Reserved for the Cat em-6

by Mercedes Lackey

  I said, I know the city because I lived here, about twenty years ago, more or less.

  “What a surprise, you hardly look a day over ten,” came Jonathon’s sarcastic reply. “You are a remarkably well preserved cat.”

  The cat bristled, the hair on his tail poofing out a little. Like uncle, like nephew. Were all the Hightower men born with acid wit, or did they learn it from one another? Do not mock me, Jemmie Hightower, he snapped. And keep a civil tongue in your head. I knew your uncle, and I knew you when you were still in nappies.

  The magician stopped dead in his tracks and swiveled to look down at the cat. His voice shook a little. “No one—has called me ‘Jemmie’—since—”

  Precisely why I used that name with you. You surely don’t think I am an ordinary cat.

  “Well of course not! You’re a magical—” Jonathon stopped, and a dumbfounded look came over his face. “No magical construction could be half as clever as you. Most of them could never even think for themselves, much less some up with the wild plans you have. What are you?”

  I am a cat, replied Thomas, primly.

  “You are as much a cat as I am a Bartholomew Faire conjurer. I say again, what are you?” The cat looked up and saw Jonathon’s eyes narrow. “Or is the right question not what, but who?”

  Thomas sat down on his haunches, and wrapped his tail tightly around his legs. You must swear never to tell Ninette. If you do, I swear I will scratch your eyes out, and pee in all your stage props.

  Warily Jonathon nodded. “All right.”

  The cat sighed. He hated letting these secrets go. He had hoped to carry them to the grave. I was as human as you are, and no, I am not reincarnated in cat form, as Wolf claims to have been. I was an Earth Master, and this is a permanent transformation. I lost a magician’s duel, and my opponent froze me in the last shape I took. Not surprising, really; she was a truly vindictive and jealous wench, and she never forgave me for running away from her—and even less was she inclined to forgive me when she tracked me down and discovered I had married someone else. He still remembered the look on Helen’s face when he told her. The fury—it had been enough to make him take a step back at the time. And if he had thought for a moment that he might be able to run away from her again, that expression had utterly disabused him of the notion. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned . . . I am inclined to think they are right. Kipling also says that the female is more deadly than the male. I am in a position to corroborate that.

  He could almost see the thoughts running through Jonathon’s head as the Fire Master ran through all of the Earth Masters in the last forty or so years he had ever heard of that came from hereabouts—sorted out all the ones that had gone missing or that could not possibly have known his uncle or clapped eyes on himself as a baby—then eliminated all those too young to be the one in question—

  Thomas recognized the moment when Jonathon put all the clues together. His jaw dropped.

  “Thomas Dupond?” the mage gasped incredulously.

  The cat sighed. The same.

  “But—” another clue floated to the surface, and Jonathon almost reeled. “But—you must be Ninette’s missing father!”

  Now you know why I did what I did. The cat’s tail lashed angrily. I did not abandon my wife and child! I was ambushed, and they were threatened. Helen Waring tracked me to Paris, sent a private detective to find me, and confronted me literally no more than a block from my home. She threatened to make life unendurable for Marie and Ninette, and you know very well that she could have, and would have, and she would never have had to use a bit of magic to do so. The only way I could distract her was to call her out in a magician’s duel. Which, as you must have deduced, I lost.

  “But now we know who the magician that is trying to kill Ninette is!” Jonathon crowed. Thomas sighed.

  You are leaping to far too many conclusions, the cat told him. No, in this case, you are quite wrong. Helen Waring is not the Earth Master we are looking for.

  “Why do you say that?” Jonathon demanded.

  Because she is dead, Thomas said flatly.

  Silence for a moment. “How can you be sure?” Jonathon asked, after a pause.

  Because I killed her.

  More silence. Then Jonathon cleared his throat awkwardly. “Ah . . . how did that come about?”

