by All right, usually I love travelling by unicorn.
I tend to assume that Addie knows her way from everywhere to anywhere, which, as it turns out, is far too much to expect of the poor girl. Also, as anyone who’s ever taken more than an occasional leisurely hack across the countryside will tell you, the delights of being on horseback tend to wane after a certain point. Zareen and I made the long journey to Norfolk in a state of increasingly grim determination, wrestling with mobile navigation systems which had no idea that Nautilus Cove even existed.
I might have been ungenerous enough to curse Jay and his inconvenient absence, but that was only while I was still airborne, gritting my teeth against the surprisingly cold wind while my hair blew into my mouth and my derriere voiced vociferous complaints about its treatment at my uncaring hands. Once Addie brought us down on a quiet little slip of a beach along the Norfolk coast and we were able to dismount — and once the warmer air down there had somewhat thawed out my face — I lost all desire to eviscerate Jay and was able to remember that I was worried about him.
I checked my phone. Nothing.
Patting Addie’s steaming neck, I whispered foolish compliments into her ears and promised her the biggest bag of chips she had ever seen in her life, just as soon as I made it to a chippie. She rolled her eyes at me and wandered off, her shadowy friend trotting amiably in her wake.
‘Right, then,’ I said, looking up and down the deserted beach. The greyish sea lapped apathetically at the rocky sand, a few clouds hung listlessly in a patchy blue sky, and behind us a cliff rose vertically to an unscaleable height. ‘Addie?’ I called. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know how to get in?’ I cursed myself for not having paid more attention on the way out, a few days before. Riding with the baron had proved to be a distracting experience.
I had not really expected a response, but a moment later Zareen said: ‘Up there!’ and pointed a ways back along the beach.
Something was glittering upon the sheer cliff face. Fittingly, it shone in rainbow colours.
We went that way.
The glow was coming from a sliver of jagged crystal embedded into the otherwise drab rock. When I touched it, the colours faded, leaving it an unremarkable chunk of opaque white stone. But the world shifted around me and dissolved, and when everything stopped spinning I was on another, whiter, pearlier beach, and the sea had gone all iridescent. Nautilus Cove.
I mentally doubled Addie’s upcoming chip rations.
Zareen materialised a moment later and stood smiling for a moment, taking great inhalations of the balmy air. It did smell rather heavenly, come to think of it — like the brightest, freshest sea air mingled with something flowery. I couldn’t see any flowers, but one doesn’t question things like that when one is prancing through a magickal dell. It’s the way they are.
I’d had a private, lingering fear that we might return to find the Striding Spire had, somehow, gone. Stridden Off, in the way that it used to, or perhaps been somehow relocated by an indignant Ministry. But it hadn’t. The clear, white beach gave way to an expanse of sleek, jade-coloured grass dotted with frondy bits (botany is not among my specialities). In the near distance the ground began a steep climb up into some rolly hills, and halfway up those was the spire. I hadn’t previously had occasion to see it from this perspective, and the sight was breath-taking. So graceful a building! Tall and slender, crowned with an elegantly sloping roof (I’d seen as much as I wanted to of that part), its windows glinted gently in the sunlight and its pale walls displayed a hint of the bluish radiance that would come in with the twilight.
‘The Redclovers had style,’ Zareen said.
They certainly did. ‘Why, then, is it abandoned out here?’ I mused aloud. ‘If you’d built something that lovely, why would you ever leave?’
‘The passage of four hundred years is neither here nor there, I suppose?’
I strode off in the direction of the spire, my boots swishing through the crisp grass. ‘Not with these people. Their bodies may have died long ago but I doubt they went far after that. I’m willing to bet that the spire had a Waymaster-in-residence, John Wester-style, for a long time, and maybe it still does.’
‘So that’s what Jay had in mind?’
‘Yes. Especially after Millie. Wester obviously wasn’t some kind of a fluke, and if there have been more of them — why not Melmidoc?’
‘You saw no sign of him before?’
