Chapter 5: Magic

It was pleasing to see that there were such things as proper knights in shining armour after all, not just arrogant heavily-armed bullies. Admittedly this one wasn't perfect. Some of Ancelyn's comments made Kelly want to hit him over the back of the head but that wasn't entirely his fault. He couldn't help what his society was like. He volunteered to "escort" her around to see the sights and, seeing as Ace and the Doctor had vanished into thin air (Hopefully not literally), she accepted. He even lent her his cloak which stank awfully of horse hair but it concealed her tunic. Allowing the knightly disguise to dissolve was, in all honesty, a relief. To add credibility to her new adopted persona, she let her hair fall freely and hoped to God it would not smell of horse later.

After he got them lost for the second time, he admitted he was not a local either. "A week or more's ride to the south. I came for the tournament as have many knights from across the land."

"It's quite a turn out," Kelly agreed. After receiving a puzzled frown, she explained, "There certainly are a lot of knights. I'm a bit shocked at how many. There's at least two dozen."

"More than twice this many again did not come," he told her before lowering his voice. "Many distrust the Lady Morgaine. There are tales that she keeps some... creature in the dungeons of the keep."

Kelly smiled. "You don't believe the stories?"

"Nay, I do," he replied earnestly. "No good comes of bewitching a creature of the Fey. Better to keep distant from them lest you catch their attention."

She tried not to laugh. The superstitions of this time and their fear of faeries and trolls, of bad air and black cats; she had always thought the medieval times were fixated on the concept of destined doom. The sincerity on his face showed he truly believed in the myths and as much as Kelly longed to enlighten him and correct his baseless fears, it was not her right to. If he wanted to believe in magic and sorcery, let him. Eventually science will grow to explain everything.

She smiled. "But you came anyway. Very courageous of you."

He beamed with pride. "Any opportunity to fight, Lady Kelly. I came at my lord's request to represent my comrades at arms," he went on. "Tis an honour to try my blade against others. Were I able to journey across the ocean, who knows what warriors I would meet and hone my edge against."

"I'm sure you'll go there someday," she reassured him. "Surely a boat trip couldn't be any more expensive than a piece of armour or the repair of a sword."

Ancelyn shook his head. "Not boats. The crossing is too rough. Few vessels pass between here and the other shore. Too costly."

Not boats? Then what? Kelly wondered.

"You have not seen an ornithopter?" he asked, looking a bit bewildered. "They are most magnificent, travelling through the sky like birds."

Kelly blinked.

"They fly, high above the clouds, across the ocean." The conviction in his voice indicated he was adamant he was telling the truth. "You do not have them back in your land?"

Well yes but that's because they belong in my time period, unlike yours, she thought. It simply isn't possible for this day and age. "How do they fly?" she asked to humour him.

"Using these I believe," called a familiar voice.

Kelly and Ancelyn turned. The Doctor was a few feet away holding a bizarrely shaped rock in the palm of his hand.

"You were right, Kelly. The lanterns, most definitely off." He indicated at the rock. "They do not use candles but these."

"The magi stones," stated Ancelyn as if that were obvious.

"Magic stones," the Doctor translated. He turned the stone over in his hand. "They appear to emit some kind of light but where is the power coming from?"

"Magic stones," repeated Kelly. "Don't be stupid. Magic doesn't exist."

Her head whipped around when Ancelyn started roaring with laughter.

"What's funny?"

A grin was plastered to his face. "Surely you jest."

"I seem to be the only one making any sense," Kelly replied as she noticed Ace and the Doctor smirking knowingly.

They weren't just playing along with Ancelyn's beliefs; they were actively supporting them. It felt like they were all ganging up on her, sharing their illogical belief in something science had disproven time and time again. Admittedly Ace had regarded quite a few gadgets of Polly's as being magic but she knew that it was just a form of technology she hadn't seen before... right?

