The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  But the sight of a Chinese turning up might change that, especially one in the state this one was in. So along with invoking his spell, he flung the spare cloak he had brought over her, and bundled her in the front door quickly.

  The defrocked, alcoholic priest who performed most of his marriages was already waiting in the hall, as was Mrs. Kelly. He handed the girl over to his housekeeper to give him time to deal with the priest. He had a suspicion he might have some trouble this time.

  His instinct was right.

  “Chinee now, is it?” The man’s grizzled face, absent of expression most of the time, now showed suspicion and distaste.

  “A girl is a girl,” he said, shrugging. “These are easier to get than white girls. Why should it matter to you? It’s not as if I’m actually marrying them.” And to ensure that this newly awoken curiosity died again, he handed the fellow his fee—and a little more.

  The man looked at the money in his hand and shrugged, putting it in his pocket, his hand trembling. Probably because he had not had a drink yet this morning. Spencer rectified that, too, taking the man into his study and pouring him a tall glass of some very inferior whiskey he kept around for just this purpose. That brought him around.

  The priest was under the impression that this business of false marriages was a sexual proclivity with Spencer, an impression that would not have stood examination if the man had not been an absolutely hopeless drunk. Spencer made sure to encourage that useful impression. It was certainly much more harmless than what was actually going on.

  The next issue arose when Mrs. Kelly came to fetch him. “She cleaned up jest fine, but she won’t put on the clo’es.” Kelly reported grimly. “She jest keeps poitin’ at ’em and shakin’ ’er ’ead.”

  He hurried to the spare room, where the girl was standing next to the bath, where she clutched her faded cotton garments, that baggy tunic and trousers, to her body. Kelly had gotten her into the knickers, the camisole, and even the petticoat, but when she saw him, she pointed at the white dress and shook her head frantically. There was something about the clothing that she did not like.

  No—he narrowed his eyes, trying to see past the bruises. There was something about that dress that terrified her.

  Now he used his second phrase. Nˇi huì chéngwéi wǒde qīzi.. You will be my wife. Still, she shook her head, and some vague memory of something he had read—that the Chinese associated white with death and funerals?—occurred to him. “Mrs. Kelly, you read popular women’s magazines, do you not?” He knew she didn’t exactly read them, but she did look at the pictures. “Can you get me some with pictures of brides in them?”

  “Dunno how that’ll help,” she said dubiously, but obeyed, returning with an arm full of the magazines. He showed the girl the first picture that Kelly found for him, pointing to the white-clad woman and repeating, Nˇi huì chéngwéi wǒde qīzi. You will be my wife. This he did over and over, until she stopped clutching her old clothing to her, and really looked at the pictures, then at him, then at the pictures again. Finally some timid Chinese emerged from her. He pointed at the bride in the picture, then at her, and repeated his phrase. Now he wished that he knew what the exact word for bride was, because he could have pointed at the picture, said the word, pointed at her and the dress, said the word, and cleared everything right up. But he held up another couple of pictures of wedding couples to her, pointed from her to the dress, to the bride, and she finally seemed to come to the understanding that she had to be dressed this way to be married. She sighed, and let go of her clothing, which dropped to the floor.

  He left, and let Kelly take care of her.

  He had noticed that the rest of her body, at least the parts of it that weren’t covered by underthings, was as bruised as her face. He hoped that wouldn’t affect the energy he expected her to impart to his “battery.” He wondered if she had been as obstinate about being prostituted as she was about not wearing a white dress. If so, that would certainly have lead to a beating, and being passed over to someone who was going to “use her up.” Brothels didn’t have time to waste on girls who wouldn’t be broken.

  Kelly brought her downstairs at last, looking very odd with her bruised face in the clean white gown, with a veil pinned to her hair. Her hair had been cut as short as a boy’s, which made her look much odder, and Kelly hadn’t bothered with shoes, so she was in her stockings. Still, the spell didn’t require shoes, and it wasn’t as if she was going to need them later.

