The Wizard of London

Time for him to get a dose of what others felt like when he casually leaned his power, of rank, of money, of magic, on them to force them to his will. No one had ever rejected him, or made him feel inferior. It was a lesson it would do him good to learn.

And still, here in the place where she was a guest, he had done his best to make it clear to her how very much less a person she was than he—

She wanted, at that moment, to be able to actually call lightning out of the sky to strike him. Not lethally, but—

“Mem’sab?”

The small voice at the door to the parlor made her pause in her pacing. She turned.

It was little Sarah, looking up at her with a worried expression, bird on her shoulder. She wondered if Sarah had sensed her inner turmoil. If so, she owed it to the child to calm herself.

“Sarah,” she said, with false calm. “If this is something trivial, I am rather preoccupied and I would hope we can deal with whatever it is later—”

Sarah looked up at her solemnly, her expression as sober as a judge.

“Mem’sab—that man that was here?” Sarah paused, and Isabelle waited for the child to tell her that he shouldn’t come around here again. It was what she was expecting, when Sarah continued, “We need to help him.”

Help him—help him? After endangering these children? After ignoring the corruption in his own circle? After coming here to lord it over me—to offer me crumbs from his table in exchange for the grace of his temporary attention—

She allowed none of this to show, and kept her psychical walls up to keep from disturbing the little girl more than she already was. “Sarah, dear, I am afraid that in this case, you really know nothing of the situation,” she said carefully. She reminded herself that she was not angry at this child, she was angry, rightfully, at David. She should not unload her anger at David onto Sarah, who had done nothing to deserve it.

Two sets of eyes, the round yellow ones of the bird, and the round brown ones of the child, looked up at her solemnly.

“He is unhappy,” Sarah said simply. “And you are unhappy, too. You’re angry and upset and so is he. And you’re so unhappy you feel dangerous. It’s the kind of unhappiness that makes bad things happen.”

Isabelle had been about to send the child off to play, when something about that last sentence chilled her anger and made her blood run cold. The words felt like a prediction. This was not good…

“Sarah,” she said instead. “Please, come sit with me.”

She turned and took a seat on a spindly-legged divan and patted the hard seat beside her. Sarah did not hesitate a moment to carefully climb up next to her.

“Now,” Isabelle said, “would you tell me what you mean by that?”

Sarah regarded her gravely, and Isabelle felt another emotion, but this time the opposite of the chilling effect of the child’s words. Little Sarah had a wise old soul in her; Isabelle had learned to recognize such people in India. Normally, such old souls were content to enjoy their childhoods and not “wake up” until they reached a stage where it was appropriate for them to be active again. Nan, too, had an old soul, but it was clearly the soul of a warrior, not a wise man.

Sarah, however, had a spirit within her that was quite remarkable. It peeked out through those eyes every now and again, leaving whoever it regarded usually feeling warm and protected. And that wise old soul wanted to help Isabelle.

With a sigh, she knew she was going to have to set her anger to one side. Sarah nodded a little as Isabelle settled her hands in the correct position in her lap, and went into a light meditative trance. She visualized her anger as a fire raging out of control, and slowly confined it to its proper place on the hearth again, because even negative emotions like anger had positive uses. It wasn’t easy, but she’d had good teachers in such discipline.

You must recognize that these things are within you and learn to use them, said the voice in her memory. Otherwise they will use you.

Yes, teacher, she said to the memory, and the fires crept back to their place.

She opened her eyes and looked down at Sarah, who was patiently waiting, and looked ready to wait forever.

“He’s very unhappy,” Sarah repeated. “I think he must have made some bad mistakes a long time ago. He thought he was being clever, but he was choosing a bad path. Now he’s all twisted up and—cold. And that’s bad, too. It’s going to make trouble if he keeps on as he is.”

Bad mistakes… The words took her aback for a moment. In the long view, which she was, for the moment, forcing herself to take, how important was a failed romance? It only really mattered to her, didn’t it? How could David rejecting her possibly lead to something Sarah would call a “bad mistake”?

“He does have a great deal of influence,” she said, thinking aloud. “What do you mean by saying he is cold?”

I know what I mean, but what is Sarah seeing?

“He doesn’t feel anything anymore,” Sarah said, her little face taking on an expression of deep sadness. “Or what he does feel he steps on right away. He thinks this is being clever, but it’s like bricking up your windows so nobody can see inside your house. Then you can’t see outside or inside yourself; you’re all alone in the dark, and you just kind of wither. And when people don’t feel anything anymore, they can do bad things without really thinking about it because it doesn’t matter to them.”

Isabelle felt shocked. Out of the mouths of babes! But then, Sarah was no ordinary child, “That’s quite true,” she acknowledged. “But if he doesn’t feel anything anymore, just what exactly can you and I do? It would seem that he is so far down his chosen path that our influence is negligible. He is not inclined to listen to me, and he definitely will not listen to you.”

Sarah frowned. “Well,” she replied. “I don’t know for certain if he really doesn’t feel anything for true, or if it’s only that he tries not to feel anything. But I think something bad is going to happen to him if we can’t wake him up again. And when that something bad happens to him, he’ll do a lot of bad around other people.”

Then the child shook her head. “It’s all hard to explain, and it’s not like I know something is going to happen, it’s just that I feel it is. I don’t have a picture or anything in my head, and Grey just feels the same.”

Too young to see the future, because she is too young to cope with needing to see it, and too young to cope with knowing what is to come. It would have been very useful if she and Nan had been in their late teens and fully into whatever powers and abilities they were going to get.

Well, perhaps Sarah could evoke more if Isabelle gave her more information.

Isabelle sighed. “He came here to tell me that he had encountered Robin. He wanted some information; I suspect he was not aware of Robin’s true nature and thought that he could simply coerce or confine Robin if—”

“If he thought Robin was in the way,” Sarah finished, with a decided nod. “Like Nan and me were in the way the other day when he came riding a horse through the hedge, and almost ran us down.”

Isabelle felt another surge of anger, but this one was clean, simple anger at the careless man who would pay no attention to where he was going—not that she thought the children had been in any danger from David. First of all, few horses that were not actually vicious or panicked were likely to trample people. Horses hated soft things underfoot, and given the choice, would shy rather than run something down.

Nevertheless—it was careless, it was heedless, and it was certainly an example of the sort of arrogance that was making her so angry with him.

He certainly had not come to anyone here at Highleigh to report the incident, which was the least he should have done. Any responsible adult would have done so. A truly responsible adult would have made certain the girls were well, then brought them to the manor himself.

No, she was vexed, very vexed with him. That was twice he had endangered the lives of two little girls with no demonstration that he considered them to be as important as a pair of stray kittens.

“Obviously, since you are not sporting hoofprints, he didn’t harm you,” she said with calm she did not feel. “I trust he apologized.”

That would have been the least that any decent man would have done.

“No. He shouted at us for being there, and Nan shouted back at him and he got angry. Nan said she thought he had no right being there, which got him more angry. So he just rode around the meadow, then went back.” Sarah shook her head. “And that’s why Nan’s angry with him,” she added. “He didn’t treat us very well, but I know why. He was in the wrong, but he feels like he has to be right all the time. The more wrong he is, the more he acts badly in order to prove that he is right. So since he feels that way, he can hurt people quite easily.” She looked thoughtful a moment. “I suppose,” she said, in tones that suggested she was trying to find David’s point of view, “if we had been crying and acting scared or hurt, he would have acted differently. But since Nan was being rude, he must have supposed that we were all right and he was free to be angry with us.”

