Heart's Magic (13 page)

The meeting didn't seem
much different than other strategy sessions Elinor had participated
in with Grey, Harry and Amanusa. Jax was there, as he always was,
but Pearl wasn't. Grey claimed he'd forbidden her to attend, since
she was not in fact a magister. He was her familiar, instead of the
other way round, so she could not tag along as Jax did. Elinor was
fairly certain that the truth probably was that Pearl had expressed
a reluctance to wake and Grey, like the besotted husband he was,
had left her happily in bed. Sleeping.

Just sleeping. Not sated
from-- Elinor wrenched her mind back to the issue of the academy
and its students.

"We're the magisters now,"
Harry was saying. "We don't 'ave to deal with Cranshaw or work
around 'im. We four agree on wot's to be done. So we tell 'em.
Women students, girls, are to be admitted just the same as boys and
it's done."

"Yes, but it's not that
simple," Amanusa said. "You can't treat the girls
exactly
like the boys. You
can't expect them to live in the same houses or bathe in cold
water. Frankly, I don't think you should expect the boys to bath in
cold water either, especially in winter. It can't be healthy. But
that's neither here nor there. Housing has to be found for the
girls. There must be standards of behavior. What classes do we
teach them? Will they be in the same classes with the
boys?"

"Why not? Look--we're
magisters, not schoolmasters. We tell the headmaster what's to be
done and let them figure out 'ow to do it."

Elinor frowned. "But if
everyone 'figuring out how' is male, will they be fair? Will they
require the same rigor in classwork from them? Will they bar the
girls from learning what they must? Or will they subject them to
humiliation and bullying?"

"I'd say that depends on
who we put in charge of it," Grey responded. "Whitson's getting up
there in years, but he's always been fair-minded."

The discussion went on. And
on. Finally, they agreed to allow the current headmaster of the
academy, Silvanus Whitson, to draw up plans for integrating female
students into the school, said plans to be approved by the
magisters and the council head before being implemented.

They discussed the armored
machines again. They discussed the dead zones and when the
walling-up of the remaining zones--all of them but the one already
done--should proceed. They talked over what to do about Nigel
Cranshaw and offered optimistic predictions about the upcoming
challenge with Edgar Dodd. Little was resolved, save to keep
working at the problems, step by step.

As the official meeting
drew to a close, Elinor debated briefly whether to draw Amanusa
aside to mention the magic she'd encountered last night on her way
home. She decided against it. It had only happened the once and
would not be happening again, since she and Harry were not having
any more encounters. Besides, Elinor couldn't bring herself to
admit to anyone what she had done. Amanusa was a friend, but Elinor
simply could not tell her how far she had fallen.

So she went home and took a
nap. She ought to go work on her potion for the upcoming challenge
or make up a new batch of the burn ointment. But she was too tired,
and her stillroom was in the conservatory off the back of Harry's
house. That would not help her avoid him. Besides, she'd promised
Dr. Rosato he could help her make the next batch so he could learn
how to do it. He could act as chaperone.

Harry spent the next
several days frustrated, because Elinor spent them avoiding him. He
didn't blame her, exactly. He understood why she would think the
way she did. Sort of. He just thought she was wrong.

She shouldn't have to deny
herself any normal life just because she wanted to be a magician.
All he needed was the chance to prove it to her. But so far, Elinor
seemed determined not to give him that chance.

When she locked herself in
the stillroom Wednesday morning to work on her potion for the Dodd
challenge before he even got to breakfast, Harry resigned himself
to another day without Elinor. He took himself off to the I-Branch
offices to see what was happening there for lack of anything better
to do.

"You're quick," Grey said
when Harry poked his head in the door of the vast desk-filled room.
"A regular Johnny-on-the-spot."

"On the spot of what?"
Harry came in the rest of the way and crossed to the oversized desk
near the windows that Grey had claimed for his own.

"Didn't you get my message?
Apparently not." Grey answered his own question as he came out from
behind his desk. He captured Harry's arm and led him back to the
door. "The lads I had out searching for your escaped machines have
found one. They've taken it to your lab for inspection and
dissection. Pearl's gone up to help."

Because sorcerers carried
the source of their magic within themselves, they were the least
vulnerable of all magicians to the no-magic of the machines and the
dead zones where they originated. Pearl or Amanusa had taken to
assisting with the actual dismemberment of the creatures when they
didn't have other, more pressing sorcerous business to attend.
Usually, it was Pearl who assisted, since as Grey's wife, she
already spent a great deal of time at the council house assisting
the Briganti. Grey had her on the payroll as a
consultant.

Harry left Grey behind and
took the stairs two at a time up to the dead zone committee's
laboratory in the north attic of the Council House building. The
Briganti lab was in the basement beneath their offices. One had to
deal with stairs to arrive at either one, but the Briganti had
fewer of them.

The Magician's Council
House was a sprawling complex of buildings taking up more than one
very crooked block just off St. Clement's Square, between the
Strand and Lincoln's Inn Fields. It housed not only the Briganti,
council, and guild offices, but also the academy and any other
magical officialdom that could squeeze in somewhere.

Word was that Sir William
was in negotiations for buildings on the other side of Market
Street, that would have them owning everything from Wych Street to
Clements Lane and from the square to Newcastle Street and Bough.
Harry was fortunate that at least he didn't have to leave the
building to go from the Briganti offices to his--the committee's
lab.

A wall of blue and
black-coated backs barricaded the work table Harry knew for a fact
was set on their other side, because he'd helped set it there. He
pushed his way through them to the front. Why bother with being
magister if you didn't use the privileges that came with it now and
again?

