The Curse of the Brimstone Contract

by Corrina Lawson

  “The peers of the realm are already scared of the power of the lower classes, hence the authority given Moran,” Gregor said. “The idea that they don’t have a stranglehold on mage ability terrifies the realm. Your father was knighted because of his gift, Sir August. The Queen is trying to assimilate those who seem worthy before that power is used against her class. But I don’t believe they realize yet that those like Joan and your father are part of a pattern. I suspect the mage gift occurs among all classes in the same proportion.”

  “If they did know this?” Joan asked.

  “Mage ability is the true nobility now. Those who possess its riches can rise as high as anyone. The lack of a strong gift precludes me from the highest councils far more than the Indian heritage from my mother. Just as Sir August’s failure to inherit his gift from his father precludes him more than his less-than-noble ancestors.”

  “What does that mean for England?”

  “Civil war, possibly,” Sir August said.

  Gregor nodded. “Quite so. There are those like my brother who seek to do with mage ability what others have done for basic education. They want to make training of the mage gift available to all, so that the country benefits as a whole. Others feel that the lords should continue to horde power among themselves. An untrained mage, no matter how powerful, is unlikely to challenge a trained noble mage.”

  “Though I agree with him, I don’t believe your brother has sufficiently convinced his peers of the harm that could result in ignoring the situation,” Sir August said. “That bodes ill.”

  “Of course it does.” Roylott stood in the doorway.

  Joan turned, expecting the monster who had wrecked her home and her business. But all she saw was the same small, pudgy man that she had seen just yesterday.

  Evil had chosen a very banal disguise.

  “Those who are lower-class mages will have to take what they need. As I did,” Roylott said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gregor sat in her father’s chair and put his fingers in a steeple. He studied Roylott. Roylott smiled a big, toothy grin.

  Gregor had known the moment his quarry had stepped in the doorway, even before he spoke. Of that, Joan was certain.

  Sir August drew out his custom pistol.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here, Joan.” Roylott did not acknowledge Sir August or his magical weapon.

  “I didn’t expect you to be a murderer.” Joan stared long and hard at the man who had dismantled her life. Despite the knowledge of what he had done, he still looked ordinary. Not too tall, not too short, thinning hair, a little too much weight around the middle.

  Roylott crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You have done my father a terrible injustice,” she said.

  “Alexander Krieger made his deal of his own free will. He did himself the injustice.”

  “Lady Grey and your other victims had no such free will.” Gregor leaned back in the chair and propped his booted feet up on the desk. “Furthermore, those murders constitute a violation of your contract with Alexander Krieger to make certain this business thrives. Either way, you are in the wrong.”

  “You know nothing, Detective. Less than nothing.”

  “If we let you leave here in peace and with Sir August’s money, will you return what you took from my father?” Joan asked.

  Roylott laughed. “Let me leave? You cannot hope to stop me. You are only two men without a strong mage gift and one untrained girl.”

  “Did you come to laugh at us?” Joan asked.

  “I came for the money.” Roylott pointed at Sir August. “Pay me, and I will disappear and leave you and your fiancée alone. Refuse to pay and I’ll drain the last of her father’s soul energy and strike back at you when you least expect.”

  Gregor snapped to his feet and strode to Roylott. “The more you threaten, the more likely you bring on your own extermination. You say I know nothing. I know more than you would guess or want me to guess. Starting with the fact that Samuel Roylott didn’t exist at all until you were hired as business manager at Krieger & Sims.”

  Roylott flushed, his bluster gone. “Of course I used a different name in a previous life.”

  “Life? Is that what you call it?” Gregor sneered.

  Dash it all, Joan thought. Gregor knew something and, once again, he had not told her what it was.

  “Where did you get your training?” Sir August asked Roylott.

  “Will you pay me or not?”

  “No.”

  “A trap, then, as I guessed.” Roylott grinned. Malice seemed to gather around him. Joan blinked, suddenly not recognizing him at all. She had asked evil to show its true visage. Now it had. Roylott’s face twisted until it seemed he wore a parody of a human smile.

  “Why did I not see this in you?” she blurted out, more to herself than for any hope of being answered. She had sensed Sir August’s intense, twisted need to avenge his brother. How could she have not sensed wrongness from a man she’d seen on a daily basis for years?

  “Roylott hid himself well, so well that not even Moran sensed what he was the other day,” Sherringford said. “I uncovered him not by magical means but by mundane ones. The brimstone on the gloves told me there was a mage here. It remained only to investigate your employees. His history was curiously blank.” Gregor put his hands behind his back and drew himself up to his full height in front of his enemy. “You may sneer at simple human methods, Roylott, but they were your undoing.”

  Was it her imagination or did Roylott seem to shrink? His face settled back to a more human form.

  “You cannot hold me.”

  “And yet here you are, asking something of us,” Joan said.

  “I’ve done no harm to your person, Joan Krieger. Your future is assured with your marriage. You should have no complaints, girl. You’re untouched.”

  As when she had realized Sir August had lied to her, Joan felt the anger spread. Her body felt rigid, her brain locked in outrage.

