by Zen Cho
The familiar farthest advanced in its hatching crawled out from among the shards of its egg. It was a tiny, naked homunculus, hairless and sexless, with pallid skin and glowing eyes. Zacharias had never before seen an immature fairy in the flesh, but it corresponded exactly to the drawings he had studied. The strange, inhuman face screwed up; the mouth opened and let loose the protesting wail of an infant. Prunella caught the creature up in her hands.
“Please leave the room,” she cried. “I do not at all wish to do what you will compel me to!”
Zacharias started forward to help. He was recalling to his memory everything he had ever learnt about fairies, and his attention was so fixed upon the elvet that Prunella’s hex took him unawares. It was a simple cantrip for confusion—naughty girls at the school had used it to deceive the mistresses on their nightly rounds of the dormitories—but it hit Zacharias full in the face.
He tripped over a chair and fell on the floor, noting as he went the clever design of the spell. It was devised to achieve not only a confusion of the limbs, but a bewilderment of the senses, and his were tangled quite successfully. His vision went dark. The elvet’s wail was suddenly quieted. He heard the tread of tiny feet upon the carpet, an “Oh!” from Prunella—and then he could see again.
Prunella rose, cradling the elvet, her face flushed, and her dress in disarray. Eggshells lay scattered upon the floor. The feverish light of magic, which had so distorted the appearance of the room, faded away.
The two other infant familiars stretched and yawned. One was a garuda, or Malay simurgh, with the black-curled head of a baby and the body of a chick, its feathers wet and plastered to its body. The other was a wobbly-legged colt with a broad leonine face and tiny antler buds—an Oriental unicorn, of the kind called ch’i-lin by the Chinese and kirin by the Japanese.
The elvet was crooning in a soft, loving voice to Prunella, and the others reached for her. They seemed content, well fed—but a familiar could only be tamed at birth by the liberal application of fresh blood, the blood of the magician who wished to be its master. It was this that made taming familiars from the egg such a chancy venture, for the sorcerer was rendered vulnerable at the time when he most needed his full strength.
“You are wounded?” said Zacharias. Prunella must be hurt, though she looked unharmed; there could be no other explanation. “I will go for a physician—no, that will not do—we must make shift to tend you here. Permit me to examine the injury.”
Prunella had gone a brilliant scarlet.
“There is no injury,” she said pettishly. “I beg you will not make a fuss over nothing. I have settled it all.”
“If it would not be proper for me to examine it, the housekeeper could assist, I am sure,” said Zacharias anxiously. “Pray do not allow reserve to expose you to any risk.”
“Mr. Wythe,” said Prunella, with indescribable hauteur, “I beg you will not take offence when I say that a gentleman would not persist in this line of questioning!”
Her face was averted, but her cheek was still flushed with high colour. Little though Zacharias had had to do with women, Sir Stephen—believing there was no area of knowledge that should be withheld from an unnatural philosopher—had taken care to acquaint him thoroughly with the workings of the mortal frame, male and female. It became evident to him what the source of Prunella’s mastery of the familiars must be.
“Oh,” Zacharias said, stricken with embarrassment.
Prunella did not dignify this with a reply, but busied herself with her new familiars. The elvet still cradled in her arms, she drew a shawl over the chick, and knelt by the unicorn, cooing, “What a sweet creature you are! And will you grow into a great horse, truly?”
It was a charming scene. It was also unprecedented in the history of Britain. In one fell stroke Prunella had become the most powerful sorcerer who had ever lived.
16
ZACHARIAS’S TRIALS HAD revealed within him an unsuspected core of unflappability. He passed almost immediately from shock to applying himself to practicalities.
“We shall have to take Lady Wythe into our confidence,” he said. “It will make everything easier, for she will be able to prepare a space for our lessons, and get the servants out of our way. We must be discreet. No one else can know. The Society is no more kindly disposed towards female magic than Mrs. Daubeney, and I shall need time to change its mind regarding your education.”
Prunella was not really attending, she was so blissfully absorbed in her familiars. She looked up with the start of someone waking out of a lovely dream.
“My education?” she said. “Need I any instruction now? Surely my familiars will teach me all I need to know.”
“Your familiars know scarcely more than you about the operation of magic—certainly not the principles of mortal thaumaturgy,” said Zacharias. “Recall that they are newborn, and will have forgotten much of their former lives in Fairyland. They will rely upon you for guidance and restraint—and you will pay dearly for any lapse. Even under Mrs. Daubeney’s scheme of instruction you must have heard of the perils of excessive magic ungoverned by learning.”
“Say, rather, especially under Mrs. Daubeney’s scheme of instruction,” said Prunella. The infusion of potent magic had had much the same effect upon her spirits as a bottle of champagne, and Zacharias’s sobriety could not dampen her. “If she had her way the girls would hardly have been taught anything else. Miss Jellicoe used to have to pretend she was lecturing them on the evils of magic, when they were only conning their figures. Poor thing! I believe algebra was all she ever thought of.”
