by Gail Dayton
Thankfully, since they were all friends and it was Saturday, the informal atmosphere kept anyone from commenting on her lateness, other than a pat on the shoulder from Amanusa sympathizing with all the magic she'd worked. Even Harry refrained from--from smirking, or winking, or whatever else he might have felt justified in doing, given her behavior yesterday evening.
The meeting didn't seem much different than other strategy sessions Elinor had participated in with Grey, Harry and Amanusa. Jax was there, as he always was, but Pearl wasn't. Grey claimed he'd forbidden her to attend, since she was not in fact a magister. He was her familiar, instead of the other way round, so she could not tag along as Jax did. Elinor was fairly certain that the truth probably was that Pearl had expressed a reluctance to wake and Grey, like the besotted husband he was, had left her happily in bed. Sleeping.
Just sleeping. Not sated from-- Elinor wrenched her mind back to the issue of the academy and its students.
"We're the magisters now," Harry was saying. "We don't 'ave to deal with Cranshaw or work around 'im. We four agree on wot's to be done. So we tell 'em. Women students, girls, are to be admitted just the same as boys and it's done."
"Yes, but it's not that simple," Amanusa said. "You can't treat the girls exactly like the boys. You can't expect them to live in the same houses or bathe in cold water. Frankly, I don't think you should expect the boys to bath in cold water either, especially in winter. It can't be healthy. But that's neither here nor there. Housing has to be found for the girls. There must be standards of behavior. What classes do we teach them? Will they be in the same classes with the boys?"
"Why not? Look--we're magisters, not schoolmasters. We tell the headmaster what's to be done and let them figure out 'ow to do it."
Elinor frowned. "But if everyone 'figuring out how' is male, will they be fair? Will they require the same rigor in classwork from them? Will they bar the girls from learning what they must? Or will they subject them to humiliation and bullying?"
"I'd say that depends on who we put in charge of it," Grey responded. "Whitson's getting up there in years, but he's always been fair-minded."
The discussion went on. And on. Finally, they agreed to allow the current headmaster of the academy, Silvanus Whitson, to draw up plans for integrating female students into the school, said plans to be approved by the magisters and the council head before being implemented.
They discussed the armored machines again. They discussed the dead zones and when the walling-up of the remaining zones--all of them but the one already done--should proceed. They talked over what to do about Nigel Cranshaw and offered optimistic predictions about the upcoming challenge with Edgar Dodd. Little was resolved, save to keep working at the problems, step by step.
As the official meeting drew to a close, Elinor debated briefly whether to draw Amanusa aside to mention the magic she'd encountered last night on her way home. She decided against it. It had only happened the once and would not be happening again, since she and Harry were not having any more encounters. Besides, Elinor couldn't bring herself to admit to anyone what she had done. Amanusa was a friend, but Elinor simply could not tell her how far she had fallen.
So she went home and took a nap. She ought to go work on her potion for the upcoming challenge or make up a new batch of the burn ointment. But she was too tired, and her stillroom was in the conservatory off the back of Harry's house. That would not help her avoid him. Besides, she'd promised Dr. Rosato he could help her make the next batch so he could learn how to do it. He could act as chaperone.
Harry spent the next several days frustrated, because Elinor spent them avoiding him. He didn't blame her, exactly. He understood why she would think the way she did. Sort of. He just thought she was wrong.
She shouldn't have to deny herself any normal life just because she wanted to be a magician. All he needed was the chance to prove it to her. But so far, Elinor seemed determined not to give him that chance.
When she locked herself in the stillroom Wednesday morning to work on her potion for the Dodd challenge before he even got to breakfast, Harry resigned himself to another day without Elinor. He took himself off to the I-Branch offices to see what was happening there for lack of anything better to do.
"You're quick," Grey said when Harry poked his head in the door of the vast desk-filled room. "A regular Johnny-on-the-spot."
"On the spot of what?" Harry came in the rest of the way and crossed to the oversized desk near the windows that Grey had claimed for his own.