There, he found Pearl
wearing a pair of riding gloves with wide cuffs extending almost to
her elbows, protecting both her hands and the sleeves of her white
dress, poised next to a machine on the table. The male observers,
who surely all chafed at that role, had hidden her from view. Pearl
was smaller than Elinor. She might be as tall as the queen, though
not nearly as wide, given that Pearl hadn't given birth nine or 10
times. However many royal princes and princesses there were.
Harry'd lost track ages ago.

"I've come to watch the
show. Have I missed anything?" Harry clapped his nearest neighbors
on the shoulders, looking around to see who else was present. He
nodded at Archaios on the far side of the table. Other than Pearl
in her sorcerer's white, everyone else wore the blue and gray of
alchemists, or conjurer's black. "We need a wizard on the
committee. Why don't we 'ave any wizards? We did used to, didn't
we?"

"We did, sir," one of the
conjurers said in a posh voice. "Until he got eaten by the demon he
tried to summon." The man, tall and lanky with floppy dark blond
hair, sounded as if he believed the tale. Harry wouldn't have, if
he hadn't seen the demon eating other people.

"Right. Forgot that was
'im," he muttered.

"The wizard's new magister
favors our study," the same conjurer said. "If she doesn't have
time to join us herself, surely she would be willing to send
someone."

"We can ask." Harry eyed
the man up and down. "What's your name again?"

"O'Toole, sir. Phillip
O'Toole."

So likely the posh accent
was as false as Harry's, when Harry bothered to put one
on.

Now that he knew who was
present, Harry turned his attention to the table and the dead
machine laid out on it. "So, wot 'ave you found?"

"Mrs. Carteret was just
about to open it up." One of the alchemists spoke up--young
Satterwhite.

"Not quite yet," Pearl
said. "I believe Mr. Gordon hasn't yet finished sketching its
underside."

This machine used wheels to
get about, wheels that appeared to be made of several layers of
disks cut--from tin plates, perhaps. The four wheels attached to a
pair of axles, each held by a single rather odd-looking support
that extended through the equally odd casing of the
creature.

"They're manufacturing,"
Harry said, pointing at the cut-out wheels with his nickel alloy
wand. "They're not just gluing together things they've found any
more."

"What do you suppose those
struts are made of?" someone asked. Harry didn't see who, didn't
recognize the voice.

"Bone." Gordon never ceased
his drawing. "I'd wager a guinea on it."

"Why do you say that?"
Harry asked, as at least one man took Gordon up on the
bet.

"The texture, partly. It's
been weathered, so it's rough. And the shape of it just looks like
a bone to me. Maybe a dog's leg bone."

"Wee dog, then," Ian Ramsey
said. There were a lot of Scots amongst the alchemists. Rather like
there were a lot of Scottish engineers. Not much to do but tinker
with things during the winters up there, Harry supposed.

"Aye." Gordon compared
machine to sketch one more time and laid aside his tablet and
pencil to take out a wand. "And did anyone else notice these?" He
pointed at the small shapes fastened to the machine's lower
casing.

"I was just wonderin' about
them myself," Harry confessed. "What do you think they are?" He
edged a bit closer, to see better.

Pearl picked at one of the
tiny objects with a gloved finger. "It's stuck down quite well. I
can't get it loose. At least not--" Before someone could hand her a
tool to use, she shook off a glove and pried at it with her bare
fingers.

"Pearl!" Harry
protested.

She listened about as well
as Elinor, meaning not at all. "I'm fine. Stop fussing." She held
the machine down with her gloved hand, changing her angle of
attack. "I've almost... Got it!"

With a slight cracking
sound, the thing came free and Pearl held it up in triumph. Then
she peered more closely at it. "I think it's a bone too. A little,
tiny rib bone."

One of the conjurers who
wasn't O'Toole held out his unfolded handkerchief for Pearl to drop
the possible bone into. Harry pushed out past the crowd, grabbed a
flat-head screwdriver off the workbench against the wall and shoved
his way back through to the front--perhaps a touch too forcefully,
given the way Ramsey went staggering into his neighbor.

"
'Ere.
" He slapped the screwdriver down
on the table. "Put your glove back on an' use this to pry any more
bits off. You get sick from this, you won't be back."

"As if Grey could forbid
it." Pearl gave him a scornful look, but she put the glove on. "It
feels nasty, but it's not hurting me."

"'Ow do you know? And it
wouldn't be Grey barrin' ya from comin' back. It'd be me. I'm not
havin'
anybody
here, man or woman, if the monsters make 'em sick."

Pearl arched an eyebrow at
him, as if noting the distance he kept.

"That's right." He backed
another step. "I keep my distance. You wear your gloves." He glared
at the other observers. "You lot keep back so I can
see."

Pearl didn't respond except
to pick up the screwdriver and use it to pop several more objects
from the lower casing. Everyone else moved back out of his
way.

"Is that metal?" Archaios
ventured to ask, breaking the extended silence. "What the objects
are glued to? Are they all bones?"

"I think so, yes." The
conjurer with the handkerchief stirred the bits Pearl had given him
with a gloved finger. "Large rat, perhaps, or small cat." He set
the handkerchief on the table and smoothed it out, ready to receive
more little bones. Harry suspected holding them, even with the
handkerchief and gloves as barriers, was beginning to affect the
man--somebody Ford.

Pearl tapped the casing
with the tool in her hand. "I think it's metal," she said. "With
all those bones stuck on, it doesn't sound right, but I think
that's what it is."

The bones had space around
them, enough to see the dull, dark gray surface they were attached
to.

"The machine is smaller,"
Harry said. "Than the one I caught--Elinor and I--Magister Tavis
caught at the dead zone. It's more rat-sized than
terrier."