The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  That was a smart idea, Nan thought, admiring how well John Watson and Caro both thought on their feet. She had no doubt that Jenny would swim back here to attack them the moment she was free—but hopefully, she couldn’t leave the water. So they wouldn’t be here to attack.

  “Follow then, feckless boy,” snarled the Water Elemental, who took off swimming as fast as she could go. But as fast as Jenny swam, Caro kept up with her, until the two were out of sight.

  “Better get up the stairs,” John said, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the sweat and the fetid river water from his face. “I’d rather not be here when she’s freed.”

  When they reached the Passage, they all leaned back against the damp brick walls. John looked exhausted. Nan wasn’t sure how the others felt, but she wanted to be out of here so badly she could taste it. The bottoms of her trousers were soaked, and she was pretty sure Sarah’s and John’s were too. Ugh. I’m going to have to soak these things to get the river-stink out of them. And when Caro materialized suddenly at the top of the stairs, Nan jumped and had to suppress a yelp.

  “The bodies entered the river from a big sewer,” Caro reported. “Jenny said she couldn’t swim up it to tell exactly where they came from. I didn’t want to push her any harder, and I wasn’t sure she actually could determine where they entered the sewer, so I let her go.”

  “I can’t argue with your reasoning,” Watson said. “Can you show us on a map where that opening is?”

  “Oh definitely,” Caro said cheerfully. “I came back slowly, by way of the riverbank, and I took note of all of the landmarks. Oh, she hates you, John. She hates all of us, but it’s you she cursed under her breath the entire time. You’d better do something specific to protect yourself from her, or the next time you’re on the water she’ll make a try for you.”

  “That’s the hazard of being a Master.” John sighed. “All right, this is all we can do for one night. I’ll have to get a borough map of Wapping tomorrow, and a find out if there is a map of the sewer system here. Maybe we can find out where it goes. If not, at least we have a start, and I might be able to use Water Magic to trace the path. Ladies, I will find you a cab, then see you tomorrow at 221C. Right now all I want is to wash. Faugh!”

  But from the way he held himself, Nan was pretty sure he was close to exhausted.

  “Go home, John,” she said. “We’ll find a cab on our own.”

  It was a measure of his exhaustion that he didn’t even argue with them. Instead, he trudged off downstream—since the road ran alongside the Thames. They turned and went upstream, passing the door of the Prospect of Whitby. Merry, raucous voices came from inside, but it sounded as if the inhabitants of the pub had settled in for the next couple of hours. At this point, the excitement of the fight wore off, and Nan found herself wishing that it was a coffeehouse and not a pub. I could do with a pot of something hot, and some food.

  “I think if we find a cab, we should send it after him,” Sarah said, in a worried tone of voice. “We can squeeze in three until we get to a part of town with more cabs.”

  “I agree.” Nan was worried too. She’d never seen John Watson look so tired after working magic, and she had the shrewd suspicion that a lot more had been going on than appeared on the surface. He’d spoken of binding the Jenny Greenteeth, and perhaps that was what had exhausted him so much. “I don’t think he does this sort of magic often.”

  “Nan! Sarah!” They were about fifty yards up the road from The Prospect of Whitby when Caro materialized in front of them. “Help! John is being attacked!”

  Nan felt another jolt of energy, turned and ran back down the road, Sarah at her side, her wet trouser-bottoms flapping against her legs. They raced past the pub—there was so much noise from inside that no one even noticed them running past—and spotted John in the distance by the light of the moon.

  Or rather, she spotted a clot of men scrumming, moving in and out of the shadows, and figured John was in the middle of them. At least four, certainly not more than six . . . her heart pounded like a railway engine.

  The two of them hit the clot of fighting before anyone realized they were there. Nan smacked the back of the head of the nearest with the hilt of her right-hand blade at the same time that Sarah hit the kidneys of the one next to him with a two-handed blow from her umbrella.

  The solid hit jarred her arm up to the shoulder, and she jigged back out of retaliatory range. Nan expected a shout or a scream, but all the two thugs uttered were grunts. But the attacks certainly got their attention. Four of the men turned toward the girls, leaving two still fighting with John.

