“Yes. I can’t control my power.” I sat up, shyly playing with a tendril of my hair. “It got so bad they had to teach me to give somebody else temporary access to my abilities.”
“Why would they do that?”
“In case I burst into flame and couldn’t put myself out. It was helpful to have a man who could take control.”
“Why would you give a sorcerer your power? Don’t they have their own?”
“No, this transferred my power to a normal person. The best magic to help me is my own. Anyone could do it, and the footmen in Master Agrippa’s house helped me practice. It was great fun for them, to be allowed to have a sorcerer’s powers even for a short time.” He mercifully took the bait.
“How would I receive your powers?” He said it casually, but his look was interested.
“Simple. You need to fetch my stave.”
He paused, then shuffled off and retrieved Porridge from somewhere out of sight. Good.
“Take some blood from me and rub it on your bottom lip.”
“That’s disgustin’.”
“I know, but it’s the only way.”
He opened the door while I sat there, chained and ever so proper. Winking, he rubbed his thumb across my cut lip, the result of Palehook’s attack. I forced myself not to shudder when he lingered. He painted the blood onto his own mouth.
“Now?”
“I confer the power upon you.” I touched my thumb to my blood and traced the image of a five-point star on his forehead. “Let’s see if it worked. Take the stave, place it to the ground, and say its name: Porridge.”
He did, and Porridge glowed blue. I gave as much of a girlish clap as I could, wearing those manacles. I knew that men loved being praised beyond life itself. Indeed, the guard looked as if he’d been appointed prime minister. “That it? I can use your power?”
“Absolutely. There’s one more thing you need to do to have complete control. Hold the end toward yourself—that’s right—and now twist it in your hands two times to the left.” I kept my breathing steady. If he heard the slightest waver, the barest hint of excitement…
“Why?” Did he sound suspicious? Was that my imagination?
“Because it conveys my power to you. Imagine that the power is rushing out of the stave to meet you.” I kept my hands in my lap and a smile on my face. I was the image of sweetness.
Pleased, he did as I’d asked. Warded force struck him in the face and chest, and he collapsed to the floor. A quick examination showed me he was still breathing. Relieved, I took up Porridge and got to work on my manacles. I adjusted Mickelmas’s teapot-to-rodent spell, and within seconds had transformed the shackles into white mice. They scampered down my dress and raced across the cell floor. I was free. Stepping over the fallen guard, I took his key ring and was in the process of locking him in the cell when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs.
“Enough, Joe. It really is your break,” the young guard said as he returned, and stopped dead. “What the blazes—”
“Stay back!” I cried, thrusting Porridge at him. The guard took off his hat and stepped out of the shadows, revealing a familiar shock of auburn hair. “Magnus? What in God’s name are you doing here?”
“Saving you. How the devil did you get free? And knock out the guard?” Eyes wide, he took the keys from me and locked the door. Voices shouted and echoed above us. There was the sound of many feet running in unison down the stairs. He winced. “Smollett and Fisher must’ve spoken to each other and realized I shouldn’t be here. Come on!” He took my wrist and led me down the long corridor of cells.
“How did you know where I was?” I couldn’t believe it.
“That’s something we really should discuss when we’re not running for our lives,” he said, looking up and down at the rows of cells and counting on his fingers. Now the guards spilled into the corridor from the stairwell. “Would you care to unlock number six?” he said, handing me the keys. “I’ll distract them.”
Magnus strode back down the hall. With an expert move, he slammed his stave into the floor. The stones beneath the men’s feet turned into soft mounds of sand, and the guards fell on their faces. With another movement, Magnus created a blast of wind that rocked the corridor, coughing up a cloud of dust that blinded the men.
I found the key and opened the door. We ran inside, locking it after ourselves.
“I just escaped from one cell, you’ve put me in another one?” I said, bewildered.
“Try to have some faith,” he muttered, looking around.
“It was a brilliant escape!”
“Hush!” He started touching the walls, the bars, a puzzled look on his face.
“What?”
“There’s something we can use to flee.”
Frustrated, I searched the cell for a trapdoor, only to discover a circle of carvings. They looked amazingly odd, like squiggles and backward letters. “A porter’s circle!”
“Yes, that. Get us out of here. As the resident magician, you’ll have to figure it out.”
“You know?” I felt naked before him. Yet Magnus had still attempted a rescue, knowing full well what I was.
“Never mind that now. Get us out of here.” He pushed me into the circle, and as the guards came, he blasted them with a shock of energy, mangling the door in the process.
I knew what to do, but there was room for only one. “Magnus, how will we both fit?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m doing splendidly.” He called the moisture from the stones in the ceiling and drooled brackish water onto the men below.
“I won’t leave you here.”
“Stop the heroics and go, Howel,” he snapped. Well, that decided it for me. I leaped onto his back, wrapping my legs and arms about him as best I could in my gown. Magnus teetered backward into the circle.
“Let’s ask it nicely to take us home,” I said.
As the now-soaked guards pulled the cell door down, the image of the house in Hyde Park Corner sprang into my mind. The world disappeared, and we fell into blackness.
—
“THAT WAS A STRANGE SENSATION,” MAGNUS grunted as we tried to reorient ourselves. He took a few steps forward and stopped. “Howel, you’re a lovely girl and not terribly heavy, but I think we’ll make better time if you get off my back.” He set me down. We’d landed in a wooded area, the mud squishing beneath our feet. “It’s Hyde Park. Never mind. I know where we are. Follow to the right, we’ll make the rendezvous in five minutes.” We set off through the trees.
“Rendezvous? The others know?”
“Every one of them.” And apparently none of them cared. The relief was sweet. We walked for a bit, and then he stopped. “Howel, are you all right? They didn’t hurt you, did they?” He touched my chin, studying my cut lip. “Because if they did, I can always turn around and go back. Stuff them into a kettle and make tea, see how they like it.” He tried to keep his tone light, but I heard the anger underneath. I stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, without thinking. He touched his face in surprise.
“Thank you for coming to help me,” I said.
“We had to. You’re one of us. The boys would do the same for me, after all.”
One of us. The thought made me smile. “So would I.”
“Well, then the rescue would be guaranteed to go well. Er, Howel?” Even in the moonlight, I could see he was blushing. “What I said in the stables, about you being awful for wanting to be kissed? I didn’t mean it. Really, you can kiss anybody you like. You can kiss the whole lot of us. Good old Dee could use a kiss, really. Kisses. Wonderful things. I’m babbling. I’m sorry for what happened.”
“You snuck into the bloody tower to save me. That wipes your debt away. There’s no need to apologize.”
“Then I take it all back.”
I gave him a playful shove and we moved ahead. I bunched my skirt in one hand, a bit sad, even now, to think of the gold back trailing away in the muddy ground. Eliza had been so proud of it. “What will they do when they find out you helped me?”
“What matters is you’ll be safe and far away from here by then.”