The Wizard of London

The Wizard of London

Elemental Master Book 5

by Mercedes Lackey

1

ISABELLE Hellen Harton waited on the dock beside the gangplank for the last of the steamer passengers from Egypt and Africa to disembark. She was not the only person waiting there; there were a number of friends and relations, eager to greet returning soldiers posted to distant climes, tourists, hunters, adventurers, businessmen, and assorted missionaries. But she was one of a small handful of quiet, soberly-dressed folk who were waiting for some very special passengers indeed.

The vast majority of the passengers had come from Egypt; it was a popular destination for those English who could afford it, especially in the winter. There were not many soldiers; they generally returned on troopships. Those who disembarked from this passenger liner were pale, thin, sometimes missing a limb or an eye; invalided out and sent home by the transport that they could get on first—or best afford.

For those who were returning under happier circumstances, there were the usual gay greetings, crowds swirled, made noise, and left. And at last, the final passengers made their solemn way down the gangplank.

A little gaggle of children, none older than ten, all very quiet and subdued, were accompanied by their guardians; three young English nannies, none pretty, all as subdued as their charges.

Isabelle fingered the letter in her pocket; she didn’t have to read it again to know what it said. And what it did not say in words written on the page, but in those hopes and fears scribed between the lines, in thought and emotion.

Dear Mrs.Harton: As terrible as it is for us, we must send our daughter Sarah out of the dangers of Africa and back to the more healthful climate and safety of England. As we have no relatives with which to entrust our child, we cast about for a school, and yours has come highly recommended by those we trust. She is our only child, and very dear to us. We have been told that you are kind and caring, which speaks more to us than that you have French tutors and dancing masters.

Not mentioned, of course, was that the Harton School was not expensive either. A pair of missionaries would not be able to afford a great deal.

So—I suspect they must have asked about a great many schools before they came to us. There was a dusting, a faint glow of true Magic about the letter; not that Isabelle was a Magician herself, but she was sensitive enough to detect it in those who were. The writer was no Master of any Element, but was surely a practitioner of Earth Magic. Not surprising, in one who had gone to Africa to be a Healer and serve at the side of another.

And the father—Doctor Lyon-White—was he, too, Magician as well as Healer? That hadn’t occurred to Isabel until now, and as she waited, she brushed her fingers across the surface of the envelope and under the first faint trace, discovered another, fainter still. Yes, another Earth Magician, and this one, a Master.

But if this little daughter had been so gifted, the parents would have sent her to another Elemental Mage to be schooled. So as she is not an incipient Elemental Mage, and they have little money to afford the only school that has a reputation for training the otherwise gifted among the other Elemental Mages, they must have been quite desperate.

Once again, it was what was not written in the letter that resonated to Isabelle’s own finely-tuned—and “extra”—senses.

Sarah has gifts we cannot train, the letter whispered to her. Nor can anyone we know. Those we trust tell us that you can—

But they could not put that into words, of course; they were writing to a stranger, who might not be as they had been told, who might think them mad for saying such things. Rumors of our special students at best among their set; and among missionaries and the like, only the assurance that we are kind and gentle. They could only be sure of this: that those who ran this school would be good to a little girl who had been sent so far away from everything she knew and loved.

Isabelle wondered just what it was that little Sarah Jane had been gifted with, then dismissed it. Whatever it was, she would find out soon enough.

Down the gangplank at last came the line of little girls and boys, two by two, with one nanny leading and the other two following, all of them quiet and round-eyed and apprehensive, subdued, perhaps, by the gray northern skies, the smokes, the looming dark city that was so completely unlike Cairo or Timbuktu.

Isabelle had eyes for only one of them, a slender, big-eyed child in a shabby coat a little too large for her, who looked with reserve, but no fear, all around her. Not pretty, brown-haired and brown-eyed, a little wren of a child. This was Sarah Jane. She knew it, felt it, and felt something under that surface that told her that Doctor and Mrs.Lyon-White had been very wise in sending their child to the Harton School for Boys and Girls.

So it was Isabelle, of all of those waiting for their charges, who stepped forward first, and presented her credentials to the leading nanny. “I am Mrs.Harton, and I am here for Sarah Jane Lyon-White,” she said in a firm voice as the nanny looked the letter over with hesitant uncertainty. And before the nanny could say anything more, she turned to the child she had singled out, and held out her hand, and put all of the welcome and love she could into her voice and gaze. “Come along, my dear. Your parents asked me to meet you.”

The child’s eyes lit up as she met Isabelle’s gaze with her own. There was relief there, too, a relief that told Isabelle how lonely the poor thing had been on this journey, and how much she had hoped to find a friend at the end of it.

Without asking for permission, she left the group and took Isabelle’s hand trustingly.

There was some fuss about getting the child’s things sorted out from those of the rest of the children, and then a bit more nonsense with getting a cab. During the entire time, Sarah did not say more than ten words altogether, but she was good and patient, despite a growing fatigue that showed in her pinched face and shadowed eyes. Finally, they were settled in the cab, and alone at last. As the horses drew away from the curb, Isabelle put her arm around the child, and immediately felt the girl relax into the embrace. For her part, she felt her own heart respond without reserve to the trusting child.

“My dear, you are welcome with us,” Isabelle said softly. “I won’t insult your intelligence by saying I’ll be like a mother to you, and that you’ll never miss your home. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. But in my school, besides learning our lessons, we set a great deal of store by taking care of each other, and being good to each other, and I do say that you’ll have friends here. I hope you’ll be happy. If you are not, it will not be because the rest of us have not tried to help you be as happy as you can be so far from home.”

Sarah looked up at her. And hesitated a moment. “My mother said—” she began, then swallowed, and went on. “My mother said you might be able to teach me things. The kind of things M’dela was teaching me?”

With that name came a flash out of Sarah’s memory, of a very black man with all the usual accouterments of a shaman… a man, as seen through Sarah’s eyes, with an aura and Talents and possessed of great wisdom.

And Talents…

“Yes, my dear, I can.” She tapped Sarah’s nose gently. “And we will begin by teaching you how to keep your thoughts and memories out of other people’s heads unless you intend for them to see such things!”

Sarah gaped at her a moment and then laughed, and Isabelle smiled. So. It was well begun.

***

Isabelle sat in her office, reviewing the progress of each student in the day’s lessons. The Harton School was not all that large, and she liked to know where each of her pupils stood in his or her studies on a daily basis, in no small part because if any of the teachers fell ill, it would be Isabelle who took over the class until the teacher was well again. She felt it, the moment her husband crossed the threshold, of course, the moment when everything inside her relaxed and said, “Yes, my other self, my other half, is at my side again.” Her heart rose, as she looked up from her work, feeling him draw nearer with every moment.

Her door was open—it was never closed, unless she was having a private conference—and he limped in. Frederick Harton was a fine figure of a man despite his limp, with broad shoulders, the unruly wheat-colored hair of the Cockney street urchin he had once been, and merry blue eyes. “Well, my angel,” he said, with that open grin she cherished, “How is your newest imp?”

“Not an imp at all,” she replied, getting up and coming around to his side of the desk to nestle unself-consciously in his arms. “Truth to be told, she’s a little dear. A touch of telepathy, both receptive and projective, I believe, and as young as she is, it may get stronger. I can’t tell what else. She has the most remarkable set of tales about a pet of hers that she left in Africa that I hardly know whether or not to believe, however!”

At his look of inquiry, she told him some of the stories little Sarah Jane had imparted to her about her Grey Parrot. “I know she believes them to be true—I am just not certain how much of it is imagination and how much is real.”

Frederick Harton looked down at her somberly. “This shaman gave her the bird in the first place, did he not?” he asked.

She nodded.

“And he said the bird was to be her protector?”

“He did. And I see where you are going.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well, in that case, I think we should assume the tales are true. I wish she had been able to persuade her mother to allow her to bring the bird here.”

“If the bird is meant to be with her, a way will be found,” he replied, and kissed the top of her head. “And I believe if a way is found, little Sarah will prove to have more interesting Talents than merely a touch of telepathy!”

He let her go, and rubbed his hands together. “Now, I am famished, my love! I trust Vashti has prepared one of her excellent curries?”

She had to laugh at that and reached up to ruffle his hair. “How fortunate we are that your tastes are so economical! Yes, of course she has, and she is waiting in the kitchen to spoil her favorite man!”

***

The object of their discussions was tucked up in bed in her own room, although it was a room that had another empty bed in it, feeling very mixed emotions. She was horribly homesick, and longed for her parents and her parrot, Grey, and her friends among the African tribe that had adopted the little family with an intensity that was painful—but she was not as unhappy as she had been on the journey here. In fact, there was a part of her that actually felt as close to happy as she had been since she left. Mem’sab Harton was everything Mummy and Papa had promised, and more, kind and warm and always with a comforting hug for anyone who looked in need of one. The journey from Africa to London had been sheer misery. Once alone with the children, the nannies had been horribly standoffish and cold, scolding anyone who cried or even looked as if they wanted to. The children had had to share the tiniest of cabins, two to a bunk. The food had been bland and mostly cold. The other children had not been particularly nice, and one of the boys, Nigel Pettigrew, had three older brothers who had made this trip before him and he was full of stories about “schools” and how terrible they were until all of the children were ready to weep with fear as they got off the ship.

For Sarah, at least, the nightmares had vanished like morning fog, and now she felt sorry for the others, who were not being sent to the Harton School, even though some of them had looked down their noses at her because she wasn’t being sent to a “first-class academy.”

When Mem’sab had determined that Sarah’s tummy wasn’t going to revolt, she’d done her best to give her a supper like the ones she was used to, the same as the grown-ups were getting. Most of the children and both cooks were from India rather than Africa, so it was, at best, an approximation, and she had milk for the first time in as long as she could remember (milk tended to go “off” very quickly in the Congo). She’d never had a “curry” before, but it all agreed with her, and if it tasted strange, it also tasted good, and didn’t make her feel half starved like the watered-down tea and toast and thin broth and gruel which was all the three English nannies seemed to think suitable for children on the ship. Now she was in a soft bed, with enough blankets to make a tropic-raised child finally feel warm again, and with a little fire in the grate to act as a night light. She sighed, and felt all of her tense muscles relax at last.

For all of her nine years until this moment, Sarah Jane Lyon-White had lived contentedly with her parents in the heart of Africa. Her father was a physician, her mother, a nurse, and they worked at a Protestant mission in the Congo.

She had been happy there, not the least because her mother and father were far more enlightened than many another mission worker—as Sarah well knew, having seen others when she and her mother visited other mission hospitals. Her parents took the cause of Healing as being more sacred than that of conversion, even though they were technically supposed to be “saving souls” as well as lives. Somehow that part never seemed to take any sort of precedence… and they undertook to work with the natives, and made friends instead of enemies among the shamans and medicine people. Because of this, Sarah had been a cherished and protected child by everyone around her, although she was no stranger to the many dangers of life in the Congo.

When she was six, and far older in responsibility than most of her peers, one shaman had brought her a parrot chick still in quills; he taught her how to feed and care for it, and told her that while it was still an immature bird, she was to protect it, but when it was grown, it would protect and guide her. She had called the parrot “Grey,” and the bird had become her best friend—and she missed Grey now more, even, than her parents.

Her parents had sent her to live in England for the sake of her health. Now, this was quite the usual thing. It was thought that English children were more delicate than their parents, and that the inhospitable humors of hot climes would make them sicken and die. Not that their parents didn’t sicken and die quite as readily as the children, who were, in fact, far sturdier than they were given credit for—but it was thought, by anxious mothers, that the climate of England would be far kinder to them. So Sarah’s Mummy had carefully explained to her, and explained that the climate of England would probably be bad for Grey, and so Grey would have to remain behind.

Though why, if the climate was supposed to be good for Sarah, it could be bad for Grey, Mummy had not been able to sufficiently explain.

“Perhaps if I’m good, Mem’sab will tell Mummy that Grey must come here,” she whispered to the friendly shadows around her bed. Some of the other children already had pets—two of the boys and one of the girls had rabbits, one girl had a canary, and there were fine, fat, contented cats roaming about perfectly prepared to plop into any lap that offered itself, all of whom seemed to belong to the school in general rather than anyone in particular. So it seemed that Mem’sab was more than willing to allow additions to the menagerie, provided any additions were properly taken care of.

If there was one thing that Sarah was well versed in, it was how to take care of Grey, and she had already determined that the same vegetable-and-rice curries that the cooks made for the school meals would serve Grey very well. So food would not be a problem. And this room was warm enough. And Mem’sab had explained (and Sarah saw no reason to doubt her) that she had made it very clear to the cats that while they were welcome to feast on as many mice and rats and insects as they could catch, anything with feathers was strictly off-limits. So that was sorted. All she had to do, really, was figure out a way to ask Mem’sab to explain to Mummy—

And as she tried to puzzle out how to do that, the weariness of a journey that had been much too long and too stressful, and the release of discovering she was in a safe and welcoming place, all caught up with her, and she fell asleep.

***

Sarah’s first day had been good, but the ones that followed were better. Not that the other children were all angelic darlings who took her to themselves and never teased her—because they weren’t. But bullying was not allowed, and teasing was met with remonstrations from every adult in authority, from the two Indian ayahs who cared for the babies to Mem’sab herself, so that it was kept to a minimum. And if Sarah didn’t make any bosom friends (partly because she was more used to the company of adults than children), she at least got along reasonably well with all of the other children her own age and for the most part enjoyed their company. As far as schooling went, she was ahead of most of them in most subjects, since both Mummy and Papa had given her lessons, so that wasn’t a worry. And it wasn’t that she didn’t make fast friends—because she did. It just wasn’t another child.

The third day of her residence, she went into the kitchen in search of a rag to clean up some spilled water, to find a very slim, quite diminutive, very dark man in a turban sitting patiently at the table, waiting for tea. There was something about him that drew her strongly; perhaps it was that she could not hear his thoughts, and yet there was no sense that he was hiding anything, only that he had the kind of knowledge and discipline that Mem’sab was trying to train her in. He turned to look at her as she came in, and nodded to her, or she would not have said anything, but the nod seemed to invite a response.

“Hello,” she said gravely, and offered her hand. “I’m Sarah Jane. I’ve just come. I’m from Africa.”

He took it, and bowed over it. “I am Agansing,” he told her, just as gravely. “I am from India. I am a Gurkha.”

As it happened, there had been enough British military visitors passing through the Congo and taking advantage of the mission’s medical facilities and hospitality that Sarah knew what a Gurkha was. In fact, she had seen some, and her Papa had told her about them; that they were exceedingly brave, exceedingly good warriors, and so trusted they had their very own regiment. She blinked. “Why are you here?” she asked boldly, because while many, many Gurkhas were in service to the Empire, once they retired, they always went home to the hills in Nepal rather than coming to England.

“I have no family, except Mem’sab and Sahib,” Agansing said, without taking offense. “My family perished in a mudslide when I was younger than you, and I never had other family except my regiment and my sworn brother, Sahib Harton. When Sahib was to muster out, he offered me a home and work. It is also so with Selim and Karamjit, who are his sworn brothers as well. Karamjit is a Sikh. We three guard Sahib, Mem’sab, and you children, though I am usually with Sahib at his warehouse.”

Selim, she knew from the name alone, was likely to be a Moslem, and her eyes went round. Many Indians came to Africa to become storekeepers and the like in the cities, and Sarah knew very well how unlikely it was that a Gurkha, a Moslem, a Sikh, and the other Hindu and Buddhist servants that she also knew were here would coexist amicably in the same household.

Agansing smiled at her surprise, and then smiled over her head. “Karamjit, my friend,” he said. “Little Missy Sarah is come to us from Africa, and we surprise her.”

Sarah turned; another surprise, because she could almost always tell when someone had come up behind her and she had not sensed—anything! There was a very tall, very dark man in a turban standing there regarding her with grave eyes. “Welcome, Missy Sarah,” he said, holding out his hand. She shook it. “We are a surprising tribe here, I do think. Though you will not meet with Agansing and Selim often, you will see me. My duties keep me mostly here.”

Though she could sense nothing from them, she had the feeling, a feeling so strong that she had never felt anything like it except in the presence of the shaman M’dela who had given her Grey, that she could trust these men with anything. And she gave Karamjit one of her rare smiles. “We need guarding, Mr.Karamjit?” she asked.

He nodded. “The leopards and tigers that prowl outside our gates are of the two-footed kind,” he told her solemnly, “and the more dangerous for that. So you must not venture out of the garden, except with another grown person.”

She nodded then hesitated, and looked from one to the other, for she knew, without knowing how she knew, that both these men had knowledge that she needed. “Can you—” she hesitated, then ventured it all. “Can you help me be quiet in my mind like you are?” she begged. “Mem’sab gives me lessons, but you’re better than she is, because you’re so quiet you aren’t even there. And I know I need to be better.”

The men exchanged a glance, and it was Karamjit who answered.

“I will, if it suits Mem’sab. If I do, you will pledge me the obedience that I gave to my master, for the teaching is not easy, and needs much patience.”

And she knew at that moment that she had gained the respect and the friendship of both these men. “I promise,” she swore.

She went and told Mem’sab what she had done at once, of course, in order to gain that permission, and as she had suspected, Mem’sab entirely approved. “Karamjit and Agansing both know meditation techniques that I never learned,” she said to Sarah.

“And if you have the patience at your young age to learn them, they will be very good for you. You can use the conservatory; it’s quiet, and you can tell Karamjit I have given you permission to do so, and thank him for agreeing to teach you.”

That was an astonishing privilege, as children were not allowed in the conservatory, or “hothouse,” as one of the boys called it, without an adult. This was in part because all the conservatory walls were glass, and children and glass walls usually do not coexist well. And in part it was because the adults used it as a refuge, since children were allowed to come and go in virtually every other room of the school, so having one place where there was some peace from childish racket was a necessary thing.

As Sarah now knew the school had not originally been built for such a function; it had been converted from an enormous house and grounds that had once belonged to some very wealthy Georgian merchant (or so Mem’sab said) but which had been abandoned when the London neighborhood in which it stood began to deteriorate. Now it was a very bad neighborhood indeed, which was why Mem’sab and Sahib had been able to afford such an enormous place when they looked for a building to use as their school.

The bad neighborhood was one of the reasons why it was not a “first-class” school. “First-class” schools were situated outside of cities, far from bad neighborhoods, bad air, and the dangers and temptations of a metropolis. But the people who sent their children here, like Sarah’s own parents, had very particular reasons for choosing it. Mostly, they only wanted their children to be cherished—but there were several other children here who also had what Mem’sab referred to as “Talents.”

Now, Sarah had been just old enough, and just sensitive enough before she left, that she knew very well her parents shared M’dela’s Magic, though she could not herself duplicate it. And she knew that though she did not have that sort of power, she had always been able to talk to Grey in her head, and she could often see the thoughts of other people—and these were things her parents could not do. As Mummy had told her, now that she was here, the people at the school were going be able to help her sort these things she could do out. Apparently other people knew that Mem’sab and Sahib could do this, too, and probably those people felt that being sorted out was the most important thing that their children could learn.

So, “Thank you, Mem’sab,” she said sincerely, dimly sensing that Karamjit did not often offer his services in this business of being sorted out, and that though this would be a great deal of work, the reward was likely to be very high if she mastered what he could teach. And that she had gained a very, very valuable teacher, perhaps one of the most valuable she was ever likely to have as long as she lived.

She went back to the kitchen where Karamjit was still waiting. “Mem’sab says to thank you that you will teach me, and that we can use the conservatory,” she told him.

One dark eyebrow rose, but that was the only way in which Karamjit showed that he found the second statement remarkable. “Mem’sab is wise,” he replied, and paused. “You have a question.”