Isabelle clenched her jaw, then forced it to relax. And she thought about what her friend Bea had said about this circle of Elemental Mages David was putting together, and how he had political ambitions. And then her blood ran cold.

The one thing that had kept the practitioners of the arcane from meddling as much as they could if they chose, was that they had kept themselves out of “secular” life, so to speak. There was little or no interference on their part with the lives of those who were not so gifted, except, perhaps, the occasional rescue.

And thus far, there had been no one who was really willing to take that step into the lives of those who were not Elemental Mages. There was an unspoken accord between the Mages and the Gifted and Talented that they would not interfere with one another either.

But combine a powerful Elemental Master, the circle he had founded, political ambitions, and the absolute certainty in that Master’s mind that he was right and what he wanted was what was best for all—

Add to that the unwillingness on the part of that Master to admit he could ever be wrong—

It would start small, of course. Such things always began small. First political contacts, and then, to a chosen man or two in very high places, the proof that magic existed and it could be used to produce real effects. Pointing out that using magic for the good of the Empire was the only patriotic way to proceed.

Then it would begin, with the Elemental Mages cautiously being given political and governmental positions and power. Perhaps there would be a special Ministry in charge of the Arcane. And at first, its work would be entirely benign. Renegade Magicians would be tracked down, rounded up, and possibly laws put through so that they could be made accountable for what they did. And in David’s circle there would be a sort of policing force ready-made. They would all have official government sanction, and a certain amount of power. Power could be very addictive.

But then—how long would it be before all Magicians were asked to register with this Ministry? How long until any Magician that had elected not to register was deemed a “renegade” and registration was no longer voluntary? How long before it wasn’t just Magicians, but all the Gifted and Talented as well?

And then, how long before the Magicians extended their hands over the ordinary people who had neither Gift nor Talent?

Then what?

There were many possibilities, and all of them were chilling.

All of this ran through her mind while the child sat there, solemn-eyed, watching her.

“Things could be very bad if his heart stays frozen, couldn’t they?” Sarah asked quietly. “Your face went all still, Mem’sab. It only does that when you’re thinking that things could be bad.”

Isabelle sighed. “Yes, Sarah. Things could be very bad. The trouble is, I don’t know how to put them right.”

Sarah’s eyes never left hers. “Mummy says that the way to start putting things right is always to start with forgiveness.”

Isabelle felt as if someone had struck her a blow. Forgiveness! It was the one thing she did not want to give him! And yet—

“Mummy says not forgiving someone hurts you worse than it hurts him,” the child persisted. “Even if he doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. She says not forgiving someone is like not pulling a thorn out of your foot just because you weren’t the one that put it there.”

Isabelle regarded the child steadily, and the old soul looked back at her out of Sarah’s eyes. Somehow she doubted that Sarah’s “Mummy” had said anything of the sort. No, this was all coming from a source that Isabelle would be wise to heed.

“So, we start with forgiveness,” she said, struggling with her own rebellious heart. “But where do we go from there?”

Sarah looked uncertain. “Maybe—Robin?”

Isabelle blinked. That was not a bad notion. The worst that would happen would be that he would tell them it was none of his business.

And even if he himself declined to help them, he might be willing to give them some idea of which way to go.

Yes, it was a very interesting idea indeed.

How to approach this, however. Well, the best thing might be to follow the advice of Lewis Carroll. “Begin at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, then stop.”

And the beginning was forgiveness.

“You can go, Sarah,” she heard herself saying. Obediently, the child nodded, and hopped down off the settle to walk quietly out of the parlor, leaving Isabelle alone.

I don’t want to forgive him—

The mere idea made her angry, so angry she could feel a headache coming on.

Coming on?

She put her hands to her head and gasped as a lance of pain transfixed her, stabbing into her temple.

And it was that pain that finally awoke her to the reality of what she was doing to herself.

The child was right. The rancor she held for David Alderscroft was like a thorn in the foot that she refused to remove because she had not put it there. Nevertheless, it was stabbing deeper with every step she took. How long before it began to fester?

Judging by her strong reaction, not long at all.

“Bother,” she said aloud. “I am not very good at this sort of thing—”

How to forgive when you really didn’t want to?

Convince yourself that you do, of course.

With a sigh, she resigned herself to the inevitable. She went upstairs to the bedroom she had been given, and got a thick pile of foolscap out of the desk. Pen in hand, she sat down to make a list.

She was, by nature, a very methodical person. It was in her nature to approach a problem by writing a list.

She divided the paper in half with a line down the middle. On the one side she would write out all of her grievances; on the other, write the reasons why she should give the grudge up.

One: he broke my heart.

Broke it? Not really. Oh, it had felt like a broken heart at the time, and certainly she had been horribly unhappy, but with the perspective of time it was not—quite—a broken heart. She wrote that down on the other side of the line, then something else occurred to her.

If he had not cast her off, she would never have gone to India and never met Frederick.

So Frederick, she wrote on the right-hand side of the page.

So if he had not broken her heart—He hurt my pride.

True enough, very true. And hardly the reason to carry a grudge. Pride got hurt all the time, it always went before a fall.

So true, she wrote on the other side, and added and no harm done.

He drove my friends away.

That was a lie. She had run away, and as she had discovered, her true friends had not been driven away, and had, in fact, only been waiting for her to approach them again.

So false she wrote on the right-hand side.

He’s arrogant.

True, but if she began to hate everyone who was arrogant, she would soon be spending all her time seething in a self-made mass of anger, too tied up in knots to actually get anything accomplished.

He thinks no one is right except himself.

Also true, but—the same argument held.

Down the lists on both sides she went, until she had three full pages of reasons why she should not forgive him—and six pages of reasons why continuing to be angry at him was foolish.

She stared at her lists and began to chuckle.

She never could hold a grudge in the face of logic. The logic here was overwhelming, and with a mocking nod of self-deprecation, she acknowledged that.

She put down the pen and stared out the window at the neatly ordered gardens. “I forgive you, David Alderscroft,” she said aloud. “I forgive you for being an arrogant ass. I forgive you for being cruel to the poor fool I was. Because if you had not been cruel, I would not have Frederick, and for that blessing I can forgive you just about anything.”

She felt some of her rancor ease. Not all, by no means, not all—but she would repeat this vow of forgiveness as often during the day as she remembered to do so, and eventually—probably sooner rather than later—she would feel it unreservedly.

And in a way, it would be a better revenge than continuing to hate him, because the last hold on her he had would be gone.

She laughed, put the foolscap into a drawer, and went down to the kitchens. She needed to find out how long the house party he was attending would last. And the servants knew everything. This might not be a matter of any urgency, but she really dared not take that chance.

***

Cordelia nibbled the end of her pen as she considered which of her social contacts would best be able to get her invited to the house party David was attending. Under most circumstances this would have been the very last thing she cared to do, but after due consideration, she had realized something quite vital.

It had occurred to her somewhat belatedly that it would be better, far better, if the transfer of souls took place somewhere other than in her own home. If it was to occur during something like this house party, for instance, there would be no breath of scandal attached. But to have David here in her London town house overnight—people would talk. There was no reason for him to stay overnight. Even if he drank too much, which of course he never did, he would not be put to bed here. In a manor or a big country estate, such things were done, because of the distances, but in London? No. If he were to be sick enough to be put up in the home of a single woman, there had better be a doctor called and two nurses in attendance. A gentleman capable of going up a set of stairs to a room would insist on going home in his carriage.

