The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry Page 2

  Delly lived in a bare little room in a boardinghouse above a bar called the Hangman’s Rest. She’d always figured that the name was meant to be a nod to the culmination of the career paths of some of the regulars, so in that way it suited her fine. It was a good little room. The floor didn’t slant too badly, the ceiling only leaked a little bit in the one corner during heavy rain, and it was right above the bar’s back room. She liked that. It gave her a comforted feeling to sleep above so much gin. If the floors gave out, at least she’d have a softish landing.

  After a few drinks downstairs, she laid out all her money and trinkets on the bed—she’d never bothered to buy a table—and her gut straightaway started to lurch. As treasure troves went, a beetle might turn up its nose at it. She licked her lips and tried to do the math. She owed Mrs. Medlow six tocats on rent for this month, plus the interest she’d promised her, and the bartender downstairs two more. She had two tocats six sen tied up in the toe of an old stocking she had hidden under a loose floorboard, and about another tocat in scrap metal she’d stripped out of an abandoned house a few days earlier, assuming she’d be able to sell it for half what it was worth. That left her four tocats four sen short with no real time to make up the difference before she’d have to sleep under a bridge with seeping pustules all over her ass. To say nothing of her mam, who’d be dead of either exposure or the red drip at any moment, at this rate.

  She was, to put it delicately, fucked up a tall tree without a ladder.

  Delly, at this juncture, went to her basin to wash her face and have a ponder. The pondering went nowhere, but the face washing refreshed her to the point that she was emboldened to embark upon her armpits. Once those were taken care of, she sat back down on the bed to gather her courage a bit more. She needed to scrounge up some money, and sharpish. That meant she was going to have to run a game.

  She wasn’t looking forward to it.

  A game was a delicate thing. Not all that hard to start with, but it’d complicate itself all on its own, like a cat made kittens even when you could’ve sworn it hadn’t gone out the window in months. For one thing, you needed to trust yourself to lose enough money to reel in the marks before you started to earn it. For another, you needed the right marks. You might get five of them in three hours and be in gin and whelks for a week, or you might waste time, entertain the criticisms of the passersby, and then be chased off by the constabulary. For either outcome you needed nerve, and today Delly felt that she lacked it.

  It was a sad fact, though, that Delly was too poor to lack nerve. Lacking nerve was a problem for women who had servants to fan their foreheads after they swooned on the chaise. Delly wasn’t disinclined toward swooning on principle, but she didn’t have a chaise to swoon on, to say nothing of the fanning servants. What she did have was a landlady, and it was Delly’s mental portrait of her glaring face that got her back onto her feet and out the door.

  She set herself up a few blocks away from her place, on a corner where she liked to work because bankers’ and lawyers’ clerks walked past it. A lawyer would ignore a youngish, plainish, plumpish lass running a game, but a clerk might sympathize or see a chance to flirt and throw her a few sen to play.

  There was someone on her corner already when she arrived. Bessa, looking cool and fresh with her black curls peeping out from under her white bonnet. That was all right by Delly. Bessa was an Objectionist heretic, and she also sold meat pies. The heresy was refreshing, which helped wash down the pie. The pie, unfortunately, was stodgy as all of the releft.

  Delly bought a pie, just to be neighborly, set herself up on the ground, and then asked for some heresy. “What’s hell like, Bessa?” She assumed that Bessa, being a good businesswoman, would be unlikely to draw any direct comparisons to her pies, but you never really knew until you asked.

  “Bright white,” Bessa said right away. “A bright white plain covered in ice and snow. It’s too bright to open your eyes, and the wind burns at your face and steals your breath, and every few steps you slip and fall, and your head pounds from the glare.”

  “Sakes,” Delly said, impressed. “Sounds awful.”

  “Which is why you ought to change your ways, Dellaria Wells,” Bessa said.

  Delly nodded slowly. “Ought to indeed. Might be that I’m too short for it, though.”

  Bessa pursed her lips. “How does your height signify?”