Zacharias paid this diversion little regard. Giddiness was to be expected in a new sorceress.
“There is no time to lose,” he said. “Your familiars are young: it will be some time before they reach the peak of their powers, and for the time being they are pliant. We ought to start right away.”
He had expected that the prospect of beginning her studies would delight Prunella, but to his surprise she said doubtfully:
“Oh, if you think we must! I should not like to take you from your work. You must have a great deal on your hands now that Mak Genggang has flown, and that wicked Society is rampaging about demanding your head on a plate. I am sure you ought not to concern yourself with my instruction when matters of such importance require your attention.”
“Your instruction is a matter of great importance,” said Zacharias severely. “The education of Miss Prunella Gentleman may have been of concern only to herself before. Now that she has acquired three familiars, her education is rightly a matter of concern to the entire nation, little though it knows it!”
“Why should that be?” said Prunella, bemused.
“Miss Gentleman, you represent what English magic has been seeking for half a century,” said Zacharias. “With three familiars, you need do nothing else but learn enough to avoid either destroying them, or being destroyed by them, to ensure the whole kingdom’s advantage. Three familiars will bring with them magic enough to supply a generation of thaumaturges. The better you understand them, the better for all of us.”
“Good gracious,” said Prunella. A gleam of naked ambition lit her eye. “But that means I am terribly important!”
“And you will have a great deal of work to do in consequence,” said Zacharias. “We will start tomorrow, once you are settled with Lady Wythe. I suppose your introduction will take up the whole morning—she will need to find you a room, and instruct the servants—but we may begin in the afternoon. There should be no obstacle to your devoting all your days to study.”
Though Zacharias had much to worry him, he could not contemplate the prospect of weeks of devotion to the study of unnatural philosophy with indifference. Even if he lacked the time to engage in such delightful work himself, to superintend the studies of another was nearly as good, and he looked forward to it with every expectation of pleasure.
If he had not been so pleased himself he might have noticed the perceptible lengthening of Prunella’s face. As it was, he was taken aback by her response.
“It all sounds most improving, I am sure, and I am obliged to you for your pains,” said Prunella awkwardly. “But I do not know that I will have time for such a very comprehensive course of study. How shall I achieve anything if I am forever at my books?”
“What else can you wish to achieve?” said Zacharias. “You are a sorceress three times over! That is an achievement no other woman in history can equal.”
“Which is delightful, I am sure, and I intend to take full advantage of it,” said Prunella eagerly. “We may feel perfectly comfortable now, for Nidget and Youko and Tjandra will see to it that your wicked assassin is thwarted in any further attempts upon your life. But do you see, Mr. Wythe, I hatched them to save trouble, not to make it. I could scarcely establish myself if I was running about after my familiars all day!”
“But what more do you require to establish yourself?” said Zacharias, bewildered. “Any of my colleagues would say they could do no more if they had but accomplished what you have done.”
“But all of your colleagues are men, and have some means of getting a living,” said Prunella. She felt Zacharias was being obtuse. “What shall I live on while I am cultivating my familiars as you desire me to do?”
The question had occurred to Zacharias already. He said:
“While you are my apprentice you need not be concerned about finding a living. We could not of course apply for the bursaries to which a gentleman in your circumstances would be entitled; yet I am so positioned that we may contrive very comfortably without.” Sir Stephen had approached the getting of a fortune with all his usual enterprise, and fortunately he had no nearer relations to dispute the will in which he had left a considerable portion of that fortune to Zacharias.
“And after I have completed my apprenticeship, what then?” said Prunella.
Zacharias hesitated. A gentleman thaumaturge in need of funds might tutor the sons of the wealthy, serve the Society, or advise the Government on magical affairs. A gentleman sorcerer would hardly need to seek opportunities, but could wait at his leisure to be sought out. It was a puzzle to know what a female in the same position could do, however, since history offered no precedent.
“You understand the difficulty,” said Prunella. “I could hardly be beholden to your charity forever. That would not do at all! Since I have neither connections nor money, the only means I have of acquiring either is to marry.” She paused, but she could not continue to mislead Zacharias if she was to have his help in achieving her purpose.
“To own the truth,” she said, “that was my chief aim in coming to London. I should never have met anyone who would do if I had stopped at the school.”
Prunella’s assertion would have scandalised neither Mrs. Daubeney nor Lady Wythe, though they might have thought her rather bold to set out her aim so plainly. Zacharias was not accustomed to thinking of marriage in such mercenary terms, and he was shocked.
“Surely you do not mean to tell me that your purpose in coming to London was to marry a wealthy lord?” he said.
“Oh no! What can have given you that notion?” said Prunella. “I should be happy with a tradesman, provided he had a respectable competence. Though of course, a fortune would be even better, and you know, I am so pretty that really I think I ought not to settle for anything less! But you see why I could not devote myself to the course of study you propose. If I am to marry, and marry well, I shall have to enter society, and spend a portion of my days being introduced to gentlemen, and dancing with them, and affecting to take a great interest in what they say, and all that sort of thing.”
