Wizard Undercover

by K. E. Mills

  Bibbie’s expression changed. “I don’t feel anything. What do you feel?”

  “Afraid,” he said. “I can’t go down there, Bibbie. And I can’t stay out here, with the crowd. Too many people. I can’t see. I can’t think. I need space, I need—”

  The Grande Splotze observation tower.

  “Up there?” said Bibbie, following his gaze. “Gerald, are you sure?”

  He took her hand and pulled her with him, reckless with his potentia as he bullied tourist after tourist out of their way.

  The observation tower was closed to the public, its gate secured with chain and lock. A wave of his hand blurred him and Bibbie from detection. A single word swung the gate wide.

  “Ah … Gerald …” said Bibbie, stepping over the discarded security chain. “Perhaps you’d better—”

  He snapped his fingers twice, and the gate clanged closed and warded behind them.

  “Right,” said Bibbie, half-laughing. “Very efficient.”

  “I’m sorry, there are quite a lot of stairs,” he said, looking up. “Four hundred and twenty-three, if you’re counting. I know—” he added, as she groaned. “It’s a bugger, but there you are.”

  The cheerful band music helped them keep time as they climbed. The jostling crowd below made a sound like the ocean, no words up here, only a susurration of voices. They reached the top of the tower, panting, and gasped for air beneath the darkening sky and the distant stars.

  Bibbie moved to the viewing platform’s warded edge and looked down at the Canal, crowded with fireworks pontoons. Then she looked back over her shoulder, her eyes bright with courage.

  “Right, then, Mister Dunwoody. What now?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The fireworks were about to start any moment. Seated with Hartwig on the crowded wedding party viewing platform, since poor gouty Brunelda was still confined to her couch, Melissande craned her neck to see in between the guests from Ottosland and Fandawandi and Graff and Blonkken, across to the next platform where various and sundry minions and lackeys were laughing and chatting and drinking cider.

  Algernon Rowbotham and Gladys Slack, who’d not returned to the palace, weren’t among them.

  Oh, lord. Oh, Saint Snodgrass. I hope they’re all right.

  She also hoped the fireworks weren’t tampered with, because thanks to their special viewing platform she was sitting awfully bloody close.

  Erminium, ruler-straight in the chair on Hartwig’s other side, was making clear her opinion of spoiled rotten servants who didn’t know how to enjoy themselves quietly.

  Norbert of Harenstein, standing nearby with his young, beautiful wife, sighed and wagged a finger at the Dowager Queen. “Come, come, Erminium. It’s not so bad.”

  Swallowing, Melissande stared at him as he coaxed Ratafia’s perpetually dissatisfied mother into taking another glass of cherry liqueur. How could Norbert be involved in the plot? He was here, with his empty-headed marquise. If the fireworks had been tampered with he’d be somewhere else, surely.

  Like Volker and Dermit. They’re not here either. But then, they really are villains.

  Of course, if Gerald was wrong again, and the fireworks were safe, then perhaps Norbert was a villain, too.

  I hate this. I’ve had enough. I want to go home.

  “Melissande?” said Ratafia, who’d decided to forgive her. She stood resplendent in topaz-gold silk, with Ludwig’s arm about her slender waist, blooming like a bride. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, smiling, feeling sick enough to weep. “I’m just excited.”

  “So am I!” said Ratafia, her beautiful face aglow. “I love fireworks, and I love Luddie. This will be a perfect night!”

  Melissande nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  A perfect night, or perfectly dreadful. If only I knew which.

  “Blimey, I hate waiting,” said Bibbie. “How lucky are you, Gerald, that I’m not scared of heights?”

  Pacing the observation tower’s viewing platform, skin crawling, palms sweating, Gerald stared down at the fireworks pontoons.

  “Very. Can you feel anything yet?”

  She sighed. “No. Still not yet.”

  No. He dragged his hand down his face, felt the tremble in his fingers. Dread was alive in him now, howling through his bones.

  Damn and blast. What I wouldn’t give to be wrong.

