Steadfast (20 page)

She steeled herself for the inevitable, waited until she could hear that most of the
others had cleared out of the dressing rooms, then went out to see Jack at the door.

But Jack took one look at her, and shook his head. “You’re in no state for a lesson,”
he said, “And by the time you get your mind wrapped around the idea, it’ll be well
past midnight. Go home, Miss Kate. Get some supper and some rest. I’ll let Lionel
know.”

It sounded as if he was disappointed in her, but she didn’t care right now. She just
thanked him and made her escape.

She could not have been happier to reach the boarding house. One cool bath and an
equally refreshing supper of the cold fruit soup that she had fantasized about, her
window open to the ocean breeze, and she was more than ready to sleep.

And then . . . sleep eluded her. Her mind buzzed, and she tossed and turned, trying
to find a cooler spot in her bed. Finally she just took the counterpane and laid it
down on the floor; the floor would at least be cooler than her mattress.

Her thoughts wouldn’t stay put. She went from reliving her mistakes in her routines,
to reliving the moment of triumph at the end of each one when the crowd applauded,
to Lionel’s little lecture.

She just couldn’t understand why it was he and Jack seemed so very urgent about her
learning to control this “magic.” Wasn’t it like acrobatics? If you didn’t know how
to do a backflip, well, obviously you wouldn’t be able to actually do one, would you?
So why all the fuss?

But wait . . . they’d said the point wasn’t that
she
did things, it was that the Elementals might do things, reacting to her emotions.
They had said that was why the Fire sprites had turned up.

But would that be so bad? She wasn’t
angry
with anyone; she’d always been excellent at keeping her temper. She’d taken after
her father that way, not her mother, who had what her father called a “short fuse.”
And when it came to Dick. . . .

She suddenly felt cold all over, not hot anymore, because even the thought of Dick
was enough to chill her and paralyze her with fear. She had to remind herself that
Dick didn’t know where she was, didn’t know where to look, and by the time he found
out, she would have her divorce and if he so much as put a finger on her, she could
have him arrested.

It didn’t help much.

She felt as if her thoughts were skittering around in her head like so many frightened
mice. It was a lot easier exercising physical discipline than it was mental discipline.

There were just too many things she had to do, and people seemed to want her to do
all of them at once.

And now that she was chilled the floor was horribly hard. She moved back to her bed,
and curled up. There had to be something good she could focus on . . .

Of the three dances, she liked the Fire Dance the best. She was a little ashamed of
that because it really
was
the easiest of the three, but she loved the way the fabric just flowed around her,
flickering red to yellow and back again as she moved through the light from the magic
lanterns. She concentrated on that, putting herself through every step, every movement,
every note of the music in her mind. And that, finally, let her sleep.

Even in sleep, however, she was not left alone. Fire creatures moved through her dreams;
the salamanders and firebirds that she knew, and other things she didn’t. Bigger birds,
with long, twinned tails. Tiny things no bigger than her thumbnail that looked, when
she peered closely at them, like miniature versions of Lionel’s sylphs, only made
entirely of something that glowed, though it seemed to give off no heat. There were
things that flew about, balls of fire with long tails, and women seemingly made of
fire. All these creatures moved through her dreams, and she could sense their curiosity
and interest in her. They didn’t frighten her in her dreaming state, although if she
had been awake, that might not have been true.

She woke at the usual time, and although dreaming so much at night often had left
her feeling more tired than when she had gone to bed, this morning she felt good;
rested and energized.

She thought over her dreams, and what Lionel and Jack had told her last night, and
the more she thought things over, the more determined she became that she was no longer
going to be told what she must or must not do in these matters. She would decide for
herself just how much time she would devote to these magic lessons. She was the one
who had not one, but two jobs in the show now. She was the one having to perfect the
dancing part in a ridiculously short period of time. And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t
grateful—she
was
. But they were asking too much of her. If they kept on like this, she’d have no time
to eat or sleep.

She trotted off to the music hall in a new state of determination, planning to arrive
early so that she could speak openly with Jack.

