The Serpent's Shadow (48 page)

He grabbed her wrist before she could hit him. The wiry strength in it didn't surprise him. “Norrey!” he hissed, and she started back, eyes going wide, at the sight of a strange man dressed like a “toff” who knew her name. “Listen to me—you
have
to do something for us. Maya needs your help, and she needs it
now.”

“But she‘s—” the girl burst into tears, and Peter let go of her wrist, seized her shoulders and shook them until her teeth rattled and she pushed him away, angry again.

“No, she's not!” He was certain, as he was certain of nothing else, that whatever had happened to Maya, she was not dead
yet,
no matter what this girl might think. Her shields were all still in place, and her magic was still a
presence
that would not have been there if she was dead. But overlying it was another magic, an inimical force that might well kill her unless he could somehow find its source. “I know who did this to her, but I don't know
where
they are, and if we're going to help her, I have to find that out!”

Norrey's tears stopped as if they had been shut off, and her expression warred between doubt and hope. “But—”

“You get your friends, and you get the word out, girl!” he said fiercely. “The people that did this are Hindu, Indians like Maya and Gupta. They'll have taken a place somewhere that they think they won't be noticed. There'll be a lot of them—mostly men. You might think they're thieves; they aren‘t, but that's what they'll move and act like.”

Norrey's eyes narrowed in concentration as he described the look and habits of dacoits as he recalled them from India. “Now, do you think you can pass that on? We need to know where they are quickly, Norrey, the quicker the better.” He took a risk, and lowered his voice still further. “This is magic, Norrey, black, evil magic; we have to find the people who are doing it and stop them, or they
will
kill her by midnight!”

“ ‘f they be in th' city, Oi'll winkle 'em out!” Norrey said, with the fervency of a vow. She wriggled out of his grip and shot out the door. Now he could push and shove his way through to the examining room, his heart plummeting with dread at what he would find there.

They had laid her out on her own examination table, and at first sight, with her face so white and still, and not so much as a flutter of her eyelids, she did look dead. All of her pets had crowded into the room, and surrounded the table; the moment that they sighted
him,
they burst into a clamor or made for him. Charan leaped up into his arms, and the three birds waved their wings frantically at him. Then the green parrot launched itself across the gap to land on his shoulder.

Peter put Charan on his other shoulder, and went to Maya's side, heart in mouth. There were no outward signs of life, not even the rise and fall of Maya's chest to show that she breathed. But when he took up her hand and felt her wrist, there was a faint pulse—and over her hung an invisible pall that only he could see, a nasty, clinging yellow-gray fog that made him sick when it brushed against him.

Gupta made his way back into the room. “Get these people out!” he snapped. “No one here but household, Lord Almsley when he arrives, and Norrey when she returns. Have you sent for a doctor?”

Gupta cast him a reproachful look. “From the Fleet, sahib,” was all he said, then set about clearing the office, then the hall, of people who, however well-meaning they were, at this point were nothing but a nuisance.

When he had closed the door on the last of them, Gupta returned. “What is this, sahib? Magic—surely—”

“Magic and something else, I don't know what—” Peter was half into a trance. He might not be a doctor—he wasn't any kind of a healer—but he was a Water Master—

And the body is
—
what? Three-fourths water?

Well, in this case, it was water with something horribly wrong about it. It wasn't only the sickening fog that hung over it, there was something foul in her very blood—coursing all through her veins, some poison or drug or both—

“Move yer bloomin' arse, ye wretched donkey!” said an Irish-accented voice, and he came abruptly out of trance as a rough hand shoved him to one side.

“Doctor O‘Reilly—” Gupta protested, while Peter coughed and shook his head to clear it.

The newcomer had a beard and head of fiery red curls, and a temper to match—but had the air of authority and the slender hands of a surgeon. He pulled off his coat in such haste that the sleeve tore. “Quiet!” O‘Reilly snapped, as the man snatched up a scalpel from a tray of instruments and began cutting Maya's clothing off of her, with a fine disregard for propriety. And as he moved, Peter saw with his inner eye a very familiar flicker of power around him. “But—you're a Fire Master!” he gasped. “How—where—”

“In Eire, of course, ye gurt fool!” O‘Reilly growled. “An' as to why I'd no joined yer precious club, ye can ask that bigger fool Aldershot or whate'er it is he calls hisself when he's at home!” He threw the remains of Maya's shirtwaist on the floor and started on her camisole and corset cover. “Didn't guess she was a young mage till after ye came along.” More rags joined the shirtwaist. “Saw no rhyme nor reason t' interfere then when you had her in hand, and her takin' a likin' to ye, so kept meself to meself. If I'd known she was with troubles, though—Hah!
There!
”

He'd gotten the corset cut off and tossed it aside, much to Peter's acute embarrassment; the doctor didn't seem to care, but Peter couldn't help flushing painfully at Maya's nude torso laid bare for all of them to see—

But his flush faded as O‘Reilly pointed at a nasty round bruise on her side, just above her hip.

“That's a syringe mark, or I'll eat me own shoes,” O‘Reilly said in angry triumph. “And that 'counts for how they got their divil brew into her! Happen they got summat
from
her, too, or I miss my guess, filthy heathen.”

He flung the scalpel down on the floor and seized the stethoscope, hauling it on over his ears and putting the listening end to her chest, then jerking it from his ears again.

