Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  "By Jove, Eleanor, I think that will work! And I know my estate manager will be only too ruddy pleased to have me in the office as often as possible, so I can make that my excuse." He actually looked— happy. Wanly happy, but definitely for one moment, happy. "You should be a tactician, old girl!"

  And just at that most pleasant moment, she felt the first faint tugging of Alison's hearth-spell, and looked down to see the sprig of rosemary pinned to the breast of her shirtwaist starting to wilt. She could have cursed. "I have to go!" she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. "I'm really sorry, but I must—"

  "What's the hurry?" he asked in bewilderment, as she shoved the empty ginger-beer bottle into his hands. "I say, I haven't said anything to offend you, have I?"

  "No, no, no, I just have to get back, I don't have a choice," she shook her head and felt the sting of disappointed tears in her eyes. "It's nothing to do with you; I enjoyed talking with you. I have to or—or— or I'll be in trouble—" she shook her head, and turned away.

  "Well, at least say you'll be here tomorrow!" he called after her, as she began to run across the grass.

  "I can't—" she called back over her shoulder, then at the sight of his stricken face, she made a reckless promise. "I'll come—I'll come whenever I can! At teatime! Whenever I can!"

  And with that, she had to turn to race back to the house, back to captivity, an imprisonment that was now more onerous than it ever had seemed before.

  12

  April 28, 1917

  Broom, Warwickshire

  DINNER WAS NOT PLEASANT TONIGHT. Animosity and suspicion hung over the table like the cloud of cigarette smoke rising above the heads of all three of the Robinsons at the table. "I don't understand it," Alison said, glaring at her daughters. "He hasn't shown the least bit of interest in either of you. That is just—unnatural." "It wasn't my spells, Mama," Carolyn said petulantly, tossing her head. "You checked them yourself. You watched me work them." She looked sideways at her sister. "Unless you interfered—"

  But Alison wasn't accepting that excuse. "She didn't interfere; don't you think I would be able to tell?" Alison snarled. "No, it's not that. I've never seen anyone who was so unaffected by spells, and that's not natural. Even men with no magic at all respond to sex-charms."

  Eleanor was unashamedly eavesdropping, and by a means that her stepmother would never guess. If Alison came to look, she would find Eleanor stoically peeling potatoes at the hearth, staring into the fire. Little did she guess that what Eleanor was staring at was not the flames. She had learned a new spell, or to be more precise, she had improvised it out of a scrying spell in Sarah's grimoire, that was supposed to use mirrors, linking the mirrors together, like a transmitter and a wireless radio, so that whatever was reflected in the target mirror was reflected in the one that the scryer held.

  Only instead of mirrors, Eleanor was using the flames on the hearth in the kitchen and the one in the dining-room. It had been very odd, actually—Sarah had been struck dumb when she first tried it. And she could not imagine where she had gotten the idea that such a thing would work, either; it just—came to her, as she was reading the grimoire, as if someone had told it to her.

  Now it was as if she was looking out from the fireplace there, and what was more, she was able to hear everything that went on as clearly as if she was sitting right there.

  "It isn't only sex-charms he doesn't respond to," Lauralee said, stabbing her cigarette down into the center of her plate. "I tried to make him loathe that Leva Cygnet girl, and instead, he sat next to her at teal"

  "And I thought you said he was an Air Master, Mama," interrupted Carolyn. "But I haven't seen a single Sylph anywhere about him, nor any hint of magic. Are you sure he's an Air Master?"

  And when Carolyn said that, Eleanor watched Alison go through the most curious pantomime she had ever seen in her life. Alison opened her mouth to say something—then a puzzled look came over her—then she closed her mouth, opened it again, closed it, and frowned.

  The girls stared at her, as if they had never seen their mother so nonplussed either.

  Eleanor wondered what it meant.

  "No Sylphs about," Alison said, consideringly. "As if the Sylphs do not recognize him as having Air Mastery either. No Zephyrs. They can't see him—I'm sure that's what that means. And yet, no shields, either. As if ... as if he is a magical cipher, a null. . . ."

  "Actually, Mama," Lauralee said reflectively. "It's more as if the spells we cast on him are just swallowed up."

  "Drained away," Carolyn echoed. "Or reflected, but not back at us."

  "How . . . odd. Then I believe we are going to have to rethink our strategy," Alison brooded. "I wanted him to be attracted to you before I went to work more directly. I am going to need to make new plans."

  "What new plans, Mama?" Lauralee asked leaning forward over the table eagerly. "Are you going to teach us new magic?"

  Eleanor watched as Alison rubbed her hands along her arms uneasily. "Well, the magic that you two can cast is clearly not going to work. In fact, I would say he is probably resistant to all but the most powerful magic."

  Both of them gazed at their mother with hunger now. Eleanor had wondered, ever since Sarah had come to the door, if Alison had been purposefully holding back teaching her daughters, or if her daughters were just not capable of greater magic. It was hard to tell—though it was true that none of the Earth Elementals were attracted to the girls.

