Rogue Magic, Free Novel, Chapter 3

*This is the new free novel I’m posting here a chapter at a time.  For previous chapters, page back to two weeks ago.  This is pre-first-draft, as it comes out.  It is a sequel to Witchfinder which will soon be taken down (once edited) and put for sale on Amazon.  Meanwhile, if you donate $6 or more, I’ll get you a copy of Rogue Magic, once finished and edited, in your favored ebook format.  Of course, if you’re already subscribing to the blog at a level at which you get whichever books come out that year, you don’t need to worry.   This book will acquire at least a temporary cover soon, I swear.  BUT not this week, because today I’m going to post this, then do a quick fly-by cleaning, then redesign my website and rearrange stuff here too.*

A Wolfe At The Door

 

Jonathan Blythe, Earl of Savage,

 

The problem, of course, was that I had moved out of Papa’s study.  Not that it was a problem, exactly that I’d moved out of his study.  What I mean to say was, after all, Papa had blown out his brains while sitting at the desk, and while the servants had done an impressive job of cleaning and I was sure I wasn’t likely to run across forgotten brain matter on the key to the accounts due drawer, yet I didn’t feel comfortable working there.

Truth be told, Papa and I had had no love lost between us.  He didn’t understand me and deplored my unsteadiness and I—

I used to think, when I was very young, that my father, unlike the other people around us, wasn’t quite real.  Oh, I knew there was elf blood in his line.  At least, from the time I was seven or so, I’d heard people mutter about it.  Usually, I’d heard people mutter about it while hiding under the drapery of occasional tables in mama’s sitting room during her at homes.  I don’t know if mama knew they muttered.  But anyway, I knew that Papa had elf blood, and also that this was supposed to make on distant, cold, and – somehow – unreliable.

But papa didn’t strike me as an elf, at least not like any elves I’d read about in the stories in the nursery.  Instead, he struck me as… glass.  I used to have dreams in which my father was a statue made of glass that had, inexplicably, come to life.  Not that I saw Papa very often.  In later years I’d wondered at how many children my parents had produced since, even when they were in the same house, they seemed to dislike intensely being in the same room.  And yet, from the look of my siblings, and also the fact that she is the most proper of scolds, I was almost sure Mama hadn’t improved the bloodline.

In any case, there was no love lost between Papa and I.  When I’d reached the age of reason, or at least the age to leave school and be able to set up my own establishment, he’d paid my bills without protest, and he’d furnished me whatever I needed or wanted, from decent horses to enough money to keep a couple of round heels happy and devoted to me.

But if you added up all the time we’d spent together in our lives, when we didn’t just happen to both be at the same party or dinner, I’d wager – and high too – that it wouldn’t come to more than ten hours, altogether.

Which just goes to show you.  There was no love lost, and no reason I should mourn him.  And certainly, while I had not held the pistol that blew out his  brains, I’d told him that I knew about his malfeasance, and given him reason to blow out his brains.

All the same, I’d found I couldn’t concentrate, attempting to work in the room where he’d breathed his last. Not that I believe in ghosts.  Or at least, I don’t believe I would see ghosts.  Mostly because I never have, and if I were going to start, it would probably be Freddie, who was like a brother to me and who died on that curricle race. But on the other hand, what a start it would be to have Papa’s sour tones call me from the perusal of estate documents with “Jonathan!”

So I’d moved my study, and I’d moved it to the only room I could think of, which would take all the bureaus and secretaries needed for the task to run the magic business, the manufacturies and the farms: the little receiving hall by the front hall.

And that was the problem.  As I came down the main stairs, at a clip, Ginevra’s letter clutched in my head, and trying to decide what spell to use on that writing, to discover my fair unknown, I found our butler arguing with someone.

“Milord will see you at a proper time,” the Butler was saying.  His name was Harving and he had been in our service since I was very young.  Hearing him talk of Milord always made me expect Papa to show up.  “Surely you don’t expect to be admitted without an appointment.”

I stopped, halfway down the marble stairs, hesitating.  It was still in time, I thought, to escape back up those stairs.  For one, should it become known around town that I am up at shortly after cock’s crow, my reputation will be quite in shreds.  People will start referring to me as old somber sides, and probably demanding I live up to my station in life.  Worse, they might decide I need to get married and raise up a whole generation of Savages to my title.  Which, heaven forfend.

So I froze.  The person talking to Harving couldn’t possibly know me.  He looked like a rustic, with coarse dark hair which appeared to have been cut by the method of upending a bowl on one’s head and cutting anything that strayed beneath.  And he hadn’t shaved that day, if indeed the day before.

But he didn’t dress like a rustic.  His suit, though dark brown was of good cut and material and would not have disgraced a respectable merchant.

Still, he could not know me.  He did not look in the least like the sort of man to join the groups in which I ran.  And I was sure I’d never met him by himself.

