The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  He was glad he’d followed his instincts tonight and brought along one of Moriarty’s larger thugs, a huge Italian boxer named Tony. Without prompting, Tony bent down and hauled the corpse up by an arm, shaking it like a dog shakes a rat, eliciting no response from it whatsoever. The body just flopped around limply. The bruiser flung it at old Don’s feet, where it landed in a heap of arms and legs. The boxer glowered at him, fists clenched at his sides.

  “I said,” Spencer repeated, slowly enunciating each word, “I’ll be having my money back now. Or must I tell Tony to shake you until the money falls out of your pockets?”

  Old Don looked from Tony to Spencer, and back to Tony again, getting red in the face with anger. Tony grinned at him and raised his fist. Hastily, old Don dug in a pocket, pulled out some greasy notes, and flung them at Spencer’s feet. Spencer bent, picked them up, and thrust them in his own pocket, turning on his heel to leave.

  “’Ere! What’m I s’pposed t’do wi’ this?” old Don shouted after him.

  “It’s your mess. You clean it up,” Spencer said coldly. “Be grateful I’m not calling the law on you. I’d like to see you bluff your way out of having a dead Chinagirl on the premises. I won’t be cheated again, and I expect to have better merchandise from you in three days.”

  And with that, he left. He and Tony crowded together into Geoff’s hansom, which was waiting at the curb for them.

  “Where to, gov?” asked Geoff from above.

  Spencer wanted to tell him “to Perdition,” but he doubted Geoff would understand the reference. “Drop Tony off first, then take me home,” he said instead.

  Outwardly he was calm. Inwardly he seethed. Setting up the magic defenses against Alderscroft had taken much of his stockpiled power, and he knew he was going to need every girl he could get. Now this! And he wouldn’t get another for three more days—and that assumed old Don would continue dealing with him.

  The cab pulled away, the horse’s hooves tapping briskly on the street.

  “Gov?” Tony said tentatively.

  “What?” Spencer snapped.

  “Nivver mind,” Tony said, hastily. “Weren’t nothin’.”

  He knew what Tony was going to offer—that he’d ask around for someone else selling Chinese girls. The trouble was the brute had no idea that he wanted something besides an exotic whore.

  And Spencer didn’t want any more people knowing he wanted “disposable” girls than were already in on the secret. Bad enough that Geoff and old Don knew. Many more, and word would get out and would certainly get into the circles where Alderscroft would hear about it. Alderscroft absolutely knew by this time that Mary Watson had been murdered with the help of magic. Right now he was looking for a common magician or even a witch, and had not put that together with the serial murderer Watson had surely been looking for. But let him put “disposable girls” together with “headless girls” and a magic murder and he’d know that the person who’d killed Mary and the murderer were the same, and that person must be a necromancer. Then the full force of the Hunting Lodge would be brought to bear—and possibly more than one Lodge. He’d heard that the Lodges in Germany were particularly ruthless when they caught who they were after.

  “It’s all right, Tony,” he said instead, as the dark and mostly deserted streets rolled by. “He’s learned his lesson, thanks to you. I’ll take you with me in three days when I pick up another shipment to make sure he behaves.”

  “Roight yew are, gov,” Tony replied, sounding relieved.

  After dropping Tony off, Spencer brooded all the way back home. He wondered how he was going to explain the delay to Moriarty, because delay there certainly would be.

  Still, might as well get it over with rather than drag out the inevitable.

  He gave Geoff a half crown as he exited the hansom. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’m sending you another fare out. He’s not to be meddled with.”

  Geoff chuckled. “Sutcher self, gov,” he replied. “’E’ll ’ave a roide loike Oi’m carryin’ eggs.”

  As soon as he got inside, he found the preacher waiting in the hall. He acted surprised to see him.

  “Good heavens!” he exclaimed, slapping his head in feigned dismay. “Did I give you the wrong day? I must have! I am so very sorry!”

