The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  Intrigued that she had thought this through, he pursed his lips. “I could—” he suggested “—go into the countryside, at hiring-fair time, and hire some passably pretty thing as a maid of all work in London.”

  She shook her head. “Nobuddy’d believe thet. Gels ain’t that stupid. But I could. I look respektuble.”

  “So you do,” he agreed. “And I am not opposed to this.” He smiled. “You’ve been an excellent partner, Mrs. Kelly. You knew exactly what to do with the parcel last night, for instance. I can see us coming to an equitable arrangement—once the Master is taken care of, of course.”

  Kelly nodded. “O’ course. Well, that lad don’ look loike much trouble. Less’n them gels, for certain.” She stopped talking long enough to send a glare at a brownie she probably suspected of slacking. The Elemental whimpered, and began polishing the bookcase at a furious rate.

  “One think at a time,” she said, as if to herself. Then louder, “’Ow much longer t’get th’ Marster where ’e needs t’be?”

  “Six more girls. That way I’ll have not just enough power, but enough and to spare.” He waited for her reaction.

  She pursed her lips. “Two days t’git th’ next ’un? I’ll need ten pounds. I wants t’ lay in what’s needed i’case ’nother one’s tore up inside as bad or wuss than th’ last one. We got lucky; she were all in a maze like, an’ not feelin’ pain. If’n th’ next one’s ’urtin’, I’ll need t’fix thet afore ye c’n marry ’er wi’out thet preacher coppin’ there’s summat wrong.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Why, Mrs. Kelly, I never suspected you of having medical knowledge!”

  She laughed. “There’s a lot ye don’ know ’bout me, m’lad. ’Appen’s a Earth Magician’s fair ’andy as a midwife, an’ ’specially a cuttin’ midwife. Reckon I ended more bebbies than I birthed, I fixed up gels as been ’andled ’ard, an’ ’ere in London, plenny of call for setch i’ hoor’ouses.”

  This was more information that Mrs, Kelly had given about her past than in all the time he had known her combined. Her value had now nearly doubled in his eyes, given this. To signify this, he gave her a slight bow. Her mouth quirked up in a wry smile. “You ain’t t’on’y one wi’ secrets, Spencer.”

  “So I see, Mrs. Kelly,” he replied, amused. “And speaking of the Master, I need to go see how he feels about our guest. Oh, and here’s that ten pounds you mentioned, and a little more for your trouble.” He handed over the money, and left her to supervise the brownies.

  The wards confining Moriarty within a rough sphere extended down into a guest bedroom, although obviously the girls that were destined to become part of the battery were of no interest to him whatsoever and he never ventured there when Spencer was grooming his little chickens. Now, however, it was time for Spencer to inform the Professor that the room contained something he would be greatly interested in.

  He went up to his workroom, uncovered the talisman, sat down, and smoothly moved himself into the spirit plane. The soft weeping of his girls behind him was the best music he had ever heard, as Moriarty faded into view and noticed his presence.

  “I have been thinking,” the Professor said, and Spencer was pleased to see that he was showing no signs of that dangerous rage that Spencer had taken for a sign of possible degradation. “In fact, since our last talk together, I have been doing quite a bit of thinking. I have some orders for you, but first, I assume you came here because you have news for me.”

  “Your potential vessel is in the bedroom beneath this,” he said, immediately. “You may wish to inspect him.”

  The Professor’s eyes lit up, and he stood and sank through the floor. Spencer had taken it as a very good sign that Moriarty had mastered the ability to move within the confines of the wards almost as soon as he had recovered from the shock of having his spirit suddenly transferred into the talisman. Of course, Moriarty would not have been able to go far in this form—if anything he was more tightly rooted to his talisman than the average ghost was to the place of its death. But Spencer had decided even before the Professor died that he had no wish to find Moriarty looming over him in the middle of the night, should the worst befall, and had warded the workroom, the attic above, and the bedroom below into a single unit out of which no spirit could pass and none could see. He had told Moriarty that this was for his protection, although he could not tell if the Professor believed him.

