Heart's Magic (2 page)

"What is it? What's wrong?"
He pushed his thumb into one of the hard pellets as he drew it out,
cracking the clay, making ready.

"There!" Elinor pointed at
the ground, fumbling through the slits in her skirts for her
dangling pockets as she danced about, rather like the horses had
been, though Harry would never say so.

"Rat? Just kick it. It'll
run off." Harry slowed his pace, but only slightly. If a rat or
mouse got up into those hoops and petticoats, they'd never get it
out. "Shake your skirts. It won't like the shakin'."

"It's not a rat, you
idiot!" She drew out a vial of something--wizard magic--and swept
her skirts to one side, the hoops belling up on the other.
"Look!"

It was a machine. Small,
perhaps the size of a rat terrier, made of the bits and pieces left
behind in the dead zones when the people fled, like the other
machine-creatures that had begun appearing in the zones some six
months ago. They hadn't been made by human hands. Harry and his
fellow researchers were fairly certain about that, especially since
magic was as deadly to the machine things as the dead zones were to
living things. But this machine was outside the dead zone. And it
wasn't dead.

It scuttled from side to
side on a multitude of tiny legs made from three-penny nails,
trying to escape Elinor's stamping feet and swinging skirts. It
humped its way over the cobbles back toward the dead zone, clashing
its dinner-plate jaws full of jagged metal teeth as it went. Why
wasn't it dead? Where had it come from? And what had it been
doing?

Harry threw his pellet at
the thing, invoking the spell with a growled, "
Ignis
,
" an
instant after it left his hand. Fire burst from the pellet in a
brilliant glare that had Harry shading his eyes with an arm. It
crashed into the monster's carapace, where it burned, a spot of
incandescence on the dark, dull surface, seeming to have no affect
at all.

Elinor uncapped her
vial.

Harry took it from her.
"You'll lose the machine under your skirts." He excused his action.
"Do I pour it on?"

"Pour or splash, either
one. Do it! It's getting away--" Her voice rose in a wail as she
pointed.

Harry ran after it. Good
thing its short little legs didn't cover ground too terrible fast.
He threw the contents of the vial in the machine's direction. Most
of the potion splattered on its dull shell, some splashing on the
cobbles. The potion on the stone hissed and foamed. That on the
machine discolored the shell, turning it dark brown around the
still-burning spot of fire. Nothing more.

"Why isn't it reacting?"
Elinor asked, from right beside him. "That potion should eat
through anything. We have to catch it, find out why."

"Stay
back
." Harry pushed her behind him.
"Remember your skirts."

"Stupid hoops," she
snarled, but she stayed where she was.

He pivoted, armed another
pellet, and threw it with deadly accuracy to burst over the
still-charging machine. It should have been deadly. Refiner's fire
burned until it was quenched. Didn't seem to be bothering this
beast a bit.

Except that it turned.
Instead of scuttling toward the dead zone, it came marching toward
them, metal teeth clashing alarmingly. It seemed to move a great
deal faster when advancing rather than running away. The fire
flared up, catching the now-dried potion alight. The creature kept
coming.

Elinor moved up beside him
again, her skirts belling out nearly a yard in front of them. Harry
caught her arm and spun her back. "Maybe you don't care about your
skirts," he growled. "But if you're hurt, who'll heal
me?"

"Of all the
selfish--"

Harry had already turned
away. He cracked a third fireball, but kept it in his hand. No use
throwing it, if it didn't work. Maybe the thing was like a
hedgehog. Not so tough underneath.

He rushed it, ignoring
Elinor's cry. Alarm or annoyance, didn't matter. A puff of smoke or
dust--something--exploded from the creature just before he reached
it and flipped it over with a toe, exposing its bristly underbelly.
The nail-legs covered almost the entire surface, attached to an odd
gearing system.

Harry slammed the pellet
into the midst of the gears, shouting the spell as he threw it. The
fire exploded with the force of his will, knocking him back on his
arse and cracking the creature's hull.

