by ‘Where’s Jay?’ I said quickly.
‘He hasn’t said. But he will, if we agree to share what we know.’
‘Part of that pact you helpfully set up?’ I subjected Zareen to my best slitty-eyed stare.
‘Yes,’ she said, unperturbed. ‘And if he does know what’s become of Jay, then it probably was helpful, wasn’t it?’
I held up my hands in surrender, for Zareen’s words emerged icily, and her face was set in bitter lines. ‘What does he want in return?’
‘Everything we know about the Redclovers and the spire. But, he says he’s got more to share than just news of Jay. More about Millie, and others like her.’
‘He didn’t mention an isle?’
‘Not so far. I wanted to ask, but if he hasn’t heard about that yet I didn’t want to give him ideas. And he probably hasn’t, if he’s short of information about Melmidoc and Drystan.’
‘Maybe, but we don’t know that this island belonged to the Redclovers, or that they had control of it. Could be something else entirely.’
‘Could be. Ves, I know we’ve had this argument already but I really think joining forces with George would be to our mutual benefit. Right now we are groping around in the dark, trying to find stuff out for ourselves while also figuring out what they already know. Why not just cut the crap?’
I couldn’t deny that she had a point. But. ‘Zar, I hate to speak ill of your friend but he did try to kill us that one time.’
‘He said he’s sorry for trying to knock you off Addie.’
‘Good of him.’
‘He wasn’t really trying to, you know. He’s a deadly shot. If he’d wanted to kill you, he would have.’
‘Then why shoot at us at all?’ I remembered the day in question clearly: Jay had whisked us off to a new henge near Milton Keynes. We’d thought ourselves safe, but George Mercer and Katalin Pataki had followed. We had narrowly escaped upon the back of my beloved winged unicorn, while Mercer employed the most potent arts his Sardonyx Wand had to offer to knock us to the ground again. We’d been carrying Bill at the time, that was the crux of it: the very first book like Mauf, intelligent and communicative and packed with a dizzying amount of information. Everybody wanted him.
‘Ask him sometime,’ Zareen suggested.
‘Like when?’
‘Like at the Ashdown Castle Ball, which is tomorrow.’
So it was. I had forgotten about it. ‘I was really hoping to have Jay back by tomorrow.’
‘You might do. Who knows?’
I tried calling Jay again, with the same results as ever. Nothing. Failure to connect, and he had not read my messages.
I stared at the evidence of this in silence for a while. ‘Zar, how far do you have to go to get zero phone or internet service?’
‘Honestly? Not that far.’
I’d begun to wonder whether Millie had carted Jay off to, say, 1768, but Zar was right. Chuck him on a suitably remote mountaintop and the effect would likely be much the same.
But I hated not knowing. Above all things that I hate, it’s ignorance.
‘How could George know where Jay is?’ I asked.
‘He didn’t precisely say. He implied, though, that John Wester and Millie Makepeace aren’t the only examples of their peculiar capabilities and that Ancestria Magicka’s got a tame one.’
Hardly surprising, really. I’d guessed since the Greyer Cottage that they were after a pet Waymaster, preferably undead, and with the kinds of resources they had, of course they’d achieved it. In record time. While we were still flailing around, bumping into Millie Makepeace by accident.
Still, George wanted something from us. That meant we were ahead of them somewhere.
‘Here’s my counter-offer,’ I said crisply to Zareen. ‘I don’t just want to know where Jay is. I want him to take us there. If he’s got a tame walkabout house then that should be easy for him.’
Zareen gave me her weird, twisted smile. ‘Thought you’d say that.’ There followed a brief phone conversation in which she relayed this to Mercer, and soon rang off. ‘Deal,’ she told me. ‘If Jay’s not back by tomorrow, he’ll take us to him.’
I wondered whether that hadn’t been just a bit too easy, but I said nothing. Zar might be caught in a difficult position just now, but I trusted her. She might be chummier with Ancestria Magicka than I liked, but she would never betray the Society. Or me.
I hung onto that certainty with both hands.
We reached the Scarlet Courtyard just in time for dinner, which pleased my stomach greatly for (as I had begun to realise about halfway through the coach journey) we had managed to skip lunch.
Alas, food was not to be mine for a little while yet, because it turned out to be one of those occasions where everything happens at once.
Mrs. Amberstone met us as we trooped wearily through the hallway. She smelled enticingly of something that was probably pie. ‘Visitor for you, girls,’ she said. ‘Chap from the Society.’
Intriguing. ‘Thanks, Mrs. A. Whereabouts is he?’
‘Somewhere about the gardens. Seems restless.’
That did not bode well, but I tried not to worry about it as I traipsed upstairs with Zareen. I wanted a quick change of clothes and a drink of water before I dealt with the next problem.
Halfway up the stairs to our rooms, though, my pocket buzzed.
Got them from Val, Miranda had sent. Anything good in there?
I stopped dead, frozen with astonishment. I read it a couple of times, just to be sure, before I showed it to Zareen.
She said nothing. There was nothing to say.
I hauled the two books out of my shoulder-bag again and snapped a quick shot for Val.
It didn’t take long for her to reply. Where did you get those, and can I have them?
From Mir, I wrote back. Says she got them from you?
Those did not come from this library, Val replied.
I sat slowly down upon the steps and put my face in my hands, because as bad news went, this bordered upon awful. I was not quite so appalled as I would have been had it been Valerie or Zareen, or Rob, or Jay. But it was bad enough.
How far back did it go?
‘Why would Miranda lie about that?’ said Zareen. She’d joined me on the step, less because she was shocked, I suspected, than because she was exhausted.
‘I can only think of one reason. If those books didn’t come from our library and Mir’s concealing the source, then they came from someplace she should not have access to.’
