by Later, happily replete with pancakes and with the Baron’s teasing smile echoing in my mind, I wandered through the corridors at Home with my shoulder bag clutched to my chest, whispering soothing words to the pup. She wanted to get out, but Alban’s words made me wary. She was more valuable even than I had imagined; not just supposedly extinct, but a potential source of riches. And if we indeed had a mole wandering these same hallways, it suddenly seemed like a very poor idea to show her off.
I was heading for the east wing, and Miranda’s quarters in the Magickal Beasts division. I needed to talk to her right away.
Unusually, she was not to be found among any of her creatures. I trawled through room after room, eyed a seemingly endless succession of cages, pens and indoor paddocks, and though a dazzling array of weird and wonderful creatures met my eyes, there was no Miranda.
I found her at last in the east wing common room, apparently meditating over a cup of coffee, and firmly ensconced in a deep, plumply-stuffed arm chair. At least, she did not look up when I walked in, her gaze remaining fixed upon the window. I looked. There was nothing much going on outside, though the view was quite lovely: sunlight glinted on the meadows surrounding the House, and given the time of year the grasses were all frilly and much strewn with new flowers.
Serene and gorgeous as it was, I didn’t think it likely that Miranda was quite so mesmerised by it as all that.
‘Mir?’ I said, when she still did not appear to notice my presence.
Her head turned, and she blinked at me. ‘Ves! Sorry, I was miles away.’
‘I noticed. Everything all right?’
‘Yep,’ she said succinctly, and smiled. Never one for long speeches, Miranda.
I offered her the bag, which she took, setting her coffee cup down on a side table. ‘Nice puppy nest,’ she commented, opening the flap.
‘I’ve been hearing all about dappledoks today, and the news isn’t all good,’ I told her. ‘You probably know what they were once used for?’
Miranda gave me a quizzical look. ‘Used for? There was an odd reference in one letter to “treasure-dogs” and something similar in a book I once browsed through, but it was an offhand comment. Their gold fur is probably enough to account for such notions, and perhaps those horns — they’re being conflated with legendary creatures. Superstition more than anything.’
‘Perhaps not.’ I related the Baron’s tale, which prompted a frown from Miranda.
‘Banned by who?’ she said, once I had finished. ‘The Troll Court?’
‘That was the implication, though if it succeeded in wiping out the dappledoks I conclude it must have been agreed upon, and enforced by, most of the magickal councils of the day.’
‘Which would be highly unusual.’
‘Wouldn’t it? I got to thinking. A spate of thefts would be unwelcome and disruptive, to be sure, but if the response was such a total and inflexible ban, then I wonder what it was that the pups were digging up?’
‘Did you ask his Baronship?’
I had, of course, prior to our leaving the improbably wonderful café. But predictably enough, he had merely twinkled at me and fended off my questions with distractions, charm, counter-questions or, when I proved impervious to any of that, the flat statement of: ‘Court secrets, Ves. Sorry.’
He ought to have known better than to say that to me.
‘Stonewalled me,’ I told Miranda.
‘Scandal,’ she said with a grin. ‘Intriguing.’
‘So, I am going to do some digging. In the meantime, the pup is a problem. If there is anybody else floating around who knows that the Legend of Dappledok might have some truth to it, I don’t want them finding out that we happen to have one. Do we have anybody good enough at illusion to camouflage a living creature?’
‘Oh, several. Leave her with me, and I’ll get somebody to come up here and sort her out.’
‘If she looks like a chihuahua or a dachshund or something, nobody would question that.’
Miranda shook her head. ‘Too mundane. This is the Society, and you’re Cordelia Vesper — flamboyant to a fault, and notorious for being up to your elbows in magick all the livelong day. We’ll make her look like a miniature gorhound or something.’
‘Purple,’ I said.
Miranda raised her brows.
‘This thing?’ I said, raising my left hand to show her the Curiosity I always wear: the ring that changes the colour of my hair. ‘It works on animals, too.’
‘Hah. Purple it is.’
I disliked walking out of there without my pup with me, but it was in a good cause. Anyway, there is no one at the Society who can be better relied upon to take good care of her than Miranda.
I was on my way to Val, next, but my phone buzzed. When I grabbed it, there was no call to answer or message to read: instead, the lock screen displayed an animated image of a handsome, eighteenth-century chocolate pot of wrought silver, glittering steam coiling from its spout.
Or in other words, Milady wanted to see me.
I changed course at once, and headed for the stairs.
Once I had finished laboriously climbing up to the very top of the tallest tower, I discovered that the summons had not been limited to just me. Waymaster Jay was already there, and — more interestingly — Val. Valerie, Queen of the Library, is rarely dragged all the way up to Milady’s tower. It might be because it is somewhat harder for her to get up there than the rest of us, seeing as she’s confined to her chair (albeit a witched-up, conveniently floating one). But the House has a helpful way of whisking her anywhere she wants to go in the blink of an eye, so it’s more likely that Val simply has the kind of autonomy at Home that the rest of us can only dream of.
