A Study in Sable (28 page)

After a breakfast she was almost too tired to appreciate, she bid farewell to Alicia and wound her weary way back to the flat, where Grey greeted her with a whistle and kissing sounds.
I cannot think what I am missing,
she thought as she greeted her friend, made sure that Mrs. Horace had given the parrot a good breakfast of peas and carrots and a little scrambled egg and bits of toast, then pulled off her dress and practically fell into bed.
I hope Nan is having better luck than I.

11

T
HERE
was something to be said for being in a hotel in a market town. No one blinked an eye when Nan, Suki, John and Mary rose at the first cockcrow and came downstairs looking for breakfast. In fact, they found four hearty souls who had arisen even earlier and were now steadily shoveling food in their mouths, drinking poisonously black tea, and looking disinclined to think about anything else, much less talk to anyone.

Under other circumstances, the silence might have been unnerving. This morning, it was precisely what they wanted.

Nan had come armed; under her skirt and over her petticoat she had strapped a belt with the Gurkha
kukri
knife that Agansing had given her when he had judged her skilled enough to have earned one. She could reach it, easily, through a false pocket in the seam of her skirt. She had armed Suki as well, with a four-inch blade that was sharp enough to cut the wind. It was hidden under Suki's pinafore; Suki knew how to use it, too.

“Now remember,” Nan had told her, taking her little chin in her hand and making sure Suki was looking right in her eyes, “I gave you Puck's charm. It's in your pinafore pocket. You are not to use this
knife
except
to get away. If something goes badly, I want you to run, then call for Puck as soon as you are safe. Only use the knife if someone gets between you and escape.”

Suki had nodded and promised solemnly. Sometimes it made a lot of sense to treat her as a very small adult, and this was one of those times.

They left the hotel and headed in the direction of Knole again—although this time, instead of taking the walking path, they were going to go a little further and take the road that branched off to the right immediately after the path. That road should take them to Sennoke Farm. By the time they got there, Cedric should be in the fields. Neville would locate him for them, and if he was alone, they were going to confront him. Nan was supposed to try reading his thoughts first, then John would approach.

That was . . . just about as much plan as they had.

And in case something happened to
all
of them, John had left a letter in his room, already stamped, to be mailed to Lord Alderscroft if they didn't return.

The Celtic warrior inside Nan was getting a little difficult to keep down. There was something about Cedric that had absolutely enraged the Nan-that-was, and she didn't think the blood magic had anything to do with it. It was more like a purely personal animosity. It didn't seem possible they had known each other in that past life—but it felt almost as if they
had.

They walked in absolute silence, even Suki, all of them sobered by the undeniable fact that they were walking into a situation over which they had little to no control, on someone else's ground. And if they had not had not one, but
two
Elemental Masters with them, Nan would never have gone along with this.

Overhead, the trees were full of birds, and there was a lark soaring invisibly above them, its singing drifting down to them as it exulted in the morning. The air was cool and a little damp and smelled of green things. Nan wished profoundly that they were walking off to another picnic and a chance to enjoy the Downs, instead of heading for what could be a nasty confrontation.

The road they turned off on was not so much a “road” as a lane; it was plain dirt, pounded hard as brick with the passage of the years, with tall hedges growing on top of the banks on either side of it. That actually was good; it meant no one would see them coming. Neville stayed within sight overhead, but was cross-quartering the area to the right of the lane as they went, searching for Cedric Edmondson.

Then, at last, he folded his wings and plummeted toward them; Nan held up her arm, and he landed hard on it. He rested the tip of his bill on her forehead and shared his thoughts with her. A moment later, she knew all that he knew.

“Edmondson is just on the other side of this hedge, cutting a ditch. He's all alone, and there is no one within sight or earshot of him. There's no better time than now to deal with him,” Nan said, tension rising in her and knotting her shoulders. “Neville says there's a stile a few feet along.”

“All right then,” John replied, sounding grim. He straightened his shoulders and looked at his wife, who nodded slightly. “Nan, is there anything you need to do to ready yourself?”

Nan considered that, then decided it was better to get her
kukri
out now and not risk its getting tangled up in her skirt. Carefully, she put her hand into her pocket, clasped the hilt, and just as carefully unsheathed it. Already she felt better having it in her hands.

John was clearly taken aback as he looked at the lethal, curved knife with recognition in his eyes. “Is that—”

“Yes,” she replied. “Memsa'b's Gurkha associate Agansing taught me how to use it a very long time ago. I was only a few years older than Suki; Suki will certainly begin lessons with him when she starts attending the Harton School in the autumn.”

Suki gave a little hop of happiness at this revelation. Nan patted her shoulder.

“The Hartons impress me more with every new revelation,” John replied. “Mary, are you ready?”

“Oh yes,” his wife said, her eyes gone very dark and fierce. “My allies are waiting. I thought you might be at a disadvantage, but if he's cutting a ditch—”

“There will certainly be water, and I don't need much to make a weapon,” he finished for her. “All right then. Let's find that stile.”

They strode onward. The stile was just around a bend in the lane; a set of narrow, steep, pyramidal wooden stairs not unlike a stepladder, going up the side of the hedge facing the road and down into the field on the other. John went first, followed by Mary, then Suki, with Nan bringing up the rear.

As Nan's head topped the hedge she saw the farmland spread out before her, low, rolling hills covered in irregularly shaped fields divided by yet more hedges and hedgerows. To the right, three fields away, she spotted a lone man working along the hedgerow. Though his face could not be made out at this distance, she was sure it was Cedric.

