Elementary (28 page)

She paid fifty cents each for Alice and herself, and they climbed into the car, taking seats on the far end. The sylphs swarmed as they lifted up, the car shuddering and swaying, the metal groaning. Aurelia smiled, and Alice, being a child, got to wave and giggle back at the Elementals without anyone looking at her sidelong.

Someday, she'll need to go through her own test,
Aurelia thought.
And I'll be here, Providence willing, to get her through it.

And maybe someday she'd leave and find another young girl who needed the instruction of an Elemental Master.

Maybe in ten years.

Maybe fifteen.

The choice was hers when to stay or go.

The car shuddered and rose to its apex. It wasn't quite flight, but it would do. Aurelia closed her eyes and leaned into the wind.

Rosemary Edghill
and Rebecca Fox

It was pouring rain when Captain Frederick Wentworth left the club. He'd planned to stay at least another hour, and he might have done, if the evening's only annoyance had been George Cliburn holding forth yet again on the great triumphs of modern science.

Cliburn was a minor Water Magician and a moderately talented alchemist, but he fancied himself a Naturalist, and was prone to holding forth at considerable length—and long past the point when his audience had lost interest—on the writings of Huxley and Darwin and their colleagues, though of late he'd become rather obsessed with Robert Louis Stevenson's lurid tale of Jekyll and Hyde.

But tonight Cliburn had left early, pleading personal business, and discussion had turned to the story buried in the back pages of the
Police Gazette
, a publication not normally welcome within the walls of the club—
though somehow,
Frederick thought,
the copies I bring with me do not lack for readers.

“Come now, Frederick, you can't possibly believe that penny dreadful rot is true,” Sir Henry said, taking a sip of his brandy. “If I believed everything I read, I'd be afraid to leave my house.”

“True or not, don't you think it's worth investigating something so . . . unusual?” Frederick asked.

Major-General the Earl of Chawleigh snorted. “If the Council stepped in every time a rabid dog bit some drunkard in Whitechapel, we'd have no time for dealing with real threats. I'll bet you half a crown this ‘Wolf of Whitechapel' business is nothing but gin and idleness. You know how those people are.”

There were nods of agreement around the room.

“Superstitious, the lot of them,” Sir Henry agreed. “Irish—and worse.”

“It killed a woman,” Frederick protested, more sharply than was really politic. “According to the report it gutted her and left . . . what was left . . . lying in the middle of the street.”

“People ought not let their boarhounds run loose,” Lord Chawleigh said firmly. “I'm sure it will find its way back to its kennel presently.”

“And what if it's a real problem?” Frederick asked. “
Our
sort of problem?”

“Oh!” Lord Chawleigh said, as if something had suddenly occurred to him. He gazed around the room. “Captain Wentworth is afraid this Wolf of London is going to bite his Goose Girl!”

Frederick stormed out of the club with the sound of laughter at his back.

After a few blocks, his temper cooled enough for him to realize he'd left his umbrella behind. He was weighing the prospect of a sodden journey home against another encounter with Chawleigh's cronies when the gnome dashed out of the alleyway just ahead. The Earth Elementals didn't care for London—too many cobblestones and too few growing things—so the sight of one here brought him up short.

Squat and fat, with hair the color of moss, the gnome's voice was the hiss of gravel sliding down a slope. “
Come, Earth Master
,” it said. “
Something's happened.”

 • • • 

Creatures with names didn't belong in cages.

Bounce knew that the way he knew that barges brought rats. The way he knew the sun came up over the river every morning. The way he knew how to shake his prey by the neck until it died.

Bounce had a name. A real name. A name given by Smell-Gives-Bite when Bounce was just a pup.

The other creatures here had names, too.

“Percy
,” said the Raven
, “from the Ravenmaster.”

“Bright Eyes,”
said the cat, “
from Tinker Tom
.”

“Jingo,”
said the monkey.
“I picked it myself.”
Monkeys were impatient creatures. That was no surprise. They were the closest cousins to Man.

They were all here in the dark and the damp together.
Bounce and Percy and Bright Eyes and Jingo.

And the bear.