  The preacher lost a little of his ebullience and began to say something, but Spencer ran right over the top of him. “No, no, all my fault, father, my fault entirely. Here—” He thrust three of the bills he’d gotten from old Don into the preacher’s hands. “This is for your time, and look! The cab I took home is still at the curb. If you trot you can catch him before he drives off!”

  That quelled any further palaver from the preacher; anxious not to be stranded here at night, the preacher quickly hurried out and was helped inside.

  Geoff drove off, and Spencer sighed. One problem solved, anyway.

  Climbing up the stairs to the bedrooms, he checked on Hughs. He was pleased to see that between them, he and Kelly had arrived at the optimal mix of drug and nutrition—and that Kelly had left a selection of succulent fruits at Hughs’ beside to encourage him to eat in his drowsy state. That was an excellent idea, and one he had not used with previous candidates. Hughs could probably keep on this way for as much as six months without substantial harm.

  Kelly came up the stairs from the kitchen, frowning a little when she saw he was alone. “Summat go amiss?” she asked.

  “Girl died,” he said shortly. Kelly tsked.

  “Wuz afraid th’ bloody barsted ’ud try an’ pass another near-deader off on yew,” she said shrewdly, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d just lasted long enough for the bloody ritual,” he growled. “If I didn’t need him—”

  “Wall, yew don’t. Thin’s’ll go slower wi’out ’im, but we c’n go back t’ the old way.” She smoothed down her apron. “One thin’ we ain’t tried. You go pickin’ up hoors, get ’em drunk, an’ make ’em thin’ yer drunker. Hev’ the weddin’, on a dare, loike.”

  He sighed. “It’s a complication I’d rather not put myself through. . . .” Then he brightened. “But I can send a couple of the boys to have a chat with him in the morning, to make it understood I won’t accept inferior merchandise again.”

  Kelly smiled encouragingly—which on her face was a bit ghastly. “Thet’s th’ spirit. Don’ let ’im think ’e c’n gammon yew again.” She yawned, covering it with her hand. “I’m fair knackered. I’m off t’bed.”

  “You do that,” he said. She’d made a thorough sweep of one of the rooms used for storage and had set herself up rather nicely, so far as he had been able to tell from glimpses through the open door.

  Closing himself into the workroom, he made himself comfortable in his chair, then uncovered the talisman and sent himself into the spirit plane. He was immediately conscious of the level of exhaustion of his brides—he’d prodded and tormented them unmercifully to try and make up the energy expended on the spells to be rid of the Watsons, and they had not recovered. In fact, one of them was faltering so badly he feared he would have to release her, or she would actually become a drain on the system. Again, he cursed old Don. If it hadn’t been for that cheating blackguard, he’d have a replacement.

  If only he’d been able to construct a way of binding souls to his battery without all the tedious marrying! But there was no getting around it. In order to control them that powerfully, they had to bind themselves willingly to him before death. And the fastest and easiest way to do that was to trick women into marrying him. There just was no other ceremony where one person would bind herself specifically to obey, and his slight alteration of “till death do us part” into “in this life and hereafter” was subtle enough that he doubted any of them had even noticed.

  “What in the name of God were you doing the other night, Spencer?”

  Moriarty phased into view, seated, as usual, in midair—though looking much calmer than he had been of late. Spender took s
ome heart at this. A calm Professor could mean this wouldn’t be as difficult as he had feared.

  “Following your orders, actually, Professor,” he replied, and proceeded to explain his actions in eliminating Mary Watson instead of her husband, and his failure at the direct approach to killing John Watson, and his reasoning in using magic. For once, Moriarty didn’t fly into a rage. In fact, it was uncannily like having the old Professor back. He listened, nodding occasionally, and said nothing until Spencer was finished. Spencer waited, holding his breath.

  “Clever,” Moriarty said with approval. “Very clever. Absolutely nothing the police can trace back to you, and nothing that the occultists will connect with the sort of magician you are. Really, quite clever. I commend you.”

  The Professor tilted his head to the side, as was his old habit when inviting a response.

