Steadfast

by Mercedes Lackey

  Since that was precisely what she had been thinking, she ducked her head a little, guiltily. Still. “Why not?” she demanded.

  “Because, it’s one thing when you aren’t aware of it. That puts a sort of barrier of innocence between you and the Elementals.” He sucked on his lower lip a moment. “It’s like you have a big, dangerous dog, except you don’t know it’s dangerous, it’s just your dog. And maybe someone comes for you, and the dog attacks. You didn’t order it to attack, and the dog wouldn’t unless he sensed danger. But now you know it’s dangerous. So say some fellow comes along and cheats you and you get angry. And the dog knows you’re angry and starts growling. And then you don’t stop him, and the dog attacks. Did the fellow who cheated you deserve to get his arm bit off?”

  She wanted to say “yes,” because she’d been in places and times when someone cheating her and her parents out of the bit of money they needed to live was just as bad, in her estimation, as being attacked. But . . . well, in the eyes of the law, it wasn’t.

  Clearly it wasn’t, in Jack’s eyes. And she didn’t want to disappoint him, somehow.

  “I suppose not,” she said, reluctantly.

  “Miss Kate.” Jack looked at her sternly. “When you got any kind of power, you’re obliged to use it properly. That’s what a soldier learns, or at least, the good ones do. A soldier has a dangerous, bad thing with him all the time, a gun. Easy thing to kill with. He has to think about that all the time—not just when he’s following orders, but because he has it with him all the time, he has to think about it when there’s no fighting going on, and it might be tempting to use that gun in bad ways. Let’s talk about that big dog and the fellow who cheated you. You’re standing there and the dog is growling at the fellow. You know the dog is going to attack. You got power, you’re obliged to use it properly. So what would the proper thing to do be?”

  “Grab his collar, I suppose,” she said, feeling a bit sulky.

  “Aye, and you could say ‘my dog don’t like it that you cheated me, and my fingers aren’t strong, so they just might not be able to hold him,’” Jack pointed out. “And you could say ‘you just put the money you cheated me of on the path and go on home and I won’t be mad and he won’t want to tear your throat out no more.’ That’s properly using the power. And if he laughs at you, well, you warned him, and if the dog does get away from you—really get away, not just that you let it go—it’s on his own head, then.”

  “But that’s a dog—” she protested. “He can see the dog, he can hear the dog. I can warn him about the dog.”

  “And your Elementals are more dangerous yet, because most folks can’t see nor hear ’em, and you can’t warn ’em without looking like a loony.” He folded his arms over his chest. “It’s all on you, do you see? It’d be as if my gun had a mind of its own. If I wasn’t in uniform, and I got mad at someone, and my gun came out and shot ’em.”

  “Well . . . why is it all right to ask salamanders to come light flashpots, and not these other things?” she persisted. “If the Elementals can think, can’t they think for themselves? What if it wasn’t just someone who I was angry with? What if it was someone who really was going to hurt me?”

  • • •

  Jack’s mind went absolutely still at that point, because this was the closest that Kate had yet come to revealing the existence of her brutish husband. Would she?

  He decided it was worth trying to coax her into it. “Is there someone who is really going to hurt you, Miss Kate?” he asked—gently, and without any tone of accusation. “If there is, you should tell me about it, both because of the magic and because I think I can call myself your friend.”

  She was silent, but she had gone a bit pale, and she wasn’t eating the sandwich in her hand, which was very unlike her. She had the healthiest appetite in a female—outside of a country-bred girl—that he had ever seen. It took a great deal to put her off her food.

  “Why would it be wrong for the Elementals to get rid of someone that I really knew wanted to hurt me?” she asked, finally. “Someone who’d hurt me before?”

  “Because . . .” he sighed. “I’m not sure how to properly explain this. Maybe because we’re supposed to do unto others as we’d like to be done by—not do by others as they done to us.”

  Oh she was a right little heathen, she was. He could see the rebellion in her eyes. She didn’t like that, and she didn’t agree with it, not one bit. He could sympathize, but he shouldn’t.

  “Let’s go back to that dog,” he said. “What do you think people do about a dog that has attacked a person—even if the dog was defending the person?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never had a dog,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “They kill it,” he said, bluntly. “Dogs aren’t given trials.”

  “But—that’s not fair!” she blurted immediately. “If the dog—”

  “The dog has learned it is acceptable to attack a human, and you have shown you can’t or won’t control him,” he pointed out bluntly. “Now, perhaps nothing will happen. Perhaps he will continue to be a good dog and loyal, and only attack when provoked or in defense of you. But perhaps he will not. Perhaps, now that he has learned he can attack a human and not be punished for it, he will decide that the next time a human has something he wants, he will take it. Perhaps that human will be a child, or a woman. Constables will not take such a risk, although,” he added with a touch of bitterness, “If you are sufficiently wealthy and the dog is sufficiently valuable, they will believe everything you say and merely demand that the dog be kept muzzled at all times. The laws that apply to the rest of us often do not seem to apply to the titled and wealthy.”

