She was cold. Elinor pressed closer to the warmth behind her, shivering from the inside out. It was dark, and damp, and there were peculiar scratching, clicking noises. She was not at home, waking up in her bed.
The surface where she lay was too hard and she still had all of her clothes on, including her corset and her shoes. And her hoops, which were pushed and twisted every which way. Her bonnet was crushed flat on one side, the ties half choking her. She reached up to claw the ribbon open, pushed the ruined hat off her head, and opened her eyes to horror.
Choking off her scream--who knew what else it might call?--Elinor drew her feet in beneath the dubious protection of her warped and broken hoops. Hordes of bone-armored machine creatures milled about her in timid aggression, darting toward her with their spinning saw blades and slicing pincers, then away again before they could get too close.
The source of warmth beside her proved to be Harry. His presence filled her with relief and reassurance, but his unconscious state terrified her, especially when she recalled the puff of smoke from the cat-skull monster's eye. Could he have been shot again?
She rolled him onto his back and tried to conduct an examination in the dark. She had no idea where they were or how they could have got here. They were inside a building scarcely more than four walls and a roof, and those none too solid. At least it wasn't raining, given how porous the roof appeared, but that only seemed to intensify the cold, which was made worse by lying on hard, damp brick.
"Harry." She shook his shoulder. "Harry, wake up and help me. Where are you hurt? Can you make a light?"
There were high windows and in the cloudless sky, the quarter moon provided a fair amount of light. She ought to be able to see blood against the white of his shirt, even in the dark. She got his jacket and waistcoat open, searching his upper body for signs of injury. He'd been facing the creature when it fired. Or did whatever it did. So she wouldn't have to examine his back.
She ran her hands over his chest and across his stomach, in case her visual examination missed something, running them down his sides to see whether the bullet or dart might have grazed him there. She probed along his trouser area, then moved to his legs. His trousers were a charcoal gray glen plaid. Blood wouldn't show against the dark color.
"So." A harsh voice startled a squeak out of her.
Elinor jumped to her feet and whirled around, spreading her skirts to hide as much of Harry as she could.
"Kitty didn't kill you after all. Pity, that." Nigel Cranshaw had come in through a ramshackle door, the cat-skull machine skittering in ahead of him. Elinor recognized Nigel only because of the moonlight falling across his familiar, narrow face. He sounded awful and looked worse, with a ragged blanket wrapped around his shoulders in place of a coat.
"You call that thing Kitty?" A shudder rippled involuntarily through her. "How can you make a pet of it?"
"Oh, I haven't. We--" Nigel lifted his foot, threatening a kick while the machine clicked and squealed at him, menacing with its tool-arms. "--co-exist."
"How did you bring us here? Why? What do you mean to do with us?"
"Do? Nothing. I didn't bring you here." Nigel limped toward a paler lump on the floor. "They did, the machines. I have no idea what they want with you. Nor do I care."
"Then we are free to go?" Elinor didn't know how she would move an unconscious Harry anywhere, but she would figure something out if she had to.
"If they will let you." Nigel waved his good hand, indicating the swarming machines. He kicked one out of his way and cackled with a sudden burst of laughter. "Quite a sight you were, carried in by dozens of the creatures. Like something out of Gulliver's Travels. I laughed myself silly."
Elinor's lips twitched. The image was amusing, she supposed. And frightening. Harry didn't do well around these machines. What did the things want with them? "Harry's hurt," she said. "I know he is, or he would be conscious. Do you have a light? Or, wait--"
Harry was her familiar or almost, as he said. How could she have forgotten? She didn't need a light to check his welfare. But she did apparently need more blood, for when she reached out to her own in his bloodstream, there wasn't enough magic for her to catch hold. Why hadn't she bought a lancet yet? There was a pin attaching a bunch of silk flowers to her bonnet. Elinor groped for it and found what she sought, slightly bent, but serviceable.
"What are you doing?" Nigel sounded his suspicions from the far side of the chamber where he sat on his lump. A mattress possibly, but if so, a disgusting sample of the species.
"I need blood." Elinor chose a finger--left fore--and lanced it, sticking the pin deep with a hiss to let the pain out. She needed to be sure of drawing enough blood for her need.
"Isn't he bleeding already?" Nigel cried. He struggled to stand. "And you want more? What about your vaunted magic from innocent blood?" He paused a moment. "Aren't you Tavis? Aren't you a wizard?"
