Heart's Blood(4)

"Might you perchance allow me to finish what I'm saying before you tell me you already know it?" Grey's irritation at her interruptions outweighed his amusement at her eagerness, but not by much. She must have made a study of London's magicians, and so knew who he was. A study from a distance, or she'd have known how to pronounce his name.

"Beg pardon," she said, almost sincerely.

"Go to Harry," Grey repeated. "If he's not at home in Albemarle Street-" He stressed the proper name of the street where they lived. "Then go to the guild house, and to the council building if he's not at the guild house. He's bound to be one of those places. Give him the handkerchief I gave you, and tell him what's happened."

"Then wot? What?" Her eyes sank below the opening, then rose again, as if she had to rest her toes a moment.

"Then go home. Back to whatever you were doing before."

Guilt suffused his every pore. His stomach soured at the knowledge of what he was sending her back to. But he simply couldn't take an apprentice. That thought curdled his insides even worse, all that responsibility. "I don't take apprentices."

"Well, you'll take this one. I'm not carrying any message for you until you promise me-promise in blood-that I am, from this very moment, your apprentice."

"You'd better nip off and deliver that hankie or you'll be found. Bobbies go up and down that way all the time." He didn't want to argue with her. He'd made up his mind.                       
       
           



       

Apparently she'd made hers up, too. "They won't see me. I'm hidden. I want your promise, or no messages."

"Then I suppose I'll just have to stay here." Grey cringed as he said it. The dank chill and the absolute lack of mental diversion already oppressed him. "I've survived the past hours. I can survive the rest."

Pearl's quiet laugh echoed around his cell. And when had he started thinking of her as Pearl, rather than as Miss Parkin?

"It's only been a quarter of an hour by the bells, between when they brought you here and when I arrived." She sounded obnoxiously amused and beyond cheeky. "Are you sure you're up to waiting hours?"

Grey swore. Under his breath, since she sounded like a lady, even if she didn't look much like one. No, he wasn't at all sure he could do it. But he couldn't take an apprentice. "Look here, I am a conjurer. Even when females were working magic, conjury was a predominantly masculine guild. What makes you think you can learn conjury?"

"What makes you think I can't?"

He wanted to reach through that tiny window and shake sense into her. Or at least jostle her a bit. "Perhaps the fact that you were able to gather in magic from all that spilled blood on the pavement. That's sorcery, Miss Parkin, not conjury, and I am not a sorcerer. The new sorceress is taking apprentices. I am sure she'll take you on when she returns from Scotland. I'll give you a glowing recommendation."

"She's not here, is she? You are. Besides, Mr. Tomlinson's new apprentice isn't studying alchemy, even though Mr. Tomlinson's an alchemist. She's studying wizardry. So I can be a conjurer's apprentice and still study sorcery."

"You don't understand." Grey ground the words out through gritted teeth. "I can't have an apprentice."

"Then I suppose we're done here. Good-bye, Mr. Carteray." The window cover squealed as she swung it closed.

Leaving him shut up alone in this tiny, empty, dank room forever. For who knew how long, which was the same thing as forever. Grey leaped to his feet, lunged halfway across the cell, crying, "Wait!"

The cover swung open so quickly, he knew she'd been waiting for his change of mind. She'd have gone if he hadn't changed it. Grey had no doubt she was that ruthless. But she'd waited first.

"What?" Those amber-shot blue eyes appeared in the little window. He was close enough now to see individual rays of gold in the indifferent light.

"All right," he said, recalling what he'd meant to do. "You win. You can be my apprentice. But-" He waited until he was sure he had her full attention. "If your aptitude proves to be for sorcery, as I strongly suspect it does, when Amanusa-Mrs. Greyson, the new sorceress-returns to London, your papers can and will be transferred to her, no harm done."

Pearl narrowed those intriguing eyes at him, as if suspecting he was weaseling out of something. Clever girl. But she wouldn't lose by his weaseling.

"Agreed." She nodded, one brisk nod, then disappeared from the window.

Grey moved closer and peered through to see what she was doing.

