Murder by Magic (44 page)

Evidently, she did. With great delicacy, she stretched out and preened three or four of Neville’s feathers, as collective breaths were released in sighs of relief.

Truce had been declared.

Alliance soon followed the birds’ truce. In fact, within a week, they were sharing perches (except at bedtime, when they perched on the headboard of their respective girls’ beds). It probably helped that Grey was not in the least interested in Neville’s raw meat, and Neville was openly dismissive of Grey’s cooked rice and vegetables. When there is no competition for food and affection, alliance becomes a little easier.

Within a remarkably short time, the birds were friends—as unlikely a pair as the street brat and the missionary’s child. Neville had learned that Grey’s curved beak and powerful bite could open an amazing number of things he might want to investigate, and it was clear that no garden snail was going to be safe come the spring. Grey had discovered that a straight, pointed beak with all the hammerlike force of a raven’s neck muscles behind it could break a hole into a flat surface where her beak couldn’t get a purchase. Shortly afterward, there had ensued a long discussion between Memsah’b and the birds to which neither Nan nor an anxious Sarah was party, concerning a couple of parcels and the inadvisability of birds breaking into unguarded boxes or brightly wrapped presents . . .

After the incident with the faux medium and the spirit of the child of one of Memsah’b’s school friends, rumors concerning the unusual abilities Sarah and Nan possessed began to make the rounds of the more esoteric circles of London. Most knew better than to approach Memsah’b about using her pupils in any way—those who did were generally escorted to the door by one of Sahib’s two formidable guards, one a Gurkha, the other a Sikh. A few, a very few, of Sahib’s or Memsah’b’s trusted friends actually met the girls, and occasionally Nan or Sarah was asked to help in some occult difficulty. Nan was called on more often than Sarah, although had Memsah’b permitted it, Sarah would have been asked to exercise her talent as a genuine medium four times as often as Nan used her abilities.

One day in October, after Memsah’b had turned away one of her friends, a thin and enthusiastic spinster wearing a rather eccentric turban with a huge ostrich plume ornament on the front, and a great many different-colored shawls draped all over her in every possible fashion, Nan intercepted her mentor.

“Memsah’b, why is it you keep sendin’ those ladies away?” she asked curiously. “There ain’t—isn’t—no harm in ’em—least, not that one, anyway. A bit silly,” she added judiciously, “but no harm.”

The wonderful thing about Memsah’b was that when you acted like a child, she treated you like a child, but when you were trying to act like an adult, she treated you as one. Memsah’b regarded her thoughtfully and answered with great deliberation. “I have some very strong ideas about what children like Sarah—or you—should and should not be asked to do. One of them is that you are not to be trotted out at regular intervals like a music-hall act and required to perform. Another is that until you two are old enough to decide just how public you wish to be, it is my duty to keep you as private as possible. And lastly—” Her mouth turned down as if she tasted something very sour. “Tell me something, Nan. Do you think that there are nothing but hundreds of ghosts out there, queuing up to every medium, simply burning to tell their relatives how lovely things are on the Other Side?”

Nan thought about that for a moment. “Well,” she said, after giving the question full consideration, “no. If there was, I don’t s’ppose Sarah’d hev a moment of peace. They’d be at her day an’ night, leave alone them as is still alive.”

Memsah’b laughed. “Exactly so. Given that, can you think of any reason why I should encourage Sarah to sit about in a room so thick with incense that it is bound to make her ill when nothing is going to come of it but a headache and hours lost that she could have been using to study, or just to enjoy herself?”

“An’ a gaggle of silly old women fussing at ’er.” Nan snorted. “I see, Memsah’b.”

“And some of the things that you and Sarah are asked to do I believe are too dangerous,” Memsah’b continued with just a trace of a frown. “And why, if grown men have failed at them, anyone should think I would risk a pair of children—” She shook herself and smiled ruefully down at Nan. “Adults can be very foolish—and very selfish.”

Nan snorted again. As if she didn’t know that! Hadn’t her own mother sold her to a pair of brothel keepers? Neville, perched on her shoulder, made a similarly scornful noise.

“Has he managed any real words yet, Nan?” Memsah’b asked, her attention distracted. She crooked a finger in invitation, and Neville stretched out his head for a scratch.

“Not yet, mum—but I kind ’v get ideers about what he wants t’ tell me.” Nan knew that Memsah’b would know exactly what she was talking about, and she was not disappointed.

