by Gail Dayton
"I thought you used Jax's blood," Elinor whispered.
"Jax is my familiar," Amanusa said in a normal voice. Nothing more. Elinor had to work her way through the rest of it herself.
"Jax's blood is the same as yours?" she whispered to Amanusa again.
"Almost," Amanusa murmured back, magic still flowing.
Elinor laid out the fabric to hold the potion and used the small wooden paddle she'd used for mixing the herbs into the oil to spread it onto the tightly woven surface. Harry had his shirt off, she noted with a quick glance, and the wound area looked inflamed from this side of his body too. Amanusa scratched her lancet lightly across it, opening up a few small stripes in his skin, less than the equivalent of a cat's scratch.
"You should have told me it wasn't healing properly," Elinor scolded as she laid the cool decoction over the reddened area. The oiled cloth tended to slide, so she held it in place while she reached for the bandage. Amanusa handed it to her.
"I thought it was." Harry craned his neck to watch what she did, his arm up over his head out of the way. "I been--well, not shot. But I've been cut before, 'ad things poke into me an' make holes. Took longer than this to 'eal."
"But then, you didn't have Elinor healing you," Amanusa teased. "She expects instant results."
"No, I don't," Elinor protested, then had to admit, "Not instant--but very, very quick."
She found herself slowing as she put her arms around Harry to pass the bandage behind his back and made herself move faster. The last time she'd done this, it had ended in a way she was determined would not happen again. And the damned poultice kept sliding, which meant more turns of bandage were required to hold it in place.
When she was finally able to tie it off, she straightened and her head bumped Harry's nose. She frowned at him and he leaned even closer. "You smell good," he murmured. "Makes you hard to resist."
"Try harder." She intensified her frown as she wiped her hands. They were a little oily too.
She checked the bandage, but there were enough layers, the potion shouldn't seep through to stain his clothing. And the bandage was cotton gauze. The process of transforming it from seed fluff to fabric took away much of its magic potential, but she could still use it to create a protective barrier to hold the magic against his skin.
"If it took only ten minutes to make this potion," Harry asked, "why did it take most of yesterday to make the potion for the challenge? Are poisons that much 'arder to work with?"
"It's not the poison so much as the magic," Elinor said. "This one was fairly simple. We wanted to pack as much healing magic into it as possible and I wanted to do it quickly, without including anything that would interfere with the sorcery. We also wanted the magic to leave the herbs quickly and go inside you. With the challenge potion, I want the magic to stick strictly to the ingredients and be difficult to remove--at least until it's drunk."
"But why do wizards use poisons?" Jax asked. "Why is it even allowed?"
"Because in lower doses, many poisons become effective medicines." Elinor held Harry's shirt for him to slip his arms into. She needed him to be covered. "Even without magic added, a tincture of digitalis--foxglove--can help steady the heart. In large amounts, it will kill. Wizards should also know the poisons in order to be able to neutralize them and to recognize which has been used.
"Herbs are a tool, like all magic. The evil is in the one using them, not the tool being used. We must study what each one will do. We do not yet know, by any means, all the uses even of the plants native to England and Europe, much less those in the rest of the world. A great deal of study is required."
"And with only twelve wizards--" Harry buttoned up his waistcoat. "We ain't 'ad enough of them to do the studying. Another reason to start admittin' females." He allowed Elinor to assist him into his jacket. He generally favored the shorter tail of a sack coat to the long-skirted frock coats Jax and Grey usually wore. He seemed to prefer the freedom of movement allowed. "Is it time for lunch yet?"
After lunch Elinor had the meeting arranged with the headmaster and faculty at the school. The sorcery students were something of a special case, since most of their sorcery classes would have to be taught by either Amanusa or Jax, who held a vast reservoir of knowledge from his 300-plus years of living. Though Pearl was ranked as master, she was still a very new sorceress and worked much of her magic, Elinor feared, by instinct. Pearl sat in on many of the sorcery classes and now Elinor would too. Quietly and without fanfare.
