The two sorcerers exchanged glances and stood with the aid of their husbands to hear the results, coming to join Elinor. This vote could have significance in her own situation as well and her hands twisted together in Harry's handkerchief. Too many men did not like the idea of women in their hallowed halls. Even though women had helped to build them in the centuries before Cromwell and his extremes.
"Votes in favor of the retention of the sorcery guild in the council--" Sir William checked the tally. "One hundred seventy-four."
Elinor grimaced. That wasn't even half of the magicians present. Did they really mean to expel sorcery from their ranks? To split the council into male and female?
"Votes against keeping sorcery in the council--" Sir William checked the sheet again and looked out over the gathered crowd. "Forty-seven. Three hundred ninety-two ballots were blank."
What did that mean?
"The motion passes. Sorcery is still a guild within the British Magician's Council."
Harry whooped silently, catching Grey in a hug, then shaking hands with everyone nearby, even those who obviously did not agree with the vote.
Sir William passed the gavel back to Gathmann, who couldn't find anything to bang it on. He started speaking without waiting for the silent commotion to die down.
"Is there a contender standing?" he called out in words that reeked of ritual to Elinor.
"There is," Dr. Rosato called back. "The wizard Elinor Tavis has drunk the potion of Nigel Cranshaw and still stands."
"Did Cranshaw drink the potion of Elinor Tavis?" Gathmann asked. Elinor supposed he had to, even if everyone already knew the answer.
Thomas Norwood took a step forward and raised the goblet he still held, prompting the Prussian to remove the silencing on him. "He did not, sir. The potion remains."
"Did the contenders restrict themselves to magic of their own calling and creation?"
"Wizard Tavis did, sir." Norwood spoke again. His voice filled with disgust and scorn as he went on. "Magister Cranshaw resorted to illegal alchemical spells, though he is a member of the wizard's guild."
Gathmann paused here. Elinor thought he must have run out of traditional questions. Contenders who cheated with other people's magic must be rare. "And what was the result?" he finally asked. "How did Contender Tavis respond to this action?"
"She used her own magic, sir," Norwood said, his voice now admiring. "She acted quickly and comprehensively, first damping the effects of the illegal fireballs, then containing Cranshaw. His injuries were caused by his own actions. Whereupon Wizard Tavis used more of her own magic to treat the results of Cranshaw's dishonorable behavior."
"This magic she used," Dr. Rosato spoke up, "from the challenge potion to the healing ointment to her innovative use of wands--it is--"
"Sir William will hear that," Gathmann interrupted. "I deal with the challenge only." He paused, scowling out across the great hall with its crowd of spectators. He waved his borrowed gavel, releasing the silence on everyone, but the only sounds were the rustle of clothing, the shuffle of feet, and a few scattered coughs. "Does anyone deny that Elinor Tavis has honorably defeated Nigel Cranshaw in this challenge of wizards?"
More feet shuffled, throats were cleared, but no one spoke.
"Then Elinor Tavis is declared the victor."
Shouting erupted across the chamber, some jubilant, some outraged, but the outrage was much less than Elinor would have suspected. Dr. Rosato hugged her first because he stood closest. He planted a kiss on her cheek--only because she turned her head quickly enough it landed there, rather than on her mouth where he aimed it, the unregenerate flirt.
Elinor hugged her sorcerer friends and was swept up in a whirling bear hug by Harry. He spun around once, then set her abruptly on her feet and backed up a step, his lips curving in a crookedly rueful smile. What did that mean? Anything?
With a last suspicious look, she turned away to shake Grey's hand and that of Jax Greyson, Amanusa's husband. Both men were also sorcerer's familiars, assisting in their wives' magic. Elinor didn't understand that either.
"I'd have thought there would be more objection than this," Amanusa said, looking around at the spectators, mostly back behind their railings again, conversing in low voices. "There certainly was in Paris, when the Conclave recognized sorcery."
