A Matter of Magic (19 page)

“Ah, well. Let’s have it, then.” Mairelon held out a hand expectantly.

Kim froze. “Uh—” She couldn’t tell him straight out that Renée D’Auber had set a spell on the letter, not with Freddy Meredith sitting there, but she couldn’t let him open it without warning him, either. “Sir, I, um—”

“Bailey didn’t write it down? I see.” Mairelon shoved his chair away from the table and rose, tossing his cards faceup as he did. Kim was relieved to see that there was nothing wrong with his balance or his speech; she had been afraid that he would be as bosky as his companion. “Sorry, Meredith, but duty calls.”

Meredith muttered something and began gathering up the coins
from the center of the table. Mairelon scooped his own winnings into his hand and thrust them into one of his pockets, then turned and followed Kim out of the room.

“That’s a relief!” he said as the door shut behind him. “I was wondering how to get out of there without winning too much from him. You caught on very quickly. Where’s Renée’s message?”

“Here.” Kim took the sealed paper out of her jacket. “She put a spell on it.”

“What? Nonsense! There’s no reason for her to do that.” Mairelon twitched the note out of Kim’s hand and reached for the seal. He stopped, frowning, and set his forefinger gently against the dull red wax. “You’re right, though,” he said after a moment’s concentration.

Kim let out her breath in a soundless sigh of relief. “Can you do anything about it?”

“Not here. We’ll have to take it back to the wagon.”

“You sure we should?”

Mairelon looked irritated. “There’s no other way to find out what she’s done. I’d also like to read whatever she’s written; that
is
why you went to Bramingham Place, after all.”

“I was just askin’.”

Mairelon tucked the note into his breast pocket and started for the door. “There’s no point in waiting. You can tell me what happened on the walk back. Come along.”

Kim rolled her eyes, shook her head, and followed.

Between Kim’s desire to include every detail of her journey to Bramingham Place and Mairelon’s periodic interruptions, Kim’s tale took up most of the walk to the wagon. Mairelon commended Kim for avoiding the Baron St. Clair and frowned over his strong resemblance to Dan Laverham, but Kim could see that he was not giving her his full attention. When she began to speak of Bramingham Place and Renée D’Auber, however, the magician’s preoccupation vanished. Kim found this extremely annoying until she noticed Mairelon’s right hand rise to touch his breast pocket
from time to time. He was more worried about that spell than he wanted to let on.

As soon as they reached the wagon, Mairelon began rummaging in the large chest. Kim sat on the floor beside the door and hugged her knees, watching with great interest. She was cold, tired, and very hungry, but she did not mention it. She was, after all, used to being cold, tired, and hungry, and if she said anything, Mairelon might remember she was there and send her away while he read Renée’s letter.

Mairelon laid a white silk scarf and a small crystal globe on the counter and closed the lid of the trunk. He turned and spread the scarf out, smoothing it carefully until not a wrinkle remained. He drew Renée D’Auber’s letter from his pocket and set it in the exact center of the scarf, with the blob of sealing wax facing him. Then he lifted the crystal globe with the tips of his fingers and set it on top of the letter. It showed a strong tendency to roll off the lumpy surface of the wax, but he got it positioned at last.

Finally he was satisfied. He raised his hands slowly and extended them, cupping them around the precariously balanced globe without touching it. He bent his head and began to whisper. The words hissed and sizzled in the confined space of the wagon, rough and saw-edged. Kim held her breath.

Orange light flared from the crystal globe, and Renée D’Auber’s voice filled the wagon. “My friend, there are things that you must know, and even this means of communication is not entirely safe. I will meet you two hours before the time I told your young companion, in the hollow below the oak hill southwest of Ranton Hill. Do not fail me in this.”

Slowly the orange light faded. Mairelon stood motionless, staring down into the crystal, even after the last of the light was gone. Kim twisted to get a better look at his face and realized that he was not looking at the globe in front of him. His eyes were focused on empty air, and he was frowning.

Kim cleared her throat, then cleared it again. Mairelon did not respond. At last she said loudly, “Hey! Is that all?”

