Steadfast (13 page)

“I—wonder if I could ask you something?” she stammered, and the woman looked mildly
surprised. “Some advice?”

“Well, I’ll do my best, dearie.” The singer was the older woman, who performed somewhat
rowdy, racy comic songs at the end of the show. Something about her inspired confidence
in Katie. In a way, the lady reminded Katy of some of the nicer circus wives, the
ones that took care of the daily chores around the circus so that the performers could
concentrate on their acts. “I don’t know what advice an old hag like me can give a
pretty little thing like you, though.”

“It’s about . . . divorce,” Katie had blurted, flushing painfully. “I wondered if—you
knew how to get one.”

“Oh well! Now
that
I can help you with.” The woman lit herself a cigarette and gestured to Katie to
take a seat on the divan. Katie lowered herself down onto it gingerly, taking care
not to crush the flounces of the dress laid out beside her. “Four men I married and
divorced, so I have some practice in it, you could say. Well, shall I begin at the
beginning?”

It took a bit of time, with a lot of diversion into “. . . and such a handsome bloke,
but a right bastard . . .” but the gist of it was fairly simple. The singer—Peggy
Kelly, was her name (“Though I’m too fat and old to be called Pretty Peggy Kelly anymore”)
knew the answer to one of Katie’s most important questions—that is, she knew to the
penny how much this was going to cost. She also knew an amenable lawyer right here
in Brighton (“I used him for two of the four, and the only reason I didn’t use him
for the other two was because I had to sue in London courts or miss my show dates.”)
and from everything Peggy said, the man was sympathetic to a woman without wanting
to get his hands all over her, and if he was a trifle too fond of the bottle, he liked
and understood show business people.

And Peggy knew exactly how to go about getting that divorce in the first place, without
ever alerting Dick to the fact that it was going on.

“It’s no use going into court and crying that he beat you,” Peggy said—and when Katie
winced, she nodded with sympathy. “Married to a brute, eh, ducks? Well, unless he
kills you, the law’s on his side.” It was said with calm acceptance that made Katie
hang her head, flushing with shame.

Peggy took one finger and put it under Katie’s chin, making her look up. “Bright side,
ducks. We can get you clear by other ways. But first, you have to tell me all about
it. Don’t hold nothing back, there’s not a bloomin’ thing you can tell me that I haven’t
seen or been through.”

This was not what Katie had intended when she first came into Peggy’s dressing room.
But the older woman, though she looked like a caricature of a low-class barmaid, past
her prime and with nothing more profound in her head than the next pint, the next
bloke, and the next new hat, turned out to be kind, shrewd, and worldly. She nodded
as Katie told her story, without any judgment. “I can’t say I’ve known more than one
or two Travelers in my life,” Peggy said, “But since a lot of the things that nose-in-the-air
people say about Travelers are the same things they say about me, I reckon there’s
about the same amount of truth in ’em. You and me can be friends, ducky. Like that
Kipling man says. Sisters under the skin!” And she
meant
that. She was as warmhearted as Katie’s own mother, and Katie could feel that warm-heartedness
in every word she said. No wonder she was an audience favorite!

When Katie got to the part about the fire, and agreeing to marry Dick, Peggy frowned
fiercely. She asked Katie some pointed questions about those foggy days following
the fire. Katie wasn’t sure why she was asking these things, but at this point, she
trusted Peggy, and answered them. Peggy didn’t say anything . . . but Katie could
tell she was thinking hard, and wondered why.

Still, since Peggy said nothing, Katie soldiered on with her story.

“. . . and then I took the train to Brighton, I found an advertisement, and came here,”
she finished. “The advertisement was Lionel’s, of course.”

“Hmm-hmm.” Peggy sat back in her chair and folded her hands over her stomach. When
she was on stage, her bulk was constricted into ample curves by a corset that looked
to have been designed by railway bridge engineers. Here in her dressing room, inside
of the folds of a dressing gown that looked like a waterfall of lace and ribbons,
her body was allowed to expand. “Well then. We’ll have to go the same route that I
did, ducks. We lie.”