  Immediately, the two girls went back-to-back. The thugs that turned to face them were armed only with cudgels and sticks; they didn’t have the length of Sarah’s umbrella nor its point, and they certainly didn’t have Nan’s blades. Now Nan concentrated on two things and two only—the men in front of her, and keeping her back pressed against Sarah’s.

  She felt the Celtic Warrior in her pressing on her, trying to come through, and she opened the mental door and let that long-ago self charge through.

  It was like dropping a shot of whiskey, neat, into her stomach. Fire ran through her limbs, and she felt a fierce and angry grin split her face. The reasoning part of her, the part that would have urged caution, got shoved to the side, and the wild Celt took over.

  It almost felt as if she had eyes in the back of her head; she didn’t need to see to know when a blow was coming and from where. She felt the attacks before they landed, and one of her knives was there to counter every blow. She maintained enough control to use the flats of the blades, and the hilts, rather than the edges—if she’d gone all out, the fight would have been over in seconds, and there’d have been four men with severed hands or throats on the ground. The Celt in her wanted blood, but dead and severely wounded thugs were going to be very difficult to explain to the police, and while this was a rough neighborhood, it wasn’t as lawless as Whitechapel.

  They didn’t seem to realize this, however.

  The one thing that was incredibly strange was that the fight took place in almost complete silence—the most noise these men made were grunts or wheezes when the girls or John Watson connected with a blow.

  And for several minutes it was an even match.

  Then things rapidly began to fall apart, and not for the girls and John.

  Behind her, Nan heard the crack of breaking ribs, and one of Sarah’s opponents fell to the street, gasping in pain. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Nan seized one of her opponents’ arms and dragged him toward her. The second thug smacked him across the shoulders with his cudgel before he realized he had hit his own man, just as Nan hit the man she’d dragged toward her in the back of the skull with the hilt of her knife. He went down, falling into his partner, bringing the uninjured man down. Nan lashed out and kicked the first one in the side as he went down. If she hadn’t been covering Sarah’s back, she would have whirled and kicked the second man under the chin, but she didn’t want to leave Sarah undefended.

  Instead, she concentrated on the second man, who had gotten back to his feet, looking for an opening to take him down as well. She got one; he was unwary enough to let his left hand drift within range and she slashed the back of it with her right-hand knife, this time using the edge.

  Now he made a sound; a curse, as he realized what she was armed with. And at that moment, a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye showed her that John Watson had landed a haymaker punch right on the chin of one of his attackers, sending the man staggering backward until he fell into the street.

  That seemed to decide the man Nan had slashed. “Bugger it!” he shouted. “I’m orf!” And he took to his heels.

  The man whose ribs Sarah had broken staggered after him, and after a moment, so did his—thus far—uninjured partner. The man Nan had put on the ground got groggily to his feet and made his escape, and John Watson’s final assailant stumbled away, grabbed the man John
had punched by the collar, hauled him up and together they made their escape.

  “Chase them?” Nan asked, perfectly ready to do just that.

  John bent over his knees, panting. “No,” he gasped. “There might be more of them. Besides, we know who this is. Sherlock warned us.”

  “Moriarty’s men,” Sarah replied, grimly. “Of course it is.”

  John stood up abruptly, but Nan already knew what he was thinking. “Wait—I can make sure Mary is all right,” she said, and closed her eyes, leaning on Sarah.

  It took no time at all to find Neville’s mind; he drowsed next to Grey, but came completely alert when she touched him. Within moments, he and Grey knew what had just happened, and the rage that filled him took her a little time to calm. Warn Mary, she said, when he had finally regained his composure, and withdrew her mind from his to let him and Grey get on with just that.

  “Mary’s fine, the birds are fine, and they are warning her,” she said, opening her eyes.

  But there was panic in John’s eyes. “I have to—” he began, then stopped himself. “No . . . no. She’s been warned. And no one knows about 221C but us and Mrs. Hudson. Mary knows where my revolver is, and she’s a decent shot.”

