Reserved for the Cat (23 page)

One certainly couldn’t fault Nigel, Arthur, or even Wolf on that score. Besides, this saved him money. Power as a mage did not translate into wealth, and not every, or even most, Elemental Masters were independently wealthy. Nigel had made his fortune honestly, by gauging the public’s tastes and meeting them, but he was no more the norm among Elemental Masters than he was among ordinary folk. Jonathon had chosen a path that would probably never make him rich, although if he was careful, he could retire comfortably one day. So living off Nigel did not bother him one whit, since it meant that much more of his salary could be tucked away towards that end.

Staying here had other advantages—one of which was that he could stroll out of the flat at two in the morning without making an excuse to anyone, and know that no one would be poking a nose out to find out where he was going. More to the point, he could return when he pleased and not have to answer to anyone, nor face being locked out.

So off he went, after choosing an inconspicuous coat and old cloth cap to wear in order to blend in with the locals.

The Salamander vanished, leaving a sense of relief in its wake as it did so. Whatever he was doing must have been right.

The streets were dark and quiet, even here in the theater district. They were, however, very well lit—it was bad for business if your customers fell and broke a limb on the way to the theater, and worse for them to be the victim of a cutpurse or felon. For once, there was no rain. At this time of night, one of the most important things to do was to walk briskly and with purpose, so that any policeman that spotted him would be certain that he was a man with a duty and a destination, and would not hinder him. He passed by two such on his way to the theater, and only when he reached it did he pause, slow down, and drop into the shadows.

And chided himself for such a melodramatic action.

Still . . .

He slipped around the side of the theater and paused, still staying concealed in the shadows, as he stood with his back against the wall, considering what could and could not be seen, trying to become invisible. Once he had regulated his breathing again, he
listened
. . . .

And that was when he heard it. The unmistakable sound of someone striking a match in the darkness of the alley.

Carefully, slowly, with his hand shielded by his arm and the breast of his coat, he called up a tiny flame in the palm of his hand. “Show me what you see,” he breathed, the simple words calling up a spell of as much intricacy as a piece of fine lace. He stared into the flame, willing it to show what that fire struck in the alley was surrounded by.

As if reflected in a mirror, he saw a shabby boy, cap pulled down over his forehead. He was striking a match. The flame that Jonathon was looking through was some little distance away, a tiny fire of the spent sticks of the matches piled there.

The boy set fire to something. Something like—a tail?

That was it. He was lighting a bundle of straw and lint that was tied to—

A rat’s tail.

As the rat squealed in fear, he opened the door to the cage, and it dashed out and into the ally.

Jonathon in his turn, leaped around the corner, only to see the bobbing ball of fire that was just out of reach duck down a grating into the sewer.

“You!” he shouted. “You there!”

The wrong thing, of course, though it had been a calculated risk—would the boy freeze in place, or try to run?

He ran. And he knew these streets better than Jonathon. Within moments, he was gone, and Jonathon was left staring into the darkness that had swallowed him up.

Had that been the only rat the urchin had turned loose? He dared not take that chance.

He dashed back to where he had seen the boy crouched, and to his dismay, found a dozen empty wooden live-traps—it had been a live-trap that he had mistaken for a cage. In a moment of rage, he kicked them, scattering them across the alley, splintering several.

But temper was not going to fix what had been done. He was going to have to work quickly. There were an unknown number of rats scrambling about this area, trailing fire behind them. Rats that could get into anywhere ... but most especially, between walls and under floorboards.

Quickly, he summoned a circle of protection about himself; it glowed on the slimy cobblestones of the alley with the deep red-orange of coals in the heart of the fire. Once there, he had his own little mantra for summoning—where Nigel used music, he drew.

With a wand of fire pulled out of the element itself, he drew in the air around himself, sigils and symbols in what would look to an outsider like a hopeless jumble, but which were, in fact, precisely placed. They glowed, yellow-hot, hanging in midair around him. The boy had turned loose a dozen rats, not less, possibly more. For good measure he scribed the desire for two dozen Salamanders on the wall of air around him.

With a push of his power, he set the final sigil. Then he sent his wand back to where it had come from, opened his arms, and Called.

The symbols around him flared, blurred, pulsed with the power he gave them, and then vanished in a blinding flash.

And Jonathon swarmed with Salamanders. They danced all over him, wreathing around his arms, threading in and out of his jacket, as he explained to them what they needed to do.

“A boy was here,” he told them, and showed them with his thoughts. “He set rats loose with fire tied to their tails. I don’t know where they all went;
you
have to find them.”

He got their answer more in impressions than words. Agreement. Fire? That was what they
were.
Of
course
they could find the rats.

