Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  Warrick Locke frowned. "Robbie has been working with me for a very long time now. Frankly, if you are concerned about him doing something other than what he has been ordered to do, I can tell you that in all the time that I have known him, he has never once had an original idea for himself."

  "It's too complicated a plan," Alison countered, throttling down her rising irritation with him. "There are too many things that can go wrong, including that the wretched child just might be tougher-minded than you think. The closer I come to reaching my goals, the less I like complicated plans. I find that the more I have to lose, the less inclined I am to take chances on something that might work. And the whole house of cards you wish to construct has far too many points of possible failure for my comfort."

  "It's the only idea that has any chance at all of giving you the results you want," he replied, with ill grace. "If she dies, you lose, because the inheritance goes to the cousin. If she disappears, you lose, because until she's proven dead, you can't touch her money and when she's proven dead, the inheritance goes to the cousin. If she stays sane, and attains her majority, you lose, because sooner or later the trustees are going to want to see her to turn her fortune over to her and then there's no telling what will happen. If you injure her physically to the point that she can't care for herself, you still lose, because doctors will be involved, and someone will find out that you've been making a slave of her and making free with her inheritance. The only way you win is if you keep her alive and drive her so completely mad that she withdraws into herself and never comes out again. That means breaking her will, her spirit, and her mind, and there's only one way that I know for certain to do that. After all, it's not as if you can drop her down a hole and be done with her."

  "Wait a moment—" she said, with a sudden surge of interest and a jolt of euphoria as his words caused an interesting image to flash across her mind. She caught and held that image; quickly extrapolated something from it, and then, smiled, slowly. "You just might have something, Warrick. You might just have solved the conundrum."

  "Pardon?" He blinked at her, caught off-guard by her words.

  "You said something very interesting. You said that I couldn't just drop her down a hole and be done with it." Her smile broadened. "But that just might be exactly what we want to do with her. There's more than one way to get the results we want from her."

  Now he was completely confused, that much was very plain. "I thought the best plan was to break her mind."

  "Be patient with me. What was the first spell I put on her? To bind her to the hearth. Correct?" She nodded as he frowned. "So this has kept her confined to the house and grounds. She can't go off on her own; that binding was intended to keep her from looking for help. But that same binding spell may serve us in another way. If she were to be taken away from the hearth, carried off somewhere, she would have to try and make her way back, no matter what obstacles were in her path. Or—? Do you remember how I constructed the bindings? Because I certainly do."

  "I'm not sure I see where this is going, but I believe the geas you put on her forces her to try, and keep trying, to make her way back to The Arrows. And the longer she's away the more of her mind becomes obsessed with the need to return, until she can't even eat or sleep, she's so driven by and consumed with that need." Now his frown looked as if he was beginning to see the shape of something, but hadn't yet deciphered the puzzle she had set him.

  She helped him out with some clues. "Warwickshire is full of abandoned coal mines. Lady Devlin was just complaining about one of them last week—it's collapsing, evidently, and causing subsidence on the property of one of her friends, spoiling a good meadow. Now suppose, just suppose, that we were to drop her down one of those, then report that she has gone missing, as we always intended to do. The first thing and only thing she would try to do is return to the hearth, driven by her growing obsession, and if we took care to drop her into one where she couldn't climb out, where the tunnels run from the entrance towards Broom, can you see what would happen?"

  His frown deepened. "I—think so—"

  Alison sat forward in her chair, leaning towards him. "She will have to follow the pull of the geas. Which means she would be forced to penetrate deeper into the mine, until she could go no further, without lights, without anything to help her." She nodded as his eyes widened with understanding. "Think of that; alone in the dark and possibly injured, she comes to a dead end. She can't retrace her steps, because the spell won't let her go back. She can't go on, because she's at a dead end. She's hungry, thirsty, and more and more of her mind is taken up with the obsession to return. Now, just to add something to ensure that we get the results we want, a mine is in the earth, and what's more, it's in violated earth, which means the Elementals associated with it are all of my sort. So if trying to claw her way through coal-bearing rock with her bare hands isn't enough to drive her mad, my little friends can take care of that problem by pushing her over the edge of sanity. Little monsters with glowing eyes appearing and vanishing in the dark, things gibbering and drooling on her, cold hands clutching at her, plucking at her clothing ... it would take a stronger mind than she has to come out of that intact!"

  "But you need to have her in your custody in order to keep control of her inheritance," Locke objected.

  She was already prepared for the objection. "And I can do that. I merely wait a day or so, then nudge a rescue party to the right coal mine and allow them to find her. Fear, thirst, hunger, constant attack by gnomes and kobolds, and the geas—if she has any mind left after forty-eight hours of that, I will be shocked and amazed. By that time, I imagine the only thing we'll need to worry about is replacing her with a servant." She did sigh at that. It was getting impossible to find servants that weren't thieves, drunks, or both. With so many women getting much better wages and shorter hours by taking the places of men than they could ever obtain as servants, only the dregs were left.

