A Matter of Magic

  By the time she reached them, Mairelon and Hunch were out of the carriage and scanning the street behind her for pursuers. “Easy, Kim,” Mairelon said as she leaned against the coach, panting. “No one’s after you.”

  “I know,” Kim said, forcing the words out between gasping breaths. “That . . . ain’t it.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Still panting, Kim told them. Mairelon’s face grew grim as she described what she had found. “No wonder you were shaken,” he said when she finished. “Do you want to stay here with Hunch while I go back?”

  “No!” Kim and Hunch said together. They exchanged glances of perfect understanding, and then Kim went on, “You’ll need someone to cast a ward, if you’re going to do anything about that there spell on Ma.”

  Mairelon studied them for a moment. “Very well, then. The sooner, the better, I think. Though I’m afraid you will have to stay with the horses, Hunch.”

  “O’ course I ’as to,” Hunch said sourly. “And I’ll ’ave them ready to move the minute you come running back.”

  “Very good,” Mairelon said, oblivious to his servant’s tone. “Let’s go, Kim.”

  They started up the street in silence. Half a block later, Mairelon said in a musing tone, “You know, you were very fortunate with that spell of yours. There are a number of unpleasant things can happen to a wizard who dispenses with written diagrams too soon.”

  “Like what happened when I tried it in English?”

  “Worse. If you get the diagram wrong—if the lines don’t quite connect in the right places, or they overlap somewhere because you can’t actually see what you are doing—then the energy of the spell will not be correctly shaped. At best, the wizard can be drained of all magical ability for weeks or months. At worst, one can end up in a condition similar to your friend Ma Yanger.”

  “But not dead?”

  “I said at worst,” Mairelon pointed out.

  Kim digested this while they continued. “You haven’t told me not to do it.”

  “I don’t intend to tell you that,” Mairelon said as they entered the tenement. “You’ve done it once; you obviously have the capacity to visualize a diagram clearly without having an actual, physical drawing. Just make certain that you always know the diagram well enough. Simple ones are easiest; the more advanced spells require too much precision, even for the very few wizards with absolutely perfect recall.”

  The reached the top of the stairs and turned down the hall. “Did you leave the door open?” Mairelon said, nodding at a wide-open entrance just ahead.

  “That’s Ma Yanger’s place, but I don’t think I left it open,” Kim said. “I’m . . . not positive, though. I was kind of in a hurry.”

  Mairelon nodded. “We’ll go carefully, then. Fiat lux.”

  A ball of light appeared on Mairelon’s palm. Resisting the impulse to point out that a light spell was not consistent with her ideas of “going carefully,” Kim followed him into Ma’s rooms. Mairelon took only a cursory look at the front room. “Workshop and business parlor both, hmm?” he said, and headed for the far door.

  Ma Yanger was gone. Nothing else had changed; the lumpy bed still bore the dent where she had been sitting during Kim’s first visit.

  “She was here,” Kim said.

  “Yes, well, given your description of her condition, she can’t have gone far if she’s just wandered off.”

  “If she’s just wandered off?”

  “Someone may have come and fetched her,” Mairelon said. “Let’s have a look around, shall we?”

  They did not find Ma Yanger, and no one they spoke to would admit to having seen her in weeks, with or without companions. A small boy on the lower floor admitted to leaving food at her door every day for several months, but said he never saw her. He would give a special knock, a shilling would slide out under the door, and he would depart, leaving the package of food behind. No one else had had even that much contact with her. After half an hour of fruitless searching, they returned to her rooms, where Mairelon made a quick but thorough investigation that made Kim blink in respect.

  “You would of made a top-drawer cracksman, the way you sort through things,” she said with considerable admiration.

  “I got plenty of practice when I was in France,” Mairelon replied absently. “And it’s easy to be fast when there’s nothing of interest to find.” He frowned, then glanced toward the bedroom. “Wait here a minute.”

  “What are you planning?” Kim demanded.

  “Something I should have done at once,” Mairelon said. “Check for residuals.” He made three sweeping gestures and spoke a long, involved sentence. Kim felt the spell, but nothing seemed to happen. She looked at Mairelon. He was turning slowly, studying everything in the room with narrowed eyes.

