The Fifth Britain

‘Drystan!’ I hissed, putting my lips close to the nearest wall. I was in the entrance hall of Millie’s farmhouse. I did not know if proximity to the wall would help him to hear me any better, but it seemed worth a try. I had to repeat his name several times before I could get his attention, so intent was he upon his argument with Millie.

What is it? he snapped at last.

‘We are missing one of our number, and the most dangerous one at that. We cannot begin until she’s found.’

Describe her.

I did that, painting as vivid a picture of Fenella as I had last seen her as I could.

Drystan went quiet for a while, to Millie’s delight, who began another song.

She is found, Drystan whispered to me. Dulcina of Moondance Cottage has sighted her traversing the cliff’s edge. It is thought that she is attempting to reach my brother’s spire.

Had she somehow guessed our intentions and fled from the farmhouse, or did she have some other purpose in mind for the spire? Either way, I wondered how she had managed to evade the allure of the many houses and cottages along the way. Not even I had accomplished that, despite being forewarned.

I bundled my precious pup into the Baron’s arms and left the farmhouse at a run.

Melmidoc had parked his spire at the other end of the cliff road from Millie’s farmhouse. It was not difficult to spot, for the sun was sinking fast and the Starstone Spire blazed with eerie, beautiful blue light. I suppose it proved a natural beacon for Fenella to aim for. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by such a display?

I tore after her. My bare feet objected strenuously to this treatment, for the ground was stony and I had not time to take care where I placed my steps. But I gained steadily upon Fenella, ignoring the stinging of my lacerated feet and the heaviness in my limbs that tiredness had wrought.

It was only once I had almost caught her that I realised I, once again, had no plan. What was I going to do, haul her bodily back to the farmhouse? Hah. She was several inches taller than me, and I had no idea what her magickal capabilities were. For all I knew, she was a better practitioner than me, too.

‘Fenella!’ I shouted. ‘This won’t do.’

She glanced over her shoulder at me, but rather than stop and talk, as I had hoped, she only ran faster towards Melmidoc’s spire. Once she knew herself pursued, she picked up speed and soon began to outpace me. Damn her and her long legs. It didn’t help that I was winded and slowing down. I’m a walker more than a runner. It’s not my talent.

Melmidoc, though, was awake. Fenella never reached the door, for when she got within ten feet of it, running at full tilt, she bounced off… something, and ended flat on her back on the ground, staring dazed at the darkening sky.

I am afraid I am invitation only, remarked Melmidoc.

Fenella snarled with chagrin, and stared up at me with blazing hatred. ‘Bloody Society,’ she spat. ‘Must you destroy everything?’

‘Actually,’ I panted, my burning lungs drawing great gulps of air. ‘I think it’s you bidding fair to destroy everything.’

‘I don’t want to cause any harm.’ She picked herself up slowly, touching a hand to her bloodied nose. ‘I just want…’

‘What?’ I prompted. ‘Everything you want will cause untold damage to this place, Fenella, and to our Britain as well. It doesn’t matter whether that’s the goal or not.’

She gave me a look of intense dislike and, without warning, began to run again.

I watched her go. I knew I didn’t have it in me to catch her a second time.

My dismay was short-lived, however, for I found that I was not the only one who had come running after Fenella.

Millie had, too.

What can I say about what happened next? If you haven’t seen an eighteenth-century farmhouse, front door agape, cackling in song as it chases down a fleeing woman, you truly haven’t lived. I stood clutching my side, breathing painfully around the stitch in my insides and breathless with mirth as Millie-the-farmhouse bore down relentlessly upon poor Fenella Beaumont. She did not stand a chance. She almost made it to the top of the cliff path before the house snapped her up like a dog gobbling down a choice biscuit, and the door slammed shut upon her.

Trapping not quite everyone inside, for on the porch stood Rob and Jay and Baron Alban, maintaining a white-knuckled grip upon the pillars. Val’s chair was slammed up against the low, white-painted railing that surrounded it. Fortunately, Val was still in it.

Whether they had come out with a view to joining the hunt for Fenella, or to avoiding Drystan’s forgetting spell, was more or less moot, for it solved the latter problem either way. I limped up to the porch and sat down with my back against the door, wincing at the pain in my feet.

Drystan’s voice came through the wall.

Interlopers all! he boomed. I regret to inform you that you are not welcome here.

‘Let’s just wait here for a bit, shall we?’ I said, smiling up at my friends. From my recumbent posture upon the floor, they loomed over me even more than usual. Baron Alban stooped down and put the puppy back into my arms. She was sound asleep.

Jay was sceptical. ‘You think he won’t notice us out here?’

‘He’s got a lot of people in there to keep track of.’ But for good measure I put up a shield around us, imbued with my best defences against magickal interference.

Jay’s expression turned both withering and apprehensive, which cost me a pang.

But Alban relaxed against the wall, arms folded, a picture of serenity. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Ves’s shields are legendary.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ I said confidently — wondering in private whether Alban was teasing me, or speaking the truth. Legendary? Really?

‘Famous last words,’ muttered Jay.

‘Officially,’ I said a few hours later, ‘None of us remembers anything.’

‘I imagine that is wise, yes,’ said Milady. ‘Just how far from the truth is it?’

‘That… varies.’ We had escaped most of Drystan’s spell, but not all of it. Bits of it had hit the five of us in different ways; I, for example, had forgotten half of Fenella’s original speech until Alban had reminded me. Jay had had to be filled in again on the whole topic of Drystan’s forgetting spells. We’d had to piece everything back together between us, which had taken some time. ‘But I think we have more or less all of it straight again.’

We had already relayed much of it to Milady, but it had come out as a garbled mess, and it had taken contributions from all four of us (Rob, Val, Jay and me — Alban had already departed for Their Majesties’ Court) to get through the tale. Whether we had been so incoherent due to the after-effects of Drystan’s spell and the journey home, or merely due to exhaustion, I was too tired to say.

Millie Makepeace had whisked the lot of us back to our own, dear Britain, singing like a drunken lark all the way. She had dumped us not far from the erstwhile site of Ashdown Castle, and from there she could not be persuaded to move. So, we had been obliged to get ourselves back to our own House the long, tiring way. There had been more hitchhiking involved than I am ever happy about.

We’d left Ancestria Magicka and guests milling in confusion around the devastated lawns that had once hosted the proud pile of their castle. They would be fine. Their cars were still there, and most of them were even functional. What they would make of the absence of Ashdown, or how they would account for the gap of some hours between the high point of the party and their arrival back in the grounds, we did not wait to find out.

Milady had been shocked by our revelations. The Troll Court may have known about three of the Britains, but (if she was to be believed) Milady had known nothing about any of it. I knew she would need some time to think it over.

Our report concluded, I found I had sunk to the floor and sat with my back against the wall. An undignified posture, especially before Milady, but I was too wrecked to help it. ‘Can we come Home?’ I heard myself say.

I don’t know what I had been planning to utter just then, but that wasn’t it.

Milady was silent for longer than I liked. We, I should perhaps say, for I am pretty sure Jay was holding his breath, too.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Milady at length. ‘I don’t know that it is wise just at present. For one thing, two representatives from the Ministry were here yesterday, asking questions about the two of you. They want to talk to you. And for another, these Britains must be investigated. We cannot leave things as they are. I may need a few among you to go back to this fifth Britain, but this cannot now be done openly.’

I looked at Jay. I thought he might be pleased at this last reflection, having expressed a clear desire to stay behind with Melmidoc. But he sat looking at his hands, and said nothing.

I could understand the conflict. I, too, wanted very much to return to the fifth Britain. But I also wanted very much to return to the fold. I missed my Home.

‘I will have decided by this afternoon,’ said Milady. ‘For now I urge you all to get some rest. You may use your old rooms for tonight, Ves, Jay, though I encourage you to avoid notice as much as possible. There’s chocolate in all the pots.’

The word all had a promising ring to it, for we had left our pot behind at the Scarlet Courtyard. I put the problem of our immediate future out of my mind for the moment — trying not to dwell upon how little I’d liked roguedom, when it came to it — and went to bed.

On the desk in my room, an enormous chocolate pot stood waiting, steam wisping from its spout. It was made from solid gold.

When I surfaced later that day, it was an insistent rapping on my door that roused me. I hauled myself out of bed with a groan, wrapped a blanket around myself, and answered the door with a bleary, ‘Yes?’

Jay stood there, clad in jeans and a clean white shirt and looking far more bright-eyed than he had any right to be. Wordlessly, he handed me an envelope.

I carried it back to bed with me.

‘Open it,’ Jay urged, hovering awkwardly in the doorway.

‘Oh, come in. I’m decent.’

He drifted exactly two steps farther into the room.

Thick, creamy paper made up the beautiful envelope, and another sheaf of the same fell out when I tore it open. The most perfect calligraphy I had ever seen covered the paper, complete with gilded flourishes.

I read quickly.

‘Well?’ said Jay, when I did not speak.

I dropped the pretty thing onto the bed, unable to muster a single word in reply. Maybe I was not yet awake.

I picked it up and read it all over again. Still the same. The pup, emerging sleepily from somewhere under the blankets, gave it a desultory sniff and sneezed.

‘The Baron said he would call you when—’ began Jay, just as my phone rang.

I answered it with a croak.

‘Did you get the invitations?’ said Baron Alban’s deep voice.

Invitations? I glanced again at Jay, and saw that he had another such page in his hands. ‘Are you sure invitations is the right word?’ I said. ‘I think such missives are typically termed royal summons.’

‘Their Majesties can’t issue you a royal summons, Ves. You and Jay are not among their subjects.’

‘The nearest thing to it, then.’

‘Mm. So, are you going to answer it?’

‘Do we have a choice?’

‘Technically.’

‘What does that mean.’

‘It means those two reps from the Ministry that were sniffing around after you have been invited to desist, and if you would like to avoid those kinds of complications recurring it might not hurt to have Their Majesties’ Court at your backs for a while longer.’

I tried to decide whether there was an implied threat somewhere in there, and decided probably not. It wasn’t Alban’s style. He did, however, have a point.

‘What are we supposed to do for Their Majesties, Alban?’

‘You’ll find out when you get here.’

‘Nefarious or not?’

‘Depends on who you ask.’

I met Jay’s eye and mouthed the words, yes or no?

He held out his closed fist, thumb extended, and slowly turned it upwards.

‘All right, we’re in,’ I said to the Baron.

‘Fantastic. I’ll pick you up at five.’

He rang off.

‘So,’ I said, staring with bemused eyes at the summons. ‘What does one wear to be presented to royalty?’

‘Shit,’ said Jay, and glanced, dismayed, at his highly informal attire. ‘No idea. What, the great Ves hasn’t been presented to royalty before?’

‘Not like this, and not these royals. It’s the most powerful of the fae courts, and rarely open to outsiders.’

Jay looked impressed, and perhaps just a little terrified.

I probably looked much the same.

He swallowed. ‘What do you suppose they want us to do for them?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, mustering my courage and my blanket both and heading for my wardrobe. ‘But come hell or high water, I’m going to be well-dressed when we find out.’

Turn page ->

***

We’re about to take a trip to the Royal Court, so I hope you’re looking your best? Meantime, while I’ve run out of paperback editions for the present (sorry – coming up!), The Fifth Britain is still available in ebook. Plus, the Patreon party is in full swing right here with more stories and advance book releases. 

Right, best dress/suit on? Off we go… Turn page ->

Mr. Patel! carolled Millie. You are just in time!

We were back at the farmhouse, ushered through a door so cunningly disguised in all that pearly light that I hadn’t noticed it. At least twenty people were already thronging Millie’s parlour, and more were arriving all the time, attended by flashes of soft light and bursts of ambrosial music.

‘For what?’ said Jay, looking about in confusion.

Millie’s response was delivered in the form of a burst of song. A Captain Bold in Halifax, who Dwelt in Country Quarters, seduced a maid who Hanged Herself one morning in her garters! She accompanied herself on an invisible piano — no, I take that back, it was not invisible. Tucked into one corner of the cosy country parlour was a shabby spinet, the keys of which were cheerily playing themselves.

‘Oh, no,’ said Jay, briefly closing his eyes.

I judged it was not the first time Millie had taken to song.

His Wicked conscience smited him, he lost his stomach daily! He took to drinking turpentine, and thought upon Miss Bailey. Ohhhhh, Miss Bailey! Unfortunate Miss Bailey!

‘Millie…’ sighed Jay. ‘Please? Stop?’

‘It is probably her first public performance,’ I murmured to Jay. ‘An important moment in any genteel young lady’s life. Let her exhibit.’

It cost me something to say as much, for Millie’s grasp of tone, melody and key were not as strong as we might all have liked.

Jay sagged against the wall in despair.

Millie sang on.

…A Ghost stepped up to his bedside, and said, ‘Behold! Miss Bailey!’ As these words floated through the house, I discovered the Baron at my elbow. He raised a quizzical brow at me, and spared a glance for the dejected figure of Jay slumped near the door. ‘Stopped for a concert?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Jay, coming alive again in a rush. He was out the door and gone in an instant.

We followed.

…and Parson Briggs won’t bury me, though I’m a dead Miss Bailey!  sang Millie as we pushed our way through the growing throng to the front door.

Which, predictably enough, did not open, though Jay tugged upon it with all his weight. He banged a fist upon it and bellowed: ‘MILLIE!’

The ghostly singing stopped. You cannot leave yet! There is still another verse!

‘Sing it to me later.’

But— but—

‘You can sing me the whole song again later if you like, just let us out.’

I admired his spirit of self-sacrifice.

