The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  Kelly held the door open for him, and raised an eyebrow as she caught sight of the girl’s face when her lolling head turned toward the housekeeper. “Not ’xactly a looker, is she?” Kelly asked.

  “Nevertheless, I have been assured that she is extremely special. We shall see shortly.” He carried the girl all the way upstairs himself, as always.

  This time, as the sharpened blade removed the head in a single blow . . . he felt a surge of power and energy unlike anything he had ever experienced from his victims before. When he took the wig from her head and placed the head in the usual glass jar full of preservative liquid, he could have sworn the head was smiling.

  He seated himself, shaking with excitement, and moved himself into the spirit world—

  He had not been sure what to expect. But the vision of beauty that met him left him stunned with shock.

  She was exquisite. Lovelier than any of the handsome women he chose when visiting a brothel. Lovelier than the “Professional Beauties” that frequented Prince Edward’s circles. In this, her spirit form, she wore flowing robes of green and blue, with sleeves that hung down over her hands, and a long, elaborate sash. Her hair was in a more elaborate style than the wig she had worn, and it was ornamented all over with flowers, buds, and butterflies of jade. She held out her hands to him, hands from which dangled solid gold chains. “Husband,” she said, in perfect English.

  “Wife,” he replied. “You are and always will be my Chief Wife. You are a peerless pearl of radiant splendor!”

  She giggled, and freed one hand to hide her face for a moment behind a dangling sleeve. “But what is this?” she asked, as the usual wailing and weeping arose from his other captive brides.

  “My other . . . concubines,” he replied. Then, in a flash of inspiration, added, “They are yours to discipline, as is proper for my Chief Wife.”

  She turned to face the rest as they faded into view, the two Chinese girls pulling away from the white girls, all of them chained, all of them weeping.

  “How dare you! Ungrateful sows!” she scolded, gathering up her chains and using them to yank the others nearer her, dragging them off their feet and forcing them all to grovel before her. “How dare you lament that you have been chosen by this Dragon among magicians! How dare you withhold your power from him? I will teach you to serve him, and serve him well!”

  And to his astonishment, a whip appeared in one of her hands, a whip that she used to beat the other girls mercilessly—but only the white ones. “How many times have I been spurned and beaten by those like you?” she scolded. “And I thought, Oh! They are so lofty, and I am so low, this is only right! But now I see that you are spoilt, spoilt and ungrateful, and have no respect for he you pledged to serve! I shall teach you respect! I shall teach you your place!”

  The two Chinese girls watched this with eyes that seemed to take up half their faces, while the white ones cowered and screamed for mercy. At length, Xi’er seemed to think she had done enough. She turned back to face Spencer, folding her hands in her sleeves so that the golden chains lay across the skirts of her robes, and bowed to him.

  “I beg my Husband’s pardon, but it will take me some time before these wretched women understand what they owe to you—and to me,” she said. “But they will learn . . . they will.”

  “I place them in your hands, Xi’er,” he said, solemnly. “You will always be my Chief Wife, my pearl above price.”

  And with that, he let himself fall back to the material plane, and regarded the head of his latest victim with utter astonishment.

  Finally he picked the body up off the table. He was about to dispose of it as he had all the others . . . but something made him stop. So instead, he went to one of the storage rooms and picked out a particularly nice coverlet. He wrapped the body in it, and carried it down to the basement. There, he pried up several of the flooring stones, labored for a good hour to dig a shallow grave, place the body in it, and covered it with the loose earth, and then the stones.

  He looked at his watch, and saw without surprise it was nearly six in the morning. He went upstairs to discover Kelly frying eggs. Sausage and bacon was draining next to her.

  “Wut was all that ’bout?” Kelly asked, as he washed his hands and face at the sink, and took his place at the kitchen table.

  “Something I needed to do,” he replied, and took a plate of food from her.

  She looked at him sharply, but the expression on his face evidently gave her the idea that she wouldn’t get any more of an answer than that.

