The old woman shook her head, looking remorseful, and made a helpless gesture with both hands.
"Oh, dear—are you mute?" Maya asked, mouthing the words carefully so that the old woman might be able to make out what she was saying if she was also deaf. The old woman nodded sadly.
"I'm sorry. It's all right, dear, it wasn't your fault.
Here, let me help you—" She groaned a little for her bruises as she levered herself up off the street, then stooped to help the old lady gather up the scattered fruit and replace it in her tray. They weren't able to gather anywhere near as much as had fallen—the little brats had stolen half of them and carried them off.
"Here you are—and here, dear, this is for the apples that were run off with—" Maya said, giving her a handful of random coins. The old lady nodded, and patted her hand, then turned to go back the way she had come.
Sudden dizziness overcame her, and she put one hand against the wall to steady herself. A second wave, more powerful than the first, struck her, and she had to cling to the wall with both hands.
What—
The old woman turned around and looked back at her—and smiled—and held up a syringe filled with red, filling her sight, red, filling her mind with red—
Then black, black, black came up and filled mind and eyes and everything, and she slid down the wall and knew nothing more.
IT was a dull day; no one had come in at all this morning, and Peter moved restlessly about the shop, dusting off his curios even though they didn't need dusting, moving them fractions of an inch to display them better. He couldn't feel settled, somehow. He was ill-at-ease and fretful.
For one thing, he couldn't stop worrying about Maya. He hadn't slept much last night, thinking about her, worrying over the increased danger she might be in. Unfortunately, the future was as opaque to him as a block of stone. Prescience was not a gift often given to Masters of any sort. Perhaps the Greater Powers felt that Masters had gifts enough without being able to see into the future as well. He could easily be worrying about nothing, and that was the problem, he just didn't know.
If only he could find a way to persuade the White Lodge to help protect her! He'd bearded old Alderscroft again in his den last night, to no avail.
"Let the foreigners contend among themselves," the Old Man had rumbled. "We have no reason to embroil ourselves in their quarrels."
No matter how much Peter tried to persuade him, to the Old Man, Maya was an Outsider, and never mind that half of her was as English as the Old Man. The White Lodge had enough on its plate, he said, trying to defeat this mysterious killer-by-night—which might, or might not, be Shivani, according to the Old Man—and now Alderscroft was not entirely certain they should even do that, not without investigating the past lives of all those who had been killed! The Old Man had actually voiced the thought that if these men had committed a crime against Indians worthy of the punishment, it would be better to let the vengeful entity sate itself, for the victims had brought their punishment on themselves!
Sophistry—and an excuse for doing nothing—if ever he had heard one! Perhaps his distaste had shown itself in his expression, for the Old Man had quickly retracted the doubtful argument, and gone back to insisting that the White Lodge had all it could do to try and stop the killer in its tracks.
But he did hint that Maya herself wouldn't be in danger if she had simply reconciled with her aunt. Peter had been hard-put to hold down his anger. If she was my wife, he wouldn't have a choice, Peter reflected sourly. He'd have to help protect her—or risk alienating three quarters of the Lodge—for if he wouldn't move to protect my wife, how could he be depended upon to order the protection of the wives and children of anyone else?
Then it hit him, with the sudden impact of a thunderbolt. Dear God, if You put that into my head, thank You! he thought, mood turning abruptly from anxiety to elation. I’ll marry her! By heaven, I'll shut up the shop right now and get hold of Almsley; he can get a Special License in two hours with his connections. If I put it to her that it's for her protection, surely, surely—
Oh, of course she'd consent! And put so sensibly, she would not think the proposal amiss, or too sudden, or too forward, or too anything!
And as an excuse to get past his own cowardice over proposing to her—
Damn it, I love her, and she loves me, I know it. Make it only the excuse to marry now, the excuse to Almsley to get us a Special License, you fool! Yes, he'd go to Almsley, get the license, then go right to Maya and throw himself at her feet—
He turned, tossing the duster aside—
And a burst of light before his face nearly blinded him.
An aureole of brilliance, rainbowed at the edges, but electric white at the center, blossomed no more than three feet from him. It screamed magic to all his senses, overwhelming all other impressions; he threw his arm up instinctively, sheltering his face against the glare.
Out of the center of the light flew a small green parrot, screaming like a terrified banshee. It shrieked in Urdu—he could only make out a few things in his confusion. Murder. Serpent. Help.
Maya's name.
It was only there a moment, then it turned and flew back into the light, which collapsed and vanished behind it, leaving his eyes dazzled and ears buzzing in the silence.
But he didn't need an interpreter to know that something terrible had happened to Maya.
He didn't stop to think, didn't pause for anything, not for a hat, not even to lock up the shop. He ran out into the street, waving wildly at a hansom cab just up the block. The driver looked vaguely familiar—was it the one that often brought Maya home at night? At any rate, he knew a desperate man when he saw one; he pulled up his horse long enough for Peter to fling himself inside, waited only to hear the address before shouting at his beast and giving the reins a mighty
shake to send it into a headlong gallop, cracking his whip over its head to urge it on. The cab lurched as the horse surged forward into the traces so eagerly it might have been a racehorse or a cavalry mount that had only been waiting for the opportunity to launch into a full-out charge. Peter clung to the inside of the cab like grim death; either the driver had guessed at the level of emergency from his face, or he was hoping for a handsome tip—which he would get— or both.
