Steadfast (24 page)

She couldn’t have moved if it had set her on fire.

Finally its head rose a little, and it looked down at her through multi-faceted eyes,
greater jewels within the bejeweled head.

“You are worthy,”
it said, then opened its mouth.

Rather than a gout of flames, the raging inferno she had half expected, what came
from its mouth was a sort of gentle cloud of white fire, a cloud that settled over
her, making her skin tingle, leaving her feeling a hundred times more alive than she
ever had before.

“You are blessed with the breath of the dragon,”
the creature whispered.
“Care for my children, and you will always be so blessed. Protect my children, and
you will always be protected.”

The great wings came around and cupped over her, feeling like a benediction.

Then the white dragon spread its wings wide, and flung itself into the sky, or what
passed for sky here, somehow managing to take off without disturbing a hair on her
head.

And that was when she woke up.

She lay there for a long, long time as the morning sun shone in her window, trying
to work out if that had just been an unusually vivid dream or if it had actually been
something real—even though it clearly didn’t take place in the real world that she
knew.

A little bit of brightness caught her eye, and she turned her head to see a salamander
standing on her pillow, staring at her.

Would it—?

Well, why not ask?

“Did I just dream all that?” she asked it.

Slowly, gravely, it shook its head from side to side.

“There really was a dragon?” she breathed, hardly able to believe it.

It nodded.

“And it—”

The salamander nodded vigorously, then rubbed its cheek against hers and turned three
times and vanished.

She slowly sat up, and touched her cheek where the salamander had caressed her like
a tiny cat.

“Well,” she said aloud. “I never.”

12

���W
ELL . . .” said Jack, as soon as Katie had left. “I told her Peggy had let the cat
out of the bag, and she didn’t hit me with your mother’s precious toby jug.”

“And a good thing too, or my sainted mother would probably haunt you for the rest
of your days.” Lionel’s eyes rested for a moment on the “precious toby jug,” a piece
of unremarkable china-work that stood about four inches high, shaped like the late
Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. The handle was a banner proclaiming the
Great Exhibition of London in 1851. It had been his mother’s pride, for she had gotten
it as a treasured bridal souvenir from her new husband on the occasion of her honeymoon
in London to view that same Great Exhibition. For some reason, his mother had been
as sentimental about Prince Albert as the Queen herself had been. Hanging on the wall
all of his life, there had been a portrait of Albert with a printed black wreath around
it, and a black ribbon on top of the frame. The toby jug had been the centerpiece
of the china cabinet. As a child, the damned thing had frightened Lionel with its
blank, staring eyes that always seemed to be looking at you no matter where you were,
and it had haunted his dreams. He was just grateful it had always been kept in the
china cabinet and that it wasn’t any larger than it was.

For some reason, Mrs. Buckthorn had taken an irrational liking to it, and had placed
it in pride-of-place in the drawing room.
I should just give it to her for Christmas,
Lionel decided in a fit of inspiration.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Mother would like that, she only left it to me because
I didn’t have children to break it.
Mrs. Buckthorn would cherish the wretched thing and pass it on to someone
else
who would cherish it. Possibly one of the small herd of married daughters she had.

“Are you actually listening to me, or has that jug got you mesmerized again?” Jack
asked.

Lionel shook himself out of the woolgathering he was doing about the toby jug and
turned his attention back to Jack. “Katie actually took what I had to say to her very
well,” Jack said. “I think perhaps we’ve been underestimating her. She’s got better
control of her feelings than I did at that age.”

“She’s had to,” Lionel felt compelled to point out. “Brutes like that beast of a husband
take any sort of display of emotion the way a bull reacts to a red rag. It’s a sign
to attack.”

Jack nodded, and Lionel wondered if he should take that as an opening to ask about—well—the
hand-holding. It might have been perfectly innocent. It might have been fatherly,
or meant to comfort. He doubted it, but it might have been.

But, as usual, Jack shot right past Lionel’s hesitation and went straight to the mark.
He sighed, and his whole expression softened, and he smiled. “Once we got past her
husband, I asked her. She’s going to have me, Lionel. Once she’s free, she’s going
to have me.”

