The Serpent's Shadow

Chapter Eleven

PETER Scott did not venture to take her arm again, and Maya wasn’t certain if she was pleased or disappointed by this. Such an action would have been improper in anyone but a relative or a suitor—

Yes, but just how “proper” is my position?

Young men in spectacles with rumpled suits, older men walking with careful dignity, and a loud American couple with their adolescent children passed them as they exited the building next to the left-hand lion. It was quite six o’clock, perhaps later; the museum remained open late on some nights, and this was one of them. Amateur scientists of all walks of life haunted the building in every possible hour that it was open, and many of them had livings to make. It was for the convenience of those who had to earn their bread that the museum kept later hours. Shops stayed open until eight or nine in the evening, men often worked that late in their offices, and dinner at six was something no one even considered except in the country. Londoners prided themselves on being cosmopolitan and modern; the gas and electric lights meant that no one was a slave to the sun going down anymore.

Which, for the working poor, only means longer and harder hours—but no one ever consults them. If a shop stayed open until eight, the poor little shopgirl didn’t see her home until ten. If the museum stayed open until nine, the charwoman couldn’t start her work until the last visitor left, which meant she worked all night. Must it always be that great advances are made at the expense of the poor? Maya thought bleakly, then shook off her mood. She was doing what she could for others; the best she could do would be to continue doing that, and hope that her example would inspire more to do likewise. She had to be certain of that, or fall into despair.

She took a few deep breaths of relatively sweet air to raise her spirits. The museum stood in a neighborhood that was patrolled religiously by street sweepers, and until winter came, there would be no dense smoke from coal fires lingering in the air. Peter looked about for a moment, then turned back to her. “Would you mind terribly if I took you to my club for dinner?” he asked diffidently, as she stood on the sidewalk at the base of the lion statue and waited for him to indicate a direction. “I know I asked you to come here later than teatime, and I shouldn’t like you to starve on my account.”

“Your club?” she said with surprise. “I thought that men’s clubs were havens away from the company of mere females.” An older gentleman passing by overheard her response, and smiled briefly into her eyes before continuing on into the museum.

Peter chuckled. “They often are, but this one happens to have a room where one can bring lady guests for a meal without disturbing the meditations of the members—largely, I suspect, because the female relatives of our members have insisted on it.”

“In that case—” She thought for a moment. She had told Gupta not to expect her for dinner, expecting to make a meal of whatever she found in the kitchen when she returned home. “I suppose it is a place where we won’t be overheard? If so, I accept your kind invitation—if not, perhaps we ought to, oh, take a walk in Hyde Park instead?” She tilted her head to the side, quizzically. “I’ve no objection to a walk instead of a meal.”

“Better to say that it’s a place where it won’t matter if we’re overheard.” With that mysterious statement, he hailed a passing cab—a hansom—and handed her into it.

With the cabby right overhead, they kept their conversation to commonplaces—he, inquiring if she intended to take a holiday anywhere this summer and commiserating when she admitted that neither her duties nor her schedule would permit it. “I’m afraid I’m in the situation where I cannot leave my business, and London in the summer can be stifling,” he said with a grimace. “Especially in August. Usually the worst weather doesn’t last long, but it can be very uncomfortable, even with doors and windows wide to catch whatever breeze there might be.”

“You say this to someone who lived through summers in Delhi?” she laughed. “Pray complain about ‘hot’ weather to someone else! If the worst comes, I’ll serve gin-and-tonics, then install a punkah fan in the conservatory and hire one of the neighborhood urchins to swing it!”

The cab stopped outside a staid old Georgian building of some pale-colored stone. Peter handed her out and paid the cabby, then offered his hand to help her up the steps to where a uniformed doorman waited. This worthy was a stiff-backed, stone-faced gentleman of military bearing, whose mustache fairly bristled disapproval as he looked at her.

“Good evening, Mr. Scott,” he said unsmilingly, holding the door open immediately.

“And a good evening to you, Cedric,” Peter Scott replied cheerfully. “Is Almsley in the club today?”

“I don’t believe so, sir. Shall I tell him that you and your guest are here and would like to see him if he arrives?” Although the doorman’s face held no expression at all, his eyes were narrowed in speculation.