Bounce was sure the bear had a name, too, but no one had asked. His very smell turned Bounce's bowels to water and left him whimpering. If he'd been free, he'd have run from the bear as fast as he could. But none of them was free, so Bounce tried to ignore the bear as best he could. It was really the only thing he could do.

Bounce wasn't sure how long he'd been here when Badstink Man brought the Girl. She was sleeping. Bounce didn't think she was dead because she didn't smell dead, and because Badstink Man threw her into another cage and locked the door before he clomped back up the stairs to wherever he went when he wasn't here.

 • • • 

Frederick wasn't really surprised when the gnome led him to Whitechapel, but he really wished the little Earth Elemental had waited until daybreak. After weaving a small glamour about himself, he offered up a silent prayer to remain unmolested. At least it was raining; even villains liked to stay out of the wet.

Frederick knew this area rather better than he liked. He'd been coming here for going on four years now, hunting what Sir Henry and Lord Chawleigh and the rest of that lot insisted was nothing but a phantom, a figment of his overheated imagination.

“You heard from a cart horse there's another Animal Speaker in Whitechapel!” Henry had laughed, slapping his knee. “Next thing we know you'll be getting the news from the pigeons instead of reading the
Times
!”

The men at the Club might poke fun, but Frederick knew
someone
had been Speaking with the animal denizens of Whitechapel for the last few years, and it certainly wasn't him. He'd wondered from the beginning if it might not be Claire Prentiss' daughter. A little girl, the animals said, who shared her food even if her own belly went empty.

“Here,”
the gnome said, pointing down the alley.

There was a faint taste of Water Magic, like the last streamers of dawn fog, and a smell of sulfur. Over that, the feeling of something utterly
Wrong
. Twisted. Frederick shivered involuntarily. If he'd been a dog, his hackles would have gone up instantly.

“The Wolf?” he asked the gnome.

“Worse,”
the gnome said in his loose-gravel voice. “
The Poison Master took Her.”

Frederick didn't know who the Poison Master was, but he didn't have to ask whom the gnome meant. There was only one
Her
in Whitechapel the Earth allies would care about enough to bring word of to him. His Goose Girl.

“I am sorry, Earth Master,”
the gnome said. “
She did not want to be found before. But now she must be found.”

“Then take me to her!” Frederick whispered. His neck prickled with the sense of dark forces of the human sort—cutpurses and bully boys and hugger-mugger—lurking in the shadows, and his skin crawled with the Wrongness in the alley.

“I cannot,”
the little Earth Elemental said apologetically. “
The Poison Master hides behind his magics. But there is one here who might be able to find where he dens.”
The gnome motioned to something lurking in a doorway, and Frederick tensed.

But what emerged from the shadows was a puppy of indeterminate color, all soaked, matted fur and heaving ribs. He limped along on three legs. One ear was chewed away, and the other lay flat against its skull in fear. It looked as if it might be a little terrier.

“Don't hurt. Don't hurt . . .”
The mind-whisper was faint and desperate.

“I won't hurt you,” Frederick said in a low voice, squatting down and holding very still.
“Friend,”
he Spoke in his mind.

Warily, the little dog slunk closer. Frederick carefully held out his hand. “I won't hurt you,” he said again.

The puppy sniffed his fingers and whined.
“Danger,”
the puppy whispered. “
Wrongthing. Took her away. Took her away.”

“Do you know where?” Frederick asked. His thighs were starting to ache from squatting, but he held himself still.

“Smell gone,”
the puppy said, tucking his tail tightly between his legs. “
Too much rain. Smell gone. The Girl gone.”

“Maybe you'll be able to find the smell again when it's not so wet,” Frederick said. “Will you let me help?”

Tentatively, the trembling puppy leaned against Frederick's leg. “
I Bucket,”
he whispered. “
Girl Named me,”
he added proudly.

I have to find her,
Frederick thought desperately.

 • • • 

Bounce did not expect the Girl to talk. As a general rule, Men didn't. They made plenty of noises with their mouths, but they didn't have names, and they didn't talk. So when the Girl asked Bounce where she was, he was shocked clear down to the tip of his stumpy little tail.

