And that was when he heard it. The unmistakable sound of someone striking a match in the darkness of the alley.
Carefully, slowly, with his hand shielded by his arm and the breast of his coat, he called up a tiny flame in the palm of his hand. “Show me what you see,” he breathed, the simple words calling up a spell of as much intricacy as a piece of fine lace. He stared into the flame, willing it to show what that fire struck in the alley was surrounded by.
As if reflected in a mirror, he saw a shabby boy, cap pulled down over his forehead. He was striking a match. The flame that Jonathon was looking through was some little distance away, a tiny fire of the spent sticks of the matches piled there.
The boy set fire to something. Something like—a tail?
That was it. He was lighting a bundle of straw and lint that was tied to—
A rat’s tail.
As the rat squealed in fear, he opened the door to the cage, and it dashed out and into the ally.
Jonathon in his turn, leaped around the corner, only to see the bobbing ball of fire that was just out of reach duck down a grating into the sewer.
“You!” he shouted. “You there!”
The wrong thing, of course, though it had been a calculated risk—would the boy freeze in place, or try to run?
He ran. And he knew these streets better than Jonathon. Within moments, he was gone, and Jonathon was left staring into the darkness that had swallowed him up.
Dammit.
Had that been the only rat the urchin had turned loose? He dared not take that chance.
He dashed back to where he had seen the boy crouched, and to his dismay, found a dozen empty wooden live-traps—it had been a live-trap that he had mistaken for a cage. In a moment of rage, he kicked them, scattering them across the alley, splintering several.
But temper was not going to fix what had been done. He was going to have to work quickly. There were an unknown number of rats scrambling about this area, trailing fire behind them. Rats that could get into anywhere ... but most especially, between walls and under floorboards.
Quickly, he summoned a circle of protection about himself; it glowed on the slimy cobblestones of the alley with the deep red-orange of coals in the heart of the fire. Once there, he had his own little mantra for summoning—where Nigel used music, he drew.
With a wand of fire pulled out of the element itself, he drew in the air around himself, sigils and symbols in what would look to an outsider like a hopeless jumble, but which were, in fact, precisely placed. They glowed, yellow-hot, hanging in midair around him. The boy had turned loose a dozen rats, not less, possibly more. For good measure he scribed the desire for two dozen Salamanders on the wall of air around him.
With a push of his power, he set the final sigil. Then he sent his wand back to where it had come from, opened his arms, and Called.
The symbols around him flared, blurred, pulsed with the power he gave them, and then vanished in a blinding flash.
And Jonathon swarmed with Salamanders. They danced all over him, wreathing around his arms, threading in and out of his jacket, as he explained to them what they needed to do.
“A boy was here,” he told them, and showed them with his thoughts. “He set rats loose with fire tied to their tails. I don’t know where they all went; you have to find them.”
He got their answer more in impressions than words. Agreement. Fire? That was what they were. Of course they could find the rats.
“All of them.”
Of course. That went without saying. And then what?
“You must follow and eat every bit of fire they leave behind them. Then when you find them, you must eat the fire tied to their tails.”
Glee. They were not often permitted to devour real-world fire. This would be like candy to them. But . . . he did not expect them to eat the rats, did he?
“No, that is not necessary. But go! Those rats could be setting anything on fire!”
Agreement.
And then they were gone.
They flashed in a dozen different directions at once, leaving him standing alone in the alley, lit only by the light from his circle of protection. Wearily, he dismissed it. The Salamanders had been alert and focused; there were times when he had trouble with them, but this, evidently, was not going to be one of those times.
They did naturally what he would have had to do magically and at greater physical expense; they were tracking the rats by the “scent” of fire, and their “noses” were better than a bloodhound’s. He knew he could leave them here to do their work. When they were done, they would simply go back to the Elemental Plane of Fire, sated and happy. They had been “paid” twice: once in the magical energy he had given them, and once in the feeding they would have.
He wanted to lean against the wall in fatigue, but it was cold and damp and very dark here, and none of those conditions agreed well with a Fire Master. Instead, he trudged back to Nigel’s flat. He knew the others were sound asleep by now, and with the crisis averted, he reckoned that morning would be soon enough for them to hear what had almost happened.
Nina tore the vagrant she had found in the gutter limb from limb in her rage, then sent the pieces off with her goblins, to be dropped into the sewers all over the city. And then, she went back to her hotel, climbed up the wall and in through the open window, and shed her blood-stained clothing. She set the maid to cleaning up the mess while she flung herself down into her bed and brooded.
What wretched luck that there was a Fire Master associated with the theater! She wondered what had brought him there tonight? Was it only restlessness and an urge to walk, or had he somehow been warned of what she was doing?
She was just glad she had been trying something without the taint of magic to it. This trick had come out of the annals of ancient sieges—sending animals into a city or an armory to set it afire. Rats were the favored vehicle for this—small and agile, they could carry the fire into the heart of the building. And she had paid the rat-catcher who served the building specifically for these rats and no others. Terrified, in pain, they would run to the place they thought of as home, dash through their secret ways in a futile effort to lose the thing that was hurting them, the fire tied to their tails.