  It must be something like that magic-detecting spell, that only shows things to the wizard who casts it, Kim thought.

  Mairelon crossed to the bedroom and stood in the doorway, looking at it for a moment. “That’s odd.”

  “What’s odd? What did that spell do?”

  “I told you, it’s a check for residuals. Spells leave traces, and these rooms are full of them—but every last one of them is over two months old. No one has done any magic here in all that time.”

  “Tom said Ma Yanger had given up witching people,” Kim said, uncertain of what point Mairelon was trying to make.

  “Yes, but she can’t have been incapacitated until very recently,” Mairelon pointed out. “From your description, she doesn’t sound as if she can clean or cook any longer; she’d have starved to death if she’d been like that for two months.”

  Kim thought of the empty eyes and the expression void of intelligence, and shuddered. “You’re right about that. Maybe someone has been taking care of her.”

  “Possibly,” Mairelon said. “But would whoever-it-is also take care of her herbs and spellworkings? There’s no dust on these shelves; they’ve certainly been cleaned in the past day or so. And look at the table.”

  Kim looked. A candle stub sat in a puddle of melted wax; next to it, a wilted violet lay on top of a heap of crushed herbs. “It looks like the makings of a spell,” she said cautiously.

  “It is,” Mairelon said. “It’s a traditional spell for averting harm or bad luck. It’s very old and not terribly reliable, which is why I haven’t bothered to teach it to you—there are much better spells available nowadays.”

  Kim looked at the table again. “That flower isn’t much wilted. Somebody set this up yesterday, or maybe the day before.”

  “Exactly. I’ll wager that the somebody was your Ma Yanger. Somehow, she knew that something was going to happen to her, and she tried to avoid it.”

  “But you said nobody’s done magic here in two months!”

  “They haven’t,” Mairelon said, and his tone was grim. “She set this up, but she either didn’t have time to use it, or couldn’t for some other reason.”

  “Maybe that spell hit her and . . . and made her like that before she could cast this,” Kim said.

  “Possibly. But if it was a spell that incapacitated her, it can’t have happened here, because there’s no trace of it. And as far as we know, she hadn’t left these rooms in two months.”

  Kim stared at Mairelon. “Then what happened?”

  Mairelon looked at her. “That is the question, isn’t it?”

  12

  Mairelon and Kim stayed a few minutes longer, turning out Ma Yanger’s bed and checking the iron kettle they found underneath it, but they came no nearer to answering Kim’s question. When they returned to the coach at last, Hunch was wearing his most sour expression, from which Kim concluded that he had been worried. He refused to drive anywhere, or to allow Mairelon to do so, until Mairelon set up a protective spell around the coach. Mairelon eventually did so. Once they arrived home, he informed Hunch with insufferable smugness that the spell had not even been tested during the drive.

  It was something of a shock to retur
n to the trivialities of a social schedule the following morning. The London Season was under way at last, and invitations were pouring in. To Kim’s surprise, many of them included her.

  “At present, people are merely curious,” Lady Wendall said. “That will change when they meet you, and I am quite certain that between us we can see to it that the change is a positive one. To that end, I should like you to accompany me on a few morning calls.”

  Kim sighed. “Morning calls are boring.”

  “That depends largely on just whom one is calling upon,” Lady Wendall replied gently. “Wear your jaconet morning dress with the pink ribbons, I think.”

  Kim rolled her eyes, but nodded. She let Wilson dress her and arrange her hair, then joined Lady Wendall in the salon. Shortly thereafter, they were on their way. The first two stops were houses Kim had visited during the horrible week with Mrs. Lowe, but to Kim’s astonishment, Lady Wendall did no more than send in her card. As they pulled away from the second house, Kim ventured to ask why.

  “One cannot cut someone dead simply because they are dull, but one need not endure their conversation in order to maintain the social niceties,” Lady Wendall replied.

