Mercedes Lackey: Reserved for the Cat

23

THE way that the club’s servants treated the man that Thomas was following said volumes about his unusual behavior. Servants could be dismissed on the basis of a single complaint. Very often the level of their personal comfort depended on the generosity of the patrons at holidays or when special requests were supplied.

So to be bundled into the cheapest possible cab, with no concern for his dignity and comfort, to have his pockets gone through and used to pay the hack driver in advance, argued for someone who had sunk so low that the servants expected nothing out of him and treated him accordingly. It also argued that even the ruling members of his own club would take the word of a servant over his.

Rather pathetic. And it made his attack on Ninette all the more puzzling. It was as if this was a real-life Doctor Jekyll, though one without the fictional doctor’s better qualities.

Thomas got himself a ride easily enough. The man didn’t even notice a cat getting in with him. Thomas tucked himself up as small as he could though, because the jolting of the poorly sprung cab was slowly knocking him out of his stupor. By the time the cab arrived at his home, he was conscious enough to clamber out, curse the driver, and stagger up to his door. Thomas followed a prudent distance behind and watched to see which lights came on upstairs. He noted, as he had expected, the lights—gaslight, he thought, by the way it increased rather than coming on—in the front upstairs bedroom. The back would overlook the tiny scrap of paved yard suitable only for the maid to do the laundry in, and other similar household chores; neither the lady of the house nor the master would care to have that view out their window. The maid—or maids, if there was more than one—would have the attic. It appeared that the man occupied the room of choice, leaving his mother to climb two sets of stairs instead of one. How chivalrous.

Thomas noted with pleasure that the passage from ground to windowsill was an easy one for a cat. Plenty of places to climb led to a faux-balcony below the windows, and the night was warm enough that—

There. The maid opened the window for the man, her expression of weary resignation clear from here. All Thomas needed to do was to wait.

Wait he did, as the lights were turned down and then off, as the neighborhood quieted further, until he was fairly certain the man was asleep. Then he scrambled nimbly up to the balcony, squeezed through the railing, and leapt up to the windowsill.

And there he was. Thomas expected sottish snoring, but the sound that came from the man made all the hair on his back stand up and his tail puff out like a bottle-brush.

He was whimpering . . . pleading. Then in the next moment, the pleading turned to an animalistic growling so full of hate that Thomas very nearly leaped down to the street again.

Thomas could not make out exactly what the man was saying, but there was something about it that sounded like half of a conversation. And he would dearly, dearly like to have heard the other half.

Then something else put up the hair on his back. The faint scent of magic. But not just any magic. This was not the magic of an Elemental Master. No, oh indeed not. This was the raw, half-tamed power of an Elemental itself.

And it had the scent of blood to it.

This man wasn’t in the throes of a nightmare, he was caught up in a Sending.

Thomas didn’t recognize the scent, so it could have been any of the three Elements not his own. Nevertheless, anyone capable of reasoning would reason it was damned unlikely to be anything other than Earth.

Then the man spoke his first intelligible words: “I am coming.” He moved then, threw off the bedclothes, reached for his clothing. His eyes were still closed; he was obeying his master’s command in his sleep.

For a moment, and a long one, Thomas fought the urge to flee. He wasn’t an Elemental Master anymore, he wasn’t any kind of a magician, he wasn’t even human! He was a cat! What could he do?

But he knew very well what he could do; it was something none of the humans he was in league with could do. He could take his courage in all paws, follow this man, and do it without being seen.

Just so long as he could avoid being detected by other means.

He jumped down to the street to wait, one shadow among many.

Ninette awoke suddenly, her mind preternaturally clear, every sense alert.

Thomas was in trouble.

How she knew this, she could not say; perhaps that encounter with that horrible man had done something to her mind, made it more sensitive or something of the sort. She had noticed it last night when she had awakened in time to warm up for her performance. She had felt things more clearly than ever before, from the stagehands, the other performers, and then, most strongly, from her audience. At first she had been a bit upset and angry, but then she realized that it was not so bad. Feeling how much the audience was enjoying what she did made her think that perhaps this could be useful.

And now she knew without a doubt that Thomas was in trouble. She felt his fear, and she knew that she could use that to find him; it pulled her like the North Pole pulled a compass needle.

She pulled on clothing, the bloomers outfit she wore to go shooting. With her hair under a cap, she would look like a boy, and that should keep her safe enough. She stuffed her pistol into one pocket, bullets into another, money into a third. She went to wake Ailse only to discover that Ailse wasn’t in her own bed.

That made her pause; then she racked her brain trying to think of where her maid could be, and came up with nothing.

“She’s walkin’ out with that lad from the hotel band.”

Ninette turned to see the creature that Nigel called a Brownie looking sideways at her. She didn’t see much of the little fellow, he was shy by nature, and she wasn’t a magician after all. But it made her obscurely ashamed that this fellow knew more about what Ailse was doing and who she was seeing than she did.

“I think they went to th’ pub,” he continued, flushing, “Though I couldn’t tell ye which one.”

Well there was nothing to be done about it. Ailse was gone, Thomas was in trouble and from the growing urgency she felt, there was no time to try and rouse Nigel, Arthur, Jonathon, and Alan. The best she could do was this.

“Thomas is in danger,” she told the Brownie urgently. “Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. When Ailse gets back, tell her that, and tell her to get the rest. Thomas was following the man who attacked me; I do not know what kind of trouble he is in, and it could be something I can solve by walking in and claiming him for mine. I know only that he is frightened and I must go to him.”

The Brownie nodded. “Aye, I can do that, miss.” Then he looked pained. “Wish’t I could come with you. . . .”

But Brownies, so Nigel had told her, were very tied to a place, once they settled into it. Literally tied in many ways; unless Ailse or Ninette were to do something that would offend it, the Brownie was unable to physically leave the building.

“Just tell her. I’m sure she’ll be back soon.” She wouldn’t have gone far, not after that madman had attacked Ninette.

But she must be thinking that Thomas was still here, and that it would be safe enough to leave Ninette with him standing guard. She didn’t know that Thomas was gone.

Ailse could be gone for as much as an hour or even more, and there was not enough time to search through all the pubs within walking distance. This was, after all, an area of boarding houses that catered to entertainers, and even when the barmen had to call “time,” they stayed open, serving food and tea while people sipped from their own flasks or made the beer they had bought before time was called last for an hour.