Steadfast (15 page)

The show went well, and Katie enjoyed her turn with the chorus dancers; the blond,
pink, and white wigs they wore in their three numbers were a good disguise, and she
was always kept at the back to fill out the group anyway. Suzie had held that particular
job as well as that of Lionel’s assistant, and she had seen to it that Katie got her
audition before anyone else had a look-in. Katie was better than any of the girls
in the chorus, but was also clever enough to look only as good as the best, so she
wasn’t put up front.

The more she convinced herself that it had all been due to a silly bump on the head,
the better she felt. After all, she’d come to no harm, and all she’d managed to do
was embarrass herself. She began to feel a great deal less strained and anxious, and
in between the matinee and the evening performance, she even managed to get out to
talk to Jack, making certain to catch him at a moment when there was no one about.

He was all alone at his desk, looking very much cooler than the performers who had
slipped out for a smoke and a pint, and when he saw her coming, she was relieved to
see he didn’t look at all put out with her.

“I’m horribly sorry, and I hope I didn’t embarrass you too much,” she said, a little
breathlessly. She did
not
want him to be upset with her in any way. He and Lionel had been so kind—and she
had come to enjoy those dark-day dinners with both of them so
very
much. She had friends again, friends that didn’t look down on her for being a Traveler,
friends that talked to her like an intelligent person and not an object. They knew
she was a Traveler; she didn’t want them to start thinking she was touched!

The doorkeeper blinked, looking confused. “Excuse me—embarrass you?” Jack faltered.
“I don’t understand—”

“When that runaway skyrocket came so close and I must have slipped and hit my head,”
she explained. “Or maybe a piece of it hit me. I mean, I don’t remember, but I wouldn’t
if it had hit me hard, now, would I? I—well, what I thought I saw doesn’t matter,
I just hope—you can understand it was all a sort of fever dream, right?” She looked
at him pleadingly. “I hope you don’t think I was raving mad, or that I was making
things up to—to get attention.”

Emotions passed so swiftly across his face that she couldn’t read them, but to her
great relief, his expression settled into one of kind concern. “Of course not, and
all you did was babble a little. I don’t remember you falling or being struck, but
then I was a bit distracted, you might say. I know you were scared, and I was worried
for you. I should be the one apologizing to you for not getting you seen to. If I’d
known you’d been struck, I would have had you off to a doctor! I drove around for
a bit to make sure you were going to be all right, but you insisted on being set down
at Mrs. Baird’s boarding house, and I reckoned that you’d be all right there. Is your
head sore?”

“Not a bit—” For a moment that confused her. Because if she had hit her head badly
enough to have seen—things—shouldn’t it be sore? But she resolutely shoved the thought
away. She must have hit her head. Her father always said she had a hard head. He said
it came from her mother’s side. He must have meant that literally as well as figuratively.

“It’s all right then. The next time we go and watch the fireworks, we’ll do it from
Paddy’s cart.” He patted the top of her head as if she had been a child, and oddly,
she didn’t resent it. “I hope you’ll be the one forgiving
me
for not seeing you’d come to a mischief. No dizziness? You were all right on stage?”

She nodded, relieved. “Right as rain. I remembered what you were talking about, down
at the shore, how you would just accept the heat when you were in Africa, and I tried
that when it started getting too warm out there. It worked! So thank you ever so,
for that.”

He made a little bow, with one hand to his heart. “My pleasure. But if you were getting
warm out there, best you go toddle off to the bar and get some tea or water. And here—”
He pulled out a little packet from his desk, which proved to have three hardboiled
eggs and salt in a twist of paper in it. “—eat these, and if you can’t eat them all,
share ’em with one of the other girls. Heat makes you not want to eat, but you ought
to anyway.”

She accepted his gift. “Thanks, ever so. You are always so good to us, Jack!”

He smiled.

