Steadfast (7 page)

He paused and dabbed some mustard on the ham, folded it in bread, and ate that while
Lionel pondered. Lionel remembered the sylph making off with a similar scrap of advertisement;
had
she
been responsible for the girl turning up?

More than likely—probably. Unlike a Master, an Elemental Magician couldn’t actually
command Elementals to do something, and half the time, when he
requested
something of them, they ignored the request. But Lionel had always gotten along well
with his sylphs, and knowing he was truly in desperate need of a proper assistant,
it looked as if they had finally decided to assist him.

“She’s Traveler, or Gypsy, or I’ll eat my hat,” Jack continued, the lamplight making
gold out of the few silver threads in his hair. “Not that there’s anything wrong with
that. Plenty of magic in Traveler blood, and no sylph or salamander would take to
her like they have if she was bad.” He ate a hard-boiled egg while he thought. “Did
she seem . . . nervy to you, though?”

Lionel knew that as an Air mage he was not as sensitive to emotions as Fire or Earth
would have been. “I couldn’t tell,” he said truthfully. He thought a little more.
“It did seem . . . I got the impulse to act rather like her old dad, just to keep
her soothed, if that makes any sense.”

Jack nodded, and ran his finger around the inside of his collar, loosening it a little.
“I’ve never known nor heard of a Traveler or a Gypsy to leave the caravans of their
kin unless they were running from something. And this is a girl, alone. It does point
to her running away.”

“She’s not just any girl—” Lionel pointed out, then took a pull of his pint, and tapped
the wood of the table to emphasize his words. “This is a trained acrobat, a trained
dancer—trained enough she likely had a good job somewhere. In fact, I know it; that
rehearsal dress of hers looked like a costume, it was used, and used often and hard.
Could it be
that
she’s running from?”

“Circus, maybe,” Jack mulled. “Circus uses dancers around the horses—around the elephant,
if they’ve got one—and in the parade and chorus numbers. Dancers always double as
something else. And she does acrobat tricks.” He turned his beer glass in little circles
on the tabletop. “A girl like her, maybe alone in the world . . . a hard man would
find it easy to take advantage of her, and most circus men I’ve met with are hard
men.”

It disgusted him, but Lionel had been in show business more than long enough to know
Jack had probably hit the answer. After all, the kinds of girls he’d been getting,
answering his advertisements, had not been . . . the nicest of young ladies. His sylphs
hadn’t much cared for them, and neither had Jack’s Fire Elementals. So how was it
that suddenly, the perfect assistant came calling out of the blue?
Because she isn’t all that perfect. She comes with a past.
“I think you’ve got it.” Lionel nodded. “Some circus owners can be brutes. Could be
she ran off and broke her contract.” He ate the last of his ham, and followed it with
a pickled carrot. “I’ll operate on that assumption until she tells me different. We’re
going to have to break it to her that real magic exists, and train her.”

Jack barked a laugh, and drained his pint. “That went without saying. I knew that
the moment I realized what she was. There are no coincidences when it comes to magicians,
Lionel. I think your sylph brought her here. You know how things are; if the sylph
brought her here, so far as
they
are concerned, she’s our responsibility and we’d better see to it that she gets sorted
out.”

The elephant in the room finally having been acknowledged between them, they were
able to dispense with it for the moment, and go on to homelier matters. When Lionel
finally let his friend out the door, things were pretty much settled between them.
They would wait and see how the girl managed, and only force the issue on her if it
appeared she was being obstinately blind to the genuine magic going on around her.

He locked his door and made his way back to his bedroom, turning out the lamps as
he did so.
I’m glad that at least I don’t have to deal with this alone. Jack might not be a Master,
but he is a damned fine Fire Mage. He can be the one to really train her. I just need
to be the one to be ready to jump in if he gets in over his head with this.