"Cranshaw's behavior has shamed them," Grey said. "He's been perhaps more extreme in expressing himself, but most of them agreed with the core of his objection, which is that women have no place in magic. Now that he has been shown to be not only a madman, but a dishonorable cheat and a coward as well, they know that their own dishonor and cowardice has been exposed."
"I would have thought one of you alchemists would have stepped in to extinguish things," Elinor said, "when Cranshaw started throwing fireballs. Why didn't you? Why did you leave me hanging there alone?" She glared at Harry. His abandonment hurt the most.
"You were still in the challenge, weren't ya?" he said, his eyes begging her to understand. "As long as the challenger is 'andling what comes at 'em, even if it's cheating, they 'ave to get the chance to do it. It's in the rules. We did step in when Cranshaw set himself ablaze, didn't we?" His eyes shone with pride now. "And you took everything the bast--the blaggart threw at ya and came out shinin'."
Appeased by the praise, Elinor nodded. "All right then, since it's in the rules..."
Motion on the dais caught her eye and she turned to see Gathmann pass the gavel to Sir William again. The Prussian remained on the dais, taking a few steps back. Probably to be ready to impose his silence again, should the council head require it.
"How did he do it?" Elinor asked Harry from the side of her mouth. "The silence? The gavel is wood and he is an alchemist."
"Wasn't the gavel 'e used," Harry replied. "It's a tricky spell, but 'e used the air--'cause it carries the sound--an' the stone in the walls and roof to contain it. Can't work this spell outside. Air moves too much, an' for quiet, you got to stop it moving." He looked sideways at her, touching his finger to his lips in admonishment. As if he wasn't the one always talking out of turn. She rolled her eyes at him, before turning her attention forward.
Sir William had apparently tired of waiting for the conversation to quiet. "Gentlemen," he said in his booming, magic-enhanced voice. "And ladies."
He bowed to the tiny cluster of white and green-gowned women amidst all the sober black, gray and brown. "Elinor Tavis challenged Nigel Cranshaw as magister of the wizard's guild and has defeated him in that challenge, as witnessed by everyone present here. Magister Tavis, come and take your seat in the magister's chair."
Wait--magister's chair? What was he talking about?
"She's not a member of the guild!" one of the wizards shouted. Elinor couldn't see who. Allsup probably. He was that sort.
Sir William scowled down at the protester. Antonio Rosato strode down the center area cleared by Briganti, his frock coat and his silky black hair blowing a little with the breeze of his passage.
"Were you not here?" he demanded. "Did you not see?" With one hand, he caught the collar of--yes, Allsup--and dragged him back across the open floor to where Cranshaw lay, watched over now by his second, Dodd. "Look. Do you not see him heal? Are you so blind?"
He shook Allsup before releasing him with a shove and turned in a circle as he addressed the crowd. "I am Dottore Antonio Rosato. You know me, at least by rumor and reputation, if not personally. Is there any man--or woman--present who will say that I am not master wizard?"
He looked hard at the British wizards one by one, until finally one of them spoke. "We know you, Rosato. We know you're a master."
Elinor knew that wizard. From the battle? His name was Fillmore.
"Then why will you not believe me when I tell you this ointment--" Rosato rubbed his still shiny fingers together, "this magic is pure genius? I am not sure I could recreate what Signorina Tavis has done in making this salve." He sniffed it, and his eyes went distant, his voice pensive. "Perhaps. There is--"
He shook himself. "Non importa. The ointment is only one part of her genius. Wizards, you all have wands, veramente? One, or perhaps two for stirring and infusing magic. Am I correct? Did it ever occur to you--to any of us--to use a wizard's wand in the manner of an alchimisto? And yet it was not used as they do, but in a unique, wizard's fashion.
"Signorina Tavis used wizard's magic to defend herself and others from physical and magical attack. She has produced master level work. I, Antonio Rosato, master wizard, so declare."
"I am William Stanwyck," her godfather said. "Master wizard. I concur. Elinor Tavis is named master wizard and a member of the British wizard's guild."