  They were married in his study rather than the parlor. The window in the study faced the blank wall of the house next door—the window in the parlor faced the street. Pure caution on his part, but he had not gotten where he was by being careless. He didn’t want some snoop catching sight of an apparent wedding going on, then making inquiries about his wife.

  When she saw the priest in his black garments, she appeared a little more confident and at ease. Perhaps she recognized what he was supposed to be from those pictures. He doubted very much if she had ever seen a Christian cleric—although you never knew, she might have run into a missionary at some point.

  The brief, altered ceremony began. He felt the bands of the spell closing around her, until they came to the moment when the spell settled, vibrating, waiting for the moment of closure.

  Now he used his third phrase.

  “Nˇi bìxū shuō ‘yes,’ ” he told her, when the priest paused for her assent.

  “Iss,” she said, timidly. But it seemed that she meant it, because he felt the spell click into place.

  The priest left, and rather than chloroform her, he had already planned on drugging her. Figuring she would recognize tea if nothing else, they shared tea and cakes in the kitchen, solemnly, half the cakes heavily laced with opium in the sugary frosting. She had the cakes with the frosting (obviously he didn’t), her eyes lighting up with pleasure at the taste. This was probably the first time she had ever tasted a sugary sweet, and she gobbled them up like the child she resembled, and licked her fingers clean afterward. It was with satisfaction that he watched her succumb to the drug, catching her as she slid out of her chair. He lifted her in his arms, pleased that she weighed so little, and carried her to his workroom.

  He usually enjoyed watching the horror on his brides’ faces when they realized where they were and what was about to happen, but that was mostly in recompense for all the work he’d had to put into obtaining them. It felt like a reward, or vindication. But he’d had to do so little actual work for this one—apart from learning Chinese—that he didn’t feel the need for her to awaken. So he simply laid her on his table without bothering to strap her down except around the waist so she wouldn’t fall off when he inverted the surface. He made a quick job of the decapitation, popped her head into the waiting jar of formaldehyde, and sealed it shut, setting the last of the spell in place while the blood drained into the funnel set in the floor and down the pipe that led to the sewer.

  That was one reason why he’d bought this house: indoor plumbing. The other was because it lay directly above one of London’s main sewer tunnels. It had been trivial to have another pipe run from the floor of this room to join the other waste pipes. And while it had been a great deal more work to gain access to the sewer below the house that ran to the Thames, knock a hole big enough for a human body in the top of the brickwork, and install a hatch, he’d used Moriarty’s hired thugs, which guaranteed silence. He’d been Moriarty’s executioner for quite some time before the Professor’s death, dispatching Moriarty’s enemies quickly and quietly while accruing their power, but he hadn’t created anything like his battery until Moriarty had met his unfortunate premature end. He’d merely strapped down the drugged victim, slit his throat, and dropped him into the sewer. From there, the victim became one more anonymous body in the Thames, with no indication of where he had come from, or who had killed him. Possibly Holmes would have recognized Spencer’s work, but Spencer was never called on to dispatch anyone Holmes would have been interested in.
/>   He used the same workmanlike procedure today.

  He let himself pass briefly into the spirit world. The girl’s spirit “woke” as soon as she was dead, of course. And for one long moment, as her spirit gazed about itself, and took in the weeping company of the other brides, all of them chained together in place by the bands of his spells, he thought he might have miscalculated. There was no terror, no horror, no tears. Only an expression of dull resignation, as if this was what she had expected all along.

  But then the dullness shattered, and the tears and terror and wailing began. And as her shrill, nasal lamenting rose above the sobs of the others, the alien nature of her lamenting roused the others to a frenzy, and he transitioned back to the real world with a satisfied smile.

  Once fully seated in his physical form, he picked up the drained body, carrying it down into the cellar, with a feeling of a job well done.