And Jack would be the one to try and coax the tale of her past out of her. Having
Lionel, her employer, demand it of her might only frighten her. But Jack was an equal,
and was friends to everyone in the theater. She should see that almost immediately,
and with luck would come to trust him.

It was as good a plan as they could come up with, at any rate.

4

T
HE magician seemed pleased with Katie’s costume, which fitted better than she thought,
and was as easy to move in as any of her circus costumes. If this was an example of
the Wardrobe Mistress’s work, she had no fear now that the new costume would be a
hazard.

“Excellent!” he exclaimed on seeing the two girls in the wings. “Now, I have a plan
for the two of you, to slowly break young Katie in on the act. What I want from you,
my dear young lady, is to caper about while you watch, carefully, what Suzie does.
That is what you will do in the first few shows as well.”

Katie looked at him thoughtfully, trying to think in her mind what her character should
be. She had learned about
character
from one of the clowns, who had pointed out just how different each of the clowns
was, and how each of them represented a distinct personality. After that, except when
she worked with Dick, she had tried to do the same. So . . . it was clear from watching
Lionel’s act that the magician liked telling a sort of story. How could she fit herself
into that story? “I can caper, right enough—but am I on
your
side, or hers?”

Either of those would do, really. Just so she had a side to be on. There would be
a lot more enthusiastic capering if she were on the magician’s side, though.

His eyes gleamed. “Excellent question. Which would you prefer?”

It occurred to her in that moment that she was rather tired of performing as a frail
little flower. Being a bit of a devil would be a relief. “Your side, sir,” she answered,
and thought a bit more. And then, another idea occurred to her. “Be good if I could
wear a domino, or some other devilish mask . . .” The mere thought of being able to
don a mask almost made her knees weak with a sudden sense of relief and liberation.
If she wore a mask, even if Dick or Andy came looking for her, they’d never recognize
her. All she had to do was keep her head down when she was outside the theater, and
they would
never
find her!

“Capital idea!” the magician applauded. “The more devilish you look, the better. That
way, when you take Suzie’s place, no one will recognize you. All right then, Davey,
let’s have a full run-through. Ladies, with me.”

He led them off into the wings, then nodded to the pianist, who banged out the opening
chords of the magician’s music with a will. She already knew this tune from last night;
quite a lively piece that would be easy to dance to. On impulse, Katie ran out ahead
of Lionel, who was pulling the “reluctant” Suzie along by ropes looped around her
wrists. She did a series of leaps and tumbles across the stage, cartwheeled back,
and ended up at Lionel’s side as he pulled Suzie to the table on which the “magic
carpet” was lying. As Katie mimed evil laughter, the magician mesmerized his victim
with a few passes of his hands, and laid her down on the carpet. And Katie rolled
over to stage front, keeping on the floor, but starting a series of slow contortions
as she watched the proceedings. Her job, after all, was to distract, so that no one
noticed whatever trickery the magician was doing to perform the illusion.

From out front last night, the carpet had appeared to levitate itself. But that had
been when the backdrop curtain had been in place. Now, it was painfully clear that
Suzie was lying on a board, over which the carpet had been draped. From the other
side of where the curtain would be tonight, a burly stagehand inserted an iron bar
under the board and with a clever mechanism and a lot of main strength, made Suzie
“float.” And when the magician had passed a ring around her to prove that she wasn’t
being hung on wires? Simple manipulation of the hoop in such a way that it
seemed
as if the hoop was passing over her twice, when in fact, the magician was manipulating
the hoop to avoid the bar. Now that she was up in the air, Katie capered about as
she watched this, like a devilish little monkey, clapping her hands and somersaulting,
and pausing now and again to turn herself into another knot.

The “flying carpet” didn’t look very comfortable for Suzie; it wasn’t nearly as long
as she was tall, and her head and legs draped over either end. Well, it more or less
had to be that way, Katie supposed, otherwise the hoop couldn’t make the passes around
that bar.

