(A Charm of Magpies 1)The Magpie Lord (17 page)

“What, exactly, just happened?”

“Someone got hold of some of your hair. They set up an equivalency, a…connection through the air, as it were, from the hair they hold, back to you. And they used the equivalency to multiply what they had, to create the hair that was choking you. I suppose you noticed it was identical to yours.”

“Someone wanted to choke me to death on my own hair?”

“Someone wanted to kill you in a way that would be very hard to stop. It’s a very old and powerful technique. The first attack would probably have killed you, but as it happens, I am good at equivalencies, so I broke it, and that should have been that. Except they set it up again in less than a minute, and they did it better and stronger and much harder the second time. And that’s very bad.”

“Why?”

“They have access to a lot of power,” said Stephen. “They are strong. They were able to use a quite different technique. I couldn’t even try to break the second channel as I did the first.”

“But you did break it?”

“No, I used it. Sent the flame back up the other way. Burned the hair they held, for a start. I really need to eat something.”

Merrick whisked out of the room. Crane put his clammy head in his hands. “What the hell is going on? Was that Lady Thwaite? Miss Bell?”

“If it was Miss Bell she is going to regret it very deeply, but not for very long. Or Aunt Annie— No. Lady Thwaite didn’t seem to have anything to offer when I got in her way earlier, and there was real skill behind that attack, but it could have been her. Goodness knows you upset her. Did anyone pick hair off you that you noticed?”

“I honestly couldn’t say.”

“No matter. I can just find out whose house burned down.”

Crane stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“Possibly. I did my level best to incinerate anyone at the other end of the channel. They were good but there will be evidence. Anything from scorched hair to a smouldering heap of wreckage.”

Merrick hurried in with a plate of Mrs. Mitching’s fruitcake. Stephen grimaced with resignation, but grabbed a thick slice and sank his teeth into it. After a few mouthfuls, he said, “You need to sleep. I am going to set up some wards round you, keep you safe. I’ll keep watch—”

“You need to sleep more than I do,” Crane pointed out.

“I’m going to. We are going to get through the night, and in the morning we are taking the first train back to London, where you are going to stay under the eyes of some friends of mine, while I come back here with a team of justiciars and tear this place apart. Mr. Merrick, I am going to need a lot of candles.”

Chapter Fifteen

He set up the wards around Crane’s bed. To the unskilled eye, it looked simply like a ring of lit candlesticks, until Stephen suddenly looked up from five minutes’ intense concentration and all the flames simultaneously bent sideways, streaming out, as though in a circle of moving air.

“I’ll sleep in the chair,” he said.

“Your bed’s in the next room.” Crane was sitting up in bed, elbows on bent knees and head propped in hands, naked to the waist, magpies spread across his chest.

“There is
no power
in this house.” Stephen tested the single armchair. It was predictably uncomfortable. “I want to be here.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Crane said. “Although when I planned for you to spend the night in my bedroom, this was not what I envisaged.”

Stephen laughed, without much amusement. “This is definitely more what I’m used to. Try to sleep.”

“I’m too scared to sleep,” said Crane baldly. “I’m sorry to be a coward, but that was horrible. The thought it might happen again—”

“It won’t,” Stephen interrupted. “I’ve put up wards. They’ll keep you safe.”

“Candles. What do they do?”

“They’ll keep off any etheric movement for a while. Not completely, not as long or as effectively as they would if I had access to power, which is why I’m staying here, but long enough that I’ll be able to get to you before they break, if something starts.”

“Get to me? You’re six feet away,” Crane said. “How long exactly—”

“
Enough
. I’m sorry, it’s all I can do given I have nothing to work with, but it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m here, and I’m not leaving you, and anyone who comes after you will have to get past me first. Yes?”

Crane gave him a long look that broke into a reluctant smile. “Thanks.”

“Anyway, it’s perfectly likely the perpetrator of tonight’s attack is not going to be in a position to act,” Stephen added. “With any luck, they’re still on fire. I’m just being cautious.”

“I approve,” said Crane. “And tomorrow we run away?”

“Tactical retreat.” Stephen shrugged off his jacket, and wrapped it back round his shoulders against the chill.

Crane twisted to lie on his side. “I suppose it would be distracting and unprofessional to suggest you join me over here?”

“Yes.”

“It’s going to be a bloody long night, then. Can I get up?”

“No. If you break those wards I’ll choke you myself. They were hard enough to set up the first time.”

“Because there’s no power in this house. Isn’t there some other way for you to get power?”

“Like what?”

“Magic wands. Magic rings. The Holy Grail.”

“You have that here?”

“If I do, someone probably carved a magpie on it. Does it exist?”

“You wildly overestimate the extent of my knowledge,” Stephen said. “As to magic wands and whatnot, there are…artefacts that act as focal points for etheric flow, but I don’t have any to hand, and there’s hardly any flow to focus.” He frowned. “Unless—I don’t suppose you have any of the Magpie Lord’s things?”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. The ring in the picture?”

“Oh, probably,” Crane said. “There’s a pile of ancient jewellery in a room at the end of the Long Gallery, or at least there was. Do you want to go and look, at all?” he added, with a touch of amusement, as Stephen sat bolt upright.

“
Yes
. Yes, but tomorrow. Or I could— No. Stay in the wards. We’ll look first thing tomorrow. If I find something to call on here, it’ll be a different story altogether.”

“And what if not?” said Crane.

“We run. As planned.”

“Mmm. Could you strip someone?”

“What? No!”

“I meant with permission—”

“No,” Stephen said again. “Sourcing from people is…it’s the definition of a warlock. It’s wrong.”

“Surely in an emergency—?”

Stephen gestured for silence. “Look. You told me that you and Merrick were starving early on, in China. Really starving?”

