by Gail Dayton
The rosy magic seemed to struggle to get past the door. Not surprising, given the warding. The magic wavered, shimmered, spread itself thin and slipped through, as if pretending it wasn't there.
"How'd you do that?" He couldn't stop himself asking, hoped it didn't distract her too much. "Get the magic through the door?"
"Oh--" She sounded embarrassed. "I think because it's--well, sex magic." She whispered those last two words and cleared her throat. "Happy magic. It confused the wards."
Harry managed to stifle his chuckle and she couldn't see his wide grin. He waited another moment to control the amusement in his voice. "Will it do what you need it to?"
Elinor didn't reply immediately. He waited for her to finish her working, trying to sense the sorcery through the alchemical hum of the metal door. It felt like Elinor. And a little like himself, which only made sense, given that he'd been part of the making of it. Maybe that was why he could sense it, because it was a little bit him too.
"Biggs is alive," Elinor said then. "But he is badly injured. His head-- Harry, we need to get out of here. We need to take care of Mr. Biggs."
He blew out a breath. "Not sure 'ow we're goin' to do that. I tried, earlier. Before--" He wasn't shy about calling things what they were but Elinor was. "Before our bit of a cuddle. I couldn't do it. The warding's too strong."
Best to get Elinor dressed, if they were going to break out. They would do it. He just had to figure out how. He set her back on the bunk and began retrieving her clothing.
"Maybe we can make enough noise, create a disturbance that will call the other guards' attention," Elinor suggested. "I need my chemise first and my pantalettes. Even with all this metal and stone around us, you couldn't get the door open?"
Harry cleared his throat, grateful for the lack of light. His embarrassment didn't show. "Mighty powerful warding in this 'ammer. Hundreds of years' worth. An' I ain't exactly up to full strength yet after gettin' shot, even with your plaster yesterday."
"Hammer? Oh, yes--jail, hammer and nail--Cockney slang. Right." Elinor was rustling around, dressing, and now Harry wished the dark away. "About your injury--"
"Ready for your stays?" He held the garment out to her. "I'll 'elp with the laces."
"Thank you." Elinor took the light corset and a few moments later, her back brushed his fingers. She'd obviously got it hooked up the front. Harry found the laces and began pulling them taut. "Just till there are no gaps," she reminded him.
"Right." He lost himself in his task, sliding his hands here and there to make sure everything was smooth and gap-free, and wishing heartily that he could just see.
Light whooshed into existence, flames igniting in the oil that had seeped under the door from Biggs' fallen lantern. Harry jumped, startled. He spun around, his hand flying out to close magic around the flame with the closing of his fist, not to extinguish it, but control it. He didn't know where else the oil might have spread since Cranshaw had dashed it to the corridor floor in his attack and he didn't want to catch anything else on fire, like Elinor's petticoats. Or Mr. Biggs.
He hadn't lit fires with a wish since he was at the academy. He wouldn't have thought he could do it now, given the warding. He opened his hand a bit, loosening his grip on the flame, and it rose up nicely, a bright little light, strictly confined to its spot on the floor just inside the cell door. He built his spell inside his intent, for the oil to feed into the flame, for the flame to continue to burn, then set it with the word. "Flammo."
"About that, your injury--" Elinor's voice was muffled as, to Harry's disappointment, she pulled a petticoat over her head into place.
"Yeah?" At least he could watch the rest.
Elinor put on another petticoat, one with stacks of ruffled netting sewed on in tiers to keep her skirts filled out. "I used a fair bit of the magic we made--" She paused to clear her throat. "--To heal that dead zone injury of yours. It is entirely likely--since you just made us a lamp--that you are back to your full strength."
Harry picked up her dress and held it for her to wriggle into. "Yeah?"
He watched--he had a pretty good view through the top half of the dress--as the skirt settled down over her. She put her arms in the sleeves and pulled it up onto her shoulders, then turned her back to him again. Oh, right, she wanted him to refasten all those shiny little buttons.
