by Sharon Lee
"Aletha goes on quite well," Hillier said promptly, with another smile for her sweet courtesy. "Her talent for the Arts Magical is growing. Her tutor is quite encouraged."
"I am gratified to hear it," Denora said warmly. "So she is responding well to the treatment?"
Hillier's face darkened, as he glanced aside to take his glass from Beyemuir. "Thank you, Elihu." He sipped and looked back to Nora.
"The treatment is not a panacea, and not even those who love her best believe that she will ever embrace a normal life. Indeed, her tutor speculates that her affliction adds potency to her talent. I find no collaboration in the literature, and one does not like to subject her to any further testing..."
"Certainly not!" Denora said warmly, and met her husband's eyes across the box. "Nicky dear, I think we should get everyone seated, don't you? I do believe the lights have gone down again..."
*
It was Nicholas and Denora's pleasant habit, on the mornings when they were both at home, to breakfast together in their private room, sharing buttered toast, coffee, and the Times between them.
Two days after opera party, they sat cozily together in the window nook, she in her carmine silk robe, he in the kimono Lord Murasaki had given him for his assistance in repairing a certain irregularity in his lordship's love life. The window was open in the nook, admitting an agreeable bustling from the street below. The late morning sun bathed the table and remains of breakfast in languorous yellow light.
Nora, her father's daughter to the fingertips, was immersed in the business section, one slim hand curled 'round her coffee cup. Nicky slouched in his chair, lazily perusing the world news. According to the Times, the world was going to pot -- no surprises there.
He turned the page to city news, one hand groping toward the table in pursuit of his cup -- and froze.
"I say..." he began, and paused as he read it again.
"Nicky?" Nora's hand dropped lightly to his sleeve. "What is it?"
He lowered the paper to meet her deep brown eyes, and found his voice. "Wolheim's dead."
Her eyes widened. "Oh, no, darling! An accident, I suppose?"
Anyone who knew of the nature of Dr. Sir John Wolheim's experiments with the Force Magical would certainly suppose an accident. Nicholas glanced down at the paper. Yes, the damning phrase was there...
"Nicky?"
"Suspicious circumstances, it says here."
"Blast." Nora crumpled her paper onto her lap with a frown. "Dickon will be calling, won't he?"
Dickon -- that would be Prince Richard -- would most assuredly be calling, Nick thought sourly. The wonder was that he hadn't called already. He sighed, folded the paper and dropped it on the table.
"I'd better dress," he said, pushing out of the chair. He smiled down into her eyes and playfully tapped a finger against her cheek. "Come, now, darling; it's not as if I'm being sent to Timbuktu."
"This time," she said darkly, just as the phone rang.
*
It was mid-day when Nicholas arrived at the house of the late Dr. Sir John Wolheim. The police were there before him, of course, but Dickon's office had been kind enough to let them know to expect the Prince's Sorcerer.
Despite the news report, Nicky had more than half-expected to confront the remains of a catastrophic release of magical energy. Wolheim's spells always carried a taint of brute force; a hint of rather too much power used. It was a flaw which would have earned him the most stringent censure of the Dean at Balliol, Nick's alma mater. Wolheim had been an Oriel man, however, and after all these years remained primarily a student of the philosophy of magic, rather than a practitioner. Benjamin Hillier, who had as deft a touch with a spell as anyone of Nick's acquaintance, himself a graduate of Balliol, had read practical magic, with a second in engineering. So it was that Hillier kept a house in the city and was no more a danger to his neighbors than the heedless town traffic, while Wolheim held to a country estate, where his frequently explosive explorations endangered no one but himself and his peculiarly devoted house staff.
Nick was let into the house by one of Appleton's men, and escorted to the laboratory at the back by another.
"Here you are, sir," his escort said, as they reached a doorway filled by a stern and wide-shouldered policeman. The door leaned against the opposite wall.
"Had to take it off the hinges," the guard said. "Locked from the inside, it was. Housekeeper called us when he didn't answer the house phone." He stepped aside, giving Nick room to pass.
"Inspector!" he called into the room. "It's His Lordship."
