Phoenix and Ashes

Eleanor looked down at it; the card showed her what looked like a young man, dancing on the edge of a cliff. There was a little dog at his feet, the sun overhead, and he held a rose in one hand, and a stick with a bundle on the end, like a Traveler, in the other.

"The Fool," she read aloud, and looked up. "Why is that me?"

"Well, you've had all that study; when you look at the stories about King Arthur and the Grail, who do they call the Perfect Fool, and why?" Sarah countered.

"Percival," she replied immediately. "Because he was innocent, unschooled. He could ask questions no one else would, because he didn't know he shouldn't."

"And that's our Fool," Sarah replied, tapping the card with one finger. "The Fire in his card is his intelligence; he burns with curiosity and the need to know things He's perfectly innocent; he breaks the rules because he doesn't know they're there and doesn't know he should abide by them. Sometimes that's for good, and sometimes it can bring disaster. He's the Seeker, who moves from card to card looking for wisdom. He's fearless, because he doesn't know he should fear. He isn't worried about being on the edge of the cliff, because he isn't thinking about the next minute when he might fall off, he's thinking about right now, and besides, for all he knows, he'll step out into the empty air and it'll hold him."

Eleanor studied the card closely. "So if he's concentrating on now, he isn't looking forward?"

Sarah nodded. "That's the negative side of him. He's not at all in the spirit, and very much in the body. He breaks rules that sometimes shouldn't be broken and will bring him grief when they are. He can fall off that cliff. He means change, but change isn't always good."

She paused, waiting. Eleanor sensed she was waiting for her pupil to come up with some answers of her own. "So, this concentration on his physical body—that's his Earth aspect? It looks to me like he's mostly Fire and Earth. Not much water symbolism here. Of course, though, there's Air—the Air he could step off into."

Sarah nodded. "Change might be the Water aspect, but mostly the Fool is Intellect and Passion, and that's Air and Fire. Which makes him even more appropriate for you."

She turned over a second card, this one showing a man in a white robe and a red cloak. He stood among roses and lilies, with a rose-vine overhead. He had a wand in his hand and was next to a table on which were a cup, a knife, another wand, and a disk. There was something like the number eight lying on its side hovering like a halo above his head. Eleanor read the card's name aloud. "The Magician."

"What else can you tell me?" Sarah asked.

She studied it, and was struck by the objects on the table, which reminded her of something in one of the Alchemy books. "That's all four Elements, there," she said, pointing to the table. "The Cup is Water, the Disk is Earth, the Wand is Air and the Knife is Fire. So he has command of all of the elements?"

"Or he hasn't yet chosen which one his Element is," Sarah countered. "That wand he's holding is a symbol of his power, not of a particular Element. He's the symbol of the mind, too, like the Fool, but in his case, it's Creativity, not Intellect He knows what he wants out of Heaven and Earth, and so long as he stays focused, he'll get it."

Eleanor studied the card further. "But he can run right over the top of you to get what he wants," she said slowly. "Which is the negative side of him; selfish and self-centered. So he's like the Fool in that way, in a way, their negative side is being self-centered."

"Good!" Sarah applauded. "And what else?"

"Well, if his positive side is that he can get anything if he can stay focused, then I guess his weakness is that he's likely to lose concentration and be scattered." She pondered that for a moment. "So, where this card is all elements, I'd say that the Magician himself is mostly Air?"

"That's how I've always seen him, but remember he's a channel for all of them, more so than most other cards. So he gets being charming and attractive from Earth, he gets a streak of passion and genius from Fire, he gets independence and the willingness to break rules from Air, and the ability to handle power and make changes from Water." Sarah got up and went back to her cupboard, taking out a similar wrapped bundle. She pulled a second card out, and laid it beside the Magician. This one, too, was labeled the Magician, but it wasn't a ceremonial Magician. This one looked like a circus trickster, a charlatan, who was juggling cups and balls. "This is an older version, from a deck I don't use much. It shows you the Magician's darker side."

"A cheat, a stage-magician," Eleanor said at once. "I can see—his dark side is that charm used to gull people, the intellect used to practice deception, the willingness to break rules can make him a criminal, and Water can sweep away everything, leaving you with nothing."

"Very good!" Sarah replied. "And those two cards are enough to think about for one night, so the lesson is over. Did you say you had a book that talked about the Tarot in alchemical terms?"

She nodded.

"Then go home and read what it has to say about the Fool and the Magician." Sarah folded her cards back up in their silk and put them away. "We'll look at another card tomorrow. Meanwhile, you think about these tonight."

Eleanor took her leave, and made her way back to The Arrows well before her sprig of rosemary withered. She went to bed and followed Sarah's orders, reading about and thinking about those two cards until she fell asleep—

At which point she found herself in dreams, dressed in clothing of a medieval Italian page, dancing on the edge of a cliff with the sun high overhead and not a cloud in the sky. . . .

20

May 3-21,1917

Broom, Warwickshire

MAY THIRD HAD DAWNED IN rain, and it kept raining all day long, a steady pour that made Eleanor reluctant even to venture to Sarah's cottage, much less to the meadow. Not that she ever thought that she would have met Reggie there. No, if he'd been kept away merely because he wanted to give rides to kiddies in his motorcar, the prospect of a soaking would certainly keep him inside four walls.

So Eleanor had stayed where she was, took the opportunity to further increase her wardrobe, and when she wasn't obeying Alison's spells, studied her books diligently. The dream she'd had the previous night, of being the Fool, had given her impetus. It had been vividly realistic, too; she'd felt nothing but euphoria and a curiosity about absolutely everything. No fear, none at all, when she'd stopped dancing for a moment, leaned over, and stared into the abyss below her. In the dream, the thought that she might fall had not even flitted across her mind. No fear, when she stared up into the sky, straight at the blazing sun, wondering what it was. Fortunately, it was the sun of the card, and not of reality; bright though it was, and hot, too, it didn't blind her. Of course, that had been in retrospect. At the time, all she had thought was, What is that? Why is it so hot? Can I reach it?

She had half-awakened, but no more than that, fallen asleep again, to find herself, still the Fool, in a garden of roses and lilies, though she had no idea of how she had gotten there. She followed a path—then she was at the end of the path suddenly, and there was an altar there. On it were a cup, a scepter, a golden disk the size of a dinner-plate, and a sword. Behind the altar was someone in a white robe and a red cloak, with a broom in her hand. A broom, because it wasn't a man, as in the card, it was Sarah.

"So, what do you see?" the Magician asked. Eleanor said the first thing that came into her mind—not an answer, but a question.

"What cup is that, and what does it hold?"

Sarah nodded. "Good. Come and find out for yourself." She leaned the broom against the altar, picked up the cup, and held it out to Eleanor, just like a priest offering the sacrament. Eleanor came and took it from her, and drank from it—

And suddenly, it was she who was in the white robes and red cloak and behind the altar, and Sarah and her broom were nowhere to be seen. But even as, when she had been the Fool, her mind was full of questions, now it was full of knowledge.

She put the cup down, dazzled by all of the things flooding through her thoughts, when a voice interrupted her from the table.

"Well, now that you have Wisdom, you ought to know what to do with the other three Gifts," the voice said, and she looked down at the Cup to see that it was much larger, nearly the size of a washtub, and there was a great salmon sticking its head out of the water and looking up at her. "Well?" said the salmon. "With all that Wisdom, what are you going to do next?"

She looked at the other three items; her hand moved towards the sword, then she stopped.

"Quite right," said the salmon, sounding like something out of Alice's Adventures. "You aren't nearly strong enough to wield the Passion of Fire. What else is there?"

Her hand hovered between the Coin of Earth and the Wand of Air, and she had just started to reach for the latter—

When she woke up. It was dawn, and time to get to work.

It was still raining, and didn't look as if it was going to stop at any time soon. So that day was a repeat of the previous one, and at least she finished sewing all the rest of her new wardrobe, because the weather cleared off in the night, and by teatime of the fifth, there was the sound of a motorcar and Alison and the girls chugged into the old stable that now served as a garage.

There was nothing to make into what Alison would have called a "decent" tea and dinner except tinned stuff, of course. And in any event, it was too late for Eleanor to start anything, so as Eleanor hauled their baggage up to their rooms, they tidied themselves up, then pulled the motor back out again to go to the Broom Hall Inn for tea and order that a dinner be sent around. And life went right back to normal.

Neither Alison nor the girls noticed Eleanor's new clothing, nor did anyone note books missing from the library. They were all very full of chatter about London—there were Americans moving through now, and Lauralee was very taken with them. She kept exclaiming about how tall they were.

As for Alison, she acted like a cat that had gotten into cream. Whatever she had done while she'd been gone, she was very pleased with it, and herself.

So things went back to the way they had been, except that every two or three days, Eleanor would slip away after the household was in bed, and get down to Sarah's cottage, which was where Sarah would take out her cards and they would go over all of the ones that she had already seen as Eleanor tried to glean a little more meaning out of them. Then Sarah would lay out a new one.

There was no chance to get out to the meadow. But as May became June, she certainly heard enough about Reggie. The campaign to ingratiate themselves into the Longacre circle was well underway, and twice-weekly tennis-parties were the artillery pounding away at the gates. Longacre had its own courts, and Lady Devlin loved to both watch and play. Even though Reggie couldn't play because of his knee, he always came to watch his mother—and Alison and both girls were good enough to give her ladyship a good game of doubles. This, of course, was according to what Alison told her little coterie of the Broom elite over tea.

Eleanor knew the truth. Of course they were good enough—because of magic. They'd shown no aptitude before this, but one of the things that had come back from London had been a set of three tennis raquettes with a faint feeling of magic about them. Eleanor had no doubt, no doubt at all, that Alison had somehow stolen someone's tennis-prowess and put it into those raquettes.

Alison and her daughters were also up at the manor at least once a week for tea, and Eleanor expected that would change to two or even three times a week before long.

There was company due at Longacre Park in the first week of June, too—which would probably mean more entertaining. Tea-dances, card-parties, boating on the river, riding on the grounds, as well as tennis and croquet, and more chances for Lauralee and Carolyn to use whatever they could to ensnare Reggie. . . .

Well, she thought, more than once, If he's stupid enough to let himself be ensnared, then he's not worth wasting time on.

But she couldn't help contrasting herself with her stepsisters, whenever they sailed out of the house in their modish tennis-dresses or flirty tea-gowns. Once, perhaps, she had been the equal of her stepsisters, and might have been able to pass herself off as belonging in Reggie's social set. Money was still not the equal of breeding in the eyes of some, but it was certainly approaching that equivalency—and to Reggie's generation, perhaps it had achieved equality. At least, so long as one had the right accent, the right education, the right manners and conversation, the right outward appearance.

Now—well, he might sit with her in a meadow and be amused by her conversation, but her hands were callused and rough with manual labor, her clothing was fit only for the lowest servants, and with those two handicaps, it didn't matter how fine her mind was. If he'd been penniless but blue-blooded, perhaps—but not while he was lord of Longacre Park. With that insurmountable social gulf between them, while he might amuse himself in private, he would never acknowledge the friendship in public.

And a friend who won't treat me the same, in public as in private, isn't worth having.

She tried not to feel eaten up with envy as the girls chattered about "dear Reggie" and tormented one another over which he had paid more attention to that day. But it would have been difficult enough to watch them swanning about with their airs and their chatter about going "up the hill." It was very difficult indeed to hear them boasting about "dear Reggie" this and "dear Reggie" that.

She took what grim solace she could in her study of Elemental Magic. The sooner she mastered that, the sooner she could free herself. And then—well, then she would worry about when she was freed.

She'd had no trouble getting to sleep; now that it was June, the days were getting longer, and longer days just meant that Alison found more work for her to do. And she was not at all surprised to find herself immediately in a dream.

The dream began now in a familiar pattern; Eleanor found herself as the Fool, resolutely turned away from the cliff-edge, and passed up the path to the Magician. The Tarot cards were providing the framework for the quest for Mastery; there was no doubt in her mind about that. But this time, the Magician was not Sarah, but a stranger. Still, she asked the right question, became the Magician, and prepared to pass on—

The Salmon of Wisdom did not appear in the cup now that she had the key to this card. She was able at this point to actually pick up the blade, the cup, the wand and the coin—and yet she sensed she was not able to use more than a fraction of the power in each, not even of her own Element. And she would not—she knew that now—until she had journeyed through all of the Major Arcana. But she needed to prove that she could handle the tools of the four Elements, so she picked each up in turn from the altar, sensed and identified the magical energies in each, then turned and walked up the path that appeared behind her. It led between two severely manicured flowerbeds, and she followed it until she came to a pavilion. She had been here before and knew who awaited her.

The High Priestess was an ageless woman, seated on a throne, holding a scroll in one hand. Crowned with all three phases of the moon, cloaked in blue, and poised between a black pillar and a white, she also represented Intelligence. The blue robe gave her Element away; it had been no challenge to figure out that it was Air. But not only did she represent Intelligence—more than that, she stood for Balance. The Priestess was all about balance, calm, emotional self-sufficiency. Nothing ever ruffled her feathers. She represented the mystic side of the mind in harmony with the physical side as well, and her negative aspect was to be without true emotion, sterile rather than celibate, to stagnate rather than be in balance, to be emotionally empty rather than controlled. Eleanor had been here before; it had taken some thinking to work out that she should ask "What is the key to Wisdom?" She asked that question now, and she accepted the scroll from the Priestess. As she had become the Magician, so she now became the Priestess, and this had provided her first real temptation. Because she didn't really want to go on to the next card. The Fool was full of questions, the Magician full of knowledge—but the Priestess was full of a calm, balanced, and ordered wisdom. If she had ever dreamed of being "like" anything when she attained her Mastery, it would have been to be like this.

And yet, that was a trap. She had a long, long way to go yet.

And that, too, was wisdom. She rose and descended the three shallow steps that led to her throne, and went back into the garden.

And though she should have left by the same path on which she had entered, instead, it was a path through wildly lush rose beds, intermingled with peonies and lilies, all three perfumes mingling in an intoxication of scent. And when she came to the end of the path, she found herself in another part of the garden, facing another crowned, seated woman. This was her new card.

The Empress.

Where the High Priestess was all austerity, The Empress was all abundance. She was crowned with stars, with her foot on the quarter-moon that the High Priestess wore as a crown. She carried a heart in one hand, a scepter in the other. She was stunningly beautiful, and was surrounded by roses, and from the sensuality that infused even the slightest gesture, it was clear that she was as warmly emotional as the High Priestess was austere.

Now, this was a card that Eleanor had not yet gotten past. Not that she didn't know all the meanings; her Element was Earth, she represented creativity, fertility in all things, grace and beauty. She was very aware of herself and very sure of herself. She had power, but it was the power to direct, rather than to lead or to order. Eleanor felt she had far more in common with the intellectual ascetic, the High Priestess, than this Lady of Venus.

The negative aspect was, of course, unbridled sensuality, but Eleanor felt herself very uncomfortable with sensuality of any sort.

"I don't see," she said to the Empress, in a voice that sounded rather high and nervous rather than confident, "what you have to do with me."

The three-moon headdress she wore as the High Priestess felt horribly heavy in that moment.

The Empress smiled a slow, languid smile, full of promises. "You don't deny you're a woman?" she drawled.

Eleanor tried not to squirm. "Not that it does me any good," she complained—the words jumping out of her mouth before she could think. "No one pays the least attention to me."

"That's your stepmother's doing," the Empress said, in a purr. "She doesn't want anyone to think of you as a human being, much less a woman. But until you reconcile yourself to the fact that you are a woman, and you can be bound by your womanhood or freed by it, you won't get past me."

"Freed?" Eleanor snorted. "Nobody is freed by womanhood! We aren't even allowed to vote! Why—"

"That has not always been so, and it will not be forever," the Empress replied, bending to sniff her roses. "That is not to the point—the point is you. You must embrace all sides of yourself to pass any card. Body as well as mind. What am I?"

"Umm—" Eleanor found herself blushing. "Ah—" "Sensuality. Rejoicing in the physical. If your head is strong and full of thoughts, but your body is weak, where are you?" The Empress tilted her head to the side. "Where is the balance in that, High Priestess? Or perhaps I should say—pretty Fool." And in that moment Eleanor's robes vanished and she was back in the garb of the Fool again.

"Weak? Me?" Eleanor snorted again. "With all the work I have to do?"

"Ah, but do you take pleasure in that fine young body of yours, or merely allow it to carry your head around?" The Empress yawned.

"And just what is there to take pleasure in?" Eleanor demanded angrily. Why this card made her so angry, she could not have said, but it did, and made her terribly uncomfortable as well.

"Please. Haven't you two working eyes, two fine ears?" the Empress replied with scorn. "There are meadowlarks by day, and the scent of flowers—by night, the moon and the cool, soothing breeze. Your body is healthy and strong, and work comes easily to it. You are young, and when the song of spring sings in your veins, you feel the quickening of the earth all around you. You have more, much more, than many of those that you know possess. You are not dead or dying, maimed or ill, how can you not take pleasure in these things?"

"Um—" well, she had been doing just that. "I suppose—I suppose you must be right—"

"And young men," the Empress persisted, looking both wise and sly. "Haven't you felt longing for—"

"No!" she exclaimed, feeling her face flush hotly.

"Too soon, too soon, you protest too much and too soon," the Empress declared, laughing, holding up the heart she held for Eleanor's inspection. "You silly child! Do you think I do not know?"

Her face flamed so redly it was painful. No! She hadn't longed after Reggie! Not really. After all, he didn't think anything of her, so why should she think of him? It wasn't even remotely possible, anyway. . . .

"And who does it harm to admit that side of yourself?" the Empress murmured, hooding her eyes with heavy lids. "Who is going to tell Reggie? Not I, certainly. My dear, my dear, these things must be taken from your path! I cannot give you the rose to let you pass until you examine and accept what is in your own heart! Who am I going to tell, after all?"

Her face burning, Eleanor opened her mouth, shut it, opened it— then turned and fled.