"Didn't you get my message? Apparently not." Grey answered his own question as he came out from behind his desk. He captured Harry's arm and led him back to the door. "The lads I had out searching for your escaped machines have found one. They've taken it to your lab for inspection and dissection. Pearl's gone up to help."
Because sorcerers carried the source of their magic within themselves, they were the least vulnerable of all magicians to the no-magic of the machines and the dead zones where they originated. Pearl or Amanusa had taken to assisting with the actual dismemberment of the creatures when they didn't have other, more pressing sorcerous business to attend. Usually, it was Pearl who assisted, since as Grey's wife, she already spent a great deal of time at the council house assisting the Briganti. Grey had her on the payroll as a consultant.
Harry left Grey behind and took the stairs two at a time up to the dead zone committee's laboratory in the north attic of the Council House building. The Briganti lab was in the basement beneath their offices. One had to deal with stairs to arrive at either one, but the Briganti had fewer of them.
The Magician's Council House was a sprawling complex of buildings taking up more than one very crooked block just off St. Clement's Square, between the Strand and Lincoln's Inn Fields. It housed not only the Briganti, council, and guild offices, but also the academy and any other magical officialdom that could squeeze in somewhere.
Word was that Sir William was in negotiations for buildings on the other side of Market Street, that would have them owning everything from Wych Street to Clements Lane and from the square to Newcastle Street and Bough. Harry was fortunate that at least he didn't have to leave the building to go from the Briganti offices to his--the committee's lab.
A wall of blue and black-coated backs barricaded the work table Harry knew for a fact was set on their other side, because he'd helped set it there. He pushed his way through them to the front. Why bother with being magister if you didn't use the privileges that came with it now and again?
There, he found Pearl wearing a pair of riding gloves with wide cuffs extending almost to her elbows, protecting both her hands and the sleeves of her white dress, poised next to a machine on the table. The male observers, who surely all chafed at that role, had hidden her from view. Pearl was smaller than Elinor. She might be as tall as the queen, though not nearly as wide, given that Pearl hadn't given birth nine or 10 times. However many royal princes and princesses there were. Harry'd lost track ages ago.
"I've come to watch the show. Have I missed anything?" Harry clapped his nearest neighbors on the shoulders, looking around to see who else was present. He nodded at Archaios on the far side of the table. Other than Pearl in her sorcerer's white, everyone else wore the blue and gray of alchemists, or conjurer's black. "We need a wizard on the committee. Why don't we 'ave any wizards? We did used to, didn't we?"
"We did, sir," one of the conjurers said in a posh voice. "Until he got eaten by the demon he tried to summon." The man, tall and lanky with floppy dark blond hair, sounded as if he believed the tale. Harry wouldn't have, if he hadn't seen the demon eating other people.
"Right. Forgot that was 'im," he muttered.
"The wizard's new magister favors our study," the same conjurer said. "If she doesn't have time to join us herself, surely she would be willing to send someone."
"We can ask." Harry eyed the man up and down. "What's your name again?"
"O'Toole, sir. Phillip O'Toole."
S
o likely the posh accent was as false as Harry's, when Harry bothered to put one on.
Now that he knew who was present, Harry turned his attention to the table and the dead machine laid out on it. "So, wot 'ave you found?"
"Mrs. Carteret was just about to open it up." One of the alchemists spoke up--young Satterwhite.
"Not quite yet," Pearl said. "I believe Mr. Gordon hasn't yet finished sketching its underside."
This machine used wheels to get about, wheels that appeared to be made of several layers of disks cut--from tin plates, perhaps. The four wheels attached to a pair of axles, each held by a single rather odd-looking support that extended through the equally odd casing of the creature.
"They're manufacturing," Harry said, pointing at the cut-out wheels with his nickel alloy wand. "They're not just gluing together things they've found any more."
"What do you suppose those struts are made of?" someone asked. Harry didn't see who, didn't recognize the voice.
"Bone." Gordon never ceased his drawing. "I'd wager a guinea on it."
"Why do you say that?" Harry asked, as at least one man took Gordon up on the bet.
