The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  Perhaps I should point this out to Moriarty once he has possessed Hugh’s body. He can simply beat Holmes by outliving him. Moriarty’s Organization can go on and on into the future, while Holmes becomes a quaint footnote in the annals of those who collect sensationalist stories.

  The sooner he made that point to the Professor, the better. It might make him concentrate more on future plans, and less on his frustration. The longer Moriarty was able to keep himself calm and concentrate on intellectual things, the likelier it was he would stay sane and close to his pre-deceased self.

  It was at this point that the cab arrived at the pub near his “convenience” flat. Having paid the driver, he entered and made a satisfactory lunch, and arrived at his flat with a good two hours to spare before Hughs arrived.

  He spent that time airing the place out, lighting a small fire and scattered a few belongings about to give the flat the appearance of being lived in, and made up a comfortable bedlike arrangement on a wide sofa in the sitting room. And he rolled a carefully measured quantity of the sticky, raw opium gum inside a bit of marchpane.

  Hughs arrived right on time, looking pathetic, yet eager. As soon as Spencer had closed the door and drawn him into the sitting room, he answered the unspoken question with a slight smile and soothing tone. “Yes, it was no problem. I have what you need. Would you prefer to relax with a cup of tea first or—”

  Hughs was clearly torn between appearing to be a civilized, controlled man and having the release he desperately craved. Before he could say anything, Spencer directed him to sit on the couch, still wearing that faint smile. “Well, why not both? Make yourself comfortable.” He went to the small kitchen and returned with a cup of tea and the opium sweet on a little plate. He handed the latter to Hughs.

  “It will take some little time before the opium takes effect, taken this way,” he said. “Smoking is faster, but—” he made a little face. “I cannot rid myself of the image of scrawny Chinese and stinking opium dens.”

  Hughs had lost no time in devouring the morsel, and Spencer handed him his cup, taking his own place in a chair where a second cup waited on the table. “Have your circumstances improved at all since yesterday?”

  Hughs shook his head dolefully and said nothing. Spencer did not attempt to coax him into further speech. Instead, he took over the conversation and turned it into a sort of monologue that Hughs was not required to respond to except in a very general way. All the while he kept a sharp watch on his guest for the signs that the opium had begun to have its way with him.

  And eventually, Hughs began to nod, then slowly sink back into the cushions of the sofa, his head lolling to one side. His eyes closed.

  Spencer carefully lifted his feet from the floor and tucked them up on the sofa. Hughs stirred a little more and arranged himself on his side, slightly curled, completely in the thrall of the drug.

  With a smile of triumph, Spencer fetched what he would need from the seldom-used bedroom and began the first of the binding magics that would eventually have Hughs completely in his thrall.

  7

  Nan was engaged in the homely task of ironing when she heard the doorbell at the street door, shortly followed by that good lady’s steps on the stairs leading up to their flat. Carefully putting the heated flatiron on the stone tile on the end of the ironing board where it wouldn’t burn anything, she hurried to the door. Mrs. Horace gave her usual discreet tap as she was four or five steps away.

  “I wouldn’t be botherin’ you on ironing day,” their landlady said, telegram in hand, “But . . .” She waved the telegram helplessly.

  “Quite right, Mrs. Horace,” Nan agreed, taking it from her with that sense of trepidation every telegram engendered in everyone she knew. The mail came twice daily after all, and ordinary communications could certainly stand a wait of twelve hours. But a telegram! That meant urgency, and urgency implied bad news.

  But when she opened it, as Mrs. Horace hovered anxiously, she breathed a sigh of relief, a sigh that was echoed by Mrs. Horace, who turned around without a word and trotted back downstairs. Meet lunch club. Alderscroft. At least no one had died!

  At least this is not a warning that Moriarty’s men are on to us, or that Watson or Mary have been hurt . . .

  “Sarah!” she called. “Alderscroft summons us to lunch! We should have just enough time to get there.”

