I spent the night at Bremor House. Thank God, when we returned from the club Bryce was already asleep, and Donald McLal had vanished somewhere on business. So we didn’t report the incident at the club, postponing the execution until morning.

  I woke to Burke shaking my shoulder. Despite a fresh suit and a clean-shaven face, my nephew looked somewhat worn.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” he said, letting out a cavernous yawn.

  “Morning…” I muttered, then asked the only reasonable question. “What?”

  “Knuckles is desperate to get home.”

  “And?”

  Morning was not conducive to long speeches. My mood had remained somewhere in yesterday, and today I would happily have skipped training and lain in bed for another hour…

  Stop! Skipping training was one of the signs of hard times.

  Well, as though things were going splendidly for me at the moment. Just splendid, damn it. I wasn’t going anywhere — I’d stay under the blanket. Only emerge for a couple of sausages and a cup of tea with milk.

  “Duncan!” Burke barked.

  “Hm?”

  “There! You’re awake. I haven’t slept all night, been racing round the city like a man stung.” To prove it, he yawned again. “Hold Knuckles back.”

  “Why?” I didn’t follow.

  “I’ll fetch a jug of cold water and wash you with it!” my nephew threatened.

  “I’m up, I’m up,” I grumbled, throwing off the blanket and rubbing my face. “What on earth do you need Knuckles for?”

  “The inspector from the City Department of Education is coming at noon. By then we need to re-register all the street urchins and redistribute them.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “They shy away from us, aren’t afraid of the girls, but they march in formation for Knuckles. The inspector’s very strict — some serious Dame. Last year she shut down two orphanages, dragged the management through the courts, and used the money recovered to open a new establishment.”

  “A Dame as in…?”

  “A lady-knight.”

  “Ha. I think I know who that is. Can’t recall the name.”

  “Kerry Rogers.”

  “That’s it.”

  Knuckles was itching to get home and attend to his usual duties. The floor hadn’t been washed that morning and Harry’s Royal hadn’t been polished, so we had to ring the wizard and ask once more for the loan of his man. Upon hearing the reason, Sir Harry behaved somewhat oddly, expressing a desire to pay a visit to Bremor House himself. I told him frankly it wasn’t the best time, but he promised not to interfere.

  Though the children had been registered and assigned rooms as they arrived yesterday, overnight they had managed to throw the entire building into chaos, start five fights, form new gangs and divide the floors into spheres of influence. The grown men from security were at first stunned by such impudence, and then restored order in their own way. Which meant donning half-beast visages, lighting particularly fearsome spells in their hands, and sweeping through the floors so thoroughly that the street rabble didn’t dare poke their noses out until morning.

  At dawn the slum cockroaches crawled out at the smell of fresh food and promptly began another uproar. One lad from Knuckles’ gang happened to be nearby and caught a blow to the face. Clint intervened, bared his teeth, swung his fists, and within five minutes had the crowd standing in three neat columns before three enormous cauldrons from which our people were ladling soup. The men were impressed and asked Albert McLal to assign the boy to assist them. Donald’s father couldn’t persuade him personally, so he sent Burke to fetch me instead.

  As for my cousin, Burke had spent the night at Olivia’s house, at the editor-in-chief’s home, and at the offices of the Herald itself: arguing with Olivia, intimidating her editor, and forcing them to rewrite the article several times to ensure nothing superfluous made it into the morning edition. He and the girl had agreed that today’s issue would contain only a couple of hints that werewolves were present in the city and that the Bremors had begun hunting them. In tomorrow’s edition, once the Farnell Daily confirmed the information and published a similar piece, the Herald would fire off a major article laden with piquant details. Thus the yellow rag would, for at least a few days, stand shoulder to shoulder with the city’s leading headline paper, and the name of Olivia Foxtrot would carry considerably more weight than before.

  Burke returned home with a fresh issue of the newspaper, still reeking of printing ink. It was about half past five, but Bryce was already up, working with Albert, so my cousin went straight to them with the article. Fortunately, the Head approved the issue. Seizing the favourable moment, Burke told him about yesterday’s conflict, trimming the sharper edges. Thanks to him, Bryan and I weren’t even reprimanded, so now we owe him, and I don’t mean the few hundred he paid the club owner.

  After giving a brief account of the night, Burke first took me to Knuckles, then handed me over to Albert and my uncle, and finally went off to sleep. In all the commotion I hadn’t realised where Donald had disappeared to, so I asked.

  It turned out that yesterday’s raid against the werewolves had not been as successful as it first appeared. When the euphoria of an easy, bloodless victory subsided, it became clear that the boy the werewolves had abducted had not been found. Donald, with a rather modest team, was combing the slums in search of him. The lad’s younger brother had been dosed with sleeping draughts and isolated from the other children so he wouldn’t frighten them with tales of werewolves. Not a single girl from the Beauties, the ones who had been present at the children’s meeting with the werewolves, had come to the orphanage, though other girls had joined us and, in the night’s turmoil, had even managed to secure an entire floor for themselves.