The little dog yapped at her heels, sounding angry at her. She ignored him as she ignored the roses whose thorns caught at her clothing and tried to stop her, as she fled out of the garden, out of the dream, and—

—and woke up with a start.

It was still dark. It had felt as if she had been in the garden for hours, but by the moon shining in her window, she knew it couldn't have been more than an hour or two.

She was panting and winded as if she really had run through that garden, and her heart pounded, the loudest sound in the room.

What was I so frightened of?

Not for the first time, she wondered just who—or what—the Tarot creatures really were. At first she had thought that they were images and archetypes out of her own mind, but she had shortly realized that they knew things she didn't. And they acted in ways that seemed entirely independent of her mind. Like the Empress, for instance.

Why was I so upset with what she said?

She did not like the Empress, not even in her proper position. She was too knowing, too lush, too—too sensual. Too much of everything, actually. The Magician had been a wealth of knowledge, cool and aloof after that first time of being Sarah, the High Priestess was someone that Eleanor could admire, wise, controlled, and ascetic. But the Empress! She was—she was—

She's like Alison, when Alison is in one of her queen-of-everything moods. . . .

And as she lay there, staring at the ceiling, letting her thoughts settle into a pattern again, she gradually understood what was going on. The key to the Empress, that had eluded her for several nights now, finally came into her grasp.

More than ever she wished she could stop with the High Priestess. And she knew that she couldn't, that she would have to dream herself back; not tomorrow or the next night, but tonight. She had to face this and face it now, with the knowledge fresh in her mind.

She closed her eyes, moved around on her lumpy mattress until she was completely comfortable, then began taking slow, even breaths. She concentrated, not on the dream she wanted to re-enter, nor her surroundings. She concentrated on herself, on relaxing every muscle in her body, starting with her face. She felt muscles let go that she didn't even know were tensed as she worked her way from her head, to her shoulders, to her arms . . . felt herself starting to drift, as the night-sounds faded away from around her, and she felt as if she was floating, and . . .

And she found herself back on the edge of the cliff, in the person of the Fool.

She stared down at the abyss below her for a moment. The bottom was lost in haze and darkness; she'd never been able to see it. Oddly, that made it seem less dangerous, as if she could throw herself over the edge, spread her arms, and fly.

And the Fool in her would have been willing to give that a try, for the Fool had no fear and not a great deal of good judgment.

Resolutely, she turned from the cliff and took the path into the garden.

The Magician was not waiting at his altar, but the accoutrements were still there. But this time, Eleanor took the dagger with her when she went on. The dagger—the representative of her own Element. She couldn't wield that power yet, but now she knew she had to have a channel through which to use it when she did master it. And this time, she didn't change to the Magician herself when she passed the altar.

That was new.

The High Priestess smiled when she saw the dagger stuck into Eleanor's belt, and wordlessly handed her the scroll. This time, for the first time, Eleanor unrolled it, and saw, painted in brilliant colors, miniatures of the first three cards she had encountered. There were empty lozenges outlined in gilt for the remainder of the Major Arcana that she had yet to pass through.

"Wisdom," she said aloud, looking up at the High Priestess, "is knowing how much you don't know."

"That is truly the greatest wisdom," the Priestess said. "You see, you have a long way to travel now."

Eleanor hesitated a moment with one foot on the path that would lead her to the Empress, despite her earlier resolution. Did she have to face the card now? Couldn't it wait?

But the scroll gave her no other options. She clenched her teeth, and marched into the perfume of hundreds of flowers that always surrounded the Empress.

Surrounded? This time it seemed as if she was walking through a maze of rose-hedges! Getting to the Empress this time was no easy task, and it wasn't helped by all of the inviting nooks, the shaded seats, the tempting bowers she had to pass on the way. But Eleanor set her chin, and went on.

Finally she turned a corner, and there the Empress was, head tilted exquisitely to the side, lush lips curved in a slight smile, quite as if she left only a second ago. Well, in this dream-world, perhaps she had.

Eleanor marched straight up to the foot of her throne, stood before the embodiment of the card, hands on her hips, and scowled. "I don't like you," she announced.

Her only answer for a moment was a slow, lazy smile. "And why would that be, child?" the Empress purred.

"Because you're like her," Eleanor replied, allowing her bitterness to show. "Everything is a weapon or a tool to get what she wants with her. Things that should just be, she has to twist and shape and use. Beauty, wit—" she blushed "—the—the sensual things. They're all weapons to get power! And that's what she's teaching her daughters. There's never enough power over people for her!"

"Ah, now you see," the Empress replied, with a knowing nod. "I am power, little Fool, I am a ruler. Above and before all else, I am a ruler, and everything that comes into my hand is, indeed, to be used, whether my aspect is reversed or proper. And if you are to pass, little Fool, you must acknowledge that you understand what power is, and does, not just to those around you, but to you, yourself, inside."

Gritting her teeth, Eleanor acknowledged that with a curt nod. "Power can be open or hidden, but that doesn't stop it from affecting you." Eleanor agreed angrily. "In fact, the power that is probably the strongest is the power that no one sees or realizes is there. And when you control that sort of power, you can control anything else you wish to."

"And that one day, if you master your magic, you, too, will be the Empress—" the card persisted. "And you, too, will know that all that comes into your hand will be a tool."

"But I can choose not to use the tools!" Eleanor all but shouted. "I can choose not to manipulate!"

"And that, too, is manipulation. Life is manipulation." The Empress smiled her slow, sweet smile. "Think, pretty Fool. You must manipulate or be manipulated, and choosing not to choose is still a choice."

"Then I choose to do as little as I may!" she responded. "Only enough to keep others from manipulating me!"

The Empress nodded. "What else am I? Remember, that what is within me is within you." When Eleanor was not forthcoming, she laughed. "Oh come now. That beautiful man? You would have to be stone, which I know you are not."

As the Empress's words stung and dug at her, Eleanor had felt herself blushing more and more hotly, and when the woman finished her sentence, it was with fury and bitterness that she allowed her temper to burst out.

"Yes, curse you!" she cried. "I do fancy him, and I have as much chance of being more than a kind of pet or mascot to him as I have of flying his aeroplane!"

She waited, hot with embarrassment and anger, daring the Empress to say anything—

"I am power," the woman said, with a secret little smile. "There are many sorts of power."

"Like Lilith's?" Eleanor countered. "Using your body to get what you want?"

"Ah, now, you have your mythology mixed." The Empress laughed. "Lilith's offense was that she would not obey Adam, for she was created his equal, from the same clay and on the same day as he. For that she was banished, and God created subservient Eve from Adam's own flesh. Or so," she finished, with a chuckle, "the myth would tell us. And yes, there is power to be found in providing something that someone wants, isn't there? And if someone wants something very badly, it becomes a weapon in your hand."

"It's a weapon I'd be ashamed to us," Eleanor replied, and then wondered—ashamed because it's underhanded, or because I'm afraid?

"And if you could have the way of using the weapons of the senses as your stepmother does?" the Empress persisted. "If you knew by using them, you could have the young man for yourself, taking him away from your stepsisters?"

She lifted her chin and stared. "I wouldn't," she said shortly—but then, flushed again, and dropped her chin, and with a sick feeling, admitted, "Or—maybe I would. But I wouldn't do it to make him my slave the way she would!"

"Ah!"The Empress stood up, a beatific smile on her face taking the place of the too-knowing expression. "There you are, my dear! That is what you needed to see! That it is how we use the tools we are given, not the tools themselves, nor even the fact that we use them, that makes all the difference. Passion reversed is manipulation that leads to slavery. Passion proper is freedom. But both are passion—"

She took one blood-red rose from the bouquet she held, and extended it to Eleanor. "I am as much Passion—Fire—as I am the Fertility of Earth," the Empress continued. "It does not do to forget that. Pass on, little Fool and seek the next stage of your growing."

Eleanor took the rose, and the moment she did so, the landscape around her changed.

She was no longer in a garden.

Instead, she was on a vast and empty plain. In the distance were mountains; dividing the mountains from the plain was a powerful, swiftly-moving river.

Seated before her, on a massive, square-built throne, was a man. He was dressed in archaic-looking armor, but it was very rich; gold-chased and engraved. He wore a crown and carried the traditional emblems of rule, the orb and scepter. As he looked down at Eleanor from his throne, she understood why the books called the Emperor a ditticult" card. ...

So she began her trial of the Emperor, by showing her own temper and determination.

"Not tonight, I think!" she impudently announced to that stern face, and turning away, summoned true sleep with a wave of her heavily perfumed rose.

21

June 21, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

"I'M NOT GOING TO BOTHER with trying to teach you anything now," Sarah said, as Eleanor finished recounting her latest dream-conquest, the Tarot card of the Lovers. She had conquered the Emperor far more easily than she had thought she would— but then, he was an easy card to understand. Not an easy card to handle, but easy to understand.

Secular power, intensely masculine, warlike, patriarchal... the embodiment, in a way, of all the traits that men found admirable. And, in the inverse—rigid, bound by tradition, unable to change, territorial— all the things that had turned the war into a disaster. His Element was Fire, a fire so fierce that nothing grew on his plain, so in his way he was as much an embodiment, even in proper position of sterility, as the Empress was of fertility ... a curious pairing.

She hadn't had much difficulty with the Hierophant, either—who was to spirituality what the Emperor was to the secular world. Both ruled by law, by conformity, by order. Both concentrated on the obvious sources of control and power, ignoring the ones within—the male counterparts to the High Priestess and the Empress, with all that this implied. Law, infallibility (presumed or actual), an intolerance for the "heretical" and the rebellious—

It had occurred to Eleanor that the world had been run by men of that stamp for some time now, and look where it had gotten everyone. And it had also occurred to her that both the Emperor and the Hierophant would expect softness and conciliation out of a female, not confrontation. The Emperor, given his Empress, would expect manipulation; the Hierophant would expect submission.

So confrontation was what she had given them. She had stood her ground and told them both the truth about what their traits, taken to extreme, had done to the world—truly conquering the cards instead of merging with them—with their own weapons of order, law, and logic. Unable to face her logic, they had faded away, leaving behind the heady taste of secular and sacred power.

But the Lovers—that was another uncomfortable card. Not the least of which because Eleanor had gone through the Hierophant's rigidly designed, mathematically precise temple to find herself in the garden behind it, and there she discovered she was facing the original—and stark naked—Adam and Eve. It was quite a shock to her senses and her sensibilities. She had never seen anyone else naked before.

Much less a man. She had literally leapt back with a yelp, and averted her eyes from the two figures, who appeared not at all uncomfortable with their nude state. Which was odd—because hadn't the Fruit of the Tree made them ashamed? These two were not at all embarrassed.

And yet, there was nothing remotely sexual about them. The Empress had had more sensuality and erotic attraction, fully clothed, than both of the Lovers put together.

Nevertheless, Eleanor hadn't known where to look, and her face had been flaming as red the roses in the Empress's garden.

She should have known this was coming, after all, she had seen the card in Sarah's deck. But somehow it had come as a complete surprise and shock, and she had been so dumbstruck she hadn't known what to do.

The Archangel of the card had stepped in to save her from dying of embarrassment, shooing the two away. They had gone off to sit under the tree with the serpent in it, to immediately begin to quarrel about who had tempted whom, and whose fault it was that everything had gone wrong.

They sounded like a couple of children, and that was when Eleanor understood why they were so devoid of eroticism. They were children. Children without the innocence of the Fool, for they had already learned how to lay blame, to lie, and quarrel.

The Archangel sighed, and shook his head sadly. It was odd; he looked exactly like the Archangel portrayed on the card—which meant, at least to Eleanor's eyes, he didn't look all that much like an angel at all. More like an androgynous man with wings. There was none of the glow, of the majesty, that she would have thought would be the hallmarks of a real angel.

He's an image, a reflection—the symbol for something, rather than the actual thing, she decided. And an image created by someone who hasn't ever seen the real thing, or even taken much thought of what one should look like. It had always seemed to her that there ought to be a reason why the first thing an angel said when it appeared was "Fear not." Presumably, the mere sight of one was enough to strike fear into the hearts of those who saw him.

This angel looked as if he was more likely to say "Welcome to the garden, have a seat" than "fear not."

"It wasn't so much that they tasted the fruit," the Angel said to the empty air, carefully not looking at Eleanor. He sounded exasperated, like a teacher with two dunces for pupils. "It was that they lied about it, and then tried, and keep trying, to blame each other. He forgives everything, you know, so long as you admit you did it and are properly sorry for it—"

He glanced at Eleanor, and now he looked sorrowful. "They began with such promise, and yet one small thing has kept them from fulfilling that promise."

"Responsibility," Eleanor said, instantly, before the Angel could get in another word. "They're not taking responsibility for what they did— so that's the reversed position for this card, isn't it? This card represents responsibility. And choices, and temptation, and balance between male and female—" The words kept tumbling out of her, as if she had turned on a spigot. "You're part of it too, since you—you aren't Michael, are you?"

He shook his head. "Raphael."

She nodded. "Raphael, whose sign is Mercury and whose element is Air; the positive of Air is freedom and an unbounded imagination, and the negative aspect of Air is carelessness and light-mindedness—"

It seemed as if some of the Magician's knowledge was with her now, and couldn't wait to get out. The more she babbled, the more symbols she saw here—temptation, in the form of the Tree and the Serpent, but more knowledge too. There was another tree, without a Serpent twined around it; it balanced the other. What did that tree represent?

If the first one is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, what is the other one? It seemed to be covered with little flames rather than leaves or fruit. Was it a sort of Burning Bush? That was another kind of knowledge—

"And Fire," the Archangel said, helpfully. "Don't forget that's there too." He nodded at the tree.

There was something about that Tree that should be ticking off memories and wasn't. As if the back of her mind recognized the symbolism, but wouldn't talk to the front of her mind about it.

She nodded, fixing her eyes on the Angel's face so she wouldn't have to look at the two naked people sprawled inelegantly beneath the tree. If they weren't physically upside-down, their position was close enough to make them look "reversed." "Of course—passion again, but it has to be passion in balance with everything else. And of course there's the Serpent and the Tree from the Garden—that's Earth—" But she wasn't quite grasping it.

"Ah, but what is the thing that you must take from them? The symbol of the power that's here?" the Archangel asked shrewdly. "It was the cup from the Magician, the scroll from the High Priestess, the Empress's rose, the Emperor's orb, the Hierophant's crown—"

"Knowledge, wisdom, passion, power, law—" she said aloud, thinking very hard. There was a problem here. The Lovers were both stark naked and had nothing in their hands. Balance, responsibility—what represents that? Choices—making good ones and bad ones— There was no symbol of any of these things anywhere about.

There were still the apples on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but—

But I've already had knowledge, and anyway, I don't think that's the answer.

She looked at the Archangel sharply. "It's nothing I have," he replied, with one perfect eyebrow raised at the exact angle required to convey admonition. "And don't even think about pulling out one of my feathers. Do that, and you'll find me treating you like something other than a lady."

Well, whatever these Tarot creatures were—one thing that they were not was to actually be what they appeared to be. This one might wear the outer semblance of an angel, but she didn't think even a minor one of the cherubim would talk like that, much less an archangel. Which, she had to admit, was something of a relief. She really didn't want to have anything to do with a real angel.

Adam and Eve were looking bored, and had even given up on their quarrel while they waited for her to come up with the symbol of what she must take from them.

What could it be?

Wait, what if it wasn't something material? This card was about balances, and there couldn't be anything more heavily weighted in favor of the earthly as a symbol than everything that stood in front of her. Except that the dominating Element of this card was Air. So—did it follow that what she was to take was the opposite, immaterial balancing earthly?

"The kiss of peace," she said, sure now of herself. "From both of them."

"Oh, well done!" the Archangel applauded, as Adam and Even came towards them at a wave of his hand. Eleanor tried not to look, but it wasn't easy, when the two of them bracketed her and leaned forward to kiss her cheeks at the same time. She closed her eyes, but she could still feel them there, and as their lips brushed her cheeks, she felt her face flaming.

And that was the moment—

"That was the moment," Eleanor said, swallowing hard. "I have gotten something from every one of the cards I passed through—something that stayed with me, that is. But from the Lovers—" She shivered, and looked up at Sarah. "Responsibility, Sarah! It all came to me, then, just before I fell into sleep. Responsibility! The burden of making the right choices! I—I—" She couldn't put into words what she had felt at the moment; it was just very big, and very heavy, and she was only beginning to see the edges of it. But part of it was that she wasn't just responsible for herself . . . she was responsible for however she affected everyone she came into contact with.

"I'm not going to bother with trying to teach you anything now," Sarah said, gravely. "For the life of me, I cannot think what I could offer you that you aren't already getting in your dreams." And before Eleanor could protest, she held up her hand. "I am not saying not to come here anymore. But I think you have a new teacher—though I don't know who or what it could be, that can work through dreams." She shook her head. "I've heard of that, but no one I know has actually gotten that sort of teaching."

Eleanor went very still. "Not even Mother?" she asked softly.

Sarah shook her head. "Not even your mother."

Eleanor slipped back into the house well ahead of the return of her stepmother and the girls. They had gone to Longacre Park for a tea party—the expected company had arrived, and with it, an invitation to tea.

And while it sickened Eleanor to hear the girls try to outdo each other in their boasting about how Reggie had been attracted to them, she wanted to hear what had happened. So she sat by the hearth with mending in her hands, and waited for them to come back.

The motorcar rattled and chugged its way into the old stable, and the three came chattering up the walk and in through the door.

Or rather, the girls were chattering. Alison was silent. Rather to Eleanor's surprise, they were not chattering about Reggie; instead they were talking about his aunt.

". .. dotty!" Lauralee laughed. "Absolutely dotty! Why she couldn't even keep track of which of us was which! And if I heard one more story about her cat, I think I should have begun screaming!"

"Mother, if that's all we have to worry about, I don't believe you are in any danger of being discovered," Carolyn said, sounding complacent.

"On the whole, I am inclined to agree with you," Alison replied, her voice plummy with satisfaction. "Calling that silly old woman an Elemental Mage is beyond being charitable. She hasn't any more power than a village witch."