  “Untouched? Do you not count all the years I have had to deal with my father’s fits and abuse?” She raised her hands to let the wrist bruises show.

  “As I said, he signed the contract, girl. He knew the cost. He bears the blame.”

  “You knew that it would affect his family. You didn’t care.”

  Roylott advanced on her. “All the years that you have taken abuse from your father and yet you still care about him?” He scowled. “If you care that much about the worthless creature, there is one last thing that can be done for him.”

  “Be careful what you say next.” Gregor’s voice was a menacing whisper. “I have the gloves and the contract that you treated with brimstone. I have the word of a respected peer that brimstone is what bound a spell that caused the deaths of two people. Moran will certainly know how to discern what you are once he is pointed in the right direction. You’re done, Roylott.”

  “And yet, Moran is not here. I think perhaps you care more about the girl’s reputation than seeing me arrested, yes? Is Joan now your fiancée, Sherringford? Or do you share her with Milverton?”

  Gregor’s face lost all expression. She had seen him annoyed. But the eerie calm that descended now was scarier even than Roylott’s menace. It was so unnerving that she forgot to be insulted.

  “He is provoking us for some reason, Sherringford,” Milverton said. “He wants something, or else he would have left once he knew this was a trap. Out with it, Roylott, so this farce ends.”

  “I wanted to let Joan Krieger know she could do something for her father.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Gregor said.

  “I echo that. Do not dare.”

  Joan turned to see her mother had come into the office.

  Just the sight of her mother made Joan feel infinitely less terrified. They embraced, as they seldom did. The clenched feeling in Joan’s insides that had haunted her since her arrest relaxed. Her mother was here. She had family, still, even if she had nothing else.

 
“Thank you for letting me know of this confrontation, Lord Sherringford,” her mother said.

  Yet another thing Gregor had kept hidden from her. Perhaps he had not known if her mother would come and did not want to disappoint her. Perhaps she should stop making excuses for him. Truth, bah. Truth under his own terms.

  Her mother turned to Roylott. “Get thee gone, villain.”

  “I’m my own master now.” Roylott turned away from her. “I will not leave until Joan hears my proposal.”

  “I’ve had quite enough of proposals,” she snapped.

  “Ah, but mine is different. I could be persuaded to turn myself in to the authorities and return your father’s soul. For a price.”

  “Not for any price,” her mother said.

  “That is Joan’s decision. Would you risk your soul for your father’s recovery, girl?”

  “She won’t risk such a precious thing for anyone,” Gregor said.

  “Pray let me speak for myself, both of you.” She focused on Roylott. “Just what do you propose?”

  Again, that strange calmness came over her. The very idea of risking her soul should send her running in the opposite direction, especially knowing what had happened to her father. She wondered if this strange emotional numbness—briefly lifted by her mother’s arrival—would ever go away.

  “I want to be free. You want your father back. One of us can get what they want. Whichever is stronger. I propose a duel to determine that.”

  “A duel?”

  “My freedom plus your soul if I win. My surrender and the return to health of your miserable father if I lose. I warn you, I don’t plan to lose.”

  He smirked. Joan barely restrained herself from hitting the man to wipe that expression off his face.

  “Joan, no,” her mother said.

  “Joan, you cannot even consider this,” Sir August said.

  “You must not do this,” Gregor said.

  “Quiet, all of you!” As much as she loved her father, she wasn’t an idiot. “Roylott, what you seem to be proposing is a sucker’s bet. You are obviously powerful and trained. You also just said that I was no match for you.”

  But she wanted to accept. Oh, she wanted to. She wanted to hurt Roylott, to wipe that smirk off his face. For poor Lady Grey, for the young man who had been forced to hang himself and for her father, who had let greed get the best of him and paid for the rest of his life.

  Roylott looked at the melted lump of the cabinet. “You have plenty of power.”

  “Duels are forbidden,” Gregor said flatly.

  “And you’re a man who obeys all rules, Sherringford? I’ve seen no evidence of it. Your Indian heritage separates you from society, so you do what suits you and society be damned.”

  “Leave with your freedom, demon, and trouble us no more,” her mother said.

  “If I am a demon, the circumstances that created me made me so. I offer a fair duel, Joan Krieger.”

  “I sincerely doubt that,” Joan said.

  “There is one arena in which you are an expert. As Milverton and Sherringford have no doubt told you, your mage ability manifests when you create clothing. It is part of why Krieger & Sims products are so valued. One cannot discern the mage energy that is expended in their creation, but the effects are visible in how they catch the eye and warm those wearing them.”

  “And what does that have to do with anything?” Joan said.

  “Sir August Milverton can tell you of how his brother proposed to duel with mage-infused pistols. The Duke of Clarence broke the deal and resorted to a stronger, less subtle energy. I would not. I would keep my word.”

  “You want a sewing duel?” Joan laughed. That was truly one of the most insane sentences she had ever spoken. She would duel with the equivalent of the devil to win her father’s soul back using her sewing machine?

  “That’s absurd,” Sherringford said.

  “That is a fair offer, according to the laws of magic. As fair as dueling with magical pistols. The first one to complete an item of clothing wins. We’ll need to bind the duel agreement with brimstone, however, so neither party can back out.”

