Phoenix and Ashes

The point is that even if you are safe for the moment, there are innocents around you who are not.' She stared him in the face and would not let him look away. 'So the question is, what are you going to do to protect them?'

He wanted, badly, to say that he wasn't going to do anything, that their protection was none of his business. He wanted to protest that he was the injured party here, that he had taken wounds to the spirit as well as the flesh in defence of his own country, and that it was past time that someone protected him for a change.

But he couldn't. As his father had once told him, there was an obligation that came with power. That obligation left him with a very clear code of conduct.

An officer and a gentleman. 'I'll do what I must, Lady Virginia,' he said, even though his hands shook with fear and his skin crawled. 'It seems I have no choice.'

June 22, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

Alison was furious, and everyone was staying out of her way.

She had every right to be furious. Bad enough that the card-party last night had been invaded and taken over by that dreadful old cow in her outmoded dresses, so that the careful work being done on Reggie by the girls was utterly disrupted as he went to dance attendance on the creature. Worse that she was Reggie's godmother and a particular friend of the family.

But worst of all—this Lady Virginia was an Air Master, a crony of Alderscroft's, and someone it would be very, very dangerous to cross. Any sort of covert magical work in Reggie's direction would have to stop; Alison could not take the risk of being uncovered.

Alison had been forced to sit there and smile and make polite noises, while her ladyship monopolized the conversation with tales of that fellow who'd gone native with the Arabs. As if he or a lot of unwashed camel- herders mattered! By the time she was able to make her excuses and escape, the greater part of the evening had been wasted, and Reggie wasn't even looking at the girls anymore. It had been his mother who'd sent for the chauffeur and the car to take them home.

But that wasn't the end of the evening's disasters, oh no. Because she had tried to call in her army of revenants to increase their strength—except when she tried to find them, they were gone. Vanished. Dispelled.

In fact, they had been dispelled so thoroughly that there wasn't a trace of them left—although the signs of the magic that had destroyed them were clear enough.

And the signature of an Air Master who didn't care who knew what she had done was clear enough for anyone to read who had the eyes to see it.

It hadn't been Reggie. It certainly wasn't the Broom village witch. That left only the newly arrived Lady Virginia. . . .

Alison had been so angry last night that she had called up and torn to bits several of her own kobolds, just to relieve her temper. She'd have dragged Ellie out of bed and beaten her—and in fact, she was tempted to—but if she started, she had known she wouldn't be able to stop, and the complications of hurting or killing the fool began with the mere inconvenience of not having someone to cook or clean in the morning, and ended with losing the Robinson fortune.

So instead, she made an example of three of the dullest of her minions, smashed a couple of china ornaments, and still went to bed in a temper.

She had awakened feeling no less angry, but by midmorning, her temper had cooled sufficiently to allow her to think clearly.

The girls knew better than to trifle with her in her current mood; when she summoned them to her room after Howse had finished her work, they came immediately and quietly.

'We have a problem,' she told them, grimly. 'That woman that arrived last night is an Air Master, and Reggie's godmother.'

The girls exchanged a look of apprehension. 'Does that mean no magic around her?' Carolyn asked.

'Nothing directed at Reggie, at least,' Alison said sourly. 'Alderscroft knows I'm an Earth Master—after all, he was the one who sent me!'

'But mother, I thought you said your job here was to be kept secret,' Lauralee protested. 'Why should Lord Alderscroft have told Lady Virginia about you?'