The front door creaked disconsolately open. Jay dashed through it, followed by the Baron and me, and it slammed shut upon the rest of the hapless guests with a ringing crash. Some few of them had displayed a keen desire to follow our fine example in beating a hasty retreat, but it was not to be.

I spared them a brief moment’s sympathy.

‘It’s lucky she likes you,’ I observed as we ran back down the street to the cliff-top. A glimpse of Ashdown Castle was enough to recall me to my purpose. Someone was injured down there, someone from the Society. I hoped Rob was with them. My evening heels were killing me by then, so I took them off, chucked them aside and hastened down the cliff-path in bare feet, making it to the bottom with only one or two small, stinging cuts to show for it. I envied the Baron a little, for not only did he cut a dash in his dark suit and white shirt but he had practical shoes to go along with them.

Ah, well. Such is life.

The great double-doors of Ashdown Castle hung half open. The interior was gloomy in contrast with the golden sunshine outside, and the air was freezing. A hushed atmosphere shrouded the place, though perhaps it just seemed eerily silent compared with the bustle and song of Millie’s parlour.

‘We had better be quick,’ I said as we trooped into the echoing hall. ‘It won’t take the houses much longer to gather everyone, and Millie can’t hold them forever.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ muttered Jay.

We wasted some time traipsing down corridors and peering into empty rooms without achieving much. All were abandoned, strewn with debris from last night’s party that nobody had had occasion or opportunity to clean up. We had ventured all the way to the ballroom before there came a flicker of movement: something, or someone, moved in the shadows. An indistinct shape darted around the corner and disappeared.

I took off in pursuit. ‘Wait!’ I called. ‘We’re from the Society. You need to come with us. It’s not safe to stay here.’ Which was, I feared, the truth. Zareen had called the enslaved Waymasters traumatised and afraid, but five minutes in the castle would have been enough to tell me that for myself. Frigid currents roiled about the floors, doors creaked eerily back and forth, and droplets of water ran down the walls like tears. The deeper we went into the castle, the worse it got.

I rounded the corner and almost slammed into my quarry, who had come to an abrupt stop barely two feet away. A female figure clad in a baggy jumper, hair untidy, head down.

‘Ves,’ said the figure, and of course it was Miranda.

I struggled for something to say. The best I could manage, in the end, was a cold ‘Hello,’ while my thoughts spun in agitated circles. Miranda was here after all. What was she doing? What did she want? How could she have the cheek to talk to us?

When she hesitated too long, I said, none too graciously: ‘What do you want?’

‘I… wanted to apologise.’

I said nothing.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll ever understand.’

‘Nope.’

‘They offered me so much… think, Ves, how much more I can do for the creatures of Britain! With their resources—’

‘If you wanted to switch sides, you should have done it openly. You didn’t have to betray us on your way out.’

Miranda’s head drooped even lower. ‘I know.’ She hesitated. ‘But it isn’t… they aren’t our enemies, Ves. I haven’t switched sides.’

‘I think you’ll find that they are. Will you excuse us? We’re in a hurry.’

‘If you’re looking for Val and Rob and the others, they’re in the kitchens.’

‘Right.’ I wheeled and retraced my steps, finding Jay and Alban standing right behind me like a pair of dark vigilantes. Miranda had guts to face the three of us, I had to give her that.

I had to pause. ‘Mir, it isn’t safe to stay here. You should get out. Up the cliff.’ Only half my motive was brutal, I swear. I wanted her herded to Millie’s with the rest of her new comrades, but I also didn’t want her stranded in a house full of undead Waymasters with newly shredded sanity. She might be a traitor now, but we’d been friends for years.

‘Ves. Jay. If there’s anything I can do to make up for what I did…’

She was thinking of that tracking spell, I supposed. Fat chance.

Then again…

‘Find me my pup,’ I said. ‘I know she must be here somewhere. I want to take her back with me.’

She made no answer. When I looked round, she had gone.

The three of us went on to the kitchens in silence.

It was Val who was injured. The violence of the castle’s transference had, at last, brought parts of the ceiling down. Val, unable to dodge out of the way, had taken a chunk of plaster to the shoulder. Looking at the size of the bleeding gash it had left in her flesh, and the mere few inches that separated the injury and her head, I thanked all our lucky stars that it hadn’t been a larger chunk.

She was curled up in her velvet chair, covered in blankets, while Rob hovered about her. There was no sign of anybody else. I took Val’s hand and squeezed it, a pressure she returned, though she rolled her eyes at the look on my face. ‘I’m fine, Ves.’

‘Doesn’t look like it.’ It really didn’t. Rob had found something to bandage the injury, but the wound had bled through, and the bloodied mess of once-white cotton occupied most of her upper arm. I thought how unfair it was. Val rarely left Home, and the one time she did…!

‘I’m still breathing, and I plan to keep it up.’

I looked at Rob, who smiled reassuringly. ‘She’ll be okay. But I want her home as soon as possible. You’ve got a way out?’

‘Will have. Where’s everyone else?’

‘Our crowd? I don’t know. Wherever the rest of the party is, I presume.’

‘Good.’ I gave them a brief outline of everything that had happened since we’d left the castle, with occasional interpolations from Jay and Alban to help things along. It was hardest to speak of Miranda.

Rob and Val listened in attentive silence, though their eyes widened at the part about the nine Britains. When we had finished, neither spoke for a few moments.

Then Val said a very rude word.

I looked at her in shock, for she was not usually one for profanity. But her eyes were shining, and she’d sat up straighter in her chair. ‘The possibilities!’ she breathed. Then her face darkened. ‘How could they hide such a thing from us!’

I wondered who she meant by “us”: people in general, or the Society? For that matter, who did she mean by “them”? Who in the sixth Britain knew anything about any of this? Probably the Ministry. The Troll Court, to a degree. Anybody else?

‘That’s for later,’ said Rob rather curtly. ‘First, we have to get out of here. How far is Millie’s house?’

‘Not far.’ I eyed Val uneasily as I spoke, though, for she was not in her strongest state, and there was the cliff path to manage.

‘Let’s go, then,’ said Rob, and took hold of Val’s chair as though he meant to wheel it. The chair rose to its customary two inches off the floor, and hovered away towards the corridor, Rob there to guide it.

The click-click of claws on tiles split the silence, and my pup came bounding into the room, her tail high and furiously wagging. She frisked and gambolled about me like I was her favourite ever person and I could almost have cried.

I scooped her up and covered her soft little head in kisses.

When we exited the kitchen, there was no sign of Miranda, but I didn’t mind. Some gratitude had blossomed, to balance out some of my negative feelings towards her. It couldn’t mend the rift between us, but it was a start.

I had hoped to see Zareen and George once more before we left the castle, but there was no sign of them whatsoever. We were obliged to go on without a final farewell.

The journey back to the top of the cliff was, of necessity, rather slow, and I chafed at the delay. If the guests weren’t escaping Millie’s clutches by then, they were probably going quietly mad under the influence of her eccentric notions of entertainment. I might be eager to shuttle Ancestria Magicka out of here as soon as possible, but I did not want their collective insanity on my conscience.

To my relief, the first house we approached at the top of the cliff — one of the pale starstone ones, whose walls were beginning to glow with a serene, blue radiance as twilight approached — flung open its door, and beckoned us with another fanfare of light and music. From there, the distance to Millie’s farmhouse was but a few steps, and we were back in the parlour.

Foolish woman! thundered a disembodied male voice as we tumbled into the room. Stop this unseemly yowling at once. I must have silence.

This is my ball! answered Millie with a shriek. And I will not be interrupted!

‘I see Drystan’s arrived,’ I murmured, as we guided Val to a corner removed from much of the chaos of the parlour.

Jay sighed, and laid a soothing hand upon the wall. ‘Millie,’ he said with mild reproach, and began talking to her in an undertone.

I stopped listening, for I needed to think. I had swiftly given up on the idea of talking Melmidoc into excepting us from his general amnesiation plan, for I’d detected in him a stubbornness to rival my own, and we did not have days of spare time to spend arguing with him about it. But that presented an urgent problem.

I leaned nearer to the Baron. ‘How are we to avoid Drystan’s spell?’

‘What, you don’t have a plan? How is this possible.’ He spoke teasingly but he was not looking at me: his gaze roamed the parlour, as though he was looking for something.

‘Not yet. Every time I think about it I get distracted— what is it?’ For a frown had descended and he looked, suddenly, troubled.

‘Where’s Fenella?’ he said.

‘Somewhere in the house?’ I suggested. ‘Not everyone is in the parlour. They must be spread all over the place.’

‘We need to find her, immediately.’

‘What’s bothering you?’

‘I’ve a hunch she might have given us the slip.’

The Baron, Rob and I spread out to search the house. It did not take long to establish that Alban was right: there was no sign of Fenella anywhere.

Turn page ->

‘What?’ said George.

‘Someone needs to tend to those poor Waymasters. They’re frightened and traumatised and I can’t just leave them like that. And,’ she added, looking at George, ‘I’ll need your help.’

But— Melmidoc began.

‘It’s in your best interests to allow it,’ said Zareen. ‘Unless you want Ashdown Castle occupying beach-space forever.’

You raise a persuasive point, Melmidoc conceded.

‘You’ll be all right here on your own?’ I said. Not that I doubted Zareen’s capability, but to be stranded in a parallel world with only George Mercer to help her, and a castle full of broken spirits her only route home, would not be easy on her. And she was already exhausted.

‘I’ll be fine.’

Then I remembered Melmidoc. He could still travel between the Britains, and could most likely be persuaded to evacuate the pair of them if it proved necessary. He’d probably be delighted to get rid of them.

And in the meantime, it did solve the problem of what to do about the castle, and George Mercer as well.

‘Agreed, then,’ I said.

‘Not agreed,’ snarled George.

‘It’s that or a dose of forgetting and a swift ship-off back home.’ Zareen was unsympathetic.

‘Screw this.’ George was out of his chair and halfway to the door before I had time to register that he’d even moved.

The door, however, slammed shut in his face.

‘Oh, come on!’ He hammered on it and delivered it a violent kick, to no avail.

‘George.’ Something in Zareen’s tone arrested my attention, and George’s too. He turned slowly around, simmering with anger but attentive.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘I need you.’

I’d never seen Zareen show so much vulnerability before. Her eyes were huge, and for a moment she looked small and defeated.

At first this entreaty did not appear to have any effect on George. He stood, arms-folded, before the door, brow dark with anger, teeth tightly clenched upon words I hoped he would not utter aloud. But he looked long at Zareen, and at last the anger drained out of him. He shook his head in frustration, and rubbed wearily at his eyes. For a second he looked almost as vulnerable as Zareen, and my heart softened towards him just a little. ‘Fine,’ he muttered, and leaned heavily against the door. I wondered if he was having trouble staying upright.

Zareen just nodded, but her gaze spoke volumes.

‘Right, then,’ I said after a moment, when the silence became awkward. ‘What about Rob, Val and the others?’

There are a number of people still in the castle, Melmidoc offered.

‘Can you see them?’

Not in the sense that you mean. I believe one of them is injured, however.

Shit. ‘We’d better check on that.’

‘Are we going to have them forget, too?’ Jay asked.

Good point. I thought fast. ‘Not Rob or Val. The rest, yes.’

Jay’s eyebrows rose. ‘Harsh, Ves.’

‘Perhaps, but the more people retain this particular secret, the greater the chance it’ll leak. Can we vouch for every one of them?’ Val had named at least ten people from the Society who had received invitations to Fenella’s party. I didn’t know if they had all chosen to attend, but I knew that half the people on her list were not close acquaintances of mine. I simply didn’t know if they could keep their mouths shut.

Jay, of course, could boast only short acquaintance with any of us, so I’d left him with no argument to offer. He merely shrugged.

I looked at Alban. ‘Was there anyone else from the Troll Court present?’

‘Other than Garrogin? I don’t think so.’

‘Not caring about Garrogin.’

He smiled faintly. ‘Nor I.’

I felt something nosing at my leg, and looked down.

A tiny hound waved its tail at me. It had sunny-yellow fur, an enormous nose, and a single horn protruding from its furry forehead.

‘Pup?’ I gasped, disbelieving. It couldn’t be the same one, could it? My own little friend, taken away with Miranda when she left?

Dwina, said Melmidoc in mild reproof. Pray do not inconvenience our guests.

No, of course it wasn’t the same one.

I took a moment to check that my valuables were still in places like around-my-neck and circling-my-wrist and not, say, in the mouth of the adorable creature staring up at me with deceptive innocence. They were.

‘Are there a lot of these hounds about?’ I asked.

I am embarrassed to confess that they have proved much more fertile than we ever anticipated. Indeed, they have become more and more so… There is now a large population of them across Whitmore.

Or in other words, they were reaching pest proportions.

That explained why they kept wandering into cottages and farmhouses and ending up in our Britain.

I stooped to pat Dwina, pleased she’d chosen to show up at that moment. It reminded me of my priorities.

I might consent to leave the place without Zareen, but there was no conceivable way I was leaving without my pup.

‘Did we come up with a way to get everyone into the farmhouse?’ I asked aloud.

We did not, Melmidoc answered. But I did. You may leave it to me.

Melmidoc took us down from the peak shortly afterwards, parking his beautiful spire on the edge of the cliff once more. We emerged into late afternoon sun, which instantly prompted so huge a yawn from me that I felt embarrassed. It occurred to me that the time back in the sixth Britain must be at least four in the morning; no wonder I was tired. Hopping between worlds, that was next-level jetlag.

