Phoenix and Ashes (45 page)

She
held quite still, knowing, even if she knew nothing else, that she did not want
to attract their attention.

But
she also did not want those things prowling about after dark. Maybe ordinary
people couldn’t see them and know them to be as dangerous as an
unexploded shell, but she could, and did, and she often went out at night.
Maybe they couldn’t get past the protections that kept the village
safe—but maybe they could.

She
wasn’t taking any chances.

I
have to get away, and tell Sarah about this as soon as I can. She has to know
these things are still out here, and dangerous
.

But
before she could make up her mind any further, she heard, faint and muffled,
the sound of another motorcar approaching. Eleanor shivered as she realized
that the motor was also nearly transparent, and as for driver and passenger,
they were utterly, weirdly silent. Were they some other kind of revenant? Or
were they something else?

The
motor chugged to a full stop alongside the fence—which, strangely enough,
was
not
transparent. And as the passenger stepped down from the
motorcar, she became more real, and more solid, with each step. It was like a
vanishing-trick in reverse. As she became more real and solid, she also began
to glow—but it was as if she had brought sunlight into the midnight
world, not the sort of sickly foxfire that the revenants radiated. Just looking
at her made Eleanor feel more confident, and less afraid.

But
the figure that stood there, straight-backed and imperious, was no one that
Eleanor recognized.

She
was dressed in the most outlandish costume Eleanor had ever seen outside of a
play or a fancy-dress party—quite literally, draped Grecian robes of a
brilliant blue. In her graying hair, which had been braided and wrapped around
her head in the style favored by Grecian matrons, was a laurel wreath. She had
a staff a little taller than she was in one hand, but she didn’t lean on
it as if she needed its support. She surveyed the scene before her, looking
down her nose at the revenants, who were only just now realizing that she was
there, and frowned.

“Provide
an anchor, Smith, just in case.” The very feminine voice
said—sounding as if she was speaking from the bottom of a well. A pale
blue ray of light lanced from the man behind the wheel to the old woman.

Now
the revenants were beginning to notice that they were not alone. They turned
towards the woman, snarling and sneering, and one or two advanced towards her
in a threatening manner.

She
didn’t seem to care in the least. In fact, she regarded them with the
calm disapproval of someone who has found schoolboys meddling in something they
should have known better than to touch. “You,” she said sternly,
“Have been very naughty, and whoever sent you was naughtier still.”

And
with that, she rapped the butt of her staff three times on the ground, and made
a gesture as of one scattering a handful of grain.

And suddenly,
Eleanor found herself at the heart of a tempest.

June 21, 1917
Broom, Warwickshire

QUICKER THAN THOUGHT,
THE TEMPEST descended. Silent, invisible winds ripped through the countryside,
practically picking Eleanor right up off her feet and slamming her into the
trunk of a tree, to which she clung for dear life. The winds tore at her hair,
sending it whipping around her, hauled at her clothing—but what they did
to her was nothing to what they were doing to the revenants.

The
revenants were—literally—being shredded, by the winds that spun
cyclone-like in a vortex, with the old woman at their still heart. There was a
clean, blue glow about the old woman and her helper now. And though the
revenants huddled howling together, trying to hide themselves, nothing they did
was any protection against the power that was ripping them apart, as if they
were nothing but tissue-paper, and whirling the tiny pieces upwards in a
reverse snowfall of glowing bits.

Eleanor
looked up, involuntarily, to see that the bits were being carried up into a
bottomless black hole in the sky, rimmed with glowing blue.

And
yet—and there was the strangest thing of all—so far as the trees
and the rest of the “real world” was concerned, there were no
winds. The leaves rustled only a little; the grasses scarcely moved at all.
There was no sound but the keening wail of the revenants themselves.

The
hair went up on the back of Eleanor’s neck, even as she clung even
tighter to the tree-trunk.

