by Dear Mum, ran my text. Can we please borrow a couple of your best alchemists. URGENT.
‘Think she will answer?’ said Val.
‘There’s almost no chance of it.’
Val had been waiting in the Academy’s entrance hall when I had finally made it downstairs, the tour having ended several minutes before. Denise must have noticed my absence then, if not sooner, but Val did not seem perturbed. She sat serenely near the door, unruffled. Only I knew her well enough to detect the signs of extreme boredom.
‘Riveting tour, then?’ I murmured as I hurried to join her.
Val gave me a sour look. ‘I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I’ve made for you.’
‘For us, Val. For the cause! Wait ‘til you hear what I found.’ I grabbed her chair and whooshed us out the door, waving cheerily to the woman on reception as we passed. Fortunately, there was no sign of Denise.
‘It had better be good,’ Val said once we were back outside in the sun. ‘I had to hear every sodding detail of Crystobel Elvyng’s life.’
‘Academic career?’
‘If she isn’t the single most brilliant woman in magick, it isn’t for lack of trying.’
‘Childhood exploits?’
‘Avid tree-climber, isn’t that adorable?’
‘Favourite brand of underwear?’
‘Calvin Klein.’
I stopped. ‘Really?’
‘No.’
‘Small mercies. Anyway, here’s the scoop. I found zero promising-looking boxes of papers dumped at the back of a forgotten garret, but—’ I ran quickly down my discovery and my list of not-quite-conclusions, or nearly baseless speculations by any other name. When I said them all out loud, they suddenly sounded ridiculous.
But Val nodded along, her head bobbing with each of my major points as we trundled around the square. When I’d finished, she said (to my secret relief): ‘You really might be onto something there, Ves.’
I punched the air.
‘Milady requisitioned some alchemist from the Court at Mandridore, no?’ she continued.
‘Yes, and maybe she ought to purloin a few from some other Court, too. Like Mum’s.’
‘Just what I was thinking.’
So I sent the text, just in case Mum was paying attention. And since she almost certainly wouldn’t be, I also sent a note to Rob. It read: Ves & Val reporting. Strongly advise Milady requests a prominent Yllanfalen alchemist to attend at Home.
On second thought I added: If there are any. After all, I’d never heard of anyone bothering with alchemy in recent memory; but Milady had claimed the contrary. No one publicly bothered with it anymore, but that said nothing about private endeavour.
I wondered whether secret alchemical endeavour had played a part in the Society’s recent history, and why no one had told me about it if it had. Van der Linden had never fully succeeded at turning worthless rubbish into priceless magickal jewels, and had eventually abandoned the project; his having done so was generally credited as the turning of the tide, the point where the magickal community turned away from alchemy, and began to see it as foolish.
But what if some part of his work had borne some kind of fruit after all, and was even now being employed across Britain? Or even just at Home?
Cursed secrets. I mean, I do get why alchemy’s such an enthralling idea. Who wouldn’t love to turn ordinary pebbles into ethereal rubies? Or lead into gold?
A reply came. Rob.
Why am I playing messenger boy?
Because Jay isn’t Home.
Nothing else after that. I hoped he would pass the message along, but if not, I could do that myself soon enough.
First, though: the Emporium.
What, you thought Val and I would pass up the chance to break our hearts over the Elvyngs’ unaffordable luxury goods?
Val might manage to be that sensible, but I certainly couldn’t.
‘About my chair,’ said Val, veering in the direction of the Emporium’s glittering doors.
All right, maybe not.
I made one last, feeble attempt to assert my inner sense of self-preservation. ‘Val, you know we can’t afford anything in there.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Val, and then she was through the doors, and what could a poor, weak Ves do but follow?
‘Hi,’ said Jay, and smiled.
‘Argh,’ I replied, jumping back about a foot.
‘Did I startle you? Sorry.’ He stood just inside the shining doors, hands in the pockets of his ever-present leather jacket, which was a wise move. Safely pocketed hands cannot reach longingly for impossible things.
‘I thought you were…’ I racked my brains. ‘Somewhere else?’
‘Wales. We pulled a charmed seventeenth-century chalice out of a crumbly local museum. They had it stuffed at the back of an exhibit called Women at home in the fifteen hundreds.’
My lips twitched. ‘Did you have any trouble liberating it?’
‘Not once they heard what we were offering.’
‘Show me a museum that isn’t strapped for cash and I’ll show you…’ I paused, struggling to think of something more improbable than that.
Jay grinned. ‘Flying pigs?’
‘I could actually show you flying pigs.’
‘I don’t think the pigs would like it.’
‘Might depend on the pig. Anyway, what are you doing in York?’
‘Waiting for you. I got back this morning, and Rob said you were headed for Elvyng Lane.’
‘Uh huh. How did you know we’d come in here?’
Jay just looked at me.
‘In my defence, it’s Val who lost her head over a levitating green brocade chair.’ I looked around, but couldn’t see her around the milling shoppers. That, and my eye snagged on a glittering grimoire crusted with jewels, and everything else went out of my head.
‘Do you need a security escort?’ said Jay.
‘Urgently.’
Jay saluted. ‘What are we shopping for?’
‘Whatever my greedy little heart desires.’
‘So in other words, everything.’
‘Just about.’
I emerged with nothing in hand, and about five hundred new additions to my wish list.
‘I’m sort of proud of you,’ said Jay as we hightailed it back to the relative safety of the square.
‘For not buying anything?’
‘Looks like self-restraint to me.’
‘Are you implying I’m bad at that?’
Jay coughed. ‘Er, not at all.’
