Reserved for the Cat

“None of that,” Nigel interrupted. “There will be no ‘sirring’ here. You are our peer in power and it is high time you got used to thinking that way.”

The young man’s mild blue eyes lit a little, and he smiled. “Very well, Nigel. ’Tis true enough my people at home treat me in that way, but I never expect it outside our walls. My uncle said only that you had a rather nasty problem, and a dangerous one. What can I do to help you?”

“Close the door, then come sit down; this will take some explaining.”

As Nigel laid out the situation that faced them, he noted with approval that Alan was actually paying close attention; he interrupted from time to time, and asked Nigel to explain some things further.

Finally Alan sat back in his chair and absently swept his sandy brown hair off his forehead with his thumb, then rubbed his eyebrow a moment. “This is a puzzler,” he admitted. “You’re all right, though, a good place to start would be to hunt for places where our Elements are excluded, and I have just the tools for that particular task.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Nigel said with relief.

“Just one more question, and this one is personal, so you can tell me I’m an impertinent brat if you like and that I should keep my nose out of your business.” Alan paused a moment, but on getting no reaction from Nigel, went on. “Why are you spending all this time and effort to protect this girl? She’s nothing to you, and from what you’ve been telling me, she has scarcely enough magic to qualify as such. She lied to you from the beginning, so why are you repaying deception with trust and protection? I tell you now, my uncle would likely have turned her out the moment she revealed her falsehoods.”

“Good questions.” Nigel had been prepared for something of the sort. “For one thing, we like Mademoiselle Dupond. She might have begun with a lie, but other than her wild tale of how she arrived on these shores, she has been completely honest and above-board with us. She says that this was all the idea of the cat, the cat says the same, and I for one believe them. It’s not as if she were a Princess Caraboo, Alan. The imposture harms no one so far as I can tell, and she is a very fine dancer. You’ll see that for yourself. She’s thrown herself whole-heartedly into this company, and stepped into the breech when we lost a few acts earlier in the season. That’s one reason. For another reason, she is a legacy.”

Alan nodded at that. A “legacy” was the offspring or spouse of an Elemental Master, especially if they had been left without that magician for whatever reason. The other Masters—at least those in the circles that Nigel traveled in—regarded such people as the particular responsibility of all other Masters. This was doubly so if those left behind had no magic of their own. Granted, few Masters had any sort of feuds going that would extend to the next generation—yet such a thing had been known to happen.

“Point taken,” Alan agreed. But Nigel was not yet finished.

“Last of all, I will admit to you that I have not only liking for her, I have a very solid pecuniary interest in her. She has talent. She is probably not as good a dancer as the greatest of our time, but she is a fine performer, and she knows how to charm an audience. Well! Heaven knows Loie Fuller was no kind of dancer, either, and like Loie Fuller, our Ninette gives every bit of value with every atom of talent she has. And she works hard; performers are rather lazy dogs, in my experience—this girl is not. I expect to build many shows with her as the star turn, and I expect she will be grateful enough to remain here in Blackpool, take what I can give her and not what other, more wealthy impresarios will offer.” He nodded at Alan’s uplifted eyebrow. “Oh yes, I readily admit to you that I am prepared to exploit her as far as she will let me.”

Alan smiled crookedly. “You mean you will exploit her as far as your own good conscience and her good sense will allow. But I can understand a motive like that, I am a Scot, after all. Very well then, I am prepared to accept her as you have and give her the benefit of my abilities. Well! When can I meet the rest of our little group?”

There was a flutter of wings that made Alan start, and Wolf landed on the perch beside Nigel’s desk. “You can meet two of us now,” the parrot said, tilting his head over sideways. “So this is the Water Master. A child prodigy, I am told?”

“You should be familiar with that, Master Wolfgang,” Alan replied, recovering quickly. “Quite familiar, in fact.” The bird clicked his beak delightedly.

