Episode 9

Hylldirion looked at me oddly, but Jay snickered. I’d got around the problem of how to store my own valuables by way of misdirection. Instead of having a safe, or a big, fancy chest with a big, inviting lock on it — anything obvious that begged to be investigated by a chancer of a thief — I had a cracked old chamber pot. No one would ever think to look in there for something worth stealing.

‘Never mind,’ I told the Lorekeeper.

Course, if you know the magickal password — so to speak — my shabby old chamber pot miraculously turns back into its true shape: a crystal chest full of goodies.

So if I could protect my valuables by disguising them as a repellent article of no interest to anyone, the alchemists of the past could certainly have protected their own valuable findings by disguising them as inanities — or the ramblings of a madwoman.

My thoughts flew to Cicily Werewode’s journal, and Mary Werewode’s moonbathing.

‘Do you have reason to think that’s what was going on?’ I looked hard at our new friend the Lorekeeper, who seemed to be enjoying our ignorance far more than I liked.

‘What, exactly?’ said Hylldirion mildly.

I took a breath. ‘That the alchemists of the past, the ones with enough magickal ability to interest us, were using some kind of code to record their findings.’

‘It is plausible, is it not?’ said the Lorekeeper.

‘More so than that nothing has survived at all.’

‘Indeed.’

‘So, then,’ said Jay, leaning forward. ‘Was there a universal code, understood among most alchemists, or did each one develop their own?’

‘Both,’ said Hylldirion. ‘Some terms were commonly used. Among regular or non-magickal alchemists, such terms as fool’s gold, horn silver, dragon’s blood and pearl ash — you will likely have heard some of them, even today. The focus of magickal alchemy, of course, was jewels more than metals; some sought to create such articles as sun’s glow, which seems to have referred either to sunstone or to diamonds, or blush of love, which meant rubies.’

So far, so familiar. I’d learned from my own research that many magicians or witches who practiced alchemy sought to create jewels, though not just any jewels: the magick-wreathed kind from which prized Wands are made. Why do you think I got in so much trouble for losing the Sunstone Wand? (and I did). Those things are not plentiful.

As far as I knew, they’d failed as surely as the likes of Flamel failed at making gold out of lead.

‘Some of them, of course, likely had their own terms between smaller groups of researchers,’ said Hylldirion. ‘On which point, I cannot assist you further. Alchemy was never my area of expertise.’ Or interest, his tone implied.

Well, few people had ever taken much interest in so batty an art. That was the whole problem.

‘Lorekeeper,’ I said. ‘Is it your opinion that anybody has ever succeeded in producing or creating magickal silver? By transmutation, or something else?’

‘I would be very surprised,’ he said, without hesitation.

I wanted to ask why, but Jay intervened with a question of his own. ‘What is magickal silver?’ he said. ‘Is it literally silver, or not?’

That was a good question, one I had briefly explored but been unable to answer. Our library, at least, had little to offer on the subject. The stuff had, perhaps, never been prevalent enough, at least in our Britain, to merit much study. Or perhaps its potential had never really been understood.

‘It is not silver,’ said the Lorekeeper. ‘In terms of its physical make-up it has little in common with real silver. It is only silver-coloured. What is it made from? How is it formed? These questions I cannot answer. I do not know that anybody can. The alchemists of old termed it a distillation of the elements of air and water, which may go some way towards explaining the names the Yllanfalen have historically used. That, of course, is a discredited notion these days.’

Yes, the world has moved on from the idea that the four elements have much to do with anything, even in magick. But that didn’t necessarily mean there was not a kernel of truth lurking somewhere in there.

I filed the idea away.

‘Regarding jewels,’ I offered. ‘I understand the ones we value to be identical in composition to any other, only they are said to form in areas of great magickal intensity, and thus absorb a degree of it before they are extracted. This seems to be a widely accepted explanation. But if magickal silver is not silver, then I suppose the same can’t be true.’

Hylldirion spread his hands. ‘Perhaps not. Perhaps yes, and some aspect of that process of absorption has a transformative effect on the base metal. Who can say? Without extensive study, we must rely on speculation, and such studies have never been conducted.’

I sighed, beginning to feel dejected. Here in the heart of Yllanfalen power, I had hoped to uncover some genuine insights; they, after all, were the one people I knew to have incorporated their moonsilver quite deeply into their culture. But it seemed the Queen’s Lorekeeper knew little more than we did.

Still, the clue about the code was of use. I’d send that snippet of information to Val at my earliest opportunity, and see what she made of it.

A scroll drifted past Hylldirion’s head, wandered off to the far side of the library, and then came back again.

‘Thank you,’ said the Lorekeeper, accepting and unfurling it. A slender thing when rolled up, it went on and on and on when unrolled, comprising far more parchment than seemed possible. I watched in dumbfounded silence as Hylldirion browsed through several reams of it.

‘Werewode, was it not?’ he murmured, without looking up.

‘Mary Werewode, in the late thirteen hundreds,’ I confirmed. ‘And Cicily Werewode, who married, at my guess, somewhere in the fifteen-eighties.’

‘There would not be a marriage record,’ said Hylldirion. ‘Because there would not be a marriage, or certainly not a sanctioned one. Not at that time. If your Mary or Cicily were born of a union between one of my people and one of yours, it would have been an illicit one.’

I felt disappointment again. ‘So you will have no way of knowing?’

‘Well.’ Hylldirion paused in his perusal of the scroll. ‘If there was a birth, and presumably there must have been, that might have been a matter of record. And here we are.’ He laid the paper, very carefully, over the surface of his desk.

Jay and I leaned over it.

In tiny, crabbed scrawl I read: Margaret Werewode, and the date 1538.

Cicily’s mother? It had to be. The timing was perfect.

‘So Mary was probably human but Cicily only partially so,’ I said, excitement rising again. ‘I knew it!’

‘What is that scroll?’ said Jay, in a tone that made me look quickly at him. He was unreadable, but I saw a certain tension in him.

The Lorekeeper said calmly: ‘It is a register of all children born to Yllanfalen and human pairings.’

I stared at the endless scroll, aghast. ‘But it goes on forever.’

‘The records date back rather more than a thousand years.’

‘Oh! A mere nothing.’

Jay did not speak. Looking at him again, I could guess at his thoughts, even if they did not show on his face. Somewhere on that scroll, his father’s name must be written — and, presumably, the name of his Yllanfalen grandfather.

Would he ask? I waited, giving him time to decide.

He said nothing.

The name of Cicily’s grandfather was there: Igryr of Everynden. ‘What is Everynden?’ I asked, pointing at the entry.

‘It is one of the towns of Aylligranir.’

I nodded, thinking. So Cicily was part Yllanfalen; was that why she had taken such an interest in her great-great-grandmother’s work? Had she inherited the Yllanfalen fascination with magickal silver?

That did not altogether follow, by itself. I began to wonder how much she had known her grandfather, this Igryr of Everynden — and whether he had shown her anything. Given her anything.

Something precious and rare, for the granddaughter he should not have had. An heirloom. A silvery one.

It wasn’t so far-fetched. Magickal silver had never been plentiful, but five hundred years ago it had been somewhat more so than it was today. A Curiosity or a small Artefact made from magickal silver, given into her care by her mysterious and magickal ancestor? That would kick off a strong interest in the substance, no doubt; especially if she could also connect it with her great-grandmother’s journals.

Who would have it now?

If anyone, the Elvyngs.

‘One last question,’ I said to Hylldirion. ‘You haven’t got any famous magickal alchemists in your kingdom’s history, by any chance?’

‘I should think it highly improbable that anybody would have thought it worth their while to bother,’ said the Lorekeeper.

That response rather took me aback. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because…’ The Lorekeeper looked thoughtfully at me, then at Jay, apparently struggling with a decision of some kind. ‘There would have been no need,’ he said finally. ‘There are several instances of powerful artefacts wrought from moonsilver holding a high place in the culture of some one or other of the Yllanfalen kingdoms, and that is not a coincidence. Our culture has historically prized the silver most highly, for its beauty and its properties. And we were able to do so because we had what was once a significant source. The Moonsilver Mines were once the property of all of the Yllanfalen monarchs, until they ran dry of silver in the late fourteenth century. They have been of little interest to anyone, since.’

Something about his demeanour tipped me off: there was more.

‘Just where were those mines?’ said Jay, glancing at me.

Hylldirion smiled. ‘Everynden.’

It really wasn’t plain, at least not to my eye. I stared and stared at Jay, and saw the same features as ever. The same human features. They were good, no doubt about that: finely etched, sculpted cheekbones, strong jaw, all the hallmarks of what might be considered solid good looks.

But he was human. Not a hint of a fae glamour about him; none of the unusual tints or beautiful, slightly alien cast to the features that might mark him as part fae. None of the things that had stood out so clearly in Cicily Werewode’s portrait.

But the Lorekeeper disagreed. ‘You haven’t the eyes,’ he said to me, not unkindly. ‘It’s clear enough to me. And to Her Majesty, no doubt.’

‘Jay?’ I squeaked.

He flashed me a tight, unamused smile. ‘Can we talk about it later?’

I folded my arms, and stared him down. No, later wasn’t going to be good enough. I’d brought a part-Yllanfalen associate into the middle of an Yllanfalen kingdom, and I had no idea what the political ramifications of that were likely to be. Was he a descendant of someone from Aylligranir? If so, the connection might not precisely please the people here. Was he descended from a scion of a rival kingdom, with whom relations were strained? That could be even worse.

Either way, we’d put ourselves in a difficult position. Rudeness didn’t begin to cover it; and what if the queen had seen it as an attempt to manipulate or influence her?

Jay needed to tell me stuff like this. Yes, it was personal, but the strictly personal could sometimes have a serious impact upon the professional. And like it or not, I was at present responsible for him.

