Phoenix and Ashes

'I—couldn't shoot him. He couldn't help but shoot me. I—' he shook his head. 'I didn't evade. He got Erik first, then my tank, and then my engine. He got Erik, and I felt him die, and it was my fault— my fault—'

Once again her fingers tightened on his, but she did not say, as so many fools had, that it wasn't his fault. 'You made a mistake,' she said instead. 'At some point, Reggie, you have to stop paying for it, and forgive yourself. But only you can decide how much payment is enough.' Then her voice strengthened. 'You were shot down. Your collarbone and your knee were both shattered, your ribs were cracked, and I think only your Mastery saved you from worse. Then the Huns came to get you out before your plane went up in flames. Something happened then, too, didn't it?'

'A Hun came to get me out,' Reggie corrected. 'A young fellow came pelting out regardless—I suppose our boys must have seen what he was doing, because they held their fire. He came pelting out, into No-Man's Land, over the wire, and hauled me out while the bird was burning. And he went back for Erik, and—' he swallowed 'that was when the shell hit. Young fellow, he couldn't have been sixteen. Maybe less.' He felt his throat closing again at the thought of that earnest young face, at the young voice that told him 'Stille, stille, bitte. Ja, das ist gut, stille.' 'The boys that came after me found some bits of his things, a letter from home, a picture of his mother. His name was Wilhelm, that's Hun for William, like West in the next bed over from me in the ward. FBI, like young Willie, too. Wilhelm Katzel. That's two fellows that died because of me, in less than five minutes.'

She nodded, but said nothing for a moment. 'I think,' she finally said, 'When this is over—you should tell his mother how brave he was.'

That was not what he was expecting to hear. 'How will that help?' he asked angrily.

'I don't know,' she replied, not reacting to his anger at all. 'But I do know that it won't hurt. It will let her know he hadn't lost his decency or his honor in this vile slaughter, and that's something for her to hold onto. This war has made beasts of so many—perhaps it will comfort her to know that her Wilhelm was still a man.'

It was not the answer he had been expecting, and he flushed a little. But she was right. She was very right.

But of course, the worst was yet to come.

'That isn't where the real trouble lies, though, is it?' she continued. 'Oh, it's horrible, and you are burdened terribly with guilt, but that isn't the worst.' She tugged a little on his hand, forcing him to look up, into her eyes. 'The worst came when you were safe, didn't it? In the bunker. Buried alive.'

He almost jerked his hand out of hers, and began to shake uncontrollably. 'How did you—'

'Reggie, I'm an Earth Master. The ground in France and Belgium is saturated with blood,' she said, with a thin veneer of calm over her words. 'I know what that attracts. There are monsters in the earth of France, Reggie, and they are fattening and thriving on that slaughter—and when that shell hit that bunker, they had a tidbit of the sort they could only crave and dream about in their power. Air and Earth are natural enemies, and they had you in their territory, in their grasp, to do with what they wanted.' His vision began to film over as panic rose in his chest; he clutched her hands, as though clutching a lifeline, as she put into words what he could not. 'They had you, Reggie, their greatest enemy, a Master of Air and a Master of the Light, helpless, on their ground.' He couldn't see, now, as all the memories came flooding back. He heard his breath rasping in his throat, his heart pounding, and could not move for the fear. Dimly, through the roaring in his ears, he heard her ask the question he did not want to answer.

'What did they do to you, Reggie? What did they do?'

Maya Scott sat with her husband in a place in the Exeter Club where—before her marriage to Peter Scott—no woman had ever been before. It was a lovely day outside, still; the windows stood wide open to the warm air, and the sun streamed down onto old Persian rugs, caressed brown leather upholstery, and touched the contents of brandy bottles with gold.

'So,' said the Lord Alderscroft, often called the Old Lion—older now than when she had first met him, and aged by more than years. 'You've seen the boy.'

She nodded.

Lord Alderscroft sat like the King on his throne, in his wingback chair in his own sitting room in his private suite on the top floor of the Exeter Club, and raised a heavy eyebrow at Maya. 'Your report, please, Doctor Scott?'

Maya never sat here without feeling a distant sense of triumph. It had been her doing that had broken down the last three barriers of the White Lodge housed here in the Exeter Club—of gender, lineage, and race. She would have failed the Edwardian tests on all three counts; female, common, and of mixed Indian and British blood. But King Edward was gone, and King George was on the throne, and after the defeat of her aunt, there was not a man on the Council who felt capable of objecting to her presence. And truth to tell, they needed her. They had needed her before the war. She was one of a handful of Earth Masters who could bear to live and work in the heart of a great city.

Now they needed her—and the other women they had admitted to the White Lodge—more than ever. The