  “So, was this ’un worth it?” she asked instead, taking her own place at the table and beginning to eat. “Thet was a lot of fuss yew went to, runnin’ outa ’ere and stayin’ so long. An’ she was powerful ugly. Was she worth what yew paid?”

  “Oh no,” he replied, in a voice full of astonishment. “Oh no, she wasn’t worth what I paid. She was worth a hundred times more.”

  16

  Spencer finished drawing out the last of the life force from the djinn he had entrapped in his southernmost Elemental trap, and added it to the shields on the house. Now, besides the first set of Elementals he had incorporated into his household shields, he had a second set of even more powerful Elementals; the djinn, a waterhorse, a scirocco, and a troll.

  If he had not had Xi’er ruling over his brides with her tiny iron fist he never would have been able to accomplish this. But he had not only been able to strengthen the household shields, he’d had power to spare to strengthen his own personal shields.

  He had been afraid at first that Xi’er would grow bored in her role, and angry that she was not getting to experience physical pleasures anymore. But she hadn’t shown any sign of boredom, and she apparently didn’t miss physical pleasures.

  Maybe it was because she hadn’t experienced many physical pleasures in her former life. She seemed perfectly contented to bask in the attentions of the two Chinese girls, who had taken on the role of her personal servants, lord it over the white girls, and invent new and more elaborate robes and jewelry to wear and ephemeral food to enjoy.

  As an added, and entirely unexpected bonus, Moriarty seemed to appreciate her company as well.

  “She amuses me,” he had told Spencer, the first time he called the Professor up after acquiring Xi’er. “She’s such a perfect little tyrant. Her desires are so simple—to have everything that was denied her in life, and to inflict the same misery on others that she herself experienced. She’s clearly happier now than she has ever been. And her will is extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary.”

  “She’s not in love with me, is she?” he had asked the Professor with some apprehension. Moriarty had laughed at him.

  “No more than a mongrel dog is in love with the person that gives it a warm bed and food,” Moriarty had said carelessly. “That’s all she is, really. Oh, she values you highly as the author of her good fortune, and is under the impression you are a truly powerful magician, but Chinese women are bred to value themselves only as extensions of their husband’s status. She won’t challenge you, and she won’t demand anything of you. Don’t concern yourself.”

  Well it was hard to not to be concerned when there had been so much improvement in the energy output of his brides, and it was absolutely clear to him that this was purely due to Xi’er’s efforts. And on the one hand, he had no intention of reciprocating whatever she felt for him. On the other hand, the only gestures of affection she seemed to need were all verbal. Not that she wasn’t attractive enough for him to have been interested in her carnally—oh, no, she was, if anything, highly alluring. But getting involved in that way with a ghost was dangerous. Very, very dangerous. It gave them power over the necromancer, and was where the legends of incubi and succubi came from. Not to mention that besides getting hooks into a necromancer’s power, playing those games allowed the ghost to have access to parts of your mind and memories no wise necromancer would want them to see.

  No, he was not going to allow her that kind of hold over
him.

  But she didn’t seem at all interested in that. She was perfectly happy to have him heap praise and compliments on her and lord it over the other girls, an empress in her own tiny domain. He was now very thankful for his classical education; it gave him a lot of poets and playwrights to steal flowery phrases from, things she would never have heard and would think were original and created to praise her.

  And that made him think of something else; Shen Li had informed him that he had another girl for him. Nothing special this time, the note had read. So he had informed the preacher there would be another wedding, and all was in readiness.

  Since this girl was “nothing special,” he wouldn’t have to go through squabbles over who was the Chief Wife . . . but he really should inform Xi’er that she was about to get a new servant.

  * * *

  Shen Li had simply handed over this girl with a smile. He’d brought her home, Mrs. Kelly and the preacher were ready, and everything went off like clockwork. He slipped into the spirit world to see how the new bride was integrating with the rest, just in time to see Xi’er already in charge. The new bride didn’t even make a squeak of protest.

