A Charm of Magpies 03 Flight of Magpies (12 page)

“Mr. Day,” Rickaby whispered, pleading.

“
Now
,” said Fairley.

Stephen knelt, breathing out hard, bracing himself for what was coming. “I wonder what the Council will think of this,” he managed. “You can’t seriously imagine you’ll get away with it. The Metropolitan Police—”

Fairley ignored him. He came up behind Stephen and fumbled the cuffs onto his wrists. Stephen bit his lip savagely, making himself stay silent as the airlessness closed around his senses. Rickaby was staring at them, lost in a world he didn’t understand.

“I don’t know who you are,” he said to Fairley, with a good attempt at authority. “But I am an officer of the law—”

“He knows. He’s on the Council. Be quiet, Rickaby.” Stephen heard his own fear, tried to sound more reassuring. “Just do what they say and it will be all right.”

“No, I don’t think it will,” Fairley said. “Kill him, Newhouse.”

The painter gave a little hiss of pleasure, and his scalpel seared over the portrait. It seemed to leave no mark for a frozen instant, then the two sides of the canvas opened up, and at the same instant, a dark red slash seemed to paint itself across Rickaby’s face, between his eyes, bisecting his open mouth, down through his throat. His features sagged to either side, and the blood came.

Stephen shut his eyes, but he felt as well as heard the thud of the body hitting the floor.

“There.” Fairley sounded satisfied. “Let’s get on now, it’s past twelve o’clock already. Don’t forget his lordship’s picture.”

Chapter Eleven

Crane returned to the flat on the Strand after a useful trip to Hannaford and Greene to find the place empty. Merrick, he knew, would be out dealing with some of Miss Saint’s problems today, but Stephen’s absence was a disappointment and a slight irritation. He wanted to see his lover, wanted him close by until the current threat was dealt with, and he knew they were safe.

He contemplated Stephen’s message—
Gone to the Golds
—and considered.

Back in summer, in the crazed days when giant rats had erupted amongst them and precipitated a sea change in their lives, he had had a brief exchange with Dr. Gold: Stephen’s best friend, Esther’s husband, a practitioner with a healing talent. When Gold had learned about Crane and Stephen’s relationship, and the power in Crane’s blood, he had told Crane to remember that he was a doctor who could be consulted in confidence. It had seemed a non sequitur at the time.

Crane tapped his fingers on the tabletop, thinking, then set out down the stairs once more, and hailed a cab for Piccadilly.

A second cab took him from Fortnum and Mason’s emporium, with an armful of purchases, to Dr. Gold’s Devonshire Street surgery. The usual nurse answered the door, her face changing from immediate refusal to a nod of recognition, and Crane was ushered in to see Dr. Gold, sitting in his consulting room in his shirtsleeves, dark face worn. There was no sign of Stephen, or Esther, or any patients.

Gold gave him a quick, tired smile. “Lord Crane. Please say nobody’s dead.”

“Not to my knowledge. May I have five minutes of your time?”

“That makes a pleasant change. Yes, by all means. Please, sit.”

Crane put his offerings on the desk: a bunch of hothouse flowers and the most expensive fruit basket Fortnum’s had had to offer. “For Mrs. Gold. I hope she’s well?”

“No, she’s sick. More or less continually, which is unpleasant for her, and since she is the worst patient of my acquaintance, fairly nasty for me. I’m probably going to hide the fruit in case she throws it at me, but I’m sure she’ll like the flowers, unless the smell makes her feel nauseous, in which case she’ll doubtless let me know about it.”

Crane had never regretted his preference for men, and this wasn’t changing his mind. “My sympathies, Doctor. I should have brought you brandy.”

“Yes, you should.” Gold leaned forward, elbows on desk. “I assume this is about Steph.”

“It is. Has he spoken to you about the tattoos?”

“Yours? The ones that move? Is that the problem?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Of course it is. Off you go. I am very tired,” Gold added before Crane could begin, “and rather worried, and in quite a foul mood, and not easily shocked, so please tell me the problem and don’t dance around my sensibilities. I think I’ve run out of those when it comes to Steph’s personal arrangements.”

Crane refrained from asking if he wanted to wager on that. “Very well. You know that the tattoos move when I make love to Stephen. The thing is, it happened yesterday, without any intimacy. I was a couple of miles away from him and had been all day, but my tattoos went flying. They even settled in the wrong places, one on my face.”

“Oh
God
,” said Dr. Gold with unutterable weariness. “Did it do anything else? What was the situation?”

Crane explained about the punchbag. Gold’s face tightened.

“Show me the hand you hit it with. Make a fist. And again.” Gold turned Crane’s hand over and back, squinting intently.

