Delusion (17 page)

“Never!” the Headmaster shouted. “We will never desecrate the sanctity of the Essence by using it for violent ends. Given time, I’m sure we can make the Dresden magicians see the error of their ways. This much is certain—if you use your power to do another harm, you yourself will be drained.”

“How ironic,” Arden said. “Headmaster, you’ve seen war yourself. Did negotiation save you in Mafeking? No, it was arms and blood. You killed your share in the siege, with the Essence, too, no doubt.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We don’t know what the Dresden magicians will do. He might not represent all of them.”

“We know the Germans are taking over the world, piece by piece.”

“We will do our best to keep them from Stour, but the war is none of our concern. And we will not, under any circumstances, use the Essence against another human, be he magician or commoner.”

“Then we are lost,” Arden said, and turned away from his master in deep disappointment.

“I can fight them,” Phil said again.

Arden turned on his heel. “What?”

“It doesn’t matter how strong their magic might be—it won’t hurt me. And you saw he had no inclination to fight me. He didn’t block, he didn’t react—he just ran. Or popped out.” She didn’t like to think what she would have done if the Kommandant had proven more adept. The only living things she’d struck were her brother Geoffrey and his boxing friends. She’d never had someone really try to hurt her.

“We don’t need any commoner interfering—” Jereboam began, but Arden interrupted.

“You’d help us?”

“My little brother is here,” she reminded him. “The German magicians killed his mother and hunted him. Do you think I’m going to let them take him now? Bad enough you lot have him. And if the German magicians are behind the war, and I can fight them, don’t you think I will?”

“Even if we allowed you to help, there may be hundreds of them,” the Headmaster said. “What could one girl do, albeit a girl immune to the Essence?”

“Two girls,” Fee said, casting a quick, loving look at Thomas.

Phil squeezed her sister’s hand, grateful.

“We have to let them help, Rudyard,” Arden said. “And what’s more, we should learn to fight ourselves. To hell with the Essence. There’s more than one way to kill someone. There’s nothing in our laws keeping me from binding someone with the Essence and then pummeling him with my fists.” He recalled Phil in her glory. “Or chopping his head off with a sword.”

“We are against all forms of violence,” the Headmaster said.

“No,
you
are against all forms of violence, Rudyard. Nothing in our code prohibits fighting or killing, only using the Essence to do it. Phil, you’ll teach us, then?”

“What I know,” she said. “But I have a price.”

“What is it?” Arden asked warily.

“I want your weapons. The guns, the swords, everything from the room where I was tied up.”

The elder masters argued about it for the better part of three hours, politely debating while Arden shouted and thundered and paced and finally, in frustration, put his fist through a stained-glass window. The Headmaster calmly repaired both flesh and glass and resumed his placid deliberation.

After several informal votes, Master Jereboam was the only holdout. Finally, near midnight, he threw up his hands and said, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, yes, no, I’m far beyond caring. Let the little twits have their weapons, let the commoners fight their wars, let our masters become pugilists, so long as you let me go to sleep!” He gave a prodigious yawn, voted yes, and left to tuck himself into bed, where he slept the deep, blissful sleep of the blameless.

You mean, you never got to ask?” Fee said as she leaned happily on Thomas’s arm.

“No, the Dresden magician came before I could say a word. Oh, you should have heard the speech I had prepared. It would have melted the heart of a stone.”

Luck favors young love. Headmaster Rudyard had put Arden in charge of coordinating the Albion girls. “Might as well be of some use,” he’d said, “since you have another two weeks added on to your sentence.” Arden needed an assistant, so he chose his young prentice. He was against Thomas’s affair with Fee and didn’t quite understand why he’d made their dreams come true when he knew they’d be in for a rude awakening soon enough. He had a glimpse of an answer when, as soon as they cleared the college grounds, Fee gave him a swift peck on the cheek, full of pretty, breathless gratitude.

Maybe happiness should be seized,
he thought,
even if it won’t last.

