crabbed and gouty feet pressed against the floor, she grasped the table edge and hauled herself out of her chair.
Mary rushed to support her elbow; Garrett would have waved her back, but the look that Mary gave her silenced any protest. Sebastien stood back, guarding the door, one hand resting on the inside of the knob as Garrett cast her circle round, painfully hauling the table out of the way to do it.
It was not perfect, but it did not need to be. It closed Queen Sofia and Garrett within, and the blood without, and that was the thing that mattered. “Is that quite safe?” Mary asked. “You’ve shut yourself up in there with whatever comes out of her.”
Garret shugged. “I have to be able to touch it.” Besides, it was unlikely to be any worse than the last exorcism
she’d attended.
Leaning heavily on on the table, Garrett fumbled her ebony wand from her left sleeve. The queen’s hazel eyes widened, showing chips of green. “You were armed in my presence?”
“I swore once to defend you,” Garrett said. “Or to defend the Crown. And you are one half of the Crown, your Majesty. I have never been released from that vow, though the Crown’s to me was abrogated.”
The queen sat still in her magic circle. Her back straightened. She was no fainting flower, then. “Do what you will, magician.”
It was consent. Garrett lifted her wand and began to trace the spirals in the air, first chasing the negative energies away from the queen and then pinning them against the barrier of salt to disentangle and dispel them. It was slow, painstaking work, exhausting, requiring great care because the energies were intricately linked with the queen’s own body and generative force. It was a booby-trap of sorts, in its intricacy: hasty work would have ripped the queen’s own life-force to shreds, with results that could range from an explosive event to the reduction of the queen to a mewling idiot.
Garrett thought it was nice work. The effort of only a half-hour, however, for her to disassemble.
Before she was quite finished, someone pounded on the door. It could have been disastrous, because she was engaged in a particularly delicate manipulation, fingers crabbed and forehead slick with pain, but she kept her concentration on the work at hand, and trusted Mary and Sebastien with her back. And indeed, when the door knob rattled, it rattled against Sebastien’s iron grip, and Sebastien held it firm.
Garrett unwound the last bit of barbed and chancrous energy from the Queen’s person, and ground it out against the slender line of salt upon the floor.
“There,” she said. She scuffed the circle open with one pain-stabbed foot, and heavily made her way back to her chair. “That was hairy. But that should repair things. Sebastien, let that in, whoever it is.”
Unceremoniously, the wampyr removed his hand from the door. Mary moved to intercept whoever barreled through; the arm her hand closed on was that of Yuri Dyachenko.
“Abigail Irene,” he gasped. “You must not touch that sorcery—”
“It’s trapped,” Garrett said calmly. “I know. Journeyman work, but quite solid. I dealt with it.”
Dyachenko gasped. He leaned back against the doorframe. “I thought we were all dead of backlash,” he said. “I came as soon as I realized what you intended.”
“But why would anyone poison the Queen of England? Except the Prussians,” Mary amended. “Are you a sorcerer? How do you know that?”
Dyachenko sighed. “I know it,” he said, “Because I am the Tsarina’s emissary, and sometimes diplomats know things. Like where to grow the best plants, for example. Did she send it herself?”
“I didn’t recognize the sorcerer’s energy signature,” she said. “Your Tsarina?”
The Russian nodded, lips thinning. “She’ll kill me now.”
Sebastien reached out a hand and laid it on Dyachenko’s arm. “Only if you go home.”
***
When she was no longer pale and shaking with release, and the cold sweat had been dabbed from her brow, Queen Sofia took Mary and left Garrett and Sebastien alone with Dyachenko while she went to speak with her king. When she returned, Phillip was with her. Mary remained at their side.
Phillip paused within the door, crowding the little room with the weight of his presence. He held his wife’s hand in his own white-knuckled one. When he came before Garrett, he bowed, shocking her.
He glanced at the queen. The queen nodded.
“Lady Abigail Irene. Once again, at great personal risk, you have been of service to us.”
She slipped her wand into her sleeve, aware that his eyes followed the gesture. But he said nothing about it, just continued, “Mary explained what you accomplished here tonight. You have saved my queen, and quite possibly my kingdom. And it seems to me that I have been churlish in my appreciation of your prior acts, when they have prevented my kingdom being passed to a collateral relative.
“You have also kept safe our royal libraries once housed in the Enchancery. We understood this before, but we did not understand fully what it implied. We are given now to understand that those books you preserved are priceless and irreplaceable relics of the Crown’s Own. For this great service, we commend you. And furthermore we find that the position of Crown Investigator was unduly stripped from you, and we would reinstate you to that organization, under the rank of Commander of the Crown’s Own.”
“Your Majesty,” she said, startled. But she found her feet fast enough. “I’ll need DCI Cuan. Someone has to be my feet.”
“Welcome back to the Crown’s Own, Commander Garrett,” the King said. He looked at Mary, who folded her arms. “I have a sense that history will long remember what you do next. And may God preserve us all from the machinations of the meddling undead.”
“Your Majesty,” Mary said, mock-stiffly.
He waved her away, and turned back to Garrett. “Somebody’s got to bring law and order back to this land,” he said, gruffly. “I don’t see why it can’t be you.”
Table of Contents
The Tricks of London:
The Body of the Nation:
Almost True:
Underground:
Twilight:
Table of Contents
The Tricks of London:
The Body of the Nation:
Almost True:
Underground:
Twilight: