contemporary fantasy

In the end, we passed through five henge complexes. Jay, of course, went through each set twice in order to ferry the lot of us across. By the time Wyr stopped and said, ‘Well, here we are,’ Jay was reduced to a legless mess.

I gathered this from his recumbent posture upon the floor, limbs akimbo, his face bathed in sweat. He was breathing far too fast, and — to my mingled amusement and concern — laughing.

Wyr stood over him with his hands in the pockets of his long coat, and slowly shook his head. ‘So many reasons to use tokens like a normal person.’

‘I’m using the Ways like a normal person,’ said Jay, laughing, and then he began to cough.

‘Oops.’ I ran to help him sit up. ‘Jay, we’re going to take a little break right here. All right?’

‘I’m fine.’ He beamed sunnily up at me, and sagged in my arms like a sack of potatoes.

I let him slither back to the ground.

‘Well.’ I looked around. ‘Let’s use this time for a little reconnaissance, hm? Is this… Vale?’

I said it doubtfully, because to my admittedly inexperienced eye, there wasn’t much about the place to suggest that we had arrived anywhere significant. We had emerged at a small complex comprising only three henges, none of them large. The trio of stone circles sat atop a grassy hill in the midst of a rolling, airy plain. In one direction I could see, distantly, the edge of an evergreen forest; everywhere else was simply more grass. A desultory drizzle of rain fell from a grey sky.

‘Vale’s that way.’ Wyr pointed out at some of the grass.

‘It’s a ways off, by the looks of it,’ I said.

‘They gave up trying to put a henge complex in there,’ said Wyr. ‘Never worked.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s… well, you’ll see.’ Wyr set off down the hill, hands in his pockets, whistling a jaunty tune.

I made to follow him.

And stopped, because down there in the grass, over towards the forest, I saw a string of what looked like wild horses racing by. They weren’t, of course. Even from this distance, I could see the far-off glint of the graceful horn each bore upon their forehead.

Adeline had stopped, too, and stood staring in their direction, her head high.

‘Unicorns,’ I said.

Miranda breathed something unintelligible but no doubt awed, and started down the hill at once.

‘No, wait!’ I said, cursing myself for an idiot. ‘Mir, hang on a second. We shouldn’t just blindly follow Wyr. Em, will you take care of Jay and pup for a bit while I check things out?’ And keep an eye on Miranda, I wanted to add, but didn’t.

Emellana nodded. ‘I think it wise.’

Jay had stopped laughing or coughing. He lay silent, ostensibly dazed, though his eyes opened at my words and he looked intently at me. ‘I should go with you,’ he said.

‘Nope.’

‘But—’

‘If you can prove you can stand up straight for more than twenty seconds, then you can come with me.’

It took Jay about ten to demonstrate his total incapacity for vertical posture.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ I promised.

‘I’m coming with you,’ said Miranda.

‘What?’ I said, idiotically.

She did not deign to repeat what she’d said, but instead strode towards Adeline, one hand outstretched. Addie, the traitor, permitted herself to be petted, and when Miranda swung herself up onto her back, she made no objection.

I knew Addie could carry two passengers at once; she’d done it before. I was left, then, to fume impotently, having no reasonable grounds upon which to object to Miranda’s company.

Ah, screw reasonable. ‘The fact is, Mir, I don’t trust you,’ I said.

She thought about that. ‘I can understand why you wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Nonetheless.’ She sat there atop Addie’s back, unmoved.

I folded my arms, equally unmoved.

‘I swear you will come to no harm at my hands?’ Miranda tried, and gave me a Brownie’s Honour salute with her right hand.

‘Why are you so determined to come along?’

‘Because,’ said Miranda, with exaggerated patience, ‘if Vale proves to be as awash with griffins as you imagine, you might need me. Isn’t that why Milady wanted me along?’

‘Not untrue,’ I conceded.

‘And because I left for Ancestria Magicka in the first place because they promised me significantly enhanced access to magickal beasts of all species, both extant and extinct, and to be honest this is the first real chance I’ve had at anything of the kind. I’m not sitting up here waiting while you have all the fun.’

‘Ancestria Magicka lie, what a shocker,’ I muttered, but I stopped arguing. ‘You’re sitting behind,’ I said, in a no-nonsense tone, and joined her atop Addie’s back. ‘Right. Em, we’ll come straight back as soon as we know it’s safe. If our creepy little thief comes back… truss him up or something.’

‘The thief is at the bottom of the hill,’ said Emellana.

‘Fine. He can stay there. Hup.’ I gave Addie the signal to fly, and she extended her beautiful wings as she took off at a trot, and then a canter. I urged her in the same approximate direction Wyr had been heading in, and soon we were airborne, a strong wind blowing drizzle into our faces.

I saw Wyr as we rose into the air, watching our upward progress with an expression of mild chagrin. Did he think we were running out on our deal? I hoped he wouldn’t give Jay a hard time over it, but if he did, Emellana could handle him.

We flew for perhaps five minutes, over uninterrupted grassy hills. Then, I caught a glimpse of a cluster of buildings upon the horizon, and my heart quickened with excitement. ‘There it is!’ I shouted, and pointed.

‘I see it,’ yelled Miranda in my ear.

The town quickly grew in our vision as we raced towards it, soon proving to be quite large. Surprisingly so. Why should I be surprised? Perhaps because Torvaston’s hand-drawn map on the back of his scroll-case hadn’t suggested anything of the kind. But, it was four hundred years old. The town of Vale spread out before us, composed of an expanse of mostly low-rise buildings. There seemed to be a trend for blue paint, for some reason, for the town was predominantly cerulean and periwinkle, with white ornaments. The grey-blue waters of a wide river snaked through the settlement, glinting in lacklustre fashion in the muted light, and a network of smaller waterways wound their way through the streets.

But our attention was soon distracted from this sight, however agreeable, for right in the middle of the town rose a hill so tall it could almost be classified as a mountain. We’d seen nothing of it from a distance, which argued for its enjoying some kind of magickal camouflage; only once we were almost on top of it did it abruptly loom out of the misty skies. Its sides were unusually smooth, and thickly clad in velvety greenery. It was liberally veined with gemstones, or so I judged from the periodic flashes of colour and reflected light that caught my eye as we flew nearer.

‘Look,’ said Miranda. ‘Look!’

Her arm stretched past my nose, pointing up and up. I looked.

And could almost have imagined myself back at Farringale, for whirling with majestic grace around the summit of that hill was a trio of griffins. They were high up, so high as to appear minuscule. But there was no mistaking the crackle of magickal lightning that wreathed their powerful wings.

I fumbled for the scroll-case, and pulled it open. There, in fading ink, was a shaky network of rivers generally matching those I saw before me, and a shape that could reasonably indicate the hill.

‘Rivers,’ I said. ‘Mountain. Griffins. Right.’ I put the case away again, and permitted myself one more long, greedy stare at those griffins far above. There were five by then — no, six — and they were coming down. ‘I think we’re in the right place,’ I said to Miranda.

‘Unicorn,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Look to your left, and down.’

She was right. Way down there, just taking to the skies, was a winged horse as ethereal and lovely as my Adeline. Well, almost. Addie is, after all, the best.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s fetch the others.’

Unfortunately for us, we arrived back at the hilltop henges to find that the others were no longer there.

I stood in the centre of the three stone circles, turning about in the futile hope that I’d catch sight of Jay somewhere on the horizon. Or Emellana, eighteen feet tall and dressed in purple.

Nope.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ I muttered. ‘Not again.’

‘Hey!’ I yelled, and launched myself in Addie’s direction.

Addie had spotted him by then, too, and did her level best to take a bite out of his black, wide-brimmed hat. He jumped back, hands up in a gesture of innocence I did not at all believe.

‘Sorry,’ he said, with a bright, charming smile. ‘I couldn’t help admiring your unicorn. I’ve never seen such a perfect specimen.’

I narrowed my eyes, unimpressed. He hadn’t just been admiring Adeline, he had most definitely been creeping up on her. And who with decent intentions called a living creature a “specimen”? ‘What do you want?’ I said, taking hold of Addie’s silvery harness.

‘Where did you get her?’ said the man. Well, was he a man? He was about four feet tall, with a brownish complexion and a lean, rather haggard face. Probably not human, but whatever he might be I could not guess.

‘I didn’t “get” her anywhere because she isn’t precisely mine,’ I replied, and immediately regretted it, for his greenish eyes lit up at my final words.

‘Wild? My, my! What a piece of luck for you.’

I didn’t like the way he said that, nor the speculative way he looked at me.

‘She’s with us,’ I said firmly.

Jay joined me. I couldn’t have said why, but I appreciated his presence at my shoulder, especially when he drew himself up to his full height, arms folded, and stared hard at our unwelcome visitor.

It’s tricky to be properly formidable when you’re scarcely over five feet tall, and sporting pink hair to boot. Nice choice, Ves.

Anyway, our creepy little intruder raised his hands again and backed up a step. ‘I’m just saying. That kind of luck… she’d fetch a premium price up at Vale.’

‘Vale?’ I said sharply. ‘Do you mean the Vales of Wonder?’

He laughed. ‘Nice. And this is a cute children’s story, right?’

‘Is it the same place?’

He shrugged. ‘Probably. Are you interested or not?’

I blinked. ‘Are you actually offering us some kind of partnership?’

‘Why not? The price she’ll fetch will split several ways, no problem.’ He beamed.

Jay shifted a fraction closer, which I interpreted as a warning gesture. He needn’t have worried. I could swallow my rage when I needed to. ‘You offer us a partnership, having just tried to steal her?’ I said.

He opened wide, wide eyes. ‘Steal? Would I?’

‘I strongly suspect so, given half a chance.’

‘Well, take me up on my offer and I won’t need to.’

I glanced at Emellana. Her appearance on the scene hadn’t fazed the little creep, despite her being the best part of twice his height. She returned my look, with her odd quirk of a half-smile, and gave a tiny shrug of one shoulder.

I took that as concurrence. And if the great and mighty Em thought it a decent plan, well, okay then.

‘We accept,’ I said crisply. ‘But if you so much as lay a finger on Adeline, I’ll feed you to the dog.’

He looked in silence at pup. She’d ceased barking some minutes before, but continued to growl, showing all her tiny teeth. ‘It would take her all year,’ he said, ungenerously, but with some truth.

‘Fine. I’ll feed you to him.’ I indicated Jay with a jerk of my chin.

I don’t know what expression Jay was wearing just then, but it impressed our new partner rather more than the pup’s minuscule rage. He subjected Jay to a long, measuring look, then nodded once and held out his hand. ‘Done.’ The smile came back. ‘I’m Wyr.’

I shook the proffered hand, albeit warily. Jay didn’t. ‘Ves,’ I said. ‘Jay, Mir and Em.’ I wasn’t especially interested in handing over everyone’s full names to a thief, though I don’t know why I imagined it would matter. Our lives and identities were a world away.

Wyr looked quizzically from face to face. ‘Forgive me for asking, but, if you weren’t taking that thing up to Vale, what were you doing?’

‘Ves,’ hissed Miranda in my ear. ‘I need to talk to you.’ Since this demand came paired with a thunderous look, I didn’t feel much inclined to comply.

‘Later,’ I muttered.

‘I mean,’ Wyr continued, without waiting for a reply, ‘Scarborough’s not really the place to be if you’re looking for a big payoff.’ His eyes strayed back to Addie and he added, ‘At least, that’s what I would’ve said ten minutes ago. But luck happens, yes?’

