Steadfast

by Mercedes Lackey

  It looked like a flower made of orange fire, blooming across a quarter of the night sky. She was entranced by the beauty, and even reached out unconsciously to touch it. She completely forgot her discomfort as she stared at the display, and rocket after rocket discharged its beauty, red and gold, orange and blue, green and white, into the black sky while the flat sea beneath reflected the colors.

  She was vaguely aware of a band playing out on the Pier, and of the exclamations of those around her, but only dimly. She felt almost as if she was drinking in the fire and the colors, as if this was satisfying something deep in her soul that she hadn’t even been aware was hungry until now.

  And then, between one moment and the next—it all went from glorious, to terrible.

  She felt it; she couldn’t tell how she knew, but suddenly, out of nowhere, she was struck with absolute terror, the terror of the fox that suddenly hears the hounds, or the bird that finds itself trapped on the ground. Somehow she knew—in a heartbeat—that they were in terrible, horrible danger. Stark, breathless fear transfixed her, coursing through her like lightning. They didn’t have time to move. She knew that. Peril was racing toward them out of the sky.

  And then, Jack . . . did something. Just as she instinctively flung up her hands in a futile, but desperate attempt to ward off what she knew was coming.

  A plume of fire erupted between him and the ocean, and out of it burst a swarm of little lizards. Except these little lizards were made of fire, and had eyes that glowed like white-hot coals. They swarmed over him, and started for her—

  As a spray of fire fanned out from her hands, and turned into a fan of fiery feathers, as a pair of birds made of fire spread their wings between her and—

  The runaway rocket hit the lizards and the birds and burst, sending showers of burning balls mostly out to sea, but also over their heads and to either side of them—balls of white hot flame going everywhere—

  Except where the two of them were standing.

  People were screaming and running away. She screamed, and ducked, as the birds cupped their wings around her and arched their necks over her. Everything was fire and darkness, screaming and terror.

  And then, as quickly as it had started, it was over. The beach was dark again. There was no one for yards around but her and Jack.

  And they were standing there completely unharmed, as the fiery lizards and the flame-birds disappeared as if they had never been there in the first place.

  7

  THE salamanders came at Jack’s panicked call to shield him and Katie.

  But Katie, it seemed, didn’t need shielding, as a pair of phoenixes flashed into being all on their own to protect her.

  That was all that Jack had time to take in. Then there was fire and choking, acrid smoke, and explosions all around them, and briefly, before the salamander batted it away, a wire of pain biting into his arm from a bit of burning metal.

  Then, it was over, and they were engulfed in a moment of absolute quiet, in which the only sound was the waves on the beach and the distant band on the Pier. And then the noise started again, as the crowd rushed back toward them, expecting horror and finding commonplace, two people standing there completely unharmed.

  It was incredible. No one believed it. A miracle! shouted someone, but Jack just grabbed Katie around the waist and pulled her into the crowd while it was still milling around. He was sure of only one thing; they needed to get away while things were still confused enough that they had a chance to. Peoples’ eyes were still dazzled enough that once they were in the crowd, no one knew they were the two that had survived the barrage of fire. The salamanders and phoenixes had deflected all the fireworks out to sea; not even the rocket casing remained.

  While it might have seemed good publicity to be the ones that had somehow come unscathed from what could have been a terrible accident, it was the last thing that Katie would want. Such publicity could bring whoever it was that she feared so deeply hunting for them. There would be pictures in the paper, and reporters wanting interviews. Sooner or later, someone would find out Katie was a Traveler, and there would be police assuming she was a thief, or that she had somehow caused the accident herself to try and get some money out of the city.

  No, they needed to get away, and quickly. Let the crowd search, they would be long gone.

  Katie was still limp with shock, and didn’t even object to his rough handling. He worked them both through the crowd as quickly as he could, while behind him, he heard the shouts.

  “Where are they?”

  “They were there a moment ago!”

  No one imagined they would want to get away from the interest of the crowd on the seashore—and the police and fire who were now pushing their way toward the spot as Jack and Katie went in the opposite direction. Who wouldn’t want the attention of having barely escaped death? Who wouldn’t want the congratulations, the fame, their names in the paper?

  Only us, Jack thought, and broke through the edge of a crowd that was getting denser with every new arrival. He worked his way up to the street, and to their faithful boy, still holding the horses and Paddy, but craning his neck as hard as he could to try and see what was going on down by the water.

  “Didja see, sir? Didja see?” he demanded, when he recognized them.

  Jack laughed, and he hoped it didn’t sound as shaky as he thought it was. “Only a runaway skyrocket, lad. Didn’t hit anyone, thanks to the Grace of God, and bounced back out to sea.”

  “Oh . . .” the boy said, briefly disappointed that there had been no carnage, no horrors. Jack laughed again, weakly. Boys were like that . . . loved talking about people bursting into flames or exploding, or being blown up into a thousand bits. Loved to think about it, as long as they didn’t actually see the reality. He remembered being exactly like that at this boy’s age. Stories about fighting, cannons roaring, stories about the American Wild West and Indian massacres, anything wild and bloody just fascinated him and made him and his friends act it out. Actually he had still been a little like that when he joined the Army. He didn’t get it knocked out of him until he’d seen the reality of war. His imagination hadn’t been good enough to get past the exciting explosion and flames and whizzing bullets part, and into the part where there were scattered limbs, burned flesh, and the bleeding bodies. Girls never seemed to be like that. Girls were nicer creatures than boys, really. Or maybe their imaginations were better.

