Later that day
The Lady Maria Wythe Academy for the Instruction of Females in Practical Thaumaturgy, England
THE SALOON OF the Sorceress Royal’s Academy had once been a handsome apartment, and it possessed the bones of handsomeness still. Poverty had not brought down the high ceilings, nor shrunk the fine windows. In candlelight one could easily imagine its charms in days past.
In the unforgiving light of day, however, its deficiencies could not be concealed. It was impossible not to see that the mouldings, though finely wrought, were now rather grey than white, and the brocade drapes hung limp and faded. The overall effect was of a decayed grandeur, calculated to depress the spirits of any person of sensibility.
Miss Henrietta Stapleton had the misfortune to belong to this class. She was generally allowed to be a pretty girl, for though there was nothing remarkable about her features, she was young and fair, and the eldest daughter of one of the wealthiest men in English magic. To these virtues were added a gentle manner and speaking grey eyes—eyes that were particularly wistful now, as she looked around the room.
“How squalid we are!” she sighed. “I wish we were able to give our guests a better account of ourselves. They will hardly expect to find England’s first school for female magicians so shabby!”
The Sorceress Royal did not respond at once, for she was studying the floor.
The one alteration the Academy had made upon occupying the house was to tear up the carpets, for the timbers thereby exposed were useful for wonder-working. Two years later, these were covered with thaumaturgical signs and sigils, only half-effaced, for the most diligent scouring in the world could not remove the marks of some magics.
The Sorceress Royal added a final flourish to the newest mark chalked upon the floor, rising to her feet with the aid of her staff.
“Nonsense!” she said bracingly. Prunella Wythe (née Gentleman) had been Henrietta’s friend from infancy: as girls they had both been at Mrs. Daubeney’s School for Gentlewitches, where they had been taught to suppress their magical abilities, as befit gently born females. In neither had this early education had the desired effect, for they were now—in defiance of convention, and much to the disapproval of the best part of English thaumaturgy—practising magiciennes.
They were united in a desire to swell their ranks—to educate as many girls and women as wished to practise magic. It was for this reason that the Sorceress Royal had established her Academy and begged her old schoolfellow to join her as an instructress.
Yet no two women could have been more different. Prunella was as dark and sharp-tongued as Henrietta was fair and mild. Prunella was an orphan, while Henrietta was burdened with more family than was convenient for a magicienne. Prunella was a magical prodigy, commanding the services of two familiars, when the greatest sorcerers in thaumaturgical history could only boast of having one familiar. Though a mere female, she had attained the highest office in thaumaturgy, taking up the ancient staff of the Sorcerer Royal—chief and representative of Britain’s magical profession. Henrietta, on the other hand, would never pass for a genius—she had just enough magic to make a thaumaturgess, but at times she doubted whether she was fit to teach others magic, when she felt she knew so little of it.
“It is not as though we were receiving anyone grand today,” Prunella continued. “They are a simple people in Janda Baik, and I do not expect these girls will be in the least puffed up. Mak Genggang holds all persons of that sort in disgust. She would never burden us with fine ladies.”
“I am sure you are right,” said Henrietta. “Still . . .”
Prunella had many excellencies of character, as Henrietta occasionally found it necessary to remind herself, but she was an indifferent listener. She leapt to her feet, dusting herself off and interrupting Henrietta:
“I believe the wretched girls are only late, and it is nothing to do with any defect in our summoning circle. Mak Genggang was never remarkable for her punctuality, and I expect her protégées are just the same.”
“You do not fear that some misadventure may have befallen them? The girls are coming to us from Fairy, after all.”
“Yes, but Janda Baik is on better terms with the Fairy Court than we can claim to be,” said Prunella. “They did not lure away dozens of the Fairy Queen’s subjects to serve as their familiars. Mak Genggang visits Fairy frequently—knows a path there that takes one from her island to England in scarcely more time than it would take for you to walk home.”
“But to send her apprentices there alone!” said Henrietta. “I wonder she dared to take such a risk. Above all at this time, when the Queen’s temper is said to be so uncertain . . .”
Few English thaumaturges had seen Fairyland since the Fairy Court had closed the border between its realm and Britain half a century ago. There were still some persons, mortal and fairy alike, who managed to circumvent the ban to travel between the two kingdoms, as Mak Genggang’s apprentices were to do. But on the whole, news from Fairy reached England at third- or fourth-hand, distilled from rumour and hearsay.