They moved into the sitting-room. Eleanor did not need to work magic to hear them. They spoke as if they were unaware that she was still sitting there in the kitchen.

"Aren't we doing anything tonight, Mother?" Carolyn continued. "It's Midsummer Eve—I thought you'd decline the invitation to the card party tonight."

"And not a time when we should be stirring anything," Alison said warningly. "No, not on the shortest night of the year. It is true that the boundaries between the seen and the unseen weaken on this night, but it is not in our favor. We will leave the work we performed on May Eve to strengthen—which it will, so long as nothing interferes with it. Our revenants will draw sustenance through the weakened boundaries on their own—and trust me, they have no wish to pass on to the unseen world."

Revenants? What does she mean by that? Eleanor heard Alison's footsteps on the floor, coming towards the kitchen, and bent studiously over her mending. It was one of Carolyn's tennis dresses; she'd caught the hem and it needed putting up again, so it was a legitimate task.

"What are you doing, Ellie?"

Eleanor looked up, and held out her hands. It was obvious that she was holding a garment that wasn't her own—she didn't own anything white. Only those with leisure, whose work was all done by servants, could have white clothing. It was a fact of poverty that Eleanor had come to learn.

"Ah." Alison nodded in satisfaction. "Yes, that will be needed tomorrow. I trust you have dinner well in hand?"

Eleanor nodded. She did—thanks to cleverly putting together things that could be made well in advance. The only things left were the new peas and new potatoes on the stove.

"We'll be eating early, then we'll be going up to Longacre Park for the evening." Alison smirked. "Put supper forward to six. I trust you can keep yourself out of mischief while we're gone."

"Yes ma'am," Eleanor mumbled, dropping her head so that Alison wouldn't see her expression.

If the girls had had their way, they'd have gone up to the Manor in ballgowns, and Eleanor would happily have let them make that faux pas—but their mother was watching, and chose their gowns herself. "Slightly more elegant than your fine afternoon gowns, my dears, but not evening dress. If we had been invited to dinner instead of a card-party, it would have been appropriate, but otherwise, no." They looked stunning, Lauralee in mauve silk, Carolyn in blue.

If Eleanor had dared to look up, she knew they would have seen the hatred and anger blazing in her eyes, so as she fastened hooks and tied lacings, she kept her gaze on her own hands, or on the floor. Alison shooed her back down to the kitchen so that her own maid could see to the girls' hair. Eleanor was glad enough to go.

And she could scarcely wait for them to get out of the house.

She sat next to the fire in the kitchen, trembling with anger. The anger actually surprised her a little; it had welled up the moment Alison called her "Ellie."

That name seemed to embody everything that Alison had done to her. She had never been "Ellie" to her father, or anyone else. Servants were called "Ellie" and "girl."

And I am a servant in my own house. But the moment I show any signs of rebellion, Alison is going to look for what inspired the rebellion.

So she busied her hands, waited impatiently for them to go, and tried to remember where she had heard or read anything about revenants.

Whatever they were, Alison was using them for something, and if Alison was using them, it couldn't be for any good purpose.

For some reason the word was making her think of ghosts—and she was sure her recollection was of something that Sarah had said, not anything that she had read.

That would make things difficult, since Sarah was out tonight, doing whatever it was that witches did on the solar and seasonal holidays.

Finally the three of them left, and once again, the house was still. Eleanor expected to hear the sound of the motorcar starting up, but instead, she heard one approaching The Arrows. And in fact, she didn't think anything at all of this, until it pulled up to the front door and stopped.

The sound of a car door opening and closing echoed over area, and Eleanor had a sudden vision of Reggie himself come to pick them up.

But no. No, she realized even as the thought crossed her mind, that it wouldn't be at all proper. Not the "done thing." No, he'd have sent his chauffeur.

But it made her angrier still that they were getting all this fuss made over them. Would it have hurt Reggie, just once, to have offered her a lift back to the village? After all, he was always coming there himself, to go to the Broom Pub—which was just across the street from The Arrows.

Of course it wouldn't have inconvenienced him in any way. But she was hardly in his social class, now, was she?

He would scarcely wish to be seen with the likes of her.

In the back of her mind, a small voice protested that if Reginald Fenyx were seen giving a ride in his automobile to a young serving girl, people would assume the worst—and that he wasn't being snobbish, he was protecting her reputation.

But that voice was swiftly drowned in the clamor from the rest of her mind, which bristled with envy of her stepsisters, anger at her own situation, and bitterness.

She kept her head down and her hands steady in case anyone should look in on her—but no one did. With a soft swish of silk and laughter as light as their gowns, all three of the Robinsons hurried out the door. The sound of two automobile doors slamming echoed in the street, then the chugging of the engine faded away in the distance.

Eleanor counted to fifty before she got up and went into the library.

Extravagant as ever, Alison had left a lamp burning there. In the section where Eleanor had found the alchemy books was one she had passed over as irrelevant, a book that purported to describe various supernatural creatures and how to be rid of them. Now she took it out, because she thought she remembered something about revenants in there.

What she found was a brief, and vague, reference, and she put the book back with a feeling of discontent. Ghosts, but not ghosts; at least that seemed to be the definition. Or else, some were ghosts, actual spirits unwilling or unable to move on, but others were memories, mechanically playing out whatever tragedy had created them She sat there, nibbling on the rough edge of her thumbnail, while she considered her options for learning anything. Sarah was unavailable; as she had been on May Eve, she was off doing something that had to do with being a witch. There was nothing in her alchemy books, and she didn't recall anything from her mother's notebook.

But what had Sarah said? That she, Eleanor, was getting direct teaching in dreams?

She was using the Tarot to guide her, after a suggestion in one of the alchemy books, and she was concentrating on the cards whenever she fell asleep, assuming that she would find her way into the Tarot realm. So if she was being taken up by some sort of teacher or teachers, perhaps they were using what she was thinking about as the structure to their lessons.

Well, what if she went to bed and concentrated on a question instead of the cards? Would she get an answer to it?

Only one way to find out.

She went up the stairs to her own room—it was unlikely the girls would come up here to wake her when they returned, since it was less work to get out of their dresses alone than it was to climb the stairs to find her and wake her—or, if Alison was feeling generous, she would send her own maid to help them. Howse would be waiting in Alison's rooms until the Robinsons returned—not that this was any hardship. There was a lounge there, and a stack of the latest magazines. Howse didn't lack for anything, truth to be told.

Though if more truth were to be told, except for the extra place at dinner, Eleanor scarcely knew Howse was in the house. She hardly spoke at all; she might have been a clockwork for all the notice she took of anything.

Then again, it was probably that Howse considered Eleanor to be so far beneath her that she would sooner turn desperado than acknowledge Eleanor's presence. If the hierarchy between lower class and upper was rigid, it was even more so among servants. Eleanor had never really understood that until she had been made into a servant herself, but it was the truth. Upper servants spoke to lower only to give orders, and would never even think of socializing with them.

So it was no great surprise that she heard nothing from Howse as she closed the door of her little garret room. Once settled into bed, she closed her eyes and concentrated. What are revenants, and what has Alison to do with them?

She could not have told the moment when she slipped from waking into sleeping, but she found herself—strangely enough—walking down the road, heading to the meadow where she met Reggie. It was dark, with hardly any moonlight at all, and yet the whole landscape seemed as bright as day to her.

It was deserted, of course. Anyone in the farms along here was already in bed. Dawn came early, and with it, the demands of livestock and crops.

She wasn't so much walking, she quickly discovered, as she was being walked. Her body—if, indeed, this was her body and not the sort of other self she inhabited when she was in the world of the Tarot— moved along of its own volition and under the control of someone other than herself. She didn't fight it; there was no reason to. As near as she could tell, she was going to be given the answer to her question—or why else take her outside the magical protections that Sarah had placed around the village? The revenants could not pass those— therefore, to see them, she must go outside them.

Finally she came to the boundary of Longacre Park.

And there, along the fence, she saw—them. The moment she did, she felt a shock of pure terror the like of which she had never felt in all her life. The nasty little creatures that she had driven away in the meadow had frightened her, but not like this. This was pure, atavistic fear, the fear that said to the gut, these things can do worse than kill you.

She'd have screamed, if her instincts hadn't caught the scream in her throat before it began. They didn't know she was there yet, and there was no reason to do something that would certainly attract their attention!

Transparent, glowing, there was no mistaking them for living creatures. For one thing, they were in a variety of costumes—but for another, they weren't all whole. At least half of them were missing pieces of themselves; arms, legs, and in at least one case, a head. And most of the rest were rather gruesomely the worse for wear and time. She was very, very glad that they all had their backs to her; if they faced her, she didn't think she would be able to hold back a scream.

There were a great many of them, all pressing against some invisible boundary at the edge of Longacre Park lands. The oldest were dressed in some sort of outlandish robes and animal skins; the newest in the uniform of the British infantry.

All of them wanted in. All of them were consumed with rage.

Why? she thought irrelevantly. Why them? What could anyone up at Longacre Park have possibly done to anger a Druid? That is, she assumed the ones in the robes were Druids. She couldn't think what else they could be.

Well, whatever it was, Alison had given their anger a form and a force of will, and now they were ready to press that advantage as far into the "enemy" territory as they could.

She held quite still, knowing, even if she knew nothing else, that she did not want to attract their attention.

But she also did not want those things prowling about after dark. Maybe ordinary people couldn't see them and know them to be as dangerous as an unexploded shell, but she could, and did, and she often went out at night. Maybe they couldn't get past the protections that kept the village safe—but maybe they could.

She wasn't taking any chances.

I have to get away, and tell Sarah about this as soon as I can. She has to know these things are still out here, and dangerous.

But before she could make up her mind any further, she heard, faint and muffled, the sound of another motorcar approaching. Eleanor shivered as she realized that the motor was also nearly transparent, and as for driver and passenger, they were utterly, weirdly silent. Were they some other kind of revenant? Or were they something else?

The motor chugged to a full stop alongside the fence—which, strangely enough, was not transparent. And as the passenger stepped down from the motorcar, she became more real, and more solid, with each step. It was like a vanishing-trick in reverse. As she became more real and solid, she also began to glow—but it was as if she had brought sunlight into the midnight world, not the sort of sickly foxfire that the revenants radiated. Just looking at her made Eleanor feel more confident, and less afraid.

But the figure that stood there, straight-backed and imperious, was no one that Eleanor recognized.

She was dressed in the most outlandish costume Eleanor had ever seen outside of a play or a fancy-dress party—quite literally, draped Grecian robes of a brilliant blue. In her graying hair, which had been braided and wrapped around her head in the style favored by Grecian matrons, was a laurel wreath. She had a staff a little taller than she was in one hand, but she didn't lean on it as if she needed its support. She surveyed the scene before her, looking down her nose at the revenants, who were only just now realizing that she was there, and frowned.

"Provide an anchor, Smith, just in case." The very feminine voice said—sounding as if she was speaking from the bottom of a well. A pale blue ray of light lanced from the man behind the wheel to the old woman.

Now the revenants were beginning to notice that they were not alone. They turned towards the woman, snarling and sneering, and one or two advanced towards her in a threatening manner.

She didn't seem to care in the least. In fact, she regarded them with the calm disapproval of someone who has found schoolboys meddling in something they should have known better than to touch. "You," she said sternly, "Have been very naughty, and whoever sent you was naughtier still."

And with that, she rapped the butt of her staff three times on the ground, and made a gesture as of one scattering a handful of grain.

And suddenly, Eleanor found herself at the heart of a tempest.

22

June 21, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

QUICKER THAN THOUGHT, THE TEMPEST descended. Silent, invisible winds ripped through the countryside, practically picking Eleanor right up off her feet and slamming her into the trunk of a tree, to which she clung for dear life. The winds tore at her hair, sending it whipping around her, hauled at her clothing—but what they did to her was nothing to what they were doing to the revenants.

The revenants were—literally—being shredded, by the winds that spun cyclone-like in a vortex, with the old woman at their still heart. There was a clean, blue glow about the old woman and her helper now. And though the revenants huddled howling together, trying to hide themselves, nothing they did was any protection against the power that was ripping them apart, as if they were nothing but tissue-paper, and whirling the tiny pieces upwards in a reverse snowfall of glowing bits.

Eleanor looked up, involuntarily, to see that the bits were being carried up into a bottomless black hole in the sky, rimmed with glowing blue.

And yet—and there was the strangest thing of all—so far as the trees and the rest of the "real world" was concerned, there were no winds. The leaves rustled only a little; the grasses scarcely moved at all. There was no sound but the keening wail of the revenants themselves.

The hair went up on the back of Eleanor's neck, even as she clung even tighter to the tree-trunk.

Or was she clinging to the trunk? There seemed to be two trees there, a kind of faintly luminescent shadow-tree, which was tossing its branches in the tempest, and the "real" tree, which was undisturbed— and her arms were wrapped tightly around the former, not the latter.

A thin cry of despair arose from the revenants, and if they had been hideous before, now, with half of their substance eaten away by the terrible cyclone, they were horrible to look at. They tried to snatch at the bits of themselves being ripped off and blown away, only to see their fingers, bits of their hands, torn off too. Eleanor felt herself sickening, and couldn't help herself; she couldn't bear the sight any longer. She squeezed her eyes shut, and tried to will herself awake, for surely this was a dream. It must be a dream. She would make it a dream—

Oh please, let this just be a nightmare, don't let it be real . . .

And with a start, and a jolting she felt in her heart, she did awaken.

She was in her own bed, crickets singing outside her window. Her heart pounded so hard she thought the bed might be shaking with the force of it, and she was terribly, terribly cold.

And a moment later, she began to shiver so violently that the bed did start shaking after all.

She tried to move, and couldn't, and her shivering grew worse. It was as if the cold itself held her prisoner, in bonds of ice. She had never been so cold; her teeth chattered with it, and her fingers and toes were numb with it, and she wanted a blanket desperately. But before she could make a second attempt to lurch out of bed to get one, something else came to her rescue.

Flowing out of the brickwork of the chimney came her Salamanders, three of them. They raced across the floor and slithered up into the bed, where one coiled itself against the small of her back, one wrapped itself around her shoulders, and one curled up just at the hollow of her stomach. Warmth spread from them, driving the numbing cold out of her, and after a moment, her shivering stopped and she began to relax.

As soon as she began to feel warm again, exhaustion hit her, as if she had been working beyond her strength. And when the last of remnants of her fear ebbed away, replaced by a weary lassitude, she gave in to it, and let sleep claim her again.

This time carefully not thinking of any questions, nor the Tarot. She'd had enough lessons for one night.

June 22, 1917

Longacre Park, Warwickshire

The card party that had begun so tediously had ended last night as a different sort of party altogether. Reggie could not have been more grateful. His aunt's good friend—and his own godmother—Lady Virginia de Marce had turned up, in her own motorcar, with her chauffeur and (though only he and his aunt knew this) arcane assistant Smith in attendance. Smith had efficiently organized the servants and gotten the formidable pile of Lady Virginia's belongings upstairs, while her ladyship tidied herself and returned to take control of the company.

Her ladyship could not help but take control of whatever company she was in. She had an air about her of absolute authority, she dressed like a queen, in her own unique style, based roughly on the enormous hats, trumpet-skirts and high-necked gowns of twenty years before, which somehow made her look tunelessly fashionable rather than outdated.

While every powerful Master that Reggie had ever met tended to exude that aura of authority, Lady Virginia had honed hers into a weapon. When she entered a room, she took charge of it and everyone in it.

With Smith's help, she had come downstairs again in less than a third of the time it would have taken any other woman, changed miraculously from her duster, goggles, veiled hat and traveling-ensemble to an exquisite gown of mauve lace. Smith, be it said, was also Lady Virginia's lady's maid—because Smith, chauffeur, arcane assistant, was a woman.

As Lady Virginia often said, "I am old enough to be able to hire whom I wish, and rich enough to be considered eccentric, rather than mad, when I do."

It was difficult to know whether one liked Smith; the curiously sexless servant was a past mistress of being inscrutable and virtually invisible. But there was no doubt that Smith was as efficient and formidable, in her own quiet way, as her mistress.

Reggie had more than once wondered if Smith was even human. It was possible that she was not; Lady Virginia, after all, was a formidable Master of Air, and it was just within the bounds of the possible that Smith was actually an Air Elemental of some arcane sort. Not likely, but possible.

As for appearances, Smith had gray eyes, curiously colorless hair kept cropped short, and invariably wore gray, either as a mannishly tailored suit, or a chauffeur's uniform (and somehow, perhaps because she looked so androgynous, no one was scandalized by a woman in trousers). She was always correct, always precise, and seldom spoke unless addressed directly.

And in fact, her name wasn't "Smith" at all. It was Melanie Lynn.

When he'd first learned this, he had been stupid enough and arrogant enough to take Lady Virginia to task for calling her servant "Smith" rather than "Lynn"—for there were people in his circle that couldn't be bothered to learn their servants' names. Instead, they had a habit of calling them whatever was convenient so that they would never have to learn a new name for the old position when one servant was replaced by another.

He should have known better. This was Lady Virginia, after all, who marched in the Suffragists' Parades, chained herself to the railing of Number 10 Downing Street, and helped Doctor Maya in her charity clinic.

"Are you mad, boy?" Lady Virginia had said, sternly. "It's not for my convenience! Smith wants me to call her Smith, and I'm not fool enough to gainsay her."

"Names are power," Smith had said, from behind him, startling him into a yelp, for he hadn't realized she had come in. "Smith is a cipher. When you are a cipher, boy, you can be anything. Standing out isn't always an advantage."

He often wondered where, exactly, Lady Virginia had found Smith, but after that day, he'd never dared to ask.