Lionel would have asked a regular fellow if this wasn’t more than a bit sudden—but
he knew, as every Elemental Magician knew, that when two magicians were right for
each other, there was no such thing as “more than a bit sudden.” People who weren’t
magicians could pother and hesitate, and beat around as many bushes as they liked—and
decide, in the end, to break it off. Magicians
knew.
Maybe not right from the moment that they met, but the more time together they spent,
the more they were drawn together until it became a literal force of nature that it
took a great deal to break. He’d heard of magicians who’d met for the first time on
a weekend, and by midweek were in Gretna Green getting married, having no patience
for the few weeks it would take to post banns and get a license as most people did.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said, lightly. “When you two get married, I won’t lose
the best assistant I’ve ever had.”

Jack barked a startled laugh. “You selfish git!” he replied, mostly in jest, though
with a hint of irritation. “Is that all you can say? Here I’ve gone for
years,
thinking no woman would ever want to be saddled with a cripple, then I find the dearest,
sweetest girl in the world,
and
she’s a Fire Magician,
and
she wants me, and all you can think about is that you won’t lose your assistant?”

“It’s not me she’s marrying,” Lionel pointed out, and laughed. “Oh, congratulations,
old man. Where would you like to go for a honeymoon? A nice volcano, like Vesuvius?
That should suit a couple of fire magicians.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Jack growled. “First we’ve got to get her free. Of course,
since she’s said she’ll have me . . .” A shrewd expression crept over his face. “She
can’t object to my helping her with that divorce of hers. I’ve got a nice packet put
away for a rainy day. I shan’t mind spending it to make a sunny one come faster.”

“I’m just a trifle concerned that she’s living in that boarding house, though, Jack,”
Lionel said, interrupting whatever thoughts he was having. “She’s very new to the
power and she’s coming on it very fast. If there should be an accident—all those girls—”

Jack’s expression became serious immediately. “Good Gad, I never thought of that.
You’re right, of course. Things popped up around me all the time when I came into
my power, but of course, my father was there to keep them under control, and my mother
couldn’t have seen them if they’d danced in front of her nose. But who knows which
of those girls there has just enough of the magic to be able to get a glimpse of such
things? Particularly if they’re feeling curious.”

“I’m not so concerned with things that people
can’t
see, but there are some that people
can,”
Lionel replied, and poured them both a brandy. “Fire sprites, for instance, who are
having no qualms about turning up on stage with her! What if one decides to go exploring
other rooms?”

“Well, how do we get her to move out?” Jack came straight to that point, and it was
a good one. “She’s comfortable, she’s happy, and she’s well-cared for. More to the
point, the lodging is cheap, and she is trying to save every penny.”

“We make up the difference, and don’t tell her.” Lionel had already made up his mind
at this point. “We just tell her about accidents, let her own imagination work for
a bit, then tell her we found a little furnished house for her at the same rate Mrs.
Baird charges. The drawback will be she’ll have to cook and do for herself. The advantage
will be she won’t have to be back by a certain hour in order to eat or face possibly
being locked out. And her Elementals will be able to prowl without sending a house
full of girls out into the street, thinking the place is about to burn down.”

“How will we—” Jack began.

Lionel just waved at him. “I’ll deal with that part. My banker found this house, he
can find me another. Besides, once we convince
her,
it’ll be three magicians with the same goal again. Remember what happened the last
time.”

Jack sucked on his lower lip. “A bit frightening how fast it happened, actually,”
he pointed out.

“All the better in this case. Now,” Lionel said firmly. “I thought there was a certain
weakness in the way she was handling her shields, but I’m not the Fire Mage . . .”

•   •   •

When Katie came down to breakfast, she found the table full of girls jabbering away
at a much higher volume than usual. One of the girls was full of stories about “a
dreadful little thing with eyes like fire!” that had looked at her out of the fireplace.
Half of the others wanted to hear all about it, the other half were making fun of
her. Finally Mrs. Baird herself put a stop to all the jabber.

“There has never been a haunt in my house,” she said, firmly. “And there never will
be while I’m in it! You, Miss Jenny—you were eating nothing but jam sandwiches last
night at supper, and I saw you!”

Shamefaced, but a little bewildered, Jenny confessed that was exactly what she had
been doing.

“Well then,” Mrs. Baird said, sternly. “It’s no wonder you was seeing things and having
bad dreams, stuffing yourself with sweet things before bed! You’ll be leaving off
the jam at night, if that’s what’s going to happen to you.”

