by Gail Dayton
And she saw him at an apothecary shop she didn't know, purchasing his illegal firebombs from a florid-faced, bulbous-nosed man who smelled strongly of onions. Cranshaw didn't know him, had only heard that one could get whatever one desired here if one knew the correct words to be spoken in the correct order. His fear of women was such that he made sure to learn the words and the order. He could not allow that horrid, horrible female to come near him. Her very touch would corrupt.
Elinor got an image of his flesh blacking at the touch of her hand, the blackness spreading through him until bits began melting and falling off. The blackness bore a resemblance to his self-inflicted burns, but she could see that the resemblance had come after the fact. How could he have thought such a thing? And why?
The magic brought her the memory of a switch striking little boy flesh, of pain, and terror for his life. The man wielding the switch was shouting, almost incoherently, but Elinor could pick out a few words: "--whore's embrace--" and "--beat the wickedness out of you--" and "--resist corruption--" There was more, but Elinor's recoil had carried her to the motherly hug from the family cook that had instigated this punishment.
This was the moment, the magic told her, that Nigel Cranshaw had decided that women were the cause and root of all pain and wickedness. At the advanced age of ten.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Elinor picked her way through Nigel Cranshaw's memories, piecing his past together. His family had been Catholic, father intended for the priesthood, though apparently as ill-suited for that as he was for fatherhood. Elinor thought the man on the verge of insanity, if not well across that edge.
Cranshaw Senior had fallen in love--or in lust--with one of the parish's young ladies and succumbed as young men tended to do, even young men preparing for the priesthood. And when Nigel's mother had turned up pregnant with Nigel, both sets of parents had insisted on marriage. Though Nigel's paternal grandparents had expressed severe disappointment that their son would not become a priest and eventually, the pope.
His father had blamed his mother for tempting him and luring him astray. He blamed her for Nigel's three younger brothers and for holding him back, making them poor. When she died, not long after the youngest brother was born, the little boys were farmed out amongst the various relatives with women to mother them, but Nigel was almost seven. A man should not be deprived of all his sons.
That was when Nigel's father took it upon himself to teach his eldest son about the wicked, licentious, corrupting nature of women and the evils of sexual congress.
When Nigel was 13, his talent for magic had been noticed by the day school he attended. The day he was admitted to the Magician's Academy and opened the Book of Wizardry was the best day of his life. Nigel had mellowed in the all-male atmosphere, until Amanusa's appearance as the first sorceress in 200 years brought all his fears back again.
Your father was wrong, Elinor whispered. Bitter, angry, and wrong to take his disappointment--his own sins--out on those weaker than himself.
She whispered those words into Nigel's own sense of fairness, his protection of the younger, smaller boys at the academy.
Your mother loved you. Elinor gave him older memories. Look at your life with adult understanding.
She wanted to do more, but his opinions had solidified into ideas so rigid, she feared breaking his mind if she knocked those attitudes down. Nor did she know if she could. But perhaps a few cracks wouldn't hurt.
At the thought of cracks, the magic swirled around her, spun her about, and showed her one. A crack, right through Nigel's ... heart? Soul?
Elinor was no theologian. Nor did she think a theologian, were one in her position, would know what to call it, but it was definitely there. A weakness in what made Nigel who he was. A place where bad things could leak through. Things that were no part of him.
The flaw was laid straight through the fear that had ridden Nigel Cranshaw most of his life, and as Elinor wondered what to do about it, she realized she already knew.
For a while, after the Battle of Waterloo Station, she and the fifteen other magicians who had participated in the fight had held the tiniest fraction of an atom of angel's power. She'd given it all away, of course. That was what the stuff was for--to be given away. But she knew now what it was, where it came from, and where to get more.
Not like the pure stuff the angel had poured into them. Mere humans couldn't bear up under that kind of power. Then again, the ordinary human variety had its own amazing power.