The three female wizardry students could follow the regular wizard's curriculum at the academy. The ladies had adopted young Mr. Little, the lone male wizardry student, as a sort of pet and he seemed to adore it, so conflict among the students would not be an issue. But there were other classes they needed, everything from history and mathematics to magicians' law. Amanusa and Elinor had already decided how those subjects would be taught.
The boys and girls had to be in classes together. It wouldn't do to have the sexes looking at each other like they were strange creatures from another world. Eventually they would have to work together. They needed to know each other, respect each other, and have knowledge of what the various types of magic could do. Harry and Grey of course agreed, and since the magisters of the four guilds were the directors of the school, they had the final say.
Headmaster Whitson had been amenable to the idea. As Grey had said, he was a forward-thinking man. The faculty were another matter entirely.
It took most of the afternoon and several threats of dismissal from their posts to convince the schoolmasters that not only would they teach the females in their classes, but they would also treat them fairly. Oddly enough, the wizardry instructor John Fillmore was not the most intransigent. That honor went to a crotchety alchemist. Elinor had heard Harry claim several times, even before this meeting, that the man should be put out to pasture. That time may have come.
Elinor left the academy feeling the need to crack heads. She was not ordinarily a hot-tempered woman, but the stubbornness of certain arrogant, self-important, ignorant-- She diverted her anger to grinding herbs for her burn ointment. She did get a trifle snappish with Dr. Rosato, even though he was truly a help in the making, but he took it in good temper.
Friday arrived and with it the second challenge. Elinor climbed onto her stepstool to retrieve her potion hidden across the room from the prominently labeled potion she'd used for Cranshaw. No one had attempted to break into her stillroom to tamper or steal--an advantage of having the room attached to Harry's house--but one could never be too careful.
The challenge itself was almost an anticlimax. They had agreed on a simultaneous working for this one, so Elinor started on Dodd's potion as soon as he started work on hers. His poison was as straightforward in its malevolence as the man himself, without any knots or twisty bits to comb out. She neutralized the potion, drank it down, and popped in one of Dr. Rosato's peppermints, which had been admitted ahead of time by Dodd's second, Phineas Allsup.
Dodd was still working over Elinor's potion. Forehead glistening with sweat, he would stir a moment, then mutter for several more before stirring again. Once he changed wands, but went back to his first after only one stir.
Elinor occupied herself by mentally reciting plants by common name, Latin name, and Gaelic name, then listing the properties of each, beginning with the letter "R" for variety's sake. She had gone off into a meditation on possible new uses for curly dock, rumex crispus, Gaelic name lost somewhere in memory, when Dodd threw down his wand, startling her back to alertness.
"I can't do it," he snapped out. "I won't drink it. I dare anyone else to try. I say even she can't drink it. A wizard who can't neutralize his own potion can't be magister."
Elinor sighed and held her hand out for the cup, pewter this time. With a sneer, Dodd handed it to Rosato who sniffed it.
"Bene," he said. "He has added nothing to it." Rosato sniffed again. "I cannot tell that he has taken much away, either."
He han
ded the cup to Elinor who still had her hand out, waiting. With a sigh, she pulled out a birch wand and stirred it through the potion, pulling all the nastiness out. Magic and poison, anyway. It would still taste foul.
She gave it one more stir to be certain all the magic had taken up residence in the wand, set the wand aside, pinched her nose shut, took a deep breath, and drank down as much of the awful tasting stuff as she could stand. She came up coughing and spitting. Oh, it was nasty. It took two more peppermints before she could endure her own mouth again.
All the while, the audience--almost as large as the previous one--waited on tiptoes to see whether her sputtering might be merely the prologue to her painful death. Alas, they were to be disappointed.
"Do you honestly think," she croaked when she could, "that I am so stupid to put magic into a poison without knowing how to take it out again, with the poison?"
Dodd merely scowled.
Elinor shook her head. "Of course you do. After all, I'm 'only' a woman. You'll learn to think otherwise soon enough."
"She did not drink all of the potion," Allsup protested.
"Rules require that the wizard drink only the majority," Sir William retorted.