Zareen just nodded, her head drooping wearily.
‘Shit,’ I muttered, and hauled myself to my feet again. The question of why Miranda had gone out of her way to put those books into our hands, even at the risk of discovery, could wait. First I had to find out who had come from the Society.
It was Rob, of course. We found him pacing about under the walnut trees at the back of Mrs. Amberstone’s garden, brow uncharacteristically clouded. He wore his customary dark shirt and trousers, and a dapper fedora over his dark curls. This last he took off, and rubbed a hand over his hair. The gesture looked unutterably weary.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said as we approached. ‘I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.’
‘It’s Miranda, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘How did you know that?’ There was a tilt to his head and a wary quality to his voice that I did not like. Was this how it would be from now on? Would we all suspect each other?
‘Miranda’s been at somebody else’s library, and I suspect it’s Ancestria Magicka’s.’ I showed Rob the few messages she and I had exchanged, and the books themselves.
Rob just looked at them, and gave a soft sigh. ‘That’s it, then.’ He shook his head, and gave the books back to me. ‘Might as well get some use out of those before we have to give them back.’
I stashed them again.
‘How did you find out?’ said Zareen.
‘I told you there’s been a rash of Dappledok puppies turning up? Miranda kept going out to collect them, but wherever she was taking them, it wasn’t Home. That became clear about an hour ago. Then we realised she hadn’t come back at all from the last pickup, had left no word for anybody, and — and she’s taken several of the rarest beasts from the East Wing. At least, nobody knows where they are, so it’s the most likely explanation.’
It physically hurt to hear this. Miranda was a fixture at the Society, had been for almost as long as I’d been employed there. How could she? What was she thinking?
I saw some of the same questions written over Rob’s face. ‘Has anyone spoken to her?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘She hasn’t been answering her phone, or messages.’
‘She answered me,’ I said, already typing. Where are you? That’s all I put.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this message she did not answer.
‘Was it Mir, then, who told Ancestria Magicka about Bill?’ I said, trying to maintain my composure. ‘And put the tracker spell into the book?’
Rob shrugged. ‘Hard to say until someone gets hold of her, but it looks likely.’
‘But why?’ I could think of nothing else to say.
‘She’s always been so passionate about those beasts,’ said Rob, and as devastated as he was himself he was still kind enough to lay a comforting hand on my shoulder. ‘The Society has always had to follow Ministry policy there. Imagine how tempting it must have been to her, when Ancestria Magicka appeared. Money to do anything and everything necessary for her creatures, and the will to defy the Ministry if they deemed it important enough. Imagine what they must have promised her. And then you showed up with a Dappledok pup…’
I was gripped by a sudden fear. ‘Rob. My pup — or not my pup, but, you know — did Miranda take her as well?’
Rob nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Ves. There are no pups left at Home.’
‘Damnit, Miranda.’ I took a breath, and ruthlessly pulled myself together. ‘When we saw her this morning, she had a couple of unfamiliar kennel aides with her. I assumed they must be new recruits.’
‘As far as I know, not. We haven’t had any newcomers in the Beasts division lately.’
‘So they were probably from Ancestria Magicka.’
Rob nodded.
I realised Zareen was no longer with us. Looking around, I saw her several feet away, her phone to her ear. She had the tense, listening posture of a person hearing unwelcome news.
‘George Mercer,’ I said. ‘Bet that’s who she’s talking to. If Miranda’s been working for them these past weeks, he probably knew.’
‘And didn’t tell her?’ Rob winced in sympathy.
‘He wouldn’t, would he? But I think Zar believes he’s honest with her.’ Privately, I think she needed to believe that. Mercer was more important a figure in her world than he at all deserved to be, at least in my opinion.
‘Something doesn’t add up, though,’ I said, frowning. ‘Why did Mir get us those books?’
Rob thought that over. ‘I’ve known Miranda many years,’ he said after a while. ‘Whatever misdeeds she may have lately committed, I don’t believe she’s ruthless by nature, nor would betrayal have come easily to her. If she did put the tracker spell in your book, she probably thought her new allies would just steal it. She could never have meant for you or Jay to end up in harm’s way.’
‘So you think this is guilt?’ I slapped a hand against my shoulder-bag, where the purloined books lay.
Rob grimaced. ‘Something like that. More a desire to make amends, perhaps. And… just because she’s been helping Ancestria Magicka, doesn’t mean she’s become entirely disloyal to the Society.’
‘How good of her to help us,’ I muttered.
Rob gave me a sad smile, and I felt a bit guilty. But, then, Rob had heard this news a little sooner, and he’d had time to regain his composure. I hadn’t, yet, but I would get there.
‘Wait,’ I said, another thought breezing cheerily into my over-burdened head. ‘What about Lord Garrogin? He interviewed Mir, like the rest of us. Why didn’t he know?’
‘Those questions are being asked.’
Much good it would do us. Garrogin would deny all knowledge, and it might be the truth or it might not be.
I called the Baron.
It hurt so much, to have to tell him of Miranda’s treachery. He listened in silence, however, and when I raised Lord Garrogin’s name he became unusually grim.
‘Miranda’s not a sorceress or a witch or — or anything, Alban,’ I finished. ‘She doesn’t have a great deal of magick of her own. What she does have is a few charms and cantrips that keep her beasts calm and happy; a bit of healing magick; that kind of thing. Nothing, in short, that could help her to deceive a Truthseeker.’
‘Right,’ said the Baron, his voice wintry-cold. ‘Then he’s a turncoat, too.’
‘Looks like it.’
Baron Alban sighed. ‘Thanks, Ves. I’ll tell Their Majesties.’
Zareen came back, her face white and set. ‘We’re going to that party,’ she informed me.
‘Oh?’
‘And we may or may not be burning down the castle on our way out.’
