Sarah passed the basket to Nan; it was heavier this time, and Nan thought she smelled something like roasted meat. Oh, if only they’d given her the drippings from their beef! Her mouth watered at the thought.
“I hope you like these,” Sarah said shyly, as Nan passed her the much-lighter empty basket. “Mem’sab says that if you’ll keep coming back, I’m to talk to you and ask you about London; she says that’s the best way to learn about things. She says otherwise, when I go out, I might get into trouble I don’t understand.”
Nan’s eyes widened at the thought that the head of a school had said anything of the sort—but Sarah Jane hardly seemed like the type of child to lie. “All roit, I’s’pose,” she said dubiously. “If you’ll be ’ere, so’ll Oi.”
The next day, faithful as the rising sun, Sarah was waiting with her basket, and Nan was invited to come inside the gate. She wouldn’t venture any farther in than a bench in the garden, but as Sarah asked questions, she answered them as bluntly and plainly as she would any similar question asked by a child in her own neighborhood. Sarah learned about the dangers of the dark side of London first-hand—and oddly, although she nodded wisely and with clear understanding, they didn’t seem to frighten her.
“Garn!” Nan said once, when Sarah absorbed the interesting fact that the opium den a few doors from where Nan and her mother had a room had pitched three dead men out into the street the night before. “Yer ain’t never seen nothin’ loik that!”
“You forget, Mummy and Papa have a hospital, and it’s very dangerous where they are,” Sarah replied matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen dead men, and dead women and even babies. When Nkumba came in clawed up by a lion, I helped bring water and bandages, while my parents sewed him up. When there was a black-water fever, I saw lots of people die. It was horrid and sad, but I didn’t fuss, because Nkumba and Papa and Mummy were worked nearly to bones and needed me to be good.”
Nan’s eyes widened again. “Wot else y’see?” she whispered, impressed in spite of herself.
After that, the two children traded stories of two very different sorts of jungles. Despite its dangers, Nan thought that Sarah’s was the better of the two.
She learned other things as well; that “Mems’ab” was a completely remarkable woman, for she had a Sikh, a Gurkha, two Moslems, two Buddhists, and assorted Hindus working in peace and harmony together—“and Mummy said in her letter that it’s easier to get leopards to herd sheep than that!” Mem’sab was by no means a fool; the Sikh and the Gurkha shared guard duty, patrolling the walls by day and night. One of the Hindu women was one of the “ayahs,” who took care of the smallest children; the rest of the motley assortment were servants and even teachers.
She heard many stories about the remarkable Grey, who really did act as Sarah’s guardian, if Sarah was to be believed. Sarah described times when she had inadvertently gotten lost; she had called frantically for Grey, who was allowed to fly free, and the bird had come to her, leading her back to familiar paths. Grey had kept her from eating some pretty but poisonous berries by flying at her and nipping her fingers until she dropped them. Grey alerted the servants to the presence of snakes in the nursery, always making a patrol before she allowed Sarah to enter. And once, according to Sarah, when she had encountered a lion on the path, Grey had flown off and made sounds like a young gazelle in distress, attracting the lion’s attention before it could scent Sarah. “She led it away, and didn’t come back to me until it was too far away to get to me before I got home safe,” the little girl claimed solemnly, “Grey is very clever.” Nan didn’t know whether to gape at her or laugh; she couldn’t imagine how a mere bird could be intelligent enough to talk, much less act with purpose.
Nan had breath to laugh with, nowadays, thanks to baskets that held more than bread. The food she found in there, though distinctly odd, was always good, and she no longer felt out of breath and tired all the time. She had stopped wondering and worrying about why “Mem’sab” took such an interest in her, and simply accepted the gifts without question. They might stop at any moment; she accepted that without question, too.
The only thing she couldn’t accept so easily was the manservant’s eerie mental silence.
But it didn’t unnerve her as it once had. She wanted desperately to know
Besides, Sarah trusted him. Nan had the feeling that Sarah’s trust wasn’t ever given lightly.
Or wrongly.
***
“And how is Sarah’s pet street sparrow?” Frederick asked, as Isabelle brooded at the window that overlooked the garden.
“Karamjit thinks she is Talented,” Isabelle replied, watching Sarah chatter animatedly to her friend as they took the empty basket back to the kitchen in the evening gloom. “I don’t sense anything, but she’s quite young, and I doubt she can do anything much beyond a few feet.”
Her husband sat down in a chair beside the window, and she glanced over at him. “There’s something about all of this that is worrying you,” he said.
“I’m not the precognitive, but—yes. We have a sudden influx of Talents. And it might be nothing more than that we are the only place to train young Talents, whereas there are dozens who are schooling their Elemental Magicians. Still,
“There’s something in the air,” he agreed. “But nothing I can point to and say—there it is, that’s what’s coming. Do you want to spring the trap on this one, or let her come to our hands of her own will?”
“If we trap her, we lose her,” Isabelle told him, turning away from the window. “And while we are ingathering Talents, they are all very young. Whatever is going to happen will not happen this week, or even this year. Let her come to us on her own—or not at all.”
***
“How is your mother?” Sarah asked, one day as they sat in the garden, since the day before, Nan had confessed that Aggie been “on a tear” and had consumed, or so Nan feared, something stronger and more dangerous than gin.
Nan shook her head. “I dunno,” she replied reluctantly. “Aggie didn’ wake up when I went out. Tha’s not roight, she us’lly at least waked up’t’foind out wha‘ I got. She don’ loik them baskets, ‘cause it means I don’ go beggin’ as much.”
“And if you don’t beg money, she can’t drink,” Sarah observed shrewdly. “You hate begging, don’t you?”
“Mostly I don’ like gettin’ kicked an’ cursed at,” Nan temporized. “It ain’t loik I’m gettin’ underfoot…”
But Sarah’s questions were coming too near the bone tonight, and Nan didn’t want to have to deal with them. She got to her feet and picked up her basket. “I gotter go,” she said abruptly.
Sarah rose from her seat on the bench and gave Nan a penetrating look. Nan had the peculiar feeling that the child was looking at her thoughts, and deciding whether or not to press her further. “All right,” Sarah said. “It is getting dark.”
It wasn’t, but Nan wasn’t about to pass up the offer of a graceful exit. “ ‘Tis, that,” she said promptly, and squeezed through the narrow opening Karamjit had left in the gate.
But she had not gone four paces when two rough-looking men in shabby tweed jackets blocked her path. “You Nan Killian?” said one hoarsely. Then when Nan stared at him blankly, added, “Aggie Killian’s girl?”
The answer was surprised out of her; she hadn’t been expecting such a confrontation, and she hadn’t yet managed to sort herself out. “Ye—es,” she said slowly.
“Good,” the first man grunted. “Yer Ma sent us; she’s gone’t‘ a new place, an’ she wants us’t‘show y’ the way.”
Now, several thoughts flew through Nan’s mind at that moment. The first was that, as they were paid up on the rent through the end of the week, she could not imagine Aggie ever vacating before the time was up. The second was, that even if Aggie had set up somewhere else, she would never have sent a pair of strangers to find Nan. And third was that Aggie had turned to a more potent intoxicant than gin—which meant she would need a deal more money. And Aggie had only one thing left to sell.
Nan.
Their minds were such a roil that she couldn’t “hear” any distinct thoughts, but it was obvious that they meant her no good.
“Wait a minnit—” Nan said, her voice trembling a little as she backed away from the two men, edging around them to get to the street. “Did’jer say Aggie Killian’s gel? Me ma ain’t called Killian, yer got th‘ wrong gel—”