‘A payoff?’ echoed Jay with a frown.

‘Now,’ said Miranda, and hauled me away by the arm.

‘What?’ I said. ‘For goodness’ sake, Miranda, if you think you have the right to—’

‘It doesn’t matter what I’ve done,’ she hissed, and I could almost feel the fury radiating off her. ‘I’ve never sunk so low as to sell a unicorn! What is wrong with you?’

I could only stare, speechless.

‘Say something!’ she all but shrieked.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I said. ‘You don’t really imagine I’m going to sell Adeline?’

‘That’s literally what you’ve just agreed to do.’ She folded her maroon-knit-clad arms over her chest and glared at me.

‘Right!’ I said. ‘And Wyr over there has just agreed to be totally saintly and not try to screw us over the first chance he gets. I’m sure he meant every word of that, too.’

Some of Miranda’s certainty faded. ‘He’ll expect you to follow through. What are you going to do when you get to Vale, then?’

I didn’t like that you, so much. After all, we were supposed to be a we for the (hopefully short-term) foreseeable future, and that made us a team.

Then again, I hadn’t been doing a great job of treating her like a team mate, and however justified my wrath, that was hardly helpful either.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Look, this is how the Ves-plan-of-action thing works. One obstacle at a time. All other bridges to be crossed when we get there. Once we’ve reached Vale and ascertained whether or not it is the same Vales of Wonder that we’re looking for, then we figure out how to proceed. Okay?’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘So’s borrowing trouble. There’s six of us against one of Wyr, so can we stop worrying about this and get on with it?’

‘Six?’ Miranda repeated.

‘I’m counting pup and Addie. Aren’t you?’

I think that alone of everything I’d said actually mollified Miranda, for she very almost smiled. ‘Fine,’ she said, and stalked back to Jay, Emellana and Wyr.

Wyr was talking. ‘So you just happen to have a nose-for-gold on hand and you’ve stumbled over a rare wild unicorn by some happenstance, but you’re not thieves? Sure.’

‘Thieves?!’ I stuttered. ‘What?’

‘Travellers,’ said Jay. ‘Voyagers. Explorers. Take your pick, if you like, but we aren’t thieves.’

Wyr shook his head in disbelief. ‘Do you have any idea how many opportunities you’re missing.’

‘To steal other people’s stuff? It’s not really something I think about much,’ Jay retorted.

Wyr responded with a look of frank dislike. ‘You aren’t going to be much fun, are you?’

‘Not even a little bit.’

‘Hey-ho, then,’ said Wyr, adjusting his hat, and grinned. ‘More loot for me. Shall we go?’

‘Let’s,’ I agreed.

Wyr looked at us. I realised after a second that he was waiting.

‘Oh, lead on,’ I said, smiling.

He held out his hand. ‘Token.’

‘No tokens yet. We’ve no idea where we’re going, recall?’

He didn’t withdraw his hand. ‘Money, then.’

‘We’re a bit short on that,’ I admitted.

Wyr just blinked at me.

‘But,’ I hastened to add, ‘we do have a Waymaster.’

‘And?’

‘So, we don’t need tokens.’

‘The fact that tokenless travel is against the law makes no never-mind to you, but you’re not thieves.’ Wyr smirked.

‘It… is?’ I said uncertainly.

‘There’s a tax on… where the blazes are you lot from? How can you not know this?’

‘We’re from overseas,’ I said smoothly. Well, it was technically true.

‘Uh huh.’ Wyr went to the kiosk, which waited patiently beside us, and acquired a token within approximately four and a half seconds. To my annoyance, I couldn’t tell what he’d done to accomplish that.

He saw me watching, though, and waved the token at me: a small object that shone. ‘Some of us are law-abiding citizens.’

‘I’m sure.’

He grinned, and walked off towards the henges, whistling. ‘Come along, then, children. We want the amber henge, first.’

First? I hoped we wouldn’t have too many henges to travel between. Poor Jay would be jelly by the time we made it to Vale.

Miranda took charge of Addie, which might have worried me if it were any creature but my unicorn. Adeline could take care of herself, if necessary; I didn’t give much for Wyr’s chances had he got much nearer to her.

But Emellana fell in beside me, and spoke in a low tone. ‘That person,’ she said, nodding her head at Wyr some little way ahead, ‘used some kind of a charm back there, on Adeline. Potent, too. The air is still thrumming with it.’

‘Oh,’ I said, and looked swiftly at Addie. Was she her normal self? ‘What kind of a charm was it?’

‘Nothing I have ever encountered before.’

‘Hardly surprising,’ I offered. ‘Everything here is so different.’

She nodded. ‘I do not criticise your decision to bargain with that one, but I do urge you to be wary. He has powerful arts at his disposal, and I cannot guess at his intentions.’

I’d been privately wondering something similar. ‘If he’s a thief he’s an inept one,’ I agreed. ‘Spotted before he got within three feet of his target.’

‘He may not have anticipated the loyalty or alertness of your pup.’

I drifted in Jay’s direction. ‘Keep that lyre out of sight,’ I whispered.

‘You think?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Fine. Sorry.’ But I couldn’t resist adding, ‘And the scroll-case, too.’ It was, after all, crusted with jewels worth a fortune.

‘Got it, Ves. Stop.’

I gave him a tiny salute. ‘Yessir.’

Wyr did not deign to wait for us. He walked straight into the circle of amber and disappeared in a shower of light.  

‘Helpful,’ muttered Jay.

In Wyr’s defence, he probably had no way of knowing that Jay could access multiple locations from these henges. ‘One of the routes is probably more… well-travelled,’ I suggested. Like a well-beaten track, but the magickal equivalent… could Jay tell? Why was I trying to help when I had no idea what I was talking about?

I shut up.

Jay said nothing for a while, but stood with closed eyes, one hand laid atop the nearest stone.

His eyes opened.

‘Em and Miranda first,’ he said. ‘Please. Ves, hang onto Adeline and pup. I’ll be coming back for you in a moment.’

I waited while Jay took hold of our two companions and stepped into the henge. All three of them vanished from sight.

By the time Jay reappeared, I had pup tucked under one arm, my other hand clutching Addie’s rope.

‘Ready to go?’ he said. His eyes were a bit wild again, but otherwise he looked — so far — normal.

‘All set,’ I said.

He held out his hands for pup, and then took my hand. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ve never taken a unicorn through the Ways before. If she comes out with her head on backwards or something—’

‘I will never let you hear the end of it,’ I promised.

‘That’s what I thought.’

We stepped between the stones, and when my feet hit the centre of the amber circle, the Winds rushed up to claim us and we were gone.

‘Jay, you total idiot!’ I kicked at the nearest stone. He could’ve ended up anywhere. Canterbury. Edinburgh. Prague. Burundi.

He reappeared two minutes later, just as Miranda and Emellana caught up with me. ‘Hah!’ he said, with gusto, and vanished again.

This process was repeated twice more before he consented to pause in the centre of the turquoise henge, trembling violently and visibly out of breath.

I looked him over carefully. He had an elated look about him that seemed out of character, and his eyes were too wide. ‘You okay?’

‘I have no idea where I just went to,’ he said, beaming at me. ‘But it was amazing.’

‘You’re pumped up,’ I said. ‘Bordering upon high. Let’s have a little sit down for a second, okay?’ I towed him back towards his rock of a seat, but he drew his arm out of my grasp.

‘No way. I need to go again.’

‘Jay, do you recall how Farringale affected most of us?’

He nodded enthusiastically. ‘You were all bonkers.’

‘Totally intoxicated.’

I waited for the penny to drop.

And it did, after a few seconds. ‘Oh,’ said Jay, with a laugh, and ran a hand through his hair.

‘We appear to have found your poison.’

He physically shook himself. ‘It’s a pretty good feeling,’ he admitted.

‘I can see that. But we need you sane.’

‘Hey, listen to Ves, talking sense with the best of them.’ He beamed at me. ‘I’m proud of you.’

I found myself casting a sideways look at Emellana, whom I would not have suspect me of foolhardiness.

She smirked at me.

I coughed. ‘Um, so, did you go to the same place each time?’

‘The first two times, yes,’ Jay said, and sat down suddenly on the grass. ‘Oops. I popped up smack in the middle of the same henge, looked like bloodstone or something like that. One of many, many. Bigger henge complex than this one, at a glance.’

Miranda nodded. ‘Most of them work like doors, or so I gather. Like, each henge goes to a specific designated partner henge in some other complex.’

‘Right,’ Jay said. ‘But I could feel more potential than that, so the third time I tried to end up someplace else. And I did. Same complex, different henge. And then the fourth time I was somewhere else altogether, no idea where, except I think it wasn’t Britain.’ He looked around hungrily at all the other henges on the site, and scrambled to his feet. ‘I need to try them all.’

I grabbed him by the sleeve. ‘Jay. Some other time, all right? You try all of these now, you’ll lose your marbles in record time.’

‘You think?’ Jay paused.

‘We’ll be scraping your sanity off the moon.’

‘But,’ he said.

I waited, but that was it.

‘Let’s stick to the task at hand, can we?’ I said. ‘We need to find a way through to the Vales of Wonder. You can play with the rest some other time.’

He grinned at me. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘You’re welcome. So, the Vales?’

I was looking at Miranda, but she shrugged. ‘I haven’t heard of it.’

‘Anywhere we could find, say, a map or something?’

‘There’s a tourist information office back in town?’ she offered.

‘How about a library with a computer?’

She stared at me. ‘No computers here, Ves. Remember? No planes, no cars, no tech.’

I stared back. ‘No internet?’

Miranda shook her head.

‘What dark nightmare is this?’

She awkwardly patted my arm. ‘It’ll be okay.’

I gave myself a shake. ‘Fine. Let’s try the tourist office, or failing that there must be a library somewhere.’

Jay was drifting away. To my alarm, he was making a beeline straight for the spiralling agate structure near the centre of the henge complex. If one of the lesser ones had scrambled his wits, what would the mother of all empowered henges do to him? ‘Jay,’ I said, and grabbed him. ‘We’re going to need to get you some coffee, and a truckload of food.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Jay said, but then stopped. ‘Actually, no. I’m starving.’

I nodded. I’d felt the same way after my near-drowning in magick back at Farringale. ‘Do they have pancakes in this Britain?’ I asked Miranda. ‘Please say yes. I have a never-ending chocolate pot, but I don’t think that’s going to cut it.’

‘No idea. Let’s find out.’

But when I looked around for Emellana, I didn’t see her. ‘Wha—’ I began, and turned in a circle.

Fortunately, it isn’t too hard to spot a seven-foot-and-something-tall troll woman dressed in purple. She was on the far side of the complex, communing with the foremost stone of the amethyst henge. Communing’s the only possible word for it. We went after her, and found her with both hands set to the smooth stone and her eyes closed. She looked mesmerised.

‘Em?’ I said softly after a minute.

She didn’t open her eyes. ‘Can I borrow that lyre?’ she asked.

Jay gave me a shifty-eyed look. ‘Turn your back, Ves.’

‘What? No! I can be trusted.’

He gave me a look that said, are you kidding me?

I sighed, and turned around. ‘Unfair.’ I leaned against Addie’s soft flank, and watched pup gambolling happily in the sunshine. She stopped, nose to the earth, and began to dig furiously. Another nugget of loose change about to come a-cropper, no doubt.

‘Why is Ves backwards?’ I heard Emellana say, absently, and then came the dulcet tones of the lyre as she strummed a brief melody.