Your mother loved you, she repeated and she gathered up the certainty of that love and plastered it into the crack. From the place where the angel power had hummed inside her came more certainty, more--more love. Straight from the Source.
It will be well, she said. All manner of things will be well. She'd heard something like that once. She knew she didn't have the words of the ancient saying right, but the heart of it--the meaning--she had that right, she was certain.
Nigel whimpered, stumbling in his painful hobbling. Flawed, he thought. Afraid.
Elinor used what she'd been given to spackle more of the love into the crack. He let her do it. He could have stopped her, she thought, knocked out what she did, but he didn't. Yes, you have made mistakes, she thought at him. There's only one who never did. But you've done nothing that can't be forgiven. Just don't make those mistakes again.
Nigel's thoughts fragmented in the emotions surging through him. Still mostly fear, but now there was confusion as he seemed to be remembering something differently. The patch job seemed to be holding. He wasn't clinging to his fault line.
She'd done as much as she could for him, Elinor decided. It was time to end the ride and go back where she belonged. She swept some of the potion toward his terrible injuries, then reached for the hold to step out again. But it wasn't there.
Before, when she was riding Harry's blood, it had been easy. She had simply caught hold of her own body and--and done it. Her body had been right there, next to Harry's. Now--
She fought off panic when she realized that during the entire time she'd been poking around inside Nigel Cranshaw's body and mind, Nigel had been creeping down the stairs inside Holborn Tower, away from the place she was fairly certain her body remained. Inside Nigel's cell. And she wasn't entirely sure what she needed to do to get back into it.
Oh, bloody hell.
Harry Tomlinson had been worried before. In fact, he'd been terrified out of his wits on more than one occasion. But that had been a terrible long time ago. Well before he'd had much more than an inkling that he could pull magic to work spells from the stones beneath his feet and the air around him. He'd never been this scared since he'd found his magic and he hadn't felt this helpless since his brother Jack had died, which had been before the magic.
He had magic now, though, and he would by God use it to make sure Elinor didn't die. Not ever again. Not on his watch.
Harry tried once more to rouse her, patting her cheeks, shaking her, not quite roughly, but almost. He called her name over and over. Nothing worked. She lay there in the dark, still as that word he refused to think, save for the breath in her lungs and the beating of her heart. She was alive. It was up to him to keep her that way.
The jailer Biggs as well, if he wasn't dead already. Harry had finally recalled the man's name. There were too many alchemists to recall all their names--almost 400 in England alone, without counting Scotland, Ireland, or Wales. But Harry tried to remember at least the ones living in London.
Now, setting his worry aside, he drew out his steel wand, the one he carried with him most often, and stirred it through the air to see what magic he could pick up.
Too little. The wards laid through and around the tower stripped most of the magic out of the air, locking it away from anyone who did not know the words and gestures to unlock it--the keys to the warding. Still, Harry was not an inmate of these stone and metal walls, with the magic locked specifically against him. He ought to be able to gather enough to get the cell door op
en.
Harry reached for the magic in the stone floor. The warding flared. If he had been an inmate, he would have been doubled over on the floor, puking his guts up from the pain. As it was, he caught the edge of the ward. His fingers went numb as his wand sparked and he dropped it on the floor, fortunately right at his feet where he could find it again.
Cursing, he sucked at his numb but stinging fingers and contemplated his next step. Three of the walls were metal. They'd have less inherent magic than the stone of the exterior wall and floor, though they conducted it nicely. The refining of the metal took some of the natural magic out. The door itself was metal as well.
He eased a little closer, extending his senses through his wand to test the door's construction and magic reserves. Being the main point of access to the cell, it was warded more heavily than the walls, but its elements were earth and fire, the two elements that came easiest to Harry's hand. Not that they all didn't come easy enough. With the warding though, Harry would have to come at the magic sideways.