Feeling much more at ease now, she ran back, first to the bar to get that tea, and
then to the dressing room, where she shared the eggs with two of the other girls.
The barmen were partial to the girls, and always gave them bread and cheese along
with the tea, although they weren’t supposed to. With bread and cheese, three hardboiled
eggs was really far more than one person could manage, and besides, she knew there
would be plenty of soup waiting for her at supper.

It also made the chorus girls more friendly. You could never have too many friends
in this world.

•   •   •

Lionel slipped out of the alcove where he’d been hiding, listening to Jack’s conversation
with Katie, once the girl had gone. He and Jack had hoped she would come try and confide
in the doorman, but he was disappointed with how she had already managed to convince
herself that what she had seen was a complete hallucination. He shook his head with
mingled irritation and sympathy. “Hit her head!” was all he said.

Jack shrugged. “You can’t blame the girl for not wanting to believe,” he pointed out,
as he offered Lionel an egg from inside his desk. “Think about it—she’s never seen
magic before, or if she did, it was something she made herself forget as soon as she
was old enough to realize no one else could see it. You and I at least had it in the
family, and our fathers made sure to make us understand about the magic from the time
we could first see the Elementals. What’s she had?”

“A worse time than we’d thought, apparently.” While Jack listened, increasingly appalled
and angry, Lionel outlined what Peggy Kelly had told him.

When Lionel was done, Jack was grinding his teeth so hard he finally had to force
himself to stop and get a bit calmer. He might not be a
Master,
but the anger of an Elemental Fire Mage was nothing to be trifled with. While he
couldn’t command his Elementals, they did respond to him, and they were just as likely
to go out hunting for something to take
his
wrath out on as they were to react with indifference. In fact, given that they had
elected to start showing themselves to the girl, they were
more
likely to look for something to hunt.

“Right, then,” Jack said, after several steadying breaths. “Well. Right now, not much
we can do about that bastard she’s shackled to.”

Lionel made a sour face. “True. At least, not much we can do about her situation until
she confides in us.”

“When it comes to getting her more of the ready, well, our hands are pretty well tied,
no matter what Peggy thinks,” Jack continued. “There are only so many jobs in this
hall, and she’s taken all the ones she can legitimately take. I don’t think it’s a
good idea to let her hunt more work outside this hall.”

“Nor do I!” Lionel replied with alarm, and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“No, the only solution is to find her more work here, but—”

“Exactly so. But.
Unless,
of course, some opportunity for her to make more money happens to land in our collective
laps.” Jack drummed his fingers on his desk. “Which . . . it might. Your Elementals
and mine now know about this, know that we need to find her a way to get enough to
get shed of that bastard. Hers have known all along, but might not have realized that
money was part of the solution. Well, now they do know, and the Elementals of three
mages, plus the mages themselves combined, often have the effect of changing luck
merely by them
wanting
it to change.”

Lionel blinked at him. “I—didn’t know that—” he said slowly.

Jack laughed. “Why do you think old Alderscroft has that bloody White Lodge of his?
It’s not just for going after the big things. It’s for bending luck the way he wants
it to bend. Which, largely, is to keep ordinary folk from finding out we exist, but
sometimes he bends it to help someone out, or bring about something that’s good for
mages in general. One of his cronies told me. Almsley, I think he called himself.”
He thought back to his encounter with Almsley . . . must have been Almsley Senior,
the man had been older than Jack. And a Duke, to boot. There’d been a little something
he’d wanted help with and only a Fire Mage would do. Jack had been a bit young to
help, so he never found out what it was. Almsley’d been a damned fine chap, nothing
high and mighty about him, polite as you please to Jack’s Pa, and no ordering anybody
about. The sort of fellow that made you want to help him because he was a good man.

“Heard of him. Never met him. Well . . .” Lionel took out his handkerchief again and
mopped his forehead with it. Jack felt sorry for him, this heat was really punishing
the Air Mage. “All right, there’s this. The gel’s seen her Elementals. They’re not
going to let her
un
see them again, no matter how much she tries to tell herself they came from a knock
on the head. So we need to be ready for when she gets her second encounter.”