“Yes.”

“So hungry that you might have been prepared to do desperate things?”

Crane tipped his head back, contemplated the canopy of the four-poster. “So hungry that I did them. Your point?”

“Did you eat human flesh?”

“Did I
what
?”

“You can always find fresh meat in a graveyard,” Stephen said. “And it’s walking around everywhere you look, if you’re prepared to butcher it yourself. All the meat you could want.”

Crane opened his mouth, closed it again and held up an acknowledging hand. “Right. Fine. You’ve made your point.”

“Exactly. Sourcing from people is wrong.”

“Understood.” Crane frowned. “No, wait. Warlocks are magical cannibals, yes?”

“That’s a…vivid way of putting it.”

“So if stripping people is as repugnant as eating them, how are there such numbers of warlocks as you’ve suggested?”

Stephen sighed. “Ah. Well.” He curled his legs underneath himself. “The thing is, finding sources of power is the main preoccupation of most practitioners most of the time.”

“For you?”

“No. No, I’m one of the lucky ones. I have—” He waved his hands vaguely. “I connect to the flow. I can pull power from the air, simple as breathing, where many of my peers would be gasping like asthmatics. It’s easy for me. And I come to somewhere like Romney Marshes or here, and I realise what it must be like for the rank and file. Constantly gasping and grabbing and desperate. So you’re ready to break the law to feed the need. It’s hateful. I hate it. This house makes me feel sick.”

Crane was watching him closely. “Are you all right?”

Stephen shook himself. “Sorry. I— It bothers me. I haven’t exactly been at my best since I came here.”

“I look forward to your best, then.”

Stephen gave him a tired smile. “You may even get it. Anyway, the point is…power is addicting. It’s hard to drag it out of the ether, but it’s so easy to tap people. Easy, effective, evil. And once one begins, terribly hard to stop, because the sensation of being without power is such a very horrible one. And of course it’s tempting for any practitioner to see the unskilled as lesser—less talented, less able, less worthy of consideration—and if you tap them for power, you start to see them as lesser beings altogether. Cattle, they call them—you,” he amended hastily. “There to feed on. There to use and discard. And that’s a warlock, more or less.”

“Cattle,” Crane said.

“Yes. Sorry.”

“Do you see the unskilled as lesser?”

“No,” Stephen said. “I do a job that makes me hated by quite a large number of my peers, including many who aren’t even warlocks, because I don’t think anyone is entitled to exploit his fellows because of an accident of birth. You’re an earl, I’m a practitioner, both of us were born this way, and neither of us is entitled to feed off other people because of it.”

Crane considered that. “I’m bloody glad you’re here.”

“Really? Because I wish to God we were both somewhere else. Try and get some sleep, Lucien, it’s late. And don’t worry. I am watching you.”

Stephen blinked, and realised it was morning. Golden light streamed through the gaps in the heavy brocade curtains. He was cold and damp and sweaty from sleeping in his suit, his neck and back ached from the cursedly uncomfortable chair, something was trying to attract his attention, and Crane was…

…right in front of him, shaking his shoulder.

“What happened to the wards?” Stephen demanded, jolting upwards.

“Nothing,” said Crane. “They were still burning when I got out of bed thirty seconds ago. Listen.”

Stephen’s brain finally registered the sound that his ears had been trying to tell him about. “What the devil— Who’s screaming?”

“I don’t know. Merrick’s down there finding out.”

Crane started pulling on clothes as he spoke. Stephen hurried to his own room, rapidly changing into his usual clothing, and irritated that he found himself noticing the baggy knees and worn, permanently grubby cuffs. That triggered a thought, and as he jerked his boots on he called, “Wear something you can run in, please. No Savile Row.”

“I don’t get my suits made on Savile Row,” said Crane, emerging in a casual grey tweed that still looked twenty times the price of anything Stephen had ever bought. “Wouldn’t stoop to it. Come on.”

They hurried down the stairs, ignoring Graham and a panicky-looking housemaid who had emerged. Other staff were heading outside for the source of the appalling noise. It was a dreadful sound, an endless, agonised shrieking in multiple voices, inhuman, and as they ran to the stables, they could hear a human voice too, a deep male sound, but sobbing like a child.

Stephen and Crane sprinted through the stable yard together and skidded simultaneously to a horrified halt.

Merrick was gripping the groom’s arms. It was the coachman who had taken them from the station, but his usually surly face was distorted by grief and agony, and tears were running down his cheeks. Merrick was shouting at him but the words were inaudible above the noise the horses were making.

One lay dead in the yard, foam and blood still spilling from its open mouth, eyes and tongue bulging black out of its head. The others were all still alive, unfortunately. Eyes full of blood and fear rolled, swollen tongues protruded with dark sores that split open and spilled out a foul yellow pus, copious slime poured from distended nostrils. The horses thrashed and jerked in agony, voiding their bowels in terror, and the screaming went on and on.

Crane grabbed Stephen’s shoulder and yelled over the hellish din, “What—the—devil?”

Stephen tried to reply, had to pull the taller man down to shout in his ear. “Get—rid—of—the—people.”

Crane took a swift look round and saw that most of his staff were standing at the stable gate, frozen in horror. He sent them off with a few sharp words and returned to find Stephen shouting intently to the stableman.

“Equine plague,” he was saying. “Got to be put down. I’m sorry.”

The stableman turned pain-filled eyes on Crane. “They’re in agony, my lord.”

Crane put a hand on his shoulder. “Will you let me do it? Or let me help?”

The stableman’s face twisted, but he looked at the five live horses and gave a brief nod.

Merrick had already gone. By the time the stableman had produced his rifle, the manservant was back from the house with two pistols.