"I don't have my bag, I don't have any light, and I can work sorcery, too." She opened Harry's mouth and put the first drops on his tongue, then squeezed out more. Let Nigel see. She didn't care. He was mad. No one would believe him if he told. "Innocent blood is for justice," she added. "Not for healing."
"It's my bag now." Nigel hobbled a few steps closer, sounding not so sane as he had moments ago. "I went back to get it, after they brought you here. What are you doing? Is that--are you giving him your blood?"
She put the third squeezing of blood in Harry's mouth. Amanusa and Pearl had been sharing bits of information about making and working with a familiar, dropping it into conversation as if off-hand. More blood was better than less, they said, in a familiar bond.
"Why are you feeding him your blood?" Nigel sounded more curious than outraged. Maybe she actually had done some good, tinkering in his mind.
"Because it will help him. I would give him all of it, if need be." All of her blood, none of her self.
Elinor shook the thought away. Had the blood gone deep enough to settle yet? She went back to her unfinished physical examination of Harry's legs. A little way down his right leg, he flinched and cried out when she touched a spot that felt wet.
Without waiting longer, Elinor leapt into his bloodstream and found the ugly, narrow, barbed bone dart deep in the muscle of his thigh. "I need the forceps." She held her hand out in demand. "And possibly a knife. I may need to cut this out."
Nigel cradled the bag to his chest. So he did have it. "It's mine."
"Yes. And I will give them back to you. Just let me use them to get this dart out of Harry's leg. Please. It's killing his magic." But not as swiftly as it had the last time he was shot. He was her familiar. Her sorcery, her blood supported him, gave him strength where he needed it. "The forceps are in a pocket on the side with the latch. The knife will be there with them. It's a folding knife, so you don't have to worry."
"You'll give them back?" Hallelujah, he was listening.
"I swear. Please. Hurry." Elinor restrained herself from snatching the bag out of his hands. It wouldn't help.
He set her bag down on the floor, bracing it with his clawed hand to work the latch with the other. "Why do you want to help him? You're a woman. Women are wicked. They lie. They set traps and drag men down."
"Some do," Elinor acknowledged. "Just like some men do wicked things. But not all of them." She twisted her hands together to keep from reaching in and fetching the instruments herself.
"Women abandon those who need them." His voice had gone high and soft, almost childlike.
She needed him to be a grown up just now. A sane one. She did not have time for this. Harry was hurt. "Your mother died, Nigel. She couldn't help it. She tried to stay, but she was weak and hurt."
Finally, finally he held out the forceps. Elinor made herself take them gently from his hand instead of snatching. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." The words came automatically, but they came. Politeness, from Nigel, to a woman. Amazing.
Elinor tore Harry's trouser leg open, struggling a bit to get the strong wool threads to separate. She stepped back into his bloodstream, then out again, and back, until she figured out how to hover half in between so she could both see what she was doing with the forceps and see where the dart lay buried in heavy muscle. He jerked and shouted when she began to probe, but she was able to push him into deeper unconsciousness, where he wouldn't feel the pain.
"Bloody hell." She spat the curse, but one wasn't enough. "Bloody, bloody hell." She had a grip on the dart, but the wicked barbs up and down half its length would catch and tear when she pulled it out. She couldn't push it all the way through. It would hit Harry's thigh bone first, even if the forceps were long enough, which they weren't. Harry had a thick thigh.
"I need the knife," she said. "I'm going to have to cut it out."
"What do you mean?" Nigel's suspicions were obviously roused again.
Elinor explained as she tried to work the dart out without the knife. Harry groaned in the depths of his unconsciousness.
"You lie! You did this to him!" Nigel scrabbled backward, clutching Elinor's wizard's bag to his chest.
"No, I did not! Your damned Kitty did it!" Shouting probably wouldn't help, but it made her feel better. Momentarily, anyway.
"Nigel, the dart is bone, like the bones armoring the machines. It has no magic in it. It's dead and it's going to kill him if I don't get it out. The barbs on the dart will tear a great hole in his leg if I yank it out without using the knife to cut it free. Please. I am begging you." She felt near tears. Would he accuse her of irrationality if she succumbed? She felt far from rational.
"Why?" His voice had gone soft and high again. "Is he your sweetheart?"
"I-- He-- We are engaged to be married." Complete and utter truth. "But I would help him even if we weren't. I helped you when you burned your hand, even though you were trying to burn me. There's an ointment in the bag I was going to bring you in the tower, if you hadn't escaped. To soften the scars and help your hand move more easily."
