Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  As Lady Virginia often said, "I am old enough to be able to hire whom I wish, and rich enough to be considered eccentric, rather than mad, when I do."

  It was difficult to know whether one liked Smith; the curiously sexless servant was a past mistress of being inscrutable and virtually invisible. But there was no doubt that Smith was as efficient and formidable, in her own quiet way, as her mistress.

  Reggie had more than once wondered if Smith was even human. It was possible that she was not; Lady Virginia, after all, was a formidable Master of Air, and it was just within the bounds of the possible that Smith was actually an Air Elemental of some arcane sort. Not likely, but possible.

  As for appearances, Smith had gray eyes, curiously colorless hair kept cropped short, and invariably wore gray, either as a mannishly tailored suit, or a chauffeur's uniform (and somehow, perhaps because she looked so androgynous, no one was scandalized by a woman in trousers). She was always correct, always precise, and seldom spoke unless addressed directly.

  And in fact, her name wasn't "Smith" at all. It was Melanie Lynn.

  When he'd first learned this, he had been stupid enough and arrogant enough to take Lady Virginia to task for calling her servant "Smith" rather than "Lynn"—for there were people in his circle that couldn't be bothered to learn their servants' names. Instead, they had a habit of calling them whatever was convenient so that they would never have to learn a new name for the old position when one servant was replaced by another.

  He should have known better. This was Lady Virginia, after all, who marched in the Suffragists' Parades, chained herself to the railing of Number 10 Downing Street, and helped Doctor Maya in her charity clinic.

  "Are you mad, boy?" Lady Virginia had said, sternly. "It's not for my convenience! Smith wants me to call her Smith, and I'm not fool enough to gainsay her."

  "Names are power," Smith had said, from behind him, startling him into a yelp, for he hadn't realized she had come in. "Smith is a cipher. When you are a cipher, boy, you can be anything. Standing out isn't always an advantage."

  He often wondered where, exactly, Lady Virginia had found Smith, but after that day, he'd never dared to ask.

  The game of bridge that had been taking place was utterly abandoned, as soon as Lady Virginia descended, tidied into elegance again. Her personality dominated the gathering without anyone other than Reggie really noticing. Within moments, she had smoothly and effortlessly redirected the conversation into a discussion of the remarkable achievements of young T. E. Lawrence in the Arabian campaign. It was a reasonably "safe" topic; an exotic enough locale that no one at the tables truly connected it with the war, and even if they had, Lawrence was leading an all-Arab army of resistance. No British lives—other than his own—were involved. He was the darling of the American as well as the British press. He was trailed about by an audacious American reporter. It was painless to find him interesting.

  But there was something about the significant looks that she kept casting at Reggie that made him certain she was only biding her time until she could get him alone. Though why that should be, he couldn't guess.

  Unless it had something to do with taking up magic again.

  Surely not.

  Nevertheless he was glad enough when his Aunt April, Lady Williams, declared that if she was tired, Lady Virginia must be shattered, and the local guests who had come from outside Longacre Park elected to take themselves back to their homes. He was able to slip away unobtrusively, and take to his own bed. Not that he had expected to sleep. His dreams—nightmares, really—had been so terrifying since the beginning of May that if he got three undisturbed hours in a night, it was a good night's rest. Only Doctor Maya's drugs kept the nightmares at bay, and he was beginning to feel uneasy about how much of that stuff he was taking.

  He lay down in his bed, expecting to stare at the ceiling for hours, and had just begun to think about what Lady Virginia could want with him. That was when he actually fell asleep due to exhaustion.

  Most nights of the last month, he had lain awake for hours, staring up at the ceiling, aware of a feeling of lurking hostility and menace, unable to determine where it came from.

  So it was all the more surprising when he fell asleep immediately, and did not dream.

  It was even more surprising that the next time he opened his eyes, it was morning. Real morning, not two or three past midnight, nor even predawn. The sun was coming up, filling his room with light—as with most Air Masters, he preferred to have his bedroom facing east— a cool breeze fluttered the curtains, and a lark saluted the day.

  He felt better than he had—in an age. Actually rested for once, and even if his knee gave him the usual amount of trouble when he rose, it was worth it to look out his window at the sun streaming over the lawns without feeling as if he would have given his soul for a single night of undisturbed rest.

  He was even whistling when he came down to breakfast to find his aunt and Lady Virginia just beginning their own meal.

  "Good morning, my lady, Aunt April," he said cheerfully as he went to the sideboard to help himself—noting with a sigh that it was a dark-bread day. If there was one thing he missed more than anything else since rationing had begun, it was good white bread.

  "Your dear mother is up and out as usual," his aunt told him, after presenting her cheek for him to kiss. "And where she gets that energy from at this hour of the day, I could not tell you. Certainly not from my side of the family. Positively indecent. No one should be that awake at six. Well, excepting milkmen, I suppose. And farmers. And one's maid. But they shouldn't be so cheerful about it. And your dear mother should know better. It troubles the servants when the mistress is up as early as they are."