  “What now?” Sarah asked, popping out of her room in her waist and bloomers and snatching the newly ironed walking skirt from the ironing board.

  “Telegram, just three words. Where’s my hat?”

  “On the bust of Athena.” Sara slipped on the skirt without a petticoat. “Can I—oh, it’s Alderscroft. Better not.” She darted back into her room and returned, shaking her skirt down over her petticoat. “I hope we can get a—”

  Just then the sound of wheels stopping in front of the building made Nan run to the window, still pinning her hat in place. “He’s sent his carriage,” she said, half-amused, half-grim.

  “Oh dear. Not the—”

  “No, the little one without the crest. But it means he wants us very badly.” She picked up Neville’s carrier and whistled, and the raven flew into the sitting room, followed by Grey. The parrot opened the door of her carrier with her clever beak and hopped inside; Neville waited for Nan to open his.

  She shut and fastened both carriers as Sarah snatched her hat off the hook, pinned it in place anyhow, and snatched up Grey’s carrier in the hand that wasn’t holding her gloves. She flew out the door, followed by Nan, who carefully locked it behind her.

  The coachman was already off the box and getting ready to open the door for them as they appeared on the doorstep. He said nothing to them except to pull on his top hat and give the customary salute of “Afternoon, miss,” so evidently whatever was so urgent, the news had not percolated down to the stables.

  At least in the privacy and space of the coach, they were able to make themselves tidier on the way to Alderscroft’s club, the Exeter. The Exeter Club had only just recovered from the shock of allowing women past the public dining rooms; Nan didn’t think it would survive the appearance of women without gloves and their hats hanging off the sides of their heads. Unless said hat was designed to perch at that precarious angle. The Club might not know a great deal about women’s fashions, but it was perfectly capable of telling when a woman was transgressing in that area.

  They were known to the doorman at this point, and while he did not give them the friendly greeting he would have given a member, or even the male acquaintance of a member, he did smile slightly and touch his hat. Nan was very glad the two of them had made themselves look impeccably tidy in the carriage. The freezing glance the doorman would have given them would have chilled the spirits of stronger souls than theirs.

  They no longer needed an escort to penetrate the sacred halls of the clubroom, and the fellow who served the same function as a butler within that hallowed place was evidently on the lookout for them. It would have been unthinkably rude, not to mention acting above his place, if he had waved at them from across the room. But a brief inclination of his head and neck in their direction and a discretely raised eyebrow told Nan he wished to speak to them.

  They crossed the room without occasioning more than a couple of coughs and a slightly disgruntled hrrmph from any of the otherwise fossilized Members. Poor things. Most of them had no idea they were there mostly as stage dressing, to obscure the fact that the Exeter was home to Alderscroft’s Hunting Lodge, a circle of some of the most powerful Elemental Masters in the country. All they knew was that the Exeter was their home, and had been a bastion of exclusively male company until very recently. They still smarted from the invasion of mere women—and were terribly afraid that this invasion presaged an invasion of another sort, one in which women would (horrors!) be permitted to become Members.

  “His Lordship has directed me to escort you to the Lodge Rooms, where a cold luncheon has been prepared.” The words were barely above a whisp
er, and Nan and Sarah had to lean closely to hear them. The birds, thankfully, did not so much as stir; probably they understood the need for silence. A single word issuing from either of the carriers would probably have caused several strokes.

  “Thank you, Williams,” said Sarah, “We know the way.”

  The appropriate way was to take the servant’s stair—encountering any of the venerable gentlemen who lived here on the guest stair would be worse than the birds saying something. Williams nodded and turned his attention back to his charges. Being here was a continual dance around the tender sensibilities of the old gents, who were encased in stone armor of hardened attitudes which could shatter disastrously at the faintest hint of change. Nan felt sorry for them rather than resentful. They labored under the illusion that they were the strong, stalwart defenders of God and Empire and all that was Good and Noble, when in fact, their rigidity and their age doomed them. With every passing day they grew closer to death, while the reins of power slipped from their fingers and, imperceptibly, the young and flexible took those reins away from them. And the irony was, if they had just been willing to bend and learn and change with the times, those reins would still be theirs, and the “upstarts” would be looking to them as sterling examples.