Katie gaped at her, unsure of how to interpret that. Did Peggy expect just Katie to
lie? Or could she possibly mean—“We?” she faltered. “You—”

Peggy laughed, and reached over to pat her hand. “You may be a thievin’ Traveler,
but you’re a bleeding babe in the woods when it comes to law courts. I’m not about
to let a little gel like you—much less one that’s our Lionel’s assistant!—go into
the den of snakes alone!” Her eyes gleamed with both amusement and anticipation of
a battle. “Besides, that blackguard that shackled you sounds like my second, and I’m
always game to take down a wife-beating bastard, I am. So now, this will be as simple
as anything. You sue for divorce on grounds of infidelity. I lie and say I caught
him bedding my maid. She lies and says he did. That’s all we need, we have two witnesses
and one of them was the one doing the bedding. My maid’ll cry and say he cuffed her
and laughed at her when he was done, and that’ll be enough for the judge to believe.
Can he read, this man you’re stuck with?”

Katie felt dazed. How was it that Peggy had come up with this story so quickly? “I
don’t think so,” she said.

Peggy laughed with glee. “All the better then. We’ll hire a feller to give him a bunch
of old newspapers with the legal stuff shoved in the middle of it, and like as not
he’ll just use the papers to light the stove with.” She nodded.

“But your maid—I don’t want to—she’ll be spoilt—” Katie objected weakly. She couldn’t
for a moment imagine why the maid would ever do such a thing for her.

Peggy tossed her head back in gales of laughter. “Oh bless your heart, she’s spoilt
herself a dozen times over before this! Two of my four, she served as the key to get
me out of their noose. No, we’ll just need a date and a place where the blackguard
might have bedded a girl or three, and it’ll have to have been one where we were playing
somewhere nearby. I’m partial to a Fair, and I’d be just likely to take a dark day
off to go see one, if it was close.”

Before too very long, they’d come up with a date when the circus was within an hour’s
jaunt of Bath, where Peggy had been playing the Crown and Castle. “Now, there we go,
deary. It’s just a matter of you saving up your pennies. My maid will need a little
present of about five pounds.” Peggy’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “Can’t ask her to
lose her honor all over again without a little present, now, can we? I swear, she
should make this a second income, that she should.”

Katie nodded her head, feeling quite as if the entire situation had taken the bit
between its teeth and run off with her.

“And you need to save up for the solicitor. He’ll want his money in advance, these
legal-lads always do. He’ll take care of everything else, I’ll advise him about what
the fellah needs to serve the papers, and he’ll get the right bloke to do it so your
bully-boy gets served without knowing.”

Katie felt a little like a leaf caught in a gale. It was a
good
gale, and it was certainly taking her where she wanted to go, but she didn’t seem
to have much say in what was happening.

“Why are you doing this for me?” she asked, finally.

Now Peggy’s shrewd and calculating gaze softened, and again she reached out to pat
Katie’s hand. “Because a long time ago, there was a bawdy old gal that dressed up
in trousers that did the same for me, when she found me crying in a corner. Don’t
you worry, ducks. Everything will work out fine.”

•   •   •

She had already been to see the solicitor, who had agreed to the same fee Peggy had
quoted. Now it was just a matter of raising the money, but as she and Jack rolled
along in the trap, heading back to Brighton, she felt more hopeful and more like her
old self than she had before her parents died. She was on the way to being free of
Dick. She had a lovely room to live in, and good food to eat, and a good job with
a good boss. She had friends!

And now they were going to cap off a wonderful day by seeing fireworks!

She’d heard them going off at night, of course. You couldn’t miss them, not even being
deep inside the music hall at the time the displays were put on. But as she had told
Jack, the only fireworks she had ever seen were the Roman candles, squibs, and crackers
that settled folk in villages let off at their Guy Fawkes bonfires. Those were pretty
and a lot of fun to watch, but these were supposed to fill half the sky. She believed
that. She believed the colored pictures she saw on the posters in shop windows and
nailed to posts. The Brighton fireworks displays sound like a war from inside the
theater, and she could hardly wait to see them.

When they arrived, Jack found one of the little boys that ran errands for the music
hall waiting to hold horses for people who had little carts and traps and riding horses,
but wanted to get down to the beach to see the fireworks closer. Brighton beasts were
used to the noise and light, of course, and unless something else startled them, were
not going to get spooked by a skyrocket. It was perfectly safe for the boy to hold
as many as half a dozen horses, three to each arm. Paddy didn’t seem the least nervous;
in fact, when he realized he was staying with the boy, he relaxed into a hipshot pose
and put his head down a bit to doze.

They left Paddy and the trap with the boy, and Jack steered her down onto the beach
with one hand politely on her elbow. She was a little worried for his wooden leg on
the uneven, pebbly surface, but he seemed to manage all right. She kept feeling, though,
as if it was she who should have been putting
her
hand under
his
elbow to keep him steady.

