You will never again feel passion of any sort. That will be mine. No pleasure. No anger. No love, nor hate, nor grief, nor joy.
For a moment she was incredulous. This was all? “What,” she asked mockingly. “Are you not going to require my soul?”
It only laughed. Your heart will do.
“Done,” she said, without hesitation. “We will rule the boreal kingdom of Britain together.”
It laughed. So let it be written, it said, in the ancient words of sealing. So let it be done.
17
CORDELIA realized within an hour of her arrival that her original plan was not going to work. David had brought his valet with him, and the man slept in a room attached to David’s own. That was a complication she had not foreseen, although she had brought her own maid with her. She had intended to drug the girl to avoid an unnecessary expenditure of magic energies, which would be at a premium in the height of summer. There was no way that she would be able to also drug David’s man. And even if she could—
Her room lay in the other wing of the place. To return her dead body to her room, she—in David’s body—would have to carry a lifeless corpse from one end of the building to the other.
Not feasible.
As she smiled and occasionally murmured pleasantries over tea, her mind was abuzz with activity. There had to be a way to make this work!
David seemed rather surprised to see her when he joined the party for dinner, but a serene smile seemed to reassure him, and he nodded to her from his place nearer the head of the table than herself. She acknowledged the nod, then went back to her conversation with an elderly duke. It was surprisingly interesting, actually; the man had spent his active years as the ambassador to the Court of the King of Sweden, and she was able to ask him a great many questions about life in extremely frigid climes. He, in his turn seemed pleased and surprised that she had an interest in such things.
After dinner, some of the ladies of the party took a turn in the gardens, which had been illuminated for the purposes with Chinese lanterns and torches. She took the opportunity to view the grounds, which, she had been told, had been specially designed to be particularly attractive at night. There were many sorts of night-blooming plants here, and paths that were broad, with turf as smooth and soft as a carpet. There were tall hedges that divided the garden into a series of roofless rooms, and as she strolled with three other ladies, it began to dawn on her that she had found the perfect place for her plot.
She could slip out into the garden under the cover of the darkness. Then she could call him here, to some secluded spot. She could plant the suggestion in his mind via one of her little ghostly servants that he was too warm to sleep, and was coming out into the garden to have a solitary turn and perhaps a smoke. No one would ever see them meet. If anyone saw him or spoke to him, it was unlikely that anyone would connect David Alderscroft with the lifeless body of his mentor, who would be found the next day.
In fact, she would make it appear that she had gone out for a similar stroll, had sat down to rest, and simply—died.
The hardest part would be subduing him without drugs, for obviously she was not going to be able to slip any such thing into him in a strange household. She would have to call upon other powers.
There were spells to bring sleep, and while they were wildly expensive in terms of the power needed, it wasn’t as if she was going to require that power later. Or, if she did, her ally could probably supply it.
Unless…
She smiled. Of course.
Instead of relying on her ghosts, she could tell him simply that she had uncovered some magical threat to him out here, and had come to warn and aid him. Obviously, they could not meet within the walls of a stranger’s home for this; she would have him come to the garden and join her for spell-work. Once he had submitted to her as the mentor, she could do whatever she wanted with him.
Simple. As the best plans always were.
He would not even worry at first as the breath of the Ice Wurms wreathed him about. He was used to it, after all. And by the time he realized that this was not the usual cold spell-work, it would be too late. He had snubbed the normal Fire Elementals for so long that they would never come to his aid if he called them—and the Ice Elementals answered to her.
She smiled, and began to stroll the gardens looking in earnest for the most secluded spot. Not tonight, of course. But soon, soon.
There was nothing like seeing a plan finally come to fruition. And the fruit, when she plucked it, would be sweet indeed.
At last she found what she judged to be perfect. Far enough from the buildings that it might as well be invisible, with tall hedges on two sides, and a secluded bench. There were no lanterns or fairy lights in this part of the garden either, but the bench was overarched by a trellis of night-blooming jasmine, which made it just the spot for a lady to sit and enjoy the evening.
In fact, she tried it out for a moment, and was satisfied.
Do not be too satisfied.
The cold voice in her mind was accompanied by the bite of frost from a spot on the path just in front of her. There was a column of mist there, faintly glowing, and a suggestion of eyes at the top of it.
You are in enemy territory, and they will stop you if you are not prepared.
“What enemy?” she demanded sharply.
If you are wise, you will find a way to accomplish this on your own ground.
“Not in any timely fashion,” she replied, in tones as cold as the mist. “The longer I delay, the likelier it is that Alderscroft will manage to drift away from me. He grows independent, and this is making me uneasy. And there is no way to accomplish this thing either in his home or mine without scandal.”
If a column of mist could shrug, this thing did. Then you will need my help, the ice creature said. We will begin with your child ghosts. Summon them now.
She was about to protest that this was not a simple thing, when a chill of warning made her think better of it. She had thought that she was in control of this situation. The cold, collected voice in her mind and the power behind it gave her the first intimation she might have been mistaken.