Hastily, Jenny promised that she wouldn’t stuff herself with jam before going to bed,
and Mrs. Baird subsided. But—a thing in the fireplace with fiery eyes? Katie was altogether
too certain of what that was, and it rather alarmed her. Why would one of her salamanders
or sprites go wandering out of her room—and how was it that Jenny had been able to
see it?

She finished her breakfast quickly, then went early to the hall, and caught Jack just
as he was unlocking for the day, before anyone else was around.

“One of the girls saw one of my Elementals last night,” she said urgently, before
he’d even had a chance to greet her. “How could that happen? And why? And—”

“Slowly, Kate,” he cautioned her, nodding toward one of the stagehands coming toward
them from the alley. “This might be a better topic for later.”

She hated to put it off, but he was right, and she knew it. So she retreated to her
dressing room and comforted herself with the certainty that if Jack hadn’t gotten
alarmed, he certainly knew what was going on, and he certainly knew what she should
do about it.

The rehearsals went smoothly, although now that the dance act had been established,
Charlie predictably wanted to muck about with it to make it more “peppy,” and fussed
about looking at the dances from every angle in the hall. Finally though, everyone
broke for luncheon, and Lionel told Charlie that “If you don’t stop flapping about
like a meddling old crow, I am going to turn you into one.”

Fortunately, at that point, Mrs. Charlie, who had turned up to run
her
eyes over the new act (and, Katie suspected, make sure Charlie didn’t have an unprofessional
interest in the dancer in question) decreed that if Charlie didn’t take her out for
luncheon that minute, she was going to go shopping.

That was threat enough to make Charlie cut the session short, and finally Lionel,
Jack, and Katie were able to descend to the workroom and what privacy there was in
the hall.

They both listened to what she had to tell them without interruption. Lionel cleared
his throat when she was done.

“Well, the obvious reason this girl saw your Elemental was because she
could,”
he told her. “Some people have just a touch of magic, enough, when they’re in the
right frame of mind, to be able to see any Elementals that were about. She might have
been reading some penny-dreadful or a sensational novel full of ghosts and devils.
She might have been half awake, and thus susceptible. She might be accustomed to having
a drop or more of gin in secret before bed. It might even have been the fault of those
jam sandwiches.” He shrugged. “The main point here is not just that she saw your Elemental,
it’s that your Elementals clearly regard the whole of the boarding house as safe territory
to roam in, and not just your room. That means this might be the first time one has
been spotted, but it won’t be the last.”

Katie bit her lip; this wasn’t what she had wanted to hear. “But can’t I just explain
to them—” she began.

Jack shook his head. “I told you, they don’t think as we do. They understand walls
as boundaries, but not rooms within walls. Fire Elementals aren’t as flitty and forgetful
as Air are, but they probably won’t remember what you tell them other than ‘don’t
go past the wall.’ This is going to be a problem, Kate. It’s rather too likely that
at some point someone will see one, or a group, and decide the house has caught fire.
And you know what
that
will do.”

Oh, she certainly did. She felt the blood draining from her face. A house full of
young women fleeing in hysteria from a supposed fire? It would draw attention. The
one thing she didn’t want to do was to draw attention. Any attention. There might
be a photographer. Her picture might be taken. If it went in the paper, someone she
knew might see it.

Or someone who knew her might see her in the street in the hubbub. And then Dick would
inevitably find her.

And even if that didn’t happen, Mrs. Baird would start looking for an explanation.

And what if in the panic, someone tipped over a lamp or something and started a
real
fire?

Before she could ask what she could do, Jack was already speaking. “We actually talked
about this last night, Lionel and I,” he said. “What we’d like is for you to move
out and into a little house of your own. Lionel is sure his bank man can find something
cheap enough for you—and at that point, a lot of difficulties become easier. You won’t
have to worry about anyone spotting your Elementals for a start.”

“You also won’t have to worry about coming home too late and finding yourself locked
out,” said Lionel. “Come the fall and winter, if our acts are good enough, we sometimes
find ourselves hired out for parties after the second show. Those parties can be late—gents
that don’t work don’t have to worry about getting up in time to be at the shop or
office. They pay well, these parties, I can tell you that. The extra pay will let
you build up your fund faster.”