gloves throughout to avoid betraying himself, and that was scarcely sustainable. And since he was only aware of three other practitioners who shared his preferences, and he wasn’t fond of any of them, he had resigned himself to the occasional hurried backstreet encounter, where emotion didn’t come in to it.

  He had never had a lasting lover before. He had never had to learn compromise or sacrifice. He had been alone, and then there had been Lucien. Lucien, who knew what he was, who found his hands exciting rather than freakish, who could be so astonishingly considerate and loving, but with that dangerously thrilling cruel streak running through his nature, a golden flaw…

  Stephen had fallen hopelessly, irredeemably in love, and he had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do about that now.

  Lucien did. Lucien was staying in a country that he hated for Stephen’s sake. He tolerated Stephen’s job and his unpredictability. He gave: not just the gifts and the clothes, the meals and the luxuries, but his strength, his belief, his alarmingly ruthless decisiveness. His protection, no matter how little or how much Stephen needed it, any more than Merrick needed it. They both had it anyway, because that was Lucien’s nature.

  Lucien gave and gave, and Stephen gave him nothing at all in return. Sacrificed nothing, compromised on nothing, understood nothing. Hopeless, useless fool.

  He curled up on his narrow bed, under rough scratchy blankets, and lay alone, looking out at the dark with wide eyes. When he finally drifted off to sleep at about one in the morning, he dreamed the borrowed magpie tattoo was ripping and tearing its way out of his skin, flying back to where it belonged, and he had to get up and contort himself in front of the mirror to be reassured that the inked bird was still on his back.

  By five o’clock he was in to the Council offices, just for the sake of something to do. He had intended to get on top of the paperwork, but it would have taken a grappling hook to do that, and as he stared at the dusty, unfiled, useless heaps of paper, he found himself concluding that Crane was right.

  That was all there was to it. Macready’s team of three had been overstretched for months. Stephen’s team of four was down to two without Esther or Saint. Fairley and Slee’s faction on the Council violently opposed any increase in their numbers—Interference on personal freedom, they said, and Trying to increase the power of the justiciary—and somehow that meant that everyone nodded along as five justiciars were supposed to do a job that couldn’t be done by eight.

  “We’re being shut down,” Stephen said aloud.

  He needed to talk this through with Crane, listening properly this time. He wondered if Crane had calmed down yet, and when, or if, he might, and if Stephen even deserved him to.

  He’s everything I could ever want, and I’m driving him away for a job I hate.

  If I lose him, this will be all I have left.

  He was in Macready’s office at the Council—a small boxroom, as little-used and paper-filled as the one Stephen and Esther occupied—when its owner came in.

  “Good day, Day.” It was a mild jest Macready been making for seven years, and would probably keep making until one of them died, which in Stephen’s current frame of mind seemed a reasonably attractive prospect. Macready hung his overcoat on the stand. “Are you going through my desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Saint’s file, I suppose.” Macready didn’t sound annoyed, or surprised. If the boot had been on the other foot, Stephen would have fully expected to find Macready rifling his own papers.

  “The file on the windwalker thefts, yes. Have you got anywhere?”

  “You must be joking. I’ve a hundred other things on my plate. I’ll have my chair back now.”

  Stephen vacated it, but kept the sheaf of documents, flicking through them. “It needs to be dealt with. We can’t afford another justiciar out of action now.”

  “Not with Mrs. Gold in an interesting condition, no.” Macready sighed. “Women justiciars. Honestly, Day, I don’t know why we allow them.”

  “Ask Mrs. Gold. I’m sure she’ll tell you.”

  Macready grinned. He was a burly man with a benevolent, permanently flushed face topped by a magnificently curled moustache. He looked like a butcher in his Sunday best, and enforced the law like a butcher on his day job. “What do you think about this business, then?”

  Stephen planted his hands on Macready’s laden desk. “I don’t think, I know. The culprit is a windwalker, male. Medium height, youngish, agile, dark hair.”

  Macready sat up straight. “What? Who? Where’s this from?”

  “I can’t tell you anything more. You’ll have to trust me, Mac.”

  Macready sat back, steepling his fingers, pulling a face. “I don’t doubt you, but you know I need more than that.”

  “I’ll give you more when I can, but that’s your man, I promise you. Did you write round the other justiciary departments about windwalkers?”

  “I did. And, believe it or not, one of them even wrote back. Apparently Hertfordshire had some trouble with a windwalker a couple of months ago.”

  “Details?”

  “Nary a one, but their chief—another blasted woman—is coming in for a quick word, in about…” Macready checked his fob watch theatrically. “Two and a half minutes. I suppose you’ll still be in my office then, will you?”

  Stephen managed a smile, relieved and grateful. “I ought to tidy your papers before I go.”

