Reserved for the Cat

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Those two? They mastered my cabinet in an hour, and they know more sleight-of-hand tricks than any boys their age should command. It is a good thing that they are fundamentally honest, because they could pick a man’s pocket while he stood there looking at them.”

  “I expect the shillings will run out about dark,” Nigel said comfortably. “Expect them back then.”

  Scotty scrupulously divided the coins between the two of them before they left by the stage door, and they both took a moment to gloat over the windfall. “Cor, Scotty!” Stubbins said with enthusiasm. “Think on it! There’s ices, an’ bullseyes, an’ Kendal Mint Cake, an’ catapults each, an’ we kin go to th’ Tower an’—”

  “Job first,” Scotty said solemnly. “We gotter do this fast an’ smart. Like Sherlock Holmes’ boys!”

  “Baker Street ’regulars,” supplied Stubbins, who read as much or more than Scotty did.

  “Right. So t’ be smart, we shouldn’t oughta do the same thing twice. So how kin we do this four dif’rent ways?”

  All the way to the first newspaper office, sitting up on the top of an omnibus, the two plotted and planned like the pair of old campaigners they were. Both had come to the theater off the street as crossing-sweepers; a place like a theater always had need of honest and reliable errand-runners, and the old fellow at the stage door had been directed to find a couple. Both took all their money home to share with enormous families; both were acutely aware of how lucky they were to be where they were. Master Nigel made sure everyone in the theater got fair wages, he didn’t demand a share of tips, and he regularly put things in the way of those that needed them. Whether or not he realized it, Master Nigel had engendered intense loyalty in his little fiefdom; there was not a man or woman in that theater who would not have stood between Master Nigel and a runaway elephant. Having been singled out for particular service made the two boys feel rather like a pair of King Arthur’s knights, right out of the panto.

  This was made even more acute by the fact that the job was to be done for Ma’mselle Nina. Now, there were plenty of acts that had passed through the Imperial acting like they were royalty. Not Ma’mselle. She was, as Scotty put it, “a right’un.” Treated everyone fair, said “If you please,” and “Thank you,” never looked down her nose at anyone, and when she wanted something out of the ordinary, you knew there was going to be an extra penny in it for you. Everyone knew she was going to be the star turn when the Big Show got trotted out, but she never acted like she thought it was her due. Truth to tell, both Scotty and Stubbins were just a little bit in love with her. Who wouldn’t be? She looked like a little china doll, pretty as a fairy, and nice as nice . . .

  So both of them were going to put a lot of effort into making sure things went right for her—and it made them feel even more knightly. Or maybe like Sherlock Holmes. Or a combination of Sherlock Holmes and Raffles.

  The first office they came to was so busy it had been easy for two boys who looked like they knew what they were doing to mingle with the rest of the crowd. There were plenty of boys their age employed in such places, messages needing taken, things needing to be fetched. Careful listening led them to the desk of the fellow that wrote up reviews and other artistic stuff; the boys waited until he left his desk for something, then slipped their folder under a big pile of stuff that was already there.

  They left that office no more than three quarters of an hour after they had arrived. One down, three to go.

  At the second office, Scotty, who was older, engaged the little girl in charge of putting files away in a mild flirtation, while Stubbins slipped Nina’s file in among the rest of those she had waiting. Scotty broke off the conversation reluctantly when Stubbins was finished, and privately resolved to come back when he wasn’t on a mission.

  Two down. They were halfway done and it wasn’t even luncheon yet.

  Office number three presented a bit of a challenge. There was a man at the door and it was clear he was there to keep out interlopers. They both eyed the fellow from a distance, Scotty frowning furiously. “I dunno,” he said, finally. “This ’un—”

  “Got it!” Stubbins crowed in triumph, looking at something or someone just past Scotty’s shoulder. He darted out before Scotty could say anything; Scotty turned to see a youngish man burdened with a huge pile of books and papers coming towards the guarded door. In a flash, Scotty knew what was going to happen—

  And it did. Stubbins rushed past the young man, brushing up against him just closely enough to knock his burden out of his hands, but not so closely that he ran into the fellow. He kept going as the pile toppled to the floor, as if he was in such a hurry he couldn’t be bothered to look back.