Suzie came down again, the stagehand pulled out the bar, and the whole apparatus was
wheeled away to the side as the magician woke his victim back up again. Katie darted
in, tugging at Suzie’s gauzy pantaloons, pretending to pinch her, and generally making
a nuisance of herself to cover the sound of the apparatus being taken away backstage.

The magician now brought out a lamp, and conjured up a “genie” out of it—a square
of scarlet silk, knotted so that it vaguely resembled a figure, that danced about
in the air, while Suzie wheeled in the next apparatus, the sword-basket. Since Katie
already knew how this worked, she now imitated a cat chasing after the dancing silk,
and eventually Suzie joined chasing it, with more graceful, dancing movements. For
the life of her Katie couldn’t see how the magician was doing what he was doing, but
that didn’t matter. She understood that
her
job was to provide enough distraction to the audience that if Lionel slipped, they
wouldn’t notice his manipulation.

The “genie” whisked back into the lamp, and the magician turned his attention to Suzie
again. With threatening gestures, he forced her into the basket while Katie leapt
and tumbled about with glee. With every thrust of a sword, Katie shouted, jumped and
clapped her hands. And when Suzie emerged unscathed, she pounded her fists on the
stage in rage.

The magician seized her, bound her with ropes, and forced her into a cabinet. He closed
the cabinet doors, whirled it around four times, and opened them again, and she was
gone! He closed them again, whirled the cabinet four more times and opened them, and
there she was! Katie still couldn’t see how this one was done, but she rejoiced at
her “master’s” triumph in a spiral of cartwheels.

And now came the finale. Lionel threw a rope up into the air, which remained, stiff
as a pole, hanging in midair. From here, Katie could see that a stagehand had caught
the rope and somehow fastened the end of it to a stout hook in the overhead scaffolding.
With threats, the magician forced Suzie to climb the rope, but when she got to the
top, she began making rude gestures at him.

As the magician raged at her below, and Katie imitated him, there was a blinding flash
and a puff of smoke and Suzie vanished as the rope dropped to the ground.

Except, of course, two very strong stagehands had actually pulled her quickly up into
the scaffolding with them and let the rope drop.

The magician ran off stage, raging, as Katie followed, imitating him, and the piano
player finished with a few crashing chords.

“Well
done,
by Jove!” the magician exclaimed, and the piano player stopped playing to applaud.
“Just repeat that tonight and we’ll be fine!”

“Too bad you can’t keep both of them,” the pianist said with enthusiasm.

“Not a chance, you cheeky monkey!” Suzie called down, on her way down out of the scaffold.
“I told my Harry we can set the date, we’ve already had the banns read, and that is
that!”

The piano player struck his chest with one closed fist. “Crushed! Again!” he cried.
Katie was surprised into a giggle.

“Now, lads, let’s wheel the cabinet out so Katie can see how that one is done,” Lionel
ordered, and the stagehands brought the box back out again. And of course, once Katie
was inside it, she saw how shallow it was compared to the outside dimensions. Of course,
since it was painted black inside, it was impossible to tell that. She understood
immediately what he was doing as she braced herself inside the cabinet. There were
two
sections to it, one with her in it, and one empty. When Lionel opened the cabinet
door on her side, she stepped out again.

“Now, let’s run through the tricks with you doing them, while Suzie coaches you,”
the magician ordered. “You’ll be fine bouncing about as you did just now in the shows,
but making the illusions appear flawless takes some work.”

A great deal more work, it appeared, than she had thought from her one stint in the
sword-basket last night. Timing was everything, and so were balance and the ability
to hold absolutely still. They managed to go through all of the big illusions twice—very
shakily—when the magician called a halt.

“I don’t want you two fainting of hunger,” he said. “Off with you. Be back in an hour
and we’ll find Katie a mask before the first show.”

The two girls hurried back to the dressing room, which was starting to fill with other
girls. They changed into street clothes, Katie made sure she still had the handkerchief
with the remains of her pound knotted into it, and they headed for the stage door.

