by Gail Dayton
The relief rolling off the other woman could almost be touched. Elinor didn't know what her story was and now was not the time for telling it. Even if her talent was small, she would be useful, especially while the guilds were being organized and students gathered.
Elinor introduced Miss Kent to Amanusa who immediately enrolled her to help keep order amongst all the new students who would be reporting to the academy in the morning. She took her along with them to Brown's for the night. Elinor waved them off with a happy smile, heaving a great sigh of weariness once the gang of sorcerers vanished through the door.
"Long day, wasn't it, Miss." John Biggs was the Briganti manning the door.
"It certainly has been. I'm surprised to see you here." Elinor tried rolling some of the ache from her shoulders. "How are you feeling?"
"Oh, right as rain. Your potions set me right up. And I never miss a testing day if I can help it." He rocked on his heels as he looked with satisfaction over the empty hall. "Reminds me of my own talent test, seeing all these lads get their chance. And now our Sarah's got that same chance. And though it's glad I am that Sarah didn't have to come through with this mob, it did my heart good to see all the girls here."
"They should do well," Elinor agreed. "We've got seven new wizardry students--can you imagine so many at once? There's rarely been more than one at a time, Mr. Fillmore tells me, and sometimes not any. And six good sorcery prospects, plus two more who might go in either direction. They're all older than most of the boys as well, so we shouldn't have to deal with inappropriate romantic connections."
"I shouldn't worry overmuch about that, unless there's someone taking advantage. I know the schoolmasters fret over the boys marrying too young, but it didn't hurt me any." He shrugged.
"Yes, but it's different for women." Elinor stopped there. She was too tired for this discussion now.
"Oh aye, it is. The woman doesn't have to go out and earn her bread, plus enough for another." Biggs nodded wisely. "She's got her man to provide for her, doesn't she? I was just 21 when I married my Lizzie and went to work at Holborn Tower. Mr. Frewing, who was alchemy dean then, pitched ten kinds of fit because I didn't go to his advanced classes.
"But I had my Lizzie to take care of. And our Sarah came along in a year or so, then the rest of the girls, and they needed feeding and frocks and such. I was proud to be able to provide. All that stuff in the advanced classes--learned every bit of it working at the tower and more besides."
He made a face. "Though I'd got a bit lazy, relying on the wards to do what I should be ready and able to do, which is how Mr. Cranshaw dropped me. He didn't use magic. I've got regular training set up for all the guards now."
"Here's all your pegs." Harry pulled the cords to shut the pouch tight and held it out to her. He kept hold of her wizard's bag, obviously intending to carry it for her. "You done? Ready to go? Hello, Biggs. Good to see you out an' about." He shook hands with the new tower warden.
"Thank you, Mr. Tomlinson." Biggs gave him a wink. "It'll be Sir Henry before long. And I haven't had the chance to congratulate the pair of you on your engagement. Meant to, Miss, before we got to talking. I know you'll be very happy together."
"Thanks." Harry flashed a quick there-and-gone-again smile. "But don't hold your breath waiting for them to knight somebody like me. I crawled out from under too big a rock."
"Nonsense," Elinor said. "Anyone can see your sterling qualities." He did have them. They usually drove her to madness, but they were excellent qualities for a man in his position.
"Too right, sir," Biggs said. "Might take a bit longer, so I won't be holding my breath, no, sir. But it'll happen. Mark my words."
Elinor took Harry's arm. Usually she didn't, despite their engagement. It felt too intimate with a man she intended to keep at arms' length even after their marriage. But it would serve to move him along now. She needed to get away from everyone so she could think. She'd never considered before that there might be disadvantages to a man in marriage.
Harry took her hint, bade farewell to Biggs and to Norwood, who would be officially turning the building back to its caretakers after all the magicians were out, and they left.
"Oh look, the moon is out." Elinor stopped at the top of the stairs to gaze. Scarcely a wisp of cloud drifted across the night sky to block the light of the moon's first quarter, halfway back to full. She'd never paid much attention to the moon's phases before her acquaintance with so many conjurers. "The sky is so clear. I want to walk in the park."
