The Serpent's Shadow

Lord Alderscroft spoke in Council perhaps once a year, but when he did, even Peter lost his cynicism, sat up, and took notice. He was, perhaps, the most powerful Fire Master who had ever sat in the seat of the Master of the Council. Peter pushed away the last of his dinner, uneaten, and said respectfully, 'What are my duties, sir?' He suspected that when Alderscroft spoke even the King stood humbly and waited for orders. The great man moved forward, out of the shadows of his wingback chair, bringing his face into the light. It was the face of an old lion, old, but without one whit of his power diminished in any way; eyes that saw through to the soul, weighed it and measured the worth and strength of it, yet somehow made no judgment of it. His hair was longer than was fashionable; no one would ever have even thought of him with other than that half- tamed, gray-and-fawn mane around his face. Power under will, will under the law, tempered with compassion, endless tolerance and patience, and a clear and unflinching knowledge of the best and the worst in his fellow man. That was Lord Alderscroft, and Peter would have gone through fire and brimstone and hell itself if the old man asked him to. They all would have, including the ineffectual Owlswick.

'We know the general district, Scott; it's down near Fleet, and we've mapped out where the confusion-magic ends, so the source is likely to be somewhere within it.' Alderscroft motioned to Lord Peter, who passed over a map with a ragged ovoid drawn on it. And Scott immediately saw the difficulty.

'You'd all stand out there like horses in a hat shop, wouldn't you?' he said, now with a touch of humor. 'By heaven, I believe you couldn't go five feet in that area without losing everything but the lining of your pockets!'

'Now you see our difficulty,' Alderscroft said, with a grave nod. 'Can you go in there—and perhaps find the source of this—even give us some notion of who the person is, and why this mage has come to this city?'

'I can try,' Peter acknowledged. 'Water's closest to Earth anyway; likely I can get close when none of the rest of you can, at least not you Air and Fire Masters. The little water sprites like to hang about Earth Magic, especially in gardens, so long as the water's clean. I might get some luck.'

'I'll send Gannet over to your warehouse and get things shipshape at your shop,' Lord Peter promised, with a winning smile, that made him look considerably less like a prime silly ass and more like the intelligent fellow he was. 'You remember Gannet, don't you?'

Scott managed a smile of his own. 'Your pet burglar, I believe?'

'Reformed burglar, reborn in the Lord, baptized most faithfully in the Blood of the Lamb, I will have you know,' Lord Peter corrected. 'Just remember, with him in charge, nothing's going to go missing, not so much as a farthing from petty cash. Or—' The smile was still there, but there was a hint of grim chill that reminded Scott just how dangerous Lord Peter really was. 'He'll be answering about it to me. And trust me, he'd much rather have to answer to the Lord God Almighty than to me.'

Gannet showed up promptly at seven, giving Peter time enough to give him some basic directions before the crew from the warehouse started arriving. Gannet did not look like an ex-burglar; he looked like a slightly shabby and terribly earnest old watchmaker— until you looked at his hands, with the fingertips sanded to make them that little bit more sensitive to the turn of a combination lock, the click of a lock pick. Still, he seemed sound enough, and by eight, Peter was out on the street, preferring to walk rather than take a cab or the Underground to where he was going. He needed to adjust his attitude and appearance, and the only way he could do that, would be to gradually acquire his local color, like a chameleon. The deeper he went, from upper middle class to middle, to lower, then to genteel poverty, then to poverty that was nothing like genteel, the more his appearance changed. Without adding or subtracting from his wardrobe, his cap acquired a tilt that furtively shaded his eyes, his grip on his walking stick changed to that of the grip on a weapon, his shoulders slouched, his path took him nearer the wall, nearer the shadows, and his eyes got a sideways slant that marked him as a wary, and possibly dangerous, man. And difficult though it was to conceal, he lost the limp entirely.

He who walks among jackals dares show no weakness.

Slowly, for he did not dare take his attention too far from the real world, he insinuated his senses into the unreal world, the one so few ever knew was all around them, even here in London, where the pavement covered the tender, nourishing earth, the water was awash in poison, the fire smoked hideously, and the air carried nearly as much poison as the water.

It was a long walk, but he was used to walking. A ship captain walked hundreds of miles on the deck of his ship; he probably walked three times the actual distance of every voyage. He walked now to keep that bad knee strong; and a shopkeeper walked nearly as much as a ship captain.

He followed his instincts into the theater district and out again.

Hmm. Interesting. As he passed from ungenteel poverty back into genteel and adjusted his appearance accordingly, he sensed his quarry, neared it, then arrived practically on top of it.

Very interesting. It pulsed just beside him, shields and other undefinable things, and over all a shifting, an urge to look somewhere else, that he had to fight to keep his attention concentrated. Power, certainly. But ... it had a curiously cobbled — together feeling. As if it was the sheer strength of it alone that kept its spells from falling to mismatched bits.

Curiouser and curiouser. He bought a paper from a passing boy, leaned against an entryway fence, and pretended to read.

Definitely not ours. It should be, but it isn't. The spells had a foreign flavor, an unfamiliar spice or savor—as if he'd been served up with Thai tea, cold and laden with sweetened cream, instead of the hot, lemony Ceylon he'd been expecting. It was the