Unnatural Issue

by Mercedes Lackey

  She listened while the nurse carefully explained where he was, how he had gotten there, and how long he had been unconscious.

  “Wait,” she heard him say. “What war? Where am I? And who am I?”

  There was a long pause. Then the nurse said, “I need to go find the doctor.”

  As she lurked outside the door, listening to the doctor talk to Charles, it quickly became obvious that Charles had lost his memory completely. He seemed completely bemused by it all, quite cheerful, in fact—but clearly, he had no idea who he was, what had been happening, or that he was an Elemental magician. On the one hand, that just might protect him; if he didn’t know how to use magic, he wouldn’t be revealing himself.

  On the other hand, he wouldn’t know how to shield or defend himself, either.

  This was bad. This was very bad.

  Her mind raced while she scrubbed. She considered putting her own shields on him, but if Richard saw them, he would know who they were sheltering, just because there could not be that many mages in a military hospital.

  She had to keep reminding herself to move at intervals, otherwise she was likely to wear a hole in the floor.

  Peter will have told the man in charge of the White Lodge—what was his name? She couldn’t remember. But then, it hadn’t seemed important at the time, just one more Peer of the Realm who wouldn’t be bothered to deal with the daughter of a renegade Master. He will have told Lord Whoever-he-is all about the attack by now. And Peter will have told His Lordship where they were sending Charles. So why hasn’t one of them come to shield him?

  Well, the obvious answer was, because there isn’t anyone about London who can. That might be oversimplifying things, however. The simple answer could be because he doesn’t need shielding. Richard surely thought Charles was dead, and Richard was in France. Unless he was planning on joining the other side—which was possible—getting back was going to be a great deal more difficult than getting over was. Virtually all the traffic was being watched. Most of the large vessels had been commandeered for military transport. Susanne had no idea how hard it would be to stow away on one, but she didn’t think it was anything that Richard would care to attempt. It would be even harder to disguise himself as a leave-bound soldier; he was too old to be a regular Tommy, and he didn’t know enough to pass himself off as one of the highly visible officers. She was very certain that every available transport ship was being watched for spies trying to get into England.

  As for, say, fishing boats? It was going to be very difficult to persuade a fisherman or the like to take him over, and they would probably report the attempt.

  And after the attempt to murder Charles, every mage in the White Lodge would want Richard’s head.

  So . . . no. There probably was no need to shield Charles. Richard probably would not be able to get back for some time, and when he did, it would be to find that the hunter had become the quarry.

  But then, just as she felt great relief in that realization, she was struck with another shock.

  He wouldn’t know her. He wouldn’t know anyone, of course, but in particular, he wouldn’t know her. And he didn’t remember anything about magic, so as far as he was concerned, she was just another menial with nothing special about her.

  She hadn’t been allowed to approach him before, and that wouldn’t change now—unless, or until she could somehow restore his memory.

  But how?

  Peter was thanking his lucky stars that Alderscroft and his own commanding officer were in constant contact, and that his report about the attack on Charles Kerridge would be able to get through without any censors laying eyes on it. It had taken him hours to write, and he was pretty sure that if any censors had read it, he would be heading straight for a transport ship, trussed up like a Christmas goose. After all—walking dead? Magic? Anyone reporting such a thing must be mad as the proverbial hatter.

  General Smythe-Hastings had given him carte blanche to try to track down Richard Whitestone. In fact, at the moment, that was his sole assignment. Which would have been very good, if Richard Whitestone had been holed up somewhere in the middle of nowhere without a war going on.

  Unfortunately . . .

  Everything he tried either gave him no results at all or lit up all over the map, because, quelle surprise, nasty things like goblins and trolls and svart alfen were crawling all over the battlefields, wallowing in the death and pain and misery. Richard Whitestone could not possibly have chosen a better place to hide.

  Which, sadly, was what he had to report to the general. He felt a little like an errant schoolboy, reporting on his failure to finish his sums.

