Free Elementary by Mercedes Lackey Page B

one by one: angry words first growled, then shouted. A door slamming on home and family. Nearly everything Christopher had was at Lord Edward Clive’s sufferance, whether he wanted to admit to it or not. That hadn’t mattered before, but now . . .
    He left . . .
    â€œGo on,” he said wearily.
    â€œThere’s this antiquity of a singular design, see,” Keeling explained, “what went into the drink and can’t be fetched up by conventional methods. It needs fetchin’ up by those of a watery nature who just might be persuaded by a flash, young cunning-man if he was to ask them in just the right manner.”
    â€œYou need the undines to bring it to the surface, and you want me to convince them,” Christopher interrupted.
    Keeling chuckled. “Straight to the point, just like your daddy.”
    â€œWhere did it fall?”
    â€œInto the Thames off Blackfriars, well beyond the low tide mark.”
    Christopher raised his head to stare at the man as if he’d gone mad. “You can’t possibly be serious?”
    â€œDeadly serious.”
    â€œThe undines don’t enter London waters. They haven’t for well over a century.”
    â€œNo, they don’t,” Keeling agreed. “Not since fair Prince Henry died from the typhoid fever he caught sportin’ with them in the Thames in 1612. But it’s no bootless errand, this. If the cunning man were flash and beautiful, and as beloved of the watery ones now as he was when he was a child, and if he were to start in a particular spot upriver where they’ve been known to frequent, and was to draw them down to Blackfriars with him swimmin’ in their midst, and them wrapped in his shields with him, it could be done.”
    â€œWestminster Bridge is the closest they ever
frequent
,” Christopher shot back. “And any cunning man witless enough to try and swim to Blackfriars would sicken before he’d gone a hundred yards. A school of undines couldn’t keep him healthy in that filthy cesspool, no matter how beloved he might be.”
    Or how beloved he might have been,
his mind added bitterly.
    â€œOh, there’s ways to stay safe in any waters,” Keeling replied with a sly smile. “Ancient ways.”
    Christopher’s eyes narrowed. “You mean magical ways.”
    Keeling shrugged. “All it takes is a simple charm, one that even Prince Henry might have worn if he’d stopped to think of it.”
    â€œA charm won’t protect the undines.”
    â€œNo, but you can. I’ve seen you do it as a babe before you even knew you could do it. On the Madras docks you sent out a shield like a little tube and drew them right up to you through it, laughin’ the whole time.”
    He straightened as Cedric appeared, a ring of keys in his hand. “O’ course, if you’re happy lickin’ your half-brother’s boots for sixpence a week, I can’t help you. But I’d like to help you. When a man’s carried a little fellow on his shoulder, he gets to thinkin’ of hisself as a kind of godfather. But you ponder on it, now, Master Kit,” he added as the constable released him. “And if you change your mind, have the boy here get a message to me.”
    Angry words first growled, then shouted. A door slamming on home and family. An unbidden memory swimming before his eyes as he stormed across Queen Square, the memory of Uncle Neville and his father standing on the Madras docks together, deep in whispered conversation while another man lifted him high onto his shoulder. A sense of urgency spurned on by the scent of magic and a knot of grief and anger . . .
    You’ll never make it. One mouthful, and you’ll sicken, whatever Keeling thinks his charm might do,
his mind jeered.
You’ll sicken, and then you’ll drown. The undines won’t come. They won’t help. Just like they didn’t help