Elementary (6 page)

“Now,”
the rough voice said,
“I must return to my home. This salt-wet air is no friend to my kind. I was far from my usual paths when the little one found me.”
Once more, a warm breeze flitted past Rodrigo's cheek, this time moving to the south at speed.

Rodrigo smiled at the description of Tareixa as a little one, for she could easily swallow the draconet whole. But her mind and spirit, and that of most of her kin, was childlike and playful. “Farewell,” he whispered to the darkness.

“Farewell to whom? To the poor souls of the
San Salvador
? Why should one smile at their loss?”

Rodrigo ducked, but he was too slow to avoid the iron grip of Don Ruarte.

Leaving the
San Lorenzo
to the sea winds, the Don dragged the struggling Galician to his tiny cabin space within the
camarote
. Once inside, he placed his body in front of the door and released Rodrigo. Rodrigo's lunge for the small window was halted when the air around him vanished, leaving him gasping for long moments until the Don loosened his grip on the winds and he could drag breath into his aching lungs. He turned back to his captor, who stood watching him with folded arms and narrowed eyes.

“The Inquisitors claimed they had rooted out the last of your kind,” Don Ruarte said. “So successful were they that few now even believe in the existence of the great sea serpents and the fire lizards, much less that there were those who could speak with them and command them. How is it that you, or the one that taught you, survived?”

“I do not command.” Rodrigo kept his head down, avoiding the Don's direct question.

“Answer me, or suffer the consequences.” The Don's voice, though quiet, was steel. “I do not need the tools and implements of the Inquisitors to wrack with pain. Who taught you? How many more serpent-speakers are there? Where are they?”

“I know of no others,” Rodrigo said at last. It was nothing more than the truth, but it did not satisfy the Don. The air around him thinned, his lungs protesting as he took great sucking breaths that barely sufficed.

“Who taught you? Where are they?” the Don repeated.

“No man taught me,” Rodrigo gasped out. Again the truth did not please Don Ruarte, and the tightness in Rodrigo's lungs increased as he struggled for air.

“How did you learn, then? Did the sea creatures themselves come to you and ask to be yours?” The Don eased his hold on the air, and Rodrigo took several blessed breaths.

“As a child, I played with them in the
rías
near my home. A few came that far inland.”

Don Ruarte glowered at him, but finally he seemed to accept that Rodrigo told the truth. He drew himself up to his full height. “As a senior priest of the
Grande y Felicissima Armada
, I have authority to deal with heresy aboard this ship as I see fit. You have practiced that which is outlawed and banned in the territories of His Most Catholic Majesty, and you have practiced it in the interest of heretics and enemies to Spain. The sentence for this treason is death, and I will execute that sentence myself.” He raised one hand, slowly closing the fingers together, and with each tightening of his hand, Rodrigo felt the thinning of the air around him.

In the last moments before blackness took him, Rodrigo sent Tareixa a picture of the open sea as a warning to flee, to seek out a place where she could be safe from his kind.

 • • • 

Crushed by the loss of the one she followed, Tareixa sank to the chalky floor of the seas of Calais, stunned near to immobility. Then, in a lightning instant, her emptiness transformed to blinding rage, and she lashed her tail, driving herself upward to the great ship that her friend had sailed upon. Heedless of her own safety, she bore her sinewy body straight into the vulnerable rudder, her weight and speed causing the ship to swing around to collide with first one, then another of the ships beside it, the wood of the rudder split and useless. Her vengeance begun, she fled before that sharp, dark presence on board the ship could seek her out and snare her as it had her wind-friends. But she did not flee far, staying long enough to see that this ship moved no farther before she followed the others of the fleet.

For the rest of the season, Tareixa and her kin hounded the ships that sailed around the great island. She delighted in snaring and hindering and pushing them until enough of the ships had fallen to satisfy her, whether they were stranded by tides or dashed against the rocky shores or sank in the storms of the deeper seas. Only when her fury had eased did she leave the scattered remains of the fleet, her kin returning to their deeper homes. Only then did she retrace her path back around the land. Only then did she seek out the place where she had sensed a cold, fresh inlet to the sea.

