Heart's Blood(12)

Pearl's size was a problem, for few women were as small as she. Ready-mades could be altered. New things could be made to measure, but Pearl needed something to wear now.

Even the simple hemming up of a skirt to the proper length was troublesome, because the voluminous skirts took forever to get all the way around. And stays were impossible, because her midriff was also short. Eventually the seamstress put together a bodice and skirt outfit from clothing meant for younger girls, removing the childish decoration. She found a capelet for warmth, to avoid the problems of fitting a jacket. Nothing matched, nor was it in the least bit fashionable, and the fit was "more or less," but Pearl was properly clothed.                       
       
           



       

More dresses were promised for the next day. The few garments that did fit-stockings and chemises, mostly-were bundled into the carriage, which followed in the street as Mr. Carteret walked Pearl to the milliner and the glover and the bootmaker. Pearl found herself captured between guilt and delight. She had once owned a wardrobe as extensive and rather more exquisite. But she had learned since that she didn't need silk stockings, and that delicate muslin was impractical for anyone who had work to do. When she pointed that out to her employer, he promptly added a dozen sturdy aprons to his purchases, which did not help the guilt aspect at all.

It felt utterly wrong for Mr. Carteret to be spending money on her with such abandon when she had blackmailed him into taking her as his apprentice. She would vow to pay him back from her wages, but he was paying those as well, wasn't he?

By the time Mr. Carteret declared the shopping expedition completed, Pearl was squirming in a perfect agony of self-reproach. She would pay him back, somehow.

He sent the carriage back to Elinor's flat with instructions to unload everything, hailed a cab, and handed her in. Pearl arranged her skirts and tugged her capelet a little closer about her. The day was cloudy, and chill from the damp, but at least the morning's drizzle had stopped.

The cab took them to the Magician's Council Hall, which took up an entire block at the edge of the ancient City, not far from Temple Bar. Pearl held her breath as he opened the door, a small one along the side facing Wych Street.

Nothing happened. No burst of smoke, or portentous disembodied voices came forth to bar her from the premises. It was simply an open door into a dark, narrow entry.

"Doesn't look like much, does it?" Mr. Carteret chuckled as he ushered her inside. "This is the working side of the council house, where the school and library are housed, and the Briganti and the council offices. The meeting hall faces St. Clement's."

Pearl opened her eyes wide to take in the tiniest detail. It probably didn't change her vision any, but it felt as if it could, so she did it, stretching and craning her neck to see in as many directions possible.

The building was old. Ancient. And cramped. A stairway rose to the right, only a few steps beyond the door, barely wide enough to get her petticoats through, she discovered when she followed Mr. Carteret up it. She didn't know how she would manage hoops when they came. Perhaps there was another, wider stair elsewhere in the building.

At the top, the stair let out onto a somewhat wider landing before turning to rise to the third floor. The carpet runner beneath their feet was faded purple and threadbare, though it was clean enough, given all the feet that walked upon it. The dark paneled walls, lit by a narrow window at either end, seemed oppressive to Pearl. But perhaps that was only her nervousness.

Mr. Carteret led her past the few scattered straight-backed chairs and an empty umbrella stand beyond the staircase leading upward, to a door that he flung open without ceremony. Like the gentleman he pretended not to be, he waited for her to enter.

Pearl looked out over a vast sea of male faces occupying the spacious room and swallowed hard. This was what she wanted, what she'd fought so hard for. To be able to walk into this room and do what they did. She would not fly the white flag now.

She drew herself to her full height and sailed through the door. Then she moved to the side to wait for Mr. Carteret. She didn't know where they were going, after all. Now that she looked for true, she could see the faces didn't quite make up a sea. Maybe twenty of them-maybe not that many. But it felt like a sea, and all of them staring gobsmacked at her.