She crossed her arms. Ace recognised that look and, thoughtfully, began to explain. "The TARDIS doesn't just travel through time. It does space too, but not just our Universe. Sometimes we end up in different ones."

"Different Universes?" asked Kelly.

"Other dimensions," the Doctor corrected but nodded in agreement with Ace's general description. "In your Universe, magic is indeed not real. For the most part," he added in the tiniest voice that Kelly wasn't sure if that was what he'd actually said or not. "In this Universe," he went on, "magic does exist in the way electricity exists in yours. It is everywhere, and they have found ways of harnessing it."

He sounded somewhat convincing but Kelly had her doubts. It was preposterous. There's no such thing as magic. Magic was only a word used to describe a science that had not yet been explained, a term used for parlour tricks and sleight of hand. All she had seen were lanterns which, apparently, had these rocks inside them. They could just be the fuel source, like coal.

"But they are," the Doctor began when she mentioned it. "These stones store this magic. Call it energy if that makes it easier for you to understand. They release this energy when tapped."

Kelly huffed, feeling belittled, however trying to imagine it as energy did help. It made a great deal more sense than this whole 'magic' idea and focused on the technological aspects of the stones. "So they're batteries," she stated.

The Doctor beamed broadly. "Very good."

Getting a bit fed up with being treated as a student in class, she crossed her arms. "So what charges them?"

"Erm..."

Kelly raised an eyebrow. No, could it be? Really? Mark the date. The know-it-all Doctor lost for words, unable to answer a question, unable to explain something.

The Doctor began muttering something that sounded complicated under his breath but Kelly was not fooled. She was enjoying this too much to ignore his embarrassment and allow him to pass off his lack of answer as being too complicated for her to understand.

Ace was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. She raised a hand to her mouth and stage whispered, "He doesn't know."

The Doctor shot her a dirty look and rapped his umbrella on Ace's head. She ducked and protected herself from another tap. She stuck her tongue out at him and he nudged her nose with one finger. These odd exchanges continued to baffle Kelly. She thought she had finally placed the Doctor and Ace's relationship as a teacher- student one, albeit involving a disgraceful misuse of trust on the Doctor's part, and then they behaved like First Years.

The Doctor took a moment to compose himself. "Perhaps Ancelyn could enlighten us," he suggested.

The knight frowned in confusion. "You know of me, sir?"

The Doctor and Ace shared a look that Kelly interpreted as 'Oopps.' Their body language indicated that they had indeed said something they shouldn't have yet neither of them made a move to correct or conceal it.

"Of course they have," Kelly interjected. "They were at the tournament and watched our match." She gave them both a pointed look and they quickly nodded in agreement.

Ancelyn beamed. He really is sweet but clueless, thought Kelly as he straightened to his full height, aglow with pride.

"The magi stones," prompted the Doctor. "What powers them?"

"I know not of their construction but were you to ask a mage they may," Ancelyn replied. "Sadly, I know there are few to be found here. Most reside elsewhere and seek solitude in their studies and practices."

He paused and glanced past them. Kelly turned and caught sight of a teenage boy in red and yellow. He was dressed extremely formally and she identified him as a messenger of some kind. Ancelyn nodded at him and the boy ran off.

"Forgive me, friends," Ancelyn told them, "but I have a bout to win." He smiled broadly. "May we meet again soon."

He gave a final smile and bowed his head to both Kelly and Ace in turn. They watched him jog off, his armour clinking and clanking until he disappeared around a corner.

Kelly caught Ace staring after him. She smiled knowingly. "Knight in shining armour your type?" she asked.

To her delight, Ace turned beetroot and spun around in alarm. "What? No! No. Not- No."

She's so flustered, it's adorable. "You want to try that answer again?" Kelly offered, still smiling.

"No," Ace repeated. "He's not. And that's really weird and kinda... well, wrong, because I know he's going to end up with somebody else."

Aww, that's so sweet it's sad. "That's not any reason to give up or not to try at all."