  Scotty ran out to lend the man a hand. They commiserated on the rudeness of some people, Scotty piled up his arms full of papers and files again, and they parted. Except, of course, the young man now had the third copy of Nina’s file in the stack he was so carefully balancing.

  Number four was absurdly easy. They arrived just about luncheon-time, and everyone that could was running out for a bite. Scotty merely walked up to the wall of file cabinets, found the drawer for “T,” and inserted Nina’s file between “Titian” and “Toulouse.”

  Their work done, they escaped into the sunshine outside, ambling away with their hands in their pockets as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Only when they were well away from the building did they look at one another and burst out laughing.

  “Thenkee, Mr. Holmes,” Scotty said, doffing an imaginary hat.

  “Thenkee, Mr. Raffles,” Stubbins replied with glee. “Now! About them ices!”

  “Reckon we earned ’em, don’t you?” Scotty replied.

  Stubbins nodded. “Reckon we did.”

  21

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you all here,” said Alan Grainger, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

  Jonathon, who knew exactly why the young Water Master had called them all together—because the cat had told him—did his best to keep any tone of smugness out of his voice. “Didn’t find our Earth-Mage, eh?” he said instead, in as neutral a tone as possible. But he couldn’t help but gloat inside. So the young genius hadn’t had any more luck than his elders! Hard not to feel a bit sorry for him, especially when he looked at Ninette and flushed. Poor lad wanted to impress the lovely little dancer, and who could blame him?

  “I’m afraid not,” Alan replied, crestfallen. “Whoever this is, he’s infernally clever, and I mean that almost literally. He set traps for us, and they weren’t the things intended to catch and perhaps harm us either. If we had been gulled by his deceptions, what we did would have hurt perfectly innocent people—well, not perfectly innocent, they were actually rather vile.” He flushed a deeper crimson. “But they were innocent of any wrongdoing towards us.”

  “A good job you were being cautious, then,” Arthur said in an attempt to console him. “At least we won’t have that on our consciences.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t find him, and Mademoiselle is still in danger.” He rubbed one temple. “I’m not used to failing.”

  Jonathon snorted. “Then you aren’t trying things that are challenging enough.”

  To his surprise and Alan’s obvious chagrin, Ninette nodded. “The more and harder things you attempt, the more you will fail. You are only guaranteed not to fail if you do not try. C’est las vie.”

  “We have all failed at this one, Alan,” Nigel pointed out. “Whoever this is, he’s a step ahead of us.”

  “He certainly was this time,” the young man said glumly, and began to outline just what it was he had discovered.

  That was when Jonathon’s head literally came up like a dog catching a scent. “Damnation!” he swore. “This is not just a trap. He’s misdirecting us!”

  “Like in one of your illusions?” Ninette asked, brows creased in a thoughtful frown.

  “Exactly. He wants us to look for him using magic. He wants us to waste our time doing so. And meanwhile, he
is doing something else! But what?” Jonathon grimaced. “What is it that he doesn’t want us to see?”

  “Whatever it is,” Wolf observed, “it can’t be good.”

  “He doesn’t want us to see him, or rather, to find him.” Nigel rose from his chair and began to pace. “The question is—”

  And then he stopped, and a look of surprise mixed with annoyance spread over his face. “Good gad. We’ve been making a fundamental error here. All along we’ve been operating on the assumption that whoever this is first attacked Mademoiselle with a storm and sank her yacht.”

  “Nom du nom!” Ninette exclaimed. “That was all a fabrication! It is the red fish!”

  “Red herring,” Arthur corrected absently. “Exactly. So when we remove that from our puzzle, we need to know when the real attacks date from. And are they centered on Mademoiselle after all? It could just be coincidence, or it could be she was attacked just because she was vulnerable. We might not be looking for an enemy of Nina’s; we might just be looking for an enemy of Nigel’s.”