“Why are you quieter in your mind than Mem’sab?” she asked.

He pondered that for a moment, while Vashti, one of the cooks, pretended to ignore them both out of politeness for what was a private conversation.

“Mem’sab believes that it is because of the way I was taught,” he said finally. “This is only in part true. It is because of what I was taught. Mem’sab has not learned this, because she cannot, not because of ignorance. It is—it is exactly that reason that you cannot learn what your parents do. Mem’sab is not even truly aware that I do this thing—that I become not there to all inner senses, unless I wish to be there. Thusly—”

And suddenly, to her astonishment, she sensed him, just as she could sense anyone else. Then, just as suddenly, he was gone again except, of course, that he was still sitting right there.

“You and I are alike in this, Missy Sarah,” Karamjit continued. “Just as Agansing and Selim and I are. It is uncommon. Sometimes it means that one is to be a kind of warrior, though not always.”

She thought that over. “I don’t feel like a warrior,” she said truthfully.

He shrugged. “One need not have this to be a warrior. Sometimes it is a protection. Nevertheless. This is why Mem’sab cannot teach you. You must be very diligent, and very patient. It is a skill that takes years to learn and a lifetime to master, so you must not expect to be proficient any time soon.”

She nodded. “Like being a doctor.”

He smiled. “Very like. Now. Here is your first lesson in patience. I will undertake to begin your teaching only after I feel that you have settled well into the school. I will choose the time.”

She sighed, a little disappointed, but knowing better than to argue—because M’dela had schooled her in much the same way.

And since that was clearly Karamjit’s way of saying “you can go now,” she excused herself.

Besides, it was teatime.

***

Sarah was used to being taught in a very large class; she had been learning her letters along with the rest of the African children whose parents thought it wise to learn the foreigners’ ways. Unlike some missions, there was neither bribery nor coercion involved in getting the African children to come to school, but Sarah’s parents had pointed out that whether the natives liked it or not, the foreigners had the guns, the soldiers, and the big ships to bring more of both; that they were unlikely to be rid of them, and it would be a good thing to not have to rely on translators who might lie, and might come from another tribe altogether. And that it would be an even better thing to be able to read treaties and agreements for themselves, and not depend on someone else to say what was in such things. And it was the tribal chief who had thought it over, and decreed that those who were apt to the teaching should come. There had been nearly thirty people in Sarah’s class, and only one teacher. There were only six in this class, and she had three different teachers. To her mind, this was quite astonishing.

A tall thin woman, Miss Payne, taught Reading, Penmanship, Grammar, and Literature. She looked as if she was the sort who would be very cross all the time, but in fact, she was quiet and reserved, and when she got excited, her cheeks went quite pink, but there were no other signs of her state. Other than that, she was evidently someone Mem’sab trusted, and she always seemed to know when one of her students was having difficulties, because she always came right to the desk to help him or her out.

Professor Hawthorne, an old man who spoke very slowly and with great passion about mathematics, was in charge of teaching that subject, and Geometry as well. He did not have anything like the patience of Miss Payne, and if he thought a pupil was being lazy, he was able to deliver quite a tongue-lashing. “The ability to understand mathematics,” he would say with vehemence, “is the only thing that distinguishes Man from the lesser animals!”

Sarah decided that she was not going to tell him that Grey could count.

Madame Jeanette taught French, Latin, and History. She spoke French with a Parisian accent, which she was quite proud of. She was also extremely pretty and young, and there were rumors among the boys that she had been a ballet dancer at the Paris Opera, or perhaps a cancan girl at the Moulin Rouge. Sarah thought that the boys would be quite disappointed if they learned the truth—a truth that Sarah had inadvertently “overheard” when Madame Jeanette was thinking very hard one day. The truth was simply that she was extremely well-educated, but that her family had fallen on hard times, and she had to go be a schoolteacher or a governess. After several wretched postings, a friend had directed her to England and Mem’sab. Mem’sab and Sahib placed no restrictions on her movements, did not spy upon her, did not forbid her to have beaus, and encouraged her to spend all the time she liked at the British Museum outside of lessons. The tiny difference in pay was far outweighed by the enormous difference in freedom, to her mind. And lately, there was a handsome young barrister who kept taking the carrel next to hers in the Reading Room…

There were four other teachers, not counting the nursery teachers, but Sarah wasn’t taking any classes from any of them.

Madame Jeanette was perfectly normal, but Professor Hawthorne and Miss Payne had—something—about them. Sarah didn’t know just what it was yet, but she had the feeling there was a great deal more to both of them than appeared on the surface.

The other five children in her class were very nice, but—well, Sarah was just used to spending a great deal of time in the company of adults, or people who acted like adults, and it didn’t seem to her as if she had much in common with the others. They invited her to play in their games, but they seemed relieved when she declined. She was a great deal more attracted to some of the older children, but they ignored the younger ones, and she couldn’t think of a good way to get their attention.

So, for the first month, she spent most of her free time alone, in the kitchen with the cooks and their helpers, or with Karamjit. Often she simply followed Karamjit on his rounds. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, when he wasn’t busy, he would talk to her as if she were a grown person, telling her about his home in India, asking her about Africa. And sometimes, he would drop little nuggets of information about the school, the teachers, and how it had all come to be.

It was all quite interesting, and during the daytime, enough to keep her from being at all lonely.

But at night—at night, she wished (for she wouldn’t call it “praying,” which she instinctively knew should be reserved for very special needs) for two things.

A friend, a real friend, another girl by preference.

And Grey.

2

NAN—that was her only name, for no one had told her of any other—lurked anxiously about the back gate of the Big House. She was new to this neighborhood, for her slatternly mother had lost yet another job in a gin mill and they had been forced to move all the way across Whitechapel, and this part of London was as foreign to Nan as the wilds of Australia. She had been told by more than one of the children hereabouts that if she hung about the back gate after tea, a strange man with a towel wrapped about his head would come out with a basket of food and give it out to any child who happened to be there.

Now, there were not as many children willing to accept this offering as might have been expected, even in this poor neighborhood. They were afraid of the man, afraid of his piercing, black eyes, his swarthy skin, and his way of walking like a great hunting cat. Some suspected poison in the food, others murmured that he and the woman of the house were foreigners, and intended to kill English children with terrible curses on the food they offered. But Nan was faint with hunger; she hadn’t eaten in two days, and was willing to dare poison, curses, and anything else for a bit of bread.

Furthermore, Nan had a secret defense; under duress, she could often sense the intent and even dimly hear the thoughts of others. That was how she avoided her mother when it was most dangerous to approach her, as well as avoiding other dangers in the streets themselves. Nan was certain that if this man had any ill intentions, she would know it.

Still, as teatime and twilight both approached, she hung back a little from the wrought-iron gate, beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to see what, if anything, her mother brought home. If she’d found a job—or a “gen’lmun”—there might be a farthing or two to spare for food before Aggie spent the rest on gin. Behind the high, grimy wall, the Big House loomed dark and ominous against the smoky, lowering sky, and the strange, carved creatures sitting atop every pillar in the wall and every corner of the House fair gave Nan the shivers whenever she looked at them. There were no two alike, and most of them were beasts out of a rummy’s worst deliriums. The only one that Nan could see that looked at all normal was a big, gray bird with a fat body and a hooked beak that sat on top of the right-hand gatepost of the back gate.

Nan had no way to tell time, but as she waited, growing colder and hungrier—and more nervous—with each passing moment, she began to think for certain that the other children had been having her on. Teatime was surely long over; the tale they’d told her was nothing more than that, something to gull the newcomer with. It was getting dark, there were no other children waiting, and after dark it was dangerous even for a child like Nan, wise in the ways of the evil streets, to be abroad. Disappointed, and with her stomach a knot of pain, Nan began to turn away from the gate.

“I think that there is no one here, Missy Sa’b,” said a low, deep voice, heavily accented, sounding disappointed. Nan hastily turned back, and peering through the gloom, she barely made out a tall, dark form with a smaller one beside it.

“No, Karamjit—look there!” replied the voice of a young girl, and the smaller form pointed at Nan. A little girl ran up to the gate, and waved through the bars. “Hello! I’m Sarah—what’s your name? Would you like some tea bread? We’ve plenty!”

The girl’s voice, also strangely accented, had none of the imperiousness that Nan would have expected coming from the child of a “toff.” She sounded only friendly and helpful, and that, more than anything, was what drew Nan back to the wrought-iron gate.

“Indeed, Missy Sarah speaks the truth,” the man said; and as Nan drew nearer, she saw that the other children had not exaggerated when they described him. His head was wrapped around in a cloth; he wore a long, high-collared coat of some bright stuff, and white trousers that were tucked into glossy boots. He was as fiercely erect as the iron gate itself; lean and angular as a hunting tiger, with skin so dark she could scarcely make out his features, and eyes that glittered at her like beads of black glass.

But strangest, and perhaps most ominous of all, Nan could sense nothing from the dark man. He might not even have been there; there was a blank wall where his thoughts should have been.

The little girl beside him was perfectly ordinary by comparison; a bright little Jenny-wren of a thing, not pretty, but sweet, with a trusting smile that went straight to Nan’s heart. Nan had a motherly side to her; the younger children of whatever neighborhood she lived in tended to flock to her, look up to her, and follow her lead. She, in her turn, tried to keep them out of trouble, and whenever there was extra to go around she fed them out of her own scant stocks.

But the tall fellow frightened her, and made her nervous, especially when further moments revealed no more of his intentions than Nan had sensed before; the girl’s bright eyes noted that, and she whispered something to the dark man as Nan withdrew a little. He nodded, and handed her a basket that looked promisingly heavy.

Then he withdrew out of sight, leaving the little girl alone at the gate. The child pushed the gate open enough to hand the basket through. “Please, won’t you come and take this? It’s awfully heavy.”

In spite of the clear and open brightness of the little girl’s thoughts, ten years of hard living had made Nan suspicious. The child might know nothing of what the dark man wanted. “Woi’re yer givin’ food away?” she asked, edging forward a little, but not yet quite willing to take the basket.

The little girl put the basket down on the ground and clasped her hands behind her back. “Well, Mem’sab says that she won’t tell Maya and Vashti to make less food for tea, because she won’t have us going hungry while we’re growing. And she says that old, stale toast is fit only for starlings, so people ought to have the good of it before it goes stale. And she says that there’s no reason why children outside our gate have to go to bed hungry when we have enough to share, and Mummy and Papa say that sharing is charity and charity is one of the cardinal virtues, so Mem’sab is being virtuous, which is a good thing, because she’ll go to heaven and she would make a good angel.”

Most of that came out in a rush that quite bewildered Nan, especially the last, about cardinal virtues and heaven and angels. But she did understand that “Mem’sab,” whoever that was, must be one of those daft religious creatures that gave away food free for the taking, and Nan’s own mum had told her that there was no point in letting other people take what you could get from people like that. So Nan edged forward and made a snatch at the basket handle.

She tried, that is; it proved a great deal heavier than she’d thought, and she gave an involuntary grunt at the weight of it.

“Be careful,” the little girl admonished mischievously. “It’s heavy.”

“Yer moight’o warned me!” Nan said, a bit indignant, and more than a bit excited. If this wasn’t a trick—if there wasn’t a brick in the basket—oh, she’d eat well tonight, and tomorrow, too!

“Come back tomorrow!” the little thing called, as she shut the gate and turned and skipped toward the house. “Remember me! I’m Sarah Jane, and I’ll bring the basket tomorrow!”

“Thankee, Sarah Jane,” Nan called back, belatedly; then, just in case these strange creatures would think better of their generosity, she made the basket and herself vanish into the night.

***

Isabelle listened to Sarah’s version of the meeting at the gate, and nodded gravely. She had already gotten Karamjit’s narrative, and the two tallied. Both Sarah and Karamjit sensed nascent Talent in the child; this must have been the Talent that she herself had sensed a day or two ago, and had sent out a gentle lure for. It looked as if her bait had been taken.

Probably the little girl in question had very minimal control over what she could do; in her world, it would be enough that she had the sense of danger before something happened to her. That might well be enough… for the short run, at any rate. But her own husband had been a street boy collected from a sad and dead-end life by another Talented benefactor, and if this child was just as salvageable, Isabelle would see to it that she was taken care of as well.

“Thank you, Sarah,” she told the child standing before her. “I’d like you to make friends with this little girl, if she will let you. We will see what can be done for her.”

Sarah beamed, and it occurred to Isabelle that the poor little thing was very lonely here. So far, she had made no close friends. This chance encounter might change that for the better.

Good. There was nothing like catching two birds with one stone.

***

Nan came earlier the next day, bringing back the now-empty basket, and found Sarah Jane waiting at the gate. To her disappointment, there was no basket waiting beside the child, and Nan almost turned back, but Sarah saw her and called to her before she could fade back into the shadows of the streets.

“Karamjit is bringing the basket in a bit,” the child said, “There’s things Mem’sab wants you to have. And—what am I to call you? It’s rude to call you ‘girl,’ but I don’t know your name.”

“Nan,” Nan replied, feeling as if a cart had run over her. This child, though younger than Nan herself, had a way of taking over a situation that was all out of keeping with Nan’s notion of how things were supposed to be. The children of the rich were not supposed to notice the children of the poor, except on Boxing Day, on which occasion they were supposed to distribute sweets and whatever outworn or broken things they could no longer use. And the rich were not supposed to care if the children of the poor went to bed hungry, because being hungry would encourage them to work harder. “Wot kind’o place is this, anyway?”

“It’s a school, a boarding school,” Sarah said promptly. “Mem’sab and her husband have it for the children of people who live in India, mostly. Mem’sab can’t have children herself, which is very sad, but she says that means she can be a mother to us instead. Mem’sab came from India, and that’s where Karamjit and Selim and Maya and Vashti and the others are from, too; they came with her. Except for some of the teachers.”

“Yer mean the black feller?” Nan asked, bewildered. “Yer from In’juh, too?”

“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “Africa. I wish I was back there.” Her face paled and her eyes misted, and Nan, moved by an impulse she did not understand, tried to distract her with questions.

“Wot’s it loik, then? Izit loik Lunnun?”

“Like London! Oh, no, it couldn’t be less like London!” Nan’s ploy worked; the child giggled at the idea of comparing the Congo with this gray city, and she painted a vivid word picture of the green jungles, teeming with birds and animals of all sorts; of the natives who came to her father and mother for medicines. “Mummy and Papa don’t do what some of the others do—they went and talked to the magic men and showed them they weren’t going to interfere in the magic work, and now whenever they have a patient who thinks he’s cursed, they call the magic man in to help, and when a magic man has someone that his magic can’t help right away, he takes the patient to Mummy and Papa and they all put on feathers and charms, and Mummy and Papa give him White Medicine while the magic man burns his herbs and feathers and makes his chants, and everyone is happy. There haven’t been any uprisings at our station for ever so long, and our magic men won’t let anyone put black chickens at our door. One of them gave me Grey, and I wanted to bring her with me, but Mummy said I shouldn’t.” Now the child sighed, and looked woeful again.

“Wot’s a Grey?” Nan asked.

“She’s a Polly, a grey parrot with the beautifullest red tail; the medicine man gave her to me when she was all prickles, he showed me how to feed her with mashed-up yams and things. She’s so smart, she follows me about, and she can say, oh, hundreds of things. The medicine man said that she was to be my guardian and keep me from harm. But Mummy was afraid the smoke in London would hurt her, and I couldn’t bring her with me.” Sarah looked up at the fat, stone bird on the gatepost above her. “That’s why Mem’sab gave me that gargoyle, to be my guardian instead. We all have them, each child has her own, and that one’s mine.” She looked down again at Nan, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Sometimes when I get lonesome, I come here and talk to her, and it’s like talking to Grey.”

Nan nodded her head, understanding. “Oi useta go an’ talk’t’ a stachew in one’a the yards, till we ‘adta move. It looked loik me grammum. Felt loik I was talkin’ to ‘er, I fair did.”

A footstep on the gravel path made Nan look up, and she jumped to see the tall man with the head wrap standing there, as if he had come out of the thin air. She had not sensed his presence, and once again, even though he stood materially before her she could not sense anything like a living man there. He took no notice of Nan, which she was grateful for; instead, he handed the basket he was carrying to Sarah Jane, and walked off without a word.

Sarah passed the basket to Nan; it was heavier this time, and Nan thought she smelled something like roasted meat. Oh, if only they’d given her the drippings from their beef! Her mouth watered at the thought.

“I hope you like these,” Sarah said shyly, as Nan passed her the much-lighter empty basket. “Mem’sab says that if you’ll keep coming back, I’m to talk to you and ask you about London; she says that’s the best way to learn about things. She says otherwise, when I go out, I might get into trouble I don’t understand.”

Nan’s eyes widened at the thought that the head of a school had said anything of the sort—but Sarah Jane hardly seemed like the type of child to lie. “All roit, I’s’pose,” she said dubiously. “If you’ll be ’ere, so’ll Oi.”

The next day, faithful as the rising sun, Sarah was waiting with her basket, and Nan was invited to come inside the gate. She wouldn’t venture any farther in than a bench in the garden, but as Sarah asked questions, she answered them as bluntly and plainly as she would any similar question asked by a child in her own neighborhood. Sarah learned about the dangers of the dark side of London first-hand—and oddly, although she nodded wisely and with clear understanding, they didn’t seem to frighten her.

“Garn!” Nan said once, when Sarah absorbed the interesting fact that the opium den a few doors from where Nan and her mother had a room had pitched three dead men out into the street the night before. “Yer ain’t never seen nothin’ loik that!”

“You forget, Mummy and Papa have a hospital, and it’s very dangerous where they are,” Sarah replied matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen dead men, and dead women and even babies. When Nkumba came in clawed up by a lion, I helped bring water and bandages, while my parents sewed him up. When there was a black-water fever, I saw lots of people die. It was horrid and sad, but I didn’t fuss, because Nkumba and Papa and Mummy were worked nearly to bones and needed me to be good.”

Nan’s eyes widened again. “Wot else y’see?” she whispered, impressed in spite of herself.

After that, the two children traded stories of two very different sorts of jungles. Despite its dangers, Nan thought that Sarah’s was the better of the two.

She learned other things as well; that “Mems’ab” was a completely remarkable woman, for she had a Sikh, a Gurkha, two Moslems, two Buddhists, and assorted Hindus working in peace and harmony together—“and Mummy said in her letter that it’s easier to get leopards to herd sheep than that!” Mem’sab was by no means a fool; the Sikh and the Gurkha shared guard duty, patrolling the walls by day and night. One of the Hindu women was one of the “ayahs,” who took care of the smallest children; the rest of the motley assortment were servants and even teachers.

She heard many stories about the remarkable Grey, who really did act as Sarah’s guardian, if Sarah was to be believed. Sarah described times when she had inadvertently gotten lost; she had called frantically for Grey, who was allowed to fly free, and the bird had come to her, leading her back to familiar paths. Grey had kept her from eating some pretty but poisonous berries by flying at her and nipping her fingers until she dropped them. Grey alerted the servants to the presence of snakes in the nursery, always making a patrol before she allowed Sarah to enter. And once, according to Sarah, when she had encountered a lion on the path, Grey had flown off and made sounds like a young gazelle in distress, attracting the lion’s attention before it could scent Sarah. “She led it away, and didn’t come back to me until it was too far away to get to me before I got home safe,” the little girl claimed solemnly, “Grey is very clever.” Nan didn’t know whether to gape at her or laugh; she couldn’t imagine how a mere bird could be intelligent enough to talk, much less act with purpose.

Nan had breath to laugh with, nowadays, thanks to baskets that held more than bread. The food she found in there, though distinctly odd, was always good, and she no longer felt out of breath and tired all the time. She had stopped wondering and worrying about why “Mem’sab” took such an interest in her, and simply accepted the gifts without question. They might stop at any moment; she accepted that without question, too.