Kelly didn't think it was possible for Ace's face to be any redder but was proven wrong. Ace snuck a sideways glance at the Doctor who was still examining the stone in his hand. "Kit, shut up," she growled.

"Why? It's not like he can hear us."

"He's not deaf!"

"He's doesn't speak Arabic now, does he?" Kelly retorted with a smile. Her adoption of another language had gone unnoticed by Ace and it still amused Kelly to no end to have her friend unknowing swap tongues mid-conversation.

Ace covered her glowing face with her hands. "He does," she mumbled.

"No he doesn't."

Ace answer was muffled by her hands. "No, really, he does. He can understand every word. The weird understanding-all-languages thing? It's not just me. He's got it too."

"You're pulling my leg."

"I wish I was," Ace muttered sincerely.

Kelly redirected her gaze to find the Doctor looking at her, biting his lip with a clear dilemma of how to acknowledge he had heard their conversation. At a loss of what else to do, he coughed slightly.

"You should have told me," Kelly hissed into the mortified Ace's ear. "You should have said."

"You didn't exactly give me a chance to," Ace returned, unwilling to even look at Kelly. "Where do you think I picked up the understanding-language thing?"

Great, he can eavesdrop on everything, thought Kelly in annoyance. What use was exchanging comments with Ace in Arabic if he could understand them?

Recovering from her large miscalculation by pretending the conversation had never happened, Kelly asked a few questions about how they knew Ancelyn. She pointed out that she deserved a few answers considering she had covered for them when they had let slip that they knew who he was.

Ace gave a quick summary with the occasional comment from the Doctor. So Ace hadn't been lying. She did know who would ensnare the knight's heart; a UNIT brigadier. Ace's insistence for her to keep an open mind about myths and legends also made a great deal of sense now, as did many of the anecdotes she had teased her with. It made Kelly's head spin a little trying to imagine meeting someone then meeting them for the second time possibly several years earlier.

The Doctor seemed to notice her exhaustion. "It's been a tiring day. Ace, you and Kelly should return to the inn and get some rest." Ace opened her mouth in protest. "I intend to examine this stone and how it functions."

Ace frowned. "But isn't that-"

"It's still midday," the Doctor explained. "I doubt there will be any knights wandering around looking for her. They'll all be competing in the tournament. She'll be safe there for now."

His reasoning made some sense. So long as they moved on somewhere else when the tournament's events ended for the day, the inn would be safe enough.

Ace nodded a little reluctantly and walked with Kelly down the main road. A scowl soon appeared and Ace's fingers began twitching. The thoughtful expression worried Kelly but she waited until the Doctor was out of earshot before asking what was on her mind.

Ace tried to pass it off as nothing. "I'm not that tired, that's all." After a little prompting, she added, "And, it's lunchtime."

Kelly rolled her eyes. She should have known it had to do with food. "Go on then."

"Huh?"

"Go," Kelly told her. "You heard what he said. All the knights will be at the tournament. Eat, take a look at the stores, anything. Go have fun. Maybe you should go and watch Ancelyn's bout."

"Oh don't start again," Ace muttered as she scratched the back of her neck. Kelly smiled reassuring and Ace hesitated. "You sure?"

Kelly tilted her head and smiled weakly. "Go. It'll save me from listening to you complain when I'm trying to sleep. I might actually get some shut eye."

Ace grinned. "Thanks Kit." After a promise to buy her a present, Ace raced off.

Kelly shook her head. She really was a First Year at heart, easily excited by anything and everything.

As Kelly passed stalls and stands, she thought again of the curious dynamics between her friend and the mysterious travelling alien. Ace had just shown one of the motivating factors that made her return to him; her boundless excitement for the new, the unusual and the novelty. She didn't have the attention span to focus on one thing for too long and the same went for her surroundings. Her restlessness had reared its head several times at St Trinian's and you could not find many places as varied and erratic as that. The urge to explore kept her from ever settling in one place for long. That said, Kelly wondered how long she might have stayed at St Trinian's had she been able to skip into the time machine and travel somewhere else anytime she had wanted. A week? A few days? Certainly not three months.