  Joan felt the blood leave her face. His offer whispered to her, enticed her, drew her as nothing else had in the last few days. It was the answer to all her problems.

  If she won.

  If she lost, she would become her worst nightmare, exactly like her father, a sometimes mindless being with no control over thought.

  But I could win.

  Her father’s downfall must have started exactly like this. Save that he had risked it for Krieger & Sims and business success, not to save a life. Was such a man worth risking her existence?

  “No!” Her mother stepped forward. “I won’t allow it.”

  “You’ve lost any power to stop it,” Roylott said.

  Her mother stared at the floor.

  From behind, Gregor put his hands on her shoulders. She felt the strength in his fingers. She did not need words to know what he thought. Sir August shook his head and mouthed no.

  “And if I refuse your duel, Roylott?” she asked.

  “Clearly, I will have to fight my way out. We shall see who survives that conflict.”

  “I never miss.” Sir August aimed his pistol. “Enough taunting, demon. Surrender or die.”

  Roylott twisted his hand, a tiny gesture. Sir August gave a strangled gasp. He lost his grip on the gun and fell to his knees. Joan grabbed at his shoulders to stop him from falling.

  He was struggling to breathe. He had risked himself for her.

  She held him steady as his breathing returned to normal. “You put your life at stake for me, even though we will not be married. Why, Sir August?”

  He shook his head. “Perhaps it’s time I started doing the right thing for its own sake.”

  Roylott twisted his hand again. Gregor’s palm flew up, as if to deflect something unseen. He staggered back, but did not fall.

  “Parlor tricks, mage. You won’t leave here alive,” Gregor said.

  “Maybe not. But neither will you.”

  Roylott was more powerful than either of them.

  She could easily set the room on fire. She could throw all her newfound power at him. But would she have enough control of the energy? She might destroy this building and everyone in it, just as the power released during the mage duel had permanently scarred the park.

  No.

  She had gone out into the night, walking in the darkness, and had then faced icy death when opening the magical safe. She had thought she was dying. Yet here she stood.

  That risk had been to find out the truth for herself and to decide the course of her own life. That risk had not ended.

  No sense stopping when the metaphorical needle was already threaded.

  “I accept your duel,” she said to Roylott.

  Chapter Twenty

  Roylott immediately pulled out a contract and a pen.

  He had planned this, Joan thought. He had known this would be a trap and devised a way that might not only lead to his escape but to his becoming more powerful.

  “You knew I would accept,” she said.

  “I had hoped.”

  “What clothing design did you have in mind for the duel?”

  “I forbid this,” Gregor said.

  “You’ll have to restrain me to stop it,” she told him. “This is my business, my family and my life.”

  As Sir August struggled to keep his balance, Joan grabbed the contract from Roylott and signed it before anyone could stop her. As she signed, she noted that Roylott had already applied his name.

  “You did more than hope. You knew I would accept.”

  “I’ve worked with you for the past seven years, lass. I know you, possibly better than your family.”

  “Then you know that you will lose.”

  Roylott shrugged. “That’s always a risk.”

  Gregor swept between them. “Where do you propose to have this duel?”

  “In the seamstr
esses’ room. It should be no matter to restart the boiler, especially with all that mage coal available.” Roylott stuffed the contract in his outer coat pocket.

  Gregor extended his long, elegant fingers. “I’ll hold that, now.” His face held no expression. She had disobeyed him. She suspected that meant they had no future. If she even had a future after this duel.

  Roylott glared but handed it over. Gregor took a step back to study it. He frowned. No wonder. It was in Hebrew, the same contract her father had signed, save it made her soul’s loss contingent on the outcome of the duel. Her father had directly signed over his soul.

  “What item of clothing shall we create?” Joan asked.

  “We can use one of your designs, one that you have not made yet. That will give us an even start. Your mother can collect the materials and then we will sew them.” He grinned. “The first one to finish wins.”

  “I will do no such thing,” her mother said. “Never. Your worthless father does not deserve this help, Joan.”

  Hatred shone through her mother’s words. “My decision is final.”

  Joan wondered how long her mother had known of her father’s deal with Roylott. She didn’t ask. She had had enough truth for today.

  “If you refuse, Mrs. Krieger, then you will have to let me collect and cut my own material, as Joan will do hers. Do you trust me to do that?”

  “I trust you with nothing, false man.” Her mother looked at Joan. She closed her eyes and sighed. “You should never have done this.”

  No approval or compassion, not even when she was about to risk her life?

  “What’s done is done. Will you gather the materials for the new traveling jacket that I have yet to make?” Joan said with clenched teeth.

  “Fine.” Her mother turned on her heel. It might have been her imagination but Joan swore she stomped her feet in anger. After, if there was an after, Joan needed to sit down with her mother and truly speak.

  “I will start the boiler.” Gregor brandished a lump of the mage coal that she had created.

  “That is acceptable,” Roylott said.

  Sir August leaned on his cane. “I will watch you until the duel is ready to begin, foul one, to ensure all is done fairly.” He stared at her. “I have underestimated you since the beginning, Joan. I’ve been blind.”