“Please do.” That was all Scott had time for before the door shut behind them. He didn’t seem the least disturbed at the doorman’s disapproval, though perhaps that was only because he had already known what the old fellow would think.

And what is he thinking, I wonder? That I’m fast for coming here unaccompanied by a relative? Or is it that he recognizes my mixed parentage?

She dismissed the thought and held her head high. No doorman was going to intimidate her. After all, she was a professional, a physician, and an adult, and had every right to go anywhere she pleased, with anyone she pleased. If it was her Indian heritage that the doorman disapproved of, well, that was his problem and not hers unless she chose to make it so. He could disapprove all he liked, since he was not in a position to bar her from entry.

They stood in a foyer that had probably been decorated in the first years of Victoria’s reign or the last years of her father’s, and hadn’t been touched since. It featured the neoclassical motifs that had been popular then; the furniture was not burdened with draperies and flounces to hide its “limbs,” although the colors were more in keeping with the Victorians’ love of dark shades—the room had been papered in brocade of deep green, the Oriental carpet featured the same color, and the upholstery was a faded burgundy. There was a faint hint of old tobacco smoke in the air, and a great deal of dust. Peter Scott led Maya in through a door immediately to the right before she had much more time to look around.

This room had something of an air of disuse, but was furnished to more recent taste—the medievalism of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The blue wallpaper, figured with peacocks and sinuous acanthus, supported a pair of Morris tapestries; the furnishings, upholstered in dark blue brocade, romantic in style and evocative of the great hall of an ancient castle, could only have come from the same workshop as the tapestries. The quaintly figured carpet, also blue, had a pattern of twining green vines. There was even a painting over the fireplace that Maya was willing to swear was by Millais. A massive sideboard stood beneath the tapestries. There were couches beneath the two windows overlooking the street, two chairs with curvaceous side tables, one on either side of the fireplace, and four dinner tables with four chairs each, none of which were occupied. Peter made a motion to Maya to indicate that she could take her seat anywhere, and reached for a tapestry bell pull beside the doorway, giving it a firm yank.

By the time they were both seated—which was no time at all—a uniformed waiter had appeared at the door, bearing a tray that held two glasses, a bottle of whiskey, a siphon of soda, and a second bottle of something straw-colored.

“Would you or your guest like to see a menu, Mr. Scott?” the waiter asked, deftly pouring Peter a whiskey and soda and setting it down in front of him. Maya held up her hand to prevent him from pouring her a glass of ratafia, since her nose identified the contents of the decanter as he unstoppered it.

“I should prefer a whiskey and soda myself, please,” she said firmly. “But I don’t believe that I need a menu. If you have a roast or a curry, I shall have that, with steamed vegetables and rice.”

The waiter raised an eyebrow; Peter’s lips twitched, but something of a smile escaped him. The waiter poured her whiskey and soda, and murmured, with more respect, “It’s lamb curry tonight, mum. Will that suit?”

“Admirably, thank you.” She granted him a smile, and he vanished, leaving the door half open, and prudently leaving the bottle and soda siphon behind.

“I think you frightened him,” Peter said, as she took her first sip and allowed the whiskey to burn its way down her throat. His eyes twinkled with suppressed amusement.

“What, because of this?” She raised her glass. “I rarely indulge, actually, but it has been a long day, and I am not going to be poured a glass of ratafia as if I were your maiden aunt!”

“Still, whiskey? And before dinner? I fear you have convinced him I’ve brought in a suffragette, and next you will be pulling out a cigar to smoke!” Peter was having a hard time concealing his mirth. “You will have quite shattered my reputation with the staff by the time dinner is over!”

She gazed at him penetratingly, then shrugged. “I am a suffragette, though I may not march in parades and carry banners. Or smoke cigars. I fear you may have mistaken me if you think differently. I am not the sort of woman of whom Marie Corelli would approve.”

“I shouldn’t care to be seen in the company of the sort of woman of whom Marie Corelli would approve,” said a strange voice at the door. A tall, thin, bare-headed blond with the face of a merry aesthete and a nervous manner leaned against the doorframe. Maya would have ventured to guess that he was quite ten years younger than Peter Scott, and perhaps more than that, but he saluted her companion with the further words, “Well, Twin, I understand you were looking for me?”

Peter sprang up, his expression one of open pleasure. “Almsley! Yes, I was! This is the young doctor I spoke to you about—Doctor Maya Witherspoon, may I introduce to you my friend Lord Peter Almsley?”

