The Wizard of London

the things that had happened were happening to her; being lowered carefully into the well, head ringing from the blows, licking swollen lips and tasting blood, unable to see out of one eye. Anger at being defeated, at being caught. No words now, only feelings, emotional and physical.

There was a kernel there that was Nan, that knew it was a little girl, that the country was ruled by a Queen and not a King, that none of this was real. There was the sense of an anchor, a protector, who sheltered that kernel of herself. She had to just let it all wash over her, and not try to fight it, because fighting would only wear her out and thin her hold on herself.

She closed in on herself, made herself like a hard little stone, the kind you got in your shoe and couldn’t get rid of. This wasn’t an attack, any more than the foot in the shoe was an attack on the stone. There wasn’t even a person behind it. This was all just idiot emotion, left behind by the trauma of long ago. Maybe there had been a ghost at one time, howling to be found, cursing those who passed by. If so, Christian burial, even though no one knew what name to put on a marker, had probably put an end to the haunts.

Finally, the little stone that was Nan dropped out of the swirling chaos of left-behind emotions. She had come through it. She was on the other side.

She opened her eyes, blinked twice, and sat down quite suddenly on the ground.

***

Isabelle shook her head. “A mystery still,” she mused. “From Nan’s description, I would guess that the man was a Roundhead, perhaps a spy? For whatever reason, someone here decided he was a menace and imprisoned him in the well.”

“And didn’t tell anyone else,” her husband pointed out. “That was where it all fell apart. We know why no one came to let him out—there was no one here.”

Now that they knew what to look for, they knew that as the Royalists lost ground to Oliver Cromwell’s troops, the family here had abandoned their manor, taken all the portable wealth they could muster, and fled across the Channel. As it happened, they had a great deal of “portable” wealth, and they had been able to get across the countryside and into France with no real difficulty. Others who had waited longer had not been so lucky…

Frederick stretched, accepted a cup of tea from Isabelle, and looked to Agansing. “You’re certain that this wasn’t deliberate murder?” he asked. “Clearing that well of the taint of something like murder—”

Agansing shook his head. “The man’s captors were hardly kind, but there is no trace in the original thought patterns that he anticipated such a thing here.”

“Besides, dearest, why would anyone go to the trouble of binding and chaining him, then lowering him carefully into the well, if they intended to murder him?” Isabelle pointed out. “It would have take far less effort to simply knock him on the head or shoot him and throw him in the river. If he was found at all, it would be assumed he was another casualty of the war. It’s what I would have done if I had wanted to murder someone at that date.”

Agansing, for all that he knew her well, looked a little aghast. Frederick reached across the distance between their chairs and patted her hand affectionately. “Sometimes, my love, you make my blood run cold,” he said fondly. “I’m glad you’re on my side.”

She sniffed. “Really, Frederick, I am only saying what I would have done, had I a wicked nature and been inclined to murder someone during the Civil War, not that I would countenance doing any such thing.”

He chuckled; he’d been teasing her, of course, but she was a little irritated at him. It was not the sort of teasing she enjoyed.

Well, perhaps her nerves were irritated by being in proximity to the negative emotions in that wellhead for so long. She sat on her irritation and went on. “We definitely need to cleanse the place, or something might well take advantage of the situation. You saw for yourself how readily little Nan became absorbed; there is a great deal of energy there, and if we still have an enemy to Nan and Sarah, that place could be used to feed and hold a truly dangerous entity.”

Frederick nodded. “I completely agree.” He rose, cracked his knuckles, and held out his hand to assist her to rise. “And there is no time like the present.”

Cordelia was angry.

The servants sensed it, and stayed as far out of her reach as possible. She would have taken her anger out on David, but he had gone off to a country house party for the next several days. She had been invited, but she had turned the invitation down; the host bored her, the hostess was worse, and it would have been one stultifying round of lawn tennis and croquet in the afternoons, and rubbers of bridge and politics in the evenings. Except she would have been excluded from the politics, relegated to gossip and amateur theatrics with the ladies, and the politics were the only part of the house party she would have found interesting.

But several important men had been invited, which meant that David had to go. So he was not here to suffer the sting of her anger either.

She sat in her exquisite parlor, and after long, hard consideration, she leveled her gaze on an extremely expensive porcelain vase David had given her, full of water and white lilies that were nearly as expensive as the vase. She stared at it; obedient to her will, the little cold Elementals that looked like white, furred snakes wrapped themselves around the lilies and began to freeze them.

Within moments, they were solid enough to hammer nails with. They were lovely in this form, but as soon as they began to thaw, they would turn into a blackened mess that the maids would have to clean up. It would take them hours, especially if any of the ruined, rotting blossoms dropped on the tabletop and marred the finish. They would be waxing and polishing half the day.

The gesture didn’t appease her wrath, but it did vent some of her feelings.

For the quarry had escaped! Before she could do anything about those wretched children, someone else had the unmitigated gall to invite them to his estate for the summer! She had no idea who, nor where it was. Her agents had been unable to get anything out of the few reticent servants left, and efforts to follow Frederick Harton had all ended in failure. She hired different agents, to the same end. It was immensely frustrating. The man was utterly ordinary, a commonplace soldier-turned-merchant. To be sure, he had some occult power, but it could not possibly be a match for that of an Elemental Master!

She was left to pursue the quarry through the only route she had left: Isabelle Harton’s friends among the female Elemental Masters. She was forced to be extremely circumspect about it, for she did not want Isabelle to get wind of the fact that she was hunting for her and wonder why.

Her rage, like all her emotions, was icy and calculating. It was a force to be conserved and put to good use. And it occurred to her suddenly that there might be one more way of finding those wretched children. She could use her rage to best effect with it right now. But it would take exceedingly careful work if she was not to tip her hand.

She closed her eyes and took several long, slow, deep breaths, then rose, and went to her workroom.

She closed and locked the door behind herself, and sat down before her worktable. No Ice Wurms to be summoned today… but she left a single gray feather on the table in front of her.

She sat in her crystal throne, folded her hands in her lap, and began to still her body.

Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing became shallow and almost imperceptible, and within the half hour, anyone looking at her would have thought her dead, or near it.

In this state, it was easy to slip across the barrier between the living and the dead. Not far, but enough across the line to shadow-walk. Enough to talk to the ghost she herself had created, though she could not speak to nor see any of the others that she had no hand in making. Enough to be able to call one of her little servants to her, or to see them, enough to travel to a limited extent herself, in spirit, though she could not move far from her body.

She had a particular child ghost in mind, a dream-raptured little thing who in life had been mute, and in death was just as mute. If Isabelle caught the ghost, she could interrogate it all she liked; she would learn nothing from it.

The waif actually knew she was dead, but did not care. She had never seen the inside of church or chapel in her entire life, and so had no expectation of any sort of afterlife. What she did know was that she was no longer hungry, thirsty, or cold. This was a distinct improvement over her lot when she had been alive. While it was true that spirits saw the living world but dimly, as if they wandered about in a London “pea-soup” fog, this did not seem to trouble little Peggoty in the least. She had never owned a toy, she had never slept in a bed, she had never had a