“There's two sorts uv diviltry here, drugs
and
magic. An' the one that'll kill her first is the drugs.” O‘Reilly's accent got thicker as time flew past and tension grew. “You—” He glanced up at Peter. “You, Water Master! You can be givin' me a hand here—I'll be wantin' ye to drive what's
in
her back out toward th' wound, here. That's not somethin'
I
can do; I can't work inside uv her wit'out burnin' her up. Can ye do that?”

“I—” he was going to say he would try, but trying was not good enough, not here, not now. He nodded, dumbly, placed his hands gently on the cool skin of her abdomen, and fought his way down past that sickening fog mantling her body again. It was harder the second time; the magic was stronger. How
much
stronger would it get?

The
wrongness
was everywhere; where to start? It was only going to continue to get pumped around in her veins as he worked! He couldn't count on keeping any place “clean” for longer than a heartbeat or two.

It didn't matter. What mattered was that he started. Indecision and hesitation were the enemy's allies.
Work like a seine net; strain out the stuff and shove it in front of me, then go back again and again—

Herding phantoms, chasing mist; that was what it felt like, and all on a miniature scale. He pushed the poisons ahead of a thread of power; they flooded in behind his sweep, and he had to force himself to ignore them, concentrating on the evil he had captured, and all the time that malevolent magical miasma he worked in thickened and grew stronger. It wasn't until the sphere of his awareness reached the area of the puncture that he understood what O‘Reilly was up to.

With a needle of Fire as finely regulated and controlled as any master embroiderer ever wielded, O‘Reilly vaporized every tiny atom of poison oozing from the puncture, without ever cauterizing the wound itself. In fact, he created a kind of suction as he evaporated the vile stuff, a suction that hastened the process of drawing out the poison. It was a brilliant display, but Peter had no time to admire it. Maya sank further with every passing moment, physically and magically.

Peter completely lost track of time and his surroundings. His focus, his life, now centered on herding the poisons, and taking note and hope from the slow but steady improvement in Maya's heartbeat and breathing as he cleared her system of them. At some point, he felt the presence of another joining him in this task, the familiar deft touch of Peter Almsley; with his Twin came a little more strength, and a little less fear, and the knowledge that he wasn't fighting evil magic and poisons all alone.

The stuff was getting thinner, less a sludge in the blood and more a color—then less a color than a stain—then it had thinned to the point where he could barely find any of it at all—

And that was when Almsley shook his elbow, and he fought his way back
out
through that horrid fog, which had by this point thickened to the point that it was a sludge, or a kind of quicksand. It left a taint in the back of the mind in the same way that a mouthful of foul liquid left a taint in the back of the throat. He came back to himself, retching in reaction to it.

Gopal was at his elbow, steadying him, as he opened his eyes on the surgery.

Almsley looked like hell, dark circles under his eyes and strain in every feature; he knew he didn't look much better. It was hard to make out O‘Reilly's face under all that hair, but his complexion was certainly pale enough.

And we aren't even close to finished yet
—

His hand sought Maya‘s, and he felt her wrist for a pulse. Strong and steady, thank God! And her chest, now decently covered with a sheet, rose and fell normally. She looked asleep to all outer appearance, except that her eyes, too, were sunken, her cheeks hollowed, and her skin as pale as porcelain, every vestige of color drained from it.

“We're holdin' our own,” O‘Reilly said, as Peter looked up at him. “That was good work ye done.” He glanced past Peter at the other man. “Almsley, I had no notion from that silly-ass manner uv yours that ye had that level uv skill.”

“Well, that's rather the point of the manner, old man. I want people to underestimate me,” Almsley said wearily, then turned to Peter. “What are we going to do about that spell that's on her?”

No beating around the bush with Almsley, thank God. “I have someone out trying to find out where these dacoits are; where
they
are, that's where we'll find the source of all this.” His own gaze moved past Peter Almsley to Gupta, who shook his head slightly. He stifled a groan. “Well, she's not back yet—frankly, Twin, she's a member of a gang of thieves and footpads, and if
they
can't find what we're looking for, no one will.”

“Seeing as we already know your Hindu sorceress has managed to cloak herself handily from everything the Lodge has tried, even that idiot Owlswick couldn't manage,” Almsley agreed, and grimaced. “Damn the Old Man for a fool! There are half a dozen other things he could have done when you first asked him for help that would not leave us at such an impasse!”

O‘Reilly growled in his throat. And he might have said something himself on the subject, but just at that moment, the doorbell rang, and Norrey burst into the surgery.

“We found ‘em!” she shouted in near-hysterical triumph. “We got 'em pinned i' their ‘ole!”

It took time to get organized; Peter fretted more with every passing second, his nerves at such a pitch that he thought the top of his head would split. He ordered Gopal to stay behind, for he didn't want to leave the house physically undefended.
Magically,
O‘Reilly, who would also stay behind because of his medical skills, was more than a match for most direct attacks. Of all the Masters, the Fire Masters were the most adept at combat, as well as having the power best suited to fighting. And while it would have been ideal to have that combative ability with them, O'Reilly was their only physician, and he
had
to stay with Maya.

Peter wanted to leave Gupta behind as well, but the old man wouldn't hear of it. He vanished briefly and came back armed to the teeth with a brace of ancient Army pistols, knives in his belt, and even a sword slung over his back. “I have slain men ere this,” the old man insisted. “I can slay dacoits now, with little more harm to my karma.”

Almsley insisted on going as well, nor was he unarmed; he'd brought his own revolver and a second one for Peter, and a pocketful of ammunition.

And they quickly found, as they looked for a second cab—their remarkable first driver and his fantastic horse having been hired by Almsley for the day, with immense forethought on Almsley's part—that the animals were not going to be left behind either.