Or
was she clinging to the trunk? There seemed to be two trees there, a kind of
faintly luminescent shadow-tree, which
was
tossing its branches in the
tempest, and the “real” tree, which was undisturbed—and her
arms were wrapped tightly around the former, not the latter.

A
thin cry of despair arose from the revenants, and if they had been hideous
before, now, with half of their substance eaten away by the terrible cyclone,
they were horrible to look at. They tried to snatch at the bits of themselves
being ripped off and blown away, only to see their fingers, bits of their
hands, torn off too. Eleanor felt herself sickening, and couldn’t help
herself; she couldn’t bear the sight any longer. She squeezed her eyes
shut, and tried to will herself awake, for surely this was a dream. It
must
be a dream. She would make it a dream—

Oh
please, let this just be a nightmare, don’t let it be real…

And
with a start, and a jolting she felt in her heart, she
did
awaken.

She
was in her own bed, crickets singing outside her window. Her heart pounded so
hard she thought the bed might be shaking with the force of it, and she was
terribly, terribly cold.

And
a moment later, she began to shiver so violently that the bed did start shaking
after all.

She
tried to move, and couldn’t, and her shivering grew worse. It was as if
the cold itself held her prisoner, in bonds of ice. She had never been so cold;
her teeth chattered with it, and her fingers and toes were numb with it, and
she wanted a blanket desperately. But before she could make a second attempt to
lurch out of bed to get one, something else came to her rescue.

Flowing
out of the brickwork of the chimney came her Salamanders, three of them. They
raced across the floor and slithered up into the bed, where one coiled itself
against the small of her back, one wrapped itself around her shoulders, and one
curled up just at the hollow of her stomach. Warmth spread from them, driving
the numbing cold out of her, and after a moment, her shivering stopped and she
began to relax.

As
soon as she began to feel warm again, exhaustion hit her, as if she had been
working beyond her strength. And when the last of remnants of her fear ebbed
away, replaced by a weary lassitude, she gave in to it, and let sleep claim her
again.

This
time carefully
not
thinking of any questions, nor the Tarot.
She’d had enough lessons for one night.

June 22, 1917
Longacre Park, Warwickshire

The
card party that had begun so tediously had ended last night as a different sort
of party altogether. Reggie could not have been more grateful. His aunt’s
good friend—and his own godmother—Lady Virginia de Marce had turned
up, in her own motorcar, with her chauffeur and (though only he and his aunt
knew this) arcane assistant Smith in attendance. Smith had efficiently
organized the servants and gotten the formidable pile of Lady Virginia’s
belongings upstairs, while her ladyship tidied herself and returned to take
control of the company.

Her
ladyship could not help but take control of whatever company she was in. She
had an air about her of absolute authority, she dressed like a queen, in her
own unique style, based roughly on the enormous hats, trumpet-skirts and
high-necked gowns of twenty years before, which somehow made her look
tunelessly fashionable rather than outdated.

While
every powerful Master that Reggie had ever met tended to exude that aura of
authority, Lady Virginia had honed hers into a weapon. When she entered a room,
she took charge of it and everyone in it.

With
Smith’s help, she had come downstairs again in less than a third of the
time it would have taken any other woman, changed miraculously from her duster,
goggles, veiled hat and traveling-ensemble to an exquisite gown of mauve lace.
Smith, be it said, was also Lady Virginia’s lady’s
maid—because Smith, chauffeur, arcane assistant, was a woman.

As
Lady Virginia often said, “I am old enough to be able to hire whom I
wish, and rich enough to be considered eccentric, rather than mad, when I
do.”

It
was difficult to know whether one
liked
Smith; the curiously sexless
servant was a past mistress of being inscrutable and virtually invisible. But
there was no doubt that Smith was as efficient and formidable, in her own quiet
way, as her mistress.

Reggie
had more than once wondered if Smith was even human. It was possible that she
was not; Lady Virginia, after all, was a formidable Master of Air, and it was
just within the bounds of the possible that Smith was actually an Air Elemental
of some arcane sort. Not
likely
, but possible.