I was the last to arrive, apparently, for the tower door closed behind me, and the incorporeal voice of Milady began at once to speak.
‘Chairs, please, dear,’ she said.
It took me a moment to realise that she had not, in fact, addressed any of the three of us by that unusually endearing title, but had been speaking to the House. Chairs promptly appeared for Jay and me: nice, fatly stuffed ones in tapestry upholstery, very comfy indeed.
This worried me. Milady rarely provided chairs. How long did she expect us to be here for?
I took a chair anyway, sinking gratefully into its plush embrace. I may be well used to the long climb to the top of the House, but I don’t care how fit you are, it is still tiring.
Jay smiled at me. ‘Had fun?’
Word really travels fast at the Society.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There were pancakes.’
‘An incomparable date.’
Well, sort of. I was still stinging just a bit from the fact that the Baron’s purpose had been so very all business, but I did not feel like admitting that to Jay. Call it pride, if you will. So I said, ‘Completely,’ and let the subject drop, for Milady interposed.
‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘Thank you all for coming. As you are unhappily aware, we have had a… situation at Home, which has not yet been resolved. And since we are on the brink of another, I consider it wise to discuss our options.’
‘Another?’ I said, startled.
‘Relating to your recent find at the cottage, Ves.’
‘We do seem to have a talent for making spectacular, but highly inconvenient finds,’ murmured Jay.
‘You certainly do,’ I said. ‘First Bill, then the pup. I wait with breathless anticipation to see what you’ll stumble over next.’
Jay flashed me a smug smile.
‘And whether or not we will survive it.’
The smile disappeared.
Milady cleared her throat. ‘First of all, let me assure you that I do not anticipate a repeat of the Bill incident. While clearly special, a dappledok pup is in no way likely to be as fiercely sought-after as a book like that — or its creator. Nor are its unusual talents widely known about, or much believed in nowadays.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘The pup is basically a gold mine.’
‘Not so much,’ said Jay. ‘It’s not fifteen thirty-seven anymore. People don’t store their wealth as stacks of gold or jewels, they keep it in banks. And when they do have valuable jewels, they’re in safes — or behind stoutly locked doors protected by house alarms. I wouldn’t say a dappledok is useless in two thousand seventeen, but the best she could do is facilitate a few petty thefts.’
‘Fair enough,’ I had to agree. ‘But you’re talking about the non-magicker world. What about our world? We know little about her talents. Is it just gold and silver she can sniff out? Jewels? What jewels? Imagine if she could stick her little nose to the ground and trundle off after, say, a major Wand or something.’
‘And that is a fair point, Ves,’ said Milady. ‘So I am pleased to hear that you have taken steps to have the pup disguised. It is a reasonable precaution, at least until we are able to discover the extent of the pup’s talents.’
‘What’s the nature of the situation, then?’ asked Jay.
‘As Ves will already be aware, I have sought help with the matter of the… disloyalty we have sadly suffered among our ranks. I would first like to privately assure you all that I do not in the smallest degree doubt your integrity. I will, however, ask that you submit to an interview with the Truthseeker, like the rest of your peers.’
‘A Truthseeker?’ Jay whistled. ‘I didn’t know there were any of those left.’
‘There are not many. Regarding the other matter, has it occurred to you to wonder in any detail where the pup came from?’
‘Somewhat,’ I said. ‘I do not think the cottage had much to do with it. For the breed to survive for two centuries, there must have been a concerted effort going on somewhere to preserve it. But if it has remained a secret all this time, then it must be somewhere very, very hidden. How those three pups came to be in the cottage I couldn’t say, but it certainly wasn’t equipped for a breeding programme on that scale, and it showed no signs of having been inhabited by anybody living for a long time. The source must lie elsewhere.’
‘They are also delicate,’ Val added. ‘Difficult to breed, almost as difficult to nurse to adulthood. It would take specialist knowledge, and a great deal of time and money to bring it off.’
‘Which suggests,’ I said, ‘that somebody out there has a clear purpose in mind for them.’
‘Might have been using them for something all along,’ said Jay.
Good point. Electrifying point. I sat up, my thoughts awhirl.
‘Exactly,’ said Milady. ‘And that is the situation. I need you to find out more about the dappledoks. Find out what they can really do, and discover where this one came from. It is still illegal to breed dappledok pups; Valerie has gone to significant trouble to verify this. That means that there is a group out there, or even a whole organisation, who have devoted considerable effort to an illegal breeding operation and they will not have done this lightly. It must be put a stop to.’
Thorny issue. On the one hand, protecting magickal beasts was a big part of our job; we were supposed to prevent them from dying out, not uphold a law that basically compelled them to do so. But I could not fault Milady’s thinking. These pups were something else. There must have been a solid reason for their banning in the first place; that reason, whatever it was, might well be as true now as it was centuries ago.
I tried not to dwell on the fact that our having a dappledok on the premises at all was effectively a crime. What would become of the poor little pup? She was an innocent in the business. It was not her fault that her huge, gawky nose was all kinds of magickal.
That would be a problem for later.