‘Because she wants to meld with the lyre and must therefore avert her eyes,’ said Jay.

‘Meld?’

‘It has a strange effect on her.’

‘Hmm.’ There was no more talk after that, for a while, but quite a lot more music, and I ached to turn around and watch what was happening. I knew Jay would scalp me if I did, though, and moreover he wouldn’t be wrong.

‘Are you finding much?’ said Jay eventually.

‘Not being a Waymaster any more than Ves is,’ said Emellana, ‘I feel very little of anything that is happening here. Until, that is, I pick up the lyre. I suppose what I am now sensing is not current activity but past, and there is a great deal of it. Very potent.’

‘It’s probably been an active complex for some time,’ Jay agreed.

‘Yes.’

I couldn’t stand it anymore. ‘What is it that you’re trying to do?’ I said. Hey, I hadn’t turned around. I was still toeing the line of good sense.

‘Gathering information,’ said Emellana.

I was hoping for something jazzier, but all right. Emellana was the expert on world exploration. She knew what she was doing.

‘Did you know your lyre absorbs magick?’ she added.

I whirled around. ‘Does it! Orlando said it might, but I think he wasn’t sure. What is it—’

I was intercepted at this point by Jay, firmly turned about, and left facing the other way. At least this time he was nice enough to stand in front of me, so I had a face to look at while I was talking. ‘Tut,’ he said.

‘It was only a little glimpse.’ Even that was enough to make my heart ache. In Emellana’s hands, the lyre had been blazing with magick and beauty. I could still feel it. ‘Moonsilver and rosewater,’ I added, unnecessarily.

‘Wasn’t it skysilver?’ said Jay, folding his arms.

‘I actually think skysilver is an inaccurate name. It’s more moon-coloured.’

‘I’ll let the Yllanfalen know your thoughts.’

‘It’s okay, I’ll just call my loving mother.’ I cracked myself up with that one. When I was still laughing twenty seconds later, I had to wonder whether Jay was the only one whose senses were a trifle disordered.

Actually he looked stone-cold sane in that moment, staring at me with one brow raised.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and swallowed my gigglefit. ‘Erm. What’s she doing now?’

‘Ms. Rogan has moved off to another couple of henges. Oh, she’s coming back. Second.’ Jay disappeared from my field of vision.

Two minutes later he said, ‘Okay Ves, you can turn around again.’

I did, to find three empty-handed people and no sign of the lyre. ‘Where are you keeping that thing?’ I demanded.

‘You are the last person I am telling.’

‘Damnit.’

Emellana wore that faint smirk again, and it was definitely directed at me. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Give me another sixty years and I’ll be every bit as imperturbable as you.’

‘I do not doubt it,’ she said graciously. ‘Though if it helps, I do not believe the lyre’s effect on you to be particularly your fault.’

‘Particularly my fault?’ I echoed. ‘It’s only a bit my fault?’

‘Perhaps.’

I decided not to rise to that. ‘What did we find out?’ I said instead.

‘I believe I have learned which of these henges goes the farthest,’ said Emellana. ‘There are clear differences in the potency of the magickal traces left behind at various sites. Though it is possible that the more potent henges lead to places of more intense magick, and the difference is unrelated to distance. The one Jay used is only of moderate power.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Keeping Jay well away from the stronger ones.’

‘Hey,’ said Jay.

‘Give me that lyre, and you can use any henge you like with my blessing. I’ll even scrape you off the ceiling again afterwards.’

‘There is no ceiling,’ he muttered, which I took to mean he had no reasonable response to offer.

Win.

‘You didn’t find one conveniently marked “this way to the Vales of Wonder” I suppose?’ I asked of Em.

‘It’s not quite that simple.’

‘No,’ I sighed. ‘It couldn’t be, could it? We need a map.’

‘Or an obliging and knowledgeable passerby,’ suggested she.

‘I don’t see why there isn’t some kind of a map here already,’ I said. ‘Or sign posts, or… something. How do people know which henge to use?’

‘That… is actually a very good point, Ves,’ said Jay.

I looked at Miranda. So did everyone else.

She opened her mouth, paused, and closed it again. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t used the henges myself.’

‘So how do you come to know so much about how they work?’

‘I asked around. I thought I might need them sometime.’

‘Nobody mentioned a handy map or something? Like the tube map. Something.’

‘No. Look, I’m thinking, but I don’t remember anything like that. It’s like… that question never came up, like no one would need to have that spelled out for them.’

‘They’re doing something we aren’t,’ I said, and stared hard at the henges as though that would help. ‘Jay?’

He shook his head. ‘If you can use these without being a Waymaster, then it can’t be a Waymaster trick they’re using.’

‘Fair.’

‘It’s my belief,’ said Emellana mildly, ‘we may be looking too hard for an unusual solution.’

‘Meaning?’ said Jay.

‘Meaning that, while many things about this Britain are indeed wondrous, not quite everything needs to be. In this instance, the fact that we have a Waymaster with us is undoubtedly an advantage, but we need not make use of your talents on this occasion if it proves inconvenient. Miranda, you spoke of travel tokens. Do you happen to know where those are sold?’

I struggled with myself. It almost hurt, to gaze at the array of magickal glory before us and interpret it as something no more miraculous than a train service; but to those who used it every day, that’s all it was.

And therefore, of course there’d be a ticket office somewhere.

‘Do we have money for that?’ I said, considering pup doubtfully. I had endless faith in her talents, but how much discarded currency could there possibly be?

‘That is a problem for later,’ said Em.

A woman after my own heart.

I collared an elderly man who was making his slow way past the gates to the henge complex and pumped him for information. He may have looked at me like I was crazy or stupid or both (debatable) but he did point out the token vendor: a short, blue-painted kiosk situated about fifty feet from the gate. All right, so it was floating two feet off the floor and didn’t seem to be manned by anybody, but it nonetheless couldn’t more obviously be a ticket office.

And we’d walked right past it.

‘Worst explorers ever,’ I sighed, and started towards it.

Then stopped. ‘Wait. Why is it floating?’

There came a snort from our helpful passerby. Thankfully for my dignity, he did not choose to comment on our utter ineptitude (this time), but merely raised a hand and whistled two notes.

I paid close attention to the tone, for the air thrummed in response, and the kiosk instantly sailed in our direction.

‘Thanks,’ I said, with a bright smile for our helpful, if taciturn, interlocutor.

He only gave me a puzzled look, and moved off.

Ah well. Can’t win everyone’s admiration quite all the time, or at least not if your name isn’t Baron Alban.

The kiosk took its sweet time crossing the short space between us, but while slow it was jaunty. It bobbed cheerfully up to where we stood before it settled down, and a light went on inside.

Er.

‘Hi?’ I said. ‘We need to go to the Vales of Wonder.’

Nothing happened.

‘Um, can we see a list of destinations?’ Jay tried.

Silence.

In fact, the thing stubbornly refused to respond to anything that we said. After a string of uninterrupted failures, we were left stymied.

‘Damnit,’ I said. ‘Voice-operated magick isn’t a thing?’

There must be a charm or something that applied here, but how to guess it? I attempted some one or two encouraging little spells, with a similar lack of effect, but as I prepared a third option my concentration was shattered by an unexpected sound: a frenzied, high-pitched barking.

‘Pup?’ I said, and spun.

She stood twenty feet away, paws dug into the earth, her whole body jerking as she roared her fury at… what? I could see nothing amiss. Addie was right behind me, peacefully turning her nose up at the bright green grass beneath our feet, one eye half-closed in stupefying boredom. Emellana and Miranda and Jay puzzled still over the kiosk, deep in debate about something I hadn’t the leisure to listen to. And while if someone wanted to relieve us of Miranda I wouldn’t have objected too much, she was kind of my responsibility, so I had to be thankful for her continued presence.

No one else was near us.

‘Pup, what—’ I began, and started in her direction.

Then I saw it. A small, sneaking, hatted little person creeping up on my Adeline.

‘I can’t feel any of that,’ I reminded him, not being a Waymaster and all.

‘Right.’ Jay looked at Emellana.

She shook her head. ‘I have no Waymaster’s arts either.’

‘One of the very few things you lack, from what I hear,’ he said.

She grinned at that, seemingly a rare expression with her. ‘Believe me, I would have rectified that lack if I could.’

‘Wouldn’t we all,’ I muttered.

‘All right,’ said Jay. ‘So this is all Waymastery, all the time. I’ve been here for twenty minutes or so and eight people have come through in that time. Three arrived here by bubble-express; of those, one disappeared through the main henge, and two through the jade one there.’ He pointed. ‘Two came down on some kind of flying carpet, I’m not even kidding, and took the one with the milky crystal stones. And the other three were coming through the other way. They all appeared together at that one that looks like lapis lazuli, and walked out of here on foot.’ He paused. ‘Six looked human. The other two were, I think, a spriggan and a… I don’t know, but he looked a fair bit like the Yllanfalen.’

‘I know!’ I enthused. ‘They’re just openly walking about among humankind. No glamours. We passed all kinds back in the streets — trolls, brownies, even a giant. And there was this woman who — I can’t be sure, but I’d almost swear she was a selkie.’

‘I’m unused to walking openly through the streets of human towns,’ said Emellana, with a faint smile. ‘At least, not without a fair amount of pointing and shrieking.’

‘Right,’ said Jay. ‘There’s no segregation here at all.’

‘No hiding,’ said Emellana. ‘It’s refreshing.’

‘I think it’s wonderful,’ I said fervently. ‘And unicorns aren’t rare at all, Jay!’ I told him about our encounter with the chip-chomping gent back in town.

He nodded. ‘Royal lines?’

‘I don’t know, but I figure they’re being bred. The way horses are back home, you know.’

‘For what?’

‘I… don’t know. Are there unicorn races?’ I shrugged.

Jay pointed towards one of the henges with a jerk of his chin. ‘There, look. Someone just came through.’

The someone in question could only be a giant. She came striding through a set of ethereally-pale stones, the henge looking dangerously delicate next to her towering bulk and height. It’s something to see an entire giant appear out of thin air, I tell you. It’s something else to watch that same giant amble through two or three of the henges, her steps shaking the earth, and then transform into a butterfly and sail airily away.

‘Where the hell are we,’ I said in awe.

‘Ain’t seen nothing yet,’ said Jay with a grin. ‘We haven’t even got to the Vales of Wonder.’

Lawks. If these weren’t wonders enough to deserve the name, what could we expect to find at the Vales?

‘I’m never leaving,’ I decided.

‘Have to,’ said Jay laconically, standing up from his rock of a seat. ‘Work to do back home.’

‘It cost you a lot to say that, didn’t it?’

‘My heart, and about half my soul.’ He set off towards the rock crystal henge, and I followed with Addie. Emellana was already twenty feet away, inspecting a large, pinkish stone. Rose quartz? Morganite?

‘What I can’t figure out about all this is… well, everything,’ he said. ‘Why so many henges? What’s the difference between them, other than the materials they’re made from? Do they go to different places? If so, why? How does that work?’

‘Do they feel different?’ I took off a shoe and set my bare foot to the earth, in hopes that might help. It didn’t. I felt nothing.

Jay shook his head. ‘Not significantly. Maybe as to degree, though it’s not as simple as the larger ones being the more powerful. The most potent one so far is actually that little spiral with the agates.’

‘Potent?’

‘Yeah. As in, I feel like I could take us to the moon out of that one.’

‘Hold that thought for my next birthday.’

‘There’s nothing up there, Ves.’