Being right down next to the ocean, though, made her stomach a bit uneasy. There was
that feeling again, as if all that water plainly did not like her, and would do her
a mischief if it could. Jack had bought them both more lemonades, and she kept sipping
the sweet-sour beverage to ease her nervous dry mouth, but that didn’t help the sensation
of being in a place she didn’t belong, and a place that was not particularly happy
about her
being
there. It was almost as if the sea was haunted by sullen ghosts that were just waiting
for a chance to do her a mischief. It wasn’t a logical or rational feeling, but she
couldn’t deny it was there.

All that fled away, however, with the first rocket.

It looked like a flower made of orange fire, blooming across a quarter of the night
sky. She was entranced by the beauty, and even reached out unconsciously to touch
it. She completely forgot her discomfort as she stared at the display, and rocket
after rocket discharged its beauty, red and gold, orange and blue, green and white,
into the black sky while the flat sea beneath reflected the colors.

She was vaguely aware of a band playing out on the Pier, and of the exclamations of
those around her, but only dimly. She felt almost as if she was
drinking
in the fire and the colors, as if this was satisfying something deep in her soul
that she hadn’t even been aware was hungry until now.

And then, between one moment and the next—it all went from glorious, to terrible.

She felt it; she couldn’t tell how she knew, but suddenly, out of nowhere, she was
struck with absolute terror, the terror of the fox that suddenly hears the hounds,
or the bird that finds itself trapped on the ground. Somehow she knew—in a heartbeat—that
they were in terrible, horrible danger. Stark, breathless fear transfixed her, coursing
through her like lightning. They didn’t have time to move. She
knew
that. Peril was racing toward them out of the sky.

And then, Jack . . . did something. Just as she instinctively flung up her hands in
a futile, but desperate attempt to ward off what she
knew
was coming.

A plume of fire erupted between him and the ocean, and out of it burst a swarm of
little lizards. Except these little lizards were made of fire, and had eyes that glowed
like white-hot coals. They swarmed over him, and started for her—

As a spray of fire fanned out from her hands, and turned into a fan of fiery feathers,
as a pair of
birds
made of fire spread their wings between her and—

The runaway rocket hit the lizards and the birds and burst, sending showers of burning
balls mostly out to sea, but also over their heads and to either side of them—balls
of white hot flame going everywhere—

Except where the two of them were standing.

People were screaming and running away.
She
screamed, and ducked, as the birds cupped their wings around her and arched their
necks over her. Everything was fire and darkness, screaming and terror.

And then, as quickly as it had started, it was over. The beach was dark again. There
was no one for yards around but her and Jack.

And they were standing there completely unharmed, as the fiery lizards and the flame-birds
disappeared as if they had never been there in the first place.

7

T
HE salamanders came at Jack’s panicked call to shield him and Katie.

But Katie, it seemed, didn’t need shielding, as a pair of phoenixes flashed into being
all on their own to protect
her
.

That was all that Jack had time to take in. Then there was fire and choking, acrid
smoke, and explosions all around them, and briefly, before the salamander batted it
away, a wire of pain biting into his arm from a bit of burning metal.

Then, it was over, and they were engulfed in a moment of absolute quiet, in which
the only sound was the waves on the beach and the distant band on the Pier. And then
the noise started again, as the crowd rushed back toward them, expecting horror and
finding commonplace, two people standing there completely unharmed.

It was incredible. No one believed it.
A miracle!
shouted someone, but Jack just grabbed Katie around the waist and pulled her into
the crowd while it was still milling around. He was sure of only one thing; they needed
to get away while things were still confused enough that they had a chance to. Peoples’
eyes were still dazzled enough that once they were
in
the crowd, no one knew they were the two that had survived the barrage of fire. The
salamanders and phoenixes had deflected all the fireworks out to sea; not even the
rocket casing remained.

While it might have seemed good publicity to be the ones that had somehow come unscathed
from what could have been a terrible accident, it was the last thing that Katie would
want. Such publicity could bring whoever it was that she feared so deeply hunting
for them. There would be pictures in the paper, and reporters wanting interviews.
Sooner or later, someone would find out Katie was a Traveler, and there would be police
assuming she was a thief, or that she had somehow caused the accident herself to try
and get some money out of the city.

No, they needed to get away, and quickly. Let the crowd search, they would be long
gone.

Katie was still limp with shock, and didn’t even object to his rough handling. He
worked them both through the crowd as quickly as he could, while behind him, he heard
the shouts.

“Where are they?”

“They were there a moment ago!”