Jay hadn’t made any purchases either, though he had been as enchanted by a bespelled book box as I had been by my bejewelled grimoire. I couldn’t blame him. The box’s charms not only proposed to keep the contents preserved against the deleterious effects of time, but would actually restore them to freshly-printed perfection, albeit very slowly. Imagine that. Ten years or so in Jay’s box and even the crumbliest tome might be brand new again. Or at least, less decrepit.
The price tag was about half my yearly salary.
Sorrowfully, we left it untouched.
‘That box reminds me a bit of what Fenella was talking about,’ I mused, not at all reluctant to change the subject away from my personal weaknesses.
‘You mean her restoration magick? Right. Though the box does it in a small way and at a snail’s pace.’
Out on the Fifth, Fenella had achieved a similar effect upon an entire room, and quickly too. I sighed a little, wistful once more for the potency of magick in that far-off Britain.
‘Have we lost Val?’ said Jay, turning cautiously towards the Emporium again.
I risked a glance. No Val.
‘Possibly for all of time,’ I said. Then a glimpse of a familiar spring-green colour caught my eye, and there came Val, sailing out of the shop in the arms of the brocade chair she’d fallen in love with a few hours before.
I swear, I’ve never seen so smug a smile before in my life.
‘Mortgaged house and home?’ I said as she drifted up. I wasn’t even joking, either. Up close, the chair’s craftsmanship was exquisite, the fabric was expensive with a capital E, and a glance was enough to tell me that its levitation charms far outstripped my own, not inconsiderable efforts. She glided up, smooth as silk, and I imagined the word “comfortable” didn’t even begin to cover it.
‘I may have to sleep on the street,’ Val said. ‘But it was worth it, Ves. It was worth it.’
I had no trouble believing that.
Back at Home, we hit the library again, hard. Val wanted to scour the catalogues — yet again — for anything about the Werewodes or, indeed, the Elvyngs. I wanted to research the kingdoms of the Yllanfalen, and any historical proclivity for alchemical pursuits that I fervently hoped to uncover.
We both came up empty. Val found nothing but the usual info about the illustrious magickal family: much the same spiel that we’d been given on the tour. They certainly had their public image down pat.
I found far too much about the Yllanfalen, little of which looked relevant, but who could tell? It might take weeks to dig up and read every word of every available resource, and with no guarantee of coming up with any answers.
So I went back to badgering my mother. Seeing as she hadn’t replied to my previous message, I attacked her again.
What’s the use of being a faerie princess if I can’t cadge favours off Her Majesty, my Mum?
I set my phone on the edge of my desk, and went back to my book. The Yllanfalen were secretive and reclusive, I discovered (you don’t say), and while their kingdoms had been relatively welcoming in some halcyon past, the modern kingdoms rarely granted access to outsiders (perfect for my mother, then). They excelled at music-based enchantments and charms—
My phone buzzed.
Cordelia, Mum had written. You are not a faerie princess. Remember? You refused.
I know, I returned. I just wanted to annoy you so you’d talk to me.
Mum: What do you want with alchemists?
Me: Something nefarious and deeply disturbing.
Mum: We don’t have any.
Me: Okay, something heroic and spectacular.
Mum: Ves. Why the hell would I have an alchemist at court?
Me: You really don’t have any?
Mum: I. Don’t. Have. An. Alchemist.
Damn.
Mum: Nobody’s done alchemy since about 1781.
Me: Fine, get me an Yllanfalen alchemist from 1781.
Mum: You do know that the elixir of immortality was a crock of shit?
Me: You are no help whatsoever.
Mum: Maybe I would be if I knew what this was about.
Me: We want to make magickal silver.
Mum: What?
Me: Magickal silver. You know, moonsilver. Or skysilver, whichever.
Mum: Make it? You can’t make it. That’s absurd.
Me: Why is it absurd?
But that, apparently, was it. I’d exasperated my mother beyond enduring, and she’d thrown her phone down the toilet in disgust.
If I wanted an Yllanfalen perspective on alchemy, I’d have to look beyond my mother’s kingdom.
On a hunch, I turned to a map of Yllanfalen territory from 1562, or a facsimile thereof. Val wouldn’t let me have the original, for some reason. I’m sure it had nothing whatsoever to do with my habit of eating sweets at my desk.
The Yllanfalen had several kingdoms back in the day, and—
‘Ves.’ Jay had come in; I hadn’t noticed.
‘Huusshh,’ I whispered. ‘I’m on the brink of an exciting breakthrough.’
‘You mean like this one?’ Jay put a piece of paper down in front of me, half covering my map.
I flicked it aside, pointing. ‘If the Werewodes were part Yllanfalen, that suggests there was probably one of their kingdoms in the Yorkshire area in the medieval era. Right? And look, there’s one not all that far from York itself, at least in 1562—’
‘Aylligranir,’ said Jay.
I looked up, blinking. ‘Right. How did you—?’
‘Apparently our ideas were running along similar lines.’ He tapped the page he’d given me, which I had disgracefully dismissed.
At the top was written Aylligranir in Jay’s neat handwriting. It was underlined. Below it followed a list of facts: Mentioned 1442 by Amhar Edris, and similar entries; and at the end of the list, Current monarch: Llirriallon the Gentle.
Being Jay, he had also noted the locations of a known entrance, together with directions from the nearest henge.
‘Star pupil,’ I said, beaming.
‘I’m not really a p— never mind. Ready to go?’
‘Uh. Now?’
‘If we don’t go now, we don’t go at all. It’s only a matter of time before I’m dispatched to Land’s End, or possibly Timbuktu.’
‘What does Milady say?’
‘She hasn’t found an Yllanfalen alchemist yet.’
‘In that case,’ I said, rising from my chair. ‘Let’s swoop in and save the day.’
