The Ink Master's Silence

by C. J. Archer

  "Very few outside the collectors' club know about my specialty," the professor went on. "I don't want to be ridiculed any more than you do."

  "It's not ridicule that worries us," Matt said darkly. "Are you a magician, Professor?"

  "No, but my grandfather was. He could manipulate iron but not to any great extent. He could bend it a little, shape a small piece into something else, but his magic was relatively weak. Magic in my family ended with him, but my interest in it is strong. I've spent my life researching it and have traveled extensively in search of original texts that mention magic."

  "And what has your research taught you?" I asked.

  "A great many things, but mostly I've come to the conclusion that magical powers have diminished to such an extent that it's almost useless. Nowadays, magicians can perform a few simple tricks, but in the past, magic could alter reality. Objects could be manipulated into something else entirely. Perhaps magic even changed the course of history."

  A mapmaker apprentice had once told me stories of sketched rivers flowing off magical maps into real life. My own grandfather believed that ancient disasters, miracles and myths that seemed impossible could be explained by the use of magic. I did not tell the professor any of that.

  "Such magic appears to be lost forever, thanks to the dilution of bloodlines," the professor said.

  "Except, perhaps, in a select few," Lord Coyle added. "You, for example, Miss Steele, can make a watch save your life."

  "No, sir. You're mistaken, "I said. "A watch is an inanimate object. I cannot make it do anything."

  He leaned forward and placed his meaty fists on the table, either side of his plate. "Your watch saved you downstairs in my entrance hall, Miss Steele. I saw it with my own eyes. "

  There was no defending myself. He had seen it, and I could think of no excuses. Lord Coyle knew it too. He stroked his drooping white moustache with his thumb and forefinger, not quite hiding his smirk.

  "Are you trying to tell us that those old stories are true?" Matt asked Nash.

  "Were true, Mr. Glass," the professor said. "As far as I am aware, only a few magicians possessed that sort of power. Even then, it's not known whether they possessed it because they came from unbroken magical lineages or their magic was different to that practiced by humble craftsmen."

  I came from unbroken magical lineages, according to Chronos, my grandfather. But these people couldn't possibly know that. Could they?

  "Tell me about the powerful magicians," I said to Professor Nash.

  "From what I can gather," he said, "they could create new spells from existing ones because they possessed the language of magic. From those new spells, all manner of things could be created or affected."

  "Miracles," Mr. Delancey pronounced with all the authority of a preacher. "Or the appearance of them."

  I got the feeling they were all watching me very closely to gauge my reaction. Lord Coyle had told them what I was capable of, but they didn't realize I had limited knowledge of the extent of my own power. I knew as much as they did—that I could make a watch run on time, fix almost any timepiece, and extend the length of another's magic. I did not know how I made watches and clocks fly off the shelves to save me.

  "India doesn't have that kind of power," Matt said. "Did you think she did? Is that why she's here?"

  Mrs. Delancey waved a hand that happened to be holding her glass. Some wine sloshed over the rim. "Not at all. We're delighted to meet her. We hoped she could speak a spell into Mr. Delancey's watch to add it to our collection, that's all. As Professor Nash says, powerful magic has probably died out. No one expects someone as ordinary as Miss Steele to be a spell caster."

  "She is not ordinary," Matt said.

  "Oh, of course not. She's quite lovely, just not…special." She laughed.

  The men did not. "Spell caster is the name I gave those rare magicians," Professor Nash said. "They seemed to be the only ones who possessed full knowledge of the language of magic."

  "The language has disappeared?" I asked.

  "I haven't been able to find any sources that explain it thoroughly, only second and third hand descriptions. The particulars seem to have been passed down orally until such time as magicians were persecuted. Then it either went so deeply underground that only a select few maintained knowledge of the language, or it was forgotten altogether. Of course, most individual magicians know a simple spell, but that's all. The rules of the language, its construction, are gone."

  The room fell silent. With the courses finished, the gentlemen would usually retreat to the smoking room, and Mrs. Delancey and I would return to the drawing room to wait for them, but our host didn't get up. He sat at the head of the table, watching me, as did the other guests. Only Matt's gaze focused in a different direction.