‘On the moon? How do you know?’

‘I have it on good authority that it’s a unicorn-free zone.’

Came then a flicker of maroon, out of the corner of my eye. I whirled.

Someone was disappearing behind a huge pillar of purple iolite.

‘Miranda!’ I shouted. ‘I see you.’

Nothing moved, and there came no reply.

I took off at a run. ‘I saw you back in town,’ I yelled. ‘Your stealth is about as good as your loyalty— there. See, I knew it was you.’

Miranda stood with studied nonchalance in the shadow of the huge, gloriously purple crystal; light shone through it, casting purplish shadows across her face. She looked exactly as I remembered: messy, disorganised, intense. Same old Miranda. Only she’d grown haggard over the weeks of her absence, and while she met my gaze with a show of bravado, she couldn’t hide the guilt behind her eyes. ‘Hi, Ves.’

‘Hi?’ I sputtered. ‘Hi? What are you doing following us around?’

‘Well—’ she said, and stopped.

‘Well?’

‘Ves, you do know you can’t just walk off with unicorns around here?’

‘I didn’t walk off with a unicorn.’

She looked over at Adeline, who was hot on Jay’s heels as he came after us.

‘Not a native. We brought her with us.’

That earned me a look of pure disbelief. ‘You brought one of the unicorns from back home? Here? You do know how incredibly endangered they are on the sixth, I suppose?’

‘Milady’s idea,’ I said quickly.

She scowled. ‘Hello, Jay,’ she said as he came up.

He responded only with a curt nod.

‘So,’ I said pleasantly. ‘How can we help you, Miranda?’

‘How did you find us?’ Jay interrupted.

‘I saw you come through from Whitmore.’

‘You’ve been following us all morning?’ I said. ‘Couldn’t you have just said hi?’

‘Was I welcome to?’ That came with a challenging look.

I sighed. ‘I won’t lie, I’d prefer not to talk to you. But it does happen that we were looking for you.’

She blinked. ‘Looking for me?’

‘Aye, thee. The thing is—’

Miranda was backing away. ‘Look, I’m sorry about everything that happened. I really am. I’ll make amends if I can, but you don’t need to…’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ I snapped. ‘We aren’t here to hurt you.’

‘I don’t know, Ves,’ she said, eyeing me uncertainly. ‘Last time we talked, you looked about ready to kill me. Still do.’

‘Ves is a violence-free area unless severely provoked,’ I said.

Jay said, ‘Does abandoning the Society and betraying our movements to Ancestria Magicka count as severe provocation?’ He sounded mildly interested.

I glowered, not because I wanted to kill Miranda but because I realised I didn’t. Not really. She looked so damned hang-dog, with her hair falling down, her jumper unravelling at the elbows, and those shadows under her eyes. ‘No,’ I grouched.

Then again, when I saw pup race into view and hurl herself at Miranda like she was her best and long-lost friend, I considered revising that decision.

‘Don’t touch the pup,’ I said warningly.

I was rewarded for my lack of generosity by two pairs of wounded eyes, fixed upon me in joint dismay.

Pup’s won me over.

‘Fine, fine,’ I said with a wave of my hand. Since Emellana had showed up along with Goodie, I made introductions. ‘Emellana’s here to help us with—’

‘Emellana Rogan?’ said Miranda, staring at Em with the same kind of awe Jay and I had felt. Then she covered her eyes. ‘Oh, lords. The worst possible time to meet your heroes.’

Emellana, serene in purple, merely lifted one brow a fraction of an inch. ‘Why is that?’

‘Because of—’ she stopped, and looked an enquiry at me.

I understood the unspoken question. Yes, I had given Emellana the story of Miranda’s defection from the Society. No, I didn’t want to say that to Miranda just then. I ignored the question in her eyes, and said: ‘Miranda’s the former expert on magickal beasts with the Society. She’s to join us on this assignment.’

Miranda stared. ‘I am?’

‘Milady’s orders.’

‘Milady?’

‘None other than.’

Miranda looked from me to Jay in disbelief. ‘I thought you two were no longer with the Society either.’

‘Erm. Well, it’s true that we’re technically working for the Royal Court at Mandridore right now. They’re partnered with the Society.’

Miranda’s eyes grew even wider. ‘What’s going on here, Ves?’

‘Something pretty big.’

‘I see that.’  

I decided not to share all the details. Miranda was still a traitor. ‘We’re looking for griffins,’ I told her. ‘Among other such creatures.’

‘Such creatures?’

‘Beasts of myth and legend. Oozing magick from every pore. That kind of thing.’

‘We’re heading for the Vales of Wonder,’ said Jay. ‘Soon as we figure out how.’

‘And what am I for?’ said Miranda.

‘You probably know more about griffins than anybody else, more or less,’ I said. ‘Right?’

‘That isn’t saying much. To the best of my knowledge, you two are the only people who’ve seen a live one in recent memory.’

‘And charmingly clueless about it we were. Are you with us or not?’

Miranda appeared uncertain, to my indignation. Honestly, how much more of an olive branch did the woman expect?

‘Are you still with Ancestria Magicka?’ said Jay suddenly, with a narrow look.

‘Technically,’ said Miranda.

‘What I’m getting at is: are you here with or without their leave?’

She grinned. ‘Without their knowledge, I think. I hope.’ The grin faded. ‘I don’t want to go back home. If I go with you, that has to be clear.’

‘The beasts back home need you far more than these do,’ I said, frowning.

Miranda just looked at me. ‘How do you know?’

Fair point.

‘Right, well, if that’s settled,’ said Jay. ‘I need to crack on with this little collection of mysteries.’ He sauntered off towards the nearest henge, hands in the pockets of his jacket, face thoughtful.

Emellana held out her hand to Miranda, who took it uncertainly. There was a handshake. ‘Good to have you with us,’ said Emellana.

‘Is it?’ said Miranda softly.

Em gave an affirmative nod, and grinned. ‘I’ve been reading your essays for years. My favourite was the one about firelight moths as familiars.’

Miranda’s eyes widened. ‘Well, this is surreal.’

‘Miranda,’ I said. ‘We need some help here. Have you learned anything about this place?’ I indicated the henges with a sweep of my arm.

Her eyes lit up. ‘Ves, this world is amazing. Amazing. You know they never had aeroplanes, or cars? Never needed them. Everything’s magick. Short-distance travel is all about the bubbles and lights — you saw that already. Long-distance journeys are taken by henge, and as far as I can figure, there’s an entire world-wide infrastructure.’

‘Uh huh, and how does that work?’

‘Like, you don’t need to be a Waymaster to use these empowered henges, necessarily. You buy travel tokens which seem to act as ticket, passport and charm in one. Take your token, step into the right henge and away you go, and the token’s used up. It’s marvellous. There’s a Union of Waymasters — big organisation — who set up and maintain these henge complexes, and keep them powered up.’

‘Jay,’ I called. ‘You need to hear all this.’

Jay had already wandered out of earshot. I started after him, calling his name — and was just in time to hear him say, with something peculiarly like a giggle, ‘Oops.’

And he vanished.

‘Oops?’ I yelled. ‘Oops?’ I set off at a run towards the henge that had taken him away, a turquoise structure whose stones crackled with a kind of lightning. As I approached, the lightning faded, leaving inert stones and no sign of Jay.

It turns out that the ancient isle of Whitmore is no real guide for the rest of the fifth Britain.

Whitmore has an old-fashioned air about it, to say the least. Most of its buildings are a few hundred years old, by the looks of them, and there isn’t much there to remind a person that the 21st century has indeed dawned. I suppose it’s because it’s still very much dominated by the Redclover brothers, who collectively haven’t quite left a seventeenth century that wasn’t so different from our world.

The Britain beyond the shores of Whitmore is something else.

Wandering through the winding streets of Scarborough, I saw little to remind me of my own Britain save for some elements of a shared history. Here was the same, general progression from timber-framed and white-washed houses into brickwork and sash windows; here were lordly stone-built properties in granite or lime; and here and there, a move into glass and something resembling concrete was also discernible, rather to my regret.

Of cars, though, there was no sign. No buses, no train stations, no phone boxes. I searched in vain for any trace of vehicles whatsoever; there were none.

But the streets were unusually full of bubbles and floating lights.

‘Ah,’ said Emellana, looking keenly at a stream of them sailing in orderly fashion along the high street, a couple of feet over our heads (mine and Jay’s, anyway). ‘In the early nineteen-hundreds, an essay was published entitled On Harnessing the Magickal Properties of Light and Air, by Adelaide Amber. She was ridiculed, which now seems a shame, considering that the paper proposed just such a potential form of transport as we see here in common use.’

‘Pity, too,’ I said, following the passage of a passing orb of light with wistful eyes. ‘How neat and clean they are.’

‘And environmentally friendly,’ said Jay, with a quirk of a smile.

Strange it was, to see magick in all its forms on such prominent display. Strange, and wondrous. We passed beauty parlours and pet shops, cafeterias and banks; but interspersed with these recognisable establishments were shops selling magickal curios and treasures, a patisserie advertising “Floataway Fancies” and “Never-ending Chocolate Pots”, and a bookshop, its window filled with a display of spell-tomes and grimoires.

‘Nope,’ said Jay, literally hooking me by the collar as I attempted to swerve into the aforementioned patisserie.

‘Jay. I need a never-ending chocolate pot.’

‘No. You need air, water and food, and that’s it.’

‘Chocolate is food! Jay!’

Jay hung grimly on.

Emellana watched us with an unreadable expression, her large arms folded over her purple cotton shirt. Then, as I writhed impotently in Jay’s infuriatingly secure grip, she silently entered the shop.

Three minutes later she emerged with a gilded pot the approximate size of my closed fist, an ornate lid hiding its contents. This she presented to me without a word, then strolled away up the street. ‘Henge complex,’ she called, pointing to a large sign adorning a nearby crossroads.

I lifted the lid of my shiny new pot, and got a strong whiff of chocolate.

‘I love her,’ I said.

Jay rolled his eyes. ‘You’ll regret it.’

‘When?’

‘When you’ve imbibed ten kilos of chocolate in two hours and start throwing up liquid cocoa.’

‘But it would be the best two hours of my entire life.’

‘Really?’

‘Okay, not. But close…’ I put the pot into my satchel. ‘Guard that with your life, Mauf. If Jay tries to swipe it, bite his fingers off.’

‘I regret, madam, that I am not in possession of any teeth,’ said Mauf.

‘I don’t take issue with how you choose to ruin his day, provided that you do.’

‘Understood, madam.’ Mauf’s tone had developed a flinty quality.

‘Henge complex,’ said Jay, ignoring me with perfect grace. He stood directly under the sign, which pointed to the right. ‘Complex?’

‘Must be the development Melmidoc mentioned?’ I said.

‘How do you develop a heng— never mind. We’ll find out.’ Jay went right.

I looked at Emellana. ‘Thank you, for the pot.’

She inclined her head. ‘Mr. Patel is… forgive me, but I had understood you to be his mentor?’

‘Not the other way around? Well, yes, but to be honest he’s got a much more developed sense of responsibility than I do.’

‘A very controlled man.’

‘Not controlling,’ I said. ‘He discourages, but I don’t think he’d ever try to dictate.’

She smiled faintly. ‘I said controlled, not controlling.’

Oh. Yes, Jay did have the air of a man exerting a rigid control over himself at all times. ‘Makes him sensible,’ I offered. ‘And hard-working. And he rarely makes mistakes.’

