Heart's Magic (7 page)

"I'll monitor his
condition," Amanusa said, sinking into that light trance that meant
she was "riding the blood."

Elinor would never
understand sorcery. Not how it worked nor why anyone would want to
use it. Good thing she was a wizard. She went back for more
ointment. "Spread it thin," she murmured to Rosato. "It's all there
is till I make more."

"
Si.
"

"His system is suffering a
great deal of shock," Amanusa said from her distance inside
Cranshaw's body.

"Ah. Yes." Rosato held his
hands in midair, shiny with salve and other things best not thought
on. "Signora Carteret, if you might open my bag for me?"

Pearl obliged. She had
shared Elinor's flat during her very short apprenticeship, before
achieving master's status and then marrying Grey on Boxing Day a
few weeks ago. Elinor considered her a good friend.

"There." Rosato pointed at
a jar in the bag. "That one, in the blue bottle--"

Pearl pointed for
confirmation and the
dottore
nodded. "Try to get it down him," he said. "All of
it. It will sustain him."

Five more minutes passed,
or perhaps ten. Elinor didn't know. Between them, Pearl and Amanusa
managed to pour most of Rosato's potion down the unconscious wizard
while Elinor and the Italian labored over his burns.

"That's helping," Amanusa
said a little while later. "So is what you're doing. He is in less
pain, which puts less strain on his heart and other
organs."

"It needs more magic in
it." Elinor looked in her quiver, but it was empty. Had they fallen
out? Or maybe she dropped them.

"This wot you're hunting?"
Harry held out a trio of wands. Maple, ash and pine.

Elinor took up the pine
wand. She'd left it empty, ready to fill with whatever magic she
needed, since pine was a soft wood and took up magic quickly. It
was also slightly astringent. Well-suited to healing magic, since
it had cleansing and healing properties of its own.

Elinor called those
properties out of the wood, shaped it for her purposes, adjusted
the magic to match the healing ointment, and sent it back through
the wand into the ointment glistening on Cranshaw's blackened and
blistering body.

"The burns are healing."
Rosato's quiet words held awe. He said it again, louder. "The burns
are healing. You can watch them heal. The ointment made by
Signorina
Elinor Tavis is
master-level work. So I, Antonio Rosato, master wizard, do
say."

"Challenger Tavis defended
herself." Norwood's booming Northern accent echoed through the
room. "She defended herself and unarmed noncombatants from a
sneaking, cheating, cowardly attack. That attack alone, using
illegal magic not created by the contender, disqualifies Nigel
Cranshaw from membership in the Magician's Council of Great
Britain." His statement brought a burst of noise from the crowd,
who had been moved back behind the rails by the Briganti. Gathmann
started back toward the dais.

"Bravo, Thom," Harry said
quietly, clapping Norwood on the shoulder.

"Only fair, sir. I've never
seen a braver lass," Norwood muttered, color staining his cheeks.
"Not that I think she should have been at risk."

"She wasn't, though, was
she? Not with that magic.
Throwing
the wands--who'd 'ave thought?"

"Silence!" Gathmann had to
impose his magic over the rising babble of shouting and argument
again, as he climbed back onto the platform. "First--" He pointed
his gavel at the knot of healers around Cranshaw, releasing the
spell on them.

Elinor and Rosato both were
sitting back on their heels, holding their ointment-sticky hands up
where they wouldn't touch anything, watching Cranshaw heal. Now
they looked up toward the dais. Amanusa still bent over the burned
man's head, touching a pair of fingertips lightly to his
temple.

"Will Cranshaw survive his
burns?" Gathmann asked.

"He'll live," Amanusa
murmured.

Elinor looked at Dr. Rosato,
who raised an eyebrow at her. "He is your patient,
signorina,
" he
said.

Oh. Right. If she wanted
women to be leaders, she had to be willing to speak in public from
time to time. Harry took her rather squishy hand and assisted her
to her feet.