  “. . . and that is all I have to tell you, sir,” he concluded. “If I were an Earth Master, I probably would get better results. Even my uncle hasn’t gotten anywhere.”

  “And those damned fools sent the only Earth Master we had packing back to London,” the general growled. He shook his head impatiently. “Between those daft fools thinking they can fight this war like the last ones, and the daft fools who won’t let me override their edicts when I was willing to personally vouch for the girl . . .” He sighed heavily, and Peter felt a sense of guilty relief that Smythe-Hastings wasn’t going to take him to task. “I tell you, Peter, the only reason we are going to win this thing is because at some point the German bastards are going to perform some outrage against the Yanks, and the Yanks will have to come in. Then we’ll have a flood of supplies and allies. I just hope that every man between the age of sixteen and forty isn’t dead on the battlefield before that happens.”

  Peter had never heard the general express himself so . . . openly. Or so at odds with the official line. He kept his mouth from falling open in surprise and wisely said nothing.

  The general ran his hand over his head, wearily. “Forgive me, young Peter. I do not suffer fools gladly, and when they are going to cost the lives of good men, I do not suffer them at all.”

  “Is it that bad, then?” Peter asked, troubled.

  “I fear it is even worse,” Smythe-Hastings said, glumly. “All we can do is follow our orders in such a way as to prevent the lives of good men from being thrown away for nothing. Meanwhile—” He paused and extracted a sheet of paper from his dispatch case. “—the Old Lion wants you back in London for a briefing, and to hear what you have to say about the Whitestone case. Oh, and also track down the Whitestone girl; she seems to have done a bunk.”

  “Oh, I know where she is,” Peter said, with relief that there finally was some question he could answer. “She’s kept in correspondence with me; she’s volunteered as an aide at Bethnal Green hospital.”

  “Isn’t that where Charles Kerridge was sent?” the general asked, a bit sharply. At Peter’s nod, he frowned. “Under other circumstances, I would be relatively pleased about that, but . . .”

  “Exactly so. I’m not sure what her reaction will be when she and the affianced come face to face. I only hope she doesn’t do a real bunk.”

  “Then it’s your job to get back there and make sure she doesn’t!” the general snapped. “Off with you! First boat back you can get on!”

  Peter saluted crisply and went to collect Garrick. The weather stations were all saying there was a storm coming over the Channel. This was not going to be pleasant.

  Susanne slipped into Charles’ room when the last of the visitors had cleared out. She was officially off-duty, so she doubly was not supposed to be here. The visitors, predictably enough, had been Charles’ parents—

  —and another young woman. Susanne had immediately sensed she was a Water magician, not a Master, but definitely a magician. She had not been able to linger close enough to determine just who she was. She hoped that the young lady was a relative, perhaps a cousin. But she feared—

  Well, there was no reason for the young woman to be allowed here unless she was engaged to Charles, or Elizabeth and Michael said she was.

  Now, there were a great many reasons why they would do so, even though—or even because—
Charles had lost his memory. He was the only son, the heir, and since he hadn’t managed to get married before he left, they’d want him to do so now. Especially since it was now clear that the war was going to go on a lot longer than the optimistic projections of August. Even if he never got his memory back, Susanne was not sure that the Army would particularly care. He could still be retrained and sent to the Front again as long as he was able-bodied and perfectly capable of thinking.

  And for his parents’ purposes, well . . . not getting his memory back might be preferable to having it. If he had been resisting marriage, they could tell him now that he had been engaged and very much in love with this woman. And he, being basically goodhearted, would go along with it. They could get him married and have the next generation safely on the way again before he was sent back to the Front.

  And although Elizabeth and Michael had treated her well enough before . . . the fact that their son had very nearly been killed because of her was not likely to make her particularly attractive to them.

  And that is a very good reason to stay out of sight for now.