It would frighten the children, making them useless for her purposes, but she didn’t think that was going to matter to the Ice Lord, as she was now calling him in her mind. “I cannot do this at this moment,” she said simply. “I must summon them by means of the things I have in my room.” She never traveled without a needle case, a roll of small felt pockets, each of which held a small, labeled sample of hair.
Fetch it and return, the voice commanded curtly. Time is of the essence.
The tenor of the voice raised the hair on the back of her neck, and she began to realize that she might have made a very profound error.
It was, however, too late to correct that error now. The best she could do would be to ride out the storm that she herself had set in motion.
That she would survive this storm was not an issue. She knew that she would. The creature needed her. But she needed now to be on the watch for ways in which she could turn it to her advantage.
Carefully avoiding the other ladies, she slipped silently into her room and retrieved what she needed. As she passed the billiard room, it was clear that the political discussion was still in full swing, by the haze of tobacco smoke and the rumble of male voices. And she felt anger at that, anger that the women were excluded without a single thought—
But this was not the time nor the place. She slipped back out into the dark gardens with their softly glowing, colored lanterns, and paused to listen to the female counterpart to the male conversation. High-pitched, artificially cadenced nonsense punctuated by the occasional polite titter. That made her angry, too. The amount that could be accomplished if these women would not allow themselves to be made into powerless ornaments—
Well, they were fools, and their men with them. Most of the earth’s population was as foolish and as useless, fit only to take orders and serve. Serve Cordelia, of course
. The England that she ruled would be structured accordingly.
But for now, she must summon her ghosts and see what the creature did with them. She did not doubt that there was danger to her plans here, even if she could not see it. The creature had not failed her before, and it clearly had a strong incentive not only to tell the truth, but to keep her safeguarded.
She would not, however, make the mistake of expecting that condition to last.
***
The next morning, she was amused to overhear the gardeners bemoaning the “patch of blight” that had appeared overnight in a remote part of the garden. It was not blight, of course, but the direct result of the Ice Lord’s work with the child ghosts. The gardeners were scrambling to replace the patch of turf and the plants, to trim back the frost-killed branches of bushes. The children now stood as arcane sentries, guarding the house and grounds, not only from immaterial threat, but from anyone with any sort of power, Elemental or psychical. They might not be able to stop all intruders, but they could certainly delay and damage even the most powerful, and they would give a warning.
They were no longer vague little sketches of children either. The Ice Lord had transformed them utterly, into feral, fierce creatures exuding menace. It would take a brave person indeed to dare to go past them, and a powerful one to be willing to try taking them on. It wasn’t that they were strong individually—it was that they were now vicious as weasels, and would swarm anybody who tried to take one on.
After she had gone back to the manor, and engaged in some pointless gossip with the other ladies before retiring, she had made a point of enforcing slumber. Tonight was going to be difficult enough without fatigue. The day had dawned unseasonably cool and continued that way, which she considered either a good omen, or an evidence that the Ice Lord was already exerting his power.
She actually thought it vanishingly unlikely for it to be the latter. The Ice Lord had made it quite clear that the bulk of the action was to be in her hands. That he had interfered at all in the case of the ghosts was something he had done with great reluctance. There was someone or something out there that he considered to be a great hazard to them and to their enterprise.
So the unseasonably cool weather was just a coincidence, but one she could take advantage of. She rose and her maid dressed her while she thought long and hard about what her next step would be.
But the opportunity to speak privately with David came sooner than she had thought.
“We must talk,” he said under his breath, as he passed her on the stairs, she going down to breakfast, he returning from it.
“Now is as good a time as any,” she replied, “I am not so enamored of grilled tomatoes that I cannot take the time to speak with my pupil when he looks so distressed. Let us take a turn in the gardens.”
Here, of course, was where she overheard the lamentations of the gardeners, and smiled to herself.
“I am not sure where to begin,” he said at last. “I encountered a—a nature spirit here. It threatened me.”
“Uncommon but not unheard of,” she observed. “Clearly, though, this was no common spirit.”
“No,” he said grimly, and proceeded to describe his encounter in minute detail, while she grew more surprised by the moment. There was only one creature she could think of with that sort of power. And the fact that it had threatened to interfere now made her understand why the Ice Lord had taken direct action.
Her first thought was that the spirit—clearly one of the Greater Fey, those who had been, in their time, worshipped as gods—had somehow deduced her plan and the Ice Lord’s. If that was the case, a few puny wraiths were not going to stop him.
But then she realized that all of the threats had been aimed toward David, and the warning specifically pointed at this part of the country. There had been an implication that the spirit did not care what happened in London, so long as no Ice Magic was brought here.
So it didn’t know.