Millie’s farmhouse loitered casually at the end of a short, narrow street otherwise lined with rather smaller timber-framed houses. As we approached, I received the impression that she was trying to look inconspicuous (do not ask me how a farmhouse contrives to look ostentatiously inconspicuous; I haven’t a hope of explaining anything so absurd). She wasn’t getting very far with it.

Her door flew open at Jay’s approach, with such vigour as to send it slamming against the wall with a terrific thunk. I took it as the building equivalent of a huge smile. Jay! she boomed joyfully, and the floor shook. Come back, come back, I have been so lonesome without you.

I wondered idly what it was about Jay that people took such a fancy to him. Odd types, too. Last week it had been the dragon Archibaldo, who was still campaigning for Jay’s instalment as Mayor of Dapplehaven. This week, a psychotic haunted house with pretty manners and a taste for striped furniture. And even Melmidoc seemed to have a soft spot for him, though I judged he would never admit it. What next?

‘Reminds me,’ I whispered to Jay as we (Jay, the Baron and I) trooped through the farmhouse’s front door. ‘Why did you make me wait, when you first went in here?’

Was it my imagination or did he look a bit sheepish? ‘Erm, no reason.’

‘Tell.’

He sighed. ‘I wanted to be sure it was safe.’

‘For what?’

‘Well, for you.’

Huh?

‘What made you think it might not be?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘These haunted houses have their… quirks. Don’t they?’

‘Hey. Just because she’s a homicidal maniac doesn’t mean—’

I like that, interrupted Millie. One little putative murder and people call you a maniac!

‘Sorry,’ I muttered.

The temperature in the house grew noticeably colder.

‘Quite right,’ said Alban, barely controlling the smile that tugged at his lips. ‘It takes at least three before the title’s deserved.’

Three at least! My uncle was a maniac. We all knew. Four neat little deaths to his credit, and they never caught him. But me! The house gave a great, windy sigh that rattled the windows and set the doors to swaying on their hinges.

Jay patted the nearest wall. ‘Most unfair.’

Inside, the house was an odd mix of styles. Some of it looked unchanged since the eighteenth century: her walls were still wainscotted and papered according to tastes two hundred years gone, and she had a fondness for the ornaments and knick-knacks that had graced many a mantelpiece or tea-table in that bygone age. But when I mentioned her taste for striped furniture, I meant that the results were mixed. She had chaise-longues clad in blue-and-white striped silk (tasteful), candy-striped rugs on her floors (a bit less so), and a tall, zebra-striped armchair in faux leather (most definitely not). I wondered where she had acquired the latter.

‘Millie,’ said Jay, taking a seat in that same zebra-patterned chair and patting the arm. ‘We’re here to ask your help.’

You have my attention.

‘Are you feeling ready to travel?’

Anywhere with you. The house warmed up again with these words, and a balmy breeze drifted through from somewhere.

The poor girl had a real crush.

Jay looked quickly at me, and gave a slight cough. ‘That’s wonderful. Will you mind if we take a few other people along with us?’

‘These people?’

‘And, um, one or two others.’

‘About a hundred others,’ put in the Baron, with a wink at me. I couldn’t disagree. If Millie was going to take exception to the sheer numbers of people involved, better we know that now.

A hundred! Oh, Mr. Patel, is it to be a ball?

Jay blinked, disconcerted, but he couldn’t miss the ring of enthusiasm in Millie’s words. ‘Well… yes, actually it is. They’ll all be dressed up and here to party.’

I never got to go to a ball, Millie said sadly. There was to be a ball at my uncle’s but unluckily I was hanged first.

‘How unfortunate,’ said Alban, somehow managing to sound sympathetic in spite of his obvious desire to laugh.

It was, because I had the perfect gown! White silk, all trimmed about with lace and real pearls! My aunt had it made up for me in town.

‘That sounds lovely,’ I said.

They buried me in it.

It fell to Alban to step smoothly into the awkward silence that followed. ‘A splendid ball, then, to make up for it all? And perhaps you shan’t mind escorting the guests home again afterwards.’

I shall dance with Mr. Patel.

Jay’s eyes grew very wide.

With that settled, we set out to return to the castle. Zareen and George had gone on ahead of us, and with Millie’s consent gained it was time for Melmidoc to begin the process of rounding up the intruders Fenella had brought. As we stepped smartly back down the narrow street towards the cliff path leading below, nothing much seemed to happen, though we passed one or two over-excited people in evening dress who could only have been some of Fenella’s guests.

Then the aged oak front door of a nearby house flew open in a gesture most inviting, and — no word of a lie — a dulcet light beckoned from within. There was even a little burst of strings music coming from inside, with a choir of voices raised in heavenly song. It looked, quite literally, like the gates to paradise.

I drifted that way.

‘Ves,’ said Alban warningly.

‘Mm?’ The music drew me, and the light and the warmth and — oh my, there was a heavenly aroma, too. Peaches and strawberries, honey and cake fresh from the oven…

I arrived at the door.

‘Ves.’ It was Jay that time, catching at my arm.

‘I’m going in.’

‘Don’t be—’ he broke off, and his grip on my arm went slack as he stared dreamily into the light. The spell had hold of both of us, and we advanced step by step, half in a trance.

‘Ves, wait!’ Alban’s voice, but it reached my ears as though from very far away.

We went through the door. The flaring light engulfed us in a gentle rosy radiance; my lungs filled with heady, tantalising scents of fruit and wine; the heavenly music flared — and then, abruptly, cut off.

Turn page ->

‘Listen,’ I said, and explained some of this. ‘We have to find a way to stop Fenella, or virtually every magicker from our world will try to move here.’

‘It may be too late,’ said Alban. ‘She made a very big, very public announcement about it all, remember? As soon as her people make it home, they’ll spread the news far and wide.’

‘If they make it home.’

Alban just looked at me.

‘What if we could persuade Ashdown Castle to go home without them?’

I do not want them here! said Melmidoc.

‘Just for a little while! We need time to talk with Milady, and Their Majesties, and the Ministry, and pretty much every other magickal authority in the sixth Britain-and-beyond, and figure out how to — uh, deal with this.’

I will not have them here. Melmidoc spoke with a ringing certainty which echoed through the floors and set my teeth on edge.

‘Besides,’ put in Zareen, ‘Ashdown Castle is going nowhere today. You heard Jay. Millie Makepeace is an old hand at this and even she can’t world-hop all that often. Those poor, naïve bastards at the Castle aren’t even capable of coherent thought right now.’

‘So if we can’t leave everyone here and we can’t ship them home? What’s the third option?’

‘Scare the living daylights out of them,’ said Zareen, flashing what I tend to think of as her batshit crazy smile. ‘Tell them it only gets worse, and will, if they ever tell a soul.’

I looked at Zareen in silence, and my mind wandered back to that pamphlet of hers. Just what weird and far from wonderful things had Zareen done in her life?

‘What?’ she said, when nobody else spoke either. ‘We’re in the land of haunted houses. Scaring Ancestria Magicka silly would be a piece of cake.’

‘But not lastingly effective.’ Alban favoured Zareen with one of his grave, serious looks — which, it struck me, were relatively rare. There was so often that lurking twinkle in his eye. ‘Fear fades. We need something more durable.’

Zareen acknowledged this point with a gracious nod. Apparently practicality weighed more with her than morality.

Good to know.

‘If only there was a way to undo it,’ I sighed. ‘Fenella’s entire announcement. I’m a bit gutted that this wasn’t about time travel after all.’

‘You don’t truly want to travel in time, Ves,’ said Jay.

‘I do too.’

‘Weren’t you panicking about smallpox, when you thought Jay was lost in 1789?’ said Zareen.

‘There’s that, but—’

Jay was laughing at me. ‘And measles and polio and bubonic plague and a host of other nasties,’ he added. ‘Then there’s all the other problems. Like, we’re giants compared to the people of a few centuries ago, we’d stick out like a sore thumb.’

‘Maybe not Ves,’ said Alban, and the twinkle was back.

I stuck out my tongue at him.

‘And you couldn’t have cornflower-coloured hair,’ said Jay, wisely electing not to join in casting aspersions upon my height. ‘Then there’s clothes. I know historical costume can be convincing, but only to us. Try making a liripipe hood that’d pass inspection six hundred years ago. There would be a thousand things wrong with it. It would be like people six centuries from now trying to make a passable pair of jeans, armed with about three paintings in oils and exactly no extant examples. Do you think they’d look real to us?’

‘Details,’ I said, waving all this away.

‘And then there’s the lawlessness of society, the fact that getting robbed or raped or murdered would be about six thousand times more likely than it is now and there’s no police to call, no ambulance to summon—’

‘All right,’ I said, glaring. ‘Point made.’

He smiled at me, half apology, half sympathy. ‘But aside from all of that, it would be fantastic.’

‘Way fantastic.’ I went to the window, and feasted my eyes upon the view. Melmidoc had taken us to the top of a tallish hill, and from that vantage point most of Whitmore lay spread before us. Its starstone buildings shone, pearly and faintly blue, in the afternoon sun, the white plaster or smooth grey brick of its less fantastical buildings gleamed, and everywhere I looked I saw the same vague shimmer of latent magick, just like the dells and enclaves at home. I could see why Jay wanted to stay. It would take me a lot less than two days to fall in love with this place.

There may be another way, said Melmidoc, interrupting the flow of chatter that had been rippling back and forth among my friends.

‘Another way to what?’ I said, turning back to the room.

To undo your inconvenient colleague’s announcement.

‘She’s not— never mind. What are you thinking of?’

It does not matter what came to pass, if no one present happens to remember it.

Baron Alban shifted uneasily. ‘That practice is outlawed in the— the sixth Britain, and for good reason.’

What are these good reasons?

‘It is impossible to be precise with the amnesiate charm. More memories than just those targeted are lost, which makes it unethical—’

It is impossible for you to be precise with the charm, said Melmidoc frostily. It was not so in my day, and it is not so here.

Alban blinked, taken aback. ‘My apologies,’ he said, with his diplomat’s graciousness. ‘I did not mean to cast doubt upon your skills.’

It can be difficult to grasp that one’s own limitations are not shared by all. Melmidoc, clearly, was not ambassador material.

Alban’s mouth twitched. ‘Regardless, it is difficult to condone the erasing of memories in so large a group of people.’

Then do not. Your friends may, perhaps, think differently.

The Baron looked my way, and must have seen my very different opinion in my face, for he sat once more upon the windowsill with a sigh. I waited for him to speak, but he did not.

‘You’re in a difficult position,’ I said, drifting nearer. ‘Their Majesties’ authority may not extend to the fifth Britain, nor are the people of Ancestria Magicka any subjects of theirs. But you must still report to them upon our return, and justify your actions, and that makes this hard for you.’

‘But?’ he said. ‘I presume there’s one coming.’

‘But, I don’t have to.’

‘Have to what?’

‘Play by the rules. Not for now. Jay and Zar and I are officially cut loose and that gives us freedoms—’

‘Ethics still apply, Ves!’

‘Can you think of a better solution?’

His eyes met mine, and held. ‘No,’ he grunted at length. ‘Of course I can’t.’

‘Then we’ll have to use this one, and if necessary you can blame it all on me.’

He smirked. ‘You’ll enjoy that when you’re languishing in a gaol cell at Mandridore.’

‘I am not among their subjects, so they can’t imprison me.’

They can try, muttered Melmidoc.

I’d forgotten he had history with the Troll Court.

‘The thing is, Ves, when you requested Their Majesties’ aid you brought me here in an official capacity. And I have to act as such.’

‘All right. What would they do?’

He threw up his hands and physically retreated from me. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Rules have to be broken sometimes, when the need is great enough. Go on, try to tell me this isn’t great need. I’m listening.’

I received a stony, silent glare.

‘This is why Milady cut us loose,’ I continued relentlessly. I realised, distantly, that I was ruining all my chances with the Baron and that stung, but this was too important. I couldn’t worry about that. ‘These are problems of unprecedented severity and nobody knows how to deal with them. There is no protocol, no rulebook, to cover any of this.’

Alban’s lips twisted with something that looked dauntingly like disgust. ‘Has it occurred to you?’ he asked. ‘That Fenella probably started out saying just these kinds of things to herself.’

I flinched at that, but went doggedly on anyway. ‘I am not going to turn into Fenella.’

‘Fenella probably never meant to turn into Fenella, either.’

‘Enough,’ snapped Zareen. ‘Comparing Ves to that pile of horse manure is absurd, and you know it.’

Alban closed his lips, and said not another word.

For some reason, I found myself looking at Jay. Zareen’s notions of morality did not, I was learning, quite stand up to close scrutiny. Much as I appreciated her support, I could not take her ideas as my guide. Jay was another matter. He drove me mad sometimes, clinging stubbornly to the rules in every situation, and for all that he teased me about fretting over consequences, he was every bit as bad in his own way.

‘Urgh,’ said Jay, his customary glibness unequal to the demands of the situation. ‘You’re going to make me decide?’

‘Nobody cares what I think, I suppose?’ said George acidly.

‘No,’ said I, and Zareen and Jay and the Baron, all at once.

Our Ancestria Magicka interloper subsided back into silence, glowering.

‘I won’t make you,’ I said to Jay. ‘You can abstain, if you want to.’

Jay struggled with the issue for about twenty seconds, then sighed. ‘The trouble with you, Ves, isn’t that you’re amoral. You aren’t. It’s that, for all your flower-coloured hair and your trinkets and your jewels, you’re too damned practical. The rest of us will wrestle with the rules and the ethics and the precedents and the expectations surrounding a given course of action for some time before concluding, regretfully, that there aren’t any other options that would get the job done nearly so well, or even at all. You go through the same process in three seconds flat, square your shoulders, lift your chin to the sky and get on with it. It’s sometimes hard to keep up with you.’