She wanted no taint attached to David, since shortly she would be David.

But a country house party? Ideal. Any stigma would attach to the owner of the house, the host of the party. The usual difficulties of explanation involved when a lady was found wandering late at night near the room of someone who was not her husband would not come into play. Her magic would prevent anyone from seeing her going to and from David’s room. Once she was in David’s body, she could carry the lifeless corpse of Cordelia back to her own room to be found in the morning. It seemed like a flawless plan.

So her first step; find out how much longer the party was to continue, and her second; somehow contrive to get invited to it.

Both were trivially easy for someone with Cordelia’s magic and social experience. To ascertain the first, she sent to David’s housekeeper to find out when he was expected back. An unexceptional, perfectly ordinary question and one she had asked the housekeeper many times before. One’s housekeeper was always the first to be informed of a prospective absence or return, often before one’s spouse knew. Of course, she did not ask directly; her secretary took that task. The answer came within the hour: in about a week.

He had already been there a week at this point. It was an unusually long time for a house party, but this one was hosting a number of quite important politicians, but not all at once, since many of them were not on speaking terms with each other. Such were the ways of politics; one’s deadliest foes were generally in one’s own party. Still, at the moment David was both an unknown and someone to be courted, and David was staying on as an extended guest to meet all of them.

Now, since she did not know the host directly, she had to contrive an indirect means of getting an invitation. But she was the mistress of the art of the indirect by now, since no mere female ever got anything done directly. No, they had to sneak and cajole and bargain. Any direct approach was unthinkable. A man could pay a call on a successful host at his club and say “Look, old man, I need to be invited to your soirée this weekend.” No one would question such a request. But a woman, particularly an unmarried woman—

Tongues would wag and people would speculate about lovers.

Surely nothing other than a lover could prompt such behavior out of a woman.

So she would have to go about this carefully, though there was nothing particularly complicated about what she needed to do, only tedious.

An hour in her workroom, scrying in her ice mirror, got her the names of those to be invited for the next week. She put on her walking suit, hat and gloves, her engraved card case, called for her carriage, and sallied forth to make calls with the determination of a Wellington planning a campaign. A set of morning calls for the least important, afternoon calls for the most, with tea reserved for the best target.

She loathed making calls. If there was a more useless waste of time she had yet to find it.

Normally this would not have involved the list of calls, but normally she would have had weeks or months for her little child ghosts to whisper in the ear of the intended victim and persuade said victim that she could not possibly go, but that dear Cordelia would provide the perfect substitute. The all-important matter of the guest list (or in this case, lists) were arranged very carefully at these parties. When guests were not accompanied by their respective spouses, an equal number of gentlemen and ladies must be arranged. When single ladies were required, they had to be above reproach in all ways. She certainly qualified on that score. No one had ever breathed a single word of scandal about her. She had never encouraged anything but the most restrained and polite of male attentions. Her pedigree was exceptional, her acquaintances wide and all of the best society, and she was, in public, neither too educated nor too ignorant. She made the ideal guest. She knew when to keep her mouth shut, when to amuse, and what topics were safe.

Your son and your husband were safe from her attentions. She could be relied upon to be seated next to a boring old man and appear fascinated, to play whatever game of cards you required a partner for, to shoot adequately if you wanted women along at a shoot, and to not complain if you didn’t. She could not sit a horse, but she could help amuse her fellow females when the hunters went out. She had no sense of humor, but that was scarcely obligatory in a mere female. She could play badminton, croquette, lawn tennis, and lawn bowls without complaint. She had no history of attempting to curry favor.

After careful weighing and measuring, which was the point of all that exercise going from town home to town home, she knew which of the rest of her “friends” was the likeliest provider of the invitation. She found her quarry, a plain and uninteresting cousin of the host, who was being invited merely to “make up” the rest of the party. She paid a call on the cousin who was a timid thing and not inclined to make a fuss—and really did not want to go to this party anyway.

When she was done, the cousin was feeling really very ill, and not inclined to go off to a strange house in the country, away from all her creature comforts. Though London might be warm in the summer, it at least had the benefit of containing all that was familiar, and a few close friends who were just as plain and uninteresting as the cousin herself. She could spend her week in her usual round of pursuits or go off to the country to be bored and unhappy, and probably looked down upon.

And here was a substitute, sighing wistfully and saying that she was tired of both London and her own Thames-side house, and longed for the tranquillity of “true” country life for a week or so.

Cordelia watched with satisfaction in her ice mirror how the cousin sat down that very afternoon to write regrets and a suggestion.

And Cordelia’s little ghosts stirred uneasily until she picked just one to do her bidding and whisper encouragement into the ear of the host as soon as he got that letter. They were not happy about being sent out now, not after the way in which Peggoty had been sent out and had not returned.

She considered sending the new one, and rejected the idea, picking instead a scraggly little boy who had been very reliable in the past. While not precisely fearless, he was certainly not as fearful as some of them.

With that particular task completed, she sat back in her crystal chair. There was no reason to leave the workroom just now, and every reason to stay. Not the least of which was that the temperature here was that of a brisk late-autumn day, with frost on the ground, and the temperature of her parlor, indeed, of the rest of the townhouse, was considerably higher.

Ah. Now you understand.

That voice again. She looked up from contemplating her hands and saw that the surface of the entire table was frozen over, creating a mirror an inch thick, in which she could only see a pair of enormous ice-blue eyes, blue as the light in the heart of a glacier. The eyes stared at her in amusement.

Now you understand. I wish to hold this place for myself and my kind. I wish to bring winter forever to this island of yours.

That actually startled her, because she had never guessed that at all.

“Why?” she asked it, as visions of a frozen London came and went in her extra mirror. The visions actually did not look particularly unpleasant, actually. The Thames was frozen solid and being used by a few hardy souls as a highway. Snow drifted up against most buildings as high as the second story, then froze hard, so that people had to either tunnel their way out or come and go through the windows.

There were remarkably few people about. Now that might have been because it was so difficult to get around in the Arctic landscape, but Cordelia didn’t think that was the case. No… not when so few chimneys were smoking… not when there was no sign that any one was coming or going at the Houses of Parliament.

It certainly looked as if London had been abandoned—

And then an image of Hyde Park, and someone driving through it in a sleigh, a sleigh drawn not by horses, but in the Finnish fashion, by reindeer. Clever that; horses were ill-suited for running on snow and ice. A closer look—it was David Alderscroft in the back, being driven by a servant muffled to the eyes in furs. But something told Cordelia that it was her living in that body, not the original owner.

Better and better.

When I hold this island through you, you will need no longer fear discovery. You can collect your own circle of Elemental Masters to serve us. You will be the King—or Queen, if you so choose to revert to a female body—in all but name. Eventually, as the years pass, you will become the monarch. Have we a bargain?

“There is always a price,” she said aloud. “What is it?”

Your heart will be mine.

She was startled for a moment. Surely the creature did not mean—

You will never again feel passion of any sort. That will be mine. No pleasure. No anger. No love, nor hate, nor grief, nor joy.

For a moment she was incredulous. This was all? “What,” she asked mockingly. “Are you not going to require my soul?”

It only laughed. Your heart will do.

“Done,” she said, without hesitation. “We will rule the boreal kingdom of Britain together.”

It laughed.

So let it be written

, it said, in the ancient words of sealing.

So let it be done

.

