A Matter of Magic (40 page)

“That’s settled, then,” Mairelon said briskly, and handed Kim a stack of wrinkled clothing. “Now, do go and try these on while there’s still time for Hunch to find more if they don’t fit. And for heaven’s sake, don’t let Aunt Agatha see you, or we’ll both be in the suds.”

A heavy London fog had settled over the dark streets by the time Kim approached Tom Correy’s shop in Petticoat Lane. Here there were no streetlamps to mark the road with flickering yellow light, and Kim was grateful. In the dark and the fog, she was only a shadow moving among shadows. This close to the St. Giles rookery, anyone who was noticing enough to spot her would likely be knowing enough to pretend he hadn’t.

Even so, the thought of Mairelon and Hunch, waiting in the carriage a few streets away, was more comforting than she had expected. The smells of coal smoke and uncollected horse dung, the sounds of drunken revelry from the public house on the corner, and most of all the penetrating chill of the fog brought back the constant undercurrent of fear that she had lived with for so long. She had almost forgotten the fear, in her year of safety and security with Mairelon.

A church clock chimed the quarter hour. Kim jumped, then shook herself.
Past midnight already. I’ll be home as late as a fashionable lady
coming back from a ball.
She frowned at the thought, then dismissed it. Pulling her jacket firmly into place, she knocked at Tom’s door.

An unfamiliar dark-haired youth opened it and looked at her suspiciously. “Who are you and what d’you want?”

“I come to see Tom Correy,” Kim said.

“And I’m a valet to His Majesty,” the youth sneered. “You’re lookin’ to unload something you pinched from your betters.”

“What if I am?” Kim said. “You ain’t one of ’em, so it ain’t no lookout of yours.”

“Ho!” The doorkeeper made an awful grimace and raised his fists. “See if I ain’t!”

“I can see it just by looking at you,” Kim said. He was sturdy enough, but his movements were too slow; even out of practice, she had little to fear from a scrap with him, unless he landed a lucky punch. She shook her head.
I’m not here to pick fights.
“You’re wasting time. Tom’s expecting me.”

“No, he ain’t,” the youth retorted. “He ain’t expecting nobody what would come sneaking around the back. He—”

“Here, Matt, what’s the racket?” Tom’s voice drifted out of one of the inner rooms, followed by Tom himself. His face split in a broad grin when he saw Kim. “Kim, lad! You got my message, then. Come in, come in, and tell me how you’re keeping.”

“Hellfire!” said the doorkeeper in obvious chagrin. “You told me you was expecting some flash frogmaker!”

“Well, so I am,” Kim said in her best Grosvenor Square tones. If Tom had already said that much, there was no point in pretending. “But I didn’t want to be noticed, and walking the alleys in pantaloons and a silk cravat would have gotten me noticed for sure.”

“Garn!” said Matt, obviously impressed in spite of himself. “You ain’t no frogmaker.”

“Oh, ain’t I?” Kim glanced quickly around. The door was closed, and the windows shuttered; no one but Tom and Matt was likely to see. Raising her right hand, palm upward, she focused all her attention on it and said,
“Fiat lux!”

The tingling sensation of magic at work swept across her hand and
arm. An instant later, a ball of light flared into being in the air above her palm. It was brighter than she’d intended; either she really was getting better at spell-casting, or annoyance had given her spell a boost. She rather suspected it was the annoyance. However it had happened, the effect was impressive. She heard Tom’s breath hiss against his teeth in surprise, and Matt’s startled exclamation, but she was concentrating too hard to respond.

Kim let the light float above her hand for several seconds. Then, one by one, she folded her fingers inward. The light dimmed, and as the last finger touched her palm, it vanished. The tingling sensation vanished as well, leaving her hand feeling unusually sensitive. She let it fall to her side, resisting the temptation to flex her fingers; it would spoil the effect.

“Coo,” said Matt, his eyes bulging. “Ain’t that a sight! What else can you do?”

“Get along with you,” Tom said, cuffing Matt’s shoulder. “Do you think a real magician has nothing better to do than show off tricks like a Captain Podd with his puppets? Kim’s got things to do, and so have you.”

With a resigned nod, Matt started for the inner door. Tom stood aside to let him pass, then called after him, “And if you say one word about this to anyone, I’ll have Kim’s master turn you into a frog!”