"The texture, partly. It's been weathered, so it's rough. And the shape of it just looks like a bone to me. Maybe a dog's leg bone."
"Wee dog, then," Ian Ramsey said. There were a lot of Scots amongst the alchemists. Rather like there were a lot of Scottish engineers. Not much to do but tinker with things during the winters up there, Harry supposed.
"Aye." Gordon compared machine to sketch one more time and laid aside his tablet and pencil to take out a wand. "And did anyone else notice these?" He pointed at the small shapes fastened to the machine's lower casing.
"I was just wonderin' about them myself," Harry confessed. "What do you think they are?" He edged a bit closer, to see better.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Pearl picked at one of the tiny objects with a gloved finger. "It's stuck down quite well. I can't get it loose. At least not--" Before someone could hand her a tool to use, she shook off a glove and pried at it with her bare fingers.
"Pearl!" Harry protested.
She listened about as well as Elinor, meaning not at all. "I'm fine. Stop fussing." She held the machine down with her gloved hand, changing her angle of attack. "I've almost... Got it!"
With a slight cracking sound, the thing came free and Pearl held it up in triumph. Then she peered more closely at it. "I think it's a bone too. A little, tiny rib bone."
One of the conjurers who wasn't O'Toole held out his unfolded handkerchief for Pearl to drop the possible bone into. Harry pushed out past the crowd, grabbed a flat-head screwdriver off the workbench against the wall and shoved his way back through to the front--perhaps a touch too forcefully, given the way Ramsey went staggering into his neighbor.
"'Ere." He slapped the screwdriver down on the table. "Put your glove back on an' use this to pry any more bits off. You get sick from this, you won't be back."
"As if Grey could forbid it." Pearl gave him a scornful look, but she put the glove on. "It feels nasty, but it's not hurting me."
"'Ow do you know? And it wouldn't be Grey barrin' ya from comin' back. It'd be me. I'm not havin' anybody here, man or woman, if the monsters make 'em sick."
Pearl arched an eyebrow at him, as if noting the distance he kept.
"That's right." He backed another step. "I keep my distance. You wear your gloves." He glared at the other observers. "You lot keep back so I can see."
Pearl didn't respond except to pick up the screwdriver and use it to pop several more objects from the lower casing. Everyone else moved back out of his way.
"Is that metal?" Archaios ventured to ask, breaking the extended silence. "What the objects are glued to? Are they all bones?"
"I think so, yes." The conjurer with the handkerchief stirred the bits Pearl had given him with a gloved finger. "Large rat, perhaps, or small cat." He set the handkerchief on the table and smoothed it out, ready to receive more little bones. Harry suspected holding them, even with the handkerchief and gloves as barriers, was beginning to affect the man--somebody Ford.
Pearl tapped the casing with the tool in her hand. "I think it's metal," she said. "With all those bones stuck on, it doesn't sound right, but I think that's what it is."
The bones had space around them, enough to see the dull, dark gray surface they were attached to.
"The machine is smaller," Harry said. "Than the one I caught--Elinor and I--Magister Tavis caught at the dead zone. It's more rat-sized than terrier."
"Great big rat, then," Ramsey said.
"It's all right, Harry," Pearl said from the corner of her mouth as she kept prying. "You can call her Elinor. We all know she used to be your apprentice. We won't respect her any less. We all saw what she did with her wands."
Everyone present added their agreement, amazement, and approval in a sudden upwelling of sound. Harry wanted to growl at them all, but he didn't. Elinor had kissed him back, not any of them.
"How many of these bones do you want me to take off?" Pearl asked, deflecting the conversation back to the matter at hand before Harry could do it.
"Enough to be able to cut it open," Ramsey said. Harry had appointed him to head up the study of the machine creatures.
Pearl had perfected the process to remove the glued down bones, for she moved across the shell in a line so fast, the popping sounded like distant strings of Guy Fawkes Night fireworks. Then she stopped and studied the machine.
