Heart's Magic (29 page)

Now Grey was urging it
too?
Elinor ignored him, except for a sour
look. He wasn't serious. "If you become council head, Harry, who
does that make magister for the alchemist's guild? Hopefully it's
someone we can work with."

Harry frowned. "I'm not
exactly sure. There's three or four at about that same level.
Vernon's getting up in age--around 60, I think. Ian Ramsay's good,
but I think Thom Norwood's better, for all he's so
young."

"How old is Norwood?"
Amanusa asked.

"Might be 30, but I don't
think so. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thereabouts."

"So he's bound to get
better than he already is, isn't he?" Grey nodded in satisfaction.
"And Norwood isn't really 'one of us,' so we can't be accused of
'cronyism.' He's an Enforcer, not I-Branch. He wasn't in academy
class with either of us. He's not any too sure about women as
magicians, but he's fair-minded. He'll come round, I think." Grey
nodded again. "He'll do. Nicely."

The others agreed, so by
the time tea arrived, it was all decided.

Wednesday morning at 11
o'clock, Elinor knocked on the front door of the wizard's guild
hall not far from Covent Garden. It was time she paid a visit. She
was the guild's magister, after all.

When the guild hall had
been built and Covent Garden had been an actual monastery garden,
the wizards had grown many of their herbs there, until Henry VIII
abolished all the convents and took over the property. Jax
remembered the event. When it became a market in the 1600s, the
wizards once again obtained their herbs there. The hall was the
original building, untouched by any of London's great fires and,
Elinor thought, never remodeled since it was built. Medieval
environs must have led to medieval attitudes.

Elinor had mentioned her
intention to Amanusa the previous evening, as she had promised
Harry. The problem was that magicians of one guild did not enter
the hall of another guild. No one was sure whether that was an
actual rule in the council charter or simply something that "wasn't
done." They had the clerks of all four guilds researching the
matter, but they hadn't finished and Elinor didn't want to wait.
Who knew how long it would take them to find anything?

She wanted to establish her
authority now, before Harry became council head and people could
mutter that she was standing behind his wand. However, she didn't
think going it
completely
alone would be wise. She looked over her shoulder
at Amanusa and Jax, Grey and Harry waiting across the street. Pearl
had stayed behind to cover their classes. Elinor wanted witnesses
who would raise the alarm if she didn't come out within a
reasonable time.

The guild hall door opened.
A tall man with a whisper of dark hair ringing his head and a long
narrow nose looked down it at her. "This," he said, "is the
wizard's guild hall. No females allowed." And the door shut again
before Elinor could say a word.

She turned and raised her
hands in a helpless gesture at the other magisters who strolled
over to join her. "Now what?"

"Knock again." Harry used
the brass head of his walking stick to do just that, to booming
effect.

The door was opened a
little more promptly this time. The butler, for he could be no one
else, peered down at the four magisters, plus Jax.

"Do you 'appen to know who
we are?" Harry thunked his stick on the ground for
emphasis.

"I know who you are not,"
the butler retorted. "You are not wizards. Only wizards allowed."
The door closed more forcefully this time and locks
turned.

"Actually--" Grey spoke up.
"That isn't true. Our clerks have finished their reading. I have
been informed that nowhere in the charter or any of the rules
agreed upon since does it say that magicians may not enter the hall
of another guild." He paused, listening to whatever spirit was
reporting. "Furthermore, it is specifically permitted--perhaps even
required--in cases of disputations or illegal behavior and upon
agreement of the magisters of the four guilds, for the four of us
to enter the guild hall and clear up the difficulty. Aided, if
necessary, by the Briganti."

Harry's grin was positively
feral. "And if we fetch Thom Norwood to 'ead up the Briganti you
take in with you, we'll 'ave the future magister along for the
trip."

"Have you mentioned the
promotion to him yet?" Elinor asked.

"Not yet. I figure Friday
or Saturday's soon enough, especially if we want 'im keepin' quiet
about it. I think Sir William wants to present it as a done deal,
and I agree. We don't want word gettin' out ahead o'
time."

"So what are we going to do
now?" Elinor propped her hands on her hips, losing patience. It was
cold out.

"I suggest we ask Grey to
make a request for a small party of Briganti Enforcers," Jax said,
"and go have a cup of tea while we wait for them to
arrive."

Elinor barely had time to
finish her cup before she saw Norwood and four other men, three of
them in black overcoats, top hats, and striped sashes, pushing
their way through Covent Garden. The fourth was dressed in a green
school master's gown. She tapped Harry's arm and pointed as she
drank the last swallow and he went out to flag them
down.

"Sir? Miss." Norwood
acknowledged them with a slight, stiff bow. Then he saw Grey and
Amanusa. His eyes widened and he greeted them as well. "We are to
force entry into a guild hall?" He sounded dubious.

Harry opened his mouth and
Elinor kicked his shin under the tiny table in the enclosed stall.
He wasn't council head yet and this was
her
guild. She stood. "You read the
pertinent portion of the charter?"

"Yes, miss, I
did."

She supposed she shouldn't
be surprised by his wariness, given what she'd done in the prison
he supervised. "I know that I skirted very close to the edge of a
number of rules, Mr. Norwood, including failing to notify you or
the tower warder when I paid my visit--though you did give me
general permission to treat Mr. Cranshaw. Which is why I am trying
to follow proper form this time. I am the magister of the wizard's
guild, am I not?"

"Yes, miss, you are that."
He still looked suspicious.

She pointed at the gothic
façade of the hall, quivering with affront. "The butler in that
hall closed the door in my face. In my
face.
It is not to be
borne."

