Heart's Magic (22 page)

"I think the burn ointment
has healed as much as it is going to," she whispered. "We should
change to another potion."

"
Si,
one designed to soften the scars."
Rosato pointed to a harsh knot of shiny, melted-looking scarring.
"And perhaps we should cut this to heal again, better?"

"Let's see how the potion
works first." Elinor turned in her crouch toward the door. "I'd
like him to have a larger dose of restorative as well. He seems
very weak to me. Low on magic."

Cranshaw shivered. Elinor
stroked the hand she held in instinctive comfort as she signaled
for Amanusa to send in the restorative. Norwood, at his post near
the door, took it from her and brought it to Rosato.

The prisoner noticed
Norwood. He followed his jailer's progress across the room, eyes
swiveling with his approach until Norwood passed behind Elinor. At
last, Cranshaw's gaze intersected with Elinor's
presence.

He screamed--a hoarse,
graveled sound, but a scream nonetheless. He yanked his hand from
Elinor's loose hold and swung wildly at her with both hands,
shouting incoherently. Elinor jerked back, falling onto her bottom,
catching herself with her hands on the rough floor. The blow struck
Rosato's arm instead, knocking the vial from his hands.

Norwood shouted something,
slashing his wand forward--Elinor didn't catch the word--and
Cranshaw froze motionless. Harry was there, lifting her to her feet
without saying anything, wonder of wonders.

"Don't hurt him," Elinor
managed to say.

"He's not." Scorn scraped
in Harry's voice. "He's just using the air to 'old him. Thom's got
the keys to the warding as well as the doors. He can use the magic
'ere."

"
Porco mondo.
"

Everyone turned to stare at
Rosato who was picking up pieces of the glass vial. The bottom was
out of it, all the potion--complete with Amanusa's blood and
magic--spilled on the floor. "You have more medicine, yes? I am
sorry to let go of your small bottle. Thicker glass for
them,
si?
"

"Yes, indeed." Elinor
pressed her lips together to keep her own swear words inside.
Several more doses of the restorative remained in her bag, but they
had lost the opportunity to get any blood inside him. At this
moment.

Rosato retrieved a
restorative from his own bag and poured a measure from the bottle
into the tin cup on the wall-hung table next to the window. He
carried it to Cranshaw and got Norwood to release the magic's hold
enough to pour the potion down the prisoner's throat. "You should
be glad we work to heal you,
signore.
Maybe we should leave to you
be a cripple, eh?"

"Foulness!" Cranshaw
hissed. "Blight upon the earth. Wickedness crawls
like--"

He continued to rave, but
Elinor ceased to listen. Harry tugged at her arm. Gently, but a
definite urging to depart.

"I have a good ointment to
help stretch his skin," she said to Rosato as she stopped resisting
Harry's pull and let him lead her out the door. "I'll send it over
to let you get a look at it, see what you think."

"
Bene.
" Rosato followed. "I am sure it
will be well. Better than well."

Norwood exited last, closed
and locked the door, then poked his wand--which appeared to be a
thickish cylinder of polished granite--through the grille and
released the spell holding the wizard motionless.

Elinor brooded the rest of
the afternoon. Cranshaw's injuries disturbed her less than his
madness. She could fix the injuries or at least alleviate them
sufficiently to make his body usable again. But without a
functioning mind, what use was a working body?

Her brooding wasn't helpful.
She knew it, but couldn't seem to stop it. She wanted to fix him
herself. Yes, Amanusa was the magister, the master of all
sorcerers. But she'd only been a sorceress since last June or
thereabouts. And Pearl had taken up sorcery only last fall.
No one
knew much about it,
except Jax, and he couldn't work it, only describe it. So really,
all the sorcery being practiced these days was essentially
experimental.

Why couldn't she do this?
Why
shouldn't
she?
Elinor had already learned wizardry. How difficult could sorcery
be? The way Pearl and Amanusa practiced it, it seemed to be mostly
wild leaps of intention into the dark. Elinor could do
that.

As she nicked her
forefinger with her worktable paring knife, Elinor's conscience
gave a little twinge. Or maybe that was her common sense. She
shouldn't be doing this. Not alone.

But the man was suffering.
She truly did want to help him.

But she'd only known of her
sorcery talent, only been a student of the guild for one day. Two,
if she wished to push the point.

But she was a magister. Of
wizardry, true, but the wizardry could fill in the gaps of her
admittedly small knowledge of sorcery.

And she would be
careful.
First, do no harm.
She wasn't a physician, but magicians--wizards, at
least--followed much the same creed. She would simply go in and
familiarize herself with his mind. If she could make some tiny
adjustment--not even a change, really, just a--a
tweak
--she might do it.
But only might. If it seemed there would be no harm come from
it.

She nicked a little deeper
than she meant to and blood flowed out. Quickly, she pushed magic
into it and wiped the blood on her alder wand before stanching the
wound with her handkerchief. It took considerable stanching to get
the bleeding to stop. Obviously, she needed to use a lancet rather
than a knife. She would have to see about getting one.

Elinor stirred the
blood-daubed wand into the small beaker holding a fresh dose of
restorative potion, making her plans. She poured the potion into a
bottle, tucked it into her wizard's bag, and put on her jacket and
shawl. She would have to hurry. It was 4:30 already, and the sun
was going down.

Harry stood in his front
parlor, nursing a glass of gin and tonic water, watching the world
go by on the street outside. Gin might be a plebeian drink but he
was a plebe after all, a member of the unwashed masses, and he
rather liked it. If you drank your gin in a fancy crystal tumbler,
that gave it a bit of class, and if you mixed it with tonic water,
that kept you from drinking too much too fast. He was trying to
decide whether to attempt a breach of Elinor's fortress, otherwise
known as her stillroom, when he heard Freeman speaking in the front
hall. The door opened and closed.