"You're her godfather." Dodd climbed to his feet. "You're--"
"Stubble it, Dodd," Fillmore said. "It's master level work and you know it. We've never objected before to masters declaring their relatives' work. But if you want to, then fine. I, John Fillmore, concur in the matter as well. That makes it all moot, doesn't it?"
A stir went around the room. Sir William stood to attention. "Magister Tavis." He bowed, gesturing at the four magister's chairs as he rose.
Elinor stared at Sir William. Surely he didn't mean she--
"Where is the Black Cauldron?" Sir William inquired in a clarion voice. "Who's in charge of the cauldron?"
Several of the wizards exchanged rather defiant looks. "We didn't bring it," Dodd said. "It's in the Guildhall."
Sir William frowned. "I suppose it doesn't matter. Eleanor Tavis is still magister of the wizard's guild, cauldron or not."
Wait-- What? Elinor looked at the people surrounding her, utterly bewildered. What did a cauldron have to do with anything?
Harry nudged her arm. "Go on. You won it fair an' square. You're magister now."
But she didn't want to be magister. She just wanted Nigel Cranshaw not to be.
Amanusa took one of Elinor's arms, Harry took the other, and together they guided her across the room to the dais. Grey lined up at Amanusa's end of the procession and took her arm. Probably so they looked like they were presenting a united front rather than dragging Elinor along, she decided when her mind stopped panicking and started trying to think.
They climbed onto the platform where, with pomp and ceremony and another four tolls of the Great Bell, one for each of the four great magics, Elinor was seated as the new magister of the wizard's guild.
"It ain't so bad," Harry muttered at her from the side of his mouth as he sat in the next chair over. "Magisterin', I mean. You can delegate the paperwork. That's the worst of it, an' there ain't so many wizards as to make that a big job. I'll 'elp all I can."
Harry's mutters didn't ease Elinor's mind overmuch.
"What's all this business about the cauldron?" she asked, grasping onto the one thing she could just now.
"It's the wizards' great cauldron, like the alchemists' hammer. Don't suppose the conjurers or sorcerers have anything like, but the cauldron's supposed to stir up the greatest potions. And be in the custody of the magister."
And it wasn't here. Oh, joy.
The last dregs of the afternoon's formalities wrapped up while she was still trying to think. Harry had to nudge her to her feet for the dismissal, the final bow and curtsy to the gathered council. The spectator's railings were swiftly disassembled by assorted Briganti and bystanders, and the crowd spread to fill the room with bodies and loud conversation.
"I suggest--" Grey Carteret stepped off the dais to join his wife as he spoke, "that you make a preemptive strike and go lay claim to the magister's office immediately, before anything important is carried off."
"Excellent idea." Harry signaled to a couple of the nearest Briganti--Norwood was again one of them--and used them to clear a path out of the chamber, practically dragging Elinor along behind him.
When had she lost control of her life? She didn't know how to stop the landslide--that was mostly Harry--now that it had started sliding down what appeared a very steep slope, knocking over all the trees in the way.
The other magisters came along too, with their spouses and a few hangers-on from the international set visiting London. It made for quite a procession through the halls of power.
The wizard's guild office in the council building was a small adjunct of the offices in the guild hall, a building not far from Covent Garden.
"'Ere we go," Harry said, thumping a heavy ledger on the desk in the wizards' council office. The ledger itself gave off a tiny poof of dust, but the council's charwomen kept the desk and its surrounds clean. Cranshaw's desk was disturbingly well-ordered, Elinor thought, the blotter perfectly aligned, a single paper centered upon it, with pens arranged in rigid rows beside the ink bottle.
"Your list of wizards." Harry nudged her, opening the enormous book. It was fully as tall and wide as the ancient Book of Wizardry, though not as thick.
"We already know who all the wizards are," Elinor said. "There are only twelve."
"Thirteen. You're not in here, are ya?" He raised an eyebrow at her. Amanusa handed her a pen and Pearl opened the ink bottle.