“The thing is,” Crane said, “Stephen told me afterwards that he’d been using his powers at the time.”

“A lot of power?”

“I don’t know if it was a lot.” Crane had seen Stephen using his powers at full stretch a few times, and those occasions had mostly been spectacularly destructive. But Stephen would surely have mentioned it if he’d wrecked the gaolyard. “I’m not sure what he did, just that he was very angry when he did it.”

“Were you angry when you were at the punchbag?”

“Yes.”

“About?”

“Stephen,” Crane said unwillingly. “We’d argued the day before.”

“Would you call it natural anger? Proportionate, something you’d usually feel?”

“Are you suggesting my mind was affected by something?” Crane bristled at the thought.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Ah…I’m not sure. I went to the gymnasium because I was angry in the first place. I had good reason to be angry with him,” he felt compelled to add.

“I’m sure you did. Hmm. How often do you two have intercourse? Of the relevant kind to this discussion.”

“Perhaps four times a week.”

“Really? Great Scott. When was the last time, before that incident?”

“Two days before. The evening.”

“Hell’s bells.” Gold rubbed his hands over his face. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“Something happened last night. We made love. He had iron on his wrists—”

“What? Why on earth— No, wait. Do I need to know why?”

“No. You would also be well advised not to let Stephen know I told you about it.”

“I’ll strive to forget this entire conversation.” Gold waved at him to continue.

“Iron,” Crane went on. “But my tattoos still moved afterwards, as usual. His didn’t until I took the cuffs off.”

“Right.” Gold thought for a moment, frowning. “Do you understand how practitioners work?”

“Go on.”

“We don’t usually carry power within ourselves. People like the Magpie Lord, or you, are few and far between. Most of us tap power out of the ether, or the world around us, or what have you.” Gold made a sweeping gesture. “Steph is drawing your power to him, and it’s flowing back from him to you, because it’s his influence setting off those tattoos. My suspicion is that there’s been enough back-and-forth of power between you that the flow has created a channel, like a river carving out a new path, understand? And that channel, I would hypothesise, exists independently of the physical contact by now, and it may be about more than moving tattoos.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I wonder if you found yourself flooded with power yesterday because of Steph, or if he found himself flooded with anger because of you.”

Crane assimilated that. “You think I affected his feelings?”

“Isn’t that precisely what you do?” Gold retorted. “This is Steph. He very rarely loses his temper. He’s dedicated. He’s cautious. He’s been put in gaol and suspended from duty because of flagrant lawbreaking and a fistfight in Council. Do you see the odd one out here?”

“He’s not that cautious. Or that calm.”

“Not since you came along, certainly.”

Crane met the doctor’s dark eyes. “Are we discussing a magical issue, or something else?”

Gold tapped a finger on the desk. “Lord Crane, my problem is this: I don’t quite see how this business between you ends, other than with you going back to China and leaving Steph alone with twelve-hour days in the justiciary and a handful of memories.”

“It won’t happen.” The picture conjured up by those words was intolerable. “I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving him.”

“Really? Not when there are damned inconvenient things like tattoos turning up on your face? Not with him tied to England and you hating the place—yes, he has mentioned that. Not in six months, a year, five years, with no marriage vows to impede you from doing as you like?”

Crane’s fingers were curling into his palm. “If you’re staying with your wife purely because of your marriage vows, then those vows aren’t worth a damn, and nor is your opinion on Stephen and myself.”

“As I’m sure you’ve surmised, I stay with Esther out of fear,” said Dr. Gold. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not opposed to your relationship with Steph, as such. If he was happy, there’d be no more to be said.”

“He’s happy. Why the devil would you say he isn’t?” Crane set his teeth against the question,
What did he say?

“He’s been suspended from the justiciary,” Gold pointed out. “You’ve been arguing. You’re asking me for help, behind his back—”

“Hardly that if he’s upstairs.”

“He’s not upstairs.”

“He said he was coming here.”

“Well, he didn’t.”

“Making this an entirely pointless journey on my part,” Crane bit out. “Thank you for your unsolicited advice, Doctor, and for your remarkable bedside manner. I can quite see why your surgery is doing such a thriving business.”

Unexpectedly, Gold laughed at that, and held out his hand as Crane started to rise. “Wait a moment. Stop. I, ah, may have overstepped the mark a little.”

“You did.”

“You’re conducting an illegal relationship with my best friend, and when I last saw my wife, she was girding her loins to discuss the topic of Jenny Saint’s virtue with your manservant, which is why I’m hiding down here. Frankly I’m not quite sure where the mark is, these days.”

