Steadfast

by Mercedes Lackey

  One such pack came around the corner before she had waited too long, and she added herself to it. She managed to get past Jack without him being able to do more than see she was there, and into the dressing room.

  And suddenly, surrounded by all the things that were normal and every-day, she started to wonder if maybe she hadn’t imagined all of that. Perhaps she had fallen and struck her head, and the entire incident had been a sort of fever dream. After all, as she listened to the dancers chattering away, she didn’t overhear anything about a runaway skyrocket. Surely that should have been something of a sensation by now. . . .

  As she put on her rehearsal clothing, she started to feel embarrassed. Poor Jack . . . what must he have thought, when she started babbling about lizards and birds? He surely couldn’t really have told her all that nonsense about magic. He must have been trying to talk sense into her . . . or maybe she was just imagining that there had been any sort of conversation whatsoever.

  She hurried out to the stage; thanks to waiting for the gaggle of girls, she was a little late, and Lionel was looking a bit anxious when she turned up.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said.

  “I heard about your—accident,” Lionel said, sounding unusually tentative. “Jack told me. Are you all right?” She flushed.

  “I clearly made a right fool out of myself,” she replied. “At least I can put that down to a knock on the head rather than drinking too much—all we had were lemonades. I’m fine now, and I’m ready to work.”

  Lionel looked at her oddly, but didn’t say anything more, just started the run-through of the act. For her part, she tried to behave entirely as if nothing at all had happened, and aside from a couple little hitches with the equipment, the rehearsal went fine.

  Well, fine except that Lionel kept asking if she was certain she was all right. It made her nervous, and she wondered just what it was Jack had told him—and what she had told Jack!

  Finally, when she was helping him arrange the equipment in the wings for the matinee, she asked, nervously, “Are you having second thoughts?”

  “About?” He turned to look at her, his face surprised.

  “About whether—I’m a good assistant—” she faltered.

  He laughed, and it sounded surprised. “No, no, nothing of the kind. I just want to be certain that you are feeling all right.”

  “I’ll be better with a bit of luncheon,” she said, trying to sound perfectly well and at ease. “I’ll be right back.”

  She hurried into her street clothing and whisked past Jack a second time. She really did not want to know, now, what had happened after that skyrocket . . . went awry. Surely it could never have come too near them. Surely what had happened was that it had burst too close over the water, and she had been startled, and fallen, and hit her head. That was the only rational explanation.

  And surely a good, strong cup of tea and a thick, commonplace sandwich would drive the last of the boggarts away.

  • • •

  “Lionel, I need to speak with you!” A voice trained to bellow out slightly bawdy songs so they could be heard all the way to the back of the uppermost gallery arrested Lionel in his tracks as he hurried after Katie, intending to catch her before she escaped the music hall. He turned.

  Peggy Kelly ambled her way across the stage toward him, making her leisurely way, the plumes on her hat bobbing, her ample bosom making her look like a ship in full sail. It would have been unspeakably rude to just run away from her, so he waited, but not patiently. He really needed to get hold of Katie, take her somewhere that was quiet, sit her down, and make her understand that none of what had happened last night was due to a hit on the head! Of all the possibilities he and Jack had discussed last night, this was not one of them!

  But Peggy Kelly had other plans in mind. “Come along to my dressing room, you reprobate,” she said, fondly, but in a tone that warned him she was not going to take any argument from him as she took his arm. “I have a few things to discuss with you. And no, before you ask, it cannot wait.”

  Inwardly, he groaned, but he put a good face on it, and allowed himself to be towed off to Peggy’s dressing room. It was one of the better ones here, as befitted someone who was a “star turn.” Small, of course, but Peggy’s dresser and personal maid had made the most of it. She motioned to him to take a seat on a surprisingly comfortable chair, lowered herself onto a divan, and whisked a napkin away that was covering the little table between the two. Somewhat to his mild surprise, there were two bottles of beer there, and a plate of extremely nice pub sandwiches.

  “Now, eat, and listen to me, and don’t interrupt me until I am finished,” she said, helping herself to a sandwich and one of the bottles of beer. “That new assistant of yours—she’s—”

  “—I know, she’s a Traveler,” Lionel said impatiently, and started to get up. “Peggy, if you don’t mind—”

  “But I do mind, and you can set yourself right back down, my lad!” she said sharply, so sharply that he did as he was told. “Now I told you not to interrupt me! That’s not what I brought you here to talk to you about! You think I have anything against Travelers?” She snorted. “That little Traveler gel has herself a very great burden of fear and troubles on her, and you need to know why, and you need to know now before the troubles come here, as they might.”

  Lionel listened, growing increasingly astonished, as Peggy laid out in no uncertain terms all of Katie’s “troubles.” He was a little irritated that after all of his kindness to her, the girl hadn’t come to him for help, but only a little. After all, he was a man, and he might be expected to take the man’s part in this; it was more natural for her to confide in a woman, once she knew she wouldn’t be condemned out of hand for running away from her husband. And Peggy was well known to be a divorcee. It was logical for Katie to have gone to the older woman, really.