Oh. Elinor took the pen, dipped it, and wrote her name in the next section under...Simon Little, apprentice. The only wizardry student in the academy. "Should I write in the rest?" she asked the crowd. "It doesn't feel right to be proclaiming myself master wizard."
"I shall write it." Tonio Rosato pushed into the room through the crowd at the door. "Since I am the one proclaiming you master of wizardry."
"Write it in English, mind," Harry said with a hint of warning in his voice.
"Si, of course." Rosato glowered back at him, as if insulted Harry would think so. The Italian made a great show of adjusting his arms, flapping his coat with the motion. He dipped the pen in the inkwell and spoke the words as he wrote them. "Master. Wizard." Then he signed his name with swirls and flourishes on the line for the adjudicator.
"And shall I write in the 'magister'?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at the others. "Or is that for another magister to write in?"
"I'll do it." Harry held his hand out for the pen.
"Oh, let me," Amanusa teased him. Elinor thought so, anyway. "I need the practice for filling out the sorcery ledger if it ever arrives from the bookbinders."
"Isn't the old one still about?" Harry asked.
"Yes, with pages so old I daren't write on them. We'll start fresh."
The exchange gave Elinor time to formulate her resolve. Needing time to think things through sometimes did lead to her being swept along by events, but she managed sooner or later to dig in her heels and slow things down.
"I'm not entirely sure I want to be magister," she said, laying her hand over the register entry so no one could write in it without her approval.
"Wot? Why not?" Harry protested, as expected. He didn't understand.
"You have to be magister," Amanusa said.
"Why?" Elinor frowned at her. "As long as Nigel Cranshaw isn't the magister, what difference does it make? I need to be in my stillroom, working on my potions and ointments and spells. It takes time to come up with things like the burn salve, or--or the wands."
The words and worries came pouring out before Elinor could try to stop them. She wasn't sure she wanted to. "If I'm the magister, I won't have time for the magic. I'll have to deal with interruptions. And paperwork. And--and politics." That last bit made her nearly nauseous.
"Then wot did you challenge Cranshaw for?" Harry propped hands on hips, coat folded back, in his customary stance.
"Because he didn't deserve to be magister," she retorted. "And yes, because I want to be a master wizard and a member of the guild, which I would never be with Cranshaw in charge. I do want to be able to get at all those books in the library."
"An' you honestly think one of the others would be any better than Nigel?" Harry gave her a doubtful look.
"What about your students?" Amanusa asked. "What about Mrs. May, or Mary Ellen and Berthe?"
She named the women Elinor had so far found, without actually looking, who had an aptitude for wizardry. Valentina May was a widow who had been caught up in the mess at Waterloo Station and had helped in the aftermath. She was thrilled to have a way to better support her rather large family. The other two had been brought to London as prospective sorcery students--Mary Ellen Young from Scotland and Berthe Stroud from Prussia--but had turned out to be better wizards.
"We've been talking," Pearl said, who of course had come along with Grey. "Amanusa and I. We don't think we should open a Female Magician's School. We think our students need to attend the Magician's Council Academy, with the apprentice conjurers and alchemists. Don't you agree that we all need to be part of the council from the very beginning?"
"Well, yes, but--"
Amanusa took the discussion back from Pearl. "How do you think that is going to happen if you let some other wizard become magister? You are the only female master wizard. If the magister is male, how much do you think things will change? We will go back to battering our heads against the door."
"The change has already begun." Elinor slipped her argument in while Amanusa took a breath. "I am a master wizard. They can't toss me out again. The sorcery guild has been confirmed as part of the council. They can't toss you out either. They can't stop us from taking apprentices."
"And how long do you think it will take for further changes to come about?" Amanusa demanded. "If some man is the wizard's magister?"