“Fire Elementals are an impatient lot,” Jack observed, grateful that at this moment
there was no one trying to get in or out of the stage door, so no one to overhear
them. “They won’t put up with being ignored for long. I’m a little surprised they
waited this long.”

“Probably the minute she’s alone, then.” Lionel gave Jack a look. Jack sighed, knowing
what the look meant.

“All right, I’ll hang about outside her boarding house in case it’s tonight,” he promised.
His leg was going to hate him for this.

8

B
Y the time the evening show was over, Katie was feeling almost as happy as she had
been yesterday afternoon, when she and Jack had been out watching the sea and drinking
lemonades. The show went well, Jack had not been offended by her nonsense, and his
little trick of dealing with the heat had actually left her feeling more refreshed
than tired when they took their final bows and all trotted off to their various dressing
rooms.

She waved off Jack’s offer of taking her to supper; she was well aware that his purse
wasn’t all that much heavier than hers, and he’d already treated her to lemonades
yesterday. “I’ve paid for Mrs. Baird’s supper, thank you, Jack,” she said cheerfully.
“Given I’ve paid for it, I’d rather eat it!”

“Can’t argue with that logic,” he replied, and turned to deal with a drunk who wanted
in the stage door to meet with a “Dorrie.” Katie saw his kind every night, men with
enough in them that they convinced themselves one of the girls in the show had been
making eyes at him and him alone for the whole night.

As was her usual habit, she waited at the corner until she joined with a knot of girls
going on their way in her general direction, trying to look as if she was part of
the group. When they drifted off in a different direction from the one she wanted,
she joined a family group of a husband and wife and several older daughters. And when
they made a turn in the direction of some family boarding houses, she was within sight
of Mrs. Baird’s and felt safe in hurrying the remaining distance on her own.

The soup tonight was a lovely spinach soup, and as usual, there was Mrs. Baird’s perfect
bread to go with it. Some of the other girls were acrobats from another of the music
halls, and when she ventured a comment on something one of them had said about how
to best execute a tumble across a smaller stage than they were used to, they accepted
her immediately into their conversation. It was like being back at that first circus
again, the one that had been so much friendlier than Andy Ball’s.

She didn’t miss Suzie much at all. It was a pity these girls would be gone in another
few weeks, but at least until then, she had someone she could compare notes with.
When she finished washing up and went upstairs, it was in a singularly contented frame
of mind.

Which meant that, when she had closed and locked her door behind her, and turned to
light the lamp, the surprise of finding that the lamp already
was
lit—and, apparently, by the fiery little bird inside it—was a cruel shock indeed.

Even more of a shock was to turn and see a trio of glowing lizards winding in and
around the logs in the unlit fireplace.

Before she could react, one of them leapt right out of the fireplace, ran up her arm,
and sat on her shoulder, staring into her eyes with its own glowing, white orbs.

She froze; even her thoughts came to a standstill.

It flickered out a flame-tongue at her, caressing her cheek with it. It should have
burned her. Instead, it felt like a cool breeze.

It stared deeply into her eyes.
“Remember . . .”
it hissed.
“Remember . . .”

Images flashed across her memory—the ones from that horrible night. The caravan, already
fully engulfed in flame, as if someone had doused it in paraffin oil before setting
it ablaze. The absolute
lack
of cries from inside. Herself, rushing for the wagon, up the stairs, and pounding
on the door with both hands, calling her parents’ names. The fires licking around
her, and creatures exactly like this, twining around her, protecting her from the
inferno. A larger bird, springing up out of the flames, actually
pushing
her away from the door, as she screamed and tried to get past it, tried to reach
for a door handle that was white-hot.

No!

She didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to understand that by the
time she saw the caravan in flames, her parents
must
have already been dead, or she would have heard them inside.