The only thing she couldn’t accept so easily was the manservant’s eerie mental silence.

But it didn’t unnerve her as it once had. She wanted desperately to know why she couldn’t sense him, but it didn’t unnerve her. If she couldn’t read him, she could read the way he walked and acted, and there was nothing predatory about him with regard to herself or Sarah.

Besides, Sarah trusted him. Nan had the feeling that Sarah’s trust wasn’t ever given lightly.

Or wrongly.

***

“And how is Sarah’s pet street sparrow?” Frederick asked, as Isabelle brooded at the window that overlooked the garden.

“Karamjit thinks she is Talented,” Isabelle replied, watching Sarah chatter animatedly to her friend as they took the empty basket back to the kitchen in the evening gloom. “I don’t sense anything, but she’s quite young, and I doubt she can do anything much beyond a few feet.”

Her husband sat down in a chair beside the window, and she glanced over at him. “There’s something about all of this that is worrying you,” he said.

“I’m not the precognitive, but—yes. We have a sudden influx of Talents. And it might be nothing more than that we are the only place to train young Talents, whereas there are dozens who are schooling their Elemental Magicians. Still, my training says that coincidences among the Talented are virtually unheard of, and an ingathering of Talents means that Talents will be needed.” There, it was out in the open. Frederick grimaced.

“There’s something in the air,” he agreed. “But nothing I can point to and say—there it is, that’s what’s coming. Do you want to spring the trap on this one, or let her come to our hands of her own will?”

“If we trap her, we lose her,” Isabelle told him, turning away from the window. “And while we are ingathering Talents, they are all very young. Whatever is going to happen will not happen this week, or even this year. Let her come to us on her own—or not at all.”

***

“How is your mother?” Sarah asked, one day as they sat in the garden, since the day before, Nan had confessed that Aggie been “on a tear” and had consumed, or so Nan feared, something stronger and more dangerous than gin.

Nan shook her head. “I dunno,” she replied reluctantly. “Aggie didn’ wake up when I went out. Tha’s not roight, she us’lly at least waked up’t’foind out wha‘ I got. She don’ loik them baskets, ‘cause it means I don’ go beggin’ as much.”

“And if you don’t beg money, she can’t drink,” Sarah observed shrewdly. “You hate begging, don’t you?”

“Mostly I don’ like gettin’ kicked an’ cursed at,” Nan temporized. “It ain’t loik I’m gettin’ underfoot…”

But Sarah’s questions were coming too near the bone tonight, and Nan didn’t want to have to deal with them. She got to her feet and picked up her basket. “I gotter go,” she said abruptly.

Sarah rose from her seat on the bench and gave Nan a penetrating look. Nan had the peculiar feeling that the child was looking at her thoughts, and deciding whether or not to press her further. “All right,” Sarah said. “It is getting dark.”

It wasn’t, but Nan wasn’t about to pass up the offer of a graceful exit. “ ‘Tis, that,” she said promptly, and squeezed through the narrow opening Karamjit had left in the gate.

But she had not gone four paces when two rough-looking men in shabby tweed jackets blocked her path. “You Nan Killian?” said one hoarsely. Then when Nan stared at him blankly, added, “Aggie Killian’s girl?”

The answer was surprised out of her; she hadn’t been expecting such a confrontation, and she hadn’t yet managed to sort herself out. “Ye—es,” she said slowly.

“Good,” the first man grunted. “Yer Ma sent us; she’s gone’t‘ a new place, an’ she wants us’t‘show y’ the way.”

Now, several thoughts flew through Nan’s mind at that moment. The first was that, as they were paid up on the rent through the end of the week, she could not imagine Aggie ever vacating before the time was up. The second was, that even if Aggie had set up somewhere else, she would never have sent a pair of strangers to find Nan. And third was that Aggie had turned to a more potent intoxicant than gin—which meant she would need a deal more money. And Aggie had only one thing left to sell.

Nan.

Their minds were such a roil that she couldn’t “hear” any distinct thoughts, but it was obvious that they meant her no good.

“Wait a minnit—” Nan said, her voice trembling a little as she backed away from the two men, edging around them to get to the street. “Did’jer say Aggie Killian’s gel? Me ma ain’t called Killian, yer got th‘ wrong gel—”

It was at that moment that one of the men lunged for her with a curse. He had his hands nearly on her, and would have gotten her, too, except for one bit of interference. Sarah came shooting out of the gate like a little bullet. She body-slammed the fellow, going into the back of his knees and knocking him right off his feet. She danced out of the way as he fell, scooting past him in the nick of time, ran to Nan, and caught her hand, tugging her toward the street. “Run!” she commanded imperiously, and Nan ran.

The two of them scrabbled through the dark alleys and twisted streets without any idea where they were, only that they had to shake off their pursuers. Unfortunately, the time that Nan would have put into learning her new neighborhood like the back of her grimy little hand had been put into talking with Sarah, and before too long, even Nan was lost in the maze of dark, fetid streets. Then their luck ran out altogether, and they found themselves staring at the blank wall of a building, in a dead-end cul-de-sac. They whirled around, hoping to escape before they were trapped, but it was already too late. The bulky silhouettes of the two men loomed against the fading light at the end of the street.

“Oo’s yer friend, ducky?” the first man purred. “Think she’d loik’t‘come with?”

To Nan’s astonishment, Sarah stood straight and tall, and even stepped forward a pace. “I think you ought to go away and leave us alone,” she said clearly. “You’re going to find yourselves in a lot of trouble.”

The talkative man laughed. “Them’s big words from such a little gel,” he mocked. “We ain’t leavin’ wi’out we collect what’s ours, an’ a bit more fer th‘ trouble yer caused.”

Nan was petrified with fear, shaking in every limb, as Sarah stepped back, putting her back to the damp wall. As the first man touched Sarah’s arm, she shrieked out a single word.

“Grey!”

As Sarah cried out the name of her pet, Nan let loose a wordless prayer for something, anything, to come to their rescue.

She never would have believed that anything would—

Then something screamed behind the man; startled and distracted for a moment, he turned. For a moment, a fluttering shape obscured his face, and he screamed in agony, shaking his head, violently, clawing at whatever it was.

“Get it off!” he screamed at his partner. “Get it off!”

“Get what off?” the other man asked, bewildered and suddenly frightened, backing away a little from his agitated partner. “There ain’t nothin’ there!”

The man flailed frantically at the front of his face, but whatever had attacked him had vanished without a trace.

But not before leading more substantial help to the rescue.

Out of the dusk and the first wisps of fog, Karamjit and another swarthy man ran on noiseless feet. In their hands were cudgels which they used to good purpose on the two who opposed them. Nor did they waste any effort, clubbing the two senseless with a remarkable economy of motion.

Then, without a single word, each of the men scooped up a girl in his arms, and bore them back to the school. At that point, finding herself safe in the arms of an unlooked-for rescuer, Nan felt secure enough to break down into hysterical tears. The man who had her—not the silent Karamjit—patted her back awkwardly, then muffled her face against his coat. And for the first time since her granny had died, Nan felt safe enough to take advantage of the comfort offered; she clutched at him and sobbed until they passed through the gates of the school.

Nor was that the end of it; though she completely expected to be set on her feet and shooed away, she found herself bundled up into the sacred precincts of the school itself, plunged into the first hot bath of her life, wrapped in a clean flannel gown, and put into a real bed. Sarah was in a similar bed beside her.

It all happened so swiftly, and with such an economy of action, that she was hardly able to think until that moment. As she sat there, numb, a plain-looking woman with beautiful eyes came and sat down on the foot of Sarah’s bed, and looked from one to the other of them.

“Well,” the lady said at last, “what have you two to say for yourselves?”

Nan couldn’t manage anything, but that was all right, since Sarah wasn’t about to let her get in a word anyway. The child jabbered like a monkey, a confused speech about Nan’s mother, the men she’d sold Nan to, the virtue of charity, the timely appearance of Grey, and a great deal more besides. The lady listened and nodded, and when Sarah ran down at last, she turned to Nan.

“I believe Sarah is right in one thing,” she said gravely. “I believe we will have to keep you. Now, both of you—sleep.”

The lady’s eyes seemed to get very, very big. Nan’s own head filled with peace, and she found herself lying down, obedient as a lamb. And to Nan’s surprise, she fell asleep immediately.

***

Isabelle Harton stood leaning against the doorframe of the girls’ room for some time, feeling limp with relief. That had been a very near thing. If little Sarah had not been able to summon the spirit of her parrot—

She sensed her husband behind her, and relaxed into his arms as he put them around her, holding her with her back to his chest. “Well, my angel. I assume we are going to keep this ragged little street sparrow?”

“Sarah desperately needs a friend,” she temporized.

“You don’t fool me, wife,” he replied, tightening his arms around her. “You would march straight out there and bring them all in if you thought we could afford to feed them. But I agree with you. Sarah needs a friend, and this friend is both clever and Talented. Karamjit says she is definitely a telepath, and possibly other things. We can’t leave one of those wandering about on the streets. You wanted her to come to you of her own accord; well, here she is, and she doesn’t look like she’s interested in leaving. When she comes into her full power, she’d either go mad or become a masterful criminal of some sort, and in either case, it would be you and I who would have to deal with her.”

“Or one of our pupils. But you’re right, I would much rather salvage her now.” She relaxed further, with a sigh. “Thank you for indulging me.”

“No such thing. I’m indulging both of us. And it isn’t as if the girl hasn’t the potential to earn her keep. If she’s any good with the infants, she can help the ayahs, and that will save us the expense of another serving girl or nursemaid in the nursery.” He bent and kissed her cheek, and she relaxed a little more. He was right, of course. They needed another pair of hands in the nursery, particularly at bath and bedtime, and she had been worrying about how to pay for that pair of hands. This just might work out perfectly for everyone concerned.

“Then I’ll ask if she wants to stay, and make her the offer tomorrow,” she told him. “I doubt that she’ll turn us down.”

He laughed. “Not if she has any sense!”

***

So ended Nan Killian’s introduction to the Harton School. She joyfully accepted Mem’sab’s offer of bed, board, and school in exchange for help with the babies, and within days, she was being idolized by the toddlers and fully accepted as the new pupil by the others. And best of all, she was Sarah Jane’s best friend.

She had never been anyone’s best friend before, nor had she ever had a best friend of her own. It was strange. It was wonderful. It gave her the most amazing feeling, as if now there was something she could always count on, and she hadn’t had that feeling since her gran died.

But that was not the end to this part of the story. A month later, Sarah’s mother arrived, with Grey in a cage, after an exchange of telegraphs and letters to which neither Sarah nor Nan had been privy. Nan had, by then, found a place where she could listen to what went on in the best parlor without being found, and she glued her ear to the crack in the pantry to listen when Sarah was taken into that hallowed room.

“—found Grey senseless beside her perch,” Sarah’s mother was saying. “I thought it was a fit, but the Shaman swore that Sarah was in trouble and the bird had gone to help. Grey awoke none the worse, and I would have thought nothing more of the incident, until your telegraph arrived.”

“And so you came, very wisely, bringing this remarkable bird.” Mem’sab made chirping noises at the bird, and an odd little voice said, “Hello, bright eyes!”

Mem’sab chuckled. “How much of strangeness are you prepared to believe in, my dear?” she asked gently. “Would you believe me if I told you that I have seen this bird once before—fluttering and pecking at my window, then leading my men to rescue your child?”

“I can only answer with Hamlet,” Sarah’s mother said after a pause. “That there are more things in heaven and earth than I suspected.” She paused again. “You know, I think, that my husband and I are Elemental Mages—”

“As are a great many of my friends, which is why you got the recommendation for our school. I understand your powers, though Frederick and I do not share them.” It was Mem’sab’s turn to pause. “Nor does your daughter. Her powers are psychic in nature, as you suspected, though I have not yet deciphered them completely. She is being instructed, however, not only by myself, but by others who are even stronger in some aspects than I.”

“Haha!” said the funny little voice. “There’s a good friend!”

Cor! I wunner what this El’mental business is? Whatever it was, it was new to Nan, who was only now getting used to the idea that her “sense” was a thing that could be trained and depended on, and that she was most unusual for possessing it.

“Oh, bless!” Sarah’s mother cried. “I hoped—but I wasn’t sure—one can’t put such things in a letter—”

“True enough, but some of us can read, however imperfectly, what is written with the heart rather than a pen,” Mem’sab replied decidedly. “Then I take it you are not here to remove Sarah from our midst.”

“No,” came the soft reply. “I came only to see that Sarah was well, and to ask if you would permit her pet to be with her.”

“Gladly,” Mem’sab said. “Though I might question which of the two was the pet!”

“Clever bird!” said Grey. “Veeeeeery clever!”

Mem’sab laughed. “Yes, I am, my feathered friend! And you would do very well never to forget it!

3

A month had gone by since Nan was brought into the Harton School. Another child picked up food at the back gate of the Harton School For Boys and Girls on the edge of Whitechapel in London, not Nan Killian. Children no longer shunned the back gate of the school, although they treated its inhabitants with extreme caution. Adults—particularly the criminals, and most particularly the disreputable criminals who preyed on children—treated the place and its inhabitants with a great deal more than mere caution. Word had gotten around that two child procurers had tried to take one of the pupils, and had been found with arms and legs broken, beaten senseless. They survived—but they would never walk straight or without pain again, and even a toddler would be able to outrun them. Word had followed that anyone who threatened another child protected by the school would be found dead—if he was found at all.

The three fierce, swarthy “blackfellas” who served as the school’s guards were rumored to have strange powers, or be members of the thugee cult, or worse. It was safer just to pretend the school didn’t exist and go about one’s unsavory business elsewhere.

Nan Killian was no longer a child of the streets; she was now a pupil at the school herself, a transmutation that astonished her every morning when she awoke. To find herself in a neat little dormitory room, papered with roses and curtained in gingham, made her often feel as if she was dreaming. To then rise with the other girls, dress in clean, fresh clothing, and go off to lessons in the hitherto unreachable realms of reading and writing was more than she had ever dared dream of.

She slept in the next bed over from Sarah’s, in a room inhabited by only the two of them and the parrot, Grey, and they now shared many late-night giggles and confidences, instead of leftover tea bread.

Nan also had a job; she had not expected pure charity, and would, deep down, have been suspicious if she’d been offered this place for nothing. But Mem’sab had made it clear if she was to stay, she had to work, and Nan was not at all averse to a bit of hard work. She had always known, somewhat to her own bemusement, that the littlest children instinctively trusted her and would obey her when they obeyed no one else. So Nan “paid” for her tutoring and keep by helping Nadra and Mala, the babies’ nurses, or “ayahs,” as they were called. Nadra and Mala were from India, as were most of the servants, from the formidable guards, the Sikh Karamjit, the Moslem Selim, and the Gurkha Agansing, to the cooks, Maya and Vashti. Mrs.Isabelle Harton—or Mem’sab, as everyone called her—and her husband had once been expatriates in India themselves. Master Harton—called, with ultimate respect, Sahib Harton—now worked as an adviser to an import firm; his military service in India had left him with a small pension, and a permanent limp.

And now Nan knew why the Harton School was here in the first place. When he and his wife had returned, they had learned quite by accident of the terrible conditions children returned to England to escape the dangers of the East often lived in. Relatives exploited or abused them, schools maltreated and starved them, and even the best schools ignored homesickness and loneliness, insisting that the bereft children “buck up” and “keep a stiff upper lip” and above all, never be seen to shed a tear. Children who had been allowed by their indulgent ayahs to run the nursery like miniature rajahs were suddenly subjected to the extreme discipline of tyrannical schoolmasters and the bullying of their elders.

Originally, they had resolved that the children of their friends back in the Punjab, at least, would not have to face that kind of traumatic separation. Then, as their reputation spread, especially among those with a bent for the arcane, other children were sent to them. Now there was a mix of purely ordinary children, and those, like Nan and Sarah, with more senses than five.

Here, the children sent away in bewilderment by anxious parents fearing that they would sicken in the hot foreign lands found, not a cold and alien place with nothing they recognized, but the familiar sounds of Hindustani, the comfort and coddling of a native nanny, and the familiar curries and rice to eat. Their new home, if a little shabby, held furniture made familiar from their years in the bungalows. But most of all, they were not told coldly to “be a man” or “stop being a crybaby”—for here they found friendly shoulders to weep out their homesickness on. If there were no French dancing Masters and cricket teams here, there was a great deal of love and care; if the furniture was unfashionable and shabby, the children were well-fed and rosy.

And for a few—those with what the Hartons called “Talents”—there were lessons of another sort, and their parents would not dream of sending them anywhere but here.

It never ceased to amaze Nan that more parents didn’t send their children to the Harton School, but some folks mistakenly trusted relatives to take better care of their precious ones than strangers, and some thought that a school owned and operated by someone with a lofty reputation or a title was a wiser choice for a boy child who would likely join the Civil Service when he came of age. And as for the girls, there would always be those who felt that lessons by French dancing masters and language teachers, lessons on the harp and in watercolor painting, were more valuable than a sound education in the same basics given to a boy.

Sometimes these parents learned of their errors in judgment the hard way.

***

“Ready for m’lesson, Mem’sab,” Nan called into the second-best parlor, which was Mem’sab’s private domain. It was commonly understood that sometimes Mem’sab had to do odd things—“Important things that we don’t need to know about,” Sarah said wisely—and she might have to do them at a moment’s notice. So it was better to announce oneself at the door before venturing over the threshold.

But today Mem’sab was only reading a book, and looked up at Nan with a smile that transformed her plain face and made her eyes bright and beautiful.

By now Nan had seen plenty of ladies who dressed in finer stuffs than Mem’sab’s simple Artistic gown of common fabric, made bright with embroidery courtesy of Maya. Nan had seen the pictures of ladies who were acknowledged Beauties like Mrs.Lillie Langtry, ladies who obviously spent many hours in the hands of their dressers and hairdressers rather than pulling their hair up into a simple chignon from which little curling strands of brown-gold were always escaping. Mem’sab’s jewelry was not of diamonds and gold, but odd, heavy pieces in silver and semiprecious gems. But in Nan’s eyes, not one of those other ladies was worth wasting a single glance upon.

Then again, Nan was a little prejudiced.

“Come in, Nan,” the headmistress said, patting the flowered sofa beside her invitingly. “You’re doing much better already, you know. You have a quick ear.”

“Thankee, Mem’sab,” Nan replied, flushing with pleasure. She, like any of the servants, would gladly have laid down her life for Mem’sab Harton; they all worshipped her blatantly, and a word of praise from their idol was worth more than a pocketful of sovereigns. Nan sat gingerly down on the chintz-covered sofa and smoothed her clean pinafore with an unconscious gesture of pride.

Mem’sab took a book of etiquette from the table beside her, and opened it, looking at Nan expectantly. “Go ahead, dear.”

“Good morning, ma’am. How do you do? I am quite well. I trust your family is fine,” Nan began, and waited for Mem’sab’s response, which would be her cue for the next polite phrase. The point here was not that Nan needed to learn manners and mannerly speech, but that she needed to lose the dreadful cadence of the streets which would doom her to poverty forever, quite literally. Nan spoke the commonplace phrases slowly and with great care, as much care as Sarah took over her French. An accurate analogy, since the King’s English, as spoken by the middle and upper classes, was nearly as much a foreign language to Nan as French and Latin were to Sarah.

She had gotten the knack of it by thinking of it exactly as a foreign language, once Mem’sab had proven to her how much better others would treat her if she didn’t speak like a guttersnipe. She was still fluent in the language of the streets, and often went out with Karamjit as a translator when he went on errands that took him into the slums or the street markets. But gradually her tongue became accustomed to the new cadences, and her habitual speech marked her less as “untouchable.”

