Heart's Magic (14 page)

"Great big rat, then,"
Ramsey said.

"It's all right, Harry,"
Pearl said from the corner of her mouth as she kept prying. "You
can call her Elinor. We all know she used to be your apprentice. We
won't respect her any less. We all saw what she did with her
wands."

Everyone present added their
agreement, amazement, and approval in a sudden upwelling of sound.
Harry wanted to growl at them all, but he didn't. Elinor had
kissed
him
back,
not any of them.

"How many of these bones do
you want me to take off?" Pearl asked, deflecting the conversation
back to the matter at hand before Harry could do it.

"Enough to be able to cut
it open," Ramsey said. Harry had appointed him to head up the study
of the machine creatures.

Pearl had perfected the
process to remove the glued down bones, for she moved across the
shell in a line so fast, the popping sounded like distant strings
of Guy Fawkes Night fireworks. Then she stopped and studied the
machine.

"How do you suppose we
should cut it open?" With a gloved finger, she poked at the
openings where the probably-bone struts went through. "I can't tell
how thick the metal is, but if it's very thick at all, I won't be
able to cut it with tin snips or anything like."

"Will the screwdriver go
through it?" Archaios asked.

Pearl eyed the machine
dubiously. "I'd be afraid of breaking something inside if it
crashed through the shell too suddenly."

"Try pressing into it, not
stabbing it." Harry tried to keep the impatience from his voice. He
wanted to take the screwdriver from her and do it himself, but he
didn't dare. Not because she was the girl and he was the strong
manly man. Just because he wanted to do it. "Set the tip against
the metal and lean on it."

"Like this?" She did as he
suggested and made a slight dent in the metal. "I'm not tall enough
to get enough leverage," she said. "It does seem as though the
metal is fairly thin. Or perhaps the magic is already affecting it.
Maybe if I stand on something?"

"If it's thin--" someone
began, then didn't finish.

"Can we pull out the
struts?" Conjurer Ford of the handkerchief pointed with a
black-clad finger. "If we--you could get them out, we could work
with the holes that remained."

"Get Grey up here an' let
him use the tin snips," Harry suggested. "He's your familiar, Mrs.
Carteret. You can keep 'im from fainting."

"That sounds sensible."
Pearl had grasped one of the swiveling axles and its support and
was trying to wrench it free.

"I've sent word," O'Toole
said. His eyes hadn't glazed over when he spoke to his spirits.
That would make him one of the top ranked conjurers. He paused.
"Magister Carteret says he'll be here in ten minutes. Please do not
start without him."

"Pearl--" Harry
said.

"I'm not starting, am I? I
don't have any snips. I'm not trying to cut anything. I'm just--"
She paused to give the strut a sharp twist and apparently broke it
loose from something inside, for it turned, rotating in its
hole.

"Stop it. Wait for Grey."
No more suggesting. Time for orders.

"I am." She shot him a
frown. "We need these things out if we want to get the snips in far
enough to cut." She had taken to yanking on it now, as well as
twisting and laying it over in one direction or another.

"I think you
should--"

A sharp tug, combined with
half a twist, and an acute angle toward the creature's nose--or
tail--and the strut came free, leaving a gaping hole, dented at the
edges. Technically, the hole probably didn't qualify as gaping,
since it was only an inch or so in diameter, but it seemed so to
Harry. He could feel the no-magic pouring out of it all at once in
a noxious rush. How did it do that? If the no-magic was just the
absence of magic, why didn't the magic in the air swarm it and
change--

"I don't feel well." Pearl
dropped the creature's limb and caught herself with a hand on the
edge of the table.

Harry lurched forward to
catch her, to pull her away from the foul blast. He took hold of
her arm, then had enough presence of mind to let go again as his
mind first lost control of his body, collapsing him to the ground,
and then lost itself as the world went black.

Elinor had just finished
the first steps in the potion for Friday when a rapid knocking
sounded at her stillroom door.