  She intended to go through with her threat to torment my wife and child. I expect she had some idea of capturing me as well, but I got over the shock of finding myself permanently a cat a great deal faster than she had thought I would. I crept into the hotel where she had rented a room that same night, Thomas told him, reining in the anger and hatred that still lashed him whenever he thought of that cruel, cruel woman. How he despised her still! Had she been a man, her evil nature would have been uncovered and dealt with long before it had come to this pass by her fellow Elemental Masters, but since she was a woman . . . they had laughed at what they called her “folly,” and had never taken her seriously. Perhaps that was why she had obsessed over Thomas; he had taken her seriously. He had known she was, or at least one day would be, a menace. He had realized that she was dangerous to him, when he had begun finding her creatures spying on him. And she had money, a very great deal of it, being the only child of a shipping magnate who had left her his entire fortune, while he was as poor as a church-mouse. She had assumed she could buy him, as she had bought everything else she wanted, including the best of tutors in her magic. It must have come as a tremendous shock to her when she discovered he had fled. I waited for her at the top of the stairs, he continued, reliving that night. And when she stepped out of her room, and was not looking, I ran between her ankles and tripped her. It was a new hotel, in the latest fashion they called Art Nouveau. There were terrible stairs in that place; very steep, beautiful marble with sinuously curving iron railings, and treacherous. She broke her damned neck exactly as I intended she should. I was glad I did it and I would do it again.

  Another long pause. “But . . . you lost the chance to have the transformation reversed—”

  Which she swore that she would never do, Thomas said bitterly. In fact, her last words to me as she sealed the spell were “I hope you enjoy mice, for you will be living on them from now on.” At a stroke she doomed my poor Marie and Ninette to starvation or worse, and me to a miserable existence either running from her, or as her captive. My only regret is that she did not suffer as poor Marie and Ninette suffered. I did what I could for them, but I was limited by . . . well, real life. I stole purses and left them where Marie would find them, but I had to be careful, and I had to make sure it was nothing too generous nor too often. Marie herself would have started to question where they came from, and if she started looking too prosperous, the gendarmes would start to ask questions to which she would have no answers. How well he remembered his horror when Marie decided that Ninette would have to become a courtesan! And to see his lovely wife trading her favors among the artists for the sake of a few sausages . . .

  It made him angry, ashamed, and vengeful, all at the same time. It still did.

  “I—see,” Jonathon said, slowly. “I mean, I do see. I’d have felt the same in your place . . .”

  I hated it. And Marie—trained Ninette to think that she must find a rich protector. I hate that even worse, if that were possible. Thomas paused to get a grip on himself. But Ninette is a good dancer, and I was sure she would be able to make her way without needing to find a—protector. In fact, I had planned to help her rise in the ranks as soon as there was an opportunity. Figaro praised her! That is no small matter in Paris! And when she found herself ejected from the Opera Ballet . . . I did not want her to find a rich protector elsewhere. I still do not. His mental voice turned fierce. I want her to never need any such thing. So I waited until she was desperate and dizzy enough with hunger that she would accept such a thing as a talking cat, and set my plan in motion. And you must never, ever tell her who and what I am.

  “I gave you my word,” ple
dged Jonathon. “And I give it again.”

  Good. Now, I think we must part. I am going to serve as nightwatch. And you must go and try to discover who it is that wants my child dead.

  And with that, Thomas stood up, flicked his tail twice, and leapt off into the shadows.

  Jonathon Hightower had had a fair number of unpleasant surprises in his life, but this evening certainly should be posted near the top of the list. First, there was the arrival of the cat and his frantic call for help. Then the discovery of just what the young ladies had caught. Then Ninette’s confession—

  Ninette. He had to admit the name suited her much better than Nina . . .

  And now this. It was as implausible a tale as anything in a shilling novel about rags-to-riches newsboys, or American cowboys and savage rustlers. Yesterday he would have called such a story sheer lunacy.

  But that was before; now, well . . .