  “Praise from you is high praise indeed,” Spencer replied, feeling unusually flattered.

  “Well, to use the common phrase, the proof is in the pudding. Did it work?”

  “Mary Watson is dead. The papers have quite properly reported it as a poisoning, and a presumed murder, but it is assumed she ate the fruit unknowingly. So Sherlock is sure to hear of it eventually, and he will very probably attribute it to the Organization, just as you wanted. He will know that we can strike when we wish—again, just as you wanted—and that if we care to, we can strike at anyone. She was buried yesterday. John Watson has passed his surgery on to a colleague and gone to live at Baker Street to be looked after by Sherlock’s housekeeper,” Spencer told him, with immense satisfaction. “He looked to me to be an utterly broken man, and frankly I don’t think the old bastard is a good enough actor to feign that. He genuinely loved his wife, and losing her has shattered him. This is actually better for our purposes, I think, than killing him outright would have been.”

  Moriarty gazed at him for several long moments, then began clapping, slowly and deliberately. After a pause to make sure the Professor wasn’t making the gesture ironically, Spencer felt a smile cross his face, and he gave an abbreviated bow.

  “Well done. You are correct. This is better revenge than killing him outright. He’ll suffer for years, and he’ll know we did this to him. He’s useless to Holmes now. We’ve shown Holmes we can strike down his friends when and where we choose, with complete impunity. It will drive him utterly mad, trying to work out why the woman ate such obviously suspicious viands. Even if Watson explains the magic to him, he’s unlikely to believe it. And Watson’s patron will be haring off after a chimera, looking for a common witch. You haven’t just created a red herring, Spencer, you’ve created an entire school of them. Now . . . am I correct in remembering that you said something about needing to conceal your presence and your magic from Alderscroft?”

  Spencer blinked with astonishment. He had not expected Moriarty to remember that. “You are,” he said.

  “I should like you to redouble your efforts, even though I am certain this will delay my acquisition of that new body. I understand, looking at your brides, that you needed to deplete them in order to get rid of Mary Watson. You will need to replenish your energy stores, and you will probably need more girls than you had originally anticipated. I would rather we worked slowly and deliberately. We can leave nothing to chance. Just keep the boy healthy, or as healthy as possible.”

  Once again, Spencer blinked in tentative hope as well as surprise. “Forgive me, sir, but this is . . . very unlike you. Or rather, unlike the person you have been since your unfortunate demise.”

  “And this has concerned you until now.” the Professor stated.

  “To be candid sir, yes, it has.” He decided to fling caution to the wind and explain everything to this newly rational spirit. “You see, sir, you have been understandably emotional since my spell brought you here and tied you to the spirit plane. The spirit plane is half in the physical world, and half in the spirit world, so that you can see and sometimes be seen in the physical world, although most ghosts cannot act in the physical world. Emotion does help hold you here, but there’s a cost, you see. Now, the more a spirit concentrates on emotion, the more a spirit loses of himself to emotion. It’s a complicated dance, you can understand. It is emotion that anchors you and keeps you in this half-and-half state on the spirit plane. But the more you concentrate on emotion, the more you begin to lose your rational, reasoning self. That is why old ghosts are always locked in a single path and a single emotion—rage, for instance, like the infamous Highwayman or Screaming Man outside of Pluckley. Or terror, as in the ghost of Catherine Howard that haunts Hampton Court Palace. They have lost everything but the memory associated with that emotion, and thus they replay the memory over and over, like a child tracing the same simple drawing over and over.”

  He paused, and was encouraged further to see Moriarty nodding. “Do go on,” the Professor said. “I feel I am ready to listen to anything and everything you can tell me now.”

  He continued, greatly encouraged.

  “You were, I feared, losing yourself to rage and the need for revenge. I was concerned that your formidable intellect would not survive for much longer beneath the heat of your anger. Hence, until this moment, I have been doing my best to speed the process of your return, sometimes at the expense of the strictest safety for both of us.” He waited, a little breathlessly, for Moriarty’s reply.