The game of bridge that had been taking place was utterly abandoned, as soon as Lady Virginia descended, tidied into elegance again. Her personality dominated the gathering without anyone other than Reggie really noticing. Within moments, she had smoothly and effortlessly redirected the conversation into a discussion of the remarkable achievements of young T. E. Lawrence in the Arabian campaign. It was a reasonably "safe" topic; an exotic enough locale that no one at the tables truly connected it with the war, and even if they had, Lawrence was leading an all-Arab army of resistance. No British lives—other than his own—were involved. He was the darling of the American as well as the British press. He was trailed about by an audacious American reporter. It was painless to find him interesting.

But there was something about the significant looks that she kept casting at Reggie that made him certain she was only biding her time until she could get him alone. Though why that should be, he couldn't guess.

Unless it had something to do with taking up magic again.

Surely not.

Nevertheless he was glad enough when his Aunt April, Lady Williams, declared that if she was tired, Lady Virginia must be shattered, and the local guests who had come from outside Longacre Park elected to take themselves back to their homes. He was able to slip away unobtrusively, and take to his own bed. Not that he had expected to sleep. His dreams—nightmares, really—had been so terrifying since the beginning of May that if he got three undisturbed hours in a night, it was a good night's rest. Only Doctor Maya's drugs kept the nightmares at bay, and he was beginning to feel uneasy about how much of that stuff he was taking.

He lay down in his bed, expecting to stare at the ceiling for hours, and had just begun to think about what Lady Virginia could want with him. That was when he actually fell asleep due to exhaustion.

Most nights of the last month, he had lain awake for hours, staring up at the ceiling, aware of a feeling of lurking hostility and menace, unable to determine where it came from.

So it was all the more surprising when he fell asleep immediately, and did not dream.

It was even more surprising that the next time he opened his eyes, it was morning. Real morning, not two or three past midnight, nor even predawn. The sun was coming up, filling his room with light—as with most Air Masters, he preferred to have his bedroom facing east— a cool breeze fluttered the curtains, and a lark saluted the day.

He felt better than he had—in an age. Actually rested for once, and even if his knee gave him the usual amount of trouble when he rose, it was worth it to look out his window at the sun streaming over the lawns without feeling as if he would have given his soul for a single night of undisturbed rest.

He was even whistling when he came down to breakfast to find his aunt and Lady Virginia just beginning their own meal.

"Good morning, my lady, Aunt April," he said cheerfully as he went to the sideboard to help himself—noting with a sigh that it was a dark-bread day. If there was one thing he missed more than anything else since rationing had begun, it was good white bread.

"Your dear mother is up and out as usual," his aunt told him, after presenting her cheek for him to kiss. "And where she gets that energy from at this hour of the day, I could not tell you. Certainly not from my side of the family. Positively indecent. No one should be that awake at six. Well, excepting milkmen, I suppose. And farmers. And one's maid. But they shouldn't be so cheerful about it. And your dear mother should know better. It troubles the servants when the mistress is up as early as they are."

Lady Virginia, said nothing, neatly and economically disposing of grilled tomatoes, while Aunt April talked and buttered toast without shedding a crumb.

This was Aunt April's usual sort of chatter; if there was a silence, she moved to fill it with whatever came into her head, which made for some interesting social moments, now and again. Reggie could still remember the time at a dinner party in this very house, during his first year at Oxford, when she had asked an eminent member of the the House of Lords, just as he was filling his lungs to pontificate, if there was a reason why his shirt-front popped every time he took a deep breath. Since the poor man had—up until that moment, at least— clearly been unaware that his shirt-front did any such thing, he had been left gaping at her like a stranded fish and had completely lost his train of thought. Nor was that the end of it; he had been so self-conscious for the rest of the evening that he never spoke more than a sentence or two. As this had the result (at least according to his father) of preventing at least three arguments, any one of which might have erupted into a major disagreement if not a diplomatic incident, Aunt April had earned the undying gratitude of the rest of the guests and standing invitations to more events than she could ever possibly attend. And if she had a reputation as being more than a bit dotty, every hostess worth her salt-cellar knew Aunt April could be counted on to defuse potential disasters with an unfocused laugh and a disingenuous remark at precisely the right moment. And if a stuffed-shirt or two was left embarrassed and wondering how it had happened, at least it was nothing he could take exception to.

"Mother's been an early riser for as long as I can remember, Aunt April," Reggie said, sitting down with his own plate of grilled tomatoes and eggs. "And I doubt that the servants even notice. This is the countryside; people get up earlier than they do in town."

"And I can't think why," Aunt April responded, waving her knife for emphasis, her brows furrowed. "What is there to get up early for? It's not as if there was shooting at this time of year, and anyway, by the time it's shooting season, getting up early isn't early anymore, it's properly late."

Reggie didn't even try to wrap his mind around that statement; it made sense to Aunt April, so that was all that counted.

"You do rattle on, April," said Lady Virginia without rancor. "Reginald, I want to speak with you as soon as you have finished your breakfast. Privately."

"Oh, good," Aunt April said, looking suddenly cheerful. "We'll get that over with, then, and it won't be hanging over our heads like a rock of Sophocles, or was it the sword of Thucydides? Whichever it was, it was a terribly uncomfortable object to have hanging over your head, and I would hate to have it hanging over ours, spoiling the entire visit—"

"Damocles," Lady Virginia said, interrupting. "It was the Sword of Damocles, dear, as if you didn't know, since I know very well you were making better use of your brother's classics tutor than your brother did. Now, if you could take your tea to the terrace—"

"Oh, I'm finished, Virginia, and I'll run off and find nothing to do," Aunt April said, with a gay little wave of her hand as she rose in a flutter of lace flounces. "Do get him to come around to taking up his powers again, will you, dear? Of course you will, if he doesn't want to, you'll threaten him with Smith."

She trotted off, without waiting for a word from either of them, leaving him staring at Lady Virginia across the breakfast table, nervously crumbling toast and wishing he'd sent down for a tray instead of coming to the table this morning.

"Reginald," Lady Virginia said, raising her chin a little. "This nonsense of avoiding magic must stop. Now."

She couldn't have been more direct, and she left him with no graceful way out of the conversation. He clenched his teeth, and replied just as directly.

"Lady Virginia—forgive me, but you can't possibly know why I am—"

She did something she had never done before, in all of his acquaintance with her. She interrupted him.

"Actually," she said tartly, "I do know. I know exactly why, in excruciating detail. I have not been idle these three years. I am a VAD— a working VAD, though admittedly, a part-time VAD, since my old bones are hardly up to the long hours the young ones put in, and I have no intention of living in some squalid little dormitory with a pack of girls. I have been spending many long hours at the bedsides of young enlisted men, and I wasn't simply mopping their brows, as you should by now be aware. Furthermore, they talk to me, Reginald. I induce them to talk to me, because it is sometimes the only way to purge them of their horrors."

Reggie felt his eyes widen with shock. It had never occurred to him that aristocratic Lady Virginia would have volunteered to do nursing-aide work. But—she was continuing.

"And as for what happened specifically to you, not only did I get the gist of the experience from Maya, one of my working-class proteges, a clever Earth magician that I sponsored through nurse's training, was privy to some of your experience in the trenches, as you rather unambiguously shared it with whoever was Sensitive at the time."

He stared at her, appalled that he had done any such thing. Granted, he'd been out of his senses but still, "Who?"

Lady Virginia shrugged. "You weren't conscious, so you won't recognize the name. A nurse at the first field-hospital you came to, if you must know; an Earth-worker, as I told you—they can't seem to stay away from pursuing healing at the Front. You nearly gave her a breakdown and she had to come home to me for a month. Fortunately, Maya sorted her out. Unfortunately, Maya does not seem to have been as successful with you."

He blinked at her. There didn't seem to be anything he could say. "I'm sorry about your protegee—" he began.

She waved his apology away. "She knew that she was going to encounter things like that before she volunteered, and the experience has given her better shields. And you could learn from her example. As soon as she could, she was back, using what power she has for the greatest good."

He flushed.

She saw the flush, correctly assumed it was embarrassment, and shook her head. "You mistake me. I am not going to act like your idiotic grandfather and call you a coward, because I know you aren't. That leg of yours can't—according to Doctor Maya—be more than half healed. And I know that you think that you have taken the best steps you can to protect yourself. But Reginald, walling yourself off from magic is not going to solve your problem. In fact, it is only going to make things worse."

Nettled, now, he narrowed his eyes. "I can't see how."

Lady Virginia sighed. "Naturally you can't see how. You haven't looked." She eyed him shrewdly. "You've forgotten that building walls instead of shields blinds you to what is going on around you. I don't suppose you'd have the effrontery to tell me you've been sleeping the sleep of the just lately, would you?"

"Last night—" he began, but she interrupted him again.

"Oh, last night, of course. But what about for the last month?" She stared at him, daring him to lie with her eyes.

And he couldn't. He gave in, feeling his fragile defenses crumple under the pressure of the knowledge she had in her eyes. He didn't know how she knew, but she clearly did. "No. I've gotten no more than a few hours of rest at most over the past few weeks. Most nights are as bad as they were when I was in hospital."

"I'm not surprised," Lady Virginia replied, with satisfaction. "Considering that until last night you had a small army of revenants breathing down your neck. Even walled and shielded, you would have sensed them, and had they gained in power, you would have been at their mercy. Revenants are not subject to the same laws as Elementals, as you should well know, and if they had been able to break through to you, they would have shredded your mind at the least, and possibly worse than that."

That took him completely by surprise. "Revenants? But—"

What could he possibly have done to arouse revenants? And here? There hadn't been a haunt anywhere near Longacre for generations!

But—"haunted" described exactly how he had been feeling for the last month or so.

Revenants! The mere thought made him dizzy. No, revenants were not subject to the same laws as Elementals. They could even make themselves seen and felt by ordinary mortals. Really powerful ones could kill.

"Smith and I encountered them clawing at the shields around the grounds last night as we came in," Lady Virginia continued ruthlessly. "We dispelled them of course. But if you had been properly doing your job instead of relying on your late father's defenses—which are eroding, may I add—you would have known they were there and done something about them weeks ago."

"But—" His head was whirling at this point.

"But me no buts. I will accept no excuses. Think, will you?" she demanded. "There are surely at least a handful of sensitives down in that village of yours, if not a real practitioner. What if one of them had been caught by the revenants instead of Smith and me?"

"I'll build better shields," he said grimly, getting his metaphorical feet under him again. "I'll put myself behind magical walls too thick for anything to sense me or find me, and I won't attract any more trouble—"

"Reginald David Alexander Tiberius Fenyx, you have tried that, and it did not work!" Lady Virginia exploded, losing her temper as she had seldom ever done in his presence. He shrank back involuntarily, as she slapped the table three times with an open palm, emphasizing her last three words. "By the Archangel Raphael, I swear, if your father was alive to hear this, he would—well, I don't know what he would do, but I know what he would be, and that is bitterly disappointed! I expect the idiots in the War Office to fail to learn from their mistakes, but I thought better of you!"

"But—" he protested feebly.

"You were behind shields—your own and your father's—and those revenants still found you! And I cannot for the life of me imagine what you could have done that would attract the attention of a renegade Druid, a couple of Roman-British louts in armor, an assortment of Regency highwaymen, and a spread of nasty cutthroats stretching back to hide-wearing henge-builders! Now what about that makes you suspicious?" She stared at him, demanding that he think.

And he did, though he didn't want to admit what he was thinking. "They were sent?"

She sniffed. "Better. I was beginning to wonder if you had left some of your wits back there on the Front. Yes, they were sent. I do not know by whom, or why, but they were certainly carefully called up, invoked, bound, and sent. Probably Beltane Night, which would account for your disturbed sleep since then. And with them dispelled, which their master will most certainly know, the next things that are purposed to attack you will be stronger."

He just stared at her numbly. He couldn't for the life of him imagine why anyone would set revenants on him.

"It doesn't actually matter who did this, or why," Lady Virginia continued. "The point is that renouncing magic is not going to make this person go away. I don't believe that whoever this is has any plans to leave you alone until you are dead or mad."

Her eyes glittered at him; he hadn't truly understood how hard she could be when she felt the need. At that moment, it came home to him that she had been an Air Master—a combative magician, on a Front of her own—for most of her life. She was as mentally tough as any soldier, if not more so. She might not have been a part of the Council, but he knew quite well that she was part of some other White Lodge, and had been just as active as any of Alderscroft's Masters.

Perhaps the only difference between her and those now in the trenches was that her experience of combat had not left her disillusioned and bitter.

"Nor are you my primary concern at this moment," she said, stabbing her finger down at the tablecloth for emphasis. "You might be able to protect yourself behind your shields and your walls. But what about others? What about the sensitives down in your village? Can they? When whoever this is levels barrage after barrage of magical attacks against you, who do you think is going to pay the price as those attacks reflect off your defenses?"

He gulped. "I hadn't—"

But in his mind's eye, he saw the shattered remains of the villages of Belgium and France, wreckage that proved it didn't matter how innocent you were, once you were in the way.

He dropped his gaze to his own hands. They were shaking. "Did you see or sense anything that might give you an idea who was behind the attack?" he asked, instead, trying to put off the moment of decision for a little while longer.

"All that I sensed was a momentary hint of someone—a Fire magician, I thought, half-trained at best. It wasn't there for long, and I don't believe the Fire magician had anything to do with the revenants, I think it was just someone caught up accidentally. Possibly one of your sensitive villagers or someone dreaming and coming to investigate the flares of power; the aura suggested someone walking in an astral projection." He looked up at that, but she shook her head at him. "And at any rate, revenants are far more likely to be sent by an Earth magician. They don't respond well to Fire."

A Fire Magician, in an astral projection? "Could it have been one of the London Fire Masters responding to the presence of the revenants?" he hazarded.

"Possibly. More likely one of their students; the brief impression I got was of someone still in apprenticeship, so to speak." She frowned. "There isn't anyone in your village who would match that description, is there?"

"I never heard of any Fire Mages there." He shrugged helplessly. "Mind you, I was not here most of the time. If I wasn't at school, I was in London. Father never even told me who the other Masters were around here; he always said there would be plenty of time when I was finished at Oxford." He frowned as he concentrated on a fugitive memory. "I think there's a witch down there—Earth, of course—or at least, there was. I don't know if she's still alive, or if she's taken on students of her own. But Lady Virginia, if someone is strong enough to call up revenants and set them on me, shouldn't we inform Lord Alderscroft?"

Hope that he might yet evade Lady Virginia's demands sprang up in him.

"Surely this is a task for Alderscroft and the Council?" he persisted. "An attack on a Council member—"

"First, there would have to be a Council left to do something," Lady Virginia replied, caustically. "What's left, now that all the young lions are at the Front, dead, or incapacitated, has their hands full with arcane demands from the Almsley's branch of the War Office." Her lips tightened into a thin line. "But that still isn't the point, Reginald. The point is that even if you are safe for the moment, there are innocents around you who are not." She stared him in the face and would not let him look away. "So the question is, what are you going to do to protect them?"

He wanted, badly, to say that he wasn't going to do anything, that their protection was none of his business. He wanted to protest that he was the injured party here, that he had taken wounds to the spirit as well as the flesh in defence of his own country, and that it was past time that someone protected him for a change.

But he couldn't. As his father had once told him, there was an obligation that came with power. That obligation left him with a very clear code of conduct.

An officer and a gentleman. "I'll do what I must, Lady Virginia," he said, even though his hands shook with fear and his skin crawled. "It seems I have no choice."

June 22, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

Alison was furious, and everyone was staying out of her way.

She had every right to be furious. Bad enough that the card-party last night had been invaded and taken over by that dreadful old cow in her outmoded dresses, so that the careful work being done on Reggie by the girls was utterly disrupted as he went to dance attendance on the creature. Worse that she was Reggie's godmother and a particular friend of the family.

But worst of all—this Lady Virginia was an Air Master, a crony of Alderscroft's, and someone it would be very, very dangerous to cross. Any sort of covert magical work in Reggie's direction would have to stop; Alison could not take the risk of being uncovered.

Alison had been forced to sit there and smile and make polite noises, while her ladyship monopolized the conversation with tales of that fellow who'd gone native with the Arabs. As if he or a lot of unwashed camel-herders mattered! By the time she was able to make her excuses and escape, the greater part of the evening had been wasted, and Reggie wasn't even looking at the girls anymore. It had been his mother who'd sent for the chauffeur and the car to take them home.

But that wasn't the end of the evening's disasters, oh no. Because she had tried to call in her army of revenants to increase their strength—except when she tried to find them, they were gone. Vanished. Dispelled.

In fact, they had been dispelled so thoroughly that there wasn't a trace of them left—although the signs of the magic that had destroyed them were clear enough.

And the signature of an Air Master who didn't care who knew what she had done was clear enough for anyone to read who had the eyes to see it.

It hadn't been Reggie. It certainly wasn't the Broom village witch. That left only the newly arrived Lady Virginia. . . .

Alison had been so angry last night that she had called up and torn to bits several of her own kobolds, just to relieve her temper. She'd have dragged Ellie out of bed and beaten her—and in fact, she was tempted to—but if she started, she had known she wouldn't be able to stop, and the complications of hurting or killing the fool began with the mere inconvenience of not having someone to cook or clean in the morning, and ended with losing the Robinson fortune.

So instead, she made an example of three of the dullest of her minions, smashed a couple of china ornaments, and still went to bed in a temper.

She had awakened feeling no less angry, but by midmorning, her temper had cooled sufficiently to allow her to think clearly.

The girls knew better than to trifle with her in her current mood; when she summoned them to her room after Howse had finished her work, they came immediately and quietly.

"We have a problem," she told them, grimly. "That woman that arrived last night is an Air Master, and Reggie's godmother."

The girls exchanged a look of apprehension. "Does that mean no magic around her?" Carolyn asked.

"Nothing directed at Reggie, at least," Alison said sourly. "Alderscroft knows I'm an Earth Master—after all, he was the one who sent me!"

"But mother, I thought you said your job here was to be kept secret," Lauralee protested. "Why should Lord Alderscroft have told Lady Virginia about you?"

Of all of the things that had been running through her mind this morning, that hadn't been one of them. She sucked on her lower lip a moment. "In fact, he probably didn't, come to think of it. She's not on his Council as far as I know, and I can't believe he would have told an outsider War Office business."