‘He’s an old man. He fell asleep over his newspaper a hundred and ten years ago, and has yet to wake up.’
Zareen grinned. ‘Right, then. Let’s go rattle his door handles and throw stones at the windows.’
My previous visit to the spire had been only a few days prior, but I found a much-changed building when we went inside. Rattling the doorknobs proved unnecessary, as the door was unlocked. And why not? There was nothing left in there, nothing at all. The kitchen on the ground floor was reduced to a collection of aged wooden counters, probably left in situ because they were both unlovely and (I imagined) heavy. The bright, circular room near the top which had previously held all the accoutrements of a comfortable living space was completely empty. The chairs were gone, the knick-knacks and ornaments, and above all, the books. All of them.
Someone had cleaned, for not a speck of dust floated up as Zareen and I tramped up the winding stairs. That was nice, I supposed.
‘They did a thorough job,’ Zar said as we stood in the doorway of the Redclover brothers’ decimated library.
‘I wonder why.’ I was wondering that pretty hard. Taking the books I could understand, even if I was disappointed. They were a valuable resource, and were liable to be damaged if left uncared for on such remote shelves. But the furniture?
I felt that unwelcome but sadly familiar sensation of foreboding.
Jay and I made the acquaintance of Mabyn Redclover during our previous investigation of the Dappledok pups, a spriggan who was somewhere high-up in the Forbidden Magicks division of the Hidden Ministry. I blessed my forethought in making sure to secure her number, and called it.
‘Ms. Redclover, Forbidden Magicks.’ Mabyn’s voice came crisply over the line.
‘Mab. It’s Ves. I’m at the spire, but nothing much else is.’
‘I was going to call you this afternoon,’ said Mabyn, and she sounded grim. ‘The Ministry finished emptying the building day before last. There was a bloodbath over the books, as you may imagine, with strong competition from the Troll Court to secure them. In the end they split the books, but the Ministry took everything else. I’ve only just found out why. It’s scheduled for demolition, Ves, and soon. They want it gone, no delay.’
‘I thought it must be something like that,’ I said. ‘Any idea why?’
‘None whatsoever. I’ve spent the whole morning trying to get an audience with the right people and I’ve largely failed. They won’t talk to me. I was reduced to loitering in the hallways hoping to run into the Chief or Vice-Chief Ministers. Well, I did see Honoria Goodenough — that’s the Vice-Chief — but she said I’m too close to the situation and wouldn’t listen to me. Just because I’m a Redclover! It’s not like I have any real connection to a pair of Redclovers from four hundred years ago. I tried to argue that it’s a rare and precious example of seventeenth-century magickal architecture and its starstone composition ought to be enough to secure instant and eternal protected status but she wasn’t having it. Nor would she tell me why. I’m sorry, Ves. There’s nothing more I can do.’
I hadn’t known Mabyn for very long, but long enough to learn that it was unlike her to gabble. She was genuinely upset. ‘It’s all right, Mab. I’m glad you tried. Do you know when it’s due to be demolished?’
‘They’ve kept that information from me. What do they expect me to do, throw myself in front of the demolition force? It’s ridiculous. But it’ll be soon. As in, possibly this week. I have set something in motion which I hope will delay them, but I don’t know if it can be there in time. I’m sorry, Ves.’
‘Right. Don’t worry, we’ll fix this.’ I hung up.
Zareen’s face was grave as I relayed Mabyn’s news, but she spoke composedly. ‘That ties in with our suspicions, doesn’t it? This building’s completely unique and irreplaceable. If they’re willing to wreck it anyway, that more or less confirms that it’s been used for something they’d consider seriously questionable.’
‘More than that. They think it could be used the same way again.’
Zareen was nodding emphatically. ‘Jay’s not the only one who thinks Melmidoc’s still here.’
‘Yes, but I’m wondering how he arrived at that conclusion. I was hoping for just such an outcome last time I was here, but I swear, I felt not a flicker of a presence. Does it take a Waymaster to spot another? Jay’s rather discouraged that idea, but in that case, why was he in a hurry to come back?’