Lord Peter came forward, his hand extended; Maya swiveled in her chair and accepted it. She half expected him to kiss it in the Continental manner, but he just gave it a firm shake, with a mock suggestion of clicking his heels together.

“Might one ask what you meant by slighting Miss Corelli?” she asked, as he dropped into one of the armchairs. She had the impression of a high-strung greyhound pausing only long enough to see if it was truly wanted. “Not that I’m any great admirer of her work.”

“Only that Miss Corelli has damned dull ideas of what women should do with their lives—which makes for damned dull women,” Lord Peter said cheerfully. “Shall I join you, or would you twain prefer to condemn me to the outer hells of the member’s dining room to eat my crust in woeful solitude?”

“Join us, by all means!” Peter Scott exclaimed, when Maya nodded her agreement. Maya had been disposed to like this man before she had ever met him. Scott had told her something of this young lordling, the most important fact of which was that he was another Water Master. Now that she’d seen him, she decided that he was worth knowing, and worth counting as a friend. And it occurred to her if she was going to have to lock horns in combat with Simon Parkening, it would be no bad thing to have someone with Lord Peter’s money, title, and influence behind her.

Peter Scott rang for the waiter a second time; the man appeared, left a third whiskey glass, took Almsley’s order, and vanished again.

“I assume it isn’t pleasure that urges you to seek the company of my Twin, here,” Almsley said, taking over the conversation with a natural arrogance that was both slightly irritating and very charming. “Not,” he added, “that the company of a woman who was likely to incur the frowns of Marie Corelli isn’t exactly what he needs in his life, but your expression leads me to think that this is not a mere social call.”

Peter Scott actually blushed; Maya refused to allow this enchanting young rascal to get any kind of a rise in temper out of her. She had the notion that he was inclined to prick people at first in order to see what they were made of. “Actually, that is correct, it is not precisely a social call,” she replied. “Though if it had not been for certain inferences on the part of my patient, I wouldn’t have thought of consulting him—but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.”

She began the short tale of Simon Parkening and Paul Jenner, pausing only when the waiter entered with their meals, and taking it up again as soon as he left. She made her story as detailed as possible, so that she only just finished as the meal did. The waiter came and cleared away the remains, lighting the lamps and the gas fire, and set up liqueurs on the sideboard before he left. Peter poured himself a brandy and Maya accepted a liqueur in lieu of dessert, but Almsley retired to the sofa under the open window, lounging there with a cigarette, while Maya and Peter sat by the fire in the armchairs. By this time, the sun had set, and the street noises outside had subsided. Almsley’s cigarette smoke drifted out the open window into the blue dusk.

“And so it occurred to me that there might be other ways of tracing Jenner to my clinic than the use of private agents,” she concluded. “I don’t know how one could employ magical creatures to spy, but I presume that a Master could do so. Furthermore, it occurred to me that there might be some danger to my patients, my clinic staff, and Mr. Jenner himself associated with those—other ways.”

“Quite right,” Peter Scott agreed, and looked to Almsley, who nodded.

“I don’t much care for the acquaintances this Parkening fellow has made,” Almsley said at last, after a thoughtful silence. “I admire Annie Besant when it comes to everything but her metaphysical notions. On that note, she and the Blavatsky crowd are harmless enough, for folk who are utterly deluded about their mystical powers. But when it comes to Uncle Aleister and his ilk, well, Jenner was right to get the wind up about some of them. And you are right to worry about Parkening tracing him to your clinic.”

“What I don’t like is that Parkening has been hanging about the hospital,” Peter Scott interjected darkly. “Given what Jenner’s said about him. Hmm? Gives him a far darker reason to linger than just his failed ambitions to be a doctor, or his uncle’s position as Head.”

“Oho! Good point, Twin,” Almsley said, sitting bolt upright, his cigarette dangling forgotten from his fingers. “There’s a lot of suffering around a hospital. No offense, Doctor, I know it’s your job to relieve suffering, but—”

“No offense taken, Lord Peter,” Maya replied, her brow furrowed with thought. “It hadn’t occurred to me that the hospital could be a—a reservoir of—”

“Of the drink the Dark Powers savor most,” Peter Scott said grimly. “If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that the hospital holds no charms for Parkening as a place of healing, but he finds it immensely useful as a source of power.”