  "I understand why the Delanceys, Sir Charles and Lord Coyle want to keep magic a secret," he said to Nash, "but why do you, Professor?"

  "I don't particularly care one way or another," he said. "On the one hand, perhaps public acceptance of magicians will encourage them into the open, perhaps even a spell caster. That excites me. But my studies in medieval history have proved to me that when the majority feel threatened by the minority, the minority always loses. I'm afraid magicians would simply be persecuted more openly rather than in the few select cases we've experienced so far. That frightens me. I don't want to see that happen any more than you do, Mr. Glass. My grandfather may have passed years ago, but I do know other magicians. I'd like them to remain safe."

  Matt nodded, happy with the answer. "Then you will agree that Oscar Barratt's enthusiasm for writing about magic in The Weekly Gazette should be curtailed."

  They all murmured their agreement or nodded. I kept my mouth shut. I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted. Or, more precisely, I wanted peaceful integration, but it was no more possible than unicorns. As Professor Nash said, magicians would most likely still be persecuted if they were publicly acknowledged.

  "How do you propose we do that, Mr. Glass?" Lord Coyle asked. "I don't know The Weekly Gazette's owners."

  "And they don't bank with me," Mr. Delancey said.

  Sir Charles shook his head and the professor shrugged.

  "Mr. Force's articles in The City Review are doing a serviceable job of refuting Barratt's claims," Sir Charles said. "We could encourage him to write more."

  "It's not enough," Lord Coyle said. "Barratt is clever and fearless. Every time Force states one thing, Barratt states another. Besides, the public believes Barratt, and belief is a powerful thing."

  Mrs. Delancey rose and refilled her own glass from the bottle the footman had left on the sideboard. "We need to discredit him," she said. "We must expose him as a fraudster, and his claims as hoaxes dreamed up to sell more copies of that rag."

  "How do we do that, my dear?" her husband asked.

  She had no answer. No one did.

  "Could someone not threaten Mr. Barratt?" she eventually said. "Accost him in a dark alley and order him to retract everything."

  I stared at her.

  "He wouldn't be harmed," she went on. "Just threatened. How do you say it in the slums? Roughened?"

  "I am not from the slums," I bit off.

  "It's not Barratt we need to stop," Sir Charles said. "It's his editor. He has the real power at that paper."

  "Baggley," Matt filled in. "An old fellow. I don't think it needs to be said, but I'll say it anyway, I do not condone violence or the threat of violence."

  Mrs. Delancey pouted.

  "Of course, of course," Mr. Delancey said. "No one here does. But I disagree with you, Sir Charles. Baggley may be able to stop Barratt from writing his poisonous articles for the Gazette, but Barratt could easily go elsewhere. A number of papers would welcome him. His articles are extremely popular. I think it's him we have to stop."

  "Unless someone comes up with a non-violent way to stop him, this conversation is pointless," I said hotly. I was no friend to Oscar Barratt anymore, after he published more in
formation in his articles than I'd liked, but this sort of talk could become dangerous. I didn't think these men had the same morals as Matt. I wouldn't put it past them to threaten Oscar—or worse.

  "Are any of you magicians?" Matt asked.

  "My father was a wool magician," Mr. Delancey said. "But I am not."

  "It's how his family made their money," Mrs. Delancey said. "They manufactured woolen garments. My husband sold the business after his father's death and bought a floundering merchant bank. It's now one of the most successful banks in the city."

  "And you, Lord Coyle, Sir Charles?" Matt asked.

  "Not me," Coyle said.

  "Nor me," Sir Charles added. "Magic is unique to the trades class. You won't find many magicians among our circle for that reason."

  Mrs. Delancey told her husband to hand me his watch. He unhooked the chain and passed it to me. "Will you, Miss Steele?" he asked.

  "She will not," Matt growled. "This is absurd. She's not a magician."

