by ‘Home’s burnt down?’ I said, as the Baron took a seat next to me.
He gave me a strange look. ‘No, of course it hasn’t.’
Hm. What else might rank as bad news in Baron Alban’s world?
‘Ancestria Magicka has taken over the Hidden Ministry,’ suggested Jay.
Alban did not disclaim this idea as emphatically as I would have liked. He thought for a moment, and then said: ‘Not to my knowledge.’ An unspoken yet seemed to hover in the air.
‘Stop guessing,’ said Zareen. ‘Let the man speak.’
The Baron tipped an imaginary hat in her general direction. ‘It’s Lord Garrogin,’ he said. ‘He’s back at Court.’ He looked intently at me, and then at Jay. ‘Why on earth did you two tell him so much?’
‘Just us two?’ I protested. ‘Zareen was grilled for ages.’
Zareen rolled her eyes. ‘I was interrogated at length because I wouldn’t tell him things.’
Oh.
I gave a cough. ‘What did we tell him that’s bad news?’
‘News of your defection from the Society reached the Court late last night. Garrogin professed himself astonished. It seems the pair of you rattled on at length about your loyalty to the Society and your total lack of interest in working anywhere else.’ The Baron sat back as his tea was presented to him by a smiling waitress. When she had gone, he slid the plate of cheesecake in my direction and continued: ‘As a Truthseeker he’s uniquely qualified to detect the perfect sincerity of everything you said, and it therefore seemed odd to him that you’ve suddenly broken with Milady.’
I took a spoonful of cheesecake, and savoured a mouthful of syrupy-sweet strawberry while I considered my response. ‘Crap,’ I said at last.
‘Perhaps it won’t matter,’ said Jay optimistically. ‘Do we need to care what they think at the Troll Court?’
‘Maybe not,’ conceded the Baron. ‘But who are you trying to fool?’
‘The Ministry, for the most part.’
I put in, ‘And any other organisation with the authority to frown upon our delving into forbidden topics.’
‘Like, for example, the Troll Court?’ said Zareen, with withering sarcasm.
‘They have no authority over us,’ insisted Jay.
‘No, but they can make plenty of trouble for us anyway.’
‘It’s a problem,’ said the Baron. ‘Because I can’t really contradict Garrogin’s assessment of the situation. Ves is known for her unshakeable loyalty to the Society, and anyway he’s a bloody Truthseeker. People believe him. The best thing I can think of to say in your support is that it must’ve been something very serious to prompt you to leave, and that naturally leads to one question: like what?’
I might think the Hidden Ministry was wrong to put a total ban on all investigation into the arena of time-travel, but they were quite right to keep the subject quiet. We didn’t need any more bright sparks like Ancestria Magicka armed with those kinds of prospects. If they wouldn’t appoint a task-force to take care of the matter, well, we’d appointed ourselves. But we in no way wanted gossip spreading far and wide as to what we might be getting up to.
‘So we need a cover story?’ I said. ‘Some other dark and dangerous thing we might have considered it worth leaving the Society for?’
‘Like what?’ said Alban, with a twinkle, and he was right because I could think of nothing.
Even if I could, the moment we ran into Garrogin again that particular game would be up. He’d catch us in a lie. And he’d seemed certain he would encounter us again…
…which was an interesting point. Why had he felt that way?
Baron Alban shrugged, and took a long swallow of tea. ‘I don’t know what the solution is. I thought it wise to warn you. For the moment, do your best to stay out of Garrogin’s way?’
‘Assuredly,’ I murmured. As long as he stayed at the Court, that shouldn’t be too hard.
‘And be careful who you trust.’ The Baron said this with uncharacteristic hesitation, as though reluctant to speak. ‘Back Home, I mean.’
That brought a dark frown to Jay’s brow, and I could not suppress a sigh. He was right, of course, and we’d known it all along. But it hurt to have to hear it spoken aloud. We knew there was a traitor at Home, and as yet, we still had no idea who it was. As far as the rest of the Society was concerned, Milady’s story of our departure had to be the truth. We couldn’t risk confiding in anybody else, with the probable exception of Rob.
‘Why did Garrogin fail?’ said Jay after a moment. ‘He spoke to everyone at Home, and it’s supposed to be impossible to fool a Truthseeker.’
‘So they say,’ said Zareen. ‘But how many of them are there, now? We’re mostly working with legends of the Truthseekers of old, and you know how those kinds of tales can get exaggerated.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And also, if arts like Waymastery have declined in power down the ages, might not the same be true of arts like Truthseeking? Perhaps Garrogin just isn’t as good at it as his predecessors were.’
‘Both good points,’ said Alban. ‘But there’s one other possibility.’
‘He does know,’ said Jay. ‘But he’s a traitor too.’
Jay seemed to be getting awfully suspicious-minded. But the Baron, to my dismay, was nodding. ‘It is possible that he knows very well who your traitor is, and has always known. But if he’s also in the pay of whoever’s bought off your mysterious colleague, then he’d obey an order to conceal that information.’
‘Damnit,’ I said with a sigh, slouching in my chair. I did not like this at all. Suspicion and paranoia proliferating by the day, mysterious dangers around every corner, an inability to trust one’s fellows combined with the necessity of lying to them… it was not my style. I liked openness and co-operation and goodwill.
A pox on Ancestria Magicka.
Then again, if they did contrive to learn the secrets of time-travel, a pox they would most likely have. Smallpox, perhaps, or even the Great Pox itself — syphilis.
Which reminded me. ‘Dear Alban,’ I began, with my best smile.
‘Yes?’ He did not look quite as buttered-up as I was hoping. The look he directed at me was more suspicious than charmed.
I fluttered my eyelashes, just a bit. No change.
