Spellmaker

Before Bacchus could say anything, the guard approached, and the two men stepped back from the bars. Elsie felt a thousand threads connecting her to them, a spell in and of itself, and she followed them as far as the heavy door would allow, wrapping both hands around the unyielding iron.

Bacchus put his warm hands over hers, driving back the chill for an instant.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

“Come on now.” The guard waved his club.

Both Bacchus and Ogden spared her a final look before walking away, and Elsie pressed her face against the slots in the door, watching them until she couldn’t see them anymore, then listening to their footsteps until they faded. The prison grew silent once more, save for the sudden, brief wail of a prisoner beyond Elsie’s chamber.

Elsie sank to her knees and found herself praying again, hoping God could muddle through her thorny thoughts better than she could.

Bacchus waited impatiently in the magistrate’s sitting room on the east side of Oxford. It was elaborately furnished in reds and creams, and he was sorely tempted to change the color scheme to give himself something to do. Granted, that wouldn’t play well. He needed this man to like him, and Englishmen seemed predisposed to think the worst of him. He looked the part of a foreigner, and so he was treated as one.

He tried to sit, first on a posh settee and then on an elaborately carved mahogany armchair, but time ticked slowly and his nerves ran hot, so he stood and paced, first before the unlit fireplace, then by the windows that looked out onto modest but well-kept gardens. Something he might have appreciated, were he not so focused on what to say and how to say it. He hadn’t even been this nervous when he’d appealed for his mastership at the London Physical Atheneum. Then again, he’d known precisely what he was doing at the time.

A servant came in, bringing a tray of tea. She set it down on a side table and lifted a cup, but Bacchus waved her off, so she simply poured some for the magistrate and departed. The liquid had to be nearly cold by the time the man finally showed himself.

Bacchus bowed lower than was necessary. “Lord Astley, thank you for seeing me.” The man was about Elsie’s height, average for a man, and looked to be sixty or thereabouts, with sagging skin on his cheeks and neck that spoke of heavy weight loss, though his stomach was still round beneath his satin cutaway. His hair was curled and receding, a few locks holding on to brown pigment, the rest varying shades of gray. A pair of spectacles rested on his nose.

“Master Kelsey.” He nodded toward him. “My butler tells me you’re here regarding the Camden case. Forgive my tardiness; I hadn’t yet read up on it, and my daughter was rather insistent I attend a picnic in South Park.” He rolled his eyes and gestured to the settee. “Please, sit.”

The magistrate settled into the chair closest to the tea and picked up the cup the servant had left for him. He made a face as he took a sip, then returned the cup to the tray.

“Then you are familiar with the charges against Miss Camden?” Bacchus didn’t have the patience for small talk, not with his mind fixed on the image of Elsie in that awful cell. He’d never seen her look so vulnerable before, so defeated. Those locked bars had completely stripped her of her practiced airs.

The magistrate nodded. “Nasty thing, really. Hard punishments, even for women.”

“I believe there’s been a misunderstanding. Miss Camden has only recently discovered her abilities. She falls well within the grace period allotted for registration.”

Lord Astley studied him in a way that did not instill confidence. “How old is Miss Camden?”

“One and twenty.”

The man’s brow knit together. “Spellbreakers usually discover their abilities in adolescence.”

“But not always,” he countered. “Elsie began to suspect only a month ago.”

Lord Astley poured a new cup of tea, loading it with sugar. “Then why did she not report it a month ago?”

Bacchus forced his posture to relax; he could feel his muscles tensing with every inquiry. “It was only a suspicion, and of course she hasn’t had the time or training to test it. Miss Camden is a working woman, you understand. Her employer keeps her very busy. And there is always a sense of fear attached to such things.”

The magistrate met Bacchus’s gaze. “Whatever does she have to be afraid of, if she’s only just discovered it?”

Choosing to be daring, Bacchus said, “Perhaps that the people she reports it to will think she must have discovered it in her adolescence, and therefore might suspect she is lying.”

To his relief, the magistrate’s lip quirked. “Touché. But my reports say that she’s been aware of her abilities for some time now, even using them.”

Bacchus didn’t miss a beat. “I believe I know who reported her, and the two met only recently.”