  Lady Virginia, said nothing, neatly and economically disposing of grilled tomatoes, while Aunt April talked and buttered toast without shedding a crumb.

  This was Aunt April's usual sort of chatter; if there was a silence, she moved to fill it with whatever came into her head, which made for some interesting social moments, now and again. Reggie could still remember the time at a dinner party in this very house, during his first year at Oxford, when she had asked an eminent member of the the House of Lords, just as he was filling his lungs to pontificate, if there was a reason why his shirt-front popped every time he took a deep breath. Since the poor man had—up until that moment, at least— clearly been unaware that his shirt-front did any such thing, he had been left gaping at her like a stranded fish and had completely lost his train of thought. Nor was that the end of it; he had been so self-conscious for the rest of the evening that he never spoke more than a sentence or two. As this had the result (at least according to his father) of preventing at least three arguments, any one of which might have erupted into a major disagreement if not a diplomatic incident, Aunt April had earned the undying gratitude of the rest of the guests and standing invitations to more events than she could ever possibly attend. And if she had a reputation as being more than a bit dotty, every hostess worth her salt-cellar knew Aunt April could be counted on to defuse potential disasters with an unfocused laugh and a disingenuous remark at precisely the right moment. And if a stuffed-shirt or two was left embarrassed and wondering how it had happened, at least it was nothing he could take exception to.

  "Mother's been an early riser for as long as I can remember, Aunt April," Reggie said, sitting down with his own plate of grilled tomatoes and eggs. "And I doubt that the servants even notice. This is the countryside; people get up earlier than they do in town."

  "And I can't think why," Aunt April responded, waving her knife for emphasis, her brows furrowed. "What is there to get up early for? It's not as if there was shooting at this time of year, and anyway, by the time it's shooting season, getting up early isn't early anymore, it's properly late."

  Reggie didn't even try to wrap his mind around that statement; it made sense to Aunt April, so that was all that counted.

  "You do rattle on, April," said Lady Virginia without rancor. "
Reginald, I want to speak with you as soon as you have finished your breakfast. Privately."

  "Oh, good," Aunt April said, looking suddenly cheerful. "We'll get that over with, then, and it won't be hanging over our heads like a rock of Sophocles, or was it the sword of Thucydides? Whichever it was, it was a terribly uncomfortable object to have hanging over your head, and I would hate to have it hanging over ours, spoiling the entire visit—"

  "Damocles," Lady Virginia said, interrupting. "It was the Sword of Damocles, dear, as if you didn't know, since I know very well you were making better use of your brother's classics tutor than your brother did. Now, if you could take your tea to the terrace—"

  "Oh, I'm finished, Virginia, and I'll run off and find nothing to do," Aunt April said, with a gay little wave of her hand as she rose in a flutter of lace flounces. "Do get him to come around to taking up his powers again, will you, dear? Of course you will, if he doesn't want to, you'll threaten him with Smith."

  She trotted off, without waiting for a word from either of them, leaving him staring at Lady Virginia across the breakfast table, nervously crumbling toast and wishing he'd sent down for a tray instead of coming to the table this morning.

  "Reginald," Lady Virginia said, raising her chin a little. "This nonsense of avoiding magic must stop. Now."

  She couldn't have been more direct, and she left him with no graceful way out of the conversation. He clenched his teeth, and replied just as directly.

  "Lady Virginia—forgive me, but you can't possibly know why I am—"

  She did something she had never done before, in all of his acquaintance with her. She interrupted him.

  "Actually," she said tartly, "I do know. I know exactly why, in excruciating detail. I have not been idle these three years. I am a VAD— a working VAD, though admittedly, a part-time VAD, since my old bones are hardly up to the long hours the young ones put in, and I have no intention of living in some squalid little dormitory with a pack of girls. I have been spending many long hours at the bedsides of young enlisted men, and I wasn't simply mopping their brows, as you should by now be aware. Furthermore, they talk to me, Reginald. I induce them to talk to me, because it is sometimes the only way to purge them of their horrors."

  Reggie felt his eyes widen with shock. It had never occurred to him that aristocratic Lady Virginia would have volunteered to do nursing-aide work. But—she was continuing.

  "And as for what happened specifically to you, not only did I get the gist of the experience from Maya, one of my working-class proteges, a clever Earth magician that I sponsored through nurse's training, was privy to some of your experience in the trenches, as you rather unambiguously shared it with whoever was Sensitive at the time."

  He stared at her, appalled that he had done any such thing. Granted, he'd been out of his senses but still, "Who?"

  Lady Virginia shrugged. "You weren't conscious, so you won't recognize the name. A nurse at the first field-hospital you came to, if you must know; an Earth-worker, as I told you—they can't seem to stay away from pursuing healing at the Front. You nearly gave her a breakdown and she had to come home to me for a month. Fortunately, Maya sorted her out. Unfortunately, Maya does not seem to have been as successful with you."