  “Yes, and yes, and yes,” Sarah told him, one hand on his arm. “John, she’s all right for now. What we need to do is be extremely careful about getting back to her. The last thing we want to do is lead anyone back to her.”

  “We should split up again,” Nan said, her brows creased with worry. “But I don’t want you alone, Watson—”

  “Sarah, give him the locket.” Caro appeared again; Nan suspected she had followed the fleeing thugs to make sure they weren’t doubling back. “I can go with him and watch for trouble and warn him before it reaches him. He can give the locket back to you once we’re all at the flat.”

  Sarah snapped her fingers. “Of course! Thank you, Caro! That’s brilliant!” She reached up around her neck and unfastened the strong chain she had bought to wear it on.

  Watson obediently bent his head so she could fasten it around his neck. “For right now, we all stick together,” he said. “It was daft to separate in the first place. Once we find a cab we can all squeeze into it until we encounter another. Then we’ll split up and follow Holmes’ standard instructions for evading followers and meet back at 221C.”

  They managed to find a cab in front of the City of Ramsgate pub, and thankfully it was a growler, not a hansom. It wasn’t long before the driver intercepted a hansom, which Watson took, leaving the girls with the growler. Nan took Sarah’s umbrella and knocked on the roof of the growler. The driver opened the hatch and peered down at them.

  “Sir,” Nan said. “We think we may be being followed. We would like you to go to 221 Baker Street, but by as random a path as you can contrive—and keep an eye out around you—”

  But in the dark, Nan saw a sudden gleam of teeth. “Bless you, miss, I useta drive fer Master ’Olmes, Gawd rest ’is soul. No worries. Oi’ll git ye there safe’n’sound.”

  Suspicion bloomed in her. She dropped her mental shields and quickly touched his mind.

  Only to discover to her vast relief that he was exactly what he claimed to be—one of Sherlock’s regular drivers: in effect, part of an adult version of the Irregulars.

  “Thank you,” she said simply, with a nod to Sarah to indicate that everything was all right. “That is the best thing I have heard all night.”

  And with that, she leaned back and relaxed as best she could over what was surely going to turn into a very long journey.

  12

  Spencer looked in on Hughs. The morning dose had been sufficient and everything was satisfactory with the young man. He was pleased to have so easily persuaded Hughs to move in here; it made it much easier to keep him healthy. As long as he insisted that the fellow eat a good, hearty breakfast on condition of getting his opium after, and an equally hearty supper on condition of getting another afterward, he wasn’t wasting away as so many opium-eaters did.

  And tomorrow he would take possession of another girl from old Don; this time Mrs. Kelly was ready for anything, and he had gotten his hands on some cocaine, which would, judiciously applied, keep even a badly injured girl on her feet long enough to be prepared and get through the ceremony.

  Pounding on his back door made him frown—but the back door was Mrs. Kelly’s to answer, and perhaps it was just some early tradesman. He retired to his study—but had not even had a chance to sit down when Mrs. Kelly hurried up from the kitchen. “It’s them men ye sent on yer errand larst night,” she said. “They didn’ do it, an’ they got beat up.”

  He swore under his breath, but what could he do? Moriarty had made it a practice never to punish anyone unless they had actually proven incompetent or stupid, so he was going to have to tend to these fellows and find out how it was that six men could not manage to kill one man alone.

  “Get my medical kit,” he told her, “Are they in the kitchen?”

  “I ain’t lettin’ them in me clean parlor!” she said indignantly. “An’ them all over muck an’ bleedin’!”

  “Good, I’ll tend to them there then.” He trudged down the hall while Mrs. Kelly went in search of the doctor’s bag where he kept the supplies he used to occasionally patch up Moriarty’s minions.

  They were a sad sight, crowded into the kitchen, all wearing hangdog expressions. They were bruised, battered, cut, and bleeding. Of course, the fact that they had missed out on a big payday probably accounted for that expression on the faces of the two who were uninjured. They already knew he wasn’t going to pay them for work they’d botched.