"So it's not as bad as you thought!" Carolyn said, brightening.

"No, Carolyn, it is as bad as I thought," Alison corrected caustically. "It is simply not as dire as it could be. She's gotten rid of my revenants, and she will certainly be able to trace any active Earth magic used against her godson straight back to me—or to you. Which means we can do nothing directly. . . hmm."

"Mother, we can still use charms against our rivals," Lauralee pointed out shrewdly. "As long as we do so away from Longacre Park. She won't bother to look for magics being worked in that way."

Alison turned a surprised—and pleased—gaze on her elder. That was two good thoughts in as many minutes. "Now that is certainly a plan," she agreed. "And a good one. I approve. And as for me—you know, I do think it unlikely that Lady Virginia will even consider watching over Lady Devlin. I will redouble my efforts, and become Lady Devlin's best, most trusted friend. . . ." She felt her lips curving into a slight smile. "Yes. I could do that. It's the sort of exercise of Earth magic that an Air Master is usually blind to—slow, deliberate, and subtle, playing on the emotions. Then, I can play on her fears. Reggie will certainly have to go back to the Front. He's the only male left in the Fenyx line. He must marry and do his duty for the Fenyx name before he goes off again."

"And who better to wed than one of the daughters of her very good friend?" Carolyn put in coquettishly.

Lauralee laughed. "Pretty, polite, presentable . . . we're no worse than any of the other girls she's been trying to interest him in. Perhaps not as blue-blooded, but if she's growing desperate, she may overlook that." She cocked her head to one side. "Do you think we could get away with some small seductive magics, if we were careful to make them look—accidental?"

"Possibly, possibly." Alison thought hard. "It suddenly occurs to me that the reason Lady Virginia might be here is to urge Reggie back into the practice of magic. He has been walled against your charms until now—but if she succeeds, he'll be vulnerable to such things again." Her smile widened a trifle. "Now, there's a fine thought! If that is indeed the case, Lady Virginia might be doing us a favor! A delicious irony, though I doubt she would appreciate it herself."

"All I care about is that she not interfere," Lauralee countered. "Nothing else matters."

"Quite right," her mother declared, with satisfaction for her daughter's practicality. "So, we need to put together our new plans. I want you two to decide what magic you are going to use on your rivals. When you have your course of action, come to me so I can be sure it is something that won't alert Lady Virginia. I will intensify my campaign to win Lady Devlin. And the three of us will work out what sort of seductions you can use against Reggie and how to make them look like the innocent work of untrained sensitives."

"Yes, Mother," they chorused, looking maliciously cheerful as she shooed them out.

Alison went to the window of her bedroom, and looked down onto the garden below. Ellie was hanging out bedlinen, and it occurred to her that there was yet another loose end that needed tidying. She still had not made up her mind what to do about the girl. For all that her emotional self enjoyed the idea of putting Locke's plan into motion, her logical self warned that there were far too many loopholes in it—not to mention pitfalls.

The problem with adding outsiders into a plan was that you could never be sure of their loyalty—nor their discretion.

No, the more she thought of Locke's plan, the less she liked it. Still, the basic notion, of driving the girl mad—that was a good one.

She resolved to put more thought into it. Time was not on her side in this.

But there must be a better answer. And she was just the person to find it.

23

July 10, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

ALL WAS DARKNESS, SAVE ONLY a tiny pool of yellow light from the lantern that the old man held. He looked like a monk, the sort that wore simple, hooded robes. He wasn't, of course. He was something altogether different, with no more than a nodding acquaintance with Christianity.

Eleanor had expected someone hard and ascetic, and possibly unfriendly. Instead, she looked up into the face of a man who looked down on her with kind, warm eyes. He looked like a grandfatherly wizard, and was the most real of all of the Tarot creatures she had yet met.

"And now," said the Hermit, "You come to me. Do you know me yet?"

Eleanor shook her head; oh she knew what he was, and even what he represented, but to know him, understand him as deeply as that simple question implied—no, she did not know him yet. She knew only enough to know that this was someone who had spent all his life looking for wisdom, and had learned to distill things down to their simplest, who would, unlike Gaffer Clark, use the fewest words possible to cut to the heart of something.

It was night here in the world of the Tarot cards, and the Hermit held the lantern that was the only source of light for as far as she could see. It was that lantern that had led her to him.

In fact, tonight, for the very first time since she had begun this quest through the Major Arcana, she had not passed through the stages she had already been tested in. That had come as something of a shock. She had gone to bed early, since Alison and the girls were at Longacre Park—again—and she was bone-weary with all the work they had put her through. They went through as many clothing-changes in a day as Lady Devlin did now, and it wasn't Howse who picked up the discarded items, laundered them, hung them to dry, starched and ironed them. Oh no—it was Eleanor, up and down the stairs three times a day, with extra demand on her because the tennis dress discarded in the afternoon would be wanted in the morning.

Alison was getting very familiar with Lady Devlin, and Eleanor didn't think it was all name-dropping. There was something going on up there at the big great house, somehow Alison had managed to worm her way into Lady Devlin's regard.

Eleanor was trying very hard not to care. After all, Alison's machinations were giving her the freedom to gain in knowledge and control of her magic and her Element. Her hands and body might be busy, but her mind was free to think, to reason, to analyze every tiny bit of information she got from the alchemy books and her mother's notes. And when the others weren't about, she could practice some of the smaller magics, sharpening her skills. Fire magic was quite good for keeping the iron hot, for instance. And if her hands weren't nearly as smooth and lovely as her stepsisters', the Salamanders had healed the cracked skin, shrunk the joints, made the nails stronger and neater.

Besides, as Sarah had said, more than once, "The manor's the manor and the village is the village, and the less we have to do with each other the better." There was no point in even thinking about Reginald Fenyx and his mother. The gulf between them was just too wide to bridge.

But if there was one thing that all this delving through the paths of the cards was teaching her, it was to look inside herself and be honest about what was there.

Never mind that her little passion for Reginald Fenyx hadn't the chance of a rose in midwinter. It was certainly there. It didn't take having her mind slip off on a daydream of what he'd looked like asleep in the meadow to tell her that. And how not, really, when you came down to it? He was handsome, he was a war hero, and he was vulnerable; put the three traits together, and how could any girl not fall a little in love with him? And he had been kind to her—carelessly kind, but kind, nevertheless. Never mind that he had most likely forgotten her entirely by now. Between his own concerns and the round of entertainments his mother was contriving, he probably hadn't given her a single thought in weeks.

Which was just as well. It allowed her to have her secret passion without embarrassing herself. There was safety in distance.

If grown women can be in love with some actor on the London stage, she told herself, helplessly, I can be in love with Reggie Fenyx, surely. Where's the harm? So long as I don't delude myself into thinking he'd ever look twice at me in public.

Some of that was going through her mind before she went to sleep tonight, knowing that if she dreamed, she would be facing the Hermit, the embodiment of "know thyself." She was afraid, to tell the truth, not of the card-creature himself, but of failing to pass whatever tests he set her. The more she thought about the Hermit, the less confident she was; how could she even begin to meet him mind-to-mind?

She really didn't think she was ready for this card—surely he should have come at the end of the Major Arcana, not barely halfway through! Surely the end of the journey that began with the Fool should end with the Hermit.

She had hoped to gain a bit more courage by passing through all the stages she had won through before facing the Hermit—but instead, when she "woke" in the Tarot realm, she woke to darkness, a darkness broken only by a single pinpoint of light in the distance, a light that she stumblingly made her way towards.

"I don't know you," she said, slowly, admitting her ignorance. "I mean, I know you are the Hermit, but—but that's not just some misanthropic old man in a desert. I don't know really know what you are."

"I am an eternal seeker," the Hermit said, and smiled. "I am Merlin, Taliesin, Apollonius of Tyanna, I am anyone who has ever sought for wisdom knowing that it is the search that is important and, not the end. Because—?"

"Because—there never will be an end because you never actually find wisdom?" she hazarded, feeling as if she was groping in the dark without the benefit of the Hermit's lantern. "Because if you think you've found it, you haven't? Because looking for wisdom is a process, and not something with an actual goal?"

"And?" he prompted. "Think what you have learned from the other cards thus far."

People who actually are something don't need to make a show. No, it was more than that. Wasn't there a quote? "To—know you know nothing—is the beginning of wisdom?" she faltered.

"And the wisest man does not claim wisdom for himself, though others may account him as wise," the Hermit said, gently, and with what she recognized with astonishment was true humility. "But that is not why you are here now. You will seek for wisdom your whole life long, little Fire-mage, and sometimes it will be through pain and trouble, and sometimes with joy and pleasure. You cannot cease from learning, especially you whose Element is Fire, for Fire changes all it touches, and everything it touches, changes. Fire is the transmuter of all. Earth becomes ash and glass, Water becomes vapor, Air is consumed. In alchemy, only through tempering and trial in the crucible, through Fire, can base become noble. Fire is a bad master, but a good servant, and for it to serve you, you must be more clever than it is."

She nodded earnestly. Not that she was entirely comfortable with all this business of master and servant—but some of what she had read in her mother's notes had made it clear that while there were some Elementals who were, well, people, the vast majority of them were no brighter than a cat or a dog. But all of them had a dangerous side. Well, look at her Salamanders, for instance. Sweet-natured with her, but she'd seen them go after those nasty little gnomes, fierce as ferrets. And the Fire Elementals were terribly dangerous when they weren't controlled.

Look what had happened in San Francisco in the United States, after that terrible earthquake.

"So you aren't to grant me wisdom," she said, looking up at him, for he was very tall, even stooped over as he was, bowed with the weight of his knowledge and years. "Because obviously wisdom is only earned with experience, and I haven't got much."

"But I can give you knowledge, and I have." He nodded at her, and to her astonishment, continued, "And you have shown yourself ready to proceed by admitting that you lack wisdom and knowledge both. Sometimes, little one, the answer is to give no answer. Sometimes it is better for the Fool to ask not, 'what is that cup?' but to say, with an open heart, 'I do not know, can you help me?' And now I am to take you to Justice, who marks the halfway point in your journey."

She stared at him, unable to believe that she had passed his tests, had won her way to the next card. Surely not.

But he was walking away, as if he fully expected her to follow. So follow she did, through the darkness that was illuminated only by his lantern, a thick darkness that closed in around them, until they came to another of those marble halls with classical pillars that seemed to be everywhere here. There he stood aside, and waited for her to go inside.

"I'm not ready!" she exclaimed, feeling a rising panic.

"No one ever is," he said, and—

—to her immense relief, she woke.

She realized instantly what had awakened her. It was the sound of voices, coming up through the floor. Alison and her daughters were back, and Carolyn and Lauralee's voices were unusually shrill with excitement.

"I can't believe it!" Carolyn exclaimed. "A real weekend party and a real Society ball! Mother, how did you persuade her?"

Good gad, what are they up to now?

"I have my ways," Alison purred. By the sound of things, they must be in Lauralee's room, directly beneath Eleanor's. "I pointed out that Reggie certainly knew any number of officers who were on injured-leave, as well as being able to extend invitations to the pilots in training at Oxford, and suggested that a proper weekend party, the kind we all remember from before the war, could be just the thing to shake him out of his gloomy spirits. And of course, I used my influence on her." Alison laughed. "I must admit, the presence of the other guests has helped in this far past my expectations. I do believe that Lady Devlin has woken up to the fact that she's buried herself in that old place for two years, and that she misses polite society. One can hardly call her father either polite or society."

Carolyn giggled. "If he'd been my father," she said boldly, "I'd have sent him packing months ago! I'm glad he's gone. And if Reggie marries me, I'm going to see to it that he stays where he belongs!"

"Hmph," Lauralee replied. "If Reggie marries me and that horrible old man turns up, he just might climb into bed one night and find himself sharing it with kobolds. And if that doesn't frighten him into heart failure, I don't know what will. Better to find a way to be rid of him permanently, Carolyn; he has a fortune of his own, and his daughter will inherit all of it. Waste not, want not, I always say."

"Don't bicker, girls," Alison said absently. "We need to plan for this weekend party carefully. The difficulty, however, is that we must go into London for several days if we are to get proper costumes for this occasion. It will be a fancy-dress ball, after all. Now, are you quite certain your magics are firmly in place on your rivals? We cannot afford any slippage."

"Absolutely," Lauralee said, in a voice that allowed for no doubt. "Our spells are working flawlessly, and they are so subtle I doubt that anyone has noticed any changes in the other girls. No matter what they sound like to anyone else, the moment they are in Reggie's presence, they will be irritating. Their conversation will be inane, they'll talk too much, and their voices will be shrill. It isn't much of a change, just half an octave or so, but it does grate on his nerves."

"Whereas we make sure to pitch our voices low when we speak to him," Carolyn said smugly. "We don't talk too much, we get him to talk about things he likes, and we try to be soothing. The contrast alone has endeared us to him."

"Good. And after a week of nothing but high-pitched irritation around him, he will be all the happier to see you back," Alison said gaily. "Well, off to bed, girls! We have a journey to make in the morning!"

The sound of footsteps below marked the departure of Carolyn and her mother from Lauralee's room. Now fully awake, Eleanor listened to the sounds of her stepsister preparing for bed in the room below.

So they were going to be gone for a full week! She could scarcely believe her luck. A week without the extra chores, the extra laundry— there would be so much more she could get accomplished! If there was the slightest chance that she could get through all of the rest of the Major Arcana cards in their absence—

Well, perhaps not all of them, but surely one each day wasn't too much to try for.

She caught herself just in time. Just be glad you have the peace to work in, she told herself. Don't try to jump ahead of yourself.

Still, she would have a week alone, and after that, this ball couldn't possibly take place terribly soon. She vaguely remembered what she knew about the big country weekends at the homes of the wealthy and titled. These things took time, a great deal of time, to organize. There were orders for food to be given, substitutions for things that couldn't be obtained would have to be made, rooms prepared, invitations sent. So while that was going on, everyone in this household would be distracted, too. Surely if Alison was now Lady Devlin's especial friend, her ladyship would ask Alison to help with the preparations. Even if not, there would be so much concentration on the weekend that no one would pay a lot of attention to Eleanor, especially if she kept herself quite quiet and unobtrusive.

Perhaps the end of July would be the earliest that this weekend could take place. By then it was possible, just possible, that she would have enough understanding of magic and her Element to break free. She was coming nearer to it, she could sense it. She could see the bonds of Alison's spells now, and they were weakening. Like a prisoner rasping her bonds against the stone wall of her prison, she was wearing away at them. But she needed more power; she needed greater understanding of her Element, and the ability to call up an Elemental who would be more than a helpful little pet, or something that mostly would not offer advice, like the Salamanders.

One step at a time, she warned herself. First, you have to learn, and you have to practice. Remember what the Hermit told you. Fire must respect you before it will serve with you. She would see how much time during the next week that Sarah could spare, and spend every free moment practicing, reading, and finding her way into the realm of the Tarot to learn still more.

And somehow, keep Alison from finding out about any of it.

July 11,1917

Longacre Park, Warwickshire

"My mother has gone insane," Reggie said flatly. "This business of holding a weekend and a fancy-dress ball is absolute folly." He stared across the breakfast table at Lady Virginia, daring her to disagree. Breakfast was, as usual at Longacre, a matter of helping one's self from the sideboard, so the only people present were himself, Lady Virginia, and the Brigadier.

Lady Virginia sighed, and looked meditatively at a grilled tomato resting in lone splendor on her plate. "I would not put it quite so strongly, but for the most part, I admit I do find this plan of a weekend party and fancy-dress ball to be somewhat ill-advised."

"Ill-advised?" He shook his head. "My lady, have you any idea how much work the staff is already doing? A staff that is adequate for a few visitors, but is seriously undermanned for something like this?" He'd been fielding plaintive pleas already, mostly from the cook and her staff, who were trying to find a way to provide four fancy dinners under rationing, not to mention the afternoon teas, the buffet breakfasts, and the luncheons for the guests who would be spending the entire weekend. He was going to have to do some foraging among the neighbors and his friends, and scour the home farms for produce.

Fortunately, I have some contacts among the Yanks, who seem to be overburdened with provisions.

He didn't want to think about what this weekend was going to mean in terms of being personally besieged by marriage-minded maidens and mamas. They'd be coming from miles around for the ball.

Lady Virginia sighed. "Nevertheless, Reggie, I understand completely what is motivating her, and it is not entirely the urge to see you bound up in wedlock."

He gritted his teeth, and studiously buttered a piece of dark toast. "Not—entirely, you say." The thought of fielding all those women made his head ache. Or maybe his head was aching because of the way his jaw was clenched. Nevertheless, it was not something he could contemplate quietly.

The Brigadier, wisely, was keeping silent, pretending a polite deafness.

"No." His godmother looked up at the ceiling for a moment, as if searching for inspiration in the intricately carved plaster. "I think she has finally gotten over your father's death. I think she has realized that the world still goes on outside the gates of Longacre Park. And I think this is her first, rather rash step towards rejoining that world. Your aunt and I have both been attempting to coax her back out of her retired state. I should hate to see this fail to come off; I fear it might send her back into seclusion again."

Reggie stopped buttering his toast, and stared at Lady Virginia, struck dumb with first astonishment, then guilt. If that were true—

He needed another opinion on this, quickly. He turned to the second of his breakfast companions. "Brigadier? What do you think? You've known Mater for as long as anyone; you should be some sort of judge here."

The Brigadier, still erect, still fit, and still every inch the soldier despite his years and gray hair, coughed once, politely. "I wouldn't be so discourteous as to contradict a lady, but I also wouldn't even make an attempt at guessing what is going through any lady's mind, no matter how long I've known her. These are mysteries that a man dares to plumb at his peril." He raised one bushy eyebrow and nodded at Lady Virginia. "I leave that to the members of their own sex."

Lady Virginia smiled slightly. "I never thought you were a coward, Brigadier."

