Heart's Magic (27 page)

"Elinor, can you stir up a
little wizardry?"

"How? There's nothing here
I can use." She was sitting on the bunk, watching him.

"Not even a wand in your
pocket?"

"Oh. Well--" She began
digging through her skirts. "Yes, but it's my favorite. I don't
want you burning it up."

"Nothing like that. I just
want you to stir up some magic for the wards to move against." He
raised a hand to placate the storm sure to issue from her open
mouth. "I won't let it 'urt you. Never. But there's plenty of magic
in the warding. I want to see if I can tip it against the door, get
it open that way."

Her expression still
dubious, Elinor nodded. "All right."

"Don't try helping me move
it. You're going to be the rock it trips over, right?"

"Tree trunk," she corrected
him, lips twitching as she fought a smile.

"Right. I'm the rocks.
You're the trees." He grinned at her. "Let me get some magic movin'
first." He started the magic swinging again, from the stone
exterior wall to the metal interior walls, to the metal door, back
to walls, to door, pushing it higher with each surge.

"All right, be ready." He
wanted to time it just so.

Elinor lifted her wand, the
one with the slight crook in it. Harry could just sense the faint
smell of grass. When the alchemy was at its height in the stone,
pushing back against the great heaviness of the warding, he spoke.
"Now, love."

Wizardry bloomed, flooding
the air with its fresh green scent, and the wards rose in fury.
Harry
pushed,
setting his shoulders into his magic and shoving it hard
against the warding magic, directing it against the wizardry
knocking on the door.

The wards smashed into the
magic, crushing it completely and weakening the door beyond. But
how much?

"You all right? Didn't get
caught in that?" He watched Elinor, searching for damage until she
nodded.

"Perfectly well. I know
when to step back."

"Most times, any rate." He
winked at her before picking his way around the oil puddled on the
floor toward the door.

He eased the little flame
across the oil patches to the puddle farthest from the door, then
extended his wand carefully to touch the door. The instant steel
touched iron, the door collapsed into a thick pile of dust laid
across the threshold. Sirens and alarms began howling all up and
down the tower and its outbuildings.

Harry blinked at it for a
moment. "Huh. It worked."

"Of course it did." Elinor
was moving past him, skirts hoisted to stay out of oil and iron
dust. "You're Harry Tomlinson, alchemist extraordinaire. Would you
fetch my bag from the guard alcove?"

"Yeah." He stepped over
what had been the cell door and hurried to collect the tools of
Elinor's trade, pausing for half an instant to check the door into
the stairwell. Locked, as he'd assumed.

Elinor was kneeling beside
Mr. Biggs, lifting his eyelids, checking his pulse, and doing other
healer-ish things. She took her bag when Harry handed it to her,
first swiping a pungent ointment onto the guard's moustache, then
lifting his head in an attempt to pour a potion down
him.

"He's breathing." She laid
his head down on the folded blanket from the cell. "His heart is
strong. I'm just worried about the blow to his head. The ointment
should help revive him, but I'm wondering if--"

Guards pounded on the door.
Harry recognized Thom Norwood's voice shouting for
Biggs.

"Biggs is down. He's 'urt,"
Harry shouted back. "Cranshaw's escaped--likely 'alfway across
London by now."

"Magister Tomlin--" Norwood
got the key turned and the door opened, "--son? What--?"

"Get men 'unting for
Cranshaw first," Harry said. "Then I'll tell you what
happened."

"Already done,
sir."

Harry couldn't like the
suspicion on Norwood's face, but he couldn't honestly blame him for
it nor for the anger. Norwood was young to be in charge of the
tower prison. Colonel Simmons was the official warder but with his
gout so bad, he was laid up with it more and more and Norwood took
on more and more of the duty. And probably the blame when things
went wrong. Harry gave a quick summary of what had happened. By
this time, Biggs was coming around, but he didn't remember anything
after Harry arrived.