"Do you want to finish it?" Elinor waved the cup in Allsup's direction. "There's no harm in it now."
Both Dodd and Allsup backed away. She didn't actually blame them. There were stories from the old days, before the burnings, about wizards who could neutralize potions within themselves while allowing anyone else who drank it to be affected. She couldn't do it, but it might be an interesting thing to learn. Not that she wanted to poison people, but if she could do it with a truth spell? Could be advantageous.
"Oh, for--" Harry hopped off the dais and strode to the challenge table which had been moved much closer to the front this time. He picked up the goblet and tossed off the remaining swallow of potion. "There. Happy?"
He spat on the floor and looked around for Rosato. "Got any more o' them peppermints?"
"Idiot," Elinor hissed at him. "You do not go about drinking wizard's potions willy nilly. Not if you can't tell what's in them."
"You drank it. I knew it was safe." Harry stuck the peppermint in his mouth and sucked on it.
"Don't do it again." She looked back at her godfather. "Sir William? Are we done?"
"Show some respect!" Allsup snarled at her.
Harry stirred as if to respond and Elinor cast him a sharp look. She was wizard's magister. He seemed to recall that and held his tongue.
"Respect is given where it is due, Wizard Allsup," she said calmly. "And where it is reciprocated. When I am shown respect, when I see wizards who deserve it, then I shall certainly give it. As for this challenge, it seems finished to me."
"The challenge is concluded," Sir William said, overpowering any other muttering. "Magister Tavis has successfully met the challenge of Wizard Dodd and prevailed."
Allsup's glower became more fierce. He began pulling off his glove with sharp angry snatches at each fingertip.
"Furthermore--" Sir William's voice got even louder. "There will be no more challenges to the authority of the wizard's magister for the period of one month. Four weeks from today--"
He consulted a calendar produced by his conjurer secretary. "On February 19, a challenge may be issued by any of you who still wish to risk it. And yes, as head of Magician's Council I have the right. Not to ban challenges entirely, but I may set the timetable. Read your charter. We are done for at least the next four weeks."
He nodded at the gathering. Elinor curtsied, the male wizards bowed, and the audience broke into a gossiping crowd.
"Dr. Rosato." Elinor laid her hand on the handsome Italian's sleeve, holding him in place. "I am feeling guilty for abandoning a patient to your care. Would you go with me this afternoon to see Mr. Cranshaw?"
"But of course, Signorina." He took her hand in his and bowed over it, pressing his lips to the back, his eyes holding hers the whole way down. It made Elinor feel rather silly. "Anything for you."
"What's this?" Harry drew closer, scowling fiercely at Rosato. While she'd been teaching the dottore to make the burn ointment, Harry had come to the stillroom half a dozen times, just to "see how it was going." She needed to make it more clear that he had no right to dictate her activities.
Rosato seemed far too amused by it. He tucked Elinor's hand into his arm. "Signorina Eleanora will go with me to visit the wizard Cranshaw for his health this afternoon."
"Not alone." Harry's expression was adamant.
"Of course not." Rosato patted her hand. "She is going with me. And perhaps the brigata Norwood. He has the keys." He looked down at Elinor, so much mischief in his eyes it made her wary. "Shall we share luncheon together before we go?"
"Good idea." Harry signaled to Grey and Amanusa on the dais. "We'll all go."
Rosato didn't seem too disappointed. Perhaps he'd intended to goad Harry into this result. Nikos Archaios and the Prussian joined them as well, but it was a smaller group that visited Holborn Tower.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thom Norwood led Elinor, Harry, and Rosato, along with Amanusa and Jax through the entrance gate and across the courtyard. There, he opened the warding on the door at the base of the tower just long enough for the party to enter.
"I am not sure this visit is wise," he said as he started up the stairs. "Mr. Cranshaw still seems quite unbalanced on the subject of women. He may become manic at the sight of the ladies."
"That is something we should know, is it not?" Rosato followed directly behind Norwood.
