Chapter Twenty-four

I am accustomed to mortal amazement, for I am quite exceptionally amazing, but even by my high standards the astonishment I engendered by my appearance was gratifying. It was even more gratifying that Sal and Jackson both drew pistols on me.

"Give me one reason I shouldn't shoot you," Jackson demanded in a tone that would have chilled me to my bones if I had bones, or could feel chill, or had been in any danger whatsoever.

"Because we both know it wouldn't stick," I told him. "Now"—I turned back to Miss Caesar—"you have two more wishes. And I do suggest you word them carefully. You don't want a repeat of your recent travails now, do you?"

"And what would you know about that?" asked Captain James. Like Jackson he had adopted a threatening tone, and unlike Jackson I wasn't totally convinced he couldn't hurt me. Certain mortals are gifted in these areas. It's the gods' way of regulating us and, I suppose, each other.

"Fairies gossip. Now, what about your second wish?"

Miss Caesar looked at me with an admirable wariness. "What about my first wish?"

"You wished that I could help you."

"But you didn't."

I tutted. "Dear me, child, did nobody ever teach you the difference between can and will ?"

"That seems needlessly pettifogging," observed Lady Mary.

"Welcome to wishcraft. Your daughter may ask me for two more things, and when she does I am bound to give her exactly what she asks for."

"Just don't, " the younger Mr. Caesar told her. "It isn't worth it."

Miss Anne, recovered from Jackson's interrogation, spoke up. "But if it helps us find William …" Tears were beginning to form in her eyes. "Whatever they plan to do to him they once planned to do to me."

"It's your choice, Mary," said the elder Mr. Caesar. "I would like to assist these people, but I will not ask you to put yourself in danger."

I sincerely hoped that the mortals weren't going to start being sensible. "A little word to the wise," I offered, "unless this delightful child can be certain she will never say the words I wish carelessly ever again for the rest of her life, I highly recommend she find some way to be useful now."

"And why should we believe you?" asked the younger Mr. Caesar.

"You shouldn't. Especially not when I'm telling the truth."

Miss Caesar turned—quite impertinently, I thought—away from me and towards her family. "Suppose I were to ask for him to take us to—"

"Not us, " her father interrupted. "You aren't coming."

"What if we need another wish?" asked Miss Caesar, which from my perspective was an excellent point.

Jackson nodded. "She's right. No sense leaving the magic behind."

"We are leaving her," the elder Mr. Caesar insisted, "and that is final."

"Thought it was her choice," Sal pointed out.

On this, however, the elder Mr. Caesar remained firm. "Wishing is her choice. She's not racing after a gang of armed cultists."

"Time's wasting," Jackson complained. "If they've not cut his throat already they might while we're standing here arguing. Make the fucking wish."

Miss Anne didn't quite stamp her foot, but she rallied to her sister's defence anyway. "Don't rush her."

Sal lowered his head. "I'm sorry, sweet thing, but we may not have much time."

With a decisiveness that I hoped would spill into foolishness, Miss Caesar turned back to me. "I wish," she began, and what a promising beginning it was, "that you would guide all those people here—"

"And at the Folly," added the captain.

"—and at the Folly who want to rescue Boy William to wherever it is he's being held."

I bowed. "Done."

And then I disappeared. I had been commanded, after all, to guide two separate groups of people beginning at different locations to a single place the location of which I did not actually know.

Fortunately, as I believe I may have pointed out once or twice, I am exceptional.

I found Boy William himself quickly enough. There were only one or two places in the city that one could appropriately make a sacrifice to Artemis, and it was not hard to check all of them.

It might have been slightly more difficult to guide the rescuers to the appropriate place before the boy was eaten by a bear, but that was not remotely my concern.

In order to actually guide the parties to their destination, I conjured each group a classic will-o'-the-wisp and hoped the mortals would have the wit to follow them. I will confess that it was not the best image to call up, given its association with being lured to a murky death in a swamp. But it seemed to work. The band at the house were already expecting something, while the ones at the Folly were at least somewhat willing to track a witch-light through the night on a hunch and a hope.

Because I am at least as skilled in my area of expertise as the Lady is in hers, the scheme worked perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that both sets of mortals arrived at the exact same time despite leaving from radically different parts of the city. Of course, even if they had not arrived simultaneously and the closer party had been required to spend a half hour standing around bickering about whether this whole affair was a windup, I could simply have lied and told you otherwise.

But that, reader, would be quite beneath me.

