The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  I don’t know about the end of the world, but I do know that having a necromancer building up to some unknown goal in the middle of the most important city in the world is not a good thing!

  “I feel so helpless!” Sarah exclaimed, throwing down her knitting in frustration. “But how can either of us find this fiend, much less do anything about him, if Alderscroft and his entire Hunting Lodge cannot?”

  “You are reading my mind again,” Nan replied, and put her book aside. “I have been reading and researching, and I can come up with nothing. Well, almost nothing. I could, I suppose, try walking every street in the East End and attempt to find him by sifting through thoughts—”

  “Don’t do that!” Sarah shuddered. “What if he has some way of sensing that you are a mind reader? What if he was ready for you? What if he could somehow trap your mind, or render you unconscious? What if he has some way of putting a curse on you like the one he put on Mary?”

  “He wouldn’t even have to do that. All he would have to do would be to identify me as someone looking for him, and follow me back here with more of those thugs of his. I’m not sure we could handle more than four—and fewer, if they are better fighters than we are. We can’t be on the alert all the time.” Nan stared down at the street outside, grimly. “I fear that we’ve only escaped his attentions thus far because he wasn’t aware how closely we have worked with Holmes, Watson, and Scotland Yard.”

  Even the bright sunlight seemed to fade a little as gloom settled over them both.

  “I wish we were children at the School again.” Sarah sighed. “Things were so much simpler then.”

  “Well, we thought they were, anyway.” Nan sighed. “I guess they were. We didn’t have to hunt down horrible things, they came after us.”

  “I suppose we could make targets of ourselves,” Sarah replied dubiously.

  “No!” Grey exclaimed. “Noooooooooo!”

  “My vote goes with the bird’s,” Nan said dryly. “Look what nearly happened to Mary Watson, and we are not nearly as prepared to defend against magic. John and Mary have learned nothing, despite their near-demise.”

  They stared glumly at one another for several long minutes. Then Nan glanced over at the little nook in the sitting room where Suki kept her own chair, made for her size, and her storybooks. “I miss Suki.”

  “So do I.”

  After a moment, Nan shook her head angrily. “All right. We’re overheated. We’re overtired. We are getting absolutely nothing done. Let’s go visit the school and Memsa’b and Sahib. Perhaps they can suggest something that we have overlooked because we are too close to the problem. If nothing else, we’ll get some fresh air and rest. And let’s convince the Watsons to come with us.”

  Sarah bit her lip, then nodded. “Yes. Let’s. I’ll get my disguise. Time for the lads to come court Mrs. Hudson’s niece.”

  * * *

  “It’s true we’re doing no good here,” Mary Watson said, tentatively. She had mending in her hands, but from the look of it, hadn’t been getting much done before the girls arrived.

  “I feel as if we would be running away.” Watson stood at the window, his back to them, staring out at the street below with his hands in his pockets. But there was no mistaking the dispirited nature of his posture.

  “I feel as if there is nothing keeping us here,” Mary countered. “Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Harton have some ideas. Or their associates—” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I only know that if I sit around here for much longer, I am not going to be responsible for my actions. I may be going slightly mad, and I do not believe I will do so quietly.”

  Watson turned away from the window. “Then in that case, if nothing else, it will do us good to get out of the flat.” He turned to Sarah. “We will meet you there; it will take a little more stealth for us to leave than it will for you. But I am sure Mrs. Hudson will be relieved that there is no longer the threat of an attack on this address once we are gone.”

  “I should think Mrs. Hudson would have gotten used to that by now,” Sarah whispered to Nan. “It’s not as if having Sherlock here didn’t invite attacks.”

  Nan for her part went to Watson’s writing desk, wrote a note for Neville to carry to Memsa’b, and gave it to him.

  “Do you want to wait for us there?” she asked. He nodded, and Nan looked over at Grey. “Do you want to go with him?”

  “Yesssss,” Grey replied.

  Nan took both birds to the window and let them go. “Let’s get on our way,” she said to Sarah.