It was clear to Kelly that Ace travelled because she wanted to escape. She wanted to run from everything and everyone, just run and run and run. As for the Doctor, his intentions remained hidden. He claimed to be a doctor but he lectured more like a history teacher, examined curiosities like an expert off Antiques Roadshow and acted like a quirky uncle around Ace. What did he get out of travelling?

She accidentally bumped into a passerby and muttered an apology.

Not only was why he travelled a mystery, but why he did so with Ace too. Why her of all people? The way Ace described it they had ended up travelling together by chance. He offered her a ticket home after a few trips around the galaxy, except she had no intention of ever going back. Then there was his manipulation of her to consider-

Kelly halted in the middle of the crowd. She reached for her coin purse. Muttering a curse, she turned around and caught sight of a boy bumping into someone and moving away quickly. The little sneak. She slid through the crowd and shadowed him. If he noticed her following him, he would take off and disappear. Of that she was certain. It was humiliating to have been robbed by such a small kid, but as she watched she was forced to compliment his dexterity. His technique was not bad and he was small enough to slip by without drawing much attention.

He stopped by a fruit stand and purchased an apple, slipping another two into his pocket as his did. Crafty too, Kelly noted with approval. He made the mistake of entering a side-street though. He relaxed there, thinking he was safe in his element, but he was mistaken. Kelly was as accustomed to narrow side streets and shadows as he was and there she pounced.

"Nice trick," she complimented, "but you should take better care of your spoils."

He spun around. His eyes widened at the collection of coin purses in Kelly's hand. He patted his pockets and found them to be empty. "How you-" he stammered.

"You're not the only one with light fingers." She selected her coin-purse from the collection and carefully tossed one of the other purses back to the boy. He fumbled the catch in his shock."Taking quite a risk today with the guards everywhere, but everyone's brought their savings with them today, haven't they?"

He nodded mutely.

"You saving for anything in particular?" she asked.

He kept silent. Smart boy, thought Kelly.

"I'm looking for information." She pulled a coin from one of the purses and turned it over between her fingers. "About a church."

"Don't no nothing 'bout no church," said the boy.

"Perhaps you could point me to someone who does?" she suggested.

He considered it but didn't look very keen.

Kelly was struck by a gut feeling and ran with the impulse. "Three silvers if you take me to them," she offered.

"Five," he bargained.

"Six, and you don't try to steal from me again."

He smiled toothily. "Can't promise nothing."

Cheeky. A little too cheeky. "No deal," she told him, "I'll just keep what I've taken." She jingled the purses in her hand and, sure enough, the sound of coins clinking abruptly changed the boy's mind.

"Six and no steal no more from you." He held out his hand for the purses.

Kelly smirked. "Thought you'd see it my way."

"I thought I told you to stay with Kelly," the Doctor reprimanded as he grabbed the back of Ace's tunic and pulled her away from a blacksmith's display of all-sorted weapons. She squirmed until he released her. "Did you at least go with her to the inn?"

Ace rolled her eyes. "She's fine, Professor. She's a big girl. She can walk herself to the inn."

He sighed in disappointment. "I wanted you to be with her in case anything happened."

"You've seen she can fight and hold her own. What are you so worried about?"

The Doctor narrowed his eyes and stared at her. "A day here and her life has already been endangered twice. Not only is she time displaced but she has been targeted by a vengeful knight and is now exhausted and alone. The medieval period is prone for ending lives prematurely and-"

"Relax, Professor," said Ace, cutting in before his lecture could reach full stride. "I know she'll be fine."

"Do you?" he interrogated.

"Yeah, I do," she replied, undaunted. "She's a lot like you, really. When I met her, she was being you; all protective and sensible and keeping me out of trouble. Was kinda annoying," Ace added in a mumble, but it had worked. He looked a bit calmer now. "Look," she told him, "She's the last person I know who'd go looking for trouble."

