I still couldn’t understand why Rogers was so negatively disposed. Had de Camp really ordered her to kill the orphanage project before it could take root? I had thought my uncle and the Mayor had come to an understanding.
“What do you mean, my lady?” I asked cautiously.
“The children must not suffer because of your squabbles!” she replied sharply. “You hide behind a noble cause, gentlemen, but you care nothing for the children.” The lady cast a stern glance over those present, brushed me aside with a dismissive look, and fixed her gaze on the teacher. “I am sincerely surprised that you are taking part in this, Sir Harry. I thought you cared about your pupils.”
Harry raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“Have you dealt with werewolves, Lady Kerry? Have you seen what remains of their victims?”
“I remember perfectly well what you were knighted for, sir. There’s no need to remind me.”
Harry pulled a face, as he did whenever that subject was mentioned. Many believed it was due to his natural modesty, but I knew the truth: Harry had not been given his title for a werewolf at all. During the hunt he had ended up in a brothel where, by pure chance, the crown prince of Duthigh had also happened to be staying. News that the heir, rather than attending to affairs of state, was passing his time in the company of perfectly ordinary prostitutes without a drop of noble blood would have destroyed his already tarnished reputation. So Harry had been rewarded with a title and a ‘seal of silence’. He had broken the seal almost immediately, but he still didn’t like being reminded of the title.
Harry stepped up to the child and pointed at the thin neck.
“Usually they tear the throat out, but for something this small they’d have torn the head clean off straight away. Then the beast would break open the chest and rip out the heart. That would be the better outcome.” He didn’t mention that in the worst case they might have turned the child into a werewolf itself. Instead he added, “Sometimes the flea-ridden brutes like to play with their food. Like a cat with a mouse.”
The lady shuddered and went pale. What sort of patron did she have, I wondered? I could see she wasn’t a fighter, though she clearly possessed both character and certain abilities.
“There were no werewolves in Farnell until the Bremor folk came here,” Kerry said.
Now it was our turn to exchange astonished looks.
“So,” Donald asked, “we brought them here?”
“Don’t take me for a fool. After the beating you gave them in Avoc, those creatures won’t dare set foot in Bremshire. You needed bait somewhere far from the clan’s lands. And you could think of nothing better than using children. Bravo!” The lady clapped her hands mockingly.
“Well, how are we not supposed to take you for a fool after that?” Donald asked.
The dame took offence, and a young man from her retinue firmly demanded that McLal apologise.
“Either that,” Donald said firmly, “or the lady is deliberately insulting the clan!”
I was entirely in agreement with Donald. To think of something like that! We were hardly saints, but we would never sink to such baseness. The young man responded sharply; the Bremor men prepared to flatten the insolent fellow on the spot—and would have done so if not for Harry.
“Silence!” the wizard barked. “Mr…?”
I followed Harry’s gaze, it was fixed on Donald, and prompted: “McLal.”
“Mr McLal, you are speaking to a lady. Kindly behave with some decorum. Dame Kerry, do you have any evidence to support such accusations? Because these are not mere words. You are attacking the professional pride and honour of the clan.”
“I have no evidence,” the dame admitted, “but I have even less reason to distrust my source.”
Albert and Donald both bristled, but Harry gently stopped them with a gesture.
“Indeed?” he said. “I suppose it would be foolish to hope that you might reveal this source?”
“Of course,” the dame confirmed.
“And did this source know that you would be here today on inspection?”
“What does that…”
“Please,” Harry said, far too gently. Even I grew wary.
Rogers hesitated for a moment, but eventually answered.
“He did.”
“Splendid.”
“Would you mind waiting outside the door for a minute?”
“Sir Harry, I don’t understand what you’re planning!”
Harry looked around at those present, then turned to me with a questioning glance. I shook my head.
“Has no one noticed? The child reached for you and ignored everyone else. That’s why I’m curious to see how the other children will behave.”
“What? Why would anyone want to kill me?”
