The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I do not think Moriarty was aware of my work with you, but it is better to take no chances,” Sherlock repeated. “This is why I will remain ‘dead’ and you will not see me until every last man of his is behind bars.”

  “We need a point of contact with you, Holmes!” Watson protested. But Sherlock shook his head.

  “Every point of contact is a risk. This was a risk, and contacting my brother was a risk, and these are things I do not intend to repeat twice. Don’t worry, old man,” he added, with a faint smile. “Mycroft is taking steps to make sure I don’t starve to death, or catch pneumonia from sleeping under a Thames bridge.” He looked at the tiny pendant watch in a jet case he wore about his neck. “And now it is time for me to go. Don’t see me out.”

  He pulled the veil over his face, and suddenly his visage seemed to shrink in on itself; and as he stood up, Nan saw he was hunched over again, and back to being the old lady who had arrived at the door. “Good evening, my dears,” quavered a high, thready voice from behind the veil, as he opened the door. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  And then he was gone.

  “Stubborn goat,” John Watson grumbled, as Mary patted his hand. “Well, at least he’s gone to Mycroft. Hopefully he has a place to lay his head and a ready source of food now. Judging by the way he ate, he hasn’t had a proper meal in a month.”

  “Well, he got those widows’ weeds from somewhere,” Mary pointed out. “And they weren’t rags, either. I think he can manage. Don’t fret too much.”

  Nan leaned back in her seat, and her raven Neville hopped from his perch to the back of the sofa and from there into her lap. “Well, despite the fact that he was finally able to accept the factual existence of your Elementals, John, I’m still concerned that magic is a blind spot with him.” She scratched the back of Neville’s head as Grey climbed into Sarah’s lap to be cuddled. “I don’t think Professor Moriarty was as stubborn. And this worries me. Holmes doesn’t himself know who the magicians and occultists of Britain and the Continent are. And now that he has run off on his own, he’s not going to have someone he can ask. He scarpered before we could tell him anything that might protect him.”

  It was Mary’s turn to frown. “Now that you mention it . . . you’re right. Moriarty was powerful and ruthless, and I find it unlikely that he ever rejected any form of manipulation and control. Even if he himself did not believe, he would be aware that some of his henchmen were believers, and he would have taken pains to acquire at least one magician among his followers.”

  “I’ll go further than that, my love,” Watson agreed, frowning under his handsome moustache. “This could be a critical area of omission for Holmes. He doesn’t have our abilities, and literally won’t see an attack by magic coming. So we must be doubly, triply alert, and take care of such enemies for him. Remember, we are all fast friends, and united, nothing is beyond us.”

  Mary smiled wanly. “I wish I was as sanguine as you, my dear,” she replied, but then she relaxed a trifle. “Still, you are right. And I must say I am relieved to be unburdened of that secret.” She finally took an interest in the tea tray. “Did Holmes leave us anything to eat?”

  * * *

  “Do you think Mycroft would have told Lord Alderscroft about Holmes?” Sarah asked as Nan returned from setting the depleted tea tray out on the landing.

  “I think it very likely, but unless Alderscroft contacts us, and says something about it, we should continue the charade,” Nan replied, and looked down at Suki.

  The little girl with a head of beautiful black curls and a complexion of café au lait looked back up at her. Nan didn’t have to say anything. Suki bobbed her head so hard her ringlets danced. “Won’t tell nobody about nothin’,” she volunteered. “I dun think we should tell Memsa’b neither,” she continued, with a little frown. “Mus’ Holmes didn’ say nothin’ bout Memsa’b.”

  Nan considered that, and nodded reluctantly. “I think you’re right. Besides, she isn’t as close to Sherlock as the rest of us are. It will do no harm to keep her out of the secret for now.” She had no fear that Suki would blurt out anything by accident. The child’s life previous to her being adopted by the girls had taught her how to hold her tongue better than most adults.

  “Well, now that the interruption to our day is over—,” Nan began.

  Suki sighed, and went to fetch the box that contained her testing cards.

