The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  “We cannot go in that direction,” the Water Elemental replied, pointing upstream. “But there are many such there, in the place where the Earth crosses the Water.” It looked at her with doubt. “Many are not sane.”

  “Earth crossed the Water,” Nan said aloud. “Sounds like Blackfriar’s Bridge.”

  “A logical place for people to jump—or be thrown. I don’t know this part of London well enough to remember which one, but I suppose the name doesn’t matter.” Sarah turned toward the water creatures. “Thank you.”

  They didn’t stand on ceremony, retreating back into the water and swimming rapidly downstream. Sarah and Nan trod the air back to the top of the embankment and moved toward the bridge.

  * * *

  Several suicides later, and several spirits that were so mindless that Sarah had, impatiently, opened a Portal directly behind them and pushed them through, they knew only that there were no ghosts associated with the headless bodies. All of the spirits capable of speaking coherently were absolutely certain of that. One and all, they expressed surprise that there was no ghost. The most sane of them spoke at length about it. “I’ve never seen a murder that violent that did not produce one of us,” he said eloquently. “And surely no one would end their own lives in such a fashion—”

  His voice trailed off, and he looked at her pleadingly. After dealing with so many ghosts at this point, she knew instantly what he didn’t want to ask. He was tall, homely, extremely thin. She suspected, from the shabby state of his garments, that he had died in abject poverty. And from his cultured manner of speaking, he was highly educated. Putting two and two together, she deduced that he was probably an artist and very likely a suicide. Beatrice had saved many of his kind in her life, simply by taking over their lives, feeding them until they were healthy again, and coaxing them into producing something that would sell, but at the same time didn’t offend their artistic sensibilities.

  “It seems to me that no God of kindness and mercy would deny someone too weary and ill to go on a swift release from pain,” she said, looking off into the gray distance. “And everything I have seen when I have opened the way to the next world makes me think that is true. Is that all you can tell me?”

  He sighed, and he seemed to brighten for a moment. “That is all I know,” he said. “I hope you can find the monster responsible for this. He deserves to be torn to pieces.”

  “Thank you,” she told him, and seeing that Nan had finished her own interrogation, she opened the Portal for him. He peered at it, and suddenly his expression changed from one of melancholy to one of joy, and he all but leapt through it. As for the spirit Nan had been talking to, and three or four others nearby, once the brightness of the Portal in the sullen gray of the spirit plane caught their attention, they flew to it like moths to a flame.

  Their faithful little sylph had been waiting patiently all this time. “Ready to return?” she asked plaintively, looking like a child who is very weary of all the tedious things the adults have been doing.

  “Yes, please,” Sarah replied. And she looked at Nan. “In fact—let’s run.”

  She had noticed that despite all the “walking” they had been doing, she was not in the least tired. So why not try running?

  Before Nan could reply, the sylph shot off, with Sarah following, Grey flying happily at her shoulder, running as fast as she was flying. A moment later, Nan caught up with her, with Neville preceding her.

  “What—”

  “Are you getting winded?” Sarah asked her, feeling very much as if she was like fleet-footed Diana and could run forever, outracing a deer.

  “No—” Nan looked startled. “I might as well be walking!”

  “Come on then!” Sarah increased her pace, and since they were coming back a by a different path, they didn’t even have to slow down to sneak past that house of sinister “nightmares.”

  Caro must have been able to sense them nearing, for she met them at the edge or her range, and joined them running. “All quiet,” she reported. “Your friends are getting anxious, though. It’s well past midnight.”

  “It is?” Sarah almost stopped, she was so surprised. “That can’t be!”

  “Time passes differently here,” was all Caro said. And then they were running on the air, up to the third story of the Hotel Meridian, and the next thing Sarah knew, she was sitting up, Grey had flown to the bedstead—and she ached in every limb, exactly as if she had just run a mile.

