The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry Page 7

  Winn’s eyes had gone all crinkled up at her over the rim of her glass, which Delly couldn’t help but interpret in a positive light. “I’m afraid that my mother would rather have me out gallivanting than safely at home learning all of the airs and graces she failed to teach me when I was a mere scrap. Pop does fret a little, though. He’d like me to be the mistress of a girls’ school or go to work at his shipping company, something nice and reliable like that.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad to me,” Delly said after another swallow of beer. “Why not?”

  “Oh, itchy feet, I suppose,” Winn said. “Troll blood and all that, born to wander, what? Pop always talks as if he went straight from school into a sober clerkship, the great blinking fraud. He was poor and saw the world and got into scrapes when he was young. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because it’s fuckin’ awful,” Delly said. “With my many apologies for my language, but being poor and living in nasty dirty places where you don’t have any choice except to meet a whole motley assortment of odd birds with peculiar habits isn’t the first thing like going on a nice jolly wander off to Esiphe to see the ancient wonders and eat foods with new and interesting vegetables in ’em. Begging your pardon again.” Her face felt a little warm.

  “Well, that’s true,” Winn said after a moment. “This has all been good fun so far, but only because I know that if I wanted to I could send for Mother or Pop and have one of them come rescue me from the sloughs of fleabite and blinkin’ indigestion.”

  “I think that those sloughs might be my mother’s native land,” Delly said. “She certainly seems comfortable enough in ’em.”

  Winn laughed, and Delly laughed, too, even though it hadn’t really been a joke, at least not completely. Her whole body was gently throbbing. She said, “Aw, God’s tits. I’m off to bed.”

  Winn gave her a nod and lifted her glass in a small salute. “I’ll be up in three ticks,” she said, and Delly was forced to hobble her way up the stairs on her own.

  The room in the dumpy little inn would probably look like a real example of the slough to Winn, Delly thought. Which was a pretty unfortunate realization to have made, because, regrettably, it was a considerable span nicer than the room Delly lived in normally. Brighter, cleaner, and set more plumb, with a fireplace with a sturdy armchair beside for toasting your toes in the winter and a good new-looking washstand with a steaming pitcher set on it. Delly gave her hands, face, and particulars a scrub—no matter how bad things got, she never liked to let her particulars go unwashed—and then stripped down to her chemise and picked the less-comfortable-looking bed in the room to squeeze her weary bones into.

  Winn was up not long after, and there were the usual rustlings and splashings of a gull getting ready for bed. Delly kept her eyes closed until she figured the danger had passed of her seeing her prospect pissing in a pot before they’d reached that wearied point in their acquaintanceship. When she dared to peep again, there Winn stood, resplendent and broad-shouldered in a frilly nightgown the likes of which Delly’d never seen outside of a fashion plate.

  Delly laughed. She couldn’t help it. She’d never seen such a thing in all her days. Never been with a gull who’d be able to afford such a trifle, and never thought to stretch a trifle like it over the frame of such a monumental gull, like an elephant in a pinafore. She regretted the laughter the instant it leaked out of her, fearing that Winn would be offended, but Winn only grinned back. “Jolly unnerving sort of thing, being laughed at this late in the evening.” She sat down on the edge of her bed. “What’s so funny?”

  “Just,” Winn began. “Nothing. Only all the ribbons and things.”

  “Oh, those,” Winn said. “Ginny of you to laugh when I sewed them on myself. Part of the courses at Miss Belvin’s School for Young Ladies, what? It was nightgowns or tablecloths, so I thought that I’d be better off equipping myself with something I’d be able to put to use.”

  “Sakes,” Delly said. “You really made that yourself?”

  “And a whole bushelful of others,” Winn said. “My mother is always unconventional, to humans and to trolls both, but she’s very strict when it comes to my knowing how to take care of myself, whether that’s conventional or not. So I learned how to embroider a dress, catch a fish, bake a loaf of bread, and throw a punch, and I’m jolly glad for all of the education now, even though I always whined and sulked over the embroidery.”