  The cards consisted of three decks shuffled together—one deck of ordinary playing cards, one deck of Tarot cards, and one deck of the cards used to drill children in their letters and numbers. To be fair, this exercise was as much to keep Nan sharp as it was to strengthen Suki’s telepathic abilities. They took it in turn to be “sender” and “receiver,” and did not stop until they had been through all the cards three times. Meanwhile, after tidying the flat, Sarah resumed her self-appointed task of going over all their summer and spring clothing, making sure that no repairs had been overlooked when they had put the clothing away last autumn, and checking that moths had not had a chance to damage things while in storage.

  Sarah sighed audibly as Nan put away the cards. “We did our best, but I think we are going to have to invest in new stockings,” she said mournfully. “They’re more darn than stocking, and I hate wearing lumpy stockings.”

  “You’ll get blisters if you try,” Nan pointed out practically, and checked her watch. “We’ve just time to go round to the shops, then the park, before dinner.”

  Suki looked up with hope in her eyes at that.

  The child looked nothing like Nan or Sarah, of course; she had curly hair as black as a raven’s wing and a dusky complexion, with a sweet, round face. Sarah was a true English rose, blond and blue-eyed and pink-cheeked, while Nan was taller than her friend, with plain brown hair and an equally plain face. But any impertinent observations on the fact that Suki did not look sufficiently “English” were swiftly quelled with one of Nan’s dagger-looks, and Sarah’s frosty, “Suki has been our ward for several years.”

  Sarah tossed all the stockings in the rag basket. “Get your bonnet, Suki,” she said, and the child ran off joyfully to do so.

  Not more than an hour later, new stockings duly bought, the two of them were in one of London’s many parks. This one was smallish, with a round pond in the center. There were four benches spaced equally around the pond, and a circle of heavy bushes shielded the pond from the streets around it. As it was teatime, they had the park to themselves.

  They sat together on one of the benches, with Neville on Nan’s shoulder and Grey the African parrot on the back of the bench beside them, and watched Suki romping with the pigeons and starlings, who were more than used to her, and knew that she was a good source of crumbs. She wore her currently favorite dress, a blue and white sailor suit, with a straw sailor’s hat. Nan, as usual, wore a plain brown Rational Dress gown; Sarah a light blue gown of similar design. “You were hoping Puck would show up, weren’t you?” Sarah said in an undertone.

  Nan shrugged. “It was a thought. I was hoping Puck could put a watcher on you-know-who.”

  “Except that you-know-who is quite likely to go places a watcher won’t want to go,” Sarah pointed out practically. “You know Earth Elementals do not much care for the city. Let John and Mary tend to that side of things. We can find out from Memsa’b if there are any occultists she would suggest might have been Moriarty’s henchmen. A telepath would have been extremely useful to him, after all.”

  “That is a very good point, and we can do so without letting the secret slip,” Nan agreed. She watched as Suki stood balanced perfectly on the curb around the pond, walking the stone as easily as if she was on the flat pavement. “We should get Suki a toy boat.”

  “So we should. It will be worth it to watch the horror in every nanny’s eyes as she outsails their male charges. How long, do you think, before she starts begging to march in suffragette parades?” Sarah chuckled.

  “Any day now—” Nan replied, when suddenly, the p
leasant day turned horrific.

  Three things happened simultaneously. Nan got a sudden surge of nausea and panic and a glimpse of horrific visions of Suki being treated as no child should be, Suki whirled and screamed, pointing, and Neville launched himself off Nan’s shoulder, bellowing a challenge. A moment later, there was more screaming, but it wasn’t Neville or Suki.

  “Gerim orf!” screamed a male voice behind Nan as she lurched off the bench and whirled. “Gerim orf!” She stared, unable to move for a moment. There was a man, roughly dressed in shabby clothing, thrashing his way out of the bushes behind her. Neville had fastened his talons into the man’s scalp and was plowing furrows into his skin with his beak, then, as Nan watched, stupefied, whipped his head down and clamped down on the right ear, scissoring it completely off. The man screamed incoherently and tried to pummel the bird, but Neville was already in the air again, hammering the man’s skull with his beak as he hovered above his head.

  Suki ran, not toward Nan and Sarah, but toward the man, her face a mask of fury. Before Nan could stop her, she reached him and plunged her little knife into his leg behind his knee. He shrieked, and before anyone could react, he ran off, stumbling and limping, covered in blood.

