Heart of Light (12 page)

Kitwana's father said that the binds were dangerous to those who set them, too. They made the setter feel superior and forget the common ties that bound all humanity. Besides, if someone set a bind and the enemy somehow had been forewarned, the attack could be reversed, and the bind-setter could find himself the victim. And the Englishmen were cunning enough they might somehow have anticipated this move. Or something might. Something was going around killing Hyena Men. Something was stronger than they were.

“Binds are illegal,” Kitwana said weakly.

Shenta laughed. “It is also illegal, or it should be, to murder our people and enslave our children, but they have done it. Don't be a fool, Kitwana. We do not have enough Hyena Men—even if we called our members from the whole world—to follow these Englishmen unnoticed. But we do have enough power to set a bind on them, and then half a dozen of us can follow them.”

Kitwana shook his head, but didn't voice an objection. He couldn't think of an objection or anything else through his headache. And his father's face, in his mind, looked sorrowful and filled with gentle reproach.

“Now what? You disapprove of my plan, Kitwana?” Shenta squared his shoulders, looking every bit like a warrior facing a challenge.

Kitwana sighed. “No,” he said. “Yes, but— No. I have a headache. I can't think clearly.”

Shenta grinned, displaying eerily even teeth. “You're not meant to think, only do the will of the Hyena Men. Now mind-summon all our members in Cairo. We'll need full strength to place this bind. And watch for the enemy.”

Kitwana started to open his mouth to say something, he didn't know what. But Shenta had already turned his back and headed up the stairs.

Kitwana sighed. If the Hyena Men did manage to secure the ruby, if they did manage to use it to bind power to someone in Africa, would it be, as Nassira had said, to all the Hyena Men? Or would the power be bound to someone like Shenta and all his descendants in perpetuity?

Kitwana fetched the ceremonial candle from the kitchen cupboard where it had been stored, and lit it with a small zap of magic. Carrying the candle to the table in the front parlor, he tried to shape his mind to the summons he must send out. But he was no longer as sure that what he did was the best for all of Africa.

He missed his father's village and the certainty he'd had when he was a child that he lived in a village at the heart of the universe, and that his father was the priest of an infallible god.

HIS HEART'S SECRET

Emily was cross. Nigel had sent her to bed.
Sent
her
to bed, as though he'd been her father, and she a child. She banged the bedroom door closed.

Oh, she knew she was his wife, his to command. But to send her to bed like that on their first night in Cairo, with no reprieve. As though Emily must retire before the real conversation, the truly interesting things could happen.

Which Emily felt was true, as she came into the hushed atmosphere of her bedroom.

The pink velvet spread on the bed and large pillows with broad printed roses that seemed to choke the life out of the room with their untamed vitality. Lace on the window, woven tightly and small, doubtless served as much to keep flies out as to provide decoration.

Emily frowned at the large mirror mounted atop the elaborately draped vanity. But for her knowing she was married . . . She tore off her elaborate hat and her lace gloves and tossed them on the bed. He mustered more enthusiasm for his old school fellow than for his newlywed wife.

And at this, a thought of Peter's starkly planed face, of his aquiline nose, his vivid green eyes made Emily draw breath in hastily, before removing every thought of him from her mind.

Curse Peter Farewell. She'd thought to find an ally in him. Though never confessing it—not in such terms—she had toyed, in the very back of her mind, with asking Peter if he knew of any impediment to her union with Nigel. Did he know of some school sweetheart, some woman without dowry and disapproved of by the Oldhalls, who languished in a home far away and left Nigel forever with a broken heart?

She looked toward Nigel's door.

Memories of every plot of every novel that, unknown to her father, she had read in the privacy of her room came to haunt her. She should know what secrets hid in Nigel's heart.

He was downstairs, somewhere, with Peter Farewell, having their port and their cigars and discussing those things both of them deemed too arcane and strange for what they imagined to be her childlike, female mind.

Let them, because while they were there, Nigel's trunks were in his room, alone and unprotected.

From her vast experience of the male soul—gleaned wholly from such novels as she managed to sneak here and there—Emily knew it for a sure fact that no man was ever without a token of his love: a picture of his beloved, a betraying lock of hair, a piece of jewelry, letters or some other fetish.

She took a deep breath then opened his door.

His room felt cold—not physically, which might well be impossible in Cairo, but a spiderweb touch upon the senses, like an uninhabited place. As well it should, since Nigel had not so much as looked at it yet.

