Phoenix and Ashes (47 page)

He
gulped. “I hadn’t—”

But
in his mind’s eye, he saw the shattered remains of the villages of
Belgium and France, wreckage that proved it didn’t matter how innocent
you were, once you were in the way.

He
dropped his gaze to his own hands. They were shaking. “Did you see or
sense anything that might give you an idea who was behind the attack?” he
asked, instead, trying to put off the moment of decision for a little while
longer.

“All
that I sensed was a momentary hint of someone—a Fire magician, I thought,
half-trained at best. It wasn’t there for long, and I don’t believe
the Fire magician had anything to do with the revenants, I think it was just
someone caught up accidentally. Possibly one of your sensitive villagers or
someone dreaming and coming to investigate the flares of power; the aura
suggested someone walking in an astral projection.” He looked up at that,
but she shook her head at him. “And at any rate, revenants are far more
likely to be sent by an Earth magician. They don’t respond well to
Fire.”

A
Fire Magician, in an astral projection? “Could it have been one of the
London Fire Masters responding to the presence of the revenants?” he
hazarded.

“Possibly.
More likely one of their students; the brief impression
I
got was of
someone still in apprenticeship, so to speak.” She frowned. “There
isn’t anyone in your village who would match that description, is
there?”

“I
never heard of any Fire Mages there.” He shrugged helplessly. “Mind
you, I was not
here
most of the time. If I wasn’t at school, I
was in London. Father never even told me who the other Masters were around
here; he always said there would be plenty of time when I was finished at
Oxford.” He frowned as he concentrated on a fugitive memory. “I
think there’s a witch down there—Earth, of course—or at
least, there was. I don’t know if she’s still alive, or if
she’s taken on students of her own. But Lady Virginia, if someone is strong
enough to call up revenants and set them on me, shouldn’t we inform Lord
Alderscroft?”

Hope
that he might yet evade Lady Virginia’s demands sprang up in him.

“Surely
this is a task for Alderscroft and the Council?” he persisted. “An
attack on a Council member—”

“First,
there would have to be a Council left to do something,” Lady Virginia
replied, caustically. “What’s left, now that all the young lions
are at the Front, dead, or incapacitated, has their hands full with arcane
demands from the Almsley’s branch of the War Office.” Her lips
tightened into a thin line. “But that still isn’t the point,
Reginald. The point is that even
if you
are safe for the moment, there
are innocents around you who are not.” She stared him in the face and
would not let him look away. “So the question is, what are you going to
do to protect them?”

He
wanted, badly, to say that he wasn’t going to do anything, that their
protection was none of his business. He wanted to protest that
he
was
the injured party here, that he had taken wounds to the spirit as well as the
flesh in defence of his own country, and that it was past time that someone
protected
him
for a change.

But
he couldn’t. As his father had once told him, there was an obligation
that came with power. That obligation left him with a very clear code of
conduct.

An
officer and a gentleman
. “I’ll do what I must, Lady
Virginia,” he said, even though his hands shook with fear and his skin
crawled. “It seems I have no choice.”

June 22, 1917
Broom, Warwickshire

Alison was furious,
and everyone was staying out of her way.

She
had every right to be furious. Bad enough that the card-party last night had
been invaded and taken over by that dreadful old cow in her outmoded dresses,
so that the careful work being done on Reggie by the girls was utterly
disrupted as he went to dance attendance on the creature.
Worse
that
she was Reggie’s godmother and a particular friend of the family.

But
worst of all—this Lady Virginia was an Air Master, a crony of
Alderscroft’s, and someone it would be very, very dangerous to cross. Any
sort of covert magical work in Reggie’s direction would have to stop;
Alison could not take the risk of being uncovered.

Alison
had been forced to sit there and smile and make polite noises, while her
ladyship monopolized the conversation with tales of that fellow who’d
gone native with the Arabs. As if he or a lot of unwashed camel-herders
mattered! By the time she was able to make her excuses and escape, the greater
part of the evening had been wasted, and Reggie wasn’t even looking at
the girls anymore. It had been his mother who’d sent for the chauffeur
and the car to take them home.

