Flight of Magpies

by KJ Charles

  “So is this.” Crane pulled back, looking into the golden eyes. “Listen. Whatever the hell is going on, and I include the Bruton bitch in that, we will face it together. You and me. No more pissing about, Stephen, no more trying to do it all yourself, or to run the world single-handed. You will ask for help, you will take it, and you will put us first. That’s not negotiable, understand?”

  “Yes.” Stephen’s eyes were wide, beseeching belief. “Lucien, I swear. That’s part of what I came here to say. I won’t lie to you again, and I am going to insist on help with this damned police business, and—if they won’t let me do my job properly, instead of piling impossible demands on me, I’m going to resign.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I’m not going to lose you to Lady Bruton. I’m not going to have you get tired of me because of the Council’s miserly budgets. You never chose this and it’s not fair, and I’m sorry it took me so long to see that.”

  Crane pulled him closer. “You’re not going to lose me at all, adai. I’m going nowhere. Not without you.”

  Stephen brushed his lips over Crane’s ear, tongue tickling the mark of an abandoned piercing. “I hope not. I will come and look for you if you do.”

  They rested foreheads together for a moment, both breathing deeply, tension ebbing, until Crane said, with some reluctance, “You should probably tell me about your day.”

  “I will. And I think we’ll need Mr. Merrick.”

  “One thing first. On the topic of you needing more help.”

  “I do, I know, and I’ll tell the Council—”

  “I’m not talking about the Council. I’m talking about me.”

  Stephen gave him a blank look. “You’re not a justiciar.”

  “True. On the other hand, I am extraordinarily rich, and I didn’t get that way because of my kind and gentle nature.” Crane leaned in, deliberately close. “I make things go as I wish. I’m good at that. I have excellent and amoral lawyers, who employ excellent and amoral private enquiry agents. Currently those agents are looking into the question of whether Lady Bruton is in England—” He grinned at Stephen’s expression. “I set them on first thing this morning. What did you think I’d do? And as soon as you give me anything on the windwalker, they’ll be looking into him too.”

  Stephen’s eyes widened. “No, wait a moment. Lady Bruton’s dangerous—”

  “So are thugs with knives. I am paying these men, lavishly, to do their job, which is to find dangerous people and report back. This is what accepting help means, Stephen, you have to let other people take risks too. Yes?” Crane waited for Stephen’s little nod. “Good. I have a lot of men out there already, and I will put on more as needed. And I have Merrick, who also has a dog in this fight, as it were. So you hand over everything you have on this windwalker business and who we’re facing, and let me get on with what I do best. Second best,” he amended. “Is that clear?”

  Stephen appeared at a loss for words. He managed, “I can’t ask you—”

  “You didn’t ask. You don’t have to.”

  “But—”

  “Someone came to my home, stole your ring, and made me bugger things up for you and the future Mrs. Merrick. So I am going to find the fucker, and I am going to pull out his spine with my bare hands, and your misplaced sense of responsibility is not going to stop me. Is that clear, Stephen?”

  Stephen attempted to voice an objection, caught Crane’s look, and lifted his hands helplessly. “Yes, Lucien.”

  “Good.” Crane pressed a hard kiss on his lips and pushed him off his lap, in the direction of the kitchen. “Let’s get Merrick. Come on, adai.”

  “I am aware that means idiot.” Stephen was trying to sound pointed, but the golden light was returning his eyes at last, and Crane felt a deep tension finally dissipate at the sight.

  “It’s a term of affection,” he assured his lover, following him to the kitchen. “You are an idiot, of course. But it’s mostly affection.”

  The three of them sat around the kitchen table as Stephen went over Pastern’s background, his appearance in the gaolyard, the threat.

  “Lady bloody Bruton,” Crane said when he’d finished. “Do you think Pastern’s telling the truth about that?”

  “I don’t know. He is said to be a loner who doesn’t voluntarily work for anyone, which makes his story somewhat plausible. And there are so few windwalkers, it’s entirely likely she couldn’t find one to do her bidding without being forced.”

  Crane nodded. “Do we kill her, then?”

  “She’s earned half a dozen deaths,” Stephen said. “But…I’m supposed to enforce justice. This feels like revenge.”

