Steadfast (6 page)

She vanished into the forest of racked costumes and returned with something bundled
in her arms. All that Katie could tell was that it came with a pair of voluminous
pantaloons. “This is one of the Sultan’s page boy outfits. It will do,” Mrs. Littleton
said, thrusting the outfit at Suzie. “Make sure it comes back without any damage.
Watch them swords and other nasty things. Now, hold still.” Before Katie could move,
the woman had whisked the tape measure from around her neck and was measuring her
at all points, writing the measurements down in a little leather-bound book she pulled
out of a pocket of her apron. “What’s your name, gel?”

“Katie?” Katie replied hesitantly.

“Right then. It’ll be a week, them Eye-talian acrobats paid me to do them all new
suits, and they come first. Tell Lionel I’ll finish this new slave-girl frock in a
week, and he’s to pay me right away, and after that if nothing urgent comes up, I’ll
do up all the others he’ll need for her before he’s done with the Turk season.”

And with that, she sat back down at her machine and went back to sewing. Clearly,
they had been dismissed.

They both went out of the wardrobe room, pausing to let a stagehand go past with a
piece of scenery—which explained why the corridors were wider here, if things were
stored on this floor.

Suzie handed over the costume to Katie, who took it reflexively, and the two of them
went back up the stairs and to the dressing room. “Here,” Suzie said, sitting Katie
down at one of the tables. “This is mine, and you might as well have it. We can share
until you’re trained and I can leave.” She showed Katie where and what all the makeup
was; Katie already knew more than enough about the matter to know what to do with
it, and said as much. “I worked in a circus—” she began, and Suzie laughed.

“Well, as long as you weren’t a clown, then you should be all right.”

Then they got Suzie into enough of her costume for a rehearsal, and Katie into the
page boy outfit, which consisted of a pair of red bloomers and a billowy yellow blouse
with a red vest all embroidered with spangles that snugged tight around her chest
with front lacings. Like most acrobats she was . . . rather flat. When she looked
at herself in the mirror, with her hair up, she
did
look a good bit like a page boy. Certainly not like pretty Suzie, in her slave girl
finery . . .

“There, that looks good enough,” Suzie said.

“Is this going to be all right?” she asked, doubtfully. “I look like a boy.”

Suzie laughed. “Lionel is more than good enough that he doesn’t need a pretty assistant
to distract the eye,” she said proudly. “A page boy will do as well as I will. Come
on then—Lionel will be waiting, I can promise you. He goes to rehearsals more than
a preacher goes to church.”

Katie followed her mentor back into the cramped corridor, and from there to the stage,
and sure enough, there was the magician, in ordinary clothing with his shirtsleeves
rolled up, fussing with the sword-basket.

•   •   •

Lionel had been utterly astonished to see one of Jack’s salamanders riding along on
the would-be assistant’s shoulders when she had turned up to audition. And within
moments, it was quite obvious that
she
was utterly oblivious to its presence.

It seemed that the fates or the Elementals had decided to dump an entire barrel of
good fortune on him at once. The girl moved easily and freely, she was small and lithe,
and—

Well, that certainly explained why Jack had been so eloquent in his insistence that
Lionel run his eyes over this new applicant immediately. He’d even stumped his way
up to Lionel’s dressing room to insist on it, though Lionel had (as usual) had people
hanging about, and Jack had not been able to be specific about why he was so anxious.
There was no doubt, whatsoever, that if there was
any
chance she was suitable, he should take her on no matter how long it took her to take
to the act. An unawakened Fire magician was certainly not going to turn up at the
stage door every day.

He was delighted to see she was clearly a dancer—her costume told him that. Typical
little gauze skirt and bodice, useful for a thousand roles, depending on what you
decorated it with. Not only was it fitted to her, personally, it was far too worn
for her to be anything but a dancer with plenty of experience. Her little routine
was quite good—to be honest she was better than every other dancer currently working
here at the Palace, although she was not going to set the world on fire at the Paris
Opera Ballet. He was even more delighted when she performed some acrobatics and contortion.
She was better than those blasted Italians, and he had been getting so desperate he
had been thinking strongly of recruiting one of them, though he preferred female assistants.