And in fact, she literally caught him as he was unlocking the stage door. There was
no one else about, and he looked surprised and pleased to see her, and opened his
mouth to say something.

But she interrupted him before he could start.

“No,” she said firmly. “No, it’s too much to ask. I’m sorry, but I am not going to
spend every waking moment in these lessons of yours. Dark day, fine. The break between
matinee and evening, fine—but only if you’ll feed me since you’ll not be letting me
get my own tea. But
not
after hours, and
not
in the morning. I’ve rehearsals to do, and I need to
sleep!
And you who have cooks and the like to look after you, did you even think about the
fact that Mrs. Baird only serves supper for a little while, and that staying behind
for these lessons will make me go to bed supperless?”

The peculiar look on Jack’s face told her she had hit the mark squarely. “Well then.
Don’t think I’m not grateful, for I am. But these creatures have existed around me
for all of my life without me getting them so worked up they’re dangerous; I expect
they can continue to do so for a few weeks more. Meanwhile, I don’t think it’s going
to do anyone any good if you work me so hard I can’t think. So you just tell Lionel
that, Jack. I need to go practice.”

And with that, she held her head and her chin high, and marched right past him and
down to her dressing room. She had the feeling that he wasn’t in the least convinced,
but with her walking away, there wasn’t much he could do or say about it right now.

Charlie had brought in a gramophone and records of the music for her three numbers
about a week ago, muttering that it was cheaper to have the gramophone than pay a
pianist. She changed into her rehearsal dress, warmed up her limbs, and ran through
her dances as many times as she could until Lionel arrived for the magic act run-through.
The only thing she didn’t do more than once or twice was to go up on her toes in the
ribbon dance. That part was still hard for her, though she hoped that with more practice
it would be a bit less painful.

When Lionel arrived she almost expected to get something of a scold out of him—after
all, she had been damned cheeky, leaving word with Jack of what she, who was nothing
more than his assistant, would and would not be doing. But instead, he just shook
his head ruefully at her.

“You’re right, I wasn’t thinking,” he admitted, after they’d finished their first
run-through. “I’ve arranged for luncheon and tea to be brought here, and if you’re
feeling up to the lessons, we can have brief ones before and after the matinee. Asking
you to add night lessons to that would be absolutely cruel.”

That was so completely unexpected—the best she had anticipated was that she would
have to stage a battle of wit and persuasion to convince the magician—that she just
gaped at him.

“I’m not a complete monster, you know,” he murmured defensively.

That awoke something in her that hadn’t stirred since the death of her parents. “Not
completely, no,” she said, dryly, a smile playing about her mouth.

“Cheeky wench,” he muttered, and made her go into the basket again.

To her surprise, it was not Lionel and Jack that met her in the workroom at luncheon—which
was, as she had half suspected it would be, pub sandwiches and bottles of lemonade.
It was just Jack alone. “Lionel is taking the door for me while you and I have our
lesson, Miss Kate,” Jack said, politely handing over a bottle of lemonade. “Then between
the matinee and the evening performance, we’re paying one of the stagehands. We told
Charlie it’s because Lionel needs both of us to help work up the fall and winter acts.”

“Does he believe you?” she asked, taking a cheese-and-Bramston-pickle sandwich from
him.

He shrugged. “Does it matter? Honestly, I more than half suspect that he knows about
our magic, and he’d let us get away with just about anything so long as we protect
the hall. I’ve suspected that all along; my job came at the recommendation of the
White Lodge in London, and I fairly well just walked in and Charlie said ‘You’re hired,’
without anything else.”

Her eyes widened. “Ordinary people know about us?” she said in surprise.

“Not many.” He shrugged. “But aye. Ordinary folk do. That can be right helpful many
times. But that’s not why we’re here.” He pointed a finger at her. “You, Miss Kate,
have the most dangerous magic of the four. And you can’t just shrug your shoulders
and say ‘Well, I’ve had it all my life and nothing bad happened, so why should I worry
about it now?’ because that won’t do. That just won’t do at all.”