‘So that’s yes?’ I interpreted.

He waved a hand in a vaguely assenting gesture. ‘I don’t love it any more than the Baron does, but I can’t think of a single alternative that doesn’t lead to catastrophe.’

‘Indeed, no one can.’

‘At least I’m not getting amnesiated.’

Are not you? said Melmidoc, sounding surprised.

Jay’s mouth dropped open. ‘What?’

Does not the same logic apply equally to all visitors from the sixth?

‘No! We aren’t bringing the hordes down on you.’

Ah. I shall take your word for it, shall I?

The problem here was, Jay couldn’t absolutely guarantee that we wouldn’t. If we took news of this back to our own Britain, and the people to whom we owed allegiance there, what might come of it? We could neither predict nor control the actions of the Society, or the Troll court, or the Ministry. I saw this dawn on Jay by slow degrees, and his face filled with dismay.

Melmidoc must have liked something about him, or he would certainly have turfed Jay back to his own Britain right away. But did that mean he would give Jay, and the rest of us, a free pass?

‘Maybe we’ll be able to work something out,’ I said pacifically. ‘But first, Ancestria Magicka, and guests. Melmidoc, what would you need in order to amnesiate the lot of them?’

The forgetting charms are more my brother’s speciality than my own, Melmidoc mused. We will draw them to his spire, and there the work shall be done.

‘And then we’ll need a way to get them home again,’ I pointed out. ‘And quickly, before they have a chance to wander off.’

‘The castle won’t do,’ Zareen warned. ‘To be honest, I’ll be surprised if that place will ever move again.’

That would be inconvenient, but I couldn’t help laughing a bit at the confusion the castle’s disappearance would cause. The papers would enjoy that one. Maybe the publicity would be sufficient to distract attention from the various other things we were much more anxious to hide.

‘I’ll talk to Millie,’ said Jay. ‘She should be ready to travel soon, and there’s just about enough space for everyone.’

‘But how do we get them all to the spire, and then from there to the farmhouse?’ I had visions of trying to herd a whole partyful of people around like sheep.

Perhaps my brother might be disposed to visit the farmhouse, Melmidoc put in.

‘Can he do that?’

The reply was scornful. Naturally.

I did not think it was natural to most people in Melmidoc or Drystan’s position, but chose not to say so. I’d only receive another round of disdain along the lines of one’s own limitations are not universal, and considering the extent of their achievements, the Redclover brothers had a right to a degree of arrogance.

‘That would be perfect,’ I said instead. ‘Then all we have to do is shepherd a bunch of excited explorers into the least interesting building on the island and hold them there until Millie gets us all home. Simple.’

‘I’m not going home,’ Zareen said.

‘What?’

‘And neither is George.’

Turn page ->

‘You made it!’ said Jay, smiling, once we had finally crawled our way to the top of the cliff.

Fortunately for him, I was a bit too out of breath from the climb to make any immediate reply. I occupied myself instead with gazing out over the water. A town was distantly visible on the horizon, but I was insufficiently familiar with Scarborough to be able to tell whether or not it looked the same.

‘Uh huh!’ said Zareen brightly and added, with deceptive casualness, ‘And where exactly have we made it to?’

‘Oh, the fifth Britain. This is Whitmore, centre of magickal government for the North.’ He eyed me in my slinky evening gown and added, ‘Nice dress.’

Faced as he was with four identically pole-axed expressions, I suppose he could be forgiven the smug smile. ‘There’s lots to tell,’ he conceded.

‘Wait,’ said Baron Alban. ‘The fifth Britain? Five?’

‘Yes,’ said Jay. ‘There are —’

‘Five?’ Zareen and I yelped in concert.

‘Well—’ said Jay.

‘Five worlds like ours,’ I said, and folded my arms. ‘You cannot be serious, Jay.’

‘I’m not,’ he said, and folded his arms right back at me. ‘There are nine.’

Nine that are known, came Melmidoc’s voice. The door to the Starstone Spire stood open, and we had all paused only a few feet away. Many scholars believe that there are more yet to be discovered.

Zareen threw up her hands and took a step back, signalling her incapacity to cope with the conversation just then. I didn’t blame her. George Mercer hadn’t said a word; he stood a little apart from the rest of us, stony-faced and silent. From the look of him, I suspected his behaviour was prompted in large part by simple exhaustion. Zareen’s too, probably.

‘Which scholars?’ said Alban.

Whitmore is also a centre of learning, said Melmidoc. Academics from more than one of the nine have gathered here. Even one or two from your Britain, Baron.

‘Well, this is…’ Alban left the sentence unfinished, and looked helplessly at me.

‘How many did you know about?’ I said shrewdly, for he alone had been little surprised by the general substance of Fenella’s speech.

‘Three are known to the Court. Not, I think, including this one.’

Considering the unique obstacles posed by your particular Britain, that is a respectable achievement, Melmidoc remarked.

‘Thank you.’ The Baron’s voice was wintry.

‘How are there nine?’ I put in, my mind reeling. ‘Are they all the same? Did they all come into being at the same time? How did you get here — what is this island — what became of the Whitmore of our Britain — what did you mean about the magickal government for the North — the North? Is there a separate one for the South? Why? Is that the fifth Scarborough over there? I—’

Peace, interrupted Melmidoc, and I stopped gabbling with a gulp.

‘Sorry. But when we’ve finished with those questions I have about two thousand more.’

Melmidoc gave a dry chuckle. Questions are the product of an enquiring mind, and should never be apologised for. Let me begin with the first. How are there nine? Multiple theories upon that point have been proposed, but none have yet been proved beyond all doubt. They are not thought to have come into being all together, but that, too, is the subject of debate. Melmidoc’s dry voice warmed with enthusiasm as he continued. I will be happy to hold a more detailed discourse with you upon those topics, should you like to hear about the leading theories. Now then, how do we get here? It is a sideways step, nothing more. Simple in explanation, difficult in practice, for your young friend here has not yet contrived to master the ability despite two days of practice. Perhaps, in your Britain — ours, I should say — it is by now a lost art. I should be sorry to think so. The Whitmore of your Britain sank, I am afraid. Rather an inconvenience to us at the time, but our removal here has turned out very well indeed, for we have been able to build the kind of magickal government in the North of this Britain of which we could only dream under the conditions prevailing in the sixth.

‘That’s ours?’ I put in. ‘The sixth Britain?’

Yes.

‘What is the fourth like?’

Of the nine worlds, said Melmidoc patiently, three are no more, including the one we think of as the fourth. In two, magick has met a permanent death and cannot now be revived at all. Of the four remaining, two have succumbed to fear and irrationality and outlawed magick entirely. That leaves your world, where magick survives in a diminished and hidden capacity, and this one, the fifth Britain, where magick thrives and need never hide.

I thought briefly of Fenella Beaumont, and Ancestria Magicka. To build so powerful an organisation in a single year, she must have had an equally powerful motive. Was this it? Had she somehow discovered the fifth Britain, a vision of a world where people like us could practice our magicks openly, and with unabated power?

It was a seductive prospect, that I could not deny. But what did she now plan to do?

I hesitate to call a close to this instructive interlude, said Melmidoc, but was it strictly necessary to bring so large a party hither?

Startled, I looked down over the cliff. For a little while, I’d forgotten about the rest of Fenella’s guests. They had made their way out of the transplanted castle by now and were milling about on the beach — staring around at everything, exclaiming and, in short, looking like a pack of excited tourists.

Which, I suppose, we all were.

‘They pose a problem,’ I said, and outlined the events of the past few hours — for Jay’s benefit as well as Melmidoc’s.

And you do not think they are here in good faith?

‘In a spirit of happy exploration, with the best of intentions and no nefarious motives in mind? No.’

Then they will be disposed of, said Melmidoc mildly.

‘Not chilling at all.’ As I watched, Fenella took up a spot partway up the cliff and began, once again, to hold forth. From this height, I could not hear what she was saying, but it involved a fair amount of pointing and gesturing up to the top of the cliff, and over the water to the huddle of buildings clinging to the far shore. I could not see Rob or Val in the mass of people, or any of our folk. Wherever they had gone, it wasn’t with Fenella.

‘Let’s go in,’ said Jay, and the door of the spire creaked open a bit wider in invitation. ‘I can see we’re going to need a cunning plan.’

I stared hungrily over the island of Whitmore, spread before us like a birthday buffet. I had a fierce lust to explore its plethora of shining buildings, their architecture so intriguing a mixture of the familiar and the strange; another spire rose somewhere in the distance, so similar in style to Melmidoc’s that it had to be related, and was that Drystan’s? Another set of people wandered the narrow streets of the town, similar to and yet different from us in the same way as their homes and shops and offices. What must it be like, to grow up here, live here, work here right out in the open? As part of an organisation known to, and accepted by, every denizen of this world whether magickal or not? What feats were they capable of, that we had forgotten long ago?

But now was not the time, for we had a more pressing problem on our hands: Fenella. I’d have to trust that my opportunity to explore would come soon, if not today. ‘What’s become of Millie?’ I asked as I preceded Jay into the Starstone Spire.

‘She’s dozing,’ he answered, ushering Zareen and George inside. The Baron brought up the rear, uncharacteristically quiet. I wondered just how many questions were buzzing through his mind at that moment, and how many worries. He rewarded my look of enquiring concern with a smile and the barest trace of a wink.

‘In the hopes of warding off a beating,’ said Jay as we trooped up the stairs, ‘I did try to find a way to get word to you, but phones from our Britain don’t work here — big surprise — and Millie can’t go back and forth all that often. It tires her.’

I am afraid I declined to be pressed into service as a messenger, Melmidoc put in, though Mr. Patel is tiresomely persuasive. In another day, perhaps two, I would have been dispatched quite against my will, I am sure of it.

‘Ves worries,’ said Jay, with a shrug.

She appears to me the very picture of a composed young woman.

‘All a lie. Underneath that calm exterior, she’s stewing over at least a dozen things.’

I blushed, for this I could not deny. ‘Maybe not a dozen…’

‘Anyway,’ Jay continued, ‘I wanted to share. Who wouldn’t?’ We reached the top of the spire, where the cosy library had once been. The room was still bare in comparison with before, but Jay had acquired a few chairs from somewhere and hauled them in — somehow — and he now collapsed into one. ‘It’s amazing,’ he enthused. ‘You have to get a look around, Ves. This is what our world could’ve been like, if we hadn’t screwed everything up.’

‘You know,’ I said, taking the chair beside his. ‘That’s more or less exactly what Fenella Beaumont was saying before she kidnapped us all here.’

‘Uh huh. And who is she?’

I explained.

Jay looked nonplussed, but he shrugged. ‘Never thought I’d be in agreement with Ancestria Magicka, but she’s not wrong.’

‘No, indeed. But what of it? It’s too late to turn our Britain into this one.’

‘Is it?’ One of Jay’s brows went up.

The world shifted under us, but subtly. Melmidoc had moved us, but it came in a smooth, unobtrusive feeling of motion, nothing like Ashdown Castle at all. The effects of practice, I supposed.

‘It is,’ said Alban. ‘Well — it is too late to come out of the shadows. Can you imagine the result if we tried?’ He had eschewed the chairs in favour of perching on the windowsill, and he did not look at us as he spoke: his attention was fixed upon the island flying by outside.

‘Total uproar,’ I said, for I had to agree.

‘True,’ Jay conceded. ‘But all our lost arts? What could we relearn, with help from the fifth?’

‘You did not have much luck learning to jump sideways, right?’

Jay rolled his eyes, and slouched disconsolately in his chair. ‘I’ve had only two days to practice. It took more like two years to learn to jump at all, as you put it. If I could stay here—’

‘Wait.’ I stared, shocked. ‘You want to stay?’

Jay avoided my eyes. ‘Think about it, Ves. All the things we could learn. All the things we could do.’

I had been thinking about it, pretty much without cease ever since Fenella had opened her big mouth and let all these delicious and dangerous secrets come tumbling out. It was, as I have already said, a seductive prospect. ‘But.’ I rallied, with a struggle. ‘This is exactly why we have to go home. We’re needed there. We aren’t remotely needed here.’

‘And we could do our work much better there if we’ve been properly trained here. I don’t propose to stay forever, Ves. Just long enough.’

‘How long is long enough?’

Jay just shrugged.

‘Melmidoc,’ said the Baron, finally turning around. ‘I don’t think we should leave that lot roaming around Whitmore for very long. Certainly not without supervision.’

Do not be concerned, said Melmidoc coolly. They are not unsupervised.

‘Oh?’

Almost every house on Whitmore has its own occupants with my general characteristics, he supplied. Most have more than one. I am receiving regular reports as to the movements of your friends.

‘Not our friends,’ Zareen said coldly.

‘Hey,’ said George. ‘Some of them are mine.’

‘Yes, about that?’ Zareen threw him a challenging look. ‘You need better friends.’

‘So you’ve said.’

I held up a hand to forestall further argument. ‘Are you saying every building on the entire island is haunted?’ I said to Melmidoc.

Haunted. His dry, aged voice registered amusement. If you wish to call it by such a term.

‘It’s the best I’ve got,’ I apologised. ‘I come from the diminished sixth, remember? These things are rare and weird back there.’

Rare and weird. Melmidoc was definitely laughing at me.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘What are their movements?’ interrupted Alban.

At present they are nearing the top of the cliff. They seem to be engaged mostly in pointing at things and saying the word wow unnecessarily often.