“They say that splitting a crow’s or raven’s tongue gives them clear speech, but I am against anything that would cause Neville pain for so foolish a reason,” Memsah’b said. “And it is excellent exercise for you to understand what is in his mind without words.”

Quork,
said Neville, fairly radiating satisfaction.

Nan now put her full attention on the task of “understanding what was in Neville’s mind without words.” It proved to be a slippery eel to catch. Sometimes it all seemed as clear as the thoughts in her own mind, and sometimes he was as opaque to her as a brick.

“I dunno how you do it,” she told Sarah one day, when both she and Neville were frustrated at her inability to understand what he wanted. He’d been reduced to flapping heavily across the room and actually pecking at the book he wanted her to read. She’d have gone to Memsah’b with her problem, but their mentor was out on errands of her own that day and was not expected back until very late.

Grey cocked her head to one side and made a little hissing sound that Nan had come to recognize as her “sigh.” She regarded Nan first with one grey-yellow eye, then with the other. It was obvious that she was working up to saying something, and Nan waited, hoping it would be helpful.

“Ree—,” Grey said at last. “Lax.”

“She means that you’re trying too hard, both of you,” Sarah added thoughtfully. “That’s why Grey and I always know what the other’s thinking. We don’t try, we don’t even think about it really, we just do. And that’s because we’ve been together for so long that it’s like—like knowing where your own hand is, you see?”

Nan and Neville turned their heads to meet each other’s eyes. Neville’s eyes were like a pair of shiny jet beads, glittering and knowing. “It’s . . . hard,” Nan said slowly.

Sarah nodded; Grey’s head bobbed. “I don’t know, Nan. I guess it’s just something you have to figure out for yourself.”

Nan groaned, but she knew that Sarah was right. Neville sighed, sounding so exactly like an exasperated person that both of them laughed.

It wasn’t as if they didn’t have plenty of other things to occupy their time—lessons, for one thing. Nan had a great deal of catching up to do even to match Sarah. They bent their heads over their books, Nan with grim determination to master the sums that tormented her so. It wasn’t the simple addition and subtraction problems that had her baffled, it was what Miss Bracey called logic problems, little stories in which trains moved toward each other, boys did incomprehensible transactions with each other involving trades of chestnuts and marbles and promised apple tarts, and girls stitched miles of apron hems. Her comprehension was often sidelined by the fact that all these activities seemed little more than daft. Sarah finished her own work, but bravely kept her company until teatime. By that point, Nan knew she was going to be later than that in finishing.

“Go get yer tea, lovey,” she told the younger child. “I’ll be along in a bit.”

So Sarah left, and Nan soldiered on past teatime and finished her pages just when it was beginning to get dark.

She happened to be going downstairs to the kitchen, in search of that tea that she had missed, when she heard the knock at the front door.

At this hour, every single one of the servants was busy, so she answered it herself. It might be something important, or perhaps someone with a message or a parcel.

Somewhat to her surprise, it was a London cabbie, who touched his hat to her. “Scuze me, miss, but this’s the Harton School?” he asked.

Nan nodded, getting over her surprise quickly. It must be a message, then, from either Memsah’b or Sahib Harton. They sometimes used cabbies as messengers, particularly when they wanted someone from the school brought to them. Usually, it was Sahib, wanting Gupta, Selim, or Karamjit. But sometimes it was Nan and Sarah who were wanted.

“Then Oi’ve got a message, an’ Oi’ve come t’ fetch a Miss Nan an’ a Miss Sarah.” He cleared his throat ostentatiously and carried on as if he was reciting something he had memorized. “Mrs. Harton sez to bring the gur-rels to ’er, for she’s got need of ’em. That’s me—I’m t’ bring ’em up t’ number ten, Berkeley Square.”

Nan nodded, for this was not, by any means, the first time that Memsah’b had sent for them. Although she was loath to make use of their talents, there had been times when she felt the need to—for instance, when they exposed the woman who had been preying on one of Memsah’b’s old school friends. London cabs were a safe way for the girls to join her; no one thought anything of putting a child in a cab alone, for a tough London cabbie was as safe a protector as a mastiff for such a journey.

Nan, however, had a routine on these cases that she never varied. “Come in,” she said to the cabbie imperiously. “You sits there. Oi’ll get the gels.”