As
for appearances, Smith had gray eyes, curiously colorless hair kept cropped
short, and invariably wore gray, either as a mannishly tailored suit, or a
chauffeur’s uniform (and somehow, perhaps because she looked so
androgynous, no one was scandalized by a woman in trousers). She was always
correct, always precise, and seldom spoke unless addressed directly.

And
in fact, her name wasn’t “Smith” at all. It was Melanie Lynn.

When
he’d first learned this, he had been stupid enough and arrogant enough to
take Lady Virginia to task for calling her servant “Smith” rather
than “Lynn”—for there were people in his circle that
couldn’t be bothered to learn their servants’ names. Instead, they
had a habit of calling them whatever was convenient so that they would never
have to learn a new name for the old position when one servant was replaced by
another.

He
should have known better. This
was
Lady Virginia, after all, who
marched in the Suffragists’ Parades, chained herself to the railing of
Number 10 Downing Street, and helped Doctor Maya in her charity clinic.

“Are
you mad, boy?” Lady Virginia had said, sternly. “It’s not for
my convenience!
Smith
wants me to call her Smith, and I’m not
fool enough to gainsay her.”

“Names
are power,” Smith had said, from behind him, startling him into a yelp,
for he hadn’t realized she had come in. “Smith is a cipher. When
you are a cipher, boy, you can be anything. Standing out isn’t always an
advantage.”

He
often wondered where, exactly, Lady Virginia had found Smith, but after that
day, he’d never dared to ask.

The
game of bridge that had been taking place was utterly abandoned, as soon as
Lady Virginia descended, tidied into elegance again. Her personality dominated
the gathering without anyone other than Reggie really noticing. Within moments,
she had smoothly and effortlessly redirected the conversation into a discussion
of the remarkable achievements of young T. E. Lawrence in the Arabian campaign.
It was a reasonably “safe” topic; an exotic enough locale that no
one at the tables truly connected it with the war, and even if they had,
Lawrence was leading an all-Arab army of resistance. No British
lives—other than his own—were involved. He was the darling of the
American as well as the British press. He was trailed about by an audacious
American reporter. It was painless to find him interesting.

But
there was something about the significant looks that she kept casting at Reggie
that made him certain she was only biding her time until she could get him
alone. Though why that should be, he couldn’t guess.

Unless
it had something to do with taking up magic again.

Surely
not.

Nevertheless
he was glad enough when his Aunt April, Lady Williams, declared that if
she
was tired, Lady Virginia must be shattered, and the local guests who had come
from outside Longacre Park elected to take themselves back to their homes. He
was able to slip away unobtrusively, and take to his own bed. Not that he had
expected to sleep. His dreams—nightmares, really—had been so
terrifying since the beginning of May that if he got three undisturbed hours in
a night, it was a good night’s rest. Only Doctor Maya’s drugs kept
the nightmares at bay, and he was beginning to feel uneasy about how much of
that stuff he was taking.

He
lay down in his bed, expecting to stare at the ceiling for hours, and had just
begun to think about what Lady Virginia could want with him. That was when he
actually fell asleep due to exhaustion.

Most
nights of the last month, he had lain awake for hours, staring up at the
ceiling, aware of a feeling of lurking hostility and menace, unable to
determine where it came from.

So
it was all the more surprising when he fell asleep immediately, and did not
dream.

It
was even more surprising that the next time he opened his eyes, it was morning.
Real morning, not two or three past midnight, nor even predawn. The sun was
coming up, filling his room with light—as with most Air Masters, he
preferred to have his bedroom facing east—a cool breeze fluttered the
curtains, and a lark saluted the day.

He
felt better than he had—in an age. Actually rested for once, and even if
his knee gave him the usual amount of trouble when he rose, it was worth it to
look out his window at the sun streaming over the lawns without feeling as if
he would have given his soul for a single night of undisturbed rest.