He rubbed at the back of his neck, not looking at me. He was deeply embarrassed by it, and I wasn’t sure why. For all my annoyance, there was nothing actually shameful about his ancestry, and in his case it had clearly benefited him. He’d inherited some part of the legendary Yllanfalen talent for magick-wreathed music.

‘My grandmother,’ he said shortly. ‘Had an — unsanctioned relationship with one of the Yllanfalen. My father was the result.’

He said no more.

That would’ve been around the 1950s, I thought, or thereabouts. “Unsanctioned” could mean a lot of things, but all of them bad; had it caused a family scandal? Was that why Jay was ashamed of it?

‘Do you know who it was?’ I said.

He shook his head.

That explained why Jay’s mother might have hoped he’d be admitted to music school, though not why he’d been denied. Apparently blood links to the Yllanfalen didn’t necessarily count for much with them, either.

I felt a little bad for putting Jay on the spot like that, and offered him an apologetic smile. It was inconvenient — from a professional point of view — that the family didn’t know who his ancestor was; it meant I had no means with which to navigate the tricky political waters. Then again, it meant the Yllanfalen might not know, either, which eliminated most of the problems I’d been worried about.

‘It may be possible to find out,’ said Hylldirion, watching Jay. ‘Would you like to know?’

‘No,’ said Jay shortly, and added, ‘Thank you.’

Time to change the subject.

‘Anyway,’ I said breezily. ‘We came to consult you on two primary points, Lorekeeper, if we may.’

Hylldirion sat down again, wheezing softly. He waved a hand, gesturing us to take chairs at will. ‘I hope you have brought me an intriguing problem,’ he remarked. ‘It is a long time since I had a really new idea to dig into.’

That boded well. ‘One of them is a mere question of ancestry,’ I admitted. ‘There was an alchemist in the fourteenth century who may, I suspect, have had Yllanfalen blood herself. I don’t know how far back your records go?’

‘An alchemist?’ he said, and his gaze sharpened upon me. ‘What was the name?’

‘Mary Werewode. Alternatively her own descendant, Cicily Werewode, about a century and a half later.’

‘Werewode.’ Hylldirion nodded to himself, and went on nodding. I didn’t see what he did, but a fine golden quill pen whisked into the air and sailed off; after a moment I realised it had been caught up and carried away by someone I couldn’t see. A sprite, most likely. ‘Kindle will find out, if records there are.’

I made a mental note to beware of invisible sprites hovering about. We perhaps ought to have been a bit more discreet with some of the things we’d said about the queen.

Oops.

‘Thank you,’ I said hastily. ‘And the other thing was about alchemy itself. Specifically…’ I thought. Specifically what? Specifically, a quick and convenient answer to the complex question of how to produce the most valuable magickal substance known to man or fae? An easy, straightforward recipe for the kind of stuff some people would kill for, just lying on a shelf in the Lorekeeper’s library? Hah.

No.

‘We, um, wondered if your people might ever have investigated some of the old alchemical pursuits,’ I said cautiously.

Hylldirion’s eyes twinkled. ‘Lead into gold, and the elixir of immortality?’

‘No. Real alchemy. Magickal alchemy. In particular…’

‘Magickal silver,’ said Jay, growing impatient with my waffling. ‘Moonsilver, as you call it. Or skysilver.’

Hylldirion considered us both in silence, for a moment or two. ‘And what leads you to believe that such a thing was ever possible?’ he asked. ‘Surely all who remember the moonsilver know that it was pulled from the ground, like any other metal.’

‘Not quite any other metal,’ I said. ‘Some are now formed by amalgamation, of course.’

‘And you think that might be a way to make moonsilver?’ said the Lorekeeper. ‘Mix silver with — something, and there it is?’

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘Were it so simple, the world would be awash with the stuff. I have no idea how it might be contrived; I only know that some one or two ancient scholars heavily implied that they had done it.’

‘Including these Werewodes you spoke of,’ said the Lorekeeper.

‘Yes. Possibly.’

Hylldirion sat with steepled fingers, his expression unreadable. ‘I can see why the search has led you here.’

Was that a glimmer of contempt in his eyes? I bridled at the mere possibility.

‘We are not asking for the sake of personal gain,’ I said. ‘We aren’t treasure hunters, if that is what you imagine. We’re from the Society, and we’re trying to save magick. Moonsilver has the distinction of being peculiarly adept at absorbing magickal energy, and under the right conditions also amplifying it. As such, it is of great interest just now; both to the Society, and to Their Majesties of the Court at Mandridore.’

I hate name-dropping, but sometimes it’s necessary. And if there is one fae court that all the others take seriously, it’s Mandridore. Pomp, power and influence.

Hylldirion did not respond directly to anything I’d said. He was silent for a while longer, while his lively mind turned over who-knows-what ideas. Then he said: ‘I do not know what your sources might be, but one would do well to ask why the art has fallen so far out of favour — indeed, been all but forgotten altogether. If there is any validity to any of those old spells, why are they no longer practiced? Why are they not respected?’

‘We had asked ourselves those same questions,’ I allowed.

‘And what conclusions did you reach?’

‘Either that there is no validity to any of it, in which case we are destined for a great disappointment. Or that they were unusually adept at maintaining a strict secrecy.’

‘Why might they have worked so hard to maintain such a secrecy, do you think?’

I shrugged. ‘Most likely because alchemy has never been held in very high regard, and no serious scholar likes to be laughed at for their choice of subject.’

But Hylldirion shook his head. ‘No area of endeavour that can prove its worth ever remains a laughing-stock for long. If alchemy has anything to offer, why was it kept secret? Why is it still?’

‘Because,’ said Jay, ‘keeping it secret was more important than giving it to the world. Which means something that was done with it was — too effective.’

‘It may simply be that the alchemists of old were avaricious in the extreme,’ said the Lorekeeper, nodding and relaxing back into his chair. ‘After all, of what use would it be to turn lead into gold, if everyone could do it? Soon enough, gold would be as common as lead, and therefore as valueless, and the whole procedure rendered worthless.’

‘That could well apply to moonsilver,’ I said.

Hylldirion nodded. ‘It may also be that the procedure proved dangerous in some way, too much so to be worth it. Or that it was too difficult, or too expensive — yes, even if the product was moonsilver. It is a substance of great, but not infinite value.’

These objections I privately waved away. Danger we would risk, for the sake of so important a project, and no expense could possibly be spared considering the importance of the ultimate goal.

‘We consider ourselves duly warned,’ I said, with a slight smile.

Hylldirion smiled back. ‘It was my duty.’

‘We understand.’

‘We return, then, to the question of how so important a secret might have been kept for so long, even at the expense of attracting ridicule. Supposing such a secret exists.’

I couldn’t tell if he knew something, and was being cagey for effect, or whether this, too, was an attempt to warn us of impending disappointment.

Lorekeepers. They’re as addicted to mysteries as I am.

‘If there are books on the subject,’ I said, ‘they’ve never been found. At least, not to my knowledge.’

‘They might be hidden in some deep, dark pit somewhere,’ Hylldirion agreed. ‘An unusually impenetrable one, that somehow no one has got into in hundreds of years. That is a possibility.’

My thoughts flew to Farringale. Would it be worth another trip back, to scour the library for such a book? Could it be possible? It could take weeks on end to search all the books on all those shelves. Even with Mauf’s help, I couldn’t see it taking much less time. And what if there was nothing there? Weeks of subjection to the dangerously unstable magickal overflows of the place, and maybe nothing to show for it.

Not exactly Plan A material.

‘Alternatively?’ continued the Lorekeeper.

He’d asked a question. I had no idea what he was driving at. ‘Um,’ I said. ‘Perhaps nothing was written down?’

Jay, though, was shaking his head. ‘Scholars of every academic discipline write things down. They have to; nobody could remember the half of complex spells or lengthy research without written records, and then it could never be passed on.’

‘Perhaps they didn’t want to pass it on. Isn’t that the point?’

‘Not widely, perhaps,’ Jay said. ‘But to the select few? Nobody wants to feel that their life’s work will die when they do. They wrote down whatever they had, I’d bet a year’s salary on it.’

‘I am inclined to agree,’ said the Lorekeeper. He watched us with both faint amusement and a kind of eagerness, like a dedicated teacher painstakingly guiding a pair of befuddled students towards enlightenment.

He couldn’t just tell us whatever he knew?

Lorekeepers.

‘What possibilities remain?’ he prompted.

‘It was written down,’ said Jay, ‘but in such a way as to be incomprehensible to the majority.’

I gasped. ‘Hidden in plain sight! Like my chamber pot.’

Curse it.

Mum’s only recently installed upon the throne of Ygranyllon, and having required some days to recover from serious injury incurred during her inauguration as the queen (sort of), I hadn’t expected she would have matters so well in hand already as to have sent envoys to neighbouring kingdoms.

Way to go, Mum!

If only it didn’t leave us in hot water.

‘Erm,’ I said, and cast a frantic glance at Jay.

No help there; he was as stymied as I.

Ah well. Talking us out of (and into) various messes was sort of my specialty.

‘You aren’t wrong,’ I said. ‘I, er, didn’t know about the other envoys.’

The queen glanced behind us. I refused to be so weak as to turn around, but if I had, I’d bet you anything you like I’d have seen the door quietly opening again, and those two guards coming in.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly. ‘We did not mean to lie our way in. Only Flow seemed inclined to evict us, and we really needed to visit.’

I waited, ready any moment to be seized and ripped to bits. But nothing happened. Hopefully she did not imagine we were here to harm her. What manner of inept infiltrators would brazenly show up at her front door, and gab their way inside?

‘You are Delia’s daughter,’ said the queen. ‘The account I received of your arrival coincides with what I have heard. Why, then, are you here, if your mother did not send you?’

‘You’ve heard of me?!’

Faint amusement twinkled in her amber eyes. ‘The events that led to your mother’s installation as queen were… noteworthy. Such tales spread.’