“What?” Mairelon said, then shook his head and turned to look reproachfully at Kim. “Don’t ever interrupt a wizard in the middle of a
spell, Kim. Magic requires a great deal of concentration, and breaking it can be very dangerous.”

“I wasn’t interrupting a spell,” Kim said. “You were just thinkin’, far as I could see.”

Mairelon blinked and glanced at the crystal. Then he rolled it to one side and picked up Renée’s letter. He stood staring at it for a moment, tapping it gently against his left hand, until Kim was afraid he was going to go back into a brown study. She tried to clear her throat again and started coughing in earnest as she inhaled something the wrong way.

This attracted Mairelon’s full attention at last, though his first inclination was to proffer cups of water instead of explanations. As soon as Kim got her breath back, she pushed the cup away and demanded, “What was it that was takin’ you such a lot of thinkin’ on? You ain’t goin’ to meet that gentry mort like she says to, are you?”

“Meet Renée? Of course I’m going to,” Mairelon said. He looked down at the note, which he had still not read, and his frown returned. “I was just wondering why she chose that particular place.”

“What particular place?” Kim said, exasperated.

“The hollow by the oak hill where those ridiculous ‘druids’ had their ceremony the other night,” Mairelon said. “Feeling more the thing? Good, because we’re going to have a busy evening. I want to get a good look at that hollow while there’s still light, and after that—well, we’ll see. Come along.” He was out the door of the wagon before Kim could respond.

“Hunch ain’t goin’ to like this,” Kim muttered as she climbed to her feet.

“Isn’t,” Mairelon’s voice corrected. A moment later his head reappeared in the open doorway. “And since Hunch isn’t here, it doesn’t matter. Bring the lamp and the little sack in the corner; I may want them.” The head disappeared once more.

Kim rolled her eyes, picked up the lamp and the sack Mairelon had indicated, and started after him.

For the rest of the afternoon, Kim and Mairelon tramped through the wood at the foot of the druids’ hill, peering under bushes and up into trees. Kim had only the vaguest idea what they were looking for, but after several attempts to pry an explanation out of Mairelon she gave up and simply copied him. Half-remembered warnings about mantraps and poachers made her move warily, but she found nothing. Mairelon seemed to do no better than she had, but he was preoccupied on the walk back to the wagon, and Kim was positive he had noticed something she hadn’t.

At Mairelon’s insistence, Kim spent the evening working on her lessons. Her fingers were growing more used to the moves and twists that made coins seem to vanish from one hand and appear in the other, and she had mastered the art of tying knots that slid apart when the proper bit of rope was pulled, but she was not doing nearly so well at reading. She pored over the stubborn little black marks for hours, muttering to herself, while Mairelon prowled restlessly up and down the wagon. Once she ventured a question about his meeting with Renée, but he was so completely uninformative at such length that she did not try again.

Mairelon was up at dawn the next morning, blundering around the limited space inside the wagon in a way that made sleep impossible for anyone else. Kim tried muffling her head under the blanket, but it was no good. Finally she gave up and rose, yawning, to see whether breakfast was one of the things Mairelon had been getting ready during his annoying rambles.

It wasn’t. Kim had to make the porridge herself, which did not improve her mood. Her irritation increased further when she noticed that Mairelon had put on his flash togs, rather than his smock or stage clothes,
to go to his meeting with Renée. He looked very well in them, which somehow annoyed Kim even more. To top things off, she didn’t do much better with the porridge than Mairelon had the day before. “I’ll be glad when Hunch gets back,” she muttered as she spooned the lumpy grey mixture into her bowl.

“What? Not already!” Mairelon said. He glanced around hastily, then turned a reproachful expression on Kim. “Don’t scare me like that.”

Kim stared at him in complete bewilderment. “What’re you talking about?”

“I thought you said that Hunch was back,” Mairelon explained.

“No, I said I’d be glad when he was,” Kim said. Then, in response to Mairelon’s skeptical expression, she added, “So we can get some better grub.”

“Oh.” Mairelon looked thoughtful. “You have a point. Perhaps we should dine at the inn tonight if Hunch hasn’t arrived by then. I rather hope he hasn’t.”

“Why? Hunch cooks better than that fat cove,” Kim said.