17

CORDELIA realized within an hour of her arrival that her original plan was not going to work. David had brought his valet with him, and the man slept in a room attached to David’s own. That was a complication she had not foreseen, although she had brought her own maid with her. She had intended to drug the girl to avoid an unnecessary expenditure of magic energies, which would be at a premium in the height of summer. There was no way that she would be able to also drug David’s man. And even if she could—

Her room lay in the other wing of the place. To return her dead body to her room, she—in David’s body—would have to carry a lifeless corpse from one end of the building to the other.

Not feasible.

As she smiled and occasionally murmured pleasantries over tea, her mind was abuzz with activity. There had to be a way to make this work!

David seemed rather surprised to see her when he joined the party for dinner, but a serene smile seemed to reassure him, and he nodded to her from his place nearer the head of the table than herself. She acknowledged the nod, then went back to her conversation with an elderly duke. It was surprisingly interesting, actually; the man had spent his active years as the ambassador to the Court of the King of Sweden, and she was able to ask him a great many questions about life in extremely frigid climes. He, in his turn seemed pleased and surprised that she had an interest in such things.

After dinner, some of the ladies of the party took a turn in the gardens, which had been illuminated for the purposes with Chinese lanterns and torches. She took the opportunity to view the grounds, which, she had been told, had been specially designed to be particularly attractive at night. There were many sorts of night-blooming plants here, and paths that were broad, with turf as smooth and soft as a carpet. There were tall hedges that divided the garden into a series of roofless rooms, and as she strolled with three other ladies, it began to dawn on her that she had found the perfect place for her plot.

She could slip out into the garden under the cover of the darkness. Then she could call him here, to some secluded spot. She could plant the suggestion in his mind via one of her little ghostly servants that he was too warm to sleep, and was coming out into the garden to have a solitary turn and perhaps a smoke. No one would ever see them meet. If anyone saw him or spoke to him, it was unlikely that anyone would connect David Alderscroft with the lifeless body of his mentor, who would be found the next day.

In fact, she would make it appear that she had gone out for a similar stroll, had sat down to rest, and simply—died.

The hardest part would be subduing him without drugs, for obviously she was not going to be able to slip any such thing into him in a strange household. She would have to call upon other powers.

There were spells to bring sleep, and while they were wildly expensive in terms of the power needed, it wasn’t as if she was going to require that power later. Or, if she did, her ally could probably supply it.

Unless…

She smiled. Of course.

Instead of relying on her ghosts, she could tell him simply that she had uncovered some magical threat to him out here, and had come to warn and aid him. Obviously, they could not meet within the walls of a stranger’s home for this; she would have him come to the garden and join her for spell-work. Once he had submitted to her as the mentor, she could do whatever she wanted with him.

Simple. As the best plans always were.

He would not even worry at first as the breath of the Ice Wurms wreathed him about. He was used to it, after all. And by the time he realized that this was not the usual cold spell-work, it would be too late. He had snubbed the normal Fire Elementals for so long that they would never come to his aid if he called them—and the Ice Elementals answered to her.

She smiled, and began to stroll the gardens looking in earnest for the most secluded spot. Not tonight, of course. But soon, soon.

There was nothing like seeing a plan finally come to fruition. And the fruit, when she plucked it, would be sweet indeed.

At last she found what she judged to be perfect. Far enough from the buildings that it might as well be invisible, with tall hedges on two sides, and a secluded bench. There were no lanterns or fairy lights in this part of the garden either, but the bench was overarched by a trellis of night-blooming jasmine, which made it just the spot for a lady to sit and enjoy the evening.

In fact, she tried it out for a moment, and was satisfied.

Do not be too satisfied.

The cold voice in her mind was accompanied by the bite of frost from a spot on the path just in front of her. There was a column of mist there, faintly glowing, and a suggestion of eyes at the top of it.

You are in enemy territory, and they will stop you if you are not prepared.

“What enemy?” she demanded sharply.

If you are wise, you will find a way to accomplish this on your own ground.

“Not in any timely fashion,” she replied, in tones as cold as the mist. “The longer I delay, the likelier it is that Alderscroft will manage to drift away from me. He grows independent, and this is making me uneasy. And there is no way to accomplish this thing either in his home or mine without scandal.”

If a column of mist could shrug, this thing did. Then you will need my help, the ice creature said. We will begin with your child ghosts. Summon them now.

She was about to protest that this was not a simple thing, when a chill of warning made her think better of it. She had thought that she was in control of this situation. The cold, collected voice in her mind and the power behind it gave her the first intimation she might have been mistaken.

It would frighten the children, making them useless for her purposes, but she didn’t think that was going to matter to the Ice Lord, as she was now calling him in her mind. “I cannot do this at this moment,” she said simply. “I must summon them by means of the things I have in my room.” She never traveled without a needle case, a roll of small felt pockets, each of which held a small, labeled sample of hair.

Fetch it and return, the voice commanded curtly. Time is of the essence.

The tenor of the voice raised the hair on the back of her neck, and she began to realize that she might have made a very profound error.

It was, however, too late to correct that error now. The best she could do would be to ride out the storm that she herself had set in motion.

That she would survive this storm was not an issue. She knew that she would. The creature needed her. But she needed now to be on the watch for ways in which she could turn it to her advantage.

Carefully avoiding the other ladies, she slipped silently into her room and retrieved what she needed. As she passed the billiard room, it was clear that the political discussion was still in full swing, by the haze of tobacco smoke and the rumble of male voices. And she felt anger at that, anger that the women were excluded without a single thought—

But this was not the time nor the place. She slipped back out into the dark gardens with their softly glowing, colored lanterns, and paused to listen to the female counterpart to the male conversation. High-pitched, artificially cadenced nonsense punctuated by the occasional polite titter. That made her angry, too. The amount that could be accomplished if these women would not allow themselves to be made into powerless ornaments—

Well, they were fools, and their men with them. Most of the earth’s population was as foolish and as useless, fit only to take orders and serve. Serve Cordelia, of course. The England that she ruled would be structured accordingly.

But for now, she must summon her ghosts and see what the creature did with them. She did not doubt that there was danger to her plans here, even if she could not see it. The creature had not failed her before, and it clearly had a strong incentive not only to tell the truth, but to keep her safeguarded.

She would not, however, make the mistake of expecting that condition to last.

***

The next morning, she was amused to overhear the gardeners bemoaning the “patch of blight” that had appeared overnight in a remote part of the garden. It was not blight, of course, but the direct result of the Ice Lord’s work with the child ghosts. The gardeners were scrambling to replace the patch of turf and the plants, to trim back the frost-killed branches of bushes. The children now stood as arcane sentries, guarding the house and grounds, not only from immaterial threat, but from anyone with any sort of power, Elemental or psychical. They might not be able to stop all intruders, but they could certainly delay and damage even the most powerful, and they would give a warning.

They were no longer vague little sketches of children either. The Ice Lord had transformed them utterly, into feral, fierce creatures exuding menace. It would take a brave person indeed to dare to go past them, and a powerful one to be willing to try taking them on. It wasn’t that they were strong individually—it was that they were now vicious as weasels, and would swarm anybody who tried to take one on.

After she had gone back to the manor, and engaged in some pointless gossip with the other ladies before retiring, she had made a point of enforcing slumber. Tonight was going to be difficult enough without fatigue. The day had dawned unseasonably cool and continued that way, which she considered either a good omen, or an evidence that the Ice Lord was already exerting his power.

She actually thought it vanishingly unlikely for it to be the latter. The Ice Lord had made it quite clear that the bulk of the action was to be in her hands. That he had interfered at all in the case of the ghosts was something he had done with great reluctance. There was someone or something out there that he considered to be a great hazard to them and to their enterprise.