His bed was covered in heavy brown velvet, which also covered his window in thick folds. Someone, presumably a maid, had lit the magelights by the bedside. They burned white and pale behind the jutting hurricane glass. By their cold light, Nigel's travel trunks loomed huge and intimidating—brown leather, strapped down, each half as large as his bed, each with a vast rounded top like a fat belly—heavy, portentous and daunting.

Emily opened the trunk straps and pulled the trunk lid up. Within were mounds of clothes, carefully laid. Too carefully laid—shirts and cravats and coats lay precisely disposed. These had surely not been set into the trunk by Nigel's hand. The way these clothes were laid, carefully folded in exact, symmetrical lines, spoke of a professional hand. Nigel's valet.

The idea of Nigel's having entrusted his heart's token to a valet made Emily smile as she stepped over to the next trunk. It was also too carefully packed.

The next trunk, Nigel's last, was guarded with magical spells. Emily could see the energy of them, running in little sparks along the straps. It tingled on her fingers when she approached.

She'd heard once, long ago, that nonmagicians or those of very small magic couldn't see magical locks. But they could feel them, much more so than magicians. There would be a burning upon the skin, a scream in the soul. Although Emily only felt a tingle, she was not so foolish as to imagine that meant she was immune to them. On the contrary, she knew that if she continued and opened the trunk lid despite the wards on it, the magic would attack her, and if not kill her, at least injure her mind and soul, leaving them blank and damaged.

On the other hand . . .

She ran her hand over the wards from above, feeling the magic as one might taste a sweet—for flavor and strength and efficacy. It was strong magic, designed by Nigel. But it was not long ago that Nigel, in a transport of passion while courting, had handed her the key to his magic, letting her sense the shape of his magical power and from it know and determine how to open every lock he set, how to enter every room he warded.

With trembling hands, Emily wove the spells in the air and unlocked each of the spells that Nigel had so carefully lain upon this trunk.

Why protect the contents this well, unless there was that token of his love that he couldn't leave behind? She flung the lid wide. And there, inside, was a style of packing that looked more like Nigel's hand. Still smooth and still well folded, but no professional touch about it, and also a hint of irrational exuberance—shirts overlying pants, overlying coats, then shirts again. Beneath a layer of clothing lay objects diverse and strange. A Martini-Henry powerstick; a sturdy rounded sun hat, quite unlike the more civilized panama, as though Nigel planned to go hiking through the jungle and a large, round stone, wrapped in the finest silk.

Emily stared at this last item, puzzling as she ran her hands over it, feeling within a great power of crouched magic. She pulled back a corner of the silk, smoother and better woven than her own finest silk dress. A stone about the size of her small closed fist looked brutishly common, a piece of granite with nothing to distinguish it from any plain rock picked up from any street. Yet power tingled in it and magic ran around its veins like blood in a human heart.

Was this, then, a token given to Nigel by his true lady love? Of course it would be. An object so common that it could not be suspected. Perhaps, under the right magical stimulus, it spun dreams of his love into his sleep. Or perhaps it sang to him in her voice. In novels, magical love tokens did all of these things and more.

Emily cringed at the thought. Until she held the thing in her hand, she had only suspected that Nigel was unfaithful to her in his heart. But now she could not doubt, for what else could this be?

She felt a great anger at her husband's unknown paramour. How dared she give such a token to a married man? Emily would know the secret of this stone and drain it of its magic. Then, deprived of the memento of the other woman, Nigel would have no choice but to turn his attentions and his love to Emily.

And surely her actions, though perhaps reprehensible, had at their heart a most proper aim. She picked up the magic stone and stood holding it in the palm of her hand.

The room was dark and still and too hot. Or perhaps the heat came from her shamefaced certainty that she should not do this, that she was debasing herself and Nigel, also. But how could she debase them further than Nigel's unfaithfulness that had made a mockery of their sacred vows of marriage? Still, she tore the velvet drape wide. Beneath was a lace curtain like her own and, beneath that, a window with many small glass panes framed in wood. She opened the window, turning the knob and throwing the panes wide. As she stepped back, wind furled the curtain, bringing fresh air into the room.

There. That was better.

Emily picked up the stone again and brought it to her chest. It glowed softly. Her mind sensed the pattern print of its magic, looking for the key that would unlock it. And bring to her the secrets of Nigel's love.

GENTLEMEN'S TALK