Heart's Magic (38 page)

Though they were still
testing girls and women long after the last boys had been passed
through the tests and admitted or sent home for more practice,
there weren't as many female applicants as Elinor had expected or
hoped for. It was possible word hadn't got out as far as they would
have liked. Many of them might have had to obtain permission to
apply--permission which was withheld. Elinor also thought it likely
the more prosperous classes saw magic as a thing for the working
class. Something a genteel female would not sully her hands
with.

It didn't trouble Elinor
overmuch, except that there might be someone like her, with a
thirst for magic. Someone who, unlike her, did not have parents
with liberal attitudes toward female education and
occupation.

The truth was, Elinor
herself was the most genteel of the female master magicians, and
her father was a country squire, barely above the ranks of
prosperous farmer. Pearl's father had been a wealthy merchant
before the crumbling of his fortune, despite her marriage to the
black sheep son of a duke. Amananusa's parents had been servants;
her father, the English valet to a diplomat in Vienna, and her
mother, a Romanian chambermaid.

Elinor had hoped a few of
the hordes of governesses or ladies' companions might have come to
see if their little love charms had real magic behind them, but
teatime had come and gone. She'd seen no one more genteel than the
dozen or so shop clerks. Three of them had proved willing to spit
and were admitted to the academy, however.

Whitson had put away his
pencil case. Hunter had poured the water out of his bowl and was
wrapping his candles. Grey had taken Pearl home at teatime. She'd
been visibly wilting. Jax and Amanusa were gathering the rather
wilted sorcery students. Elinor sat in her hard, slat-backed chair
and dropped her wooden pegs one by one into their pouch, yawning
until she thought her jaw would pop, when Archaios appeared at her
elbow again.

"I thought you'd gone
already," Elinor said when the yawn let her go.

"I was on my way, when I
saw this lady outside on the steps." Archaios gifted Elinor with
the smile that made ladies swoon. Other ladies. Elinor only swooned
over Harry's perfect mouth, blast it. "She will speak only with
you, Magister Tavis."

Elinor stood and offered
her hand, trying not to appear too eager. This was obviously one of
those ladies she'd been hoping for, given her good quality dress
with its shabby edges. The woman was thin, rather faded looking,
but she met Elinor's eye and shook her hand with a firm, but not
challenging grip.

"I am Wilhelmina Kent," she
said. "I debated all through my afternoon off as to whether I
should come. I am due back at my employers at seven o'clock." She
stopped, a fine shudder running through her. "And I simply cannot
go back to that house."

"Can you work magic?"
Elinor caught Jax's eye and signaled for him to wait.

Miss Kent bit her lip. "I
am not sure. I--is there magic one can work by--" She pantomimed
licking her thumb. "Placing a seal, thus?" She rubbed her thumb
along the air, as if along a door.

"Indeed there is." Elinor
beamed at the woman. "Come. Let me introduce you to the sorcerer's
magister. I think we can arrange that you never do have to return
to your former employer."

The relief rolling off the
other woman could almost be touched. Elinor didn't know what her
story was and now was not the time for telling it. Even if her
talent was small, she would be useful, especially while the guilds
were being organized and students gathered.

Elinor introduced Miss Kent
to Amanusa who immediately enrolled her to help keep order amongst
all the new students who would be reporting to the academy in the
morning. She took her along with them to Brown's for the night.
Elinor waved them off with a happy smile, heaving a great sigh of
weariness once the gang of sorcerers vanished through the
door.

"Long day, wasn't it,
Miss." John Biggs was the Briganti manning the door.

"It certainly has been. I'm
surprised to see you here." Elinor tried rolling some of the ache
from her shoulders. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, right as rain. Your
potions set me right up. And I never miss a testing day if I can
help it." He rocked on his heels as he looked with satisfaction
over the empty hall. "Reminds me of my own talent test, seeing all
these lads get their chance. And now our Sarah's got that same
chance. And though it's glad I am that Sarah didn't have to come
through with this mob, it did my heart good to see all the girls
here."

"They should do well,"
Elinor agreed. "We've got seven new wizardry students--can you
imagine so many at once? There's rarely been more than one at a
time, Mr. Fillmore tells me, and sometimes not any. And six good
sorcery prospects, plus two more who might go in either direction.
They're all older than most of the boys as well, so we shouldn't
have to deal with inappropriate romantic connections."

"I shouldn't worry overmuch
about that, unless there's someone taking advantage. I know the
schoolmasters fret over the boys marrying too young, but it didn't
hurt me any." He shrugged.

"Yes, but it's different
for women." Elinor stopped there. She was too tired for this
discussion now.

"Oh aye, it is. The woman
doesn't have to go out and earn her bread, plus enough for
another." Biggs nodded wisely. "She's got her man to provide for
her, doesn't she? I was just 21 when I married my Lizzie and went
to work at Holborn Tower. Mr. Frewing, who was alchemy dean then,
pitched ten kinds of fit because I didn't go to his advanced
classes.

"But I had my Lizzie to
take care of. And our Sarah came along in a year or so, then the
rest of the girls, and they needed feeding and frocks and such. I
was proud to be able to provide. All that stuff in the advanced
classes--learned every bit of it working at the tower and more
besides."

He made a face. "Though I'd
got a bit lazy, relying on the wards to do what I should be ready
and able to do, which is how Mr. Cranshaw dropped me. He didn't use
magic. I've got regular training set up for all the guards
now."

"Here's all your pegs."
Harry pulled the cords to shut the pouch tight and held it out to
her. He kept hold of her wizard's bag, obviously intending to carry
it for her. "You done? Ready to go? Hello, Biggs. Good to see you
out an' about." He shook hands with the new tower
warden.

