Steadfast

by Mercedes Lackey

  “We never said a thing about it to Charlie nor anyone else,” Jack was going on. “In a way, it’s a good thing we’re all in theater. We’ve got . . . more flexible ideas than people with settled lives.” Whatever he read in her face seemed to encourage him, and he reached out and patted her hand lightly. “I don’t think you were wrong for marrying someone you didn’t even know, and I don’t think you’re wrong for trying to free yourself from him. There’s more to blame with that circus owner who rushed you into marrying his strongman, and you still in shock and grief, than there is to you. And you’re a smart young woman to have run off, smarter still to go somewhere the circus won’t. And then, you worked out you needed to get a divorce, who to ask about it, and you’ve gone about getting there in the most sensible way possible. I really don’t know how you’ve managed to keep your head through all the things you’ve gone through. I don’t know many people who would have. Most would just throw their hands in the air and wait for God or someone to rescue them.”

  She flushed a little at his praise. It wasn’t just the praise, either; it was the brief touch of his hand on hers, and the fact that he was praising her. If this was what country girls got, well, she wanted more of it. His hand on hers made her all a-tingle, and the look in his eyes made her think all sorts of things that no Traveler girl should ever think about a man she wasn’t married to.

  Now more words came, faster, as if he was trying to get them all out before he lost the courage to say them. “Katie, I know you might not want to think of such things as a fellow talking to you like this, because all you know of men is what that . . . foul creature did to you. I know this divorce could take a great deal of time. And I know you aren’t free now to even think about possibly finding someone else. But when you are . . . I would consider it the greatest honor . . . it would make me awfully happy . . . if you would consider me . . . letting me . . . pay my attentions to you.” He flushed deeply. “I mean . . . honorably of course. Pay court to you, is what they’d say back when I was a boy. If you’d—”

  It finally penetrated to her what he was asking, and a startled laugh bubbled up from inside her. For a moment he looked startled, then a touch angry and a great deal embarrassed, but before he could take it wrong, the words all tumbled out of her, impelled by a rush of feelings she couldn’t define, but which were exciting, breathtaking, and utterly intoxicating.

  And at that moment, she was sure, as sure as she knew anything was sure, that this was right. Maybe other people would look at the two of them and shake their heads, but she knew. They were meant to be together. They more she thought about it, moment by moment, the more certain she became.

  “That would be amazing!” she said. “I—I like you better than any fellow I have ever met, Jack, and the more I am with you, the better I like you! I wish you would!”

  It was not the most elegant way to respond, but his face cleared, and then he smiled. And he took her hand and kissed it. “Then we can start by becoming the best of friends,” he replied. Which was an answer she liked, a very great deal—not the least because it had never even entered Dick’s head to be friends with her.

  “I would like that, very, very much,” she said softly, and did not withdraw her hand, which tingled in a most delightful way where he had kissed it. She would have thrown away her good name a thousand times for this.

  Lionel returned to find them holding hands and talking about hundreds of things, flitting from subject to subject, taking it in turns to speak or listen avidly. For Katie’s part, she couldn’t hear enough about Jack and his past. She could almost see the farm he’d grown up on in her head; often there were farmers like that kind enough to let a Traveler camp on their land for a night or two, or more, if there was something about the farm that they could do. Katie’s Da was no tinker, and no strong man, but he didn’t shirk work, and often during hop season, the whole family would camp with all manner of folks, Travelers, city people, and wandering workers who came for the harvest, and take part in the hop-picking. From what Jack said, his Da had been the sort that Travelers could depend on to treat everyone fair, and the sort no Traveler was allowed to steal from. She was glad Jack’s Da and Ma were still alive so she could meet them. She hoped his sisters wouldn’t make a problem because she was a Traveler—though she didn’t mind at all being inside four walls, not like some Travelers who couldn’t abide it, so perhaps she just wouldn’t say anything, and ask Jack not to.

  Already, in the back of her mind, there were vague stirrings of plans. They would stay at the music hall, of course. Lionel needed them. Charlie needed her, at least for as long as this craze for Russian dancers lasted. She knew Jack had rooms of his own nearby; they would probably be big enough for two, she didn’t take up much space. By September, she would have enough money for the divorce. Maybe by the time winter set in things would be quiet enough at the music hall that they could take a week or two to get married and just be completely together for a bit.

  And it seemed that Jack couldn’t hear enough about her life—or at least the part of it before Dick. He said wonderful things about her Da and Ma, and he even said he used to envy Travelers as a boy, always going somewhere new, and doing interesting things. Romantic, he called it. She doubted that he would have found the going hungry and cold parts all that romantic, but she wasn’t going to ruin it in his mind.

  When Lionel came in, she saw his eyes take in how closely they were sitting together, and that they were holding hands—and saw little smile-creases appear in the corners of his eyes. But he didn’t say anything, he just sat down in his chair and let them separate naturally. For Katie’s part, it was also reluctantly. But it wouldn’t be proper, nor polite, to act so in front of Lionel, so they both sat back in their chairs, and she folded her hands in her lap to wait and see what he had to say.