  Charles looked up as she came in. He smiled pleasantly at her. She smiled shyly back. “Is there aught I can be getting’ tha’?” she asked in her broadest Yorkshire accent, hoping that would trigger some memories.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “No, nothing, I am doing well, thank you,” he replied politely, then laughed. “Or at least, as well as someone who can’t even remember his own name can be said to be doing.”

  Well, speaking to him in the accent of his home hadn’t worked. She wondered if she could get a bit of heather somewhere—hadn’t someone told her, once, that scent was the most likely thing to trigger memory? Or—cheese! Some of the cheeses that she herself had made! She moved around his room, tidying and cleaning—just in case someone came in or spotted her from the hall—while talking to him, and pummeling her mind for anything she might use to bring those memories back.

  Scrumpy? Parkin? Yorkshire pud’ and onion gravy? Where on earth would she get what she needed to make those things? And where would she be able to make them in the first place? Well, she couldn’t make scrumpy, and she rather doubted that the aristocratic Kerridges drank it anyway, but everyone had parkin on Bonfire Night. And Curd Tart . . .

  She continued to chatter about the things that he should find familiar, and he continued to be pleasant but . . . absent. Clearly he had no idea what she was talking about, and he was . . . well there was no other way to put it. He was humoring her.

  Finally she gave up. She finished putting his room to rights and excused herself. It was going to be dark soon, and this was the East End. It didn’t do for a woman to be out on the street alone after dark.

  As she hurried through the cold streets, she continued to try to think of ways she could wake up his memory. The most obvious was also the most dangerous: use magic. If Richard was back in England, he would certainly be looking for signs of Earth Magic, and he would associate it with Charles. She might just as well mail him an invitation if she used magic.

  Well . . . if she used magic. There was someone else who might and who was too powerful for Richard to trifle with.

  She also had the impression that he wouldn’t care a fig about all the barriers other Elementals found to being within an urban center like London.

  The main question was, could she prove to him this was something he really should do?

  “Food shortages,” mused Alderscroft, swirling the brandy around in his glass.

  They were sitting in two of Alderscroft’s leather wing chairs in front of a nice coal fire in his sitting room at the club. Outside, December made itself known. Inside, all was warm and comfortable. They had just finished one of the Exeter Club’s excellent dinners.

  Peter had been thinking about the poor bastards in the trenches with a great deal of guilt.

  “Eh?” said Peter, startled. “Not that I had noticed.”

  The Old Lion snorted. “Ask your watery little friends about the German submarines. It’s only a matter of time before they start torpedoing merchant ships. They’ll wear us down by starvation—or at least, they’ll think they can.”

  “Good gad.” Peter blinked. “I never thought of that. I’m just not used to thinking in war terms. Especially not this modern warfare with all the—” he waved his hands vaguely, trying to signify terrible scientific weapons. “How soon, do you reckon?”

  “End of next year, I expect there will be rationing.” Alderscroft shrugged eloquently. “Your brother should be told; all the country dwellers should be told, if they’ll listen, which most of them won’t. But your brother will. You know what best to advise your people to do. There are plenty of things that can be grown that won’t be taken for the war effort. Country folk will be all right, if they start planning for it now; it will be the city dwellers that will feel the pinch.” He shook his head. “Back to the subject at hand. Now please remember, young Peter, that I don’t want the Whitestone girl harmed. I also don’t want Charles Kerridge harmed. On the other hand, they make excellent bait to draw out Richard Whitestone.”

  “I’d need informed consent for that,” Peter warned him. “I won’t do that any other way.”

  Alderscroft gave him a level look. “You’ll get it from the girl, I expect. She doesn’t strike me as the shrinking kind, from what you’ve said. But Charles—”

  “Still doesn’t remember a thing,” Peter confirmed. “And it’s not malingering. Maya’s been to see him, and she says its genuine.”

  Alderscroft cursed quietly for a moment. “Well, in that case, we have to treat him as we would a child. Ruddy well can’t use him as bait. That only leaves the girl. I wouldn’t mind it if it were the two of them together, or Charles alone, but the girl alone? I don’t like it.”