I wondered what part in that Jay and I were said to have played, and decided not to ask. I could not tell if Queen Llirriallon approved of my mother’s ascension to royalty and authority, or whether she shared the opinions of those of her people who despised the prospect of a human ruler. Her composure was too good, her serenity untouched. I hoped, though, that the welcoming manner she had shown indicated the former. She’d already known, then, that we were no official envoy.

I realised, too late, that I had not answered her question.

Jay pre-empted me.

‘We, er, came out of no idle curiosity,’ said Jay. ‘If you know of us, you must know that we work for The Society for the Preservation of Magickal Heritage. We’re here because we are looking for something.’

Right. Honesty is the best policy, etc. I formed my signature sign to back up Jay’s words: the Society’s three crossed wands, and my own unicorn symbol superimposed over them (how very fitting that choice now seemed). ‘We were actually hoping to consult your archivist,’ I put in. I debated throwing the word “alchemy” straight in, but dismissed the notion. For one thing, running around asking about alchemy in any serious fashion tends to get a person labelled an eccentric, and I really didn’t need any extra help in that department. For another, I wasn’t sure what to make of her majesty of Aylligranir. If her people knew something to our benefit, would she be minded to share it, or hide it? I always prefer to speak to fellow scholars, when I can. They’re intrigued by tricky questions, and often as desirous of finding answers to an interesting puzzle as I am.

‘And any alchemists you may have at the court,’ said Jay, reaching totally different conclusions to mine.

Curse it.

‘Alchemists?’ echoed the queen, her brows going up. ‘A discredited art, no?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But nonetheless we have questions for anyone who might have kept it up—’

‘There is no such person here,’ said the queen, and that keen look was back in her eye. ‘What is it that you are looking for?’

Now Jay looked to me, and well he might. What could I possibly say? How top secret was Milady’s magickal-modulator project? She had welcomed a partnership with the Court at Mandridore; did that mean she was as happy to draw other fae courts into the scheme?

This was why I hadn’t chosen to show our hand. All the awkward questions that follow.

Fine, well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And did not every fae court, and every magickal society, stand to gain if the Society could pull this off?

‘We’re after magickal silver,’ I said. ‘What you call moonsilver, or skysilver — at least, that’s what they were calling it in Ygranyllon. We need it in quantity, and as you must know there isn’t a great quantity of it to be had. So we’re following some rumours. It’s said here and there that the alchemists of the past may have sought to create it, and may have succeeded, but if they did they’ve been awfully quiet about it.’

‘Such a project, were it successful, must be very lucrative,’ said the queen, and I am sure I did not imagine the shade of disapproval in her tone.

‘Very,’ I said quickly. ‘But that isn’t why we want to make it.’

‘I think you had better tell me the rest,’ said the queen.

So we did. Not quite all of the rest, but a lot of it. I began with our first venture into lost Farringale, and ended with Torvaston’s abandoned scheme to create a solution via magickal means. ‘So if we are here as envoys,’ I concluded, ‘it is as members of the Society, not of my mother’s court. And we are seeking help. To save magick. For everyone.’

It wasn’t a bad speech, if I say so myself. Harder to say whether Queen Llirriallon was impressed by it or not; she sat very still, ruminating upon everything we had said, and I could not tell from her face what thoughts were passing through her mind.

Told all in a rush, the way Jay and I had just done, it sounded far-fetched. Crazy. Magickal parasites, lost royal houses, alternate Britains, mysteriously powerful artefacts and two ordinary magicians at the heart of it all: would she believe it? How much of everything we’d said did she already know?

At length, she spoke.

‘At court, we have a store of moonsilver.’

My heart leapt, and began to race. Giddy gods, could it be that easy? Would she give her kingdom’s store into the Society’s care?

‘It is not enough for your purpose, but perhaps some token of it may be of use to the Society. I am prepared to offer a loan, via the proper channels of course.’

Of course. She wouldn’t just let us waltz off with it, which was fair.

But if it was a loan, she did not intend for it to be used in the creation of any magickal modulator. So, then…?

She read my questions in my face, for she smiled a little, and rang the tiny, silvery bell that stood on a corner of her desk. ‘You wanted to speak to an archivist?’ she said, and a moment later the door swung open.

‘Please take Miss Vesper and Mr. Patel to see Hylldirion,’ she said to the green-clad official who entered. ‘He is our Lorekeeper,’ she said to Jay and I. ‘I believe you may find him useful to consult.’

Jay was laughing softly as we exited the queen of Aylligranir’s salon.

‘What?’ I hissed, trailing after our taciturn guide at a distance of a few feet. He’d barely acknowledged us, offering us the scantest of bows before turning his back and walking off. Apparently we were to follow or not, he neither knew nor cared.

‘Was that us being gently disposed of?’ said Jay.

‘The classic token-gesture-and-fob-off combo,’ I nodded. ‘She’s a master at it.’

On the face of it, Llirriallon the Gentle had been most obliging and helpful. But Jay and I hadn’t missed the fact that she had asked no questions about the modulator, or our quest to rebuild it.  She’d made no professions of solidarity, and offered us no real assistance. Just the loan of a small piece of unworked moonsilver, however that was supposed to help, and then dispatched us to pester her Lorekeeper with our questions.

And there’d been that gleam of something in her soft eyes that looked awfully like amusement.

I consoled myself by remembering what Val had said. The shining lights of history were often considered cranks in their own time. I had no real problem with being considered a crank. In fact, Milady rather specialised in being underestimated.

Still, it would’ve been nice to meet with more real assistance, here at an unusually intact Yllanfalen enclave.

A stray thought filtered in.

‘Jay,’ I said, in a different tone. ‘Did she know you?’ I was thinking of the way she’d stared at Jay, and repeated his surname. And the way everyone seemed to know who we were the moment we showed up, though that might just be because I was notorious for causing a ruckus, and Jay was getting famous by association. That, and for his shiny Waymastery skills.

Jay cast me a glance I can only term shifty. ‘Er, no.’

‘And now for the truth?’ Our green-clad guide walked on at a measured pace, either oblivious or uninterested, and he’d led us through so many twisty corridors I had hopelessly lost what passed for my bearings. Hopefully Jay had some idea of where we were.

With a sigh that expressed the utter futility of trying to fob me off, Jay said: ‘She doesn’t know me. She may know of my family.’

‘The Nottinghamshire Patels?’ That surprised me. What possible link could there be between Jay’s family and an Yllanfalen kingdom in Yorkshire?

‘My mother tried to get me admitted for music tutelage,’ Jay said. ‘She was quite persistent, I understand.’

My thoughts flew to Jay at the piano, and the ethereal music drawn forth by his clever fingers. Music tutelage, or musical magick? ‘Did she succeed?’

‘No. I was not invited to study here, or at any other Yllanfalen kingdom.’

Some piece was missing in this little history. Jay’s musical talents were inarguable, but few parents, however devoted, would have the gumption to importune the Yllanfalen for training. Not least because of its utter futility. These fae had never been especially welcoming of human visitors, however magickal they might be. Even with my links to a fellow Yllanfalen queen, I knew our time in Aylligranir was likely to prove brief; soon enough we would be politely encouraged to take ourselves off.

Why, then, had Mrs. Patel considered it worth the effort to try?

‘Is there some reason she thought they might—’ I began, but our guide at last stopped in the middle of another interminable corridor, opened a low door set into the pale stone wall, and bowed us through it. ‘At the queen’s pleasure, Lorekeeper,’ he said to whoever was inside.

I walked past him, and stepped into a room Val might literally have killed for. A library, naturally, and not, whatever my words might have suggested, the spectacular kind. Unlike much of the rest of the palace, this room had no soaring ceilings, no pillars and statuary, no starstone or gilding. Its proportions were surprisingly modest, but every inch of the space was turned to the practical purpose of close study. The books crowding the shelves of the many plain oak bookcases were well-used and well-loved, though also well-kept; reading desks and comfortable chairs were tucked into every cranny and corner; handsome glass cases hinted at rare and precious bookly treasures just waiting to spill their secrets. The library was well-stocked, lived-in and loved, and full of the personality of whoever had built it.

Which was, possibly, the gentleman who looked up from a gigantic tome, blinking in befuddled surprise at his unexpected guests. Our guide didn’t linger; within moments, the door closed behind us, and Jay and I were left to introduce ourselves to Hylldirion the Lorekeeper.

‘Please forgive the intrusion,’ I murmured, recognising the bemused, faraway look of a man whose mind was far from the room in which he sat. ‘Her Majesty sent us to enquire with you about—’

‘Ancestry records? Yes, yes.’ Hylldirion set aside his tome — a volume I longed to leaf through, it positively radiated secrets — and stood up. The process cost him some effort, for he looked at least a hundred years old and could easily have been thrice that. He was bald as an egg, his stooped frame clad in a simple blue robe, though his grey eyes held a bright alertness I myself would’ve envied on many an early morning.

‘Later, certainly,’ I said, for we did want to pursue the question of the Werewodes and their possible Yllanfalen ancestry. ‘But we particularly wanted to ask you about…’

I trailed off, realising that Hylldirion had no way of knowing about the Werewode part of our mission. We hadn’t mentioned that to anyone yet, not even the queen. How then had he known we would be interested in his lineage papers?

‘What—-’ I began, but he was looking at Jay, and Jay had an air of acute embarrassment shaded with irritation, and he was most definitely avoiding my eye.

Something slotted into place.

‘Wha,’ I breathed.

Jay’s expression turned stony, and an irritated muscle jumped in his jaw. ‘We aren’t here for that, sir,’ he said to the Lorekeeper, with slightly strained politeness.

‘Jay,’ I choked. ‘You’re— you can’t mean that you’re—’

It was Hylldirion who answered; Jay maintained his silence. ‘Possessed of a degree of Yllanfalen heritage? It’s as plain as a pikestaff.’  