No one imagined they would want to get away from the interest of the crowd on the
seashore—and the police and fire who were now pushing their way
toward
the spot as Jack and Katie went in the opposite direction. Who wouldn’t want the
attention of having barely escaped death? Who wouldn’t want the congratulations, the
fame, their names in the paper?

Only us,
Jack thought, and broke through the edge of a crowd that was getting denser with
every new arrival. He worked his way up to the street, and to their faithful boy,
still holding the horses and Paddy, but craning his neck as hard as he could to try
and see what was going on down by the water.

“Didja see, sir? Didja see?” he demanded, when he recognized them.

Jack laughed, and he hoped it didn’t sound as shaky as he thought it was. “Only a
runaway skyrocket, lad. Didn’t hit anyone, thanks to the Grace of God, and bounced
back out to sea.”

“Oh . . .” the boy said, briefly disappointed that there had been no carnage, no horrors.
Jack laughed again, weakly. Boys were like that . . . loved talking about people bursting
into flames or exploding, or being blown up into a thousand bits. Loved to think about
it, as long as they didn’t actually see the reality. He remembered being exactly like
that at this boy’s age. Stories about fighting, cannons roaring, stories about the
American Wild West and Indian massacres, anything wild and bloody just fascinated
him and made him and his friends act it out. Actually he had still been a little like
that when he joined the Army. He didn’t get it knocked out of him until he’d seen
the reality of war. His imagination hadn’t been good enough to get past the exciting
explosion and flames and whizzing bullets part, and into the part where there were
scattered limbs, burned flesh, and the bleeding bodies. Girls never seemed to be like
that. Girls were nicer creatures than boys, really. Or maybe their imaginations were
better.

He gave the lad his penny, got a still-shocked Katie up into the trap, and clicked
to Paddy, who knew there was only one place they could be going now, and broke into
a trot to get there.

•   •   •

Katie felt . . . stunned. Nothing made any sense. The world didn’t contain lizards
and birds made of fire that protected people from skyrockets. It
didn’t.
No matter what stories her mother had told her at night, huddled in the cupboard-bed
in the caravan, or sitting beside a campfire. That was all silliness and magic, like
the little people she used to pretend she saw in the forest, the ones with goat-hooves
and horns, or the tree-girls, or the tiny flying ones with butterfly and dragonfly
wings. Even if she thought she used to see lizards and birds like that in the campfire,
that was all a child’s nonsense. It had never been real. Children could convince themselves
they had seen anything, that a bush was a lion and a cloud was a dragon.

But these things had been real; there was a slight scorch across the linen of her
skirt at ankle-length to prove it. Her hair and dress stank of gunpowder and chemicals.
It had
happened.
She had seen it with her own, adult eyes, and so had dozens of witnesses. They had
almost been killed by a runaway rocket, and things out of her childhood daydreams
had appeared out of nowhere to save them.

It was impossible.

It was real.

She vibrated between the two, unable to accept that imaginary creatures had just saved
her life, unable to deny that they had. She was so numb that she just allowed Jack
to hurry her through the crowd and away from the site of the impossibility, let him
practically throw her into the trap. But finally, as they got into a side street where
it was quiet, where Paddy’s hoofbeats echoed cheerfully among the buildings, she seized
his arm and shook it violently, making Paddy pull up, confused.

“What just happened?”
she choked out.

Jack licked his lips. It looked as if he was thinking of a thousand different answers,
but the one that he decided on was a single word.

“Magic,” he said, in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument.

“But it—but then—but you aren’t—” she began, thinking that surely, surely he meant
something like what Lionel did—except, of course, illusion wasn’t going to shield
a person from a rain of fireballs!

“Katie,
hush,”
he said sharply, grabbed her wrist and gave it a little shake. “It was magic. Real
magic. Now hush, and hear me out.”

She couldn’t have said a word now if she’d had to, they were all stuck somewhere in
her throat. So they sat there in the trap in the empty street while Paddy pawed the
cobblestones impatiently, and he told her impossible things.

How there were four kinds of magic—“Elemental” magic he called it—Earth, Air, Fire,
and Water. How some people could use this magic. How there were magic creatures that
were made of this magic. How he and Lionel were able to use it, that he could use
Fire and Lionel could use Air.

How she could, too. How the fiery birds coming out of nowhere to protect her proved
it. How the fact that she could
see
them proved it.

“You don’t think anyone else saw them, do you?” he asked her. “Did you hear them shouting
about the phoenixes and the salamanders? No, of course you didn’t. They only saw the
skyrocket. Only you and I saw what came to protect us.”

