Chapter Two
London
Jasper Thornton, nephew of the Duke of Findlater—and his probable heir if an unreliable magical gift ever amounted to anything—had one of those annoying premonitions that told him nothing.
Something was happening. Something that would, at some undisclosed time in the future, have an unknown impact on him.
That was it. No specifics.
Could it be the war with France? On the continent, the battle mage Napoleon continued to conquer territory after territory, and everyone knew he had his eye on Great Britain.
There were even rumors that the man was a dragon lord, or that he had a dragon lord in his court—and if that were true, Britain was doomed.
Everyone Jasper knew was desperately hoping it was just French propaganda and would come to nothing, as the rumors several years ago about a Welsh dragon lord had also come to nothing.
It was probably untrue. Dragon lords were vanishingly rare, though the Welsh did have a very powerful mage who had taken the name Emrys, after the dragon lord the English called Merlin.
In fact, the only reason there was more than one in the entire world was that they lived for hundreds of years. None of the six currently alive was a European, and the one in Ethiopia, the youngest of the six, had already passed his first century mark.
If it were not for the war, Jasper would visit one of them.
Perhaps they had lived long enough to know someone like him, with a powerful gift and no control.
But here in Europe, the war dominated everything, although in Findlater’s London mansion, life went on as usual.
Jasper had been begging to be allowed to go and fight.
Even if his magic was unpredictable and near useless, he could still swing a sword and shoot a gun.
But the duke refused permission, so here Jasper remained, useless gift and all.
He had still been in the nursery when he first worked magic—usually the sign of a strong gift.
However, it had never amounted to much. His ability to work a spell changed more frequently than the English weather.
His tutors used to complain that he was lazy, undisciplined, just not trying.
The duke ordered them to whip him, and that made it worse.
Thank goodness for Mr. Fellowes, the tutor who stayed. The tutor who realized that Jasper was trying as hard as he could to follow magical rules and practices that just didn’t fit his type of magic.
“It is not that Master Thornton does not know the spells, your grace,” Mr. Fellowes had told the duke.
“I have observed him closely. His words, his actions, his tone of voice—he does everything precisely as he has been taught, and the results are—at best—unpredictable. Your grace, the young master is strongly thaumadiversus, as those who tested him in childhood discovered. But he has a type of magic that does not work by any rules we have yet discovered. For example, a weather spell for a gentle rain might, in Master Thornton’s hands, give us a day of sunny weather or a thunderstorm, and we can have no idea which. ”
The duke had grumbled that such a gift was more like a curse, and Jasper was inclined to agree with him.
But Mr. Fellowes was confident there must be patterns and rules to be discovered, even with unexpected magic like Jasper’s.
“With further study and practice, my boy,” he had said, “I am hopeful you will learn to control your magic.”
Ten years later, Jasper was still trying.
He could reliably manage to start a fire now.
He could levitate long enough to walk over a puddle dry shod, provided it was not too wide.
He could cast a truth spell, at least well enough to know whether someone was being honest with him.
Though sometimes even that backfired, and the person he was questioning wanted to share their sins all the way back to the cradle.
Still, these were skills that most mages acquired in the first year after their magic initially manifested, after which they focused on their particular strengths.
Jasper did not appear to have any particular strengths.
Or, on different days, for unpredictable periods of time and with frequently undesirable results, he was good at a whole range of different gifts.
Weather working. Invisibility. Levitation.
Elemental mastery. Magical beast handling.
Scrying. Precognition. Translocation (of objects, sounds, and even himself—though he had given up on shifting living things when pieces of a pigeon he tried to translocate ended up in three different places.
He could only be grateful it hadn’t happened the time he translocated himself.) You named it, Jasper could do it. Sometimes.
Apparently, today was not his day for precognition. Something was happening, somewhere? How useful was that? It was very frustrating.
He might as well go and seclude himself in the tower they had given him in the ducal palace’s gardens, so he could mess things up without affecting anyone but himself.
He needed to read the grimoire Mr. Fellowes had sent him from one of the little principalities in Germany.
It might have a few clues about managing his magic.
*
Nettleford Grange
Millie could not help Delia. The little scullery maid who came instead had heard the gossip that was, apparently, streaking through the house and out into the estate.
Polly reported that Father had sent for the stable girl immediately after the birth, because the little unicorn was lashing out in panicked anger at everyone in the loose box.
But when he sent Millie in, the little unicorn had tried to kill her.
Fortunately, the animal was too small to do much harm in the seconds it took for Father to retrieve the girl.
“She has cuts and bruises, miss,” said Polly.
“The master is furious. He is threatening to have some of the stable hands beaten before he turns them off.”
Polly was still hovering by the door to the stall. She was not accustomed to horses, was nervous around the mare and terrified of the unicorn, and was not large enough to wield a pitchfork or even one of the big stable brooms.
She was, however, another pair of hands, and the unicorn was calm in her presence, so she was still a virgin.
And she should be, for Polly could not be more than ten.
And Millie was only fourteen, and a good girl.
Delia’s surge of rage at what must have happened to her friend disturbed the unicorn.
