A Matter of Magic

by Patricia C. Wrede

  “Did you?” Mairelon’s expression was closed; she hadn’t ever seen him quite like this before. Not knowing how to respond, Kim said nothing.

  “Very sensible of you,” Lady Wendall put in approvingly.

  “I must entirely disagree,” Mrs. Lowe said. “Running ‘errands’ at this hour of the morning is plainly an excuse. I insist that Kim explain—”

  “Aunt.” Mairelon’s voice was quite level and not very loud, but Mrs. Lowe broke off in mid-sentence and looked at him. In the same level tone, he continued, “My apprentice and ward will explain to me immediately after breakfast. I trust that is clear?”

  “As you wish,” Mrs. Lowe replied stiffly.

  Kim finished her meal quickly in the uncomfortable silence that followed. “I’m done,” she said.

  Mairelon rose. “Then you can explain yourself to me in the library.” He waited only long enough to see Kim nod before he left the room.

  She caught up with him on the stairs and followed him into the library. As soon as the door closed behind them, he said, “Well?”

  “I went to Mannering’s office.”

  “What? Are you mad? Didn’t you think at all? If Mannering is behind this—”

  “I thought for most of the night,” Kim said, and looked at Mairelon apologetically. “I saw right off that Mannering was in this somewhere, but I didn’t think you had yet.”

  “Then why didn’t you mention it?”

  Kim hesitated. “Because I was worried you’d go off and do something goose-witted,” she owned at last. “You’ve done it before.”

  Mairelon stared at her in silence for a moment. “Not after I said I wouldn’t,” he said at last.

  “When—” Kim stopped. He’d promised her, when she’d come back from seeing Tom Correy two weeks before, that he wouldn’t go investigating Mannering without talking to her first. She hadn’t remembered . . . but she hadn’t remembered because, she realized, she hadn’t really believed that he would hold to his promise now that the situation had changed so radically. “I forgot,” she said lamely, and then, looking down at her hands, she added, “Nobody ever—I never knew anybody before that . . . that would do that. Not with something this big, not when it was only somethin’ they said to me.”

  “I see.” Mairelon’s voice had lost its coldness; he sounded torn between amusement and some other emotion she couldn’t identify. After a moment, he went on lightly, “So to keep me from doing something goose-witted, you did it yourself. Why? And why in heaven’s name didn’t you at least tell me what you were planning?”

  The bantering tone didn’t fool Kim; she could hear the hurt underneath the lightness. She turned away and said to the monkey cage, “I had to do something. You looked . . . you were . . . I just had to do something, that’s all. And I didn’t say because I was afraid you’d stop me. I can see now I should of trusted you, but—Well, I never had nobody I could trust like that before. I’m not used to it.”

  There was a long silence. Kim wiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. After a long time, Mairelon said, “Anybody you could trust. Not ‘nobody.’ ” His voice sounded hoarse.

  “Anybody,” Kim repeated. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m afraid I have to apologize as well,” Mairelon said. She turned to find him looking at her with an expression she could not interpret. “I didn’t mention Mannering for the same reason you didn’t—because I didn’t want you haring off after him. I forgot that you hadn’t promised anyone not to.”

  “Well, I won’t do it again,” Kim said.

  “Good.” Mairelon hesitated. “I suppose you’ve thought of the possible connection to your friend Ma Yanger, as well?”

  Kim licked her lips. “First thing last night, practically.”

  “Well.” Mairelon looked down, and for a brief moment his expression was grim. Then he shook his head and said, “Well, then, how was your little visit with Mannering?”

  “He wasn’t there,” Kim said. “Looks like he took all his valuables and piked off in the middle of the night.”

  Mairelon stared at her, then sat down very slowly in one of the reading, chairs. “Gone, is he? Now that is interesting. I wonder why?”

  “I been—I have been thinking about that,” Kim said. “What if he doesn’t know that you’re the one he caught in that spell? If he thinks it was me—”

  “—then he’d have expected a very angry wizard in his office bright and early in the morning, and he didn’t think he could handle it,” Mairelon said. He gave Kim a rueful grin. “He appears to have been quite right, too, though perhaps not in exactly the way he’d been thinking.”