Even here, in the belly of the beast, there was no overt damage. Nicky paused on the threshold to admire the neat ordinariness of the room. Tools were hung away; vessels lined up by kind and capacity; books shelved; poisons behind glass; the famous collection of wind-up toys tidily arranged on their special shelf, except for one -- a chimp mounted on a tricycle -- sitting quietly, its energy spent, in the center of the otherwise empty work table.
From behind that spotless work surface arose the long and dour form of Inspector Appleton. "Your Lordship," he said. "Here it is, sir. We've left everything as it was found."
Nick did not number precognition among his talents, but there was something in Appleton's face that put him on his guard. Carefully, he walked forward, steeled for the worst.
It was well that he was, for the object lying on the floor bore no relationship to the dapper and impatient little man Nicky remembered meeting at various professional symposia across the years.
The corpus was hirsute, and thick, where Wolheim had been bald and thin. Rags of what had once been a laboratory smock and corduroy trousers clung in ribbons to bestial arms and trunk. The head was misshapen, showing a curved growth of horn from the temple, sweeping back around an oddly elongated ear. The face... Nicky sank carefully down on his heels. The face was as hairy as the rest of the body, the features thickened into something ape-like or worse.
Nicky looked up to Appleton. "You're certain this is Sir John?"
"Sergeant Beerman cast the True-See, sir. Housemaid identified the ghost."
Nicky nodded. Sylvia Beerman was a first-rate 'caster. Wasted in the police force, really. He rose and stood staring down at the thing on the floor.
"Beerman said you was to check her, sir. Said she didn't believe it herself."
"Well, then. We mustn't disappoint a lady, eh?" Sighing, Nicky slid his wand from its long pocket inside the lining of his jacket, and held it poised, eyes half-closed, gathering energy. The tip of the wand glowed a ridiculous bright green, which had pained him in his youth, when he first learned that the wand light's color reflected the magician's life force. He had been quite the esthete in those days, and would have given his soul for a wand-glow of icy blue or starry silver. Thank God Nora had come along and knocked that nonsense out of him.
He glanced at Appleton, who held the police department's camera obscura at the ready.
The glow from the wand-tip was steady. Nick drew the pattern in bright green fire around the corpse, murmuring, "I will see with the eyes of truth."
The pattern flared, bathing the monstrous corpse in a brilliant wash of color. Superimposed on the bestial body, emblazoned in brilliant green, was the image of a thin and tidy little man in rumpled lab coat and at-home corduroys, his face hairless, his features contorted in agony.
"Got it!" Appleton said, over the snap of the shutter closing. He fiddled with the camera a moment, then nodded and held up a glass slide. "Same as Beerman caught, sir. Hers was a little fainter. Shall I run this past the maid?"
"It can't hurt, I suppose. Please express my compliments to Sergeant Beerman -- first rate work, as always."
"Will do, sir."
The green image above the horrid body was fading. Nicky stood with the wand between his palms, watching the last of the spell dissolve. He glanced at Appleton.
"I'll need some room, Inspector."
"Of course, sir. I'll be right outside the door."
Nicky st
ood, his attention was focused on the ...thing... on the floor. His next order of business was to identify the magician responsible for the spell -- or spells -- which had beset Wolheim during his last hour of life. This was work of high order, less energy intensive than the True-Seeing, but more wearying for the magician. It was not Nicky's favorite spell, though it was certainly among the enchantments he worked most often.
It had become something of a challenge among mages of a certain level of skill -- and mischief -- to conceal -- to attempt to conceal -- one's magical signature. In some circles, it was a parlor game. Among the criminal element it was far from a game, and there were those who were quite ingenious in their methods. But it all and always came down to cover-up, obfuscation and misdirection. No one -- no matter how skilled -- could completely erase all trace of their own signature.
Sighing, Nicky had recourse once more to the wand, this time enclosing himself and the corpse within the same circle of glowing green fire. He spoke a Word and the flames leapt upward, meeting over his head, sealing out the world and any random magics still afloat in the late doctor's laboratory.