And she did
not
want to see these hallucinations, these creatures out of her own mind, right here
in her room. They
must
be hallucinations! Because if they weren’t—

If they weren’t, then it might have been that she could have controlled the fire and
saved her parents. And for some reason, she had not.

That was what she didn’t want to face, most of all.

With a tiny cry of despair, she brushed the lizard from her, wrenched open the door,
and raced headlong down the stairs, and out into the street.

The room that had been a shelter to her was a shelter no more, and all she wanted
was darkness and a place to hide.

•   •   •

A little salamander popped out of the bowl of Jack’s pipe as he stood on the corner,
quietly smoking. The door to the boarding house flew open, and, warned by the appearance
of his own Elemental, Jack was not surprised to see Katie, eyes streaming tears, running
blindly down the stairs and into the street.

And, fortunately, right toward him. Fortunately, because as fast as she was moving,
he didn’t think he had a prayer of catching up with her.

She didn’t even see him and he was able to reach out and catch her as she stumbled
past him. “Gently, Katie!” he said, before she could lash out at him. “It’s me, Jack . . .”

She didn’t fight him, which was a mercy. She didn’t go limp, either, or fling herself
at him. Instead, she just stood there, looking as if she was so caught up in what
was going on in her own head that she was oblivious to everything around her.

They had to get somewhere safe. He had to bring her out of this, and make her understand
and accept what was going on with her. Frantically, he tried to think of somewhere
he could take her where they could talk and be private. Some place she would feel
secure. Not, good gad, his own rooms at his little flat. Not the parlor there either,
nor Mrs. Baird’s parlor. It was too late and too far to go to Lionel’s—

The music hall . . .
He had the keys. He could take her to Lionel’s dressing room. She’d feel safe there.

“Come on, Katie,” he said. “I know somewhere we can go.”

•   •   •

It must have been well after midnight when he finally got some sense into her and
out of her; Jack had not bothered to take out his watch to check the time, for fear
that she would interpret the gesture as being he was tired of dealing with her. He
was tired, but not of dealing with her . . . exhausted, really, but so was she.

But finally he got through to her. He convinced her she wasn’t insane. He showed her
everything he knew how to do, from requesting Elementals to come to them—and fortunately
they were more than anxious enough to oblige—to creating fire in his hand, lighting
a lamp, shielding them both within a dome of fire-energy—

Every trick he knew, really. And then, somehow, he coaxed her to try a little. Just
the usual; make a flame dance on the tip of one finger, coax a salamander into her
hand.

Finally, he heard the full story of that terrible night when her parents had died
from her own lips. He didn’t know if he would
ever
be able to convince her that there had been nothing she could do to save her parents,
but at least he was sure of one thing.

Whatever the cause, it hadn’t been her doing.

Both of them exhausted, he walked her back to her boarding house. Mrs. Baird was not
the sort to render judgment on the girls that lived there, not as long as they didn’t
actually bring men to their rooms. So as he suspected, the kitchen door had been left
off the latch, and she could slip inside and make her way back up to her room without
anyone the wiser.

And as for him, well, no one cared at what hour a man came home.

•   •   •

Katie woke up to find herself lying fully clothed atop the bedclothes . . . and with
a curious glowing lizard nose to nose with her.

If there was ever any chance that she was likely to wake up doubting what Jack had
shown her last night, having a salamander lying on one’s chest like a friendly cat
was the one thing that would explode all possible doubts.

She started to sit up, and the salamander scampered down her body and up onto the
bedpost, where it sat like some sort of brass ornament, watching her.

“Good morning,” she croaked hoarsely.

The creature bobbed its head to her.

It continued to watch her as she changed her clothing and washed herself. Doing so
didn’t make her feel less exhausted, but at least it made her feel less sticky.

