Prunella reached blindly for a chair and collapsed in it, burying her face in her hands. Zacharias was anxious to be discreet, and for a while he absorbed himself in the study of her bookshelves, noting with disapproval the number of novels and frippery magazines with which they were laden. But Prunella was silent for so long that he grew concerned.
“Are you quite well?” he said.
Prunella raised a startled dark gaze to his face. Her eyes were dry.
“She looks just like me!” she said.
It was so prosaic an observation Zacharias was tempted to laugh, but it was only the truth. The resemblance was remarkable: the shape of the eyes, thin lips and decided chin were all the same, but the most striking similarities went beyond the physical. Prunella’s mother had looked the great woman. So, too, would Prunella appear when she was older, refined in the fire of an indomitable will.
“Your mother’s ability accounts for yours,” said Zacharias. “The Grand Sorceress of Seringapatam! I suppose it is hardly a surprise she did not pursue you to England,” he added absently, though he regretted his words at once.
If Prunella’s mother had been at Seringapatam at the time of its fall then it was, indeed, no surprise that she had not come to recover her child, even a decade after the conquest. But it had been neither kind nor tactful to say so.
“I expect she has had a great deal of business to attend to,” he said hastily. “I do not wonder that she has not had an opportunity to get away.”
“Oh, indeed!” said Prunella, with an appearance of nonchalance. “I expect she has been busy.”
She went to the window. It was a transparent enough device to prevent his seeing her face, and Zacharias was not surprised that when Prunella spoke, it was to change the subject.
“I suppose Lady Wythe will have risen by now,” she said. “I ought to return to my room, or Lucy will think I have eloped again. Will yoube quite safe at the Society today? Ought my familiars and I to come, in case those wretched thaumaturges take it into their heads to carry out the Hallett after all?”
“I hope you will come, though I have no concerns regarding my safety,” said Zacharias. “Lord Burrow is opposed to the Hallett, and Midsomer need not worry us overmuch. Now that Mrs. Midsomer is gone with Georgiana Without Ruth, I cannot think him capable of anything great in the way of magic. As for his intrigues, I fancy I have a surprise that will throw anything he might try into the shade. I shall need your agreement to carry it out, however.”
“Oh, certainly!” said Prunella. “I should be glad to help. I am very much obliged to you, Zacharias. I could not have deciphered my mother’s message alone, and I knew I could repose the utmost confidence in you. I knewyouwould never betray my secrets.”
Prunella’s gratitude was wholly sincere, but she spoke, too, out of careful calculation. Zacharias did not blame her. They both knew what a secret it was that he now possessed.
•••
YOUcannot now deny where your duty lies,” said Sir Stephen.
Zacharias had stopped by his study to collect his thoughts and pick up some papers before the meeting at the Society. He was not altogether surprised to find Sir Stephen lying in wait for him.
“No, indeed,” said Zacharias. He had not had much time to consider the morning’s revelation, but its implications had been immediately obvious to him.
Sir Stephen was so excited he did not notice the tone of Zacharias’s voice, but continued:
“To think that England has been in such want of familiars for decades, when a single kingdom in India has been hoarding seven eggs! Their magicians are famously close, but I had no notion how much they concealed. What the Society will say when you tell them!Who knows what other wonders lie hid in that vast subcontinent? And where else might we not find similar riches? Why not the deserts of Araby, the steppes of Mongolia, the Malay archipelagoes? We must begin the survey at once. It will take time, ingenuity, perseverance. If Miss Gentleman’s mother is an example of foreign magicians, we will have considerable difficulties to contend with—deceptions to penetrate, evasions to circumvent, defiance to overpower.”
“I gave Miss Gentleman my word I would not tell anyone,” said Zacharias.
Sir Stephen had been pacing the room in his flurry of spirits, but this stopped him in his tracks. He turned on Zacharias a look of amazement.
“If I did not know better I would accuse you of being bewitched by a pair of snapping black eyes,” he said. “Even you must admit the girl has not a right to all the familiars of India. Indeed, it is bad enough that she has three; it is a breach of the Society’s rules for any magician to possess more than one familiar, as you very well know. The girl will pay for it if ever the Society discovers her crime.”
“I know it,” said Zacharias.
“But you may save her by this revelation, Zacharias,” said Sir Stephen. “And yourself, for it would be such a stroke as no Sorcerer Royal has ever managed. What are Miss Gentleman’s three familiars to a continent’s worth of familiars’ eggs? It overturns all our assumptions.”
Zacharias shook his head. He was calm, quite calm, and yet his pulse beat high in his throat. He had grown practised in disagreeing with Sir Stephen since his death, but they had never diverged so far before.
“Did not you hear the Grand Sorceress?” he said. “‘The foreigners will not touch them’—and so Mrs. Gentleman murdered her husband, and enchained the secret of unlocking the eggs to Prunella’s very blood. She foresaw what would occur if Europe were to discover herpeople’s wealth: the interference in their affairs; the miserable increase of bloodshed and oppression.”
Sir Stephen went white, then red.
“Need I remind you that you are England’s Sorcerer Royal?” he said. “Your title will on occasion demand the exercise of power—even, where necessary, what you are pleased to call oppression and bloodshed. But that is the nature of the office. You are called upon to advance the good of this nation, and none other. Your allegiance is not to magic alone, nor to all humanity, but to your own portion of humanity, to the country that nurtured you—”
“And enslaved my parents?” said Zacharias.
