Phoenix and Ashes

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Copyright ©2004 by Mercedes R. Lackey. All rights reserved.

Jacket art by Jody A. Lee DAW Books Collectors No. 1306

DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Book designed by Elizabeth M. Glover

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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First Printing, October 2004 123456789

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—MARCA REGISTRADA

HECHO EN U.S.A.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

To Janis Ian; amazing grace

Acknowledgments

When I needed to populate the village of Broom and Longacre Park, the denizens of the Dixon's Vixen bulletin board sprang to my aid by volunteering to be scullery maids, war-heroes, or villains as I chose. So if the names of the inhabitants are not consistent with the conventions of 1917, that is why.

And

Thanks to Richard and Marion van der Voort (www.atthesignofthe dragon.co.uk), who vetted my historical and colloquial accuracy.

And

To Melanie Dymond Harper, who, when I lost my map and pictures of Broom, went out into wretched weather to recreate them for me.

1

December 18,1914

Broom, Warwickshire

HER EYES WERE SO SORE and swollen from weeping that she thought by right she should have no tears left at all. She was so tired that she couldn't keep her mind focused on anything; it flitted from one thought to another, no matter how she tried to concentrate.

One kept recurring, in a never-ending refrain of lament. What am I doing here? I should be at Oxford.

Eleanor Robinson rested her aching head against the cold, wet glass of the tiny window in the twilight gloom of her attic bedroom. With an effort, she closed her sore, tired eyes, as her shoulders hunched inside an old woolen shawl. The bleak December weather had turned rotten and rainy, utterly un-Christmas-like. Not that she cared about Christmas.

It was worse in Flanders, or so the boys home on leave said, though the papers pretended otherwise. She knew better. The boys on leave told the truth when the papers lied. But surely Papa wouldn't be there, up to his knees in the freezing water of the trenches of the Western Front. He wasn't a young man. Surely they wouldn't put him there.

Beastly weather. Beastly war. Beastly Germans.

Surely Papa was somewhere warm, in the Rear; surely they were using his clever, organized mind at some clerking job for some big officer. She was the one who should be pitied. The worst that would happen to Papa was that he wouldn't get leave for Christmas. She wasn't likely to see anything of Christmas at all.