“Beautifully done,” Mem’sab said warmly when Nan finished her recitation. “Your new assignment will be to pick a poem and recite it to me, properly spoken, and memorized.”

“I think I’d loike—like—to do one uv Mr.Kipling’s, Mem’sab,” Nan said shyly.

Mem’sab laughed. “I hope you aren’t thinking of ‘Gunga Din,’ you naughty girl!” the woman mock-chided. “It had better be one from the Jungle Book, or Just So Stories, not something written in Cockney dialect!”

“Yes, Mem’sab, I mean, no, Mem’sab,” Nan replied quickly. “I’ll pick a right’un. Mebbe the lullaby for the White Seal? You mustn’t swim till you’re six weeks old, or your head will be sunk by your heels—?” Ever since discovering Rudyard Kipling’s stories, Nan had been completely enthralled; Mem’sab often read them to the children as a go-to-bed treat, for the stories often evoked memories of India for the children sent away.

“That will do very well. Are you ready for the other lesson?” Mem’sab asked, so casually that no one but Nan would have known that the “other lesson” was one not taught in any other school in this part of the world.

“I—think so.” Nan got up and closed the parlor door, signaling to all the world that she and Mem’sab were not to be disturbed unless someone was dying or the house was burning down.

For the next half hour, Mem’sab turned over cards, and Nan called out the next card before she turned it over. When the last of the fifty-two lay in the face-up pile before her, Nan waited expectantly for the results.

“Not at all bad; you had almost half of them, and all the colors right,” Mem’sab said with content. Nan was disappointed; she knew that Mem’sab could call out all fifty-two without an error, though Sarah could only get the colors correctly.

“Sahib brought me some things from the warehouse for you to try your ‘feeling’ on,” Mem’sab continued. “I truly think that is where one of your true Talents lies, dear.”

Nan sighed mournfully. “But knowin’ the cards would be a lot more useful,” she complained.

“What, so you can grow up to cheat foolish young men out of their inheritances?” Now Mem’sab actually laughed out loud. “Try it, dear, and the Gift will desert you at the time you need it most! No, be content with what you have and learn to use it wisely, to help yourself and others.”

“But card-sharpin’ would help me, an’ I could use the takin’s to help others,” Nan couldn’t resist protesting, but she held out her hand for the first object anyway.

It was a carved beetle; very interesting, Nan thought, as she waited to “feel” what it would tell her. It felt like pottery or stone, and it was of a turquoise blue, shaded with pale brown. “It’s old.” she said finally. Then, “Really old. Old as—Methusalum! It was made for an important man, but not a king or anything.”

She tried for more, but couldn’t sense anything else. “That’s all,” she said, and handed it back to Mem’sab.

“Now this.” The carved beetle that Mem’sab gave her was, for all intents and purposes, identical to the one she’d just held, but immediately Nan sensed the difference.

“Piff! That ‘un’s new!” She also felt something else, something of intent, a sensation she readily identified since it was one of the driving forces behind commerce in Whitechapel. “Feller as made it figgers he’s put one over on somebody.”

“Excellent, dear!” Mem’sab nodded. “They are both scarabs, a kind of good-luck carving found with mummies—which are, indeed, often as old as Methuselah. The first one I knew was real, as I helped unwrap the mummy myself, to make sure there was no unrest about the spirit. The second, however, was from a shipment that Sahib suspected were fakes.”

Nan nodded, interested to learn that this Gift of hers had some practical application after all. “So could be I could tell people when they been gammoned?”

“Very likely, and quite likely that they would pay you for the knowledge, as long as they don’t think that you are trying to fool them as well. Here, try this.” The next object placed in Nan’s hand was a bit of jewelry, a simple silver brooch with “gems” of cut iron. Nan dropped it as soon as it touched her hand, overwhelmed by fear and horror.

“Lummy!” she cried, without thinking. “He killed her!” She stared at the horrible thing as it lay on the floor at her feet.

Who “he” and “her” were, she had no sense of; that would require more contact, which she did not want to have. But Mem’sab didn’t seem at all surprised; she just shook her head very sadly and put the brooch back in a little box which she closed without a word.

She held out a child’s locket on a worn ribbon. “Don’t be afraid, Nan,” she coaxed, when Nan was reluctant to accept it, “This one isn’t bad, I promise you.” Nan took the locket gingerly, but broke out into a smile when she got a feeling of warmth, contentment, and happiness. She waited for other images to come, and sensed a tired, but exceedingly happy woman, a proud man, and one—no, two strong and lively mites with the woman.

Slyly, Nan glanced up at her mentor. “She’s ‘ad twins, ’asn’t she?” Nan asked. “When was it?”

“I just got the letter and the locket today, but it was about two months ago,” Mem’sab replied. “The lady is my best friend in India’s daughter, who was given that locket by her mother for luck just before the birth of her children. She sent it to me to have it duplicated, as she would like to present one to each little girl.”

“I’d ‘ave it taken apart, an’ put half of th‘ old ’un with half of the new ‘un,” Nan suggested, and Mem’sab brightened at the idea.

“An excellent idea, and I will do just that. Now, dear, are you feeling tired? Have you a headache? We’ve gone on longer than we did at your last lesson.”

Nan nodded, quite ready to admit to both.

Mem’sab gave her still-thin shoulders a little hug, and sent her off to her afternoon lessons. Nan had finally learned to relax and enjoy hugs; she’d never gotten one from her mother and her gran had not been inclined to physical demonstrations either. Her cheeks flushed with pleasure as she went off to her lesson.

Figuring came harder to Nan than reading; she’d already had some letters before she had arrived, enough to spell out the signs on shops and stalls and the like and make out a word here and there on a discarded broadsheet. When the full mystery of letters had been disclosed to her, mastery had come as naturally as breathing, and she was already able to read her beloved Kipling stories with minimal prompting. But numbers were a mystery arcane, and she struggled with the youngest of the children to comprehend what they meant. Anything past one hundred baffled her for the moment, and Sarah did her best to help her friend.

After Arithmetic came Geography, but for a child to whom Kensington Palace was the end of the universe, it was harder to believe in the existence of Arabia than of Fairyland, and heaven was quite as real and solid as South America, for she reckoned that she had an equal chance of seeing either. As for how all those odd names and shapes fit together… well!

History came easier, although she didn’t yet grasp that it was as real as yesterday, for to Nan it was just a chain of linking stories. Perhaps that was why she loved the Kipling stories so much, for she often felt as out of place as Mowgli when the human tribe tried to reclaim him.

At the end of lessons Nan usually went to help Nadra and Mala in the nursery; the children there, ranging in age from two to five, were a handful when it came to getting them bathed and put to bed. They tried to put off bedtime as long as possible; there were half a dozen of them, which was just enough that when Nadra and Mala had finally gotten two of them into a bathtub, the other four had slithered out, and were running about the nursery like dripping, naked apes, screaming joyfully at their escape.

But tonight, Karamjit came for Nan and Sarah as soon as the history lesson was over, summoning them with a look and a gesture. As always, the African parrot Grey sat on Sarah’s shoulder; she was so well-behaved, even to the point of being housebroken, that she was allowed to be with her mistress from morning to night. The handsome bird with the bright red tail had adapted very well to this new sort of jungle when Sarah’s mother brought her to her daughter; Sarah was very careful to keep her warm and out of drafts, and she ate virtually the same food that the children did. Mem’sab seemed to understand the kind of diet that let her thrive; she allowed her only a little of the chicken and beef, and made certain that she filled up on carrots and other vegetables before she got any of the curried rice she loved so much. In fact, she often pointed to Grey as an example to the other children who would rather have had sweets than green stuffs, telling them that Grey was smarter than they were, for she knew what would make her grow big and strong. Being unfavorably compared to a bird often made the difference with the little boys in particular, who were behaving better at table since the parrot came to live at the school.

So Grey came along when Karamjit brought them to the door of Mem’sab’s parlor, cautioning them to wait quietly until Mem’sab called them.

“What do you suppose can be going on?” Sarah asked curiously, while Grey turned her head to look at Nan with her penetrating pale-yellow eyes.

Nan shushed her, pressing her ear to the keyhole to see what she could hear. “There’s another lady in there with Mem’sab, and she sounds sad,” Nan said at last. Grey cocked her head to one side, then turned his head upside down as she sometimes did when something puzzled her. “Hurt,” she said quietly, and made a little sound like someone crying.

Nan had long since gotten used to the fact that Grey noticed everything that went on around her and occasionally commented on it like a human person. If the wolves in the Jungle Book could think and talk, she reasoned, why not a parrot? She accepted Grey’s abilities as casually as Sarah, who had raised the bird herself and had no doubt of the intelligence of her feathered friend.

Had either of them acquired the “wisdom” of their elders, they might have been surprised that Mem’sab accepted those abilities, too.

Nan jumped back as footsteps warned her that the visitor had risen and was coming toward the door; she and Sarah pressed themselves back against the wall as the strange woman passed them, her face hidden behind a veil. She took no notice of the children, but turned back to Mem’sab.

“Katherine, I believe going to this woman is a grave mistake on your part,” Mem’sab told her quietly. “You and I have been friends since we were in school together; you know that I would never advise you against anything you felt so strongly about unless I thought you might be harmed by it. This woman does you no good.”

The woman shook her head. “How could I be harmed by it?” she replied, her voice trembling. “What possible ill could come of this?”

“A very great deal, I fear,” Mem’sab said, her expression some combination of concern and other emotions that Nan couldn’t read.

Impulsively, the woman reached out for Mem’sab’s hand. “Then come with me!” she cried. “If this woman cannot convince you that she is genuine, and that she provides me with what I need more than breath itself, then I will not see her again.”

Mem’sab’s eyes looked keenly into her friend’s, easily defeating the concealment of the veil about her features. “You are willing to risk her unmasking as a fraud, and the pain for you that will follow?”

“I am certain enough of her that I know that you will be convinced, even against your will,” the woman replied with certainty.

Mem’sab nodded. “Very well, then. You and I—and these two girls—will see her together.”

Only now did the woman notice Sarah and Nan, and her brief glance dismissed them as unimportant. “I see no reason why you wish to have children along, but if you can guarantee they will behave, and that is what it takes you to be convinced to see Madame Varonsky, then so be it. I will have an invitation sent to you for the next séance.”

Mem’sab smiled, and patted her friend’s hand. “Sometimes children see things more clearly than we adults do,” was all she replied. “I will be waiting for that invitation.”

The woman squeezed Mem’sab’s hand, then turned and left, ushered out by one of the native servants. Mem’sab gestured to the two girls to precede her into the parlor, and shut the door behind them.

“What did you think of the lady, Nan?” asked their teacher, as the two children took their places side by side, on the loveseat they generally shared when they were in the parlor together.

Nan assessed the woman as would any street child; economics came first. “She’s in mournin’ an’ she’s gentry,” Nan replied automatically. “Silk gowns fer mournin’ is somethin’ only gentry kin afford. I ‘spect she’s easy’t’ gammon, too; paid no attention’t‘us, an’ I was near enough’t‘ get me hand into ’er purse an’ she would never be knowin’ till she was home. An’ she didn’ ask fer a cab’t‘ be brung, so’s I reckon she keeps ’er carriage. That’s not jest gentry, tha’s quality.”

“Right on all counts, my dear,” Mem’sab said, a bit grimly. “Katherine has no more sense than one of the babies, and never had. Her parents didn’t spoil her, but they never saw any reason to educate her in practical matters. They counted on her finding a husband who would do all her thinking for her, and as a consequence, she is pliant to any hand that offers mastery. She married into money; her husband has a very high position in the Colonial Government. Nothing but the best school would do for her boy, and a spoiled little lad he was, too.”

Grey suddenly began coughing, most realistically, a series of terrible, racking coughs, and Sarah turned her head to look into her eyes. Then she turned back to Mem’sab. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” the child said, quite matter-of-factly. “Her little boy, I mean. Grey knows. He got sick and died. That’s who she’s in mourning for.”

“Quite right, and as Grey showed us, he caught pneumonia.” Mem’sab looked grim. “Poor food, icy rooms, and barbaric treatment—” She threw up her hands, and shook her head. “There’s no reason to go on; at least Katherine has decided to trust her two youngest to us instead of the school her husband wanted. She’ll bring them to Nadra tomorrow, Nan, and they’ll probably be terrified, so I’m counting on you to help Nadra soothe them.”

Nan could well imagine that they would be terrified; not only were they being left with strangers, but they would know, at least dimly, that their brother had gone away to school and died. They would be certain that the same was about to happen to them.

“That, however, is not why I sent for you,” Mem’sab continued. “Katherine is seeing a medium; do either of you know what that is?”

Sarah and Nan shook their heads, but Grey made a rude noise. Sarah looked shocked, but Nan giggled and Mem’sab laughed.

“I am afraid that Grey is correct in her opinions, for the most part,” the woman told them. “A medium is a person who claims to speak with the dead, and help the souls of the dead speak to the living.” Her mouth compressed, and Nan sensed her carefully controlled anger. “All this is accomplished for a very fine fee, I might add. Real mediums are very rare, and I know all of the ones in England by name.”

“Ho! Like them gypsy palm readers, an’ the conjure men!” Nan exclaimed in recognition. “Aye, there’s a mort’a gammon there, and that’s sure. You reckon this lady’s been gammoned, then?”

“Yes, I do, and I would like you two—three—” she amended, with a penetrating look at Grey, “—to help me prove it. Nan, if there is trickery afoot, do you think you could catch it?”

Nan had no doubt. “I bet I could,” she said. “Can’t be harder’n keepin’ a hand out uv yer pocket—or grabbin’ the wrist once it’s in.”

“Good girl—you must remember to speak properly, and only when you’re spoken to, though,” Mem’sab warned her. “If this so-called medium thinks you are anything but a gently-reared child, she might find an excuse to dismiss the séance.” She turned to Sarah. “Now, if by some incredible chance this woman is genuine, could you and Grey tell?”

Sarah’s head bobbed so hard her curls tumbled into her eyes. “Yes, Mem’sab,” she said, with as much confidence as Nan. “M’luko, the apprentice to the medicine man that gave me Grey, said that Grey could tell when the spirits were there, and someday I might, too.”

“Did he, now?” Mem’sab gave her a curious look. “How interesting! Well, if Grey can tell us if there are spirits or not, that will be quite useful enough for our purposes. Are either of you afraid to go with me? I expect the invitation will come quite soon.” Again, Mem’sab had that grim look. “Katherine is too choice a fish to be allowed to swim free for long; Madame will want to keep her under her control by ‘consulting’ with her as often as possible. And if she can, she will get Katherine to remain in England and become dependent on her.”

Sarah looked to Nan for guidance, and Nan thought that her friend might be a little fearful, despite her brave words. But Nan herself only laughed. “I ain’t afraid of nobody’s sham ghost,” she said, curling her lip scornfully. “An’ I ain’t sure I’d be afraid uv a real one.”

“Wisely said, Nan; spirits can only harm us as much as we permit them to.” Nan thought that Mem’sab looked relieved, like maybe she hadn’t wanted to count on their help until she actually got it. “Thank you, both of you.” She reached out and took their hands, giving them a squeeze that said a great deal without words. “Now, both of you get back to whatever it was that I took you from. I will let you know in plenty of time when our excursion will be.”

It was past the babies’ bedtime, so Sarah and Nan went together to beg Maya for their delayed tea, and carried the tray themselves up to the now-deserted nursery. They set out the tea things on one of the little tables, feeling a mutual need to discuss Mem’sab’s strange proposition.

Grey had her tea, too; a little bowl of curried rice, carrots, and beans. They set it down on the table and Grey climbed carefully down from Sarah’s shoulder to the tabletop, where she selected a bean and ate it neatly, holding in on one claw while she took small bites, watching them both.

“Do you think there might be real ghosts?” Sarah asked immediately, shivering a little. “I mean, what if this lady can bring real ghosts up?”

Grey and Nan made the same rude noise at the same time; it was easy to tell where Grey had learned it. “Gam!” Nan said scornfully. “Reckon that Mem’sab only asked if you could tell as an outside bet. But the livin’ people might be the ones as is dangerous.” She ate a bite of bread and butter thoughtfully. “I dunno as Mem’sab’s thought that far, but that Missus Katherine’s a right easy mark, an’ a fat ’un, too. People as is willin’’t‘ gammon the gentry might not be real happy about bein’ found out.”

Sarah nodded. “Should we tell Karamjit?” she asked, showing a great deal more common sense than she would have before Nan came into her life. “Mem’sab’s thinking hard about her friend, but she might not think a bit about herself.”

“Aye, an’ Selim an’ Agansing an’ mebbe Sahib, too.” Nan was a little dubious about that, having only seen the lordly Sahib from a distance.

“I’ll ask Selim to tell Sahib, if you’ll talk to Karamjit and Agansing,” Sarah said, knowing the surest route to the master from her knowledge of the school and its inhabitants. “But tell me what to look for! Three sets of eyes are better than two.”

“First thing, whatever they want you’t‘ look at is gonna be what makes a fuss—noises or voices or whatever,” Nan said after a moment of thought. “I dunno how this medium stuff is gonna work, but that’s what happens when a purse gets nicked. You gotta get the mark’s attention, so he won’t be thinkin’ of his pocket. So whatever they want us to look at, we look away from. That’s the main thing. Mebbe Mem’sab can tell us what these things is’s’pposed to be like—if I know what’s’t‘ happen, I kin guess what tricks they’re like’t’ pull.” She finished her bread and butter, and began her own curry; she’d quickly acquired a taste for the spicy Indian dishes that the other children loved. “If there ain’t ghosts, I bet they got somebody dressed up’t‘ look like one.” She grinned slyly at Grey. “An’ I betcha a good pinch or a bite would make ‘im yell proper!”

“And you couldn’t hurt a real ghost with a pinch.” Sarah nodded. “I suppose we’re just going to have to watch and wait, and see what we can do.”

Nan, as always, ate as a street child would, although her manners had improved considerably since coming to the School; she inhaled her food rapidly, so that no one would have a chance to take it from her. She was already finished, although Sarah hadn’t eaten more than half of her tea. She put her plates aside on the tray, and propped her head up on her hands with her elbows on the table. “We got to talk to Karamjit, Agansing, an’ Selim, that’s the main thing,” she said, thinking out loud. “They might know what we should do.”

“Selim will come home with Sahib,” Sarah answered, “But Karamjit is probably leaving the basket at the back gate right now, and if you run, you can catch him alone, and he can tell Agansing.”

Taking that as her hint, for Sarah had a way of knowing where most people were at any given time, Nan jumped to her feet and ran out of the nursery and down the back stairs, flying through the kitchen, much to the amusement of the cook, Vashti. She burst through the kitchen door, and ran down the path to the back gate, so quickly she hardly felt the cold at all, though she had run outside without a coat. Mustafa swept the garden paths free of snow every day, but so soon after Boxing Day there were mounds of the stuff on either side of the path, snow with a faint tinge of gray from the soot that plagued London in almost every weather. Somehow, though, the sooty air never got inside the school. The air indoors, in all the buildings, was as clear as a spring day with a sea wind in the streets.

Nan saw the Sikh, Karamjit, soon enough to avoid bouncing off his legs. The tall, dark, immensely dignified man was bundled up to the eyes in a heavy quilted coat and two mufflers, his head wrapped in a dark brown turban. Nan no longer feared him, though she respected him as only a street child who has seen a superior fighter in action could.

“Karamjit!” she called, as she slowed her headlong pace. “I need’t‘ talk wi’ ye!”

There was an amused glint in the Sikh’s dark eyes, though only much association with him allowed Nan to see it. “And what does Missy Nan wish to speak of that she comes racing out into the cold like the wind from the mountains?”

“Mem’sab asked us’t‘ help her with somethin’—there’s this lady as is a meedeeyum that she thinks is gammonin’ her friend. We—that’s Sarah an’ Grey an’ me—we says a’course, but—” Here Nan stopped, because she wasn’t entirely certain how to tell an adult that she thought another adult didn’t know what she was getting herself into. “I just got a bad feelin’,” she ended lamely.

But Karamjit did not belittle her concerns, nor did he chide her. Instead, his eyes grew even darker, and he nodded. “Come inside, where it is warm,” he said. “I wish you to tell me more.”

He sat her down at the kitchen table, and gravely and respectfully asked Maya to serve them both tea. He took his with neither sugar nor cream, but saw to it that Nan’s was heavily sweetened and at least half milk. “Now,” he said, after she had warmed herself with the first sip, “Tell me all.”

Nan related everything that had happened from the time he came to take both of them to the parlor to when she had left Sarah to find him. He nodded from time to time, as he drank tea and unwound himself from his mufflers and coat.

“I believe this,” he said when she had finished. “I believe that Mem’sab is a wise, good, and brave woman. I also believe that she does not think that helping her friend will mean any real danger. But the wise, the good, and the brave often do not think as the mean, the bad, and the cowardly do—the jackals that feed on the pain of others will turn to devour those who threaten their meal. And a man can die from the bite of a jackal as easily as that of a tiger.”

“So you think my bad feelin’ was right?” Nan’s relief was total; not that she didn’t trust Mem’sab, but—Mem’sab didn’t know the kind of creatures that Nan did.

“Indeed, I do—but I believe that it would do no good to try to persuade Mem’sab that she should not try to help her friend.” Karamjit smiled slightly, the barest lifting of the corners of his mouth. “Nevertheless, Sahib will know how best to protect her without insulting her great courage.” He placed one of his long, brown hands on Nan’s shoulder. “You may leave it in our hands, Missy Nan—though we may ask a thing or two of you, that we can do our duty with no harm to Mem’sab’s own plans. For now, though, you may simply rely upon us.”

“Thankee, Karamjit,” Nan sighed. He patted her shoulder, then unfolded his long legs and rose from his chair with a slight bow to Maya. Then he left the kitchen, allowing Nan to finish her tea and run back up to the nursery, to give Sarah and Grey the welcome news that they would not be the only ones concerned with the protection of Mem’sab from the consequences of her own generous nature.

***

Sahib took both Nan and Sarah aside just before bedtime, after Karamjit, Agansing, and Selim had been closeted with him for half an hour. “Can I ask you two to come to my study with me for a bit?” he asked quietly. He was often thought to be older than Mem’sab, by those who were deceived by the streaks of gray at each temple, the stiff way that he walked, and the odd expression in his eyes, which seemed to Nan to be the eyes of a man who had seen so much that nothing surprised him anymore. Nan had trusted him the moment that she set eyes on him, although she couldn’t have said why.

“So long as Nadra don’t fuss,” Nan replied for both of them. Sahib smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“I have already made it right with Nadra,” he promised. “Karamjit, Selim, Agansing, and Mem’sab are waiting for us.”

Nan felt better immediately, for she really hadn’t wanted to go sneaking around behind Mem’sab’s back. From the look that Sarah gave her, Nan reckoned that she felt the same.

“Thank you, sir,” Sarah said politely. “We will do just as you say.”

Very few of the children had ever been inside the sacred precincts of Sahib’s office; the first thing that struck Nan was that it did not smell of tobacco, but of sandalwood and cinnamon. That surprised her; most of the men she knew smoked although their womenfolk disapproved of the habit, but evidently Sahib did not, not even in his own private space.

There was a tiger skin on the carpet in front of the fire, the glass eyes in its head glinting cruelly in a manner unnerving and lifelike. Nan shuddered, and thought of Shere Khan, with his taste for man cub. Had this been another terrible killer of the jungle? Did tigers leave vengeful ghosts?

Heavy, dark drapes of some indeterminate color shut out the cold night. Hanging on the walls, which had been papered with faded gold arabesques upon a ground of light brown, was a jumble of mementos from Sahib’s life in India: crossed spears, curious daggers and swords, embroidered tapestries of strange characters twined with exotic flowers and birds, carved plaques of some heavy, dark wood inlaid with brass, bizarre masks that resembled nothing less than brightly painted demons. On the desk and adorning the shelves between the books were statues of half-and fully-naked gods and goddesses, more bits of carving in wood, stone, and ivory. Book shelves built floor to ceiling held more books than Nan had known existed. Sahib took his place behind his desk, while Mem’sab perched boldly on the edge of it. Agansing, Selim, and Karamjit stood beside the fire like a trio of guardian statues themselves, and Sahib gestured to the children to take their places on the overstuffed chairs on either side of the fireplace. Nan waited tensely, wondering if Mem’sab was going to be angry because they went to others with their concerns. Although it had not fallen out so here, she was far more used to being in trouble over something she had done than in being encouraged for it, and the reflexes were still in place.

“Karamjit tells me that you six share some concern over my planned excursion to the medium, Nan,” Mem’sab said, with a smile that told Nan she was not in trouble for her meddling, as she had feared. “They went first to Sahib, but as we never keep secrets from one another, he came to me. And I commend all of you for your concern and caution, for after some discussion, I was forced to agree with it.”

“And I would like to commend both of you, Nan and Sarah, for having the wisdom to go to an adult with your concerns,” added Sahib, with a kindly nod to both of them that Nan had not expected in the least. “That shows great good sense, and please, continue to do so in the future.”

“I thought—I was afeared—” Nan began, then blurted out all that she’d held in check. “Mem’sab is ‘bout the smartest, goodest lady there is, but she don’t know bad people! Me, I know! I seed ‘em, an’ I figgered that they weren’t gonna lay down an’ lose their fat mark without a fight!”

“And very wise you were to remind us of that,” Sahib said gravely. “I pointed out to Mem’sab that we have no way of knowing where this medium is from, and she is just as likely to be a criminal as a lady—more so, in fact. Just because she speaks, acts, and dresses like a lady, and seeks her clients from among the gentry means nothing; she could easily have a crew of thugs as her accomplices.”

“As you say, Sahib,” Karamjit said gravely. “For, as it is said, it is a short step from a deception to a lie, from a lie to a cheat, from a cheat to a theft, and from a theft to a murder.”

Mem’sab blushed. “I will admit that I was very angry with you at first, but when my anger cooled, it was clear that your reasoning was sound. And after all, am I some Gothic heroine to go wide-eyed into the villains’ lair, never suspecting trouble? So, we are here to plan what we all shall do to free Katherine of her dangerous obsession.”

“Me, I needta know what this see-ants is gonna be like, Mem’sab,” Nan put in, sitting on the edge of the chair tensely. “What sorta things happens?”

“Generally, the participants are brought into a room that has a round table with chairs circling it.” Mem’sab spoke directly to Nan as if to an adult, which gave Nan a rather pleasant, if shivery, feeling. “The table often has objects upon it that the spirits will supposedly move; often a bell, a tambourine, and a megaphone are among them, though why spirits would feel the need to play upon a tambourine when they never had that urge in life is quite beyond me!”

She laughed, as did Sahib; the girls giggled nervously.

“At any rate, the participants are asked to sit down and hold hands. Often, the medium is tied to the chair; her hands are secured to the arms, and her feet to the legs.” Nan noticed that Mem’sab used the word “legs” rather than the mannerly “limbs,” and thought the better of her for that. “The lights are brought down, and the séance begins. Most often, objects are moved, including the table, the tambourine is played, the bell is rung, all as a sign that the spirits have arrived. The spirits most often speak by means of raps on the table, but Katherine tells me that the spirit of her little boy spoke directly, through the floating megaphone. Sometimes a spirit will actually appear; in this case, it was just a glowing face of Katherine’s son.”

Nan thought that over for a moment. “Be simple ‘nuff’t’ tilt the chair an’ get yer legs free by slippin’ the rope down over the chair feet,” she observed, “An’ all ye hev’t’ do is have chair arms as isn’t glued’t‘ their pegs, an’ ye got yer arms free, too. Be easy enough to make all kind uv things dance about when ye got arms free. Be easy ‘nuff’t’ make th‘ table lift if it’s light enough, an’ rap on it, too.”

Sahib stared at her in astonishment. “I do believe that you are the most valuable addition to our household in a long time, young lady!” he said with a delight that made Nan blush. “I would never have thought of any of that.”

“I dunno how ye’d make summat glow, though,” Nan admitted.

“Oh, I know that,” Sarah said casually. “There’s stuff that grows in rotten wood that makes a glow; some of the magic men use it to frighten people at night. It grows in swamps, so it probably grows in England, too.”

Karamjit grinned, his teeth very white in his dark face, and Selim nodded with pride. “What is it that the Black Robe’s Book says, Sahib? Out of the mouths of babes comes wisdom?”

Mem’sab nodded. “I should have told you more, earlier,” she said ruefully. “Well, that’s mended in time. Now we all know what to look for.”

Grey clicked her beak several times, then exclaimed, “Ouch!”

“Grey is going to try to bite whatever comes near her,” Sarah explained.

“I don’t want her venturing off your arm,” Mem’sab cautioned. “I won’t chance her getting hurt.” She turned to Sahib. “The chances are, the room we will be in will have very heavy curtains to prevent light from entering or escaping, so if you and our warriors are outside, you won’t know what room we are in.”

“Then I’d like one of you girls to exercise childish curiosity and go immediately to a window and look out,” Sahib told them. “At least one of us will be where we can see both the front and the back of the house. Then if there is trouble, one of you signal us and we’ll come to the rescue.”

“Just like the shining knights you are, all four of you,” Mem’sab said warmly, laying her hand over the one Sahib had on the desk. “I think that is as much of a plan as we can lay, since we really don’t know what we will find in that house.”

“It’s enough, I suspect,” Sahib replied. “It allows three of us to break into the house if necessary, while one goes for the police.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully with his free hand. “Or, better yet, I’ll take a police whistle; that will summon help in no time.” He glanced up at Mem’sab. “What time did you say the invitation specified?”

“Seven,” she replied promptly. “Well after dark, although Katherine tells me that her sessions are usually later, nearer midnight.”

“The medium may anticipate some trouble from sleepy children,” Sahib speculated. “But that’s just a guess.” He stood up, still holding his wife’s hand, and she slid off her perch on the desk and turned to face them. “Ladies, gentlemen, I think we are as prepared as we can be for trouble. So let us get a good night’s sleep, and hope that we will not find any.”

Then Sahib did a surprising thing; he came around his desk, limping stiffly, and bent over Nan and took her hand. “Perhaps only I of all of us can realize how brave you were to confide your worry to an adult you have only just come to trust, Nan,” he said, very softly, then grinned at her so impishly that she saw the little boy he must have been in the eyes of the mature man. “Ain’t no doubt ‘uv thet, missy. Yer a cunnin’ moit, an’ ‘ad more blows than pats, Oi reckon,” he continued in street cant, shocking the breath out of her. “I came up the same way you are now, dear, thanks to a very kind man with no son of his own. I want you to remember that, to us here at this school, there is no such thing as a stupid question, nor will we dismiss any worry you have as trivial. Never fear to bring either to an adult.”

He straightened up, as Mem’sab came to his side, nodding. “Now both of you try and get some sleep, for every warrior knows that sleep is more important than anything else before a battle.”

Ha, Nan thought, as she and Sarah followed Karamjit out of the study. There’s gonna be trouble; I kin feel it, an’ so can he. He didn’ get that tiger by not havin’ a nose fer trouble. But—I reckon the trouble’s gonna have its hands full with him.

***

“I’m glad you aren’t angry with me—”

Isabelle and her husband had turned to each other and said virtually the same words at the same time. And now both laughed.

“Oh, we know each other far too well, my love.” Frederick took her in his arms, and she laid her head contentedly on his shoulder. “Far too well. So, you were annoyed because I was being the warrior and not giving you credit for being one in your own right.”

“And you were annoyed because I was planning on wandering off into danger without thinking,” she said, ruefully. In hindsight, she had very nearly made a dreadful decision. And yet it had seemed harmless enough; the address of the medium was suitably genteel, no real harm had come to Katherine except to be fleeced of a few “gifts” in order to see what she thought was her son.

Isabelle now acknowledged that she just hadn’t thought deeply enough.

“I would never have made that mistake in India,” she admitted, “I would have assumed there was an entire clan of thieves behind the fraud. Or worse—”

Because there had been worse. It was not always money that was at stake in India, and there were worse fates than death.

“You were thinking of your friend—”

“And not of danger.” She nodded.

“I think—” he paused. “I think danger here has become more subtle than when we first lived in England. The attacks are indirect.”

She frowned a little. “I would have said, more petty. And that bothers me. We know there are great occultists with cruel agendas still living here. So where are they?”

“In hiding.” He paused, and released her. She stood away from him a little, looking up into his face. “I wonder if they are not waiting for science to make people forget that they ever existed.”

“So that they can return to prey on the utterly unwary?” She shivered. “An uncomfortable thought.”

“But not one we need to confront tonight or tomorrow.” He smiled down at her. “Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof.”

“True enough.” She took his hand, and looked coyly up at him. “And since it happens to be night—”

He laughed.

***

The medium lived in a modest house just off one of the squares in the part of London that housed those clerks and the like with pretensions to a loftier address than their purses would allow, an area totally unfamiliar to Nan. The house itself had seen better days, though, as had most of the other homes on that dead-end street, and Nan suspected that it was rented. The houses had that peculiarly faded look that came when the owners of a house did not actually live there, and those who did had no reason to care for the property themselves, assuming that was the duty of the landlord. Mem’sab had chosen her gown carefully, after discarding a walking suit, a mourning gown and veil, and a peculiar draped garment she called a sari, a souvenir of her time in India. The first, she thought, made her look untrusting, sharp, and suspicious, the second would not be believed had the medium done any research on the backgrounds of these new sitters, and the third smacked of mockery. She chose instead one of the plain, simple gowns she preferred, in the mode called “Artistic Reform”; not particularly stylish, but Nan thought it was a good choice. For one thing, she could move in it; it was looser than the highest mode, and did not require tight corseting. If Mem’sab needed to run, kick, or dodge, she could.

The girls followed her quietly, dressed in their starched pinafores and dark dresses, showing the best possible manners, with Grey tucked under Sarah’s coat to stay warm until they got within doors.

It was quite dark as they mounted the steps to the house and rang the bell. The door was answered by a sour-faced woman in a plain black dress, who ushered them into a sitting room and took their coats, with a startled glance at Grey as she popped her head out of the front of Sarah’s jacket. She said nothing, however, and neither did Grey as she climbed to Sarah’s shoulder.

The woman returned a moment later, but not before Nan had heard the faint sounds of surreptitious steps on the floor above them. She knew it had not been the sour woman, for she had clearly heard those steps going off to a closet and returning. If the séance room was on this floor, then, there was someone else above.

The sitting room had been decorated in a very odd style. The paintings on the wall were all either religious in nature, or extremely morbid, at least so far as Nan was concerned. There were pictures of women weeping over graves, of angels lifting away the soul of a dead child, of a woman throwing herself to her death over a cliff, of the spirits of three children hovering about a man and woman mourning over pictures held in their listless hands. There was even a picture of a girl crying over a dead bird lying in her hand.

Crystal globes on stands decorated the tables, along with bouquets of funereal lilies whose heavy, sweet scent dominated the chill room. The tables were all draped in fringed cloths of a deep scarlet. The hard, severe furniture was either of wood or upholstered in prickly horsehair. The two lamps had been lit before they entered the room, but their light, hampered as it was by heavy brocade lamp shades, cast more shadows than illumination.

They didn’t have to wait long in that uncomfortable room, for the sour servant departed for a moment, then returned, and conducted them into the next room. This, evidently, was only an antechamber to the room of mysteries; heavy draperies swathed all the walls, and there were straight-backed chairs set against them on all four walls. The lily scent pervaded this room as well, mixed with another, that Nan recognized as the Hindu incense that Nadra often burned in her own devotions.

There was a single picture in this room, on the wall opposite the door, with a candle placed on a small table beneath it so as to illuminate it properly. This was a portrait in oils of a plump woman swathed in pale draperies, her hands clasped melodramatically before her breast, her eyes cast upward. Smoke, presumably that of incense, swirled around her, with the suggestion of faces in it. Nan was no judge of art, but Mem’sab walked up to it and examined it with a critical eye.

“Neither good nor bad,” she said measuringly. “I would say it is either the work of an unknown professional or a talented amateur.”

“A talented amateur,” said the lady that Mem’sab had called “Katherine,” as she, too, was ushered into the chamber. “My dear friend Lady Harrington painted it; it was she who introduced me to Madame Varonsky.”

Mem’sab turned to meet her, and Katherine glided across the floor to take her hand in greeting. “It is said to be a very speaking likeness,” she continued. “I certainly find it so.”

Nan studied the woman further, but saw nothing to change her original estimation. Katherine wore yet another mourning gown of expensive silk and mohair, embellished with jet beadwork and fringes that shivered with the slightest movement. A black hat with a full veil perched on her carefully coiffed curls, fair hair too dark to be called golden, but not precisely brown either. Her full lips trembled, even as they uttered words of polite conversation, her eyes threatened to fill at every moment, and Nan thought that her weak chin reflected an overly sentimental and vapid personality. It was an assessment that was confirmed by her conversation with Mem’sab, conversation that Nan ignored in favor of listening for other sounds. Over their heads, the floor creaked softly as someone moved to and fro, trying very hard to be quiet. There were also some odd scratching sounds that didn’t sound like mice, and once, a dull thud, as of something heavy being set down a little too hard.

Something was going on up there, and the person doing it didn’t want them to notice.

At length the incense smell grew stronger, and the drapery on the wall to the right of the portrait parted, revealing a door, which opened as if by itself.

Taking that as their invitation, Katherine broke off her small talk to hurry eagerly into the sacred precincts; Mem’sab gestured to the girls to precede her, and followed on their heels. By previous arrangement, Nan and Sarah, rather than moving toward the circular table at which Madame Varonsky waited, went to the two walls likeliest to hold windows behind their heavy draperies before anyone could stop them.

It was Nan’s luck to find a corner window overlooking the street, and she made sure that some light from the room within flashed to the watcher on the opposite side before she dropped the drapery.

“Come away from the windows, children,” Mem’sab said in a voice that gently chided. Nan and Sarah immediately turned back to the room, and Nan assessed the foe.

Madame Varonsky’s portraitist had flattered her; she was decidedly paler than she had been painted, with a complexion unpleasantly like wax. She wore similar draperies, garments which could have concealed anything. The smile on her thin lips did not reach her eyes, and she regarded the parrot on Sarah’s shoulder with distinct unease.

“You did not warn me about the bird, Katherine,” the woman said, her voice rather reedy.

“The bird will be no trouble, Madame Varonsky,” Mem’sab soothed. “It is better behaved than a good many of my pupils.”

“Your pupils—I am not altogether clear on why they were brought,” Madame Varonsky replied, turning her sharp black eyes on Nan and Sarah.

“Nan is an orphan, and wants to learn what she can of her parents, since she never knew them,” Mem’sab said smoothly. “And Sarah lost a little brother to an African fever. The bird was her brother’s, and it is all she has of him.”

“Ah.” Madame Varonsky’s suspicions diminished, and she gestured to the chairs around the table. “Please, all of you, do take your seats, and we can begin at once.”

As with the antechamber, this room had walls swathed in draperies, which Nan decided could conceal an entire army if Madame Varonsky were so inclined. The only furnishings besides the séance table and chairs were a sinuous statue of a female completely enveloped in draperies on a draped table, with incense burning before it in a small charcoal brazier of brass and cast iron.

The table at which Nan took her place was very much as Mem’sab had described. A surreptitious bump as Nan took her seat on Mem’sab’s left hand proved that it was quite light and easy to move; it would be possible to lift it with one hand with no difficulty at all. On the draped surface were some of the objects Mem’sab had described; a tambourine, a megaphone, a little handbell. There were three lit candles in a brass candlestick in the middle of the table, and some objects Nan had not expected—a fiddle and bow, a rattle, and a pair of handkerchiefs.

This is where we’re supposed to look, Nan realized, as Sarah took her place on Mem’sab’s right, next to Madame Varonsky, and Katherine on Nan’s left, flanking the medium on the other side. She wished she could look up, as Grey was unashamedly doing, her head over to one side as one eye peered upward at the ceiling above them.

“If you would follow dear Katherine’s example, child,” said Madame, as Katherine took one of the handkerchiefs and used it to tie the medium’s wrist to the arm of her chair. She smiled crookedly. “This is to assure you that I am not employing any trickery.”

Sarah, behaving with absolute docility, did the same on the other side, but cast Nan a knowing look as she finished. Nan knew what that meant; Sarah had tried the arm of the chair and found it loose.

“Now, if you all will hold hands, we will beseech the spirits to attend us.” The medium turned her attention to Mem’sab as Katherine and Sarah stretched their arms across the table to touch hands, and the rest reached for the hands of their partners. “Pray do not be alarmed when the candles are extinguished; the spirits are shy of light, for they are so delicate that it can destroy them. They will put out the candles themselves.”

For several long moments they sat in complete silence, as the incense smoke thickened and curled around. Then although there wasn’t a single breath of moving air in the room, the candle flames began to dim, one by one, and go out!

Nan felt the hair on the back of her neck rising, for this was a phenomenon she could not account for—to distract herself, she looked up quickly at the ceiling just in time to see a faint line of light in the form of a square vanish.

She felt better immediately. However the medium had extinguished the candles, it had to be a trick. If she had any real powers, she wouldn’t need a trapdoor in the ceiling of her séance room. As she looked back down, she realized that the objects on the table were all glowing with a dim, greenish light.

“Spirits, are you with us?” Madame Varonsky called. Nan immediately felt the table begin to lift.

Katherine gasped; Mem’sab gave Nan’s hand a squeeze. Understanding immediately what she wanted, Nan let go of it. Now Mem’sab was free to act as she needed.

“The spirits are strong tonight,” Madame murmured, as the table settled again. “Perhaps they will give us a further demonstration of their powers.”

Exactly on cue, the tambourine rose into the air, shaking uncertainly; first the megaphone joined it, then the rattle, then the handbell, all floating in midair, or seeming to. But Nan was looking up, not at the objects, and saw a very dim square, too dim to be called light, above the table. A deeper shadow moved back and forth over that area, and Nan’s lip curled with contempt. She had no difficulty in imagining how the objects were “levitating”; one by one, they’d been pulled up by wires or black strings, probably hooked by means of a fishing rod from the room above.

Now rapping began on the table, to further distract their attention. Madame began to ask questions.

“Is there a spirit here for Isabelle Harton?” she asked. One rap—that was a no; not surprising, since the medium probably wouldn’t want to chance making a mistake with an adult. “Is there a spirit here for Katherine Boughmont?” Two raps—yes. “Is this the spirit of a child?” Two raps, and already Katherine had begun to weep softly. “Is it the spirit of her son, Edward?” Two raps plus the bell rang and the rattle and tambourine rattled, and Nan found herself feeling very sorry for the poor, silly woman.

“Are there other spirits here tonight?” Two raps. “Is there a spirit for the child Nan?” Two raps. “Is it her father?” One rap. “Her mother?” Two raps, and Nan had to control her temper, which flared at that moment. She knew very well that her mother was still alive, though at the rate she was going, she probably wouldn’t be for long, what with the gin and the opium and the rest of her miserable life. But if she had been a young orphan, her parents dead in some foreign land like one or two of the other pupils, what would she not have given for the barest word from them, however illusory? Would she not have been willing to believe anything that sounded warm and kind?

There appeared to be no spirit for Sarah, which was just as well. Madame Varonsky was ready to pull out the next of her tricks, for the floating objects settled to the table again.

“My spirit guide was known in life as the great Paganini, the master violinist,” Madame Varonsky announced. “As music is the food of the soul, he will employ the same sweet music he made in life to bridge the gap between our world and the next. Listen, and he will play this instrument before us!”

Fiddle music appeared to come from the instrument on the table, although the bow did not actually move across the strings. Katherine gasped.

“Release the child’s hand a moment and touch the violin, dear Katherine,“ the medium said, in a kind, but distant voice. Katherine evidently let go of Sarah’s hand, since she still had hold of Nan’s, and the shadow of her fingers rested for a moment on the neck of the fiddle.

“The strings!” she cried. “Isabelle, the strings are vibrating as they are played!”

If this was supposed to be some great, long-dead music master, Nan didn’t think much of his ability. If she wasn’t mistaken, the tune he was playing was the child’s chant of “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” but played very, very slowly, turning it into a solemn dirge.

“Touch the strings, Isabelle!” Katherine urged. “See for yourself!”

Nan felt Mem’sab lean forward, and another hand shadow fell over the strings. “They are vibrating…” she said, her voice suddenly uncertain.

The music ground to a halt before she took her hand away—and until this moment, Grey had been as silent as a stuffed bird on a lady’s hat. Now she did something quite odd.

She began to sing. It was a very clever imitation of a fiddle, playing a jig tune that a street musician often played at the gate of the school, for the pennies the pupils would throw to him.

She quit almost immediately, but not before Mem’sab took her hand away from the strings, and Nan sensed that somehow Grey had given her the clue she needed to solve that particular trick.

But the medium must have thought that her special spirit was responsible for that scrap of jig tune, for she didn’t say or do anything.

Nan sensed that all of this was building to the main turn, and so it was.

Remembering belatedly that she should be keeping an eye on that suspicious square above, she glanced up just in time to see it disappear. As the medium began to moan and sigh, calling on Paganini, Nan kept her eye on the ceiling. Sure enough, the dim line of light appeared again, forming a grayish square. Then the lines of the square thickened, and Nan guessed that a square platform was being lowered from above. Pungent incense smoke thickened about them, filling Nan’s nose and stinging her eyes so that they watered, and she smothered a sneeze. It was hard to breathe, and there was something strangely, disquietingly familiar about the scent.

The medium’s words, spoken in a harsh, accented voice, cut through the smoke. “I, the great Paganini, am here among you!”

Once again, Katherine gasped.

“Harken and be still! Lo, the spirits gather!”

Nan’s eyes burned, and for a moment, she felt very dizzy; she thought that the soft glow in front of her was due to nothing more than eyestrain, but the glow strengthened, and she blinked in shock as two vague shapes took form amid the writhing smoke.

For a new brazier, belching forth such thick smoke that the coals were invisible, had “appeared” in the center of the table, just behind the candlestick. It was above this brazier that the glowing shapes hovered, and slowly took on an identifiable form. Nan felt dizzier, sick; the room seemed to turn slowly around her.

The faces of a young woman and a little boy looked vaguely out over Nan’s head from the cloud of smoke. Katherine began to weep—presumably she thought she recognized the child as her own. But the fact that the young woman looked nothing like Nan’s mother (and in fact, looked quite a bit like the sketch in an advertisement for Bovril in the Times) woke Nan out of her mental haze.

And so did Grey.

She heard the flapping of wings as Grey plummeted to the floor. The bird sneezed urgently, and shouted aloud, “Bad air! Bad air! Bad, bad air!”

And that was the moment when she knew what it was that was so familiar in the incense smoke, and why she felt as tipsy as a sailor on shore leave.

“Hashish!” she choked, trying to shout, and not managing very well. She knew this scent; on the rare occasions when her mother could afford it—and before she’d turned to opium—she’d smoked it in preference to drinking. Nan could only think of one thing; that she must get fresh air in here before they all passed out!

She shoved her chair back and staggered up and out of it; it fell behind her with a clatter that seemed muffled in the smoke. She groped for the brazier as the two faces continued to stare, unmoved and unmoving, from the thick billows. Her hands felt like a pair of lead-filled mittens; she had to fight to stay upright as she swayed like a drunk. She didn’t find it, but her hands closed on the cool, smooth surface of the crystal ball. That was good enough; before the medium could stop her, she heaved up the heavy ball with a grunt of effort, and staggered to the window. She half-spun and flung the ball at the draperies hiding the unseen window; it hit the drapes and carried them into the glass, crashing through it, taking the drapery with it.

A gush of cold air, as fresh as air in London ever got, streamed in through the broken panes, as bedlam erupted in the room behind Nan.

She dropped to the floor, ignoring everything around her for the moment, as she breathed in the air tainted only with smog, waiting for her head to clear. Grey ran to her and huddled with her rather than joining her beloved mistress in the poisonous smoke.

Katherine shrieked in hysteria, there was a man as well as the medium shouting, and Mem’sab cursed all of them in some strange language.

Grey gave a terrible shriek and half-ran, half-flew away. Nan fought her dizziness and disorientation; looked up to see that Mem’sab was struggling in the grip of a stringy fellow she didn’t recognize. Katherine had been backed up into one corner by the medium, and Sarah and Grey were pummeling the medium with small fists and wings. Mem’sab kicked at her captor’s shins and stamped on his feet with great effect, as his grunts of pain demonstrated.

Nan struggled to her feet, guessing that she must have been the one worst affected by the hashish fumes. She wanted to run to Mem’sab’s rescue, but she couldn’t get her legs to work. In a moment the sour-faced woman would surely break into the room, turning the balance in favor of the enemy—

The door did crash open behind her just as she thought that, and she tried to turn to face the new foe—

But it was not the foe.

Sahib charged through the broken door, pushing past Nan and using his cane to belabor the man holding Mem’sab; within three blows the man was on the floor, moaning. Before Nan fell, Karamjit caught her and steadied her. More men flooded into the room, among them, Selim and Agansing who went to the rescue of Sarah and Grey, and Nan let Karamjit steer her out of the way, concentrating on those steadying breaths of air. She thought perhaps that she passed out of consciousness for a while, for when she next noticed anything, she was sitting bent over in a chair, with Karamjit hovering over her, frowning. At some point the brazier had been extinguished, and a policeman was collecting the ashes and the remains of the drug-laced incense.

It was a while before her head cleared; by then, the struggle was over. The medium and her fellow tricksters were in the custody of the police, who had come with Sahib when Nan threw the crystal ball through the window. Sahib was talking to a policeman with a sergeant’s badge, and Nan guessed that he was explaining what Mem’sab and Katherine were doing here. Katherine wept in a corner, comforted by Mem’sab. The police had brought lamps into the séance room from the sitting room, showing all too clearly how the medium had achieved her work; a hatch in the ceiling to the room above, through which things could be lowered; a magic lantern behind the drapes, which had cast its image of a woman and boy onto the thick brazier smoke. That, and the disorienting effect of the hashish, had made it easy to trick the clients.

Finally, the bobbies took their captives away, and Katherine stopped crying. Nan and Sarah sat on the chairs Karamjit had set up, watching the adults, Grey on her usual perch on Sarah’s shoulder. A cushion stuffed in the broken window cut off most of the cold air from outside.

“I can’t believe I was so foolish!” Katherine moaned. “But—I wanted to see Edward so very much—”

“I hardly think that falling for a clever deception backed by drugs makes you foolish, my dear lady,” Sahib said gravely. “But you are to count yourself fortunate in the loyalty of your friends, who were willing to place themselves in danger for you. I do not think that these people would have been willing to stop at mere fraud, and neither do the police.”

His last words made no impression on Katherine, at least none that Nan saw—but she did turn to Mem’sab and clasp her hand fervently. “I thought so ill of you, that you would not believe in Madame,” she said tearfully. “Can you forgive me?”

Mem’sab smiled. “Always, my dear,” she said, in the voice she used to soothe a frightened child. “Since your motive was to enlighten me, not to harm me—and your motive in seeking your poor child’s spirit—”

A chill passed over Nan at that moment that had nothing to do with the outside air. She looked sharply at Sarah, and saw a very curious thing.

There was a very vague and shimmery shape standing in front of Sarah’s chair; Sarah looked at it with an intense and thoughtful gaze, as if she was listening to it. More than that, Grey was doing the same. Nan got the distinct impression that it was asking her friend for a favor.

Grey and Sarah exchanged a glance, and the parrot nodded once, as grave and sober as a parson, then spread her wings as if sheltering Sarah like a chick. The shimmering form melted into Sarah; her features took on a mischievous expression that Nan had never seen her wear before, and she got up and went directly to Katherine. The woman looked up at her, startled at the intrusion of a child into an adult discussion, then paled at something she saw in Sarah’s face.

“Oh, Mummy, you don’t have to be so sad,” Sarah said in a curiously hollow, piping soprano. “I’m all right, really, and it wasn’t your fault anyway, it was that horrid Lord Babington that made you and Papa send me to Overton. But you must stop crying, please! Laurie is already scared of being left, and you’re scaring her more.”

Now, Nan knew very well that Mem’sab had not said anything about a Lord Babington, nor did she and Sarah know what school the poor little boy had been sent to. Yet she wasn’t frightened; in fact, the protective but calm look in Grey’s eye made her feel rather good, as if something inside her told her that everything was going wonderfully well.

The effect on Katherine was not what Nan had expected either. She reached out tentatively, as if to touch Sarah’s face, but stopped short. “This is you, isn’t it, darling?” she asked in a whisper.

Sarah nodded—or was it Edward who nodded? “Now, I’ve got to go, Mummy, and I can’t come back. So don’t look for me, and don’t cry anymore.”

The shimmering withdrew, forming into a brilliant ball of light at about the level of Sarah’s heart, then shot off, so fast that Nan couldn’t follow it. Grey pulled in her wings, and Sarah shook her head a little, then regarded Katherine with a particularly measuring expression before coming back to her chair and sitting down.

“Out of the mouths of babes, Katherine,” Mem’sab said quietly, then looked up at Karamjit. “I think you and Selim should take the girls home now; they’ve had more than enough excitement for one night. Agansing can stay here with us while we deal with the results of this night’s adventure.”

Karamjit bowed silently, and Grey added her own vote. “Wan’ go back,” she said in a decidedly firm tone. When Selim brought their coats and helped them to put them on, Grey climbed right back inside Sarah’s, and didn’t even put her head back out again.

They didn’t have to go home in a cab either; Katherine sent them back to the school in her own carriage, which was quite a treat for Nan, who’d had no notion that a private carriage would come equipped with such comforts as heated bricks for the feet and fur robes to bundle in. Nan didn’t say anything to Sarah about the aftermath of the séance until they were alone together in their room and Karamjit and Selim had returned to Mem’sab and Sahib.

Only then, as Grey took her accustomed perch on the headboard of Sarah’s bed, did Nan look at her friend and ask—

Sarah nodded. “I could see him, clear as clear, too.” She smiled a little. “He must’ve been a horrid brat at times, but he really wasn’t bad, just spoiled enough to be a bit selfish, and he’s been—learning better manners, since.”

All that Nan could think of to say was—“Ah.”

“Still, I think it was a bit rude of him to have been so impatient with his mother,” she continued, a little irritated.

“I ‘spose that magic-man friend of yours is right,” Nan replied finally. “About what you c’n do, I mean.”

“Oh! You’re right!” Sarah exclaimed. “But you know, I don’t think I could have done it if Grey hadn’t been there. I thought if I ever saw a spirit I’d be too scared to do anything, but I wasn’t afraid, since she wasn’t.”

The parrot took a little piece of Sarah’s hair in her beak and preened it.

“Wise bird,” replied Grey.

***

Isabelle sat holding her friend’s hand, as the police sergeant questioned her in a painstaking but ponderous manner. Isabelle felt obscurely sorry for Katherine; it was a difficult thing to have to admit that you had given your trust to someone who had then not only abused it, but done so in such a fashion as to make you look incredibly foolish. As Katherine reluctantly admitted the large sums of money she had pressed into “Madame’s” hands—probably, Mem’sab reflected, with all the fervent devotion of a religious convert—she flushed and looked acutely uncomfortable until even the policeman noticed.

“Begging your pardon, mum,” he said apologetically, “But we have to hev these particulars down in the report, or we can’t prosecute the woman properly. This’s theft, it is, and no two ways about it, as I’m sure the magistrate will say.”

Well, while it might morally be theft, it actually was fraud under the law, and if Katherine hadn’t been wealthy and highly connected, Isabelle very much doubted whether this police sergeant would be bringing it up to a magistrate on such charges.

But she was both of those things, and the upshot of that was that Madame—based on the amount of money she had taken—would probably be in prison for the rest of her life or, at least, would be transported to Australia.

Even more uncomfortable for Katherine was divulging the names of her other wealthy, titled, or connected friends who had been fleeced by this fraud. That was worse than embarrassment, it was very nearly social suicide. Katherine would have to live in India for another five years before people like Lady Harrington forgot who had been the cause of common police appearing at her door to question her—and the ensuing embarrassment on her part of discovering she had been taken in by such a fraud.

Still, there was nothing for it, and if Lady Harrington had been the one who had introduced Katherine to Madame in the first place, perhaps her annoyance would be tempered by guilt.

Finally, the police released them all, and Katherine fled to the safety and seclusion of her carriage, looking utterly shattered.

“She should have thanked you at least, Mem’sab,” said Selim gravely, as the carriage rolled away into the darkness. Frederick had gone to look for a cab with Agansing, leaving her with the third of the guardians.

“Well, I can’t say as I am surprised that she did not,” Isabelle admitted. “She was one of the girls I went to school with, one in whom Elemental Magic burns very dimly. We tended to be thrown together within the group of the Gifted and the Talented on that account, you see; I had none of their Magic, and she had very little. But I did have something quite powerful that demanded a certain amount of respect. I may have been less than circumspect in my conversations about my powers, and as a consequence, I believe poor Katherine got some unrealistic notions about occult abilities.”

“And yet Missy Sarah has them,” Selim observed.

“Hmm.” Isabella’s lips compressed. “I fear that if Katherine makes this known, the consequences will be some exceedingly intrusive and unwanted attention on all of us. There are many bereaved people in the world, none of whom really wishes to know that a loved one has moved on and left them behind.”

“One cannot blame them,” Selim replied. “But it would be hard on Missy Sarah to be the one to suffer at the hands of their need.”

The sound that emerged from Isabelle’s throat was of a laugh with no humor in it. “And there is not one in a thousand of them who will consider that asking a very young child to perform mediumistic work is both cruel and uncaring. Each of them is so enwrapped in her grief—for it is predominantly women who flock to mediums—that nothing else is of consequence.”

“They would be better off seeking solace in the arms of their religion, and leave the child out of it.” Selim’s tone was grim.

“Well, they will be leaving the child out of it, because we are her guardians, and I have no intention of allowing her to do any such thing.” Isabelle’s tone was just as grim as Selim’s. “Ah! Here is Sahib with our cab!”

The short journey back was conducted mostly in silence. It was Isabelle who finally broke it. “I know I thanked you all before—but now I have to thank you again, with the full knowledge of what foolishly rushing in to this situation could have brought me to.” In fact, she felt a bit shaken and rather humbled at this point. It was painfully clear that at the least, she, the girls, and Katherine could have been harmed, and at worst—

“And who was it, Mem’sab, that kept me from believing I could brave the temple of Kalima alone?” asked Agansing.

“Or insisted that if I would go to meet that fakir, it would be while I was under the eye of my friends?” said Selim.

“Or told me to go direct to Bhurka Singh with my suspicions instead of allowing them to fester,” added Karamjit, his teeth gleaming in a white smile in the shadows of the cab.

“Or kept me from rushing into a hundred foolish ventures,” Frederick concluded, with his arms around her. “This is what it means to be human, as I quite recall you saying the last time I came home with a broken head. You succeed, you become a trifle overconfident, and at that point it is the duty of your friends to haul you back and point out the edge of the cliff at your feet.”

“Well, nevertheless,” she said, feeling a little better and a trifle less stupid. “Thank you.”

“Nevertheless,” said Frederick, with a squeeze, “You are welcome. Provided you continue to do me the same good turn, my love.”

And somehow, that made her feel very much better indeed.

4

NAN sat on the foot of Sarah’s bed, with her feet curled up under her flannel nightgown to keep them warm. Sarah Jane’s parrot Grey lay flat on Sarah’s chest, eyes closed, cuddling like a kitten. Warm light from an oil lamp mounted on the wall beside the bed poured over all of them. It wasn’t a very big room, just room for Nan’s bed and Sarah Jane’s, a perch with cups screwed to it for food and water and a selection of toys hanging from it for Grey, and a wardrobe and chests for their clothes and things. If the wallpaper was old and faded, and the rugs on the floor threadbare, it was still a thousand times better than any place that Nan had ever lived in—and as for Sarah, well, she was used to a mission and hospital in the middle of the jungle, and their little room was just as foreign to her as it was to Nan, though in entirely different ways.

While only little Sarah had a pet from “home,” there were plenty of pets acquired here in England for the other children. To make sure that the children never forgot those who had sent them here, other reminders of absent parents were encouraged here, and there was a supply of paper, ink, and penny stamps in each room. Most schools encouraged letters—so long as they were written in class where the teacher could ostensibly check for spelling, grammar, and penmanship, but in reality making sure nothing uncomplimentary about the school or the teachers went out through the mails. There was a great deal of laughter in the Harton School, and the lessons learned were all the surer for it.

And that was the least of the eccentricities here, in a school where not all of the lessons were about what could be seen with the ordinary eye.

Nan was alone in not wanting reminders of her family; she had no idea who her father was, and her mother had finally descended (last Nan had heard) to the lowest rung on the social ladder her type could reach, that of a street whore in Whitechapel. She roamed the streets now with everything she owned on her back, without even a garret or cellar room, or even an under-stairs cubbyhole to call her own, satisfying first her craving for drink, before looking for the extra penny for a bed or a meal. She would probably die soon, of bad gin, of cold and exposure, of disease, or of everything at once as her chronically-damaged body gave out. Nan had neither time nor pity for her. After all, it had been her gran that had mostly raised her, not her mam, who’d only been interested in the money Nan brought in by begging.

Sarah had a very special sort of bond with Grey—who Sarah insisted was a great deal more than “just” a parrot. Nan was in wholehearted agreement with that estimation at this point—after all, it was no more difficult to believe in than to believe that wolves could adopt a mancub, and Nan was convinced of the truth of Mr.Kipling’s stories.

Sarah had a new set of lessons, now that they had learned she could on occasion, talk with, and see, the dead. This could be a very dangerous ability, so Mem’sab had told Nan, who had appointed herself as Sarah’s protector.

Well, if Nan and Grey had anything to say about the matter, danger would have to pass through them to reach Sarah.

“Nan tickle,” Grey demanded in her funny little voice, eyes still closed; Sarah was using both hands to support the bird on her chest, which left no hands free to give Grey the scratch she wanted.

Nan obliged by crawling up to the head of the bed, settling in beside her friend and scratching the back of Grey’s neck. It was a very gentle scratch—indeed, more like the “tickle” Grey had asked for than the kind of vigorous scratching one would give a dog or a tough London cat—for Nan had known instinctively from the moment that Grey permitted Nan to touch her that a bird’s skin is a very delicate thing. Of all of the people in the school, only Nan, Mem’sab, Sahib himself, and Agansing were permitted by Grey to do more than take her on a hand. Sarah, of course, could do anything she liked with the bird.

“Wish’t Oi had a friend loike you, Grey,” Nan told the bird wistfully, the remnants of her Cockney accent still clinging to her speech despite hours and hours of lessons. The parrot opened one yellow eye and gave her a long and unreadable look.

“Kitty?” Grey suggested, but Nan shook her head.

“Not a moggy,” she replied. “Mind, Oi loike moggies, but—Oi dunno, a moggy don’t seem roight. Not clever ‘nuff.”

Sarah laughed. “Then you must not be a witch after all,” she teased. “A witch’s familiar is always a cat, or a toad—”

Nan made a face. “Don’ want no toads!” she objected. “So Oi guess Oi ain’t no witch, no matter what that Tommy Carpenter says!”

Tommy, a recent addition to the school, had somehow made up his mind that she, Sarah, and Mem’sab were all witches. He didn’t mean it in a derogatory sense; in fact, he gave them all the utmost respect. It had something to do with things his own ayah back in India had taught him. Nan had to wonder, given whom he’d singled out for that particular accolade, if he wouldn’t be getting private lessons of his own with Mem’sab before too long. There was something just a little too knowing about the way Tommy looked at some people.

“But Oi still wisht Oi ‘ad—had—a bird friend loike Grey.” And she sighed again. Grey reached around with her beak and gently took one of Nan’s fingers in it; Grey’s equivalent, so Nan had learned, of a hug. “Well,” she said, when Grey had let go, “Mebbe someday. Lots’ve parrots comes in with sailors.”

“That’s right!” Sarah said warmly, letting go of Grey just long enough to give Nan a hug of her own, before changing the subject. “Nan, promise to tell me all about the Tower as soon as you get back tomorrow! I wish I could go—maybe as much as you wish you had a grey parrot of your own.”

“ ‘Course Oi will!” Nan replied warmly. “Oi wisht you could go, too—but you know why Mem’sab said not.” She shuddered, but it was the delicious shudder of a child about to be regaled with delightfully scary ghost stories, without a chance of turning around and discovering that the story had transmuted to reality.

For Sarah, however, the possibility was only too real that, even by daylight, that very thing would happen. It was one thing to provide the vehicle for a little child ghost who had returned only to comfort his mother. It was something else entirely to contemplate Sarah coming face-to-face with one of the many unhappy, tragic, or angry spirits said to haunt the Tower of London. Mem’sab was not willing to chance such an encounter, not until Sarah was old enough to protect herself.

So the History class would be going to the Tower for a special tour with one of the Yeoman Warders without Sarah.

Sarah sighed again. “I know. And I know Mem’sab is right. But I still wish I could go, too.”

Nan laughed. “Wut! An you gettin’ ‘t’ go’t’ Sahib’s warehouse an’ pick out whatever you want, on account of missin’ the treat?”

“Yes, but—” she made a face. “Then I have to write an essay about it to earn it!”

“An’ we’re all writin’ essays ‘bout the Tower, so I reckon it’s even all around, ’cept we don’t get no keepsakes.” Nan ended the discussion firmly.

“I know! I’ll pick a whole chest of Turkish Delight, then we can all have a treat, and I’ll have the chest,” Sarah said suddenly, brightening up in that way she had that made her solemn little face just fill with light.

Grey laughed, just like a human. “Smart bird!” the parrot said, then shook herself gently, wordlessly telling Sarah to let go of her, made her ponderous way up Sarah’s shoulder and pillow, and clambered up beak-over-claw to her usual nighttime perch on the top of the brass railing of the headboard of Sarah’s bed—wrapped and padded for her benefit in yards and yards of tough hempen twine. She pulled one foot up under her chest feathers, and turned her head around to bury her beak out of sight in the feathers of her back.

And since that was the signal it was time for them to sleep—a signal they always obeyed, since both of them half expected that Grey would tell on them if they didn’t!—Nan slid down and climbed into her own bed, turning the key on the lantern beside her to extinguish the light.

***

It was a gloomy, cool autumn day that threatened rain, a day on which Nan definitely needed her mac, a garment which gave her immense satisfaction, for up until coming to the school she had relied on old newspapers or scraps of canvas to keep off the rain. Getting to the Tower was an adventure in and of itself, involving a great deal of walking and several omnibuses. When they arrived at the Tower, Nan could only stare; she’d been expecting a single building, not this fortress! Why, it was bigger than Buckingham Palace—or, at least, as big!

Their guide was waiting for them under an archway with not one, but two nasty-looking portcullises—and the tour began immediately, for this was no mere gate, but the Middle Tower. The Yeoman Warder who took the children under his capacious wing was an especial friend of Sahib’s, and as a consequence, took them on a more painstaking tour of the Tower than the sort given to most schoolchildren. He did his best—which was a very good “best,” because he was a natural storyteller—to make the figures of history come alive for his charges, and peppered his narrative with exactly the sort of ghoulish details that schoolchildren loved to hear. Creepy, but not terrifying. Ghoulish, but not ghastly.

Nan was very much affected by the story of poor little Jane Grey, the Nine-Days’ Queen, and of Queen Anne Boleyn, but she felt especially saddened by the story of the execution of Katherine Howard, who had been rather naughty, but had been very young and pretty, and shackled in marriage to a King who was so fat he could hardly move on his own. No wonder she went after a bit of fun on her own! And the old King should have expected it!

They walked all over the Tower, up and down innumerable stairs, from the old Mint buildings, to the armory in the White Tower even to the Yeoman Warders’ private quarters, where their guide’s wife gave them all tea and cakes. Nan felt quite smug about that; no one else was getting tea and cakes! Most of the other visitors had to blunder about by themselves, accompanied with maps and guidebooks, or join a crowd of others being given the general tour by another of the Yeoman Warders, and dependent on their own resources for their refreshment. She tasted the heady wine of privilege for the first time in her young life, and decided that it was a fine thing.

But the one thing that she found the most fascinating about the Tower was the ravens.

Faintly intimidating, they flew about or stalked the lawns wherever they cared to; they had their very own Yeoman Warder to attend to them, because of the story that if they were ever to leave the Tower, it would be the end of England. But Nan found them fascinating; and kept watching them even when she should, perhaps, have been paying attention to their guide.

Finally Nan got a chance to watch them to her heart’s content, as Mem’sab noted her fascination. “Would you like to stay here while the rest of us go view the Crown Jewels, Nan?” Mem’sab asked, with a slight smile.

Nan nodded; going up another set of stairs along with a gaggle of other silly gawpers just to look at a lot of big sparklers that no one but the Queen ever would wear was just plain daft. She felt distinctly honored that Mem’sab trusted her to stay alone. The other pupils trailed off after their guide like a parade of kittens following their mother, while Nan remained behind in the quiet part of the Green near the off-limits area where the ravens had their perches and nesting-boxes, watching as the great black birds went about their lives, ignoring the sightseers as mere pointless interlopers.

It seemed to her that the ravens had a great deal in common with someone like her; they were tough, no nonsense about them, willing and able to defend themselves. She even tried, once or twice, to see if she could get a sense of what they were thinking, but their minds were very busy with raven business—status in the rookery being a very complicated affair—

Though the second time she tried, the minds of the two she was touching went very silent for a moment, and they turned to stare at her. She guessed that they didn’t like it, and stopped immediately; they went back to stalking across the lawn.

Then she felt eyes on her from behind, and turned, slowly.

There was a third raven behind her, staring at her.

“ ‘Ullo,” she told him.

“Quoark,” he said meditatively. She met his gaze with one equally unwavering, and it seemed to her that something passed between them.

“Don’t touch him, girl.” That was one of the Yeoman Warders, hurrying up to her. “They can be vicious brutes, when they’re so minded.”

The “vicious brute” wasn’t interested in the Warder’s estimation of him. “Quork,” he said, making up his mind—and pushed off with his strong, black legs, making two heavy flaps of his wings that brought him up and onto Nan’s shoulder. “Awwrr,” he crooned, and as the Yeoman Warder froze, he took that formidable bill, as long as Nan’s hand and knife-edged, and gently closed it around her ear. His tongue tickled the ear, and she giggled. The Yeoman Warder paled.

But Nan was engrossed in an entirely new sensation welling up inside her—and she guessed it was coming from the bird; it was a warmth of the heart, as if someone had just given her a welcoming hug.

Could this be her bird friend, the one she’d wished for?

“Want tickle?” she suggested aloud, thinking very hard about how Grey’s neck feathers felt under her fingers when she scratched the parrot.

“Orrrr” the raven agreed, right in her ear. He released the ear and bent his head down alongside her cheek so she could reach the back of his neck. She reached up and began a satisfying scratch; she felt his beak growing warm with pleasure as he fluffed his neck feathers for her.

The Yeoman Warder was as white as snow, a startling contrast with his blue-and-scarlet uniform.

The Ravenmaster (who was another Yeoman Warder) came running up, puffing hard and rather out of breath, and stopped beside his fellow officer. He took several deep breaths, staring at the two of them—the raven’s eyes were closed with pure bliss as Nan’s fingers worked around his beak and very, very gently rubbed the skin around his eyes.

“Blimey,” he breathed, staring at them. He walked, with extreme care, toward them, and reached for the bird. “Here now Neville old man, you oughter come along with me—”

Quick as a flash, the raven went from cuddling pet to angry tyrant rousing all his feathers in anger and lashing at the outstretched hand with his beak. And it was a good thing that the outstretched hand was wearing a thick falconer’s gauntlet, because otherwise the Warder would have pulled it back bloody.

Then as if to demonstrate that his wrath was only turned against those who would dare to separate him from Nan, the raven took that formidable beak and rubbed it against Nan’s cheek, coming within a fraction of an inch of her eyes. She, in her turn, fearlessly rubbed her cheek against his. The Warders both went very still and very white.

“Neville, I b’lieve you’re horripilatin’ these gennelmun,” Nan said, thinking the same thing, very hard. “Would’jer come down onta me arm?”

She held out her forearm parallel to her shoulder as the Warders held their breath.

“Quock,” Neville said agreeably, and stepped onto her forearm. She brought him down level with her chest and as he rested his head against her, she went back to scratching him in the places where she was now getting a sense that he wanted to be scratched. He was a great deal less delicate than Grey; in fact, he enjoyed just as vigorous a scratching as any alley cat.

“Miss,” the Ravenmaster said carefully, “I think you oughter put him down.”

“I c’n do that,” she said truthfully, “but if ‘e don’t want to leave me, ’e’ll just be back on my shoulder in the next minute.”

“Then—” he looked about, helplessly. The other Warder shrugged. “Miss, them ravens belongs’t’ Her Majesty, just like swans does.”

She had to giggle at that—the idea that anyone, even the Queen, thought they could own a wild thing. “I doubt anybody’s told them,” she pointed out.

“Rrrk,” Neville agreed, his voice muffled by the fact that his beak was against her chest.

The Ravenmaster was sweating now, little beads standing out on his forehead. He looked to his fellow officer for help; the man only shrugged. “ ‘Ollis, you was the one what told me that Neville’s never been what you’d call a natural bird,” the first Warder said judiciously, and with the air of a man who has done his best, he slowly turned and walked off, leaving the Ravenmaster to deal with the situation himself.

Or—perhaps—to deal with it without a witness, who might have to make a report. And what he didn’t witness, he couldn’t report—

Nan could certainly understand that, since she’d been in similar situations now and again.

Sweating freely now, the Ravenmaster bent down, hands carefully in sight and down at his sides. “Now, Neville,” he said quietly, addressing the raven, “I’ve always done right by you, ‘aven’t I?”

Neville opened one eye and gave him a dubious look. “Ork,” he agreed, but with the sense that his agreement was qualified by whatever the Ravenmaster might do in the next few moments.

“Now, you lissen to me. If you was to try an’ go with this girl, I’d haveta try an’ catch you up. You’d be mad an’ mebbe I’d get hurt, an’ you’d be in a cage.”

Nan stiffened, fearing that Neville would react poorly to this admission, but the bird only uttered a defiant grunt, as if to say, “You’ll catch me the day you grow wings, fool!” The feathers on his head and neck rose, and Nan sensed a sullen anger within him. And the fact that she was sensing things from him could only mean that as the Warder had said, Neville was no “natural” bird.

In fact—he was like Grey. Nan felt excitement rise in her. The fact was a tough bird like a raven suited her a great deal more than a parrot.

But the Yeoman Warder wasn’t done. “Now, on’t‘other hand,” he continued, “If the young lady was to toss you up in th’ air when you’d got your scratch, and you was to wait over the gate till her an’ her schoolmates comes out, an’ then you was to follow her—well, I couldn’t know you was missing ‘till I counted birds on perches, could I? An’ then I couldn’t know where you’d gone, could I? An’ this young lady wouldn’t get in no trouble, would she?”

Slowly, the feathers Neville had roused, flattened. He looked the Warder square in the eyes, as if measuring him for falsehood. And slowly, deliberately, he nodded.

“Quok,” he said.

“Right. Gennelmun’s agreement,” the Warder said, heaving an enormous sigh, and turning his attention at last to Nan. “Miss, I dunno what it is about you, but seems you an’ Neville has summat between you. An’ since Neville’s sire has the same summat with the Ravenmaster afore me an’ went with ‘im to Wight when ‘e retired, I reckon it runs in the family, you might say. So.”

Nan nodded, and looked at Neville, who jerked his beak upward in a motion that told her clearly what he wanted.

She flung her arm up to help him as he took off, and with several powerful thrusts of his wings, he took off and rowed his way up to the top of the main gate, where he ruffed up all of his feathers and uttered a disdainful croak.

“Now, miss,” the Yeoman Warder said, straightening up. “You just happen to ‘ave a knack with birds, and I just give you a bit of a talkin’-to about how dangerous them ravens is. An’ you never heard me talkin’ to Neville. An’ if a big black bird should turn up at your school—”

“Then I’ll be ‘avin’ an uncommon big jackdaw as a pet,” she said, staring right back at him, unblinking. “Which must’ve been summun’s pet, on account uv ‘e’s so tame.”

“That’d be it, miss,” the Warder said, and gathering his dignity about him, left her to wait for the rest of the class to come out.

Mem’sab, Nan was firmly convinced, knew everything. Her conviction was only strengthened by the penetrating look that her teacher gave her when she led the rest of the Harton School pupils out to collect Nan. Since the Crown Jewels were the last item on their programme, it was time to go—

“How did you get on with the ravens, Nan?” Mem’sab asked, with just that touch of irony in her voice that said far more than the words did. Could someone have come to tell her about Neville being on Nan’s shoulder? Or was this yet another demonstration that Mem’sab knew things without anyone telling her?

Nan fought hard to keep her accent under control. “I’m thinkin’ I got on well, Mem’sab,” she said, with a little smile.

Mem’sab raised an eyebrow. If there had been any doubt in Nan’s mind that her teacher might not be aware that there was something toward, it vanished at that moment.

She raised another, when, as they made their way down the broad walk away from the Tower, a black, winged shape lofted from the gate and followed them, taking perches on any convenient object. For her part, Nan felt all knotted up with tension, for she couldn’t imagine how the great bird would be able to follow them through London traffic. It seemed that the Ravenmaster hadn’t yet got around to trimming Neville’s wing feathers, for he had them all but two, so at least he wasn’t going to be hampered by lack of wingspan. But still… how was he to get from here to the Harton School?

They boarded a horse-drawn omnibus and—since it wasn’t raining yet—everyone ran up the little twisting staircase to the open seats on top. After all, what child cares to ride inside, when he can ride outside? They were the only passengers up there due to the chill and threatening weather, and Nan cast an anxious look back at the last place she’d seen Neville—

He wasn’t there. Her heart fell.