‘As waiting rooms go,’ said Jay, ‘This one isn’t bad.’ He reposed himself upon the grass once more, shut his eyes, and apparently dozed off.

I stood watching him for a few minutes, undecided about whether or not to interrupt his nap. As opportunities for R&R went, the locale was ideal but the timing was pretty bad.

But he looked so comfortable lying stretched out in the verdure, with a tiny half-smile on his sun-bathed face, that I didn’t have the heart.

He didn’t seem to mind that he was exhausted, yet expected to soldier on; nor that Milady kept him hopping, week in, week out. He never complained. Either he loved the job that much, or he had one hell of a work ethic.

Which made me wonder, once again, about the Jay behind the workhorse façade. Though we’d been working together for some weeks now, I was aware that I still didn’t know him very well. There had hardly been the time to try.  The Jay I knew was tireless, unbelievably dedicated, magickally remarkable, and very self-contained. He’d occasionally got a little irritated with me (my fault, always), but his temper rarely frayed, he never panicked, and he hardly ever worried. A cool cucumber, you might say.

But nobody was like that all the time. Em Rogan had called him “controlled”, and she was right. Where was the real Jay, behind the top-of-the-class star student of the Hidden University? What did he care about, besides his studies and his mission with the Society? The only glimpses I’d really had into his inner world were disparate things like his dress sense (that jacket didn’t quite go with the image), the motorbike (ditto), and…

Nope, that was about it.

Might have something to do with the family, I mused. The only time I really saw him animated was when he talked about his siblings, of which there were at least three—

‘You’re staring at me,’ said Jay, and I realised with a start that his dark eyes were open.

‘Was not,’ I said automatically.

‘And you had that pensive look on your face.’

‘Pensive?’ I tried my best smile on him. ‘Wasn’t thinking anything, I swear.’

‘One might even say, inquisitive.’ Jay sat up with a slight groan, and brushed grass seeds out of his hair. ‘Whatever I’ve done to deserve such scrutiny, I beg mercy.’

‘I was just wondering,’ I began, but with a whoosh of magick — tasting like clear air after a thunderstorm, and smelling of white wine — our not-so-friendly local sprite was back.

She’d developed a smile.

‘My name is—’ she said, followed by several unpronounceable syllables I will not attempt to recreate. ‘It means flow of bright water in your tongue.’

‘…Is it all right if we call you that?’ I said.

‘Maybe just “Flow”,’ Jay amended.

Flow bowed her assent. ‘You are welcome in Aylligranir, Cordelia Vesper and Jay Patel,’ she announced. ‘Her Majesty is eager to meet the envoys of Queen Delia. If you will follow me?’

Her manner being far more gracious than before, I was somewhat surprised, and a shade uneasy. Obviously, our ruse had succeeded better than I had expected. Hopefully, anyway. That, or this was a counter-ruse, and upon accepting Flow’s gracious invitation we were to be thrown into a deep, dark dungeon.

And how was it that she knew our names? I didn’t remember telling her mine, let alone Jay’s.

‘Our fame has preceded us,’ I whispered to Jay, as Flow walked, stately and straight-backed, towards the sheer hillside.

‘Can’t decide if that’s a good thing or bad,’ Jay muttered.

Neither could I.

Instead of coming to an abrupt halt at the base of the emerald-green hill, Flow wavered like the water whose namesake she was, and vanished.

‘Um,’ said Jay. ‘What do we do?’

I eyed the impenetrable verdure, no less confused. ‘When in doubt, follow suit,’ I said, and walked after Flow, putting my feet, as best I could, exactly where she had stepped.

It’s hard to walk face-first into a slab of rock, so I shut my eyes.

No impact. No grazed nose. I took two steps, then three, then five, and when I still felt free-flowing air around my face I hazarded a glance.

‘Oh,’ I said, and stopped.

Flow had walked us into the middle of a city. Right into the middle: we stood in the centre of a wide street, paved in pale, silver-touched stone. To my left and right, and all around me, stupendous buildings soared. They were tall, they were graceful, they were pale and interesting, yet touched here and there with bright motes of colour. Starstone liberally glimmered, everywhere I looked. Pointed arches embraced grand, clear windows bordered in stained glass; engraved pilasters and carved friezes graced every façade.

I heard music: faint, ethereal, enticing. Faerie bells upon a summer breeze.

It reminded me, sharply, of the music I had twice heard Jay draw forth from a piano, or a spinet, and I looked keenly at him.

‘What?’ he said. ‘I can’t possibly be more interesting to look at than all of this.’

‘Nothing. Sorry.’ I needed to put a lid on my curiosity. Jay wasn’t a mystery to solve.

Flow, oblivious alike to our awed wonder and our conversation, floated away down the street. I hurried to catch up. There were not many other Yllanfallen abroad; our footsteps echoed in the quiet, and the distant music teased insistently at me.

Ahead of us loomed a structure of such size and splendour as to put all the rest to shame: a palace, in other words, set in gardens of such verdure, such ethereal beauty, I could have lived there forever.

And as such, I was obliged to stifle an intense desire to turn tail and run away.

We were here on one errand: find out what the Yllanfallen knew about magickal silver, or indeed about Mary or Cicily Werewode, if the two things proved to be connected. But in posing as envoys from my mother, we would now be obliged to be envoys from my mother. And who knew what seductive magick this deliriously gorgeous place would work on our senses while we were at it? Aylligranir was like Ygranyllon, only… better. More beautiful. Less wrecked.

I glanced behind me. Jay walked at my left elbow, and several feet behind both of us strolled a pair of Yllanfallen men. They looked innocuous enough at first glance, but something about their demeanour, the matching dark-blue raiment they wore, and the incidental fact that they were armed tipped me off. These were guards. Either Flow had summoned them to keep us in order, or they had fallen in with us once we’d passed through the palace gates.

So much for my stirrings of a plan to sneak away. Not that it would have availed me very much, this time; it’s not like Flow wouldn’t notice.

No, we would have to brazen it out.

Palaces are never of meagre proportions, and this one was a fair specimen of its kind, in being far too big and improbably convoluted. Once through the soaring double doors, another ten minutes’ walking had to be gone through before we at last arrived at an audience chamber. Presumably. Flow liked the palace; I judged this from the dancing gait she’d adopted once inside the pale, cool walls, and the way her sea-foam gown frisked around her legs. She stopped before a tall, narrow door of solid starstone, the stuff gleaming pale and faintly blue even at this early hour, and bestowed upon us a smile of such angelic exaltation I began to wonder who we were to meet. A queen, or a god?

She said nothing, however, only faded away, as she had before: and the starstone door swung slowly open.

No throne-room lay beyond. No grand, imposing chamber of any sort, in fact; more of a salon, sumptuously decorated but surprisingly comfortable. A carpet the colour of rose quartz covered a silvered floor. Matching, gossamer curtains framed the tall, slim window of clear glass overlooking a profusion of yellow rose bushes below. Velvet divans with plump, embroidered cushions and deep armchairs made up the furniture, surrounding a low table of silvery stone.

The room’s only occupant was a slim woman seated at a birchwood desk near the window, pen in hand, eyes fixed upon something faraway. Her black hair was bound back in a simple plait, with a ribbon threaded through, and she wore a loose jade-green robe. Her skin was the colour of amber-touched honey. She looked a little out of place in the pale, elegant room; her vivid colouring washed out the delicate tints of the furnishings. In contrast with her, everything looked a little faded.

She did not look up as we entered the salon, nor did she make any sign that she had noticed us.

I paused a moment, uncertain. Would Flow return? Were we not to be introduced? Even the guards did not seem disposed to assist, having taken up positions upon either side of the door — on the outside.

The door had decided no further visitors were required, and quietly closed itself behind us.

When a couple of minutes passed in silence, I finally cleared my throat. ‘Um, good morning. We—’

‘Oh!’ said the lady, and jumped. She looked at us in round-eyed surprise, and dropped her pen. ‘Oh,’ she said after a moment. ‘The envoys? I had quite lost myself in thought, hadn’t I? Please.’ She stood up, came towards us with an eager step, and shook my hand heartily, and then Jay’s. ‘Do tell me your names,’ she said. ‘I am sure I was told, but I am afraid I was only half listening, and have forgotten.’

I repressed an urge to steal a look at Jay. Was he as confused as I? Who exactly had we been delivered to meet? Flow had implied that the queen would receive us, but this vibrant, daydreaming woman surely could not be her.

‘Cordelia Vesper, my lady,’ I said, with a curtsey. I could have no idea of her title, supposing she possessed one, but it never hurts to be polite.

‘Delia’s daughter.’ It was not a question, more of a statement, and came with a considering look that took in everything about me, from my hair to my shoes.

‘Jay Patel,’ said Jay, with a trace of diffidence rather unlike him. Had the splendour of Aylligranir and its palace intimidated him? Surely not, after our sojourn at Mandridore.

‘Patel,’ repeated her ladyship — the queen? She was, if anything, as arrested by Jay’s name as by mine, and subjected him to a fresh scrutiny.

Which did not appear to surprise Jay, though it did discomfit him. He endured it in silence, though his jaw clenched.

‘Yes,’ she said at last, and with one last, keen look, she released Jay from the pressure of her regard, and looked once more at me.

Llirriallon the Gentle, my hat. Welcoming she may be, but something about her was beginning to scare me.

‘Now then, what has my sister-queen to say?’ said she, confirming once and for all her identity. Did they not do pomp and ceremony?

I straightened, as if that would help. ‘Erm. Her Majesty, Queen Delia of Ygranyllon, has sent us to— er, to convey her greetings and respects, and—’

‘But she has not, has she?’ interrupted Queen Llirriallon, gently enough, but the words stopped me dead.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I stammered.

‘Two envoys from Ygranyllon arrived not three days ago,’ said the queen calmly. ‘The business they arrived to transact is already in hand; therefore I cannot imagine why Delia would trouble to send another, and so soon.’