“And what of your familiars? Are they to languish away? Does magic mean so little to you?”
Prunella flushed in indignation. “No, indeed! Of course I will give my familiars all the care they need. But neither they nor magic can feed me. What has magic done for anyone at Mrs. Daubeney’s school, save in the suppression of it?”
“You could not be more concerned than I regarding the injustices perpetrated against your schoolfellows,” Zacharias began, but Prunella, feeling her candour had been ill rewarded, shot back:
“I think you will find that I can! What might not I do for feminine magic, with wealth and position? But I cannot do anything useful until I have established myself. Else I could be a sorceress seven times over, and still only hope to be some afflicted girl’s governess, tasked with scolding her out of her magic!”
It was impossible for Zacharias to refute this. His own example showed how little magical talent alone could do to secure one’s position in society. His colleagues could deny his ability, and indeed often did, but Sir Stephen’s influence, his wealth and position, were harder to ignore, even after his death. Little as Zacharias liked it, he knew well enough that these were the most potent argument for civility among his peers, and had often moderated their treatment of him.
“If you truly had any concern for Miss Liddiard and Henrietta and all the rest of them, you would help me,” said Prunella into a tense silence. “All I need is to be introduced into society upon a respectable footing. The rest I could contrive myself.”
Zacharias sighed.
“Miss Gentleman,” he said, “I beg you will look here.” He rolled up his sleeve, holding his arm out.
“It is your arm,” observed Prunella, after a moment’s puzzled contemplation.
“You will not, I am sure, have failed to notice its colour,” said Zacharias. He rolled down his sleeve again, conscious of Prunella’s intent dark eyes, waiting for a conclusion.
“Certainly society has not,” he continued. “My colleagues are compelled to deal with me, however much they may dislike it. But in the circles to which you aspire, I am of no account whatsoever. A magic-making African might serve as a diversion in high society, but never more than that. Society would never consent to be influenced by such as I.”
“But you are the Sorcerer Royal,” said Prunella. Her cheeks warming unaccountably, she added, “If you wished to be married to anyone, you would never be refused on account of your colour.”
Zacharias stood for a moment gazing down at his own hands. He could not say whether he agreed. Lady Wythe would have dismissed his doubt, even as she allowed that not every family would be delighted to own such a son-in-law:
“But you should not like such illiberal connections yourself! There are a great many sensible people who will know how to value you even as you deserve. You need not shut yourself off from the world for fear of the few who might be so little-minded.”
But the world had given Zacharias little reason to believe that the sensible, as Lady Wythe termed them, outnumbered the little-minded, though he had not sought out opportunities to test the truth of her statement. He needed no further reminder of the peculiar loneliness of his position—of the fact that, but for the intervention of fate, he might never have known the ease he now enjoyed; might never have had even the few friends he possessed.
“Perhaps not,” he said. “I have never made a trial. It is not within my power to make you respectable. I cannot even do that for myself.”
“Lady Wythe could,” said Prunella. “Anyone to whom she lent her countenance could not but be respectable.”
She clasped her hands. Zacharias had never seen her so serious.
“You know what it is to be on the fringes of everything—to see that others have what you lack, for nothing more than an accident of birth,” she said. “I suppose my scheme sounds wild enough, and perhaps no one will marry me after all, for fear of what my colour might signify. But I must try, or spend the rest of my life a lady’s maid, working petty magics as it suits my betters—and that would not suit me at all!”
Zacharias looked at the elegant hands wound together, the head crowned with cloudlike dark hai
r.
“I doubt you need have any worry of that,” he said, feeling the blood rise in his cheeks, though he spoke in the driest manner he could manage.
“Not if you will help me,” said Prunella. She was so engrossed in what she was about to say that she did not notice Zacharias’s embarrassment. “And if you do, as I know you could, I shall study as many tomes as you like, and what is more”—she flung back her shoulders, raising her head—“you may have an egg!”
Zacharias did not at first understand what she meant. Then he went still. “You have another?”
“I have four more eggs, besides the ones I hatched,” said Prunella. “But I should think one would be sufficient to pay for the expenses of my coming out, do not you agree?”
Zacharias could tell she was not nearly so confident as she pretended, but Prunella was not in fact wrong. He could think of several thaumaturges who would pay a great deal more than she could spend in a year for a familiar’s egg, and count it a bargain.
“How did you acquire seven familiars’ eggs?” he demanded.
“Why, I found them while I was rummaging in the attic.”
“Pray be serious,” said Zacharias, frowning. “It is a matter of greater consequence than you know.”
“Never mind where they are from, for there are no more to be got from that quarter,” said Prunella firmly. “All you need know is they are mine, to do what I will with them. What do you say to my offer?”
Zacharias hesitated, hardly knowing what to think, or what to do. “I am not sure it is not my duty to take them from you, if only for safeguarding.”
“As if you would!” said Prunella. She looked at him, and her brow clouded. Doubt, and a touch of fear, entered her eyes.