"I'd appreciate if you could move that knife a little further away from my throat," Kelly murmured.

"Who is you?" The wielder of the knife glared daggers at the boy. "What you bring 'er 'ere for?" he demanded.

"Six silvers," replied the boy with the cheekiest grin Kelly had seen since the twins had told her they might have blown up the shed with C4.

Alright, she thought, I messed this up. That much was clear from just the location she had been brought to, disregarding the weapon held against her. Another reminder of why it was important to plan and not improvise. Improvising is not my thing so I shouldn't be surprised that I've ended up here. God, Ace must be rubbing off on me worse than I thought.

The boy passed three of the coins she had given him to the knife-wielder who began cackling with laughter. "She really did. Stupid woman."

She felt heat rising to her cheeks but remained still. "Perhaps," she answered, as much to herself as to him. "But if anyone is to know of St Trinian, it would be among thieves."

The man's grip on the knife tightened. Kelly's heart raced. Did he know something? "Speak," he ordered as he pulled the knife a few inches away from her throat.

Kelly tried not to look at the weapon as she answered, "I want to know about the church, south of here."

His eyes momentarily widened before he resumed his squinting. "One of the Fey lives there. Pulls the roof off every time they try to put one on."

That sounded remarkably similar to the legend Kelly had uncovered back in the 21st Century. "But someone stopped it, didn't they?" she prompted.

The boy looked puzzled but the man tilted his head. "How do ye know that?"

"Who's Trinian?" asked the boy.

"Pah!" the man spat and swatted at the boy with his free hand. Two of his fingers were only stumps. "Ye know 'im. The Trickster. He tricked the Fey."

Kelly smiled. So she was right. So there was another legend that had a basis in fact in this dimension. Her school's namesake was still a patron on thieves in this world, yet she had always suspected St Trinian to have been a woman. There was no particular reason she had thought that. It had just been a feeling after all but it was a little disappointing to discover her hunch was wrong.

She tried not to look surprised when the man removed the knife and returned it to his belt. He must have concluded she wasn't a threat. "Ye have the look of the Trickster about you," he told her and she took that as a compliment.

The boy quickly told him how she'd caught him and, in a voice of admiration, how she had pick-pocketed him blind.

"Magic?" questioned the man suspiciously.

"Skill," Kelly corrected.

The man raised an eyebrow. He gestured at a locked box behind him that sat on a wooden table. "Prove it."

It was not a strange request really. It was hardly unusual to issue challenges to newcomers to test their skill. This likely served the same purpose. Now the knife was sheathed it was possible for her to make a break for it. They still might have information for her though. Better to play their game.

Kelly plucked a pin from her hair and set to work. The lock looked badly rusted so she doubted the mechanism would put up much resistance. She was aware of the two pairs of eyes trained to her hands but did her best to ignore them. She frowned. This is too simple, she thought. The challenge they've set is too easy. There's something about this they're not telling me.

She paused and examined the box for traps or other mechanisms she might set off. There weren't any to be found, and that worried her. They may as well have asked her to open an unlocked door. Nothing for it, she decided, and twisted the lock into the open position. It barely made a click. Cautiously, she opened the lid and her audience gasped. Kelly was mentally reviewing her perception that medieval thieves were of another class lost to time through video surveillance and electronic alarms when she noticed the thinnest flake of one of the stones from the lanterns resting against the lock in a cut slot.

"She opened it," exclaimed the boy but the man was not as impressed. "How'd she do that?"

"Magic," the eight fingered man stated, his frown deepening.

Kelly touched the stone with a finger and pulled it away with a hiss of pain. It was like a live wire. The stone had to be an anti-tampering deterrent. Presumably it attempted to zap anyone who tried to open it without the correctly sized key. She had examined the exterior of the box for trip wires and had opened the lid slowly so as to avoid any potential spring-loaded interior defences. What she hadn't expected was a lock-based defence. False tumblers and springs were quite antiquated from Kelly's point of view but this was different. This stone was the equivalent of wiring the entire lock up to a battery. When she'd been picking, she hadn't been that careful with manoeuvring the pick inside the lock so it was unlikely that the pick hadn't brushed against it so why hadn't she been zapped before?