  On the other hand, once the business of Eleanor is settled, perhaps the answer would be simply to use magical coercions on whatever I can get. I pity any thief that tries to purloin anything from, my house. Or perhaps she could take someone feeble-minded from the workhouse. The same coercions that kept Eleanor scrubbing and tending should work on the feeble-minded.

  Locke gazed at her with astonishment. "My hat is off to you. I would not have thought of any of that. I hesitate to call anything a perfect plan, but this one is as close to perfect as a reasonable person could wish. I assume you'll put her to sleep to make her easier to handle?"

  "Probably," Alison agreed. "I wouldn't even need to use a spell, if I didn't want to. A little chloroform on a sponge would do the trick."

  "More reliably renewable than a spell, too," Locke murmured admiringly. "And costs nothing in power. You could even do it with your daughters; simply wait until the girl has gone to sleep, go up to her room, administer the sponge, and there will not even be a struggle."

  She did not ask how he knew that. Presumably he had some experience in such matters.

  "As I told you, I prefer simple plans," she replied, feeling so pleased with her own ideas that she was willing to be very pleasant to the man. "And it does occur to me that when this works, I'll be needing to find some place safe and secure to put the afflicted child. I scarcely intend to keep her at home; the present servant problem is bad enough without trying to find someone to care for and stand guard over a madwoman. I presume that you've been looking into such things?"

  "Discreetly, I assure you, and mentioning no names," he responded immediately, and dug into his case for a file. "And here are the best places I found—quite discreet, very understanding about the need to keep someone alive and healthy, but once a patient is checked in, they don't ever emerge."

  She smiled, and leaned over the table to examine the tastefully subdued brochures. On his own ground, Locke was knowledgeable and immensely helpful.

  She would definitely keep him around a while longer.

  Especially now that he
realized she didn't need him to come up with better plans than he could. It would make him a little on edge, and anxious not to get on her bad side, because she was, after all, a most generous client.

  July 18, 1917

  Longacre Park, Warwickshire

  Lady Devlin was a very old-fashioned hostess, and that meant she believed in doing things the old-fashioned way. She was writing out every one of the invitations for the ball herself, since she no longer had a secretary to tend to such things for her. The estate manager could probably have done it for her, but she claimed that she was enjoying it. After a while, out of sheer guilt, Reggie elected to help her. His once-neat copperplate handwriting was gone all to hell, of course, with lack of practice, but it was good enough to address envelopes.

  Which was tedious, but saved his mother the effort of writing out the addresses and allowed her to concentrate on the aesthetics of producing the invitations. They couldn't be printed, alas; perhaps the middle-class found invitations where one filled in missing names and dates acceptable, but no one of Lady Devlin's stature would even consider resorting to such a stratagem. Besides, many of them required a certain level of personalization in the form of a note.

  It did allow him to sit down without looking like a malingerer. It also gave him a chance to find out who the girls were that would be pursuing him at this little hunt disguised as a party.

  Roberta and Leva Cygnet; not much of a surprise there. They were already coming to teas and tennis-parties. "Mrs. Regina Towner," though—"Regina Towner?" he asked, casually. "Do I know the Towners?"

  "An old friend from school," his mother replied, just as casually. Right enough; mother's age, which means her daughter is probably my age . . . Mr. Robert and Mrs. Tansy, Esq., and daughter. So Ginger will be in the howling pack. Good gad, I hope some of my lads come through. I need all the distractions I can muster, and Ginger likes to dance. Some of the next few were innocuous enough. Then, "Lt. Commander Matthew Mann, the Hon. Mrs. Matthew Mann, Miss Mann." Ah, good gad. The Brigadier's granddaughter, and Mama is an "Hon." I've never seen an "Hon." that wasn't on the hunt for a title for the family. Well, the Brigadier warned me. "Vicountess Arabella Reed." One of Lady Virginia's friends, she was a chatterbox, but at least she didn't have any daughters.

  Then, at last, the run of invitations that he hoped would save him—pilots-in-training at the school headquartered at Oxford, and lads he knew either were on leave or could get it. Even a cadet was a second lieutenant, and while Mamas were on the hunt for titles, daughters were easily distracted by officers' dress-uniforms.

  Second Lt. Michael Freed, Second Lt. David Jackson, at Reading. Lt. Vincent Paul Mills, good gad, I hope he doesn't get shot to bits before this thing comes off; that handsome face will be even more of a distraction than his uniform. Captain Michael Dolbeare; good thing he's training the lads at Oxford; he's a got enough medals at this point to sink him if he fell in the river, and the girls can't resist the shiny. Lt. Allen McBain; arm in a sling, but even if he can't dance he's another handsome devil. That Scots burr, though; the girls will giggle over it and make him blush, which is entertaining as well as a distraction. Now the Oxford lot. Second Lt. John Oliver, Second Lt. Charles Goddard, Second Lt. Lyman Evans—at least they aren't losing a flying-student a day the way they were at the start of the war, or half my invitations would never get answered. Of course Turner had made sure that the names he had given Reggie were of the better students who had less chance of cracking up. That was a concern; ambulances were stationed at the students' fields because they were, by heaven, needed. The accident rate was appalling, the death-rate even more so. The Rumpetys killed more lads than combat did. Thank Cod for the Gosport system. Things had changed since he was a cadet; now there was a logical system in place for training. Still. Back in his day, there were always several dozen crashes a day when the weather permitted and the planes were up. Usually one cadet died a day, and several more .were injured. Not so bad now, though. Can't afford to lose that many in training, I suppose. Took those old men long enough to figure that out.