"Besides," Harry inserted himself into the female debate. "The magister is the best magician in the guild. The best alchemist, best conjurer, best sorcerer, best wizard. Always. Cranshaw was head an' shoulders better'n any of the other wizards, an' we just saw 'ow much better than him you are. Best wizard is magister of the wizard's guild. And that's you. No way past that."
Elinor clung to her mulish expression, but inside, she was resigning herself to her fate. Amanusa was right. Harry was too, but the sorcerer's argument held more weight with Elinor. It would be utterly selfish of her to grasp this opportunity to work master-level magic and deny it to other women. She did want others to have the chance she had, or better. She wanted them to have the same chance as any grubby boy from Seven Dials.
Being magister wouldn't be easy, or comfortable, but she had already determined to make any necessary sacrifice to achieve her goals. She could sacrifice a little more.
Besides, Harry had already promised she could delegate the paperwork. If only she could delegate the politics.
Elinor moved her hand from the registry. "You write it, Harry," she said. "You were my master of magic and you're the senior magister. It should be you."
He gave her a quick look that sent heat flashing through her as he took the pen from Amanusa. Elinor shook it off. She didn't understand it, didn't want to.
Harry carefully printed "Magister" at the top of the separate qualifications section and signed his name, without any swirls. He'd learned reading and writing after he entered the academy at 16, so his handwriting tended to the basic.
Elinor took the pen back from Harry. If young Simon Little was listed, her female students should be in the book as well. She turned the page and filled in three of the four sections on the next, carefully writing "apprentice" after each name.
She blotted the entries, wiped the pen clean, and smiled up at those gathered in the office and beyond in the hall.
"Time to celebrate." Harry grinned at her. "Cook's laid on a big spread. Everyone's invited."
He'd invited them all beforehand, of course. Win or lose, they would want to gather, but Harry had been supremely confident of victory.
"Shouldn't I visit the guild hall?" Elinor asked him quietly. "To claim it as well? Perhaps locate the cauldron?" Not that she really wanted to, but she wondered if she ought.
"The register is the important bit," he said as the hallway began to clear. "You might ask for Briganti to go an' make sure no one's carryin' things off as shouldn't be carried, though."
"Brilliant idea. Grey?"
"Already in train." The elegant conjurer tipped his head toward the omnipresent Norwood. "Simmons left shortly after the counting of votes, laid low by his gout, but his very efficient executive officer is managing everything magnificently."
Norwood flushed a dull red under the praise, but maintained his stone-like Guardsman's expression. He stepped out of the office into the just-cleared corridor and gestured for those still in the office to follow suit.
Elinor was almost the last one out, only Harry behind her. As she entered the hallway filled with laughter and happy chatter, Edgar Dodd stepped forward to block her way.
"Elinor Tavis," he said in a voice harsh and growling with anger, "you are not fit to be magister of the wizard's guild. I challenge you for the title of magister."
Dodd raised his hand and people gasped, obviously fearing he would strike her as she had slapped Cranshaw when she challenged him. He didn't. He threw his glove in her face. It fell to her bosom, then her wide skirt, then to the floor as he backed away. Elinor was too surprised to try to catch it. She shouldn't have been.
"Witnessed," Sir William said wearily.
"Witnessed." Thomas Norwood didn't sound any happier, but he was evidently a man who knew his duty and did it.
"Challenge to take place one week from today," Sir William pronounced.
Dodd nodded in acceptance, turned on his heel, and walked away.
Dr. Rosato cleared his throat. "I will, of course, be in delight to serve again as your secondo, signorina."
"Thank you, Dottore." Elinor managed to smile. Why had she thought the challenge with Cranshaw would be the end of it?
"Don't fret." Harry tucked her hand in his elbow. "Cranshaw was the best of 'em, and look 'ow easy you beat 'im. Course you'll be able to trounce Dodd. 'E ain't 'alf the wizard you are. Come on. We still got somethin' to celebrate."