So the unseasonably cool weather was just a coincidence, but one she could take advantage of. She rose and her maid dressed her while she thought long and hard about what her next step would be.

But the opportunity to speak privately with David came sooner than she had thought.

“We must talk,” he said under his breath, as he passed her on the stairs, she going down to breakfast, he returning from it.

“Now is as good a time as any,” she replied, “I am not so enamored of grilled tomatoes that I cannot take the time to speak with my pupil when he looks so distressed. Let us take a turn in the gardens.”

Here, of course, was where she overheard the lamentations of the gardeners, and smiled to herself.

“I am not sure where to begin,” he said at last. “I encountered a—a nature spirit here. It threatened me.”

“Uncommon but not unheard of,” she observed. “Clearly, though, this was no common spirit.”

“No,” he said grimly, and proceeded to describe his encounter in minute detail, while she grew more surprised by the moment. There was only one creature she could think of with that sort of power. And the fact that it had threatened to interfere now made her understand why the Ice Lord had taken direct action.

Her first thought was that the spirit—clearly one of the Greater Fey, those who had been, in their time, worshipped as gods—had somehow deduced her plan and the Ice Lord’s. If that was the case, a few puny wraiths were not going to stop him.

But then she realized that all of the threats had been aimed toward David, and the warning specifically pointed at this part of the country. There had been an implication that the spirit did not care what happened in London, so long as no Ice Magic was brought here.

So it didn’t know.

Just because a creature was very powerful, it did not follow that it was omniscient. And even if it had the capability to read the future, it did not follow that it would. The Greater Fey in particular had curious holes in their thinking. They tended to be “flighty.” They had difficulty in concentrating on any one thing for too long. No matter how important something was, there was always the possibility that once it was out of immediate sight, it would also be out of mind.

Chances were, the creature had already forgotten about David. And by the time it realized that they were working Ice Magic, it would be too late. Nor would it occur to the Fey that there could be more to it than just Cordelia’s plan.

But this fed directly into her plot.

“You were right to be concerned,” she said earnestly. “This is a dangerous creature, capricious and unpredictable. I must safeguard you from it.”

His lips thinned as he frowned. “Simply tell me what to do,” he replied, once again showing an annoying independence. “I can handle this myself, I should think.”

“Under normal circumstances, yes,” she replied. “But these safeguards are against the Greater Fey and must be placed externally. Even if I told you how to place them—which I will, of course—you would only be able to place them on someone else. The subject must be unconscious in order for the protections to be invoked, or the initial disorientation as one is suddenly able to see the Fey realms is far too painful.”

She congratulated herself gleefully at that stroke. Brilliant! Now she could do whatever she liked with him with absolute impunity. He would never even question what she was doing, because he already had had the experience of what happened when one first was able to see the creatures and energies of Elemental Magic. It was generally very disorienting and sometimes distressing. Children who were born into nonmagical families sometimes went mad, or believed they were doing so. He had no idea whether or not being able to see the Fey would be worse than that, although, in fact, the Fey realms did not exist, and the Fey were simply Masters of all the Elements.

“When can we do this?” he asked eagerly, as she regarded him with grave eyes.

“Tonight would not be too soon,” she said soberly. “And if you meet me here in the garden, I will find a secluded place where we can work undisturbed.”

***

Isabelle was just finishing her correspondence when the sound of a familiar footstep made her raise her head and swivel swiftly in her chair.

Just in time to have Frederick stoop over her and kiss her passionately, his arms including both her and the ladder-back of her chair, which was probably the only reason why he wasn’t crushing her into his chest. Not that she would have minded being crushed into his chest.

As always, she closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment when all she thought of, felt, knew, was him; the moment of being completely with him, in love, surrounded by love, engulfed by love. As always, it was better than it had been the last time. She had never been more sure of him, never been more sure that no matter how things changed, the two of them would see that they changed in a way that only brought them closer.

Being together, in that way that stole her breath and stopped her heart and held them both in timeless time.

The moment passed, as such moments always did, leaving behind echoes that created their own kind of song inside her. She felt him stand straight and opened her eyes, smiling.

He looked down at her, chuckling, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Once again, we scandalize the servants.”

She laughed. “I did not expect you until tomorrow!”

He grinned and shrugged. “Doomsday Dainwrite sent me off with a half holiday,” he replied, and his face took on the mournful expression of a bloodhound contemplating an empty food dish. “You need to go to your wife,” he said in sepulchral tones. “Terrible things are about to happen, and she will need you.”

Isabelle laughed at that, because the head of the firm, called “Doomsday” even by his own wife (who he predicted would leave him, drown, catch fire, be struck by lightning, or die of some plague virtually on a daily basis), had never, ever been right in his predictions of disaster and mayhem. The only times disaster had befallen the firm or some person in it, Doomsday had been completely silent on the subject and had been taken as much by surprise as anyone else.

“Well, it is not as if you have not earned a half holiday and more,” she replied, taking his hand in hers, and holding it against her cheek for a moment, then letting it go.

“And so have you. We are having tea on the terrace, away from the children, and then we are going for a walk on the grounds, you and I and no one else. And we are going to talk of nothing but commonplaces.” He bestowed a look on her that told her he was accepting no arguments. But then, she was not inclined to give him one.

By dinnertime all was back to normal, except that she felt as rejuvenated by the afternoon as if she had spent a week at the seaside. Her good humor spread among the children; for once there were no quarrels, no outbursts of temper, scarcely even a raised voice when there was contention over the last jam tart. That pirate of a raven, Neville, was on his best behavior, and Sarah’s parrot Grey did not even indulge herself in her own favorite bit of mischief of sorting through the bits in her cup and dropping what she didn’t care to eat on the floor.

The children went off to baths and bed with scarcely a moment of fuss. The youngest, now at the “escape from the bath and run through the halls naked, shrieking,” stage, for once did not indulge themselves. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

Until, as the oldest were settled into their beds, and Isabelle finished the rounds of “good night hugs,” she and Frederick stepped out onto the terrace—

—and the perfect day shattered.

One moment, they were holding hands, gazing at the stars and listening to the nightingales and the occasional call of an owl.

The next, they were clutching each other, half-deafened by the thunderclap, half-blinded by the lightning bolt that had delivered Robin Goodfellow to the foot of the terrace. A very angry Robin Goodfellow, who was nothing like the merry lad who had strutted his way across their improvised stage, playing himself with gusto and glee.

No, this was a tall and terrible creature, dressed head to toe in black, features inhumanly sharp and feral, with a face full of wrath and a sword in his hand.

“Woe be unto ye, son of Adam and daughter of Eve!” he cried, in a voice that echoed hollowly. “Your friend would not heed my warning, nor thine, Eve’s daughter, and he and his leman seek to unleash that which has no place here!”

And with another bolt of fire and explosion of thunder he was gone. But a cold, angry wind sprang up in his wake, sending storm clouds racing from east to west, plastering Isabelle’s gown to her legs.

“—what—” Frederick began, having to shout to make himself heard over the tempest.

But Isabelle had no doubts. “Alderscroft,” she shouted back. “David Alderscroft is—invoking something. I don’t know what, but—”

“But we need to put a stop to it,” Frederick shouted back, and as one they turned—

To find Nan and Sarah behind them, birds crouched down on their shoulders against the wind—and behind them, Agansing, Karamjit, and Selim.

The girls both wore expressions of fierce determination, and faintly glowing auras that looked incongruous on two youngsters dressed in schoolgirl pinafores.