That was all the apology that seemed to be forthcoming, so Crane gave a nod of acceptance. The doctor steepled his fingers with a scowl. “There is something else I feel I should mention. Is Steph still using that blasted ring of yours, the Magpie Lord’s?”

“He has been.”

Dr. Gold sighed heavily. “Have you noticed anything different about it?”

“It looks as ever it did the last time I saw it. Although, he was wearing it on a chain round his neck when we made love and the chain, uh, melted.”

Gold slumped forward, hard, so that his forehead hit the desk with a thud.

“Doctor?”

“Don’t mind me,” Gold said, voice muffled by the wood. “I’ll just rest here. Melted the chain, you say. That didn’t worry Steph at all?”

“Not obviously. But he did say it was no longer dormant, if that means anything to you.”

“Nothing good.” Gold raised his head again. “Lord Crane, have you felt entirely yourself through all this? Any peculiar sensations or unfamiliar symptoms?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Right. Because, I dare say this is very far fetched, but the most powerful sorcerer England has ever produced lives on in your bloodline, and the connection between you and Steph has awakened his power to the point where you don’t apparently need Steph, or the ring, to light it up any more. So I’m keen to know whether you feel, for example, let’s say…possessed by the spirit of a Jacobean sorcerer, at all?”

“No.” Crane bit back an exasperated
For fuck’s sake.
“I can assure you that I don’t.” Gold cocked a brow. “Doctor, I was possessed by the spirit of a Chinese sorcerer barely four months ago. I haven’t forgotten what that felt like.”

“Fair enough, glad to hear it. Except that you have the Magpie Lord’s bloodline; Steph’s using his power and wearing his ring; both of you have magpies all over you. And it’s getting stronger. I am a little unnerved by the scale of the Magpie Lord’s presence in your lives.”

“The Magpie Lord has been dead for centuries,” Crane said obstinately. “Granted, death is less of a barrier to being a damned nuisance than I’d realised, but even so…” He tailed off.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

It was not quite nothing. When that insane spirit had claimed his mind and body back in summer, and Stephen had called on the power in his blood to fight it off, there had been a single thought in Crane’s mind. It came back now with force.

What he had thought, as he struggled to retain mastery of his body and soul, was
We are the Magpie Lord
. And, it occurred to him, that was when they—Stephen, rather, just Stephen—had wrested back control of the power.

That was sheer coincidence. It had to be coincidence, because the alternative was unacceptable and Crane was bloody well not going to accept it.

This was something Stephen had to know. He was damned if he would talk to Gold about it first.

Gold’s dark eyes were locked on his, intent and intense. “Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Gold contemplated him for a few more seconds, then blinked and looked away. “Well, if you say so. Let me know if that changes. And if you see Steph before I do, tell him that if he doesn’t come and talk to me, I’ll send Esther to talk to him, and then he’ll be sorry. In the meantime, do you want my advice on your immediate problem?”

“Go on.”

“Accept that this sort of thing is going to happen.”

“You really are outstandingly unhelpful,” Crane said. “I’ll definitely come to you when next I want leeches applied.”

Gold shrugged. “If you actually want this to stop, leave him and go back to China. Otherwise, you’re a powerful magical source, he’s a practitioner. Strange things are going to happen now and then.”

“My life has been an unending barrage of strange things ever since I set eyes on him,” Crane said. “But I take your point.”

“Good, because it’s the only one I currently have.” Gold gave a sudden yawn. “Excuse me. With the best will in the world, I have no other ideas to offer. I’m occupied in trying to keep my wife from miscarrying our children.”

“Children?”

“It’s twins. Esther does like a challenge. Is there anything more I can do for you?”

Crane rose, accepting the dismissal. “Thank you, Doctor. I think.”

“I never claimed to have answers,” Gold said. “Certainly not to the kind of questions that involve Steph. Good day, Lord Crane.”

“Good day. I’ll show myself out.”

Crane left the doctor in his empty consulting room and headed for the street, unnerved and unsatisfied and wondering where Stephen had got to. He wanted to tell Stephen about this, to hear a testy, “Don’t be ridiculous,” and see his amber eyes crinkle with annoyance at Gold’s alarmism.

He wanted Stephen to be here, now. Where the devil was the man?

Crane made it three steps along the pavement before he heard his name called.

“Lord Crane? Lord Crane!”

It was the handsome young man from the other evening. His face was rather set. The white streak in his black hair was much more pronounced now, a jagged line like a broad flash of lightning. Stephen had mentioned that when he told Crane about meeting him in the gaolyard.

“Mr. Pastern,” Crane said. “How very convenient. I was just thinking how much I wanted to hit someone.”

“You don’t have time for that. They’ve got Mr. Day.”