  “Xi’er,” he said, when the spirit had finished loftily informing the new bride of her proper place in things. “One of the concubines has faded to the point of being nearly useless.”

  “I was going to tell you this, Husband,” Xi’er said with a little bow. “And ask you what you wished to do with her.” She looked utterly exquisite today, her hair braided and wrapped on the top of her head and secured by pins topped with gold butterflies with moving wings, her robes of gold and red brocade layered with silk so light it was transparent, wearing her golden chains as if it was an honor to wear them. And he noticed for the first time, as the hem of her robe moved aside, that she now had the tiniest feet he had ever seen, in red and gold shoes. Well, he presumed that she could will herself not to feel the pain that bound feet were supposed to cause.

  “I will use her to bolster our defenses against our enemies,” he said immediately, relieved that he wasn’t going to run into an objection.

  “Ah good. These white concubines are nearly useless. I think you should replace them all with Chinese.” Her arrogance was actually oddly charming. He found himself smiling. “Chinese girls will know the honor you have given them, and be as proud to serve you as am I.”

  “Well, she can serve as an example to the others, as to what happens to girls who don’t perform to your standards,” he said, and “unhooked” the girl’s chains from the others. As the wraith writhed in terror, he drew her close to him, then spun her substance out, as he had spun out the substance of the Elementals, to fit into the matrix of protections on the house. When he was done, there was nothing left of her, and her chains vanished into the aether.

  “There!” Xi’er exclaimed to the other, cowering, whimpering white girls. “You see? This is what your master can do if you do not give him all he needs!” The spirits huddled together, struck dumb, he suspected, by the complete obliteration of one of their kind.

  He left her giving one of her lectures to her captive audience and enjoying herself immensely.

  How is this even possible? he wondered. Moriarty had said she had great willpower. She surely had an immensely strong will, much stronger than he would ever have given the ugly little thing she had been credit for. She’d turned herself into a stunning beauty on the other side of death, and her spirit self showed no signs of degradation. If anything, she seemed stronger than when she had first been sacrificed, as if she was feeding off something now.

  It occurred to him then that this might be the case. That she might be feeding off the spirits of the other girls. But if she was, well, she was earning it. His “batteries” were filling up at a steady rate, replenishing the energy he’d spent on defenses. And soon, between the batteries and the girls, he would be able to transfer Moriarty into Hughs’ body.

  He went to the shelves of jars and took down the one that held the head of the girl whose spirit he had just obliterated. It wasn’t difficult to tell which one it was; once the spirit was gone as a discrete entity, the head immediately started to decay, regardless of the fluid preserving it. This one was already showing the first signs; the eyes had shrunk in, and the skin around the mouth and eyes had darkened. He took the top off the jar and decanted the whole thing down the chute in the floor into the sewer below. He closed the door in the floor.

  It was highly unlikely that Scotland Yard would ever recover the few heads he had disposed of; there was generally nothing left but a skull by the time rains and sewage washed a head into the Thames, and of course, being bone, it would sink to the bottom immediately. They must be wondering where the heads of the corpses they had recovered had gone. I think not even Alderscroft can guess what use I have for them.

  Speaking of Scotland Yard . . .

  He went downstairs to the kitchen, his nose telling him Kelly was baking scones. She seemed to enjoy being here, if the fact that she was making more baked treats for both of them was any indication. “Mrs. Kelly, have you heard from your urchins today?”

  She turned, wiping her hands on her apron. “Th’ shop-lads, y’mean? Aye, this mornin’. Nothin’ t’say. Watson mopes ’bout the flat. Some toff turned up two days agone, nothin’ changed. I reckon the toff was Alderscroft. Watson don’t go t’the Yard, an’ the Yard don’t come t’him.”

  He smiled. No matter how many shields against scrying Watson put on his flat or Sherlock’s, there was no fooling real, living eyes. And as Sherlock had proved many times over with his Baker Street Irregulars, no one pays much attention to a child. Perhaps Watson should not have chronicled that aspect of Holmes’ investigations so faithfully. It allowed others to copy him.