  She nodded, and did not appear shocked at such sentiments. Well, she was a Traveler, after all, and Travelers were well-schooled in the lesson that there were those with privilege and there were those with none—and the Travelers were in the latter group.

  “But that is neither here nor there,” he continued. “Elementals do not think as we do. We don’t know how intelligent—or not—they are. We don’t know what the consequences would be for some of them to learn they can harm humans at will. We do know that there are Elementals of all four sorts that hate humans, and will take any opportunity to harm them.”

  She gaped at him. “There are?”

  He nodded. “Terrible things have happened when such creatures were given the power by a magician or a Master of wicked intent to wreak their will on the world. And we do not know how they came to be this way. Did it begin as something as simple as—defending a friend? Like the dog? Once they travel that road, do they turn into something evil?”

  “You don’t know that they do!” she protested.

  “And we don’t know that they don’t.” He shook his head. “I have seen what happens when men who were once good become used to doing terrible things. The war in Africa—I don’t pretend to be a politician. I don’t know if Britain was wrong to be there, or right. But I do know this; we were ordered to do increasingly terrible things there, we Tommies. They told us that because the Boer men kept slipping off into the bush to fight us, that we had to take all but the barest means to survive from the women and children on the farms, because the farms were clandestinely supplying the men. Then they told us that since that wasn’t working, we had to burn the farms out. Then they told us since that wasn’t working, we had to round up the women and children, throw them into prison camps where they starved, and if they didn’t starve, they died of disease.”

  The words had come hard to him; they came hard every time he had to speak them. He loved his country and his King—then, Queen. He just didn’t like what he’d been asked to do. It had made him sick then; it still made him sick, and the fact that he himself had not been personally forced to do those things did not make him any less sick about it. Because that had all been luck—and he had seen what had ha
ppened to those who had.

  • • •

  Katie really knew nothing of what went out outside of the places she herself had lived and roamed. She’d known there had been a war, and that it had been in Africa—but that was all she knew.

  But this man, this fine man who she trusted, and who had become her friend—it was that war that had taken his leg, and from the sound of it, had inflicted an even deeper wound on his spirit.

  Then he told her what men like him had been forced to do, and it shocked her to the core. The pain in his voice, on his face . . .

  It made her hurt for him.

  “I never had to do any of that,” he was saying, though from the sound of it, he might just as well have done. “I was lucky, or maybe my Elementals twisted my luck to keep me from it. But I knew men who did, and . . . it changed them, Miss Kate. It changed them, and mostly for the bad. Some, it made harder; those were the worst, I think. It made them hard, made them into men who were sure, as sure as they were that the sun came up in the east, that anyone who wasn’t British was . . . only a little higher than a beast, and deserved whatever the Crown decided to do to him. Self-righteous they became . . . and as a consequence, were anything but righteous.” He passed a hand over his face; his complexion was a little gray. “Some went mad—a bit, or a lot. Their minds just couldn’t take the cruelties they were asked to do. Some just deserted, ran out into the bush and either joined the Boers or went native. Most are like me; torn up inside, trying to reconcile what they think they are with what they did.”

  He shook his head again. “That is what I am trying to tell you, Miss Kate. That is what doing as you were done by does to you. It eats your heart. It’s like acid in your soul.” He looked into her eyes. “Miss Kate, it changes you. And if it changes you, it changes the Elementals even more. Would you want that? Think of them—if you won’t think of yourself, think of them, and ask yourself if you want to change them for the bad that way, and have that on your conscience.”

  Suddenly she found words coming out of her mouth that she had no intention of saying. “I’m married, Mister Prescott,” she heard herself saying, her voice gone hard and bitter. “I’m married to a wicked man, a brute. A man who hurt me, and scared me, a man who took the money I earned and spent it on whores and gin. A man who might well kill me for running from him. Are you saying that I don’t have the right to defend myself from him if he comes for me? Are you saying I should just lay down and let him beat me or kill me? That I shouldn’t let this power I have defend me?”

  She couldn’t believe she had just said that. She was thinking it, of course, but she couldn’t believe she had just come out and said it.

  She expected him to—well, lecture her, or something. Tell her that she was wrong and she should go back to her husband, that he was her rightful superior and she must have done something wrong to make him beat her. That it was her duty, since she had married him, to be and do whatever he said. That—well, all the usual things.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he sighed, and looked as if all the pain of the world was weighing on him.

  “Miss Kate,” he said, wearily. “You still have a choice. You know you do. You can ask your Elementals to watch for him and warn you of him, so you can run from him. You can get a divorce, and then if he lays a hand on you, it’ll be the law on him. You can take ship for another country—I’m sure you have enough money by now, or will soon. You can hide. You probably have a dozen things you can do, if you need to. Or . . . you can ‘defend’ yourself by letting yourself get so angry that your Elementals kill him for you, knowing that is what you are doing. And that would be murder on your part, and it would corrupt them. And you know it.”