  "Don't treat us as fools, Glass," Lord Coyle said. "It's hardly a secret that her magic is powerful enough that her watch can save her. We also know that she combined her magic with that of a doctor to extend your life."

  I sucked in a breath. He could only have known that if he'd spoken to Sheriff Payne. No one else who'd been there that day would have told him. If Coyle was associating with Payne then I didn't trust him at all.

  Matt glared at Coyle, his fingers stroking the stem of his wine glass. I thought he might pick it up and throw it at our host, but he remained outwardly calm. Perhaps too calm.

  "You ought to know that the sheriff is mad," I said quickly. "Don't believe him. Witnesses at his trial will refute every outrageous claim." The trial hadn't started yet. The sooner it did, the better. If Payne was saying things in prison, he needed to be stopped before the rumors took flight.

  Lord Coyle dismissed my speech with a lazy lift of his hand. He didn't even bother addressing it. It was rather insulting.

  The entire evening had become quite upsetting; added to which, I still wasn't entirely sure why I'd been invited. I didn't for a moment think it was because Mrs. Delancey wanted me to infuse magic into her husband's watch. That watch now sat on the table between us, its chain coiled on the white tablecloth like a snake.

  I caught Matt's eye and jerked my head ever so slightly.

  "If you'll excuse us, we're leaving," he said, rising.

  All the gentlemen rose as I stood.

  "But you haven't used your magic on my husband's watch," Mrs. Delancey whined.

  I thanked our host and managed polite goodbyes to the other guests. Matt offered me his arm and went to open the door only for it to open from the other side. The butler entered and whispered something in Lord Coyle's ear. Matt and I made our exit but Lord Coyle summoned us back.

  "Something has happened which will interest you." Coyle looked to Sir Charles. "It seems someone else thought as you do, Whittaker. Mr. Baggley, editor of The Weekly Gazette, has been murdered."

  Chapter 2

  "What did you eat?" Duke asked the moment Matt and I set foot in the drawing room. He, Willie and Cyclops had waited up for us, although Cyclops looked drowsy.

  Willie set down her cards. "That's your first question?"

  Duke shrugged. "I'm hungry."

  "The food was delicious and plentiful," I told him. "The wine superb, although there was rather too much of it for me."

  Willie gave a knowing nod. "You don't hold your liquor well, India, it's true. Ain't your fault. You just need more experience."

  "What did Coyle want?" Cyclops asked.

  "I'm not entirely sure," I said. "Perhaps just to introduce us to his friends."

  Matt offered to pour me a drink but I declined. He sat down without pouring himself one either. "I think he wanted to gauge our reactions to Professor Nash's claims," he said.

  We told them about the other guests, the collectors' club, and the professor's interest in the history of magic. Twice I had to explain the lost language of magic and how spell casters used it to create new spells.

  "But you know the language, India," Willie said. "So do other magicians."

  "We only know a few words. There are probably thousands more. According to Nash, those magicians knew how to string the words together to make new spells, just like writers and storytellers have done for centuries with the English language."

  "Nash also thinks they were powerful magicians with unbroken lineages," Matt said.

  They all looked at me.

  "I am not a spell caster," I said. "I'm doubtful they even existed. Nash is only guessing, after all. He has no proof, only his own interpretations of some old texts. He said so himself." I picked up Willie's cards and pushed her entire stack of matchsticks into the middle.

  "Not that much!" She pulled them back again.

  "They're matchsticks, Willie," Duke said with a roll of his eyes. "We ain't playing for diamonds."

  "I don't like losing to you."

  I sat again and looked at Matt. I was so used to seeing him exhausted at this time of the evening that I almost ordered him to bed. Instead, I smiled, although my mood wasn't as buoyant as it had been before dinner. The news about poor Mr. Baggley unnerved me. I told the others what Coyle's butler had reported just before we left.

  "Murdered!" Cyclops's one eye squinted. "How?"

  "Shot from behind," Matt said.

  "Shot!" Willie cried. "From what distance?"

  "The butler didn't know," Matt said wryly.

  "Then how'd he know Baggley was shot?"