Emellana accepted this without comment, only a flicker of her eyebrow suggesting she might find fault with some part of my argument. But she walked on without further conversation, and I fell in beside her.

‘Wait,’ I said, and came to a stop. ‘How did you pay for the pot? We have no money.’

‘No, but your nose-for-gold has been collecting quite the hoard. I’ve been watching her.’

I hadn’t, or at least, only closely enough to make sure she didn’t wander too far. In my defence, I had to watch Adeline and Jay, too; who knew what kinds of mischief those two might get up to if I didn’t keep an eye on them.

‘I was… distracted,’ I admitted, with a sheepish grin, and gestured around at all the magickal wonder on display. ‘This is the stuff of dreams.’

Emellana didn’t smile. ‘So it is. But dreams can all too easily turn to nightmares.’

I blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean… keep a watch on your unicorn.’

Upon this point she would not elaborate, however much I pressed, so I abandoned the attempt — and looked around for Addie.

There she was — drifting after a man holding a wrapped parcel which, I strongly suspected, held a portion of fried potato.

I hastily retrieved her. ‘Adeline, darling—’ I began, when, to my surprise, the chip-bearer caught sight of his pursuer and cheerfully offered her a handful of potato wedges. Then he proceeded to stroke her nose, smiling.

‘Yours?’ he asked of me as I came up. He was barely taller than me, with pale, curling hair and a wide smile. Something about him suggested he might not be human.

‘Something like that,’ I said, taking hold of Adeline’s silvery rope harness. He seemed wholly unsurprised to find a unicorn lusting after his lunch, like it was as common as being trailed by somebody’s pet dog.

‘What a beaut,’ he said, eyeing Adeline appreciatively.

‘Thank you.’

‘No, I mean, really. You must’ve paid a fortune for her. She looks like royal lines.’

Royal lines? ‘She isn’t really mine in that sense,’ I said. ‘She just… goes where I go.’

‘Wild?’ For some reason, that startled him as nothing else had. ‘I didn’t think there were still any wild ones left. I mean, not around here.’

With which statement he offered Addie one last chip, gave a careless wave, and ambled away up the street.

I looked at Emellana, who had quietly joined us about halfway through this peculiar conversation. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘If unicorns are as common in this Britain as horses are on our own?’

‘Got it.’ No more letting Addie wander off; not if she was “royal lines”. ‘Where’s Jay?’

‘He went after the henges.’ Emellana gestured, and we set off in that general direction, me leading Addie carefully through the clusters of shoppers. None of them seemed much surprised to see her, either, or no more so than you might be at seeing someone leading a race-horse down the high street.

‘Wait,’ I said abruptly, and stopped. ‘Is that—?’ A familiar messy blonde ponytail had caught my eye. ‘Hold Addie for me,’ I said, and took off after the figure. Unless I was mistaken, there’d been a glimpse of a shabby maroon-coloured jumper too…

I caught up to where I’d seen the ponytail and found no one nearby who resembled Miranda at all. Had I imagined it? Probably.

But perhaps not.

‘Listen,’ I said as I rejoined Emellana and Adeline. ‘If you  see a woman maybe a few inches taller than me, messy dark blonde ponytail, chunky knitted jumper, late thirties or so in age, let me know?’

‘Certainly,’ said Emellana.

‘Might conceivably be found skulking along behind us.’

Emellana’s brows went up. ‘Dangerous?’

‘No. Or at least, not to us. She might be inclined to wander off with Addie, though.’ Was I doing Miranda an injustice in saying as much? She might be a betrayer, but that didn’t necessarily make her a thief.

Nonetheless.

‘Human?’ asked Emellana.

‘As it gets.’

She nodded. ‘Right.’

The “henge complex” turned out to be at the city’s highest point, not far from the castle I had admired from the shore.

Jay had found a seat upon a chunk of limestone on the edges of the grassy glade which hosted both structures, and sat watching the henges intently.

It really was a henge complex. The centrepiece was a stone circle to rival Stonehenge; in fact, it surpassed it. Tall slabs of limestone stabbed at the sky, arranged in a perfect circle. Each one had to be at least thirty feet tall.

Arrayed around this stupendous array was a series of lesser circles, all constructed from differing types of stone. The one nearest us looked like chunks of clear quartz, except I’d never previously been outdone in height by a slab of rock crystal.

‘This,’ said Jay without looking at us, ‘is amazing.’

‘Oh?’ I sat down beside him. ‘Tell me why.’

‘For a start, I’ve never seen more than one henge in the same place, let alone… what, ten? Twelve?’ He indicated the entire, majestic panorama with a sweep of his arm. ‘Just look at that.’

‘They’re beautiful,’ I agreed. And they really were. Clear quartz, deep grey granite laced with something green, amethyst, beryl, something sunset-coloured—

‘They’re more than just pretty.’ Jay might have rolled his eyes, though I couldn’t be sure. ‘The currents here are… I’ve never felt anything so powerful in my life.’

Jay coughed. I suspicioned it might have been a strangled laugh. ‘Torvaston is an interesting figure,’ Jay quickly put in, before Melmidoc could blow his proverbial stack. ‘He had some theories about the sources of magick, which are of considerable significance to us. His disappearance into your Britain is a mystery we’d like to solve.’

Why? demanded Melmidoc, all bluntness. You were well rid of him.

‘Were we?’

Melmidoc made no answer.

‘Because we want to restore Farringale,’ I said. ‘And that is because the decline of magick in our — and your — Britain can, debatably, be traced back to that approximate era. It’s been withering away for four centuries and we’d like to stop it.’

I paused for breath, feeling peculiarly as though I’d just said something momentous. I hadn’t really… had I?

Jay, though, was staring at me. ‘Is that what we’re really doing, Ves?’

‘What?’

‘Bringing magick back.’

I blinked, and thought. ‘Yes,’ I decided at last. ‘Of course it is.’

Of course it was. It could never be enough simply to halt the decline of magick, though that would be a good place to begin. If there was the faintest chance we could reverse the trend entirely, and set it burgeoning again — why wouldn’t we go after that? How could we resist?

Melmidoc was uncharacteristically quiet. ‘Mel?’ I said after a while.

You do not know where it will end, he said. He sounded, for some reason, subdued.

‘Be careful what you wish for, etc. We know.’

 I do not think you do.

‘Then, tell us.’

But Melmidoc was silent.

‘Show us, then,’ said Emellana. ‘The Court at Mandridore is committed to this goal. As their representative, I am scarcely less so.  Why should we hesitate?’

Go, said Melmidoc.

I sighed, wearied with his obstreperous attitude. ‘Fine.’

To the Vales of Wonder, Melmidoc continued. Go there if you must. You will see for yourselves.

As Torvaston had, I wondered? An excess of magick had made short work of old Farringale, that was for sure. But Torvaston would have taken those lessons away with him, when he left for the fifth Britain. He wouldn’t permit such mistakes to be repeated.

Neither would we.

Jay had Torvaston’s scroll-case in his hands and was staring at it, frowning deeply. ‘Now that I come to think of it,’ he said. ‘How do we find these Vales of Wonder?’

I peeped over his shoulder. At a brief glance, which was all either of us had had opportunity for when we’d swiped it out of Farringale, it looked detailed enough. Upon closer scrutiny, though, the map proved to be hand-drawn, and inconveniently devoid of context. Or text, besides those few printed words: The Vales of Wonder on one half, and the Hyndorin Mountains on the other. These were maps of those two places, not to them.

You will find it simply enough, Waymaster, said Melmidoc. In Scarborough there is a developed henge you may use.

‘Developed…?’ said Jay.

Melmidoc offered nothing more.

‘Right. Thanks, then.’ Jay put away the scroll-case.

‘One last thing,’ I said suddenly. ‘Melmidoc. You don’t have any idea where Zareen and…’ I stopped. He would have little idea who Zareen, George and Miranda were, and would in all likelihood care rather less. ‘Are there any outsiders left on Whitmore? Anyone from our Britain?’

No, he said, with evident satisfaction.

‘Well, damn and blast.’

I waited in hopes that either Jay or Emellana might have some bright suggestion to offer — or that Melmidoc might recover from his fit of the sulks and help us out. Literally, even.

You are still here?

I rolled my eyes. ‘Going.’

Not that I was sorry to be on our way out. Ever since our first visit to Whitmore, I had been itching to cross the water, and see what the rest of this hyper-magickal Britain was like. Opportunities had been consistently lacking, thanks in large part to distractions courtesy of Fenella Beaumont and her miserable crew.

Well, Melmidoc might be a grouchy old donkey but at least he’d got rid of her. And for all his ungraciousness, he hadn’t subjected us to the same fate.

I suppose that made us, sort of, favourites. I’d take it.

‘Where do we go!’ I said, once fairly beyond the door of the Spire. ‘Jay! Make it happen!’

He gave me a rather helpless look, then gazed out over the town. ‘Well. Somewhere down on the shore there must be a crossing of some kind.’

So there must, but now that he mentioned it… had I ever noticed such a thing before? ‘A ferry?’ I suggested. ‘A bridge?’

Jay shrugged. ‘Either would be good.’

Emellana’s perfect serenity gave way to a degree of puzzlement. There was even a slight frown discernible upon her agéd brow. ‘The two of you have been here before, yes? Did I correctly understand that?’

‘We have!’ I said, making up in chirpiness for what I lacked in certainty.

‘Multiple times,’ said Jay drily. ‘We were a bit distracted at those times.’

‘I could fly over, and send Addie back for you,’ I suggested.

‘We’ll consider that as a last resort,’ said Jay.

‘Oh, come on. Air Unicorn hasn’t killed you yet.’

‘There must be a more sensible way across, and we will find it,’ said Jay loftily. ‘After all, those story-tellers came across from the mainland last time we were here. There has to be a crossing somewhere.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Emellana mildly, ‘it is nothing so obvious as a bridge, or a ferry.’

‘Why would it be, indeed?’ I said with a groan. ‘Nothing else about this place is ordinary.’ I set off down the sloping hill into the town, scooping up pup along the way. ‘I’m going to ask someone.’

‘You don’t think that will sound a bit… weird?’ said Jay, striding after me. ‘Hey, I know we’re on an island and surrounded by water we ought to have crossed in order to get here in the first place, but where’s the ferry?’

I shrugged. ‘What’s wrong with sounding weird once in a while? Who’s going to care?’

Jay growled something, but he made no further objections.

Emellana soon outstripped me, her legs being about six times as long as mine. ‘There are assorted magickal means of crossing water,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Some of which would not be nearly so eye-catching as a ferry terminal.’

‘Such as what?’ I called.

‘In parts of Morocco they use a species of levitation charm. I crossed the Lukkus in ‘78 in a laundry tub. Uncomfortable, but effective. In Persia in ‘49 I was taken over a lake by a great bird — I never did discover whether it was a simorq or a rukh, but something of that nature. Then in, oh, ‘60, or ‘61, I galloped across the Danube on horseback. How they contrived to keep the animals afloat, I don’t know, but quite the marvel.’ As she spoke, Emellana kept up a brisk stride down and down the hill, ever on towards the shore. We passed a number of Whitmore’s citizens, few of whom were used to seeing trolls much, I concluded, from the way they stared at Emellana. Or was it the group effect of a gigantic troll, two oddly-dressed humans (by their standards) and a unicorn clattering behind that got their attention? Maybe that.

If I stopped to talk to any of them, she would soon leave us behind, so I hastened on.

‘Why don’t they just have a henge here?’ I wondered aloud. ‘That would make everything easy.’

