A Matter of Magic (52 page)

“Th-that one,” the clerk said, pointing. “But you can’t go in there, it’s locked and I ain’t got the key, and Mr. Mannering—”

“Ain’t here, you said that, too,” Kim said, releasing him. She dusted her gloves and stepped back, to find Hunch and Wilson standing in the doorway. “See this cove don’t shab off just yet, will you, Hunch?” she said. “I might want to talk to him again after I’ve had a look at Mannering’s office.”

Hunch nodded. Kim walked down to the doorway the clerk had pointed out and studied the lock. It was new and shiny against the aged wood of the door; pretty much what you’d expect to find at a moneylender’s place of business. But this moneylender had been collecting wizards. Frowning, Kim cast the spell that allowed her to see enchantments. To her relief, the lock did not glow. She fished her lockpicking wire from the bottom of her reticule and set to work.

Opening the lock took some time; Mannering had paid for the best, and gotten it. Kim felt considerable pride when it clicked open at last. The feeling turned to strong dismay when the door opened and she got a look at the room beyond.

Everything indicated that someone had been here before her: the heavy lockbox lying open and empty on the desktop, the dustless squares here and there on the shelves where objects had lain, the half-open drawers, the wrinkled cravat lying forgotten underneath the chair. Kim bit back a curse and started forward. Maybe the other cracksman had left something she’d find useful.

As she sifted through what was left in Mannering’s office, she quickly became convinced that this was no robbery. No thief would have bothered to take pages from the ledgers, or missed the pound note stuck under the lockbox. Mannering had taken the things he considered important and piked off, and he’d done it in a tearing hurry, too. Kim frowned. This didn’t make sense . . . unless he thought that Mairelon’s tracing spell had worked, and had expected to find the Runners on his doorstep this morning instead of Kim.

Methodically, Kim began pulling out the desk drawers and examining their contents. Most contained paper or old ledgers. The center drawer had a small lock, which had been thrown—but in his hurry, Mannering had not shut the drawer completely, and the lock had not engaged. Pleased to be spared the work of picking it, Kim opened the drawer.

The drawer was half full of notes and partially completed spell diagrams. Kim looked at one or two of them and frowned. They all looked the same, or rather, nearly the same—on this page, the top line twisted up; on the next, it twisted down; on the one after that, it was straight as an old Roman road.
Variations on a spell design,
Kim thought.
But Mannering wasn’t ever a frogmaker, and George and Jemmy and Wags don’t know this kind of magic. Who’s he got helping him?
Some of the notes bore a line or two of almost illegible writing, with frequent crossings-out and insertions. Kim puzzled at one of the inscriptions for a while, then shook her head. Reading was hard enough when she could tell what the letters were supposed to be; Mannering’s scrawl was hopeless. Maybe it was instructions for the spell. She gathered up the papers and stuffed them in her reticule. Mairelon or Lord Kerring or Lord Shore-ham might be able to make something more of them.

When she finished, she rejoined Hunch, Wilson, and the clerk, who was by turns sullen and terrified. “I’m done, Hunch,” she said. “We’d better go.”

“You—I—What am I going to tell Mr. Mannering?” the clerk babbled. “You can’t do this!”

“Tell him I heard he wanted to see me,” Kim said. “Tell him I got something he wants.” She pulled a small blue book from her pocket, just
far enough for the clerk to get a look, and then shoved it back out of sight. It had taken her half an hour to find one that was a reasonable match for Marie de Cambriol’s
livre de mémoire
, and she wasn’t going to give anyone a close enough look to see that it wasn’t the real thing. “Tell him that if he pulls any more tricks like last night, he won’t see this, or me, or anything else he wants. I ain’t got much patience with jingle brains or shag-bags.”

The clerk nodded dumbly. They left him staring goggle-eyed after them, and returned to the hackney. “Where to now, miss?” the jarvey said.

Kim hesitated, then shook her head. “Back to Grosvenor Square,” she said.

“Find anything?” Hunch said as the coach started off.

“Not what I thought,” Kim said. “The cull has piked off, right enough. I think he was scared of something.”

“Good.”

Kim glanced at him, startled by the savagery in his tone. She wasn’t really surprised, though; it was the way she felt whenever she thought about what had been done to Mairelon. “He left some notes. Maybe they’ll help.”

Hunch nodded and lapsed back into his usual silence. Kim stared glumly out the carriage window, watching the tradesmen on the street without really seeing them. Mairelon was not going to be pleased to find out what she had done, but she’d have to tell him;
she
certainly wasn’t going to be able to make sense of all those bits and pieces and scrawls.

The other members of the household were at breakfast when Kim and Wilson slipped through the back door. Kim sent Wilson off with her bonnet and pelisse, while she went up to join the family. When she entered the room, she could tell from everyone’s faces that this modest attempt at concealment had been pointless; they were already aware that she had left the house, and Mairelon and Lady Wendall, at least, had been worried.

“Kim!” Mrs. Lowe said. “Where
have
you been at such an hour?”

“I had an errand to run,” Kim said, heading for the sideboard. “Don’t jaw me down now; I ain’t had breakfast yet.”

“Mind your language!”

“Sorry,” Kim said absently as she filled her plate. “I . . . haven’t . . . adjusted back yet.”

“Adjusted back?” Lady Wendall raised her eyebrows.

“Don’t tell me that after all my warnings, you went to see some of those low friends of yours!” Mrs. Lowe said.

“No.” Kim took a seat and began tucking in to the sausage. “Not a friend.”

Mairelon’s eyes narrowed. Oblivious, Mrs. Lowe shook her head at Kim. “Where
did
you go, then? After all the worry you’ve caused—”

“I’m sorry you were worried,” Kim said, glancing at Lady Wendall apologetically. She couldn’t quite bring herself to look at Mairelon yet. “I thought I’d be back before anybody noticed I was gone.”

“That is no excuse,” Mrs. Lowe said. “It is highly improper for a young lady to wander about London unescorted.”

“I took my abigail,” Kim said. She sneaked a glance at Mairelon. “And Hunch.”

“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.”

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.