  He shook off the shakes that threatened him as he remembered some of those crashes . . . fortunately, his sojourn at the school as a cadet had been mercifully short. He already knew how to fly, and didn't take long to prove it.

  Captain William Robert Howe. Can't do without him. He's bringing the band— Thanks to the Brigadier; this was a regular infantry band, though they had played for the RFC. That would give some of the FBI a thrill, coming up to a country house to play. Captain Howe was the officer in charge and the bandleader, all in one. And, the Brigadier claimed, single. Another alternate target for the husband-hunters. FBI he might be, and less glamorous than a pilot, but he was a captain.

  Captain Steven Stewart, and he'd damned well better get leave. Steve had pledged on his life he'd come. Tommy had sworn he'd see to it. Tommy had incentive; was getting a case of whiskey from the Longacre cellars if Steve did make it.

  Lt. Commander Geoffrey Cockburn, and if he puts his auto in the pond again, I'll make him go in after it. Captain Christopher Whitmore, and he had better not bring all that photographic paraphernalia with him. Both had been chums of his at college. Geoff was a tearaway, Chris studious, both still single and not at all unhandsome. Yet more fodder for the husband-hunters. With luck, he'd get a word with them ahead of time so they could help keep the harpies off.

  "Here's the uniformed lot, Mater," he said, with relief, putting his stack beside the rest of the finished envelopes.

  "Ah, good," she replied, absently. "Here, there's just a few more of the local people. Be a dear and do them, would you?"

  Mrs. and Mrs. Donald Hinshaw, the vicar and his wife. Doctor and Mrs. Robert Sutherland. And then—

  Mrs. Alison Robinson, Miss Danbridge, Miss Carolyn Danbridge, Miss Eleanor Robinson. . . .

  Eleanor? For a moment, his mind went blank. Then it refocused again. Eleanor Robinson. His Eleanor?

  She was that—woman's daughter? But how was that possible?

  "Mater, who's this Eleanor Robinson?" he asked casually, or at least, as casually as he could manage.

  "Oh, she's just dear Alison's stepdaughter," his mother said, indifferently. "The vicar reminded me about her, or at least, I think it was the vicar. Someone did, anyway. She's supposed to be at Oxford, so I suppose she's a terrible bluestocking not to come home for the summer, but it wouldn't do not to invite her, even if she doesn't come."

  She's supposed to be at Oxford? But— He felt as if he'd been poleaxed, he was so stunned. There was certainly no monetary reason why she shouldn't be at university—that woman spent money as freely as his own mother did, and it was common knowledge she was well-off, so there should be no trouble with the fees.

  For that matter, given how Alison Robinson spent lavishly, why was Eleanor always so shabby-looking? Why did she have hands like a charwoman?

  What was going on there?

  And the next question. How do I find out if I can't get near Eleanor in the first place?

  25

  July 20, 1917

  Longacre Park, Warwickshire

  REGGIE HAD DECIDED ON CAROLYN as the most likely to let something about Eleanor drop—she clearly was not the more intelligent of the sisters (though neither of them were a match for their mother) but he still was going to tread very cautiously around her. He didn't want to alert any of the three to the fact that he knew their stepsister was somewhere in Broom. In fact, he didn't want to alert them to the fact that he had met her more than once. It had taken a great deal of willpower not to limp down to his motor and take it right to the door of The Arrows that day when he had addressed an invitation to her, and only the fact that so very much was ringing false had kept him from doing so. There was a great deal more than met the eye going on; he had a notion that he might eventually want Lady Virginia's help on this, but not until he had investigated all other courses of action himself.

  A tennis match presented the best opportunity; his mother
was playing against hers, and he brought her a lemonade as a pretext for sitting next to her. After some noncommittal chat, he managed to steer the conversation towards Oxford, and asked, as if in afterthought, "Oh—don't you have a sister there?"

  She jerked as if she'd been stung by a bee, and stared at him, wide-eyed. If he hadn't known there was something wrong before this, he would have by her reaction. He knew guilt when he saw it. "A sister?"

  "Eleanor?" he prompted. "It occurred to me that the only Robinsons in Broom had a daughter named Eleanor. Before the war, I remember talking to her about going to Oxford—she had her heart set on it, and was taking the examinations in order to qualify."

  "Oh—Eleanor!" Her brittle laugh rang entirely false. "She's only my stepsister, not a real sister. I scarcely think of her at all, actually, we're practically strangers." Her smile was too bright, and she looked very nervous to him. He fancied that Eleanor was nowhere near as much of a stranger as she was pretending.