Harry nodded a greeting at the bobby standing watch at the foot of the London Institution's broad stairway. The bobby gave a little salute in return. "All right. Seems safe enough."
She made a face at him, but he was right. Safety was important. The melee in the very street where they walked now had emphasized the point on his behalf. Female magicians, even females who wanted to be magicians, were at risk.
They crossed the street and passed under the circle of stately plane trees. Elinor let go of Harry's arm as she moved into the park beyond the trees, heading for the moonlight. He paced silently along beside her, hands clasped behind his back.
Thought proved elusive for Elinor. She knew what she ought to be thinking about, but she could only feel.
A riot of turbulent emotions had taken possession of her, disrupting her thoughts, and throwing her mental process into utter disarray. Every time she managed a coherent thought, some stray emotion came crashing through it, smashing it into bits. If she could define the emotions, perhaps she could make a start at bringing them into some semblance of order, but she couldn't do it. Anger was there, bashing about inside her, and fear. So was compassion. And guilt--or was that an emotion?
"Wot's that?" Harry was peering at something beneath the trees. "Elinor, do you see it? That white thing there?" He pointed into the shadows.
She squinted, not sure where he was pointing. "Under the rhododendron?"
"No, beside it. Next to the tree trunk there." He moved toward it, whatever it was.
Elinor, perforce, went with him. Horror shuddered through her when she saw the tiny grinning skull with its sharp teeth moving through the deep dark, stealing her breath, her strength. "What--?"
"Cat, I think," Harry said, as calm as if he observed a phenomenon in his laboratory. "Skull bone's harder than lots of the other bones. I wonder why it used the skull whole."
"What used it? How is it moving like that?" Elinor kept close to Harry, but behind him. Caution had its proper place.
"Machine. Out o' the dead zone. The rest of it's darker than the skull stuck on top, harder to see. I wonder wot it's doin' 'ere."
"Call your committee, get someone here to find out."
"No conjurer handy to call for me." He crept toward the machine step by slow step.
"Harry, you are an alchemist. You cannot be messing about with machines when they make you faint."
"Armored ones keep all their no-magic locked away inside their armor. Besides--" His teeth flashed in the moonlight as he grinned over his shoulder at her. "I'm your familiar now, or almost. I'm not just an alchemist anymore." He held his hand out, inviting her to take it.
This was why she couldn't make up her mind to break the familiar bond. Because it kept proving itself useful. She placed her hand in his. "At least give a shout to the bobby and ask him to report in."
"All right, I will. Just let me--" Harry turned back to look at the machine again just as something popped and a puff of dust or smoke drifted out one of the cat skull's eye sockets.
He grunted, a sound of pain. His knees buckled and he caught himself by his grip on Elinor's hand. She cried out, voice rising to a scream as the cat skull turned toward her. Something shot out from the other socket, a streak of shine in the moonlight. Elinor's scream cut off as all her muscles collapsed and the world went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She was cold. Elinor pressed closer to the warmth behind her, shivering from the inside out. It was dark, and damp, an
d there were peculiar scratching, clicking noises. She was not at home, waking up in her bed.
The surface where she lay was too hard and she still had all of her clothes on, including her corset and her shoes. And her hoops, which were pushed and twisted every which way. Her bonnet was crushed flat on one side, the ties half choking her. She reached up to claw the ribbon open, pushed the ruined hat off her head, and opened her eyes to horror.
Choking off her scream--who knew what else it might call?--Elinor drew her feet in beneath the dubious protection of her warped and broken hoops. Hordes of bone-armored machine creatures milled about her in timid aggression, darting toward her with their spinning saw blades and slicing pincers, then away again before they could get too close.
The source of warmth beside her proved to be Harry. His presence filled her with relief and reassurance, but his unconscious state terrified her, especially when she recalled the puff of smoke from the cat-skull monster's eye. Could he have been shot again?