But
that wasn’t the end of the evening’s disasters, oh no. Because she
had tried to call in her army of revenants to increase their
strength—except when she tried to find them, they were gone. Vanished.
Dispelled.

In
fact, they had been dispelled so thoroughly that there wasn’t a trace of
them left—although the signs of the magic that had destroyed them were
clear enough.

And
the signature of an Air Master who didn’t care who knew what she had done
was clear enough for anyone to read who had the eyes to see it.

It
hadn’t been Reggie. It
certainly
wasn’t the Broom village
witch. That left only the newly arrived Lady Virginia…

Alison
had been so angry last night that she had called up and torn to bits several of
her own kobolds, just to relieve her temper. She’d have dragged Ellie out
of bed and beaten her—and in fact, she was tempted to—but if she
started, she had known she wouldn’t be able to stop, and the
complications of hurting or killing the fool began with the mere inconvenience
of not having someone to cook or clean in the morning, and ended with losing
the Robinson fortune.

So
instead, she made an example of three of the dullest of her minions, smashed a
couple of china ornaments, and still went to bed in a temper.

She
had awakened feeling no less angry, but by midmorning, her temper had cooled
sufficiently to allow her to think clearly.

The
girls knew better than to trifle with her in her current mood; when she
summoned them to her room after Howse had finished her work, they came
immediately and quietly.

“We
have a problem,” she told them, grimly. “That woman that arrived
last night is an Air Master, and Reggie’s godmother.”

The
girls exchanged a look of apprehension. “Does that mean no magic around
her?” Carolyn asked.

“Nothing
directed at Reggie, at least,” Alison said sourly. “Alderscroft
knows
I’m an Earth Master—after all, he was the one who sent me!”

“But
mother, I thought you said your job here was to be kept secret,” Lauralee
protested. “Why should Lord Alderscroft have told Lady Virginia about
you?”

Of
all of the things that had been running through her mind this morning,
that
hadn’t been one of them. She sucked on her lower lip a moment. “In
fact, he probably didn’t, come to think of it. She’s not on his
Council as far as I know, and I can’t believe he would have told an
outsider War Office business.”

“So
it’s not as bad as you thought!” Carolyn said, brightening.

“No,
Carolyn, it
is
as bad as I thought,” Alison corrected
caustically. “It is simply not as dire as it could be. She’s gotten
rid of my revenants, and she will certainly be able to trace any active Earth
magic used against her godson straight back to me—or to you. Which means
we can do nothing directly… hmm.”

“Mother,
we can still use charms against our rivals,” Lauralee pointed out
shrewdly. “As long as we do so away from Longacre Park.
She
won’t bother to look for magics being worked in that way.”

Alison
turned a surprised—and pleased—gaze on her elder. That was two good
thoughts in as many minutes. “Now that is certainly a plan,” she
agreed. “And a good one. I approve. And as for me—you know, I do
think it unlikely that Lady Virginia will even consider watching over Lady
Devlin. I will redouble my efforts, and become Lady Devlin’s best, most
trusted friend…” She felt her lips curving into a slight smile.
“Yes. I could do that. It’s the sort of exercise of Earth magic
that an Air Master is usually blind to—slow, deliberate, and subtle,
playing on the emotions. Then, I can play on her fears. Reggie will certainly
have to go back to the Front. He’s the only male left in the Fenyx line.
He
must
marry and do his duty for the Fenyx name before he goes off
again.”

“And
who better to wed than one of the daughters of her very good friend?”
Carolyn put in coquettishly.

Lauralee
laughed. “Pretty, polite, presentable… we’re no worse than
any of the other girls she’s been trying to interest him in. Perhaps not
as blue-blooded, but if she’s growing desperate, she may overlook
that.” She cocked her head to one side. “Do you think we could get
away with some small seductive magics, if we were careful to make them
look—accidental?”

“Possibly,
possibly.” Alison thought hard. “It suddenly occurs to me that the
reason Lady Virginia might be here is to urge Reggie back into the practice of
magic. He has been walled against your charms until now—but if she
succeeds, he’ll be vulnerable to such things again.” Her smile
widened a trifle. “Now, there’s a fine thought! If that is indeed
the case, Lady Virginia might be doing us a favor! A delicious irony, though I
doubt she would appreciate it herself.”