Harry followed Rosato and as Elinor started up the stairs behind him, she looked back at Amanusa, trying to indicate with a one-handed gesture the lancing of a thumb.
Amanusa caught up when Elinor paused at the first landing as if winded. "I've ridden his blood," Amanusa said quietly. "It is not a pleasant place."
"But if we could change that?" Elinor started up the next flight of steps.
"He may be happy as he is," Jax said as he came up behind Amanusa.
"He's not," Amanusa assured them. "He lives his life in a state of terror and--and-- I cannot think of the right word. Disgust, perhaps. He is horrified by his urges and thoughts, and he is afraid of women."
"Is it not incumbent on us then, to relieve that pain? Or attempt to?" Elinor felt it was, strongly, but didn't know if those feelings were correct.
"Jax, do you know if it is possible?" Amanusa looked over her shoulder at him.
"Of course it is possible." Jax climbed slowly, so the sorcerers dropped behind the others. "You yourself have removed memories. Perhaps losing a memory or two will help ease him."
"I hate to do that. Without your memories, who are you?"
"Perhaps we can help him understand those memories differently," Elinor suggested. "But how do we get it in him? I don't think he'll drink anything we offer."
"Have Rosato offer it," Amanusa said with a shrug as Elinor entered the guard station where the other men waited.
"What is Rosato offering?" the dottore wanted to know.
"Some of my restorative." Elinor didn't carry her large bag today, just a small approximation. Its primary contents were the restorative elixir.
"Ah, bene. It will do him good. I have been dosing him thus, of course, but variety can be helpful." Rosato led the way along the hall to the door the wizard was imprisoned behind.
Elinor got out a vial of restorative and held it in her hand as she stood on tiptoe to peer through the iron-barred grille. Cranshaw sat on his bunk, holding his injured arm in the air as if studying it. He was bending and straightening his ruined fingers over and over again, staring at them as he did. He seemed unaware that anyone else was near.
"Do you think we can do this?" She kept her voice quiet in hoped of keeping Cranshaw from noticing their group a while longer.
"I don't see why not," Norwood said. "He doesn't seem to notice your presence while you and Mrs. Greyson are behind the door. Perhaps he will if you come closer
. Since Dr. Rosato says we should know how he will react."
"I would like to see how his hand is healing," Elinor said. "If he will permit me to examine it."
"Elinor--" Harry glowered at her.
"Harry." Elinor glowered back. "I am master now, not apprentice, with more than wizardry at my hand."
"If you go in, I go in."
"Fine." As long as she could enter, she didn't care who else did.
Norwood produced his vast ring of keys again and unlocked the cell door. Elinor handed her vial of restorative to Amanusa and followed Dr. Rosato into the surprisingly spacious cell.
All that stone and metal made her shiver, sent cold fingers running up her spine. Harry squeezed in right behind her and Norwood after him, both alchemists holding their wands at the ready.
"He's already burned," she hissed at them.
"Fire's not the only magic we got," Harry said without expression.
"Signore Cranshaw." Rosato approached the wizard with a pleasant, matter-of-fact air. "We have come to see how your healing progresses."
Cranshaw didn't bother to look up. Elinor couldn't like that apathetic attitude. She studied his face. The fire had brushed it lightly. She could see no sign of scarring on his narrow, blade-nosed face, though there appeared to be red streaks rising up the side of his neck above his open collar. At least he was healed enough to wear clothing.
He offered up his damaged hand, still without looking at any of the others in the cell. Rosato took it. Cranshaw's gaze seemed to be focused in a corner of the cell to the right of the door, his lips moving in silent--conversation? Litany? Or was it a rant? Elinor couldn't guess. She glanced over her shoulder, but despite the deep shadow cast by the pale cold afternoon light coming through the tall narrow window, she could see that the corner was empty.
Rosato looked at her, indicating with a twist of his chiseled lips and a lift of his long-fingered hand--the one holding Cranshaw's--that here was where he wanted her attention. Elinor gave it, crouching beside Cranshaw's cot to see better. Gently, she tested the range of motion in the ruined claw. Better than she would have expected.