Prunella benefited from a source of reliable intelligence about Fairy, however, for she counted among her intimate friends Robert of Threlfall, a scion of one of the oldest and most powerful draconic clans in the realms of Fairy Within.
Rollo Threlfall lived mostly in the form of a mortal man, indistinguishable from any dandy to be seen on Bond Street, and few who saw him in his everyday guise would have suspected that he had begun life as a dragon, hatched out of an egg. Nonetheless Rollo could not avoid the occasional summons from his aunt Georgiana, from which visits he brought back gossip of Fairyland. The most recent report had been that the Fairy Queen, who reigned over the several realms of Fairy Within, had announced a splendid banquet, to be attended by all her subjects.
“Bad news,” Rollo had said, shaking his head. “Her Majesty only announces a party when she suspects her allies of conspiring against her. She’s sent to my uncle Harold for the Virtu, for she means to eat it at the banquet.”
“The Virtu?” said Prunella.
“It’s an amulet—one of the Queen’s most prized possessions,” said Rollo. “We look after it for her. No thief has succeeded in taking anything from Threlfall’s hoards in thousands of years.”
“But whyever does she wish to eat an amulet?”
“Why, it is the quickest way to absorb magic, you know. Works just as well with amulets as with people. The Queen feels the need for more power, I suppose. Well,” said Rollo, with an air of resignation, “we were due a purge—she has one every other century—but it’s all very unpleasant. I wouldn’t be at the Court now for love or money!”
Recalling this exchange, Prunella said now, “The girls will not have gone anywhere near the Fairy Court—Mak Genggang knows better than that! Can you wait till they arrive, Henny? Does not your mamma expect you?”
Henrietta looked guilty. “Not precisely. We were to call upon my aunt at two o’clock.”
“Why, it is half past!” said Prunella, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Will not she be on the rampage—baying for your blood?”
Henrietta coughed. “No,” she said awkwardly. “She believes I am with her. I knew you would have need of me today, so I employed the enchantment you taught me to disguise my absence.”
At Prunella’s blank look, Henrietta added, “The spell for the creation of effigies. I used linen and a pillow, and when I had bound all together it looked just like me.”
“Did it really?” said Prunella, delighted.
Before her marriage, Mrs. Wythe had had occasion to require the services of a chaperone. Having neither the funds to hire one nor any real desire for a duenna, she had invented a companion literally out of whole cloth.
“But you must have adapted my spell, if it is able to move and speak well enough to deceive your relations, though you are not there to watch over it,” she said. “You must tell me what you did, Henny. If it has sufficient novelty, you might send it to the Gazette. Then you would have your first published spell—named for yourself and acknowledged as your invention. What will you call it? ‘Stapleton’s simulacrum’ sounds well, I think.”
Henrietta smiled weakly.
“It could not bear the name Stapleton, you know,” she began.
But she was interrupted, for just then the chalk marks of the summoning circle burst into a brilliant green glow. The timbers warped and turned clear, a dark pool opening in the floor. The sounds of a tropical evening filled the saloon—the rustle of small creatures crawling through undergrowth, the monotonous scream of insects and the distant cries of unknown beasts.
A girl lurched out of the dark pool of the summoning circle, startling the magiciennes. She stumbled and would have fallen if Prunella had not leapt forward, steadying her.
“Here you are!” said Prunella. “I am Mrs. Wythe, and this is Miss Stapleton, who teaches the scholars here at the Academy—” She broke off, saying in quite a different tone, “Oh, but you are hurt!”
The new arrival was panting and dishevelled, with leaves tangled in her hair and scratches all over her brown arms. Her square face bore the signs of recent tears; her eyes were red; and her jacket and skirt of woven cloth were both the worse for wear. Altogether she made a piteous sight.
She formed a striking contrast to Prunella, who looked as charming as ever. Though Prunella’s skirts were somewhat disordered from close contact with the floor, still the wine red dress set off her rich colouring remarkably—her mother had been Indian and Prunella was darker than the common run of Englishwomen. Yet she seemed to disappoint their guest.