  “Not a word,” he said sternly, as Kelly brought in his bag. “Not one solitary word out of you until I’ve put you back together. Then you can try, try, to give me an explanation I’ll believe for why six men were unable to take down one.”

  The lightest injury belonged to a man with a nasty slash across the back of his hand, or rather, wrist. If it had been his hand he’d likely have bled to death. The worst was something of a tie between a fellow with a cracked skull and one with broken ribs. There wasn’t much he could do for the cracked skull, but he got the man with the broken ribs bandaged up so with luck, and if he wasn’t an idiot, he wouldn’t pierce a lung and die. When he got them all sorted out, he looked them up and down for a moment, and said, “All right, which one of you idiots is supposed to be the leader?”

  The man with the slashed wrist sheepishly nodded.

  He sat down in the kitchen chair and looked at the thug sternly. “I’m waiting.”

  “’E wuz in Wappin’, sor,” the man said, clutching his greasy cap in his uninjured hand. “We follered ’im there, lost ’im fer a bit, then found ’im again. Dunno wut ’e was doin’ but when we found ’im, ’e wuz alone, loik yew wanted. So we jumped ’im. An’ then outa nowhere comes a gang of ’Indoos, wut starts beatin’ on us.”

  Spencer gave the man an incredulous stare. “Hindus? In Wapping? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Oi swear, guv, they was ’Indoos. Them long shirts and bloomers an’ all. They ’ad sticks an’ knives, an’ they fought loik devils, must’ve been five or six uv ’em! It was loik they came outa thin air, loik some sorta conjurin’ trick. They ’ad four uv us down afore ye could say ‘knife.’ I figgered we was gonna get pinched fer sure, so we bolted outa there.” The man didn’t seem to be lying. He had none of the aspect of someone who was lying. And besides—Hindus? If he had been lying, surely he would have come up with a better story!

  Then it occurred to him. The Hartons had Hindus and Sikhs and god only knew what all else working for them. And he knew they were friendly with Alderscroft, the old man gave them his estate for their damned school. Could they have sent their servants to protect Watson on Alderscroft’s orders? It was certainly possible. More than possible, actually. Sherlock had probably said something to Watson, Watson had said something to Alderscroft, and the old man had called in the Hartons.

  H
e cursed mentally, although he let none of his irritation show. He simply could not have anticipated this. But it definitely complicated matters. He didn’t know why Watson was in Wapping, but Wapping was much too close to this house for comfort.

  Was it possible that some of the headless bodies had been found? Possible that wretched Lestrade had been put in charge of the case, and enlisted Watson to help? Yes, yes it was possible; it was even probable. He’d thought by dumping them in the sewer they’d be carried out to sea, but he really should have known better.

  He looked up at the six sheepish, groggy men crowding his kitchen. “Well,” he said aloud. “I am not happy with you. You are certainly not going to be paid. But I am not going to punish you either. Go on, get out of here. And leave Watson alone; he’s clearly got protection you didn’t see until it was too late.”

  “Yessir,” said the self-appointed spokesman, the hand holding his cap white at the knuckles. “Thenkee, sir.”

  They filed out, with Kelly watching from the doorway, her face a mask of disapproval.

  “Yew b’lieve ’em?” she demanded, when they were gone.

  “I do, actually,” he replied. “The Hartons have Indian servants, several of whom are seasoned fighters, and the Hartons are friends of Lord Alderscroft.”

  “Ah . . . so ye reckon arter ’Olmes faked ’is death, th’ old man ’ad ’is friends put their men t’ guard Watson?” Kelly surmised.

  “I’d have done the same in his place,” Spencer admitted. “Some of these Indian chaps are the very devil for being able to slip about unseen. Dammit. This is a complication I did not anticipate, and I am afraid that Doctor Watson may be a serious threat to our plans.”

  Kelly sucked on her lower lip. “Wappin’ is too close to us fer my likin’.”

  “My thought exactly.” He considered consulting Moriarty, then decided against it. “I’ll be in my study,” he said instead, and got up. “I need to think in peace and quiet.”