by Zen Cho
“Mr. Wythe,” said Prunella, “are you well?”
“So late!” said Zacharias in a harsh voice, so changed that Prunella stared. “Nearly midnight! How could I have permitted you to remain so late?”
He staggered when he returned the clock to the mantelpiece, and had to steady himself by grasping the back of a chair.
Prunella could not make out why the hour should shock him so, but it was no time to puzzle over the Sorcerer Royal’s eccentricity. Mr. Wythe was grey, his countenance fixed and staring.
“I am sure you are unwell,” she said.
“It is nothing,” said the Sorcerer Royal in that strange, distracted manner. “A headache, nothing more. You must certainly go back to the school.”
But Prunella would not be put off. The look on Mr. Wythe’s face as he turned from the mantelpiece had gone to her heart. It was a fleeting look—vanished in a moment, for he composed his features into their usual calm—but the pain and fear could not be mistaken.
“Pray sit down. You look but poorly,” she said. “Mrs. Daubeney used to be a martyr to her headaches, till Cook put an end to them with—well, she said it was a tisane, but I am sure it was a spell!”
Years of chivvying little girls to take their baths and finish their dinners had given Prunella a knack for making the recalcitrant bow to her will. She bundled Zacharias unceremoniously into a chair, and it was this that saved him, for the first jet of flame shooting out from the grate was aimed precisely at where his head had been a moment ago.
Prunella fell back with a shriek.
“Good God!” cried Zacharias.
The fire spilt out of the grate, growing with inconceivable rapidity, devouring the carpet and flaring out towards the ceiling. Choking black smoke filled the room. This was no ordinary fire, for it was haloed with an eldritch green light, and the pungent smell of magic—a smell of hot metal and sulphur, and of herbs burning—filled Prunella’s nostrils.
“Take care!” she gasped, as another jet of flame burst from the fireplace.
Mr. Wythe was still in his chair, ashen-faced. He managed to evade the jet by slumping out of the way, but he seemed incapable of doing any more, though he grasped the arms of the chair and tried to pull himself up. It was clear he was in no state to defend himself, much less Prunella. She must contrive to look after them both.
She grasped his hand and drew the edges of her ragged invisibility spell together. There was no time to think. Working by instinct, she knitted up the rips and tears in her charm and wound it around them both, thinking it furiously into solidity. It must be a wall—a cool wall—a freezing wall—
There were weird inhuman faces in the fire, with tendrils of flame for hair, and mouths open in silent screams of rage. Prunella had not erected her defence a moment too soon. The spirits of the fire surged out of the grate, and threw themselves bodily against her ward.
It held. The fire hissed as it met the ward (cold as ice, cold as November). The spirits roared, their faces melting and re-forming within the wall of flame encircling her and Zacharias. Sometimes the spirits looked like people, but sometimes they looked very unlike, having far too many limbs, and far too many teeth.
Prunella was so cold her teeth chattered in her head, but the bubble enclosing her and Mr. Wythe was lit with a hellish orange light. The devouring fire surrounded them. She could not hold it off for much longer.
A tentacle of flame pierced the barrier as she grew weary, and reached towards Zacharias. If Prunella had been thinking clearly she might well have allowed the flame to obtain its aim. She was not thinking at all, however, and she flung out her hand to stop it.
The flame wrapped around her wrist. She was so cold she did not feel the heat at first, but then she did.
Zacharias heard the girl cry out, and that brought him back to himself, through the haze of pain. He grasped her, though he was weak, dangerously weak. He should never have allowed her to stay, so close to midnight.
“Leofric!” he cried. “Leofric, damn you, remember the bargain!”
He felt the weakness leave him. Power rushed in a cool stream down his arm.
Prunella did not know quite what was happening, but the pain eased suddenly, and the fire receded. Mr. Wythe rose to his feet.
She had the blurry impression of her ward being turned inside out, like an umbrella in a storm. But it was no longer the spell she had knitted frantically together—it was transformed into something larger and far more powerful. It enveloped the blaze, cooling it in a trice, and crushed down the fire, till the room was dark, and there was nothing left of the flames or the spirits.