"I'd like one of the
sorcerers to take a peek at your head," Elinor said, packing up her
vials, leaving one with Biggs for the headache.

"We'll submit to a sorcery
inspection," Harry said, before he saw Elinor widen her eyes at
him. No, she probably wouldn't want anyone knowing what else had
happened. "On 'ow Cranshaw got out." There would be no need to
query what had happened afterward.

"I would like to know how
you did that to the door," Norwood snapped. "That door was two
hundred years old."

"No wonder it rusted away."
Harry hid his wince in a shrug. It would take ages to get the
warding built back up to proper strength. "It took both of us to do
it and we're neither one of us prisoners, with the wards
specifically keyed against us." That should make him feel
better.

By the time Harry showed
Norwood and his guards how he'd done what he'd done--which meant he
first had to figure out exactly what that was--the Briganti
I-Branch had appeared, led by Grey Carteret himself at the head of
a small mob of magicians.

"Good God, Harry, can't you
stay out of trouble?" Grey squeezed through the crowd of Enforcers
guarding nothing to stare down at what had once been a
door.

"Wasn't my idea. I was just
following Elinor to keep her out o' trouble." He slid a glance
toward her, but she was helping a wobbly Biggs to his feet. "Good
thing I did, too."

"Yes, it was a good thing,"
Elinor agreed. "Though if you hadn't startled me into beginning my
ride too soon--" She sent the injured man with his co-workers to be
delivered to his home. "One of the sorcerers will call on you in
the morning, sir."

Harry ignored her. Didn't
matter whose fault it was. That was in the past. What mattered was
what happened next. Grey stepped carefully over the line of former
door, waggling a finger at it. "Gather that up, will you,
Duncan?"

"Aye, sir." Duncan was one
of the I-Branch alchemists who examined evidence from the scenes of
various magical crimes.

"Why?" Harry leaned on the
door jamb to watch Grey prowling inside the cell. "That's not 'ow
Cranshaw got out."

"We still might learn
something from it." Grey shrugged. "No harm in looking, is there?
Would you mind putting out your fire? We did bring
lanterns."

"Oh, right." Harry reached
out to grasp the flame again and this time when he closed his fist,
he quenched it.

Grey approached the side of
the prison cell nearest the corridor in his prowling and went
still. He sniffed. He took another step and sniffed
again.

"What--?" Harry cut himself
off at Grey's upraised hand.

Elinor came up beside him
in the doorway to peer in and Harry moved to the side, behind
Duncan on his knees, carefully sweeping the door bits into a dust
pan. Together, Harry and Elinor watched Grey slowly approach the
shadowed corner, the light from the lantern in his hand showing
nothing out of the ordinary.

Grey shuddered and took
several steps back. He handed the lantern off to Harry, dusted his
hands, and wiped his face with them. He gestured for Harry and
Elinor to back out of the doorway, exited, and led them a little
way down the corridor, away from the crowd, beckoning for Norwood
and Grey's I-Branch second, George Meade, to join them.

"There's been a demon in
that cell," Grey said quietly.

"I don't think it was a
physical manifestation like in Southwark last month," Grey went on,
"but a definite presence. Meade, I want you to take the conjury
lads through with their spirits, now Duncan's finishing, so they
know what they're looking for when they go out to search. Send a
callout through the guildhall to get the rest of the conjurers out
to search. All of them, including the sixth-formers at the academy.
It's the full moon tomorrow. They'll all be up anyway."

As Meade headed for the
magicians at the other end of the corridor, Grey turned to Norwood.
"It's my opinion that the demon gave Cranshaw the strength to do
what he did, breaking out of the cell. Though granted, Elinor's
expedition probably provided the opportunity."

"Cranshaw's a wizard,"
Norwood protested. "Not a conjurer. He can't call--"

Grey was already shaking
his head. "Doesn't matter. Not to a demon. They can't be called,
remember? If anything, it made Cranshaw more susceptible to it.
Conjurers are taught to recognize them."