“I don’t think anyone intended to kill you,” said Harry. “You are far more useful alive.”
“For what? Sir Harry, stop speaking in riddles and say it plainly!”
“Plainly? Very well. Someone turned you against the Bremor folk, fed you the right information, and arranged this attack.”
“Nonsense!” the dame protested. “What sort of person would even think of such a thing?”
“Fairburn, for instance,” Harry replied. “I understand they have nothing to do with this, but it would be very much in their style. So, shall we test my theory, or dismiss it at once?”
“We’ll test it!” the McLals said together.
“This could harm the children,” the lady inspector objected, but Donald puffed up and made it quite clear that a woman’s opinion meant nothing to him. Out of sheer contrariness rather than logic, Rogers objected again. “Even if the children react only to me, you still cannot say who influenced them, when, or for what purpose.”
“So we did this to them ourselves?” Donald asked. “Remind me again what it was you asked us not to take you for?”
“Boor!” Rogers snapped, offended, and left the room.
Her retinue followed. Harry allowed the girl to leave but stopped the young man.
“Young man, stay. Your disorientation trick may prove quite useful. Doctor,” Harry said.
Feron looked at Donald, waited for a nod, asked which child to wake, and poured a couple of drops of potion into the boy’s mouth. For the experiment they chose another lad, the smallest of them all. This time the healer did not say they would have to wait, and rightly so: the child came to at once. He recoiled from the crowd of unfamiliar men, staring wide-eyed, but he did not grow claws and made no attempt to tear us apart. Harry examined him thoroughly with diagnostic spells but found nothing unusual, so after about two minutes Donald, with Harry’s silent approval, invited Dame Kerry back in.
The moment the boy saw the knightly lady, changes began in his subtle body. The blotches in his aura condensed into thin veins of dark energy and flowed towards his head, to the Third eye. Harry watched the boy closely through the etheric plane of the diagnostic spell, yet did not even gesture to show that he saw the change. I couldn’t hold back.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Harry!”
“I see it,” the wizard replied.
The child lunged in attack but was gently thrown back by an invisible wall. Harry moved the diagnostic spell aside without dispelling it, took another from his book, and cast it at the boy. The child immediately lost consciousness and was carefully laid back on the cot. The wizard returned the diagnostic spell to its place and again began studying the changes occurring in the subject’s subtle body.
Both guests and hosts waited with interest for the verdict, but Harry did not hurry. He examined several more children. Charlie Feron grew bolder and began peering into the spell’s plane from the side, though he seemed to understand nothing of the etheric smears from which Harry was drawing a great deal of information.
“This is something between Compulsion and possession,” the wizard announced. “I cannot be more precise, because I have never encountered anything like it. The energy that drives the children to attack is not a spirit and does not possess even the semblance of a mind. What is more, I cannot determine which element it belongs to, and I have no idea how to fight it.”
I, however, had a suspicion. It was the same darkness that coils in the Spiritual heart of werewolves and in the source of vampires. But I could not say that aloud. Such a statement would certainly reveal my abilities, raise new questions, and answer none of the old ones. So what was to be done? Lycanthropy is treated with potions, vampirism with a bullet to the forehead, but what this was, and how it might be cured, was entirely unclear.
“What if…” I suggested. In this city there was a specialist capable of quite literally smelling such darkness. Anything connected with spirits and possession sent him into a fanatical rage. “We could ask Vicar Wood.”
The eccentric man belonged to the Coulier Order, a clergy order that hunted spiritual abominations almost as professionally as the Bremor folk hunted physical monsters. Fanatical faith and an extraordinary ability to sense the scent of magic had earned the vicar quite a reputation in that field.
Harry inclined his head in thought. Donald and Albert tried to remember who that was, and only Dame Kerry cautiously spoke against the idea.
“He is rather aggressive and not always in his right mind. The children are frightened of him.”
“But there are few in this city better at exorcism,” Harry countered. “It may work. And we needn’t wake the children.”
“Ah, the mad Coulier,” Donald recalled. He himself had never met Wood. He had probably read about him in reports — mine and Bryan’s.
“He’s not mad,” I said in his defence. “Unpleasant, eccentric – yes, but not mad.”
“As you say. Where do we find him?”
I took out my notebook and gave them the telephone number, the address of his flat in the Rapsy district, and the cathedral where the vicar served. Donald promised to bring him within half an hour, but I asked him not to push his luck, knowing how stubborn the vicar could be. McLal looked exhausted, reacted sharply to every irritation, and was clearly running on stimulants. Albert stopped his son and said he would go himself. Dame Kerry sighed and sent her assistant with him, assuring us that if the request came from the young man, the vicar would agree more quickly.
Since we suddenly had some free time, it was decided to arrange a small tea with a light bite. Naturally, Uncle Bryce presided over it after Donald gave a very brief report. As host, Bryce tried to draw the woman into conversation, but the dame tactfully sidestepped his attempts, engaged Harry instead, and made his pupils the central topic. Not wishing to be left aside, Bryce suggested inviting Clint if the lady wished.
Five minutes later Knuckles, the former street urchin was spreading jam on toast in the company of a count, a baron, a baronet, and a knightly dame. The situation was made slightly less awkward by the fact that neither Donald nor Rogers’s assistant held a title. McLal, however, occupied an important position within the clan, and the assistant preferred to keep silent whenever possible, whereas yesterday’s street boy, now earning a little as a driver, boldly told the dame about his progress in studying the branch of physics called thermodynamics and the prospects of mechanical engineering.
I suspect that over the past year he had not received quite the sort of upbringing Harry had intended for him. The lad had completely stopped fearing titles, and even if the king himself had been present he would likely have behaved in much the same way. What saved him was that, for all his boldness, he knew the basics of etiquette rather well and tried to follow them. Minor slips the company easily excused on account of his background.
Naturally, few of those present understood much about mechanics. Certainly not Dame Kerry. Knuckles soon carried away with himself, and the woman quickly lost the thread of his reasoning. Uncle Bryce hastened to steer the conversation back to a subject more accessible to the lady. He explained that such an outstanding young man with a brilliant future ahead of him was already a model gentleman worthy of imitation.
Knuckles froze under the praise. Kerry sensed a trap but did not have time to react before Bryce told her how Clint had refused a thousand pounds in exchange for allowing us to accept older teenagers into the orphanage. However much the dame might have wished to continue ignoring the discussion about the orphanage’s prospects, she could not — largely because the embarrassed youth had turned the colour of a ripe tomato. Knuckles was not used to being praised. He began shifting the credit onto Harry and me, saying we would have done the same, and that he had never actually held that money in his hands, otherwise he might never have given it up.
Naturally, such a reaction only earned him even more respect and praise from the elders. Knuckles could do nothing but blush and tug helplessly at his already loosened collar, not realising that behind the words of praise lay quite different feelings and intentions.
Kerry and Bryce began a sort of complimentary ping-pong, trying to nudge the ball of conversation towards their preferred topics. The dame attempted to focus on Knuckles himself, but the lad was clearly uncomfortable and helped Bryce shift the discussion to the other street boys. At that point my uncle recalled that, according to their agreement, the older lads had already committed their first offence and could technically be expelled. Yet seeing how hard Clint was trying, he simply could not bring himself to do it. After allowing Kerry to enjoy Knuckles’s reaction for a while, Bryce casually asked how other institutions of this kind dealt with hooliganism.
Grinding her teeth, the dame entered into a proper discussion. Bryce asked questions, Kerry answered them, while Donald enthusiastically took notes in a small notebook like a diligent student: laws, methods, textbooks, names of specialists…
The conversation lasted about ten minutes, and Bryce was quite prepared to continue until he had shaken every scrap of knowledge out of Kerry, and she knew a great deal. Curse it, she had received her title for outstanding work in education and charity. The plans were disrupted by Albert, who returned to Bremor House accompanied by the vicar.