Curse it.
‘I’ve some questions,’ I said more briskly, abandoning all hope of sweet-talking the information out of him.
He folded his muscular arms. ‘No,’ he said.
‘No?’
‘No, the Court has no secret information about travelling through time via Waymastery.’
‘Damn. How about the Redclovers of Dappledok Dell?’
‘Which ones?’
‘The interesting ones. Melmidoc and Drystan, of the Striding Spire.’ If our suspicions proved correct, these two spriggans had jaunted around in time quite at their leisure, by way of that sparkly spire I was just talking about.
‘I don’t know,’ said Alban. ‘I can check the libraries.’
‘Lovely. And Ancestria Magicka?’
The Baron conceded to uncross his arms. His tea cup was empty. I offered him a forkful of cheesecake but fortunately this was spurned. ‘Probably we know about as much as you do,’ he said. ‘It’s a fairly new organisation, less than two years old. Extremely rich, though no one seems to know where their funds are coming from. Aggressive, mercenary, and sometimes dangerous. I hope you aren’t planning to take them for your role-model.’
‘But we are,’ said Zareen. ‘They’re perfect. Unscrupulous, uncompromising, and working in mysterious ways. We don’t have funders, so we’ll have to adopt a similarly enigmatic attitude on that score. And we’re plenty unscrupulous enough to investigate the Spire in spite of the Ministry’s strict orders not to.’
Unscrupulous. A wonderful word. ‘Not a single scrup between us,’ I agreed, with a big smile.
Jay looked faintly ill.
The Baron waved a hand in a whatever gesture, and stood up. ‘Must go,’ he said, then paused, and withdrew a sheet of paper from an inside jacket pocket. ‘I almost forgot that.’ He bowed to us, handed the paper to me with a wink, and strolled away.
It was a scan of somebody’s hand-written notes, apparently the minutes of some sort of meeting. Neither the author nor the identities of the attendees were specified, but the contents were highly interesting. I read it quickly, and handed it off to Jay.
Zareen raised her eyebrows.
‘Seems there’ve been a few reported sightings of disappearing buildings made to the Court this year,’ I said. ‘One of them sounds like the Greyer cottage, but there are others.’
Zareen snatched the paper from Jay and devoured its contents in hungry silence. ‘I’d heard nothing of these,’ she said when she’d finished. ‘Though I thought I’d dug through pretty much everything.’
‘The Troll Court thrives on mystery.’
Jay retrieved the paper and studied it more closely. ‘The most recent of these sightings was last week.’
‘Which one was that?’ I asked.
‘Eighteenth-century farm house, in the Cotswolds. Observed vanishing into the mists on the edge of the village of Owlpen.’ He collected his phone from a pocket and after a moment’s work added: ‘Which is only a couple of miles from the Owlcote Troll Enclave.’
‘George was in Gloucestershire recently,’ said Zareen. ‘Stroud area. Wouldn’t say why.’
‘I’m guessing this is why,’ said Jay.
‘Excellent.’ Zareen gave the satisfied smile of a spider about to devour a particularly plump fly. ‘I’ll ask him about it.’
We checked ourselves into a B&B for a couple of nights. There is one in the vicinity of Home called, for reasons unknown, the Scarlet Courtyard. The proprietors are both witches, so they’re tolerant of our sort. Mrs. Amberstone is about eighty years old but unbelievably spry. I can’t get her to tell me what dark magic makes that possible.
‘I’ve got a coffee cake in the oven,’ she informed me as she showed me to my room, a cosy little space under the eaves with a sloping dormer window.
‘I love you,’ I said with total sincerity.
She winked at me as she withdrew.
Anyway, having spent the afternoon arguing about our various options and what we might be disposed to do about them (‘The Spire,’ said Jay. ‘The Cotswolds,’ said Zareen. ‘The Troll Court,’ said I,) we arrived at The Cupboard shortly before seven.
‘Off you go,’ said Zareen silkily. She’d done all the eye-makeup and looked incredibly sultry.
‘You promised!’ I said.
‘Actually, I remember myself saying “no”.’
‘She did,’ confirmed Jay at my elbow.
‘Then why did you let us come with you?’
‘I don’t mind your being in the same building. Just keep away from my table.’
I wanted to protest, but Jay grabbed my arm and steered me towards a table on the far side of the pub from Zareen’s chosen spot. I wilted into a chair, disappointed.
‘You don’t seriously want to play gooseberry on Zareen’s date?’ Jay said, his expressive eyebrows going up.
‘Is it a date?’ I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of Zareen across the crowded room. ‘She hardly sees him.’
‘If I showed up for dinner and found all that waiting for me, I’d definitely call it a date.’ He inclined his head in Zareen’s direction as he uttered the word that, and I realised he meant the dress and the up-do and the eye-makeup.
‘She’s just trying to impress him so he’ll talk.’
‘Yes,’ Jay agreed. ‘By taking him on a date.’
I wondered how far Zareen’s interest in George Mercer really went. Was she just being manipulative, or did she really like him? She was as enigmatic as the Troll Court.
The door opened then, and George Mercer came in. He wore a dark blazer over a t-shirt, his unruly brown hair artfully wind-swept. I hadn’t taken much note of his physical characteristics before, as the first time we’d met he had been trying to knock me off my airborne pegasus and the second time he’d got straight into a fight with Jay. But now I noticed his height — at least 6’2”. He was well-built, too, and good-looking in a rugged sort of way. I could see why Zareen had kept in touch.
So intent was I upon my scrutiny of his personal charms that I failed to notice he was not alone. By the time this fact had registered with me, Katalin Pataki was halfway across the pub and heading straight for our table.
‘Curse it,’ I muttered. ‘What’s she doing here?’