  Their next stop was quite close, and this time Lady Wendall climbed down from the coach to rap on the door. A moment later, they were ushered up to the drawing room, where they found their hostess, Lady Clement, already engaged with several earlier visitors. Kim was dismayed to see that one of them was Miss Annabel Matthews, who had been at Mrs. Hardcastle’s disastrous tea.

  Lady Wendall presented Kim, and Lady Clement introduced her guests. Miss Matthews was accompanied by her mother; the tall, brown-haired girl beside her was Miss Marianne Farrell. Miss Farrell’s aunt completed the company of ladies. Across from them was a handsome, blond man in his mid-twenties, who was introduced as Lord Gideon Starnes. As he rose and bowed, Kim’s eyes flashed automatically to his hands. They were ringless.

  A little uncertainly, Kim made her curtsey. To her relief, Miss Matthews welcomed her warmly, though her mother frowned disapprovingly. Lord Starnes, Kim noticed, did not seem pleased either; his eyebrows rose slightly and his lips curved in an ironic smile as she took her seat.

  “I am so glad to see you again,” Miss Matthews said in a low tone. “And if you would be so good as to pretend to be absorbed in conversation with me for a few moments, I would be deeply grateful.”

  “Why?” Kim asked.

  “I do not wish to speak with Lord Starnes,” Miss Matthews said. “And he will not take a hint.”

  “Is he—” Kim could not think of a polite way to finish her question.

  “There! He has struck up a conversation with Mrs. Farrell, and we are safe.”

  “Why don’t you like him?” Kim asked.

  “It is not that I don’t like him, exactly,” Miss Matthews responded. “But it is very wearing to be solicited constantly as a go-between, particularly when it would be decidedly improper of me to agree.”

  Kim blinked in surprise. In her experience, the need for a third party to carry messages or arrange other things occurred only when something illegal was involved. But Miss Matthews was an unlikely choice as either a fence or a bawd. “Who does he want you to—to go between?” she asked cautiously.

  Before Miss Matthews could answer, her mother looked over and said, “Annabel, dear, come and tell Lady Clement about that Brussels lace we found at the market last Thursday. You are much better at describing such things than I am.”

  Miss Matthews looked a little surprised by this request, but all she said was, “Of course, Mother,” and the two changed places.

  “And then I wish to hear all about this ghost of yours,” Lady Clement said to Lady Wendall. “I understand it smashed an entire set of Crown Derby china and sent three of the housemaids completely out of their minds?”

  Startled and a little worried, Kim looked at Lady Wendall, but Lady Wendall only smiled. “Nothing so dramatic as that. An extremely ugly Sèvres vase was broken, and one of the housemaids had hysterics.”

  “But the ghost?” Miss Farrell said breathlessly.

  “A magical experiment that got out of hand,” Lady Wendall said.

  “I suspected as much,” Lady Clement said with satisfaction. Miss Farrell appeared to have suffered a severe disappointment.

  “It was really very careless of Richard,” Lady Wendall went on, “and I have informed him that in the future he is to use the laboratories at the Royal College.”

  “An excellent idea,” Lady Clement said. “You really cannot have anything like that happening during your ball. It has been an age since your last party, and I am quite looking forward to this one. Though I trust you do not plan to serve frogs’ legs this time. Unusual refreshments are all very well, but there are limits.”

  “My son has already made the same request,” Lady Wendall replied. “And since it is to be his ward’s come-out, I felt it only proper to accede to his wishes.”

  “So there is going to be a ball!” Miss Farrell said. “I thought it must be true when you came in with—That is, how splendid!”

  Mrs. Matthews looked slightly startled. “You are indeed presenting your son’s . . . ward, Lady Wendall? I had heard some talk of a ball, but I made sure it was idle speculation, circumstances being what they are.”

  Lady Wendall’s smile had very little warmth in it. “Circumstances? I have not the slightest notion what you mean.”

  “Well . . . that is . . . I was no doubt misinformed.”

  “Miss Tarnower was probably just mistaken,” Miss Farrell said soothingly.

  Lord Starnes stiffened, and his expression turned dark as thunderclouds. “I hope you are not criticizing Miss Tarnower,” he said.