"Thank you, Mr. Tomlinson."
Biggs gave him a wink. "It'll be Sir Henry before long. And I
haven't had the chance to congratulate the pair of you on your
engagement. Meant to, Miss, before we got to talking. I know you'll
be very happy together."

"Thanks." Harry flashed a
quick there-and-gone-again smile. "But don't hold your breath
waiting for them to knight somebody like me. I crawled out from
under too big a rock."

"Nonsense," Elinor said.
"Anyone can see your sterling qualities." He did have them. They
usually drove her to madness, but they were excellent qualities for
a man in his position.

"Too right, sir," Biggs
said. "Might take a bit longer, so I won't be holding my breath,
no, sir. But it'll happen. Mark my words."

Elinor took Harry's arm.
Usually she didn't, despite their engagement. It felt too intimate
with a man she intended to keep at arms' length even after their
marriage. But it would serve to move him along now. She needed to
get away from everyone so she could think. She'd never considered
before that there might be
disadvantages
to a man in
marriage.

Harry took her hint, bade
farewell to Biggs and to Norwood, who would be officially turning
the building back to its caretakers after all the magicians were
out, and they left.

"Oh look, the moon is out."
Elinor stopped at the top of the stairs to gaze. Scarcely a wisp of
cloud drifted across the night sky to block the light of the moon's
first quarter, halfway back to full. She'd never paid much
attention to the moon's phases before her acquaintance with so many
conjurers. "The sky is so clear. I want to walk in the
park."

Harry nodded a greeting at
the bobby standing watch at the foot of the London Institution's
broad stairway. The bobby gave a little salute in return. "All
right. Seems safe enough."

She made a face at him, but
he was right. Safety was important. The melee in the very street
where they walked now had emphasized the point on his behalf.
Female magicians, even females who wanted to be magicians, were at
risk.

They crossed the street and
passed under the circle of stately plane trees. Elinor let go of
Harry's arm as she moved into the park beyond the trees, heading
for the moonlight. He paced silently along beside her, hands
clasped behind his back.

Thought proved elusive for
Elinor. She knew what she ought to be thinking about, but she could
only
feel.

A riot of turbulent
emotions had taken possession of her, disrupting her thoughts, and
throwing her mental process into utter disarray. Every time she
managed a coherent thought, some stray emotion came crashing
through it, smashing it into bits. If she could define the
emotions, perhaps she could make a start at bringing them into some
semblance of order, but she couldn't do it. Anger was there,
bashing about inside her, and fear. So was compassion. And
guilt--or was that an emotion?

"Wot's that?" Harry was
peering at something beneath the trees. "Elinor, do you see it?
That white thing there?" He pointed into the shadows.

She squinted, not sure
where he was pointing. "Under the rhododendron?"

"No, beside it. Next to the
tree trunk there." He moved toward it, whatever it was.

Elinor, perforce, went with
him. Horror shuddered through her when she saw the tiny grinning
skull with its sharp teeth moving through the deep dark, stealing
her breath, her strength. "What--?"

"Cat, I think," Harry said,
as calm as if he observed a phenomenon in his laboratory. "Skull
bone's harder than lots of the other bones. I wonder why it used
the skull whole."

"
What
used it? How is it moving like
that?" Elinor kept close to Harry, but behind him. Caution had its
proper place.

"Machine. Out o' the dead
zone. The rest of it's darker than the skull stuck on top, harder
to see. I wonder wot it's doin' 'ere."

"Call your committee, get
someone here to find out."

"No conjurer handy to call
for me." He crept toward the machine step by slow step.

"Harry, you are an
alchemist. You cannot be messing about with machines when they make
you faint."

"Armored ones keep all their
no-magic locked away inside their armor. Besides--" His teeth
flashed in the moonlight as he grinned over his shoulder at her.
"I'm your familiar now, or almost. I'm not
just
an alchemist anymore." He held
his hand out, inviting her to take it.

This was why she couldn't
make up her mind to break the familiar bond. Because it kept
proving itself useful. She placed her hand in his. "At least give a
shout to the bobby and ask him to report in."

"All right, I will. Just
let me--" Harry turned back to look at the machine again just as
something popped and a puff of dust or smoke drifted out one of the
cat skull's eye sockets.

He grunted, a sound of
pain. His knees buckled and he caught himself by his grip on
Elinor's hand. She cried out, voice rising to a scream as the cat
skull turned toward her. Something shot out from the other socket,
a streak of shine in the moonlight. Elinor's scream cut off as all
her muscles collapsed and the world went black.

She was cold. Elinor pressed
closer to the warmth behind her, shivering from the inside out. It
was dark, and damp, and there were peculiar scratching, clicking
noises. She was
not
at home, waking up in her bed.

The surface where she lay
was too hard and she still had all of her clothes on, including her
corset and her shoes. And her hoops, which were pushed and twisted
every which way. Her bonnet was crushed flat on one side, the ties
half choking her. She reached up to claw the ribbon open, pushed
the ruined hat off her head, and opened her eyes to
horror.

Choking off her scream--who
knew what else it might call?--Elinor drew her feet in beneath the
dubious protection of her warped and broken hoops. Hordes of
bone-armored machine creatures milled about her in timid
aggression, darting toward her with their spinning saw blades and
slicing pincers, then away again before they could get too
close.

The source of warmth beside
her proved to be Harry. His presence filled her with relief and
reassurance, but his unconscious state terrified her, especially
when she recalled the puff of smoke from the cat-skull monster's
eye. Could he have been shot again?

She rolled him onto his
back and tried to conduct an examination in the dark. She had no
idea where they were or how they could have got here. They were
inside a building scarcely more than four walls and a roof, and
those none too solid. At least it wasn't raining, given how porous
the roof appeared, but that only seemed to intensify the cold,
which was made worse by lying on hard, damp brick.