  “Not over the fisticuffs, though?”

  “Oh, no,” Winn said, and got into bed. “I always thought that that part was fun. Good night, Delly.”

  “Good night, Winn,” Dell said, and they put the lamps out.

  * * *

  —

  They were woken up in the middle of the night by screaming.

  They both went half jolting, half lurching out of their beds, but within about half a second Winn was already bolting out the door in the direction of the screams—the Wexins’ room, just beside theirs—while Delly was still half-prone and all-hoping that this might turn out to have nothing to do with their traveling companions and she would be able to go back to sleep in a moment. Then, a moment later, she was up, too. The screams had only gotten louder, and she didn’t figure anyone would want to pay a salary to a gull who lazed around in bed while her employer was being violently murdered in the next room over, to say nothing of the difficulty of paying anyone a salary when one had recently been the victim of said murder.

  When she finally stumbled into the room, it took her a few moments to comprehend what was happening. Miss Mayelle was standing on a stool in the corner of the room, screaming, as Miss Dok and Winn fought off more creatures like the spider-thing that had attacked them earlier in the day. Miss Mayelle was bleeding from a cut to her neck. Her sister, the useless fucking trout, was unconscious on the floor.

  These things seemed even more wrong than that horrible thing from before, though it took Delly a moment to realize what the matter was. It was as if they’d been made too hastily. They were much smaller than the other one, about the size of cats, but while the big one had looked very much like a spider, these things were like a child’s drawing of the same: some with too many legs and some too few, some dragging one end along the ground as they advanced, some moving in odd jittery hops. It turned Delly’s stomach to look at them.

  Miss Dok successfully exploded one and gave a muffled shout that soon turned into a groan. The center of it was still rocking back and forth on the floor, still trying to get to Miss Mayelle, even though its legs were spread to the four fucking corners of the room and it couldn’t go anywhere at all. The sight of that—the sheer fucking repulsiveness of it—was what finally sprang Delly into action. “Right, you lot get their legs off and I’ll melt the bodies,” she said, and set to work.

  It was almost easy, once they had a plan. Miss Dok blasted the things with magic, Winn bashed them with a fireplace poker, and once they were incapacitated, Delly melted the little bastards. Then, just as they were nearing the end, Mrs. Totham came charging into the room. “Capture one!” she cried out. “Capture one, please! We need to examine it!”

  “Bugger that up a tree,” Delly said, and melted the thing in front of her.

  “Right,” Winn said, and bashed the last one with the poker to break its last working legs, grabbed it with her bare hand, and shoved it into a pillowcase she’d just snatched off of the nearest bed. Then she held it at arm’s length, grimacing as it thrashed around. “And if you don’t mind, Mrs. Totham, I think we’d all prefer it if you were a bit hasty with your examinations so that Delly can go ahead and melt it back to its first reliving.”

  “Oh, of course, of course,” Mrs. Totham twittered, and took the writhing bundle from Winn.

  Delly’s eyes focused in on Winn’s hand, which was dripping blood. “You’re hurt,” she said uselessly.

  “Those things have mouths like razors,” Miss Dok said. “If Mayelle
hadn’t woken up and jumped just in time . . .”

  Miss Mayelle, who had just clambered down from her stool, was shaking. Mrs. Totham’s voice, on the other hand, was steady as could be when she said, “Oh, dear. How very terrible.”

  “What?” Delly said. She never had much patience for anyone taking a long time to line up their dramatic statements before they took the shot.

  “I must remind you that I am a body scientist,” Mrs. Totham said. “And like most body scientists, I am strictly opposed to the abuse of the field in any way. With that said, this thing would seem—I am very afraid to say—to be the result of illegal necromancy.”

  “What does that mean?” Delly asked. She was starting to feel sick again.