He reached through the wand and nudged a little magic from the wall into the door. Neither seemed to object, probably since the movement only reinforced the door. Carefully, and far too slowly for the urgency riding him, no matter how firmly he tried to shut it away, he maneuvered the magic toward the lock. He paused again and again to hold his breath and the magic while the wards settled back from the edge of attack.
When he finally had enough magic poised and waiting, he spilled a thin trickle into the locking mechanism, teasing the tumblers delicately into--nothing. They refused to move.
Harry fed more magic into the lock, packing it full. He shoved. And again, nothing.
He was almost out of the magic he'd so painstakingly gathered. He was long out of patience and frantic with worry over Elinor, who still hadn't moved. He shoveled in all the magic he had, growling curses not quite under his breath, somehow taking enough care that the wards were not triggered. He poked the tip of his wand into the keyhole and let go. Best not to be holding it for this.
The fire element in the metal around him was old and weak, but it was there. Harry called it up and with a word, smashed it through his wand into the lock. The lock flared red hot and something went bang! The wand went shooting across the cell, trailing white and gold sparks. And the door remained fully and serenely locked.
Harry lost his temper. He didn't do it often, because his temper was so bad it sometimes scared him, the things he did when he lost it. He cursed and kicked the door. He threw magic at it, hauling it out of the stones and the air around him by brute force. None of it made any difference. Except his toes hurt from kicking the door and his fingers were numb and stinging again.
He didn't have the keys to the warding. Nor was he at his normal strength. With the keys, he could have brought the tower down. At full strength, without the machine-inflicted injury chewing at him, he might have knocked the door off its hinges, or at least blasted the lock. Without either, he was stuck.
"Biggs!" He shouted at the guard, trying to spot him through the grille in the door. It was darker in the hallway than in the cell with the full moon's light occasionally filtering through the cloud cover. He couldn't see anything. "Oi, Biggs! Get your arse off the bloody floor an' make yourself useful!" He hoped the man wasn't dead and not just because he was their best hope.
He tried one more time. "Biggs!" He gave a prayer-like thought for the guard's welfare. Yeah, Harry believed. After Waterloo Station, who didn't?
Harry turned back to the cot and his main concern, the woman lying still as--not death. Still as still on top of it. She was little more than a darker shape in the thin light. He hurried as fast as he dared in the darkness. He found her shoulder, then her neck, breathing a little sigh of relief at the strong pulse beating there.
"Elinor?" He didn't know what to do now that his attempt to break out had failed. He was an alchemist, not a healer of any variety. "Damn it, Elinor, don't do this to me, woman."
His hands explored her face of their own accord. He certainly wasn't in control of them. Or anything else. He felt utterly helpless, and he hated the feeling. Hated it.
One of his fingers brushed the lace ruffle at the neck of her dress. It seemed buttoned up awfully tight around her neck and--was she wearing a corset? When ladies fainted, doctors always said to loosen their clothing.
Harry put his hands round her waist. He had to slide his hands down a little in the dark to find it. He couldn't feel whalebone, but the dress was heavily layered and restrictive. He probably ought to loosen her clothing anyway.
He pulled Elinor up off the cot and propped her against his shoulder while he started to work on the buttons down the back of her dress. The row of tiny buttons on this dress drove him mad with lust every time she wore it, making him think about undoing them one at a time, with a kiss for every button as he uncovered more of her creamy skin. Now that he was opening them, he couldn't think about kisses at all, he was so cold with fear for her.
"Elinor," he said again, murmuring in her ear as his hands worked their busy way down her back. "Elinor, love, time to wake up. Time to come back from wherever it is you've gone. Come on, Elinor. Things to be done. Cells to escape from. Villains to catch."
He kept up his flow of words, not knowing if they did any good but unable to stop them. At the middle of her back, he discovered that yes, she did wear a corset, but a small, light one, not one of those whalebone monstrosities he'd encountered from time to time when undressing one of his intermittent doxies. He unbuttoned her dress all the way past the waistband of her skirt, then worked at the hooks of the corset.