  He blinked at her. There didn't seem to be anything he could say. "I'm sorry about your protegee—" he began.

  She waved his apology away. "She knew that she was going to encounter things like that before she volunteered, and the experience has given her better shields. And you could learn from her example. As soon as she could, she was back, using what power she has for the greatest good."

  He flushed.

  She saw the flush, correctly assumed it was embarrassment, and shook her head. "You mistake me. I am not going to act like your idiotic grandfather and call you a coward, because I know you aren't. That leg of yours can't—according to Doctor Maya—be more than half healed. And I know that you think that you have taken the best steps you can to protect yourself. But Reginald, walling yourself off from magic is not going to solve your problem. In fact, it is only going to make things worse."

  Nettled, now, he narrowed his eyes. "I can't see how."

  Lady Virginia sighed. "Naturally you can't see how. You haven't looked." She eyed him shrewdly. "You've forgotten that building walls instead of shields blinds you to what is going on around you. I don't suppose you'd have the effrontery to tell me you've been sleeping the sleep of the just lately, would you?"

  "Last night—" he began, but she interrupted him again.

  "Oh, last night, of course. But what about for the last month?" She stared at him, daring him to lie with her eyes.

  And he couldn't. He gave in, feeling his fragile defenses crumple under the pressure of the knowledge she had in her eyes. He didn't know how she knew, but she clearly did. "No. I've gotten no more than a few hours of rest at most over the past few weeks. Most nights are as bad as they were when I was in hospital."

  "I'm not surprised," Lady Virginia replied, with satisfaction. "Considering that until last night you had a small army of revenants breathing down your neck. Even walled and shielded, you would have sensed them, and had they gained in power, you would have been at their mercy. Revenants are not subject to the same laws as Elementals, as you should well know, and if they had been able to break through to you, they would have shredded your mind at the least, and possibly worse than that."

  That took him completely by surprise. "Revenants? But—"

  What could he possibly have done to arouse revenants? And here? There hadn't been a haunt anywhere near Longacre for generations!

  But—"haunted" described exactly how he had been feeling for the last month or so.

  Revenants! The mere thought made him dizzy. No, revenants were not subject to the same laws as Elementals. They could even make themselves seen and felt by ordinary mortals. Really powerful ones could kill.

  "Smith and I encountered them clawing at the shields around the grounds last night as we came in," Lady Virginia continued ruthlessly. "We dispelled them of course. But if you had been properly doing your job instead of relying on your late father's defenses—which are eroding, may I add—you would have known they were there and done something about them weeks ago."

  "But—" His head was whirling at this point.

  "But me no buts. I will accept no excuses. Think, will you?" she demanded. "There are surely at least a handful of sensitives down in that village of yours, if not a real practitioner. What if one of them had been caught by the revenants instead of Smith and me?"

  "I'll build better shields," he said grimly, getting his metaphorical feet under him again. "I'll put myself behind magical walls too thick for anything to sense me or find me, and I won't attract any more trouble—"

  "Reginald David Alexander Tiberius Fenyx, you have tried that, and it did not work!" Lady Virginia exploded, losing her temper as she had seldom ever done in his presence. He shrank back involuntarily, as she slapped the table three times with an open palm, emphasizing her last three words. "By the Archangel Raphael, I swear, if your father was alive to hear this, he would—well, I don't know what he would do, but I know what he would be, and that is bitterly disappointed! I expect the idiots in the War Office to fail to learn from their mistakes, but I thought better of you!"

  "But—" he protested feebly.

  "You were behind shields—your own and your father's—and those revenants still found you! And I cannot for the life of me imagine what you could have done that would attract the attention of a renegade Druid, a couple of Roman-British louts in armor, an assortment of Regency highwaymen, and a spread of nasty cutthroats stretching back to hide-wearing henge-builders! Now what about that makes you suspicious?" She stared at him, demanding that he think.

  And he did, though he didn't want to admit what he was thinking. "They were sent?"

  She sniffed. "Better. I was beginning to wonder if you had left some of your wits back there on the Front. Yes, they were sent. I do n
ot know by whom, or why, but they were certainly carefully called up, invoked, bound, and sent. Probably Beltane Night, which would account for your disturbed sleep since then. And with them dispelled, which their master will most certainly know, the next things that are purposed to attack you will be stronger."

  He just stared at her numbly. He couldn't for the life of him imagine why anyone would set revenants on him.

  "It doesn't actually matter who did this, or why," Lady Virginia continued. "The point is that renouncing magic is not going to make this person go away. I don't believe that whoever this is has any plans to leave you alone until you are dead or mad."

  Her eyes glittered at him; he hadn't truly understood how hard she could be when she felt the need. At that moment, it came home to him that she had been an Air Master—a combative magician, on a Front of her own—for most of her life. She was as mentally tough as any soldier, if not more so. She might not have been a part of the Council, but he knew quite well that she was part of some other White Lodge, and had been just as active as any of Alderscroft's Masters.