Tourists.

Which raised an unpleasant prospect for the fifth Britain, for this was what Fenella’s decisions would initially condemn them to. Endless trips from starry-eyed magickal tourists. Whitmore awash with wistful and marvelling magickers from the sixth Britain, eager to see and experience every single little thing they could — and to take as much of it back with them as possible.

What’s more, Jay would not be the only person who’d try to stay. Far from it. Our own, beloved Britain would be half emptied of magickers by the time the excitement died down, which would only cripple it further.

We had a full-scale emergency on our hands.

Turn page ->

The ballroom was already crowded by the time we arrived. We were among the last to squeeze our way into the vaulted chamber, and there was barely space enough for us. I was relieved to find Rob just inside the door, apparently on the watch for us. ‘Is she all right?’ he said at once, already reaching for Zareen.

‘I’m fine,’ said Zar, and she was recovering by then, though still rather weak. She straightened up, shaking me off, and lifted her chin. Her eyes, thankfully, were normal again.

Mercer had revived after a couple of minutes, but refused to come with us. He’d staggered off into the bowels of the castle, and we had let him go.

Rob nodded. ‘Trouble?’

Zareen gave him a quick account of the ten (or more) Waymasters she had sensed locked into the walls, and I watched as Rob’s face grew very grave. ‘Ten Waymasters ought to be enough to move a castle, wouldn’t you think?’ he said when she had finished.

‘Fair chance of it.’

A small stage occupied the far end of the ballroom, raised up very high. A smattering of applause broke out as a woman strode out onto it, dressed in a dazzling gown that glittered like the night sky. When her identity became clear, the applause became thunderous.

I was too astonished to move.

‘That’s Fenella Beaumont,’ I hissed.

Let me tell you about the Beaumonts. They were a powerful magickal family some few hundred years ago, and Ashdown Castle had been their principal seat for many generations. But they’d withered away down the ages; their powers and their fortune had declined at about equal rates, and most of them had died out. Fenella Beaumont was one of only two surviving members of the family — and she had not been seen or heard from in so long, some had begun to say she, too, was dead.

Well, she wasn’t. With her silvery hair swept up in a fairy-tale style and her still slender figure encased in sparkling velvet, she was causing a sensation up on the stage.

‘Welcome to my ancestral home!’ she said, when at last the applause began to die down. ‘It is a pleasure to see my beloved Ashdown Castle not only restored to its former glory but also hosting such a distinguished set of guests. I hope you have all been suitably supplied with champagne?’

A roar of assent.

‘Her home?’ I whispered to Rob. ‘Ancestria Magicka bought this place last year.’

‘From Everett Beaumont,’ said Rob. ‘Her uncle.’

Everett Beaumont was famously destitute, hence the appalling state of disrepair the castle had fallen into — and its sale. Fenella Beaumont was as broke as the rest of them, so what was she doing up there in a designer gown, diamonds flashing at her ears and throat?

‘Let me introduce you to Ancestria Magicka,’ Fenella was saying, flashing a charming smile. ‘Many have called for a progressive, forward-thinking organisation for the magickal among us. Many have chafed against the needless restrictions laid down by our sisters and brothers at the Ministry, among the Courts of the Fae, and the many other establishments tasked with the protection and preservation of our kind. And they do fine work, do they not? But it isn’t enough.’ Fenella began to pace back and forth across the stage. A good move, I had to admit: she had a fluid, graceful stride, and the sparkle sent up by her gown and her jewels had a nearly mesmeric quality. ‘It isn’t enough to be safe. It isn’t enough to be careful. If we want to regain what we’ve lost, well, somebody has to take risks!’

She stopped, and looked seriously out over her audience. ‘We all know what we’ve lost, don’t we? Our arts have declined with every passing century, smothered by the relentless rise of modernity and technology. Even the greatest of our living practitioners has nothing to compare with the witches and sorcerers, the waymasters and necromancers, of ages long past. This isn’t right. Where will we be in another hundred years? Another two centuries? Will there be anything of magick left?

‘And that isn’t all. My friends, my colleagues, we have lost far more than any of you realise. More than that: it has been taken from us, hidden from us. You are all being lied to, every single day, by those you look up to. Our leaders have swaddled us in comforting half-truths and outright lies, all in the name of safety! Of miserable caution! In so doing, they collude in our destruction.

‘We cannot go on this way.’

She paused here for effect, and you could have heard a pin drop in that room. Some of the people near me did not even seem to be breathing. The woman had presence, I’d give her that. ‘A year ago today, I founded Ancestria Magicka,’ continued Fenella. ‘To fight back. To find a new way forward. To reclaim our lost heritage. I see a brighter, more magickal future ahead and it is my dearest wish to share it with all of you.’

The tension in the room became palpable, and I sensed that the first of those “scintillating surprises” was about to be dropped on us. (If we weren’t counting the involvement of Fenella herself. Even the purchase of Ashdown Castle, of all places, hadn’t tipped me off about her).

‘We may have left the best of our arts behind us, but what if I told you they are not lost? What if I told you there is a way to get them back?’

It was my turn to stop breathing. I clutched the Baron’s arm so hard it must have hurt, but he didn’t move. His attention was riveted upon Fenella Beaumont.

‘Look at our world,’ said Fenella. ‘Half drained of magick, and what little is left must be hidden away. We are forced to hide in the shadows. Why, there is an entire Ministry devoted to no other purpose! But why? Why must we hide? Why has magick declined?

‘It is claimed that this is a natural and inevitable process — that there is nothing we could have done to slow or halt this decline. That as the world progressed, as technology improved, we and our magick must necessarily be left behind.

‘This is false. It is through our own poor choices, our own weaknesses, that modern magick has arrived at this condition. We, and our ancestors, have betrayed everything we have, everything we are, and we continue to do so, day by day. But it doesn’t have to be this way.’ Fenella stood dead centre of the stage, now, staring out at the audience. She stood tall and proud and majestic, glittering with magick, her eyes alight with fervour; every word she uttered struck me deeply. ‘What we have broken, we can mend. We can! And we will!

‘How do I know this? Because, my friends, I have seen the proof with my own eyes. Some of those around you have seen it. I have travelled far beyond the borders of Britain. I have travelled far beyond the borders of this world. And I have seen another Britain. Another world. One where magick has not declined. A world where magick and its practitioners co-exist, peacefully and without conflict, alongside the very same technologies we enjoy in our own reality.’

She was obliged to pause, here, for the ballroom was by then in uproar. I felt like screaming myself. ‘What the bloody hell?’ I gasped. ‘What nonsense is this?’

Baron Alban alone had neither moved nor spoken. He just looked at me.

‘It’s true? It cannot be.’ I was shaking all over, I wasn’t sure why. Shock? Horror? Awe? I wrapped my arms around myself and took a steadying breath, though it was difficult to muster a state of calm when everyone around me was losing their wits. ‘Explain?’ I said beseechingly.

‘Later.’ The Baron looked back at Fenella. ‘Methinks the lady isn’t finished with us yet.’

He was right. Fenella raised her voice to shout above the tumult. ‘I see scepticism in many faces!’ she shouted. ‘Lies, I hear you call! It is a difficult idea to believe, is it not? It has been hidden from us, hidden by our own leaders, our own guiding lights. Well, the time for secrets has passed. I bring you truths, and I shall prove that this is no lie.’ Her lips curved in a saucy smile. ‘How, you ask?

‘Why don’t I just… show you?’

With splendid theatricality, most of the lights went out, leaving the ballroom in an atmospheric gloom.

And then, too many things happened at once.

Zareen, at my elbow, began abruptly to babble, six or eight voices at once streaming from her lips. Her eyes had gone solid black again, and every muscle in her body was rigid. Her voices rose to a screaming pitch and she clapped her hands over her ears as though to shut something out; her gaze, locked on mine, was wide and desperate.

She collapsed.

‘Zar!’ I fell to my knees beside her, but there was nothing I could do. She lay shuddering uncontrollably, still babbling in an endless stream of words, her hands clutching helplessly at me.

Then George Mercer was there. He looked little better himself, and his lips moved in concert with Zareen’s, uttering the same words which poured still from her mouth. But he bent and hauled her up, steadying her somehow. They clung to one another.

The ground began to shake.

‘We’re going somewhere,’ I gasped, and almost fell as the earth gave a convulsive shudder beneath my feet. A dull roar began as the ancient bricks of Ashdown Castle rattled and shook, as though an earthquake passed through.

‘We’re going a long way,’ said Alban grimly, and I was grateful when he took hold of me, for with his superior weight and bulk he was a lot more stable than I was. I clung to him like he was a tree in a storm and shut my eyes. How did I really feel, in that moment? Terrified, appalled — but afire with excitement, because, good gods, if Fenella spoke the truth… I had no words to express the impact her revelation would have upon everything I knew and cared for.

Rob surged out of the crowd. His dark hair was dusted white with fallen plaster and he had a shield up, a field of magickal energy which flickered darkly around him as he moved. ‘Ves!’ he bellowed. ‘Where’s Val?’

I pointed in the direction I’d last seen her, though who knew if she was anywhere near that spot anymore.

‘Take care of Zareen!’ he shouted, and plunged into the crowd in, hopefully, Val’s general direction.

I summoned a shield of my own, taking care that it encapsulated Zareen (and George) and the Baron as well as me. Rob was right: at this rate, Fenella’s mad scheme would bring the roof down on us.

The roar of rumbling brick and stone grew louder still, the earth rocked wildly under another tearing shock, and then — then we were gone, hauled bodily through space like the worst of all rollercoasters. Dizziness overwhelmed me, and Alban too, for we went tumbling to the ground and lay there stunned as the world broke into whirling pieces and faded away.

It seemed a long time later when the tremors stopped at last, and the ground ceased to shudder and buckle beneath us. I opened my eyes, tentatively, to find my shield still intact around the dishevelled little group of us, toppled like bowling pins.

‘Are we alive?’ I croaked.

‘Breathing,’ said Alban from about three inches away. The pale bluish tint to his skin had developed more of a greenish air, but otherwise he looked hale. He managed, somehow, to smile at me.

Zareen and George were twined tightly together not far from where I lay. Both appeared to be breathing, which was good enough for me at that moment. With a groan, I hauled myself to my feet, and looked around.

The roof had not come down, but plenty of plaster had. Ancestria Magicka’s guests were liberally dusted with it, their splendid evening attire nicely ruined. Nobody appeared hurt, or not more than a little. All about me, dazed guests were struggling to their feet.

‘Any idea where we are?’ I muttered to the Baron.

‘Some,’ he said. ‘Let’s find out.’

I looked at Zareen, but she waved a hand weakly at me. ‘Go,’ she whispered hoarsely, and her lips quirked in a tiny smile. ‘Save yourselves…’

I rolled my eyes, and held out a hand to her. ‘Come on. Don’t you want to see this vision of magickal marvels?’

‘I do,’ she said, and began to shiver. ‘My legs don’t, and I’m really not sure about my stomach.’

George dragged himself up and stood there for a moment, swaying slightly. When he did not fall, he held out his hand to Zareen. ‘We’re okay.’

‘Speak for yourself.’ But she rallied and got herself up somehow. Her eyes were still coal-black, which I tried not to notice, and a trickle of drying blood marred the blanched skin beneath her nose. At least they had both stopped babbling.

I kept the shield up as we left the ballroom. Fortunately we had maintained a station near the rear door, and few people yet stood between us and the questionable safety of the outdoors. Our pace was slow, and I became aware of several hitherto undiscovered bruises as we staggered through the corridors of Ashdown Castle to its main doors. They were closed, but they swung slowly open as we approached, and fresh air rushed in. I took a great, grateful lungful of it.

The sun was up, and it should not have been, for darkness had fallen by the time Fenella began her spectacular speech. We had somehow gone back (or forward) to the middle of the afternoon, or thereabouts, and that fact caused a violent fluttering in my stomach — part excitement, part anticipation, part terror.

‘What the fuck is going on,’ muttered Zareen, and I agreed whole-heartedly with the sentiment, for beyond the doors of the castle was a sight both unfamiliar and unfathomable.

A sandy beach strewn with stones stretched before us, and beyond that came the deep blue glitter of a sunlit sea. A cliff rose in jagged stages to a height of some hundred feet, a winding roped-off pathway snaking its leisurely way up to the top. Little houses were tucked into nooks and corners at intervals up the cliff, and their architecture was mostly of a type I recognised: timber-frames, whitewashed walls, steeply gabled roofs covered in thatch. But one or two were odd. It took me a moment to realise that their pale, pearly walls were built from starstone, and they bore some of the same whimsical features as Melmidoc’s Striding Spire. One of them even had a short, round tower of almost identical design.

My gaze made its way slowly up this bizarre and inexplicable cliff and when I at last took in what lay at the very top, I received another shock, for there was Melmidoc’s own spire. It stood casually at the edge of the cliff, a pale, elegant shape against the deep blue sky, and just to round the day off nicely there was a familiar figure coming out of the door at its base.

Jay looked down at the group of us huddled on the beach, shading his eyes against the sun. Then, curse him, he gave us a cheery wave.

‘What,’ I said slowly, ‘the fuck is going on.’

Jay beckoned.

‘Right, then,’ I said, squaring my shoulders. ‘All ready for another dose of strange beyond all reason?’

‘Bring it on,’ said Alban.

Turn page ->

I had paid a visit to Ashdown Castle before, only a few weeks past. On that occasion, the place had been half a ruin, with parts of its roofs fallen in, glass missing from the windows, walls tumbling down — a wreck, in short. What a pity, too, for it was a large, rambling old place, five centuries old, with appealing higgledy-piggledy architecture all built from unusual brown brick.