He closed his eyes, feeling the wand vibrating in his hand; the air, warmed by power, caressing his face. Invoking the trance was a matter of a measured breath, the deliberate forming of a Word in the blackness behind his eyelids.
As always, it was as if he passed through a door, leaving a shadowed room and stepping into full, glorious daylight. All about him, he perceived the cords of power, the lines of magic which knit the world of the spirit to that of the flesh. There was no deception in this place, nor was there mercy. Those who came seeking truth here had best be canny, and skillful -- and wise. If one could not be wise, caution might do.
Nicky, who had studied caution at the feet of a master, brought his attention to the sorry tangle of cord and discord before him. Even in the remoteness of the sorcerous viewpoint, he felt a thrill of astonishment, as he counted the layers of spell enwrapping that which had been John Wolheim. So numerous were they that the shine of each melded into the next, rendering the whole a blot of meaningless, shapeless power, obscene in this place of orderly peril.
So, then. The sorcerer girded his will, lifted his wand, and set about the tedious and dangerous task of separating the layers, one by one, subjecting each to the closest scrutiny before allowing it to evaporate back into the common reservoir of magic.
*
Some hours later, baffled and sweat-soaked, his ears ringing with exhaustion, Nicky leaned against the work table. He had scrutinized each of the eighty-five separate and distinct high level attacks upon Wolheim's person, and yet discovered no smallest trace of the magician who had conceived and implemented those attacks. It was as if a textbook spell had suddenly become maliciously animate, repeating itself over and over. Or a machine...
He closed his eyes. Memory replayed Brian's voice, cheerful with gossip: "declared that it is possible to store -- store -- a spell!"
"Oh," Nicky murmured. "Blast."
*
He was known to Benjamin Hillier's butler, and so was shown to the upper parlor while that worthy went off to roust his master from his work. Restless and exhausted, Nicky stalked the bookshelves -- novels, mostly, with Benjy's more interesting books reposing in the research library upstairs, next to the laboratory.
Sighing, he turned from the shelves -- and caught himself up. Curled into the corner of a wide damask chair was a tow-headed girl of about twelve years, her dress rucked up to expose thin knees. There was a book on her lap -- the bestiary, he saw -- but she was staring at him out of frowning blue eyes.
"Good afternoon, Aletha," Nicky said softly. "How are you today?"
The frown extended to her face, drawing the light brows together. "I'm reading," she stated. "Why are you here?"
"I'm here to see your father," he answered, and moved carefully to sit in the chair opposite hers. Quick motions frightened her, and loud voices. Music, she could not abide, nor birds, nor dogs. Despite this, she had a fascination with pictures and books on the subject of all kinds of animal, and would spend hours immersed in one page of her bestiary. Indeed, it was this characteristic of absorption in her own projects to the exclusion of any other stimulus that sat at the core of her affliction. Benjamin had the best and most learned doctors -- psychological, magical and spiritual -- to her, and some progress was made in the direction of encouraging her to interact with other humans. It was rare to find her in so talkative and gracious a mood, however.
"Your father tells me that you are progressing in your magical studies," he said, choosing a topic of conversation that might be expected to engage her interest.
Aletha stared at him, blue eyes unblinking, then abruptly shut her book, slipped to her feet and walked away. A moment later, he heard the door to the parlor slam.
"How very maladroit of me," Nicky murmured, around a sigh. He allowed his head to fall back against the chair, and closed his eyes, wishing that Benjy would come.
The chair was comfortable and he was very tired. And it really would not do to fall asleep before he had a chance to speak to Benjy. Grimly, he pried himself out of the chair and wandered back to the shelves.
He was browsing the novels when a gleam caught his eye, back among the dark books. Aletha liked to hide those things she had identified as precious, according to Benjy; and her taste appeared to run to shiny.
At great peril to his sleeves, Nicky reached back and slid the object out, discovering nothing more precious than a silver cigarette case. He frowned down at it, noting Benjy's initials, and a slight shimmer across the surface, as if --
Behind him, the door opened. He turned, slipping the case into his pocket.