I had led the rescue party to the gates of the Tower of London and when I appeared once more before them, I was getting some very suspicious looks.

"He's in there?" asked Captain James, only too willing to believe his ill fortune.

"I fear so," I told him. "But that should be no difficulty for such a fine body of men, surely."

The elder Mr. Caesar, who had been quite unwilling to be left behind, looked at Captain James, who still moved a little stiffly from the glass bayonet. "He is injured," he said. "And I am old, and my son takes too little exercise."

"Excuse me," the younger Mr. Caesar protested, "I walk quite regularly."

"Can you not just"—Callaghan waved his hands in a gesture indicating magic—"hop us over the walls?"

"I can, " I told him. "I choose not to."

Captain James scowled. "Barryson, can you make this fucker be less of a fucker?"

"Sorry"—Barryson gave an apologetic grin—"don't know the right words. Everything's worse in the south, elves included."

Kumar rested his chin on two fingertips and pursed his lips contemplatively. "If the men in red really are in there then they must have got in somehow, and they might not have closed the door behind them."

"And they'll have left it unguarded?" asked the captain in his most expecting-the-negative tone.

"Guards," said Jackson, "we can deal with."

"What about bears?" asked Barryson.

The younger Mr. Caesar raised a hand in a just-a-moment gesture. "I don't believe anybody mentioned bears."

"As I see it," Barryson explained, "they'll be here for two reasons: because it's a symbolic place for a sacrifice, and because bears are sacred to Artemis and this is the only place in London you'll find one."

The elder Mr. Caesar began loading and priming a pistol that his son had never realised he owned. "It seems like we have a plan. Where do we think they went in?"

On this, Barryson was surprisingly certain. "Traitor's gate. Matches the symbolism, and they must've known we'd follow, and a water gate makes it a pisser to keep powder dry."

"And so resolved," I said, "our intrepid heroes set—"

"Sorry," asked Captain James, "what do you think you're doing?"

It was, I will confess, an embarrassing moment. "My apologies, I occasionally narrate mortal actions."

A look of realisation crossed Barryson's face. "Fuck, you're one of those. "

"Excuse me, I object to the designation one of. I assure you I am quite unique. Having no time for such distractions," I said as I slid into mists and shadows and out of mortal sight, "Captain James took charge of matters."

"Right," he said, "let's go."

Sal and Jackson, handing over their muskets and pistols, slipped away from the rest of the group, moving with as much stealth as was possible for people dressed in bright red jackets and gleaming white breeches. As they approached the water gate they slipped from the shadows to the cut in silence and vanished beneath the surface. The rest of the Irregulars, along with the Caesars, hugged the line of the wall and waited. I, having the virtue of invisibility, did not.

There had been two guards posted to watch the traitor's gate. Each bore a rifle. Each had been charged with watching the waters to ensure nothing disturbed the sacrifice. And each was woefully unprepared for an attack from beneath by a seasoned murderer with a knife.

Two bodies vanished into the murk and a few minutes later Sal and Jackson reappeared with the message that the coast was clear.

So the Irregulars and the Misters Caesar slipped into the water, making certain to keep heads and powder and firearms above the surface. They emerged into the outer ward of the tower and progressed as quickly and as quietly as they could manage to the inner courtyard.

And there was Boy William, bound and kneeling in the shadow of the White Tower. Lieutenant Reyne stood beside him, robed but unmasked, his hood down and a blade in his hand. A little way off was Major Bloodworth, who watched the whole affair with a mix of disdain and impatience. A scattering of masked men stood around the little vignette; most carried muskets, some carried pistols. One was holding a bear on a chain and didn't look entirely like he knew what he was doing.

"Artemis," Lieutenant Reyne was incanting to the sky, "daughter of Zeus, slayer of wild beasts, you that spin the silver light at night, receive this sacrifice which we offer to you."

"Rush them?" suggested Callaghan. "Or one of us can probably put a bullet in his head."

The lieutenant's invocation continued. "We the British army and King George offer to you the pure blood that flows from a virgin's throat."

"Might miss," the captain replied.

"Grant our ships an untroubled journey. Grant that our—"

With a low murmur of fuck it Captain James strode out into the courtyard. "Here for my man, Reyne."

The lieutenant lowered his knife just a fraction. "It wouldn't have come to this if you'd let me take the girl."

" Let you?" sputtered the major. "You're an officer of the British army, you don't need permission from the likes of him."

Serene in the moonlight, Lieutenant Reyne turned his attention to the major. "You could have seized her yourself."