Isabelle’s entire nature went into revolt at the sight of the children. Whatever needed confronting, they had no place there!

The three men were overlaid with their aspects of Warriors of the Light; Agansing in the garb of the Gurkha, enormous kukri at his belt, Karamjit in the tunic and turban and bearing the sword of the Sikh fighter, and Selim, also in turban and tunic, but with a spear to Karamjit’s curved sword.

“The avalanche has begun, Mem’sab,” Agansing said, eyes glinting. “It is too late to make a choice among what will fall. The children summoned us; they in their turn were summoned.”

Isabelle looked down at the girls, and her heart sank.

Agansing was right as often as “Doomsday” was wrong.

***

Nan was dead asleep one moment, and wide awake in the next.

She woke with the absolute certainty that something was horribly wrong. It was like the same feeling she’d had back in Berkeley Square, though different in that the threat was not directed at her or at Sarah. But a threat there was, a deadly one, and she had to meet it. She glanced up at Neville’s perch above her bed to see the raven looking down at her. She felt him in her head, calling something; felt that “something” waking up.

She leaped out of bed, to find Sarah also scrambling up.

“Wot is it?” she asked, feeling shaky and scared, but also, another part of her, galvanized and energized and—eager?

“Don’t know,” Sarah replied, pulling her dress over her head, “—but it’s—”

“Bad!” Grey cried, every feather sticking out so she looked like a gray pinecone. “Bad, bad, bad!”

That was all she had time for when the whole building shook beneath a cannonade of thunder.

And it was as if some uncanny telegraph connected them, for the same information flashed into both their minds.

“Robin!” cried Sarah, and “Puck!” shouted Nan at the same time, while Neville called alarm and Grey uttered a high-pitched, growling shriek.

“He’s angry!” Sarah added, her face white in the light of the candle Nan lit.

“He’s more’n that,” she said grimly. “He’s gone for killin’.”

Difficult as it was to imagine friendly, funny Robin Goodfellow prepared to kill something, she had no doubt in her mind at all that this was what he was prepared to do. And she also had no doubt in her mind that it was her job to prevent it, if she could.

And not just for the sake of the potential victim, either—

“Oh, Nan—” Sarah turned round eyes on her. “If he does that—”

Nan nodded. She knew, and knew that somehow the knowledge came through Neville, that if Robin Goodfellow, the Guardian of Logres, was to spill human blood, he would be banished from the Isle for all time. And if that happened—much, if not all, of the magic would go with him. She sensed a future stretching out from that moment, bleak and gray and joyless, and shuddered.

Around them, the other children, startled out of sleep by the thunder, were calling out, the babies crying. The ayahs were busy calming them, and no one paid any attention as Nan and Sarah, with Neville and Grey clutching their shoulders, slipped out and downstairs.

No one that is, until they ran right into Agansing, Karamjit, and Selim.

A wave of dismay swept through Nan as she winced back, sure that she and Sarah were going to be rounded up and sent back upstairs.

But instead, Agansing held up his hand and peered at them. That was when Nan realized there was a kind of ghostly, glowing “other” version of Agansing superimposed on the everyday fellow.

“We will need these fellow Warriors, my brothers,” he said solemnly. Karamjit peered at them and nodded. Selim sighed with resignation.

“I bow to your superior experience, brother,” Selim said reluctantly. “But I cannot like it. They are too young.”

“Younger than they have taken up arms, and they have unique weapons none of us can wield,” Agansing replied, and turned to Nan. “We go to join Sahib and Mem’sab. We are needed.”

“Yessir,” she said, feeling oddly as if she ought to be saluting.

All of them moved swiftly in a group to the doors leading onto the terrace, the two girls having to trot to keep up. A vicious wind howled around the windows, and in lightning flashes from outside it was obvious there was a storm raging—wind, but no rain as yet.

They emerged onto the terrace and into the icy teeth of the wind just as Sahib and Mem’sab turned.

“The avalanche has begun, Mem’sab,” Agansing said, eyes glinting. “It is too late to make a choice among what will fall. The children summoned us; they in their turn were summoned.”

We summoned them? For a moment Nan was aghast at the lie. But then—then something told her it was not a lie, but the truth. Somehow she and Sarah had summoned the men, or at least, Agansing. She didn’t know how, but—

That other presence within her smiled grimly; she felt it smile. Felt it tell her how it had summoned a fellow warrior with a mental trumpet call to arms.

The wind had begun to die, although eerily silent lightning still raged in the clouds above them. “It is David Alderscroft.”

Mem’sab was saying. “I don’t know what he is trying to do, but Robin Goodfellow warned him off doing so, and I tried to echo that warning. He—”

She left whatever she was going to say unsaid, and merely shrugged, the gesture more eloquent than words of what she thought about men who refused to listen to sound advice.

“Then we have to stop him,” Selim replied immediately. “By force, if need be.”

“There’s more nor that,” Nan piped up, urged by that silent presence within her that felt strangely like some kind of version of herself, only older, stronger, tougher. “If’n Robin hurts a mortal, som’thin’ bad ’appens. ‘E gets banished.”

Mem’sab’s eyes grew wide in the light from the lightning. “Oh—” she said, “Oh—that would be—”

“Not only the end to magic in the Isle, but it would open the door to a great many things that would make life very uncomfortable for the rest of us,” Sahib said grimly. “With the Guardian at the Gate gone—”

“Run,” Mem’sab said, suiting her actions to her words, as she picked up her skirts in both hands and fled down the terrace like a racing deer. “Run!”

They followed her; she ran like that girl in the Greek myth Nan had just read—Atalanta, that was her name, or something like. Nan snatched Neville down off her shoulder and cradled him in her arms as Sarah did the same with Grey; the birds would never have been able to stay on their shoulders while they ran. It was a good thing Mem’sab was wearing a white summer dress; they were able to follow her, flitting along the paths of the estate like a ghost, with Sahib like a shadow right beside her.

After a little, Nan realized where they were going; the door in the hedge that the arrogant man had ridden through.

And that was where and when it all came together. The man that had nearly ridden them down and the man that Mem’sab was angry at and the man who was about to unleash all hell on them with his foolishness were all the same man, and his name was David Alderscroft…

***

Sarah was glad that she and Nan were used to playing hard. She would never have believed that a grown-up could run like that. Mem’sab had hiked her skirts clean up over her knees, and her legs flashed through the grass in a way that should have scandalized anyone who saw it. It was just a good thing that Mem’sab never did wear the kind of dresses people called fashionable; in fact, Sarah was not entirely sure Mem’sab ever wore corsets either. She’d never have been able to run in anything fashionable.

Sahib put on a limping burst of speed and got to the door in the hedge ahead of Mem’sab and wrenched it open. They all caught up to her and piled through the door and—

And they all stopped dead in their tracks.

Sarah felt a tingle, and knew that this was her moment, at the same time as Grey said urgently, “Go! Now!”

She shoved through the adults, and saw what it was that had them paralyzed.

There was a crowd of—creatures—lined up on the bridle path, standing as a barrier between them and wherever it was that Mem’sab was leading them. They weren’t physical. They might have been the ghosts of children, once.

They weren’t now.

They glowed a leprous white, and where their eyes should have been there were only empty holes with a dull, red gleam to them, as if old, dying embers lay at the bottom. Their unnaturally long fingers were crooked into vicious claws, and in place of fingernails, they had talons. Their mouths were agape, showing feral, pointed teeth, and a craving for fear and pain emanated from them in a way calculated to make any sane person turn and flee.