She was smart, willing and flexible—and quite desperate for a job, desperate enough
to jump right into the sword-basket and let him run the trick on her without a moment
of hesitation. By the time she was done, he was convinced, and hired her on the spot.
Certain that her desperation for a job indicated an empty pocketbook, he advanced
her the first week’s salary. He was not going to chance losing her because she was
picked up for vagrancy, or have her fainting at a performance from hunger. The salamander,
who had been watching the entire time, flicked its tongue out with satisfaction, spun
around in a circle, and vanished.

After Suzie and his new assistant had left the stage, Lionel shoved his props back
into their proper places and headed for his dressing room. He wanted to talk to Jack—badly.
But before he did, he needed to get out of the Turk rig.

As usual, as if the universe was conspiring against him, there were half a dozen people
who just
had
to see him after the performance. When he finally dispensed with them—including the
agent who was frantic to sign him, and could not understand why he didn’t
want
a season at the Hippodrome in London—the theater was nearly empty except for the
cleaners.

Jack must have known that Lionel would want to talk, however, for the doorman was
waiting patiently for him, though he had donned his hat and coat.

“You are coming back with me for supper, old lad, and nothing you can say will change
my mind,” Lionel announced as he approached.

Jack smiled crookedly. “I rather thought as much. Don’t go charging ahead as you usually
do. I’m too tired to keep up with you tonight.”

Lionel nodded, and they left together, Jack pausing to lock the stage door behind
himself and turn off the gas lamp.

They said nothing as they walked, slowly, to Lionel’s little house, with Jack’s wooden
leg making an odd thump on the cobbles as they walked. It was near enough that Lionel
never took a cab unless the weather was utterly foul. Jack’s flat wasn’t that much
farther off, by intention; he’d looked for a place close to Lionel’s as soon as he’d
been hired at the music hall. Only Earth mages tended to be recluses. Other Elemental
magicians preferred to be reasonably close to one another—there was safety in numbers,
and when darkness came calling, it was good to have your allies within shouting distance.
Lionel made sure to dine with his friend at least once a week, sometimes—usually in
winter—more often. Fire Mages used up more energy than Air, and he wanted to make
sure Jack got at least a couple of properly hearty meals during the week.

Even this late, there were plenty of people on the streets. Most were men, or paired
women. The only single women out at this time of night were those who did a private
sort of entertaining, and the families who came here to holiday were generally worn
out at the end of an evening performance and already back in their lodgings by the
time he and Jack left the theater. There were still plenty of bars and pubs open,
though, and smaller music halls than the Palace, the sort where the songs were not
the sort you wanted your wife to hear, and the can-can dancers might not be wearing
knickers.

Lionel shuddered at the notion that the girl he had just hired might have been reduced
to
that.
It wasn’t just that such work was degrading (which it was) and filthy (which it was)
and led down darker paths (which it did), it was that desperation could do bad, mad
things to an Elemental Mage’s mind, and of all the unawakened Elemental Magicians
you did not want trudging down the path of despair, the highest on the list was the
Fire Mage. When a Fire Mage went out of control, emotionally, even an awakened and
trained one could do a great deal of damage. If an unawakened Fire Mage went out of
control, and awakened during the process—

Well, there were many fire brigades that had been faced with catastrophic, unexplained
fires that would, had they known Elemental Magicians existed, have discovered a somewhat
grisly answer to their many questions. “Spontaneous human combustion” was what they
called it. Temperance lecturers ascribed the phenomenon to drinking too much, although
they never had an explanation for why it also happened to teetotalers.

He shook himself out of his dark thoughts as a trio of drunk sailors lurched past
in the street, singing.
Disaster averted,
he told himself, and felt relief. Suzie would take care of the girl, get her settled
in safe lodgings, see to what she needed. Reliable little Suzie! If only she’d been
a mage . . .

Well, she wasn’t, but with her good heart she was a treasure he would sorely miss,
the more so since she’d been with him longer than any other assistant that
was
a mage.

