Pearl pulled a hand free to reach carefully into her pocket. She drew out a few scraps of pale blue fabric. The dress she'd been wearing. "I cut my arm slightly on a piece of the broken forge cover. We'll have to burn these."
Grey's pulse stopped, then it raced faster than ever. "Innocent blood." The words whispered out of him.
"What?" Pearl heard him. No one else seemed to.
He cleared his throat and spoke louder. "Innocent blood. Your blood was shed. Blood always speaks truth. It can tell us who did this."
"May I?" Archaios-he was still here, like most of them-held a hand out to Pearl asking for the bloodstained cloth patches. With a glance at Grey for approval-good girl-she surrendered them.
The Greek took the worst of the patches and slid it between his fingers, eyes closing as he pulled it through two or three times over. He took a deep breath as he opened his eyes and handed the piece of cloth back to Pearl with a little bow. "Yes, I can sense it. The magic is not so strong as that on the rope."
"It was a small injury," Pearl said. "Not murder."
"Indeed." Archaios rubbed his fingers together. "It had a sharper feel to it-more focus, perhaps-and yet softer. Feminine? I shall recognize you again."
Grey took the bloodstained patches, folded them in his handkerchief, and tucked them in his inside breast pocket. They'd be safe enough there. He studied the others in the corridor, contriving ways to steal their blood for Pearl's justice magic. It would not be easy.
"What of your experiment, Magister Tomlinson? Is it utterly ruined?" Pearl turned to Harry, who captured her hands to inspect the burns as well.
"Not utterly." Harry peered intently at her hands, devoting a small fraction of his attention to his words. "We'll be able to scrape up some results when we get the collector 'ammered back into shape. And we got plenty o' rope and table. We can run the experiment again, soon's we get the cover replaced."
"How long will that take?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Bit of a while. This is incredible. I saw her arms, her hands, how bad-" He broke off, shaking his head. "That's powerful magic, Elinor. Good work."
Grey took Pearl's hands again the instant Harry released them. Perhaps he encouraged the release a bit. The burns were better than when Grey had last looked, only moments ago. He wanted to press a kiss to her hurts, help them heal. But he didn't.
"Seems to me Cranshaw's crown might be at risk," he mused. "His potions have never healed so quickly that one could watch it happen, have they? And Elinor's naught but an apprentice."
"How long is a bit of a while?" Pearl persisted. "How long before you can do your test again?"
"Depends, don't it?" Harry rubbed his nose as he stared at the floor. "If the artificer's got a spare made up, we ought to be able to spell it and fit it by end of the week. If he's got to cast a new cover from the beginning, might take as long as three."
"Weeks?" The squeak in Pearl's voice perfectly declaimed Grey's dismay.
Harry's broad face looked decidedly long as he nodded. "Covers for an alchemist's forge got to be specially made. Can't just anyone do it. And this forge, well . . ."
"It appears that someone may not want the test performed," Archaios said. The ominous tone in his voice resonated in Grey's core.
Grey considered other methods of determining the villain. Could they test her clothing? Learn who had touched her? But that only worked if magic was used, and a push in the back didn't require magic. Blood held the most promise.
"One of us?" Ferguson exclaimed. "I don't believe it."
"Nor I," Duncan said.
"Did anyone notice when Cranshaw joined us?" Grey asked. "Was he in the courtyard during the experiment?"
"Dunno," Harry said, looking thoughtful.
No one else did, either. They were all watching the experiment. No one had seen anyone push Pearl. No one had seen anything until she went flying into the forge.
"But, Cranshaw's a magister." Ferguson sounded scandalized.
"He's also unbalanced on the subject of women," Duncan said with the forthrightness of an alchemist who did not have to deal with the man regularly. "Particularly women in magic and more particularly on the subject of sorcery."
"If no one saw him," McNair continued, with the logical practicality so often found in Scots, "then it is entirely possible he did push her. It is also entirely possible he did not. All possibilities must be examined."