  “It’s still my investigation.” Macready’s tone was a warning. “And I’m not just taking your word for it.”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  The visitor arrived about fifteen minutes later, allowing Macready the opportunity to mutter about women who couldn’t read the clock. Stephen lurked in the corner, making himself unobtrusive, as a smartly dressed, unfashionably freckled woman in her thirties came in with a firm tread.

  “Good morning.” She seated herself without invitation opposite Macready’s desk, making no apology for her lateness. “Nodder, Hertfordshire justiciary. I hear you’ve a windwalker problem?”<
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  “A series of thefts,” Macready said. “Pretty daring, often from occupied houses. Jemmies the windows from outside, three or four floors up. Witnesses have reported a figure running through the air from more than one scene of crime.” He paused fractionally. “I’ve a description of a dark-haired man of medium height, but I don’t know how much weight to put on that.”

  “I do,” said Miss Nodder crisply. “Bad luck, Mr. Macready, you’ve got Jonah Pastern.” Her tone reminded Stephen irresistibly of Esther’s husband, Dr. Daniel Gold. It was exactly the voice he’d use for Bad luck, you’ve got the pox.

  “And who’s that, when he’s at home?” asked Macready.

  Miss Nodder leaned forward, then glanced round at Stephen. “Are you in this conversation, or just skulking?”

  “Mostly skulking.” Stephen had a particular knack for making himself unobtrusive. He felt mildly impressed that he’d been noticed. “But I have licence to skulk.”

  The justiciar’s green eyes glimmered with amusement. “Skulk away, then. Pastern comes from Trumpington, near Cambridge. Farming stock, a good, religious family, so of course they threw him out when his powers came in, aged about twelve. He turned to theft for a year or so, until the justiciary picked him up and placed him with some practitioners in Cambridgeshire. Apparently he was unteachable and incorrigible. They kicked him out by sixteen and he set fire to their house in revenge.”

  Macready muttered under his breath. Miss Nodder went on. “He turned up in Birmingham, then Manchester, and moved to Liverpool when Manchester was too hot for him, and—well, you read it.” She took a thick dossier from her bag and put it in front of Macready. “He’s a loner. Never pals up with other practitioners, doesn’t work with anyone. A habitual thief and a talented one. Utterly indiscreet, with no compunction about windwalking in public. What it comes down to is, he’s a nuisance.”

  “Description?” Stephen asked.

  “Five foot eight, black hair, deep blue eyes, twenty-six years old. Reckless, slippery…rather charming, if you like the type.” The slight twitch of Miss Nodder’s lips suggested she wasn’t entirely immune. “And rather good, too. It took us months to pin him down, working with the local police force. We finally caught him after he robbed the Tring Museum. I left him, in irons and in a closed carriage with a police constable guarding him, for twenty minutes.” She raised her eyebrows, mocking herself. “My mistake.”

  “He killed the officer?” Macready asked.

  Miss Nodder gave a crack of laughter. “Ha, no. I suspect the poor fool wishes he had. Pastern—well, to speak frankly, he seduced the man. He picked the constable’s pocket and unlocked the cuffs while the benighted idiot’s attention was, er, elsewhere.” She raised a meaningful brow. “Then he was straight out of the carriage and into the sky, and that was the last we saw of him.”

  Macready was redder than usual. Stephen said, “In twenty minutes? Really?”

  “Don’t ask. What a business. Anyway, that’s Pastern. We had him, and we lost him. And now it looks like he’s in London.” She leaned over the desk and pushed the dossier an inch further towards Macready. “And therefore, your problem.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Macready. “He’s your prisoner, Miss Nodder. You’re here to take him back. Aren’t you?” He spoke with unquestionable authority.

  “Why would I want him back?” Miss Nodder rose from her seat. “Have fun.”

  “But—what are you up in London for if not to get Pastern?”

  “Shopping, of course. It’s my day off. I’m very fond of Hertfordshire but you can’t get the hats.” She lifted a hand in farewell. “Good morning, Mr. Macready. Nice to lurk with you,” she added to Stephen, and departed, apparently deaf to Macready’s splutters.

  “Someone was just telling me I had to hand over more work to other people,” Stephen said. “That’s how you do it, is it?”

  “Bloody woman. Bloody women. I’ve a good mind—” Macready rose hastily, snatched up his coat and hat, and followed Miss Nodder out, at a run. Stephen shut the door behind him and took possession of his chair, and Jonah Pastern’s dossier.

  He honestly meant to concentrate on Saint, and on the ring. He was going to go back to Crane and show that he was putting them first, and if he did that, perhaps it would go some way towards the apology he knew he owed. He wouldn’t let the job interfere with his life this time.

  But half an hour later, he was being dragged out of the building by a police constable.

  “Murder, sir,” the young man repeated, clutching Stephen’s arm. He looked rather sick. “Your kind of murder, Inspector Rickaby said. He needs you at once.”

  “When did it happen?”

  The constable swallowed hard. “It’s going on right now.”