"Yes,
Herr
Gathmann," Elinor called out,
using magic to be heard through the whole room. "Mr. Cranshaw will
live. His burns will heal. He may even be able to use his hand
again some day." She took the handkerchief Harry gave her and began
cleaning off her hands.

A rustle of silenced
movement flowed around the room at that announcement.

"Thank you,
Fraulein
Tavis, for
offering your talents to heal him." Gathmann gave one of his stiff
little heel-clicking bows.

Sir William took that
moment to come forward and murmur in the Prussian's ear. Gathmann
turned the gavel over to him.

"I have the results of the
vote on the sorcery guild." Sir William waved a sheaf of papers in
all sizes.

The two sorcerers exchanged
glances and stood with the aid of their husbands to hear the
results, coming to join Elinor. This vote could have significance
in her own situation as well and her hands twisted together in
Harry's handkerchief. Too many men did not like the idea of women
in their hallowed halls. Even though women had helped to build them
in the centuries before Cromwell and his extremes.

"Votes in favor of the
retention of the sorcery guild in the council--" Sir William
checked the tally. "One hundred seventy-four."

Elinor grimaced. That
wasn't even half of the magicians present. Did they really mean to
expel sorcery from their ranks? To split the council into male and
female?

"Votes against keeping
sorcery in the council--" Sir William checked the sheet again and
looked out over the gathered crowd. "Forty-seven. Three hundred
ninety-two ballots were blank."

What did that
mean?

"The motion passes. Sorcery
is still a guild within the British Magician's Council."

Harry whooped silently,
catching Grey in a hug, then shaking hands with everyone nearby,
even those who obviously did not agree with the vote.

Sir William passed the
gavel back to Gathmann, who couldn't find anything to bang it on.
He started speaking without waiting for the silent commotion to die
down.

"Is there a contender
standing?" he called out in words that reeked of ritual to
Elinor.

"There is," Dr. Rosato
called back. "The wizard Elinor Tavis has drunk the potion of Nigel
Cranshaw and still stands."

"Did Cranshaw drink the
potion of Elinor Tavis?" Gathmann asked. Elinor supposed he had to,
even if everyone already knew the answer.

Thomas Norwood took a step
forward and raised the goblet he still held, prompting the Prussian
to remove the silencing on him. "He did not, sir. The potion
remains."

"Did the contenders
restrict themselves to magic of their own calling and
creation?"

"Wizard Tavis did, sir."
Norwood spoke again. His voice filled with disgust and scorn as he
went on. "Magister Cranshaw resorted to illegal alchemical spells,
though he is a member of the wizard's guild."

Gathmann paused here.
Elinor thought he must have run out of traditional questions.
Contenders who cheated with other people's magic must be rare. "And
what was the result?" he finally asked. "How did Contender Tavis
respond to this action?"

"She used her own magic,
sir," Norwood said, his voice now admiring. "She acted quickly and
comprehensively, first damping the effects of the illegal
fireballs, then containing Cranshaw. His injuries were caused by
his own actions. Whereupon Wizard Tavis used more of her own magic
to treat the results of Cranshaw's dishonorable
behavior."

"This magic she used," Dr.
Rosato spoke up, "from the challenge potion to the healing ointment
to her innovative use of wands--it is--"

"Sir William will hear
that," Gathmann interrupted. "I deal with the challenge only." He
paused, scowling out across the great hall with its crowd of
spectators. He waved his borrowed gavel, releasing the silence on
everyone, but the only sounds were the rustle of clothing, the
shuffle of feet, and a few scattered coughs. "Does anyone deny that
Elinor Tavis has honorably defeated Nigel Cranshaw in this
challenge of wizards?"

More feet shuffled, throats
were cleared, but no one spoke.

"Then Elinor Tavis is
declared the victor."