He and Jack turned down a little lane connecting two larger streets. Both sides of
the lane were lined with two-story dwellings, wedged-in and dwarfed by the three-
and four-story townhouses of the two streets themselves. Those towering townhouses
were owned by very well-to-do families of what might be called the “upper” middle
class who could afford a second home for summer, and didn’t care for either the country
or conventional watering spots like Bath. This was where the wife and kiddies came
for the summer, both for a bit of fun and to avoid the perilous climes of London,
and where the good, hardworking husband came for his holiday. All except for this
lane, whose occupants, with the exception of Lionel, were white-haired and elderly.

This lane was where his house was—outright bought and owned, like the townhouses,
rather than rented. There were only half a dozen of these little places, three to
each side of the street, and all were at least two hundred years old. Their proportions
were a bit broader than the townhouses, although the ceilings were a bit low. He often
wondered how they had survived the conversion of Brighton into a holiday resort, when
the little houses like them had been knocked down and replaced with the grander townhouses.
Perhaps the explanation was simply that the owners had refused to sell at any price,
so here they were, hemmed off and overshadowed.

For someone like Lionel, being hemmed off and overshadowed was anything but a handicap.
After all, he was gone most of the day, so why would a lack of sunlight bother him?
And the relative darkness in the morning, when he was sleeping long past the hour
when most were awake, was just what he needed.

The little scrap of a back garden that belonged to his house had been left to go wild,
and whatever could flourish nurtured only by the rain and the little sun that got
down there did so, and what didn’t, died. The fact that it had ended up becoming a
tiny wilderness pocket of shade-loving plants was a happy accident. Birds loved it,
and he even had a resident squirrel.

He’d completely renovated the inside when he’d bought the place, so he had all the
conveniences of the most modern of flats, including laid-on gas, a boiler for hot
water, gas fires instead of coal, sound indoor plumbing, and floors that did not tilt
in every possible direction. He didn’t care that he had no view, it didn’t matter
that the inside needed artificial lighting even at midday. The fact that those tall
buildings on either hand also muffled the noise of the city was something he had counted
on, and more than made up for the shadowy interior.

The house was the middle of the three, with a door right on the street, so poor Jack
hadn’t any stairs to climb. The modern gaslight at the door had been left lit by Lionel’s
housekeeper; by its clear beams he unlocked his door and waved Jack inside.

There were no smells of cooking, other than the lingering aroma of fresh bread. The
housekeeper was very old-fashioned in her cookery habits, and saw no reason why they
should buy bread when she could make it.

That lack of cooking-scent meant that the supper laid out for him in the dining room
under the hygienic metal domes he insisted on would be cold. Probably Sunday’s ham,
which was quite fine with him, and which Jack would enjoy.

The two of them moved to the back of the house and the little dining room attached
directly to the kitchen, where the domes gleamed in the center of the table. With
a faint sigh, Jack sat down immediately; Lionel whisked off the domes to reveal what
lay beneath. As he had suspected: ham, some cold sliced tongue, some rather lovely
cheese, onions, pickles of various sorts, radishes, some lettuces, and a fresh, round
loaf of bread.

“That looks heavenly,” said Jack with approval. Knowing what his friend and fellow
magician liked, Lionel was already making him up a sort of plowman’s lunch without
being asked, even as Jack passed him plates and cutlery from the stack waiting on
his side of the table.

There was beer as well, but that was in a little barrel on the sidebar. Lionel pulled
them each a pint before he sat down himself.

“All right then,” Lionel said firmly, before taking his first bite. “Time for you
to be talking, my lad.”

“Not much to say,” Jack replied, picking up a piece of Gloucestershire, eyeing it
for a moment, then eating it. “The girl turned up with one of your sylphs flitting
about her, so at first I thought she might be Air, but then one of my salamanders
flashed out and attached himself to her, so I knew she was Fire. Unawakened, of course,
but if a salamander’s taken to her, the power is there. She had a scrap of paper with
your advertisement on it and asked if the job was still open. I told her yes, gave
her a ticket to the show so she’d stop here, and told her to come back when it was
over. Then I went to let you know.”