  “Well?” Peggy asked, watching him shrewdly when she had finished.

  “Well, clearly we are going to have to help her,” Lionel replied, a little nettled that Peggy would doubt his support. “You needn’t ask, we shall. By Jove, when I think of a brute of a man beating that poor little thing that must have been half his weight, well, it’s a damn good thing that I can’t get my hands on him, that’s all.” He felt his lip curling with contempt. And it is a damned good thing for me that my powers wouldn’t extend to harming him. However provoked, Alderscroft would hunt me down like a mad dog if I used them that way. “I think that explains why she was so happy to wear a mask on stage—she doesn’t want to chance anyone recognizing her.” He licked his lips. “Divorces aren’t cheap, are they?” he ventured.

  The plumes on Peggy’s hat bobbed as she nodded. “Not cheap, no. And if she’s not going to decide she needs to starve herself to save for it, you will need to find a way for her to make a bit more money.” Peggy made it quite clear with her attitude that he had better come up to the mark and do so quickly, or he would be answering to her.

  “Of course, of course. . . .” That was the least of his concerns. He didn’t think that Katie was overreacting by wanting to wear a mask on stage. She knew this fellow better than anyone, and she would also know exactly how possessive and persistent he would be when his “property” bolted. “Peggy, just how much of a brute was—is—this fellow, could you tell from what she told you?” He was actually rather anxious to know the answer to that question. He might have to find a way to restrain Jack from hunting the man down and shooting him when the doorkeeper found out.

  “Not as bad as my second,” Peggy said complacently, and turned her sandwich around a bit in her plump, pink fingers so she could bite a corner off of it. “It sounds as if he only knocked her about a little bit; it was his strength that did the hurting. But she’s right terrified of him, and I think he’s brutish and stupid enough that if he’s drunk or in a temper, he’s quite likely to try and kil
l her for running away. At the very least, if he’s drunk or angry, he won’t hold back his strength, and might kill her by accident. I’d keep that from Jack, if I were you. He’s taken a fondness for her, and she for him, if my old bones are right.”

  “Oh your old bones are not wrong . . .” He chewed on his lower lip, took a drink of beer, and finished his own sandwich. “Well, let me think this over. Really the best, first thing we can do is get her free of this brute. Since that takes money, well, then money we must find. Maybe something will turn up in the way of an extra job for her. She’s already in the chorus, but that pays almost nothing . . .”

  “You’re a good lad, Lionel. You’ll think of something.” She patted his knee and finished her beer, the lace flounces on her sleeve fluttering like the wings of a butterfly—or a sylph. “Now you run along back to your dressing room. We’ve a matinee to get ready for.”

  “Good gad, is it that late?” he asked, startled, and looked at his watch. He’d entirely missed a chance to get Katie alone. There would be absolutely no time between the matinee and the evening performance. He would never be able to catch her after the evening performance if she decided to bolt back to her boarding house. “Blast. It is. Well . . . thank you, Peggy.”

  “You just do right by that little gel,” Peggy warned him. “No woman deserves to be knocked about like a stray dog. I won’t hear of it. She’s your responsibility, now that you know what’s what.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  Back in his dressing room, he looked up to see a sylph perched on his mirror. “Well now what do I do?” he asked the little thing, who cocked her head to peer down at him. “The girl has talked herself into believing none of what she saw is real. And we have to figure out a way for her to earn quite a bit of extra money. I don’t suppose you have any ideas, do you?”

  The sylph shrugged, and vanished in a poof of sparkling magic. He sighed.

  “Of course not,” he grumbled, applying himself to the business of getting on his makeup. “And it’s not as if I was one of those poncy Masters with pots of money sitting around like Alderscroft. God above knows that would solve everything, one way or another.”

  • • •

  The show went well, and Katie enjoyed her turn with the chorus dancers; the blond, pink, and white wigs they wore in their three numbers were a good disguise, and she was always kept at the back to fill out the group anyway. Suzie had held that particular job as well as that of Lionel’s assistant, and she had seen to it that Katie got her audition before anyone else had a look-in. Katie was better than any of the girls in the chorus, but was also clever enough to look only as good as the best, so she wasn’t put up front.

  The more she convinced herself that it had all been due to a silly bump on the head, the better she felt. After all, she’d come to no harm, and all she’d managed to do was embarrass herself. She began to feel a great deal less strained and anxious, and in between the matinee and the evening performance, she even managed to get out to talk to Jack, making certain to catch him at a moment when there was no one about.

  He was all alone at his desk, looking very much cooler than the performers who had slipped out for a smoke and a pint, and when he saw her coming, she was relieved to see he didn’t look at all put out with her.

  “I’m horribly sorry, and I hope I didn’t embarrass you too much,” she said, a little breathlessly. She did not want him to be upset with her in any way. He and Lionel had been so kind—and she had come to enjoy those dark-day dinners with both of them so very much. She had friends again, friends that didn’t look down on her for being a Traveler, friends that talked to her like an intelligent person and not an object. They knew she was a Traveler; she didn’t want them to start thinking she was touched!