The several sloping roofs were all intact, now. The windows glittered with bright, new glass, every rickety wall had been rebuilt or stabilised, and there had even been some cleaning done to its decorative stone embellishments. How they had achieved so much in so short a space of time was beyond me to imagine; I could only gape in astonishment, and marvel again at just how much money these people had to throw around.

‘I really, really want to know who’s funding this lot,’ I muttered to the Baron.

‘Yes,’ he replied, grimly. ‘We were thinking the same thing.’

By we I supposed he meant himself and Their Majesties. It wasn’t just the money, either. They behaved with the splendid insouciance of people who think that laws are beneath them, and are confident of there being no conceivable way any unpleasant consequences could ever be brought to bear for breaking them. I’d wondered before how many connections they had in advantageous places, especially since Lord Garrogin’s duplicity had come to light.

Probably that had occurred to Their Majesties, too.

Our invitations were accepted at the door by a pair of young women in blue uniform robes — or mine was, anyway. The Baron needed no invitation. He had only to announce himself and his eminence did all the work (with a little help from his best and most charming smile, perhaps). The girls on the door looked thrilled as they waved him in. Was it because he was handsome, or because his presence here was another coup for Ancestria Magicka?

In the great hall — whitewashed walls inside, high ceiling, remarkable painted murals depicting forest scenes — we found a large number of our fellow guests already milling about, many of them with champagne glasses in hand.

We also found Zareen, loitering near the door, with George Mercer in tow. He wore a black tuxedo; she was devastating in a slim column of a black dress, her eye make-up dramatic.

‘Half the Society’s coming,’ she hissed as she drew us aside. ‘They’ve invited everyone.’

‘So I learned from Val. You wouldn’t happen to know why, would you?’

We both looked at George Mercer, who had the grace to look uncomfortable.

‘They’re looking to expand,’ said Zareen in disgust. ‘At our expense, obviously.’

The same conclusion Milady and I had reached in our separate deliberations, but I was no longer certain that was all that was going on. There was too much show, the party was too big, the guests too varied. What Zareen had said was probably true enough, but what other motive lurked behind all this effort and expense?

‘I’d like to know where Jay is,’ I said to George, as pleasantly as I could manage considering that I wanted to choke the information out of him with my bare hands.

He grunted. ‘You’ll find out.’

‘Once we’ve given you the information you want, you mean?’ I was ready to do that if it meant getting Jay back.

But Mercer rolled his eyes. ‘No.’

I thought Zareen was looking a bit shame-faced. Had she already spilled everything?

She caught my look, and sighed. ‘They know all about that bloody island already, all right?’

‘They do?’ That shed some interesting new light on things. ‘All about it?’

‘As much as we know, anyway.’

Mercer, to my interest, looked like he wanted to say something, but he hesitated and Zareen swept on. ‘Last recorded position off the coast of Scarborough, vanished since to an undiscovered location.’

He was definitely looking shifty. ‘Do you also have an inkling as to where?’ I said — politely, I swear!

The man sighed, ran a finger around the collar of his shirt as though it was choking him, and walked off, muttering something about a drink.

Zareen’s smile grew satisfied.

‘What was that?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said, but then amended that to: ‘Mission almost accomplished.’

‘What mission?’

‘My secret George Mercer mission.’

‘Does it have anything to do with getting Jay back?’

‘Sort of.’

I gave up. I’d always known that Jay and Zareen did not altogether get along, but I hadn’t expected to find her so unmoved by his mysterious plight. Remonstrating with her was useless. I walked away.

The Baron leaned down to whisper in my ear. ‘I think that she has not had the success she was hoping for with Mr. Mercer, but is embarrassed to admit it.’

Hmm. Was she embarrassed or just hopping mad? Either way, uttered in his smooth, calm tones, the idea sounded reasonable, and some of my irritation and dismay dissipated. He was probably right.

I came to a dead halt halfway across the hall, because a familiar figure approached from the other side of the room: an extremely tall figure, clad in robes. ‘Lord Garrogin’s here?’

The Baron looked about as pleased to see him as I was. ‘Bloody cheek,’ he muttered.

I was better pleased to see Rob and Nell there, and Val arrived shortly afterwards. I didn’t see Miranda, though I was on the watch for her.

I began to feel bad about turning my back on Zareen like that. I knew she was in a difficult position between the Society and George Mercer, and could hardly be blamed for having slightly confused loyalties. She would be doing her best. I ought to be a better friend.

But when I turned to go back to her, she was not where we had left her a few minutes before. It took me a few seconds to locate her among the mass of sumptuously clad guests; they were as curious about the castle as I was. A ceaseless flow of party-goers streamed from door to door, disappearing into the depths of the building and coming back again, probably in search of more champagne.

I would join them in exploring before long, but first… ah, there was Zareen, in a corner by herself. She had her eyes closed. As I drew nearer, I saw that she was pressed into the walls, one hand laid palm-flat against the pale plaster. Her face was pale and drawn in that way I was beginning to dread seeing.

I approached carefully, wary of startling her. ‘Zar?’ I said softly.

Her eyes snapped open. They were only half filled in with black, yet, but the colour was spreading into the whites. ‘Ves. You know the…’ she trailed off as Alban came up beside me.

‘Carry on,’ I murmured. ‘The Baron’s all right.’

‘I’d rather not.’ The look in Zareen’s eyes too nearly resembled fear for my liking, so I was glad when Alban took this in good part, and moved quietly away again.

‘The Greyer cottage,’ Zareen continued, pitching her voice lower. ‘And how George and Katalin almost beat us to it.’

‘Yes.’

‘We thought they were trying to purloin the services of Wester, and maybe one of the Greyers, for themselves. And we were right.’

‘But you exorcised them, so that put paid to that plan.’

‘But it didn’t. It’s something George said earlier today…’ Her eyes fluttered shut again, and she visibly swallowed. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in her mind at that moment. ‘There are more Waymasters like Wester. Millie Makepeace, for one, and George claims they’ve another tame one in some building somewhere, he wouldn’t say in any more detail. But I think that’s not the half of it. You’ve been here before, haven’t you?’

‘Once, a few weeks ago.’

‘Notice anything different about it?’

‘Only everything.’ I told her about the castle’s formerly derelict state.

‘Building works,’ Zareen whispered, and said hoarsely: ‘Ves. There are at least seven spirits loose in here.’

‘Seven?’

She nodded. ‘Perhaps more, I am having trouble separating them. Some of them are… really not happy.’

I’ve a notion my face turned as paper-white as Zareen’s. Seven spirits, most or all of them conveyed here with or without their consent, their bones sealed into newly rebuilt floors or walls. Possibly more than seven. ‘Are they all Waymasters?’

‘At least two of them are. One is called Bonnie Bishop. I know this because she keeps shrieking her name at me. She was a healer in a village called Combe Greening. Edward Visser kept a charms and cantrips shop in Amesbury. Harriet Theale was a vicar’s wife in a parish called Bodwell. Two of them are talking in languages I cannot understand and the rest are just— I can’t distinguish.’ Zareen gripped her head, her eyes wide and staring now, and black from edge to edge. ‘Eight,’ she said with forced calm. ‘Toby McNeal, Kinross. Waymaster and baker.’

‘Zar.’ I took hold of her hands, and tried to make her look at me. ‘Zar, stop. Where is this coming from? You were fine a few minutes ago.’

‘They were silent until a few minutes ago. I didn’t know they were there. They woke up, all at once.’

That boded poorly. The party was just getting underway, pretty much everyone was here who was going to be here, and now the ghosts in the walls woke up?

‘I need George,’ said Zareen shakily, and tried to pull free of me.

I hung onto her. ‘We’ll find him together. Come on.’

Baron Alban, bless him, had not been oblivious to this. He was at my side in an instant as I set off across the hall, supporting Zareen. He took up a position on her other side, his bulk helping to shield her from unwanted attention, and with his superior height he was the first to spot George Mercer slipping through a half-concealed door at the back of the hall.

We followed.

‘Stranger Arts?’ murmured the Baron to me as we passed through the door.

‘Mm.’

He looked more sympathetic than repulsed, and duly went up yet another notch in my estimation.

‘George!’ gasped Zareen. ‘Stop. Please.’

For a moment I thought he would ignore her, but to his credit he slowed, and turned around. He looked every bit as bad as Zareen, if not worse, his face chalk-coloured and his eyes pitch. Shadows crept across his skin, giving him a chilling, cadaverous air. ‘I told you to stay away,’ he said, his voice rasping like rusted metal.

‘And that’s why I came. You’re holding them here, aren’t you? You’ve got to let them go.’

‘I can’t.’

‘George. They’re tearing themselves to pieces.’

‘They’ll tear me to pieces if I try it.’

‘If they do, so be it.’ Zareen was ice-cold. ‘You should never have done this.’ She swallowed, choked, and added: ‘Nine. Bob Malley, Kellswater. He wants to go home, George.’

George’s reply, whatever it might have been, was drowned by a sudden blare of music from the hall. No, it was not coming from the hall, or not only from the hall. It was coming from everywhere at once. I might have suspected a complicated speaker system, except that the music — strings and trumpets, with something of the fanfare about it — seemed to explode from the very walls. Then came a woman’s voice. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Ashdown Castle! Ancestria Magicka is delighted to make your acquaintance. Your presence is kindly requested in the main ballroom for the first of several scintillating surprises, so make haste! We begin in five minutes!’

A look of utter horror flashed across George’s face, prompted by… what?

‘Ten,’ said Zareen. ‘Felicity Bennett, Ivybridge. Seamstress.’

‘Right,’ I said, straightening my spine. ‘Zar, you need to stop this. Shut them off. They’ll drive you insane, and there is nothing you can do for them at this moment.’

Zareen nodded ready acquiescence, to my relief — but then she shuddered so violently she almost fell to the floor. The Baron and I caught her between us.

I stared flintily at George, my heart pounding. ‘What is going on here?’

But I was too late. He gave the same tearing shudder as Zareen, but while she had weathered it, George did not. His eyes rolled up and he collapsed.

Turn page ->

On the other side of the door was House’s favourite room. I had been there just once before, in search of the third key to Farringale. In character it is a pretty sitting-room, a perfectly preserved specimen of mid-to-late seventeenth century style, with elegant floral wallpaper, wrought-silver candlesticks (never tarnished) and a tall grandfather clock. House keeps it well hidden.

Val sailed her chair over to a wall and stopped, promptly producing a laptop from somewhere. She started it up and began typing furiously.

I took one of the tall, pale-upholstered chairs, and spent a moment collecting my thoughts.

‘What are we working with?’ said Val. She’d stopped typing and was waiting expectantly.

‘Lost islands,’ I said.

‘You mean like Atlantis?’

‘A bit more real.’

‘Atlantis isn’t real?’

‘It… is it?’ I stared.

Val grinned. ‘Might be.’

‘You did say is, not was?’

With a flick of her fingers, Valerie waved this away. ‘Another time. So like Atlantis or more like Ferdinandea?’

‘That’s the one that keeps vanishing and popping up again? No. No volcanic activity involved, as far as we know. It’s more like Bermeja.’ (I had done some research already).

‘Gulf of Mexico,’ said Val promptly. ‘Marked on a few ancient maps but nobody can find it today?’

‘Exactly. Or any sign that it ever existed at all.’

‘Okay. But you’re certain this island of yours did exist.’

I told her everything we’d heard so far, every miserably insufficient clue we had mustered, and spoken all together it did not sound like much. But Val listened with close attention, and as I’d hoped, the question fired her interest.

She began typing again.

‘Could be vanished,’ she murmured, half to herself. ‘Islands vanish all the time, but they’re usually discernible lying right there on the sea bed, and you say this one was never on any maps?’

‘That’s one of the questions I had for you. Can you find a map with an island marked off the Scarborough coast? Pre-sixteen-hundred, it would be.’

‘Working on that. Really though, Ves, how could anybody hide an entire island? Especially so close to shore.’

‘Well.’ I sneaked a look at the Baron. ‘Er. You know when you’re working on a valuable book, and you want to take a bathroom break, but you don’t want to have to put the book away only to haul it out again ten minutes later?’

Val stopped typing. Her face said: You know about that?

I gave her an apologetic look, and said no more. I’d seen her pull a sneaky trick with just such a book, once. It was incredibly rare, one of the few copies of Agadora’s Miscellany still extant. The library had been empty other than the two of us, and I was at the other end of it, apparently absorbed in a book. Val had left the room — leaving the Miscellany on the table before her.

I thought she had forgotten to put it away, or perhaps trusted to me to guard it. But when I’d looked at the table, there was no book there. I went over to investigate, and I still couldn’t find it, couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it.

When Val came back, there it was again, in the same spot as before, as though it had never moved at all. Which, in all probability, it hadn’t.

‘So, that trick,’ I continued. ‘How big an, er, object could you hide like that?’

Val stared, wide-eyed, at nothing. ‘No idea, Ves. I’ve never tried it on anything bigger than—’ She broke off, shooting a faintly guilty look at the Baron. He, of course, just twinkled. ‘I would not like to attempt it upon a significant land mass,’ she finished.

‘All right, we can hold that idea in reserve. What about the Baron’s idea? Could it be moved around?’

Alban coughed politely. ‘I did not actually intend to propose the notion as my own idea. It is merely a possibility that has surfaced.’