  He gave the lad his penny, got a still-shocked Katie up into the trap, and clicked to Paddy, who knew there was only one place they could be going now, and broke into a trot to get there.

  • • •

  Katie felt . . . stunned. Nothing made any sense. The world didn’t contain lizards and birds made of fire that protected people from skyrockets. It didn’t. No matter what stories her mother had told her at night, huddled in the cupboard-bed in the caravan, or sitting beside a campfire. That was all silliness and magic, like the little people she used to pretend she saw in the forest, the ones with goat-hooves and horns, or the tree-girls, or the tiny flying ones with butterfly and dragonfly wings. Even if she thought she used to see lizards and birds like that in the campfire, that was all a child’s nonsense. It had never been real. Children could convince themselves they had seen anything, that a bush was a lion and a cloud was a dragon.

  But these things had been real; there was a slight scorch across the linen of her skirt at ankle-length to prove it. Her hair and dress stank of gunpowder and chemicals. It had happened. She had seen it with her own, adult eyes, and so had dozens of witnesses. They had almost been killed by a runaway rocket, and things out of her childhood daydreams had appeared out of nowhere to save them.

  It was impossible.

  It was real.

  She vibrated between the two, unable to accept that imaginary creatures had just saved her life, unable to deny that they had. She w
as so numb that she just allowed Jack to hurry her through the crowd and away from the site of the impossibility, let him practically throw her into the trap. But finally, as they got into a side street where it was quiet, where Paddy’s hoofbeats echoed cheerfully among the buildings, she seized his arm and shook it violently, making Paddy pull up, confused.

  “What just happened?” she choked out.

  Jack licked his lips. It looked as if he was thinking of a thousand different answers, but the one that he decided on was a single word.

  “Magic,” he said, in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument.

  “But it—but then—but you aren’t—” she began, thinking that surely, surely he meant something like what Lionel did—except, of course, illusion wasn’t going to shield a person from a rain of fireballs!

  “Katie, hush,” he said sharply, grabbed her wrist and gave it a little shake. “It was magic. Real magic. Now hush, and hear me out.”

  She couldn’t have said a word now if she’d had to, they were all stuck somewhere in her throat. So they sat there in the trap in the empty street while Paddy pawed the cobblestones impatiently, and he told her impossible things.

  How there were four kinds of magic—“Elemental” magic he called it—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. How some people could use this magic. How there were magic creatures that were made of this magic. How he and Lionel were able to use it, that he could use Fire and Lionel could use Air.

  How she could, too. How the fiery birds coming out of nowhere to protect her proved it. How the fact that she could see them proved it.

  “You don’t think anyone else saw them, do you?” he asked her. “Did you hear them shouting about the phoenixes and the salamanders? No, of course you didn’t. They only saw the skyrocket. Only you and I saw what came to protect us.”

  She didn’t want to believe him, but the only other explanation was that she had gone mad.

  She kept shaking her head no and he kept saying yes.

  “Are you going to be all right?” he kept asking. “I don’t want you to get into your room and have hysterics alone, I need to know if you are going to be all right.”

  Finally, when she realized that what he meant was that he was actually going to take her straight back to her room at the boarding house, if she was going to be all right, she managed to shake her head yes.

  He turned Paddy’s head, much to the pony’s disgust, and as she sat there on the seat of the trap and shook, he took her home.

  • • •

  Lionel must have been waiting at the door, listening for the sound of the pony and trap, for he practically flew out of the front of the house the moment that Jack pulled the cart up in front of the house. “What in the name of God happened?” he asked, sounding frantic. “I felt something horrible, and my sylphs were out of their minds! My—”

  Jack waved a weary hand at him. “Let’s get the things into the house, then if you don’t mind, could you take the trap back to the stable and walk back? I don’t think I’m up to it.”

  “Good God man, you stink of—” Lionel shut his mouth. “Obviously you are all right, and obviously Katie is all right or you would have sent a message. Get in the house, get some soup in you, it’s waiting on the table. I’ll be right back.”

  Jack lowered himself out of the cart, and limped heavily into the house, his stump aching worse than it had in a very long time. He thought for certain that the evening’s near-disaster had killed his appetite, but when he smelled the heavenly aroma of thick chicken soup, he realized it had not. The heavy tureen had kept it piping hot, and he was into his second bowl when Lionel returned.

  Now that the rawly ravenous gnawing in his gut was quieted—and he should have realized, working that much magic, that fast, was going to burn a lot of energy—he described to Lionel what had happened.

  Lionel sat back in his chair, light from the gas lamps showing his features clearly. “Good Lord,” he said. “Good Lord. And she—manifested.”

  “A pair of phoenixes,” Jack told him. “I didn’t have to protect her at all.”

  “And she saw them.”