  It was suppertime when they arrived back at their flat, and rather than allowing Mrs. Horace to take it upstairs, they shared supper with her in her kitchen. They were familiar enough with it after many sessions of candy-and biscuit-making, familiar enough to note with admiration a handsome set of new knives, replacing the ones she’d inherited from her great-grandmother. After listening to some of the neighborhood gossip and enjoying the soup, egg-salad, and fresh bread, Sarah broached the real reason why they wanted to speak with her.

  “We miss Suki, and we’ve decided to spend at least a week at the school,” she said. “Perhaps longer, we’ll telegraph you if we do decide to extend our visit.”

  “Well, that’s lovely!” Mrs. Horace replied, her eyes lighting up. “The birds will be going with you, of course?”

  “Yes indeed. We expect to be charged the full rent as usual, of course—” Nan began.

  “Well, if you’re not worried about me touching your things, I’ve been meaning to ask you if you could go away for a few days so I can give the place a good turn-out,” Mrs. Horace put in, her eyes now definitely gleaming. “You just can’t do a thorough cleaning when people are there.”

  “By all means, that would be splendid,” Sarah said. “Nothing could be better, knowing we’ll come back to a shining clean flat.”

  “I can even have the sweep in, which I wouldn’t dare with those darling birds there. The soot would probably be terrible for them.” It was very clear that Mrs. Horace relished the chance to get in their flat and turn it upside down and inside out, give it a good shake, and put all to rights again.

  “Then it’s all settled. We’ll just pack what we need and catch the last train.” Nan finished her tea and stood up. “I’m glad everything is going to work out for all of us.”

  “Did you see her face?” Sarah whispered to Nan as they climbed the stairs to their flat. “You’d have thought we’d just given her a new fur cloak!”

  “Well, you’ve seen what she does with her own flat for a spring cleaning; there isn’t a dust mote left. And ours hasn’t been thoroughly ‘done’ since we moved it. It must have been driving her mad. And it’s lovely that she wants to do it. But I will never understand how anyone can enjoy cleaning, of all things.”

  They parted company at the door and each went to their own room to pack up what they’d need. It wasn’t more than a suitcase each and the bird-carriers, since they both kept an extra wardrobe at the school—it saved on packing and unpacking when they came to visit, and neither of them could bear to let go of old, outmoded garments that still had useful life in them. Even if his Lordship did make gentle fun of them by sending them both yet another new dress or waist and skirt any time he caught them in their old, comfortable things.

  “Now I wish I hadn’t told Neville to stay at the school,” Nan said ruefully. “We might have been able to borrow Lord Alderscroft’s carriage—”

  But just as they left the front door and Nan was about to leave the luggage in Sarah’s hands to go look for a cab, a growler came around the corner and stopped right in front of them. Inside were an old man and a young man, and it took Nan a moment to recognize the Watsons.

  “This yer party, guv’nor?” the cabby called down from his box.

  “That’s right, that’s right,” Watson said, in a raspy voice, and coughed. “Help them with their luggage, there’s a good lad.”

  The cabby had already hopped down to do so, and Mary Watson popped out to gi
ve the girls a gentlemanly hand up into the cab. “My word, I do like these trousers,” Mary said in a low voice, as the cab moved off again. “I may adopt bloomer suits after this!”

  Watson sighed.

  They reached the station in plenty of time to catch the last train stopping at the station nearest to the Harton School. Watson wouldn’t hear of them traveling second class, so they all shared a first-class compartment and traveled in slightly stuffy comfort. Stuffy, because if you opened the windows, you had a better than even chance of getting smuts from the engine all over you, so your choice was to take that risk and have fresh air, or stay clean but sit there fanning yourself for the entire trip.

  They chose stuffy; it wasn’t too bad, since it was early evening. And when the train stopped at their little country station just outside of the London suburbs, there was a handsome, tall young man dressed in the manner of an Indian Moslem, waiting on the platform.

