Mercedes Lackey - The Gates of Sleep

Marina got a good stranglehold on her temper and smiled as the waiter bowed and trotted away. “I’ve never had lobster salad, Reggie,” she said.

“Oh, you’ll like it, all ladies do,” he said vaguely, as the waiter returned with tea and a basket of bread and rolls. He chose, cut and buttered one for her. Was this supposed to be gallantry?

She decided to take it as such, or at least pretend to, and thanked him, even though it was a soft roll, not the hard sort with the crunchy crust that she preferred.

She did actually enjoy the lobster salad when it came, although it wasn’t the meal she’d have chosen on a cold day. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of those things that she did know how to eat, although she had waited for its appearance with growing dread, not knowing if this meal was a sadistic ploy on Reggie’s part to discomfit her in public. But Reggie was either inclined to treat her nicely today, or else had been ordered to be on his best behavior, because other than taking complete charge of everything but the actual choice of hats and books for the entire day, he’d treated her rather well.

Perhaps it’s because I haven’t objected to all those flirtations, she thought, watching him exchange another set of wordless communications with a lady two tables over, whom he evidently knew of old. There was the glover’s girl, the milliner’s apprentices, the lady at the bookshop —and now here. Whatever the exchange portended, however, must not have been to his benefit, as the lady shortly after welcomed another gentleman to her table with every evidence of pleasure, and Reggie applied himself to his saddle of mutton with an air of having been defeated.

The defeat must have been a very minor one, though, as he was all smiles again by dessert.

“All right, m’gel,” he said, when the bill was settled, to the waiter’s unctuous satisfaction, “It’s off to work for us! Let’s collect our traps and hie us hence.”

All the pleasures of the day faded into insignificance at that reminder of what she was here for in the first place. And as they collected their “traps” from the cloakroom girl and piled into yet another cab, Marina tried to prepare herself to hunt—even though she didn’t really know what she was looking for.

Andrew Pike drummed his fingers on the desk-blotter, stared into nothing much, and tried not to worry too much about Marina. After all, it wasn’t as if she was going to open herself up to anything dangerous just by passive observation. And it wasn’t as if they’d had any evidence that either her guardian or the Odious Reggie (how he loved that nickname!) were the ones responsible for the occult drain on Ellen. It was just as likely that the pottery had been built on the site of some ancient evil, and that the presence of someone with Ellen’s potentials had caused it to reach out and attach itself to her. For heaven’s sake, it was equally possible that she’d done something unconsciously that awoke the thing! It was equally likely that one of her so-called gentleman friends had done it, figuring the girl was ignorant, and perfectly willing to drain her and throw her away when he was satisfied. After all, the rotters were equally willing to do the same sort of thing physically.

Still.

Still, just because Madam hasn’t shown any signs of otherworldly abilities, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them.

Andrew was not a Scot—he was from Yorkshire, actually—but he had taken his medical degree in Scotland, where there was a strong occult tradition—which was how he’d come to find another Earth Master to teach him beyond what his Air Mage mother had taught him in the first place. And up there, he’d encountered a number of—interesting fragments. There had been rumors among the Scots Masters for centuries, for instance, that perfectly ordinary folk, without any discernible magical abilities, could steal magic from others by frankly unpleasant means. Yes, and use that magic too, even though they were effectively working blind. Some of those fragments attested that a cult of Druids were the ones who practiced this theft, some that it was a splinter of the Templars that really did worship the old god Baphomet as was claimed, and some—well, the majority actually—said it was Satanists. A group of Satanists recruited and taught by the infamous Gilles de Rais to be exact, who then came to England when he was caught in his crimes and brought the teachings with them. The trouble was, no one had any proof—and it was a difficult proposition to track down what was essentially a Left-Hand Path magician when he didn’t look like a magician, didn’t have shields like a magician, and could not be told from ordinary, non-magical folk.

And as it happened, neither Madam nor her son looked like magicians, had shields like magicians, or seemed in any way to be anything other than ordinary, non-magical folk.

He had many questions that were bothering him at this point, of which one was why, exactly, had Marina not been living here with her parents? No one in the village knew—although there were stories that something terrible had happened shortly after the child’s christening that had sent Marina’s mother into “a state.” Coincident with that, it seemed, the child was sent away.

Why was it that no one had seen or heard anything of this sister of Hugh’s for years? Interestingly enough, it was common knowledge that Madam had had a falling-out with her parents over her choice of husband, and had not been seen at Oakhurst ever again until the Roeswoods died so tragically. But why, after the parents were dead, had brother and sister not made some attempt to reconcile? Unless Hugh Roeswood was of the same mind as his parents about Arachne. But then, why not have a will, just in case, to prevent Arachne from ever having anything to do with the Roeswoods? But if the rift was so insurmountable, why had Arachne claimed the girl and taken her directly into her household? Why not just leave her where she was, washing her hands entirely of her? No law could force her to become Marina’s hands-on guardian.

It was all fragments that instinct told him should fit together, but which didn’t.

He wished that he’d had more uninterrupted time to talk to her. He wished that Clifton Davies had discussed more of her past and less of chess-moves and music with her. Merely mentioning her mother seemed to make her wary, as if there was something about her mother that she didn’t much want to think about.

Though what it could be—if there was anything—he was hanged if he could imagine!

Well, old man, there is one route to find out what you can about her that you haven’t taken.

Not that he hadn’t thought about it—but magicians as he knew them up in Scotland were odd ducks. Insular, self-protective, and inclined to keep things close to their chests. Those that had formed groups tended to look a little suspiciously on outsiders, and if anyone was an outsider here, it was definitely Dr. Andrew Pike, with Clifton Davies from the Welsh Borders a close second. Still—

They’re sending their sick to me, and mage-born children of ordinary parents when they find them in trouble. So I might not be so much of an outsider that I can’t get information out of these Devonian mages after all. It’d serve me right to discover that the only reason no one’s told me anything is because I didn’t ask.

Fauns would be the best messengers, he reckoned. They weren’t at all troubled by cold weather—didn’t go dormant to sleep until spring like some Earth Elementals. They went everywhere there was a patch of wildwood, and every Earth mage he had ever seen had a patch of wildwood somewhere about. That was one reason why they didn’t much like being in cities, truth to tell. When he got done sending out his messengers, he could get Clifton to send out—oh, Sylphs, he supposed. They were the Air Elementals he was most familiar with, though perhaps there was something else that was more suitable. Then… hmm. Who did he know that he could trade on favors to help him with Water and Fire?