The celebration was loud, long, and merry, with much laughter and many toasts, beginning with toasts to Elinor, running through the queen and her late consort, to the lovely wands Elinor had used in her victory. That was Pearl's rather tipsy contribution to the festivities. They ate lobster patties and tiny beef Wellingtons and hothouse strawberries and crème fraiche until Elinor thought she would burst. That did not include the lemon cakes, chocolate biscuits, and buttery scones brought out as teatime stretched toward supper.
Dr. Rosato opened the piano and played off-key music for impromptu dancing. Off-key due to the piano, not his playing. Elinor thought it was the first time the piano had been played since Harry bought it with the house ten or so years ago. It obviously had not been tuned in all that time, but the sour chords didn't dampen the merriment.
Elinor didn't want to dance, though with only three ladies present she knew it wasn't fair to keep refusing. But dancing implied flirting, flirting implied interest, and she wasn't interested. She wouldn't be. Her life's path was set.
Harry, of course, paid no attention whatsoever to her preferences or refusals, sweeping her into a rollicking polka without bothering to ask. He simply seized her and took off. He swung her around, making faces at her until she succumbed to laughter and the whirling, bouncing energy of the dance.
After that, there was no hope of backing into her corner again. She danced with Grey and Jax and Nikos Archaios. She danced with the American conjurer who had come as part of a diplomatic mission from one side or the other of their warring country and stayed to study the dead zones. She even danced with Dr. Rosato when he convinced Pearl to play the three songs she knew, only one of which was suitable for dancing. They danced to all of them anyway.
After Pearl's turn at the piano, the party broke up. Elinor had Freeman send for her pelisse and shawl when the other coats were brought, but when a footman returned with the items, Harry took them away from him.
"Stay a bit," he said quietly. "We've a thing or two to discuss, 'aven't we?"
Elinor was tired, but she knew if she went back to her flat in the mews behind Harry's garden, she wouldn't rest. And the magisters did have matters to discuss. When to wall up the second London dead zone on the south bank of the river in Bermondsey, for instance. Then there was Dodd's new challenge to consider, though she didn't want to discuss that.
"All right." She might as well use up her restless energy and calm her whirling mind at Harry's as at her own flat.
Now that she was no longer Harry's apprentice, she probably ought to find another place to live. Except she hadn't begun to earn anything from her magic. She didn't think she could afford anything as nice as the place she had now.
Nor would it be so convenient to the other magisters, since Grey and Pearl lived across the street and down a few houses, and Amanusa and Jax still resided in Brown's Hotel, up the other way from Harry's, while they looked for a house. Perhaps she could use her expectations as magister to secure a little house to rent.
"Bright an' early then?" Harry was saying.
"Not too early," Grey said at the door. "You know how Pearl is, laying about asleep all hours."
Pearl poked him in the arm. "You're the one all chatty with your spirits at three in the morning. We'll be here by ten," she said to Harry.
"Ten? Is the sun even up by that hour?" Grey protested. "It is January, you know."
"Good night." Harry chuckled, closing the door on them.
"They're leaving?" Elinor belatedly realized the house seemed very empty. Even the servants had vanished to wherever servants stayed. "Amanusa and Jax too?"
"They've already gone." Harry gave her a puzzled look as he walked toward her. "Why?"
"I thought we were going to talk. About the school. Strategy." She waved a hand. "Magister things."
"We can do that in the morning when they come back." He stood very close. Close enough she could feel his warmth. Close enough that his legs pressed into her skirts, causing them to billow around him.
She'd gone without hoops today, using layers of petticoats to fill out her skirts, fearing the bone cage might trip her up during the challenge. Now, she didn't know if the missing hoops made her feel safer or more vulnerable. Her skirts didn't tip up in the back as he stood so close, the way hoops would, but she could feel his legs through the layers of cloth and netting.
"Wh-what are you doing?" Why did she ask that? She didn't want to know. Elinor's hands trembled. Her head felt lighter than air.
Harry cupped her face as if it were a delicate blossom in his rough-textured hand, his expression intent. On her. "This."
And he kissed her.