by ‘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.’