Maya nodded, but her mind had gone on to other possibilities. The movement of patients in and out of the hospital was not that strictly controlled; they’d had patients get up and walk out as soon as they were able before this. What if some of them hadn’t gone off of their own accord?

No, surely not. He wouldn’t dare kidnap sick and injured people to—to torture them! Would he? She wondered.

Parkening had dropped broad hints that he wouldn’t be displeased if Jenner died, and those hints had been heeded and acted upon. How many other times had he hinted the same thing? And to what dark end had he done so?

“What do you say to a visit to your clinic, Doctor?” Almsley asked suddenly, interrupting her dire thoughts. “I’d like to have a word with this Jenner chap. He probably knows a great deal more than he’s told you, and I’ll be able to ask questions he’d be embarrassed to hear from your lips. And it might be I could use him when he’s better. I wish I had somewhere to put him until he recovers—but frankly, I don’t. Well, I could house him at the old barn in the country, but getting him there—”

“He’s been moved enough as it is,” Maya said firmly. “I had already considered taking him to my home, but he’s safest at the clinic for now. A long train ride to your country estate is out of the question.”

“We can hide him from those otherworldly eyes, though,” Peter Scott offered. “And if Parkening has any sense, he’ll steer clear of anything with our sign on it.”

Maya didn’t ask what he meant by that; Lord Peter nodded grimly at that point, and she decided that she didn’t need to know. “If you don’t mind—” she began.

“Mind? Not in the least. I’ll have Clive get us a cab.” Lord Peter shot up out of his chair like the greyhound he so closely resembled, and out of the door, returning a moment later.

“There. If you’re ready, Doctor? Scott?” He chivvied them out a little like a sheepdog herding its charges, much to Maya’s amusement. She had decided that she liked Peter Almsley very much, despite a slight touch of the unconscious arrogance that came with having money and rank bestowed on him at birth—and she pitied any woman who thought to wind him around her finger. He only played the fool; it was a mask, and a good one, but a mask nonetheless.

The three of them would never have fit in a hansom, but Clive (who evidently replaced Cedric in the evening, and looked far less grim), had gotten a motor taxi, with two broad bench seats. The men took one, and she sat facing them, in isolated splendor that felt a little ridiculous. The taxi chattered and chugged its way to the Fleet, attracting the attention of little urchins who ran alongside it, shouting. Nothing this modern had ever penetrated the neighborhood around the Fleet before, and it was a marvel to every small boy that beheld it.

The little boys followed it after it left them at the door of the Fleet. The driver did not care to linger in the neighborhood, and Maya was not particularly worried about getting home. Tom would take her back, then return for the two Peters.

The noise attracted all of the night staff—and Amelia—to the door of the clinic, however. It was Maya’s turn to play sheepdog and herd everyone inside, before too much curiosity got the better of everyone.

“What are you still doing here?” she whispered to Amelia, as she closed the door behind them all. “I thought you would be home by now.”

Amelia flushed and ducked her head. “I still had things to do,” she confessed. “I couldn’t go home with half my work undone.”

Translation: “I left everything to do because I spent too much time talking to Paul Jenner,” Maya thought, amused, but without a smile. “I hope you’ve caught up,” was all she said.

“Oh, yes! I was just about to see if someone could find me a cab when you all arrived. What is all this about?” Amelia would have said more, but Lord Peter turned around at that very moment and accosted Maya.

“Doctor Witherspoon!” he said, with a charming smile. “Please introduce me to your staff—and give me a tour, if you would!”

Head Nurse Sarah Pleine smelled “wealthy donor,” and her normally cheerful face was wreathed in smiles when Maya made the introductions. So did the rest of the night staff—Jeffry, the orphan who ran errands and slept in the garret, George, the man-of-all-work and porter, and Patience, Sarah’s daughter and assistant. Maya let them think just that; who knew, it might even be true, for Lord Peter showed no impatience on his brief tour, and even asked a few pointed and pertinent questions about the operating costs of such a clinic.

“Some of our expenses are covered by a group donation—all the London newspapers put together a common fund, which is why this place is called the ‘Fleet Clinic.’ And once a year, they organize a subscription fund for us,” Maya explained. “But that only takes care of some basic needs. I don’t receive anything for my services, for instance, and neither does Amelia; the only paid staffers are our anesthetist, the nurses, and the porters.”