"I'm here to give orders," the major replied, "not to grab hold of silly chits."

"Afraid to get your hands dirty?" asked the captain.

The major's expression of contempt somehow managed to deepen, a process that took it from "utter" to "absolute." "How typical of your sort to mistake dignity for fear."

At the foot of the tower, the lieutenant's hand tightened on his blade, and he twisted Boy William's head back to expose his throat.

"I've men behind me," Captain James warned. "Do this and you won't walk away."

Neither Lieutenant Reyne's hand nor his voice wavered. "After everything I have done, do you really believe I am unfamiliar with sacrifice?"

I am scarcely a judge of these things, reader, for I am not—or at least was not at the time I made these observations—vulnerable to mortal weapons, but I could not help but feel that the advantage in this standoff lay all with the lieutenant. He had position, numbers, and a complete disregard for his own life and the lives of others. It was a winning combination.

But then even in so dire a circumstance, the unexpected can happen.

"We'll trade." The voice was not the captain's. It belonged to the younger Mr. Caesar, dashing forth from the shadows with an air of panicked heroism and addressing himself to the major directly. "You're not here for the gods, you're here because I made you angry. You want to cut a throat, cut mine."

"John," the captain said with affectionate weariness, "don't be such a fucking—"

" Done, " said the major. "You"—he indicated one of the masked soldiers—"seize him."

The man did as commanded, but got only about halfway towards the younger Mr. Caesar before the elder, striding from the increasingly empty hiding place of the Irregulars with pistol unerringly levelled, intercepted him. "Touch my son," he said with the same level but authoritative tone that had made him so popular on the speaking circuit, "and you will die."

All around the courtyard soldiers were raising muskets, but thus far nobody had risked being the first to fire. And despite the major's bargain Lieutenant Reyne had yet to set down his knife. "The sacrifice," he explained with the timeless patience that has, throughout history, characterised those shackled to incompetent superiors, "must be a virgin, and that man decidedly is not."

The major sneered. "Really? Way I hear it he's never been with a woman."

"In the eyes of Artemis, that is not the criterion."

And then, to my overwhelming joy, the major said: "Fuck Artemis."

The bear growled.

"Major Bloodworth," pleaded Lieutenant Reyne, striking a practised balance between entreaty and calm, "I strongly suggest that you recant that. Quickly."

Strong suggestions, however, did not go over well with the major. "Fuck Artemis," he repeated, "for a Grecian whore. I'm not here to play your petty games, Reyne. I'm here to teach that man "—he pointed an accusing finger at Mr. Caesar—"a lesson, and I will do it with or without your pagan bitch goddess."

Readers, you know that I love chaos. And what happened next I loved a great deal.

With a roar to shake rooftops, the bear—a vast American grizzly gifted to the king some years prior—broke free of its handler and rushed to defend the honour of its patroness as only a six-hundred-pound omnivore can. Several of the masked soldiers attempted to stop it, but, having no tools at their disposal save notoriously inaccurate black powder weaponry, they succeeded only in provoking a firefight.

The man who had been charged with apprehending the younger Mr. Caesar moved to make good on his orders and progressed a full two paces before the elder Mr. Caesar made good on his word and shot him full in the chest.

A volley of musket fire rang out from the Irregulars and then, through the smoke, they charged with war cries and bayonets. Boy William, hands tied, squirmed wormlike towards his companions, but Lieutenant Reyne—abandoning his knife and drawing a sword—reared above him like a praying mantis. This left me with something of a dilemma. I so enjoy seeing mortals dismembered, and now I needed to decide whether I watched a young boy get run through with a blade or an old man get ripped apart by a bear.

I chose bear, and I was not disappointed. The major had never insulted me personally, but he was such a rude gentleman and watching King George's pet grizzly bear him—my apologies, the pun in this case was truly unintentional—to the ground, clamp its jaws around his head, and then bite with a pressure in the region of a thousand pounds per square inch was eminently satisfying. Of all the Hellenes, I have always had a quiet respect for Artemis. Insult most gods and they will spin elaborate schemes of vengeance involving falling in love with your own reflection or being transformed into a spider or having your whole city burned down by men hiding inside a big wooden mammal. But sweet Artemis will usually just fucking kill you.