Now the two escorted Phil and Fee back to Weasel Rue, loaded with swords and rifles. The prohibition on using the Essence didn’t seem to bother Arden at all now. His eyes gleamed with a new passion, and the loss didn’t hurt nearly as much. Betrayed by his comrades, he was feeling rebellious and knew how easily he’d defy his punishment if it proved necessary, or perhaps even merely convenient.

“Was he really at Mafeking?” Phil asked, shifting the brace of swords she carried over each shoulder.

“Oh, yes.”

“But how? I thought you were captured—”

“Admitted, if you please.”

“Certainly. Sounds more like an insane asylum that way. In any case, I thought you were admitted at an early age. How did he get to war?”

“Rudyard was an unusual case. He was a lord, taken young as the rest of us were, but he escaped and didn’t rejoin us until he was much older. Most of our magicians are poor foundlings.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Most of them have single mothers, so they’re much more likely to be put up for adoption or grow up in poverty.”

Phil crinkled her forehead in puzzlement. “But why on earth would more magicians be born to single mothers?”

“Because most of them have a magician father and a commoner mother. Journeymen in their period of travel father the children, then—”

“Return to the college, of course, leaving behind the poor woman who fell in love with them. Or is it rape?”

“No, no. How could you think that?”

“Ah, so only seduction, lies, and abandonment. Did you sire any children when you went out into the world, then?”

“I...no.”

She looked relieved. “At least one of you has some morals. But if you’re allowed to live in the world for a while, why not forever? Think of all the good you could do!”

“We have a strict tenet prohibiting us from interfering in the outside world. We have a sacred duty to perform the Exaltation, to circulate the Essence and keep the world alive. There’s no room in our lives for anything else, not when the price of negligence is so high.”

“Loyalty is all well and good, but what about love? For, um, children, I mean.”

“There is no place for it.”

“What a sad, sorry lot you all are,” Phil said. “But what were you saying about the Headmaster?”

“He was one of the few magicians born to two commoners, the Lord and Lady Stour.”

“So not quite commoners, then,” Phil said.

“Even monarchs are commoners, to us,” he said unflinchingly.

“And I’m a subcommoner, right?”

“You are...something else.” He remembered his early disgust at the mere thought of her—cursed to be utterly without the Essence—and felt ashamed. She was hardly responsible for her lineage. He was starting to think he’d been wrong about her.

“Our journeymen found Rudyard at the usual age, around eight. But he wasn’t a poor boy glad to be rid of hunger and disgrace. He was heir to Stour and even at that age was absolutely dedicated to his birthright. He was at the college for a little over a year, learning all he could, and then he escaped. There was such a sensation in the papers about it that the Headmaster at the time decided not to pursue him. He must have stayed mum and continued to practice using the Essence, because by the time he met up with members of the college again, he was much more powerful than any of them.”

“Because he used it instead of just fiddling with it like you do.”

“He’d joined the army and wound up in besieged Mafeking in the second Boer War. He was gravely wounded and sent home to die. A wandering journeyman was drawn to his power, as he lay on his deathbed, and saved his life. Grateful, and no doubt weary of war and of the world, he rejoined us and gave us Stour Manor for our new college.”

“You haven’t always been here?”

“We have to move every hundred years or so.”

“So you don’t get caught?”

“You make us sound like criminals.”

“No, only kidnappers and traitors to your country.”

“Hmm, well. Mostly we move because we have to spend time circulating the Essence in each part of the island, to keep it healthy.”

“I don’t know much about geology, but I bet there are fellows who could prove that you didn’t raise England from the sea, and the earth is doing just fine without you.”

“They’d be wrong,” he said flatly, and having argued herself red in the face with fanatics before, Phil wisely let it drop.

When they neared Weasel Rue, Phil said, “It’s odd your Headmaster would say he doesn’t believe in interfering with the outside world, when it’s plain he’s cast a spell over all of Bittersweet.”

“Ah, yes—that. But it’s for our protection, not to exert any influence or control.”

“You’re keeping hundreds of people from doing their part. Bad enough you all are cowards—well, not one of you, maybe—without manipulating an entire village into being cowards, too. How do you do it?”