Jay shrugged. ‘It doesn’t necessarily follow that, because magick is more plentiful here then Waymasters must be common as muck.’

‘How disappointing.’

‘Nonsense, rarity confers value.’

‘Says the Waymaster.’

‘Maybe I like being sought-after.’

‘They only love you for your ancestral magicks.’

Jay grinned. ‘Whereas you love me for my…?’

How did I answer that? I could come up with a decent list, if I thought about it for a minute.

I decided not to.

‘Excellent hair,’ I said instead. ‘And bordering-on-bad-boy dress sense.’

Jay casually popped the collar of his jacket. ‘I knew it.’

Emellana was fading into the distance. ‘Crap,’ I said. ‘Better run for it.’

We caught up with our Court representative on the shoreline. Pup was squeaking in protest at being so jostled about, so I set her down near Adeline.

‘I believe this is it,’ said Emellana.

What? I looked up and down the beach. We’d taken the cliff path downwards at a run, and I’d kept my eyes open all the way down for a sign of something promising on the horizon. Nothing.

All I saw now was unbroken sand, save for an occasional stray figure wandering upon some distant part of it, and no sign whatsoever of a way over. No ferry terminal, no bridge, no boats.

Only a wooden post, in front of which Emellana had stopped. It was an attractive post, I had to give it that much. Someone had made it out of a length of naturally twisting elm, perhaps, or walnut, and had cheerfully ornamented its knots and gnarls with embedded gems of an appealing blue colour.

‘It’s a post,’ I said.

Emellana smiled at it, reached out a hand, and brushed a finger against the largest of the blue stones.

And promptly vanished.

‘What the—’ I said, turning in circles. No sign of her.

‘There,’ said Jay, pointing.

I saw a clear bubble rise, and drift dreamily out over the sea.

‘A bubble.’ I folded my arms and watched, supremely unimpressed, as it disappeared from view. ‘A bubble.’

‘I thought you’d be delighted.’

‘Me?’

‘I am still speaking to the woman who spent, and I believe I quote, three glorious minutes as a pancake not too long ago?’

‘I was high at the time.’

‘Point taken.’

‘She’ll pop.’

‘Magick is vast and wondrous,’ said Jay rather pompously.

‘And?’

‘So, probably she won’t pop. Neither will you.’

‘We’ll be swept out to sea and never seen again.’

‘Chicken.’ Jay stooped, casually kidnapped my pup, and before I could stop him he’d touched his fingers to the eerie blue gem and turned into a bubble, too.

‘Hey!’ I yelled as he drifted away. ‘That’s my pup!’

I wasted a few seconds on pointless fuming. Low-down, dirty trick! I mentally took back about the half of the reasons I might recently have volunteered for generally approving of Jay. ‘Filthy Waymasters,’ I muttered.

Adeline nibbled upon my sleeve.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We could just fly over, and skip the whole cast-helpless-upon-the-breeze-as-a-bubble-of-air bit altogether. But. He called me a chicken.’

And he wasn’t actually wrong.

Furthermore, there was the matter of Emellana. One did not wish to be humbled before one’s heroes.

‘Meet me on the other side, Addie,’ I sighed, and before I could talk myself out of it, I touched the blue stone — cool under my fingers, and curiously watery — and that was that.

‘That,’ I said, a short time later, ‘was awesome beyond all reason.’

Jay stared at me. ‘No. No, you were right before. That was awful.’

‘What? No! I’ve never felt so carefree in my life.’ That was the literal truth. How exactly my doubts had so entirely vanished I couldn’t say, but the moment I’d transformed I’d felt like a wholly different person. I’d sailed over the blue-grey waters like a leaf on the wind, singing in my mind the whole way.

Jay looked as though he’d been dragged backwards through a hurricane. It didn’t seem fair.

I couldn’t tell how Emellana felt about the process. She was, as ever, serene.

‘Incoming unicorn,’ said Jay, and we waited while Adeline came soaring over the waves and landed with a thump.

I patted her nose. ‘Excellent creature.’

We had ended up on another beach; Scarborough’s, I hoped. Unlike Whitmore, no cliffs stood between us and the settlement. The buildings started where the beach ended, and rose in a majestic gaggle up a gentle slope. At the top, surrounded by deep green oak trees, was a castle — looking, as far as I could judge from this vantage, more intact than most such examples in our Britain.

I was beginning to sense a pattern, there.

‘Time to—’ I began, but Emellana was already off, striding purposefully up the beach. You’d think she was twenty-five, not one hundred and…whatever.

‘It’s all kinds of humbling, being around her,’ I muttered.

Jay grinned. ‘Call it inspiring, and let’s go.’

Ashdown Castle was gone.

Believe me, I checked thoroughly. I don’t know where I thought Zareen might have managed to hide a huge medieval castle-manor on an open beach, but I trawled up and down the sand anyway, twice over, before I was prepared to concede that it really wasn’t there.

This was good, for it meant (hopefully) that Zareen had succeeded in finding a better, permanent home for the place. Considering its weight, it really shouldn’t have been left any longer on sandy ground.

It was bad because that meant Zareen and George were nowhere within reach.

So much for our easy (maybe) link to Miranda.

We made a slightly forlorn group for a moment there, Emellana and Jay and Adeline and I, faced with the utter absence of an entire castle, and our friends with it.

Well, Jay and I did. Adeline attempted to eat a crab, and swiftly regretted it. Emellana maintained an enigmatic silence.

‘I suppose Melmidoc might know something,’ I offered, half-heartedly.

‘Do you think Zareen was much in contact with him?’ said Jay.

‘Not really.’ Zar wasn’t the type for dutiful check-ins, especially with someone she would consider wholly uninvolved with her business, and therefore irrelevant. ‘But it’s somewhere to start. Even if he doesn’t know, he can help. I mean, where would Miranda go, if she’d stayed here?’

‘Wherever the rarest magickal beasts are,’ said Jay promptly.

‘Right. And Melmidoc would know that, for sure.’

‘You are trying to find a colleague?’ said Emellana.

 I grimaced. ‘Ex-colleague.’

Emellana’s raised brow invited elucidation, which I provided. It made for a surprisingly brief story.

‘Why do you need her?’ said Emellana, gazing thoughtfully over the sea.

‘We don’t,’ I said, with a ferocity that surprised even me.

Jay gave a slight cough. ‘Milady insisted upon it.’

‘And you always do what Milady requires.’

‘Not… always,’ honesty compelled me to admit. ‘But mostly. And she is right about Miranda’s expertise. If we find griffins or unicorns, we may be glad of her presence.’ Maybe.

Emellana said nothing. Her silence proved more eloquent than any counter-argument might have been.

I watched her for a moment. Her serenity was… slightly unnerving. I mean, here we were on the mythical fifth Britain, a place even the Court at Mandridore had known nothing about until recently. A place overflowing with magick, brimming with all the lost arts and artefacts and beasts we could only dream of. I was itching to get off the isle of Whitmore, at last, and explore what lay on the mainland beyond the sea. Jay, I knew, was feeling the same.

Emellana Rogan, however, was… unimpressed. She stared out over the sea as though it were just a sea, any sea, and not teeming with magick and probably full of selkies and mermaids and naiads and… ooh, what if there were mermaids down there?

There could be.

‘Jay! Do you think there are mermaids in those waters?’ I said.

He gave me the side-eye. ‘No idea. Let’s pop down and check.’ He started to remove his boots.

I grabbed his arm. ‘Not now. Later.’

His eyes grew wide. ‘You’re actually serious.’

‘Weren’t you? Oh.’ Abashed, I folded my arms, and attempted to mimic Emellana’s cool, wordless stare over the water. A balmy sea-breeze blew back my hair. ‘I knew that.’

Jay grinned. ‘Do you want to try the stocking trick or not?’

‘The wha— oh.’ In the bustle and confusion of departure, I’d managed to forget about Miranda’s stocking. I dragged it out of my pocket, and cast about for the pup.

She was thirty metres up the beach, snout down in the sand, digging furiously.

‘Hey, she’s found something,’ I said, and set off after her at a trot.

Jay followed after. ‘Imagine what it could be. A gold crown studded with jewels. A priceless gemstone Wand. A cache of selkie’s pearls.’

‘Now you’re teasing me,’ I said with dignity.

He laughed. ‘Someday, one of your wild ideas will turn out to be true, and you’ll have the last laugh.’

‘Not this time,’ I said mournfully, for having scooped up the pup (to her loudly-voiced dissatisfaction) I discovered her unearthed treasure to be… a coin.

I picked it up. ‘They’re still using shillings,’ I said, showing it to Jay. It was bright and new, and obviously had not spent long buried in the sand.

‘No new money? Interesting.’ Jay stuck it in his pocket. ‘About ten thousand more of those and we’ll be rich. Good job, Goodie.’

I attempted to interest my writhing little friend in Miranda’s stocking, but her response to it was to sneeze heartily, three times in quick succession. I set her down in the sand, hoping she might take off in pursuit of our missing ex-colleague, but she only sat on her haunches, ears drooping.

‘To be honest, I’d probably react the same way,’ said Jay.

‘Her pure little heart beats only for filthy lucre,’ I said with a sigh, and put the stocking away again.

Emellana joined us at a casual stroll, her large hands pushed into her coat pockets. It was a little nippy on the beach. ‘We appear to have an imminent visitor,’ she said, and pointed up the cliff.

Poised upon the edge was a familiar, pale spire, its walls twinkling faintly blue. ‘I suppose it was too much to expect we could show up here without Melmidoc finding out about it,’ I said.

‘Especially if we park the car right next door,’ said Jay.

‘There is that.’ The spire loomed far up there, an obvious summons. Was he coming down, or were we expected to go up?

I waited, but the spire did not move again.

‘Righto, then,’ I said, and trudged off in the direction of the winding path upwards. ‘Let’s find out what Melmidoc knows about the Vales of Wonder and the Something Mountains.’

The spire’s heavy door swung slowly inwards as we approached, with an ominous creaking noise.

I don’t know why I found this essentially inviting gesture intimidating.

‘Good morning, Mr. Redclover,’ I said, extra brightly to cover my unease. ‘We—’

You took them all away, Melmidoc thundered, cutting me off. Is that not what you promised?

‘What?’ I blurted, taken aback. ‘Who? You don’t mean… Ancestria Magicka?’

The interlopers, and their inappropriately sized conveyance.

‘The castle’s gone now,’ said Jay helpfully. ‘We checked.’

And its occupants? said Melmidoc.

‘Do you mean George?’ I suggested. ‘He stuck with Zareen, but only to get the castle moved. They should both be—’

Who in the blazes is George? thundered Melmidoc.

I suppose that answered my question as to whether Melmidoc knew what had become of Zareen.

‘Who have you seen?’ I said.

That woman.

‘More specifically?’ My thoughts went to Zareen first, then Miranda. Neither seemed to deserve such an epithet.

About her, there is the arrogance of a born leader.

Definitely not Zareen or Miranda. ‘You cannot mean… Fenella Beaumont?’ I said.

Emellana stiffened beside me. ‘That woman.’

My thoughts whirled. We had heard of her only once, since we’d turfed the lot of them off Whitmore. On that one occasion, she had recently made a wreck of poor Millie Makepeace.

Since then, nothing. She’d vanished. If I had given the matter much thought, I’d probably assumed she and her rotten followers were busy finding a new base of operations.

Perhaps not.

‘Just when did the castle disappear?’ I said around a growing feeling of foreboding.