“If Hunch gets here today, it’ll be because he’s in a hurry,” Mairelon answered. “And he’ll only hurry if he thinks Shoreham’s information is important. I’d prefer not to have any startling news about any of the people connected with the Saltash Platter. Or its copy.”

Kim mulled that over while she finished her porridge. She scraped the last few lumps from the sides of her bowl and surreptitiously shook them off her spoon and onto the ground beside the steps where she was sitting. She scowled down at the bowl, dropped her spoon into it with a muffled clink, and said, “We ought to leave if you want to be the first one at that hill.”

“Yes,” Mairelon said. “Thank you for reminding me.” He rose and brushed at his pants, as if to dispose of nonexistent crumbs. “Practice that handkerchief trick while I’m gone; you still haven’t got the last twist right.”

“You ain’t leavin’ me here!” Kim said incredulously.

“I most certainly am,” Mairelon replied. “When Renée says alone, she means alone. I shouldn’t be long.”

“You shouldn’t be goin’ at all,” Kim told him. “And you particularly shouldn’t be goin’ alone. What if that druid cull shows up wavin’ his pops, the way he did the other night?”

Mairelon looked amused. “Jonathan Aberford? I doubt that he’s even out of bed at this hour, much less wandering about in the woods with a pistol.”

“How do you know? He’s dicked in the nob, if you ask me, and there ain’t no knowing what notions a Bedlamite’ll get.”

“All the more reason for you to stay here,” Mairelon said. To Kim’s indignation, he still looked more diverted than concerned. “If he shows up, you can bar the wagon door. No more arguments, Kim, if you please. You’re not coming, and that’s that.”

“It don’t please me at all,” Kim muttered, but she could see that Mairelon was determined, and she knew from experience that once he took a notion, he was stubborn as a costermonger defending his route through the market. She sat and glowered at him while he straightened his jacket and brushed his hat, but she did not make any further remarks until he had disappeared into the woods. Then she burst out, “Bubblebrained, pigheaded, sapskulled gull! Muttonheaded flat! Nod-cock. Goosecap. It’d serve him well enough if I up and followed him. Bufflehead. Shab—”

She stopped suddenly, staring at the place where Mairelon had vanished. She
could
follow him, as easy as not. She scrambled to her feet, then hesitated, considering. Mairelon was a wizard, and in spite of the abuse she had just been showering on him, Kim had to admit that he was sharp as two needles. That ginger-pated D’Auber mort was a wizard, too, and she had a powerful reputation. She was foreign into the bargain, and therefore unpredictable. What would they do if they caught Kim spying on them?

The thought gave Kim a moment’s pause. Then she shrugged. She’d just have to make sure they didn’t catch her, that was all. Stay hid and sherry off if they looked like suspecting anything. It was no different from being on the sharping lay in London. And if there
was
trouble, Mairelon would excuse her obstinacy in following him. Besides, given
Mairelon’s idea of “explanation,” there was no other way she could be sure of finding out what happened at the meeting.

That decided her. She threw some dirt on the fire, kicked her bowl under the steps of the wagon, and started off. She did not take the same route as Mairelon had, but cut sideways up to the road. After all, she knew where he was going. There was no point in risking discovery by sticking too close.

The road was dry enough for comfortable walking, and there was no sign of approaching vehicles, but Kim, remembering her experience the day before, stuck to the far edge anyway. “What am I doing?” she asked herself as she trudged along. “Goin’ off to spy on a couple of frog-makers? I must be madder than
he
is!” But she continued walking in spite of her misgivings.

The sound of hooves and the rattle of a carriage brought Kim out of her reverie. Glancing up, she saw a landau coming briskly toward her from the direction of Ranton Hill. She sighed and angled down the verge, hoping that the driver would not pay any heed to a shabby boy heading into town. When she looked up again, the carriage had slowed and begun to turn down the lane that led to the druids’ meeting place. It was close enough now to give Kim a clear view of the occupants, and she nearly choked trying to smother an exclamation. Lady Granleigh sat stiffly erect in the rear seat, while her brother Jasper made shift with his back to the horses. The driver was the heavyset Stuggs, and he was frowning in evident concentration as he tried to maneuver the landau around the corner.