She rolled him onto his back and tried to conduct an examination in the dark. She had no idea where they were or how they could have got here. They were inside a building scarcely more than four walls and a roof, and those none too solid. At least it wasn't raining, given how porous the roof appeared, but that only seemed to intensify the cold, which was made worse by lying on hard, damp brick.
"Harry." She shook his shoulder. "Harry, wake up and help me. Where are you hurt? Can you make a light?"
There were high windows and in the cloudless sky, the quarter moon provided a fair amount of light. She ought to be able to see blood against the white of his shirt, even in the dark. She got his jacket and waistcoat open, searching his upper body for signs of injury. He'd been facing the creature when it fired. Or did whatever it did. So she wouldn't have to examine his back.
She ran her hands over his chest and across his stomach, in case her visual examination missed something, running them down his sides to see whether the bullet or dart might have grazed him there. She probed along his trouser area, then moved to his legs. His trousers were a charcoal gray glen plaid. Blood wouldn't show against the dark color.
"So." A harsh voice startled a squeak out of her.
Elinor jumped to her feet and whirled around, spreading her skirts to hide as much of Harry as she could.
"Kitty didn't kill you after all. Pity, that." Nigel Cranshaw had come in through a ramshackle door, the cat-skull machine skittering in ahead of him. Elinor recognized Nigel only because of the moonlight falling across his familiar, narrow face. He sounded awful and looked worse, with a ragged blanket wrapped around his shoulders in place of a coat.
"You call that thing Kitty?" A shudder rippled involuntarily through her. "How can you make a pet of it?"
"Oh, I haven't. We--" Nigel lifted his foot, threatening a kick while the machine clicked and squealed at him, menacing with its tool-arms. "--co-exist."
"How did you bring us here? Why? What do you mean to do with us?"
"Do? Nothing. I didn't bring you here." Nigel limped toward a paler lump on the floor. "They did, the machines. I have no idea what they want with you. Nor do I care."
"Then we are free to go?" Elinor didn't know how she would move an unconscious Harry anywhere, but she would figure something out if she had to.
"If they will let you." Nigel waved his good hand, indicating the swarming machines. He kicked one out of his way and cackled with a sudden burst of laughter. "Quite a sight you were, carried in by dozens of the creatures. Like something out of Gulliver's Travels. I laughed myself silly."
Elinor's lips twitched. The image was amusing, she supposed. And frightening. Harry didn't do well around these machines. What did the things want with them? "Harry's hurt," she said. "I know he is, or he would be conscious. Do you have a light? Or, wait--"
Harry was her familiar or almost, as he said. How could she have forgotten? She didn't need a light to check his welfare. But she did apparently need more blood, for when she reached out to her own in his bloodstream, there wasn't enough magic for her to catch hold. Why hadn't she bought a lancet yet? There was a pin attaching a bunch of silk flowers to her bonnet. Elinor groped for it and found what she sought, slightly bent, but serviceable.
"What are you doing?" Nigel sounded his suspicions from the far side of the chamber where he sat on his lump. A mattress possibly, but if so, a disgusting sample of the species.
"I need blood." Elinor chose a finger--left fore--and lanced it, sticking the pin deep with a hiss to let the pain out. She needed to be sure of drawing enough blood for her need.
"Isn't he bleeding already?" Nigel cried. He struggled to stand. "And you want more? What about your vaunted magic from innocent blood?" He paused a moment. "Aren't you Tavis? Aren't you a wizard?"
"I don't have my bag, I don't have any light, and I can work sorcery, too." She opened Harry's mouth and put the first drops on his tongue, then squeezed out more. Let Nigel see. She didn't care. He was mad. No one would believe him if he told. "Innocent blood is for justice," she added. "Not for healing."
"It's my bag now." Nigel hobbled a few steps closer, sounding not so sane as he had moments ago. "I went back to get it, after they brought you here. What are you doing? Is that--are you giving him your blood?"