  Meanwhile, there was enough pity in her to cause her to grit her teeth a little and dance around them.

  The servants’ stairs were narrow and steep, and poorly lit. Had the girls been dressed in fashionable attire rather than sensible walking skirts, they’d probably have broken their necks.

  Reaching Alderscroft’s rooms was a relief, although they had to come in through the tiny kitchen—good mainly for reheating cold food and making tea. Alderscroft was waiting in the dining room—and so were Mary and John Watson.

  Lord Alderscroft was a great lion of a man. In defiance of fashion, he wore his mane of reddish blond hair longer than anyone who was not an artist or an eccentric generally did, and strikingly intelligent blue-gray eyes gazed at Nan and Sarah with a directness that might have seemed rude in anyone else. He was tall and strongly built, currently wearing a smoking jacket of his favorite crimson—favorite, because he was a Fire Master, and both his clothing and the decor of his rooms, such as this crimson-painted dining room, reflected his Element.

  They released the birds immediately. Alderscroft must have expected them, since he had a couple of tobacco-stands fitted out with food and water cups and newspapers spread beneath, which Grey and Neville flew to. The only other furnishings in the room were a mahogany sideboard, laden with a modest spread of food, and the matching dining table and red-brocade-upholstered chairs.

  “Help yourself from the sideboard,” his Lordship rumbled. “Now that we are all here, we can get started.”

  It was only then that Nan realized there was a third guest already at Alderscroft’s table: Mycroft Holmes.

  Mycroft was clearly the elder of the two brothers. He was as tall as Sherlock, but much fatter, and it was clear he preferred the sedentary life to the active one his brother pursued. But the moment you looked into his steel-grey eyes, you forgot he was fat, you forgot anything except the incredible intellect that high-browed head housed. His was a personality that could, when he chose, fill the room and dominate anyone and anything in it, save, perhaps, his brother. Beside him, Alderscroft seemed . . . ordinary. When Mycroft Holmes chose, he was the British government, or so his brother claimed. Looking at him now, Nan saw no reason to doubt this assertion.

  She felt her eyes widening a little, but she put Neville’s carrier down on the floor and followed Sarah to collect some luncheon. Mary Watson poured out tea for them both, suggesting that this was a very serious occasion indeed, and one at which Alderscroft wanted no outsiders.

  “Well, Mycroft?” his Lordship said, when they were seated. Mycroft cleared his throat, but did not stand.

  “Alderscroft and I want you to assist Lestrade with these hideous murders of young girls,” he said bluntly.

  Nan and John exchanged a startled glance. Nan nodded, and John spoke up. “We’ve done as much as we can do,” he explained patiently. “We’re good, but we’re only human. You either need to find a way to bring Sherlock out of hiding, or you, sir, need to bend your formidable intellect to this task.” He nodded here at Mycroft Holmes. “We are all out of our depth.”

  “Nevertheless,” Mycroft replied, “His Lordship and I require you. There is more to this than you are aware.”

  “Indeed,” Alderscroft said, taking up the thread. “To make a very long story short . . . the Hunting Lodge has detected the activity of a necromancer in London, and we believe these murders might possibly be his work.”

  John and Mary looked both startled and aghast. Nan was only puzzled. “What, precisely, is a necromancer?” she asked.

  “You are aware of the Masters and magicians of the four Elements—Earth, Air, Fire and Water,” Alderscroft said. “And you know that some of these have gone to the bad, and done terrible things. But there is a fifth Element, and very, very rare magicians and Masters of that Element—the Element of the Spirit. And Masters of the Spirit are as rare among Elemental Masters as the Elemental Masters themselves are rare in the general population. Spirit Masters can see, interact with, and use the magic of all Elementals, because all Elementals are, to a greater or lesser degree, spirits. But most importantly of all, Spirit Masters can see, interact with, and control human spirits, or ghosts.”

