"We got back from a Conclave in Paris about six weeks ago. That's where we met Archaios. He's come to London from Greece, where 'e's from, to consult about the dead zones."
A chill ran through Pearl and out her spine at mention of the dead zones. There was one not far from the docks, where a fire had raged, burning warehouses, blocks of hovels, and even ships out on the river, stretching clear through Bethnal Green. People and vermin had flowed out in a sweeping rush of screams and ratty scrabbling feet. The fire had smoldered for weeks at the warehouses of the shipfitters, where it had started in the stored barrels of pitch, canvas, caulking cotton and other ship's fittings. The embers kept burning everywhere the hot pitch had flowed. When the fire was out and the people began to creep back in to see what could be salvaged, they found plump, glossy bodies of rats that had gone in ahead of them, now lying dead in the ashes.
And they saw other things. Things that clattered and banged and lived when they shouldn't have. Things made of nails and bits of brick and wire and bone.
The people who stayed too long in the burned-out area, who weren't driven out by horror, or fear of the half-seen things clanking in the shadows, those people weakened. Their limbs failed them. They had trouble catching their breath, and they fell. Collapsed into the ash like rag dolls. It didn't happen quickly. Took longer if they came out at night, less if they bunked down in a burned-out shell of a building. Once a person fell, if they didn't have someone to pull them out, they died.
That's when the talk started. How folk had died there before the fire. Strong men, bully boys and stevedores, who dropped dead from living or working in the wrong place, not just the old and the weak.
The fire had happened not long after Pearl and her papa had gone to live on Half Moon Yard. They'd had a set of rooms well away from the fire, and had hung onto them grimly. Pearl had, at any rate. She'd gone with the other boys after, to look for salvage, but she wouldn't go in. No matter how they teased, no matter how she feared her cowardice might expose her disguise.
She'd felt how dead the place was, and how the death crept out from its center, faster and faster as it grew, until it was swallowing whole houses in a quarter of a year. If it kept growing at that rate, kept increasing its pace, all of London could be gone before the decade was out. Because it wasn't the only zone in the city.
"This business with Grey and the murder is going to distract everyone from the real work," Mr. Tomlinson was saying. "We've got to get it solved and behind us so we can focus on the dead zones."
"Then we need to send a message to Mr. Archaios," Elinor said decisively. "Straightaway."
Pearl had a new question. "What do the dead zones have to do with magic?"
"They're caused by magic." Tomlinson stopped pacing, spinning his walking stick almost like a weapon there in the narrow corridor. Pearl backed up to give him room as he spoke.
"Or by the absence of magic. The magic is dying, already has died, in those zones, in the earth and the stones. And without magic, everything else dies. The zones are growing because the earth is trying to pull magic back, as it always does. It's replenished by the things living on it. But there's not enough magic to fill it back up, so it keeps pulling more and more, and what it pulls-that dies, too. It can't survive in the zones. And so the zones get bigger.
"We figured out in Paris 'ow to stop 'em from doing that. It takes all four of the great magics: alchemy, conjury, wizardry, and sorcery. But since we only got the one sorceress, and she's the first in two hundred years, it'll take a bit longer before we can wall up all the zones and stop 'em from growing.
"In the meantime, we got to figure out how to reverse it, make the zones shrink. That's why Archaios is 'ere. He's got experience working with other magic. Got perfect pitch, you might say, only for magic instead o' music."
He tossed his stick in the air and caught it again. "Right, then. Elinor, your hand's better'n mine, so you write the note to Archaios. I'm off to call on Sir Billy, to see if 'e'll call in the Greek on council authority, send 'im over to get Grey out o' clink."
Sir William Stanwyck was the head of the Magician's Council of England, knighted for his service to the crown, and for his abilities as master wizard. Pearl knew that from her newspaper reading. Hearing Mr. Tomlinson refer to him as "Sir Billy" shocked her.
"Pearl, you'd better head over to Grey's house and take charge. They'll 'ave got the letter 'e wrote by now, so they'll be expecting you."