The shock was beginning to leave them now, and the scowls to appear. Though not all of them scowled. Big, toothy grins spread across the faces of some of the young ones. Boys, considerably younger than her. Students relishing the potential for fireworks, most likely. The older men looked as if they'd been chewing lemons, their faces all screwed up and sour.

The room stretched deep into the building, with a fireplace at the inside end. Square, leather-upholstered armchairs, most of them occupied, sat in cozy groups around low tables scattered with books and magazines. Near the windows fronting Wych Street stood several long tables where students scratched away at their lessons. Though now, they all seemed to be staring at her.

As Pearl traversed the space on Mr. Carteret's arm, she had to look down to hide the smug smile rising on her face. It wasn't polite to rub it in, how pleased she was at her victory. Her skirt swished near one of the scowlers in the comfy chairs and he jerked his feet back as if afraid of contamination. She fought off a chuckle. They couldn't keep her out. She didn't have to go to their silly school. She was an apprentice, with a contract signed not just by a master magician, but by the magister of the conjurer's guild himself.

"How dare you?" The challenge came growling out of the chest of the very tall, thin man who stood to block their way.

Pearl assumed Mr. Carteret had been leading her to the door opposite the one through which they'd entered, for he stopped now that this other gentleman stood in front of it.

"Oh dear." Mr. Carteret turned up his feet to look at the soles of his shoes. "Have I tracked in muck again?"

"Don't be stupid, Carteret." The man's hands were curled tight into fists and anger shimmered off him in waves that Pearl could almost reach out and touch. "Though with you that's a difficult task, I realize. You know what I mean. How dare you bring that-that-"

"This?" Mr. Carteret made a graceful turn to peer down at Pearl, as if he'd never seen her before. "This is my apprentice. Pearl Parkin. Come to wander through the library, you know." His languid air of unconcern seemed to make the tall man more rabid.

"That is a female," he snarled. "Not an apprentice."

Mr. Carteret stepped back, folding one arm across his chest and raising the other to tap his pursed lips with a forefinger, as his gaze took another of those disconcerting trips up and down Pearl's form.

"You're right, Cranshaw," Mr. Carteret said. "She is most definitely female. Astute of you to notice, old chap. Most observant. But as for the other-she is also most definitely my apprentice. Signed in ink, filed with the registry, and-" He waggled his left forefinger at the man. "Sealed in blood."

Cranshaw went pale and staggered back a step. Was he one of those made ill at the sight, the thought of blood?

Mr. Carteret put out his arm again and Pearl looped her hand through it. "Come along, Parkin." He led the way around the Cranshaw person. To the right, which put him between Pearl and Cranshaw. Deliberately?

Through the door, with it safely shut behind them, Pearl found herself in the library Mr. Carteret had mentioned. It stretched two stories high and the depth of the building. Light sifted through windows set in the upper half of the walls on both sides. Ladders on wheels gave access to the bookcases between the windows, running past sturdy tables encircling the room. The center of the vast space was a maze of shelves, many of them bowed with the weight of the books resting there.

"And every single book is about magic." Mr. Carteret smiled down at her, as if it were perfectly natural to be reading her mind. "It still awes me," he said. "The amount of knowledge to be had in this room."                       
       
           



       

"Why are we here?" Pearl whispered. It didn't seem right to speak aloud in such a place.

"Ah." He took her hand and led her down the left-hand aisle, past the rows of tables with their sporadic clusters of readers and students, leaving a wave of whispers in their wake.

He turned into the central maze and strode briskly down a cross aisle to what Pearl calculated to be the absolute center of the library. Beneath a high skylight stood a square table, and on it lay four massive books, each facing one of the four sides of the table.

Leather bound, with elaborate latches locking them shut, the books looked and felt older than old. As if time itself had been young when these books were written. The book nearest Pearl showed a waterfall pouring over rock on its cover, the windblown spray seeming real enough to get her wet. Lightning slashed across one corner to ignite a little flame.

"Alchemy?" She tilted her head to indicate the book, afraid to point in this hallowed location.