  “She saw everything.” He blew out his breath in a sigh. “And all I can say is, thank heaven she’s poor and depends on the job at the music hall, or I very much doubt we would see her tomorrow. If she weren’t poor and desperate, she’d probably be packing to leave right now.”

  Lionel passed his hand over his face. “Well,” he said, finally. “At least she didn’t incinerate anyone.”

  “In fact, my salamanders just kept me from being turned into cinders. Her phoenixes deflected the worst of the rocket back out into the sea.” That little detail had only come back to him as he’d talked. He finished his soup and the last of his bread, and pushed the bowl away, reaching for his beer. He very much felt as if he had earned it.

  “Now what do we do?” Lionel said at last.

  “I suppose . . .” Jack paused for thought. “I suppose that very much depends on her.”

  • • •

  Katie would have run up the stairs and hidden in her room—except that the moment she opened the door of the boarding house, the smell of Mrs. Baird’s good soup struck her a blow and she nearly doubled over from hunger. And once again she found herself vibrating between two things that she desperately wanted to do. She desperately wanted to run up and pull the covers over her head—and she desperately wanted to eat.

  Hunger won, although she kept absolutely quiet while she ate three bowls of thick pea soup. Since everyone else was chattering gaily away, no one seemed to notice—or if they did, they probably thought she was melancholy over losing Suzie to matrimony.

  As soon as she had eaten, she scuttled up to her room; this morning she had been sad that she was going to be in it all alone—it was the first time in her life that she’d had a room all to herself, and it felt alien and not-right. But now . . . now she was intensely grateful. And she did throw her clothing onto the other bed, huddle herself into her night-dress, and pull the covers over her head, to curl into a ball and shake.

  Because . . . if all this was real . . .

  Then besides all those childhood memories of little folk in the fields and forests, and strange things dancing in the fire, there were other memories she did not want to face.

  Memories of running to the burning caravan, and being driven away from the door by fiery birds that protected her from the flames and tried to keep her from going in. Memories of beating on the door—a door that would not move so much as an inch—with fists surrounded by flame-lizards. Memories of being pushed, back, and back again by the little lizards, who had kept her from trying to break down the door, until real, human hands seized her and dragged her away.

  And oh, she did not want to see, she did not want to remember!

  But she did, and she cried, and cried, and cried, until she could scarcely breathe, until she was all out of energy and all out of thoughts, and fell at last into a sodden, grief-filled sleep.

  • • •

  She woke a little earlier than usual, feeling heavy, empty, and starving. Her eyes were sore, her cheeks were sore, and every muscle felt cramped.

  Not a good omen for a performance day . . .

  “Oh Mother Mary,” she said, almost starting to weep all over again. Of all the things she didn’t want to do right now, facing Lionel and Jack, much less a crowded music hall, was at the top of the list.

  But she didn’t have a choice. There were bills to pay. She needed to eat. And—

  For one very brief moment she toyed with the notion of just packing up and fleeing. Finding a job somewhere else . . .

  But then, good sense came back to her, because really, where else could she go that Dick wouldn’t have a good chance of finding her? Mary Small had sworn that Brighton was the only place safe for her and . . .

/>   And . . .

  Mary Small said I had magic.

  Could this have been what the old woman meant? Had Mary Small herself had a touch of this—stuff? Her head began to spin. How many other people had this? Jack said he and Lionel did . . . did Suzie? Anyone else in the music hall?

  Oh God . . .

  The gnawing in her stomach finally drove her out of bed. She washed her feverish face in the basin on the dresser and bathed her eyes, hoping to take some of the soreness out of them. She pulled on her clothing, wincing a little at the faint scorch-mark on the bottom of the skirt. At least being left out overnight had aired the gunpowder smell out. At least as far as she could tell . . .

  Suzie had left some of her things behind, and one of them was a bottle of lavender-eau-de-cologne. “I can’t bear lavender, you have it,” she’d said. So now, just to be sure, Katie sprinkled it liberally on her dress before she put it on.

  When she came down to breakfast, the entire table was abuzz—but not, as she had feared, with the story of the miraculous escape of two people from a runaway firework, but with rumors of a railway strike. Relieved that no one was going to be asking her about her outing, she ate in a hurry and rushed out of the boarding house, only to find her steps lagging, as she didn’t really want to go to the theater. . . .

  And most especially, she did not want to face Jack.

  She waited just outside the alley, though, for a big knot of the dancers to come. They all shared the same boarding house—another, not unlike Mrs. Blair’s, but that catered to dancers—and they tended to arrive and leave at the same time. Of all the professions in the music hall, it seemed that men were under the impression that the dancers had the most easily negotiated virtue. Of course . . . they were mostly right, the men. The dancers weren’t paid very much, and it wasn’t as if they were going to be able to put anything aside for their old age. Given that the general opinion was that they were no better than they should be anyway, plenty of them figured they might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and took advantage of that reputation to get as much out of the stage-door beaus as they could. But some were not particularly anxious to trade their slightly shabby virtue for anything less than a wedding ring. Those traveled in packs of four to six, and never went out with men alone. Or at least, not until they found someone willing to marry them.