“So I am! Well, do not emulate me by dying too young. And here is Arthur, who hasn’t got the benefit of wings to whisk him through the backstage.”

Alan stood up and turned around as the conductor entered the room, and shook Arthur’s hand heartily. “A pleasure, and I wish this were under better circumstances,” Arthur said, taking a seat of his own.

Alan shook his head. “Our kind always seems to be meeting under unfortunate circumstances,” he said, sitting down again. “I met Nigel when he was assisting my uncle with a bad bit of business about five years ago.”

“In Scotland?” Arthur asked, and at Alan’s nod, continued, “Yes, he told me a bit about that. Very ugly doings. Someone should have done something about that old man long before he got to be a menace. It’s deuced easier to prevent a disaster than it is to clean up after one.”

“Well, we like our freedom and our privacy, north of the border, and we don’t care to meddle in a man’s business if he wants to make a hermit of himself,” Alan countered. “The worst that could be said of Auld Geordie was that he was a misanthropist and generally had a quarrel with anyone to cross his path, but up until that last, he had never done any soul any harm. We had rather leave our eccentrics alone; we’ve had more than enough of witch hunting in the bad old days. It’s only when the eccentric goes and calls up ancient evils because his neighbor’s a better fisherman than he that we feel we need to do something about him, d’ye ken?”

“Yes, but the general populace saw the damned thing, and might well have gotten eaten by the damned thing if the Masters hadn’t acted,” Arthur protested. “As it is, Loch Ness is going to have a notoriety I much doubt the natives will care for!”

Nigel snorted; having been up there, he was well acquainted with the hard-headed nature of the natives, as well as their sly sense of humor and the ability to wring a penny out of stones. “Being Scots, they’ll find a way to exploit it and make money off the Sassenach,” he said. “Without a doubt.”

Alan smiled crookedly. “I expect so,” he replied comfortably. “When a Scotsman butchers a pig, he uses everything but the squeal. When presented with a monster, he’ll find a way to make someone pay to strain his eyes looking for it. I’d be very much surprised if this didn’t make the papers, or at least, the pages of the annals of fantastic occurrences. Once that happens, every landlady and publican will be re-chalking the order boards with new prices for those who come to gawk.” Then he laughed. “And every man jack of them will be lamenting that the little castle by the Loch is too ruined to rent out, and crying pity that you can’t charge for taking or painting pictures of it.”

Nigel turned to his friend. “Did you manage to pry Jonathon and Ninette away from the new trick?”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Pry is nearly the right word. Something or other got misaligned or malfunctioned or something, and Ninette was trapped in it for a bit.”

Nigel frowned. “That couldn’t be—”

“No, it was not caused by magical interference,” Wolf assured him. “Jonathon and Arthur both made sure of that. It was nothing more sinister than the usual business with one of Jonathon’s contraptions. Evidently when he tested it, he hadn’t allowed for the weight of someone inside.”

Nigel shook his head. “Poor Ninette.”

Arthur shouted with laughter. “Poor Ninette! Poor Jonathon, rather! He had every stagehand and half the acts clustered around him while he tried to get her out, all of them offering advice. We had to restrain Bob Anderson from hacking the thing open with a fire-ax. I swear to you, a vein was throbbing on Jonathon’s temple by the time he got her out.”

“Ninette wasn’t helping, either,” Wolf said merrily.

“Well, it is a very good thing that Ninette is not afraid of the small places,” said the lady in question, causing all the men to rise out of politeness. “It was not tres amusant, but at least I was not feeling that my breath was being stolen.” She shook hands gravely with Alan before taking a seat. The cat promptly curled up at her feet and watched the newcomer with unblinking eyes. “I am Mademoiselle Dupond, as you know, and this is the cat, Thomas.”

They had only just gotten settled when the last of the party showed up. Nigel immediately felt sorry for him. Poor Jonathon, indeed! The magician’s collar was half off and unfastened, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and the