  He pulled up the concealed hatch, ignoring the miasma that rose from below, and dropped the body into the darkness. It was with further satisfaction that he heard it drop into what must have been a good two feet of liquid. It would wash into the Thames quickly, then. The one time that a body had rotted right under the hatch had been . . . unpleasant. And it took a great deal of liquid to move a body along if it was stuck in this part of the sewer.

  He dropped the hatch, covered it over with tarred cloth that at least helped to seal in the smell, and dropped the concealed false-brick of the floor.

  Then he went upstairs for luncheon. He hoped Mrs. Kelly had made a shepherd’s pie.

  “So, it’s to be Chinee from now on?” she asked him, as she filled a plate for him and another for herself.

  “I have a dealer who can give me one every three days,” he told her. “No fussing with them, and the hardest part is getting them from the cab to the door without the neighbors noticing.”

  She shoveled a mouthful of food into herself and chewed thoughtfully. “Don’t like Chinee,” she said, though from her inflection it was as if she had commented that she didn’t like turnips, or something equally commonplace. “But they ain’t stayin’ long ’nough to sleep ’ere, eh?”

  “No.” He considered this a moment. “Just long enough to convince to get into the dress and be married.”

  “Then it’s a damn sight less work than a white gel,” she said decisively. “An’ thet’s all roight wi’ me.”

  9

  “Well, this is an improvement,” Nan observed, as they all stood in the spirit plane version of their flat, next to their bodies. Sarah had suggested that they move a cot into Nan’s room for her, and so they had. Grey nestled on her chest, and Neville on Nan’s, both as deeply “asleep” as their humans. Grey “herself” was on Sarah’s shoulder, clearly ready for an adventure.

  Nan had discovered that she could call up and wear the form of the Celtic Warrior that Memsa’b assured her she once had been when they moved their spirits into the spirit plane. She brandished a bronze sword for Caro’s admiration, and hefted her little circular shield with the bronze boss on her left arm.

  Sarah had the feeling that if it had been an option, Nan would have dressed like this all the time. She had to admit it was an improvement over anything women could wear these days. The thigh-length linen tunic—at least, she supposed it was linen—and the baggy linen trousers looked very comfortable. The colors of these garments seemed to vary with Nan’s whim, but they were never subtle. Right now, the tunic was striped red and yellow, and the trousers were a red and blue checkered pattern, and the tunic was held in at her waist by a wide leather belt that supported a leather scabbard. Nan’s hair had been tied back in a single braid down her back, and wrapped in more red-and yellow-striped linen.

  Sarah didn’t have a “warrior form,” at least, not as far as she had ever been able to discover. She’d compromised with a short Grecian tunic of the sort Memsa’b’s spirit form wore. Her legs were bare, which was a bit distracting, but she supposed she would get used to it, particularly here, where no one lived but ghosts and people like them. There certainly was no one to be shocked by her bare legs. She’d seen ghosts in mere tattered suggestions of clothing, so she doubted anyone was going to accuse her of immodesty.

  The birds had taken to this immediately. Both were larger than they were in the real world, though not so large that the girls couldn’t comfortably carry them. Sarah suspected that they had already known how to slip into and out of this place long before Beatrice Leek had taught the girls how to enter it. I wonder if Grey would have taught me, if Beatrice hadn’t. There wasn’t much about Grey that surprised her anymore.

  The big surprise was Caro. She had taken on an entirely new life and liveliness now that she was actively assisting. And once she had seen that Nan could change how she looked, Caro had done the same, shedding the gown she had been buried in for men’s riding breeches, boots, a riding jacket, and a cap. “I always wanted to wear something like this,” she said with satisfaction, examining herself. “It looked so comfortable when my brother wore it. I wish I could have a mirror and see myself.”

  Well, they were in the spirit-plane version of their flat, so there was a mirror, but unfortunately it was fundamentally useless, because it reflected nothing. “You look dashing,” Sarah told her. “And you would probably cause a scandal.”