The doorman was at his post, of course, with a bottle of lemonade on his desk and
a brown-paper-wrapped sandwich waiting beside him. “Can we bring you anything back,
Jack?” Suzie asked, as they squeezed by a couple of men chattering in some foreign
language.

“I’m fine, thanks, dearie.” The doorman smiled warmly at Katie, who flushed a little
and returned the smile. It occurred to her again that he was a handsome man, and that
the strands of gray in his hair had probably been put there by pain, and not by years.
“How did you fare, Miss Kate? Pleased enough with the job?” His eyes twinkled. “Reckon
you’ll stay?”

“It’s—lovely, thank you,” Katie stammered, shyly. “Really lovely!”

“Just you watch out for them Eye-talian acrobats,” he cautioned her, as they stepped
down into the alley. “They pinch!”

“And how
do
you like being a magician’s assistant?” Suzie asked, as she guided Katie to the left
and down the walkway, which had started to get a bit crowded, as compared with the
morning.

“It really
is
lovely,” Katie confessed. “I like bobbing about like a little ape, and making a bit
of a Guy of myself. I really like being able to make things up to get into a character,
and to make up my dances and acrobatic turns. Would Master Lionel be annoyed if I
made things up when I take your part?”

Suzie laughed. “Bless you, no, not as long as you hit your mark with the music. You
can do anything you like in between your marks. And if for some reason the apparatus
is being balky, he’ll signal the orchestra to repeat, you follow that. It’s only happened
twice since I’ve been with him, and never with the Turk act, but having someone that
can do more than prance about and pose the way I do would be jolly useful. Nothing
like being able to tie yourself in a knot to distract people from apparatus troubles.”

Katie skipped out of the way of a large man with a very red face who was evidently
in a great hurry, and nodded.

“How
did he make that silk dance about, though?” she asked, furrowing her brow in puzzlement.
“I could not work that out.”

“I never have, and I’ve been with him two years, ducks,” Suzie laughed. “And he won’t
tell me! Some things just have to remain a mystery.”

•   •   •

Jack felt Lionel approaching long before the magician appeared at the end of the corridor.
At this point, people were arriving for brief run-throughs with the band—the group
of musicians employed by the Palace was far too small to be called an “orchestra.”
They would have to be a bit careful of what they said, but the two of them had worked
together for so long that they were used to speaking in a sort of code that sounded
perfectly ordinary to anyone who might have been listening in.

“Satisfied with the new assistant?” he asked, when Lionel took up a spot just inside
the doorway where there was a good breeze. He handed Lionel the second bottle of lemonade
and another paper-wrapped sandwich, faithfully delivered by one of the lads that regularly
ran errands for the hall.

“Quite. She’s quick, observant, smart. She’ll never set the world on fire as a dancer,
but she’s
good,
better than those goat-footed prancers in the chorus, she’s got fantastic timing
and good musicality. She should have the tricks down within the week. I can’t ask
more than that of an assistant.” Ah, the things that Lionel did
not
say. One of the most glaring was that he didn’t mention the “genie” illusion, which
was no illusion at all. The bit of flying silk was manipulated by one of Lionel’s
sylphs. And the girl hadn’t seen the little thing.

Yet.

“Perhaps when she’s settled in, I should take her to see the fireworks,” Jack said
in measured tones. “Or out to a bonfire picnic.”

“Both,” Lionel decreed. “If she doesn’t enjoy those, she’s not the girl I think she
is. Actually on that note, I’d like you to see if you can draw her out on the subject
of her past, because she wants to wear a mask onstage.”

Jack raised an eyebrow in surprise.
Most
performers preferred not to go masked onstage. It was, quite frankly, dangerous,
especially for a dancer. Masks, however unrestrictive and closely molded to the face,
still obscured one’s vision. And it was not just the danger of a misstep that made
performers shun masks, it was the danger of getting too close to the footlights. Performers
had been burned, and even killed, doing so.