Kim couldn’t make out the words of the muffled response, but it was apparently an affirmative, for Tom nodded in satisfaction and pulled the door to. Looking gravely at Kim, he said, “You hadn’t ought to have done that.”

“It was just light,” Kim said uncomfortably.

“That’s not the point, but it’s too late to mend matters now.” Tom sighed. “I just hope Matt has the sense to keep his jaw shut. If his uncle hears about this, we’re grassed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I forget, you don’t know what’s been going on.” Tom studied Kim for a moment, and forced a smile. “You’re looking well. I guess that Mairelon cove wasn’t gammoning me about feeding you up and teaching you magic and all.”

“No, he’s done all that, right enough,” Kim said.

Tom gave her a sharp look. “So? And what hasn’t he done?”

“Nothing. It’s just . . . different. Toffs take a bit of getting used to, that’s all. I’m fine.”

“You’re a sight better off than you’d have been if you’d stayed here, and don’t you forget it,” Tom said emphatically.

“I ain’t likely to, what with regular meals and all,” Kim said. “Why did you want to see me? And what was that about Matt’s uncle? Who is he, anyway? You never used to have anybody to help out.”

“Matt is one of my Jenny’s nephews,” Tom said, and Kim grinned at the possessive fondness in his tone when he spoke of his wife, even in passing. Some things hadn’t changed. Oblivious, Tom continued, “Her sister’s eldest boy, come to London to learn a trade.”

“So? Ain’t he working out?”

“He was working out fine, until somebody talked Jack Stower off the transports. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Stower’s loose? When did that happen?” Kim was surprised, but not unduly alarmed. Jack Stower was Tom’s brother-at-law, and a bad lot if there ever was one. Kim had never had much use for him, but she’d never feared him as she had his boss, Dan Laverham. And both Jack and Dan had been arrested a year ago, when she’d first hooked up with Mairelon. A twinge of uneasiness shook her. “Laverham ain’t loose as well, is he?”

“No, he danced on air last November. It’s just Jack.”

Kim blew out a long, noisy breath. “Then I don’t see what you’re nattered about. Jack will have it in for me, but I can handle Jack now.”

“I thought that’s what you’d say,” Tom said gloomily. “And if it was just Jack Stower, I wouldn’t have sent for you to come here. But he’s hooked up with Mannering, and if that don’t worry you, it ought to.”

“Why? Jack may think he can borrow enough to turn himself into a toff, but it ain’t going to happen. And if he’s in over his head with Mannering and the other cent-per-cents, he’ll have more to worry about than me.”

Tom stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “I forget how much has changed since you’ve been gone. Mannering ain’t just a moneylender, these days. He’s got ambitions.”

“Like what?”

“Like rounding up anyone with a hint of magic to ’em, and persuading them to work for him.”

Kim snorted. “Laverham tried that once, and Ma Yanger gave him a week’s rash, and Sam Nicks pitched him out a window, and George and Jemmy and Wags gave him an earful in the middle of Hungerford Market. You’re telling me a creaky old moneylender’s had better luck?”

“A lot better luck, one way and another, and nobody knows why. George and Jemmy and Wags turned him down when he first tried, right enough, but two weeks later they were working for him. Sam was stubborner, and he woke up one morning in an alley with his throat slit. Ma Yanger ain’t working for Mannering, but she ain’t working for nobody else, neither.”

“Ma Yanger’s given up witching people?” Kim said incredulously.

Tom nodded. “She’s holed up in her rooms, and she won’t see nobody. Been that way for two months now. And that’s how it is with everyone else—they’re working for Mannering, or they ain’t working at all. And since Stower came back, Mannering’s lads have been asking about you.”

“Me?”

“Stower told him you can do magic,
and
that you were getting training from some fancy toff wizard. I think Mannering would like to get his hands on both of you. I figured the toff could look out for himself, but I thought somebody ought to tell you what was up afore you found out the hard way.”

“Thanks, Tom.” With a shiver, Kim remembered that Jack was one of the few people from her old life who knew of her masquerade.
It doesn’t matter any more if people know I’m a girl
, she told herself, but the old habits and fears kept her tongue locked.

“So you see why you hadn’t ought to have been showing off in front of Matt,” Tom went on. “Jack Stower is his uncle, and they’ve been thick as treacle since Jack turned up again. Jenny’s after me to keep Matt away from him, but how she expects me to do that I don’t know,” he added gloomily. “It ain’t like I can put leg-irons on the boy.”