While the man and the boy examined and sorted the contents of the box, Kelly held her makeshift pick in the lock and slowly poked it at the stone, expecting to get zapped. The pin touched the stone. Nothing happened. Mystified, she removed the pick and tried poking the stone with a thin piece of metal she found on the floor. When it touched the stone, it did zap her. She brought both the hairpin and the other lock pick up to eyelevel and examined them both. What was the difference? A different kind of metal?

She inhaled quickly. No, she realised as she identified the cause. Her hairpin was identical to the other lock pick in every way except that it had bits of rubber glued to its ends.

And what had the Doctor compared this world's 'magic' as being? Electricity.

"She be of the Trickster's lot, boy," she heard the man say.

He has no idea how right he is, thought Kelly. I am St Trinian, just not of the magical kind. Except... She glanced at her hairpin again. I do have magic, don't I? I can do something they don't understand and that makes me powerful in their eyes. That's a kind of magic and in a world where controlling electrical energy was so important, it was incredibly valuable magic indeed.

She returned the pin to her hair and regarded the man and boy; the boy in awe, the man both intrigued and concerned. Neither made any attempt to stop her as she walked out of the crumpling shack, and Kelly was unsure if she had made allies or more enemies.

Finding her way back took a while through the winding streets. She thought she had been paying attention to all the turns the boy had lead her down but she began to lose faith as her surroundings grew less and less familiar. A few narrow passages eventually led her back to the main road where the market stalls were. Glancing left and right, she reorientated her bearings and set off in the direction of the inn, stopping occasionally to examine wares. There was not much that she could judge to have long-term value. Woven baskets, fruit and vegetables would be worthless but other bits and pieces were too large to lug around with her. She highly doubted the Doctor would willingly allow her to transport goods back to her time. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end giving her a split second's warning before a voice startled her.

"I think we need to talk, Miss Jones."

She jumped and glared at the Doctor who had appeared right behind her. How long had he been there? "Have you been following me?" she accused.

It's a good thing I didn't buy anything, she thought.

"It's not a habit of mine to leave any young travelling companion to walk the streets alone," he replied evenly.

Of course, I am completely incapable of doing anything by myself and need a chaperone. "I don't need looking after," she told him firmly.

One of his fingers rested on his chin as he regarded her. "Perhaps, however you are my responsibility."

Kelly went quiet. She had always seen her fellow peers at St Trinian's as being her responsibility. Only after she had left had she felt that burden leave her shoulders. Even since then, she had not been responsible for anyone nor had anyone else been responsible for her. It had been liberating not to have to think about anyone else. To hear him declare responsibility for her, like he owned her... It was as though he has stolen a part of her and made it his. She detested it.

He sighed, having detected her hostility. "I understand you must feel quite lost in this strange place but I can't make things any easier for you if you keep shutting me out." He met her eyes. "I thought it would do Ace some good to have someone else to talk to yet you are so uncooperative and repel all my attempts to communicate."

Kelly's frown deepened. You keep forgetting I didn't ask for this, she thought. You dared me to and I could not refuse, not without disappointing Ace. Don't think I can't see what you're trying to do here.

He was obviously trying to play the 'Good Guy' card where he would make himself look noble and respectable by pretending to care and make allowances for her. Ok, so he had helped with a bit of pre-duel training but that didn't make them friends. Her use of the term earlier had been a slip of the tongue, nothing more. He was still not worthy of her trust.

He frowned in return. "I'm beginning to wonder at the validity of that judgement."

His probing was grating her nerves. "There is a fine line between being curious and intrusive. Tread it carefully, Doctor."

Nothing more was said as he personally escorted her back to the inn.