“Still, it’s better to have the papers as your founding sponsors, I would think,” Lord Peter observed. “Isn’t there less interference about who ‘deserves’ treatment this way? And I should think it highly unlikely that members of the press would find drinking and smoking as objectionable as some of our worthy clergy do.” His wry smile made Maya and Amelia laugh.

“Oh, the myth of the Deserving Poor—” Maya replied. “As if we bothered to ask if a man screaming in pain was a regular churchgoer and subscribed to the Temperance Union!” The more Lord Peter said, the more she liked him; it was such a relief to meet someone from the upper classes who really had a grasp of how things stood in the East End. Where cheap gin numbs the pain of the joints of a man who has been working too long and too hard in the damp and cold—where “Sunday outfits” linger in the pawnshop until Saturday night, and if there is no money to redeem them, then there is no way to go to church—

“Well, as a rule, I don’t go subscribing to charities unless I know that they aren’t wasting my donations on hymnbooks and tracts,” Lord Peter told them, with a definite smile on his thin lips. He didn’t say anything more, but when he reached into his breast pocket and brought out his notecase, then took Maya’s unresisting hand and pressed several notes of large denomination into it, she stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment.

“But I didn’t—” she managed, trying to grasp the fact that he had just given her the equivalent of a month’s worth of operating expenses for the clinic.

“I know you didn’t, which is why you can count on the Almsley fortunes augmenting yours from now on,” Lord Peter said, with a chuckle. “Meanwhile, this should purchase you a few necessities. I shan’t bother to suggest anything; you know your needs better than I.”

Hastily, Maya transferred the handful of notes to Sarah, who took them off to be sequestered in the cashbox and added to the pathetic totals in the ledger. Bandages—sticking-plaster—a set of good scalpels! A real bed for Jeffry! A spirit-lamp so Sarah can make tea at night—oh, and canisters of decent tea!

“Now, shall we go have speech of your special patient?” Almsley continued, as if he hadn’t done anything more costly than tipping a newsboy a farthing.

Well, perhaps for him, it wasn’t, Maya reflected dazedly. If Lord Peter really did become a regular donor—there were so many things that she could do here—

She shook herself out of her daze; there was another reason why they were here, and it had nothing to do with the finances of the Fleet. “He’s this way,” she said, gesturing, as Amelia looked puzzled.

She was even more puzzled when they went straight through the clinic in the direction of Paul Jenner’s bedside. He’d been installed in a kind of doorless closet at the end of the tiny sick ward—not out of any consideration for his privacy, but so that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious to outsiders that he didn’t fit in with the general run of Fleet patients. The closet was generally used for children, or for patients who needed relative isolation and quiet. But that very positioning gave them a chance to talk with him without disturbing—or being overheard by—the others here.

But the moment that Amelia realized where they must be going, she pushed herself forward. “Let me go first, so he isn’t alarmed,” she said, and without waiting for an answer, skipped past Peter Scott and on to the sick ward. Maya exchanged glances with Scott; his questioning, hers amused. Evidently it wasn’t only unfinished work that had kept Amelia here tonight! I wonder what’s been going on in my absence?

When the little group reached Paul Jenner’s alcove, Amelia had lit the oil-lamp on the wall above his head. He was awake and sitting up, looking alert and wary. They couldn’t hear what Amelia murmured to him, but Lord Peter came forward with his hand outstretched.

“You must be Paul Jenner. I’m Almsley of Magdalen,” Lord Peter said, an arcane incantation that meant nothing to Maya, but evidently spoke volumes to Paul Jenner, whose face (what could be seen of it) cleared immediately.

“Almsley of Magdalen! They still speak of your prowess at bat, sir, in hushed and reverent tones! Forgive me for not rising, my lord,” Jenner began, but Almsley laughed, and sat down on the stool beside the bed.

“Not at all; now, I wish we didn’t have to jump immediately into an unpleasant subject, but I’ve heard some things from Doctor Witherspoon that quite alarm me, and as it happens, I may be the fellow to do something about them. This is my good friend Peter Scott, and you can trust him as you would me. It seems that you and I and Scott here need to have a little discussion about a fellow Oxford man who has been a very naughty boy.” Maya had no idea how they managed it, but in next to no time, Almsley and Peter Scott had Paul Jenner completely at his ease and talking frankly about his employer while Amelia and Maya simply stood in the background and listened.

