“Your reticule is the unicorn, and as for your pelisse—”
“It is I,” piped a tiny voice. The elvet was the only one of Prunella’s familiars that had learnt to speak in a human tongue. The unicorn and simurgh spoke only their own languages, and communicated with Prunella in thought.
“What are you doing?” said Zacharias. His spirits had begun to improve the moment they were out of doors, but now his voice sharpened, though he strove to keep it even. “Did not we agree upon the importance of keeping your familiars hidden?”
Prunella tried desperately to look solemn, but a smile would keep breaking through her gravity. The elvet’s high-pitched giggle could be heard in the vicinity of her pelisse.
“But that is the clever thing about it! They are completely hidden,” she said. “They have been so longing to see the world, and I could notthink of a way to contrive it, till Nidget hit upon the notion. Nidget is the one who understands shape-shifting, for unicorns and phoenixes do not as a rule, but it taught the others as a favour to me. They have learnt remarkably quickly, though the bonnet is not quite right. Tjandra refuses to be red, though it would be so much more becoming. He likes being a hat very well, however—it gives him an excellent vantage point for looking about himself.”
“Is it not possible to make you aware of the danger,” said Zacharias, “theterribledanger, of the familiars’ being detected? I have explained what public outrage it would cause if it were to be discovered that you possessed these familiars. Every effort would be made to separate you from them. And if you will not consider yourself or your familiars, consider me. My position would be untenable if it was revealed that I knew of your familiars, and did nothing to prevent their attachment to you.”
Prunella’s face grew stormy. “As if you could prevent it!”
Zacharias held her gaze until the colour rose in her cheeks, and she dropped her eyes.
“I know I could not. That would not signify to the Society,” said Zacharias. “They would consider the responsibility for the disaster mine. And it would be a disaster, Prunella—a disaster for which I would be called to account.”
Prunella rolled her shoulders as though she sought to shrug off the burden he had placed upon them. She said ungraciously:
“I am sorry.”
Zacharias looked at the small head still held defiantly high. He was shaken by a pang of he knew not what emotion—whether it were pity or admiration, he could not tell. His anger dissipated.
“It is my first concern that you—all of you—should be safe,” he said gently.
Prunella nodded, though she refused to look at him. In a low voice shorn of bravado, sounding quite unlike herself, she said:
“I like to have them by me. One feels less out of place.”
This took Zacharias aback. “Do you feel out of place?”
“Why, of course,” said Prunella. She paused. “I have never been among my own people, you know. At Mrs. Daubeney’s I did not quite belong with the girls, and the servants would not have me. I was not even Mrs. D’s, though I was there on her sufferance. Even now, when I am received with such cordiality, and scarcely go anywhere in London without meeting someone of my acquaintance... it is strange to know you would be cast off by the people who greet you so warmly, if they knew the whole truth about you.”
“There are advantages to being outcast,” said Zacharias. “One is set at liberty from many anxieties. There is no call to worry about what others will think, when it is clear that they already think the worst.”
“I suppose you ought to know,” said Prunella. “But you do not seem to benefit much fromyourliberty. Damerell says you are the most nice-conscienced, duty-bound fellow he knows.”
Zacharias smiled without mirth. His chief aim had always been that he should stand beyond reproach in word and deed, since his colour seemed to prove a ground for any allegation. He was content—or at least resigned—but he needed no reminder of how he was circumscribed.
“I am held by bonds of gratitude,” he said. The words were bitter on his tongue. “I was born a slave, you know, and should have passed my days in backbreaking labour if Sir Stephen had not taken notice of me. It was by the merest chance that we met. He was travelling on theMinervain the West Indies, conducting a study of maritime magic levels. He purchased me from the captain, brought me home to England, manumitted and educated me. He was persuaded that with instruction I would be capable of attaining the highest peaks of thaumaturgical achievement—that I might, in time, even become Sorcerer Royal myself.”
A curious sympathy had existed between Zacharias and Prunellasince the day they had first met, despite their differences in temperament and disposition, but there had also been constraint. Prunella was always on her guard, and Zacharias could not be completely easy around her—for more reasons than one, not all of which he wished to articulate to himself.
But today the restless energy that usually animated Prunella was tempered; the tension in her quick movements and ready speech was blunted. Zacharias realised that he had seen her calm and collected, speaking audacities with composure, but he had not seen her truly at ease. Perhaps she began finally to trust him.
“You must have been very young when you met Sir Stephen, for Lady Wythe is always talking of what you were like as a boy,” said Prunella.
“I was but an infant,” said Zacharias. He added, with some awkwardness, “I was travelling with my mother and father, who belonged to the captain of theMinerva.”
A fine line appeared between Prunella’s eyebrows. “Did not Sir Stephen purchase your parents as well?”
“No,” said Zacharias. “Presumably he did not discern the same potential in them.”
The statement brought up the old anger and confusion, followed by the accustomed guilt, that he should be so ungrateful as to resent the man who had rescued him from bondage. And yet he did resent Sir Stephen, even now.
“I don’t see why you feel obliged to him at all,” said Prunella. “What right had he to part you from your parents when you were so young?”
Her words seemed to echo Zacharias’s own thoughts, thoughts he had suppressed many a time, striving to feel the unclouded gratitude expected of him. What might his life have been, with a father and mother? It could not have cost Sir Stephen very much to purchase them as well—certainly not enough to strain his ample resources.How could his benevolence have extended so far as to move him to free Zacharias, but no further?