“The Headmaster reaches inside them and directs their thoughts. Here and in London, too.”

“But that’s a violation!” The idea of someone changing her thoughts was as bad a physical assault. “And why on earth, if you can do that, can’t you reach across the Channel and meddle with Hitler’s brain?”

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Arden assured her. “We can’t actually make anyone do what he doesn’t want to do; we only make it easier for him to do the easy thing, you see? People will always prefer to ignore the unpleasant parts of life, so it’s simply a matter of making the people of Bittersweet turn away from anything that doesn’t immediately concern them.”

They both leaned against a tree while they waited for Fee and Thomas to bid each other farewell. Phil heard a sigh close to her ear and felt warm breath on her cheek, but when she turned her head, Arden was staring at the stars. She was profoundly glad that she was immune to the Essence and couldn’t be manipulated into doing something she suddenly wanted to do, quite badly.

“I wish I could have persuaded Rudyard to let you live at Stour,” Arden said, as the lovers’ murmurs drifted from the darkness.

“You certainly have changed,” Phil said, and leaned her cheek on the rough bark, wondering if he’d turn his head toward her, too.

But Arden, remembering his last doomed love affair, said stiffly, “It’s only practical. If you have a guard dog, you don’t bring it to visit, you chain it in the yard.”

Stung, Phil stalked away.

Arden, alone, wondered why he was such a fool.

When I heard we were going to a farm, I worried we’d be with some strait-laced stickler who would impose a curfew and look askance if we wore makeup,” Phil said to Fee as they crept into the pitch-dark house. “But I like Mrs. Pippin’s laissez-faire attitude toward boarders. Bed, meals, and independence.”

“She
does
look askance at your makeup, Phil, but then, so do I. You wear a bit too much lipstick.”

“So do you, only you kiss it away. Well, has the shine rubbed off your romance?”

“Thomas is as heavenly as ever, thank you. He recited all of
The Lady of Shalott.
”

“How romantic. To be cooped up in a tower and then die the moment you escape in search of your true love.”

“Phil dear, you’ve read more poetry than you let on.”

“No, I’ve been kept awake too many nights with your reciting. Even German began to make sense after Mr. Somerset droned it into my ear for a few years. Oh, what a waste that was. I wonder if he’s interned?”

“He wasn’t German, silly. He was as English as you. Oh, damn!”

“What on earth?”

“The chickens!” In a flurry, Fee dashed out into the night to see if her feathered charges had settled themselves without her assistance. (They had, and she only succeeded in convincing them all that she was an invading fox and sending them into a squawking terror.)

Chuckling, Phil cut herself a thick slice of bread—not from the slops larder this time—and sat down at the kitchen table to spread it with butter and honey. She was proud of herself, proud of her swollen knuckles and the slightly sick feeling lingering in the pit of her stomach.
I fought a German!
she thought. She knew full well that instinct and adrenaline rather than any real skill had saved the day, but it was enough to encourage her.

I’ll get the boxing vicar to help me give lessons,
she thought,
and now that we have a few guns, surely there’s someone in Bittersweet who knows how to shoot. I’ll train with the villagers and do what I can for the magicians. And before long, they’ll be willing to help me—with far more than weapons.

Finally, she knew what the magicians needed: the very thing they despised her for, her invulnerability to the Essence. If she could help them in their struggle against the German magicians, surely they’d return the favor by helping England against the German army.

She heard a click and the whisper of the back door swinging carefully open.

Licking the last honeyed crumbs from her fingers, she called out softly, “I’m going to take a bath, Fee. See you in bed.”

In the small morning hours, the house was hushed and still. Phil felt her way down the hall to the bathroom, which stood between their room and Uncle Walter’s.
What a shame he’s become a pacifist,
she thought as she turned on the tap. Still, she didn’t entirely blame him. After the Dresden magician disappeared, all she had wanted was to be somewhere nice and safe where she never, ever had to do anything remotely like that again. It was only when her nerves settled that she was sure she could do it all over, if she had to. If she could just convince Uncle Walter—the only real soldier in Bittersweet, except for Algie, of course—to teach her real military tactics.