The bloody matter of the bear had distracted me just long enough that when I returned my attention to Boy William I expected him to have been stabbed already. Which would not necessarily have been a total loss; he might still have wriggled in an amusing fashion. But I had reckoned without the innate love of drama amongst almost all of the conflict's primary belligerents. So Lieutenant Reyne had felt it necessary to repeat his dedication to the goddess before he struck, which had permitted Captain James to intercept his blade just in time, which had in turn allowed the younger Mr. Caesar to dash towards the boy, seize his hand, and drag him to safety. Or at least to something resembling safety given that they were still, variously: surrounded by armed men who wanted them dead, under the watchful gaze of a bloodthirsty deity, and eight feet from an angry grizzly.

"I said things'd be different if we crossed paths again," said the captain in a matter-of-fact tone.

"They're certainly more wasteful." The lieutenant aimed a cut at Captain James's head, but the captain turned it aside easily. "How many of my men have you killed already?"

"As many as it took. You shouldn't have come for one of mine." The captain fought with untutored grace and a strength born of something purer than vengeance. He thrust clean at the lieutenant's throat, making him spring back.

With an almost piteous expression, Lieutenant Reyne shook his head. "If only you'd been a man of vision. We could have done remarkable things."

The lieutenant was keeping a cautious distance from Captain James, which I thought showed a rather unsporting commitment to self-preservation. He circled widdershins to put allies behind him. And, perhaps more important, to turn the captain's back to the bear.

An experienced swordsman, if an unpolished one, Captain James was keenly aware of the risks of being outflanked, but with the rest of his men engaged elsewhere there was little he could do about it. He risked a glance over his shoulder to make certain that he wasn't about to be torn apart by an enraged ursine, and in that moment of less than complete focus, Lieutenant Reyne was on him.

Watching from a scant few feet away with Boy William at his side, Mr. Caesar felt a deep swell of nausea. Despite all he'd been through, he still wasn't used to the sound of gunsmoke, nor the sounds of men screaming, and most certainly not the roars of wild beasts, and it was a mystery to him how the captain and the others could go so heedless into danger.

Biting his lip and trying to do something, anything, to feel less helpless and useless, he did his best to untie Boy William's hands, but he had never been good with knots. As it turned out, however, he was far better with knots than he was with bears.

The American grizzly, having had all it needed of the major, was returning to the fray guided by its hunger and the will of a goddess. It had avenged the insult to Artemis quite adequately, but there was still the matter of the sacrifice, of virgin blood offered up to the weaver of moonlight. And so it paced now towards Boy William with hunger in its eyes and a feral piety in its heart.

Barely able to move, Mr. Caesar had just the wherewithal to take two steps forwards and place himself between the beast and Boy William, although how much protection he expected his squishy mortal body to offer against the bulk of an apex predator I do not really know. Whatever his intended outcome, the tableau of the younger Mr. Caesar standing as tall as he could manage betwixt the boy and the bear was striking enough that it struck Captain James a fatal distraction.

Turning his eyes from his own enemy for just long enough to utter a frankly uninspired cry of "John," the captain was knocked at once to his knees by Lieutenant Reyne, too close to bring the point of his sword to bear but well placed to drive the pommel into the back of the captain's skull.

Whatever distress Mr. Caesar may have felt at watching his lover fall was swamped by the still greater distress of being charged by a third of a ton of fur, fangs, and flesh. With one hand he shoved Boy William backwards as far as he could while with the other he covered his eyes so that he would not need to look death in the face.

Thus he did not see the bear barrelling towards him, nor did he see Barryson charging past him in the opposite direction, his hair wild and his eyes wide and a war anthem of the old north on his lips.

On his own duelling ground in the shadow of the White Tower, Captain James had been equally expecting of death, but the lieutenant's blade had never fallen. Turning his head cautiously he saw what I had seen myself far better and far sooner: the lieutenant standing still, his hands raised, the elder Mr. Caesar behind him with a pistol.

"Put the sword down," he was saying, "and call off your men and your beast."

The beast was having more difficulty with Barryson than it had with the major—the initial charge had put a bayonet into its neck below the jawline and it was losing blood by the moment. But bears, dear reader, bears are large and strong. And courage will take a man only so far.

The lieutenant's command to stand down came as the first rays of dawn crested the battlements of the tower, as the bear fell, and as Barryson fell beneath it.

In the end the battle had been short-lived and with mercifully few casualties, one of them nonhuman. The major was gone, of course, and several of the men in red had suffered wounds that put their odds of survival into the realm of card turns and coin tosses. Sal had taken a shot to the arm and Callaghan a cut to the face, but otherwise the Irregulars emerged intact.

Save Barryson.