Aylligranir. Courtesy of Jay, we whooshed up into West Yorkshire in no time, and courtesy of Addie we arrived at the historic entrance to the ancient kingdom of Aylligranir within about an hour.

So far, so good.

Next problem.

‘How do we get in?’ I said, gazing hopelessly at the sheer hillside before us. We were deep in the Yorkshire Dales, and all those people who claim that Yorkshire is the most beautiful county in England are really onto something. The sky positively glittered with sunshine; the grassy slopes were the vivid green of summer dreams; and the air smelled of… I don’t know, heaven.

I wasn’t an unhappy woman in that moment, except for the fact that I had no idea what to do next. For the hills, while beautiful, were also impenetrable, and though I strained every magickal sense I possessed, no sign of a way forward could I detect.

Reclusive, huh? I’m not sure that quite covers it.

‘I’ve… no idea,’ said Jay, dashing my hopes. When even the navigator is stumped, what does one do?

I sat down in the grass, cross-legged, and unwrapped one of the sandwiches we’d brought with us. Maybe I thought the comforting flavours of egg mayonnaise and cress might help me think.

‘Oh, we’re eating?’ Jay stood regarding me in some exasperation, though he was not absolutely devoid of a smile.

It occurred to me that he looked tired. Nothing serious; just a slight droop in posture, an extra shadow or two about the eyes. But while I had been firmly ensconced in the library for weeks in order to “get some rest”, albeit the scholarly kind, Jay had been working as usual. As our sole Waymaster, was that always going to be the case?

I patted the grass beside me. ‘If you can’t beat them, join them,’ I said, offering him a sandwich.

He took it, and sat holding it, and staring at the hillside. The verdant slope was criss-crossed with those unfathomable drystone walls, the kind that consist of stones piled atop one another and which by some mysterious force do not fall down again. There were sheep, woolly and dozing in the sun. Lovely.

‘Sandwiches taste a lot better if you put them in your mouth,’ I suggested.

Jay ignored that. ‘Did you find anything in all those books you were drowning in?’

‘No. Lots about how much they don’t like visitors, though.’

‘The lack of signposts was a bit of a clue there.’

‘Ring the bell for Aylligranir,’ I intoned, picturing a sign bearing this very legend in glowing magickal lettering.

Jay took a bite of egg mayo.

‘Then again,’ I said, a stray wisp of thought stirring somewhere within. ‘A bell. Maybe I’m onto something. They are primarily known for musical magicks.’

‘I see no bell,’ Jay observed.

‘Me neither, but for a community of hermits that would be far too obvious.’ I packed away my sandwich wrapping, and leapt to my feet.

‘That was energetic,’ said Jay, notably not following my example.

‘I am on fire with possibility,’ I informed him, retrieving my syrinx pipes from the bodice of my dress. I hadn’t thought to bring my Yllanfallen sheet music, the songs I’d had pressed on me by an obliging shopkeeper in Ygranyllon. But while my memory for directions is abysmal (and for lyrics, ditto, to my eternal regret), my memory for melodies — and obscure trivia — is something else.

I began to play Yshllyn Ara Elenaril first, but after three notes I changed my mind. Jay wouldn’t thank me for raining all over his sandwich, and what self-respecting Brit would ever ruin a rare day’s sun? I played Syllphyllan instead, a rippling, jaunty piece said to be beloved of sprites. I had not noticed any popping out of the woodwork at Home to admire me and my music, but if we were in — or near — Yllanfallen territory out here, then maybe…

‘That’s pretty,’ said Jay, sandwich-free and rather recumbent. Lucky I didn’t choose Llewellir. He’d be snoring by now.

I was about to retort — something along the lines of pretty is as pretty does — but I felt a faint stirring on the edge of my magickal senses. Something unfurled, like flower petals in the sun. It was the barest whisper of a sense, nothing so profound as an invisible magickal gateway opening. But it felt… familiar.

I played on, until I had gone through my entire repertoire of Yllanfallen songs — including Llewellir, Jay would have to take his chances with the soporific melody. I added Addie’s song on top, just for luck, and before I had got halfway through its beloved tones Adeline herself appeared again, ears pricked up, pale tail streaming like a banner in the wind, and the pearlescent spiral of her horn glinting in the sun.

Excellent. It wouldn’t hurt one’s credibility to show up with a unicorn once beloved of an ancient Yllanfallen king. Addie had serious connections.

When at last I ran out of music, I slowly lowered my pipes from my lips and half turned.

There, crouched in the long grass about twelve feet away, was a sprite. She was distinct from the others I had seen in Mum’s kingdom: this creature was lovely, a young one perhaps, with smooth, pearly skin touched with sky blue, tumbling pale-gold hair and an intriguing sea-foam gauze dress I really wanted to ask her about. Her eyes were wide and entranced, and she was staring at — Addie.

‘Hello,’ I said cautiously, and smiled my best smile.

I was prepared for her to dash away, but she did not. She made no movement at all, only stared fixedly at Addie. It was as though I had not spoken at all.

I cleared my throat. ‘Um, where do you live?’ I tried. ‘Aylligranir?’

Her gaze flicked briefly to me as I spoke the kingdom’s name, and at once she began to fade, her outline turning misty.

‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Don’t go. We aren’t here to cause trouble.’ On an impulse, I waved my syrinx pipes, letting the pallid skysilver catch the sunlight.

She looked at them, and frowned. ‘Had I known it was a human playing our songs,’ she said, and did not seem minded to finish the sentence. I supposed the implication was clear enough.

‘I’m an unusual human,’ I said hastily. ‘Daughter of Queen Delia of Ygranyllon.’ I made her my best curtsey. It hurt a bit to effectively credit Mum with my syrinx pipes, and indeed the presence of Addie in my life, but needs must.

The sprite looked hard at me, and she was no longer entranced. ‘And what does Her Majesty of Ygranyllon wish of us?’

‘Nothing,’ I began.

But Jay, on his feet again, came up beside me, and nudged me powerfully with his elbow. ‘We are here as envoys,’ he said. ‘With messages for Her Majesty, Llirriallon.’

The sprite folded her thin arms. ‘Then how is it that you linger here at the gate? Did not Delia, Her Majesty, grant you means of entry?’

‘Er, Delia’s only just taken the throne,’ I said. ‘And Ygranyllon was without a ruler for some time, as you may know. We are here to re-establish lost links with Aylligranir.’

The sprite checked out Adeline again, who unwittingly played her part by looking both deeply magickal and wholly unperturbed at hanging around with us.

I wished, briefly, that I had the power to be a unicorn myself outside of the borders of Addie’s glade. That might impress Miss Suspicious Sprite.

But at length she dropped the prickly attitude, and returned my curtsey. Hers, of course, was infinitely more graceful. ‘Doubtless Aylligranir will welcome the envoys of Ygranyllon,’ she said.

‘Tha—’ I began.

‘I will go and check,’ she said, ignoring me, and disappeared.

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.’

To my surprise, when we entered the illustrious Academy building we found the entrance hall full of people. And I do mean full. They weren’t students either, or they didn’t look like it. Most were at least my age or older, and only about half were human. The rest were fae of various tribes and cultures, including a couple of spriggans, a troll, and a willowy silver-haired man who would’ve looked right at home in the kingdoms of the Yllanfalen. I’d expect to see such a rabble pouring through the doors of the Emporium, but what were they doing here at the Academy?

A petite woman with a blonde ponytail and a thousand-watt smile spotted us as we came in, and leapt to clear room for Val’s chair. ‘Are you here for the tour?’ she asked us.

‘N—’ began Val.

‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘We’d love to join the tour.’ Not only were tours sometimes surprisingly informative, but the general chaos they caused was also perfect for surreptitiously sneaking off. Nobody would notice if a tour of twenty-plus people suddenly shrank by, say, one or two.

‘Great!’ said the tour guide, displaying enough energy for twelve people as she herded us all into a roughly organised group, and took up a position at the front. She placed Val front and centre, which was both considerate and convenient. We got a clear view of everything, even in the crowd.

The Academy building was not quite what I had pictured. It was small, relatively speaking, and I had no trouble believing that it had once been a private residence. The walls were built from that lovely, dark-red brick they favoured in the 1500s, at least those who could afford it; those things were painstakingly crafted by hand, after all. The leaded windows looked original, and the place had the eccentric, poky structure of antiquity; none of the clear, open spaces and featureless décor one would expect to find in a modern educational establishment. The Elvyngs hadn’t stinted on ornaments, either. Oil paintings hung in ornate frames upon every wall, probably depicting former scions of their line, and I spotted more than one artefact of great age and value prominently upon display.

They must have good security at the Elvyng Academy — and a charming confidence in the rectitude of their students.

Hopefully the security wasn’t going to get in my way later. I had nothing like so much faith in my own rectitude. Oh, not that I was planning to walk off with a fourteenth-century enchanted music box (tempted though I might be). But a little sneaking and stealthing might well be in order.

‘Welcome to the Elvyng Academy!’ roared our tour guide, and the low babble of chatter and rustling of fidgeting people slowly ceased. ‘Over the next half-hour I’ll be showing you the highlights of this remarkable, early sixteenth-century building, home to generations of the brightest minds in magick. The Elvyng family’s contributions to magick are deservedly legendary, and you’ll be hearing all about those today.

‘It is the summer holidays so most classes are suspended this week. There may be one or two study groups still in session, so I must ask you please to keep the chatter to a minimum as we proceed. Okay?’ Tour Guide Lady beamed upon us.

We were an obedient tour group, for nobody spoke.

‘Okay, let’s begin!’ Tour Guide Lady led us out of the main hall and into a kind of salon, its contents correct for the sixteenth century: heavy, English oak chests and cabinet chairs, tapestries, etc. More paintings, the largest of which we halted in front of.