  The doorkeeper blinked, looking confused. “Excuse me—embarrass you?” Jack faltered. “I don’t understand—”

  “When that runaway skyrocket came so close and I must have slipped and hit my head,” she explained. “Or maybe a piece of it hit me. I mean, I don’t remember, but I wouldn’t if it had hit me hard, now, would I? I—well, what I thought I saw doesn’t matter, I just hope—you can understand it was all a sort of fever dream, right?” She looked at him pleadingly. “I hope you don’t think I was raving mad, or that I was making things up to—to get attention.”

  Emotions passed so swiftly across his face that she couldn’t read them, but to her great relief, his expression settled into one of kind concern. “Of course not, and all you did was babble a little. I don’t remember you falling or being struck, but then I was a bit distracted, you might say. I know you were scared, and I was worried for you. I should be the one apologizing to you for not getting you seen to. If I’d known you’d been struck, I would have had you off to a doctor! I drove around for a bit to make sure you were going to be all right, but you insisted on being set down at Mrs. Baird’s boarding house, and I reckoned that you’d be all right there. Is your head sore?”

  “Not a bit—” For a moment that confused her. Because if she had hit her head badly enough to have seen—things—shouldn’t it be sore? But she resolutely shoved the thought away. She must have hit her head. Her father always said she had a hard head. He said it came from her mother’s side. He must have meant that literally as well as figuratively.

  “It’s all right then. The next time we go and watch the fireworks, we’ll do it from Paddy’s cart.” He patted the top of her head as if she had been a child, and oddly, she didn’t resent it. “I hope you’ll be the one forgiving me for not seeing you’d come to a mischief. No dizziness? You were all right on stage?”

  She nodded, relieved. “Right as rain. I remembered what you were talking about, down at the shore, how you would just accept the heat when you were in Africa, and I tried that when it started getting too warm out there. It worked! So thank you ever so, for that.”

  He made a little bow, with one hand to his heart. “My pleasure. But if you were getting warm out there, best you go toddle off to the bar and get some tea or water. And here—” He pulled out a little packet from his desk, which proved to have three hardboiled eggs and salt in a twist of paper in it. “—eat these, and if you can’t eat them all, share ’em with one of the other girls. Heat makes you not want to eat, but you ought to anyway.”

  She accepted his gift. “Thanks, ever so. You are always so good to us, Jack!”

  He smiled.

  Feeling much more at ease now, she ran back, first to the bar to get that tea, and then to the dressing room, where she shared the eggs with two of the other girls. The barmen were partial to the girls, and always gave them bread and cheese along with the tea, although they weren’t supposed to. With bread and cheese, three hardboiled eggs was really far more than one person could manage, and besides, she knew there would be plenty of soup waiting for her at supper.

  It also made the chorus girls more friendly. You could never have too many friends in this world.

  • • •

  Lionel slipped out of the alcove where he’d been hiding, listening to Jack’s conversation with Katie, once the girl had gone. He and Jack had hoped she would come try and confide in the doorman, but he was disappointed with how she had already managed to convince herself that what she had seen was a complete hallucination. He shook his head with mingled irritation and sympathy. “Hit her head!” was all he said.

  Jack shrugged. “You can’t blame the girl for not wanting to believe,” he pointed out, as he offered Lionel an egg from inside his desk. “Think about it—she’s never seen magic before, or if she did, it was something she made herself forget as soon as she was old enough to realize no one else could see it. You and I at least had it in the family, and our fathers made sure to make us understand about the magic from the time we could first see the Elementals. What’s she had?”

  “A worse time than we’d thought, apparently.” Whil
e Jack listened, increasingly appalled and angry, Lionel outlined what Peggy Kelly had told him.

  When Lionel was done, Jack was grinding his teeth so hard he finally had to force himself to stop and get a bit calmer. He might not be a Master, but the anger of an Elemental Fire Mage was nothing to be trifled with. While he couldn’t command his Elementals, they did respond to him, and they were just as likely to go out hunting for something to take his wrath out on as they were to react with indifference. In fact, given that they had elected to start showing themselves to the girl, they were more likely to look for something to hunt.

  “Right, then,” Jack said, after several steadying breaths. “Well. Right now, not much we can do about that bastard she’s shackled to.”

  Lionel made a sour face. “True. At least, not much we can do about her situation until she confides in us.”

  “When it comes to getting her more of the ready, well, our hands are pretty well tied, no matter what Peggy thinks,” Jack continued. “There are only so many jobs in this hall, and she’s taken all the ones she can legitimately take. I don’t think it’s a good idea to let her hunt more work outside this hall.”

  “Nor do I!” Lionel replied with alarm, and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “No, the only solution is to find her more work here, but—”

  “Exactly so. But. Unless, of course, some opportunity for her to make more money happens to land in our collective laps.” Jack drummed his fingers on his desk. “Which . . . it might. Your Elementals and mine now know about this, know that we need to find her a way to get enough to get shed of that bastard. Hers have known all along, but might not have realized that money was part of the solution. Well, now they do know, and the Elementals of three mages, plus the mages themselves combined, often have the effect of changing luck merely by them wanting it to change.”