  Nan was first out of the railway carriage, and greeted him with relief. “Dilawar!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know you knew how to drive!” Dilawar was Selim’s nephew, and had, along with the nephews of Karamjit and Agansing, arrived last winter to train under the tutelage of their uncles. Not as replacements, at least not yet, but certainly as their adjuncts.

  “Mustafa has been training me,” Dilawar said proudly; Nan could not help but notice he was the handsomest of the nephews, with his clean-shaven face and expressive eyes. “He says that the others have ‘heavy hands.’ I do not know what that means, but I enjoy this part of my duties very much.”

  Watson was just getting down out of the carriage and heard this. “He means the other lads pull too much on the reins,” Watson said, as Dilawar peered at him curiously.

  “I beg pardon,” Dilawar said in puzzlement, as Mary Watson got out and directed the porter to bring all their bags to where the Harton School carriage was waiting. “I was told I was to be conveying the Misses, and Doctor Watson and his wife—”

  “Shhh. That is Doctor Watson and his wife,” Nan hissed. Dilawar blushed.

  “Begging your pardon,” he said, still blushing. “Please to be coming this way.”

  Nan could tell that John was very pleased Dilawar had not been able to recognize him. Actually, so was Nan. It meant the Watsons had probably been able to leave without being followed. And almost certainly no one had recognized the fresh-faced young man as Mary.

  The carriage ride to the Harton School, located in Lord Alderscroft’s country mansion (Nan refused to call so enormous a structure a mere “house” or “home”) wasn’t a long one, but Nan was glad to get there, and she suspected everyone else was too. The sheer relief she felt at seeing the place, the burden that lifted from her even though nothing had been resolved, made her feel her exhaustion all the more. And yet there was no sense of elation along with that relief. In fact, if anything, she felt depression. The situation had not been resolved, the danger, whatever it was, had not been averted, and there still didn’t seem a way for them to do anything but wait for the blow to fall and hope they could react to it in time.

  Memsa’b and the other two nephews, Kadar and Taral, the nephews of Karamjit and Agansing respectively, stood next to her. Memsa’b was not a beautiful, or even a pretty woman, but she was tall and lithe, and even though her hair had started to go gray she was still striking with her strong features. She half ran down the steps to embrace the girls as they alighted from the carriage, then offered her hand to John and Mary in turn. “Excellent disguises, Doctor, Mary,” she said. “If I had not known who you must be, I would never have guessed. Now I am sure you are exhausted from the last few weeks, and we are going to say nothing more about why you are here until the morning. The boys will take your things to your rooms,” she continued, as the two young men seized all their baggage as if it weighed nothing while Dilawar drove the carriage around to the stables. “I’m sure you’d all like to get into something comfortable. Sahib and I will see you in his study when you feel ready to have a little refreshment. Girls, you already know where to go, I’ll show the others to their room.”

  Nan and Sarah were only too happy to trot after Kadar up to the rooms they always used when they were at the school. Neville was waiting on his stand in Nan’s room, up on one leg and looking contented with his world, when she took her case and carrier from Kadar and entered. Once there, she threw off her traveling gown, rid herself of her corset, gave herself a quick wash in the basin, and put on the lightest gown she could find in the wardrobe. It was an old thing, a little shabby, but too comfortable to get rid of.

  Unpinning and shaking out her hair, she tied it back with a bit of ribbon, and emerged from her room to see Sarah had done nearly the same thing. The only difference was that Sarah’s gown was an old morning gown, which made her chuckle a little.

  “What?” Sarah asked.

  “Oh, only that somewhere out there, half a hundred great doyennes of Society are feeling a surge of rage over the third course of dinner, and not knowing why.”

  That made Sarah chuckle too. “A morning gown worn in the evening! Horrors!” They headed for Sahib’s study, and Nan, at least, was feeling a trifle light-headed at this point, both from being so very tired and from trying to manage her emotions. She hoped the Hartons didn’t intend to serve them anything strong.