“
All
of them.”

Of course. That went without saying. And then what?

“You must follow and eat every bit of fire they leave behind them. Then when you find them, you must eat the fire tied to their tails.”

Glee. They were not often permitted to devour real-world fire. This would be like candy to them. But . . . he did not expect them to eat the rats, did he?

“No, that is not necessary. But go! Those rats could be setting anything on fire!”

Agreement.

And then they were gone.

They flashed in a dozen different directions at once, leaving him standing alone in the alley, lit only by the light from his circle of protection. Wearily, he dismissed it. The Salamanders had been alert and focused; there were times when he had trouble with them, but this, evidently, was not going to be one of those times.

They did naturally what he would have had to do magically and at greater physical expense; they were tracking the rats by the “scent” of fire, and their “noses” were better than a bloodhound’s. He knew he could leave them here to do their work. When they were done, they would simply go back to the Elemental Plane of Fire, sated and happy. They had been “paid” twice: once in the magical energy he had given them, and once in the feeding they would have.

He wanted to lean against the wall in fatigue, but it was cold and damp and very dark here, and none of those conditions agreed well with a Fire Master. Instead, he trudged back to Nigel’s flat. He knew the others were sound asleep by now, and with the crisis averted, he reckoned that morning would be soon enough for them to hear what had almost happened.

Nina tore the vagrant she had found in the gutter limb from limb in her rage, then sent the pieces off with her goblins, to be dropped into the sewers all over the city. And then, she went back to her hotel, climbed up the wall and in through the open window, and shed her blood-stained clothing. She set the maid to cleaning up the mess while she flung herself down into her bed and brooded.

What wretched luck that there was a Fire Master associated with the theater! She wondered what had brought him there tonight? Was it only restlessness and an urge to walk, or had he somehow been warned of what she was doing?

She was just glad she had been trying something without the taint of magic to it. This trick had come out of the annals of ancient sieges—sending animals into a city or an armory to set it afire. Rats were the favored vehicle for this—small and agile, they could carry the fire into the heart of the building. And she had paid the rat-catcher who served the building specifically for these rats and no others. Terrified, in pain, they would run to the place they thought of as home, dash through their secret ways in a futile effort to lose the thing that was hurting them, the fire tied to their tails.

It had been a good plan. Too bad the Fire Master had shown up to ruin it.

But she, at least, had gotten away. And he had no idea she was anything other than a mad little street urchin with a penchant for setting fires.

One good thing had come out of this. Now she knew the face of the possible opposition, or part of it, anyway. She would have to be cunning, careful.

She settled herself in her bed, and began to think.

“He
what?”
Nigel spluttered.

“He was tying bundles to the rats’ tails, setting them on fire, and—” Jonathon paused. “—and turning them loose.”

“That is an ancient siege trick,” Wolf said unexpectedly.

Jonathon did not ask the bird how he knew that. Wolf was always coming up with unexpected bits of information.

“Well what are you waiting for?” Nigel asked, regarding him angrily. “Is it Nina? Is this someone attempting to attack her? Is this what we should be looking for?”

And now Jonathon had to hesitate. “I don’t know,” he said, finally. “There wasn’t anything at all magical about what was going on. It was just a street-boy, and it wasn’t as if he was actually trying to start fires that I could make out—more that he was just tormenting the rats for the fun of it.”

“But?” Arthur asked, watching him closely.

“But I don’t like it. If Nina’s enemy is clever, he could have paid the boy to do this. There would be no telling that it was the work of a mage.” He got up, all his interest in breakfast gone. “I just don’t know. It seems almost diabolically clever. But the storm—that is the work of someone who just doesn’t think. And yet—”

“All right, Jonathon,” Arthur said, finally. “What we can do is to be on our guard. The fact that your Salamander came to
you
before we had a burning theater means that they seem to have rapport with you we can probably count on.”

He nodded. That was reasonable.

“In that case, we should assume it was the work of Nina’s enemy, and that she’s been discovered,” he replied. “Whoever this is, he’s very subtle. So we should assume spies, attempts to lure her out somewhere alone, and indirect attempts, like on the theater.”

“Humph.” Nigel put his fork down and frowned. “I wonder, if it is Nina’s enemy, what he’ll come up with next.”

“Clearly we have to think in terms of things that are not magical,” Jonathon pointed out. “Whoever this may be knows very well that there are Masters here, and he is not going to make it easy for us to find him, or stop him.”

All three of the others, Wolf included, nodded. “We must think like a saboteur, or an assassin,” Arthur murmured.

“And not just that,” Jonathon replied grimly. “We must think like a clever one.”