  With a whistling rush the first fireworks ignited, tracing lines of green and gold against the deepening night sky. The crowd roared, drowning the screaming whizz of the thaumaturgically enhanced gunpowder. All the smiling upturned faces, splashed with colour, reflected wonder and joy. Next came a blossoming of flowers, gold and crimson and purple and white, promise of a distant spring.

  Bibbie turned, laughing. “Look at them, Gerald. They’re fabulous!”

  He wanted to smile back at her, to share in her wonder. But the howling dread wouldn’t let him, wouldn’t stop shaking his bones. Roiling beneath the beauty was a filthy promise of death.

  Between heartbeats, Bibbie’s pleasure died. Her face twisted with pain.

  “Gerald—”

  “I know, Bibbie! I know!”

  He fought to stay on his feet, but these thaumaturgics were worse than the blood hex, worse than what they’d faced at the Hanging Bridge. They beat him to his knees.

  “Gerald!”

  “Stay back, Bibbie!” he groaned, shuddering. “Please. Stay back.”

  With an effort he got rid of Algernon, needing to be himself. Wanting her to see him, not that counterfeit face. Just in case … in case …

  “Bloody hell, Bibs.” He was nearly sobbing. “It’s close, so damned close—”

  And then she was kneeling with him, her fingers warm and strong around his wrists. A twisting ripple and she was herself again, Gladys Slack cast aside. The brilliant blue eyes he’d missed so much were wide with fear.

  “Gerald, I don’t know how to—it’s grimoire magic, I’m not strong enough, I can’t—”

  “I can,” he said, gasping. “But not alone.”

  “Do you want me to hide you? I can do that much, at least, I can—”

  “No!” He didn’t want her anywhere near what was coming. “It might make things tricky, this time. Two potentias.”

  “Then what do you need, Gerald?” Her breath caught. “Anything. It’s yours.”

  “Tell me again, Bibs. I need to hear it.”

  She framed his face with her warm hands. Pressed her forehead to his. “I love you, Gerald Dunwoody, and I am not afraid.”

  “Damn,” he muttered, torn between delight and dismay. “Sir Alec will go right round the bend. And your uncle!”

  A small shrug. “Probably. But I say we jump off that bridge tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, and kissed her, too briefly, making the word a promise.

  Four hundred and twenty-three steps below them, the crowd roared and cheered as fireworks streaked the night sky all the glowing colours of dawn. Melissande was down there. Rightly or wrongly, she mattered more than the rest. If he failed here, her death would belong to him forever. The ensuing Splotze-Borovnik conflict would be his too, countless deaths, rivers of spilled blood, a continent plunged into chaos.

  So don’t fail.

  Something malevolent shuddered through the ether. A putrid flower, unfurling, its petals stinking of decay. Another roar from the crowd, this time pocked with alarm. There were wizards among the thousands watching, and witches. They knew.

  With an effort Gerald stood, and Bibbie stood with him. Walked beside him to the edge of the platform so he could see the tethered pontoons and the fireworks and the people he had to save.

  “I don’t know who or what I am any more, Bibbie,” he whispered. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m making this up as I go.”

  She laced her fingers with his, cool and slim. An anchor. A lifeline. “It’s all right, Gerald. I won’t let you get lost.”

  And
that was her promise. Believing it, he made his leap of faith into the dark.

  The tainted thaumaturgics in the fireworks were rank and riddled with decay, dreamed to life by a twisted soul. He felt his changed potentia quail at the touch of them, changed not so much, it seemed, as he feared. He rode the roil of dark magics through the ether like a kestrel in a storm, feeling the whip and wash toss him, feeling his soul fight to stay free. Here there was no distance, he was a mere hairsbreadth from the terrible incants. Reach out his hand and he could touch them. Reach out his mind and see them crushed.

  Provided they didn’t crush him first.

  Don’t let go, Bibbie. Don’t leave me here alone.

  He fought to remember all he knew of thaumaturgics. The lessons Reg had taught him. The things he’d learned on his own. What he’d discovered by accident in the attics at Chatterley Crescent, arguing mad experiments with Monk. And of course the grimoire magics that he’d given himself.

  Every incant created contains the seed of its own destruction. For every syllable there is a silence. For every take there must be give.