  Caro giggled.

  Sarah sounded normal, at least to her own ears, and so did Nan. But Caro still had an echoing, whispery quality to her voice, although they were all technically “spirits.” Caro also looked just a little less “solid” than the two of the living girls did.

  “You’re going armed, I hope?” Nan asked her soberly. “Once we get outside the warded area of our flat, spirits will be able to interact with us. That means they can hurt us, and we don’t have Puck’s charm to protect us from them.”

  Unlike the dome of protection in Beatrice Leek’s workroom, all the walls of the spirit-plane flat glowed faintly, and were written with brighter complicated signs and symbols. These were the “wards” that John, Mary, Alderscroft, and an Earth Master on a brief visit to London had placed on the flat. Sarah had felt very sorry for the Earth Master; it had been clear he was extremely uncomfortable in the city and could not wait to get back to his country home. She and Nan had been very grateful for his help, and never more so than now, because thanks to this work, nothing could enter the flat without being invited.

  And this made it a secure place to retreat to—and leave their slumbering bodies.

  “What sort of weapon do you suggest?” Sarah asked. “I’m not the knife-fighter you are.”

  “You’re not bad with a staff and a singlestick. How about a spear?” Nan suggested. “That would give you a great deal of reach.”

  Sarah shrugged, and concentrated on her right hand. A moment later, a spear grew in it from a central point in her palm.

  “Should I have a weapon too?” Caro wanted to know.

  “Do you feel as if you need one?” Nan asked logically. “More to the point, do you actually know how to use one? Sarah and I were actually trained by Sahib’s friends. I learned knife fighting from a Gurkha, which carries over to a sword, and Sarah learned staff and singlestick from a Buddhist who studied with warrior-monks.”

  Caro pondered that. “I don’t think I would be of much use with a sword or a spear,” she admitted. “Except—I did learn archery at one of the sanitoriums. I wasn’t bad at it.”

  “If you can envision yourself in new clothing, you should certainly be able to think up a bow and arrow,” Sarah told her decisively. Caro frowned with concentration, and after a few moments, a misty bow appeared in her left hand, and a quiver of arrows on a belt appeared on her hip.

  “All right, I think we are ready.” Nan gave her sword another experimental swing and seemed satisfied with the result. “Let’s make our first foray. If we do well here, we can try the Thames next. Now, how do we open a door?”

  Caro laughed at them. “You don’t, you silly goose. You’re a spirit. And t
hese are your wards so you can pass through them at will. You do this, just moving right through the walls.”

  And without moving her feet she drifted through the street-side wall.

  It took both of them some little time to get the knack of drifting—or “flying,” as Nan called it. Sarah personally did not consider anything that had them moving at a walking pace counted as “flying.”

  The birds preceded them through the walls. There was a slight moment of resistance as Sarah passed the wards, then she found herself hovering above the spirit-plane version of their street.

  The first thing that struck her was how silent and deserted it was. No traffic, either of foot or vehicle. No sound. But there was something odd, not unlike a heat-shimmer down there. She squinted at it.

  “That’s the real world,” Caro said matter-of-factly. “If you look at it sideways, you can make out what’s going on.”

  At first, Sarah could not understand what she meant, because looking at the gray, misty street out of the corner of her eye produced nothing at all.

  But then it occurred to her to try to use the same mental trick that allowed her to see ghosts in the real world—and the moment she did, the street leapt to vibrant life, so much so that her heart leapt.

  “By Jove!” Nan exclaimed. “It looks completely normal! Is this what you see, Caro?”

  “Not so much,” the ghost admitted. “It’s like a watercolor version of the world for me. But then, I don’t belong there.”

  “This is interesting, but the living are not what we are looking for right now,” Sarah declared, and with a mental twist, the empty, silent, gray street took the place of the vibrant one. “Let’s see how far away we can get from ourselves before we begin having difficulties.”