She put the third squeezing of blood in Harry's mouth. Amanusa and Pearl had been sharing bits of information about making and working with a familiar, dropping it into conversation as if off-hand. More blood was better than less, they said, in a familiar bond.
"Why are you feeding him your blood?" Nigel sounded more curious than outraged. Maybe she actually had done some good, tinkering in his mind.
"Because it will help him. I would give him all of it, if need be." All of her blood, none of her self.
Elinor shook the thought away. Had the blood gone deep enough to settle yet? She went back to her unfinished physical examination of Harry's legs. A little way down his right leg, he flinched and cried out when she touched a spot that felt wet.
Without waiting longer, Elinor leapt into his bloodstream and found the ugly, narrow, barbed bone dart deep in the muscle of his thigh. "I need the forceps." She held her hand out in demand. "And possibly a knife. I may need to cut this out."
Nigel cradled the bag to his chest. So he did have it. "It's mine."
"Yes. And I will give them back to you. Just let me use them to get this dart out of Harry's leg. Please. It's killing his magic." But not as swiftly as it had the last time he was shot. He was her familiar. Her sorcery, her blood supported him, gave him strength where he needed it. "The forceps are in a pocket on the side with the latch. The knife will be there with them. It's a folding knife, so you don't have to worry."
"You'll give them back?" Hallelujah, he was listening.
"I swear. Please. Hurry." Elinor restrained herself from snatching the bag out of his hands. It wouldn't help.
He set her bag down on the floor, bracing it with his clawed hand to work the latch with the other. "Why do you want to help him? You're a woman. Women are wicked. They lie. They set traps and drag men down."
"Some do," Elinor acknowledged. "Just like some men do wicked things. But not all of them." She twisted her hands together to keep from reaching in and fetching the instruments herself.
"Women abandon those who need them." His voice had gone high and soft, almost childlike.
She needed him to be a grown up just now. A sane one. She did not have time for this. Harry was hurt. "Your mother died, Nigel. She couldn't help it. She tried to stay, but she was weak and hurt."
Finally, finally he held out the forceps. Elinor made herself take them gently from his hand instead of snatching. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." The words came automatically, but they came. Politeness, from Nigel, to a woman. Amazing.
Elinor tore Harry's trouser leg open, struggling a bit to get the strong wool threads to separate. She stepped back into his bloodstream, then out again, and back, until she figured out h
ow to hover half in between so she could both see what she was doing with the forceps and see where the dart lay buried in heavy muscle. He jerked and shouted when she began to probe, but she was able to push him into deeper unconsciousness, where he wouldn't feel the pain.
"Bloody hell." She spat the curse, but one wasn't enough. "Bloody, bloody hell." She had a grip on the dart, but the wicked barbs up and down half its length would catch and tear when she pulled it out. She couldn't push it all the way through. It would hit Harry's thigh bone first, even if the forceps were long enough, which they weren't. Harry had a thick thigh.
"I need the knife," she said. "I'm going to have to cut it out."
"What do you mean?" Nigel's suspicions were obviously roused again.
Elinor explained as she tried to work the dart out without the knife. Harry groaned in the depths of his unconsciousness.
"You lie! You did this to him!" Nigel scrabbled backward, clutching Elinor's wizard's bag to his chest.
"No, I did not! Your damned Kitty did it!" Shouting probably wouldn't help, but it made her feel better. Momentarily, anyway.
"Nigel, the dart is bone, like the bones armoring the machines. It has no magic in it. It's dead and it's going to kill him if I don't get it out. The barbs on the dart will tear a great hole in his leg if I yank it out without using the knife to cut it free. Please. I am begging you." She felt near tears. Would he accuse her of irrationality if she succumbed? She felt far from rational.
"Why?" His voice had gone soft and high again. "Is he your sweetheart?"
"I-- He-- We are engaged to be married." Complete and utter truth. "But I would help him even if we weren't. I helped you when you burned your hand, even though you were trying to burn me. There's an ointment in the bag I was going to bring you in the tower, if you hadn't escaped. To soften the scars and help your hand move more easily."