They were white, to match the white and green stripes of the top part of the dress. The skirt was a light brown and both top and skirt were trimmed with rows of dark green ribbon and all those buttons down the back. Harry thought this dress might have just become his favorite of all Elinor's dresses. Of course, he thought any dress she let him take off her would be his favorite, at least temporarily.
"Harry, did you hear what I said?"
He kissed the nape of her neck above the last button he'd just closed. "Sure I did. It was--" He closed his eyes and hunted for the place he put things to think about later. "You said I might be in top shape again."
He used his hold on her shoulders to turn her round and kissed her forehead. "Let's see, shall we?"
In the light he'd made, Harry easily spotted the wand he'd blasted across the prison cell sometime in the previous century. Before Elinor. It had rolled beneath the table by the window. One of his socks lay nearby. The other was next to the cot. He retrieved all three and tossed the socks onto the bunk to put on later.
On the other hand, perhaps he should finish dressing now. He sat to put on his socks. "If I get the door open, it'll set off alarms. We'd best be ready for them to find us."
"Then perhaps you shouldn't have removed my shoes." Elinor sounded exasperated, but her lips smiled beneath the scowl in her eyes, so he didn't think she was too mad. She sat down beside him to button her shoes up.
Harry stomped his foot into his second half-boot. "You know there'll be scandal, just from bein' locked in 'ere together, don't you?" He put on his waistcoat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. "Won't be much we can do about that."
Elinor sighed. "I know. It can't be helped, though. You're right about that."
"Course I'm right. Aren't I always?" He grinned as he picked up his wand from the cot.
"No, you are not," she said crisply. She picked up the crumpled blanket and swung it over her shoulders. "Hurry. All this metal and stone makes me cold."
"Right." He turned, rolling his wand through his fingers to get a feel for the magic in it and the magic surrounding him. The wards felt like a great, muffling weight holding him down, but he knew all about lifting and hauling. He'd done enough of it before they let him in the school.
He pulled a little magic through his wand, enough he could feel how the wards would react. He'd need to be careful. He didn't want to drop the door on top of Biggs and hurt him worse. What if he could use the wards? Turn the magic back on itself?
Not entirely sure how it could be done, Harry played with the magic, sliding it from stone to metal and back again, creating a little swaying, back-and-forth wave while he thought.
Weight. He began there. Levers lifted weight. Pulleys did too. Catapults and mangonels--they used both, and counterweights, to throw things. Could he create a counterweight? Or a lever?
What did he have to work with? Plenty of metal, stone, and air, and now he had a little fire. He also had Elinor. Who was a wizard in a cell designed to hold wizards. She was a sorceress too, at least the beginnings of one, but he didn't see that sorcery had much magic for getting doors open. But, if the wards here were constructed against wizardry...
"Elinor, can you stir up a little wizardry?"
"How? There's nothing here I can use." She was sitting on the bunk, watching him.
"Not even a wand in your pocket?"
"Oh. Well--" She began digging through her skirts. "Yes, but it's my favorite. I don't want you burning it up."
"Nothing like that. I just want you to stir up some magic for the wards to move against." He raised a hand to placate the storm sure to issue from her open mouth. "I won't let
it 'urt you. Never. But there's plenty of magic in the warding. I want to see if I can tip it against the door, get it open that way."
Her expression still dubious, Elinor nodded. "All right."
"Don't try helping me move it. You're going to be the rock it trips over, right?"
"Tree trunk," she corrected him, lips twitching as she fought a smile.
"Right. I'm the rocks. You're the trees." He grinned at her. "Let me get some magic movin' first." He started the magic swinging again, from the stone exterior wall to the metal interior walls, to the metal door, back to walls, to door, pushing it higher with each surge.
"All right, be ready." He wanted to time it just so.
Elinor lifted her wand, the one with the slight crook in it. Harry could just sense the faint smell of grass. When the alchemy was at its height in the stone, pushing back against the great heaviness of the warding, he spoke. "Now, love."
Wizardry bloomed, flooding the air with its fresh green scent, and the wards rose in fury. Harry pushed, setting his shoulders into his magic and shoving it hard against the warding magic, directing it against the wizardry knocking on the door.
The wards smashed into the magic, crushing it completely and weakening the door beyond. But how much?