In Mr. Wythe’s hand pulsed a ball of crimson light. He flung it into the grate. It hit the wall and burst with a hollow roar, many-voiced. Prunella saw the spirits of the fire escape up the chimney, hissing angrily as they went. A remaining nucleus of flame dropped on the logs, where it glowed for a moment before it expired.
Prunella’s last thought was that if Mr. Wythe was not unwell, after all, she wished she had not troubled to exert herself. Her wrist hurt very much. But then she did not feel it any longer. A merciful darkness swallowed her whole.
• • •
THERE was no sign of the fire when Prunella awoke. She was lying on the chaise longue, and the Sorcerer Royal was in an armchair opposite, deep in thought.
Prunella looked around the room, expecting to see the walls blackened and the furniture reduced to tinder, but it was as though the fire had not happened at all. The only evidence that remained was the throbbing pain in her left wrist.
A dreadful thought struck her.
“My valise!” she cried.
“It is safe by your feet,” said Mr. Wythe. He did not seem ill at all. He bent on her a look of concern. “I am glad you are awake. How do you feel?
“How do I feel?” echoed Prunella.
Her immediate sensation had been of relief that Mr. Wythe had not touched her valise while she was unconscious, but now she had occasion to consider herself, she found she was exceedingly cross.
“That is scarcely to the point!” she snapped. “If you were capable all along of fighting off that fire, why did not you? I should have thought you would be ashamed to take your leisure, leaving me to suffer an injury!”
She sat up unsteadily and thrust out her arm, upon which a livid burn had been branded by the flame.
If Prunella had been less upset it might have occurred to her that upbraiding the Sorcerer Royal might not be the best means of persuading him to take her to London. She was quite out of temper, however, and the apparent collapse of her scheme had removed any reason to check her tongue.
Mr. Wythe looked wretchedly guilty.
“I am indeed ashamed,” he said. “I regret extremely that you should have been injured by an attack intended for me. If I had been myself, you should not have suffered the least harm.”
Such a ready acceptance of wrong could not but mollify Prunella. Besides, she was intrigued by the reference to the conflagration’s having been an attack. It had been clear that the fire was of magical provenance, but she had not considered what the purpose of that magic might be.
“Was it meant for you, then?” she said, forgetting her rancour in curiosity. “Are you often so attacked? Why, it is just like the old stories, with sorcerers continually at one another’s throats! I had not thought thaumaturges were still so murderous.”
“Neither had I,” said Zacharias grimly. “The ashes in the grate still bear the impression of the hex. It was designed to injure a magician, without leaving any trace of its presence. That is why the furniture is unharmed. My enemy, whoever he is, hoped to leave me a charred corpse—to be found sitting at my desk, with my possessions undisturbed where I left them.”
“How horrible!” said Prunella with relish.
“The hex was certainly intended for me. No other magician was m
eant to be staying at this inn,” said Zacharias. “Unfortunately for you, Miss Gentleman, my enemy did not account for your presence. If you had been a chair, you would have escaped harm. Since the fire took you for a magician, you were burnt, for which I am very sorry indeed.”
“As you should be!” said Prunella, but the reproach was perfunctory. It was too interesting to have been present at an attempt on the Sorcerer Royal’s life for Prunella to work up any lasting indignation about her part in the proceedings. “I suppose the spell disabled you, so you should not be able to counter it. That was cleverly done.”
Zacharias looked embarrassed.
“No,” he said. “I was taken ill, as you observed, but that was merely an unlucky circumstance, unconnected to the attack.”
He hesitated, then continued awkwardly:
“I am prey to a recurring complaint whose symptoms are most marked in the evening, and particularly at midnight. It was unfortunate that my attacker struck at precisely that time. I am only glad I was able to summon my strength before it was too late—though not in time to prevent your coming to harm.”
The harm was not much worse than the cuts and scalds Prunella had received in the school kitchens, but she was not about to admit that. She drew herself up and looked haughty.