  “I’m not sure how much leeway we have for finer feelings,” Crane suggested.

  “I’m not a murderer, Lucien. I won’t kill anyone for Jonah Pastern’s convenience. If she’s after you then I will nail her, but I’m not doing that airborne mountebank’s bidding, do you see?”

  “I’d like a word or two with that Mr. Pastern myself before we’re done,” Merrick put in.

  “You’re welcome to him.” Stephen met Merrick’s eyes directly for the first time. “Mr. Merrick, we need Saint here.”

  “What for?” There was no give in Merrick’s voice.

  “I have to apologise to her,” Stephen said. “I accused her unjustly. I want to make that up to her, and to know that she’s all right.”

  “She is.” That was a flat statement.

  “I expect so,” Stephen said. “She is a formidable and determined young woman. It can be hard to remember that when you’ve known someone as a child.” He was watching Merrick’s face. The manservant considered his words, gave a brief nod.

  “Fair enough, sir.”

  “And, practically speaking, nobody else will be able to keep up with Pastern,” Stephen added. “How are the kicking-people-in-the-face lessons going?”

  Merrick’s features relaxed. “Pretty good, sir.”

  “Let’s get them into action, then,” Crane said. “Haul her out of wherever you’ve stashed her, quick smart. Kwai-kwai, gentlemen, we need to get moving.”

  Stephen glanced round at the kitchen clock. “It’s almost three. I’m going to the Council first—”

  “What?” said Crane ominously.

  Stephen held up a hand. “I have to, Lucien. A practitioner killing policemen isn’t just murder, it’s an absolute disaster for all of us, politically. The authorities don’t love us as it is, you know. I can’t hide these killings from them and they will notice if nobody’s paying attention to them, and a lot of people might suffer as a result if the Met get upset. If they think the justiciary aren’t playing our part properly—I don’t know what might happen but it will be bad. So I have to put this on someone else’s desk and make sure it’s dealt with, which I am going to do now. Then my entire attention is going to be on Lady Bruton and Mr. Pastern and us, Lucien. Yes?”

  Crane leaned over and kissed him, hard, ignoring Merrick’s pointed sigh from the other side of the table. “Yes.”

  “Good. Can you get Saint to meet me at the Council, Mr. Merrick, and I’ll talk her through Pastern’s dossier? And we’ll see you back here later.”

  Stephen was at the Council and locked in furious argument with John Slee when the commotion started outside the room. There was already plenty inside.

  “You need to do your own damned work, is what I’m saying!” Slee bellowed, thumping the table. “I have never heard such a thing. I don’t pass my work off onto you—”

  “You’re being unreasonable, John,” Mrs. Baron Shaw told him. “This is an extremely serious matter—”

  “Which is Day’s job to deal with. John is quite right,” Fairley came in. There was a yell from outside, a heavy thump, and a babble of voices. “If it’s so important, Day, why don’t you focus on it and drop something else? You real
ly must learn to manage your time better.”

  “How, by creating twice as much of it?” Stephen demanded. “I told you, sir that it is not possible—”

  “Then the other justiciars will have to do some work. God knows we have enough of them on the payroll! What is that racket out there?” demanded Slee.

  “This is not a debate, sir,” Stephen said through his teeth. “I cannot deal with this alone.”

  “Don’t you bloody threaten me, Day.”

  “Be quiet.” Mrs. Baron Shaw gestured sharply. “What the devil is going on?” She rose in a rustle of silk and headed for the door. Stephen, jolted from his focus on the argument, realised that the noise was not merely the usual sounds of violent disagreement that could be expected from more than three practitioners in a confined space. It was the sound of trouble.

  He caught up with Mrs. Baron Shaw as she pushed the door open, and found himself shoved out of the way by Fairley’s hand between his shoulder blades.

  There was a gaggle of practitioners in the hallway, mostly young ones. He could see Janossi, white-faced, and Saint, flushed and terrified. Janossi was holding her, but it looked more like restraint than comfort. There was a red mark on the wall, starting at about six feet up with blood and hair, and dragging downwards. At its base, on the floor in a crumpled heap, was a body.