"How do you suppose we should cut it open?" With a gloved finger, she poked at the openings where the probably-bone struts went through. "I can't tell how thick the metal is, but if it's very thick at all, I won't be able to cut it with tin snips or anything like."
"Will the screwdriver go through it?" Archaios asked.
Pearl eyed the machine dubiously. "I'd be afraid of breaking something inside if it crashed through the shell too suddenly."
"Try pressing into it, not stabbing it." Harry tried to keep the impatience from his voice. He wanted to take the screwdriver from her and do it himself, but he didn't dare. Not because she was the girl and he was the strong manly man. Just because he wanted to do it. "Set the tip against the metal and lean on it."
"Like this?" She did as he suggested and made a slight dent in the metal. "I'm not tall enough to get enough leverage," she said. "It does seem as though the metal is fairly thin. Or perhaps the magic is already affecting it. Maybe if I stand on something?"
"If it's thin--" someone began, then didn't finish.
"Can we pull out the struts?" Conjurer Ford of the handkerchief pointed with a black-clad finger. "If we--you could get them out, we could work with the holes that remained."
"Get Grey up here an' let him use the tin snips," Harry suggested. "He's your familiar, Mrs. Carteret. You can keep 'im from fainting."
"That sounds sensible." Pearl had grasped one of the swiveling axles and its support and was trying to wrench it free.
"I've sent word," O'Toole said. His eyes hadn't glazed over when he spoke to his spirits. That would make him one of the top ranked conjurers. He paused. "Magister Carteret says he'll be here in ten minutes. Please do not start without him."
"Pearl--" Harry said.
"I'm not starting, am I? I don't have any snips. I'm not trying to cut anything. I'm just--" She paused to give the strut a sharp twist and apparently broke it loose from something inside, for it turned, rotating in its hole.
"Stop it. Wait for Grey." No more suggesting. Time for orders.
"I am." She shot him a frown. "We need these things out if we want to get the snips in far enough to cut." She had taken to yanking on it now, as well as twisting and laying it over in one direction or another.
"I think you should--"
A sharp tug, combined with half a twist, and an acute angle toward the creature's nose--or tail--and the strut came free, leaving a gaping hole, dented at the edges. Technically, the hole probably didn't qualify as gaping, since it was
only an inch or so in diameter, but it seemed so to Harry. He could feel the no-magic pouring out of it all at once in a noxious rush. How did it do that? If the no-magic was just the absence of magic, why didn't the magic in the air swarm it and change--
"I don't feel well." Pearl dropped the creature's limb and caught herself with a hand on the edge of the table.
Harry lurched forward to catch her, to pull her away from the foul blast. He took hold of her arm, then had enough presence of mind to let go again as his mind first lost control of his body, collapsing him to the ground, and then lost itself as the world went black.
Elinor had just finished the first steps in the potion for Friday when a rapid knocking sounded at her stillroom door.
"Miss Tavis? Are you in there, Miss Tavis?" Freeman, Harry's butler, never sounded alarmed. But he did now.
Elinor sighed. Surely Harry wasn't resorting to such juvenile tactics just to get her attention.
"Miss Tavis?" The flurry of knocking sounded rather alarmed as well.
The potion ingredients needed to steep together for several hours. She might as well see what he wanted.
Elinor picked up the ceramic crock she'd just poured her morning's work into and set it at the back of the next to the lowest shelf, moving the jug of currant wine a little in front. She took off her apron, shook it out--noting the new stain down the left side where she'd wiped her hand--and hung it on the hook beside her work table.
"Miss Tavis, they need you at the council house!" Another voice--this one young, female, and Scottish--called. "Mr. and Mrs. Greyson have already gone. Are you there, Miss Tavis?"
Now alarm rippled through Elinor, too. What could have happened. She hurried to the door, then had to fumble through the slit in her skirt seam to find the pocket dangling from her top hoop where she'd placed the key. Finally, with thoughts of disaster ranging from wizardly mutiny to plague at the academy running through her brain, she got the door open. Nan Jackson, youngest and fleetest of foot among the sorcery students, danced there from foot to foot.