  10

  This time Spencer arranged to take delivery of his property by night, so as not to arouse any curiosity in the neighbors. The less magic he had to use, he reasoned, the better—and why waste precious power on a spell when the cover of darkness would do just as well? He had replaced the defrocked priest with a street preacher who, besides being completely insane, conveniently proclaimed from his soapbox that all men should have as many wives as Solomon. When Spencer suggested he wanted to do exactly that, and would pay the man to officiate, the fellow had literally danced with glee. All he had asked was that he be allowed to preach a short sermon.

  And he’d had no difficulty over using Spencer’s altered ceremony, nor with performing a wedding after sunset. Spencer gave him directions and a time, and the man promised he would show up.

  And if he didn’t, well, Spencer figured he could lock the girl in the guest room and find someone quickly enough. There were street preachers out every night at Covent Garden for instance, badgering the crowds of opera and ballet attendees—and a lot more of them outside music halls and pubs and gin palaces. None of them ever bothered the brothels, however. They were lucky to get away with broken bones if they tried.

  The second Chinese girl was as cooperative as the first, although it seemed to Spencer that she was very sluggish. Even his assertions that he was going to marry her didn’t seem to lift her out of her lethargy. It was not until after he had put her in Kelly’s hands and was having quite a lively—and entertaining—discussion with the preacher in his study about the nature of angels, that he learned the reason for her behavior.

  “Marster,” Kelly said from the door. “Need t’ talk t’ye.”

  He made an excuse to the preacher and poured him another tumbler of cheap brandy before retreating into the hall with Kelly. “Marry ’er and do ’er quick,” Kelly told him urgently. “She’s been ’ard used, an’ she’s all tore up inside. I ’ope that won’t make difference t’ th’ magic.”

  Well that explained a lot. Why Old Don was so anxious he get her off his property, for one. The old fraud didn’t want her to die on the spot. Serve him right for not specifying the limits of abuse he’d tolerate in his purchases. “It won’t,” he said briefly. “Can she stand?”

  “Fer a while. These Chinee are like old work ’orses. Pull till they drops dead i’ the traces. I’ll git ’er fixed up an’ downstairs. You ’eard the preacher.”

  Within five minutes, Kelly had the girl neatly gowned, with no sign that she was probably bleeding to death at that moment. At least that meant she didn’t make a fuss about wearing white. The preacher seemed to mistake the girl’s dazed condition for modesty or shyness, which was all to the good. It took some prodding to get her to whisper “iss,” but the spell melded into place just as it always did. He escorted the preacher out, as the man exclaimed gleefully, “Populate the earth with your seed, my boy! A man with a quiver full of arrows is a blessed man!” And when he returned to the study, the girl had collapsed, semiconscious, in the nearest chair.

  Conscious now that the clock was ticking, he scooped her up and took the stairs to his workroom. Being inverted on his killing table brought her back to consciousness briefly, but of course he had taken the precaution of strapping her down, just in case. She didn’t even recover enough to do more than try to sit up before he dispatched her.

  He had not expected the power of the wail of despair from her spirit after seeing the sluggish creature she had been when alive. “Gratifying” was too mild a word for how he felt about i
t, since he sensed it without even slipping himself into the spirit plane. And as with the last Chinese girl, her mere presence woke anger and resentment from the other girls. This was utterly delicious. Another half dozen and he’d have enough power at his command to do anything.

  As he racked the jar containing her head with the rest, out of nowhere, with a thrill of excitement, a thought occurred to him . . . he could probably get a personal interview with the Queen with that much power. It would merely take time, working his way up through those in power as a spiritualist. What would the Queen give him for a few words with her beloved Albert?

  It wouldn’t be the real Albert, of course. Once a spirit crossed to the next world, he couldn’t touch it unless it came back on its own. But it was child’s play to take a ghost lodged in the spirit plane, make it look the way he wanted, and coerce it into saying what he told it to do. So what would the Queen do if her dearest, dead husband told her to make Spencer her confidant and advisor?