  Now Suki turned and ran for Sarah and Nan, throwing herself against Nan’s legs, wrapping her arms around Nan’s waist and sobbing into Nan’s skirt. Neville landed on the ground beside them, looking equally concerned for Suki and very proud of himself, ear still held in his beak.

  “Get rid of that, Neville,” Nan said absentmindedly, as she embraced Suki’s shaking shoulders. “You don’t know where it’s been.”

  Neville looked disappointed that he was not going to be allowed to eat it, but obediently flapped off and returned without the ear. I don’t think I want to know where he left it.

  By this time a bobby had appeared, attracted by the screaming. Nan continued to comfort Suki, letting Sarah handle the situation.

  He was gonna—he was gonna—Suki cried in Nan’s mind.

  He was going to try, lovey, but we’re here, Neville got him, and so did you. And if he hadn’t run away, Sarah and I would have turned him inside out. She gathered from the murmurs on Sarah’s part that she was convincing the bobby that the man had actually attacked Suki, rather than merely thinking about it, and that he’d been frightened off when all three of them screamed. Certainly Suki’s hysterics were convincing enough, and by some miracle she hadn’t gotten any blood spattered on her where it would show. Nan held her little ward tightly while Suki showed her, in much more detail than Nan found comfortable, exactly what she had sensed in her attacker’s mind. It reminded her far too much of what she herself had seen in the minds of the men her mother had sold her to when she was a child, before Memsa’b took her in. Nan continued to reassure her until the bobby had gotten enough detail from Sarah to hurry off and make his report.

  “He’s never going to catch the bastard, you know,” Nan murmured under her breath, as they both sat down on the bench again, with Suki between them, and Grey and Neville both now trying to offer their own sorts of comfort. “You described him before Neville savaged him.”

  “Eyes.” Neville croaked angrily, making it very clear what his next target would have been if the man hadn’t run off.

  “And how was I going to explain that our pet raven turned his skull into a dissection exhibit?” Sarah replied, reasonably, petting Suki’s hair and wiping her eyes. “We’re just lucky the park was empty and no one else saw what happened.”

  Suki hiccupped a couple of times, and took the handkerchief out of Sarah’s hand to blow her nose. She took a long, deep breath, and the horrific images faded from her head. “Oi ’ope ’e bleeds t’death,” she said, hoarsely.

  “Well, he’s likely to die of an infection,” Nan replied grimly. “Neville’s beak is anything but clean.”

  “Oi!” Neville objected.

  Nan looked over Suki’s head to Sarah. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That this was what you-know-who warned us about?” Sarah replied, just as grimly.

  “Either the man was completely mad, or it seems a strange thing to do.” Nan set her jaw. “There’s no other reason to attack a child in broad daylight in a public park. And it wasn’t an impulse attack. It was Suki he wanted.” She looked down at their ward, who sniffed and nodded confirmation.

  But then Suki spoke up. “I don’ thin’ ’e was gonna grab me ’ere. I thin’ ’e was gonna foller us ’ome t’see where we lived. On’y, I screamed an Neville went fer ’im.” She managed a watery smile and petted Neville, who purred. “Yer a ’ero, Neville.”

  “Yes he is. And . . . damn it all. Whatever the cause, I don’t think we dare take the chance that this wasn’t aimed directly at us. I think you need to go back to Memsa’b, and I think you need to be a boy for a while, my love,” Nan said firmly, and Suki’s face looked a little less forlorn. Although she loved her pretty things, and preened in the lovely dresses Lord Alderscroft spoiled her with, she also loved the freedom being dressed as a boy gave her.

  “All right,” Suki agreed, blowing her nose again.

  When they got back to their flat, they sent messages, first to Lord Alderscroft, who replied immediately that his carriage would be there within the hour to take Suki straight to the school, then to Memsa’b with the particulars. Neville was better than a telegraph office; he returned with Memsa’b’s short reply, Send her here at once! just as the carriage also arrived. And in the carriage were two very burly footmen. Lord Alderscroft obviously was taking the situation quite seriously.

  One of the footmen stowed Suki’s small trunk on the roof of the carriage, while the other handed her in as if she was a princess, much to her delight. The girls stood on the stoop and waved to her until the carriage was out of sight, then went back into their flat. Already it seemed emptier.