He lifted his hand to interrupt her—politely. "I was, in my time, considered a good strategist, my lady," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "And a good strategist never attacks a fortified stronghold. Ever." He spread his empty hands in a gesture of conciliation. "Besides, I am at a disadvantage. My daughter-in-law and granddaughter will be invited for the ball. If they were to discover that I dared to be against it, however briefly, I will have to watch for arsenic in my brandy."

Reggie swallowed his groan. If it was, indeed, the case that this was the sign his mother was ready to move back into her old circles again— then how could he possibly object to something that would get his mother to do what he had been praying she would ever since his father's untimely death? She couldn't keep trying to lock the world outside away. It wasn't healthy. She'd turn into a Miss Havisham if she weren't careful.

But there was no denying the fact that this weekend party was a thinly disguised attempt to force him to make some sort of choice of fiancee and announce an engagement. If not announce an engagement and a wedding—at this point in the war there had been so many hasty marriages that virtually any young man who wanted or needed a special license could get one on a moment's notice. Not that he entirely blamed her on that score; he was the only heir, and he was going back to the Front when his leg healed—

—when his mind healed—

But dash it all, there wasn't one of these society fillies that he could stand being in the same room with for the course of a cardparty! How was he to tolerate one day in, day out, for the rest of his life?

The mere thought took away his appetite, and he excused himself from the table, going out onto the terrace to stare unseeing down into the gardens. He had made some progress towards the goal that Lady Virginia had set for him; his shields were far more transparent now, and he had been making some small, tentative attempts at reading the currents of magic around him. As a result, he sensed it was her coming up behind him, long before she spoke.

She stood beside him, looking out onto the vista that had cost his distant ancestor a pretty penny to produce. "Sometimes I wonder if you hate me, Reggie," she said, in a voice that sounded tired.

He turned towards her with surprise. "Hate you? No! Why should I hate you?"

"Because I tell you all the uncomfortable truths you would rather not hear. It's a privilege of age. But that doesn't make it less painful to hear them, I'm sure." She made a little, annoyed sound in the back of her throat. "Not that I'm going to stop telling them to you."

"Not that I expect you to," he countered. He leaned on the marble balustrade and looked out into the garden. "Mater wants me married. She wants it with a desperation that frightens me. I don't want a wife, or a fiance, or anything like one. I won't insult you by claiming some noble motives, my lady, or pretending I want to spare some unknown girl grief when I go back to the Front; the simple fact is that I have not met one single young woman who would be 'suitable' in Mater's eyes who was not a dead bore, an empty-headed mannequin suited only for displaying expensive clothing, or—"

He almost said, "Or a hard-eyed chit who would wait just long enough for me to get onto the train to the Channel-ferry before collecting her lovers to populate my house at my expense," but decided that discretion was the better part there. Besides, Lady Virginia would want to know who he was talking about, and he didn't want to tell her.

"Or an opportunist more interested in my title and social connections than myself," he concluded, instead.

"Ah," said her ladyship, nodding wisely. "The Robinson girls."

"Among others." He laughed without humor. "They aren't the only ones by a stretch, but they are the most persistent at the moment. I think even their mother would be casting her cap at me, if she thought she could slip herself past Mater's eye."

Lady Virginia sighed. "I almost wish she would try; it might shake your mother's friendship with the creature. I know this is unreasonable of me, and I know that I should be happy for her to have a friend— but there is something about that woman and her girls that puts my back up."

Reggie knew what it was, even if Lady Virginia didn't. She would never admit it, never recognize it in herself, but Lady Virginia was a snob . . . the idea of someone whose money came from trade marrying into the aristocracy secretly outraged her. Well, it probably wouldn't outrage her if the girl was also a Master—but Mastery was another sort of aristocracy.

Or perhaps, as long as it's someone else's blue-blooded family, and not hers, nor that of her friends, it wouldn't matter so much.

It was hardly her fault; it was the way she'd been raised. And he probably would not have noticed, if it hadn't been for that stupid not-quite-quarrel he'd had with Eleanor.

He sighed. He missed those conversations. He missed her company, her wit, her intelligence, and how she was kind without making him feel as if he owed her something for her kindness. He'd been down to the meadow several times, but she'd never again appeared. Either he had offended her so much that she was shunning his company, or else his timing was so exquisitely bad that she thought he was avoiding her—and as a result she had stopped coming.

Or else, and this was the likeliest, she was kept too busy for frivolous visits in the middle of the day to the meadow. It was summer, after all, and there were probably a thousand chores she was being made to do. Oh, it made him depressed to think about it, that fine, keen mind, shackled to some sort of menial work. It was like seeing a Derby winner hitched to a plow.

If only he could do something for her without insulting her further.

If only some of those empty-headed dolls his mother kept dragging about could have a fraction of her intelligence and personality.

"There will be young women you've never even seen at this weekend, Reggie," Lady Virginia said, breaking into his melancholy thoughts. "Perhaps—"

"Or perhaps not," he said, more harshly than he had intended, and tried to soften it with a sheepish smile. "I'll keep an open mind, my lady. I won't promise more than that."

There was one saving grace in all of this. With the weekend looming up, and all of the preparations that even Lady Virginia would have to help with, she wouldn't be pressuring him so much to take up his magic quickly.

A silver lining of sons. These days, he would take whatever sliver of silver he could get.

"Exactly what sort of girl interests you, Reggie?" she asked, out of the blue. "I've never been able to make you out. I must suppose you had your little flings—"

"Quite enough, with my debts honorably discharged," he replied, flippantly. "There is one thing to be said in favor of a girl who only expects money and presents from one; you always know where you are with her, and she always has someone waiting in the wings when you tire of her."

Lady Virginia winced. "Is that the prevailing attitude now?" she asked soberly. "In my day, there was at least a pretense of romance."

"We haven't time to waste on romance, my lady," he said flatly. "Not when—"

He didn't say it, but it was there, hanging in the air between them. Not when in a week or two or three you can be just another grave in Flanders.

She brooded down on the roses. "I expect there is a great deal to be said for knowing that if the—worst—happens, your current inamorata will simply shrug and move on to another when she sees your name in the papers. But those of your generation that live through this hideousness are coming out with scars of the heart and soul as well as the body, and I do not know what that will mean in the long run."

"Neither do I," he replied truthfully. "But you asked what sort of girl I find attractive—"

Involuntarily, the image of Eleanor, independent, clever, intelligent, entirely unsuitable Eleanor, flashed through his mind.

"Someone I can talk to, about anything," he said, finally. "Someone who has the brains not only to understand what I'm talking about, but to hold up her side of the conversation. When you have the wherewithal to buy as much beauty as you want, it isn't as important. Mind, I'm not saying that I don't like a girl to be pretty, but—" He shrugged helplessly. "Never mind. It's hardly relevant."

"Surely at some point," Lady Virginia began, "you must have encountered—"

It was time to put an end to this, so he put up the one argument he knew there would be no getting around. "My lady, there's another condition, and it's one I cannot tell Mater. I watched how father struggled to keep Mater ignorant of his Elemental work, the difficulties and even heartache it caused for both of them, and I decided a long time ago that I won't marry anyone who isn't an Elemental Master in her own right. I must have someone I don't have to keep that sort of secret from, and how likely is that?"

There. That will silence her. He actually had sworn that—before the war—so he wasn't lying. Not that he ever expected to take up the wand of an Air Master again. Merely dropping some of his shields had been shudderingly difficult; he could not even think about working real magic again without bringing on an attack of panic.

Lady Virginia looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Perhaps more likely than you think."

He snorted. "They're not exactly thick on the ground," was all he said. He tried not to think of Peter Scott with raw envy. Curse the man—he had the perfect partner, a woman who was an Elemental Master, brilliant, self-sufficient, and a stunning, exotic beauty.

Not that Mater wouldn't drop dead on the spot if I brought home a half-breed Hindu.

She was the one woman he had ever met who could actually understand, really and truly, what the war did to a man, did to his soul. Maybe that was the biggest problem with the girls of his set. They didn't, and couldn't. None of them had volunteered as nurses or VAD girls in France or Belgium. None of them had the least idea of the things that lay inside his mind; none of them would ever want to know. They preferred to think of the war the way those first volunteers had, as a chance for glory, and if one must die, to die nobly. They didn't know and couldn't understand that there was nothing noble or glorious about those churned-over fields, the dead zones of mud and razor-wire. And if he tried to tell them, they would turn away in horror.

Doctor Maya knew, and didn't flinch from it. But how many like her were there?

"It has been my experience, limited though it is, that if you are really determined in that direction, the partner will find you when you are both ready," she said gravely. "But I am sure that makes me sound like some sort of mystic, so I will keep my opinions to myself. Just keep an open mind as you promised—and open eyes as well."

She retreated to the house, leaving him staring down at the garden, wondering bitterly if anyone who hadn't experienced the Front could ever understand what it did to someone inside.

We look, act, and talk like our old selves, but we've been damaged, each and every one of us, he thought. We're scarred inside. Like rosebuds with canker-worms at their hearts. We look the same, but even if we live, we'll never blossom. And there is nothing that will change that. Nothing at all.

24

July 15, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

SUNSHINE AND FRESH AIR FLOODED the kitchen, and The Arrows was very peaceful without the Robinsons and Howse present. So peaceful, that Eleanor wondered what it would be like to live here like this forever—if somehow, the Robinsons would just never return.

"I've thought and I've reasoned, and I've looked," Sarah said aloud, startling Eleanor as she concentrated on a particularly obtuse paragraph about the Hanged Man card. "And much as I hate to admit that I'm wrong—well, I'm wrong."

Eleanor blinked, and stared at her mentor. Sarah was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the kitchen, staring down at a pile of stones with markings on them. Rune-stones, she called them, and she used them not only to try and give her some direction for the future, but to try and learn what was going on around her that might be hidden from her. If, for instance, someone was sick enough that he needed to see the medical doctor and not just depend on her herbal remedies. There were many country folk who still were suspicious of the doctor and veterinarian, and sometimes it took Sarah a deal of convincing to get them to go to either gentleman.

"Wrong about what?" Eleanor asked. It took a lot to get Sarah to admit she was wrong about anything. She was dreadfully stubborn that way.

Then again, she had every right to be.

"I've always said that the big house and the village haven't got much of anything to say to each other," Sarah replied sourly, still staring down at her stones. "Still, I knew it was an Air Master that chased off the revenants; I knew it couldn't be a local witch, no matter how powerful, when you told me about it, and I was right. It turns out she's a guest up there at Longacre, though, and it seems that she's staying the summer. And that changes everything."

"An Air Master?" Eleanor said, catching her breath. Oh, granted, it wasn't her Element, but any Master could help her—

More to the point, unlike, say, a constable or any other authority figure, any Elemental Master would know she was telling the truth about Alison and what Alison had done to her. She wouldn't have to try and convince an Elemental Master that she wasn't mad because she was talking about magic.

"That's what we've needed, what you've needed, to see if you can't get cut free of your stepmother and her wicked magic. And now, I've asked the cards, the bones, and the stones, and they're all saying you need to go up there and meet with that Air Master. In fact, they say if you don't, well—" she shook her head. "It'll be bad, that's all. Not just bad for you, either. The stones reckon Alison's got some wicked mischief going that's going to be a trouble no matter what steps are taken to stop her, but horrible bad if she isn't stopped." Sarah looked up, her face full of fear. "I can't tell what it is, but at a guess, she's let loose some kind of sickness; she's Earth, and that's the sort of thing they do when they go to the bad. Pestilence and plague." Sarah bit her lip. "Well, the stones say that if you work with that Air Master and get yourself cut free, Alison will fall, but if you don't, she'll use you somehow and put more power into whatever it is she's done, and the stones don't say how much worse it will be, but they're all showing their bad sides."

She felt as if hope and fear were at war inside her. Hope, because here was exactly what she needed. Fear, because how could she ever get what she needed with Alison's hearth-binding still holding her? "But—I can't get as far as Longacre," she protested. "And even if I could, I can't just stroll up to even the tradesman's entrance and ask to be introduced to the Air Master!" Even if she knew the Air Master's real name. Especially not looking like a servant. She knew better than to go to the front door—she'd be turned away in a heartbeat.

"Well, now, that's not necessarily true . . . because you only need to get inside those walls once and talk to her. After that, if she's worth anything, and the stones say she is, she'll come to you." Sarah gathered up the stones and poured them into a little leather bag. "And there is one night, coming up, when you can walk in the front door and be presented like you were to the manor born. Provided you're wearing a fancy dress." She tilted her head to one side. "Think about it. The night of that fancy dress ball. If your stepsisters are good enough to be invited, you surely are as well."

Eleanor's hand flew to her mouth. "Good gad!" she cried. "You're right, you're exactly right! But—" As quickly as her hopes rose, they dropped again. "Where am I going to get an invitation? Or a costume? Especially one that will look as if it belongs among people like that?"

"Ah, now, what about that attic of yours?" Sarah replied, with a lift of her brow. "I think we ought to take a look up there, first, before we think about any other possibilities. As for the invitation, you leave that up to me. I'll find a way to get you invited."

Eleanor wanted to protest that she'd been through all of the chests and had salvaged the only usable garments up there, but Sarah was already on her feet and marching towards the steps. With a sigh of resignation, Eleanor followed.

It was easier to move the chests with two of them, but it was rather disheartening to see what the moths and time had done to some of the once-beautiful gowns that had been inside them. Silk shattered and tore like wet tissue as they lifted gowns out; the satins had mostly discolored, beadwork fell off the bodices. But just as Eleanor turned away, even though there were older chests and clothes-presses waiting, certain that they had completely eliminated any possibility of finding anything, Sarah let out an exclamation of satisfaction.

"What?" Eleanor blurted, turning back.

Sarah held up a froth of flounces and lace. "I knew there should be one of these still good!" she exclaimed with satisfaction. "It's still a tale in the village, how the three girls from Broom went up to London and were the belles of the ball. The fellow who owned The Arrows before your father bought it was just as well-off; the wool-trade, d'ye see, that and The Arrows had been in his family since Great Harry's day. This is a ball-gown from the time of Victoria's coronation; all three of the daughters here went down to London on account of some aunt married a title got them all manner of invitations. She got them into all the right circles and chaperoned them about for three weeks. It must have worked, since two of them got husbands out of the journey, and but the third never could settle on anyone, and ended up back here, taking care of her parents when they got old. That's who your father bought the house of, the daughter who never married."

Curious now, Eleanor made her way back to where Sarah was unpacking the petticoats that went with the gown. They, remarkably, were also still sound. The gown was stupefying to one used to the current narrow skirts and minimal (or in Eleanor's case, nonexistent) corseting. She couldn't imagine how much Venice lace had gone into trimming the row after row of flounces on the skirt. Twenty yards? Thirty? The neckline was low enough to make her blush; the puffy little flounced sleeves were as tiny as the skirt was huge. It was made of some sort of flounces of netting or gauzy stuff in a dark ivory tone over a slightly heavier skirt. Maybe it had once been pure white, and had aged to this color, but if so, it had done so uniformly.

"You'll look a rare treat," Sarah said, giving the gown a good shake. "This is Indian cotton, from back in the day when it was dearer than silk."

"I'll look a rare Guy—" Eleanor retorted. But she reached out to touch the delicate lace, anyway, wondering wistfully if she really could fit into it.

A moment later, she found out, at Sarah's insistence. She was surprised to find that it fit her very well indeed.

"A good thing that they didn't reckon young girls should wear much but flowers or feathers, back in the day," Sarah said, looking very pleased. " 'Cause how I should manage jewels, I haven't a clue. We'll say you're little Princess Victoria herself. Here, I've got a nice rose-colored sash off that silk that went to bits, that'll take the place of the old one that's gone, a bit of cleaning, some flowers and a domino-mask—you leave it to me. Put your hair up, and a bit of glamourie, even Alison won't recognize you."

Eleanor looked down at herself, feeling a thrill of excitement. And it wasn't because she would finally find a possible mentor, or because this might be the chance to plead her case to an Elemental Master. No, there was only one thought in her head at the moment.

Reggie will be there. And he'll see me like this—not shabby.

"But how am I going to get there?" she asked, as it occurred to her that trying to walk up to Longacre in that dress was going to be in impossible proposition.

"I'll borrow a cart and horse and put a glamorie on them, too," Sarah said dismissively. "Make them look like a carriage. Wouldn't pass in daylight, but this will be after dark. I'll be your coachman, I'll hand you out, so nobody gets close enough to see through the glamorie."

"But—I still can't get as far as the manor!" she objected weakly. "Alison's bindings—I've tried stretching them, and they still only go as far as the meadow."

"You will be able to. Alison will have her hands full with her girls. She'll be trying to hide her nature from that Air Master, you can count on it. She'll be distracted by the ball. For an hour or two, and working together, we'll be able to stretch those bindings just far enough that night." Sarah sounded quite sure of herself, and Eleanor just gave in.

She had to be right. This was Eleanor's only chance to get some outside help.

She wanted to see Reggie, even if he didn't recognize her. Maybe because he wouldn't recognize her. Just once, she wanted to talk to him, and see him look at her the way he would look at any other girl that was his social equal.

She wanted—a memory. No matter what happened to her after that night, she wanted to have a memory of being a princess at a ball, dancing with a handsome knight, and allow herself to be just that little bit in love with him.

"You're right," she said, with a nod. "If we don't seize this opportunity, there may never be another one; we have to make it work."

July 11, 1917

London

Thanks to her friendship with Lady Devlin, the Savoy had put the Robinsons up in a better suite than usual; the girls didn't even have to share a room, which made for a little more peace and quiet. It certainly impressed Warrick Locke when he arrived on Alison's summons.

Alison saw no need to trouble herself with secrecy today; what could be more natural than a meeting with her solicitor since they both "happened" to be in London? The girls were at fittings for their costumes; nothing could be more respectable than having him come to her hotel suite in broad daylight with a briefcase full of papers. Howse was right in the next room, though she could have been in this one, if Alison had wished, and neither seen nor heard anything but her book. It had taken more than a year, but now Howse was nicely obedient to Alison's will and directions, yet still had enough freedom of thought that she performed all of her duties properly.