Shouting erupted across the
chamber, some jubilant, some outraged, but the outrage was much
less than Elinor would have suspected. Dr. Rosato hugged her first
because he stood closest. He planted a kiss on her cheek--only
because she turned her head quickly enough it landed there, rather
than on her mouth where he aimed it, the unregenerate
flirt.

Elinor hugged her sorcerer
friends and was swept up in a whirling bear hug by Harry. He spun
around once, then set her abruptly on her feet and backed up a
step, his lips curving in a crookedly rueful smile. What did that
mean? Anything?

With a last suspicious
look, she turned away to shake Grey's hand and that of Jax Greyson,
Amanusa's husband. Both men were also sorcerer's familiars,
assisting in their wives' magic. Elinor didn't understand that
either.

"I'd have thought there
would be more objection than this," Amanusa said, looking around at
the spectators, mostly back behind their railings again, conversing
in low voices. "There certainly was in Paris, when the Conclave
recognized sorcery."

"Cranshaw's behavior has
shamed them," Grey said. "He's been perhaps more extreme in
expressing himself, but most of them agreed with the core of his
objection, which is that women have no place in magic. Now that he
has been shown to be not only a madman, but a dishonorable cheat
and a coward as well, they know that their own dishonor and
cowardice has been exposed."

"I would have thought one
of you alchemists would have stepped in to extinguish things,"
Elinor said, "when Cranshaw started throwing fireballs. Why didn't
you? Why did you leave me hanging there alone?" She glared at
Harry. His abandonment hurt the most.

"You were still in the
challenge, weren't ya?" he said, his eyes begging her to
understand. "As long as the challenger is 'andling what comes at
'em, even if it's cheating, they 'ave to get the chance to do it.
It's in the rules. We did step in when Cranshaw set himself ablaze,
didn't we?" His eyes shone with pride now. "And you took everything
the bast--the blaggart threw at ya and came out
shinin'."

Appeased by the praise,
Elinor nodded. "All right then, since it's in the
rules..."

Motion on the dais caught
her eye and she turned to see Gathmann pass the gavel to Sir
William again. The Prussian remained on the dais, taking a few
steps back. Probably to be ready to impose his silence again,
should the council head require it.

"How did he do it?" Elinor
asked Harry from the side of her mouth. "The silence? The gavel is
wood and he is an alchemist."

"Wasn't the gavel 'e used,"
Harry replied. "It's a tricky spell, but 'e used the air--'cause it
carries the sound--an' the stone in the walls and roof to contain
it. Can't work this spell outside. Air moves too much, an' for
quiet, you got to stop it moving." He looked sideways at her,
touching his finger to his lips in admonishment. As if he wasn't
the one always talking out of turn. She rolled her eyes at him,
before turning her attention forward.

Sir William had apparently
tired of waiting for the conversation to quiet. "Gentlemen," he
said in his booming, magic-enhanced voice. "And ladies."

He bowed to the tiny
cluster of white and green-gowned women amidst all the sober black,
gray and brown. "Elinor Tavis challenged Nigel Cranshaw as magister
of the wizard's guild and has defeated him in that challenge, as
witnessed by everyone present here. Magister Tavis, come and take
your seat in the magister's chair."

Wait--
magister's
chair? What was he talking
about?

"She's not a member of the
guild!" one of the wizards shouted. Elinor couldn't see who. Allsup
probably. He was that sort.

Sir William scowled down at
the protester. Antonio Rosato strode down the center area cleared
by Briganti, his frock coat and his silky black hair blowing a
little with the breeze of his passage.

"Were you not here?" he
demanded. "Did you not see?" With one hand, he caught the collar
of--yes, Allsup--and dragged him back across the open floor to
where Cranshaw lay, watched over now by his second, Dodd. "Look. Do
you not see him heal? Are you so blind?"

He shook Allsup before
releasing him with a shove and turned in a circle as he addressed
the crowd. "I am Dottore Antonio Rosato. You know me, at least by
rumor and reputation, if not personally. Is there any man--or
woman--present who will say that I am not
master
wizard?"