I inclined my head in his general direction. ‘I’m going to keep calling it your idea anyway, because it’s simpler than “the other idea that the Baron happened to raise but that does not necessarily reflect his private thoughts on the matter.”’

He grinned. ‘Fair enough.’

‘Waiving for a moment the question of whether or not it’s possible,’ I continued, ‘it is a plausible explanation. If I were Melmidoc Redclover, and Their Gracious Majesties were trying to prosecute me for breaking a million rules, I’d want to whisk my hideout somewhere far away too. But where would they go? It would have to be somewhere isolated enough that no one would stumble over it — and it seems nobody has, in all these years. But somewhere habitable, too. Survivable climate, source of food, and so on. Where in the world might that put them?’

This is where I wanted Val’s help, aside from the matter of her book-hiding trick. She doesn’t have a search engine so much as a search labyrinth, and as I talked her fingers moved ceaselessly over the keys of her laptop. She was feeding it endless lists of search terms, and as she worked her search-maze was scouring a host of databases for every nugget of relevant information (several of them seriously off-limits to most of us), cross-referencing everything with everything else, and hopefully pulling out something useful.

It occurred to me that the Baron had been quiet, for all his talk of helping. When I looked his way, I found that he was looking at me. I wish I could say it was an admiring look, but it was more of a thoughtful gaze, with a hint of something troubled in it.

I made a questioning face, but he only smiled and looked away.

‘I am happy to tell you that there are exactly zero places on the planet that match those criteria,’ said Valerie after a while.

‘Zero!’

‘It’s the twenty-first century, Ves. We’ve had satellites for a while now. Nobody’s hiding any mystery islands anymore.’

I felt an impulse to chew upon a fingernail, which I suppressed. It is a habit I broke years ago, but it still surfaces occasionally in times of stress. ‘Then it is either hidden after all, or… there’s the third possibility.’

‘That being?’

‘You know. We cannot find the isle because it’s popped off to 1598. And so have Millie Makepeace and the spire.’

Val looked at me over her spectacles. ‘And, therefore, Jay?’

‘Yes. And they had smallpox back then, not to mention bubonic plague—’

‘I thought you were thrilled at the prospect of time travel?’

‘I am, but it might perhaps benefit from a little forethought. If Jay’s in the sixteenth century right now, he’s on his own.’ And it would explain why his phone seemed to have ceased to exist.

Valerie said nothing, but she transferred her penetrating gaze to the Baron’s face.

It was his look of bland innocence that made me suspicious.

‘You know something about all this, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Did the Court send you to help, or to spy?’

I wanted him to deny it, but he passed a hand over his face and sighed. ‘I sometimes have cause to wish you weren’t so astute, Ves.’ He caught Val’s eye and muttered, ‘The whole damned lot of you.’

I folded my arms and gave him the death stare. ‘Explain.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can and will.’

‘Ves—’

‘All that nonsense about the island moving around was misdirection, was it? All right, so it probably is impossible to haul an entire bloody island around but in that case where is it?’

Alban gave me a helpless stare.

‘Is it three and a half miles off the coast of Scarborough?’ I pressed.

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘In which century?’

‘I… Ves, that is genuinely a complicated question to answer.’

‘Or in other words, it’s not this one.’

‘It is,’ said Alban, and then added, ‘in a manner of speaking.’

I stifled an urge to kick him.

Into the icy silence left by the combined efforts of Val and me, he offered: ‘I am not here to obstruct you. Honestly.’

‘No?’ I said.

‘Not necessarily,’ he amended, and held up his hands when I threatened to explode on the spot. ‘The Court is unsure how to proceed, Ves. This is a… it’s an unprecedentedly tricky situation. I am to help where I deem it fit and… and see what happens.’

‘Which means you are also to hinder if you deem it fit?’

‘If it proves necessary, yes.’

‘Hinder whom?’

‘Ancestria Magicka, definitely. Hopefully not you.’

Hopefully.

I looked him square in the eye. ‘Do you know where that island is right now, Alban?’

He met my gaze without flinching. ‘I have an inkling, but I am not yet certain. I have some investigating to do, like you.’

‘Are you going to share your inkling?’

‘I can’t, at present. Their Majesties have expressly forbidden it. But it pains me to have to say no, Ves.’

‘Comforting,’ I said tartly. ‘Thank you.’

His lips curled in a tiny, unhappy smile. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘We’ll find out anyway.’

His smile turned more genuine. ‘I would expect nothing less.’

‘It’s party time,’ said Val crisply.

Startled, I checked the time: six o’ clock. Just an hour left to get dinner and find a dress. ‘Wait,’ I said, frowning at Val. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘How? I was invited.’

‘What? Who else?’

‘I don’t know everybody who got an invitation, but Rob for one. Nell. Indira, Rosalind, Siobhan, Berat, Vincent, Ravindra, Jack, um, rumour has it they even invited Orlando.’

It did not escape my notice that everyone on Val’s list (and mine) was either a figure of some authority at the Society, they were particularly experienced or specialised in their field, or they possessed rare talents of one sort or another. ‘They’re trying to swipe more of our best people, aren’t they?’

‘Milady drew the same conclusion, but I don’t think they’ll get very far with most of us.’

Nobody mentioned Miranda.

The Baron stood up. ‘Time to get something to eat?’ he said, looking at me.

Part of me wanted to be petulant and tell him to get stuffed, but it was a small part. And since we were no longer able to wander down to the cafeteria for dinner… ‘All right,’ I said, grudgingly.

He looked, politely, at Val, but she waved us off. ‘I’ll see you at Ashdown.’

The Baron offered me his arm, which I took with a sniff of disdain.

‘You’ve a good indignant face,’ he said, and that damned twinkle was back in his eyes. ‘Had some practice?’

‘Thanks to the likes of you, yes.’ I refused to be charmed out of my displeasure just yet. Maybe after I’d been fed.

‘Ouch,’ he said with an exaggerated wince.

‘You deserved that.’

‘I did.’

The Baron and I arrived at Ashdown Castle slightly early. He had certainly known about the party in advance, for he had come prepared, and changed into a delicious deep blue dinner suit while I slipped into my favourite slinky evening gown, a wine-red satin confection (and changed my hair to match: auburn bordering upon burgundy). Alban drove us, utilising some of his enviable Troll Roads, I think, for we made suspiciously excellent time.

I had heard nothing from Zareen, and was left to assume that she, too, would meet us there.

They really had sent out a lot of invitations, for when we swung smoothly into the driveway at Ashdown Castle we were met by the sight of at least fifty cars already parked. The grassy grounds had been turned into a giant car park for the evening, event-style, as though they were expecting nearer five hundred guests than fifty. They had also disabled most of the enchantments which protected the place from unwanted incursions. No concealments remained, no shields, no discouragements of any kind.

‘Serious business,’ I remarked, taken aback.

‘They’re planning to cause a stir,’ agreed Alban.

He offered his arm as we got out of the car, and I was glad to take it. We walked briskly up to the castle (carefully as well, in my case — heels on grass is always a risky proposition). The scale of the event and the mystery surrounding it made it clear that this was to be no ordinary party, and I was alert for signs of trouble or intrigue as we made our way to the entrance.

Well, the next thing I noticed was that Ashdown Castle had undergone something of a facelift.

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I sat up very straight, electrified. ‘The isle disappeared! An entire island! Impossible!’

‘Apparently not,’ said Alban.

‘But then, its location was known initially?’

‘Mm. It was said to lie about three and a half miles off the Yorkshire coast, about due east from the town of Scarborough.’

‘But had it always been there? I’ve never heard of an island in those parts.’

‘There certainly hasn’t been for the past four hundred years. And there is no reason to imagine that it was a large island.’

‘Even so.’ My mind was awhirl at the prospect, but so was my scepticism. ‘I know that Waymasters used to be a lot more powerful, and clearly they could — and can — move buildings around. But so far, they’re small ones. Cottages and modest farmhouses.’

‘And the spire,’ put in Zareen.

‘Right, but even that isn’t so huge a place. An entire island, though? A spit of land? I’m not sure I believe it.’

‘Islands have been known to move about before,’ said the Baron. ‘Come loose and float away.’

‘Fixed or not, it’s still a big land mass. If it was habitable, it must have been at least a few miles square. How many Waymasters working together would it take to move all that? Surely it cannot be done.’

‘And yet,’ said the Baron. ‘As far as the official enquiry records, it was gone.’

‘They couldn’t prove that it was gone,’ I pointed out. ‘All they meant was, they couldn’t find it. Perhaps it was not gone, but hidden.’

The Baron inclined his head, ceding the point.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so resistant to the idea that an island had physically moved. A few weeks ago, the idea that a two-room cottage could waltz off had seemed impossible.

‘So the island existed,’ I mused. ‘And while we are not certain that the isle mentioned by Talbot Makepeace was the same one, it seems likely. Everything fits. So it was probably still there — or still somewhere — over a century and a half later, and somebody lured Millie there. Perhaps the same somebody who had awoken her Waymaster abilities in the first place, and bound her into the farmhouse.’

‘But is the isle still there now?’ said Zareen.

Melmidoc had rushed off to answer that same question. Had he succeeded in finding his lost isle? Or was it gone, sunk beneath the waves long ago?

If it was still there, was Millie still in the habit of frequenting the place?

Was that where she had taken Jay?

If it was, and the Baron’s theory was correct, then the island could be anywhere. It didn’t even have to be in British waters anymore. It could be lurking off the coast of New Zealand, or somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Under the circumstances, I preferred my theory.

‘I’m going to see George,’ Zareen suddenly announced.

‘What—’ I began, but she was already striding away in the direction of the Scarlet Courtyard.

‘Meet you at the party,’ she called back.

‘Right,’ I said, taken aback.

The Baron raised an eyebrow.

I could only shrug. ‘I do not know what’s going on with them.’

‘By the looks of it, I’d say a lot.’

‘Zar knows what she’s doing.’

‘She does have the look of a formidable woman.’ The Baron was twinkling at me again, damn him, which was as much as to say that I didn’t.

Probably a fair observation, what with my daffodil hair. I straightened my spine a bit more, and rose with dignity to my feet. ‘I have an alternative theory,’ I told him.

‘To my wild reports of wandering isles?’

‘Yes. I need to see Val. Are you game for a sneak-in?’

‘Sneaking into Home? Has it come to that? I thought you left on decent terms.’ Did I imagine the slight emphasis he’d put on the word left? As though he was making air quotes in his mind while he said it.

‘If you call defying Milady’s orders about the spire decent behaviour, then yes, we left on excellent terms.’

That was definitely a smile lurking about his lips. ‘As you say,’ he said mildly.

I gave a sigh. ‘It was Garrogin, wasn’t it?’

‘He did seem to think that you and Jay made a perfect picture of loyalty. The way he told it, well. I wish my staff were half as loyal.’

‘Curse him.’

‘Their Majesties have already done so.’

The twin curse of a pair of powerful troll royals ought to be a bit more effective than mine, so I let Lord Garrogin be.

Truth to tell, I was a bit uneasy about going back Home again so soon. I knew Milady would not mind in principle, but in practice? Our masquerade had already proved to be paper-thin. It was stupid to jeopardise it further by sauntering back Home just as though we still belonged there. It would have to be subterfuge.

Which is a tall order, because our House’s security measures are deservedly legendary. Why do you think Ancestria Magicka went to so much trouble to get their claws into Miranda? It isn’t like they could just send over a spy. They either had to get someone of their own recruited by Milady, or convert an existing Society employee; there were no other options. If Milady had revoked my access to Home, then there was no way I was getting in. Or the Baron either.

So it was with some trepidation — and some bitter feelings — that I approached the environs of our beloved House late that morning, riding as passenger in the Baron’s beautiful sleek car. We parked just outside the entrance, and the fact that I could still see the handsome double gates reassured me a little. First layer of security: it is tricky to break into a place you cannot find.

I had the sense not to waltz in at the front gate; instead, we circled around to a side-door into the grounds, and slipped through. Nothing was barred, and nobody tried to stop us. The walk from there into the House itself was a short one, just down a narrow passageway lined with hedgerows, across the narrowest part of the shrubbery, and then in at the door.

Hopefully.

Beloved House. I had been banished from it for only a handful of days, and yet I experienced a piercing sense of loss as I walked up to the door and gazed wistfully up at its ancient walls. Not just Home, but my home, and for the past decade. Place of work, place of abode, place of everything. A small part of me harboured the fear that, one way or another, I might never be able to come properly Home again.

But that was foolish. This was just an assignment, like any other. Once we had established the truth (or lack thereof) about the spire, the island and the whole prospect of time travel, we would be able to return.

‘Morning, House,’ I said with a bright smile, and knocked lightly upon the heavy oak door. ‘Is it all right if we go in to see Val?’

The door was unlatching even as I spoke, its bolts rattling as they drew back. Before I’d even got as far as uttering Val’s name, the door swung wide open with a cheerful creak. Was I being fanciful in interpreting it as a welcoming sound?

I went inside, laying a hand briefly upon the white-plastered wall as I went past. ‘I miss you too,’ I told the dear old place.

Baron Alban followed me into the passage. We were in what had once been the servants’ wing of the house; the old scullery was to our left, and on the right were the pantries. Some of those were still used to store food. ‘Do you and the House always chat like that?’ asked the Baron.

‘Yes, always.’ I spoke absently, for it occurred to me that my plan had been limited. All right, we were inside: but how were we to make it as far as the library without passing at least a few people?

I trod softly to the end of the passage and peeked around the corner. No one in sight, yet, but a couple of passages and a few corners down that way, we’d enter the library complex, and it was a popular spot. There was no way we could sneak—

‘Ves!’ said Val.