  There was a cab waiting. The jarvey whipped up the horses urgently, and in not many minutes they were tumbling out and into a house in Lamb’s Conduit Street.

  A scullery maid hovered on the stairs, looking too panicked to give directions, so Stephen just followed the screams.

  He entered a large bedroom, wallpapered in an ugly shade of arsenical green. In the room were Inspector Rickaby, a man who looked like a doctor, standing helplessly, a woman, her expression a rictus of horror, and a man on the bed, writhing. His face…

  “Everybody get out,” Stephen said, and then, throwing a command through the ether, “Out.”

  “I’m staying,” said Rickaby grimly.

  “Fine. Get rid of everyone else. You too, madam, this is not a place for you. Where’s Dan Gold?” Stephen stripped off his greatcoat and dumped it on the nearest chair.

  Rickaby closed the door behind the last constable. “Not coming.”

  “What? Did you tell him—”

  “He’s not coming.”

  Oh hell, Stephen thought, that must be Esther. Nothing else would stop Dan from doing his duty. Please God, let her not be losing the baby, please… He shoved the thought away as he rolled his sleeves back, moved to the head of the bed, and reached for the man’s face.

  “You want to touch that?” said Rickaby, with some alarm.

  No, he did not. “What’s his name?”

  “Alan Hunt. Sergeant Hunt. Of the Cannon Street nick.”

  Where, Stephen knew, Rickaby had used to work. Hellfire and damnation. “Sergeant, my name is Stephen. I need you to stay calm. I’m going to try and help you.” He took a very deep breath and put his fingers on the man’s face. If you could call it that.

  Hunt’s features were warping and twisting like clay. His nose was a huge, piglike snout. His tongue was split to the root, bloodlessly, into two spongy extrusions that wobbled and flopped helplessly from his mouth. One eye socket was stretched several inches long, a gaping hole extending down into his cheek. The other eye stared at Stephen with a terrified plea.

  Stephen had expected a rush of something awful as his fingers touched the flesh, had braced himself for a variety of horrors. What he found was the last thing he expected.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “Eh?” said Rickaby.

  “There’s no cause for this.” Stephen moved his hands rapidly, sketching over the parody of a face. “No force coming in. None of my sort of thing. Nothing.”

  “You’re telling me this is natural?” said Rickaby, with incredulous fury.

  “No, I’m saying I can’t find how it’s being done. Be quiet.” Stephen shut his eyes, poured everything he had into his hands. The ether rang with Hunt’s fear and pain, and the lesser echoes of a lot of terrified people, and thrashed like a maelstrom around the victim’s face, but…

  “It’s not going anywhere. No connection.”

  It had to be coming from somewhere. But it wasn’t happening inside the room, and nor was it an equivalency, streaming the ether between two points; Stephen was far too good at those to miss any such thing. Could
it be coming from within Hunt? He gripped harder, searching desperately. The man grunted and thrashed under his hands, and Rickaby made a stifled noise. Stephen opened his eyes, looked down, said, “Oh my God,” and shut them again.

  “You have to make it stop.” Rickaby’s voice rasped.

  “Would if I could,” Stephen gritted out.

  “What do you mean?”

  Stephen jerked his head to bring the inspector over. He didn’t think Hunt could hear him, not with his left ear vanished so that the side of his head was smooth skin, and the right ear disappearing as Stephen watched, but he didn’t want to say this out loud.

  Rickaby bent his head to Stephen’s mouth. Stephen said, quietly, “I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t stop it. If whoever’s doing this wants him dead, he’s going to die. Ask him questions while you can.”

  “He’s got no ears.” Rickaby’s bewildered horror rang in the last word.

  “Write it down.”

  Rickaby stared at him for a second, then went to the desk. Stephen kept on, reaching, searching, trying to get a grip on whatever was turning the man into a monster. Why can’t I find it? Where the devil is it?

  Rickaby held a piece of paper in front of Hunt’s good eye. It read, in clear print: WHO WANTS YOU DEAD?

  Hunt’s eye bulged, and he tried to respond, but his bifurcated tongue wouldn’t work. He cawed helplessly. Rickaby made a disgusted noise, and then gave a cry of alarm as the flesh began to smooth over Hunt’s nostrils.

  They were going to block up his nose, Stephen thought, and then his mouth, and then he wouldn’t be able to breathe, and he’d die.

  He shoved his fingers into Hunt’s mouth. The man gave a spasm of panic, doubtless feeling the electric shock of Stephen’s fingers. He was well beyond caring. “We need to keep his airway open,” he snapped at Rickaby. “Some kind of tube. Something he can breathe through.”

  “Will that work?”

  “How the devil should I know?”

  Rickaby half-ran to the door, and Stephen heard him barking out orders. He kept his eyes on Hunt’s face. The nostrils were closed now, the piggy nose a featureless lump, and as he watched, Hunt’s bad eye distorted further, the skin around it turning slowly red.