"You lie." But it was a whisper, without conviction.
"No, about none of it." Elinor tried using her sorcery to stanch more of Harry's bleeding. The flow slowed down, though it wouldn't quite stop. She didn't know if she should stop it entirely, before she got the dart out. She needed to know more medicine, proper medicine.
"The announcement of our engagement was in the newspapers. And the ointment is in the big jar in the middle, on the opposite side from the forceps pocket. Please, will you let me have the knife?"
"What are the vials?"
"Let me get the dart out of Harry's leg and mend him, and I will tell you. Everything you want to know. I'll show you how I make the potions, if you like."
"I never liked Harry. He doesn't like me either."
"Would you let him die out of petty dislike?" Elinor wanted to scream.
Nigel stared at her from his pale, bulgy eyes, exposed in a swath of moonlight. "No," he said after an eternity of silent thought. "No, I am better than that."
"You are." She would agree with anything if it would get her what she needed.
Nigel handed her the clasp knife, the one she kept as sharp as any scalpel, and scuttled back out of her reach. Elinor ignored him, finding the balancing point for her vision again as she began to make an opening large enough to remove the dart without catching it on anything. She discovered that if she piled up magic around the injury, he didn't twitch as she worked. With luck, it blocked the pain the way Amanusa had. She worked quickly and soon was able to draw the nasty dart out of Harry's thigh.
"May I have just a bit of healing potion to pour over his leg? It's a sorcery potion Amanusa--Mrs. Greyson is teaching me to make." Elinor looked up at Nigel and discovered that he had moved closer while she worked. He still clutched the bag to his breast, but he watched her work intently.
"Is that it?" he rasped. "The dart Kitty shot him with?"
"Yes." Elinor handed him the forceps, dart and all. She didn't need them anymore. Or the knife. "Do you want to keep sorcery in your wizard's kit?"
Nigel glanced at the bloody dart with its tiny scraps of flesh clinging to the barbs. She hadn't been able to get it out without tearing anything at all. He grimaced and flung the dart away to land in a puddle near the door. "Sorcery? Sorcery doesn't heal. It kills."
"It heals. The tall curved bottle on the end. I'll get rid of it for you."
He got out the bottle, sniffed, and made a face. "Alcohol spirits." He exchanged it for the knife. "You got blood on the instruments."
Elinor rolled her eyes. "I'll clean them. Or here--" She gave over Harry's handkerchief. "Clean them yourself."
She poured the medicine--mostly gin, saliva, and magic--straight into Harry's wound and did what she could with it to start the healing. Amanusa claimed sorcery magic worked better than wizardry on violent injuries, particularly deep puncture wounds. Something about the shed blood, perhaps. Elinor didn't know, but she didn't have any of the more usual wizard's potions for such bodily insults with her. This would be her experiment to learn whether it was true.
She tore off a higher ruffle from her petticoat--the bottom ruffle was dirty from contact with the ground--and wrapped it around his leg, tying it off with a strip torn from the bottom of his ruined trousers. She used the pin from her hat to fasten his torn pants leg together in hopes of conserving a little warmth. Then she pushed more magic into his blood, pushing out the no-magic poison.
"Harry." She lifted his head into her lap, stroking and patting his face. He needed to wake up. She couldn't carry him out and Nigel wouldn't.
"How long have you been living here with these creatures?" she asked Nigel absentmindedly, worrying over why Harry didn't rouse.
"I don't know. How long has it been since I escaped Holborn Tower?"
"Hmm--maybe three weeks?" She had pushed Harry deeper into unconsciousness, so she ought to be able to bring him back. If she could figure out how she had done it. "Have you been here all that time?"
"I think so." Nigel frowned. He folded the knife, put it in the bag, fastened the latch, and gathered it into his protective embrace. Then he seemed to realize he was still holding the handkerchief he'd used to clean the instruments Elinor had used. "It's all bloody."
"Yes. Shall I take it back?" It was Harry's blood. Harry was her familiar. She should be careful with it.
Elinor held her hand out and Nigel laid the handkerchief in it. Somehow, touching the blood Harry had shed while she removed the dart allowed her to follow the path he had taken to his deep sleep. She found him there, curled up on a massive pile of dream world feather beds. Harry. She called him once more without speaking aloud. Harry, wake up.
Oh. Wot? His mental shape blinked up at her. Is it time?