Just for the sake of verisimilitude, Locke had a stack of papers on the table. The fact that none of those papers concerned her was something no one else would ever find out. Some of them, however, concerned Eleanor, who was the central topic of their conversation. Eleanor was a loose end that Alison very much wanted tidied up before there was a wedding in the offing. It would be harder to dispose of her quietly when one was connected to the Fenyxes of Longacre Park.

But Locke still had no better plan than the old one, even though he'd had weeks to think of alternatives. Alison was extremely disappointed in him; normally he was full of ideas, but he seemed terribly fixated on this one. Perhaps it was because of his own personal obsessions, but if that was indeed the case, the sooner he got them under control, the better.

"I tell you, Warrick, no matter how much you like your plan to break that wretched girl's mind, it is too complicated," Alison objected. "What's more, it relies too much on that man of yours, as well as bringing in possible confederates. I know you trust him, but every time you add a person to a plan you double the chances of something being said or done at the wrong time and either ruining the whole thing or giving the plan away. Or worse still, you've added the danger of having your confederate decide to betray you."

Warrick Locke frowned. "Robbie has been working with me for a very long time now. Frankly, if you are concerned about him doing something other than what he has been ordered to do, I can tell you that in all the time that I have known him, he has never once had an original idea for himself."

"It's too complicated a plan," Alison countered, throttling down her rising irritation with him. "There are too many things that can go wrong, including that the wretched child just might be tougher-minded than you think. The closer I come to reaching my goals, the less I like complicated plans. I find that the more I have to lose, the less inclined I am to take chances on something that might work. And the whole house of cards you wish to construct has far too many points of possible failure for my comfort."

"It's the only idea that has any chance at all of giving you the results you want," he replied, with ill grace. "If she dies, you lose, because the inheritance goes to the cousin. If she disappears, you lose, because until she's proven dead, you can't touch her money and when she's proven dead, the inheritance goes to the cousin. If she stays sane, and attains her majority, you lose, because sooner or later the trustees are going to want to see her to turn her fortune over to her and then there's no telling what will happen. If you injure her physically to the point that she can't care for herself, you still lose, because doctors will be involved, and someone will find out that you've been making a slave of her and making free with her inheritance. The only way you win is if you keep her alive and drive her so completely mad that she withdraws into herself and never comes out again. That means breaking her will, her spirit, and her mind, and there's only one way that I know for certain to do that. After all, it's not as if you can drop her down a hole and be done with her."

"Wait a moment—" she said, with a sudden surge of interest and a jolt of euphoria as his words caused an interesting image to flash across her mind. She caught and held that image; quickly extrapolated something from it, and then, smiled, slowly. "You just might have something, Warrick. You might just have solved the conundrum."

"Pardon?" He blinked at her, caught off-guard by her words.

"You said something very interesting. You said that I couldn't just drop her down a hole and be done with it." Her smile broadened. "But that just might be exactly what we want to do with her. There's more than one way to get the results we want from her."

Now he was completely confused, that much was very plain. "I thought the best plan was to break her mind."

"Be patient with me. What was the first spell I put on her? To bind her to the hearth. Correct?" She nodded as he frowned. "So this has kept her confined to the house and grounds. She can't go off on her own; that binding was intended to keep her from looking for help. But that same binding spell may serve us in another way. If she were to be taken away from the hearth, carried off somewhere, she would have to try and make her way back, no matter what obstacles were in her path. Or—? Do you remember how I constructed the bindings? Because I certainly do."

"I'm not sure I see where this is going, but I believe the geas you put on her forces her to try, and keep trying, to make her way back to The Arrows. And the longer she's away the more of her mind becomes obsessed with the need to return, until she can't even eat or sleep, she's so driven by and consumed with that need." Now his frown looked as if he was beginning to see the shape of something, but hadn't yet deciphered the puzzle she had set him.

She helped him out with some clues. "Warwickshire is full of abandoned coal mines. Lady Devlin was just complaining about one of them last week—it's collapsing, evidently, and causing subsidence on the property of one of her friends, spoiling a good meadow. Now suppose, just suppose, that we were to drop her down one of those, then report that she has gone missing, as we always intended to do. The first thing and only thing she would try to do is return to the hearth, driven by her growing obsession, and if we took care to drop her into one where she couldn't climb out, where the tunnels run from the entrance towards Broom, can you see what would happen?"

His frown deepened. "I—think so—"

Alison sat forward in her chair, leaning towards him. "She will have to follow the pull of the geas. Which means she would be forced to penetrate deeper into the mine, until she could go no further, without lights, without anything to help her." She nodded as his eyes widened with understanding. "Think of that; alone in the dark and possibly injured, she comes to a dead end. She can't retrace her steps, because the spell won't let her go back. She can't go on, because she's at a dead end. She's hungry, thirsty, and more and more of her mind is taken up with the obsession to return. Now, just to add something to ensure that we get the results we want, a mine is in the earth, and what's more, it's in violated earth, which means the Elementals associated with it are all of my sort. So if trying to claw her way through coal-bearing rock with her bare hands isn't enough to drive her mad, my little friends can take care of that problem by pushing her over the edge of sanity. Little monsters with glowing eyes appearing and vanishing in the dark, things gibbering and drooling on her, cold hands clutching at her, plucking at her clothing ... it would take a stronger mind than she has to come out of that intact!"

"But you need to have her in your custody in order to keep control of her inheritance," Locke objected.

She was already prepared for the objection. "And I can do that. I merely wait a day or so, then nudge a rescue party to the right coal mine and allow them to find her. Fear, thirst, hunger, constant attack by gnomes and kobolds, and the geas—if she has any mind left after forty-eight hours of that, I will be shocked and amazed. By that time, I imagine the only thing we'll need to worry about is replacing her with a servant." She did sigh at that. It was getting impossible to find servants that weren't thieves, drunks, or both. With so many women getting much better wages and shorter hours by taking the places of men than they could ever obtain as servants, only the dregs were left.

On the other hand, once the business of Eleanor is settled, perhaps the answer would be simply to use magical coercions on whatever I can get. I pity any thief that tries to purloin anything from, my house. Or perhaps she could take someone feeble-minded from the workhouse. The same coercions that kept Eleanor scrubbing and tending should work on the feeble-minded.

Locke gazed at her with astonishment. "My hat is off to you. I would not have thought of any of that. I hesitate to call anything a perfect plan, but this one is as close to perfect as a reasonable person could wish. I assume you'll put her to sleep to make her easier to handle?"

"Probably," Alison agreed. "I wouldn't even need to use a spell, if I didn't want to. A little chloroform on a sponge would do the trick."

"More reliably renewable than a spell, too," Locke murmured admiringly. "And costs nothing in power. You could even do it with your daughters; simply wait until the girl has gone to sleep, go up to her room, administer the sponge, and there will not even be a struggle."

She did not ask how he knew that. Presumably he had some experience in such matters.

"As I told you, I prefer simple plans," she replied, feeling so pleased with her own ideas that she was willing to be very pleasant to the man. "And it does occur to me that when this works, I'll be needing to find some place safe and secure to put the afflicted child. I scarcely intend to keep her at home; the present servant problem is bad enough without trying to find someone to care for and stand guard over a madwoman. I presume that you've been looking into such things?"

"Discreetly, I assure you, and mentioning no names," he responded immediately, and dug into his case for a file. "And here are the best places I found—quite discreet, very understanding about the need to keep someone alive and healthy, but once a patient is checked in, they don't ever emerge."

She smiled, and leaned over the table to examine the tastefully subdued brochures. On his own ground, Locke was knowledgeable and immensely helpful.

She would definitely keep him around a while longer.

Especially now that he realized she didn't need him to come up with better plans than he could. It would make him a little on edge, and anxious not to get on her bad side, because she was, after all, a most generous client.

July 18, 1917

Longacre Park, Warwickshire

Lady Devlin was a very old-fashioned hostess, and that meant she believed in doing things the old-fashioned way. She was writing out every one of the invitations for the ball herself, since she no longer had a secretary to tend to such things for her. The estate manager could probably have done it for her, but she claimed that she was enjoying it. After a while, out of sheer guilt, Reggie elected to help her. His once-neat copperplate handwriting was gone all to hell, of course, with lack of practice, but it was good enough to address envelopes.

Which was tedious, but saved his mother the effort of writing out the addresses and allowed her to concentrate on the aesthetics of producing the invitations. They couldn't be printed, alas; perhaps the middle-class found invitations where one filled in missing names and dates acceptable, but no one of Lady Devlin's stature would even consider resorting to such a stratagem. Besides, many of them required a certain level of personalization in the form of a note.

It did allow him to sit down without looking like a malingerer. It also gave him a chance to find out who the girls were that would be pursuing him at this little hunt disguised as a party.

Roberta and Leva Cygnet; not much of a surprise there. They were already coming to teas and tennis-parties. "Mrs. Regina Towner," though—"Regina Towner?" he asked, casually. "Do I know the Towners?"

"An old friend from school," his mother replied, just as casually. Right enough; mother's age, which means her daughter is probably my age . . . Mr. Robert and Mrs. Tansy, Esq., and daughter. So Ginger will be in the howling pack. Good gad, I hope some of my lads come through. I need all the distractions I can muster, and Ginger likes to dance. Some of the next few were innocuous enough. Then, "Lt. Commander Matthew Mann, the Hon. Mrs. Matthew Mann, Miss Mann." Ah, good gad. The Brigadier's granddaughter, and Mama is an "Hon." I've never seen an "Hon." that wasn't on the hunt for a title for the family. Well, the Brigadier warned me. "Vicountess Arabella Reed." One of Lady Virginia's friends, she was a chatterbox, but at least she didn't have any daughters.

Then, at last, the run of invitations that he hoped would save him—pilots-in-training at the school headquartered at Oxford, and lads he knew either were on leave or could get it. Even a cadet was a second lieutenant, and while Mamas were on the hunt for titles, daughters were easily distracted by officers' dress-uniforms.

Second Lt. Michael Freed, Second Lt. David Jackson, at Reading. Lt. Vincent Paul Mills, good gad, I hope he doesn't get shot to bits before this thing comes off; that handsome face will be even more of a distraction than his uniform. Captain Michael Dolbeare; good thing he's training the lads at Oxford; he's a got enough medals at this point to sink him if he fell in the river, and the girls can't resist the shiny. Lt. Allen McBain; arm in a sling, but even if he can't dance he's another handsome devil. That Scots burr, though; the girls will giggle over it and make him blush, which is entertaining as well as a distraction. Now the Oxford lot. Second Lt. John Oliver, Second Lt. Charles Goddard, Second Lt. Lyman Evans—at least they aren't losing a flying-student a day the way they were at the start of the war, or half my invitations would never get answered. Of course Turner had made sure that the names he had given Reggie were of the better students who had less chance of cracking up. That was a concern; ambulances were stationed at the students' fields because they were, by heaven, needed. The accident rate was appalling, the death-rate even more so. The Rumpetys killed more lads than combat did. Thank Cod for the Gosport system. Things had changed since he was a cadet; now there was a logical system in place for training. Still. Back in his day, there were always several dozen crashes a day when the weather permitted and the planes were up. Usually one cadet died a day, and several more .were injured. Not so bad now, though. Can't afford to lose that many in training, I suppose. Took those old men long enough to figure that out.

He shook off the shakes that threatened him as he remembered some of those crashes . . . fortunately, his sojourn at the school as a cadet had been mercifully short. He already knew how to fly, and didn't take long to prove it.

Captain William Robert Howe. Can't do without him. He's bringing the band— Thanks to the Brigadier; this was a regular infantry band, though they had played for the RFC. That would give some of the FBI a thrill, coming up to a country house to play. Captain Howe was the officer in charge and the bandleader, all in one. And, the Brigadier claimed, single. Another alternate target for the husband-hunters. FBI he might be, and less glamorous than a pilot, but he was a captain.

Captain Steven Stewart, and he'd damned well better get leave. Steve had pledged on his life he'd come. Tommy had sworn he'd see to it. Tommy had incentive; was getting a case of whiskey from the Longacre cellars if Steve did make it.

Lt. Commander Geoffrey Cockburn, and if he puts his auto in the pond again, I'll make him go in after it. Captain Christopher Whitmore, and he had better not bring all that photographic paraphernalia with him. Both had been chums of his at college. Geoff was a tearaway, Chris studious, both still single and not at all unhandsome. Yet more fodder for the husband-hunters. With luck, he'd get a word with them ahead of time so they could help keep the harpies off.

"Here's the uniformed lot, Mater," he said, with relief, putting his stack beside the rest of the finished envelopes.

"Ah, good," she replied, absently. "Here, there's just a few more of the local people. Be a dear and do them, would you?"

Mrs. and Mrs. Donald Hinshaw, the vicar and his wife. Doctor and Mrs. Robert Sutherland. And then—

Mrs. Alison Robinson, Miss Danbridge, Miss Carolyn Danbridge, Miss Eleanor Robinson. . . .

Eleanor? For a moment, his mind went blank. Then it refocused again. Eleanor Robinson. His Eleanor?

She was that—woman's daughter? But how was that possible?

"Mater, who's this Eleanor Robinson?" he asked casually, or at least, as casually as he could manage.

"Oh, she's just dear Alison's stepdaughter," his mother said, indifferently. "The vicar reminded me about her, or at least, I think it was the vicar. Someone did, anyway. She's supposed to be at Oxford, so I suppose she's a terrible bluestocking not to come home for the summer, but it wouldn't do not to invite her, even if she doesn't come."

She's supposed to be at Oxford? But— He felt as if he'd been poleaxed, he was so stunned. There was certainly no monetary reason why she shouldn't be at university—that woman spent money as freely as his own mother did, and it was common knowledge she was well-off, so there should be no trouble with the fees.

For that matter, given how Alison Robinson spent lavishly, why was Eleanor always so shabby-looking? Why did she have hands like a charwoman?

What was going on there?

And the next question. How do I find out if I can't get near Eleanor in the first place?

25

July 20, 1917

Longacre Park, Warwickshire

REGGIE HAD DECIDED ON CAROLYN as the most likely to let something about Eleanor drop—she clearly was not the more intelligent of the sisters (though neither of them were a match for their mother) but he still was going to tread very cautiously around her. He didn't want to alert any of the three to the fact that he knew their stepsister was somewhere in Broom. In fact, he didn't want to alert them to the fact that he had met her more than once. It had taken a great deal of willpower not to limp down to his motor and take it right to the door of The Arrows that day when he had addressed an invitation to her, and only the fact that so very much was ringing false had kept him from doing so. There was a great deal more than met the eye going on; he had a notion that he might eventually want Lady Virginia's help on this, but not until he had investigated all other courses of action himself.

A tennis match presented the best opportunity; his mother was playing against hers, and he brought her a lemonade as a pretext for sitting next to her. After some noncommittal chat, he managed to steer the conversation towards Oxford, and asked, as if in afterthought, "Oh—don't you have a sister there?"

She jerked as if she'd been stung by a bee, and stared at him, wide-eyed. If he hadn't known there was something wrong before this, he would have by her reaction. He knew guilt when he saw it. "A sister?"

"Eleanor?" he prompted. "It occurred to me that the only Robinsons in Broom had a daughter named Eleanor. Before the war, I remember talking to her about going to Oxford—she had her heart set on it, and was taking the examinations in order to qualify."

"Oh—Eleanor!" Her brittle laugh rang entirely false. "She's only my stepsister, not a real sister. I scarcely think of her at all, actually, we're practically strangers." Her smile was too bright, and she looked very nervous to him. He fancied that Eleanor was nowhere near as much of a stranger as she was pretending.

He smiled slightly, or rather, stretched his lips in something like a smile. "I suppose for form's sake we ought to invite her to the ball, too. It isn't done to leave out one sister of three. People might talk."

Again, that brittle laugh. "Oh, you can if you like, but I shouldn't trouble myself. She'd never come. She's a dreadful bluestocking, and she never even comes home on the vacs. I don't think she knows such things as balls exist. She certainly doesn't know how to dress. She'd never leave her—studies—for anything that frivolous."

He leaned back in his chair. He hadn't missed that moment of hesitation when she had sought for a word to describe what Eleanor was doing. He yawned. "Oh, well, in that case, if you think she won't feel slighted. The vicar suggested to Mater that she ought to be included on the guest list is all."

"Oh." The girl's voice grew hard, and just a touch cold. "The vicar, was it? No, I really shouldn't bother if I were you. I'll make sure Mother reminds the vicar of how much Eleanor dislikes leaving Oxford. I suppose she'll be a don, once they allow such things."

He made a sound like a laugh. "It's not as if there won't be a surfeit of young ladies to dance with; too many of them are likely to be wallflowers as it is, unless I can bring some more cadets from the RFC up to scratch. I think we can do without her."

"So do I." She swiftly turned the subject to costumes, and whether he thought it would be too warm for eighteenth-century court dress. "Wouldn't an Empire gown be cooler?" she asked.

"I should think so," he replied. "And besides, it'd be deuced difficult to dance in those side-things that stick out—what-you-call-'ems—"

"Panniers," she said with immense satisfaction. "Lauralee wouldn't hear of anything but being Madame Pompadour, but I thought Empress Josephine would be far more elegant and cooler."

"Well, there I agree with you, but don't tell her that," he said, in a confidential tone of voice. "I'd rather dance with a girl who can move about in her costume than have to steer some wire contraption around the floor." She giggled and agreed. He thought he had effectively distracted her from the subject of her sister.

As he continued talking with her to make sure she had forgotten his question in her flutter of excitement about his attentions, he digested what he had learned. Well, now he knew this much, at least. He knew that Eleanor was Alison's stepdaughter, and he knew that they were, for some reason, keeping alive a fiction that she was at Oxford. It was clear that she wasn't—but the question was, what was she doing in Broom? His assumption that she had fallen on hard times was obviously wrong, but why was she dressed like an inferior servant and clearly doing menial labor?