  I learned all this in passing while Knuckles, under Albert’s supervision, used his knuckledusters and a liberal supply of strong language to organise the crowd of street urchins into the now-familiar three columns. The clan girls, together with members of Knuckles’ former gang, quickly conducted a second registration, sorting the children by age, weight and sex. Each group was assigned supervisors drawn from the adult Bremorians, the younger girls, and Knuckles’ lads — the latter as examples of reform. A paradox: for all the envy and respect Knuckles inspired among the rabble, his boys themselves provoked nothing but contempt. Perhaps because they hesitated to use their fists and were somewhat overawed by the sight of a snarling, quarrelsome crowd.

  Before the inspector’s arrival, the children were to be washed, changed and resettled; they had scattered throughout the house, whereas in reality they were meant to occupy only the three floors prepared for them.

  A separate problem was a group of seven older boys, sixteen or seventeen. All of them had held prominent positions in their gangs and were ready to seize the palm from any leader who showed the slightest sign of weakness. They had subjugated the crowd and divided the floors among themselves. I have no doubt that at least half of them had a corpse to their name. Perhaps more than one. It was with them that Knuckles encountered the main difficulties. Matters had gone as far as grievous bodily harm, and when the juvenile gangsters realised they couldn’t take Sparrow, with his technical boxing and excellent amulets, on their own, they began plotting. The fools hadn’t reckoned on the fact that there were plenty of shifters among the Bremors, listening to the children without pause. So their little mouse-scurrying did not go unnoticed.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Reforming this contingent was, to put it mildly, a dubious undertaking, and Albert would gladly have handed the embittered youths over to the police. But it was too late: we had promised to shelter everyone, and each of the seven had younger ones pleading for them. Whether that was genuine loyalty or coercion from the older lads, I don’t know. The fact remained: the problem existed and had to be dealt with. Before the clan fighters, the seven groveled like beaten dogs before the leader of a pack, instantly turning into meek lambs, so Albert found nothing better than to dump the matter on me. I was roughly their age, he said; it would be easier for me to draw them out.

  And then what? Beating their faces in wasn’t an option. I’d lose the reputation I’d gained thanks to Knuckles. So I had to employ a wizard’s chief weapon — his brains. I didn’t need to fight them, nor even truly frighten them, though that would probably be unavoidable. I merely had to demonstrate the difference in our capabilities so that any desire to measure themselves against me would evaporate of its own accord.

  For the demonstration I chose one of the classrooms prepared and furnished with single desks on the ground floor. Given resources and time, even a mediocre wizard can show a more gifted opponent the price of cheese; as for powerful wizards like Harry, they could play squash with their adversaries. I’m no Harry, but my opponents weren’t Massai warlocks either, merely a handful of vicious adolescents. A single casting of Majesty of the Mountains, with its mental pressure, would have been more than enough, but that spell still eluded me, so I would have to make do with Petrification. The question was how to ensure all the troublemakers fell under the spell at once. A vast seal? I had yet to master aerial script, so that was out of the question. If I drew something similar on the floor or ceiling, the rabble would never step into it, and it wouldn’t be nearly as impressive.

  An idea struck me. I took a different approach, leaving only nine desks in the room. Exactly seven would have been too suspicious, while all twenty were beyond my capabilities. This way there was even the illusion of choice. To ensure every street kid fell under the spells, I inscribed them on the undersides of the desktops and along both windowsills. I had no doubt my ‘pupils,’ in a spirit of rebellion, might well plant themselves there too. All the seals were linked to a control point I placed beneath the teacher’s desk. A light push of power, and my little sparrows would be firmly glued to their chairs.

  The work took me about an hour and, since I had used ordinary ink for the diagrams, I had roughly the same amount of time left to carry out the plan, otherwise the magic from half a dozen earth reservoirs would simply dissipate. Not a small sum wasted. Luckily, I had warned Albert in advance and, the moment I finished, gave him the signal. McLal cleared the entire floor for me, while Knuckles’ lads scattered through the orphanage and, ten minutes later, began bringing in those causing trouble.

  By then I was idly paging through a spellbook. I couldn’t rule out my plan going awry, so as a precaution I had cast Acceleration, Precision, and Strength. Along with the last, I also held Petrification ready in my left hand. To a couple of urchins in identical cheap suits it looked like strange passes over an open book, but I soon snapped it shut and laid it beside me.

  Knuckles’ boys brought in the gang leaders one by one, asked for my instructions, and after receiving permission withdrew. That had been deliberate — to underline my importance. Soon there were four of them, while I remained alone. Whispers began. With the fifth arrival, a minor scuffle broke out over a seat in the back row. One lad flashed a broad knife, another a sharpened nail. They didn’t use them, merely showed them, watching for my reaction. I hoped they saw nothing.

  The sixth to arrive was a girl — far from delicate: rough hands, blunt features, a crooked nose, cropped hair, and a sturdy build. Her appearance was greeted with whistles and jeers, which she returned in kind, trading barbs easily with the others.

  At that moment Knuckles brought in the last and most troublesome participant in my little educational effort. A tall, broad-shouldered lad, a head taller than Knuckles, with the same crooked nose as the girl and a fresh black eye beneath his left eye.