"You all right? Didn't get caught in that?" He watched Elinor, searching for damage until she nodded.
"Perfectly well. I know when to step back."
"Most times, any rate." He winked at her before picking his way around the oil puddled on the floor toward the door.
He eased the little flame across the oil patches to the puddle farthest from the door, then extended his wand carefully to touch the door. The instant steel touched iron, the door collapsed into a thick pile of dust laid across the threshold. Sirens and alarms began howling all up and down the tower and its outbuildings.
Harry blinked at it for a moment. "Huh. It worked."
"Of course it did." Elinor was moving past him, skirts hoisted to stay out of oil and iron dust. "You're Harry Tomlinson, alchemist extraordinaire. Would you fetch my bag from the guard alcove?"
"Yeah." He stepped over what had been the cell door and hurried to collect the tools of Elinor's trade, pausing for half an instant to check the door into the stairwell. Locked, as he'd assumed.
Elinor was kneeling beside Mr. Biggs, lifting his eyelids, checking his pulse, and doing other healer-ish things. She took her bag when Harry handed it to her, first swiping a pungent ointment onto the guard's moustache, then lifting his head in an attempt to pour a potion down him.
"He's breathing." She laid his head down on the folded blanket from the cell. "His heart is strong. I'm just worried about the blow to his head. The ointment should help revive him, but I'm wondering if--"
Guards pounded on the door. Harry recognized Thom Norwood's voice shouting for Biggs.
"Biggs is down. He's 'urt," Harry shouted back. "Cranshaw's escaped--likely 'alfway across London by now."
"Magister Tomlin--" Norwood got the key turned and the door opened, "--son? What--?"
"Get men 'unting for Cranshaw first," Harry said. "Then I'll tell you what happened."
"Already done, sir."
Harry couldn't like the suspicion on Norwood's face, but he couldn't honestly blame him for it nor for the anger. Norwood was young to be in charge of the tower prison. Colonel Simmons was the official warder but with his gout so bad, he was laid up with it more and more and Norwood took on more and more of the duty. And probably the blame when things went wrong. Harry gave a quick summary of what had happened. By this time, Biggs was coming around, but he didn't remember anything after Harry arrived.
"I'd like one of the sorcerers to take a peek at your head," Elinor said, packing up her vials, leaving one with Biggs for the headache.
"We'll submit to a sorcery inspection," Harry said, before he saw Elinor widen her eyes at him. No, she probably wouldn't want anyone knowing what else had happened. "On 'ow Cranshaw got out." There would be no need to query what had happened afterward.
"I would like to know how you did that to the door," Norwood snapped. "That door was two hundred years old."
"No wonder it rusted away." Harry hid his wince in a shrug. It would take ages to get the warding built back up to proper strength. "It took both of us to do it and we're neither one of us prisoners, with the wards specifically keyed against us." That should make him feel better.
By the time Harry showed Norwood and his guards how he'd done what he'd done--which meant he first had to figure out exactly what that was--the Briganti I-Branch had appeared, led by Grey Carteret himself at the head of a small mob of magicians.
"Good God, Harry, can't you stay out of trouble?" Grey squeezed through the crowd of Enforcers guarding nothing to stare down at what had once been a door.
"Wasn't my idea. I was just following Elinor to keep her out o' trouble." He slid a glance toward her, but she was helping a wobbly Biggs to his feet. "Good thing I did, too."
"Yes, it was a good thing," Elinor agreed. "Though if you hadn't startled me into beginning my ride too soon--" She sent the injured man with his co-workers to be delivered to his home. "One of the sorcerers will call on you in the morning, sir."
Harry ignored her. Didn't matter whose fault it was. That was in the past. What mattered was what happened next. Grey stepped carefully over the line of former door, waggling a finger at it. "Gather that up, will you, Duncan?"
"Aye, sir." Duncan was one of the I-Branch alchemists who examined evidence from the scenes of various magical crimes.
"Why?" Harry leaned on the door jamb to watch Grey prowling inside the cell. "That's not 'ow Cranshaw got out."
"We still might learn something from it." Grey shrugged. "No harm in looking, is there? Would you mind putting out your fire? We did bring lanterns."