The spell should have blown
it to bits, but it only knocked the merest crack in the thing's
outer armoring.

Harry scooted back, in case
it sprouted legs from its top and started on again. The blast left
him a bit dizzy. And there was a sting in his middle. He put a hand
over the pain and muttered "
Extinguo
," to put out any stray
fire.

It still hurt. Maybe it
wasn't fire.

"Where are you hurt?"
Elinor was there, bending over him.

"Get back." He pushed at
her, feebly. What happened to his strength? "I only cracked
it."

"Cracked--your head?"
Elinor began running her fingers through his hair, probing his
skull.

"No, damn it, the machine.
Bloody 'ell, woman, don't you 'ave sense to stay out of a battle
zone?" He pushed her again, stronger this time.

"It's dead." She pointed,
moving to the side so he could see past her skirts. "A crack was
apparently enough. Where are you hurt?"

Harry ignored her fussing
to heave himself to his feet and stagger over to the machine. It
rustled its legs menacingly at him. But she was right. It wasn't
dead yet, but it was dying.

He swayed as he poked it
with his toe. The flames burning its underside licked out to touch
his boot. He'd fireproofed them when he bought them, so no worry
there. The thing clashed its jaws at him once, twice, then went
still. Harry poked it again, staggering this time when he lost
balance. The machine didn't stir and he caught himself with a hand
on the nearest wall. Dead enough to quench the battle fires. Harry
gestured as he spoke to do so.

"See? It's dead." Elinor
inserted herself under the arm holding up the wall and pulled it
down across her shoulders, like she thought he couldn't stand on
his own. "Come along, now. Let's see how badly you're
hurt."

"I want it." Harry looked
back at the machine while Elinor bore him off to the carriage, his
head feeling not at all the thing. All fuzzy-like. "I want the lads
in the lab to look at it. Why didn't the fire 'urt it? Or your
potion? Why didn't the magic kill it? And how did it get out o' the
dead zone? Wot was it doin'? An' how many others got out while we
wasn't lookin'?"

"We will find answers to all
those questions," Elinor said. "But first, I am going to discover
where you are injured and treat that injury. Your coachman will
fetch the machine for you. You will
not
handle it yourself."

"Fine," he grumbled. And a
bloody pain in the arse it was, to be not just alchemist, but
magister of the alchemist's guild and thus the most susceptible to
the deadly no-magic of anyone in all of England. He couldn't even
carry a damned machine in a bloody basket without feeling
breathless.

"Here we are," Elinor said.
"Up you go."

Sharkey, his coachman, was
opening the door, his wizened face expressionless as always, except
for a twitch in one eye. That twitch--Harry began to worry. Maybe
he was hurt more than he thought.

It took both Elinor and
Sharkey to shove Harry into the carriage. Elinor climbed in
after.

"Take the basket." She
dragged it from beneath the back-facing seat and thrust it into the
coachman's arms. "And go fetch my--Mr. Tomlinson's specimen. It's
dead and the fire's quenched. It can't hurt you."

"Right, miss." The coachman
bobbed his head, his flyaway white hair floating in the breeze of
his motion as he hobbled down the alley.

Now, finally, Elinor could
see what Harry had done to himself. She struck a match to light the
carriage lamp.

"I ain't so feeble I can't
light a lamp," Harry protested.

Elinor ignored him. She
planted a hand high in the middle of his chest and pushed him over
onto his back, her heart pounding with alarm at how easy it was.
Just how hurt was he?

She yanked open his jacket,
too worried for buttons, and stifled her gasp when she saw his
waistcoat soaked in red. "Did you know you were bleeding?" She kept
her voice even, informative. It wouldn't do to alarm the patient.
The waistcoat buttons were loose in their buttonholes and came open
easily.

"Is that wot it is?" Harry
got an elbow under him as if he intended to sit up and have a
look.