  Right after eliminating Mary Watson, he’d sent Kelly to make the rounds of the shops around 221 Baker Street, pretending she had just moved there. Every few days she would go from shop to shop, buying something small in each place, asking about Watson. It wasn’t as if his address was secret, after all. He himself had posted it in every one of the adventures he had chronicled. It wasn’t hard to get the boys to talk, either—Watson was their local celebrity now that Holmes was gone, and they were avid to gossip. There were at least a dozen boys, all told, and among all of them he was getting a pretty accurate description of every move Watson made. Sometimes their reports included such details as the dishes Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, was making to tempt his appetite. The only thing better than asking the shop-boys would have been to somehow recruit Mrs. Hudson or her maid, but Mrs. Hudson had proved to be a taciturn and close-mouthed Scot, and the maid was evidently her relative and absolutely incorruptible.

  “I think we can count on the fact that Watson has lost his taste for detective work, Mrs. Kelly,” he said with satisfaction. “How is Hughs coming along?”

  Mrs. Kelly got that sly smile on her face that told him she had been up to something clever. “Oh,” she said, far too casually. “He’s comin’ along. Didja know, Mister Spencer, the lad’s highly suggestible?”

  Kelly was every bit as useful as Xi’er, and then some. “You interest me, Mrs. Kelly,” he replied. “Do say on.”

  “Well, I thought, it wouldn’t do a bit’o harm if I talked to meself whilst I was cleanin’ ’is room. I thought I’d see if ’e could ’ear me. And there yew go, ’e started talkin’ in ’is dreams, and ’is dreams ’ad what I was talkin’ about in ’em! So . . . I been tellin’ ’im ’ow terrible ’is poesy is. ’Ow ’e’s a disgrace to ’is fambly. ’Ow the people ’e thinks are ’is friends are larfin’ at ’im pretendin’ t’be a poet. ’Cept you, a’course, but yer losin’ faith, an accounta ’e’s not written one word since ’e got ’ere.” She cackled evilly. “I daresay it’s all makin’ ’im wisht ’e was dead.”

  Now, such an approach would never have occurred to him. He’d always assumed that when Hughs was in his drug daze, he was deaf to the world. “Mrs. Kelly . . . that’s inspired. I think I shall
have to go reinforce that before I leave the house today.”

  And suiting his actions to his words, he went up to the guest room where Hughs lay, already deep in opium dreams.

  “Oh Hughs,” he murmured, standing over the young man, in tones of deepest disappointment. “When are you going to throw off your lassitude and write? I had such faith in you, my boy. I was sure you had the makings of another Byron in you. And what do you do? You waste your time and mine in these idle reveries. You break my heart, just as you have broken your parents’ hearts. Now I see why your father cast you off. Perhaps I should, too.”

  And having deposited this rich ore of melancholia for Hughs to mine in his dreams, he left, smiling.

  The more he infected Hughs with depression, the more Hughs would lose the will to live. The more he lost the will to live—although he would be in no position to even attempt to take his own life—the weaker the hold his spirit would have on his body. And that would make it much easier for Moriarty to push him out.

  It seemed that absolutely everything was going his way. He headed out to take care of the business of the Organization with a light heart. Very soon now, it would no longer be his task to take care of these mundane details and keep a firm hold over the remnants of the gang. Very soon Moriarty’s hands would be on the reins again.

  And with Watson disposed of, it would not be long before they found and disposed of Holmes. This time for good.

  And he would be able to get on with some of the other projects that had occurred to him—such as getting his own hooks into members of the Court, until he could depose Alderscroft and gain the ability to influence the Queen herself.

  * * *

  Nan longed desperately for something to take the two of them out of town—preferably as far away as possible. Despite the beautiful sunny day, a black gloom hung over the flat and both of them. Sometimes she wanted to run out into the street and shriek at the top of her lungs that something horrible was about to descend on London, like one of those crazy Hyde Park religious lunatics, screaming about the end of the world being at hand.