  “I reckon that sin, being denser than air, tends to settle close to the ground,” Delly said. “That’s why as a rule you’ll find your drunks lying in gutters and your great thickets of pious young ladies up in choir lofts.”

  Bessa sighed. “You’ll be going straight up to the white lands, Dellaria,” she said, and then favored a young man who wanted to buy a pie with a smile.

  Delly eyed up the other young fella standing around waiting for his friend to pay, then slipped him a wink. “Try your luck with a game while your fella eats his pie?”

  “He’s not my fella,” the fella said straight off. “He’s householded to a clanner.”

  Delly rumpled up her face, sympathetic-like. “I had a girl who did that. A lady who wore pearls took a liking to her, and she was householded before the year was out.”

  “Hard times,” the fella said.

  “Hard times,” Delly agreed, though she reckoned that her girl up and leaving her had had more to do with Delly’s own bad behavior than it did with the nation’s economy. Then she said, “Interest you in a game?”

  “Might be,” the fella said, and threw down five sen.

  Delly ran her game. She let him get pretty far: far enough that a crowd started to gather. Far enough that she started to sweat. If he was a clever fella, he’d walk now and take her for a few tocats. He wasn’t, though, and he didn’t, so she ended up a tocat ahead, with her heart pounding and three new marks lining up behind him. It looked like the day might be in Delly’s favor after all.

  Delly ran a few more games—let one pretty girl walk away with two tocats, for the sake of winning a smile as much as for the sake of keeping the game running—then took a break to stretch her legs, eat some whelks, and read the bulletins posted on the public board a street over. Sometimes the bulletins had something useful in them: she’d found work from one once before, helping a crew of workmen to strip pipe out of an old building. It’d paid well enough, and she’d fucked a nice burly workman from the northlands out behind the site privy, so it had all around been a bulletin to lift the spirits and incline the soul toward thankful contemplation.

  There was nothing of too much interest in the first few ads she looked at. Lots of comfortable sorts looking for sober and upstanding young women to scrub out their underthings. Seeing as how Delly was often drunk, was never upstanding, and was barely prepared to scrub out her own underthings on any kind of regular schedule, most of these postings weren’t of much interest to her. Then, one in particular caught her eye.

  WANTED

  Female Persons, of Martial or Magical ability, to guard a Lady of some Importance, prior to the celebration of her Marriage, during her period of Matrimonial Seclusion. Inquiries may be made at 332 Barrow Street, Elmsedge, Leiscourt, at the rear entrance. NO MEN to be considered for any positions.

  Delly ate another whelk. This was one to engage the organs of ponderation, all right. Elmsedge, that was Clanner Hill, and only real steel-stayed traditionalists still practiced matrimonial seclusions. A good family, then, the type who had the one girl just to scrub out the underthings and another to dust the mantels and a third to make the cream cakes while a sober gent sat down in the cellar and tabulated the expenditures. But what the hell would a girl like that need a whole herd of bodyguards for? You had to be important to have people who wanted to murder you. Or rather, you had to either be important or be related to someone who owed someone else a hell of a lot of money, and if you owed someone that much cash, you’d probably be better off setting up a payme
nt plan than you’d be hiring a bunch of lady pugilists to guard you. This, then, was something interesting, and Delly was a long-standing enthusiast of being interested.

  She memorized the address, then headed back to her corner. The crowds had thinned out some, but there were still enough folks milling about for her to get a new game going, so that’s what she did.

  She was down a few sen and preparing to take a particularly prune-faced old geezer for a tocat or two when a matched set of cops lifted their boots in her direction. “Dellaria Wells?”

  Delly looked about herself like she was looking forward to seeing some other silly old creature getting taken away in chains. The officer nearest her leaned in and grabbed her by the wrist. “Dellaria Wells,” he said, “I am arresting you in the name of the First Headman.”

  Delly said, “Well, shit.” Then she used a bit of magic and set her own skirt on fire.