“All
I care about is that she not interfere,” Lauralee countered.
“Nothing else matters.”

“Quite
right,” her mother declared, with satisfaction for her daughter’s
practicality. “So, we need to put together our new plans. I want you two
to decide what magic you are going to use on your rivals. When you have your
course of action, come to me so I can be sure it is something that won’t
alert Lady Virginia. I will intensify my campaign to win Lady Devlin. And the
three of us will work out what sort of seductions you can use against Reggie
and how to make them look like the innocent work of untrained
sensitives.”

“Yes,
Mother,” they chorused, looking maliciously cheerful as she shooed them
out.

Alison
went to the window of her bedroom, and looked down onto the garden below. Ellie
was hanging out bedlinen, and it occurred to her that there was yet another
loose end that needed tidying. She still had not made up her mind what to do
about the girl. For all that her emotional self enjoyed the idea of putting
Locke’s plan into motion, her logical self warned that there were far too
many loopholes in it—not to mention pitfalls.

The
problem with adding outsiders into a plan was that you could never be sure of
their loyalty—nor their discretion.

No,
the more she thought of Locke’s plan, the less she liked it. Still, the
basic notion, of driving the girl mad—that was a good one.

She
resolved to put more thought into it. Time was not on her side in this.

But there must be a
better answer. And she was just the person to find it.

July 10, 1917
Broom, Warwickshire

ALL WAS DARKNESS,
SAVE ONLY a tiny pool of yellow light from the lantern that the old man held.
He looked like a monk, the sort that wore simple, hooded robes. He
wasn’t, of course. He was something altogether different, with no more
than a nodding acquaintance with Christianity.

Eleanor
had expected someone hard and ascetic, and possibly unfriendly. Instead, she
looked up into the face of a man who looked down on her with kind, warm eyes.
He looked like a grandfatherly wizard, and was the most real of all of the
Tarot creatures she had yet met.

“And
now,” said the Hermit, “You come to me. Do you know me yet?”

Eleanor
shook her head; oh she knew what he was, and even what he represented, but to
know him, understand him as deeply as that simple question implied—no,
she did not know him yet. She knew only enough to know that this was someone
who had spent all his life looking for wisdom, and had learned to distill
things down to their simplest, who would, unlike Gaffer Clark, use the fewest
words possible to cut to the heart of something.

It
was night here in the world of the Tarot cards, and the Hermit held the lantern
that was the only source of light for as far as she could see. It was that
lantern that had led her to him.

In
fact, tonight, for the very first time since she had begun this quest through
the Major Arcana, she had
not
passed through the stages she had
already been tested in. That had come as something of a shock. She had gone to
bed early, since Alison and the girls were at Longacre
Park—again—and she was bone-weary with all the work they had put
her through. They went through as many clothing-changes in a day as Lady Devlin
did now, and it wasn’t Howse who picked up the discarded items, laundered
them, hung them to dry, starched and ironed them. Oh no—it was Eleanor,
up and down the stairs three times a day, with extra demand on her because the
tennis dress discarded in the afternoon would be wanted in the morning.

Alison
was getting very familiar with Lady Devlin, and Eleanor didn’t think it
was all name-dropping. There was something going on up there at the big great
house, somehow Alison had managed to worm her way into Lady Devlin’s
regard.

Eleanor
was trying very hard not to care. After all, Alison’s machinations were
giving
her
the freedom to gain in knowledge and control of her magic
and her Element. Her hands and body might be busy, but her mind was free to
think, to reason, to analyze every tiny bit of information she got from the
alchemy books and her mother’s notes. And when the others weren’t
about, she could practice some of the smaller magics, sharpening her skills.
Fire magic was quite good for keeping the iron hot, for instance. And if her
hands weren’t nearly as smooth and lovely as her stepsisters’, the
Salamanders had healed the cracked skin, shrunk the joints, made the nails
stronger and neater.