‘The Elvyng family legacy began with Ambrose Elvyng in the late fourteen hundreds,’ said Tour Guide Lady. I caught a glimpse of her nametag. Denise. ‘An early pioneer of the arts of charm-binding, he’s said to have been among the first to lastingly imbue inanimate objects with magickal properties. Isn’t that impressive? But it was his son, Wauter Elvyng, and his daughter Godlefe who founded the Elvyng Academy…’

Blah blah blah. I stopped listening, having already read much of this information off the internet. Keeping half an ear open for any mention of Cicily or the Werewodes, I devoted myself to a surreptitious study of the contents of an impromptu bookcase set up atop a heavy oak chest behind Denise. Between two weighty bookends of imbued crystal were half a dozen reasonably aged-looking books.

Great Expectations, Gulliver’s Travels, Jane Eyre…

Novels.

I suppose it was too much to hope that a book titled Magickal Silver and How to Make it would be lying there waiting for me, but was an interesting magickal tome or two just too much to ask of the Elvyngs?

Feeling obscurely piqued, I folded my arms.

‘What about Cicily Werewode?’ Val said, firmly interrupting Denise as she streamed smoothly onto the next topic. ‘She married Degare Elvyng, didn’t she?’

‘I believe so,’ beamed Denise.

‘What can you tell us about connections between the Elvyng family and the Werewodes?’ said Val.

Denise’s smile faltered. ‘Uh, there are no known connections with a family of that name, but I believe there is a portrait of Cicily Elvyng in the house. Perhaps in one of the bedchambers?

‘We would like to see that,’ declared Val.

Denise’s smile returned. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be included as part of this tour. Now! If you’ll follow me into the conservatory…’

Val shot me a meaningful look. Probably it said, so much for your bright idea of joining the tour.

‘Sorry,’ I mouthed.

Val shook her head, rolled her eyes, and made an awkward jerking motion in the direction of the upstairs. Then she sailed after the vanishing crowd of tourists.

Oh. Right.

Val couldn’t hope to sneak away without her absence being noted; not after she’d been given so prominent a position at the front of the tour, and being the only person in a wheelchair at that. But I could.

Portrait of Cicily Werewode. Right.

I waited until the rest of my tour group had disappeared through the far door after Denise, then quietly retreated back the way we’d come in. I’d glimpsed a set of stairs leading off one of the passageways we had passed through, which to my relief proved easy to find again (this is me we’re talking about, here. If anyone could get lost in the space of two rooms and a couple of passageways it would be me). I stole up to the first floor, blessing my random choice to wear flat, sneaking sandals instead of the heels I’d briefly considered. Thanks to the summer holidays, I encountered no one as I wandered into room after room.

I soon concluded I was still on the wrong floor. If any of these chambers had been bedrooms once, they were classrooms now, and none of them featured portraits on the walls. It took me ten minutes to find more staircases up, and I began to feel a little nervous of the time. How long would the tour take? Would anybody notice I was no longer in the group? Val could cover for me, but still… I darted up more stairs, and found myself at last on a floor with a certain air of neglect about it. Dustier than the floors below, and much less decorated, it looked little used and little valued; the deep blue carpets covering the floors were faded and threadbare, and nothing had benefited from a coat of paint in a while.

It was also much more cramped. I was entering the roof space, I judged, for the ceilings were lower and sloping. Servants were probably housed here, once, and now? Storage space. The kind of place boxes of old papers might be kept. And old, forgotten bedchambers nobody now had a use for.

I opened a door at random — and stopped, arrested. I’d found a bedchamber, but so small it bordered upon classifiable as a garret. The furniture, simple and inexpensive, included a narrow bed with faded green tapestry curtains, a lone oak chest, and a couple of blue plastic chairs incongruously dumped in a corner.

A portrait hung by the window. Circular, mean in proportion and poorly maintained, the image was darkened with age and dirt; however, the subject matter shone through to my interested eye. It showed a woman’s face in profile, her pale hair crimped and braided according to the fashions of the fifteen hundreds. The portrait itself excited no especial remark, being a merely workmanlike piece of art; but the subject matter had me across the room in seconds, examining it more closely with breathless interest.

The woman was not human.

Or, not only human. The shape of her face was human enough, and though only her head, neck and shoulders were depicted, nothing suggested she was of other than ordinary human stature. But that hair was unusual: still pale blonde, despite the layers of grime coating the image. Were it cleaned, the woman’s hair would likely prove to be silvery in hue. Her eyes, too, could pass for blue, but were shaded with amethyst. I couldn’t have said what else it was about her that gave her ancestry away; something about her bone structure, perhaps, or even just some species of intuition with which we’re all occasionally blessed. But like the willowy man I’d seen below, the woman in the painting would not have looked too out of place among the Yllanfalen.

The Elvyngs had an Yllanfalen ancestress.

And somehow, I knew in my heart that this was Cicily Werewode. The era was right, the clothes she wore, everything.

‘Cicily,’ I breathed, lightly touching the carved oak frame. What was she doing, exiled all the way up here? Why was her husband so celebrated, and not she? Doubt washed over me. Were we right to think that Cicily Werewode had been onto something with her ancestress’s work? Or that she had continued to pursue it even after marriage? Perhaps she wasn’t, or hadn’t. Perhaps she had got married and given everything else up, as so many women had chosen to — or been obliged to.

But her obvious Yllanfalen ancestry suggested otherwise. I paused, thoughts awhirl, as disparate pieces of this puzzle swirled around my mind.

The Yllanfalen. At least one of their kingdoms — my mother’s, at present — had a magickal silver artefact that was of paramount importance to their culture. The lyre was so old, nobody really knew where it had come from, save that a mythical king out of legend was said to have created it. Well; had he used mined magickal silver, or had he — or someone of his court — created the silver, too? The possibility hadn’t crossed my mind before. But in my (admittedly not exhaustive) experience, the Yllanfalen were the only people who seemed to remember the Silver at all.

Mary Werewode. If Cicily had Yllanfal blood, had Mary also? How closely linked were the Werewodes to the Yllanfalen?

Mary and her moon-bathing. Moonsilver.

Skysilver? What had Mum actually called the stuff?

Both, I realised. She’d spoken of both. The lyre she talked of as made from “moonsilver”, and the syrinx pipes — like my own — were “skysilver”. I hadn’t asked what those things were, at the time, nor what the difference between them was supposed to be. But perhaps there was no difference. The names were a matter of legend only, they sounded good in a story — but in essence they were both the substance we were now calling (rather drearily, in contrast) magickal silver.

Hmm.

Had Mary Werewode favoured silver because she was Yllanfalen? That would explain why she had gone in so different a direction to every other alchemist of her era, eschewing mere gold in favour of a “Silver” far more valuable, to those who realised it. But most didn’t, hence the lack of respect in which she and her work were held.

Cicily had realised it. Had her husband? Had any of the Elvyngs? I’d never heard that the Elvyng family had any Yllanfalen connections. The influence of Cicily’s other heritage had long since disappeared.

I chewed a fingernail, my eyes still fixed to the strange, pale face of Cicily Werewode. Had the sixteenth-century Elvyngs had any idea what Cicily was talking about, or not? Had any of them taken her work seriously? Had she been permitted to pursue it at all? If so, where were the results of it now?

These were questions that urgently needed answering.

Then again, maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe alchemy alone wasn’t the answer. Maybe we needed to go looking for the Silver among the Yllanfalen.

Moved by some strange (and reprehensible) impulse, I stretched out my hand once more, and let my fingertips lightly rest upon the surface of the canvas. One does not, ordinarily, go about feeling up delicate articles of great age; even the slightest interference can damage them. I cannot say why I so violated all such principles this time; only that I felt an odd desire to link myself with the enigmatic figure of Cicily Werewode, even if only for a moment.

And what a moment for my fingers to fizz.

Fffupht. Magick spurted. I snatched my hand away, but too late: a ripple of eerie light flooded Cicily’s face, momentarily obscuring her features. When it faded, it left traces behind: a faint glimmer here and there, like motes of moonlight woven in her pale hair.

The dirt of centuries was gone. Cicily’s face smiled at me, clear and vivid, fresh as the day her image was captured in paints.

I waited, breathless with anticipation. But the seconds ticked by and nothing else happened, save that the light faded from Cicily Werewode’s hair.

I turned away at last, reluctant to leave so alluring, so vibrant a woman alone in this dingy little garret.

‘Ves,’ snapped Val the following morning, ten o’clock sharp, somewhere in the midst of the city of York. ‘Calm down. They aren’t going to be there.’

‘They might be,’ I protested. ‘Well, maybe not all of them. One of them? It could happen.’

‘The Elvyngs have more important things to do than hover about in The Shambles signing autographs.’

‘Hovering,’ I beamed. ‘Literally.’

‘No.’

‘I don’t want an autograph. I just want to…’ I paused. ‘I don’t even know.’

‘Gush about how amazing they are, knowing you.’

‘You think me absurd. I knew it.’

‘Ves, everyone thinks you’re absurd.’

‘Except Alban. He thinks I’m impressive.’ I wanted to add Jay’s name to the (incredibly short) list; he’d shown signs of looking up to me when he’d first arrived. But I had pretty much put paid to that by now. Nobody who’s seen me and a plate of cake in the same room together could hold me in respect for long.

‘He does,’ said Val, widening her eyes at me. ‘That’s a thought. Think your Baron could get us an introduction to Crystobel Elvyng?’

‘He isn’t my Baron, and no.’

‘No?’

‘He isn’t here.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Touring Europe with his wife.’

‘Ah.’ Val, wisely, let the subject drop. ‘No matter. If we need to talk to the Elvyngs, Milady will arrange it.’

The car drew to a stop in a side street, and our driver came round to let us out. Val used a proper wheelchair outside the grounds of Home, and we spent the first few minutes of our sojourn in York getting her set up in it. I’d witch it as soon as we got out of the regular city, so she wouldn’t have to roll the thing around.