"Nicholas! A thousand apologies for keeping you cooling your heels!"
Nicky smiled. "It wasn't as long as that."
"Well, you're kind to say so," Benjy said, running a hand through his already disordered hair. "I suppose it's about Wolheim? The news report said the circumstances were suspicious, and I thought of you."
"Yes, it's precisely about Wolheim," Nicky said. "Listen, will you, and see what you make of this."
Quickly, he described the scene as he had found it: the grotesquely transformed body, the cocoon of spells, the lack of signature.
By the time the tale was told, Benjy was shaking his head. "I can't help you, I'm afraid. Wolheim didn't confide in me, if you're thinking that this is one of his own projects, gone hideously wrong." He frowned. "Though, how he might have achieved that affect -- and there would have been a signature in that case -- his own."
"Too true. I'm wondering though, something along the lines of your stored spell system..."
Benjy blinked, then shook his head again. "No, old man, it's not like that. Even if Wolheim had managed to completely overload his vehicle, the spell would still have shown a signature -- his." He moved his shoulders. "A stored spell is the same as any other -- just held in abeyance for a bit. I'd show you just how it is -- but my prototype's gone missing."
"I see." Nicky frowned, wishing he weren't so desperately weary. "Do you know of any enemies Wolheim may have had?"
"Besides myself, you mean? Only half of the practical magicians on the town -- and half of the philosophers, too."
Despite his weariness, Nicky smiled. "Explosive on all fronts, the late doctor."
"That he was." Benjy shrugged. "Not very helpful, am I?"
"Not yet, but I expect you will be. I would appreciate a list of those people you know Wolheim had offended."
Benjy sighed. "Is tomorrow morning soon enough? You understand, it's a project which will consume some time."
"Thank you," Nicky said with a weary smile. "Tomorrow morning will be soon enough."
*
"Nicky?" Nora's voice wafted into his dressing room. "Whose cigarette case is this, darling?"
He shrugged into his jacket and walked out into the main room. Nora, adorably tousled in her carmine robe, was fiddling with the catch on the silver cas
e.
"Oh, it's Benjy's," he said. "There was something odd about it and I wanted --"
Across the room, the case sprang open with a loud swell of music and an expanding yellow cloud of a thousand tiny butterflies.
Nora squeaked and dropped the case; Nicky leapt forward and caught it before it hit the rug. On a higher plane, the butterflies reached the sky-blue ceiling, and melted into snowflakes, embracing the two of them in a brief, indoor snowstorm. The snow dissipated, leaving behind a lingering sense of cinnamon -- the magical signature of Benjamin Hillier.
"What in heaven's name --" Nora gasped, but Nicky was holding the silver case, his face perfectly blank. She sighed, rather unsteadily, and went over to the table to pour herself a cup of coffee. By the time she had added cream and brought the cup to her lips, Nicky had blinked back to everyday awareness.
"It works," he said, in soft wonderment.
"What works, darling?"
"Benjy's spell storing system," he said, staring down at the case as if he had never seen anything like it before in his life. "This will revolutionize the Arts Magical."
"Well, good," Nora said. "Benjy deserves some --"
A knock at the door of their suite interrupted her. Nicky slipped the expended cigarette case into his pocket as he crossed the room and opened the door, finding their butler, bearing a tray with a single envelope on it.
"Special delivery, your Lordship," he said.
"Thank you, Jensen," Nicky replied and took the envelope, recognizing Benjamin Hillier's hand. The list of possibles, then. Splendid. "That will be all."
He closed the door, slipped his finger under the seal, and pulled out a single sheet of paper.
It was not a list, but a letter.
Dear Nicholas,
By the time you receive this, matters will be in hand. I apologize for leading you a little dance yesterday afternoon. Yesterday afternoon, I had not fully understood the problem -- or the solution.
But, there, you wish to know who killed Wolheim.
I performed that well-earned deed. I, and my accomplice.
Certainly, there was no one else who deserved to die as much as Wolheim -- for Sarah alone he deserved a dozen excruciating deaths, and she was only one of many, though dear to me. Very dear to me.