  “Waterford!” said Fairley sharply, and started forward.

  That was Fairley’s student, a podgy and rather spiteful youth of limited talents and excellent family. He disliked Saint intensely and rarely missed an opportunity to taunt her.

  Stephen looked at the mark on the wall, and Waterford on the floor, blood running freely from his scalp, and Saint’s guilty scarlet.

  “What happened?” he asked hopelessly.

  There was a babble of voices. Janossi was insisting that Waterford had started it. Saint was shaking her head, teeth digging into her lip. Half a dozen witnesses were insisting, with varying degrees of shock, horror and pleasure, that Saint had, against all the rules of the Council, risen in the air, using her powers, and kicked Waterford in the face so hard that his skull had shattered.

  “Well, it clearly hasn’t,” Mrs. Baron Shaw said, from where she knelt by the recumbent man, but nobody was listening.

  “I thought so,” Slee was saying with huge satisfaction. “I told you the justiciary are out of control—”

  Fairley was shouting too, eyes blazing, finger waving. “Utterly unacceptable. The absolute law of the Council. A justiciar, so called. Arrest her at once. A thief and a killer—”

  “He isn’t dead,” Mrs. Baron Shaw pointed out.

  “Well, he should have been!” Fairley snapped. “Could have been. For heaven’s sake, madam, you cannot defend this.”

  “I don’t intend to. This is quite serious enough. Mr. Day, I’m afraid there is no option. As the most senior justiciar present—”

  “I know,” Stephen said, watching the blood drain from Saint’s face. He knew exactly what this meant for her. There were witnesses, there would be no sympathy…

  “I’ll take her to the cells. Now, Jen. Kwai-kwai, understand?”

  Saint’s silver-blue eyes widened slightly, and Stephen thanked God for that infuriating habit of Merrick and Crane’s, the Shanghainese words dropped into English so often that one could hardly fail to pick them up. Including kwai-kwai, which Crane had assured him meant Shift your arse.

  His hope was that if he spoke as Crane and Merrick would, Saint might act as they would.

  “Sir…” Saint’s voice shook, and her eyes searched his.

  “Kwai-kwai, Jen,” he repeated. “Let her go, Joss, I’ll handle this. It’s all right.”

  “It’s very much not all right,” Fairley began, and let out a bellow of rage, because the second Janossi released Saint, she shot upwards and backwards, flipping over the astonished crowd of practitioners, landing for a second on the wall and shoving herself off again, above the crowd and out of the doors that Stephen had pushed open with a thought. Fairley yelled, and let out a bolt of power after her, into the street, and it was with a sense of immense, giddy release to go with his impending doom that Stephen hit him in the balls with a closed fist.

  Saint was in the flat when Crane returned from a hasty trip to his lawyers to impress on them the urgency of the search for Lady Bruton. Hannaford and Greene had been recommended to him when he had started looking for the nastiest legal men in London. They performed every task with a dry, impersonal relish that put Crane in mind of a professional torturer at work, and their only ethical principle was not to leave a promise unfulfilled. They had promised Crane information on his quarry by the next morning, and so he strode back along the Strand in a mood of some self-satisfaction, stopping to enjoy a spirited exchange with a cheeky telegraph boy who hailed him insisting that he must be the famously ancient Duke of Portsmouth, or maybe Mr. Gladstone. He even threw a penny to the ever-present street artist who sat by the wall with his sketchbook, scribbling away, and returned to the flat with a sense of well-being that evaporated on the instant as he heard the sound of a woman’s choking, despairing sobs, and Merrick called to him, “We got a problem.”

  It was three very long hours later before Stephen let himself into Crane’s flat through the servants’ door.

  Crane, Saint and Merrick were all in the kitchen, seated round the table. As the door rattled and opened, both Crane and Saint leapt up. Saint gave a squeal of “Mr. D!” and hurled herself at Stephen as he came in. He staggered back, taking her slight weight with a grunt, hugging her tightly. Crane gave her a full thirty seconds, until his patience ran out, and then plucked her away bodily so he could get at his lover.

  “Jesus Christ, Stephen.” His voice shook as he took in Stephen’s appearance. “Who did that?”