It had been a good plan. Too bad the Fire Master had shown up to ruin it.
But she, at least, had gotten away. And he had no idea she was anything other than a mad little street urchin with a penchant for setting fires.
One good thing had come out of this. Now she knew the face of the possible opposition, or part of it, anyway. She would have to be cunning, careful.
She settled herself in her bed, and began to think.
“He what?” Nigel spluttered.
“He was tying bundles to the rats’ tails, setting them on fire, and—” Jonathon paused. “—and turning them loose.”
“That is an ancient siege trick,” Wolf said unexpectedly.
Jonathon did not ask the bird how he knew that. Wolf was always coming up with unexpected bits of information.
“Well what are you waiting for?” Nigel asked, regarding him angrily. “Is it Nina? Is this someone attempting to attack her? Is this what we should be looking for?”
And now Jonathon had to hesitate. “I don’t know,” he said, finally. “There wasn’t anything at all magical about what was going on. It was just a street-boy, and it wasn’t as if he was actually trying to start fires that I could make out—more that he was just tormenting the rats for the fun of it.”
“But?” Arthur asked, watching him closely.
“But I don’t like it. If Nina’s enemy is clever, he could have paid the boy to do this. There would be no telling that it was the work of a mage.” He got up, all his interest in breakfast gone. “I just don’t know. It seems almost diabolically clever. But the storm—that is the work of someone who just doesn’t think. And yet—”
“All right, Jonathon,” Arthur said, finally. “What we can do is to be on our guard. The fact that yo
ur Salamander came to you before we had a burning theater means that they seem to have rapport with you we can probably count on.”
He nodded. That was reasonable.
“In that case, we should assume it was the work of Nina’s enemy, and that she’s been discovered,” he replied. “Whoever this is, he’s very subtle. So we should assume spies, attempts to lure her out somewhere alone, and indirect attempts, like on the theater.”
“Humph.” Nigel put his fork down and frowned. “I wonder, if it is Nina’s enemy, what he’ll come up with next.”
“Clearly we have to think in terms of things that are not magical,” Jonathon pointed out. “Whoever this may be knows very well that there are Masters here, and he is not going to make it easy for us to find him, or stop him.”
All three of the others, Wolf included, nodded. “We must think like a saboteur, or an assassin,” Arthur murmured.
“And not just that,” Jonathon replied grimly. “We must think like a clever one.”
Nina still thought that burning down the theater was the best plan. The question was, how to do so without showing her magical nature. Her second attempt was more straightforward in execution but devious in planning.
Taking on the look of one of the ruffians she had absorbed, she went in search of the sort of pub where unsavory deals could be made. Then, once she found such a pub, she let it be known that her employer had a building she wanted removed from the property it was on.
It was not long before she was sharing drinks with someone who thought that might be arranged. He was a little surprised to discover the building in question, but it was just a brief flash, and then he was all business. Nina was relieved to discover that he did not want to know why the theater needed to be burned. She did not offer said explanation. She merely paid him what he asked, and settled back in her suite to await the results.
But the results were disappointing. There was no fire on the stipulated date, and the next day the sensation of the morning paper was that a known arsonist had been caught red-handed, and he was expected to be spending the rest of his life in prison.
Credit for the discovery was given to a young police constable, but Nina cursed, knowing in her heart it must have been that wretched Fire Master.
She made one more attempt, but her heart wasn’t in it; like the first try, she used an animal to try and carry fire into the building. This time it was the starlings that nested in the top. She gave them matches and twists of oiled paper which they carried up to the roof and tucked into their nests; she intended to do just a tiny bit of magic to ignite the matches themselves. That failed as the first had; one of the wretched birds dropped its burden on a passer-by, and the next thing Nina knew, the building was being scoured and the poor starlings lost all the nests they had started.
She also looked for ways to lure the imposter out away from anyone else; if she ever managed that, the result would be that the imposter would be absorbed, and Nina would change into her clothing and take her place. At least for a little bit—just long enough to have a great row with the theater owner and flounce out.
But the girl wouldn’t accept invitations of that sort. No “I have something that might be to your advantage,” no supper invitations from handsome young men, no—nothing.
In fact, the girl led a life so cloistered that it gave Nina pause. Not the work—Nina herself did the work of a dancer, and a good one too—but the sacrifice, that was unprecedented. No little téte-a-téte dinner parties with select gentlemen. No afternoons off for a picnic. No afternoons off shopping! That was what truly astonished Nina; every other dancer she had ever known was an inveterate shopper!
It was a pity too, since shopping would have been the ideal way to take her. Become a helpful shop girl, suggest there were better things in a back room. Take her there—and become her. No one the wiser.
There would be a complication of course, because it was possible that she might just decide to stay here. That impresario in Germany . . . she could cancel the appearances . . . but then she would have to eliminate him, too, or return his money. If she didn’t he would probably sue for breach of contract.
All right. It was time to play to her strong suit. Use her own Element.