He worried at the problem for the rest of the day, through tea, while he dressed for dinner and all through dinner. It made for a quiet meal, but his aunt more than made up for his silence, and his mother was so full of her entertainment plans that they didn't really notice that he wasn't talking much. How was it that neither the vicar nor the doctor were aware that "Eleanor is at Oxford" was a complete fiction? Surely, if she had been strolling around Broom, someone would have noticed and said something. And she certainly wasn't transporting herself to their meadow by magic carpet. None of this was making much sense.

After dinner he went out on the terrace with a drink; the Brigadier joined him as they watched the sun set; the sky ablaze with red, gold, and purple, the last rays of the setting sun making streaks across the horizon. It looked like a Turner painting.

"You would never know there was a war from here," the old man said at last, and Reggie thought he sounded wistful. "Must admit, I was dubious about this brouhaha your mother set her heart on, but—it won't be bad to forget for a little while, and pretend."

"Like children playing truant from school," Reggie replied, with bitter longing. "But it won't go away."

"But we can rest our minds from it for a little, surely, without feeling guilty." The Brigadier sipped his brandy. "We'll all put on our dominoes and pretend that outside the walls of Longacre it is 1912; we can even persuade ourselves for a little that our lost and absent friends are out there in the crowd, too. And as long as the masks are being worn, we can hold to the illusion. Is that so wrong?"

Yes, he wanted to say. Yes, because the ones that haven't been killed by the idiotic strategies of old men fighting a war with last century's tactics are out there putting their lives at risk because those same old men are so certain that what they want is God's will that they won't admit they are wrong or that what they are doing is a hideous, horrible mistake.

But he didn't say it. In part, because he knew that although the Brigadier agreed with him in his heart, he could never admit it aloud. And in part because it would only hurt that good old man further.

"Sometimes—one needs illusions," he said, carefully, and left it at that.

Illusions. So much of what was going on here was an illusion. Not just this country weekend and the ball, but everything on this side of the Channel. No one wanted to talk about the war anymore, or think about it even, except those who had been in it. The topics that seemed to obsess most people had nothing whatsoever to do with the war except as the war had caused the problems. And that drove him mad, sometimes. He wanted to wake them up, drag them forcibly down to the hospitals and show them the shellshocked and the maimed, to make them care, force them to understand what this war was doing. Was he in the wrong, then, to want to break into the comfortable illusions and shout at them all, that their petty little concerns over their comforts, the shortage of servants, the rationed food, were selfish, self-centered and disgusting to him? That over there in France, that sound like thunder that came over the Channel when the wind was right, was the sound of people dying, and it was time they woke up and acknowledged it?

But he wanted to forget it too—part of him was so tired of it all that he was sick with longing for it to just stop, to go away, and take all his memories with it.

He turned his mind back to the problem of Eleanor with a feeling almost of relief. It was something to think about that was not the war, and part of him deeply sympathized with the Brigadier. Like those nights when he would lie in his bed at the hospital and recite poem after poem in his head to keep from thinking about what was out there in the dark, waiting for him to fall asleep. Because you could only think about the war and what it was doing to you and your mates for so long before you started going mad.

Eleanor Robinson should have been at Oxford, and was not, and it was not for lack of money in her family. And in fact, from all appearances, she was working as a servant. Why, oh why, had she not told him herself what was wrong? Pride?

For that matter, why had her father married a scheming creature like Alison?

She vamped him I suppose, like her daughters are trying to vamp me. I suppose if you've never been vamped before, it would be easy to succumb. When would that have been? He tried to reckon up the last time he had seen her. It was before the war, before he joined the RFC. So at some point between then and the start of the war, her father had remarried. He'd done some checking, and her father had died at some time around the first Christmas of the war. So why had his daughter not been at Oxford at that point? Had Alison persuaded the besotted new husband that it was unnecessary to give a girl a university education? Or had she pled the war as an excuse, claiming she needed Eleanor at home? Just how besotted had he been, to deny his only child her one dream? He must have been caught like a salmon in a net.

And then, just as the last of the sun sank below the horizon, it struck him. What if her father had altered his will in favor of the new wife before he went off to the war?

It was just the sort of thing that Alison would have insisted on, he was sure of it. Manipulative creature that she was, she would have promised, ever so sweetly, that she would take as good care of Eleanor as of her own daughters. So why shouldn't her dear new husband not change his will to make her sole inheritor? After all, leaving flighty young girls anything directly was generally a bad idea. Who could guess what they would do with their inheritance, and of course, there were always cads who would romance them for their money, then waste it and leave them penniless and deserted.

He stared into the growing darkness, as beside him, the Brigadier lit up a cigarette. The end of it glowed as he pursued that line of thought to its logical conclusion.

So, assume that was precisely what had happened. Then her father had died in the first months of the war, leaving her entirely at the mercy of her stepmother, a woman who clearly despised her. Then what? What was she doing here, dressed like a servant?

Well, what were her choices? To leave—and do what? She wasn't suited to anything but marriage, and if she'd had a sweetheart in the village, he doubted that she would have been so keen to go to university. There was a sad truth to her condition; she had no skills with which to support herself. She hadn't enough education to become a governess. She hadn't the money to train as a nurse, and although she could have gone as a VAD no one could really live on the tiny stipend that was allotted to the volunteers. In the beginning she wouldn't have had the stamina for a factory job, and the Land Girls hadn't been formed until later. That would have left her with only one option. To remain at home at the mercy of her stepmother, who must have seen her as a ready source of free labor and put her to work as a servant.

Which explained why she was dressed like one.

Now, her own pride would have kept her hidden from the village. And her stepmother would never have admitted she had treated her own stepdaughter so shabbily. And so the fiction of "Eleanor is at Oxford" was born, with both sides of the situation eager to maintain it.

His left hand clutched at the stone balustrade, and he downed the last of his drink and set the glass down lest he inadvertently shatter it in his sudden fit of anger. Perhaps it was absurd to be so angry over what was, essentially, a teacup tragedy when there were so many greater tragedies in the wake of this war. She wasn't dead, after all, merely ill-used. She hadn't been struck by a stray bullet and paralyzed, not blown to pieces by a shell.

But feelings, he reminded himself, were not rational. And this shabby treatment of a girl who'd done nothing to earn it made him very, very angry.

He could see how it was that no one noticed that she was still here, especially if she herself took pains to conceal the fact. And no one ever really looked at anyone in servants' clothing. Especially not someone dressed as shabbily as Eleanor was. So on the rare occasions when she escaped her work for a little, so long as she kept her head down— which everyone would expect anyway out of a lower servant—no one would recognize her. He didn't recall that she had socialized much with the girls her age, anyway; it had been the boys that had congregated around his aeroplane that knew her best, boys who were all long gone in the first weeks of the War. Perhaps the adults—the adult women, anyway—might have noticed, but in those first weeks and months, they had more than enough cares of their own to preoccupy them. The longer the charade went on, the less likely it would be that anyone would see the face of the clever schoolgirl in the visage of the work-hardened young woman. That had to be it.

The question now was—what could he do about it? And to that question he had no ready answer. For a start, how could he even get to her to talk to her? Helping her would mean prying her out of her imprisoning shell, the walls of The Arrows, and at the moment, he had no good idea of how to do that.

Once he did that, he also had no good idea of how to offer help without it seeming like charity and pity, and he had a fairly good idea of what she would think about charity and pity. At least, he thought he did.

"Penny for your thoughts," the Brigadier said, out of the darkness, startling him from his concentration.

"I'd have to give you ha'pence change, Brigadier," he replied, mendaciously. "I wasn't thinking about much."

The old man chuckled. "Let's go in, then," he suggested. "The damp isn't doing either of us any good."

"Probably not," he agreed. "I was thinking of going down to the village, anyway."

"And I'm for my book and bed," the Brigadier replied. "It's peaceful out here. I shall take my rest while I can get it."

They parted company on the terrace, Reggie limping his way down to the stable to get his motorcar. He decided that he would see what he could learn by steering the conversation in The Broom around to the Robinsons. It would be natural enough, what with The Arrows being almost directly across the street, and that would be a good place to start.

July 22, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

Sarah looked so triumphant when Eleanor arrived just before midnight that Eleanor could not in good conscience deny her the pleasure of revealing whatever it was that had put that smug smile on her face. She hoped it was good news, because today had been particularly brutal. The amount of work that she'd been laden with would have laid her out four years ago. She'd almost been too tired to come here tonight, and really, all that had gotten her out the door was the promise of eventual freedom.

"It is a very good thing that no one would ever entrust you with a state secret, because you could never conceal the fact that you had a secret in the first place," she told her mentor, as she picked up her mother's notebook to begin her exercises, took a deep breath, and concentrated on getting her second wind. She and Sarah were focusing on one thing now; to extend the length of her "leash," so that she could attend the fancy-dress ball—though how she was going to get inside the doors of the manor at Longacre Park without an invitation, she had no notion. There was no chance that one would come for her now. Lauralee, Carolyn, and Alison had long since gotten theirs, and the girls took every chance they could get to take out the precious piece of cream-laid vellum and flourish it about. Their acquaintances—one could hardly call them "friends," anymore—in the village were eaten up with envy. The only other villagers who had gotten invitations were the vicar and his wife, and the doctor and his. With this alone, Alison had made it wordlessly clear how much higher her social stature was in the tiny circle of Broom. That, in fact, she had escaped the social circle of Broom for another, more rarified atmosphere.

She had, of course, cleverly feigned confusion to "discover" that no one else had achieved similar invitations, and unlike her daughters (who might be excused such behavior on the grounds of their callow youth) she did not make much of it after that initial flurry of exquisitely acted discomfiture. In this way, even though she had without doubt made some real enemies among the village elite, none of them would dare come out actively and openly against her. The ladies still came to her teas and her war-effort gatherings—though with all of the invitations up to the manor, those were becoming infrequent. But she presided over them with the absent air of a queen who has other concerns than the petty ones of her subjects.

Eleanor had hoped that somehow, someone would remember her existence and include her in the joint invitation, but no one had; it had read, "Mrs. Alison Robinson, Miss Danbridge, and Miss Carolyn Danbridge." Not even a hint of "Eleanor." She had almost given up at that moment, but it did occur to her that Sarah might know a way of slipping her in, somehow—or perhaps even was planning to forge an invitation. Granted she wouldn't be on the guest list, but perhaps no one would check that, or if they did, she could claim she was part of "Alison Robinson and daughters." Or perhaps Sarah meant for her to slip in through the gardens, though how she was to do that in an enormous ballgown eluded her.

She settled herself at Sarah's old, age-darkened kitchen table, her brazier in front of her, a Salamander already lying coiled in the coals without needing to be summoned.

"Here you are, just as I promised," Sarah said, handing over a plain envelope that contained a cream-laid vellum one that—no mistake— was identical to the one in Alison's middle desk-drawer. The outer one was addressed to Sarah, but the inner to Eleanor herself— At an Oxford address. Somerville College, to be exact. She gazed at it in blank astonishment. She already knew what it contained, of course. Her invitation to the ball. But— "How—" was all she could manage.

Sarah actually winked. "I have my ways," she said. "A little word to—someone—who kindly reminded her ladyship that Miss Robinson was away at Oxford as the invitations were picked up to be given to the postman, so she rewrote the Robinson invitations on the spot. And then, a—fellow follower of the Ancient Ways, not an Elemental Master, who is—" She hesitated. "Well, I'll only say this. She has every reason to be at Somerville, and she chose Somerville because it is the women's college that has no religious requirements that might conflict with her own faith."

Eleanor gaped at her, feeling her eyes going rounder with every passing moment.

"Oh, don't look at me like that!" Sarah laughed. "I told you there were more of us than you'd ever guess! At any rate, she intercepted your invitation and reposted it to me. That's all. You are on the guest list and you have a genuine invitation. So if I were you, I would stop staring and get back to my exercises, or on the day, you won't be able to get as far as the front gate." She plucked the invitation from Eleanor's nerveless fingers. "And I'll keep that safe, here. No point in risking having it found, and you'll have to come to me to dress anyway. Now, it's time to work, not daydream."

It was difficult to concentrate on the tedious mechanics of a spell which amounted to telling something very stupid and slow, over and over, that a boundary wasn't where it had been originally set. Doing so when your arms and shoulders ached from all the fetching and carrying you'd done, and your legs from all the trips up and down the stairs, was even harder. Magic, she had come to understand, was largely a means by which the magician imposed her will on the world, and made the world conform to it.

That sounded very simple, and in theory, it was—or would be, if there was a simple world to deal with, and only one magician in it.

The problem was that there were a great many other things, a few of them also magical in nature, that were also imposing their will on the world. Ways had to be found to get the results one wanted with the least interference with everything else. Some interference was inevitable; meddling with things made ripples, and disturbed other things.

It wasn't just that one didn't want to disrupt other things that were going on out of courtesy—or fear of reprisal. It was that when one did interfere unduly, there were consequences. Everything one did magically had a cascading effect, like the little pebble that starts an avalanche. Sometimes, of course, one could stop the cascade before things became serious, but you had to be aware of consequences to do that. You had to look for the things you might change, and include them in your plan. You had to try and think of things that weren't obvious.

Consequences . . . and responsibilities. That called to mind the purview of the High Priest. The Magician. Most of all, the Hermit, who moved slowly and only after studying all the possible ramifications of his actions.

One of those ramifications was that when things were jarred into new patterns, there were sometimes—Things—that took notice; different creatures for each Element. The ones for Earth were the Trolls and Giants, for Fire, the Wyverns and Fire-drakes (entirely different species than true Dragons). For Water it was the Leviathans, and for Air the Wendigo. They were not very bright, but they were very powerful, very dangerous, and always, always hungry. What they "ate" was the life-force of magicians. One did not want to attract their notice. Even Alison moved cautiously to avoid attracting Trolls and Giants.

So the smaller one's "footprint" of influence was, the better.

Alison had gotten away with as much use of magic as she had because she had confined it mostly to one single person—Eleanor. Hedging one person in with spells did not make much of an effect on the rest of the world.

Now it was Eleanor's turn, and the best course of action now seemed to be to work on the spells already in existence. That meant, at the moment, persuading the spell that kept pulling her back to the hearth that it had never been meant to call her back when she went beyond the grounds of The Arrows—that instead its boundary was much farther. It would return to its previous state when she took her attention off it, of course, but that didn't happen at once, and in fact, the more she worked at this, the longer she had before it reverted.

The village was very quiet at this time of night. A dog barked out in the distance, and nearer at hand, the trees rustled as a breeze tumbled among their leaves. Inside there was only the pop and crackle of the small fire in the fireplace, and the sound of their breathing.

"I think," Sarah said, when she had been working at her spellcasting for the better part of an hour, "that if we could just find a way to dig up your finger and destroy it, that would break the spell."

Eleanor slowly released the spell she had been manipulating; she could see it in her head, like a cat's cradle of lines of magical power. It remained as she had left it, and she turned her attention to Sarah, who was watching her with solemn eyes. They'd had this discussion before. "But you're still not sure," Eleanor said flatly. She looked across the table into Sarah's eyes, and saw what she expected to see. Once again, Sarah had attempted to unravel the complexities of the spells around Eleanor, and once again, she had not been able to decipher them.

Sarah shook her head. "I'm not powerful enough to read all those spells she's tangled up around you. I just can't keep them separate in my mind. I think destroying the finger would break them all, but there's a chance that destroying the finger would make them bind more tightly."

"I'm not willing to take that risk," she replied, with a frown. "If I can achieve the Sun, that's the card of freedom and problems solved, and it's a Fire card. I'll have the knowledge, the wisdom and the power to use Justice's sword, and I can cut myself free of the spell-bindings." She paused a moment, and added, "They say it's a simple card. If I can pass through it soon . . ."

She didn't specify what she meant by "soon." She had eight more cards to pass through before she reached the Sun. She had yet to face Death ... or even the Hanged Man. Truth to be told she didn't want to face either, but it had to be done. The Hermit had not been as frightening or as difficult as she had thought, but the Wheel of Fortune had been terrifying. One wouldn't think that an abstract concept like that would be frightening, but—

But it hadn't been abstract. It had been the whole world up there, looming in a sky that was half storm and half calm, with terrible energies crackling through it all, and the realization that a single turn of the Wheel could set random factors into motion that could doom all her plans.

And even as she had gazed up at it in awe—for it had looked nothing at all like the card, except in that it was a wheel, or at least wheel-shaped—she had felt herself and all the world coming apart, then returning together again, in what she came to understand was a cycle of creation and destruction, of death and rebirth, and she had grasped things for that moment that she couldn't even begin to articulate now. But evidently she had grasped them correctly, for the huge, looming Wheel settled, and a little more knowledge and power settled into her mind, and she was given to understand that she had passed this test, too.

So it was understandable that at this moment she really didn't want to think what the Death card was going to be like. It would have been easier on her nerves if the card had been called Transfiguration, or something of the sort.

Sarah gave her an odd look. "This isn't the path I would have seen you taking," she said at last. "Your mother was always so impatient, the Fire in her wanting to take things quickly—"

"Which isn't always a good idea. I think perhaps this business of using the Tarot to teach me was the best thing that could have happened to me." Eleanor grimaced, and rubbed the joint of her right thumb with her left hand, easing a little ache there. "Much though I would like to make things happen faster, I'm learning about the strengths and weaknesses of the other three Elements as I go, and I hope that means I won't be as vulnerable."

She didn't have to say aloud what she was thinking—that if her mother had known more about the strengths and weaknesses of the antagonistic Element of Water, she might not have died. She knew Sarah was thinking the same thing by the faint expression of regret mixed with other emotions too fleeting to catch.

But one of them was pride—pride in the daughter who was, perhaps, a little wiser than her mother.

"You're learning," was all Sarah said.

"I bloody well hope sol" Eleanor snapped, with a little show of Fire temperament, quickly throttled before it could have any other effect. "And before you say it, I will say it for you. Back to work. We have only a fortnight, and I have a lot of progress to make before then."