  In a sense though, Spencer wasn’t lying. Given Moriarty’s temper, the less he saw, the better. It was the spirits that were angriest that degraded the fastest.

  Spencer waited patiently, and while he waited, he looked over his storage spheres and the girls. His last conversation with them seemed to have had the salubrious effect of cowing them, but the waves of despair, mingled with resentment at the Chinese within their midst and fear, combined to form a mixture that was almost exactly what he would have wanted if he’d been concocting it to his own recipe. The two Chinese struck a slightly foreign note of fear and bewilderment. They still didn’t understand what had happened to them. They didn’t understand why they were enchained to a gaggle of white girls. In fact, they didn’t actually understand anything, except that they were no longer among the living, and this was no form of afterlife they had been taught to expect.

  He examined the spheres and determined that several had reached their capacity and would need to be exchanged for new ones. This was delightful news, and made him feel quite prepared for any of Moriarty’s new demands.

  The Professor rose up through the floor and took a seat in midair, even though he didn’t really need to rest in any way. Predictably he positioned himself so that his head was higher than Spencer’s. Spencer wondered if Moriarty realized how obvious a play to assert himself this was, then decided that Moriarty just didn’t care if it was obvious.

  “This vessel is perfect,” the Professor declared, to Spencer’s relief. “You are right; his will was weak and is weakening more with every day he takes the drug. His opium dreams are full of death, or at least, what he imagines death is like. You will, of course, cut off the drug as soon as I have the body.”

  “I had thought to wean you off—” Spencer began.

  Moriarty interrupted him. “A waste of time. I am certainly strong-willed enough to push my way through the effects. I will need my mind completely unimpaired once I have this new body, and it will be worth the discomfort and trouble to keep it that way. Tell me how you convinced him to come here.”

  Spencer explained the ruse of the walking tour, and Moriarty chuckled.

  “Excellent planning. The tour will give a reason for the change in personality. I have considered what you suggested, and I find it has the bones of a good plan. I do not believe it will take me much, if any, time to establish myself as a mathematical genius—since that is what I actually am. I will write and publish several papers immediately on taking this boy’s body, and send copies to select dons at Oxford and Cambridge. Knowing that they would want a potential genius under close supervision, so that they control what he publishes and when, and get credit for it, I shall soon have them competing for me. That alone will impress the parents without needing to attain a degree. We can then arrange for an unfortunate accident while I am interviewing at one of those institutions, which will give me an excellent alibi, and an excellent reason for putting off my enrollment. No one will fault me for abandoning my academic pretentions, due to excess of grief. By the time I have rebuilt and revived the Organization, everyone will have forgotten poor Hughs, who had everything and lost it all to become a recluse, shut in with his sorrow.”

  Spencer nodded. This was, indeed, an excellent plan, and one with a minimum of risk. Moriarty had, without a doubt, a half dozen plans for eliminating the family, and was only pondering which was the least risky.

  “Now, about the Organization—” Moriarty fastened him with a basilisk gaze. “You have said nothing. I am sure with Sherlock Holmes free and able to act that we are losing men. How many so far?”

&nb
sp; Spencer could not hold his breath in the spirit plane, but he certainly gave Moriarty the number with a fair amount of apprehension.

  But the Professor did not explode with rage as he had feared would be the case. Instead, he pondered.

  “Bad,” he said, finally. “But not the worst case.”

  “I’ve lost a handful to circumstances I do not think Holmes had anything to do with,” Spencer told him. “One died of infected wounds, and three have deserted to join Brown’s gang.”

  “Have the deserters killed,” Moriarty ordered. “I doubt they’ve gone to Scotland Yard, but we can’t take the chance they’ve become informers, and getting rid of them will send a message to the rest that deserting the Organization is suicide.”

  “I’ll arrange it at once,” Spencer promised. “But I haven’t seen any direct evidence that Holmes is responsible for the others—”

  Moriarty interrupted him again. “That’s exactly why I know he was. He will leave no trace. Our men will simply find themselves in irons, whisked out of London, with charges lodged against them that cannot be denied. They’ll be tried in some provincial court in secrecy, and fly through the justice system so swiftly that within days of being taken up, they will be in Dartmoor Prison in solitary confinement. No, we need to distract him before he takes any more. I want you to have John Watson murdered.”