"Miss Tavis? Are you in
there, Miss Tavis?" Freeman, Harry's butler, never sounded alarmed.
But he did now.

Elinor sighed. Surely Harry
wasn't resorting to such juvenile tactics just to get her
attention.

"Miss Tavis?" The flurry of
knocking sounded rather alarmed as well.

The potion ingredients
needed to steep together for several hours. She might as well see
what he wanted.

Elinor picked up the
ceramic crock she'd just poured her morning's work into and set it
at the back of the next to the lowest shelf, moving the jug of
currant wine a little in front. She took off her apron, shook it
out--noting the new stain down the left side where she'd wiped her
hand--and hung it on the hook beside her work table.

"Miss Tavis, they need you
at the council house!" Another voice--this one young, female, and
Scottish--called. "Mr. and Mrs. Greyson have already gone. Are you
there, Miss Tavis?"

Now alarm rippled through
Elinor, too. What could have happened. She hurried to the door,
then had to fumble through the slit in her skirt seam to find the
pocket dangling from her top hoop where she'd placed the key.
Finally, with thoughts of disaster ranging from wizardly mutiny to
plague at the academy running through her brain, she got the door
open. Nan Jackson, youngest and fleetest of foot among the sorcery
students, danced there from foot to foot.

"What's happened,
Nan?"

"Magister Carteret sent
word to Mrs. Greyson's secretary and they sent me for you," Nan
said. "Mrs. Carteret is ill. From a machine?" She sounded doubtful,
but continued her message. "And Mr. Tomlinson's fainted and won't
wake. Mr. Jax said Mr. Carteret said to bring all your
tricks."

Harry, unconscious? Not
waking up?

Elinor shut her stillroom
door and handed the key to the butler. "Lock it up for me, Freeman.
I'm working on dangerous poisons and don't want anyone getting into
it by accident." She spoke over her shoulder, already halfway to
the front hallway. "Has the carriage been sent for? Oh, never mind,
I'll catch a cab."

Freeman came scurrying
after her. Hopefully he'd taken the time to lock the door, but
Elinor couldn't worry about that now. Pearl was ill and Harry
unconscious. "The carriage has been sent for, miss, and should be
waiting. Your cloak, miss."

Elinor turned, saw Freeman
holding her jacket for her to put on, her cloak folded neatly over
his arm, awaiting its turn.

"It is quite cold,
miss."

Yes, it was, wasn't it?
Elinor put on her jacket and allowed Freeman to lay the cloak over
her shoulders. He took her bonnet from the footman who'd fetched it
from the conservatory where she'd left it and handed it to her when
she finished fastening the cloak. Then he handed her her wizard's
black bag. Where had she left that? In her flat? She thought so,
yes. He must have sent someone to collect it when the message
came.

"You think of everything,
don't you, Freeman?" Elinor took her gloves as the butler opened
the front door and escorted her down the stairs to the waiting
carriage.

"I do my best, miss. Bring
Magister Tomlinson home to us. Awake or no, we'll tend him best at
home."

Her smile could only
flicker past the tightness in her throat and the sting in her eyes
as she climbed in. "Of course. Thank you, Freeman."

He shut the door and the
carriage moved out sharply, almost before the latch caught. Elinor
tried not to worry during the trip to the council house. At every
corner, every turning, she fretted at the time it was taking. She
wanted to shout at the other vehicles in the street to get out of
the way. She tried to distract herself and prepare herself by
reviewing possible reasons for extended unconsciousness, but that
frightened her too much. So she went back to looking out the window
and railing silently at the traffic.

Finally, they arrived and
as the council footmen came to open the carriage and assist her
out, Elinor saw Thomas Norwood hovering inside the door.

"How is he?" she asked,
hurrying toward him. "What happened? Has Dr. Rosato been sent
for?"

"Aye, that's why I'm here."
Norwood took her bag of potions and led her through the corridors.
"I escorted the doctor from the tower, where he was checking on Mr.
Cranshaw. They've taken Mr. Tomlinson to the ladies' retiring room,
I'm afraid. It was the nearest place they could lay him
out."