And right down out of the sky, the huge bird landed with an audible thump in the aisle between the rows of seats, just as the ‘bus started to move. He folded his wings and looked about as if he owned the place.

“Lummy!” said one of the boys. “That’s a raven!” He started to get out of his seat.

“No it isn’t,” Mem’sab said firmly. “And no one move except Nan.”

When Mem’sab gave an order like that, no one would even think of moving, so as Neville walked ponderously toward her, Nan crouched down and offered her forearm to him. He hopped up on it, and she got back into her seat, turning to look expectantly at Mem’sab.

“This is not a raven,” their teacher repeated, raking the entire school group with a stern glance. “This is an uncommonly large rook. Correct?”

“Yes, Mem’sab!” the rest of Nan’s schoolmates chorused. Mem’sab eyed the enormous bird for a moment, her brown eyes thoughtful. Mem’sab was not a pretty woman—many people might, in fact, have characterized her as “plain,” with quiet brown hair and eyes, and a complexion more like honest brown pottery than porcelain. Her chin was too firm for beauty; her features too angular and strong. But it was Nan’s fervent hope that one day she might grow up into something like those strong features, for to her mind, Mem’sab was a decidedly handsome woman. Right now, she looked quite formidable, her eyes intent as she gazed at Neville, clearly thinking hard about something.

“Bird—” she addressed the raven directly. “We are going to have to go through a number of situations in which you will not be welcome before we get home. For instance, the inside seats on this very ‘bus—since I think it is going to rain before we get to our stop. Now, what do you propose we do about you?”

Neville cocked his head to one side. “Ork?” he replied.

Now, none of the children found any of this at all peculiar or funny, perhaps because they were used to Mem’sab, Sarah, and Nan treating Grey just like a person. But none of them wanted to volunteer a solution either if it involved actually getting near that nasty-looking beak.

“Oi—I—can put ‘im under me mac, Mem’sab,” Nan offered.

Their teacher frowned. “That’s only good until someone notices you’re carrying something there, Nan,” she replied. “Children, at the next stop, I would like you to divide up and search the ‘bus for a discarded box, please—but be back in a seat when the ’bus moves again.”

Just then the bus pulled up to a stop, and slightly less than twenty very active children swarmed over the vehicle while passengers were loading and unloading. The boys all piled downstairs; they were less encumbered with skirts and could go over or under seats quickly.

The boys hadn’t returned by the time the ‘bus moved, but at the next stop they all came swarming back up again, carrying in triumph the very thing that was needed, a dirtied and scuffed pasteboard hatbox!

As their teacher congratulated them, young Tommy proudly related his story of charming the box from a young shopgirl who had several she was taking home with her because they’d been spoiled. Meanwhile, Nan coaxed Neville into the prize, which was less than a perfect fit. He wasn’t happy about it, but after thinking very hard at him with scenes of him trying to fly to keep up, of conductors chasing him out of the windows of ‘buses, and of policemen finding him under Nan’s mac and trying to take him away, he quorked and obediently hopped into the box, suffering Nan to close the lid down over him and tie it shut. Her nerves quieted down at that moment, and she heaved a sigh of very real relief. Only then did she pay attention to her classmates.

“I owes you, Tommy,” she said earnestly. “Sarah, she said last night she was gonna get a chest’ve Turkish Delight from Sahib’s warehouse for her treat and share it out. You c’n hev my share.”

Tommy went pink with pleasure. “Oh, Nan, you don’t have to—” He was clearly torn between greed and generosity of his own. “Half?” he suggested. “I don’t want to leave you without a treat, too.”

“I got a treat,” she insisted, patting the box happily. “An’ mine’ll last longer nor Turkish Delight. Naw, fair’s fair; you get my share.”

And she settled back into her seat with the pleasant, warm weight of the box and its contents on her lap, Mem’sab casting an amused eye on her from time to time. Neville shifted himself occasionally, and his nails would scrape on the cardboard. He didn’t like being confined, but the darkness was making him sleepy, so he was dozing when the box was on her lap and not being carried.

There were no difficulties with the rest of the journey back to the school; no one saw anything out of the ordinary in a child with a shopworn hatbox, and Neville was no heavier than a couple of schoolbooks.

They walked the last few blocks to the school; the neighbors were used to seeing the children come and go, and there were smiles and nods as the now-thoroughly-weary group trudged their way to the old gates, which were unlocked by Mem’sab to let them all back inside.

True to her word, Sarah had gotten the sweets, and when the others filed in through the front door, she was waiting in the entrance hall, with Grey on her shoulder as usual, to give out their shares as soon as they came in. Nan handed hers over to Tommy without a murmur or a second glance, although she was inordinately fond of sweets—Sarah looked startled, then speculative, as she spotted Nan’s hatbox.

“Sarah, you just gotter see—” Nan began, when Mem’sab interrupted.

“I believe that we need to make a very careful introduction, Nan,” she said, steering Nan deftly down the hall instead of up the stairs. “Sarah, would you and Grey come with us as well? I believe that Nan has found a friend very like Grey for herself—but we are going to have to make sure that they understand that they must at least tolerate one another.”

There was a room on the first floor used for rough-housing on bad days; it had probably been a ballroom when the mansion was in a better neighborhood. Now, other than some ingenious draperies made out of dust sheets, it didn’t have a great deal in it but chests holding battered toys and some chairs pushed up against the walls. For heat, there was an iron stove fitted into the fireplace, this being deemed safer than an open fire. This was where Mem’sab brought them, and sat Sarah and Grey down on the worn wooden floor, with Nan and her hatbox (which was beginning to move as a restless raven stirred inside it) across from her.

“All right, Nan, now you can let him out,” Mem’sab decreed.

Nan had to laugh as Neville popped up like a jack-in-the-box when she took off the lid, his feathers very much disarranged from confinement in the box. He shook himself—then spotted Grey.

Grey was already doing a remarkable imitation of a pinecone, with every feather sticking out, and growling under her breath. Neville roused his own feathers angrily, then looked sharply at Nan.

“No,” she said, in answer to the unspoken question. “You ain’t sharin’ me. Grey is Sarah’s. But you gotter get along, ‘cause Sarah’s the best friend I got, an my friend’s gotter be friends with her friend.”

“You hear that?” Sarah added to Grey, catching the parrot’s beak gently between thumb and forefinger, and turning the parrot’s head to face her. “This is Nan’s special bird friend. He’s going to share our room. But he’ll have his own food and toys and perches, so you aren’t going to lose anything, you see? And you have to be friends, because Nan and I are.”

Both birds clearly thought this over, and it was Grey who graciously made the first move. “Want down,” she said, smoothing her feathers down as Sarah took her off her shoulder and put her down on the floor.

Neville sprang out of his hatbox, and landed within a foot of Grey. And now it was his turn to make a gesture—which he did, with surprising graciousness.

“Ork,” he croaked, then bent his head and offered the nape of his neck to Grey.

Now, in Grey’s case, that gesture could be a ruse, for Nan had known her to offer her neck—supposedly to be scratched—only to whip her head around and bite an offending finger hard. But Neville couldn’t move his head that fast; his beak was far too ponderous. Furthermore, he was offering the very vulnerable back of his head to a stabbing beak, which was what another raven would have, not a biting beak. Would Grey realize what a grand gesture this was?

Evidently, she did. With great delicacy, she stretched out and preened three or four of Neville’s feathers, as collective breaths were released in sighs of relief.

Truce had been declared.

***

Alliance soon followed. In fact, within a week, the birds were sharing perches (except at bedtime, when each perched on the headboard of their respective girl). It probably helped that Grey was not in the least interested in Neville’s raw meat, and Neville was openly dismissive of Grey’s cooked rice and vegetables. When there is no competition for food and affection, alliance becomes a little easier.

Within a remarkably short time, the birds were friends—as unlikely a pair as the street brat and the missionary’s child. Neville had learned that Grey’s curved beak and powerful bite could open an amazing number of things he might want to investigate, and it was clear that no garden snail was going to be safe, come the spring. Grey had discovered that a straight, pointed beak with all the hammerlike force of a raven’s neck muscles behind it could break a hole into a flat surface where her beak couldn’t get a purchase. Shortly afterward, there had ensued a long discussion between Mem’sab and the birds to which neither Nan nor an anxious Sarah were party, concerning a couple of parcels and the inadvisability of birds breaking into unguarded boxes or brightly-wrapped presents…

After the incident with the faux medium and the spirit of the child of one of Mem’sab’s school friends, rumors concerning the unusual abilities Sarah and Nan possessed began to make the rounds of the more Esoteric circles of London. Most knew better than to approach Mem’sab about using her pupils in any way—those who did were generally escorted to the door by one of Sahib’s two formidable school guards, one a Gurkha, the other a Sikh. A few, a very few, of Sahib or Mem’sab’s trusted friends actually met the girls—and occasionally Nan or Sarah were asked to help in some occult difficulty. Nan was called on more often than Sarah, although, had Mem’sab permitted it, Sarah would have been asked to exercise her talent as a genuine medium four times as often as Nan used her abilities.

One day in October, after Mem’sab had turned away yet another importunate friend and her friend, a thin and enthusiastic spinster wearing a rather eccentric turban with a huge ostrich plume ornament on the front, and a great many colored shawls draped all over her in every possible fashion, Nan intercepted her mentor.

“Mem’sab, why is it you keep sendin’ those ladies away?” she asked curiously. “There ain’t—isn’t—no harm in ‘em—least, not that one, anyway. A bit silly,” she added judiciously, “but no harm.”

The wonderful thing about Mem’sab was that when you acted like a child, she treated you like a child—but when you were trying to act like an adult, she treated you as one. Mem’sab regarded her thoughtfully, and answered with great deliberation. “I have some very strong ideas about what children like Sarah—or you—should and should not be asked to do. One of them is that you are not to be trotted out at regular intervals like a music-hall act and required to perform. Another is that until you two are old enough to decide just how public you wish to be, it is my duty to keep you as private as possible. And lastly—” her mouth turned down as if she tasted something very sour. “Tell me something, Nan—do you think that there are nothing but hundreds of ghosts out there, queuing up to every medium, simply burning to tell their relatives how lovely things are on the Other Side?”

Nan thought about that for a moment. “Well,” she said, after giving the question full consideration, “No. If there was, I don’t‘s’p-pose Sarah’d hev a moment of peace. They’d be at her day an’ night, leave alone them as is still alive.”

Mem’sab laughed. “Exactly so. Given that, can you think of any reason why I should encourage Sarah to sit about in a room so thick with incense that it is bound to make her ill when nothing is going to come of it but a headache and hours lost that she could have been using to study, or just to enjoy herself?”

“An’ a gaggle of silly old women fussing at ’er.” Nan snorted. “I see, Mem’sab.”

“And some of the things that you and Sarah are asked to do, I believe are too dangerous,” Mem’sab continued, with just a trace of frown. “And why, if grown men have failed at them, anyone should think I would risk a pair of children—”

She shook herself, and smiled ruefully down at Nan. “Adults can be very foolish—and very selfish.”

Nan just snorted. As if she didn’t know that! Hadn’t her own mother sold her to a pair of brothel keepers? And Neville, perched on her shoulder, made a similarly scornful noise.

“Has he managed any real words yet, Nan?” Mem’sab asked, her attention distracted. She crooked a finger in invitation, and Neville stretched out his head for a scratch under the chin.

“Not yet, Mem’sab—but I kind uv get ideers about what he wants’t‘ tell me.” Nan knew that Mem’sab would know exactly what she was talking about, and she was not disappointed.

“They say that splitting a crow or raven’s tongue gives them clear speech, but I am against anything that would cause Neville pain for so foolish a reason,” Mem’sab said. “And it is excellent exercise for you to understand what is in his mind without words.”

“Quork,” said Neville, fairly radiating satisfaction.

***

After that, Nan put her full attention on the task of “understanding what was in Neville’s mind without words.” It proved to be a slippery eel to catch. Sometimes it all seemed as clear as the thoughts in her own mind, and sometimes he was as opaque to her as a brick.

“I dunno how you do it,” she told Sarah one day, when both she and Neville were frustrated by her inability to understand what he wanted. He’d been reduced to flapping heavily across the room and actually pecking at the book he wanted her to read, or rather, to open so that he could look at the pictures. She’d have gone to Mem’sab with her problem, but their mentor was out on errands of her own that day and was not expected back until very late.

Grey cocked her head to one side, and made a little hissing sound that Nan had come to recognize as her “sigh.” She regarded Nan first with one grey-yellow eye, then with the other. It was obvious that she was working up to saying something, and Nan waited, hoping it would be helpful.

“Ree,” Grey said at last. “Lax.”

“She means that you’re trying too hard, both of you,” Sarah added thoughtfully. “That’s why Grey and I always know what the other’s thinking—we don’t try, we don’t even think about it really, we just do. And that’s because we’ve been together for so long that it’s like—like knowing where your own hand is, you see? We don’t have to think about it, we don’t even have to try.”

Nan and Neville turned their heads to meet each other’s eyes. Neville’s eyes were like a pair of shiny jet beads, glittering and knowing. “It’s—hard,” Nan said slowly.

Sarah nodded; Grey’s head bobbed. “I don’t know, Nan. I guess it’s just something you have to figure out for yourself.”

Nan groaned, but she knew that Sarah was right. Neville sighed, sounding so exactly like an exasperated person that both of them laughed.

It wasn’t as if they didn’t have plenty of other things to occupy their time—ordinary lessons, for one thing. Nan had a great deal of catching up to do even to match Sarah. They bent their heads over their books, Nan with grim determination to master the sums that tormented her so. It wasn’t the simple addition and subtraction problems that had her baffled, it was what Miss Bracey called “logic problems,” little stories in which trains moved toward each other, boys did incomprehensible transactions with each other involving trades of chestnuts and marbles and promised apple tarts, and girls stitched miles of apron hems. Her comprehension was often sidelined by the fact that all these activities seemed more than a little daft. Sarah finished her own work, but bravely kept her company until teatime. By that point, Nan knew she was going to be later than that in finishing.

“Go get yer tea, lovey,” she told the younger child. “I’ll be along in a bit.”

So Sarah left, and she soldiered on past teatime, and finished her pages just when it was beginning to get dark.

She happened to be going downstairs to the kitchen, in search of that tea that she had missed, when she heard the knock at the front door.

At this hour, every single one of the servants was busy, so she answered it herself. It might be something important, or perhaps someone with a message or a parcel.

Somewhat to her surprise, it was a London cabby, who touched his hat to her. “ ‘Scuze me, miss, but is this the Harton School?” he asked.

Nan nodded, getting over her surprise quickly. It must be a message then, either from Mem’sab or Sahib Harton. They sometimes used cabbies as messengers, particularly when they wanted someone from the school brought to them. Usually, it was Sahib wanting Agansing, Selim, or Karamjit. But sometimes it was Nan and Sarah who were wanted.

“Then Oi’ve got a message, an Oi’ve come’t‘fetch a Miss Nan an’ a Miss Sarah.“ He cleared his throat, ostentatiously, and carried on as if he was reciting something he had memorized. “Missus Harton sez to bring the gurrels to ‘er, for she’s got need of ‘em. That’s me—I’m‘t’bring ‘em up’t‘ Number Ten, Berkeley Square.”

Nan nodded, for this was not, by any means, the first time that Mem’sab had sent for them. Although she was loath to make use of their talents, there were times when she had felt the need to—for instance, when they had exposed the woman who had been preying on one of Mem’sab’s old school friends. London cabs were a safe way for the girls to join her; no one thought anything of putting a child in a cab alone, for a tough London cabby was as safe a protector as a mastiff for such a journey.

Nan, however, had a routine on these cases that she never varied. “Come in,” she said imperiously to the cabby. “You sits there. Oi’ll get the gels.”

She did not—yet—reveal that she was one of the “gels.”

The cabby was not at all reluctant to take a seat in the relative warmth of the hall while Nan scampered off.

Without thinking about it—she suddenly knew exactly where Sarah and Grey and Neville were; she knew, because Neville was in the kitchen with the other two, and the moment she needed them, she’d felt the information, like a memory, but different.

Stunned, she stopped where she was for a moment. Without thinking about it—So that was what Grey had meant!

But if Mem’sab needed them, there was no time to stand about contemplating this epiphany; she needed to intercept Karamjit on his rounds.

He would be inspecting the cellar about now, making certain that no one had left things open that should have been shut. As long as the weather wasn’t too cold, Mem’sab liked to keep the cellar aired out during the day. After all, it wasn’t as if there was fine wine in the old wine cellar anymore that needed cool and damp. Karamjit, however, viewed this breech in the security of the walls with utmost suspicion, and faithfully made certain that all possible access into the house was buttoned up by dark.

So down into the cellar Nan went, completely fearless about the possibility of encountering rats or spiders. After all, where she had lived, rats, spiders, and other vermin were abundant. And there she found Karamjit, lantern in hand, examining the coal door. Not an easy task, since there was a pile of seacoal between him and the door in the ceiling that allowed access to the cellar.

“Karamjit, Mem’sab’s sent a cab’t’fetch me’n Sarah,” she said. “Nummer Ten, Berkeley Square.”

Berkeley Square was a perfectly respectable address, and Karamjit nodded his dark head in simple acknowledgment as he repeated it. “I shall tell Sahib when he returns from his warehouse,” Karamjit told her, turning his attention back to the cellar door.

He would; Karamjit never forgot anything. Selim might, if he was distracted or concentrating on something else, but Karamjit, never. Satisfied, Nan ran back up the stairs to collect Sarah, Grey, and Neville—and just for good measure, inform the two cooks of their errand. In Nan’s mind, it never hurt to make sure more than one person knew what was going on.

“Why do you always do that?” Sarah asked, when they were both settled in the closed cab, with Grey tucked under Sarah’s coat and Neville in his hatbox.

“Do what?” Nan asked, in surprise.

“Tell everyone where we’re going,” Sarah replied, with just a touch of exasperation. “It sounds like you’re boasting that Mem’sab wants us, and we’re getting to do things nobody else in the school gets to.”

“It does?” Nan was even more surprised; that aspect simply hadn’t occurred to her. “Well, that ain’t what I mean, and I ain’t goin’ ter stop, ‘cause summun oughter know where we’re goin’ ’sides us. What if Mem’sab got hurt or somethin’ else happened to ’er? Wouldn’ even hev’t’be anything about spooks or whatnot—just summun decidin’ ‘t’cosh ‘er on account uv she’s alone an’ they figger on robbin’ ’er. What’re we supposed ter do if that ‘appens? ‘Oo’s gonna lissen’t‘couple uv little girls, eh? ’Ow long’ud it take us’t‘find a perleeceman? So long’s summat else knows where we’ve gone, if there’s trouble, Sahib’ll come lookin’ fer us. But ‘e can’t if ’e don’t know where we are, see?”

“Oh.” Sarah looked less annoyed. “I’m sorry, I thought you were just—showing off.”

Nan shook her head. “Nah. I show off plenty as ‘tis,” she added cheerfully, “But—well, I figger around Mem’sab, there’s plenty uv things’t’go wrong, an’ why make it worse by bein’ stupid an’ not tellin’ where we’re goin’?”

“Clever bird,” Grey said, voice muffled by Sarah’s coat.

“Quork,” Neville agreed from within his box.

Sarah laughed. “I think they agree with you!” she admitted, and changed the subject. “I wonder why Mem’sab sent for us.”

“Dunno. Cabby didn’t say,” Nan admitted. “I don’ think ’e knows. All I know’s that Berkeley Square’s a respect’ble neighborhood, so it might be one of ‘er fancy friends again. Not,” she added philosophically, “that ye cain’t get coshed at a respect’ble place as easy as anywhere’s else. Plenty uv light-fingered lads as works Ascot, fer instance.”