  It was Sarah who understood what he was talking about first, and gasped, “Sarasate!”

  “Indeed,” said Alderscroft. “Sarasate is at the least an Elemental Magician of Spirit, if not a Master. His medium of interaction is music. He seems to be completely untaught, but because he uses his power for good, and has tremendous control, we have not meddled with him. But the converse of a Sarasate is a necromancer—one who wakes or invokes spirits, binds them, controls them, and exploits them for his own power and purposes.” He took a deep breath. “And the Lodge believes we have uncovered evidence of such a necromancer in London. This necromancer may be connected to the murders. We need you to discover him, and determine whether or not he is.”

  “If there is anyone who is likely to be able to find such a necromancer, it is Miss Sarah,” Mycroft said into the silence. “Or rather, Miss Sarah, working with John Watson, my brother’s chief and best pupil.”

  “I am not—” John began, flushing a little. “Not nearly—”

  Mycroft cut him off with a wave of his hand. “You know my brother, Watson. You know he does not suffer fools at all, nor the incompetent, nor the willfully blind. He has compassion, which was why he took the time to telegraph you young ladies at a perilous moment, but very little sentiment. Do you think, John Watson, that he would have tolerated you at his side for more than a month, if you had not had a first-class intellect not only capable of understanding his methods, but still, at an adult age, willing and able to learn, and to master them?”

  John Watson looked like a man who had just been poleaxed. Mary, however, looked triumphant, vindicated.

  “Now, Miss Sarah,” said Alderscroft, taking over the conversation again. “I am going to ask you to try new things, things that may not have occurred to you that you could do. To begin with, I am going to ask you to learn how to extend your vision into that half-world that spirits inhabit, and learn to call that vision up whenever you need it. Beatrice Leek may be of some small help there; I believe many in her family were mediumistic.”

  “I can certainly try,” Sarah said cautiously. “But what difference will that make?”

  “Once Watson has established a likely place where these unfortunates went into the Thames, instead of waiting for possibly insane spirits to come to you, you can venture into their world, find ones worth talking to, and interrogate them.” Nan sensed Sarah’s skepticism; Nan shared it, bur Alderscroft seemed very certain this was something she could do.

  “This is of paramount importance,” Alderscroft went on, in a tone that brooked no argumen
t. “There have been more bodies than just the ones Lestrade has been burdened with. For a necromancer to undertake something of this nature suggests he is not just murdering random young girls for the pleasure of it. Clothing them as brides, the specific method of death, the fact that all are identical—it suggests that he is binding their spirits for a specific purpose, creating a kind of reservoir of power he can draw on that will be stronger and more reliable than hunting and binding random ghosts. We don’t know what that purpose is, but it will be terrible.”

  “As terrible as that other-world we once ventured into? As terrible as bringing over the hideous ruler of that place into our world?” Nan asked.

  Both Alderscroft and Holmes nodded.

  “Terrible in some new and unforeseen fashion,” Mycroft added. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger as if his head pained him. It probably did. “Bother all this occult business. It is nothing a rational man can predict.”

  “It is as predictable as any other threat to the Empire,” Alderscroft replied dryly. “It is all down to men craving power. It is only the means of obtaining that power that appears unpredictable to you.”

  “I am willing to cede that to you, my lord,” Holmes replied. “So long as your little band of unlikely warriors is willing to fling themselves into the battle on my behalf.”

  Mary looked rebellious for a moment. And before John could reply, she spoke.

  “I don’t want my husband to find himself chasing after chimeras every hour of the day and night,” she said, firmly. “He has patients. He has a family. He is not like your brother, Mycroft Holmes, or like you. He doesn’t find all of his joy in the chase, or fulfillment in the conclusion. We will do this, but this does not mean he is at your beck and call whenever you have some stupid problem you cannot solve!”