Ten days ago, said Melmidoc. And you have not yet answered my question.

‘I didn’t hear a question, I heard a deal of shouting.’

Why are they returned? You claimed we were rid of them!

‘I doubt I said anything so foolish, considering we are in no way in control of their actions.’ I spoke rather absently, my mind turned upon Zareen and George and Ashdown Castle. Had they removed it, or had Fenella somehow reclaimed it? ‘Where was Fenella, when you saw her? What was she doing? Who did she have with her?’

She and three souls, Melmidoc began.

‘Oh, so only four of them, that isn’t bad—’

Four is four too many! he snapped.

‘Sorry.’

She and three souls, he said again. Skulking about the beach at night, as though we would not know!

‘What did you do?’ said Jay.

Repelled them.

I did not like the way in which he said this, suddenly cool where before he’d been ablaze with wrath. ‘Um,’ I put in. ‘What does repelling Ancestria Magicka involve?’

They are in one of the other Britains now.

‘One of them? You don’t know which?’

It is immaterial.

I swallowed. ‘Right. And was this before or after the castle vanished from the beach?’

After.

So it could still have been either Fenella or Zareen who was behind that little event. I was prepared to hope it was Zareen. What was Fenella doing “skulking” around on the beach, if she’d already retrieved her castle?

I made a mental note not to get on Melmidoc’s very bad side. We were on his somewhat bad side already; any more, and we’d be expelled to some other Britain in Fenella’s wake. Which one was she on? Was it one that had banned all magick, or one of the ruined ones?

‘We are very sorry,’ I said hastily. ‘We did not imagine she would find the means to return so soon.’

So soon? You knew it was likely to occur eventually?

‘She’s tenacious. It would take more than an ignominious banishment and a dose of amnesia to put her off.’

Perhaps a second ignominious banishment will be sufficient.

I privately thought not, supposing she managed to return from whichever Britain she was now skulking about on.

‘Do you know how she got here?’ said Emellana.

Madam, I believe we are unacquainted.

I sighed inwardly. Melmidoc was ever irascible.

‘So we are,’ said Emellana mildly. ‘I am Emellana Rogan, scholar and Lady of the Court on the sixth Britain.’

‘New Court,’ I put in quickly. ‘Not Farringale.’

Emellana raised a brow at me.

‘Melmidoc has a few issues with the Old Court,’ I supplied.

I felt him glower. I cannot bid you welcome, madam, said he waspishly. You are uninvited.

‘It was quite rude of me,’ Emellana agreed. ‘There is some urgency about our errand.’

I rubbed at my eyes. Was that a headache coming on, already? ‘Em, Melmidoc Redclover died about four centuries ago. Before that, he was one of the most visionary magickers of his age. He and his brother built this place, and pioneered the kind of advanced Waymastery that permits travel back and forth between Britains.’

Emellana made a kind of bow. ‘An honour.’

Your errand? said Melmidoc. Still waspish, but, perhaps, slightly mollified.

‘We seek the Vales of Wonder,’ said Emellana.

There was a pause. To what end? said Melmidoc at length.

Emellana looked at me.

Here was the tricky part. How to tell Melmidoc that we were in pursuit of the last king of Farringale? He could hardly welcome such news. He’d spit, and snarl, and refuse to help. I’d have to handle him delicately, manage him very carefully, turn a deaf ear to his sarcastic commentary…

Ah, screw it.

‘We’re looking for the last king of Farringale,’ I said.

Turn page ->

‘Wow, Millie,’ I said, and whistled. ‘You. Look. Fine.’

When Alban had promised to see Millie Makepeace — or rather, the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse she haunted — appointed a royal residence, I’d taken it as a convenient bribe. The circumstances at the time had been a trifle pressing, after all. Apparently he’d meant every word, for Millie had been sumptuously refitted.

I mean, her exterior walls were much improved: window frames repainted, glass and doors replaced, stonework repaired, that kind of thing. But the house was still an ordinary, modestly-sized farmhouse.

Inside was a different matter. Upon walking into her parlour, I received an eyeful of polished mahogany parquet floor strewn with plush rugs; handsomely wainscoted walls; long windows fitted with silken drapes; and an array of elegant (and to my semi-expert eye, authentic) eighteenth-century furniture. The best kind. Ornate couches, gilded and upholstered in pale blue damask. Mahogany side-tables with scrolly bronze carvings. A towering, polished cabinet bearing a vast, elaborate mirror. Etc.

The works.

‘Fit for a queen,’ Jay agreed, smiling at me. He sat ensconced in a pretty, curved-back chair upholstered in silvery damask, the pages of Torvaston’s book open on his lap.

Am I not? agreed Millie happily. Her Majesty herself sat in that very-same chair, Mr. Patel!

‘Clearly I’ve chosen the best, then,’ Jay said.

Emellana Rogan sat in a matching chair on the other side of Millie’s majestic, carved fireplace. It was lucky the house had been refurbished for use by the Troll Court, I thought, as the furniture was all suitably sized up to accommodate their greater proportions. Ms. Rogan would be in no way inconvenienced — and neither would the chairs.

‘Any luck?’ she said.

I retrieved the stocking and waved it briefly in the air. ‘Best we could do. Where’s pup?’

Emellana gestured at her lap, and I drifted closer. Pup was curled up there, fast asleep. So dwarfed was she in contrast to Emellana’s size, I hadn’t noticed her.

To my shame, I experienced a momentary stab of pure jealousy. What was Goodie doing sleeping with adorable, puppy trust all over someone who wasn’t me? Or Jay?

Still, she looked happy and so did Em, so I swallowed the feeling. Unworthy, Ves.

‘Checklist,’ I announced. ‘One pup with improbable gold-sniffing powers: check. One Lady of Mandridore with improbable magick-sniffing powers: check.’

‘One unreasonably talkative but conveniently knowledgeable book: check,’ said Jay, and I spotted the purple-clad form of Mauf lying by his chair.

‘Unreasonably?’ said Mauf, in a dangerous tone.

‘Conveniently, wittily, superbly talkative,’ Jay amended.

Mauf riffled his pages, and slammed shut his front cover with a theatrical puff of dust.

Jay suppressed a grin. ‘One set of incomplete kingly notes on the sources of magick: check.’ He tapped the paper in his lap.

‘Wands?’ I said. ‘Geniusware from our favourite eccentric?’

‘Double check,’ said Jay.

I looked at Emellana, who nodded serenely. I looked forward to seeing what kind of a Wand she carried.

‘Great. Fabulously expensive scroll-case etched with map of destination?’

‘Check,’ said Jay again. ‘I’ve put it with Mauf.’

Not a bad idea. I wasn’t sure if Mauf could absorb maps the way he could absorb text, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. Just in case we were careless enough to lose a scroll-case that must be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

I shuddered inwardly at that thought, and swiftly reminded myself that the map was actually the valuable part.

‘Dangerously beautiful moonsilver lyre?’ I said.

Jay developed a guarded look. ‘I’ve got it.’

‘Where?’

‘You don’t need to know that right now.’

Fair enough. ‘Unicorn-summoning pipes…’ I began, and then frowned. ‘Wait. Can I summon Adeline from a different Britain?’ I was staring, for some reason, at Jay.

‘How the hell should I know?’ Jay said.

‘Fair. Sorry. Hang on.’ I left the house again, fished out my silver syrinx pipes, and blew an airy melody upon them. I mean, I’m usually a fan of the Trial and Error approach, but this was one occasion where it had to be a bad idea. What if we got there and I found Addie couldn’t hear me from all the way over wherever-the-fifth-Britain was? Or couldn’t reach me?

Would the absence of one unicorn make or break the mission? Probably not, but who wanted to risk it when you were working for the queen?

Not me. And Milady had specifically recommended taking Addie along.

Addie arrived on foot, this time (on hoof…?). She came trotting between two of the great, ancient oaks that line our driveway, head held high, silvery mane streaming in the wind. The balmy sunshine of early June glittered charmingly off her pale, coiled horn.

She came right up to me and shoved her face into my chest. Bump.

‘Should I be calling you Ylariane?’ I said, running my fingers through her silky mane. I’d recently learned that to be her true name — or at least, one of them. Apparently she was a venerable old lady; who knew how many friends she’d made, or how many names she’d been given, in all that time? Ylariane was her name among the Yllanfalen. Pretty. Ethereal. Fitting.

I couldn’t get used to it.

‘Addie,’ I said decisively. ‘I haven’t got any chips for you. Let me be up front about that right now.’

Adeline snorted, most inelegantly.

‘And,’ I went on. ‘In a minute I’m going to make you walk through a human-sized door into a perambulatory Royal Troll Residence and sit tight while we fly through the aether into Elsewhere. You okay with all that?’

My favourite unicorn sneezed on me.

‘Great!’ I said heartily. ‘Let’s go.’ I took hold of a section of her mane and wandered doorwards. Addie placidly followed after — until we came to the door, which Millie invitingly opened for us. There she stopped.

‘Please?’ I wheedled. ‘It’s nice in here. Fit for a unicorn-friend-of-kings. Come on.’

Addie gave me the kind of flat stare that heralded immediate doom. I pictured myself nicely diced into bite-sized cubes, and swallowed.

‘Righto. Second, then.’

I made a call. ‘Val? Logistical problem here. Can you get hold of the kitchens for me?’

Ten minutes later, Addie’s chips arrived. I’d pictured maybe a bowl full, but the kitchens had sent an enormous tub of them. There must’ve been three kilos, at least.

I stole one. Fresh, crisp and hot.

Perfect.

‘Thanks,’ I beamed at the obliging kitchen staff: two bright young things, both too obviously thrilled at experiencing a real unicorn sighting. They retreated a ways, and stopped.

Well, okay. I didn’t really want to do this with an audience, but given the promptitude with which they’d delivered Addie’s snacks, I hadn’t the heart to dismiss them. Let them witness my humiliation if they must.

‘Miss Adeline,’ I said, backing up quickly towards the door. Addie’s nose was already twitching; she’d caught the scent. ‘Every single chip in this tub is yours if you follow me through that door.’ I thought a moment, and in all honesty had to add: ‘Almost every chip. One or two are mine.’

Addie drifted towards me, as though drawn against her will. I quickened my steps, unwilling to become the splattered victim of an out-of-control-unicorn charge, and almost fell over Millie’s lintel.

Jay caught me from behind. ‘Steady. If you must drop the chips, at least drop them all over the floor in here, not out there.’

‘You know what? Great idea.’ I tipped up the tub, letting a stream of chips fall all over the threshold. The rest I strewed all over the beautiful parquet in the short hallway beyond, and then through the parlour.

Addie, wonderful girl, dipped her head and went through the fallen chips like a lawnmower. With a brief helping hand from Jay, she was through the door and storming the hall, devouring chips at the rate of at least eight per second.

Jay slammed the door behind her. ‘Go!’ he called.

Where to, good ladies and gentlemen? Millie had apparently had a manners upgrade, too.

‘Whitmore!’ I said, abandoning the tub to Addie’s predations. ‘Melmidoc’s Whitmore, please.’

Departing in twelve seconds, said Millie brightly.

And with a stomach-dropping whoosh, an unpromising rumble of stonework, and a little light chamber music, off we went.

I… am sinking, said Millie shortly afterwards.

‘What?’ I leapt up from my involuntary recumbent posture on the parlour floor, and dashed to the window.

Beyond it I saw the bluish-grey expanse of an English sea, and… well, that was it.