Yes, it is. Time to go.
All right, then. He opened his actual eyes. "Why does my leg hurt?"
"You got shot. Again." Elinor took another moment to check the status of his wound. Already the flesh was knitting back together, though not as quickly as she'd have liked. She pulled magic from the handkerchief and used it to replace the magic destroyed by the dart. "It's healing well, though. You ought to be able to walk on it long enough to get away from here."
"Where is 'ere?" Harry sat up and looked around. "Hello, Nigel."
"Tomlinson." Nigel nodded in brusque acknowledgment.
"I'm guessing somewhere in the East End?" Elinor looked to Nigel for confirmation.
He nodded. "A bit north of Whitechapel Road, near Osborn Street."
"I think I know the place. Damn, woman--me best trousers, ruined."
"Better the trousers than your leg." Elinor was not sympathetic. "And you've better trousers."
"I am not impressed with your choice of companions, Nigel." Harry eyed the machines still wandering more or less aimlessly around the room.
"Neither have I been, truth to tell." Nigel shrugged. "They were here when I arrived. They are a nuisance, stealing anything left unattended, but they keep the rats down. They have never interfered with me."
"How did you come here?" Elinor asked. "How did you find this place?"
Nigel looked troubled. "I don't-- Much of that night, leaving the tower and afterward, is a blur. I--I might have been led. Not by a machine, but by who or what I do not recall."
"We need to leave." Elinor had felt the need since she woke and now an urgency gripped her so tight, it was all she could do not to run screaming for the door. Except Harry couldn't run and she wouldn't leave him.
"Go right ahead." Nigel plunked himself down on his lump of a mattress again. "I won't be here when you send your bully boys after me."
"You can't prefer this filth and cold to the tower." Elinor couldn't believe it.
"No warding here."
"True enough." Harry tried to stand and fell back to the bricks. The machines startled and began running about even more agitatedly. Elinor clasped his forearm and braced herself, serving as an anchor for Harry to pull against as he got to his feet. She put his arm over her shoulders to provide support. He would fall if she didn't.
"Tell you wot, Nigel." Harry put all his weight on his good leg, leaning very slightly on Elinor. "I got people 'ere who'll keep an eye on ya. Long as you behave yourself--don't cause trouble or 'urt anybody--I won't send Briganti down 'ere after ya. I know you weren't part of the attack on Elinor and me--"
"What attack?" Nigel frowned. "You don't have authority to send Briganti anywhere."
"Oh, that's right--you scarpered before Sir Billy--Sir William resigned." Harry filled him on all the changes of position. "And the attack was from Dodd and Allsup and all the rest of your cowardly cronies afraid of change."
"You? Head of the Magician's Council? That's--" Nigel puffed right to the edge of outrage, but couldn't quite work up the proper head of steam to go over. "Not Carteret?"
"He didn't want it. Nor did the ladies."
"Harry." The men could talk politics for hours, if she let them. "We need to leave. I want you in a proper bed somewhere warm."
He raised a wicked eyebrow at her. She could have phrased that better, should have known even his new, proper self wouldn't be able to resist it. "Well, why didn't you say so?"
She rolled her eyes at him and started walking toward the door. Since she was holding Harry up, he was forced to limp along with her.
The machines had settled somewhat from their furious racketing about, but as Elinor and Harry moved toward the door, the machines ramped up their motion, making their odd whistling, squealing, clicking noises at each other. They were moving to block the path to the door, Elinor realized.
"Kitty" scrambled toward them over the bodies of the other machines and Elinor turned, placing herself between the cat-skull creature and Harry. "That's the one that shot you," she told him. "You can't take being shot again."
"Didn't it shoot you too?" he growled. He already had his wand out. Wands, one in each hand. "How did it get you here?"
"It didn't shoot me with a dart." Elinor fumbled in her pocket for her wand, but could only find her pouch full of pegs. "It was something else. It felt like an electrical shock."
"Can we get out another way?" Harry tossed a strange blue light toward the rafters as he turned to survey the rest of the building. The machines didn't like it.
"Stop disturbing them!" Nigel pulled his feet and all his possessions on top of his mattress. "They are unpleasant when they are disturbed."
The machines clashed mandibles together, snapped pincers, crowding closer. They were wary of the wands Harry pointed at them. The one in his hand draped over her shoulder was steel, the other, copper.
"Nigel." Elinor demanded his attention, backing from the threatening machines. "Is there another door?"