“I wish I could help,” Kim said, but Tom shook his head.

“That ain’t why I asked you to come. Matt’s my business, and I’ll deal
with him. But I don’t know that I can keep him from talking to Jack about this, and if he does, Mannering will be after you like a shot.”

“Maybe he already has been,” Kim said thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t know something about a green cracksman who bungled a job in Grosvenor Square last night?”

Tom considered for a moment. “No, but I can ask around if you like.”

“Let it go,” Kim said, shaking her head. “If Mannering’s got you that nattered, you hadn’t ought to get any more mixed up in this than you are already. I’ll find out about it some other way.”

“Kim, if Mannering has already made a try for you—”

“It wasn’t anything like that,” Kim said hastily. “Somebody tried to nobble a book from Mairelon’s library, near as we can tell, and botched the job. It probably didn’t have anything to do with Mannering. He’s a deep old file; he wouldn’t send an amateur on a crack lay like that.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t bungled apurpose?”

Kim snorted. “The cull didn’t know the first thing about housebreaking. Mairelon thinks he was depending on a spell to keep from getting nabbed, and even that didn’t work.”

“I still don’t like it,” Tom said. “He’s a sneaking one, Mannering is.”

“All the more reason he’d know better than to send a green ’un to mill a ken in Grosvenor Square. It’s pure luck the cull wasn’t laid by the heels right then.” Seeing that Tom still looked unconvinced, Kim shook her head. “I’m sorry I mentioned it. And I really am glad of your warning.”

“I don’t know what good it’ll do you,” Tom said in a gloomy tone. “Jemmy and Sam and the others knew what was up, and knowing didn’t help them none.”

“Jemmy and Sam ain’t proper wizards from the Royal College,” Kim said. “I ain’t, neither, but Mairelon is. And Mairelon won’t take kindly to nobody messing with his ward. If Mannering knows anything about toffs, he’ll twig to that as soon as he finds out where I am. If he finds out at all.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Tom said thoughtfully. “Mannering deals with toffs all the time, what with his business and all. He ain’t like Laverham, passing off sham gentility.”

“It wasn’t no sham with Laverham,” Kim said. “He was born on the wrong side of the blanket, but he was a toff, sure enough.”

“No! Laverham? You’re bamming me.”

Thankful to have found a neutral topic to take Tom’s mind off fretting, Kim allowed herself to be drawn into gossip about old acquaintances. Tom reciprocated as well as he was able. Many of her former fellows were in Newgate Prison, “polishing the King’s iron with their eyebrows” as they looked out through the barred windows. Some had been transported; a few, like Laverham, had been hung. On the whole, it was a depressing catalog, and Kim was almost glad when time came to give Tom a final “Thank you” and slip away at last.

The shadows on the streets and alleys seemed darker and more threatening as she made her way down Thread needle toward the Thames. Even at this hour, the street was not quite deserted, and she kept a wary eye on the bingo boy staggering from one public house to the next and the tired costermonger pushing his barrow home from Covent Garden.

Mairelon’s carriage waited at the end of the street, just where she had left it. Hunch sat in the coachman’s seat, chewing on the ends of his mustache. When he saw Kim, his gloomy expression lightened in relief, and he thumped on the carriage roof. “She’s ’ere, Master Richard.”

There was a muffled noise from inside, then Mairelon’s head poked out of the carriage window. “There you are, Kim! I was just about to come and fetch you.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Kim said. “Tom and I had things to talk about.”

“You can tell me about it on the way home,” Mairelon said. He sounded somewhat disgruntled, and when Kim climbed into the carriage, she saw that he had changed into a workingman’s wrinkled shirt, vest, and breeches.

He’s disappointed because he couldn’t go larking about the alleys,
Kim thought, and shook her head. He ought to have better sense. She smiled suddenly, remembering her own eager response to the thought of a night out.
Seems like neither of us is strong on good sense.

“Well, what happened?” Mairelon said as the coach began to roll. “Did Correy just want to talk over old times?”

“Not exactly,” Kim said. “Jack Stower’s loose, and Tom thinks he’s
trying to make trouble.” She repeated what Tom had said about Mannering, his ambitions, and his apparent interest in Mairelon and Kim.

When she finished, Mairelon rubbed his chin, frowning. “What else do you know about this Mannering fellow?”