  Now she heard the answer, or at least, the answer that Alison was going to give them. "I'm afraid, my dears, you have no more inborn ability with magic than Warrick Locke. And I don't think at this point it would be wise to use my greater magics for more than I already have planned. So instead of using magic, use your wiles; show no jealousy of the other girls, but be the most pleasant and charming creatures in the room. Pay attention to everything he does and says. Work out what pleases him and what he would prefer not to deal with. Be sympathetic, and find things to get his mind off the war. That will do for now. Meanwhile, I will need to do some research of my own."

  Eleanor had wondered about that. Her own feeling, once she had begun learning about magic herself, had been that neither girl would ever be a Master—because if that were possible for them, they would have surely shown some sign of it by now.

  "Yes, Mama," the two chorused as one. They left the table to go up to their rooms, as Alison rang for Eleanor to clean up.

  Is that why Reggie recognized me, when no one else in the village does? she wondered, as she carried plates back to the kitchen. Because Alison's spells just don't work on him?

  It hadn't been until she had gotten back to the kitchen after first meeting him that she had realized Reggie had recognized her, had known who she was, almost from the first moment he had seen her. Other than Sarah, he was, apparently, the only other person who did. And she hadn't been able to get away to ask Sarah why that could be since the meeting.

  Events in the household had conspired against her. First, despite Alison's assertion that she and the girls would be having tea up at Longacre for the foreseeable future, that hadn't exactly come to pass. The next day had been Alison's "at home," and although Alison certainly wanted to claw her way into the social circles of Longacre, she knew better than to abandon her post as leading light of Broom. For one thing, there were quite a number of things that the ladies of Broom could do to undermine Alison's progress if they chose. And for another, as she explained to her daughters, there was no point in prematurely burning bridges. The social set of Broom was still useful—particularly that centered around the vicarage, for the vicar, Donald Hinshaw, and his wife Theresa were the one couple who traveled socially freely between village and the big house.

  Then the next day had been a meeting of the Ladies' Friendly Society, and it had been held at The Arrows, though under the auspices of its president, Amy Hammer. It had been yet another bandage-rolling meeting, and as a consequence, the house had been filled with women, all of whom required tea and refreshm
ents. Now, those meetings were ones at which Eleanor had to be particularly careful of what was served; it wouldn't do at all to make it look as if this household was immune from the current privations—but at the same time, Alison was adamant that the tea be something that would elevate her status as a hostess. It all came down on Eleanor's shoulders, of course. It meant a great deal of cutting up heavy brown bread into thin, thin slices, toasting it delicately, and removing the crusts, spreading it with layers of jam and potted shrimp. It meant cutting more wafer-thin slices of brown bread and adding wafer-thin slices of smoked Scottish salmon atop. It meant baking whatever sort of cake could be managed with what was available in the village shops.

  So that pretty well put paid to getting away that day. And the next, Warrick Locke had come for the afternoon. It had been all about business and legal papers; there was a good clue now to which sort of "business" was going on when Locke showed up. If it was mundane business, he brought with him his personal secretary, a curiously opaque lady named Jennifer Summers, as well as his "man," Robbie Christopher. Eleanor was not around Miss Summers enough to make a judgment of her, but Robbie made her flesh crawl. There was just something not right about him. As a consequence, she kept well out of their way. Locke spent the entire afternoon closeted with Alison, going over any number of matters concerning the manufactories.

  He might be a horrible man, but he did know his business.

  So, that meant no leaving the house on that day.

  Finally, though, today had sent Alison and the girls out into the village on a series of meetings and whatnot concerning the annual May Day fete for the church, which brought them home exhausted, and made them perfect targets for Sarah's herb-spell. They were in bed by nine and fast asleep by ten, all three of them, and Eleanor was free to cast her spell and run to Sarah's cottage.

  Sarah wasn't alone—Annette Monstead, the village midwife-in-training, and sister to Eric, the village sexton, was with her, discussing a possibly difficult case. Rather than intrude, Eleanor didn't even knock; she just waited outside until Annette left. It was scarcely a hardship; it was a beautiful evening, the kind on which—before the war—courting couples would go out walking.

  Though that "walking" sometimes resulted in cases for Annette....

  Proper young ladies weren't supposed to know about that sort of thing, but Eleanor had never been proper as such—and since the war, there was, if not actually condoning of such matters, certainly more understanding of them, and of the acts of desperation that led to an unexpected pregnancy. A fellow could get emergency leave, at least to get as far as London for a day or two to "put things right." There was not so much counting of months between the wedding-day and the day of the baby's arrival.

  Eric turned up to escort his sister home—he, too, was above the conscription age, though his sister was at least twenty years younger. He was the eldest, and she the youngest, of a truly enormous family. Not so much a family as a tribe, in fact. Small wonder Annette had turned out to have a talent for midwifery!

  Only after they were gone out of sight did Eleanor knock on Sarah's door and let herself in.

  "I've met Reggie!" she burst out, unable to hold herself back. "And Sarah—he recognized me!"