  He was standing on a viewing platform, high above Grande Splotze. Stretch up with his fingers and he’d touch the sky, catch a falling star, make the moon his toy. He could feel the ground below him and the emptiness of air. Behind his closed eyelids he saw traceries of fire.

  And fire is ravenous. Fire feeds until it’s dead.

  All the wicked, wicked magic. Before its gluttonous feast was over half the world or more would be consumed. Abandoning himself to instinct, to his remade and terrible potentia, he planted his own seed within the heart of every tainted incant. Showed it silence. Gave it death.

  The incants screamed with their dying, died cruel, died hard. He struggled not to die with them but they were tearing him apart. Tearing quickly. Or was it slowly? He’d lost all sense of time.

  The last incant perished. In its dying wake, a different, kinder silence. And then he heard, from far away, someone call his name, weeping.

  “Gerald … Gerald … it’s over. Come back. Please, please, come back.”

  Was he leaving? He didn’t want to. He had a reason to stay. Blood tasted like salt and iron. It was warm, and stank of life. He could feel somebody’s fingers, tightly interlaced with his. Someone’s tears fell on his cold face, warm as blood on snow.

  Bibbie.

  Gerald opened his eyes. He was sprawled on his back, the tower’s platform hard against his flesh and bones. But his head had a fine pillow, beautiful, wonderful Bibbie Markham’s lap, and she was stroking his hair with her cool, slim fingers, brokenly saying his name again and again. As he smiled up at her, not leaving, not dying, the crowd far below them roared its approval … and in the starry night sky above them untainted fireworks danced with joy.

  * * *

  A princess should carry smelling salts upon her person at all times.

  It was one of the oddest admonitions she’d ever encountered, growing up, but as she bent over a stricken Lord Babcock, Melissande found herself grateful to the governess who’d left Dashforth’s Precepts for Young Royalty in the nursery’s library.

  Lord Babcock, pale and clammy, slumped in a chair at the back of the viewing platform, breathing in shallow groans. He wasn’t alone in his discomfort. Aframbigi’s Foreign Minister, and Jandria’s, were also suffering pangs of some kind. Just not badly enough to require smelling salts—or so they claimed.

  She wafted the foul salts under Lord Babcock’s nose one more time, to be on the safe side. As he snorted and spluttered, a fresh roar of appreciation from the crowd and much clapping from her fellow wedding guests and their minions on the other platform tipped her face skywards, but it was too late. The astonishing burst of fireworks was no more than a swiftly fading memory of blue and green.

  The fireworks.

  She felt her stomach jitter. There’d been a moment, just a moment, when she could have sworn she saw something creepily wrong in the brilliant, fiery lights bursting overhead. But then the moment passed, the fireworks continued beautifully brilliant, nothing creepy about them at all, and she’d thought, I really must learn to curb my imagination.

  That was when someone said, “Oh dear, Lord Babcock’s not feeling too well.”

  And naturally she’d gone to help, because that’s what one did. It was the reason one carried smelling salts at all times.

  Satisfied that Babcock was coming around with no harm done, Melissande put the stopper back in the bottle of salts and returned it to her reticule. A pity she couldn’t put her suspicions away just as neatly.

  I’ll swear this isn’t another case of finger food gone wrong. Something dreadful was about to happen with the fireworks, I know it. Something thaumaturgically catastrophic. But then … it didn’t.

  Because of Gerald and Bibbie, she’d stake her life on that. And she’d bet it was the near-thaumaturgic disaster that had skittled Lord Babcock and the other two. Chances were that all three men, given who they were and where they came from, had finely tuned etheretic sensitivities.

  On the other hand, Norbert of Harenstein hadn’t noticed a thing. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  Another glorious burst of light and colour. More cheering. More clapping. The fireworks were reaching their breathtaking crescendo, boom boom boom, bloom and burst, a battering of beauty. Shaky with relief, Melissande smiled.

  Well done, Radley Blayling. Unless of course you’re part of the plot, in which case, shame on you.

  With another spluttering snort, Lord Babcock collected himself out of his slump. Bending again, she patted his arm. “Feeling better, Your Lordship? Oh, I am pleased.”

  “What happened?” Babcock muttered, hand pressed to his head. “What the devil’s going on?”