When she opened the door, the lizard vanished in a poof of sparks; she knew now that
it would come back when it chose to, and sometimes, when she asked it to. It occurred
to her as she made her way slowly down the steep staircase that she had never had
a pet before. Which led to a new question, among . . . hundreds, really. But the one
foremost in her mind was a rather simple one. Were these Elemental creatures more
like pets, or more like companions?

So many questions, and she was not sure if it was right to ask about them. Was she
supposed to find these things out for herself? Jack hadn’t said anything last night
about what she was to do about all of this. Was someone supposed to teach her? Were
there books?
I don’t read very well . . .
In fact, she could just about blunder her way through a basic primer. How could she
be expected to read a complicated book?

If this was something that supposedly you just
knew
how to deal with then . . . well, she didn’t. No instructions had turned up in her
sleep last night.

She was so absorbed in thinking about everything that had happened that she paid almost
no attention to what she was eating and was as quiet as the proverbial church-mouse.
The other girls didn’t notice at first, but finally one of the acrobats stopped chattering
to her mates and took a good look at her.

“Are you sickening for something?” the young woman asked in alarm. “You look
terrible.
Like you didn’t sleep a wink.”

“I didn’t, or mostly not,” Katie confessed. “I had horrible nightmares.” That was
safe to say, everyone had nightmares from time to time. And this was almost true.
Her own memories were worse than nightmares.

“Well at least you weren’t screaming,” said one of the others. “Blackpool, one of
the girls in our house was an awful screamer when she got the horrors. So thanks for
that, and sorry you didn’t sleep.”

“It must have been the heat,” Mrs. Baird said, coming in from her office. “Hold still,
lamb—”

The landlady put her wrist against Katie’s forehead before Katie could say anything.
“Well, you aren’t fevered. It was probably the heat, and I swear the air don’t move
in this house at all at night. You’ll be all right. I don’t suppose a bad night ever
killed one of us entertainers.”

“It hasn’t killed me yet,” Katie said, with a hollow laugh. “It was just nightmares,
you know how it is, you start up out of them and don’t want to go back to sleep for
fear they’ll come again, worse. I’ll come straight back from the evening show, have
a wash-up, and go to bed. That’ll set me right.”

“And we’ll be having something cooling tonight for supper, instead of soup,” Mrs.
Baird promised, looking about at the rest of the girls. “Cucumber and cress sandwiches,
perhaps?”

“Oh yes, please!” begged the girl who had noticed that Katie looked exhausted. Katie
tried not to smile. Cress sandwiches might mean “high class” and “high tea” for girls
in a city, but they had been the court of last resort for her family in the summer,
when she and her parents were short of the ready. Cress might be a luxury in town,
but cress could be found wild growing near streams, and if you cut your bread thin
enough, you could make it go a long way . . .

But Mrs. Baird wouldn’t be cutting paper-thin slices of bread, and there would be
plenty of butter on those sandwiches. Cress and cucumber would be a welcome change
for everyone, even Katie.

“This summer heat is only going to get worse, I fear,” the bearded woman said, shaking
her head. “I had better go talk to my greengrocer, and the fishmonger, and we’ll start
eating cooler things, not so heavy. Fruit and tomatoes and toast, perhaps, instead
of oatmeal. Cooler suppers. If it’s soup, it’ll be a cold soup. I can’t have you girls
having nightmares over my food.”

Now, Katie hadn’t said a
word
about that, but it seemed their landlady was perfectly capable of deciding that somehow
she—or rather, the supper she had served—was responsible for a night of bad dreams.

Well, no harm done, even if it wasn’t the truth. Katie had to admit that food that
wasn’t so heavy would be a welcome change, since the city was baking this summer.

The landlady let her go off with a word of admonishment that if she felt faint she
was
not
to let her master badger her into anything other than “having a nice lay-down.” “Suzie
told me you work harder than anyone, dear,” Mrs. Baird told her before she let Katie
escape out the door. “There is no point in you fainting on stage. And you let him
know I said as much.”