  The resulting conflagration was large enough to startle, amaze, and generally annoy the arresting officers, but not large enough to facilitate any escaptionary maneuvers. There was some shouting and hopping about, and then some helpful citizen of the fair republic tossed a glass of beer over Dellaria’s person, which served very well to extinguish both the flames and Delly’s hopes of sleeping in her own bed tonight. She gave the cops a smile. “Horribly sorry, fellas, only that just always happens to me when my nerves are on edge. Nervous flaming is what it is.”

  “Right,” said the taller of the two fellows, and gave her a bit more of a shake than Delly thought was really needful before marching her off at a lockupwardly slant.

  2

  Wherein Dellaria Talks Herself Out of a Situation That Was Really Entirely Her Own Fault in the First Instance, and Establishes a Prospect

  This entire day had really gone balls up at a canter. Delly was impressed with herself. In all of her history of turnip-headedness, she didn’t know that she had ever fucked up so badly as to have gotten herself arrested before an early supper. Fortunately, what she did have was a whole sea of experience in talking herself right back out of the same shit she’d gotten herself into in the first place, and so she set herself to that task with all the energy she could muster.

  “You’ve brought in the wrong woman, gents,” she said. “How could I ever have melted a chandelier in a bank when I was being interviewed for a domestic position up on Elmsedge at the time the crime was being committed?”

  “How could anyone who wasn’t a damn thieving fire witch have melted the damn chandelier in the first place, you silly tit?” asked the warden, whom Dellaria suspected of harboring paternalistic feelings toward her person. He had, after all, practically raised her, considering all the time she’d spent in here before her age of majority. “And what the hell sort of domestic position could you be interviewing for? They want a girl around to drink them dry and make the house dirtier than it was to start with?”

  “Those are hurtful words, sir,” Delly said. “Very wounding indeed. And here my poor self had been thinking that I was practically a daughter to your honorable self, sir.”

  “Oh, shove it up your ass, Dellaria,” the warden said, fatherly-like. Then he said, “And what was the position, then? Go on, I want to hear it.”

  “It was a bodyguarding position, sir,” Delly said. “At 332 Barrow Street, to be exact about it.”

  The address, at least, caught the warden off his guard a little. Delly wasn’t usually too keen on providing verifiable facts to her interlocutors. “What the hell would they want with you for a bodyguard?”

  “They were looking for women of a wizardly persuasion,” Delly said, with dignity. “To guard a lady in her matrimonial seclusion. And they’re expecting to speak to me again tomorrow, so you might as well let me go now and get on with finding the actual criminal.”

  The warden dragged a skeptical eye up one side of her and then back down the other. Then he said, “We’ll just see about that, Delly Wells,” and removed himself from her presence.

  Delly spent a few fruitful hours scowling at the ceiling, picking at her nails, and trying to teach herself to make miniature fireworks as she’d seen a fire witch doing once at a carnival. Maybe if she learned to do it well enough she’d be able to take up a life in the theater with her old pal Elo, which would provide her with a steady income and a reason to stay out of the fucking clink for once in her fucking life. Instead, she only succeeded in filling her cell with smoke, and she was pressing her face up to the bars to cough when a Lady appeared.

  She was a very distinguished-looking Lady, thin and straight-backed, with a nose like an opinionated pelican and her white hair in a neat Hexian crop. “I’ve been told,” said the Lady, in milk-souring tones, “that you have been bandying about the address of my employer in an attempt to extricate yourself from your current state of imprisonment.”

  Delly blinked. Then she said, in her most refined and least West Leiscourt accent, “There must be some kind of a misunderstanding, madam. I only meant to inform his honor the warden that I had the intention of presenting myself as a candidate for the position of bodyguard to your particularly honorable self’s distinguished employer, madam.”

  They were both quiet for a spell, possibly stymied at having met another person with the same circumnavigatory habits of speech as themselves. Delly took a big breath of smoke, then gave a delicate hack.

  The Lady frowned. “Did you produce all of this smoke?”

  “Might it so,” Delly said—she was still coughing—and then winced at herself and started again. “That I did, madam. In fruitless pursuit of the production of fireworks, madam.” Then she added, by way of explanation, “I’m a fire witch, madam, which is why I wanted to present myself to yourself in search of a position guarding your employer, madam. I had intended on making my way to Elmsedge for the interview tomorrow morning, madam.”