I whirled.

She was right behind me, ensconced as usual in her majestic green velvet chair. She did not look so perfectly turned out as usual; her upswept dark hair was tumbling down a bit at the back, and her clothes had the rumpled look that suggested “freshly pressed” was an increasingly distant memory. ‘Val?’ I blurted. ‘I was just—’

‘Coming to find me. I know, House brought me. Bloody hell, Ves, where have you been?’

‘We’ve been—’

‘I mean, I know the official story but I’ve never heard so much crap in my life. As if you or Zareen would ditch us like that! Or Jay either!’

‘I know, but it was necessary to—’

‘I’ve missed you.’ They might have been pleasant words but Val spat them out like they were the gravest insults, her eyes flashing fire.

‘Val.’ I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I thought Milady would have told you everything, I—’ It occurred to me that we were not exactly in a secure location, so I shut up. ‘Can we get somewhere quiet?’

Only then did Val notice the Baron, who had been loitering at a polite distance from us both. He sauntered up with a show of non-threatening casualness, and graced her with one of his courtlier bows.

Val’s eyes went very wide. I tried to remember whether she had ever met the Baron in person before, and concluded that she probably had not.

He did tend to have an impact.

‘This is Baron Alban, from the Court,’ I said, to cover her silence.

Val held out a hand. ‘It is a pleasure to meet any representative of Their Majesties of Mandridore, but do you mind if I ask what you’re doing here?’

The Baron shook Val’s hand with a smile. ‘Helping Ves, actually.’

Val gave me a roguish look that said well-I-never, but her voice was steely again when she spoke. ‘If you steal Ves away to Mandridore, Baron, I shall never forgive you.’

‘Understood.’

‘In fact, the entire Society will swarm Their Majesties’ gates in order to fetch her back.’

Alban saluted gravely.

I was touched.

‘Right,’ Val said, more crisply. ‘House, dear. Somewhere private for the three of us?’

A door opened silently in the wall to Val’s left. A door that had not been there a moment before.

Val’s wing-back chair floated serenely through it, and the Baron and I followed.

Turn page ->

I sent a few messages to Miranda after that, mostly variations on the general theme of why?

To my regret, but not to my surprise, she did not answer any of them.

By the next morning, it was official: Miranda had gone. Rob brought us a copy of the Society’s internal memo on the subject.

I winced upon reading it. Milady was most seriously displeased.

Miranda Evans is no longer a member of this Society. The circumstances of her departure are not for public dissemination. Let it be known, however, that any and all communication with Ms. Evans is strongly discouraged.

There was more, but not much. I pictured the icy fury with which Milady had penned the missive (or dictated it, she being incorporeal and all) and shuddered.

It did raise an interesting question, though. Had Miranda corrupted anybody else, prior to her departure? I could only assume that was the fear lurking behind Milady’s prohibition on communication. We none of us wished to lose any more people to Ancestria Magicka.

I’d had to field a string of messages from Indira, too. She had discovered Jay’s absence by way of several failed and unanswered phone calls and was cheerfully freaking out about him. Since I was in much the same state, albeit more secretly, there was not much I could do to reassure her. I could not even say for sure that George Mercer’s offer was still open, not after he and Zareen had so obviously fallen out over Miranda.

Difficult morning. I treated my nerves to an extra helping of chocolate from Milady’s wonderful pot, recruited my strength with some of Mrs. Amberstone’s best pancakes, and boosted my confidence with a change of hair colour. Maybe it sounds frivolous, but try it before you judge me.

I stepped out a little later, tossing my parti-coloured hair (cream at the top and daffodil-yellow at the bottom, with a smooth ombre fade in between). I was beginning to lose my patience with this particular mess, and it was high time we sorted it out.

I found Zareen in much the same frame of mind. A solid ten hours of sleep had restored her colour somewhat, and she looked much nearer her old self when she opened her door. ‘Plan?’ she said.

‘Find Jay.’ I ticked off point one on my fingers. ‘Find out what that isle of Melmidoc’s is about. Figure out what the bloody hell has got into Miranda and fix it. Discover the source of the Dappledok pups and fix that, too. And find out once and for all where in space or time those houses are going to when they vanish.’ I ticked them all off on my fingers, using rather more fingers in the process than I was hoping.

‘That’s a wish list,’ said Zareen. ‘What’s the plan?’

‘No bloody clue.’

‘Right, then. Situation normal.’ Zareen grabbed her jacket, stuffed her feet into her boots and fell in beside me as I made for the stairs.

‘The party’s at seven,’ Zareen said, checking the time. ‘We’ve got ten hours until then. Pick a place to start?’

‘Baron Alban.’

‘Needing a little eye candy?’

‘Always, but that’s not it this time. Val’s drawn a blank on Melmidoc’s isle as far as our library goes, and Mauf has nothing for us either. We need another resource, and I can’t think of a better one than the library at the Troll Courts. Can you?’

‘I can punch George in the face until he consents to check their records for us.’

‘Think that’ll work?’

‘No. And anyway, I’d have to tell him all about the isle first, and we sort of agreed not to do that.’

‘Right. Plan forming. Part one in progress.’ I composed another message to Miranda and sent it before I could change my mind.

It said: Rage aside, Mir, those books prove you want to help us. So help. Find out anything you can about a secret isle, probably 1600s, linked to names like Melmidoc Redclover. Please. Thanks xx

We hadn’t given Miranda the full low-down about the spire before, probably because it had not seemed relevant. We’d just told her about the part we knew would interest her: Dramary’s Bestiary. I wondered, though. Had she heard the rest from someone else? Word tended to travel at Home. If she had, she would have taken that information to Ancestria Magicka — which meant that George Mercer must be lying about their ignorance. If so, what was his game?

I showed my message to Zareen, who grunted, a sound halfway between approval and irritation.

‘I know, I know.’

‘I hate this.’

‘Me too. Right. Part two in progress.’ I called the Baron. ‘Alban,’ I said crisply the moment he answered. ‘It’s Ves. May I speak frankly?’

‘Please.’

‘This shit is driving us crazy and we would like to resolve it. We propose a joining of forces.’

‘Oh? Among whom, exactly?’

‘The Thrilling Three, even if we are presently down to the Testy Two, and the Troll Court.’

‘As represented by me?’

‘Yes.’

I waited. I knew the Baron would understand my meaning. I wasn’t just asking for his personal assistance; I was requesting the official aid of Their Majesties’ Court itself.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

The Baron arrived in person about an hour later.

Zareen and I spent the intervening time scouring Miranda’s books for what Nancy Drew might have called “leads” (unsuccessfully). About all I could determine from Millie Makepeace’s diaries was that she was batshit crazy, and largely unaware of her Waymaster abilities. Apparently magickal education for young women of breeding was on the underwhelming side, back in the day. I wondered who had introduced her to her powers (after death…?), and how they had known she’d had any. I shied away from the idea that someone from her own family had been responsible for her after-death fate, but one or two references to her father made me wonder a bit. Had he been a practitioner of the Weird Stuff? Perhaps.

Zareen read through her pamphlet with an irritable frown, and finally snapped it closed with, I thought, unnecessary violence. The booklet was old, and delicate. I gently took it from her. ‘No use?’

‘Tells me nothing new.’

Judging from her glowering dissatisfaction, it had reminded her of a number of things she did not like to think about.

I checked the title. Dark Deeds and Strange Wayes: The Wyrde Path. No author was listed.  

‘It’s all new to me,’ I said. ‘Mind if I read?’

Zareen had signalled her lack of objection with a shrug, and had then proceeded to stretch out in the grass (we were out in Mrs. Amberstone’s garden again, under the walnut trees). Whether she was sleeping or brooding I could not tell.

I skimmed through the pamphlet, keeping an absent eye on my phone in case of word from the Baron or Miranda — or Mabyn Redclover, at the Hidden Ministry. I’d informed her of the fate of the spire, and had capitalised on her satisfaction by pleading for help. I knew Val would be doing her utmost to come up with something, too; with that many people at work on the matter of the mysterious isle, I had hopes of hearing something useful soon.

But the pamphlet.

‘Chilling read,’ I said when I’d finished it.

That was an understatement. It proved to be the work of an early serial killer. The author — who was so cagey about his or her identity that I could not even determine their gender — had discovered at a horrifyingly young age that the “art” of killing (their words, not mine) had a pleasurably amplifying effect upon their “wyrde wayes” (also their words). The obliging author had conducted a number of grisly murders over a period of years (all described in detail) and recorded the effects of these despicable deeds upon their unsavoury magicks. All very positive, I was to believe; after several such murders, the author was understood to be in possession of virtually unheard-of power in fields such as necromancy, and could oblige any Ghoste or Spirite to do my Bydding, as well as making Puppets of the Deade, and, perhaps most interestingly, restorynge Life that has been Loste.

Did they mean converting the dead into the undead, or a revival from death back into a state of genuine life? If the latter, that was… remarkable. I experienced a vision of this unknown necromancer four hundred years ago, killing the same victim over and over again in the name of experimentation, and shuddered. Thank goodness I had not been burdened with the Stranger Arts. I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes at the School of Weird.

I was not absolutely convinced by the author’s claims. The text displayed clear signs of narcissism and megalomania, in my humble opinion, and surely the links between murder and “wyrde” powers couldn’t be that simple or powerful or we’d have seen a total ban on all such arts many years ago.

But Zareen accepted it, and she ought to know.

I handed the pamphlet back to her.

Message from Miranda. Tread carefully, Ves.

‘Is that it?’ I said in disgust, quoting it to Zareen. ‘What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘Means she knows something but cannot or will not say, other than to imply that it is dangerous.’

I sighed. ‘And that means Ancestria Magicka knows something, which means maybe it’s time to start punching George in the face.’

Zareen complied, metaphorically speaking.

And then came the Baron, strolling over Mrs. Amberstone’s neatly-trimmed lawn like he had all the time in the world. I suppose with those long legs, he could stroll all he liked and still make faster progress than I would at a brisk trot. He’d dressed down: he wore a pair of crisp, dark blue trousers and a loose white shirt, open at the neck. Polished shoes, no hat, his bronze-blonde hair artfully disordered. If anything, the effect was more devastating than all the impeccable, elaborate style of his previous ensembles. He smiled at me as he approached, his green eyes bright with apparent pleasure at seeing me, and something odd happened in my stomach.

‘Morning,’ I said lightly.

Baron Alban made us a polite, courtly bow amid exquisitely courteous greetings. I did not imagine it: his smile definitely lingered on me. ‘Morning, ladies. What’s the news?’

‘Not much.’ I showed him Miranda’s note, upon which he made no comment save for a raised eyebrow.

‘I’d hoped you were bringing the cavalry,’ I said, noticing all the empty space around him that was not filled with other knowledgeable and useful members of Their Majesties’ Court.

‘What, one wickedly handsome troll isn’t enough for you?’

‘Well, since you mention it…’

He grinned. ‘I’m afraid it’s just me, but I do bring help.’

I sat up. ‘Oh?’

‘I don’t know if you realise it, but you and Jay are popular at Court at the moment — what with uncovering the blight at the lost enclaves, hacking your way into Farringale and coming out alive, and now tackling this spire business.’

‘Their Majesties aren’t opposed to investigating there?’

‘No. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve disagreed with the Ministry. But Ancestria Magicka has them worried, and angry. Lord Garrogin was a friend.’

‘Was?’

‘Mm.’ The Baron’s mouth set in a grim line. ‘He isn’t anymore. His invitation to the Court has been revoked.’

‘So, the isle?’ I prompted.

‘I drew a blank at the library. Nothing there. I can say this with certainty because Her Majesty interviewed our Chief Archivist on the subject personally. I never saw a man more terrified. I don’t think he could have lied to save his life.

‘But, the library is not our only resource. The Court is a court in two senses of the word: it’s the home of Their Majesties, and it’s also a place of justice. Has been ever since the fall of Farringale. A lot of cases have been heard there, and a lot of complaints lodged.’

I discreetly checked the time. Not discreetly enough, for the Baron saw me and smiled a wry smile. ‘All right, the short version: I consulted the Scribe of the Court of Justice. One of his duties is to maintain the court’s records, including recopying the oldest and most faded documents at need. And those date from the early sixteen hundreds through into the eighteen hundreds.

‘Late last year he copied and refreshed an account of a complaint brought by one Talbot Makepeace, of Suffolk, who claimed that his house and his daughter had been stolen from him. The complaint was dismissed because his daughter was known to have been recently executed, and he could give no proper explanation as to how his house had been filched. He claimed it had walked away, and his dead daughter with it. I believe the poor man was written off as mad. He was noted to have shrieked something about that accursed isle as he was dragged from the Court.’

‘Ah!’ I crowed. ‘A link between Millie and the isle!’

‘Indeed.’ The Baron paused to smile at me. ‘Another, older complaint referred to an unnamed isle in a similar way. This one was dated to somewhere in the sixteen thirties, so the Scribe estimated, and it was a much more serious case. An attempt was made to prosecute one Melmidoc Redclover and his brother Drystan for the creation of a secret magickal society, one unauthorised by any power in existence. Now, they were not actually obliged to have permission in order to set up their own establishment; there was no such stringent system of laws then, as there are now. But if you wished to create a new magickal nation, with its own legalities and rules and its own, independent authority, it was considered polite to have the support of your peers. To act without it was to make a lot of people nervous, for what might you be planning to do? Melmidoc and Drystan skipped that part. The account, unfortunately, is not that useful, because the Redclover brothers could not be got hold of for comment. They’d disappeared, and so had the isle.’

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