Only then did she find a lonely
ría
where she could be alone and undisturbed, and mourn.

 • • • 

Author's Note: The Spanish Armada of 1588 was devastated more by weather and the voyage north around Scotland to return to Spain than by any of the encounters with the English ships. The gunpowder explosion aboard the
San Salvador
actually occurred a few hours after the first battle engagement on July thirty-first, although it was not a result of the battle itself and is believed to have been an act of intentional sabotage. The
San Salvador
was then boarded and taken by Sir John Hawkins. All other events in this story take place according to the known history.

Fiona Patton

The London Chronicle,
March 4, 1783

“On Monday night about eleven o'clock, the body of an unknown man was found wedged under the dock at Blackfriars by members of the Bow Street Constabulary. Foul play is suspected.”

 • • • 

“Master Christopher?”

The small cell in London's Wood Street Compter was dark and cold and smelled of urine and vomit. The young man seated against the far wall had awakened some time ago, but after ascertaining that it was not yet time for either release or breakfast, had gone back to sleep. Now, recognizing the voice as belonging to his elder brother Edward's manservant, he slowly opened his eyes.

“Hullo, William,” he said with a yawn. “Is it morning already?”

The heavyset man standing outside the cell showed a flash of relief before schooling his expression to one of aggrieved respect.

“It's just past seven, Master Christopher. Will you come out of there now, sir?”

“Is the fine paid?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was it high this time?”

“It was . . . steep, yes, sir.”

Christopher snorted. He wasn't surprised. The Sessions of the Peace-Inferior Court judge—and wasn't that just a mouthful to get one's head around when one was a little too influenced by drink?—had added miscellaneous breaking of the peace—which meant whatever the judge chose to make it mean—to the list of charges the night before.

“And my brother?” he asked.

“Is waiting outside, sir.”

“Then we won't keep him a moment longer.”

Christopher rose and, after making a show of folding his newspaper and throwing his plum-colored frock coat over his arm, ambled to the front of the cell, where a young man in a deep blue uniform immediately opened the door for him.

“Thank you, Constable. It
is
Constable, isn't it . . . ?” Christopher peered at him through the gloom, “Cedric?”

The young man couldn't help but blush. “It is, sir, yes,” he answered. “Thank you for remembering. We're all to be constables now, sir.”

“Thief-takers and Charlies no more, eh? Proper officers of the law?”

“Yes, sir.”

Christopher rubbed at the back of his neck. “To that end, I'm afraid my memory of last night is rather spotty. Did I damage anyone?”

“Oh, no, sir, not as such. You had a fearful barney with Jakey, that is, Constable Jake Townsend, sir, but what with him being a former boxer and all . . .”

“I came out rather more worse for our encounter than he did?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That explains the bruises. Give him my regards when you see him next.”

“I will, sir.”

“Right. Well, then, come along, William,” Christopher called over his shoulder as he headed up the prison steps at a brisk pace. “We don't want to keep the Baron Clive of Plassy Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire waiting, now do we?” Nodding to the police officers in the hall, he pushed through the main doors, then stood a moment, blinking in the bright spring morning. A smart coach waited in Mitre Square, and he crossed to it in three long strides, pulling himself in without waiting for the coachman to disembark.

The man inside had been dozing and he gave a start and then a rueful smile. “All right, Kit?” he asked with a yawn.

Christopher's careless demeanor faded. “As right as I'll ever be, Teddy,” he answered. “You can drop me off at my rooms in Thames Street, if you would be so kind,” he added as the coach lurched forward.

Edward shifted uncomfortably. “No, I can't,” he replied. “I'm under strict instructions from our sisters to bring you home.” At Christopher's pained expression, he raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “These violent bouts of drunken melancholia frighten them. They frighten
me
. So you will come home, bathe, change, reassure Lottie and Lizzie that you're all right, and then have breakfast in that order. After which, I'll have Tom take you to Thames Street if you must go.”