  It was a good question. According to the butler, Baggley had died mere hours earlier from a gunshot wound to the head. He'd been working late at the Gazette's office on Lower Mire Lane but the butler couldn't say if anyone else had been present or if someone had been arrested. But how had he known about the murder in the first place?

  "Coyle must have spies," Matt said.

  "At the Gazette?" I asked.

  "All over the city, but particularly at the Gazette's offices now. You heard him tonight, India. He and his friends don't like Barratt's articles. I wouldn't put it past him to have paid an employee to report who meets with Barratt, what he and Baggley discuss, that sort of thing. Coyle will be looking for any way to sabotage Barratt and the paper."

  "Like murder the editor?" Duke said.

  "You think him capable?" Cyclops asked.

  Matt looked to me. "India?"

  He was allowing me to express my opinion before him, in an attempt to boost my confidence. I'd been quite hopeless at judging character in the past, having made some terrible choices in my friendships, but I liked to think I was getting better. For instance, I trusted the people in that room implicitly.

  "Yes," I said. "I think he is capable."

  "So do I. He has the resources to pay someone to do it, so he can look innocent, and he's ruthless enough to want to protect his collection's value."

  I shivered. Lord Coyle could have orchestrated a murder while dining with us. Surely his ruthlessness didn't extend that far. Yet I couldn't shake the thought.

  "To be fair," Matt went on, "any number of people must want the articles to end. The other guests there tonight, for example, Abercrombie and the guild masters, and even a few magicians who want to remain anonymous."

  "That's the thing, though," I said. "They wanted the articles to end, so why not kill Barratt? Killing Baggley probably won't change anything. The newspaper will still go out weekly, and Barratt's articles will still be included. They are popular enough that a new editor won't stop them."

  It was the conclusion we had all come to over dinner, and I saw no reason to alter my opinion. To end the articles, one had to stop Oscar Barratt, not Baggley.

  "Maybe it has nothing to do with the paper," Duke said. "Maybe it were personal."

  "I'll see what I can learn tomorrow," Matt said. "Cyclops, you look done in. You haven't stopped yawning since we got home."

  "I've been fixing the con
vent roof," he said, turning a flinty glare onto Duke and Willie. "Without help."

  "We helped," Willie protested. "Holding the ladder requires two of us on account of you being so heavy."

  "We thought it would be good for you to work alone up there," Duke added. "Physical work tires you so you don't have time to think about Catherine Mason."

  "What does she have to do with anything?" Cyclops growled.

  "You have been thinking about her a lot lately," Willie told him. "And it's making you sad that you can't be together."

  "We're doing you a favor," Duke added.

  Cyclops pushed to his feet. "You can't talk, Willie. You been thinking a lot about your lover lately, too. Your face has been as long as an old nag's."

  "She ain't my lover no more." Willie slid all of her matchsticks into the middle of the table. "Let's get this game over. I want to go to bed."

  She and Cyclops glared at one another while Duke showed his hand then gleefully raked in all the matchsticks.

  "The three of you need to blow off some steam," Matt said, clamping a hand on Cyclops's shoulder. "The convent roof is finished, isn't it? Why not go out tomorrow? See the sights of London. Visit a museum. Have a picnic in Hyde Park."

  The three of them looked at him as if he were mad.

  "Or enjoy a drink at a pub," I said.

  They agreed on that and went to bed in happier spirits.

  I thought we should visit Oscar Barratt to find out more about Mr. Baggley's death, but Matt disagreed. He claimed it was because Detective Inspector Brockwell would know more, but I suspected it was simply because he didn't like Oscar. I doubted Brockwell would tell us anything. He was a stickler for following protocol.

  I was both right and wrong. He was more informative than I expected when he finally invited us into his office after making us wait for twenty-three minutes. His willingness probably had a lot to do with experiencing danger together the day Sheriff Payne was arrested. It was surprising how life and death situations could bring people closer.

  "I don't think his murder has anything to do with the articles about magic that have appeared in The Weekly Gazette," he said in his precise, clipped manner of speaking. "Tea, Miss Steele?"