She didn’t want to believe him, but the only other explanation was that she had gone
mad.

She kept shaking her head
no
and he kept saying
yes.

“Are you going to be all right?” he kept asking. “I don’t want you to get into your
room and have hysterics alone, I need to know if you are going to be all right.”

Finally, when she realized that what he meant was that he was actually going to
take
her straight back to her room at the boarding house, if she was going to be all right,
she managed to shake her head yes.

He turned Paddy’s head, much to the pony’s disgust, and as she sat there on the seat
of the trap and shook, he took her home.

•   •   •

Lionel must have been waiting at the door, listening for the sound of the pony and
trap, for he practically flew out of the front of the house the moment that Jack pulled
the cart up in front of the house. “What in the name of God happened?” he asked, sounding
frantic. “I felt something
horrible,
and my sylphs were out of their minds! My—”

Jack waved a weary hand at him. “Let’s get the things into the house, then if you
don’t mind, could you take the trap back to the stable and walk back? I don’t think
I’m up to it.”

“Good God man, you stink of—” Lionel shut his mouth. “Obviously you are all right,
and obviously Katie is all right or you would have sent a message. Get in the house,
get some soup in you, it’s waiting on the table. I’ll be right back.”

Jack lowered himself out of the cart, and limped heavily into the house, his stump
aching worse than it had in a very long time. He thought for certain that the evening’s
near-disaster had killed his appetite, but when he smelled the heavenly aroma of thick
chicken soup, he realized it had not. The heavy tureen had kept it piping hot, and
he was into his second bowl when Lionel returned.

Now that the rawly ravenous gnawing in his gut was quieted—and he should have realized,
working that much magic, that fast, was going to burn a
lot
of energy—he described to Lionel what had happened.

Lionel sat back in his chair, light from the gas lamps showing his features clearly.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Good Lord. And she—manifested.”

“A pair of phoenixes,” Jack told him. “I didn’t have to protect her at all.”

“And she
saw
them.”

“She saw
everything.”
He blew out his breath in a sigh. “And all I can say is, thank heaven she’s poor
and depends on the job at the music hall, or I very much doubt we would see her tomorrow.
If she weren’t poor and desperate, she’d probably be packing to leave right now.”

Lionel passed his hand over his face. “Well,” he said, finally. “At least she didn’t
incinerate anyone.”

“In fact, my salamanders just kept me from being turned into cinders. Her phoenixes
deflected the worst of the rocket back out into the sea.” That little detail had only
come back to him as he’d talked. He finished his soup and the last of his bread, and
pushed the bowl away, reaching for his beer. He very much felt as if he had earned
it.

“Now what do we do?” Lionel said at last.

“I suppose . . .” Jack paused for thought. “I suppose that very much depends on her.”

•   •   •

Katie would have run up the stairs and hidden in her room—except that the moment she
opened the door of the boarding house, the smell of Mrs. Baird’s good soup struck
her a blow and she nearly doubled over from hunger. And once again she found herself
vibrating between two things that she desperately wanted to do. She desperately wanted
to run up and pull the covers over her head—and she desperately wanted to eat.

Hunger won, although she kept absolutely quiet while she ate three bowls of thick
pea soup. Since everyone else was chattering gaily away, no one seemed to notice—or
if they did, they probably thought she was melancholy over losing Suzie to matrimony.

As soon as she had eaten, she scuttled up to her room; this morning she
had
been sad that she was going to be in it all alone—it was the first time in her life
that she’d had a room all to herself, and it felt alien and not-right. But now . . .
now she was intensely grateful. And she
did
throw her clothing onto the other bed, huddle herself into her night-dress, and pull
the covers over her head, to curl into a ball and shake.

Because . . . if all this was real . . .

Then besides all those childhood memories of little folk in the fields and forests,
and strange things dancing in the fire, there were other memories she
did not
want to face.

Memories of running to the burning caravan, and being driven away from the door by
fiery birds that protected her from the flames and tried to keep her from going in.
Memories of beating on the door—a door that would not move so much as an inch—with
fists surrounded by flame-lizards. Memories of being pushed, back, and back again
by the little lizards, who had kept her from trying to break down the door, until
real, human hands seized her and dragged her away.

And oh, she did not want to see, she did not want to remember!

But she did, and she cried, and cried, and cried, until she could scarcely breathe,
until she was all out of energy and all out of thoughts, and fell at last into a sodden,
grief-filled sleep.