  It was the spare, unembroidered way in which Thomas had told his tale that made it the more plausible. He had to admit that his blood had run a little cold when the cat had described so matter-of-factly how he had murdered his tormentor. But then again . . . she deserved it. He remembered stories his uncle and some of the other Elemental Masters in that circle shared over beer or brandies. Helen Waring was not remembered with anything other than distaste—and curses, and the general opinion that it was to be hoped that “she got what was coming to her.” Not that anyone suspected she had been murdered . . . she had just gone to the continent, and rumors had returned that she had died. But no one ever was quite sure about Helen Waring, and for all anyone knew, she could appear again without warning. It would be a profound relief to some people in magical circles to learn that she really had gone on to whatever “reward” she had earned.

  And he certainly didn’t blame Thomas for doing his best to keep his child from prostituting herself. In Thomas’s shoes—or fur—he’d have done the same. From the tone of the cat’s mental voice, it had been agony to watch Marie training the girl for such a position, knowing he could do nothing about it.

  But then, there was the deception. He hated being lied to above all things.

  He walked back to the flat in a sort of smoldering temper, which was rather the worse for the fact that he could not really fault her very much for doing so. It was not as if she had somehow cheated them; she had worked damned hard for them all, in fact. It was not as if she didn’t have talent, for she certainly did. In fact, he had no real reason to be angry with her . . .

  Are you angry with her because she lied about her identity, or because you just learned she has been raised to be a courtesan, and she is unlikely to give up that plan?

  He gritted his teeth. Well, at least he had an ally in hating that idea. The cat Thomas was entirely of the same mind about that . . .

  And neither of you will have anything left to fret about if you don’t put your mind to discovering who it is that wants to be rid of her and why! the logical part of his mind protested. Really, you had better set your priorities . . .

  He stopped, then; looked up and blinked in shock. No wonder the pavement had felt somehow familiar—

  He had gotten from where he left Thomas all the way to the building that contained Nigel’s flat without having any memory of the intervening space.

  15

  “WELL,” said Nigel, over breakfast. “What are we going to do about this situation?”

  No one had to ask “What situation?” since none of them had slept particularly well last night. After many attempts to trace the homunculus back to its source, both Nigel and Arthur had to admit defeat. Jonathon had not even tried; “Fire,” he had said distinctly, “is not an element conducive to bloodhound work.” Nigel had hoped that the Air Elementals might have a memory of the creature’s passage, but evidently it had not come out into the open until it reached the building that housed Ninette’s flat.

  “Guards, for one thing,” Jonathon said, slowly chewing a mouthful of toast. “Wards, for another, since I am not sure we can rely on Air Elementals to remember they are supposed to guard her.”

  Nigel groaned. “Wards. Do you know how much that is going to attract attention to her? We might as well set a beacon on the top of her building! Better yet, why don’t we simply just send invitations to every dark mage we know of, and let them all appear at once?”

  “Oh come now, Nigel, it isn’t that bad,” Wolf said, leaning down over Arthur’s shoulder and helping himself to a generous bite of Arthur’s scone. “After all, I wrote an entire opera that revealed I was an Elemental Master, and look how long it took the dark ones to puzzle it out!” He held the bite in one claw and ate neatly, as Arthur gazed ruefully at the place where all the jam had been until Wolf took it. “Poor Salieri. He went quite mad after that. Convinced himself that he was the one that killed me.”

  “Wolf—it was a disease homunculus that did you in, wasn’t it?” Nigel cast the parrot a sharp glance. “I don’t suppose it would be the same mage—”

  “After all this time?” Wolf made a sound like a snort. “I think not. Besides, the creature was clearly after our dancer, not me.”

  Nigel sighed, and went back to contemplating his kipper. “Well, nothing is simple, is it?”

  “We could set a trap . . .” Wolf continued, wiping his jam-sticky beak on Arthur’s dressing-gown, much to the latter’s exasperation. “Not anything that would actually catch the next creature that attacks her, but something that would allow us to trace it back?”