  Well, my lord, if it turns out I’m right that’s for me to know and Sir Ralph Markham to tell. Eventually. If he feels so inclined. Which he probably won’t.

  “I’m not sure, Lord Babcock,” she said kindly, because the poor man did look seedy. “A little too much cherry liqueur, perhaps.”

  His gaze sharpened, turning inwards. “Yes. Yes. Most likely. Thank you, Your Highness.”

  Government ministers, no matter how exalted, did not dismiss royalty. Except when they did. Ah, the Ottish. Unoffended, because really, what would be the point, Melissande made her way through the well-bred cheering back to Hartwig’s side.

  “Old Babcock all ship-shape, then?” he asked, his arm going around her, his hand resting, inevitably, on her hip.

  “He’s fine,” she said, giving up. He was Hartwig, he was harmless, and he had a lot on his plate. “Twiggy, the fireworks were wonderful.”

  “Yes, well,” he said gruffly, and smoothed his moustache. “Only got one brother, haven’t I? Got to do the right thing by him. Even if he is an idiot who dives into canals.”

  Carriages were waiting to take the wedding party back to the palace. Riding with Hartwig, the horses trotting through a storm of cheering and tossed confetti, Melissande searched every face in the crowd as it passed. But no Algernon. No Gladys. She wanted to weep.

  It didn’t kill them, did it? Saving us? Please, please, don’t say I brought them here to die.

  “Look at that,” said Hartwig, pitching his voice above the happy throng. “We’ve got clouds coming in. Think it might rain a bit, later tonight. S’posed to be a good omen, a touch of rain at a wedding. Brings luck, the old wives say.”

  She glanced at the sky. He was right, the stars were clouding over. “Let’s hope so, Twiggy.”

  Because right now I need all the luck I can get.

  Toiling her way up to her suite, she debated with herself about whether or not she should tell Hartwig she’d misplaced her secretary and her lady’s maid and ask him to send out a search party for them. She knew he’d say yes in a heartbeat … but if she did ask, might she unwittingly be putting Gerald and Bibbie in danger? Assuming, of course, they weren’t— weren’t—

  No. I refuse to entertain
the possibility.

  She was still trying to decide on the best thing to do when she walked into the guest apartment’s bedchamber.

  “Good, there you are,” said Bibbie, neat and tidy in a primly demure dark blue satin dress. “I’ve got your green silk evening gown pressed and ready, because you can’t stay in that hideous purple thing. Honestly, all it’s good for is dusters.”

  Melissande blinked. For a moment it was a toss up, whether she hugged Bibbie or slapped her. In the end she simply sat on the bed, beyond caring if she crumpled her maligned mauve dress.

  “You wretched bloody nuisance,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Don’t you realise I thought you were dead?”

  Bibbie’s brittle brightness faded. “Oh. Look, Melissande, there’s—”

  “No, Bibbie. There is no looking. No there’s no need to make a fuss. Not after what happened with the fireworks. Something did happen, didn’t it? I mean, I’m not losing my mind?”

  Her Gladys Slack face sombre, Bibbie perched on the edge of the nearest chair. “No. Something happened. Or rather nothing happened. Thanks to Gerald.”

  It was a different kind of relief, to know she’d not been wrong. “And where is Gerald? Is he all right?”

  “Honestly?” said Bibbie, after an unnervingly long silence. “I’m not sure. I think so. He didn’t die or go mad, which is good. Only …”

  “Only what, Bibbie?” she demanded. “Please. Just say it. You’re frightening me.”

  Bibbie looked up, her eyes haunted with wonder. “Well, the thing is, Mel? I think he should have. The grimoire incants in those fireworks?” She shivered. “I’ve never felt—I never imagined …” She pressed her hands to her face, briefly. “They were brilliant, y’know. Wickedly, dreadfully brilliant. Monk could’ve made them. He wouldn’t, but he could. I don’t know who else is good enough. And I don’t know any wizard besides Gerald who could’ve destroyed them, and survived.”

  Melissande stared. “Not even Monk?”

  “No, not even Monk. Because Monk isn’t—he hasn’t—”

  And now Bibbie was really frightening her. “What? Monk hasn’t what?”