  “Well,” Mrs. Totham said, “instead of the magic that has brought them to life coming from the wizard who created them, it has come from an outside source.”

  “Such as?” Winn asked. The room had gone very still.

  “In this case, a cat,” Mrs. Totham said, and closed her eyes. The wriggling lump in the blanket went abruptly still. Mrs. Totham shivered. “Oh, dear,” she murmured. “The poor thing was so terribly afraid.”

  5

  Wherein Suspicions Are Raised, Many Miles Are Traveled, and Dellaria Is Disappointed by the Moral Fiber of Her Betters

  It was pretty damn uncomfortable trying to get to sleep after that. Using more magic after such a long day of it left Delly feeling simultaneously sapped and jittering, as if she’d been drinking strong coffee on an empty stomach. Her aches only got worse, too. She got back into bed and just lay there awake, occasionally rolling from side to side like a sausage being cooked. She felt as if she’d been cooked altogether too well. Her brain was full of dead cats and metal spiders, and the growing light in the room didn’t do a damn thing to diminish them, just filled her with a greater dread that soon she’d have to be up and confronting yet another wretched fucking day.

  She might have dozed off for a while. When she woke up again, it was still in the darkish hours of the morning when it was impossible to do anything but worry. In the heart of the dimness sat Winn, very upright and quiet in the chair in front of the cold fireplace.

  “All right there, Winn?” Delly asked.

  Winn jolted slightly. “Oh, fine,” she said. There was a moment of quiet. Then she said, “I miss my pop. Bit embarrassing, what? A big girl like me. But I do miss him.”

  “That doesn’t sound embarrassing to me,” Delly said. “Just sounds nice. Having someone to miss, I mean.”

  “Maybe it is,” Winn said after a moment. “It still feels blinking dreadful, though.”

  “I’m not too surprised to hear it,” Delly said. “Most things are pretty dreadful, I’d say.”

  That was the end of their conversation that morning. They both got dressed and went downstairs, where they breakfasted on bread smeared with dripping and a bit of cress. Miss Dok came down before the Wexin girls, and Delly took the opportunity to put a question to her. “Who the fuck hates Mayelle Wexin so much that he’d want to kill her with a bunch of disgusting metal undead cat-spider-things?”

  Miss Dok got a lemon-licking look to her. “You’re speaking out of turn, Miss Wells.”

  “Then I am, too,” Winn said. “None of us were told to expect anything like those things attacking us yesterday. If we’re supposed to be defending Miss Wexin from her enemies, I think that we at least ought to be told who those enemies are, instead of being forced to fire bullets into the bleeding darkness. Rather brings down company morale to have to wage war against invisible necromancers for no real reason, what?”

  Miss Dok pinched up her lips. Then she said, “It oughtn’t make a difference to your carrying out your duties.”

  “And yet it does,” Winn said right back. “And so I suppose that we’ve reached some sort of impasse. You could tell us and resolve our curiosity, or keep on withholding information that may turn out to be the difference between life and death for us and wait to see whether or not it will prevent us from protecting Miss Wexin to the best of our abilities.”

  Miss Dok gave her eyes a big roll. “For God’s sake, it really oughtn’t make a difference,” she said. “But if you really must be difficult about it, I’ll tell you now that we don’t know. Mayelle received letters threatening her against the marriage, first, and then the attacks started. Mr. Crossick—Mayelle’s fiancé—did have some trouble with a woman who misinterpreted his intentions toward her a year ago, but that’s all long since over. Mayelle also has an uncle who’s a bit fanatical about Old Land Elgarism and doesn’t approve of the match, but that’s hardly reason to engage in necromancy and attempted murder. It’s really all such an annoying muddle,” she added, as if she thought that attempted necromantic murder was something like trying to organize your notes the week before an exam.