If Harry hadn't been
watching her, he'd have missed Elinor's little flinch, the flicker
of a frown before she schooled her expression again.

"Do you think the demon was
there very long?" Elinor asked.

"Likely, yes, or I wouldn't
have sensed it. Their presence is usually more subtle. A whisper in
the ear, a whiff of temptation, and they're gone again." Grey waved
his hand in a graceful flourish to illustrate their departure.
"This one stayed. To be sure of its target perhaps.
Why?"

Elinor shrugged. "Just
wondering."

Harry looked at Norwood.
"Still want us to do that sorcery test?"

Norwood shook his head. "If
Magister Carteret says a demon helped Cranshaw escape, his word's
good enough for me."

"Then I'll be takin'
Magister Tavis home. She's 'ad a strenuous evening." He collected
their outer garments from the guard alcove where they'd been left
and escorted Elinor through the lines of conjurers wending their
way inward to have a
sniff
at the cell.

"I hope they find him
soon," Elinor said as they exited the tower. "He's not yet
healed."

"Is 'e gonna die if 'e
don't get his potions?" Harry set his hand in the small of her back
as they crossed the courtyard.

"No, nothing like that. But
he can hardly walk and he's still in pain."

They were alone in the
open, no tower guards near. Harry asked the question he'd been
saving. "So, why were you so worried about the demon?"

Elinor waited until they
passed through the gate onto the street before she answered. "Not
worried, exactly." She sighed. "I can be tempted, Harry. Quite
easily, when it comes to magic. I wanted to use sorcery to heal
Nigel Cranshaw's mind. I wanted it enough to bluff my way into
Holborn Tower and convince Mr. Biggs to give him the
potion."

She firmed her lips and
straightened her spine as she strode along. "The demon in the tower
might have whispered its temptation into my ear, but I am the one
who succumbed to it. I neither fled from temptation nor resisted. I
embraced it with open arms, even though I knew--I knew,
Harry,
quite
well--that what I wanted to do was foolish and ill-advised
and--and just wrong. It's my fault Nigel is running loose. Mine
alone."

"Maybe, yeah." Harry
signaled a hackney cab, now he thought Elinor might have walked far
enough to have calmed herself down. "I dunno about you
alone,
but yeah, you at
least contributed. And you're sorry, an' you won't do it again." He
sat next to her in the cab and fixed a pointed stare on her. "Will
you?"

"I won't. I will try very,
very hard not to."

"No tryin'. Do it. Or
rather, don't." Harry scowled more fiercely.

"Harry--" She lifted her
hands helplessly. "I can say I won't, but I honestly don't know if
I can. Should I make a promise I'm not sure I can keep?"

He slumped against the back
of the cab. "No, don't do that. But Elinor--" He let out a gust of
air.

"I
know.
" She twisted her hands together.
"I didn't tell anyone what I was doing because I knew you would try
to stop me, or convince me to put it off, or--" She hid her face in
her hands. "I am such an idiot! I could have damaged his mind
permanently. Maybe I did. I don't think so, but he's gone. How am I
to know? And what if you hadn't been there? This could have been an
even greater disaster. I might still be trapped inside Nigel's
mind, which is not the loveliest place to be, even if you're
Nigel."

Harry put his arm around
her and tucked her head into his shoulder. "But you're not. It's
all right. We'll work it out. You meant well. You
just--"

"Didn't go about it
properly," Elinor finished for him with a sigh. At least it wasn't
a sob.

"I know summat about that
kind o' temptation." Harry leaned his cheek against the top of her
head. "I've given in to it a time or two meself. What if--can you
promise me this? And I'll try to get the other magisters to promise
too. If you're thinkin' on working some new magic, somethin' that's
not been done before, or somethin' that might be dangerous, tell
me. Or Grey or Amanusa. Or all of us. That way we can put our 'eads
together and talk it out and figure a way to make it safe as
possible."