"Exactly so." It was time Grey got over his fright and took matters, including himself, in hand. "Harry, if you will take over recovery of the material from the collector? Let us know what you find. Duncan, you're in charge of the forge repairs and whatever you have to do to clean up the mess."
Harry and Duncan both nodded and departed on their tasks, taking most of the loiterers in the hall with them.
"Ferguson," Grey turned to the young wizard. "You're with Archaios. Practice shielding and reading magic-no change there."
Grey took Pearl's elbow and started down the passageway. "What about me?" she asked.
"You, Parkin, are going home to heal." He waited for her protest, but it never arrived, which brought his worry roaring back. "No argument?"
She sighed. "Not this time. I thought about it. I'm almost healed, after all. But I'm not, quite. And I'm tired."
"Well, well, well-" Grey smiled to himself. "So all of my lectures have finally had an effect."
She slanted him a warning look. "Do not become accustomed."
He wouldn't. He knew better. This was Pearl.
15
THE THIRD DAY after the forge incident, Pearl climbed the stairs to Grey's workroom. He found her there when he returned from I-Branch, after a discreet note arrived from McGregor. "You should be resting," Grey said.
"If I rest any more, my head will explode from boredom." Pearl scarcely looked up from her sorcery book.
"We can't have that. Exploding heads aren't any more done than burst apprentices."
She rolled her eyes at him without offering the faintest of smiles. She had to be excruciatingly bored.
Grey hesitated, but if she were truly healed . . . "How do you feel about working a bit of justice magic?"
Her book slammed shut, raising a cloud of two-hundred-year-old dust, and she beamed at him. "Splendid." Her eyes narrowed. "On whom?"
"Whoever might have pushed you this past Monday."
"You need a suspect."
"I have one." Grey didn't think he needed to name him.
Pearl bit her lip. "I need another book."
"Do you?" He raised an eyebrow. "What sort of book?"
"One that tells how to do justice magic. I don't actually know how. And this book-" She pointed at the one she'd just shut. "None of the spells call for blood. They're all spit spells."
"Then we shall get one."
"Now?" Pearl bounced to her feet. She had to be feeling a great deal better.
"All right." Grey didn't think he gave in too easily. Nor did he believe he was too eager to work a little justice on Nigel Cranshaw. He hoped he was correct in his beliefs.
The scowls hadn't abated since he'd first taken her through the lounge to the library. Sixty-year-old boys in a pet because their No Girls Allowed signs had been ignored. Dogs in the manger, all of them. They couldn't use the magic, but they didn't want any females doing it, either. Idiots.
"There." He pointed at the section of sorcery books. "Find what you need."
She slanted him a quick look and darted into the stacks before his second thoughts could arrive. When they did, he fell into a perfect agony of indecision. Was she ready for this? She was older than the twelve-year-old apprentices the beginning book was intended for. She had a great deal more experience in using sorcery and manipulating the magic created by innocent blood. But she had only been an apprentice for three weeks.
Pearl emerged from the stacks bearing a small, fat book with scarlet-and-gilt-edged pages, looking very satisfied with herself. Her thirst for knowledge was as alarming as his own.
"No experiments," Grey warned her. "If you are not sure what will happen, or what you should do, then you will not do it. You must be very confident of your spell. Understand?"
She nodded. They checked out the book and went back to his house. He went with her to fetch her bloodstained bits of clothing, which she carefully laid across her worktable in the attic room. Then she sat down to read.
In the morning, Pearl talked him into taking her with him to the council house, arguing that she could read just as well in her private study as she could at home. Not that he had much to do at I-Branch besides annoy his subordinates.
To that purpose, he wandered down to the laboratory to see what they were doing. Harry stood over Tipple, who was painstakingly scraping the still rather squashed inside of a piece of the collection device with a long-handled instrument.
"That's got it, lad." Harry clapped Tipple on the shoulder as he withdrew his scraper and peered at it. Grey couldn't see anything, but he was a conjurer. What did he know?