Ninette limbered herself backstage at afternoon rehearsal. She had taken the ball, hoop, and ribbon dances out, and had put in two pure ballet solos. Both, had she been asked, were blatant copies of two of Anna Pavlova’s dances—“Waterlily” was a copy of her “California Poppy,” complete with bringing the petals of her skirt up around her at the finale when the stage went dark, and “Fairy,” which was a copy of Pavlova’s “Dragonfly.” But Anna Pavlova was far away and unlikely to ever get to Blackpool, and people were actually coming to Blackpool for their holidays to see her!
Of course most of that was due to her miraculous “rescue” that spring. But still. . . .
“Those dances are rather good,” Jonathon said from behind her.
She shrugged, and bent over to touch her forehead to her knees and hold the position for a moment. “I copied them from Pavlova,” she said frankly.
“I know,” came the surprising reply. “I saw ‘California Poppy’ and ‘Dragonfly’ in Monte Carlo.”
She straightened so fast she almost hurt herself. “What? And you said nothing to Nigel?”
It was his turn to shrug. “He wouldn’t care. I know I don’t. A dance isn’t like a magic trick. I don’t think you can ever say ‘that’s mine’ once you’ve done it in public.”
“I suppose so,” she said, dubiously. She hesitated, but anything she was going to tell him was lost as the trained dog act suddenly saw Thomas, and idiotically forgot all of their tricks. Thomas headed straight for the dressing room with the pack in full cry behind him and the frantic trainer right behind them. Ninette let them all run—she knew very well that Thomas was more than a match for a hundred dogs—but Jonathon swore and raced after them all. Perhaps he was concerned for the dogs.
But that was the moment when things began to thaw between them.
12
NINETTE was keeping her muscles warm in the wings when the female half of the dog-training act dashed up to her, face white. “Have you seen Nigel?” she asked, breathlessly. Ninette stared at her, perplexed and alarmed, all at once, and pointed to stage left, where Nigel’s sleeve was just barely visible behind a piece of scenery.
The dog trainer—Ninette strained to remember her name since the act went by the name of “Harrigan’s Amazing Hounds”—rushed across the stage in a blatant violation of all the rules of performance. Thou shalt not cross the stage during someone else’s act in rehearsal—dress rehearsal, of course, not band-call.
The act she ran through was, thank heavens, that of the character-comic, who was a good-natured old fellow, even if he did partake of the bottle a bit more than he should have. He kept right on, like a trouper, even as the female trainer seized Nigel—literally!—and began an urgent speech that started off quietly but very, very rapidly ascended into the hysterical.
She spoke too rapidly for Ninette to understand her, given that for Ninette, English was still very hard to comprehend unless people spoke in a leisurely manner. She got a few words here and there—accident and broken legs.
She rushed back across the stage again, her agitation visible, her eyes seeing nothing but the way out. Ninette kept warming up. No matter what, the show went on. It always went on. Only the death of a monarch would close down a show.
But in just exactly the time it took for someone to cross from stage left to stage right through the backstage area, Nigel appeared at her elbow. “Harrigan somehow fell into a hole in the street and broke both legs,” he said grimly. “I hate to ask you to—”
“I will put back the ball, ribbon, and ring dances,” she said instantly. It was not as if they were great effort to perform. Not like the Black Swan pas-de-deux. Not like Giselle’s Mad Scene. Not like the Corsair solos. They were, in fact, full of little pauses, rests, where she co
uld catch her breath before going on to the next difficult passage. And they were done on demi-pointe rather than full pointe. She would have to change her shoes, but that was no great difficulty, and if worst came to worst and the ribbons wouldn’t unknot, she could cut them off and Ailse could put new ribbons on while she danced en pointe.
Nigel nodded with relief and gratitude. “I’ll be in my office; I should have a replacement act by tomorrow.”
She shrugged. “So long as the audience is not bored with me, I can dance the extra solos for as long as you need me to.”
He just said something that sounded like “You’re a brick,” and dashed off to his office. She was left shaking her head. It was going to be a long and strenuous night.
She went looking for her ball, ring, and ribbon music. At least the band knew it. And at least the hole she would be filling was in the middle of the bill. She’d be well rested by the time her skirt dance came up.
By band call the third day after Harrigan broke his legs, if Nigel had been any other impresario, he would have been tearing his hair out. Because by that time, it was beginning to look as if the Fates had targeted him for disaster.
This was a very desirable venue for most performers; a six-week engagement at minimum meant it was possible to relax, unpack, mend things, take in the local sights. It was, after all, the audience that changed during the season in Blackpool; virtually a new audience twice a week. Nigel usually had far more acts auditioning than he had slots for them.
But now . . . first Harrigan, who had fallen into a hole that his wife swore literally “opened up in front of them” and broken both his legs. It was a good thing for both of them that Nigel knew a doctor who was also an Elemental magician, though not a master. He did not care to think of what a butcher’s job an ordinary doctor would make of such a patient. So Harrigan was now splinted and resting comfortably surrounded by wife and dogs, a stone’s throw from the doctor’s office. Nigel was keeping him on wages, partly because it seemed the right thing to do, and partly because he wanted the Hounds for the big show, and when Harrigan was well again, he would certainly feel a debt of gratitude to Nigel.
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