True to his direct and blunt nature, the man ignored the hosts entirely and set straight to work. In other words, he demanded to be taken to the children at once. We were informed only afterwards that he had already begun the examination. Our company descended to the medical ward for the second time. Bryce joined us this time as well.
Had I not known the vicar, I would never have trusted him with children, except in the most desperate circumstances. In fact, that was precisely how the townsfolk treated him. Wood had a foul temper, the rough face of a boxer with a crooked nose and battered ears, wore crumpled clothes, smelled of cheap whisky and cigarettes, and shaved perhaps once every three days. What he lacked most of all was the white clerical collar that might have lent him the appearance of a pious servant of the Lord.
All the more so because he began examining the children by sniffing them, and when he finished he took out a cigarette, struck a match against the sole of one of the boys’ shoes, lit up, and drew on it with obvious pleasure. The fact that a roomful of aristocrats was watching him bothered the vicar even less than it had bothered Knuckles. I half expected him to start swearing, but the man restrained himself and gave a surprisingly polite bow.
“Dame Kerry,” he said with genuine respect, then added more casually, “gentlemen.”
“What do you say, Hamish?” the dame asked.
“The little ones have been cursed. Bloody…” he caught himself, “…bloodsuckers.”
“Bloodsuckers?” Bryce asked. “Not werewolves?”
“You can smell werewolves too, but that’s on the outside. Inside, though, definitely a bloodsucker’s work. A strong one. An unusual one. Feels like that bitch you didn’t let me finish off,” Wood said, pointing his cigarette at me. “Only she was weak. This one’s a master, no less.”
Several pairs of eyes turned towards me.
“The Lusonian singer, Jaris Sardu,” I said, then added more quietly the name of the spirit the bloodsucker had worshipped. “Marduk.”
Bryce suddenly stepped forward, shook his hand, and the Ferrish dagger appeared in it. Everyone interpreted the gesture in their own way, though few understood what he actually intended to do. Kerry cried out and grabbed his arm, her assistant braced himself for a fight, the McLals drew their weapons. The vicar, meanwhile, calmly took a drag, blew smoke towards the ceiling, and said, “There’s no need to kill them. Someone came to me in time. I’ll have a smoke and then we’ll pray.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Bryce asked. “No one’s planning to kill them. I just want to check.”
Kerry uncertainly released the warlock’s arm. My uncle stepped up to the child and passed the blade back and forth above him. Then he sliced off the buttons of the boy’s shirt, bared the bony chest, and pricked the skin with the tip.
“Lord Bremor!” the dame protested, but the vicar and I hissed at her at the same time.
In the subtle planes the boy’s condition began to change in a very familiar way. The blotches in the aura condensed into threads and started to flow… No, not towards the Third eye, but towards the enchanted blade.
Within a minute the boy’s subtle body was rid of every trace of the otherworldly influence. My uncle withdrew the dagger.
The vicar narrowed his eyes suspiciously, stubbed his cigarette out against the boy’s boot, and carefully sniffed the child again. I have no idea what he could smell apart from tobacco, but he seemed entirely satisfied with the result.
“Am I still needed?” he asked.
“The child’s all right?” Bryce asked.
“Perfectly,” Wood assured him.
“In that case… perhaps you might wait half an hour and say a prayer, just to be safe?”
“A hundred,” Wood replied.
“Agreed. Dame Kerry, my spirit has accepted this offering. Are you interested in receiving a reward?”
Kerry puffed up indignantly, while Wood burst out laughing.
“The lady’s patron,” he explained, “is Saint Martha of Farnell. She rewards kindness and mercy.”
“My apologies if I caused offence,” Bryce said. “Donald, organise the youngsters. You saw what to do.”
It seemed my uncle had decided to make use of the situation and strengthen the young warlocks. The dame clearly disliked the idea, but she did not protest.