Just because a creature was very powerful, it did not follow that it was omniscient. And even if it had the capability to read the future, it did not follow that it would. The Greater Fey in particular had curious holes in their thinking. They tended to be “flighty.” They had difficulty in concentrating on any one thing for too long. No matter how important something was, there was always the possibility that once it was out of immediate sight, it would also be out of mind.
Chances were, the creature had already forgotten about David. And by the time it realized that they were working Ice Magic, it would be too late. Nor would it occur to the Fey that there could be more to it than just Cordelia’s plan.
But this fed directly into her plot.
“You were right to be concerned,” she said earnestly. “This is a dangerous creature, capricious and unpredictable. I must safeguard you from it.”
His lips thinned as he frowned. “Simply tell me what to do,” he replied, once again showing an annoying independence. “I can handle this myself, I should think.”
“Under normal circumstances, yes,” she replied. “But these safeguards are against the Greater Fey and must be placed externally. Even if I told you how to place them—which I will, of course—you would only be able to place them on someone else. The subject must be unconscious in order for the protections to be invoked, or the initial disorientation as one is suddenly able to see the Fey realms is far too painful.”
She congratulated herself gleefully at that stroke. Brilliant! Now she could do whatever she liked with him with absolute impunity. He would never even question what she was doing, because he already had had the experience of what happened when one first was able to see the creatures and energies of Elemental Magic. It was generally very disorienting and sometimes distressing. Children who were born into nonmagical families sometimes went mad, or believed they were doing so. He had no idea whether or not being able to see the Fey would be worse than that, although, in fact, the Fey realms did not exist, and the Fey were simply Masters of all the Elements.
“When can we do this?” he asked eagerly, as she regarded him with grave eyes.
“Tonight would not be too soon,” she said soberly. “And if you meet me here in the garden, I will find a secluded place where we can work undisturbed.”
***
Isabelle was just finishing her correspondence when the sound of a familiar footstep made her raise her head and swivel swiftly in her chair.
Just in time to have Frederick stoop over her and kiss her passionately, his arms including both her and the ladder-back of her chair, which was probably the only reason why he wasn’t crushing her into his chest. Not that she would have minded being crushed into his chest.
As always, she closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment when all she thought of, felt, knew, was him; the moment of being completely with him, in love, surrounded by love, engulfed by love. As always, it was better than it had been the last time. She had never been more sure of him, never been more sure that no matter how things changed, the two of them would see that they changed in a way that only brought them closer.
Being together, in that way that stole her breath and stopped her heart and held them both in timeless time.
The moment passed, as such moments always did, leaving behind echoes that created their own kind of song inside her. She felt him stand straight and opened her eyes, smiling.
He looked down at her, chuckling, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Once again, we scandalize the servants.”
She laughed. “I did not expect you until tomorrow!”
He grinned and shrugged. “Doomsday Dainwrite sent me off with a half holiday,” he replied, and his face took on the mournful expression of a bloodhound contemplating an empty food dish. “You need to go to your wife,” he said in sepulchral tones. “Terrible things are about to happen, and she will need you.”
Isabelle laughed at that, because the head of the firm, called “Doomsday” even by his own wife (who he predicted would leave him, drown, catch fire, be
struck by lightning, or die of some plague virtually on a daily basis), had never, ever been right in his predictions of disaster and mayhem. The only times disaster had befallen the firm or some person in it, Doomsday had been completely silent on the subject and had been taken as much by surprise as anyone else.
“Well, it is not as if you have not earned a half holiday and more,” she replied, taking his hand in hers, and holding it against her cheek for a moment, then letting it go.
“And so have you. We are having tea on the terrace, away from the children, and then we are going for a walk on the grounds, you and I and no one else. And we are going to talk of nothing but commonplaces.” He bestowed a look on her that told her he was accepting no arguments. But then, she was not inclined to give him one.
By dinnertime all was back to normal, except that she felt as rejuvenated by the afternoon as if she had spent a week at the seaside. Her good humor spread among the children; for once there were no quarrels, no outbursts of temper, scarcely even a raised voice when there was contention over the last jam tart. That pirate of a raven, Neville, was on his best behavior, and Sarah’s parrot Grey did not even indulge herself in her own favorite bit of mischief of sorting through the bits in her cup and dropping what she didn’t care to eat on the floor.
The children went off to baths and bed with scarcely a moment of fuss. The youngest, now at the “escape from the bath and run through the halls naked, shrieking,” stage, for once did not indulge themselves. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.
Until, as the oldest were settled into their beds, and Isabelle finished the rounds of “good night hugs,” she and Frederick stepped out onto the terrace—
—and the perfect day shattered.
One moment, they were holding hands, gazing at the stars and listening to the nightingales and the occasional call of an owl.
The next, they were clutching each other, half-deafened by the thunderclap, half-blinded by the lightning bolt that had delivered Robin Goodfellow to the foot of the terrace. A very angry Robin Goodfellow, who was nothing like the merry lad who had strutted his way across their improvised stage, playing himself with gusto and glee.
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