He went rigid, raising his head and staring at the door as if to seek out whatever was upsetting her.
This would not do. Delia murmured soothingly, driving her anger back, focusing on her small charge.
He looked up at her, his eyes changing from red to purple and finally to a brilliant sapphire blue the same color as the pretty shimmer that surrounded him.
“There, now, Sapphire,” she said to him. “That’s better.”
“She is very pretty,” said Polly.
“He,” Delia corrected. “Unicorns are all boys. Isn’t he sweet? Would you like to pat him?”
Polly cast a hurried glance at the door, shut firmly behind her. “Won’t he attack me, Miss?”
“Unicorns attack men and also women who smell of men,” said Delia, calmly. “He likes nice little girls like you. Come closer, Polly. He won’t hurt you.”
It took time, but eventually, Delia had little Sapphire settled in Polly’s lap, the two staring blissfully into one another’s eyes.
Delia moved a few steps away, and Sapphire did not react. “Polly, I am going to take Lightning out,” Delia said. “She needs to have the man-smell washed away so that Sapphire can feed.”
Polly nodded without taking her eyes from the unicorn.
Lightning followed Delia from the loose box easily enough. She led the horse through a stable that was empty of all the usual bustle. Several horses watched her, as did the stable cat, but the place had been cleared of stable hands.
They were outside, scurrying back and forth from the little building that was occasionally used to quarantine horses. Father was directing the work, but came striding toward her as soon as she emerged into the courtyard. He stopped several paces away.
“Cordelia, how is the colt?”
“Calm, for the moment. Lightning needs to be washed, sir, so the colt can feed.”
“Good, good. I’ll have someone draw water. You’ll have to wash and groom the mare, Cordelia. I’m setting the maids to cleaning the quarantine house now the boys have finished clearing it, and you can move the mare and her foal there once it is ready.”
Even as he spoke, here came the younger maids, a whole group of them under the housekeeper’s command, hurrying toward the quarantine house with buckets, dusters, brooms, and mops.
“Thank you, Father. He will be calmer if he has a place away from the main stable block.”
At that moment, Sapphire screamed his rage once more.
Both Lightning and Delia whirled around to face whatever danger the little colt had detected.
Before they could make a move toward the stable, the air in front of them shimmered and suddenly Edgar stood there in the center of the shimmer, his face panicked and then bewildered as he looked around the courtyard.
Sapphire’s rage cut off. “I need to check the unicorn,” Delia said, tossing Lightning’s bridle toward Father’s hand. She circled her brother and reentered the stable.
Behind her, she could hear Father asking Edgar what had happened.
Delia could make a guess. Edgar had sneaked into the stable, and tried to see the unicorn, who had attacked.
He must have escaped by magic, but whose?
Polly had never shown any signs of magic, or she would not be a scullery maid, and no one else was inside the stable block. Could it have been the unicorn?
The little colt was still purple-eyed, standing as if on guard in front of Polly, who was pressed against the wall in the corner. It took Delia another ten minutes to calm them both down.
Back outside again, she found Lightning waiting for her, tethered to a ring, with buckets, brushes, combs and linen clothes set neatly beside her. No human was in sight. No stable hands. No Father. No Edgar.
She set to work washing the mare. Wet and soap the horse all over.
More water to rinse. Then scrape the animal with the edge of a flattened stick to remove as much water as possible and finally, rub with a dry cloth.
She was on to the final wipe by the time the housekeeper emerged from the quarantine house, followed by the maids.
The procession returned to the house, so they must be finished.
That was good. In a few minutes, she would be able to take Lightning directly to her new lodgings, then bring Sapphire over.
She settled Lightning and checked again on Polly and Sapphire—they had both fallen asleep, the unicorn in the girl’s arms, the girl curled in the hay with her cheek against the unicorn’s neck.
Good. Delia still had work to do. The housekeeper and her workers had cleaned the building and filled the trough in the loose box with water, but they had not spread fresh hay nor had they fetched the feed the mare would need to produce good milk.
Delia found a handcart and loaded it with hay from the side of the stack, away from the front where the men had been working. Or lounging with a jug if the stable master wasn’t around to clip their ears and send them off to another task.
She was pulling the cart across the courtyard when a loud sound—a crack or a bang—drew her attention to the house.
Up on the third floor, a window had suddenly disappeared.
It was completely gone, frame and glass.
And from the rectangular hole that remained, a stream of stars in rainbow colors cascaded down the side of the building, winking out before they reached the ground.
“Edgar!”
The frustrated shout was in Father’s voice. Did that mean Edgar was responsible for making the window vanish? And for the fall of stars?
Apparently so, for the next shout—more of a wail—was from Edgar. “I can’t help it! Father, I can’t help it!” Another shower of stars punctuated the complaint.
Behind Delia, the deep-toned bell in the stable tower sent out its solemn sound.
She turned to look as the chimes repeated, each strike tripping over the echoes of the last. It was noon.
In the course of one morning, Nettleford Manor had experienced a string of once-in-generation happenings.
A dragon, a unicorn, and a magical awakening.
Delia could only hope for no more surprises.