She drew a penknife from a trouser pocket. A very sharp penknife, for it pricked her finger with the slightest of pressure. "Now you."

"Why is it women are always wanting to stab me with things?" Grey protested as a matter of form while he brought an assortment of fingers up to the window and presented them. Manacles were such inconvenient things.

"Probably because you deserve it," Pearl said without a trace of curiosity as to what he might mean by his cryptic statement.

He'd meant it to be cryptic. Probably been too cryptic. He'd have to go for less crypticity-crypticness?-in the future.

She selected one of his fingers-the left fore-and poked it so that a drop of blood welled up. She pressed her own blood-daubed finger to it. "Now say it," she said. "Swear that I'm your apprentice."

What was it Elinor's papers had said, when she'd signed them to become Harry's apprentice?

"I, Greyson George Arthur William Victor Carteret, swear that I will take to apprentice one Pearl . . ." He paused, in case she had any additional names. He was feeling peculiar. Almost dizzy.

"Pearl Elizabeth Parkin," she said quietly.

"One Pearl Elizabeth Parkin," Grey repeated, "as magician's apprentice, to teach her knowledge of magic, and hereby undertake to provide such accoutrements as are customary."

Grey had firm opinions about oaths. It was why he didn't often swear them, or make promises. Once made, the promise had to be kept. Which meant, now that he'd made this one-in blood, no less-he would be the very best magic-master he could. No regrets, no looking back. It was done, or would be when Pearl said her part.

"And I, Pearl Elizabeth Parkin, swear to follow Greyson George Arthur-"

"William Victor," he prompted in a stage whisper.

She repeated the names. "-Carteret as my master in magic." She peered past their fingers at him. "Is that it?"

"Enough for now." Grey withdrew his hands and leaned a shoulder against the door so he could look through it and she didn't have to stand on tiptoe. "There are papers to be signed, but later," he said. "We're sworn in blood."

That alone could be causing this peculiar feeling, the light-headedness that had set in moments ago. He could stomach the sight of anyone's blood but his own. "You have your promise. Now go find Harry."

"Yes, master." She tugged the front of her cap in exaggerated obsequiousness, and slipped down the dark corridor, wrapping her blur around her. Grey watched her through the window, able to do so only because he knew she was there.

She had to wait at the exit for someone to come in, so she could stay hidden while she slipped out. It wasn't a long wait. A bobby came in shoving a thickset bully boy ahead of him. Pearl flattened herself against the wall next to the flung-open door and vanished in truth as soon as the pair passed her by.

The bobby thrust his prisoner into a cell just beyond Grey's. On his way out again, he noticed the open window in Grey's cell door. "What's this doin' open?"

Grey looked blandly back at the copper. "It's been open since I was shut in here."

The officer scowled more fiercely, obviously suspecting magic.

Grey lifted his shackled hands. "Well, I certainly didn't open it. Not from inside here."

The cop snorted, disbelieving, making a sign to ward against evil. Superstitious idiot.

"It's daylight," Grey reminded him. Not that it made any difference for Grey, given a daylight moon. But if it allowed his jailers to relax a bit in his presence . . .

"Right." The policeman slammed the tiny window shut and locked it down, so tight Grey feared Pearl wouldn't be able to get it open next time.

Next time, it would be Harry visiting, not Pearl. Grey hoped. Harry could be difficult to find at times. Grey trudged back to his cold, hard metal bunk and lay down again, hoping he wouldn't have to wait too long.



PEARL GOT OUT of the police station without much trouble. It was so full of bustling bodies, no one noticed an extra jostle. When she was a safe block or two away and didn't have to hide so much, she let loose with a caper and a bit of a jig. She was apprenticed to a magician.                       
       
           



       

Not just any magician, neither. Either. Greyson George Arthur Something Whatsit Carteray was, besides a man of many names, the best of the best. Tip of the top. He was a magister.

The mere word sounded impressive. And she, Pearl Elizabeth Parkin, was his apprentice. Sealed in blood so it couldn't be taken back.