‘Right,’ I said as our driver — her name was Candice — departed again with the car. I took hold of the handles of Val’s chair, ready to wheel. My fingers fizzed, and the chair jumped a foot in the air and began to levitate.

‘Ves,’ hissed Val. ‘Not yet.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’ I spoke softly to the chair and it settled down, permitting me to wheel it like a normal person once more.

This has been happening lately. Ever since I’d soaked up all that excess magick on the Fifth, in fact (almost blowing myself up in the process). A surge of something jazzy happens; there’s a fizz of magick; and anything I touch is in for an interesting time.

I made a mental note to spend an afternoon at Addie’s glade somewhere over the weekend.

‘Which way?’ I said, grasping the wheelchair’s handles firmly. My fingers had stopped fizzing. Probably it would be fine.

‘Why are you asking me?’ she said.

‘Because you know everything.’

The shameful truth was, I’d only been to Elvyng Lane once before, about a year after my induction into the Society. It wasn’t lack of interest that had prevented my ever making a return visit. It was lack of everything else. Impulse control, willpower, funds…

Val consulted her phone, then pointed. ‘That way, and turn left.’

We made slow progress in this fashion, pausing from time to time to check our bearings. The streets of York were busy, surprisingly so for the early morning. Summer holidays, of course. At length we made it to The Shambles, which is a crooked little street dating back something like a thousand years. Timber-framed buildings overhang the street, some of them pretty old — as in fourteenth century, Mary Werewode’s era.

Val and I quietly slipped between a chocolate shop and a tiny gallery, and, as far as the other shoppers were concerned, disappeared.

Don’t ask me how. I’m sorry, but it is a deep, dark secret and I’m not allowed to share.

Elvyng Lane is a bit of a misnomer by now. Maybe it was just an alley, once, but these days it’s more of a courtyard. We emerged from the secret snickelway into an airy square, lined on all four sides with buildings. The most imposing of them is the Elvyng Academy, a three-storey pile built in Elizabethan red brick with those wonderful twisty chimney-pots. It was founded (according to my hurried swatting on the way) in 1557 by Wauter Elvyng, father of Degare. Cicily’s father-in-law.

Ranged around the rest of the courtyard were such delights as the Magickal Archives of the City of York (whither we were bound), Gryffen’s bookshop (legendary for grimoires), and of course the Elvyng Emporium. The place that almost bankrupted me about nine years ago.

I resolutely turned my face away from the latter’s inviting façade and marched off in the direction of the Archives.

‘Ves,’ hissed Val when we were halfway across the square. ‘They’ve got new chairs.’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ I begged, ‘or we may never get out of here alive. I’ll just move in and stay there forever and ever until I die of thirst. Or maybe longing.’

‘Chairs,’ said Val again, and gasped. ‘Green brocade — Ves, that chair is waving at me. Stop. Stop!’

I gritted my teeth. ‘What was it you said about serious scholarly field trip?’

‘Very serious,’ said Val. ‘Right after we get me a new chair.’

‘No. Work first, shopping later.’

‘Who are you and what have you done with Ves?’

‘This is the new Ves. The old one was absurd, remember?’

We were by this time safely across the square, the mesmerising Emporium behind us. Once we had passed through the grand doors of the Archives, and were out of sight of the magick shop, I judged it safe to charm Val’s chair. It rose a couple of inches, hovering nicely.

Val needed a couple of minutes to recover her dignity. I didn’t interrupt.

At length she gave a tiny sigh, and said: ‘Do you think it’s possible I spend too much time in libraries?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think it’s possible you spend too much time in libraries?’

‘I—’ I stopped. I wanted to say no again, but hadn’t I been complaining about exactly that only just yesterday? ‘We’re here for a good reason,’ I said instead, chickening out.

‘I finally get out of the House,’ grumbled Val, floating off towards the reception desk. ‘And the first thing I do is disappear into the Archives.’

This was unlike Val, so I ignored it. She was just grouchy about the chair. And maybe some other things too, for all I knew. She floated up to the desk — and stopped three feet short, before abruptly turning around again and making for the door.

‘Val!’ I took off after her, reaching her only as she sailed out into the street. ‘Forget the chair! You already have a great one.’

‘No,’ said Val. ‘This is not where we need to be.’ She paused on the doorstep, her eyes scanning the square. To my relief, she did not seem inordinately interested in the Emporium this time.

‘Er,’ I said. ‘If we want information, the Archives are always a good port of call. Surely?’

‘Not this time. Think about it, Ves. We aren’t here just to poke into the history of the Elvyngs, interesting as it no doubt is. We’re here about Cicily Werewode-Elvyng’s work, specifically anything derived from Mary Werewode. And, of course, anything the Elvyng descendants might have accomplished since. I already asked the archivists for anything else with the Werewode name, and they have nothing. The other thing they do not have is an Elvyng archive. I know this, because it’s frustrated me before. That family is secretive.’

‘There might be books from after her marriage in there—’ I began.

‘No. If the Elvyngs had developed a way to make magickal silver and they were interested in bragging about the fact, we’d already know. Everyone would know. They’re famous, and moonsilver is exactly the kind of expensive rarity they’d sell in the Emporium if they were minded to profit from it. If they have any materials on this subject at all, they’ve been sitting on them for generations. They aren’t going to be lying around on a shelf in the public archives.’

‘All right,’ I allowed. ‘That makes sense. But then, why did we come?’

‘To do some digging, right at the heart of the Elvyng empire. For once, Ves, we must be strong, and ignore the big, beautiful library.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I like digging.’

‘So. If you were a scion of a famous magickal family with limitless resources at your disposal, where would you put a library of secret alchemical research?’

‘Why would I bother having it at all if I wasn’t going to use it?’

‘Good point. Then they’re using it — somehow.’

‘Or, it doesn’t exist.’

Val shook her head. ‘Cicily was a dedicated scholar, and alchemy was her subject. Mary Werewode favoured silver as her focus, Cicily did too, and I can’t believe she would have abandoned her work.’

‘After marriage? She wouldn’t have been the first woman to do so.’

‘True,’ sighed Val.

‘Especially likely,’ I added, after a moment’s thought, ‘if she was championing the work of a woman history remembered as a crank. Would her husband and father-in-law have taken it seriously, either? If not: would that have stopped her, or might she have gone on in secret?’

‘She might have,’ said Val slowly. ‘Either because the work was considered risible, or — because it was not. Look at that place.’ She waved a hand at the glorious Emporium, inviting as it was, and dripping with money and magick. ‘All this wealth and grandeur had to come from somewhere, and the Emporium’s four hundred years old. They had an eye for valuables, to say the least.’

‘And a talent for profiting from them,’ I agreed. ‘Could she have feared that they’d do the same with her own and Mary’s work?’

‘Who knows. But altogether, I think it plausible that Cicily Werewode might have had a cache of secret research somewhere, which the Elvyngs may or may not know about.’

‘I wonder,’ I said slowly, going off on a minor mental tangent, ‘if they have any magickal silver artefacts in stock today?’

Val sucked in a breath. ‘Surely not. Do you know how rare such things are nowadays?’

‘Yes, but only as of recently. I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but… magickal silver seems to be a lost idea in general, no? Not only do we have no idea how to make it — if there was ever a way — but the magickal world in general has forgotten that it exists. Including the Elvyngs?’

‘If they knew about it and knew how to make it, we’d all know,’ Val agreed, and nodded towards the Emporium. ‘Look at that place. The windows would be full of the stuff.’

‘So either, Cicily’s work never bore fruit and we’re chasing a red herring. Or, whatever she achieved was lost somewhere in the past five hundred years.’

‘Pessimistic, Ves,’ chided Val. ‘We’ve got Cicily’s journal. She must have produced other documents over her lifetime. Where would they have gone?’

‘They would have been absorbed into the Elvyng papers, most likely,’ I said. ‘Which, if they’re not in the Archives, must be…’

‘In one of the other Elvyng buildings,’ said Val. ‘Of which there are several.’

‘And!’ I said, not entirely listening. ‘Val, how did Cicily know about Mary Werewode’s work in the first place? She must have had something of Mary’s, too, something that indicated what she was doing. And if those things aren’t in the Archives, then—’

‘Then those might be with the Elvyng papers, too,’ said Val, sitting upright. ‘Yes! These ancient old families have boxes and boxes of such records lying about, and nobody ever cares to go through them. Anything important would be locked away, but crumbling notes on improbable subjects written by women nobody remembers or respects?’

‘What we want could be lying in an attic somewhere, just waiting to be found.’

‘So back to my earlier question,’ said Val.

‘If I was impossibly rich and spectacularly magickal, where would I store my junk?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I wasn’t actually joking about the attic.’

As one, we turned to look at the Elvyng Academy.

‘It’s said to have been founded in Wauter Elvyng’s own house,’ I said. ‘They had only four students to begin with, and they weren’t that rich yet. They didn’t have the means to buy a whole new property for it.’

‘Cicily might have lived there,’ said Val.

‘Almost certainly did,’ I agreed.

‘Do you think it’s too late to be admitted as students?’

‘Yes.’ I said this with some regret. As a child I’d dreamed of attending the Elvyng Academy — we all did — but the entry requirements would make your eyes bleed to look at them. I hadn’t been up to it. ‘We can, however, wave the Society flag and hope they find us impressive,’ I added.

‘If you can impress the Prince of Mandridore, you can impress the Elvyngs.’

‘Or their head teacher, anyway. Got your Important Person face on?’

Val drew herself up in her chair. I don’t know about me, but she can be imposing as hell when she wants to be. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Where,’ I said plaintively, some twenty minutes later, ‘is Jay?’

I’d searched most of the building for him, and then the gardens, too, and found no sign. Ending up at last in the first-floor common room, just in case I’d missed him before, I posed my question to the room at large.