  “As I expected, my little library was bereft of information on Fire Magic, except in how it works with Air Magic,” he said, quite as if he had found them exactly as he had left them, and not “canoodling,” as Peggy would have called it.

  “Well, that’s information we already knew,” Jack pointed out, “Since you and I have worked together often enough. You’d think there would be more than that in your books.”

  “I don’t have a large library, just what I inherited from my uncle,” Lionel said, “And I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to get more books. Most magicians and all the Masters are rather cautious about who they talk to about their libraries, and insist on you coming to them. Then you have to work out if they have a spare copy, or if they’ll allow you to make a copy, which, since it’s by hand, takes a great deal more time. These books are not the sort of thing one can pick up in a shop.”

  “You would think,” Jack replied, a bit crossly, as Lionel fanned himself, “That the White Lodge would be a little more helpful in getting books out to the rest of us. There have to be some good general books about all four forms of Elemental Magic, and it’s deuced difficult for those of us who never saw the magic of another Element to try and help out another magician. We don’t all own family libraries the size of this house, after all! How hard would it be to get a private printing of some of the more useful pieces and offer it to the rest of us?”

  Katie could tell this was a long-held grievance of his. She had the feeling it was not the first time he’d made this sort of complaint to his friend.

  Lionel shrugged. “Well, we are all mere mages, and rather below the notice of the White Lodge in London unless they happen to need more bodies than there are Masters hereabouts.” He flicked the fan in the direction of the garden. “We are the sparrows of the Kingdom, and they are the hawks. It’s quite true that they do good work in guarding the unknowing herd from nasty things, but I wish they’d remember we do quite as much as they do, even if we are only eating up the bugs that would spoil the harvest and not fighting the great monsters. But they never seem to unless something happens an
d they find themselves forced to rely on one of us.”

  Jack laughed. “Oh, yes, they’re all ‘Tommy go away’ until they need soldiers. And somehow they never seem to grasp that the soldiers do better when they’ve got the best guns in their hands.” But he didn’t sound bitter about it. “That’s all right; I never had that much teaching out of books. Maybe mere mages learn their magic better and easier by following their instincts and having someone along to guide. Maybe we don’t need all the rules and faradiddle the Masters seem to think they need.”

  “It’s entirely possible. I’ve gotten along all my life that way, and so have you. I think we know more about doing a great deal with a very little, certainly. If ever they find themselves cut off from the majority of their power, they’d probably be as helpless as any man you pulled off the street. And most of them are toffs, anyway,” Lionel said dismissively. “Reasonable, often fairly likeable toffs, but toffs just the same. It never occurs to them that we’re any different from—oh—a valet. Or a butler. Useful but not someone you invite for a brandy and a cigar.”

  “Hmm hmm,” Jack murmured. “Officers and ge’mun.”

  They nodded sagely at each other. Katie felt a little lost, but then, she often felt that way around men who were great friends—it was as if they had a language all their own. And they forgot, sometimes, that there was anyone else about.

  But it seemed after all that they had not forgotten her, because both of them turned to her in the next moment.

  “So!” Lionel rubbed his hands together, as if he was getting ready to do some great work. “We’ve made a good start on some basic things, Katie, but you didn’t ask any questions. Do you have any?”

  “You already answered the only ones I had . . . about feeling as if I was full of Fire somehow, and feeding it off to the salamanders.” She tilted her head to one side, inviting any further information, if they had any.

  Lionel leaned back in his chair. “That, I did find something useful about. It seems that, now and again, Air magicians are able to do something similar—and Masters of all four Elements always can. It’s something like this. You evidently have the ability to store that magic, rather like storing rainwater in a barrel. Jack merely lets the magic flow through him, rather than storing it, for instance. I do the same. You, however, hold onto a fair bit of it. There comes a point where you are full, and you either have to stop taking it in, or drain it off. Working with magic all day for the first time, you got filled up. You can hold it, but that requires getting used to holding it. I know it made you feel uneasy.”

  She nodded. “A bit. Like I’d et a bit too much. Like I was restless beneath my skin.”

  “Well, if you ever have to do something quite large, you’ll need to store it for at least a while,” Lionel replied, fanning himself. “But for now, you can either drain it off as you did, by offering it to your Elementals, or you might be able to make objects to store the magic in, called Talismans.”

  “I’ve heard of those. In stories my Ma told me,” she said.

  “They’re often spoken of in fairy tales—and you will discover as we go along there is a great deal that is true in fairy tales.” Lionel gave her a decisive nod. “Making Talismans is useful, since that allows you to keep extra magic about if you need it, but it’s dangerous, because such things tend to attract people and things that want the magic for themselves. It’s difficult to shield them, impossible to hide them if you can’t shield them. Unless you are making some just before a great work, I find they are more trouble than they are worth.”

  “The Masters feel differently, of course,” Jack interrupted. “But then the Masters can do a lot of things we can’t, including making shields for things that are permanent and don’t need work or thinking about.”

  Lionel went on. “Feeding your Elementals is useful, since it will cause them to think very highly of you, and will make them more inclined to help you when you need it, but some might consider it wasteful, as opposed to making Talismans, which will certainly be useful to you at some time or other.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Not me. I’d rather have friends than things.”