Norwood sighed. His
northern accent came to the fore. "No, miss, I'd say not. Come on,
then. Let's get your door open." He beckoned to his men and
everyone tramped back across the way to the guild hall.

This time, when the butler
opened the door, after an excessively long wait in Elinor's
opinion, his expression upon being confronted with a quartet of
Briganti alchemists with wands out was most gratifying. A
combination of astonishment and offense, with a goodly dose of fear
included.

"Stand aside." Norwood
gestured with his wand--a bright, shiny copper one--for the butler
to move out of the way.

He stiffened and
straightened to his full, considerable height--a good number of
inches taller than Mr. Norwood--and resumed looking down his nose.
"This is the
wizard's
guild hall. No one other than a wizard is permitted to pass
inside."

"Not if the magister of the
wizard's guild says we can." Norwood twitched his wand, almost
absentmindedly. Elinor didn't think it actually was an absentminded
twitch, not given the butler's nervous gulp. The effect had to be
calculated.

"You do know who the
wizard's magister is, don't you?" Norwood went on. "Now that both
Wizard Cranshaw and Wizard Dodd have lost their
challenges?"

The butler gulped again,
visibly wilting. "I had heard something--"

"So." Norwood flicked his
wand up and aimed it at the butler's top waistcoat button. "Are you
going to step aside or are we going to make you? While you're
considering your answer, you might want to think on whether you
honestly want to make an enemy of the new magister. If you haven't
burnt that bridge already."

And a third time the butler
gulped. The action seemed to collapse him entirely and he stepped
aside. Norwood and one of his men stepped through, wands at the
ready as they surveyed the entrance hall for danger.

Elinor swept in behind
them. She was the magister after all. The vast entrance hall was
sized to impress with its massive medieval fireplace, but the dust
and cobwebs in all the corners diminished the effect. Another
strike against the butler.

The tour of the building
was something of an anticlimax after all the drama just getting in.
There had been some remodeling done after all, but not extensive.
Rooms for the bachelor wizards to reside in had been built. The
stillroom had been supplied with iron stoves. A glass conservatory
larger even than Harry's had been added on.

A surprising number of
wizards resided in the guild hall. All of the wizards in London, in
fact, save for Sir William and John Fillmore the schoolmaster, who
lived at the Academy. Fillmore was the man in the robe who'd
arrived with the Briganti. Nigel Cranshaw had lived in the hall as
well, before taking up his chambers in Holborn Tower. Elinor made a
note to herself to ask Grey how the search for the missing prisoner
was going and perhaps offer her services. Not that she knew how she
could help.

All of the wizards living
at the guild hall were bachelors--Fillmore, Phineas Allsup who had
been Edgar Dodd's second, old Beddowes, and two others, Jenkins and
Moreman, who were strangers to her. It seemed odd that none of them
should be married. Had Nigel forbidden his wizards to marry? She
made another note to herself to investigate the matter.

Mostly, Elinor found dirt,
disorder, and antagonism. Bachelor gentlemen were not exceptionally
fastidious about their surroundings and servants tended to take
advantage of that fact, especially if all the servants were male,
which they were. Over the years, generations of mostly female
wizards had collected things. Plants. Mechanical devices.
Furniture. Other things Elinor couldn't begin to guess at. And none
of it apparently had ever been thrown out.

Entire rooms were devoted to
collections of ... junk. She found the Black Cauldron--she didn't
think it was
that
cauldron from the Gaelic myths but it had the same
name--stuffed into a sideboard in the smoking room. She took
possession of it as the new magister, handing it off to one of the
Briganti to carry. It was quite heavy. Even the stillroom--a vast
and echoing chamber with tall windows opening onto the conservatory
and north-facing clerestory lights--had whole sections piled high
with everything from other enormous iron cauldrons to ornate
birdcages. The piles of clutter created a maze of walls separating
the various workplaces of the resident wizards. Jenkins and Moreman
apparently worked together. Their space was twice as large as the
others. Fillmore's space was twice as small. He had use of the
stillroom at the academy.

None of them wanted her in
their workspace. She had acquired an entourage of the resident
wizards trailing after her like rats after the piper. In the
stillroom, they turned notebooks over and covered their work,
glowering furiously at everyone who traipsed through their
territory--five alchemists, a conjurer, a sorcerer and her
familiar, the magister of their own guild, and all the other
wizards.

They sputtered with rage,
stamping along on Elinor's tour, snarling imprecations and insults.
She was grateful they didn't go beyond that. Norwood and his
Briganti were due the gratitude.

The inspection ended at the
guild hall offices. They proved as dusty and neglected as the rest
of the building. The archives covering the previous thousand years
or so were threatened by damp. Immediate measures needed to be
taken to preserve them. Fortunately, all the current and ongoing
records had been removed to the office in the main council
building.

Elinor borrowed Harry's
customary posture, propping her hands on her hips while she
surveyed the potential ruin of centuries of history, if not wisdom.
All the herbals and notebooks had been taken to the council
library, so they were safe too. What was left were the records.
"The roof has to be fixed."

"I agree." Harry poked his
pen knife into a wooden rib supporting the roof. "Looks like you've
got dry rot as well."

"The guild isn't poor. Why
hasn't any of this been done?" She raised an eyebrow at the
scowling wizards. "Do you want to see the building fall down around
your ears?"

Most of the men made
snarling, grumbling noises. Old Beddowes cried, "None of your
business!"

"I assumed Nigel was taking
care of it," Fillmore said from the back of the group, where he
leaned against the doorjamb. "He was the magister. It's the
magister's job."

Elinor snorted. "We see
what a fine job he's done of it and where he's ended up."
Immediately after she said it, she knew she shouldn't
have.