Probably both.
Hansoms were two-wheeled vehicles; this one not only bounced over the cobbles but occasionally went airborne for a moment as it hit a particularly large bump. People flung themselves out of their path as they careened headlong down the street, but they needn't have bothered; the driver and his horse showed a level of skill at judging the traffic ahead and the places that they could squeeze through that was positively supernatural. The horse was soon drenched in sweat, drops of foam and sweat flying from its mouth and neck as it pounded around a corner, yet it showed no sign of wanting to slacken its pace, and the driver never again touched his whip, which remained in its socket up beside him.
The torture of each hard bump and landing was nothing compared to the torture of his heart. His gut clenched; his heart was a cold lump of icy terror. The cab swayed wildly from side to side as the driver swerved around slower-moving vehicles. Mindful that he might need the man's services immediately after he got to Maya's home, Peter let go of one side of the cab and pulled out his notecase, extracting a tenner which he stuck in his breast pocket. He stuffed the pocketbook back in his coat, grabbing the side of the cab again as they cut around a corner on one wheel. A tenner was more than double the proper fare; the man and his horse weren't going to suffer for this.
At last the cab clattered down Maya's street, and pulled up to the door, the horse actually going down on its haunches and skidding to a halt. Peter thrust the money up at the cabby as he leaped out, then had a second thought, and called "Wait a moment!"
He pulled out his notecase again, and scribbled a note to Almsley. At this hour, his Twin would still be sleeping the sleep of the idle rich in his Piccadilly apartment. He extracted another note and thrust it an
d the note with Peter's address on it at the cabby.
"Give this to Lord Almsley's man," he said, already turning away. "Tell him it's an emergency."
"Roight yew are, guv'nor!" the cabby said, and before Peter had even touched the door, was off, his horse again at the gallop, drawing on reserves of strength and stamina that Peter would never have expected.
The door flew open as he turned back around; it was Gupta, who uttered an inarticulate groan, and gestured him inside. Peter pushed past him.
He didn't have to ask "where"—there was a small crowd crammed into Maya's office and spilling out into the corridor. It was all of Maya's own household, neighbors—
The sight of one of them, a girl in shabby satins, triggered another brainstorm. He knew her only from Maya's description, but he had no doubt who she was, and he grabbed her by the elbow. She rounded on him. fist pulled back and clenched to strike, eyes red, hair disheveled, and face streaked with dirt and tears.
He grabbed her wrist before she could hit him. The wiry strength in it didn't surprise him. "Norrey!" he hissed, and she started back, eyes going wide, at the sight of a strange man dressed like a "toff" who knew her name. "Listen to me—you have to do something for us. Maya needs your help, and she needs it now."
"But she's—" the girl burst into tears, and Peter let go of her wrist, seized her shoulders and shook them until her teeth rattled and she pushed him away, angry again.
"No, she's not!" He was certain, as he was certain of nothing else, that whatever had happened to Maya, she was not dead yet, no matter what this girl might think. Her shields were all still in place, and her magic was still a presence that would not have been there if she was dead. But overlying it was another magic, an inimical force that might well kill her unless he could somehow find its source. "I know who did this to her, but I don't know where they are, and if we're going to help her, I have to find that out!"
Norrey's tears stopped as if they had been shut off, and her expression warred between doubt and hope. "But—"
"You get your friends, and you get the word out, girl!" he said fiercely. "The people that did this are Hindu, Indians like Maya and Gupta. They'll have taken a place somewhere that they think they won't be noticed. There'll be a lot of them—mostly men. You might think they're thieves; they aren't, but that's what they'll move and act like."
Norrey's eyes narrowed in concentration as he described the look and habits of dacoits as he recalled them from India. "Now, do you think you can pass that on? We need to know where they are quickly, Norrey, the quicker the better." He took a risk, and lowered his voice still further. "This is magic, Norrey, black, evil magic; we have to find the people who are doing it and stop them, or they will kill her by midnight!"
" 'f they be in th' city, Oi'll winkle 'em out!" Norrey said, with the fervency of a vow. She wriggled out of his grip and shot out the door. Now he could push and shove his way through to the examining room, his heart plummeting with dread at what he would find there.
They had laid her out on her own examination table, and at first sight, with her face so white and still, and not so much as a flutter of her eyelids, she did look dead. All of her pets had crowded into the room, and surrounded the table; the moment that they sighted him, they burst into a clamor or made for him. Charan leaped up into his arms, and the three birds waved their wings frantically at him. Then the green parrot launched itself across the gap to land on his shoulder.
Peter put Charan on his other shoulder, and went to Maya's side, heart in mouth. There were no outward signs of life, not even the rise and fall of Maya's chest to show that she breathed. But when he took up her hand and felt her wrist, there was a faint pulse—and over her hung an invisible pall that only he could see, a nasty, clinging yellow-gray fog that made him sick when it brushed against him.
