The Serpent's Shadow (9 page)

As he lifted vases and
ushabtis
from their packing crates, he marveled, as he always did, at the craftsmanship. These men took real pride in their work, and it showed. The alabaster of a replica oil lamp glowed in the light from his lantern, so thin was the stone of the lotus blossoms on their curving stems. And the tender expression on a goddess meant to protect one corner of a sarcophagus brought an answering smile to his lips; a sad smile, for he knew what the original had looked like, and who it had been for—and that all four of the sheltering goddesses had borne the lovely face of the dead Pharaoh's grief-stricken wife.

Beautiful. And all of it free from the taint of the tomb, of the faint miasma of the rage of an impotent former owner. He often wondered how
anyone
could bear to have genuine artifacts anywhere near where they lived and slept.

The scent of Egypt and warmth came up from the excelsior along with the artworks: dust and heat; incense mingled with dung; a hint of lotus. By the time he finished with his inventory, for once finding nothing missing, broken, used as a container to smuggle opium or hashish, or otherwise amiss, he was tired and the ache in his knee gnawed at the edges of his temper. He was glad enough to replace the last figure in its bed of excelsior and close the lid on the packing case. A cozy coal fire was sounding better by the moment.

“Night, Cap‘n,” the night watchman saluted from his stool beside the door, as Peter left the warehouse. Peter hadn't been “Captain” Scott for a good six years and more, but the grizzled and weather-beaten night watchman had been one of his old hands, and habits died hard.

“Good night, Jeremiah,” he replied, with a return salute. “Fog by morning.”

“And hard luck to them on the water,” Jeremiah said with sympathy. “Or off it. Keep an eye to your back on your way home. Fog's a blessin' t' them as is no better'n they should be, so mind ye take care.”

“That I will,” Peter assured him, and limped out onto the dock, listening to the water lick at the wooden pilings. But something in the sound of the water stopped him, just beyond the night watchman's line of sight. He listened again. Someone swam, gently and quietly, just beneath the pier. Just beneath
him,
following where he went, sending up a thin, telltale touch of magic to alert him, thin as fog, insubstantial, tasting of water weeds, a gleaming, furtive, and fugitive ribbon of palest green.

And he stifled a groan
. Not tonight Not a messenger tonight Oh, bloody hell
.

He walked to the edge of the dock, and looked down. A translucent, faintly glowing, narrow female face looked up at him from the water, surrounded by the tangle of her seaweed hair. The naiad scowled; they didn't like the filthy water of the Thames inside the London basin, and Peter didn't blame them. He wouldn't have taken a swim in that filthy stuff for a king's ransom.

“The Council summons, Water Master,”
the naiad told him, her voice the hiss of foam on the sand, the hollow gurgle of wavelets in the rocks. Then, her message discharged, she dove under the surface and vanished, heading for cleaner water as fast as she could swim.

Peter cursed under his breath.
“The Council summons,” indeed.
He was the only member of the Council that was a middle-class, regular working man; the rest were moneyed. Some were “professional” fellows, doctors or lawyers or stockbrokers; some were titled or had other forms of inherited wealth. None of them were tradesmen.
They
didn't have to be up at dawn to mind the store.
They
wouldn't have to somehow find a bloody cabby at dockside, and they wouldn't have to find another way to go home in the cursed fog! Oh, granted, Scott could use a beckoning finger of magic to lure a cabby in, but it would still take doing, and waiting!

But do they ever “summon” me when it comes time for a nice dinner party, or a bit of an entertainment?
he thought sourly.
Oh, no. I'm the most popular bloke on the Council when there's something to be done at a savage hour, though. Gawd Almighty, old Kipling's got it dead right. “Tommy this and Tommy that an' Tommy go away, but it's ‘thenkee Mister Atkins' when the guns begin t' play.”
He wasn't sure he had the quote dead right, but the sense of it certainly seemed to ring home tonight, in the cold and fog.

It crossed his mind, as it did every time he was called unexpectedly by the Council of Masters, to go directly home and tell them that their bloody Council could go straight to hell for all he cared. But the problem was that the Council was useful; without them, there would be open warfare between Elemental Masters and no doubt of it. And they did
good
work; the White Lodge had put down a couple of nasty bits of work, even if they couldn't do much about blatant idiots like Aleister-damn-his-eyes-Crowley. He couldn't quit, not in good conscience. Not while there was evil crawling around that no purging of the sewers was going to get rid of, and not while some arrogant, damned Elemental Masters thought the way to settle a quarrel was to ruin decent, normal folks' lives with floods, earthquakes, storms, and conflagrations.

So, still cursing under his breath, Peter Scott spun up his green-tinged summons, then limped off in search of a cabby brave enough to dare the docks after dark.

The meeting place was always the same; the Exeter Club, and if anyone happened to stumble in to see the poor old codgers dozing away in their chairs or pretending to read the
Times,
he'd assume it was just another backwater of retired Colonials. The codgers were a ruse, more than half of them the pensioned-off bachelor upper servants of the real members, kept in happy and comfortable retirement here to keep the work of their former masters as secret as anything you'd find at the Foreign Office. More so, actually. At the Foreign Office, you didn't have to worry about a salamander whipping down the nearest chimney to have a listen-in.