  “I haven’t stirred up any trouble that I know of,” Nigel said slowly. “But then again, neither has Ninette any magically gifted enemies. But at least we know where to start looking for mine.”

  “And what to look for.” Jonathon pursed his lips. “For that matter, the first attack that we definitely know of came after I had arrived. I might be the one that this magician seeks to ruin. And I must say I have made a considerable number of enemies over the years. I am not an easy man to get along with, and I do not suffer fools.”

  “Surely not—” Nigel interjected, and then stopped. “No, you are correct, old friend.”

  He began paging through a little book he kept, separate from the larger daybook in which he scheduled acts and noted things down about the day’s events in the theater. He had the daybook open too. He looked up.

  “Do you suppose—when Harrigan broke his leg, do you think that could have been the first attack?”

  All of them stared at him. It was Jonathon that spoke first. “Didn’t Mrs. Harrigan say that the street just opened up in front of him?”

  Nigel nodded, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Well then, that was the first attack, and it not only came after you joined us, it came after I began letting information on our planned productions get out.”

  “It does seem to point to the notion that this is an enemy of yours, Nigel,” Wolf put in thoughtfully. But then Jonathon saw Alan brighten.

  “There is no reason to think that this enemy might have been covering his tracks quite so effectively that far back is there?” he asked eagerly.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Nigel regarded the young man shrewdly. “I take it you have a notion?”

  “If you know where that hole was, I can probably read what happened in the past,” Alan said with a look of determination. Jonathon whistled.

  “I don’t know of more than one or two Masters that can do that.” He was impressed in spite of himself. But Alan only shrugged.

  “It’s usually more in the line of a clairvoyant rather than a magician, but Water is uniquely suited to scrying,” he replied diffidently. “It’s more the aptness of the element rather than any virtue on my part.”

  “Well I think you are very clever to have thought of it!” Ninette said, looking at the young man with admiration. Jonathon scowled a little.

  “Will we have to go there?” the Fire Master demanded. “Because that could be deuced awkward even at night. When you start performing magic in the middle of a public thoroughfare, people tend to look at you askance.”

  “It’s not that obvious,” Alan replied, “But I do need the exact spot—”

  Jonathon rolled his eyes and growled a little, but agreed to take him to the spot. “I will come too!” Ninette insisted. “If need be I can make the distraction.”

  “You are already a distraction,” Jonathon grumbled, but he knew better than to order her to stay behind. She wouldn’t obey him and it wasn’t as if he had the right to issue commands to her anyway. So the three of them went out into the afternoon—which threatened rain again—as Jonathon led them to the place where the so-called “sinkhole” had been a wonder and a nuisance.

  It was filled in now, but that didn’t seem to matter to Alan, who looked around to make sure no one was near enough to notice what he was about to do, then pulled a watch out of his pocket along with a small flask, opened the watch so that the cover-plate was resting on his palm, then poured a tiny bit of water into the little dish that the cover made.

  Ninette stationed herself in front of him. Looking up at him as if they were having a conversation. Seeing what she was doing, as Alan began to mutter to his little pool of water, Jonathon interposed himself between Alan and the street, his tall form making an effective screen. Anyone who saw them now would only think it was three friends having a peculiarly intense conversation.

  Jonathon, of course, could not see what it was that Alan was doing, but he caught some words in a variant of Gaelic that sounded very old indeed.

  Alan made a small sound of triumph and spilled the water out of his watch onto the ground. He watched it intensely for a moment, then nodded. “Feel up to a trek?” he asked the two of them, raising his eyes. “I can follow the disturbance in the Water-magic back to the source, I think.”

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Jonathon observed. “But we should send Mademoiselle back to the theater.”

  She opened her mouth to protest. He gave her one of those looks that she had learned meant she was going to get nowhere in arguing with him. Then, as he had learned to do around her, he told her why.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said, in a quiet, firm voice, “we do not know what sorts of neighborhoods we may be going through. I am sure you can defend yourself against a single man, or even two, but we might be set upon by a gang. And someone has to tell Nigel that Alan has succeeded in wringing something from the stones, and is off on the hunt.”