  He’d have to be extremely clever not to come to the attention of Alderscroft, of course. One on one, he could probably defeat the Lodgemaster, but it wouldn’t be one-on-one; when it came to necromancy, Hunting Lodges threw gentlemanly conduct and fair play out the nearest window. The full strength of the Lodge would come to bear on him, and possibly even the strength of whatever Continental Lodges Alderscroft could contact.

  And on reflection, he could not see any way of hiding his activities from Alderscroft once he reached the Queen’s outer circles, much less the inner ones.

  Probably not worth it.

  Not when he could accomplish nearly as much by staying out of Alderscroft’s purview.

  He did briefly amuse himself with the fantasy of the Queen knighting him, gifting him with a small manor house (he wasn’t greedy, after all), in Wales, perhaps, or Devon (not Scotland, good gods no!). And seeing Alderscroft’s Hunting Lodge broken up, Alderscroft himself led away in chains on charges of treason—

  And there his imagination failed him, because he didn’t actually know what Alderscroft looked like.

  Still. Once Moriarty was back, it all wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that between them, he and the Professor could put an end to Alderscroft and his Hunting Lodge. Minds could be influenced. Evidence could be manufactured and planted. Witnesses could be created. Not even a peer of the realm was immune from the courts, if the evidence was strong enough. Then he actually would be able to influence the Queen if he chose. Something to think about. With this much power, and Moriarty beholden to him, many things were possible.

  * * *

  Hughs had been asking to arrive earlier and earlier, then spending most of the long daylight hours in dreams, so in the morning Spencer was in his alternate flat, just finishing his second pot of tea of the day, when he heard the young man’s knock. When he answered the door, he found Hughs leaning against the doorframe, dark circles under his eyes. He obviously had not slept well last night.

  “I don’t mean to complain, Spencer, because you’ve been an absolute brick,” he said without preamble, “But it’s a long way to your flat.”

  “We could do this at yours,” Spencer offered, although he already knew from things Hughs had let slip that this wasn’t possible.

  Hughs came inside and Spencer shut the door behind him, hoping that the time had come for the next stage of the young man’s conversion. “That would be a disaster,” Hughs said, with a grimace. “Mater has the landlady in her pay. Mostly so I don’t set up a mistress there, since she knows I haven’t got the ready to set up a mistress in her own establishment and she knows I haven’t enough for a decent girl in a good brothel either. Not that she’d admit to knowing such things exist. If she got wind of this, it would be all over, and I don’t know which would be worse, her finding out about my opium-eating, or suspecting us of ‘the love that dare not speak its name.’”

  Spencer laughed, partly because that was funny, and partly because the day that he first spoke to Hughs, the fact that his mother might think they were homosexual lovers would never have entered his mind, and a few weeks ago, he never would have voiced that openly. The weakening of his inhibitions was a sign of the weakening of his will.

  “Well, I have a proposition, then,” he said. “This isn’t my only property. I have a house elsewhere with plenty of spare rooms and a housekeeper to look after the place and cook. Pay your rent in advance, tell your landlady you are going on a walking tour of the Lake District, shut the place up and move in.”

  Hughs stopped in his tracks, hope warring with suspicion. “Won’t that inconvenience you?”

  Spencer shrugged. “I have my own chemical experiments I perform there, and I’m just about to start a new series. Such things are a matter of short bursts of work and long periods of waiting. It will be no trouble to look in on you, and you’re not exactly going to make a great deal of work for my housekeeper. I merely offer,” he added, “Because it will be a great deal more convenient to me not to have to shuttle back and forth.”

  Hughs caved in. “In that case, I’ll do it, and thanks, old man. I have the feeling old Coleridge was onto something. I’m so close to a breakthrough, I can feel it.”

  Spencer had read the incoherent fragments and ramblings in Hughs’ notebook when the man was deep in the throes of his opium dreams, so he very much doubted that Hughs was close to anything but the same suicide he’d been flirting with when Spencer first met him. But the last thing he wanted to do was break any of Hughs’ delusions just now. So he nodded. “Do you want to have your usual session and handle things after you wake, or a smaller dose so you can avoid unpleasantness, go deal with your landlady, and come back here? I can have a cab waiting to take both of us to my house. We’ll get you settled, and you can doze off by luncheon.”