Peter limped up the stairs to be greeted by the night porter, who allowed his usual stony expression to slip just enough to display a hint of sympathy for the dodgy knee. Clive had one of his own, courtesy of the Boer War; they exchanged a wordless wince of mutual pain, and Clive took his coat, muffler, and hat. “They are in the Red Room, sir,” the old soldier said, with a nod in the correct direction. “In view of the hour, I believe they've bespoken you some refreshment.”
Of course, their idea of refreshment is usually purely alcoholic,
he thought with continued irritation. Still. It showed
some
consideration. He strode past the Club Room, even at this hour full of drowsing ancient men looking like Methuselah's grandpa, or slightly younger ones exchanging lies over pipes and port, and headed straight for the Red Room.

At least if it's the Red Room, it's not an all-out mage war, or some fool gone mad and trying to burn down London.
If it had been something really, truly, serious, the Council would be in the War Room, not the Red Room, robed and begemmed to the teeth and staves or swords in hand.

The door opened just as he reached it, and to his relief, the fellow with his hand on the knob was Lord Peter Almsley, second son and—until his brother George came up to the paddock and produced a son—titular heir to the Almsley lands, estate, and strawberry leaves. Lord Peter stood on ceremony with no one, and was one of the few members of the Council and the Lodge that Peter Scott thought of as an actual friend.

“Get in here, Twin,” Peter exclaimed—his own private joke, since they were both named Peter and both Water Masters. “You look fagged to death. I've ordered you up a rarebit; it's on a chafing dish and I've been guarding it with my life till you got here. Bunny keeps trying to bag some for himself.” Lord Peter could not have looked less like Peter Scott; he had that thin, nervy, washed-out blondness and general air of idiot-about-town that Scott tended to associate with a bit too much inbreeding within the Royal Enclosure, but he was as sound as an oak inside, and tough whip-cord when it came down to cases. Scott had seen Lord Peter face down an ancient god without turning a hair, and knew for a fact there were at least nine ghosts haunting the old Almsley estate, all of whom Lord Peter had met and even conversed with. Lord Peter never said what the rest of his family (other than his grandmother) thought about the haunts, but he, at least, considered them to be personal friends.

With a hearty clap of his hand to Lord Peter's shoulder by way of thanks, Scott entered the Red Room—which was—red. Very, very red. Red brocade on the windows, red-silk wallpaper, red-leather chairs. It
must
have been decorated by a Fire Master, and it always made Peter want to throw buckets of blue or green paint over everything.

But the enticing aroma of hot cheese coming from the chafing dish on the sideboard was enough to make him overlook the decorating deficiencies for once. He ignored the rest of the Council and went straight for the bubbling rarebit, scooping up a plate, loading it liberally with toast from the rack beside the dish, and inundating the crisp triangles with cheese until there was danger of the plate overflowing. Only then did he take his place in the single empty seat around the table—and privately nominated Lord Peter for beatification when the man shoved a tall glass of stout silently toward him.

“Listen, Scott,” began Dumbarton, one of the old lads who'd inherited a pile and made it bigger in the Exchange. “Apologies and all that—knew you were working—but there's something come up.”

Peter made certain to demolish a satisfyingly hearty triangle of toast and cheese before replying. “Well, there always is, isn't there? What is it that the Council can't sort out over dinner without calling me in?”

Someone coughed. Owlswick, of course. Lord Owlswick, who never
left
the Club except for hunting season. “Well, ah—it's magic, Scott, don't you know. Earth Magic. New source of it, in the bottom of the garden, so to speak. And we're none of us ... ah ... Earth Masters.”

Peter did not make the obvious retort that neither was he—nor that they
would
have more than half a dozen Earth Masters on the Council if they'd just give up their Old Boys nonsense and allow a few farm lads, a Scot or two, or, for God's own sake, a few of the
female
Earth Masters just west of London into their exclusive little enclave.

Old argument, and his silence said it all for him. It was Lord Peter who took pity on the rest and kept the ensuing silence from turning into an embarrassment. “The trouble is, old man, it's got bloody strong potential, but it's not
our
Earth Magic. Nothing remotely like our traditions. And we can‘t—well—trace it, locate it.”
That
got his attention, and he stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. “You—what? You're having me on, right?”

Lord Peter shook his head. “ ‘Fraid not, old fellow. Wish I was. We get it narrowed down to a district, then—that's as far as we get. It's as if whoever is
doing
this has something going meant entirely to confuse and confusticate.”

“And
that,”
rumbled old Lord Alderscroft, the head of the Council, at last, “is very interesting. Worrying. And we
damned
well want to know how it's done, especially if there's something more serious behind it.”

Lord Alderscroft spoke in Council perhaps once a year, but when he did, even Peter lost his cynicism, sat up, and took notice. He was, perhaps, the most powerful Fire Master who had ever sat in the seat of the Master of the Council. Peter pushed away the last of his dinner, uneaten, and said respectfully, “What are my duties, sir?” He suspected that when Alderscroft spoke even the King stood humbly and waited for orders.

The great man moved forward, out of the shadows of his wingback chair, bringing his face into the light. It was the face of an old lion, old, but without one whit of his power diminished in any way; eyes that saw through to the soul, weighed it and measured the worth and strength of it, yet somehow made no judgment of it. His hair was longer than was fashionable; no one would ever have even
thought
of him with other than that half-tamed, gray-and-fawn mane around his face. Power under will, will under the law, tempered with compassion, endless tolerance and patience, and a clear and unflinching knowledge of the best and the worst in his fellow man.
That
was Lord Alderscroft, and Peter would have gone through fire and brimstone and hell itself if the old man asked him to. They
all
would have, including the ineffectual Owlswick.