  “Does sound a little gin-faced,” Delly allowed after a moment. “I’d bet on the misinterpreted woman.” In her experience, a man who allowed that sort of misinterpretation to come about deserved all of the attempted murders that he got, though she’d never understood why the victim of the misinterpretation would take out her understandable ire on the new gull and not the two-faced barnfucker responsible for the problem in the first place.

  “I’d bet on the uncle,” Winn said. “I never trust fanatical types, m’self. Find them generally likely to give you alarming pamphlets and set public buildings alight.”

  “There’s no need for anyone to bet on anything,” Miss Dok said briskly. “We’ll be arriving at Crossick Manor this evening, and once we’re there, we’ll only have to wait until the wedding. The manor wards prevent any magic worked from the outside from entering without the permission of the master of the house, so as long as we can keep anyone from climbing in through the windows at night we’ll be quite safe, and the wedding will be held, and we’ll all be able to get back to our normal occupations.”

  “Those of us who have one of those, at least,” Delly muttered.

  Winn piped up again then. “I don’t know that I agree,” she said.

  Miss Dok raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know that you agree about what?”

  “That it will all resolve so simply,” Winn said. “It seems to me that anyone who’s willing to engage in necromancy in order to kill a young girl two weeks before her wedding isn’t all that likely to be put off by the prospect of a bit of cat burglary, what?”

  Delly cast her an admiring glance for her perceptiveness, but any more conversation on this count was cut off by the arrival of the rest of the women. For the first time, Delly found herself seated beside Ainette Wexin, who was being fussed over by the company on the subject of her fainting spells.

  “I’m sure that it must be the wizard swoons,” her sister said. “You really must stop using magic. It can’t possibly be good for you.”

  “It’s not the swoons, Mayelle,” Ainette said, with a smile at her sister. “That’s contracted in childhood, for one thing. I think that I’m just a bit run-down. The country air will do me good.”

  “I could examine you,” said Mrs. Totham. “It might be something more pernicious that you haven’t yet considered.”

  “Oh, no, no, thank you,” Ainette said in a firm tone. “You needn’t bother, Mrs. Totham. I’ll be much better once we’re off the road and I can rest.”

  That seemed to serve as the group’s cue, as everyone stood at the same time and filed out. Then there was the usual fuss with the donkey—at a certain point Winn was forced to intercede and coax the beast out of its stall—and eventually they were off again, Delly trying not to allow her groans of discomfort to grow too loud and distracting. She didn’t want Winn to come away with a poor impression of what Delly’s moans could sound like when she was at her best.

  They rode for several hours without major incident, then stopped for lunch at a little place without so much as a single other customer in it, just
one sleepy-looking man to serve the beer and an equally sleepy-looking little orange cat walking to and from the kitchen. Once they’d eaten, they got back up into the saddle again, and Delly’s braying reprobate of a donkey decided to go ambling around to the back of the inn instead of the front, where Delly saw the crumpled figure of the little orange cat on the ground, its fur matted with blood.

  Delly swallowed. Then she whispered, “C’mon, fella, time to follow Winn again,” and managed, despite herself, to urge the donkey back to rejoin the rest of the group.

  She and Winn ended up near the rear of the assemblage again, and she leaned in to murmur to her. “Did you notice who all went back to the privy just now?”

  Winn raised her eyebrows. “I’d have to suspect that practically everyone used the privy, after all that beer, though that’s a bit of a delicate question to ask about a lady, what? Why do you ask?”

  Delly explained, as quietly as she could, about the dead cat. Winn went very still for a moment. Then she said, “I suppose that I owe an apology to the blinkin’ fanatical uncle.” She paused. “Who do you think we ought to worry about?”

  “Dok and the sister,” Delly said. “They both know her. Or the Tothams could be hired on by someone. And Mrs. Totham’s a necromancer, so she’d be the likeliest to know how to extract the spirit from a cat.” Then she added, “Or I could be the one.”

  “Or I,” Winn said. “But I don’t think that you’re a murderer.”