  “After our last discussion, I attempted to make a calculation, and I was alarmed when I could not do so. Then I became angry . . . and realized at once that I was now unable to make an even more trivial calculation. Within a short period of time I concluded for myself something of what you just described to me.” He smiled thinly. “So since our last meeting, I imposed strict discipline on myself. No more rages. No dwelling on revenge. Nothing must ruffle my composure. I kept myself controlled. I found my ability to reason returning. And now you have given me both corroboration of my observation and the explanation for it. There will be no more outbursts from me, Spencer. If I am to rebuild my empire quickly, I will need every iota of my reason and intelligence. And we will proceed with all due caution; indeed we will proceed with the greatest of deliberation.”

  “Professor, words cannot express how pleased I am to hear this,” he said, with real sincerity.

  “I should like you to redouble your efforts at concealing this endeavor from those most likely to detect it,” Moriarty continued. “That will take precedence over all else, even my return to the flesh. After all, if we are discovered because of haste or not enough caution, everything you have worked for will be ruined. Now, if you will take down some mental notes, I can give you some ways of keeping my new body strong and relatively healthy. That will purchase us more time.”

  Spencer had long ago mastered the art of being able to memorize quickly and easily, and the Professor’s suggestions were clever, and simple. Gavage feeding for instance: Hughs would not even notice being tube-fed if he was sufficiently stuporous.

  “And now can you explain to me the details of how your—battery—works? What, exactly, do you need to do to ensure your brides can’t somehow escape your control?”

  Spencer did not even pause to think; he merely launched into the explanation, which the Professor listened to with every evidence of interest, leaning over in an attitude of intense listening.

  From time to time, Moriarty held up a hand to get him to stop, which made him apprehensive again, until the Professor asked him to explain the theory behind Spencer’s actions.

  That did lengthen the explanation, but since Moriarty remained rational the entire time, Spencer was even more encouraged, rather than the opposite.

  Finally he concluded his explanation. Moriarty remained bent over his knees, his expression one of deep thought, his hands clasped. Finally, he spoke.

  “I believe you must teach me about magic,” Moriarty said, at last.

  Spencer felt his jaw going agape, and snapped it shut. “But—why? The ability to use magic is born, not learned.” That wasn
’t . . . exactly true. Moriarty had the strength of will to manipulate magical energy even if he couldn’t see it. But Spencer wasn’t going to tell him that. “You never had it in life, and Hughs shows no sign of that gift either.”

  “I do not need to be a star to plot the course of one,” the Professor said, smiling thinly. “I do not need to see gravity to understand its influence, nor to map that influence mathematically. This magic has laws. I can learn them. I can reduce them to equations. I can assist and suggest. And—if I am to surpass Holmes, I need to have a tool he does not have. I need to understand magic, so that I can understand when and how to apply it in order to get the most out of it.”

  This was entirely like the Professor of old. And Spencer felt a great burden lifted from his shoulders. Which—suddenly made him realize he was exhausted.

  “Then I will teach you,” he promised. “But not until I have had sleep. I think it must be three in the morning, or thereabouts, and I cannot keep my eyes open.”

  There was a brief flash of impatient anger in the Professor’s eyes, which was instantly subdued. “I understand,” Moriarty replied. “The flesh is weak, and you are still in possession of yours, which is extremely fortunate for me. I will bid you farewell until you are ready, then. Good night, Spencer.”

  “Good night, Professor,” he replied, and slipped out of the spirit world and into his own body again.

  Total and complete exhaustion slammed him so hard he very nearly passed out, and when he checked his watch, to his astonishment he saw it was nearer five in the morning than three. Now he was exceedingly glad that Kelly had temporarily moved in; she could make sure Hughs was all right and got his opium on time if he couldn’t manage to awaken.

  He left the workroom and staggered downstairs, dropped his clothing on the floor as he pulled it off, and fell into bed.