He leaned forward to look
toward his front door and saw Elinor briskly descending the steps,
heading toward the hotel and all the hackney cabs that clustered
nearby. Where in blazes was she going this time of day? Especially
after a day like this one had been.

Harry tossed back the rest
of his drink and shouted for his coat as he set the glass on the
drinks table. In moments, he was out the door and trotting down the
street after Elinor.

He considered calling after
her, but she didn't like being shouted at and if she didn't want
anyone knowing where she was going--which it appeared she
didn't--she might bolt and then he'd never catch her. As it was, he
was just a hair too slow to jump in the hack with her and had to
hire his own to follow. What in bloody hell was she up
do?

And where were all these
other idiots going? The streets were crammed with carriages and
omnibuses and wagons and cabs, and all the cabs looked alike. He
managed to keep Elinor's cab in sight, as did his driver, but they
fell farther and farther behind.

Dense traffic delayed
Elinor's trip to Holborn and had her seething with frustration, but
in the end it didn't matter. The magician at the gate recognized
her as wizard's magister and let her promptly through. Mr. Norwood
had gone home, he said. Elinor told him not to bother the man, she
knew the way to the wizard's cell. She had a potion for his poor
hand.

She had to knock on the
door at the proper floor to get through from the stairwell landing.
A small window in the door slid open and an alchemist peered out,
his eyes widening as he saw her. "Miss Tavis. How may I assist
you?"

"I've brought a potion for
Mr. Cranshaw." She raised her bag to show him. "To help calm his
mind." She hoped it would, at any rate. "Would you be willing to
take it to him? I doubt he will drink it from my hand."

"Certainly, Magister." Keys
turned in locks and bolts were thrown. "If you'll give it to
me?"

"I'd like to wait a bit and
see how it affects him, if you don't mind."

When he admitted her,
Elinor looked about the small guard station, but could only see the
thick ceramic mug that held the guard's own tea. "Is there a cup I
can pour it in, Mr.--"

"Biggs, miss. John Biggs."
He opened a shallow cupboard above his tiny table and took out a
tin cup.

"Why does that name sound
familiar?" Her eyes narrowed in thought as she uncorked her vial
and poured her potion in the cup. "Are you the alchemist with the
daughter?"

"Aye, miss. Sarah's a good
girl and sharp as they come."

"Amanusa--Mrs. Greyson sent
round a note for her to come be tested. If you haven't got it yet,
you will. We're anxious to have every likely girl we can find,
especially if she's from a family that understands magic and has
supportive parents like you." Elinor beamed at him as she handed
him the cup.

"The missus, she's not so
sure, but--well, it's not likely our Sarah will find a husband.
She's lovely as can be, to be sure, but she has a birthmark, a port
wine stain over half her face. That's a hard thing for the fool
idiots that most men are to look past, you see."

"Do send her.
Straightaway." Elinor nodded briskly and tried not to actually shoo
him off to do what she wanted.

"Right." Biggs lifted the
cup to show he knew what that was and trundled down the
corridor.

Elinor came into the
hallway to watch him open the cell door, enter, and close it behind
him. She eased down the way to hear what was said. She wasn't quite
tall enough to see through the grille, but she didn't think she
wanted to be seen anyway.

"Here we are, Mr.
Cranshaw," Biggs was saying in that too-hearty voice people often
used with the ill and insane. "A nice tonic to revive your
health."

A space of quiet fell.
Elinor pictured Biggs handing the cup to Cranshaw. Or perhaps
helping him to drink it.

"Hmph. Smells competent
enough, I suppose." Cranshaw sniffed more audibly this time and
Elinor modified her mental picture to match. "Though I don't know
why he would have put marigold,
tagetes
patula,
in it. Still..."

"The doctors want you to
drink it, sir." Biggs sounded firm enough. "Here, I'll help
you."

"I'm not entirely crippled,
young man. No thanks to that dreadful female."

Elinor envisioned him
taking the cup. And draining it? She could only hope.

"Females aren't so bad,
sir. I'm married to one myself and have five more for offspring.
Not a dreadful in the bunch. All bright as sunbeams, they
are."

"Corruption," Cranshaw
snarled. "Wicked and bent to sin."

"No more than any lad. Less
so, if you ask me. But you didn't."

Someone knocked at the
stairwell door. Pounded, more like. It made Elinor jump. Who else
could have come here at this hour? Mr. Norwood would have his own
keys. Her brows came down into a frown.

"That's it, sir. Drink it
all up. I'll take the cup back with me. Got to see who's come
calling. You rest easy tonight, Mr. Cranshaw." Biggs let himself
out of the cell again.

"Who could that be?" Elinor
clutched at his coat to slow his progress.

Biggs shrugged. "Dr.
Rosato, maybe. Could be Mr. Norwood again. Won't know till I
answer, will we?"

"I'll stay here to observe
Mr. Cranshaw." In truth, Elinor wanted to start her ride. If
someone had come after her, to stop her--like, oh say, Harry--she
wanted to be well on her way.

Elinor opened her magic
sense and
looked
for sorcery for the first time. Even when she'd ridden Harry's
blood, she hadn't looked, just felt around. This time, it was still
more
feel
than
sight,
but the magic was there. A bit of herself in the chamber
beyond the heavy iron door that she could reach out
and--

Step into.
Elinor found herself buffeted from all sides as
she tumbled down some long darkness. She reached out to slow her
fall, but it did no good. The magic hadn't--hadn't
settled
yet.

"Elinor!"

The sound of her name--not
quite shouted, but nearly--disoriented her even more, so much she
almost fell over. Hands, Harry's hands, caught her and hauled her
up against his broad chest.