  “Nor more do I,” Peter replied, feeling his blood run cold at the very notion. “He keeps getting stronger and more clever. I’ve no notion how he managed to separate Charles from his men, but he did it. And then he attacked Charles on his ground, and he used the barrage to his advantage. That’s getting devilishly clever, and deuced if I know how he’s controlling that many liches. Then there are the ambushers to consider. I might be a Master, but Water isn’t the most effective power against Earth, unless we can get him somewhere that my Elementals can get at him.”

  “Neither is Fire,” Alderscroft pointed out. “His Elementals can smother most of mine. It should be Earth and Air against Earth, with Fire and Water as support—or in a pinch, Fire and Air together and Water as support. And I’m damned shorthanded right now. Maya can’t be spared, nor can her husband. I need her in the hospital and him on coast watch. The rest of the Lodge are scattered from Scotland to Wales, and some are serving under the general. But we can’t leave Richard Whitestone free a moment longer than we have to. You saw the results of what he could do with a battlefield of corpses and six months of war to draw from. Imagine what he’ll be like as it goes on!”

  “Thank you, I’d rather not,” Peter replied frankly. He drank the last of his brandy, and put the glass aside. “I’ll just toddle along and let the girl know I am here. We’ll put our heads together. She’s clever, that one.”

  “I just hope she’s clever enough,” Alderscroft replied, glumly.

  It was growing dark by the time he stepped out of the door of the club; he decided that he wouldn’t stop at his flat to change out of his uniform. Even in Bethnal Green it would go a long way toward keeping him from being interfered with, and an officer’s uniform would guarantee respect at the boarding house where Susanne was living.

  He knew how to pick his taxi drivers; he found one in relatively short order that had no qualms about taking a fare into Bethnal Green, and they were on their way.

  “I’d like you to wait for me,” he said, as they neared the address.

  “Long as yer payin’ guv’ner,” the cabby replied. “Got me a cosh in the front seat. Nobody’ll trifle wit’ me while yer in there.”

  �
��I rather thought so,” Peter said with satisfaction. “If there’s trouble, give a toot on the horn, and we’ll settle them.”

  The driver laughed. “Shouldn’t be surprised, guv’ner. Ye don’t look loik much, but in my ’sperience, it’s the skinny ones as fights the nastiest.”

  Despite his anxieties, Peter laughed aloud. “True, o’ wolves! I should be right out.”

  He ran up the door to the boarding house and rang the bell. A suspicious-looking woman in a maid’s dress answered it, and her eyes went round when she saw what was clearly an officer on the doorstep. “I should like to speak to Constance Weatherby, if you please,” he said, with a little tip of his hat. “I know it’s late, but we are old friends, and I need to speak to her about her father in France.”

  The maid’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, cor!” she breathed. “He’s not—”

  “No, not yet anyway,” Peter said truthfully. “But I do need to speak with her about him. Tell her Peter is here to talk to her about her father.”

  “Come in, sir,” the maid told him, and showed him into a tiny parlor, empty at the moment. “I’ll go fetch her down.”

  Peter chose the least uncomfortable-looking of the chairs and perched on it, grateful for the little fire. After a moment, two sets of footsteps on the stairs coming down told him that “Constance” was coming.

  “Constance Weatherby, sir,” the little maid said, as if she was a herald announcing the queen’s arrival. Then she gave a little curtsy and left.

  “Have you got a key?” Peter quietly asked Susanne. “Can you let yourself back in after the landlady locks up? There are things I would rather not talk about here, and I’m likely to keep you out late.”

  “I have a key, and my cloak is still down here in the hall,” she replied, and went to fetch it. “We’re likely to be on at all shifts, here. The landlady is used to us coming and going at all hours.” Peter helped her on with it, and the two of them went out into the blustering night to the waiting cab.