by ‘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.