"What about my apprenticeship papers?" Pearl blurted out, without quite intending to.
"Oh, right." He reached inside his gray pinstriped jacket and pulled out a sheaf of printed papers. "I figured you'd be needing 'em, so I already hunted 'em up. Most lads come through the school nowadays, but as Elinor's my apprentice, I knew where to look. This 'ere's the standard lot."
He turned and spread the papers out against the wall, beckoning Pearl over. Only two sheets, she saw, now that he'd gotten them unfolded; extralong legal pages.
"Your name goes here, and Grey's over here, and there's other bits and pieces to be filled in-support and any wages and like that." Tomlinson pointed to the various blanks. Then he folded the papers back up and handed them to her. "You'll want to read them over 'fore you sign 'em."
She didn't, actually. She wanted them signed. And sealed and recorded and whatever else was necessary to make them official. So she took them.
"A'right." Mr. Tomlinson offered Pearl his arm. "Let me order a cab for ya."
"Thank you, sir, for your kind offer." She laid her hand lightly atop his gray-clad arm and they proceeded to the door as Elinor hurried to find paper and pen to write her note.
Pearl's new life seemed off to a good start. If they could get her magic master out of jail.
4
GREY'S WAIT WAS interminable. Endless. An eternity of waiting that felt like days, weeks, and lasted perhaps five hours. The watery light wasn't strong enough to indicate the sun's position, so it might have been longer. Might have been less.
He catalogued the lingering aches and pains of his body. Residual now, as if they didn't actually belong to his own body, and growing less noticeable as time went on. Still it was something to do that didn't involve provoking ghosts. He ate the last sandwich Elinor had brought in her lovely basket. Would Pearl be the sort of apprentice who brought sandwiches?
She seemed more cheeky than Elinor, though Elinor was well supplied with that commodity. In Elinor's case, it seemed more an unwillingness to put up with his nonsense. How did cheek relate to sandwiches? If Pearl mocked him while bringing them, he could put up with cheek.
Pearl had looked quite different in that dress than she had in her boy's costume. Quite, quite different. She'd been clearly female in her trousers once she dropped the illusion magic. Small as she was, she had curves enough to fill those trousers nicely. But in that dress-
It wasn't even a pretty dress. Obviously borrowed from a young servant not grown into her adult size and shape, the dress was made of a coarse brown twill, faded slightly with wear. It sagged at Pearl's waist and strained across her bosom and, ugly as it was, made her look utterly feminine. Even the scraped-back knot of her hair-a rich dark brown that had been invisible under her boy's cap-emphasized her newly displayed womanhood.
And Grey had no business whatsoever thinking of her that way. She was his apprentice.
Grey had almost convinced himself that he could indeed fall asleep on his bare metal bunk when keys rattled in the lock and the door to his cell squealed open. He'd imagined it so often, he only cracked an eyelid to see if this time it might be true.
"Get up, you murderin' scurf." The bobby poking him with his club felt all too real. "The magistrate wants you."
Grey sat up, surprised that his fragile bones and aching muscles didn't protest more than they did. He stood and obeyed the policeman's prodding. Another bobby waited in the corridor. They escorted him fore and aft through the warren of the police station to the front room with its high desk.
"Hullo, Archaios." Grey greeted the magician waiting there, a tall, dark brooding sort of chap with silver just beginning to streak his temples. Sometimes Grey wanted streaky temples like that. He rather thought it might make him look distinguished. But most of the time, he was pleased that his hair showed no signs of wear. "Come to get me out?"
"I am here solely for my magical expertise," the alchemist said with a little bow. "He has come to get you out."
Grey looked at the other man waiting in the room, and his stomach knotted up. "Hullo, Wright. Been a long time."
"Indeed it has, Lord Greyson. I had thought you long ago moved past such misadventures." The man's hair had gone white and-away-in the fifteen or so years since he'd seen him last. Otherwise, Wright looked much the same as when he had dragged Grey out of his various youthful . . . "misadventures" was a good word for the things he'd fallen into then.