“You are the Sorceress Royal?” she exclaimed. “But you are only a girl!” Her English was perfectly intelligible, though it was evident that she spoke with the aid of a translation spell.
Prunella shot Henrietta a puzzled look—it was certainly odd that she should be reproached for her youth by a girl who could not have been more than eighteen. Henrietta only pursed her lips, but theirs was an intimacy that rendered speech unnecessary for mutual understanding. She knew Prunella had caught her meaning, as much as if Henrietta had said aloud, “It is beyond me!”
“I am one-and-twenty, and Miss Stapleton has recently attained her nineteenth year,” said Prunella to their guest. “You cannot be much older than that, surely!”
Colour rose in the visitor’s dusky cheeks.
“I beg your pardon,” she stammered. “I did not mean any discourtesy. It is only that I thought you must be a contemporary of Mak Genggang’s.”
Prunella bowed. “Pray think nothing of it, Miss . . . oh, but how absurd! Mak Genggang did not tell me your name. Would you be so good as to introduce yourself? And I believe there was a code you were to give me?”
“Yes, of course,” said the girl. She seemed distracted, so that conversation demanded unusual exertion on her part, but she collected herself with a visible effort. “I am called Muna. The witch charged me to say: the sky’s pink dress, the basket, the secret in your blood.”
“Quite right,” said Prunella. She had agreed with Mak Genggang a test by which the guests were to prove themselves—for, Mak Genggang had said darkly, who knew what strange creatures might seek to take advantage of the path she opened for her apprentices?
Muna had passed, for not many knew that Mak Genggang had once made a gift to Prunella of a pink dress on the sky’s advice; that Prunella had extricated the witch from an awkward situation by means of a basket; or that it was Mak Genggang who had taught Prunella what secrets might be unlocked by her blood.
“I am afraid you have had trouble on your way here,” said Henrietta, looking at Muna in concern.
“But stay,” said Prunella, “were not there to be two of you? I am sure Mak Genggang said she would be sending two. A witch and her companion.”
Their guest’s large dark eyes filled with tears. She dashed them away impatiently, saying in a trembling voice:
“Madam, she did. Two of us set out from Janda Baik. But as we were walking through Fairy, we were struck by misfortune—my sister vanished, snatched away by black magic! Though I searched, I could not find her. I do not know what has become of her, but I fear the worst!”
“Good heavens!” said Henrietta, appalled.
Muna fixed a pleading gaze upon the Sorceress Royal, but before she could say anything else, they were interrupted. A maid burst into the room, pink and agitated.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wythe!” she gasped. “Mr. Stapleton insists upon seeing you. I said you were not at home, but he would not be put off on any account.”
Though she addressed the Sorceress Royal, it was Henrietta she looked at with stricken eyes.
Henrietta blanched, seizing the Sorceress Royal’s arm in a cold hand. “Papa! Oh, Prunella, what is to be done? He thinks I am with my mother.”
“I don’t see that there is any call to disabuse him of the belief,” said Prunella, with unruffled calm. “Thank you, Sarah. I suppose those are Mr. Stapleton’s footsteps? (I told you we should be glad of those creaking floorboards, Henny!) Would you be so good as to shut the doors, Sarah, and stand with your back against them? That ought to detain him for a moment.”
Prunella turned to the foreign visitor. “I hope you don’t dislike animals, Miss Muna?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t mean wild beasts, you know,” said Prunella, “or even horses, which are liable to frighten some ladies. But smaller, peaceable creatures—do you have any objection to them? Would you mind a chicken, say, or a rabbit?”
“No,” said Muna, bemused. “There is no harm in a rabbit.”
“Excellent,” said Prunella. “Then we will take the liberty of imposing upon your good nature, Miss Muna.”
“Prunella, what are you doing?” said Henrietta in an urgent whisper, as a knocking started at the doors.
“Sh!” said Prunella, frowning in concentration as she wove a spell.
Sarah shrieked, leaping out of the way just in time before the doors at the end of the saloon burst open. Prunella opened her hand, gabbling a formula.
Smoke rose in the air, engulfing them all, and for the second time that day Muna saw a person vanish before her eyes. The yellow-haired Englishwoman disappeared, leaving in her place a small light-furred beast, with long twitching ears and a startled expression.