  “My name is Magister Fentan,” said the Lady. “You may address me as Magister. Why on earth would I be willing to interview a criminal for a position in my employer’s household, Miss Wells?”

  “If I might beg your pardon, Magister,” Delly said, “I’m only a very petty criminal, but I’m a rare excellent fire witch, and we ain’t so very thickly strewn upon the local thoroughfares, Magister. It might be that having useful and steady employment would deter me from the path of wickedness I set upon at an early age due to the dreadfully neglectful behaviors of my mother and father, Magister, who abandoned me in the coal scuttle of a public house when I was a mere infant, Magister. Also, if any brigand were to attempt to shoot or stab your employer, I would be able to melt the weapon before any harm could be done, which I imagine would be of a great comfort to her elevated self, Magister.”

  Magister Fentan looked at her consideringly. Then she pulled a pair of nail scissors from her pocket, handed them to Delly, and said, “Show me.”

  Delly put the scissors into her palm and concentrated a bit harder than she needed to, then watched as the scissors melted, puddled in her hand, then trickled through her fingers and fell in droplets upon the floor. It tickled a mite.

  “Hm,” said the Magister. Then she said, “I’ve already selected all of the women that I want to hire for the position.”

  “Oh,” Delly said.

  “I had been hoping to find a fire witch, though,” said the Magister. Then she said, “I will be holding a meeting for all of my formal candidates for the group at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning at 332 Barrow Street. If you attend promptly, clean and sober, I might consider your application for employment.”

  “Fucking truly, then?” Delly asked, astonished.

  The magister pickled up her face at her. “I’d also ask that you refrain from that sort of language when in the presence of my employer. You will be working for a woman of quality, not for the proprietor of a public house.”

  “Yes, Magister,” Delly said. “Understood, Magister. But begging your honorable self’s pa
rdon, Magister, I’ll have to be released from jail before I’ll be able to attend a meeting, Magister.”

  Magister Fentan was already departing. “I will speak to the warden,” she said, and within very short order an exceedingly irritated-looking warden reinflicted Dellaria Wells upon the populace.

  Delly returned to her flat in a moderately discombobulated state and set at once to eating a bowl of porridge and laundering her least-tattered dress in a large tub in the pub’s kitchen. Then she deposited her tired carcass into bed and slept like a sack of potatoes.

  The next morning, Delly cleaned her teeth, combed her hair, and arrived at 332 Barrow Street at exactly the time the Magister had said, according to her goddamn dad’s old pocket watch.

  A servant let her in with a suspicious cast of his eye, which wasn’t too much of a surprise; in her experience weasel-faced fellows in the butling profession had a sort of instinctive sense for her not belonging places. This gentleman looked like a terrier with a noseful of rat.

  Another servant led her to a nice little sitting room, where there were already a few other people.

  Magister Fentan directed her nose ceilingward and her eyes Dellyward. “Miss Wells. You’re late.”

  Delly made her own eyes into perfect circles, by way of expressing her extreme astonishment, and pulled the pocket watch out. “Politely begging the pardon of your honorable personage, Magister, but it’s two to eleven by my pocket watch.”

  “It is, in fact, twelve after,” the magister said. “Please, sit.” She said it politely enough, but Delly thought she could see the crinkles of irritation starting to array themselves around the corners of her mouth. Delly arrayed herself in the nearest chair and had a look around the room.

  There were all sorts of knickers on this washing line, all right. There was Delly herself: like a potato with freckles and brown hair in a bad plait. Nearby was an old lady with soft dark eyes, a broad nose, and a few white curls peeking out from under her bonnet. The old biddy was sitting next to a sea of blue-and-white frills into which someone had dropped a little whey-faced blonde girl. Delly figured if you directed a question to the girl, she might have to consult the frills before she answered. If she’d fought at all to prevent herself from being overcome by them, she’d lost the battle.