  “What?” Spencer gasped. “But—”

  “We prove to Holmes that his friends are not invulnerable, and that if we cannot reach him, we can certainly reach his friends. This may make him pause. I do not say that it will, but it may. And if this does not work, we will take harsher steps.”

  “But won’t that tell him you still live?” Spencer asked.

  “It will tell him that the Organization is capable of defending itself. That is all I need him to know.” Moriarty settled back in his seat in midair with an expression of satisfaction on his face. Spencer knew from long acquaintance with the Professor that this was his signal to leave.

  So he did.

  When he found himself back in his body, he was breathing as heavily as if he had been running. He calmed himself by changing the charged spheres for virgin ones, and added the charged to his storage bank.

  Then he went back downstairs, noting by the clock chime it was six. He had been with Moriarty longer than he had thought.

  Kelly was in the kitchen, and stared hard at him when he entered. “Yer white’s a sheet,” she said flatly. “What’d th’ Marster tell ye?”

  “That our losses are probably due to Holmes,” he said, “Except for the three we know deserted to another gang. He wants them killed.”

  “Get Geoff,” she advised. “’E don’ ’alf ’ate ’em already. Wut else? Thet ain’t all.”

  “He wants us to kill John Watson.” Spencer took a deep breath. “He’s hoping this will make Holmes pause, at least for a while.”

  “’E ain’t thinkin’ roight if ’e thinks thet,” Kelly observed. “Thet’s more like t’make ’im mad.”

  “I’m more concerned with the fact that it’s going to be impossible to get anywhere near Watson,” Spencer replied, annoyance now beginning to gain ascendancy over other emotions. It was all very well for Moriarty to issue instructions, but it was Spencer who was going to have to carry them out! “He lives and works in a highly respectable neighborhood.” He sat and thought for a moment. “Moriarty didn’t give me a time limit. Very well, I shall take my time. I’ll have him followed by a team looking for an opportunity. If that doesn’t work, I’ll arrange for one of his regular patients to be poisoned; nothing lethal, but something that will give painful symptoms after night falls. They’ll send for him when they feel ill, and he will certainly come. We’ll ambush him as he leaves the patient, while he is preoccupied with thoughts of his patient.”

  “Marster don’t give ye ’alf credit fer brains,” Kelly remarked.

  “Well,” he replied with a smile, “We both know what happens to those he thinks might challenge him. No, I’d prefer him to believe I am complete dependent on him for guidance. It’s safer that way,”

  * * *

  Perhaps Moriarty had expected him to run out and engage the first thug he could think of to deal with Watson. Instead, the first thing he did the next day was seek out Geoff the Elf in the building that the most connected of Moriarty’s henchmen used as a sort of informal headquarters. It was an outwardly respectable boarding house for working men. And indeed, the men that came and went from its doors dressed to work, as cabbies, as waiters, as shop-tenders, as mechanics . . . as every sort of job where a man was likely to overhear things that would be of profit to the Boss.

  Well the Boss was dead, so far as any of them knew, but pay kept flowing from the man Spencer, the boarding house matron still didn’t demand a weekly rent, and the meals continued to be hearty and abundant, so they kept right on as they had been.

  There was a kind of informal “pub” in the basement of this boarding house. No refreshments were sold, but there was a billiard table, a blind eye was turned to card and dice games, and nobody troubled a man if he brought in bottled beer, fish and chips, and a few friends. This was where, when he wasn’t sleeping or driving his cab, Spencer knew he would find Geoff the Elf.

  He was, indeed, there. Observing a game of billiards, rather than playing, as the men who lived here knew better than to play anything but a strictly friendly game of billiards, cards, or dice with Geoff, with no money involved. And of course, if there was no money involved, Geoff did not want to play.

  As soon as Geoff caught sight of Spencer coming down the stairs, he lost his bored expression and put on that wide, friendly smile that was partly the reason for his name.

  “’Allo guv!” he greeted Spencer. “Lookin’ fer a lad?”

  “For you, in fact, Geoff,” he replied.

  “Then let’s us go up t’me room,” Geoff said, not wasting any time. He led Spencer up the stairs to the third floor, down a corridor, and unlocked the door to his room.

  Spencer had been here before, but it always struck him how very unlike the man he knew the interior of Geoff’s room was. It was as clean and neat as if Kelly’s brownies had been at work there. His bed was neatly made with a patchwork counterpane. There was a small bookcase, and two chairs. The most prominent feature was a huge crucifix on the wall. The only literary works were religious ones. The first time he had come here, he hadn’t even known Geoff could read. . . .

  As the door closed behind him, he finally asked Geoff what he had always wanted to know. “Geoff, what is all this about?” he asked, waving his hand vaguely at the crucifix and the books.

  Geoff looked at him quizzically, then sighed, divining that Spencer wasn’t going to get down to business until he answered. “Well, guv’,” he said. “Sez i’ Bible thet if a man repents, an’ b’lieves in Jesus, ’e goes t’ ’Eaven. Aye?”

  “Well, yes . . .”

  “An’ it also sez, ye obeys yer Marster. An’ ye gives Caesar what Caesar’s owed, aye?” Geoff persisted.

  “It—”

  “The Boss wuz me Marster. I guess yew are now. ’E wuz me Casesar too, an’ I guess that’s yew too. So, I does me dooty, loik Bible sez. An’ I repents. I repents uv ev’thin’ soon as I does it. I believes i’ Jesus, I prays faithful, an’ I gives t’ th’ poor, I obeys me Marster, an’ I repents.” He grinned. “Reckon I’m goin’ t’ ’Eaven.”

  Spencer stared at him in slack-jawed astonishment. Never in his entire life had he heard so twisted and yet so logical a view of Christianity. He had heard with his own ears many preachers claim that as long as you repented of what you did, and believed that Christ was your savior, you’d be cleansed of any and all sins. Geoff had just taken that to extremes. And Spencer would have given a very pretty penny to hear some of those preachers debate this with him.

  “Well, I’m going to give you some more things to repent of, I’m afraid,” he told the white-haired, wizened man.

  “Oi’m all ears, guv,�
� came the cheerful reply.

  “I need you to get rid of those three fellows that ran off to Brown’s gang,” he said, sternly. “We can’t be having that.”

  “Dead roight ye cain’t,” Geoff agreed. “People’ll think yer soft. I wuz gonna say somethin’, but it weren’t me place.” He rubbed his hands together with glee. “Roight, Ye want ’em disappeared, or turn up as an ex-amp-ell?”

  Spencer thought about that for a moment. “If we don’t make sure people know that running off has consequences, we might as well not go to the effort at all.”

  Geoff made no mention of the fact that there was no “we” involved—that he and he alone was going to be making the effort and taking the blame if he got caught.

  But of course, he wouldn’t get caught. Geoff the Elf was named that way for another reason—his near-magical ability to be half the city away when bodies were discovered.

  “Jest leave it t’me, guv,” he said with glee, as Spencer handed over a triple fee. “By this time termorrow, people’ll know yer the Boss now, an’ ye won’t be trifled with.”

  “I have another job for you as well,” Spencer told him. “Something more difficult. I want you to put together a group, very carefully, to follow John Watson and kill him if you get an opportunity.”

  Geoff’s eyes widened at that, but Spencer was not done. “I’m serious about how careful you need to be. You absolutely must not be caught. And Watson is a clever man and he’s very likely to catch anyone following him, so you need to be able to watch him without him catching you.”

  Here Geoff rubbed his temple, and looked dubious. “Watson! ’E may play th’ fool in ’is stories, but he’s a slippery cov, ’e is. That’ll take some special lads . . .”

  “There’s a hundred pounds in it for each man, and an extra hundred for you,” Spencer replied. And Geoff’s eyes widened still further. “For that, you should be able to get the best men in the city.”