Since that was precisely what she had been thinking, she ducked her head a little,
guiltily. Still. “Why not?” she demanded.

“Because, it’s one thing when you aren’t aware of it. That puts a sort of barrier
of innocence between you and the Elementals.” He sucked on his lower lip a moment.
“It’s like you have a big, dangerous dog, except you don’t know it’s dangerous, it’s
just your dog. And maybe someone comes for you, and the dog attacks.
You
didn’t order it to attack, and the dog wouldn’t unless he sensed danger. But now
you know it’s dangerous. So say some fellow comes along and cheats you and you get
angry. And the dog knows you’re angry and starts growling. And then you don’t stop
him, and the dog attacks. Did the fellow who cheated you deserve to get his arm bit
off?”

She
wanted
to say “yes,” because she’d been in places and times when someone cheating her and
her parents out of the bit of money they needed to live was just as bad, in her estimation,
as being attacked. But . . . well, in the eyes of the law, it wasn’t.

Clearly it wasn’t, in Jack’s eyes. And she didn’t want to disappoint him, somehow.

“I suppose not,” she said, reluctantly.

“Miss Kate.” Jack looked at her sternly. “When you got any kind of power, you’re obliged
to use it properly. That’s what a soldier learns, or at least, the good ones do. A
soldier has a dangerous, bad thing with him all the time, a gun. Easy thing to kill
with. He has to think about that all the time—not just when he’s following orders,
but because he has it with him all the time, he has to think about it when there’s
no fighting going on, and it might be tempting to use that gun in bad ways. Let’s
talk about that big dog and the fellow who cheated you. You’re standing there and
the dog is growling at the fellow. You know the dog is going to attack. You got power,
you’re obliged to use it properly. So what would the proper thing to do be?”

“Grab his collar, I suppose,” she said, feeling a bit sulky.

“Aye, and you could say ‘my dog don’t like it that you cheated me, and my fingers
aren’t strong, so they just might not be able to hold him,’” Jack pointed out. “And
you could say ‘you just put the money you cheated me of on the path and go on home
and I won’t be mad and he won’t want to tear your throat out no more.’ That’s properly
using the power. And if he laughs at you, well, you warned him, and if the dog
does
get away from you—really get away, not just that you let it go—it’s on his own head,
then.”

“But that’s a dog—” she protested. “He can see the dog, he can hear the dog. I can
warn him about the dog.”

“And your Elementals are more dangerous yet, because most folks can’t see nor hear
’em, and you can’t warn ’em without looking like a loony.” He folded his arms over
his chest. “It’s all on
you,
do you see? It’d be as if my gun had a mind of its own. If I wasn’t in uniform, and
I got mad at someone, and my gun came out and shot ’em.”

“Well . . . why is it all right to ask salamanders to come light flashpots, and not
these other things?” she persisted. “If the Elementals can think, can’t they think
for themselves? What if it wasn’t just someone who I was angry with? What if it was
someone who really was going to hurt me?”

•   •   •

Jack’s mind went absolutely still at that point, because this was the closest that
Kate had yet come to revealing the existence of her brutish husband. Would she?

He decided it was worth trying to coax her into it. “Is there someone who is really
going to hurt you, Miss Kate?” he asked—gently, and without any tone of accusation.
“If there is, you should tell me about it, both because of the magic and because I
think I can call myself your friend.”

She was silent, but she had gone a bit pale, and she wasn’t eating the sandwich in
her hand, which was very unlike her. She had the healthiest appetite in a female—outside
of a country-bred girl—that he had ever seen. It took a great deal to put her off
her food.

“Why would it be wrong for the Elementals to get rid of someone that I really knew
wanted to hurt me?” she asked, finally. “Someone who’d hurt me before?”

“Because . . .” he sighed. “I’m not sure how to properly explain this. Maybe because
we’re supposed to do unto others as we’d like to be done by—not do by others as they
done to us.”