  “Sendin’ Suki back to school?” their landlady, Mrs. Horace, asked from the door of her own flat. And without waiting for an answer, she nodded wisely. “Almanac says it’s going to be a dreadful summer. Heat always makes sickness spread like wildfire. You’re wise girls to get her back to somewhere healthy before it starts.”

  “That’s what we thought, Mrs. Horace,” Sarah replied. “I’m glad you agree.”

  “I wish we could leave,” Nan said, as they closed the door of their flat behind them. “I wish Alderscroft would find us a job that needs doing somewhere on the other side of the country.”

  “Wales would be nice,” Sarah sighed wistfully. “Or Scotland. We’ve never been to Scotland. The Scottish Highlands sound so romantic in Scott’s novels.”

  Nan cleared away the supper things and put the tray out on the landing for Mrs. Horace. When she came back, Sarah was cuddling Grey in her chair at the hearth. Neville was in no mood for cuddles; Nan sensed he was still angry about the near-attack on Suki.

  “Well,” Nan said aloud, settling into her own chair, where Neville was already perched. “Here’s the question. We’ve had a chance to calm down and our thoughts to cool. Was this random, or was it one of Moriarty’s henchmen?”

  “You’re better equipped to determine that than I am,” Sarah pointed out. “Was there anything in his thoughts that suggested he was sent after us, specifically?”

  Nan frowned as she examined the repugnant memories. “He wasn’t thinking about anything but Suki,” she admitted. “I didn’t see anything about him being ordered to find us . . . but I didn’t not see anything, either, if that makes any sense.”

  “So it could be he was just looking for a victim—and it’s possible he wouldn’t have actually tried to abduct Suki at all?” Sarah persisted. “Yes, I know he wanted to, but she was with two adult women in a very public park. And we live in a respectable neighborhood where everyone knows her. One hint of a scream from her and half the neighbors would come boiling out with fireplace pokers and brooms in hand.” She rubbed her head as if it ached. “What I am trying to say is, yes, he was an absolutely horri
ble man and I have no doubt he has done horrible things to other children, but all we can tell for certain is that he was only thinking about doing them to Suki.”

  Nan swore under her breath. “Which means, we know nothing, other than we certainly administered just retribution to someone who absolutely has earned it by his actions in the past.”

  Sarah nodded. “We may have been jumping at shadows. But I think we did right in sending Suki away. Until we know that Sherlock has eliminated all of Moriarty’s men that are inclined to look for revenge, we should be alert enough to jump at shadows.”

  Nan glanced over her shoulder at the nearest window, where the last light of sunset touched the roof of the building across the street. “Well, I still hope he comes to a horrid end,” she growled. “Maybe even more, now.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “And if we run across him again, I’m going to let Neville have his eyes!”

  “And I won’t stop you,” Sarah replied. “In fact. . . .” She bared her teeth in something that was not a smile. “I’ll help.”

  2

  Mary O’Brien looked about herself with wide eyes. She had never been to a place like this in her short life. In fact, for most of her twelve years she had never been anywhere except to play in the streets, or work in whatever cramped little room the whole family shared, so this place was like one of those fairy palaces in a song.

  She knew it was a pub, but she had never dared to go in a pub. Not because she would have been chased out because she was too young to be there—but because she would have been chased out because she was too poor to be there. Pa was a crossing-sweeper and she and Ma mended clothes for pawnbrokers, and her three little brothers collected dog shit for tanners and there was just never enough money to go around even for basics like food and rent. In summer especially there were weeks when they all slept rough in the street, their meager belongings stowed underneath them against thieves.

  There were lots of places where you just didn’t go when your dress was more patch than dress and you wrapped your feet in rags in the winter because you didn’t have shoes. She probably would already be in service if she’d had one good, clean dress to be interviewed in, but nobody hired even a tweenie who didn’t have a good dress and a pair of shoes. As it was she’d been helping her mother with her mending and sewing work since she was old enough to be trusted with it. Never mind they were all supposed to be at school. School was only for days there was no work. At least she could write her name, and puzzle out words, and add good enough that she didn’t get cheated, so that was something.