by 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.