  “The latter, old man.” Hughs clapped him on the shoulder with an unsteady hand. “That will suit me down to the ground.”

  Spencer smiled. The bait was taken. Now for the trap to close.

  Hughs left after his quarter dose, acting very like his former self. As with alcoholics, there was a level of intoxication in opium-eaters where only the effects of addiction were alleviated, and the addict could speak, act, and reason effectively. After so much experience with his other candidates, Spencer rather thought he was good at judging just how small a dose would provide control without intoxication. Hughs proved he was still sharp insofar as his intellect was concerned by turning up just before luncheon with a heavy rucksack loaded with some personal goods and a hiking staff. Spencer had taken the opportunity to get luncheon for two from the pub, and greeted him at the door.

  “I paid the old harridan for three months—she was damned happy to see it, too,” he said, as Spencer let him in and took him to the kitchen. “I told her I was going on a walking tour while the weather was fine, and not to expect to hear from me until September at the earliest. Sent a note off to Mater by post.” He laughed, although it was sardonic. “She’ll fret, but she’ll know I’ve already gone by the time she reads it, and short of hiring one of those investigator johnnies to try and find me, there won’t be anything she can do. And Pater will want to know why she’s hiring such a fellow, and put his foot down, and she knows it.” He shook his head. “Pater would probably be just as happy to get word the black sheep of the family tumbled down a mineshaft on the moors and broke his fool neck.”

  Spencer politely ignored that last, but he took it as a good sign that death was still very much on Hughs’ mind. “I have a cab turning up at one, so we might as well have our luncheon.” He waved at the other chair, sat down at the table, and urged the young man to partake of the food, though as he well knew opium suppresses the appetite. Still Hughs ate, more than he expected. A good sign that his body was still strong.

  The young man’s energy was wearing off, though, and the cab ride to the house took place mostly in silence. By the time they arrived, he was looking haggard, and Spencer carried his rucksack and stick for him into the house.


  But the little bedroom the girls used was clean and ready, it was right beneath the workroom, and Spencer had no expectation of needing it again now that he had found such a convenient alternate supply. In short order, Hughs had had his usual dose, his things were stored in the wardrobe, and he was dreaming in the unfamiliar bed, shades drawn, curtains closed.

  Spencer went downstairs to consult with Mrs. Kelly.

  “Reckon Marster’ll like this ’un,” the old woman said from her comfortable perch on the sofa in the sitting room, as half a dozen unhappy-looking brownies cleaned industriously at her direction. “’E’s a ’andsome bloke, or ’e’ll be once the devil’s outa ’is system. An’ ’e’s young.” And she looked at him shrewdly, and added, “What’s th’ price uv doin’ that fer me?”

  This was the first time, ever, that the old woman had expressed any personal interest in the procedure. He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment.

  “High,” he said, finally. “I’m sure you have a strong enough will to triumph in evicting the soul of the body you take, but I’ve no guarantee that your magic would survive the transition. I’ve never tried transferring a magician.”

  She sucked on her lower lip. “Yer gonna do it yersel’ though.”

  Shrewd guess on her part! “I intend to. It’s clear from all I have read that Spirit Masters can bring their magic and power along to the new vessel.”

  She thought about that some more. “Not sure I’d need magic, wi’ a pretty ’nuff face. An’ ye reckon I can do this thing?”

  He nodded. “Success lies within you, for the most part. You have to overcome the will of the soul you want to replace, and expel it from the body. Mrs. Kelly, everything I know about you tells me you have a will of iron.”

  She nodded, as if this was something she had expected to hear. “Somethin’ t’ think about,” she said. “Th’ kind o’ pretty gel I’d wanta look loike ain’t gonna be easy t’get. Pretty gels go missin’, some’un’s gonna be missin’ ’em. Even a hoor is gonna be missed, by ’er keeper if naught else.”