He wished he could tell her, but he didn't remember how he'd come to be here in a cage in the dark. All he remembered was Badstink Man, and the others who had been here before Bounce came disappearing one by one. First all the mice, and then Long Toes the pigeon and her mate White Feather, and then the three-legged cat named Sharpteeth, and finally Black Joe, who had been a guard dog before he woke up in his little cage. Now Bounce and Percy and Bright Eyes and Jingo and the bear were the only ones left, and Badstink Man had stopped feeding them when he had taken Black Joe away.

He had no answers for the Girl, but he could ask her the one question that mattered:
“What's your name?”

“People call me Cinder,”
the Girl said.
“But it isn't a real name.”

That was too bad, Bounce thought. People should have names.

 • • • 

Bertrand was at Frederick's side with a large towel and a look of tolerant amusement not thirty seconds after the night footman ushered him through the front door of the Wentworth townhouse. Despite the opinions of certain visitors, Bertrand owed his uncanny ability to appear just when he was needed not to any Gift, but to whatever instinct it was with which God blessed superlative valets.

“Best I take care of that coat of yours at once,” Bertrand said, proffering the towel. “If you will forgive me for mentioning, it has a certain . . . air . . . about it, sir.”

“Wet dog,” Lady Mina pronounced, coming into the white-tiled foyer on the heels of the night footman, her maid behind her. “With a hint of open sewer.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. She was wrapped in a green silk dressing gown; clearly she had been preparing for bed when curiosity got the better of propriety.

Frederick's pocket chose that inopportune moment to yip sharply.

“Good heavens, Frederick, what have you brought home
this
time?” Mina demanded.

“This is Bucket,” he said, plucking the sodden, shivering scrap of brown and white from his pocket and holding the puppy close in the crook of his arm. Bucket blinked at the light and whined.

“Oh!” Mina said, folding her arms. “First it was those filthy sparrows, then that awful one-eyed cat, and now it's some mangy little mongrel. Get that thing out of the house, Frederick. It almost certainly has fleas.”

Frederick shook his head. “No,” he said. “I need Bucket's help.”

“What possible help could it possibly be?” Mina scoffed. She wrapped her dressing gown more tightly around herself and glared. Behind her, Mrs. Lange sniffed disapprovingly in sympathy.

“Bucket's seen her, Mina,” Frederick said urgently, toweling his hair dry one-handed. “My Earth Magician. She's been kidnapped—”

Mina blinked at him, her dark eyes narrow. “You've been in Whitechapel at this hour? Have you a death wish?”

“I didn't mean to,” Frederick protested. “I—”

“Took the word of a
dog
that Claire Prentiss' imaginary daughter has been kidnapped to Whitechapel,” Mina said, tossing her head in annoyance. “It's been
four years
, Frederick. When are you going to give this nonsense up? If the girl ever existed, she's long dead.”

“If Claire Prentiss had married Lord Marbury instead of eloping with that Russian lion tamer,” Frederick snapped, “you'd want to know whether her daughter was dead or alive.”
And so,
he thought grimly,
would the Council.

“If that . . .
thing
is still here in the morning,” Mina said as she turned to stalk back upstairs. “I'm going to Bath. Mother told me marrying an Earth Master would be trouble.”

“Well,” Frederick said, gazing down at the puppy after she was gone, “that went well, don't you think?”

 • • • 

Bounce was almost sleeping when Badstink Man came back, even though he was hungry and thirsty and the air was full of bear smell.

The Girl had tried to talk to the bear earlier, but he had merely grunted and whuffed and growled threateningly.

“I think he is a circus bear,”
the Girl told Bounce.
“I think people”
—by which she meant Men—
“have been very cruel to him.”

Bounce might have answered her, but the Badstink Man opened the door that led to Above and came down the stairs, whistling cheerfully. He left the door open, but it did none of them any good, trapped as they were in their hard iron cages. Badstink Man stopped to pet Bright Eyes, who hissed at him and showed her teeth, before turning and strolling over to the Girl's cage.

Bounce couldn't help but growl uselessly as Badstink Man crooked a finger under the Girl's chin and crooned to her.

“You are my precious treasure,” he said to her in the babble of Men. “You will be my triumph. The men at the club laughed at me, but you, my child, will help me prove Stevenson's elixir is real. His novel points the way to the next stage of human evolution.”