Except—

Except they were the spirits of children still. And under all that, they were lost, alone, afraid.

And that was what Sarah must reach.

She put Grey on her shoulder, and felt the parrot spread her wings, as if giving her shelter.

“Sarah—” Sahib began, but Mem’sab shushed him.

“Give her backing, my brothers,” she said instead, and Sarah felt a steady, warm glow building behind her, a warmth of love and support, as Nan pushed through also and came to stand beside her. She cast a glance aside.

Nan—Nan was a warrior.

The transformation was complete. Instead of the little girl in the pinafore, what stood beside Sarah was a wild creature out of an old Celtic saga, a glowing golden fighting maiden in a short, red wool tunic with a short bronze sword and a slight smile on her face that was just the least little bit disturbing in its enthusiasm.

“I see what needs be done, sister,” Nan said, with no trace of her usual accent. “This is old magic, and I know it well. I shall sever the soul from the rider, so you can set the spirits free.”

And with no more warning than that, she leaped at the line of waiting creatures, then leaped in among them—

—and began to dance.

That was all that Sarah could call it. The creatures swarmed her, but seemed unable to touch her. With Neville making vicious stabs at weirdly transparent faces, battering them with his wings, Nan danced among them, feinting, leaping, whirling, never staying in any one place for long, until—

Strike!

The sword licked out, and there was a cry, and something with tattered wings and a terrible face separated from the seething mob, as the spirit of a small child, faded and frightened, dropped out of it.

“Come!” Sarah called, holding out her arms to it, casting her heart toward it. It fled to her, and as it neared, with a cry, Grey stood on her tiptoes and spread her wings wide, and a bright light surrounded them both. The child ghost flung itself at them, touched the light—and vanished.

The thing that had separated from it uttered a scream of mingled rage and fear, and popped like a soap bubble, just as Nan made another of those lightning strikes, and severed another “rider” from its victim.

Sarah lost track of what was going on; it took all of her strength and concentration to help Grey keep opening that “door” to the beyond and persuade the children to pass through it. But eventually, Grey settled down on her shoulder again, shook herself and uttered a soft, tired sigh. The light around them faded, and she blinked, to see that the golden warrior was gone, and there was only Nan standing on the path with Neville at her feet, looking disheveled and tired—but triumphant.

But there was no time for congratulations. There was a cold, ominous glow beyond the trees, and the clouds were swirling in a whirl over the spot, lightning firing almost continuously from them.

“Run!” Mem’sab called again. And they ran.

***

David Alderscroft was beginning to feel misgivings about all this.

It didn’t feel right. He couldn’t put his finger on why, it just didn’t. Maybe it was the strange storm that had sprung up. Wind, clouds, and more lightning than he had ever seen before, but no rain.

Maybe it was the oddly eager light in Cordelia’s eyes.

Maybe it was an uneasy feeling that he did not know nearly enough about what she was going to do—or said she was going to do.

Or that he sensed an invisible, icy presence lingering somewhere nearby. It was not one of the Ice Wurms he was used to using. It was a lot—larger. And it was able to conceal itself from him almost entirely.

Why would it want to do that?

The longer he stood here in the lightning-lit garden, watching Cordelia set out her preparations, the more his instincts were overriding his control. From nagging doubt to insisting, from insisting to screaming, they were telling him that despite all appearances, this was a bad idea, that he should leave—

Except that his instincts had told him this sort of nonsense before. He was more than instinct. He was a rational, thinking man. And all this fear could be the work of that very nature spirit that Cordelia meant to protect him against.

And yet—the spirit had been very specific. It had warned him against practicing his Ice Magics here, and no more. Or actually, it had warned him against practicing them against the countryside. As if there was any reason why he would do that.

So why was Cordelia so intent on protecting him from it? It wasn’t as if he had any reason to practice any magic at all in this place. And the creature hadn’t done anything worse than frighten him.

As he stood there uncertainly with a tempest overhead, and growing misgivings in his heart, the solitude of that corner of the garden was broken, not once, but twice.

And in that moment, everything changed.

A bolt of lightning struck the ground to the east of where he and Cordelia stood, blinding and deafening him for a moment. And when he could see again—

He felt himself go rigid. It was the nature spirit again, but—different. Very different.

It was taller, its features were sharper, and it was dressed, head to toe, in black. Surrounded by a coruscating rainbow of all powers, it stared at him and Cordelia in a dark rage.

That was when the thing that David had only sensed until this moment made itself visible to the west of where he and Cordelia stood.

Or—more visible. There was something about whatever the entity was that made him struggle without success to keep his eyes on the spot where it stood, and he couldn’t look directly at the thing at all. His eyes and his mind slid around the edges of it, without being able to concentrate on it.

And then—seven people strode into the garden as if they had every right to be there.

Two of them he did not know, but both were clearly foreign, probably from some part of India. One he recognized as the servant that had let him into Frederick Harton’s home and school. The fourth was Frederick Harton himself, and fifth and sixth were the two little girls he had nearly run down. And the seventh—

—the seventh was Isabelle.

Cordelia drew herself up in surprise. “Well,” she said. “I confess, I had not expected you to turn up here. Isn’t it rather late in the day to be playing the rejected lover?”

Isabelle ignored her. The lightning made for a poor illumination source, washing out all colors, and it occurred to David then that she looked like a marble monument. Her hair had come down and tumbled in wild profusion down her back. “David,” she called, her voice trembling a little. “You do not want to be here.”

“Oh, indeed,” Cordelia replied, her own voice utterly, coldly polite. “And why would that be, I wonder? Surely you are not going to claim that I have some nefarious designs upon him. Simple logic would show that if, indeed, I had wanted something of his power and position, I would have had it long ago.”

Isabelle ignored the jab, and concentrated on David. “You need to ask yourself why it was so needful that you be here now, in the middle of the night, alone. This woman is not your friend.”

“And you are.” Cordelia did not laugh. “This sort of flummery was all very well when you were a girl, Isabelle, but it ill-suits a grown woman who should have better self-control and a more realistic view of life.”

Isabelle continued to ignore her. “David, when has she offered you so much as a single moment of honest friendship?”

He paused; there was something stirring inside him at her question. “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.

“Ordinary friendship,” Isabelle persisted. “Spending time in one another’s company not because you were expecting some sort of gain, but merely because you enjoy spending time there with him.”

Friendship. David could remember having friends. He could recall hours spent playing parlor games, or having discussions on anything and everything long into the night. He remembered, dimly, the pleasure he had gotten from it. When had he stopped doing that?

“What nonsense.” Cordelia’s eyes glinted. “This foolishness is for children. Adults have no such need. Begone.”

A rumble of thunder followed the word, but overhead the storm was dying, and the nature spirit was listening intently.

“I am not one of your familiar spirits to be banished with a word, Cordelia,” Isabelle said sharply. “David, you cannot go through life in isolation, seeing others as objects to be manipulated and used, and watching for the same behavior in others.”

And that was exactly what his life had become. He saw it in a stunning moment of clarity. He had not done a single thing he truly enjoyed in the last year, nor spent a single moment in the company of someone he would have sought out on his own. What had his life turned into?

“There are more important, and more lasting, things than power and position, David,” Isabelle continued. “Power is ephemeral and can be taken away. Position is just as ephemeral. But no one can take love and friendship. You can lose them by your own actions or lack of them, or by neglect, but they cannot be taken away.”