"No. Only the one. Don't upset them. They're bad when they're upset."
"Walls are 'alf rotted." Harry pointed his copper wand at the walls, directing the crackling light to illuminate them. "Could probably knock straight through."
Elinor had finally found her wand. She had a handful of pegs in the other hand. She needed to keep hold of Harry's hand, she thought, or his wrist--bare skin somewhere--so they could reinforce each other's magic. She put her wand in the same hand with the pegs, dropping one in the fumble.
It bounced off her skirt, rolled down, hit a bent hoop, and went flying out toward the machines. "Wood burns--" she said tentatively as she watched it go.
"So it does. Ignis!" With a twitch of his wand, Harry lit the peg up as it dropped into the mass of machines. Elinor could feel the twist he gave to the magic to turn the flame to refiner's fire, hotter than any ordinary fire.
One of the machines squealed and ran in stuttering circles, setting its compatriots alight, until it collapsed and burned. The other machines ignored their own burning hulls, as if they couldn't even feel it.
"You'll set the city on fire!" Nigel cried. He was on his feet, standing on his mattress.
"Don't think so." Harry didn't sound concerned. "Everything's too wet. And refiner's fire's easier to control than the other sort." As if to prove it, he circled the tip of his wand and the fire skittered over the top of the burning machines, spreading to more of the creatures. As long as the magical fire had fuel, it could spread. It would keep burning even without fuel until extinguished by an alchemist but it wouldn't spread, or so Harry had told her.
Elinor felt the magic adjust again, confining the fire to burn only these creatures and others like them. Not that it seemed to be doing much damage.
"It'll burn through the armor," Harry muttered. "Someday."
Harry was her familiar, but so far, he was the one doing all the magic. But what could she do? Would innocent blood magic work on a machine?
Elinor was about to try it, gathering magic from Harry's injury, as she had learned to do only this afternoon, when the machines began to climb one atop the other. Not as they had earlier, clambering over each other to reach a target, treating the other machines as obstacles in their way. This climbing was more purposeful, especially when the machines began to lock onto each other, as if--
Each machine was made of disparate parts, gathered up from the detritus left behind when people abandoned the dead zones and joined together to function as a whole. Now, the individual machines seemed to be joining together as parts creating some kind of--of super machine.
Elinor invoked the blood from Harry's wound, shaped the spell, adding more power from Harry's magic, and threw it at the oversized creature, now about as high as her shoulder. The magic shook the thing, knocked it awry. A few machines went crashing back to the ground, their locking mechanisms failing. Other machines took their place, as if nothing at all had happened.
"Nigel, you should come over here with us," she said, hiding the fear quaking in the pit of her stomach. "I don't think it will be safe there in another few minutes."
"They've never done that before." The wizard's voice had gone cracked and quavery.
"All the more reason to get yourself over 'ere." Harry could put out a lot of sound without actually shouting.
"You mean me no harm?"
"We mean you less 'arm than they do, I wager. Now come on." Harry leaned his head near Elinor's and spoke softly. "Wot do ya want with 'im anyway? He's well-nigh useless."
"He's human. That thing is not." It seemed reason enough to Elinor.
Nigel took a cautious step off his mattress and edged toward them, jumping every time one of the nasty little beasts spun a knife-edge his way or clacked its pincers. The machine of machines kept building itself larger, until it was as tall as Harry and a fair bit wider. Harry, Elinor, and Nigel backed toward the wall behind them as smaller machines fastened onto each other in single file, slowly creating clumsy arms.
It didn't create legs for itself, but a wide base floored with wheels to move it. Perhaps it feared losing balance and topping over, Elinor thought. Walking was a trickier business than trundling about on wheels.
It. Did a single mind direct the assembled machines? Whose mind was it, if so? What drove them to lock together like this?
Harry put his hand behind his back, the one not over Elinor's shoulder for support. She felt him draw magic--from the air?--and fed strength into him. His leg wound was still bleeding his strength away with a slow seep of blood she couldn't seem to stop. He flicked his copper wand toward the back wall behind them, speaking the word for his concussion spell. She used her own blood in all three of them present to throw up a protective wall, to keep the air from blasting back against them.
It did. It also shaped Harry's spell, giving it more directional force. The spell blew a great hole through the wall. Big enough for them to walk through, if Nigel ducked a little. He was quite tall. But before they could escape, machines scrambled to cut off their path.
"Naughty, naughty."