Very frankly, as it turned out; what he’d told Maya was merely the visible tip of the iceberg. Within a very short period of time he’d revealed things that made the hair on the back of Maya’s neck crawl.

She didn’t know a very great deal about the dark side of magic, but some of what Jenner said made it very clear to her how closely he had come to things that were truly evil, and only his good sense and instincts had warned him away. He had no notion of how imperiled his very soul had been. From the looks that the two Peters exchanged, they didn’t plan to enlighten him.

And why should they? It wouldn’t help him now; there isn’t anything he could do about it. But, oh, now I am so glad I went to Peter with this!

Amelia looked completely bewildered by some of it, but there were parts that even she understood. She went pale, and then greenish a time or two. The two healthy men, one standing, one sitting, bent over the injured one with faces that reflected nothing but concern and a certain urgency. They could have been his relatives or friends, just paying a visit to the sickroom; the heavily-shaded oil-lamp at Jenner’s bed cast a circle of dim light that enclosed the three of them, with Maya and Amelia left in the shadows outside that magic space. Only the things they were calmly discussing—dark rituals involving blasphemy and pain in basement chambers, the spilling of blood on nameless altars, unsettling forms of Holy (or more aptly, Unholy) Communion, and things that Paul Jenner had only glimpsed or guessed at—were totally at odds with the otherwise pleasant scene.

Finally the two Peters seemed to have gleaned everything they could from Maya’s patient, and Almsley sat up straighter. “Thank you, Jenner,” Almsley said with a sigh. “Thank you very much for telling us all of this.”

“Thank you for believing me,” Jenner replied earnestly. “There aren’t many who would.”

“There aren’t many who would understand the significance of what you had to tell us,” Peter Scott said somberly.

Jenner looked from one Peter to the other, and his mouth tightened. “There’s more to this, isn’t there?” he asked. “You know something—No! I don’t want to know what it is! It’s enough that somebody does! Can you act on it?”

“We can,” Peter Scott told him, as Almsley nodded in confirmation. Then Scott smiled, and added, “Think of us as a sort of police agency; rely on it, the information you’ve given us is going to have some results.”

“And meanwhile, let me change the subject for a moment and ask if you’re free to take a position outside of London as soon as you’re well enough to move and work a little?” Almsley asked. “As it happens, I could use a private secretary of the sort who… now how shall I put this?”

“Of the sort you can trust to handle some rather odd correspondence, who won’t be disturbed by it, or get the wind up about it,” Scott supplied, and Almsley grinned broadly.

“Exactly! And one who won’t lose his nerve if I happen to need some very odd jobs done.” Almsley waggled a finger at Jenner. “Think of your experiences this way; before you’d had them, you’d have been useless to me, but now that you’ve seen some of the things that are ‘not dreamt of in your philosophy’ and know them for verifiable truth, you’re invaluable to me! So, would you care for a position? Same conditions as your previous employer, but without the nastiness. That much I can assure you. Also that I am not a sadistic bully; I drive myself quite as hard as I drive my employees.”

“Ah—” For a moment, Jenner was quite speechless, and it was Amelia who spoke up a bit sharply.

“Just where would this be, my lord?” she asked.

“The Almsley estate for now; Heartwood House. Between here and Oxford—just past Hatfield,” Almsley replied, looking not at all surprised that it was Amelia who had posed the question. “Newport Pagnell, to be precise. A journey, but not a very long one, as rail journeys go; it wouldn’t be a bad thing, I think, to get Master Jenner out of physical reach of Simon Parkening for a bit. In fact, when the time comes, if you would be willing to accompany him there as a sort of private physician and see him settled, I’d be obliged to you.”

“Would you be wanting me to personally deal with some of the more outré matters that might involve you, my lord?” Jenner said at last, looking distinctly uneasy again. “Because—well, I’d really rather not. I’m not certain I’ve got the stomach for it.”