He was still alive when the captain and Mr. Caesar reached him, though his arm was mauled past using and his chest streamed blood from deep gouges. And Mr. Caesar mouthed a silent thank you while Captain James offered a louder and less civil "You stupid bastard."

Barryson laughed through blood. "Fancied a fur shirt," he said. And then he said nothing else.

What remained of this encounter was a tedious mixture of emotion and logistics. The sun having risen, a sacrifice to Artemis was now impossible and thus the Iphigenians had little to gain by further resistance. Captain James saw them rounded up and, after seriously entertaining the suggestions from Sal and Jackson that they just be gutted and dumped in the river, instructed his men to deliver them to the Mithraeum where they might face military justice. While the stronger, more martially inclined men were taking care of this matter, Boy William and the Misters Caesar took steps to disentangle the bear from Barryson's body and to arrange for a coroner to be called.

They made a melancholy scene, for though the Irregulars had seen a great deal of death, it is not something mortals ever truly grow accustomed to, at least not when it comes for their own. For the sake of his men, and perhaps for Mr. Caesar, the captain kept a bold face on matters for as long as there remained enemies to be watched over, but Callaghan and Kumar kept vigil over Barryson's body while the others worked, and offered what words they could for the departed. Even Sal and Jackson, who had the least aversion to blood of all the company, took solace in one another, stood side by side, their arms about each other's waists and their heads inclined together.

For my personal tastes, I must say it all got rather mawkish. I began to feel an increasing desire to leave them to it. Besides, I had one more loose end to deal with.

Miss Caesar was in her room, still not sleeping, although this state was at least now attributable to anxiety rather than her utter transfiguration into an inorganic substance. Not bothering with my dog's guise, I appeared to her as I had after her first wish, all dash and charm.

"It is not done," she said, "for a gentleman to be alone in a lady's room."

"I am not a gentleman," I told her.

"You are certainly no lady."

"Quite so. I am neither or both. I am birdsong and sunlight. I am a dream."

Miss Caesar gave me a look that, in a different era, in a different context, would have very clearly expressed that she was tired of my shit. "I am weary," she said, "and I would know if my brother and father are well."

"They are," I told her, quite truthfully. I never lie, readers. Never ever. "As are most of the men. And the sacrifice to Artemis was prevented"—I cocked my head in a quizzical gesture—"which I suppose means that your king's armies will be disadvantaged relative to those of Napoleon, but I'm sure that will have no wider consequences."

Perhaps it was her recent experience with the Other Court, but Miss Caesar seemed quite immune to my efforts to get, as you mortals might say, inside her head. "Then," she said, "you are here for my third wish."

"Quite so."

"And if I choose not to make one?"

"Then I will wait."

She nodded, understanding. "And if I ever utter the words at any time in the future, you will take whatever I say as opportunity to toy with me, as your friend did."

There is little mortals can say to us at which we will take true offence, but I could not stand for being called a friend of the Lady. That would be to deny my fealty to my lord Oberon, which is, of course, absolute and unfailing and wholly deserved by his great wisdom, majesty, and glory. "She is no friend of mine," I said without hesitation. "We serve different masters. But otherwise yes, you are correct."

"Then …" Miss Caesar looked down at herself. She looked, to my wholly inexpert eyes, rather lovely in that moment. Whole and mortal, her cuts already healing. "Then I wish you well."

I was uncertain that I had heard her correctly. "I am sorry, what do you mean precisely?"

"I didn't think what I meant mattered. Don't you just take my words and make whatever you will of them?"

"It is a little more complicated than that," I protested. Although not too strongly, because in candour it was not very much more complicated.

"Then I am sorry if I have made things difficult. But that is my wish: I wish you well. It is a mortal pleasantry, and the most harmless wish I could think to make."

This was growing vexing. I had no particular desire to ensnare the girl in a net of her own words and drag her through blood and darkness with it, but I would have liked the option. "You could have had wealth," I told her. "Long life, happiness, love."

She nodded her agreement. "I could. But I have learned the hard way not to wish for things I do not need, or that I already have."

"‘I wish you well,'" I murmured. "You realise I can do nothing with that?"

"Might you not do whatever you want?" the lady ventured. "Albeit for yourself, rather than for me."

The thought galled me. I am a loyal servant of the Other Court, after all. I am a being defined by my function and my place and have never once harboured any secret desires for a different life. "You are a strange child, lady."

"And you are a very strange dog. But I think I am glad I met you."

I did not return the compliment. I said simply: "I wish you well," and permitted myself to fade from her sight.