  Stephen’s cheek was swollen and red. He had a vicious black eye coming, and his top lip was split and bloody over his crooked canine tooth. He gave Crane a quick, somewhat pained smile. “It’s fine.”

  “The fuck it is,” said Merrick and Crane in chorus. Crane went on, clenching his fists, “What happened? Miss Saint told us—”

  “Yes, about that.” Stephen looked over at his student, who had retreated to stand by Merrick’s chair. “What the devil were you playing at? Assault by practice, in the Council? What in God’s name were you thinking?”

  Saint squared her small shoulders. “I’m really sorry, Mr. D. Really, I am. But it was that prick, excuse my French, that git Waterford. I was waiting for you, and he just came up and started in on me again. I mean, he calls me a thief, and all the usual stuff, and I didn’t say nothing, but then he started on Mrs. Gold, and I swear to God, Mr. D—”

  “Mrs. Gold?”

  Saint’s small jaw jutted. “He said he hoped she lost the baby. He said there was enough kikes in London and we don’t need any more. He said he reckoned she couldn’t grow babies proper because Dr. Gold can’t, you know, do it, and just all this horrible, dirty stuff about her and the doctor, and—”

  She was tripping over her words. Merrick put a hand on her arm as Stephen gestured for silence. “Enough. Yes, I see. And for that you kicked him in the head?”

  Saint stuck out her chin belligerently. “Yeah.”

  “This is what I keep telling you, Saint. You have to think,” Stephen said. “If you’d put a knee in his groin first, you could probably have punched him in the face as well when he went over.”

  “Which is exactly what I said, sir,” Merrick remarked. “See, Jen? Go for the balls.”

  “Miss Saint, I trust you realise that your life is about to become utterly intolerable,” Crane said. “I should know, I’ve had the pair of them on my back for months. Sit down, Stephen. Tell us the rest.”

  Stephen sat on the offered chair, shrugging off his coat with a wince, as Merrick poured coffee. “Well, Saint left Waterford with a seriously broken nose, a sp
lit scalp and a nasty concussion, but nothing more. Head wounds bleed a great deal.” Saint’s shoulders sagged slightly with relief at that. “As she made her exit, Fairley threw a rather nasty bit of practice after her, which in my professional opinion was sufficiently uncontrolled to count as endangering the general public, so I thumped him, er, as discussed. Yes, thank you, Jenny,” he added at Saint’s whoop of glee. “He punched me in the face in retaliation, which was probably fair enough. Then it turned into a bit of a melee. Joss might possibly have got in the way of a few people who were attempting to go after her.”

  Saint gave her sharp-toothed grin. Crane frowned. “So physical violence is acceptable in the Council premises, is it?”

  “Well, it’s not encouraged, obviously, but practice is the thing that gets you into trouble. A lot of trouble. As in, Saint now needs not to be seen by anyone at all—not just justiciary, but anybody inclined to interfere—because there’s a general hue and cry out for her, and if caught, she will be dragged in and punished with extreme severity.”

  “She said,” Merrick put in grimly. “Sir, how severe—”

  “I just got in rather a lot of trouble myself so we didn’t find out,” Stephen said. “That wasn’t merely fighting by practice in the Council. You clobbered a Councillor’s student, and one who is not a friend of the justiciary. You’re in deep trouble, Saint, make no mistake.”

  “And what about abetting the escape of this notorious criminal?” Crane asked. “What did that get you?”

  “I’ve been suspended from duty pending investigation—Saint, I expect that sort of language from Lord Crane, not you. That was what took so long. They all had to shout at me and then hold an impromptu sort of court-martial. Nobody could assert I’d done anything apart from fail to take you in, but, really, everyone knew. It wasn’t the most pleasant of afternoons.”

  “Oh Gawd, Mr. D.” Saint looked stricken. “You shouldn’t of—”

  “Nonsense. It doesn’t matter, Jenny. If you’d been jugged, I’d only have had to deal with that, and we have quite enough to do as it is.” Stephen stretched, rolling his shoulders. “Anyway, at least nobody can expect me to look into these blasted murders now I’ve been suspended, so it may be for the best.”