  She felt her face flushing, partly in anger and partly in shame. Because she knew he was right.

  She hated it, but she knew he was right.

  “It’s not fair,” she said, sullenly and angrily. “It’s not fair. Why is it that he can do whatever he wants, and I can’t?”

  “Because you are good, Kate,” Jack said quietly, putting one hand over hers as she clenched them together. “Because you are good, and he is not. It’s always harder to be good. But it’s worth it, in the end.”

  The touch of his hand on hers was unexpected, and so was the effect. She went very, very still, shocked into stillness by the strange, almost electric feeling that came over her from that touch. It was like nothing she had ever felt before. Everything came into sharper focus, and she was aware of a thousand tiny little things—mostly about him. How gentle his hand was, so unlike Dick’s, as if her hands were fragile flowers he was being careful not to crush. How there were lines of pain that made his face look older than he really was—but lines of laughter, and smile lines about his mouth, too. How everything about him was clean, trim, and in order—and nothing could have been more in contrast with Dick’s slovenliness. Merely looking into his eyes put fire in her veins.

  “Kate,” he said, so quiet it was almost a whisper. “We care about you. We don’t want you lost. We’ll help you, but it’s you that has to make the choice.”

  “What choice?” she asked, choking a little on the words.

  “Joy instead of anger. Peace instead of hate. Come to your magic like a child would, happy in the new gift, and master it as an adult does, with reason and control. Give over the anger. Let go of the pain so it stops blinding you, and you can see all the other choices you have. I know it’s hard, mortal hard, but it’s worth it. Trust me.”

  And she did trust him. Reluctant though she was . . . because the anger had been what had saved her in the first place, and propelled her out of Dick’s clutches and onto the road. Fear had only kept her paralyzed. Anger had given her strength.

  “Anger will burn out and leave you with nothing, Kate,” he said, as if he was reading her mind. “These past few weeks—have you needed that anger? No. Have you even felt it? I don’t think so. And aren’t you the better for that?”

  She couldn’t argue with that, either. It hadn’t been anger that had helped her create those dances. It hadn’t been anger that had propelled her steps on the stage.

  Slowly, she let out her breath.

  “I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll try.”

  And another electric thrill passed through her as he tightened his hand slightly on hers. “That’s all I ask, Kate. That’s all anyone could ever ask.”

  11

  JACK felt as if he had just fought a major battle as he stumped back to his desk. He was exhausted, but filled with a sense of triumph.

  And filled with something else as well . . .

  Something he really didn’t want to think about just at this moment, when the performers were coming back from tea (or the pub) and he had to guard the door like the proverbial dragon against interlopers.

  Already word had gotten around about “the Russian’s” performance. This hall was too small to rate a review yet—not unless she generated enough of a sensation on her own. Perhaps the third week in, the papers would get around to sending their reviewers.

  But there were people out there buying tickets for the evening performance because of what they had heard in their boarding houses last night. And he knew this, because of what the chorus girls and band members were saying as they trickled in; some of them could always be counted on to linger at the ticket booth just to hear what people were saying. It made for great gossip fodder if there was someone they didn’t much like.

  Or, in this case, if it was someone they liked, like Katie, it made for something cheerful to gush about. Plus . . . well, there was always the chance that if Katie started filling the hall to overflowing, Charlie might put on another couple shows, which would mean more money for everyone. Toffs sometimes hired on part of a music hall show on a dark day to entertain at parties—so far that hadn’t happened very often within Jack’s memory, but if Katie proved popular enough, that w
ould provide another source of income.

  “There’s a line, Jack, wouldjew berlieve it?” one of the girls gushed as she edged past the desk. “There ain’t been a line at the box since . . . well, since Charlie managed to get George Lashwood!”

  Jack remembered that well. Like too many performers, Lashwood had been a bit improvident, and his solution to the problem was to double-book himself, doing two halls a night—an early one here, then his regular, and an “after midnight” show at the Brighton Hall.

  Well, this was a good sign. He wouldn’t count on it, though, and he wouldn’t tell Katie yet. It might be a fluke. He didn’t want to get her hopes up.

  Nor to give her stage fright, either.

  For a brief moment, he felt a sense of dislocation—not uncommon among Elemental Mages, actually. Here he was, worrying about the box office and popularity of his friend Katie—his friend Katie, who could, if she decided that was what she wanted and persuaded her Elementals to help, probably burn this music hall to the ground. He and every other Elemental Magician led double lives, balancing the “real world” against the other that they lived and worked in. And sometimes that other world seemed . . . insane. Impossible.

  Just for a moment, then everything would settle into place again, and he would be back to juggling the two sides.

  He was just grateful that tomorrow was a dark day. It could not have been timed more perfectly to get the lesson home to the girl while she was still open to it.

  • • •

  Katie was both glad and sorry that tomorrow was a dark day. Glad because at least she would not have to juggle the magic business with the vastly more important business of properly getting her job done. Sorry because she just knew that Jack and Lionel were going to make a full day of it for her. She’d get no rest this dark day . . .