"Nearest place to what? And
remind me later to ask about Mr. Cranshaw's condition. I want to
know, but not now."

"Yes, miss." Norwood's lips
twitched, but he didn't smile. "The magister was in the dead zones
laboratory, I'm told. Mrs. Carteret was there helping dissect a
machine they'd found."

He led her through a crowd
of people--Harry's dead zone committee--clustered in the hall.
Waiting to hear, she supposed. Norwood opened the door to the
retiring room, adapted from an office by means of nailing cheap
mourning cloth over the glass half-walls. Elinor bustled
through.

Pearl was sitting up in a
large, cushy wingback chair looking pale and fragile, holding a
basin in her lap, while Grey hovered over her looking terrified.
Harry was laid out on the chaise longue, which was both too
short--since they didn't have him propped up on the back--and too
narrow for him. One arm dangled off the side, though they'd managed
to get his other arm to stay folded across his middle. His coat and
waistcoat had been removed and his shirt opened to bare his
chest.

Elinor's heart lurched. She
might not want to marry him, but that didn't mean she didn't him to
live a long and healthy, happy life.

Amanusa Greyson and Tonio
Rosato looked up from either side of Harry as Elinor entered. "I've
only just got here myself," Amanusa said, rising to her feet. "Let
me take a quick look at Pearl and I'll be right back to check on
Harry with you."

"His heart sounds strong."
Rosato pulled his stethoscope from his ears.

"Then why won't he wake?
What happened?" Elinor looked across the room to Pearl, who was
taking a sip from a cup Amanusa held to her lips. She swallowed and
leaned back in the chair looking even more pale, holding up a
finger as if to ask for a moment.

"She has been plagued with
nausea," Amanusa said.

"They were opening up a
damned machine," Grey growled.

"Harry was?" Elinor looked
down at him, laid her hand on his chest to feel his breathing. The
dead zones seemed to interfere with that the most--breathing and
consciousness. And the machines were like small, portable pieces of
a dead zone. He seemed to be breathing all right now.

Pearl shook her head. She
swallowed hard, waited a moment, as if to see whether anything
might change, then she spoke. "Harry was at a distance. Mr. Ramsey
said they started making him stay across the room for dissections
when he kept fainting and having to be carried out."

"This has happened before?"
Elinor couldn't quite conceal her alarm. She moved her hand over
his heart to feel it beating. Not to keep touching his naked chest.
"Of course it has. I've seen it myself, once. But he came to in
seconds once he was away from the machine."

"This one was
different--this machine." Pearl was relaxing into the chair, her
muscles losing their fretful tension. Amanusa slipped the basin
from her hands and set it on the floor.

"This machine," Pearl went
on, "was found well outside the dead zone. Found in--Mr. Ramsey
told me and Grey told me too, but I forgot."

"In Hoxton, near Regent's
Canal." Grey stroked the fallen strands of hair from Pearl's face.
Elinor's heart ached with happiness that her dear friend had found
such devotion.

"Wait." Elinor's thoughts
caught up with what Grey had said. "Hoxton--that's not anywhere
near the dead zone."

"Well, it's not as if they
found it in Kensington or Battersea Park," Grey said, "but yes, it
is quite a distance from the dead zone in Whitechapel and Bethnal
Green."

"How did it get there?"
Elinor frowned. "Is this related to that creature Harry and I
found? The one with all the nails for legs that was outside the
zone?"

"I think so. Harry could
doubtless tell you more." Pearl closed her eyes as Amanusa touched
her forehead. Sorcerer's magic. "But we believe the machine was
armored to keep the magic from getting inside it. Which also kept
the no-magic dead-zone atmosphere from getting out."

"And when you opened it,
all the no-magic got out all at once," Elinor said, quickly
grasping what must have happened. "Instead of slowly dissipating as
it was carried across London from the dead zone to the lab, like
all the other machines you've investigated."