The clouds parted overhead, and bright moonlight shone down on them. The spirit moved closer, head tilted to one side. She glanced at her companions as she said that, and they moved closer to her. Her husband put one hand on her shoulder, and in another moment of clarity, David saw what he had not seen before. These people were not masters, pupils, and servants. They were also friends.

And what of his friends? He recalled their names and faces clearly and they were no longer in his “circle.” He had told himself he had outgrown them, but that was not the truth. The truth was he had thrust them away, or ignored them, because Cordelia had told him that his precious time was too valuable to waste in their company. And so they had stopped calling on him, stopped issuing him invitations. And he turned from friends to those who were politically valuable. His life had become an unending round of work. He no longer even read things that were not in some way related to his ambitions. He looked back over the past several years and saw nothing but empty hours, gray and uninteresting. He looked ahead to the future, and tried to imagine what life would be like if he achieved those ambitions. Surely, it would be worth the cost.

But he realized with a sinking spirit and a feeling of nausea that it would only be more of the same. More empty, pleasureless years, punctuated by a few hours of fame, which would only bring him to the attentions of people who were just like him, who had ambitions of their own, and hoped to maneuver him to get something.

If he married, it would be to a woman who brought him more connections, perhaps more wealth, who would spend as little time as possible in his company. She would be too busy exercising her own ambitions to become a notable hostess in the most exclusive of sets. Even if she felt some dim stirrings of affection, she would have no time for anything other than bearing the “heir and a spare” required of her, and furthering her own social climb.

“What was the last moment of simple pleasure you remember having, David?” Isabelle asked quietly. “Something you enjoyed for its own sake.”

With a plummeting heart, he realized that the only simple moment of pleasure he had experienced in the last several weeks was sitting down to dinner in his club and enjoying a well-cooked meal.

Weeks! He had gone weeks with the only memorable moment being a meal!

Cordelia glanced sharply at all of them, and must have sensed that she was losing him. “Enough,” she barked.

But he was too deep in despair at his situation now to pay any attention to the author of his misery. He looked at Isabelle, who had one hand resting affectionately on the shoulders of each of the children—at her husband, whose very posture proclaimed that he would quite cheerfully and publicly take her into his arms for a loving embrace at any moment, and know it would be returned with equal fervor. He looked at the three “servants,” whose protective posture said that they would lay down their lives for these friends—

These children were not even Isabelle’s by birth, and yet he could see they loved her unreservedly. If he had children of his own, they would grow up in the company of nannies and nursemaids, tutors and governesses. They would be sent away to school, return home only for a few days at a time, and over the course of twenty years, if he was in their presence for a grand total of six weeks’ worth of time it would be amazing. They would call him “Pater,” and they would respect him, but they would not love him, and when he died he would go to his grave with their dutiful attendance and concealed pleasure that he was gone and they could now enjoy his wealth and property unfettered by any rules or constraints of that stranger who had been their father.

The Hartons were surrounded by servants who loved and protected them. He was surrounded by servants who probably resented and definitely cheated him. Frederick had a wife who so clearly adored him that nothing made her unhappy except to be separated from him. He lived in a lonely empty house, a condition that would not change even if he took a wife of his own.

“I would not exchange a single moment of my life for all of your wealth, David,” Isabelle told him, as Cordelia seethed. “Your power cannot buy me peace. Your position cannot bring me friendship. Your estates cannot give me hope. And your wealth cannot purchase love.” Her voice took on tones of remote pity. “What you have is worth nothing to me. And this is what Cordelia has brought you to.”

Bleak, black despair settled over him like a blanket. If he could have gotten himself past the shame of it, he would have wept. By now, he was a cold, heartless, ruthless creature. He had lost the friends he had once had, and no longer knew how to make new ones.

And as for love—

He had driven it away.

He stared at Isabelle numbly, wanting to howl his grief to the moon.

The little girl with the parrot looked up at him solemnly, and paced forward until she stood a mere foot from him. And she held out her hand.

“I’ll be your friend, Mister Alderscroft,” she said soberly. “ ‘Cause sometimes the reason you are friends with someone is that they need one.”

Something broke inside him—or perhaps, it was better to say that something melted. Tears burned in his eyes as he took the child’s hand; they overflowed and trickled down his cheeks. The child tugged on his hand and drew him to stand beside her friends.

Cordelia’s cheeks flamed, and she made a summoning gesture. “You flout me at your peril!” she exclaimed. “You—”

“They have the protection of Robin Goodfellow, sorceress,” said the earth spirit, coming to stand on the other side of Isabelle. “The Fey do not take sides in mortal quarrels—but I am a law unto myself and I say they are under my protection—and have my friendship.”

Undeterred, Cordelia voiced the Words of Power to bring her creatures to her.

But David, with a little shock of surprise that he still recalled the words, called upon the allies of his true Element of Fire to come to his aid. After the way he had shunned them, he would not have been surprised that they did not answer.

But they did.

A rain, a stream, a river of Salamanders, greater and lesser, of Imps and Lyons and Firebirds and even a Phoenix, all came crowding about him at his summons, as if they had only been waiting for this moment.

They stood, shoulder to shoulder, in a compact group of solidarity, surrounded by creatures of Fire. And at last, the near-invisible Ice Lord spoke.

“

You have failed, woman

,” it said. “

You are mine

.” In the blink of an eye, it somehow surrounded her, and before she had a chance to scream or cry out, they were both gone.

Epilogue

DAVID Alderscroft surveyed his quarters with melancholy satisfaction.

He had closed and sold his town house, and moved into rooms at his club. Men in general were not so exacting of the requirements of friendship as women were. Some weeks and months of careful tending, and he would soon be living among men who considered themselves his friend. And at that point, he would begin renewing his acquaintance with those old friends he had thrust aside. They would take some more careful cultivation, but eventually he thought he could win them over again. And he would never make the mistake of losing them twice.

But there was no point in keeping up his town house, because he knew, deep inside, that he would never need it, for he would never marry. He had rejected love once. Unlike friendship, that sort of chance never came again. In the moment that his heart had thawed, it had also broken.

And it was his own damned fault.

Still. In the midst of heartbreak—there were the little compensations. He glanced affectionately at the pasteboard square in his hand.

Dear Uncle David, it said. Please come to the school this weekend. We want to show you the new ponies and take you riding on the paths we have been cutting, and we have decided to make September 12th Nan’s official birthday. There will be cake and ice creams. Love, Sarah.

David’s old estate was no longer empty and hollow. It rang with the happy voices of children—the children of Elemental Mages, the children of the Talented and Gifted, and the children of expatriates. It was now the home to the Harton School, and, he trusted, would provide a harvest of fine young men and women for decades to come.

It was a good legacy.

And he planned to create a second as well; his Circle would work not only for the protection of Mages and Masters, but for the protection of all of England, so that another creature like the Ice Lord could never slip onto the island without someone noticing.

Good legacies, both of them.

He set down Sarah’s invitation, picked up a pen, and began to write out his acceptance when a second piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Without his prompting, a Salamander manifested, darted to the floor, and retrieved it, returning it to the desk only slightly scorched.

Isabelle’s note, attached to Frederick’s accepting an honorary chair in the London Circle as spokesman for the Talented and Gifted, in response to his addendum that he was sorry he could not invite her, but that as the Club was exclusively male—

Dear David, if I wanted to prance around infancy dress, I would join the Order of the Golden Dawn. Their robes are just as ridiculous, and they serve a better tea. Affectionately, Isabelle.

The Salamanders danced as the room rang with laughter.

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Epilogue