She did not—yet—reveal that she was one of the “gels.”

The cabbie was not at all loath to take a seat in the relative warmth of the hall while Nan scampered off.

Without thinking about it, she suddenly knew exactly where Sarah and Grey and Neville were; she knew, because Neville was in the kitchen with the other two, and the moment she needed them, she’d felt the information, like a memory, but different.

Stunned, she stopped where she was for a moment. Without thinking about it—so that was what Grey had meant!

But if Memsah’b needed them, there was no time to stand about contemplating this epiphany; she needed to intercept Karamjit on his rounds.

He would be inspecting the cellar about now, making certain that no one had left things open that should have been shut. As long as the weather wasn’t too cold, Memsah’b liked to keep the cellar aired out during the day. After all, it wasn’t as if there were fine wine in the old wine cellar anymore that needed cool and damp. Karamjit, however, viewed this breach in the security of the walls with utmost suspicion and faithfully made certain that all possible access into the house was buttoned up by dark.

So down into the cellar Nan went, completely fearless about the possibility of encountering rats or spiders. After all, where she had lived, rats, spiders, and other vermin were a matter of course. And there she found Karamjit, lantern in hand, examining the coal door. Not an easy task, since there was a pile of sea coal between him and the door in the ceiling that allowed access to the cellar.

“Karamjit, Memsah’b’s sent a cab t’ fetch me ’n’ Sarah,” she said. “Number ten, Berkeley Square.”

Berkeley Square was a perfectly respectable address, and Karamjit nodded his dark head in simple acknowledgment as he repeated it. “I shall tell Sahib when he returns from his warehouse,” Karamjit told her, turning his attention back to the cellar door.

He would; Karamjit never forgot anything. Selim might, but Karamjit never. Satisfied, Nan ran back up the stairs to collect Sarah, Grey, and Neville—and just for good measure, inform the two cooks of their errand. In Nan’s mind, it never hurt to make sure more than one person knew what was going on.

“Why do you always do that?” Sarah asked when they were both settled in the closed cab, with Grey tucked under Sarah’s coat and Neville in his hatbox.

“Do what?” Nan asked in surprise.

“Tell everyone where we’re going,” Sarah replied with just a touch of exasperation. “It sounds like you’re boasting that Memsah’b wants us, and we’re getting to do things nobody else in the school gets to.”

“It does?” Nan was even more surprised: that aspect simply hadn’t occurred to her. “Well, that ain’t what I mean, and I ain’t goin’ ter stop, ’cause summun oughter know where we’re goin’ ’sides us. What if Memsah’b got hurt or somethin’ else happened to ’er? Wouldn’ even hev t’ be anything about spooks or whatnot—just summun decidin’ t’ cosh ’er on account uv she’s alone an’ they figger on robbin’ ’er. What’re we supposed ter do if that ’appens? Oo’s gonna lissen t’ couple uv little girls, eh? ’Ow long’ud it take us t’ find a perleeceman? So long’s summat else knows where we’ve gone, if there’s trouble, Sahib’ll come lookin’ fer us. But ’e can’t if ’e don’t know where we are, see?”

“Oh.” Sarah looked less annoyed. “I’m sorry, I thought you were just—showing off.”

Nan shook her head. “Nah. I show off plenty as ’tis,” she added cheerfully, “but—well, I figger around Memsah’b, there’s plenty uv things t’ go wrong.”

“Clever bird,” Grey said, voice muffled by Sarah’s coat.

Quorak,
Neville agreed from within his box.

Sarah laughed. “I think they agree with you!” she admitted, and changed the subject. “I wonder why Memsah’b sent for us?”

“Dunno. Cabbie didn’t say,” Nan admitted. “I don’ think ’e knows. All I know’s that Berkeley Square’s a respect’ble neighborhood, so it might be one of ’er fancy friends again. Not,” she added philosophically, “that ye cain’t get coshed at a respect’ble place as easy as anywhere’s else. Plenty uv light-fingered lads as works Ascot, fer instance.”

“Do you always look on the bright side, Nan?” Sarah asked in a teasing tone of voice that told Nan she was being twitted for her pessimism.

Nan was just about to let her feelings be hurt—after all, just how was someone whose own mother tried to sell her to a brothel keeper supposed to think?—when her natural good humor got the better of her. “Nah,” she said dismissively. “Sometimes I get pretty gloomy.”