  “Anyone can make a mistake,” Miss Farrell said hastily.

  “Perhaps she was confused because my sister-in-law, Mrs. Lowe, acted as Kim’s chaperone for a few days until I arrived in London,” Lady Wendall said. “But it would be quite improper for anyone other than myself to present my son’s apprentice and ward to Society.”

  “Apprentice?” Miss Matthews said, with a puzzled glance at Kim.

  “Kim is to be a wizard.”

  “Oh, I see.” Mrs. Matthews looked relieved. “That explains everything.”

  “I thought it might,” Lady Wendall murmured sweetly.

  “Yes, yes, but now you must tell us about this ball,” Lady Clement said, and the talk turned to the festivities. Kim found it very dull. So, apparently, did Lord Starnes, for after a very few minutes he rose to take his leave. He bowed punctiliously to each of the ladies, but when he came to Miss Matthews, he gave her a look that, even to Kim’s inexperienced eye, was fraught with significance. Miss Matthews reddened and shook her head slightly. Lord Starnes’s face darkened once again; with a curt nod to Kim, he left.

  “Such a handsome young man,” Lady Clement said as the door closed behind him. “What a pity he has not a feather to fly with.”

  “If someone truly cared for him, his lack of fortune would not weigh with her,” Miss Farrell proclaimed, tossing her head.

  “Yes, between the title and that face of his, he may do very well in spite of his financial situation,” Mrs. Matthews said. “Though I understand he has a penchant for gaming, which may add to his difficulties.” She looked at her daughter and added pointedly, “It is unlikely, however, that he would express serious interest in any young woman whose means are but modest. He cannot afford it.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Matthews, you cannot mean that the way it sounds,” Miss Farrell said earnestly. “Why, you make Lord Starnes out to be the veriest fortune hunter!”

  Although Kim was quite sure that this was exactly what Mrs. Matthews had intended, the woman disclaimed any such intention, and the talk turned to various social events once more. Lady Greythorne’s upcoming musicale was the focus of much interest; rumor had it that over a hundred and fifty cards of invitation had been sent out, and that nearly everyone had accepted.

  Several w
ell-known singers had been asked to perform, in addition to an Austrian harpsichordist, and there were to be refreshments afterward, and a card room for those who were not musically inclined.

  Kim found the conversation alarming. The invitation to Lady Greythorne’s musicale had been delivered two days before, and Lady Wendall had accepted it that morning. Kim was rather vague as to what a musicale was, and had been picturing something rather like the opera. From the ladies’ discussion, it was clear that there would be considerably more activity than that. It was also clear from Miss Farrell’s remarks that rumors about Kim and her exact status were already circulating. The thought of facing over a hundred members of the ton was intimidating enough for a former street thief without adding worries about what they might have heard.

  Kim voiced her concerns to Lady Wendall as soon as they were alone in the carriage again after leaving Lady Clement’s.

  “All the more reason for us to make a push to establish you properly,” Lady Wendall said. “In fact, that is one of the reasons I particularly wished you to join me today. You may be sure that after this morning Lady Clement will inform all her acquaintance that you are a very prettily behaved young woman, and her word carries considerable weight. If we can stop in to see Lady Harris, and perhaps Lady Jersey as well, we will have done a good day’s work. I do hope Sally Jersey is at home. She is the dearest creature, and the greatest gossip in London.”

  Kim prepared herself for another boring morning, but the rest of it went much better than its beginning. Lady Harris was a lively woman with a wide range of interests; she had clearly heard of Kim’s background and equally clearly found it fascinating. Lady Jersey was even livelier; she talked nearly nonstop for the entire visit and at the end of it pronounced Kim’s conversation to be thoroughly unexceptionable.

  They arrived home to find Mairelon scowling over Marie de Cambriol’s battered book. “Mother, do these ingredients sound familiar to you? ‘A quart of red wine, three handfuls roses, and the pills out of two pomegranates.’ The pomegranates are heavily underlined; they must be important, though I can’t see why. I thought at first it might be a variation on the de Quincy fire spell, but I can’t see why anyone would need that much wine for it.”