  Jonathon shook his head. “If we were the same power, yes, but for an unlike and an antagonist power? It would take us years to work out how.”

  “I would rather know why,” Nigel said thoughtfully. “The girl seems so inoffensive. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Then it has to tie back to her father somehow.” Jonathon pursed his lips. “I believe I will send some messages out via Elemental to the other Fire Masters that might remember Helen Waring and Dupond. Nigel, you do the same. Perhaps if we can unravel the mystery from that end, we’ll be in a position to do something for Ninette.”

  “It might turn out to be someone that Miss Waring scorned,” Wolf said, with relish. “Someone who blamed Dupond for it. That could be very useful actually. So long as he isn’t utterly mad, we might be able to show him that rather than being jilted, he had a narrow escape!”

  Nigel rolled his eyes. “Trust you to think of that. It sounds like a plot for one of your operas.”

  “Speaking of which,” the parrot said brightly, “I have the plot for Nina’s next vehicle! It’s very Ruritanian, and if we can manage it, I think we can even get a swordfight into it! It’s about a princess who is engaged to marry a prince she’s never seen, and only wants to be a dancer instead, so she disguises herself as a maid and runs away to London, where she becomes a sensation.”

  “And I suppose that the prince she was supposed to marry only wants to become a stage magician,” Jonathon drawled sarcastically.

  “Not at all. The prince has been going to university here, sees her on the stage, and not knowing who she is, falls instantly for her and begins wooing her. She doesn’t know who he is, she only knows he’s a very rich student and is probably noble, and doesn’t take him very seriously at first.” Wolf looked triumphant. “Then we can have an evil cousin who has plans to usurp the throne, and kidnaps the princess to use her as bait for the prince. We can have a grand melee sword fight and end with a triumphant wedding scene when they all realize who they all are.”

  “I think you have been reading too many sensational novels,” said Jonathon dryly.

  “Bosh. Let’s just make the kidnapping an attempted kidnapping so we don’t have to change the scene.” Nigel looked up, a light that Jonathon very well recognized in his eyes. Jonathon sighed.

  “Shall we concentrate on protecting our leading lady and get her first show on the stage before we think about her next one?” he asked, exasperated.

  Nigel shook his head as if to clear it. “You’r
e right. So. Wards?”

  Nina woke from her death-like sleep with a groan. Destroying her homunculus before those cursed Masters could trace it back here to her had been destroying a part of herself. Doing so had left her prostrated on the floor, too weak to move, and she’d just held onto consciousness long enough to get her servants to pick her up and carry her to her bed.

  She had saved herself, at the cost of a great deal of power.

  At least now she knew what all her enemies looked like, as seen through the eyes of the homunculus. There were two, not one, Masters: an Air Master and the Fire Master she already knew about. There was an additional Air magician, the wretched dancer who had only the power of glamorie, and a girl that was Sighted.

  She did not have to ring for her servants as a human would; they knew when she was aware and needed them again. And they knew just what it was that she needed, too. Two of the men each brought a struggling street urchin in, both children so ragged and filthy it was impossible to say whether they were male or female. Not that it really mattered to Nina. She fell on them like a starving dog on a steak. When she was like this, there was no finesse involved, only the hunger and the need to replenish herself.

  Literally, in this case. She had lost substance as well as energy, and when she was done there was nothing left of the children but their rags. Feeling sated and reinvigorated, she stretched and yawned. The servants took that as their signal to remove the rags and send her maid in.

  “Draw me a bath,” she said. “I need to think.”

  What she meant was that she needed to draw on the memories of all those she had absorbed, on their collective intellects. Her old men might have been addled by her spells and her beauty, but most of them were intelligent men who had not inherited their wealth. They had earned it, every penny of it, and gotten it as ruthlessly as anyone could imagine. They had been shrewd, calculating, and scheming. All that was hers to call upon now.