“I call it a disgrace!” she said. “My wrist hurts very much, and I should think it will need a great deal of time and care to heal. I don’t suppose it will have either, since I must return to Mrs. Daubeney, who doesn’t care whether I live or die!”
This was a wholly speculative play on Prunella’s part, for she had given up on Mr. Wythe’s doing as she desired. It took the wind out of her sails when he replied:
“Of course you cannot go back to that finishing school. Your talent would be thrown away there. I shall take you to London. If I am to reform the magical education of women, why should not the reform begin with you?”
“Oh!” said Prunella. After a moment she rallied, and tried to look as though this were only what she had expected. “Yes! That is what I have been trying to tell you all along.”
Mr. Wythe nodded, but he did not look at her.
“Besides,” he said, “I am in your debt, and will do what I can to make a return. I should likely have died if not for you. You saved my life.”
“Why, so I did,” said Prunella, charmed.
9
ZACHARIAS MANAGED TO prevail upon Miss Gentleman to return to the school the next morning: whatever had passed between them, she still owed Mrs. Daubeney a farewell, and if she returned, no one need know she had passed the night at the inn.
He had been thinking of his own reputation as well as Miss Gentleman’s. He had no wish for it to be bruited abroad that the Sorcerer Royal was in the habit of abstracting maidens from girls’ schools and entertaining them in his rooms. “It is quite enough for them to call me a murderer and an ingrate, without adding the ravishing of innocents to my trespasses!”
But Zacharias was tempted to regret his discretion when he was shown into Mrs. Daubeney’s drawing room in the morning. The lady herself was cast down upon an ottoman, weeping stormily into a handkerchief. Prunella hovered nearby with a bottle of smelling salts. She had the air of one to whom such displays were commonplace, but the apprehension in her eyes belied her appearance of composure.
“I am sorry to intrude,” said Zacharias. “Shall I return at a more opportune time?”
Mrs. Daubeney dabbed at her eyes and sat up. “What time can be opportune now that my poor Prunella is ruined?”
“I met Mrs. Daubeney as I was returning to my room,” explained Prunella.
Mrs. Daubeney had had every intention of snubbing Mr. Wythe when she saw him again. She considered he had behaved very shabbily in failing to be impressed by the Seven Shackles, which she regarded as a prime feather in her cap. And he had been a shocking dinner companion, speaking once in ten minutes if he spoke at all. No, the Sorcerer Royal was quite exploded in Mrs. Daubeney’s eyes. She would not be surprised if he had murdered poor dear Sir Stephen after all, and that faithful old dragon of his!
Her plan to treat him with silent dignity was forgotten in her distress over Prunella, however. Mrs. Daubeney’s affection might fail so far as to lead her to demote Prunella at her convenience, but Prunella’s disgrace was a catastrophe she had neither conceived nor desired, and she was all the more dismayed for that she felt she was in part to blame. Prunella would never have been so reckless if she had not been distressed by the little scolding Mrs. Daubeney had given her. Clearly she had run away in a fit of temper, and thereby come to her downfall.
But Mr. Wythe’s was the guilt, and he need not think he would escape it. Any notion of silent dignity was cast aside, and Mrs. Daubeney harangued Zacharias quite as though he were an old acquaintance.
“If you had a heart, you might imagine my feelings when I saw Prunella’s bed unslept in!” she said. “My own child, whom I raised ever since her poor father walked into the river! I do not claim my care was a substitute for the affection of her parents. I daresay it was not, but I challenge you to name anyone who would have shown a penniless female such devotion as I gave!”
“You have been very good, Mrs. Daubeney,” said Prunella. “To a mere penniless female!”
There was an undertone in her voice that made Zacharias glance warily at her, but Prunella knew her audience. Mrs. Daubeney was too wound up to take any notice of her interjections.
“And then to learn she had fled my roof for yours!” lamented Mrs. Daubeney. “The world may call you a great man, Mr. Wythe, but I say you are the veriest blackguard for preying upon a young female, reared in retirement, and innocent of the ways of the world!”