  "Well, and he would, wouldn't he, being an Air Master—" she began, but this time Eleanor interrupted her.

  "Yes, but there's no Sylphs around him, and no Air energy," she continued, and went on to describe what she had learned watching the fire night after night.

  When she was finished, Sarah stood next to her own hearth, arms folded over her chest, tapping her foot. "Hmm. That's a different kettle of fish altogether. It almost sounds like—" But then she frowned, and shook her head. "No, I don't know. And it's not right to speculate. I don't know nearly as much as your mother did, and sending you off in the wrong direction wouldn't do either of you any good."

  "Sarah!" Eleanor cried indignantly. "At least give me a hint!" Sarah pursed her lips, and ran her hand through her hair. "Well, if I were to guess, and not being a Master, I have no business in guessing, I would say that something happened to him to make him afraid of using any magic. Now, when a Master decides not to use any magic, none at all, sometimes they stop thinking straight, and their heart—not their heads, the thinking parts, put the heart, the feeling part—is so frightened that the heart decides that means no magic by anyone else is going to get used around them either. So magic around them gets kind of—swallowed up. Things that the heart decides usually happen unless the head is well in charge." Sarah shrugged. "But that's just a guess. People like me don't have enough magic to do that sort of thing."

  "But if that's the case, then why couldn't I tell him about Alison?" she asked, feeling desperate now. "Why didn't that spell stop working?"

  Sarah grimaced, but with an air as if it should have been obvious to Eleanor that she had no idea why these things had happened or not. "Don't know. Maybe because that spell is stronger. Maybe because the spell to keep people from recognizing you is set to work on them and the one to keep you from telling people the truth is set to work on you." She shook her head. "I don't know, I'm just guessing. I'm not the Master Alison is, nor the Master your mother was. I know I've had my own counter-charms set that let me see you and talk to you freely, but then, I already knew what and who you were and I had a bit of your baby-hair I could use to work them. I don't know the complicated spells; I never bothered to learn them. I'm only strong enough to work cantrips and charms. In the case of countering what's on you, I can make them work for me, but not other people, unless I were to set the charm on each one of them. And maybe all of this guessing is going wide of the mark. I've no way to know."

  It was terribly frustrating. To know that she had someone within reach who probably could help her break the spells that were on her, if only he knew what was going on, was agonizing.

  "What do I do?" she wailed. Sarah gazed at her sternly.

  "You stop whingeing for one," the witch replied. "It isn't going to help. For another, if you can find out what it is he's so afraid of, maybe you can do somewhat about it. Do that, and he may come out of that shell he's built around himself. If you can crack that, he should see you're set about with spells yourself, and wonder why, and try untangling them himself. But you can't do any of that if you're wasting your time feeling sorry for yourself."

  Eleanor felt herself flush with anger, but kept a curb on her tongue. Sarah was right—but the witch's tongue got oversharp when she'd had a long day. And it wasn't as if Eleanor's day had been any shorter.

  "Now, in the meantime," Sarah was already continuing, "While you're here, you might as well learn something. If Alison ever decides to challenge you Master to Master in a Sorcerer's Duel, your little Salamanders aren't going to be causing her more than a minute of amusement. So you might as well start learning how to call the Greater Fire Elementals, and the best time is now. We'll start with the Phoenyx."

  Eleanor was quite ready to fall asleep on Sarah's floor when the wilting of her rosemary sprig told her it was time to go. When she got back, she made up her bed on the kitchen floor again, rather than take the chance of stumbling on the stairs and waking the household. She thought she saw eyes in the embers as she drowsed off—not the golden eyes of the Salamanders, but a hot, burning blue. . . .

  Reggie showed up faithfully in the meadow at teatime, every day— though after the second day that the girl failed to materialize, he had brought the 'bus with him, so he could go on down to the pub if she didn't show up. After the third day, as he sat in the sun and listened to the wind in the grass watched the branches overhead with their haze of new green buds, he wondered why he kept coming here—there was nothing very special about her—

  —well, other than her quick wit and agile mind.

  It wasn't as if she were especially pretty; certainly not compared with all the elegant, doe-like creatures his mother kept trotting past him. She was as raw as a young filly and just as awkward. She seemed to be as poor as
a church-mouse, too, from the state of her clothing.

  That was odd; as he recalled, old Robinson had been something in the way of a manufacturing fellow, and when he'd known her last the girl had certainly dressed well enough. But maybe the money was all gone, thanks to the war. There were a lot of places that had failed; couldn't get the raw goods they needed to keep making whatever it was they were making.

  She looked as if she worked for a living. Maybe she was a maid now, or a kitchen-girl. Or maybe she worked in one of the other pubs or something. Maybe that was what she meant when she said she'd be there "if she could."

  What was it about her that made him desert his mother's carefully gathered bouquet of well-bred beauties and come down here to sit on a log for an hour on the chance that she might appear?

  She can talk, for one thing. She knows how to listen, for another. And when she talks, she doesn't talk nonsense.