by I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised. Mabyn Redclover had aligned herself with precisely the type of organisation — and the very department thereof — most likely to be opposed and despised by those who remained loyal to the goals of the Redclover school. She had become a person who made a point of getting in the way of projects like the Redclovers’, curtailing their options and limiting their prospects for reasons with which they apparently disagreed. If you were not disposed to consider those kinds of laws as justified, Mabyn’s choices would tend to look rather like defection to the enemy.
I wondered what kinds of things they were getting up to at the school these days.
‘We need to pay a visit to the Redclover School,’ I said.
Mabyn gave me an exasperated look. ‘It has been forty years since I left. I thought they might have got over their anger by now, but apparently not. They aren’t going to let us anywhere near that school.’
‘Not you, perhaps,’ said Jay. ‘I mean no offence, but Ves and I have angered no one.’
‘Yet,’ I muttered.
Jay ignored that. ‘If we request a tour, as representatives of the Society, surely they would agree?’
‘Of course they would,’ said Mabyn.
‘Great.’
Her lips quirked in a sardonic smile. ‘Anything remotely objectionable is well hidden, and believe me, you won’t find it without help.’ She held up a hand as Jay opened his mouth, forestalling his words. ‘I cannot help you there. Forty years, remember? I am out of touch with their present arrangements.’
‘Not to worry,’ I said. ‘I have a plan.’
Jay eyed me warily. ‘Is it by chance a Mad Ves plan?’
‘A what?’
‘Mad Ves plans make perfect sense to Ves, but less so to anyone else. They are the result of Ves’s unique worldview, combined with a splendid disregard for convention or rule and a degree of blithe recklessness.’
‘You don’t like my plans?’
‘They frighten the life out of me,’ said Jay. ‘It’s therefore galling to have to admit that they sometimes work.’
‘Usually,’ I corrected.
‘All right, usually. So what’s the plan?’
‘I am going to show them the pup.’
‘What? Ves, if they are the ones responsible for breeding that puppy, we’ll be in big trouble.’
‘I don’t think they are. Or if they are, they may be unaware that one has got away. They’d be quite interested to hear about that, don’t you think?’
‘Oh? How do you figure that?’
‘Because this place is so reclusive. If this is where the pup came from, how did it end up in a medieval ghost-cottage in East Anglia? If the pup came from here at all, then somebody took it out of Dappledok into England, and that is a circumstance that’s likely to be frowned upon by the School. I think they would like to know about it, don’t you?’
‘Like I said,’ said Jay with a sigh. ‘Blithe recklessness.’
I looked at Mabyn. ‘Would you like to be on better terms with your family again?’
‘What,’ said Mabyn suspiciously, ‘did you have in mind?’
‘If, say, you heard about this Goldnose matter and came here out of concern for the school, that might win back a little favour.’
‘They would only think I was here to make trouble for them.’
‘Which,’ Jay put in, ‘we very possibly are.’
‘Let’s just see how it goes, shall we? Anyone who’s with me, come along.’ I left without waiting for a reply. I knew Jay would follow, and it wasn’t especially important whether Mabyn did or not.
I thought for a moment that she would not, but then I heard her uneven footsteps following along behind Jay’s — the intermittent clip of her one remaining heeled shoe on the stone floor. ‘You’ll never even find the school without me,’ she called.
‘Is it that well-hidden?’
‘It’s more that it’s spread all over Dapplehaven by now, and beyond. It had thirteen different buildings last I knew, and that was some time ago. What you’ll want is the kennels, which used to be on the north-eastern edge of the town.’
‘Lead on,’ said Jay with a courtly half-bow.
Mabyn led us all the way back down the stairs again. Her cousin Doryty lingered still in the hall. ‘And where are you going?’ snapped she when she saw Mabyn.
‘To the school.’ Mabyn spoke firmly. ‘We have come on a matter of some urgency, and I think the school will want to hear of it. Please ask whoever is currently serving as its headmistress to meet us at the kennels.’ She did not await a response, but swept out of the front door with her chin held high.
Doryty scowled, but made no move to stop either Jay or I as we went past.
‘Headmistress?’ Jay wondered. ‘It couldn’t be a headmaster?’
Mabyn did not appear to hear, and marched on up the street oblivious of Jay’s question.
So I hauled out our lovely book. ‘Mauf. Is the Redclover School at Dapplehaven always led by a headmistress?’
‘Typically,’ said Mauf. ‘Spriggan society tends strongly towards the matriarchal.’
‘I knew I liked them,’ I said.
The kennels, happily, had not been moved in the last forty years, though judging from Mabyn’s reaction they had been altered. She led us down myriad curly streets, past a great many houses and little shops (I wanted to investigate some of the latter, but Jay would not let me). The streets were mostly empty, but we passed a few citizens of Dapplehaven here and there — spriggans, mostly, dressed in such a riot of different clothing styles that I could detect no clear pattern. A society with no prevailing fashions? Unusual. We attracted some attention ourselves; I could well believe that they did not often see a couple of humans wandering down their wonky boulevards.
Just where Dapplehaven’s houses thinned and gave way to rocky heathland, there was a cluster of low-roofed buildings arranged around a central courtyard. The sounds of yapping and baying announced the kennels’ presence rather before they came into view; they were obviously still in use.
But Mabyn looked around with a frown, apparently nonplussed.
‘Something the matter?’ said Jay.
‘There used to be a lot… more,’ said Mabyn. ‘Of everything.’
