The Wizard of London by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online

asked gently. “Would you believe me if I told you that I
have seen this bird once before—fluttering and pecking at my window, then
leading my men to rescue your child?”
    “I
can only answer with Hamlet,” Sarah’s mother said after a pause.
“That there are more things in heaven and earth than I suspected.”
She paused again. “You know, I think, that my husband and I are Elemental
Mages—”
    “As
are a great many of my friends, which is why you got the recommendation for our
school. I understand your powers, though Frederick and I do not share
them.” It was Mem’sab’s turn to pause. “Nor does your
daughter. Her powers are psychic in nature, as you suspected, though I have not
yet deciphered them completely. She
is
being instructed, however, not
only by myself, but by others who are even stronger in some aspects than
I.”
    “Haha!”
said the funny little voice. “There’s a good friend!”
    Cor
!
I wunner what this El’mental business is
? Whatever it was, it
was new to Nan, who was only now getting used to the idea that her
“sense” was a thing that could be trained and depended on, and that
she was most unusual for possessing it.
    “Oh,
bless!” Sarah’s mother cried. “I hoped—but I
wasn’t sure—one can’t put such things in a
letter—”
    “True
enough, but some of us can read, however imperfectly, what is written with the
heart rather than a pen,” Mem’sab replied decidedly. “Then I
take it you are not here to remove Sarah from our midst.”
    “No,”
came the soft reply. “I came only to see that Sarah was well, and to ask
if you would permit her pet to be with her.”
    “Gladly,”
Mem’sab said. “Though I might question which of the two was the
pet!”
    “Clever
bird!” said Grey. “Veeeeeery clever!”
    Mem’sab
laughed. “Yes, I am, my feathered friend! And you would do very well
never to forget it!
     

3
    A month had gone by
since Nan was brought into the Harton School. Another child picked up food at
the back gate of the Harton School For Boys and Girls on the edge of
Whitechapel in London, not Nan Killian. Children no longer shunned the back
gate of the school, although they treated its inhabitants with extreme caution.
Adults—particularly the criminals, and most particularly the disreputable
criminals who preyed on children—treated the place and its inhabitants
with a great deal more than mere caution. Word had gotten around that two child
procurers had tried to take one of the pupils, and had been found with arms and
legs broken, beaten senseless. They survived—but they would never walk
straight or without pain again, and even a toddler would be able to outrun
them. Word had followed that anyone who threatened another child protected by
the school would be found dead—if he was found at all.
    The
three fierce, swarthy “blackfellas” who served as the
school’s guards were rumored to have strange powers, or be members of the
thugee cult, or worse. It was safer just to pretend the school didn’t
exist and go about one’s unsavory business elsewhere.
    Nan
Killian was no longer a child of the streets; she was now a pupil at the school
herself, a transmutation that astonished her every morning when she awoke. To
find herself in a neat little dormitory room, papered with roses and curtained
in gingham, made her often feel as if she was dreaming. To then rise with the
other girls, dress in clean, fresh clothing, and go off to lessons in the
hitherto unreachable realms of reading and writing was more than she had ever
dared dream of.
    She
slept in the next bed over from Sarah’s, in a room inhabited by only the
two of them and the parrot, Grey, and they now shared many late-night giggles
and confidences, instead of leftover tea bread.
    Nan
also had a job; she had not expected pure charity, and would, deep down, have
been suspicious if she’d been offered this place for nothing. But
Mem’sab had made it clear if she was to stay, she had to work,