“Pray do not distress yourself, Mrs. Daubeney,” said Prunella. “Even if anything untoward had happened—and Mr. Wythe will vouch that it did not—I haven’t got any reputation worth speaking of, you know.” Her eyes glittered. “After all, it is not as though I were one of the young ladies.”
Mrs. Daubeney drew herself to her full height, the picture of affronted hauteur.
“Prunella, you forget yourself,” she said. “Remember your father was a gentleman!”
“But if he drowned himself and left his infant daughter with the landlady, he cannot have been very respectable,” argued Prunella.
“Ah! Poor Gentleman,” said Mrs. Daubeney, shading her eyes as though she were looking down sunlit avenues into the depths of her past. “He had had a hard time of it, indeed.”
Zacharias saw his chance.
“I gather Mr. Gentleman contrived at his own demise?” he said.
“He left a note,” said Mrs. Daubeney. “Otherwise I could never have believed it of him. Such a prettily written note! ‘Miranda’—we were such friends, we never stood on ceremony with each other—‘Miranda, I know your generosity will forgive this final trespass, despite the trouble I have caused you.’ Even then, in his anguish of mind, so considerate!”
Zacharias nodded sagely. “It sounds like him.”
Mrs. Daubeney’s eyes widened. “Did you know him?”
“I owe you my apologies, ma’am. I ought to have told you yesterday, but I did not wish to speak until I had confirmed Miss Gentleman was the object of my search,” said Zacharias. He sat down across from Mrs. Daubeney, though she had not invited him to take a chair. He must conduct himself with the utmost confidence, or the game was up. “Mr. Gentleman was a particular friend of my guardian, Sir Stephen Wythe. I saw him often.”
“Why, you cannot have been very old then,” said Mrs. Daubeney. “Gentleman came here the instant he returned from India. He told me he had no relations and no friends he cared to see in England. If you knew Mr. Gentleman before he left for India, you cannot have been very old.”
“Certainly I was not very old, but Sir Stephen told me so much about him, that I feel as though I knew him myself,” said Zacharias,
inventing wildly. “He—he was not such a man as one easily forgets!”
In Mr. Gentleman Zacharias had hit upon the one subject in respect of which Mrs. Daubeney would swallow nearly anything. Her eyes dimmed. “Yes. You knew him, I can see!”
“Unfortunately Sir Stephen did not hear from him for many years after they parted,” said Zacharias, suppressing a pang of guilt. “He then discovered that Mr. Gentleman’s fortunes had taken an adverse turn; that he had passed on, and left a daughter in straitened circumstances. My guardian had only sufficient time to discover so much before his own death, and he was not able to help his friend’s daughter as he desired. It was his wish that I should locate her, and offer her what assistance I could. It was in accordance with that wish that I came to your school.”
“That explains why Georgiana’s nephew did not come!” cried Mrs. Daubeney.
Zacharias paused to cast a glowering thought in the general direction of Rollo Threlfall, who was doubtless strolling along Bond Street at that very moment, blissfully unaware of the predicament in which he had landed his friend.
“Yes, I proposed that I should take Mr. Threlfall’s place,” said Zacharias. “I had heard a rumour that Mr. Gentleman had passed his last days in these parts, and I wondered whether his daughter might not be among the gentlewitches at your school.”
“I had wondered! The Sorcerer Royal was never concerned with the education of gentlewitches before,” said Mrs. Daubeney. She was enchanted by this vision of her beloved Gentleman as an intimate of the Sorcerer Royal, fondly remembered even upon Sir Stephen’s deathbed, and herself the friend who in her nobility of character had preserved his daughter from the workhouse. “But this accounts for all!”
Zacharias nodded, though he felt wretchedly uncomfortable. Having set his hand to the plough, however, he could hardly turn back.
“I was soon certain that Miss Gentleman was the young lady I sought, but I had only time to inform her of the bare fact of my guardian’s connection with her father,” he said. “Anxious to learn more, she came to the inn yesterday to speak with me. She ought to have consulted you, ma’am, before undertaking such a visit alone, but we will forgive Miss Gentleman her eagerness to understand more of her origins.”