With one hand on the splintery top step, she concentrated with all her might on picking up something, anything, from his thoughts. At this distance, alone as he was, she
should
have been able to sense at least some of his thoughts—but there was nothing. Just a kind of blank . . . a sort of shadow in her mind where he
should
have been, but was not.

John looked up at her, anxiously, as Mary kept an eye on the distant figure, who did not seem to notice them.

“Anything?” he asked, intuiting what she was doing.

“Nothing,” she said with a shake of the head. “That either means he's one of the rare folk whose thoughts I can't sense, or he's got a block from something.” It briefly occurred to her that the problem might be with
her
—

But that had never happened before. Why should it now?

John's expression darkened. He didn't like the implications of that any more than she did. “All right then. We have no choice but to confront him.” He looked down at Suki. “Child, you are our only hope if things go terribly wrong. Now tell me what you're going to do.”

Suki straightened her back, looking very proud to be so trusted. “Oi stays well back. An' if yew an' Missus Watson an' Miss Nan starts t'lose, Oi runs. Oi gets over the hedge an' runs till Oi fink there ain't nobody chasin', an Oi calls Puck.”

John nodded decisively. “Exactly right. Mary? Nan?” He looked from one to the other, as if to say
if you have any doubts, this is the last chance to voice them.

They both nodded. And at his signal, they all headed to where Cedric, all unaware, was digging his ditch. They walked the paths beside the fields, rather than through them; no matter what else was going on, they were mindful of the fact that it was acutely bad form to trample a growing field.

That is, that is what they intended to do. But as they got within about thirty feet of him, he looked up straight at them, and his face—and everything about him—abruptly changed.

Or at least, it seemed that way to Nan, who no longer saw a farmer, attired in his trousers and boots, with his smock over it all, patiently cutting a ditch with nothing more in his hands than a spade.

Once again, she saw the figure from her vision, crowned with stag horns, with symbols painted in blood on his bare chest, his face deliberately streaked in patterns with the same blood. And the Celtic warrior in her rose up and overwhelmed her.

Her vision literally misted red with rage. Screaming a war cry her civilized self didn't understand, she charged him, hand holding the
kukri
raised high. Or was it a bronze-hilted sword? She couldn't tell, all she felt was white-hot anger, and all she could see was her enemy, her hated and despised
enemy
, that she
must
slay or die herself. For if she did not, he would lay waste to everything she cared about.

At the last possible minute, he grasped the handle of the shovel in both hands and raised it above his head, catching and holding the
kukri
on it as she slashed it down on him in the move that was known to Gurkha warriors to cut their enemies' torsos in half. They struggled together, as Neville screamed and beat at Cedric with his wings and slashed at him with his beak, their faces close enough together to have kissed—but they were snarling, both of them with an absolutely feral rage. And there was nothing in Nan
but
rage and the driving need to
kill
this man, until suddenly—

“STOP!”

The word rang in Nan's head and drove the rage completely out,
leaving her suddenly empty and stunned. She found herself looking into the face of Cedric, who looked equally stunned—and no longer painted in bloody symbols. Just a farmer, red with exertion, his face streaked with his
own
blood from the slashes Neville had put on his left ear and the side of his head.

Between them was Suki, with one hand on each of them as if she could hold them apart with her own tiny little body.

“Nan! Yew haveter
stop,
'cause 'e ain't doin' whatcher think!” Suki said firmly.
“Look!”

Somehow Suki had been able to read Cedric's thoughts, clearly, and now she poured them into Nan's head, so much and so fast that Nan staggered back a single pace, and then another, and finally dropped the
kukri
to the ground and stared at the man she had attacked in stunned horror.

• • •

“. . . and I am the latest in the line of priests of Tyr that goes back to when my people came across the water, and fought . . . yours, I suppose,” Cedric said, looking deep into Nan's eyes. He shook his head heavily. “Which will likely be where your anger comes from. 'Tisn't blood magic that I am doing, not in the way you take the meaning of it. The—life-force, I reckon ye'd say, of my sacrifices goes to the land, as it allus has been an' allus will be. 'Tis Land Magic. I take none of the magic for meself, nor my own family.”

They were sitting in the shade of one of the bigger trees growing up out of the hedgerow, on the edge of a field of, of all things, lavender. Cedric had his hand up to the side of his head, putting pressure on the wounds Neville had inflicted on him. “But the altar—” said John. “The vision Nan had—”

“'Twas a true one. But that there stag was an old friend of mine. I slay no beast that is not willin'; most of them come to me when they are old and sick and longin' for peace, and they lay down their blood in the service of the land.” Cedric smiled crookedly. “'Twas not always so,” he acknowledged. “My grandfather's grandfather's
grandfather sacrificed the young and prime, not the old and weary. But the deeper our ties grew to the land and the beasts here, the less we wished to choose the young and strong, in the full prime o' life. The blood of the old feeds the land as well as theirs, and 'tis kinder to send them to an easy rest.”

“But why did—” John chewed the ends of his moustache. “This does not match with what Nan saw.”

“Because Miss Nan and I met and fought in another time, I think,” Cedric replied. “And she saw not what was before her, but her ancient enemy. And I will confess, in that dark time we did slay men on that altar, and many of them.”

Neville flew down out of the tree and landed at Cedric's feet, striding ponderously up to him. The raven looked up into Cedric's face, then looked down at the ground.
“Sorry,”
he croaked miserably.

Cedric reached out and scratched the nape of Neville's neck, in the vulnerable spot Neville had offered him. “You were defending your mistress. Tain't no dishonor in that.”

Considering that Cedric's ear and the left side of his face had been brutally savaged, that was gracious indeed. Nan winced. John had put a rough bandage on him made of all of their handkerchiefs together, but there was no doubt it needed better tending than that.