"It was. But no sane member of the conjurer's guild would have worked it." He emerged triumphant with the last raisin cake and continued his explanation. His willingness to do so without complaint surprised her a little. For a man who didn't want an apprentice, he was awfully patient with her questions.
"Guild members know conjury can't call demons. We have it hammered through our heads. There are still rooms in the guild hall that haven't been touched-that can't be touched-since the debacle that resulted from the last experimental attempt to summon a demon. Students of conjury are taken by the rooms. Journeymen are taken inside, so we can know the horror."
His eyes saw something other than the cell where they stood, the half-eaten cake forgotten in his hand. "The blood is still fresh in those rooms, do you know? Fresh after four hundred years. Can't be cleaned up. Can't be touched. Old Bizzault still looks surprised. And quite, quite dead, since his head's been separated from his body that same four hundred years. But the worst isn't the blood or the gore. It's the evil.
"You can sense it. Feel it, taste it, smell it-Evil seeps in through your pores and screams in your ears and-"
"Grey." Elinor jolted both of them back to the present, for Pearl had been as caught up in her master's words as he in memory.
Elinor held onto Mr. Carteret's elbow another moment, staring into his eyes until she found whatever she searched for. She patted his shoulder and returned to her seat on the bunk.
"Murder conjures nothing," he said, staring at the cake in his hand as if he'd never seen one before. "Murder spills innocent blood, and innocent blood cries out for justice, and that's sorcery. But it will take conjury to find the murderer."
"Isn't Colonel Simmons a conjurer?" Elinor asked. "Doesn't he know all that, that no conjurer would try such a thing?"
A bitter smile flickered across his face, there and gone again. "Ah, but remember. I said no sane conjurer. The good colonel isn't any too sure of my sanity. He'll be happy to accuse me of this crime, because anything else might require him to actually think. And of course, it will get me conveniently out of the way. No more diluting of the power."
"But, didn't you just say innocent blood was sorcery?" Pearl's talent leaned toward sorcery. He'd said that, too. Perhaps she could be of some real assistance.
"Sorcery would help," he admitted. He seemed to recognize the raisin cake, and bit into it finally. This time, he swallowed before speaking again. "But I'm not wiring Amanusa and Jax to summon them from their belated wedding trip. They'll come back to London when they're ready. Hopefully before the weather becomes so utterly abominable that they can't travel. No, I'll just have to get out of lockup and look into this myself. Somehow."
As Pearl watched, his fallen-angel's face hardened, became fierce, angry, darker than grim. He cursed, under his breath, but Pearl stood close enough to hear the filthy word. She wasn't shocked. She'd heard worse on London's streets.
"What is it? What's wrong?" She swung the basket to the floor, but stopped herself reaching out to him. "Have you remembered something from last night?"
He gave her a sharp look. "No, nothing like that. Only-I am forced to do something I swore I would never do. Ever."
"What?" What could have him this agitated? Pearl didn't know what to do, how to help.
"Call on my father for aid."
"Oh." Elinor's response meant something, but Pearl didn't know what it was.
"Who is your father? How can he help?" She'd read every newspaper she could get her hands on, but they'd been sporadic and often smeared, and she didn't remember any of them mentioning Mr. Carteret's parentage.
"The Duke of Brandon," Elinor said, when Mr. Carteret merely continued looking fierce.
Oh. A duke would certainly have enough influence to spring his son from jail. But why the anger and the cursing? It wasn't as if his father could lose everything he owned and drink himself into a stupor every night. Well, perhaps the stupor, but not the rest of it. Not with entail.
He reached for the ale bottle she discovered she still held, and his look met with her confusion.
He laughed, a bitter sound that edged along her skin. "Never mind. With any luck, you'll never meet him."
Mr. Carteret quickly drank down the remaining ale and handed the bottle to Elinor. "Did I feel paper in this basket?" He bent and Pearl hastily picked the basket up from the floor. She was closer and got there quicker.
"Yes," Elinor said. "I thought you might need to write a letter to someone. Instructions for your solicitor. Introductions for your apprentice."
