Heart's Magic (39 page)

"
Harry.
" She shook his shoulder.
"Harry, wake up and help me. Where are you hurt? Can you make a
light?"

There were high windows and
in the cloudless sky, the quarter moon provided a fair amount of
light. She ought to be able to see blood against the white of his
shirt, even in the dark. She got his jacket and waistcoat open,
searching his upper body for signs of injury. He'd been facing the
creature when it fired. Or did whatever it did. So she wouldn't
have to examine his back.

She ran her hands over his
chest and across his stomach, in case her visual examination missed
something, running them down his sides to see whether the bullet or
dart might have grazed him there. She probed along his trouser
area, then moved to his legs. His trousers were a charcoal gray
glen plaid. Blood wouldn't show against the dark color.

"So." A harsh voice
startled a squeak out of her.

Elinor jumped to her feet
and whirled around, spreading her skirts to hide as much of Harry
as she could.

"Kitty didn't kill you
after all. Pity, that." Nigel Cranshaw had come in through a
ramshackle door, the cat-skull machine skittering in ahead of him.
Elinor recognized Nigel only because of the moonlight falling
across his familiar, narrow face. He sounded awful and looked
worse, with a ragged blanket wrapped around his shoulders in place
of a coat.

"You call that thing
Kitty?
" A shudder rippled
involuntarily through her. "How can you make a pet of
it?"

"Oh, I haven't. We--" Nigel
lifted his foot, threatening a kick while the machine clicked and
squealed at him, menacing with its tool-arms.
"--co-exist."

"How did you bring us here?
Why? What do you mean to do with us?"

"Do? Nothing. I didn't
bring you here." Nigel limped toward a paler lump on the floor.
"They did, the machines. I have no idea what they want with you.
Nor do I care."

"Then we are free to go?"
Elinor didn't know how she would move an unconscious Harry
anywhere, but she would figure something out if she had
to.

"If they will let you."
Nigel waved his good hand, indicating the swarming machines. He
kicked one out of his way and cackled with a sudden burst of
laughter. "Quite a sight you were, carried in by dozens of the
creatures. Like something out of
Gulliver's
Travels.
I laughed myself
silly."

Elinor's lips twitched. The
image was amusing, she supposed. And frightening. Harry didn't do
well around these machines. What did the things want with them?
"Harry's hurt," she said. "I know he is, or he would be conscious.
Do you have a light? Or, wait--"

Harry was her familiar or
almost, as he said. How could she have forgotten? She didn't need a
light to check his welfare. But she did apparently need more blood,
for when she reached out to her own in his bloodstream, there
wasn't enough magic for her to catch hold. Why hadn't she bought a
lancet yet? There was a pin attaching a bunch of silk flowers to
her bonnet. Elinor groped for it and found what she sought,
slightly bent, but serviceable.

"What are you doing?" Nigel
sounded his suspicions from the far side of the chamber where he
sat on his lump. A mattress possibly, but if so, a disgusting
sample of the species.

"I need blood." Elinor
chose a finger--left fore--and lanced it, sticking the pin deep
with a hiss to let the pain out. She needed to be sure of drawing
enough blood for her need.

"Isn't he bleeding
already?" Nigel cried. He struggled to stand. "And you want more?
What about your vaunted magic from innocent blood?" He paused a
moment. "Aren't you Tavis? Aren't you a wizard?"

"I don't have my bag, I
don't have any light, and I can work sorcery, too." She opened
Harry's mouth and put the first drops on his tongue, then squeezed
out more. Let Nigel see. She didn't care. He was mad. No one would
believe him if he told. "Innocent blood is for justice," she added.
"Not for healing."

"It's my bag now." Nigel
hobbled a few steps closer, sounding not so sane as he had moments
ago. "I went back to get it, after they brought you here. What are
you doing? Is that--are you giving him
your
blood?"

She put the third squeezing
of blood in Harry's mouth. Amanusa and Pearl had been sharing bits
of information about making and working with a familiar, dropping
it into conversation as if off-hand. More blood was better than
less, they said, in a familiar bond.

"Why are you feeding him
your blood?" Nigel sounded more curious than outraged. Maybe she
actually had done some good, tinkering in his mind.

"Because it will help him.
I would give him all of it, if need be." All of her blood, none of
her self.

Elinor shook the thought
away. Had the blood gone deep enough to settle yet? She went back
to her unfinished physical examination of Harry's legs. A little
way down his right leg, he flinched and cried out when she touched
a spot that felt wet.

Without waiting longer,
Elinor leapt into his bloodstream and found the ugly, narrow,
barbed bone dart deep in the muscle of his thigh. "I need the
forceps." She held her hand out in demand. "And possibly a knife. I
may need to cut this out."

Nigel cradled the bag to
his chest. So he did have it. "It's mine."

"Yes. And I will give them
back to you. Just let me use them to get this dart out of Harry's
leg. Please. It's killing his magic." But not as swiftly as it had
the last time he was shot. He was her familiar. Her sorcery, her
blood supported him, gave him strength where he needed it. "The
forceps are in a pocket on the side with the latch. The knife will
be there with them. It's a folding knife, so you don't have to
worry."

"You'll give them
back?"
Hallelujah,
he was listening.

"I swear. Please.
Hurry.
" Elinor restrained
herself from snatching the bag out of his hands. It wouldn't
help.

He set her bag down on the
floor, bracing it with his clawed hand to work the latch with the
other. "Why do you want to help him? You're a woman. Women are
wicked. They lie. They set traps and drag men down."

"Some do," Elinor
acknowledged. "Just like some men do wicked things. But not all of
them." She twisted her hands together to keep from reaching in and
fetching the instruments herself.

"Women abandon those who
need them." His voice had gone high and soft, almost
childlike.