"Stay still." Elinor pushed
him back down. It wasn't any more difficult this time.

She worked at his shirt
buttons. They wouldn't rip--she'd tried--and she didn't have time
to rummage in her bag for scissors. She got down to the last few
and tried tearing it open again. This time it worked and she spread
the shirt wide, exposing Harry's chest and abdomen.

Relief flooded through her,
inappropriate and inevitable. Something had skidded along his ribs
and dug itself a home in the muscle under his arm. She'd envisioned
worse. Much worse.

Images of destruction, of
wrecked bodies and missing--she thrust them from her mind. Harry
was injured--not too badly--and needed healing. She could heal him.
She would allow herself that much. She reached for her bag, sitting
on the opposite seat where it belonged, and opened it. Numbing
potion first.

She lifted his arm out of
the way and poured the potion liberally along the wound. It was
simple to make and the ingredients were cheap and easily come by.
No need to be stingy with it.

"Keep your arm there," she
ordered as she drew her forceps from its spell-lined spot and
whispered a few cleansing words to reinforce the spell. "This
shouldn't hurt."

"Wot shouldn't 'urt?"
Harry's native accent floated in and out as it pleased, without
seeming to follow much rhyme or reason. He craned his neck to peer
at his injury.

"This." Elinor punctuated
the word by grasping the foreign object and working it out of the
wound.

"What is it?" Harry reached
for it and she gave it to him, forceps and all.

"A splinter. A very large
one." Elinor pressed hard on the wound to stop the bleeding, then
flushed it out with the clean water she carried. She used another,
smaller forceps to probe for any threads of his clothing or
broken-off bits of dart that might remain.

When she was satisfied the
wound was as free of foreign matter as she could make it, she
delved into her bag, selecting the proper ointment. That jar, the
watercress-based, was better on burns, but she should have plenty
of the other, with the bindweed and dock she'd put in as an
experiment. A successful one, she thought. Yes, the next jar along
had the bindweed ointment.

Harry turned the forceps
this way and that, examining the thing that had been in his side.
"Biggest splinter I ever saw. It's not wood. I'm not sure it's
metal either. I don't know wot it is. Where did it come from?
Before you pulled it out o' me, I mean. How did it get in
me?"

"I haven't a clue." Elinor
opened her jar, scooped out a good-sized dollop and began to spread
it over Harry's injury. "Did you scrape against something when you
lost balance?"

"No, it 'appened before
that. Right when I flipped the machine over. I thought I'd burned
meself again." He put a finger out as if to touch the splinter, but
didn't. He went very still instead, as Elinor stroked ointment over
Harry's skin with her fingers.

His stillness changed
things. The air became charged with awareness. With waiting,
perhaps anticipation. Elinor's senses drank it all in, making her
even more aware. Of the horses stamping on the cobbles outside,
making the carriage shift ever so slightly. Of the smell of herbs
and magic and underneath that, the scent of Harry. And that made
her notice how his skin felt beneath her fingers, how his broad
muscled chest looked beneath shirt and waistcoat and jacket. How
absolutely motionless he was.

She looked up and found him
looking back at her, his hazel eyes gone dark and hooded, his
nostrils flared, though he--was he holding his breath? His tongue
slipped out to touch his lower lip and retreat, drawing her
attention to his mouth. The most perfect mouth in all
England.

There. She'd thought it and
the world hadn't come to an end. Harry Tomlinson had a perfect
mouth--cupid's bow on top, full and sensuous below. The rest of
him--well, he had a very nice chest, now she'd got a look at it,
and a stomach to match, but really, he was an ordinary
Englishman.

He had light brown hair
that generally looked as if he'd cut it himself with hedge
clippers. He didn't, but it stuck out in all directions unless he
brilliantined it flat to his head and even that sometimes didn't
help. He had an ordinary nose and a broad English face and light
hazel eyes that changed colors depending on his mood. And that
mouth. That perfect, beautiful, all-too-kissable mouth.