Three people were there: Dave from the treasury (accounts, by any other name; Milady despises modern corporate-speak); lovely, Scary Rob; and a newcomer (she looked about five minutes old) that I didn’t know.

Rob, parked by the open window with a tall glass of water at his elbow, looked up from the magazine he was reading. ‘He’s not here,’ he said.

‘I discovered that for myself just now.’ I flopped into a chair, disconsolate. Searching the premises for Jay had only made me hotter, and without the satisfaction of sharing Val’s breakthrough with him. ‘So where is he?’ I’d checked my phone, too, in case of missed messages from him, but there was nothing.

‘He’s off on assignment.’

I blinked. ‘Without me?’

‘He’s with Melissa’s team on some kind of artefact retrieval.’

 ‘Oh,’ I said.

Rob smiled, kindly enough, at my disappointment. ‘He’s the only Waymaster we have, Ves. You do realise how in demand he is? Every department at Home has been clamouring to borrow him for weeks.’

‘Oh,’ I said again.

‘You were lucky to monopolise him for so long.’

I waved this away, duly humbled. ‘Any idea when he’ll be back?’ I asked, super casually.

‘Miss him?’ said Rob.

‘It’s not that,’ I said quickly.

‘Mmhmm.’ Rob went back to his magazine.

‘It’s just that we’re starting to make a bit of a breakthrough on the alchemy thing, and we might need him soon.’

‘Oh?’ Rob looked up. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Possibly, York.’

‘York isn’t that far away.’

‘You mean we should drive places? In a car? Old school.’

Rob grinned. ‘You’re getting spoiled.’

‘I like my personal Waymaster service.’

‘Uh huh. But you’re in no way missing Jay.’

‘I miss my Waymaster,’ I sniffed. ‘Who happens to be Jay.’

‘Yes, and he isn’t yours.’

What that meant, of course, was that Jay had graduated from the position of new boy and no longer particularly needed my guidance. He was a fully-fledged agent in his own right, and in great demand. Popular, too. I couldn’t help noticing that everybody liked Jay.

‘Lonesome?’ said Rob.

‘I am not lonely,’ I said with imperious dignity.

He gave me much the same sceptical look I’d been getting from Val. He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to. Val’s essential point held. I’d spent months rattling about the world(s) with Jay, frequently Alban and Zareen, and more recently Emellana Rogan, too. Now Alban and Em were gone back to Mandridore, Zareen was in recovery at the School of Weird, and Jay was off saving the magickal world without me.

Maybe I was just the teensiest bit lonely.

At least I had Val. And Addie. I could feel my link with my unicorn pal, wrapped tenderly around my heart. She was my familiar, and I suppose I was hers; I always felt her near me, even when she probably wasn’t. I’d taken more than one secret (hopefully) trip back to her glade to visit, and don my unicorn horn and tail myself. It felt good.

Possibly too good.

Rob was scrutinising me in that doctorly way of his. Looking for signs of ill-health, probably; Milady had given me stern instructions to rest. ‘Do I need a check-up?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t know,’ he said easily. ‘Are you feeling well?’

‘Completely.’ I flashed him my sunniest smile.

He was visibly unconvinced. ‘Look,’ he said, putting his magazine aside. ‘If you want to talk to someone, I’ve given Grace notice to give you an appointment anytime. She’ll see you whenever you want.’

‘Grace?’ I blurted. ‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Just in case.’

‘Did Milady put you up to this?’

‘She might have mentioned it.’

I said nothing more, fuming quietly. It wasn’t that I had anything against Grace personally. It was just the fact that Grace Clement is our resident psychologist. When Rob spoke of an appointment, he meant an intake interview. Or in other words, Milady thought I might be losing my marbles.

I don’t know quite why I felt offended by that, but I did.

Rob was waiting for an answer.

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ I said.

His dark eyes twinkled at me. ‘You’re annoyed.’

‘Wouldn’t you be?’

He thought about that for a moment. ‘Only if I thought Milady might be right.’

‘About what? That I’m a sandwich short of a picnic?’

‘No, nothing like that. But, Ves, you’ve been through a lot lately. Things nobody knew were even possible. It would not be surprising if you were feeling a little… stressed.’

‘I’ve had plenty of rest,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

Rob nodded. ‘You should know that Jay saw her, before he left with Melissa.’

‘Jay? What? Is he all right?’

‘He’s fine. He just needed a little help processing a few things.’

Small wonder. Jay had joined us only in April, and as luck would have it he’d arrived just in time to be dropped in at the deep end. Way at the deep end. He didn’t have my ten-year experience of mad Society missions to help buffer the impact; he was fresh off the farm, so to speak. It was probably a good thing that he’d got some help.

I pushed aside some few, small, unworthy feelings — if Jay had been struggling, why hadn’t he talked to me? — and focused on feeling glad that he was okay.

‘Just think about it,’ said Rob. ‘Nobody’s going to push you, so don’t get mulish about it.’

‘Mulish? Me? Never.’ I stood up. ‘You don’t happen to know when Jay will be back, by any chance?’

‘I don’t think anyone does. He’ll be back when they’ve finished whatever they’re doing.’

I permitted myself a tiny sigh. ‘Thanks, Rob.’ I trailed off towards the door.

‘Ves?’ Rob said.

I stopped. ‘Yes?’

‘You can also just talk to me, if you feel more comfortable with that.’

I mulled that over. Maybe I would. I’d known Rob much longer than I’d known Grace, and we had been on several missions together. He had a solid, calm air about him that I found soothing, at least when he had his doctor hat on; not so much when he was in Scary Rob mode.

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

I went up to my room. Someone had taped a page torn from a glossy mag onto my door.

Prince Alban Wows Europe, shouted the headline, and my heart quickened. He looked gorgeous, all princely splendour as he paid a state visit to some foreign troll kingdom or other.

He also had an unusual accessory. A woman almost as tall as he was stood at his side, decked in jewels and every inch a royal. Princess Marit, his wife.

My stomach dropped.

I snatched the page off my door and disappeared inside with it, retreating to my bed. I stared at the picture, hoping to find something to criticise. No luck. Marit was lovely, almost as beautiful as Alban was handsome, and with nothing of hauteur about her. Alban had implied that she was of a chilly disposition, but she didn’t look it. She was smiling, a real smile, not a fake, gracious-princess grimace. They looked good together.

I wondered who had left the page for me.

‘Right,’ I told myself after about ten minutes of this. ‘Get a grip, Ves.’ I screwed up the page and threw it in the bin, then sauntered into the bathroom. Enough pining. I’d deal with my used-dishcloth status with a cool shower, head down to the cafeteria for lunch, then get back to the library. My break hadn’t been quite the refreshing interlude Val had envisioned, and I’d about had enough of it.

Four hours later found me back in the library and glued to a computer. Val had reserved to herself the task of combing through Cicily’s journal again, looking for any clues she had missed. She also had three other books with her, the contents of which she would not tell me about. ‘Not until I’ve had a look,’ she’d insisted. ‘I don’t want to raise your hopes. Or mine.’

I didn’t mind. My job was to scour the secret internet archives pertaining to magickal history, the kind that only Val had full access to. I’d been at it for hours already, and I had a long list of notes forming. None of them especially pertinent, but notes nonetheless. Notes are good.

‘Any and all mentions of the Werewode family,’ Val had said. ‘Write them all down, Ves, especially any pertaining to the York area. Check family history records, too. I want to know if there were any other Werewodes of interest, and I really want to know what became of Cicily.’

‘Probably marriage,’ I’d suggested.

Hours later, I stuck by that surmise, with one modification: marriage or death. That’s because I had found zero references to a Cicily Werewode after 1583, which was approximately when she had been writing her journal. And when the women of history disappeared off the historical record like that, it usually meant they’d died — or undergone a marital name-change.

Unfortunately, marriage records don’t really go back that far. We could consult the parish register for the area she had got married in, but for that we’d need to know where she came from. Sadly for my theory, that had not proved to be York.

Half an hour later, I had it. I didn’t even have to dig through the magickal archives for this one; I found it in an obscure collection of birth and christening records from 1538 through to 1672. No marriage record for Cicily Werewode — but there was a birth. In the Yorkshire parish of Kirkby Malzeard, in 1590, a Godfrey Elvyng was born to Degare Elvyng and his wife, Cicily.

Elvyng. Middle name: Werewode.

I stared open-mouthed at the screen for fully a minute, barely breathing.

Then I rocketed out of my chair, and high-tailed it to Val’s desk.

‘Val,’ I said. ‘I’ve got it.’

She looked up, noted my expression of euphoric excitement, and sat straighter in her chair. ‘Go on,’ she said.

‘Cicily Werewode was an Elvyng.’

‘What?’

‘She must’ve married Degare Elvyng — I couldn’t find a marriage record for them but I found a birth record, there’s a son—’ I babbled on, probably making a confused mess of it but Val, to her credit, managed to follow me.

When I’d finished, she looked as electrified as I felt. ‘And is this the Elvyng family?’ she said.

‘How many magickal families called Elvyng can there possibly be in Yorkshire?’

She nodded slowly, her face alight with an excitement echoing my own. ‘Ves, you’re amazing. This is huge. We have to be onto something.’

Onto something we were. See, York looms large among magickal communities of the modern age. It’s been a centre of magick for centuries. It’s home not only to the aforementioned Magickal Archives which Val has already been plundering, but also to the Elvyng Academy, an ancient school for certain magickal disciplines which everybody who’s anybody has graduated from. And more. Lots more. There’s an entire street called Elvyng Lane right in the heart of York, and it’s a spot any magick user would kill to visit.

‘Val,’ I breathed. ‘Tell me we’re going shopping.’

‘We are not going shopping.’

‘Damnit.’

‘We are going on a serious, scholarly field trip.’

‘Yes.’ I adopted a suitably serious expression.

‘And if we should happen to pass by the most famous magick shop in Britain on the way, we cannot be held responsible for the consequences.’

‘Now you’re talking.’