‘I know that look.’ Zareen eyed me with sour suspicion. ‘You want me to do something, don’t you?’
I might have been wearing the pleading eyes, at that. I hastily composed my face. ‘Those Stranger Arts you aren’t supposed to talk about? Could you somehow sense a spirit presence, even if it’s dormant?’
‘Or determined to hide from me? I don’t know.’ Zareen looked annoyed, for no reason I could understand. Then she sighed, and passed a hand over her eyes. It occurred to me that she was looking tired, dark shadows etched under her deep brown eyes. Her shimmery green eyeshadow did a fine job of deflecting attention from them. She hesitated, apparently struggling with herself. ‘Look, Ves,’ she finally said. ‘The Stranger Arts — or the Weird Stuff — it’s not quite like your magick. It… takes a toll. I’m not supposed to talk about it partly because I’m not supposed to use it, except at great need. And there are good reasons for that.’
‘What kind of a toll?’
A deep frown clouded Zareen’s brow. I almost hadn’t wanted to ask, for the matter clearly troubled her. But if it was important…
‘It’s to do with Mauf’s bright idea about the… amplifying effects of… of—’ she stopped. ‘Look, if all power corrupts, let’s just say that some kinds of power corrupt faster than others. And the link isn’t as clear-cut as Mauf, or those wannabe scholars, suggested. If I get too immersed in the weird stuff, I… it changes me. I feel a need to do some terrible things, Ves, and if I give in to them… I will be more powerful. Only for a short time, of course. It’s like a hit of caffeine, or steroids. When it wears off, you feel as weak as a newborn kitten, and to add to the fun it’s like the worst kind of withdrawal you can experience — crack is nothing to it—’ She stopped again, her expression turning wary. She’d said more than she meant to.
For a moment, I was too shocked to speak. This was a glimpse into Zareen’s daily life, and her past as well, that I’d never before been offered.
She (and George Mercer) had expended considerable power and effort to exorcise the spirits of the Greyers and John Wester from the Greyer cottage. After that, she’d gone quiet for twenty-four hours — I hadn’t seen her, or heard anything from her. At the time, I thought nothing of it. Zareen and I were friends, but not to the extent that we talked every day, or kept tabs on each other all the time. Now I wondered what had been going on with her during those hours of silence.
I looked at the shadows under her eyes with a new understanding.
‘I didn’t know,’ I said at last.
Zareen shrugged. ‘The School of Weird isn’t just a special school for people with our abilities. It’s also a kind of quarantine, a help centre, a support group and rehab all rolled into one. It needs to be.’
That also explained her enduring link with George Mercer. He understood her in ways Jay and I never could, and they must’ve shared so much… I resolved never to tease or poke her about that friendship ever again.
And I understood what she had not said, at least not in so many words. After her efforts at the Greyer cottage, she needed time to recover, to rebalance herself. She couldn’t afford to drown in the Stranger Arts again so soon.
I remembered the way the whites of her eyes had filled in with black, and shuddered inwardly.
‘Right then,’ I said briskly. ‘How else can we wake up Mr. Redclover?’
‘Throwing stones at the windows is out?’ Zareen gave a weak smile.
‘If he slept through the removal of the entire contents of the building, I’d say we need something a little more potent.’ I thought hard.
I came up with nothing.
‘Maybe we could—’ began Zareen, but the rest of her sentence was drowned out by a terrific roar that sounded from outside — somewhere close. The spire’s glorious starstones shook under the force of it.
Zareen and I ran to the window, just in time to see a gout of crackling fire lance across the sky.
‘That’s dragon-fire!’ shouted Zareen.
Another blast of fire followed seconds later, and this one hit the window. The window-frame caught and flames roared cheerfully to life, blocking the sunlight and casting dancing patterns across the floor of the tower. The reek of smoke filled my nostrils.
‘Mabyn was wrong,’ I said tightly. ‘The demolition isn’t just this week. It’s today.’