“I must. I'm meeting someone.” Christopher shook his head as his words evoked a worried frown. “Your senior East India Company agent, Teddy,” he explained in a tone of exaggerated patience. “Who'd you think it was, some doxy out of Southwark?”

Edward shifted again. “No, of course not. It's just . . .”

“Just . . . what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” As the coachman maneuvered them out of the city proper and onto High Holborn Street, Edward made to speak, thought the better of it, tried again, then sat rubbing the thumb and index finger of his left hand together, his expression increasingly distressed.

Finally Christopher reached over to cup a hand over his. “Stop that,” he ordered. “If you set your coach alight, you'll have the devil of a time explaining it to your stable master.”

Edward smiled. “I'll tell him I dropped a cheroot.”

“You don't smoke cheroots.”

“I'll tell him you dropped it, then.”

“I don't smoke cheroots, either; I can't keep the damned things lit.”

“That's because the undines don't like smoke.”

“The
undines
leave me to do as I please.”

Both men fell into an uncomfortable silence, but as the coach turned onto Oxford Street, Edward glanced over with a hesitant expression. “So what happened this time?” he asked.

Christopher stared out the window, watching the estates of England's minor nobility pass by before giving a brief shrug. “I called on Philippa,” he answered, his casual tone of voice belied by the angry set of his jaw.

“And?”

“And I was told by her father's butler”—Christopher spat out the words—“that she would no longer see me. Apparently, she's suddenly engaged.”

Edward chewed the inside of his cheek. “To whom?” he asked finally.

“Does it matter? To a man whose parents were married. To each other.”

“I'm sure that has nothing to do with it, brother.”

“And I'm sure that has everything to do with it,
half
-brother.”

Edward gave him a reproachful look. “That distinction matters to no one except yourself,” he chided.

“Myself,” Christopher agreed bitterly, “the whole of London society, and Philippa Torrington, apparently.”

Edward sighed. “If you'd let me, I could introduce you to any number of Henrietta's friends who would be thrilled to marry such a
talented Water Mage
, regardless of his parentage.”

Christopher bared his teeth. “No, thank you,” he grated. “I don't need you or your intended to matchmake for me, and I don't need to find a woman thrilled to marry me because I'm a talented Water Mage.”

“Better that than trying to make a life with someone who doesn't know; we've both seen how hard that's been on Becky.”

“Becky's a Fire Mage with our father's temper . . .”

“Made that much more difficult to control because she's married to a . . .”

“Pompous ass.”

“Kit . . .”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. You're right. He is a pompous ass. She never would have accepted his proposal if . . .” Edward broke off, his expression distressed once again.

“If Father'd been alive,” Christopher finished for him. “Everything went wrong after Father died,” he added in a hoarse whisper. He closed his eyes as nine years fell away as if they'd been a single day.

“What do you mean, he died in the bath? He's a Water Mage!”

“His doctor says it looked like suicide, Kit.”

“The devil take his doctor! What about the undines?”

“They weren't there.”

“How could they not be there? Where were they?”

“I don't know! Ask them, Kit. They love you; they'll speak to you.”

But they hadn't, not for nine long years, no matter how often he'd asked or begged or demanded, they couldn't or wouldn't tell him what had happened that night. Keening in distress, the little creatures had just eddied about him like tiny whirlpools, their pale, delicate features distorted with unhappiness, until he'd finally stopped asking. Now they hardly interacted at all, and Christopher spent more time staring into the bottom of a glass than into any pond or pool.

They passed through the gates of the Clive family's Bloomsbury house in Queen Square a few moments later. An ornate coach with the emblem of the Royal Astronomer was parked before the door, and Edward's brows drew down as he alighted.

“What's Uncle Neville doing here at this time of the morning? I hope nothing's happened to Grandmama.”

“He's probably just stopping in on his way to another exotic locale to plot the course of yet another planet,” Christopher scoffed, turning his gaze from the splashing fountain in the center of the courtyard.

“Then why are there no sylphs hovering about his coach?” Edward insisted. “The roof's usually festooned with them.”

“Because they're . . . with him?”

“And they're with an Air Mage inside a Fire Mage's home because . . . ?”

“They . . . love him? But even so, we might want to hurry.”

