The Serpent's Shadow

London School wouldn't take a girl that young.

I don't think that I would care to stand between her and something she dearly wants. I would probably find her walking over the top of me to get it.

The office revealed very little of the doctor's personality, other than the fact that she—or her servants—were fanatically neat. Bookcases lined the wall behind her except for a space where a door broke the expanse, bookcases polished until they gleamed and filled with leather-bound volumes. Her desk, spartan and plain, held only pen, pencil, paper in a neat stack, an inkpot, and a blotter. There was one small framed print on the wall behind him, but he didn't dare turn around to look at it, not with those black eyes fixed on him. Printed wallpaper might be Morris; he wasn't sure; it was warm brown, yellow, and cream, exactly the colors he'd expect from an Earth Mage.

Nothing on the desk to help—no pictures, no trinkets. And nothing with writing on it. So she was the kind who put her patients' records out of sight before they even left the office. A careful woman; a wise woman, given what she'd implied about her last client.

Ah, but what he sensed, now that he was within the enclosure of her protective magics, made him long for fifteen minutes left alone in this—or, indeed, any— room in the house. It wasn't just the force of her personality that left him a little stunned, it was the strength of her magic. Strangest of all was that she wasn't using it. She was certainly old enough to have learned as much as he about the arcane; certainly powerful enough—but the magic she had invested in the walls was held together mostly by the main strength of that power. If those spells had been put in place by an Elemental Apprentice, they'd have fallen apart before the mage turned around. She had taken a bit of this, a bit of that, and a heavy dose of willpower to create protections that were effective in their way, but with all the grace of a pig in a parlor, and all the symmetry of that poor bloke they called 'The Elephant Man.' This was patched-together, mismatched, unaesthetic, ugly magic, and not the elegant creation she should have been able to weave. This, he would bet his soul, was not a clumsy, inelegant, or inept woman. This was not by her choice; she'd done what she could with instruments flawed and warped.

But there was one little bit of nice work there— tangled in among the rest, like a shining silk thread running through a skein of ill-spun yarn, was a whisper of magery Peter would dearly love to learn to cast himself.

Turn your eyes aside, it whispered to those beyond the walls who looked with the inward eye and not the outward. There is nothing here to interest you, there never was, and never will be. Seek elsewhere for your quarry; it is not here.

Peter couldn't fathom it, and didn't know where to begin a conversation with this woman. As it happened, he didn't have to.

'Well, I would judge, Mr. Scott, that no one sent you here from one of the many well-intentioned religious organizations who are trying to 'save' young ladies like Sally without any plans for providing her with an alternate source of income,' the doctor said at last, leaning forward slightly and resting her weight on the arms laid across the top of her desk.

Peter didn't bother to ask her how she knew that; anyone with her potential would have intuition so accurate she might just as well be able to read minds.

Besides, it didn't take Conan Doyle's fictional detective to read a man's personality from his outward appearance.

And to put the cap on it, I didn't storm in waving a Bible either.

'My leg is dodgy,' he offered, in hesitant truce. 'Just not as bad as I made it out to be. Nobody's been able to do anything for it.'

Now she leaned back, a slight frown crossing her face. 'I wouldn't think they would be able to,' she replied. 'But you, sir, are not my usual sort of patient, and you would not have heard of me or my office from any of my usual clients. I would like to know why you appeared on my doorstep today.'

Peter wasn't a Water Master for nothing—and now that he was inside the lady's boundaries, her unseen friends in her fountain had no qualms about tossing him just the bit of information he needed.

'Fleet Clinic,' he said shortly—and knowing that his appearance, a bit down-at-heel though it was, put him a great deal more than a touch above those who stumbled into charity clinics, he added, 'Used to be a ship's captain on the India route. I ran into one of my old lads looking better than he had in ten years, and the old boy told me about how you fixed him up. Thought I'd look you up and see if you had any notions about the knee.' Now he shrugged. 'Reckoned it couldn't hurt to see, eh? Worst you can do is tell me what every other sawbones has.'

As he'd hoped, the charity clinic where she worked was probably so overwhelmed with poor working men and women that she'd have seen dozens of sailors among her patients since she set up practice, and wouldn't remember any particular one. She lost her frown, and her expression became one of skepticism rather than suspicion.

'And you have no objection to being treated by a woman?' she asked.

He gave a short bark of a laugh. 'I've got no objection to being treated by a Zulu witch doctor if he could do something with this knee,' he retorted, with honesty that finally won her over. He was pleased to see a faint smile