"Oh, right." Harry reached out to grasp the flame again and this time when he closed his fist, he quenched it.
Grey approached the side of the prison cell nearest the corridor in his prowling and went still. He sniffed. He took another step and sniffed again.
"What--?" Harry cut himself off at Grey's upraised hand.
Elinor came up beside him in the doorway to peer in and Harry moved to the side, behind Duncan on his knees, carefully sweeping the door bits into a dust pan. Together, Harry and Elinor watched Grey slowly approach the shadowed corner, the light from the lantern in his hand showing nothing out of the ordinary.
Grey shuddered and took several steps back. He handed the lantern off to Harry, dusted his hands, and wiped his face with them. He gestured for Harry and Elinor to back out of the doorway, exited, and led them a little way down the corridor, away from the crowd, beckoning for Norwood and Grey's I-Branch second, George Meade, to join them.
"There's been a demon in that cell," Grey said quietly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"I don't think it was a physical manifestation like in Southwark last month," Grey went on, "but a definite presence. Meade, I want you to take the conjury lads through with their spirits, now Duncan's finishing, so they know what they're looking for when they go out to search. Send a callout through the guildhall to get the rest of the conjurers out to search. All of them, including the sixth-formers at the academy. It's the full moon tomorrow. They'll all be up anyway."
As Meade headed for the magicians at the other end of the corridor, Grey turned to Norwood. "It's my opinion that the demon gave Cranshaw the strength to do what he did, breaking out of the cell. Though granted, Elinor's expedition probably provided the opportunity."
"Cranshaw's a wizard," Norwood protested. "Not a conjurer. He can't call--"
Grey was already shaking his head. "Doesn't matter. Not to a demon. They can't be called, remember? If anything, it made Cranshaw more susceptible to it. Conjurers are taught to recognize them."
If Harry hadn't been watching her, he'd have missed Elinor's little flinch, the flicker of a frown before she schooled her expression again.
"Do yo
u think the demon was there very long?" Elinor asked.
"Likely, yes, or I wouldn't have sensed it. Their presence is usually more subtle. A whisper in the ear, a whiff of temptation, and they're gone again." Grey waved his hand in a graceful flourish to illustrate their departure. "This one stayed. To be sure of its target perhaps. Why?"
Elinor shrugged. "Just wondering."
Harry looked at Norwood. "Still want us to do that sorcery test?"
Norwood shook his head. "If Magister Carteret says a demon helped Cranshaw escape, his word's good enough for me."
"Then I'll be takin' Magister Tavis home. She's 'ad a strenuous evening." He collected their outer garments from the guard alcove where they'd been left and escorted Elinor through the lines of conjurers wending their way inward to have a sniff at the cell.
"I hope they find him soon," Elinor said as they exited the tower. "He's not yet healed."
"Is 'e gonna die if 'e don't get his potions?" Harry set his hand in the small of her back as they crossed the courtyard.
"No, nothing like that. But he can hardly walk and he's still in pain."
They were alone in the open, no tower guards near. Harry asked the question he'd been saving. "So, why were you so worried about the demon?"
Elinor waited until they passed through the gate onto the street before she answered. "Not worried, exactly." She sighed. "I can be tempted, Harry. Quite easily, when it comes to magic. I wanted to use sorcery to heal Nigel Cranshaw's mind. I wanted it enough to bluff my way into Holborn Tower and convince Mr. Biggs to give him the potion."
She firmed her lips and straightened her spine as she strode along. "The demon in the tower might have whispered its temptation into my ear, but I am the one who succumbed to it. I neither fled from temptation nor resisted. I embraced it with open arms, even though I knew--I knew, Harry, quite well--that what I wanted to do was foolish and ill-advised and--and just wrong. It's my fault Nigel is running loose. Mine alone."
"Maybe, yeah." Harry signaled a hackney cab, now he thought Elinor might have walked far enough to have calmed herself down. "I dunno about you alone, but yeah, you at least contributed. And you're sorry, an' you won't do it again." He sat next to her in the cab and fixed a pointed stare on her. "Will you?"