I started to turn around, trying to make the movement natural.  The man was talking in a low rumble to Harving, and I could feel Harving’s stony rejection of him behind me.

But just as I turned, the man’s voice called out, “Milord!  Lord Savage.”

It took me about a second to realize that running like crazy up the stairs was not something an Earl could do.  It probably wasn’t something I should even have done as an Earl’s heir.  But this didn’t mean I had to like it.  I turned around and descended the rest of the stairs, in the most stony manner possible, folding Ginevra’s letter and putting it in my breast pocket.

The rustic was holding his hat and looking up at me as though I were his hope for salvation, and Harving was stonily disapproving, if of me or of the rustic didn’t bear thinking.  Being stonily disapproving was his default mode towards me, anyway.

“Yes,” I said, as I reached the bottom step and stood on it, to maintain the advantage of position over the two of them.  “And you are?  I don’t have the pleasure—”

“No, milor’” the rustic said, and his voice was cultivated, while bearing a trace of the North country.  “I’ve been traveling and there would not have been any occasion to have met you, though I have corresponded with you often since–  Since the unfortunate demise of your esteemed parent.  In fact I only recognized you from your resemblance to your grandfather, which is marked.”

“And you are?” I said, again, coldly.  If he’d corresponded with me often and often, he was likely one of our suppliers or managers, but which one?  There were a good fifty of the creatures.

“My name is Wolfe Merritt, Milor’”

I made a sound, because of course, Wolfe was our main manager, the man responsible for Blythe blessings.  I should in fact have met him, if I’d either given any attention to the business before Papa’s death, or if Merritt hadn’t been on some trip of inspection since papa died.

Which meant this was important business indeed, and Harving should have been standing on position.  I dismissed him with, “That will do, Harving,” and feeling Ginevra’s letter like a weight over my heart, I realized it would have to wait.  I turned to Merritt, “Come with me,” I said.  “Into my study.”

I’d had the study furnished in all new furniture, and it was all light and airy figured walnut.  The chairs were comfortable, too, because if someone was important enough to be admitted to my study, he wasn’t an adversary and, unlike Papa, I didn’t view everyone I dealt with as an enemy to be conquered.

“What will you have,” I said, sitting behind my desk and ringing for service.

“Nothin–  Nothing milor’.”

“Teetotaler?” I asked.

Something like a shadow went across his face, and his lip tried to lift in a smile.  “No, Milor’.  But your father didn’t like–  That is—”

“Forget my father,” I said.  “I’m doing my best to.  Now, what will you have?”

“Brandy, Milor’.  If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all.”  I approved of a man not afraid to drink brandy this early in the morning, and I relayed the order to the serving man who appeared.  Then I turned back to Wolfe, “You were on a visit of inspection to manufactories that were having some trouble, and I do not know why, nor what you found.  So perhaps you’d care to enlighten me?”

Wolfe drew in breath, puffed out his cheeks, then let it out with an explosive “Pah” sound.  “Well, milor’  That is the problem.  In fact, I don’t know…  That is, it started as something so uncertain that we couldn’t be sure, but then…  But it didn’t seem right, and your father was busy with… with other matters, and this left me to look into it.  I thought it was something to do with the spells we’d used last year not being quite right.  Sometimes you get flighty head magicians and—” He shrugged.

“Understood,” I said, though I actually understood very close to nothing.  Harving himself came in, gave me a disapproving look, and set two glasses and a decanter of brandy on a tray on my desk.  I dismissed him with a nod, and poured brandy for myself and Merritt.

As Harving closed the door behind him, Wolfe grabbed for the glass of brandy I extended him, tossed it back in a single gulp, looked at me with woebegone expression and said, “It’s gone rotten milord.”

“What?  What has?” I asked, wondering if there was a reason, after all, that Papa didn’t let Merritt drink.

“The Magic, milor’”

“What magic?  The spells we sent to the manufactories, or—”

“All of it,” he said.  He sighed.  “All of it.  All the spells sold by Blythe blessings, but the industrial magic sent to our manufactories too.  It’s all gone rotten.  Mostly it does what you expect, just oddly or weakly, but then there are times when a spell or powering magic will go… disastrously wrong.  There was that child in the factory in Liverpool who–  never mind.  It doesn’t bear describing.  But it can’t go on.”

I tossed my brandy down my throat, thinking of all of papa’s ill gotten gains going up the spout and leaving us destitute after all.  “I…”  I cleared my throat.  “What can have caused it?”

“A strain of rogue magic,” he said.  “Come from elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere?  You mean, one of our rivals?”  Despite everything my house had done to Seraphim Ainsling, I couldn’t see him taking revenge.  He was one of nature’s noblemen, was Seraphim.  Besides, he’d come out well enough, so why would he?

“No, milor’.  I mean another world.”