  “Well said.” Lionel looked very satisfied. “And on that happy note, shall we have our tea? I think Mrs. Buckthorn has just finished laying it out.”

  After tea, they practiced the shields and magic-gathering more—or rather, Katie practiced while Lionel and Jack watched. This time, now that she was aware of it, she could actually feel how she was drinking in the magic power she didn’t use in making the shields. And when she started to feel tired again, with their encouragement, she called a couple more of her salamanders and fed them—and this time they were joined by a handful of shy little Fire sprites, and a glowing bird.

  Once again, when she was done, she was ravenous. “Why am I so hungry?” she asked, as they went in to a lovely cold supper, complete with ice cream. This was a treat that Katie had seldom enjoyed—it was far too expensive for her parents to have gotten for her more than twice, both times being on her birthday, when they had all been at a Fair.

  “You’re hungry, because it takes physical energy to move magic power,” Jack explained, as they helped themselves off the buffet; lovely cold asparagus, and several kinds of pickles, cress and cucumber sandwiches, cold ham, cheese, cold boiled eggs, sliced tomatoes. “That’s why we tell new magicians that they should never do with magic what they can do with their hands. It might look a treat to snap your fingers and light a candle, but it pulls more strength out of you to do that than it would to walk down to the shops, buy some matches, walk back and light the candle with one of those. So, you’ve been working as hard as if you were dancing, and now you’re hungry.”

  “Couldn’t I—I don’t know—use the magic? Eat it like food or something?” she wanted to know. “I’d rather eat real food, it’s much nicer, but it would be good to know if I could.”

  They all sat down at the table. Mrs. Buckthorn had already eaten, since they had gone past their usual supper time, so it was just the three of them, as the shadows deepened outside, and the bit of sky you could see through the dining room window turned to a darker blue. Definitely sunset. “Supposedly, yes,” Lionel said. “Supposedly, there are mystics who can do that. I’ve never known any, I’ve never met any, and I suspect they need at least a little real food to turn the trick. Most of them are supposed to be in India and China, and it could be like all of those stories out of India and China, all bosh.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, and tucked into the repast.

  Jack offered to accompany her back to the boarding house; the idea of him stumping painfully along beside her made her ache for him, but she forced a light laugh. “Oh, no need, and I know you two are buzzing inside with all the business you want to discuss without me being here. True?”

  The sheepish looks on their faces told her that she had struck the mark fair.

  “All right then, tomorrow is a working day, so I will let you get to that, and I will get myself some sleep so I am fit for double duty!” She saluted them with two fingers, as the saucy little chorus girls did in their “Only The Admiral’s Daughter” number. “Don’t stay up too late!” she said, and Mrs. Buckthorn let her out.

  • • •

  • • •

  She went to bed happy, and dreamed again, dreamed of all those fiery creatures, but this time, they were clearly pleased with her. She walked through a space in which they all had gathered, an arrangement of rocks and gigantic crystals in pleasing shapes, although she couldn’t tell from the darkness overhead if she was indoors or out—or if here there was any real difference between the two. The ground was a sort of soft sand without any rocks or sharp things in it. When she entered the space, it was as if she was entering something that was not as special as a party, but not as ordinary as a simple crowd, the sort you might encounter around a village inn.

 
This time, she was something of the center of attention. The ones that had been aloof smiled at her, or gave the impression of smiling. The ones that had been shy flitted around her. The ones that had been friendly flocked to her like the little birds Jack had described eating out of his hand.

  It was the happiest dream she had ever had in her life. It was as if she was at a gathering full of good friends, all of whom were fond of her.

  These were the Fire Elementals in their true forms; she understood that now. Waking, she could only see them imperfectly—sleeping, she was somehow able to slip over into their world and walk among them. They were pure, innocent in a way no mortal person she had ever met could be innocent, not even a child. Despite the fact that some of them were clearly far, far more powerful than she could even dream, her overwhelming impulse regarding them was to protect them.

  It was in that moment of realization of how truly innocent these beings were that she knew, this time in her heart and without reservation, that Jack was right. That no matter how much she hated Dick—no matter how much she wanted to be rid of him—no matter how badly he hurt her—she could not bear to let that innocence be ruined by turning them into murderers on her behalf.

  Even as she thought that, she felt something . . . enormous . . . looming up behind her back. She turned, quickly, and saw something like a huge, jeweled column reaching upward. Except it wasn’t a column, and those weren’t jewels. It was a neck and chest, supported by two legs that ended in clawed talons, each talon as long as her arm, talons as clear and glittering as crystal, and the jewels were actually scales covering the creature that sparkled and scintillated with power.

  She gasped a little, and her gaze was drawn up and up—and the creature bent its long, long neck and looked down at her, as flaming wings fanned out to either side of it.

  Now she knew what it was. It was a dragon, a white dragon, though it reflected every color she could name and some she couldn’t in its iridescent scales. It brought its head down until she was almost nose-to-nose with it, and the hot scent of its breath was in her nostrils. It breathed over her, and her hair floated away behind her from the gentle force of its breath, hot, and spicy.