Gupta made his way back into the room. "Get these people out!" he snapped. "No one here but household, Lord Almsley when he arrives, and Norrey when she returns. Have you sent for a doctor?"
Gupta cast him a reproachful look. "From the Fleet, sahib," was all he said, then set about clearing the office, then the hall, of people who, however well-meaning they were, at this point were nothing but a nuisance.
When he had closed the door on the last of them, Gupta returned. "What is this, sahib? Magic— surely—"
"Magic and something else, I don't know what—" Peter was half into a trance. He might not be a doctor—he wasn't any kind of a healer—but he was a Water Master—
And the body is—what? Three-fourths water?
Well, in this case, it was water with something horribly wrong about it. It wasn't only the sickening fog that hung over it, there was something foul in her very blood—coursing all through her veins, some poison or drug or both—
"Move yer bloomin' arse, ye wretched donkey!" said an Irish-accented voice, and he came abruptly out of trance as a rough hand shoved him to one side.
"Doctor O'Reilly—" Gupta protested, while Peter coughed and shook his head to clear it.
The newcomer had a beard and head of fiery red curls, and a temper to match—but had the air of authority and the slender hands of a surgeon. He pulled off his coat in such haste that the sleeve tore. "Quiet!" O'Reilly snapped, as the man snatched up a scalpel from a tray of instruments and began cutting Maya's clothing off of her, with a fine disregard for propriety. And as he moved, Peter saw with his inner eye a very familiar flicker of power around him. "But—you're a Fire Master!" he gasped. "How—where—"
"In Eire, of course, ye gurt fool!" O'Reilly growled. "An' as to why I'd no joined yer precious club, ye can ask that bigger fool Aldershot or whate'er it is he calls hisself when he's at home!" He threw the remains of Maya's shirtwaist on the floor and started on her camisole and corset cover. "Didn't guess she was a young mage till after ye came along." More rags joined the shirtwaist. "Saw no rhyme nor reason t' interfere then when you had her in hand, and her takin' a likin' to ye, so kept meself to meself. If I'd known she was with troubles, though—Hah! There!"
He'd gotten the corset cut off and tossed it aside, much to Peter's acute embarrassment; the doctor didn't seem to care, but Peter couldn't help flushing painfully at Maya's nude torso laid bare for all of them to see—
But his flush faded as O'Reilly pointed at a nasty round bruise on her side, just above her hip.
"That's a syringe mark, or I'll eat me own shoes," O'Reilly said in angry triumph. "And that 'counts for how they got their divil brew into her! Happen they got summat from her, too, or I miss my guess, filthy heathen."
He flung the scalpel down on the floor and seized the stethoscope, hauling it on over his ears and putting the listening end to her chest, then jerking it from his ears again.
"There's two sorts uv diviltry here, drugs and magic. An' the one that'll kill her first is the drugs." O'Reilly's accent got thicker as time flew past and tension grew. "You—" He glanced up at Peter. "You, Water Master! You can be givin' me a hand here—I'll be wantin' ye to drive what's in her back out toward th' wound, here. That's not somethin' I can do; I can't work inside uv her wit'out burnin' her up. Can ye do that?"
"I—" he was going to say he would try, but trying was not good enough, not here, not now. He nodded, dumbly, placed his hands gently on the cool skin of her abdomen, and fought his way down past that sickening fog mantling her body again. It was harder the second time; the magic was stronger. How much stronger would it get?
The wrongness was everywhere; where to start? It was only going to continue to get pumped around in her veins as he worked! He couldn't count on keeping any place "clean" for longer than a heartbeat or two.
It didn't matter. What mattered was that he started. Indecision and hesitation were the enemy's allies. Work like a seine net; strain out the stuff and shove it in front of me, then go back again and again—
Herding phantoms, chasing mist; that was what it felt like, and all on a miniature scale. He pushed the poisons ahead of a thread of power; they floo
ded in behind his sweep, and he had to force himself to ignore them, concentrating on the evil he had captured, and all the time that malevolent magical miasma he worked in thickened and grew stronger. It wasn't until the sphere of his awareness reached the area of the puncture that he understood what O'Reilly was up to.
With a needle of Fire as finely regulated and controlled as any master embroiderer ever wielded, O'Reilly vaporized every tiny atom of poison oozing from the puncture, without ever cauterizing the wound itself. In fact, he created a kind of suction as he evaporated the vile stuff, a suction that hastened the process of drawing out the poison. It was a brilliant display, but Peter had no time to admire it. Maya sank further with every passing moment, physically and magically.
Peter completely lost track of time and his surroundings. His focus, his life, now centered on herding the poisons, and taking note and hope from the slow but steady improvement in Maya's heartbeat and breathing as he cleared her system of them. At some point, he felt the presence of another joining him in this task, the familiar deft touch of Peter Almsley; with his Twin came a little more strength, and a little less fear, and the knowledge that he wasn't fighting evil magic and poisons all alone.
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