The school had downsized its kennels in recent years, hm? Perhaps things were not going so well for them.
The kennels also appeared oddly deserted, in spite of the noise. We wandered about for a while, peeping into each of the white-walled buildings in turn. There were plenty of beasts there, including a litter of gorhounds just like the one my pup presently resembled, but there were no people.
The pup swiftly proved a handful. Her face had popped up out of the bag the moment the first forlorn yap had reached our ears, and she had ridden like that, ears pricked up and on high alert, until we got within sight of the kennels. After that, nothing would restrain her. I managed to catch her as she swarmed out of the bag, but she writhed like a wild thing in my arms and it was like trying to hold on to a thrashing eel. She bested me with embarrassing ease and hit the floor with a bounce.
Off she went at a run.
She did not seem disposed to go far, so I was not unduly worried. She came back into view from time to time, tearing past with her tail flying behind her, jaws wreathed in a huge puppy grin as she went from kennel to kennel, greeting every single other creature there.
It was the pup who finally found signs of sentient life, in a manner of speaking. I had not seen any sign of her for a few minutes, and Jay and Mabyn and I had gathered into a knot in the central courtyard, deprived of any particular objective for the moment and awaiting the arrival of the headmistress (supposing she chose to answer the summons). The pup suddenly erupted from a nearby kennel, vaulting over the door in a single leap, and dashed towards us, tongue lolling.
The door she had just jumped over slammed open in her wake, and a spriggan came dashing out after her. I could swear we had looked into that same building only a few minutes before, and seen no one, so how we could have missed him I do not know. He came barrelling in our direction, but not because he had the slightest interest in us; all his attention was fixed upon the pup.
He swiftly proved himself an adept handler of all puppish creatures, for he stymied all her attempts at evasion, anticipating her movements with remarkable prescience, and intercepted her as she swung around behind Mabyn. He pounced, and scooped, and emerged victorious, with a wriggling and indignant pup captured in his arms.
I took brief note of his posture. Was he holding the pup in some special way? I couldn’t see how, but by one means or another, he was holding her fast where I had completely failed.
‘I am so sorry,’ I said to him, holding out my arms to receive her. ‘Lacking your aptitude with such creatures, I could not persuade her to stay with me. She’s a little over excited by all the company, I’m afraid.’
The spriggan looked up, as though noticing my presence for the first time. His gaze travelled from me to Jay and then to Mabyn, but he betrayed no sign of understanding what I had said.
Mabyn stepped in, to my relief. She spoke to him in a string of incomprehensible words, presumably repeating what I had said, for she gestured once or twice at me.
But the spriggan shook his head, so emphatically that the flat cap he wore almost fell off. He said something in response, with a vehemence I interpreted as excitement. He shook the pup slightly as though to say, look at this! And I noticed that he was shaking.
Mabyn winced, and turned to Jay and me. ‘He asks where you got a Goldnose pup from.’
‘He… he can tell she is not a gorhound?’
‘He says he would know a Goldnose anywhere, whatever disguise they wore.’
Oh dear. I hoped there were not too many people around who could so easily see through our deception. ‘Please tell him that we are here in hopes of discovering an answer to that very question. We do not know where she came from.’
Mabyn relayed this, which seemed to dumbfound the kennel worker. He stood in thought for a moment, a look of total befuddlement on his face. Then, to my mild indignation, he turned around and wandered off in the direction of the kennel he had emerged from.
‘Hey, wait a moment,’ I said. ‘That’s our pup.’
‘He is fetching her some milk,’ said Mabyn. ‘He said a moment ago that she’s too thin, and he thinks you have not taken good care of her.’
‘She’s only been with us a few days!’ I protested. ‘She was starving to death when we found her.’
‘That is hardly surprising,’ said a new, unpromisingly stern voice from somewhere behind me. ‘She needs a special milk, which I do not suppose she has been getting.’
I turned. Behind me stood a woman almost of my own height — a human woman, not a spriggan — and almost of my own age, too, if I judged correctly. She presented an unassuming appearance, with dark hair drawn into a ponytail and discreet make-up. She wore a deep blue trouser suit with a black blouse. On the lapel of her jacket was a tiny silver pin in the shape of a pegasus.
‘You must be in charge,’ I guessed.
She inclined her head to me. ‘My name is Jenifry Redclover. I am the present headmistress of the school.’
Now that I looked more closely at her, I detected traces of something else in her face that might indicate a mixed ancestry. Slightly overlarge eyes, for one, and an unusually wide mouth. Still, it did not make much sense for her to share a surname with Mabyn, who could scarcely be more different.
‘It is something of an honorific,’ she explained, with a faint, unamused smile. ‘To become the manager of this school is to become a Redclover, if you were not one already.’ I supposed my puzzlement must have shown, which was clumsy of me.
I hastily changed the subject. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Redclover. May I ask whether the pup came from these kennels?’
‘That is quite impossible. To so blatantly flout all Magickal Accords would result in the school’s permanent closure. It could never be worth the risk, however valuable the Goldnose may be.’
At this point, Mabyn decided to reassert herself. ‘I hope that is the truth,’ she said in a brisk tone. ‘It has come to the attention of the Hidden Ministry of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales that the breed has resurfaced against all prohibitions. No good can come to those responsible, and if the school is involved there is a great deal of trouble brewing.’
‘Hello, Mabyn,’ said Jenifry flatly. ‘How good of you to return.’