  “He left some notes in his desk,” Kim said, and began pulling them out of her reticule. “They look like bits of spell diagrams and such, but I can’t read half of them.”

  “You’re right,” Mairelon said, glancing at the drawings. “Someone was experimenting.” He squinted at one of the scribbled notes and frowned. “This looks as if it could be part of a spell chant, but—”

  “But?”

  “It’s in English.”

  Kim stared at him. “But if the spell is in English, it won’t work right for an English wizard,” she said at last.

  “Exactly.” Mairelon tapped the note. “Now, if you don’t mind, tell me just what happened during your visit to Mannering’s offices this morning, and then we’ll go through these a little more carefully.”

  16

  It took Kim some time to give Mairelon the precise account he wanted. He did not interrupt, but listened with a bemused expression, sorting Mannering’s notes into two neat piles as Kim talked. When she finished, he shook his head.

  “None of this adds up properly,” he said. “You say Mannering isn’t a wizard, and is certainly English, but he has a drawer full of magical diagrams and spell bits that no English wizard could use. We have a Russian wizard nice and handy, but he can’t possibly have cast those spells last night—not with you, me, and Renée standing right next to him. One of us would have noticed. We have a mystery wizard who is willing to waste power in prodigious amounts in order to get hold of a useless livre de mémoire, and a singularly inept burglar who seems to be, in his better moments, a gentleman of sorts. And we have a batch of untrained criminal wizards who, for no reason anyone knows, have suddenly forsaken their independent ways and gone to work for Mannering—except for one, who first gave up or lost her magic and then vanished completely under suspicious circumstances. It doesn’t fit.”

  And none of it looks like it’s helping to get your magic back. “I could have a talk with Jemmy or Wags,” Kim offered, but Mairelon was shaking his head before she even finished speaking.

  “No. I’ll ask Shoreham to have his people look into it. It’s not, strictly speaking, part of the business of the Ministry, but he owes me a favor or two, and I think he’ll do it.” He eyed Mannering’s notes thoughtfully. “I’ll take these with me when I visit Shoreham later, if you don’t mind. He may have a few more ideas.”

  “If I don’t mind?” Kim said, astonished.

  Mairelon gave her a crooked smile. “You’re the one who went and got them.”

  Kim could only nod her assent.

  “Meanwhile, I think it would be advisable to make a copy.” Mairelon handed her the stack of diagrams. “You do these; I’ll see what I can make of the others.”

  They set to work, side by side at the table. Mindful of the need for accuracy, Kim worked with painstaking care, duplicating even the lines that looked to be accidents or scribbles before she turned the paper face down to go on to the next one. On the third page, she turned the note over and stopped. “Mairelon. This one has writing on the back.”

  Mairelon looked over. “So it does. Let’s see—” He stopped abruptly, frowning at the writing.

  “What is it?” Kim said, peering down at it. The writing was, like that of the other notes, nearly illegible, and there were circles and arrows and check marks on top of it that made it even harder to
puzzle out.

  “It’s a list of names,” Mairelon said. “French names.”

  “Not those wizards Mademoiselle D’Auber was telling us about?” Kim guessed.

  “Right the first time,” Mairelon said. “But there are only six of them. Monsieur László Karolyi, Mademoiselle Jeannette Lepain—that one is circled—the Comtesse Eustacie de Beauvoix, the Comte Louis du Franchard—he’s circled them, too, and there’s a check mark next to the comte’s name—Madame Marie de Cambriol—circled, but no check mark—and the Duchesse Camille Delagardie.”

  Kim ran quickly through her memory of their conversation with Renée D’Auber. “It’s missing Henri d’Armand.”

  “Yes.”

  “But what does it mean?” Kim said in frustration.

  “I don’t know.” Mairelon looked down at the page, and a muscle by the corner of his mouth spasmed briefly. “But it’s the first real evidence we have that Mannering is connected with our bits-and-pieces wizard—the one who was after the de Cambriol book.”