“Nor do I blame you!” Almsley responded, as a trick of the light and the way he held his head made his hair shine, creating a kind of halo about it for a moment. “Jenner, I can’t promise you that you wouldn’t ever be called in to help me with such things, because that would be a lie. I’m not much good at foretelling the future, don’t you know. I’d as soon tell you that sort of thing didn’t happen, I really would, but it’s a kind of nasty little war that Scott and I are engaged in, and war is no respecter of persons or promises.”

Jenner nodded solemnly.

“So I shan’t make a promise that I might have to break,” Almsley continued, “But I can promise that if such a need should arise, I wouldn’t spring it on you as a surprise, and you’d have at least one chance to tell me to take myself and my interests somewhere a great deal hotter than here!”

Jenner actually laughed weakly at that, much to Maya’s relief. “In that case, Lord Peter, I would be honored to serve you,” he said, holding out his hand, which Almsley shook firmly.

Maya let out the breath she had been holding in; two problems off her hands at once—three, if you counted Lord Peter’s promise of support for the clinic. The whole atmosphere seemed to lighten, even though nothing had outwardly changed. Then Paul Jenner sagged a little, and Amelia moved into the circle of light cast by the shaded lamp.

“Lord Peter, Mr. Scott, if you are finished, P—my patient needs his rest,” she said firmly. And neither Maya nor the other two missed how she’d almost called Jenner by his Christian name, nor how her fingers had reached for his, and his for hers, for just a moment.

“I quite agree,” Lord Peter said, standing. “I’m sure we’ve fatigued him no end, and he could probably do with something to help him rest. We’ll take our leave, Jenner—but I’ll be checking on your progress, and the moment you’re fit to take a rail journey, we’ll get that organized and you can take up your position.”

“Thank you again, Lord Peter,” the injured man replied feelingly, before Amelia shooed them all out of the alcove. She busied herself with “her patient” as Maya beckoned them aside into the clinic’s tiny office.

“Protections?” she whispered, in order not to wake sleeping patients or excite the curiosity of the night staff.

The two Peters nodded, oddly in unison, as if they were twins. “That was next,” Peter Scott said. “Maya, could you help us with this? There isn’t a great deal of water around here for us to draw on—would you be willing to supply us with the energy?”

She made a face; the Fleet was hardly a “cleansed” place, but she nodded anyway.

“It will be easier than you think,” Scott said by way of encouragement, as Lord Peter straightened his back and braced his feet a little apart, closing his eyes as he did so, and tilting his head back a trifle. “You’ve been working here for some time, and you’ll have actually done some cleansing without realizing it.”

Maya closed her own eyes for a moment to orient herself, and “saw” that Peter Scott was right; in the immediate area of the Fleet Clinic the general “feeling” of the earth was nothing like as polluted as it was outside the walls. Encouraged, she plunged her spirit deep into the earth beneath the Fleet and pulled up strength from the enormous source she found there. Then, as if she poured what she found into a waiting vessel, she passed that energy to her two companions, who received it and transmuted it instantly.

It didn’t take very long; the Peters worked with a unity she could only marvel at and envy, and in the time between one breath and the next, there was a shell of power standing between the Fleet and the rest of the world, a shining barrier of protection that swirled with opalescent color and light. When they no longer needed her, Maya relinquished her hold on the Earth Magic she’d called, and opened her eyes on the real world.

Almsley opened his eyes, grinned, then settled his collar and cuffs quite as if he did this sort of thing every day, as Peter Scott ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture that betrayed his nerves.

“That was a good day’s work, I think,” Almsley said cheerfully. “Now, is there any chance of a cab out here at this time of night, or must I see if my abilities to defend myself against footpads are up to the task?”

He looked so absurdly eager, as if he actually hoped for a chance to try his self-defense skills against the thieves and drunks outside, that Maya had to stifle a laugh behind her hands.

“Sorry to disappoint you, my lord,” she replied, with mock regret that made his eyes gleam at her friendly insolence. “But I’ll have to deny you that pleasure. I do believe I hear my friend’s hansom pulling up outside.”

“Ah, well, in that case I shall kidnap my twin and bid you adieu, then send him back for you and the other young lady. Come along, Scott,” he added imperiously. “We have a report to make to the Old Man.” What Old Man? she wondered, but didn’t have a chance to ask. Peter only had a moment to press her hand and whisper, “May I come by tomorrow?” and accept her nod before Almsley whisked him off into the darkness.