She needed him to be a grown
up just now. A sane one. She did not have time for this.
Harry was hurt.
"Your
mother died, Nigel. She couldn't help it. She tried to stay, but
she was weak and hurt."

Finally, finally he held
out the forceps. Elinor made herself take them gently from his hand
instead of snatching. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." The words
came automatically, but they came. Politeness, from Nigel, to a
woman. Amazing.

Elinor tore Harry's trouser
leg open, struggling a bit to get the strong wool threads to
separate. She stepped back into his bloodstream, then out again,
and back, until she figured out how to hover half in between so she
could both see what she was doing with the forceps and see where
the dart lay buried in heavy muscle. He jerked and shouted when she
began to probe, but she was able to push him into deeper
unconsciousness, where he wouldn't feel the pain.

"Bloody hell." She spat the
curse, but one wasn't enough. "Bloody,
bloody
hell." She had a grip on the
dart, but the wicked barbs up and down half its length would catch
and tear when she pulled it out. She couldn't push it all the way
through. It would hit Harry's thigh bone first, even if the forceps
were long enough, which they weren't. Harry had a thick
thigh.

"I need the knife," she
said. "I'm going to have to cut it out."

"What do you mean?" Nigel's
suspicions were obviously roused again.

Elinor explained as she
tried to work the dart out without the knife. Harry groaned in the
depths of his unconsciousness.

"You lie! You did this to
him!" Nigel scrabbled backward, clutching Elinor's wizard's bag to
his chest.

"No, I did not! Your damned
Kitty did it!" Shouting probably wouldn't help, but it made her
feel better. Momentarily, anyway.

"Nigel, the dart is bone,
like the bones armoring the machines. It has no magic in it. It's
dead and it's going to kill him if I don't get it out. The barbs on
the dart will tear a great hole in his leg if I yank it out without
using the knife to cut it free. Please. I am begging you." She felt
near tears. Would he accuse her of irrationality if she succumbed?
She felt far from rational.

"Why?" His voice had gone
soft and high again. "Is he your sweetheart?"

"I-- He-- We are engaged to
be married." Complete and utter truth. "But I would help him even
if we weren't. I helped you when you burned your hand, even though
you were trying to burn me. There's an ointment in the bag I was
going to bring you in the tower, if you hadn't escaped. To soften
the scars and help your hand move more easily."

"You lie." But it was a
whisper, without conviction.

"No, about none of it."
Elinor tried using her sorcery to stanch more of Harry's bleeding.
The flow slowed down, though it wouldn't quite stop. She didn't
know if she should stop it entirely, before she got the dart out.
She needed to know more medicine, proper medicine.

"The announcement of our
engagement was in the newspapers. And the ointment is in the big
jar in the middle, on the opposite side from the forceps pocket.
Please, will you let me have the knife?"

"What are the
vials?"

"Let me get the dart out of
Harry's leg and mend him, and I will tell you. Everything you want
to know. I'll show you how I make the potions, if you
like."

"I never liked Harry. He
doesn't like me either."

"Would you let him die out
of petty dislike?" Elinor wanted to scream.

Nigel stared at her from
his pale, bulgy eyes, exposed in a swath of moonlight. "No," he
said after an eternity of silent thought. "No, I am better than
that."

"You are." She would agree
with anything if it would get her what she needed.

Nigel handed her the clasp
knife, the one she kept as sharp as any scalpel, and scuttled back
out of her reach. Elinor ignored him, finding the balancing point
for her vision again as she began to make an opening large enough
to remove the dart without catching it on anything. She discovered
that if she piled up magic around the injury, he didn't twitch as
she worked. With luck, it blocked the pain the way Amanusa had. She
worked quickly and soon was able to draw the nasty dart out of
Harry's thigh.

"May I have just a bit of
healing potion to pour over his leg? It's a sorcery potion
Amanusa--Mrs. Greyson is teaching me to make." Elinor looked up at
Nigel and discovered that he had moved closer while she worked. He
still clutched the bag to his breast, but he watched her work
intently.

"Is that it?" he rasped.
"The dart Kitty shot him with?"

"Yes." Elinor handed him
the forceps, dart and all. She didn't need them anymore. Or the
knife. "Do you want to keep sorcery in your wizard's
kit?"

Nigel glanced at the bloody
dart with its tiny scraps of flesh clinging to the barbs. She
hadn't been able to get it out without tearing anything at all. He
grimaced and flung the dart away to land in a puddle near the door.
"Sorcery? Sorcery doesn't heal. It kills."

"It heals. The tall curved
bottle on the end. I'll get rid of it for you."

He got out the bottle,
sniffed, and made a face. "Alcohol spirits." He exchanged it for
the knife. "You got blood on the instruments."

Elinor rolled her eyes.
"I'll clean them. Or here--" She gave over Harry's handkerchief.
"Clean them yourself."

She poured the
medicine--mostly gin, saliva, and magic--straight into Harry's
wound and did what she could with it to start the healing. Amanusa
claimed sorcery magic worked better than wizardry on violent
injuries, particularly deep puncture wounds. Something about the
shed blood, perhaps. Elinor didn't know, but she didn't have any of
the more usual wizard's potions for such bodily insults with her.
This would be her experiment to learn whether it was
true.

She tore off a higher
ruffle from her petticoat--the bottom ruffle was dirty from contact
with the ground--and wrapped it around his leg, tying it off with a
strip torn from the bottom of his ruined trousers. She used the pin
from her hat to fasten his torn pants leg together in hopes of
conserving a little warmth. Then she pushed more magic into his
blood, pushing out the no-magic poison.

"
Harry.
" She lifted his head into her
lap, stroking and patting his face. He needed to wake up. She
couldn't carry him out and Nigel wouldn't.