There was a moment's hesitation when he wondered about Elinor's reaction when she woke and discovered herself half dressed, before he shrugged fatalistically. She would do what she would do. He had to do the same--whatever necessary to keep her alive. He didn't know what had happened or why Elinor had done whatever it was she'd done, but he had no doubt whatsoever that this thing could kill her. Maybe not in the next instant, maybe not even soon, but if it wasn't fixed, and sooner rather than later, she would die.
So Harry would do what he had to and face the punishment when it came. Right now, the reasonable thing seemed to be getting her out of all these swaths of petticoats and choking garments. He wouldn't strip her naked, just down to her shimmy. Getting her peeled out of the sleeves and the top of the dress was no real problem, now he had it unbuttoned, but to get her out of the rest--the petticoats seemed to multiply, tangling him up in their layers.
Harry finally resorted to standing Elinor on her wobbly feet and shoving the mass of it to the ground. Since she couldn't stand without her knees folding up, Harry had to hold her up by means of one arm squeezing that lush little body against his own, while the other fought with fabric. And of course, he couldn't help reacting to the feel of her practically naked in his arms. He was a man, for God's sake, not a marble statue.
When the dress and all the damned petticoats were kicked out of the way, Harry had a double armful of woman pressed tight all along his front and he was feeling so light-headed, he was grateful his head was securely attached to the rest of him. "Elinor? You awake? You better get back 'ere right quick, Elinor, 'cause I'm about to kiss you, an' if you don't want me doin' it, well, you'll just 'ave to get back 'ere and stop me."
He nuzzled her cheek, rubbing his lips against her soft, soft skin, feeling guilty for even wanting to kiss her when she was unconscious and incapable of saying no. Then it hit him, the possible truth in what he'd said without realizing. What if she literally needed to return from somewhere else?
She'd been riding Cranshaw's blood when he arrived, he was reasonably certain. What if it wasn't Cranshaw's blood inside her that she was riding, but the blood that was away inside Cranshaw? So that she in truth needed to come back here?
How far could the escaped wizard have gone? Could Elinor cross such a distance? Amanusa and Pearl had always been in close physical proximity to the one they examined when the
y did this sort of thing--so far as he knew. Surely she could return, though, if she was in fact elsewhere. This was her body, after all. A body she perhaps hadn't paid as much attention to as she should have, given her reaction to his love-making.
Harry sat down on the bunk with Elinor in his lap. He intended to reacquaint Elinor with herself, starting with a deep, slow, wet, sensual kiss.
Elinor was sitting rather glumly on what she thought might be a scarred tendon in Cranshaw's arm. It seemed to be drawn excessively tight, but maybe that was nervousness, rather than injury. She didn't know enough to know. And she hadn't given up on getting back where she belonged. She certainly didn't intend on remaining here for the rest of her life--however long that might be. She would think of something. Soon, even. She simply needed a little more time to adjust to the current reality.
Although-- At a rather ridiculous distance, she thought she might be sensing--what? She tried to focus. Senses--there were six. Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and magic. All but the last were strictly physical, and magic often interpreted itself in terms of those senses. This sensation was touch. She was almost certain of that.
She moved...her lips. She felt the sensation against her lips and she moved them.
"Elinor?"
She heard. Her name in Harry's voice.
"Kiss me again, Elinor. Kiss me now."
She felt his lips against hers again, but they were motionless. Both sets. Harry's seemed to be just--waiting. For something. For her to kiss him, he'd said.
Lips--soft, damp, and hot--weren't all she felt. She could sense--Elinor worked hard to define the distant sensations. Hard muscle all along the front of her body, a band of it--Harry's arm, both arms around her, holding her in place. She could feel--waistcoat buttons? Yes, she thought so. And the lips were moving against hers as Harry spoke.
"Elinor. Get yourself back 'ere and kiss me, damn it!" Harry didn't speak louder than a surly growl, but the intensity vibrated through her.