Together, the brothers took the townhouse steps two at a time.

 • • • 

The London Chronicle
, March 5, 1783

“On Monday night about nine o'clock, a group of men carrying knives boarded the East India Company ship
Woodford
, threatened the passengers, and made off with goods totaling three hundred and five pounds, ten shillings.”

 • • • 

The small cell in the Wood Street Compter was dark and cold and smelled of urine and vomit. Christopher groaned as a return to consciousness brought the return of bruises he hadn't realized had set quite so deeply and a twisting, inexplicable sense of . . . grief?

Raising himself up into a sitting position, he carefully opened his eyes. The room swam dizzily in front of him as he tried to sort out this latest visit from the last. He'd exchanged blows with Constable Townsend . . . no, he corrected himself . . . that had been the night before. He'd gone to see Philippa . . . again, the night before. He . . . A memory surfaced, hovering shakily in his mind's eye, and he made a grab for it before it could vanish again. He'd had a fight with . . . Uncle Neville? No, that didn't seem right. With . . . Teddy. That seemed equally wrong, but once dredged up, the memory remained, fuzzy with drink, but distinct enough to relive angry words, first growled, then shouted . . . His sisters' faces, white with fear, his brother's face white with uncharacteristic anger . . . Storming out, finding a tavern, drinking, raging, trying to drown out the resurgent tide of grief and guilt, blows.

His hand strayed to his upper lip, finding it split and puffy. His throat felt raw, and there was an acrid odor of spell-casting about him. He frowned. Had Teddy and he used magic against each other? They never did that. True, they'd had some dandy fights as boys—like their sister Rebecca, Christopher had their father's temper—but they'd never resorted to hurling spells at each other.

He cautiously felt about himself. His clothes were more or less intact, torn and dirty, but without scorch marks or damp patches. The smell remained, however, a magic he didn't quite recognize but seemed to think he ought to, wrapped about a knot of pain and anger that seemed familiar but strangely unreachable.

A sudden chuckle snapped him out of his reverie, and he turned to see an older, heavyset man with a short, grizzled beard and lank gray hair leaning against the bars of the opposite cell. When the man saw he had Christopher's attention, he touched his forelock with a sardonic expression.

“As I live and breathe,” he noted, “if it isn't little Kit Walcot, all growed up.”

Christopher squinted at him. “Do I know you?”

The man shook his head. “Me? No. You wouldn't remember me, lad, not after all this time, but I remember you. Why, the last time I saw you—before last night, mind, when you tried to take on the entire custom of The Bird and Babe—it woulda been over twenty years ago. You was waitin' on the Madras docks for a ship to speed you off to England. Your ayah was too small to lift you high enough to see, so I took you up on my shoulder. You were a sad little bantling that day. O' course, you would be, what with your mam just passin' and all, but the boats made you smile. Them, and the little creatures swirlin' about in the water. They came right up to the dock to comfort you, as I remember it.”

The man pressed a hand against his chest. “Henry Keeling. I fought for your daddy at Plassey and a few other battles besides that never made it into the papers back home. And I knew your mam. She had a rare gift for lightin' up a room.” He laid a finger along the side of his nose. “A very rare gift.

“Your daddy now,” he continued before Christopher could say anything, “was the devil's own cunning man, and that's a fact. Robert Clive was a rare flash cove who could've whistled up a monsoon and danced it all the way to London if he'd had a mind to.” Keeling raised his hands disarmingly. “No need to look so suspicious, lad. There was only a few of us in the know, but we that was, were all trusted to keep his secret. And we did keep it. Some of us took it to the grave, just as he did.

“A bad business that.” Keeling shook his head. “Folk sayin' he'd topped hisself. That wasn't right. He never would of done somethin' like that. Never. Had to have been somethin' else, don't you think?”

A twisting, inexplicable sense of grief, a knot of pain and anger . . .

“Now, a little bird's told me that you've inherited more than just his looks and his appetite for fightin', yeah?” Keeling continued, again before Christopher could say anything. “Of course, that same little bird's told me that was about all you inherited from him.”