  And the one that set that trap. Kim scowled at the papers. “Well, it doesn’t help much.”

  “It’s something.” Still studying the pages intently, Mairelon said, “Let’s finish this, and then we’ll see what Shoreham has to say.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, of course.” Mairelon did not look at her. “He’ll want to hear about your visit to Mannering’s office, and it will be better if you’re there to tell him in person. And there may be . . . other things.”

  Kim’s startled comments died on her lips as she realized belatedly just what “other things” Mairelon was referring to. Spells. If the Earl of Shore-ham had anything to recommend, or needed a second wizard to help with any test he wanted to run, someone besides Mairelon would have to be there to do it. And Mairelon would want it to be someone who already knew of his . . . difficulties, which meant either Lady Wendall or Kim.

  Feeling more than a little nervous, Kim nodded and returned to her copying. Edward, Earl of Shoreham, wasn’t just another toff; he was one of the top men at the government’s Ministry of Wizardry, head of a semiclandestine department that was responsible for a great deal of intelligence gathering by both magical and nonmagical methods. He was the one who had persuaded Mairelon to do all of his spying on the French during the last few years of the war. Kim had only met him twice before: once, when he had turned up during the recovery of the Saltash Set, and once a few weeks later, after she and Mairelon had returned to London. Shoreham was, unquestionably, a right knowing one, and though he did not seem to dislike her, he made her uneasy nonetheless.

  But when they finished making their copies and arrived at the Ministry of Wizardry with Mannering’s original notes, they found that Shore-ham was not there. “Gone down to Brighton to meet one of our chaps coming in on the packet,” the secretary, an earnest young man, said. “He should be back tomorrow.”

  “Tell him we’ll be by at ten o’clock,” Mairelon said.

  “He’s meeting with the minister then,” the secretary replied, checking a book lying open on the desk.

  “Eleven, then,” Mairelon snapped, and left in more of a temper than Kim could ever recall seeing him in before.

  Their visit to the Royal College was slightly less frustrating—Lord Kerring was there, and though he was deeply immersed in some magical project that Kim did not quite understand, he set it aside at once when he heard that Mairelon was in need of help. After hearing their story, he studied the spell affecting Mairelon from several angles, but then shook his head.

  “There’s nothing I can do about this today. I need an analysis, and from what you say, the standard spell is . . . inadvisable.” Lord Kerring scratched his bushy beard. “I’ll have to design something that works less invasively than the usual methods.”

  “How long will it take?” Mairelon said.

  “Hard to say,” Kerring replied. “I know you’re in a hurry, and I don’t blame you, but . . . some things, you just can’t rush. I’ll send you word as soon as I have something feasible, but don’t expect it before next week. And it might be longer. It depends on how tricky the interlocks turn out to be.”

  Mairelon nodded; from the quality of his silence on the ride home, Kim concluded that he had been hoping for a quick solution. When they arrived back at Grosvenor Square, Mrs. Lowe informed them that they had had several visitors in their absence.

  “The Marquis of Harsfeld was among them,” she said with a significant look at Kim.

  “Lord Franton?” Kim said. “He did tell me he was going to call, but I didn’t think he meant right away.”

  “When he discovered that you were from home, he did not stay,” Mrs. Lowe said. “I trust that he will have better fortune on his next visit.”

  Mairelon frowned. “Who else did we miss?” he said abruptly.

  “Your French friend, Miss D’Auber,” Mrs. Lowe replied. “She said that she wished to see how you did. I cannot think where she could have gotten the impression that you were unwell.”

  “She may have mistaken something I said last night,” Mairelon said.

  Mrs. Lowe nodded, satisfied. “I told her it must be some misunderstanding.”

  “Did she say anything else?” Kim asked, hoping to turn the subject before Mrs. Lowe accidentally precipitated a crisis.

  “She mentioned that she overheard the Marquis of Harsfeld tell Lady Greythorne that you were even more charming in person than from afar,” Mrs. Lowe said. “I am pleased that you managed to make such a good impression last night, though it would have been far better had you been here to receive him when he called today. Oh, and there has apparently been something of a rash of thefts and burglaries lately.”