  I cut their exchange short, rose from behind the desk, adjusted my jacket and said,

  “Since everyone’s here, do take a seat, gentlemen.”

  Jessie, being closest, slipped into a desk in the second row. Only the front seats remained free, but Lenny, whom Knuckles rightly considered the most dangerous of the seven, merely snorted and headed for the windowsill instead, settling there with his arms folded across his chest in open defiance.

  Knuckles didn’t like that.

  “Oi, Bulldog…”

  A gesture from me silenced him.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Sparrow.”

  My formality towards Knuckles drew sniggers. One of the boys pulled a pompous face and mouthed “Mis-ter Spar-row,” while the rest settled for contemptuous chuckles. Each of them was trying to prove himself top dog in the pack, acting by the same simple law: the strong live off the weak; the weak either submit or fall. Knuckles submitted, so in their eyes he was weak. The fact that he could have flattened any one of them individually was conveniently ignored.

  I paid the mockery no mind and stepped slowly out from behind the desk, staying close enough to slam my fist down when needed.

  “We’re not in class yet, so we can allow ourselves a little freedom. But once lessons begin, that won’t do.”

  Another round of laughter answered me. They were beginning to take me for a fool.

  Excellent! I continued calmly, “You gentlemen are causing problems. Which raises a question: why are you here?”

  The lad with the knife in the back row twirled the blade idly.

  “To reform… and all that,” he said with a shrug.

  Knuckles barely held himself back.

  “Gentlemen, and of course, the lady, reform is impossible without order. And the ‘all that’ must remain in your former life.”

  “Oh my, my lord, you say such clever things!” Crooked-Nose girl exclaimed in mock admiration, batting her eyelashes. She propped her elbow on the desk and rested her chin on a fist with skinned knuckles. “How could the likes of us possibly understand you? We haven’t attended academies.”

  “I’ll explain,” I promised, swinging myself up to sit on the edge of the desk. “Step forward, please.”

  Six throats managed to create the illusion of a crowd: cheers, whistles, even applause. Crooked-Nose did not refuse. She came to the front and gave an exaggerated curtsey.

  “Just like a star pupil. Tell me, my lord — do you like them sweet and studious, or a bit wicked? I can manage either.”

  “Oi! Do you want a man or a rich little lordling?” someone dared to shout.

  “Shut your mouth!” Knuckles snapped at once, only spurring them on.

  I ignored the remark and asked the girl to turn and face the class, to stand straight. She pulled faces, striking ridiculous poses. I beckoned Sparrow over, instructing him with a glance to take his place beside her. Crooked-Nose stiffened, and so did the boys. Sparrow was clearly associated, in their minds, with beatings. Yet no one left his seat. Excellent.

  “Kindly look at these gentlemen,” I said.

  Her eyes flicked towards the desks, and I released the spell that had already numbed my left hand. Petrification locked her body at once, but the pose was unstable, and she began slowly tipping sideways. Sparrow caught her before she could bend that crooked nose any further.

  The rabble braced for a fight.

  “Support the young lady, Mr. Sparrow. Here is your example, my dear, of why order is essential. Look at these fine youths, you know them better than I. Five minutes ago they were quite lively in their discussion of your charms. Theoretically, if Mr. Sparrow and I were not adherents of propriety and order, and were to leave you in this state alone with them…”

  I let her imagination do the rest. Judging by her eyes, the prospect unsettled her more than she would ever admit.

  “Sluts…” one of them muttered.

  I activated every seal at once.

  The big lad on the windowsill pitched forward. I lunged and caught him by the shoulders just before he hit the floor. He still cracked his forehead, but I saved him from breaking his neck. The petrified body had to be hauled to the teacher’s chair, from the floor he might have spotted the markings beneath the desks and along the sill. I would need to sand them away later.

  “As I was saying, gentlemen, no true gentleman lays hands upon a lady. Silence, I take it, means agreement,” I added dryly. “You are accustomed to violence, but believe me, you have not yet seen real strength. I do not mean myself, do not flatter me. In this clan there are warlocks who have slain master vampires with a single blow. Almost any Bremorian in this city, man or woman, could crush you like a gnat. Appreciate the restraint they show you. They treat you gently only because they choose to. You have a genuine chance to step out of the vicious circle you’ve fallen into. Not to sell yourself, my dear, risking a belly from a dock labourer or some passing sailor. Not to steal, boys, hoping your partner won’t stick an awl in your kidney over a couple of pounds. Not to die like dogs in an alley. End this petty scurrying. We are still offering you a chance.”

  I was not satisfied with the speech. I doubted they took away anything beyond the simple conclusion that Bremors were to be feared.

  I lifted Petrification from the girl alone, an example that a lady ought to be treated with courtesy, and left the boys as they were. Let them think. I did not, however, leave them unattended. Sparrow remained to watch them. The last thing we needed was slit throats on the eve of the inspector’s visit.

  With that task complete, I fully intended to return to my bed. But onto the square before Bremor House a Royal rolled, clumsily, like a pregnant cow. Which meant Harry was at the wheel. And while I had nothing against my teacher, the red-haired creature in the passenger seat gave me both a nervous twitch and heartburn at once.