"Pleas to my paternal parent?" He raised an eyebrow, then winked at Pearl, and her heart went thumpety. He should not be so handsome.
He drew out a few sheets of paper and appropriated the bunk, displacing Elinor so he could use half for his chair and half for his writing desk. He dipped his pen into the inkwell Pearl opened for him and began to write in a slashing, left-handed scrawl. He wrote a letter to his father informing him of the situation; a letter to his house hold introducing Pearl; a note to Harry regarding apprenticeship papers. There may have been another letter. Pearl wasn't sure.
All this decisive, purposeful activity left Pearl feeling spun around in circles all over again, as Mr. Carteret displayed yet another side to his multifaceted personality. Would she ever get a grasp on who he was?
He rose to his feet, as if realizing the women were standing, therefore he should as well, since his business was conducted. He blew on his last letter and handed it to Pearl to fold, then took it back to write the direction on the outside, bending over the bunk to do so. His frock coat stretched across his shoulders and rode up on his back. Pearl gazed down at the basket by her feet. It wasn't proper to ogle one's employer.
The policeman came to usher them out again just as Mr. Carteret turned to give her the letters.
"There's sandwiches for your lunch," Elinor said quickly, pausing near the door.
"I am in love." He pressed a closed hand to his heart, that lush mouth curved in a tiny smile. Men shouldn't have lips like that. And Mr. Carteret shouldn't say things like that, not even teasing. Not even to someone else.
Pearl took her turn to linger at the door and look back at him, her master of magic, her teacher. Her beau ideal. Drat.
"Go," he said, as the policeman began making hurry-along noises. "I can survive a night in this place."
"I hope you don't have to."
"So do I," he said as she slid through the closing door. The clang of metal on metal echoed through the stone-walled corridor as the officer shut and locked the door.
PEARL TALKED ELINOR into hand-delivering the note to Mr. Tomlinson. So, after a pause to post the other letters, they drove straight to the Magician's Council Hall, reasoning that he couldn't have finished the necessary paperwork in so little time. He hadn't.
"I swear, I think Simmons is throwin' up barricades just so Grey stays longer in th' straight box," Tomlinson growled as he paced furiously outside the room filled with clerks and copyists, his accent thick with annoyance. "I knew Brigantis wasn't all sunshine and roses, but Grey never let on it was this bad."
"I doubt it was," Elinor said. "Not while Grey operated from a position of power. This situation has weakened him."
"I never said anything about Grey being arrested. 'Ow does 'e know?" He scowled at the frosted glass in the upper half of the door at the shapes of the people beyond.
"You know how quickly rumor spreads."
"So how will we get Mr. Carteret out of jail?" Pearl asked, feeling even more anxious.
"We have to get this mess in the hands of somebody who knows how conjury works," Tomlinson said. "That's the first thing."
"But I thought-" Pearl shook her head, trying to shake out the confusion. "Will transferring it to the Briganti get him out? He said it wouldn't, but-I don't understand."
Tomlinson banged his walking stick hard on the tiled floor, starting up his pacing again. "That's the tricky part. Simmons can claim, rightly, that Grey's men will be loyal to him. Simmons'll want his own men investigating." Tomlinson fell silent, scowling at the door again.
"Do they know anything about investigations?" Pearl asked. "Simmons's men?"
"No." Tomlinson banged his stick a few more times. "And they'll be as biased against Grey as Grey's men are in his favor. Simmons types, every one of 'em."
"What about Mr. Archaios?" Elinor spoke up. "He's done investigations for the Conclave."
"Who's Mr. Archaios?" Pearl asked. "Besides an investigator for the Conclave. And what's the Conclave?"
"Magician's Council is where all the guilds get together and discuss things as affect all magicians in England, right?" Tomlinson paced down the corridor the other way, Pearl and Elinor swiveling to watch him. "The Conclave is where all the Magician's Councils from all the countries-England, France, Hungary, Greece, and so on-get together to work out things that affect magic at the international level.