  “Really?” Mairelon was suddenly all attention. “Did Renée say who, or when?”

  “Someone stole a painting from Mr. Winton’s library last week, and Lord Bancroft and his wife lost an urn that had been in the family for several generations, though it was only silver plate. That was Monday. And last night, someone broke in at the George.”

  “Someone tried to rob a hotel?” Kim said incredulously.

  “It does seem a bit unusual,” Mairelon said.

  “It’s a mug’s game,” Kim told him. “People who’re putting up at hotels don’t cart their silver along with them, and if they’ve got jewels, they’re out wearing them at night. And there’s the hotel staff, as well as everybody’s servants, so there’s at least three times as many people to avoid. Milling a gentry ken is a lot safer, and they’re not exactly easy marks.”

  “Kim,” Mrs. Lowe said reprovingly, “you really must be more careful about your language. Those . . . cant terms are simply not suitable in polite company.”

  “I wonder what the cracksman took,” Mairelon said.

  “Miss D’Auber didn’t say,” Mrs. Lowe replied stiffly, frowning at him.

  “Pity. Kim, I’ll want to see you in the library after lunch; we’ve a good deal of work to do if we’re to have that illusion ready for your ball.” And with an absent nod, Mairelon escaped up the stairs, leaving Kim with his aunt.

  Kim had expected the rest of the day to be quiet, but she was quickly disabused of that notion. Mairelon had not been joking when he said they had a lot of work to do to prepare for the illusion spell, and most of the work was Kim’s. Fortunately, Lady Wendall could take over some of Mairelon’s part, but there were limits to what she could accomplish from the sidelines without letting it become obvious to everyone that it was she, and not her son, who was assisting Kim with her come-out illusion. The additional parts fell to Kim, and she burned candles late into the evening trying to memorize them all.

  Promptly at eleven the next morning, she and Mairelon were at the Ministry of Wizardry once again. The Earl of Shoreham did not keep them waiting long. “I suppose you’re here about those French wizards again,” he said to Mairelon as they found seats in his office.

  “Not directly,” Mairelon said. “There have been developments.”
r />   “With you, there are always developments,” Lord Shoreham said, amused.

  “Someone seems to have developed themselves right into my magic, and me out of it,” Mairelon said with an unsuccessful attempt at lightness.

  “What? Richard, you don’t seriously mean—” Lord Shoreham looked at Mairelon, and his amusement vanished, replaced by concern. “You’d better start at the beginning. What has this got to do with your French wizards?”

  “If I knew that, I’d be considerably farther along than I am now,” Mairelon said testily. “The beginning, so far as I know, was an inept burglar who tried to steal a book from my brother’s library. Kim heard him in process, and interrupted before he got what he was after. The book was a livre de mémoire written by a French wizard named Marie de Cambriol and rather grandiosely titled Le Livre de Sept Sorciers, and so far as I’ve been able to tell, there’s no reason at all why anyone would want to get hold of it.

  “Last week someone had another go at it while Kim and Mother and I were at the opera. He used a scrying spell to make certain we were away from home, and then put together a sort of summoning-cumlevitation to bring the book to him. He failed mainly because he didn’t have sense enough to find out which side of the house the library was on before he cast his spell; according to my aunt, the book spent half an hour trying to batter through a wall when it could have nipped through one of the windows and been gone.”

  “Amateur work, then?” Shoreham said.

  “Possibly. There was a lot of power behind the spell, but it was very badly balanced; it fell apart almost immediately when I tried to analyze it. I’d guess self-taught, or foreign, or both.”

  “Ah.” Shoreham leaned back in his chair. “Go on.”

  “The spell reminded Kim of an old . . . acquaintance of hers that lives up by the Charterhouse, a Ma Yanger.”

  Shoreham nodded. “One of the rookery witches. She’s one of the canny ones—we have reason to think she turns an occasional spell for some of the professional thieves, but she’s been careful enough that we haven’t caught her at it. Most of her trade is minor household-level magic—removing corns, easing aches, the odd love spell. Some of it is the genuine article, but a good deal of it is mere sham.”