  But first, a quick reunion with Suki was in order. They went straight to her room and spent a half hour hugging and catching up, and explaining to her with as little detail as possible what they had been and probably would be doing. Suki listened gravely, and with a solemn face assured them that they were doing what had to be done, and she would help the Hartons keep the school safe while they did it.

  Fortunately, as usual, Memsa’b had anticipated their needs. As soon as they entered, Memsa’b waved them to a tray with four tall glasses of lemonade, which was exactly what Nan would have asked for if she’d thought of it. They each took one and waited for the Watsons. Sahib said nothing, as was generally his way. Nan noticed that the two gray streaks in his hair, one at each temple, had grown thicker, but otherwise he was much the same, his weathered, strong face set in an expression that always reminded her of his wisdom.

  The need to be comfortable and casual seemed to have infected all of them. John Watson was, for the first time in Nan’s memory, wearing a vest and rolled-up shirtsleeves. Mary was in a linen gown worn so often it was soft and draping rather than crisp and tailored. Both of them acquired their glasses and sank into Sahib’s comfortable leather chairs with sighs that betrayed how long they’d been living with tension.

  John took a long drink of his lemonade, then opened his mouth.

  “No,” Sahib said firmly. “It can wait until tomorrow. We want you to relax and rest and get a good solid night of sleep. None of you look as if you’d had one for a while.”

  “Although Mary looks remarkably lively for a corpse,” Memsa’b observed.

  “I’m as much of a corpse as Sherlock is,” replied Mary.

  “We’d suspected as much,” Sahib replied. “And since I suspect that Sherlock’s non-demise has nothing to do with your current problems, I would very much like to hear how he survived plummeting off a cliff.”

  John Watson was only too happy to tell the story again. The Hartons nodded now and again, but did not interrupt him.

  “I presume he’s engaged in hunting down the last of this Professor Moriarty’s men, then?” Sahib asked when he was finished.

  “Yes, and he warned us that we might well be a target for vengeance. We seem to have attracted other attention instead,” John began, and Sahib held up his hand.

  “Not until the morning,” he said firmly. “Is there anything else that you can talk about?”

  They all exchanged glances, a little nonplussed. The necromancer had been occupying so much of their attention and lives that suddenly they were left with very little to say.

  Until Sarah suddenly straightened. “Oh! I nearly forgot!” She closed her hand over the locket she wa
s wearing, and her brows furrowed in concentration, and the misty form of Caro—in her young man’s garb—formed in the middle of the room, where they could all see her.

  “Sahib, Memsa’b, this is Caro. She’s attached to this locket, and she’s been helping us. Caro, these are the people I’ve told you about.”

  “Very pleased to meet you,” came Caro’s whispery voice. “And just as pleased to have a change of scenery.”

  “Oh, you’ll have more than a change of scenery, my dear,” Memsa’b replied with a smile. “There’s a small army of young hooligans here, some of whom will certainly be able to see or otherwise detect your presence, and none of whom will be frightened by you. In fact, you are more likely to be swarmed if you choose to make yourself visible to all of them.”

  “That would be a novelty,” Caro replied cheerfully. “It sounds like jolly good fun.”

  Nan was very glad that Caro at least was still feeling cheerful. She was having a hard time maintaining “sober” rather than “hideously depressed.”

  It looked to her as if the others were feeling about the same. And Memsa’b took over the conversation, relating tales of the pupils—which, when one was running a school in which more than half of the children were gifted with psychical powers, could get interesting. Nan noticed that the lemonade had some herbal quality to it, and that the biscuits Memsa’b handed around had also been subtlety “doctored,” and from the knowing look Watson had noticed too. Memsa’b didn’t have that kind of knowledge of medicinal herbs herself, so it was probably on her orders, but done by one of the ayahs or even someone like Gupta’s wife, who was one of the kitchen wizards.

  While she nibbled biscuits and drank lemonade, she did notice that although she didn’t feel any happier, she did feel sleepier, and it was clear from the stifled yawns the others were feeling the same. “I cannot keep my eyes open,” Mary Watson finally confessed. “And I hate to be—”