  Alan was casting entreating looks at her , but she did not look away from Jonathon’s eyes. “All right,” she replied. “Those are good reasons.”

  She nodded agreement, but before she could turn to go, Thomas had his own say.

  I will be staying with you, the cat put in. You might need another messenger. You might need for someone to get in at a second-story window.

  “So that you can tear a room apart?” Jonathon snorted. “I think you were an anarchist in a previous life.”

  Not likely. And I wouldn’t have done that if we hadn’t needed to cover what we’d stolen.

  “I think there has been enough of arguing. Take Thomas, please, Jonathon.” Ninette said firmly.

  He gave her a firm look. “And what if you should run into difficulties?”

  She laughed. “Going back to the theater in broad daylight? Really, I am not so helpless as all that!”

  He considered how far she had come with that pistol of hers, and nodded reluctantly. “Just take care.”

  They parted at the corner, and Jonathon was relieved to see her summon a cab and step into it before he and Alan had moved from their spot. In fact, he let out his breath in a sigh of relief. He should have realized she would be sensible. After all, it was by no means clear that the enemy was actually after Nigel and not her.

  He turned to see that Alan was watching him with a very odd expression, as if the young man had only now realized something—thought what that something could be, Jonathon had no idea.

  “That is a remarkable lady,” Alan murmured.

  “Remarkable in that she has more sense than most women,” Jonathon replied, wondering what had brought that remark on.

  Yes, yes, yes indeed, Ninette is a fine creature. Now shall we get on with what we came out here to do? the cat asked in irritation.

  “This is going to be aggravating for both of you,” Alan said sheepishly. “I have to follow the watercourses, so I will have to go afoot and will probably lead you on a very meandering course indeed—”


  “As long as you actually lead us on something, I do not much care,” said Jonathon, then softened his tone. He hadn’t meant to sound so gruff. “Every Master works within the bounds of his own Element, and I would hardly expect you to conform to a Fire Master’s ways. Lead on.”

  Alan nodded, and the odd little procession moved off.

  Alan had not exaggerated. He did lead them on a course that was more akin to a cow wandering a pasture than anyone going directly towards something. From time to time he stopped, pulled out his watch, and allowed a little weight attached to the chain to dangle—Jonathon watched it, though, and watched Alan watching it, and knew within moments of the first pause what Alan was doing.

  He was dowsing, that most ancient of means to find water. The pendulum would swing in the direction that they needed to go, and Alan would put the watch in his vest pocket and set off again.

  Now normally one dowsed for water. Jonathon thought to himself that Alan was actually dowsing for the direction of the absence of water. Or rather, of Water Magic. And he was doing it, not in the present, but in the past. He had found the place in time when what was now a repaired sinkhole had been created. With that mark to guide him, he was following the path of that magic, by tracing where it had in essence shoved everything out of its way in passing.

  This was a tour de force that Jonathon knew he would never have been able to duplicate.

  He’s good, isn’t he? Jonathon sensed that the cat was “speaking” for his “ears” only.

  Remarkably so, Jonathon thought back at the cat. I was skeptical—I’m not anymore. Even if— But he did not finish that thought, which would have been, “Even if Ninette does seem to enjoy his company more than I like.”

  Well no one can be a young genius forever, the cat said with amusement. If nothing else, young geniuses become old geniuses, and a newer, younger genius is always coming up, nipping at his heels. Being in those shoes is somewhat less than comfortable.

  Their journey took them long enough that Jonathon’s feet were beginning to hurt. He was by no means used to walking great distances; he was, after all, a city dweller, and men of his class took cabs. They would certainly need to take a cab back to the theater to be in time for the first performance. But just when he was about to ask Alan how much longer he thought this would be, Alan looked up and gave an exclamation of mingled triumph and disappointment. Jonathon looked in the direction he was gazing and saw—