‘Millie, how close to the water are we?’

I was aiming for the top of the cliff, said Millie, without quite answering my question.

‘And what happened?’

I missed.

Jay joined me at the window. ‘Can you jump again?’

Jump, Mr. Patel?

‘You know.’ Jay made up-and-over gestures. ‘Travel again. Up a bit.’

I whirled about and ran down the hall. As I’d feared, water was beginning to seep under the door. ‘Millie, you need to move. Now.’

 I am tired! Make me stop sinking!

‘We cannot, but you can. Come on, Millie.’ The house was beginning to lean, slowly but surely, to one side as it sank. ‘I know this is hard for you, but—’

Ohh, said Millie, cutting me off. She had gone in an instant from half-panicked whining to… purringly appreciative. Very good, thank you.

Bemused, I went back into the parlour. Jay was hastily scooping up Mauf and the scroll-case and moving them farther away from the windows and doors; Addie huddled against the far wall, her rump bumping the mahogany sideboard, sniffing sadly at the empty chip tub; and Emellana leaned casually against one wall, watching my unicorn with a smirk of amusement.

‘Millie?’ I said. ‘What?’

Emellana gently patted the wall, and Millie said: Just a little more…

I raised an eyebrow in Emellana’s general direction.

‘She needed a boost,’ she said, as though that explained everything.

‘What did you do?’

‘Supplied it.’

What had she done, applied some kind of magickal jumpstart to a… house?

Apparently, yes, for the farmhouse lurched and shifted, and with a horrible sloshing, sucking noise of loosened sand and swirling saltwater, we rocketed off the beach and upwards.

Too fast.

I clutched at the nearest sofa, waiting for a crashing sound and a sickening impact as we collided with the cliff face.

There came a crunch and a grinding noise, and the house tipped sideways, sending the lot of us sliding abruptly left.

‘Millie!’ I yelled as I hit the wall with a thud.

Sorry! She trilled.

We tipped back to the right. I collided, somehow, with Jay, and the pair of us went tumbling down.

I spared a moment’s fervent prayer that Adeline wouldn’t be joining us down there.

Whitmore Cliff! Millie announced, with enviable serenity.

 ‘Thanks,’ I groaned, and peeled myself off Jay. Back on my feet, I took a brief inventory of my wounds.

A few things hurt, particularly my left shoulder where I’d hit the wall. I flexed and turned; nothing was broken.

Right, then.

Jay was vertical; Emellana, too, who still held my pup in her capable hands. All appeared sound, so I turned my attention to Adeline.

‘You deserve another vat of chips after this,’ I told her as I coaxed her up from the floor. ‘But you shan’t have one, or you’ll be as fat as a barrel.’

Adeline whinnied and stamped, head tossing, eyes wild.

‘…I think I’d better get her out of here,’ I decided, nimbly avoiding her kicking hooves.

‘Post-haste,’ Jay agreed.

All I had to do, as it turned out, was open the front door. Addie ran down the little hallway at a canter, and hit the grass beyond at full gallop.

I followed.

Millie had contrived to hop to about the highest point on the island; Melmidoc’s shining spire towered not far away, and the treacherous sea was reduced to a distantly glittering blue-grey ribbon on the horizon.

One corner of the farmhouse was rather crushed, its newly-mended stonework crumbling. ‘Lucky you’ve got royal patrons now, Millie,’ I grumbled.

Jay emerged from the house, carrying Mauf and the scroll-case, both of which he put into my hands. The pages of Torvaston’s translated book stuck out of Mauf’s front cover.

I stuck them into my trusty shoulder-bag. ‘The lyre?’ I asked, when he made no move to go back inside.

He just winked at me.

‘That… that isn’t an answer.’

‘I know.’

‘We aren’t leaving it in the house?’

‘No, certainly not.’

‘Then… Emellana’s got it?’

He merely smiled at me.

‘I dislike secrets, sir. You should know that.’

‘Untrue. You love secrets — except when they’re withheld from you.’

‘Which is exactly what you’re doing.’

‘It’s for a good cause.’

‘That being?’

‘Your sanity.’

I considered that. ‘I concede the point,’ I reluctantly said.

Emellana emerged into the cool air, still clutching the pup. She did not appear inclined to transfer Goodie into my care, and pup herself just lay there, like an inert and smiling log.

I had to scowl.

‘I suppose it’s all right for pup to ride with you for a bit,’ I said, as graciously as I could, which wasn’t very.

Emellana gave me a serene smile. ‘She is very tired.’

To which, I had no particular response to offer.

Turn page ->

There was indeed a house in the driveway. With a supreme disregard for convenience or sense, Millie had parked herself almost directly in front of the great double-doors. I had to take a sharp left once I reached the steps, and circle around the familiar flint stone walls of the sturdy eighteenth-century farmhouse, before I saw Alban’s enormous, so-shiny car.

It was purple today.

‘My favourite colour,’ I said as I approached the driver’s seat.

His highness smiled up at me. ‘I know.’

He, as always, was my favourite everything. Bright, intense green eyes, lively and full of approval as he looked at me. Bronze, artfully windswept hair. Loose, cream silk shirt.

I realised I was clutching the pup before me like a meat shield between me and him, and adjusted my grip. ‘So,’ I said lightly. ‘You wanted to see me?’

‘Always.’

At which I raised a brow, half questioning, half disapproving.

‘Sorry,’ he said, and reached up to stroke Goodie’s soft ears. ‘I’m actually playing errand boy. I’ve brought you some things.’ He retrieved a stack of papers from the passenger seat, and handed them to me. ‘That’s the transcript-so-far of Torvaston’s book. There’s less of it than you’ll want, I’m afraid. It’s proving tricky to translate.’

I took it gratefully, careful not to touch his fingers. ‘Thank you. I’m sure it will be useful.’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe. And I’ve brought your new team mate. She’s inside with Milady.’

So he wasn’t to be our ally from Mandridore. ‘Excellent,’ I said brightly. ‘Then we’re almost ready to go.’

I waited, with the vague hope that he’d say something like allow me to escort you to your unusually house-shaped chariot, milady, and then never leave again.

Sadly, he merely nodded, and turned the key in the ignition. His beautiful car started up with a purr. ‘Be careful out there, Ves. I’m pretty sure it will be dangerous.’

‘Doubtless,’ I said, with a failed attempt at a smile. ‘But then, so am I.’

‘Oh, always.’ He released the handbrake.

‘So you aren’t coming with us?’ I blurted. Great. So much for cool composure.

Alban looked up at me. ‘I wanted to. Mother… said no.’

‘And you have to do as you’re told.’

He smiled, faintly. ‘For the most part, yes. I do.’

What a dreary prospect. I didn’t try again to detain him, and after a moment’s hesitation, he said, ‘Bye, Ves. Call me when you get back,’ and drove slowly away.

I stood watching until the glorious Purplemobile was out of sight, for once appreciating pup’s clumsy attempts to groom my face.

‘All okay?’ said Jay, from right behind me.

I jumped, and turned. ‘How long have you been there?’

‘About three seconds.’

I must’ve been lost in thought; I hadn’t heard him approach. ‘All okay,’ I said, with my firm, professional, no-nonsense smile. ‘We’ve got this.’ I waved the papers at him. ‘Transcript of His Majesty’s Mysterious Book of Magick, or some of it. And our new associate’s inside.’

Jay glanced at the empty driveway, down which Alban had just disappeared. ‘Oh?’

‘Yes, Alban isn’t coming with us. I don’t know who the lady is, yet; he didn’t say.’

He was either wise or sensitive enough not to show his probable relief at Alban’s lack of involvement. ‘Right,’ he said instead, with a nod. ‘Let’s go introduce ourselves.’

Our new associate was a troll with at least a dash of giant heritage, or so I was forced to conclude. We found her in the Audience Chamber — the same room, I noted in passing, where I had first met Alban. She, though, was not to be found lounging at one of the tables, supping upon chocolate and pastries and reading a book. She stood not far from the door, her regal posture emphasising her excessive height, her large hands neatly folded as she awaited our arrival. I might have expected a lady dispatched straight from the Court at Mandridore to be sumptuously garbed, but she was dressed in plain trousers, a simple shirt, and sturdy boots made for tramping about. Ready for anything, then. She was not young; her wealth of hair was snow-white, and her face wreathed in the tracery of advanced age. Nonetheless, she was unbowed, and emanated an enviable kind of vitality.

She observed our approach coolly, and subjected us both to a swift, keen look before she stepped forward to meet us. ‘You must be Miss Vesper,’ she said, in a low, rather deep voice. ‘And Mr. Patel.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, on my best behaviour because — her casual attire notwithstanding — something about her self-possession and serenity suggested great power. Whether of the magickal kind or the courtly-status kind, I couldn’t yet say.

‘Emellana Rogan,’ she said. ‘I am here at Her Majesty’s direction.’

My jaw dropped.

‘It— I— um, wonderful to meet you,’ I managed. ‘Jay, Ms. Rogan is—’

‘I know,’ said Jay, and looked unsure whether to bow or shake her hand. He decided upon the latter, and received what appeared to be a painfully hearty handshake from the lady.

Emellana Rogan. Dear, giddy gods, the woman is the stuff of legend. She’s had a thriving academic career since well, well before I was born; her papers and studies fill every magickal library worth its salt from Land’s End to John O’Groats — and well beyond the shores of Britain, too, no doubt. She’s written on every major magickal development since about 1941, unearthed a host of lost spells, dragged all manner of magickal history out of the earth with her bare hands… she’s an archaeologist, charmwright and scholar all in one, and with giddy-gods-know what other talents besides.

Well, apparently one of her less well-known talents is similar to my mother’s. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

‘I can’t say that I have all your books,’ I said, aware that I was gushing but unable, quite, to stop. ‘There are so many. But I’ve got at least half. My favourite is Artefacts and Alchemy, though I also love Charms: An Unorthodox History, and—’

‘Bestiary of Extinct Beasts,’ Jay put in. ‘Especially the part about the Wight settlements, that was brilliant—’

Jay and I were gabbling like teenagers. This realisation seemed to strike both of us at once, for we fell silent, leaving a somewhat awkward pause.

I couldn’t tell if Jay was blushing, but I was. Self-possession, Ves. I lifted my chin.

Ms. Rogan smiled graciously, without condescension, and gave us to understand that she was greatly flattered by our immense admiration, etc.

Then she said six words which threatened to send me off into another paroxysm of awkwardness, namely: ‘I enjoyed your thesis, Miss Vesper.’

She had read my thesis? My thesis! I couldn’t speak.

‘Um,’ I croaked after a moment. ‘Call me Ves.’

Very smooth.

But she nodded, and said: ‘Call me Em.’

Unthinkable.

Jay stepped into the breach. ‘So, you are a… I’m sorry, I don’t know the term for what Ves’s mother does.’

‘It is an uncommon art,’ said… Em. ‘And not much regarded, its uses being considered few. As such, I am unsure a term has ever been coined for it. But yes, I am able to detect traces of past magicks performed.’

‘You’d think such a talent would be more useful,’ I said, interested out of my paralysis.

‘It is vague,’ said… Em. ‘That is its primary drawback. I can determine that some manner of magick was once conducted in this hall, for instance. But what of that? There are traces of many kinds of magick done here, as well there might be. It is difficult to say for certain what kinds of magick they were; impossible to say what they were intended to achieve, when they were performed, or by whom. Therefore, it is of little relevance. I am hoping, however, that your lyre may be able to assist me there.’

‘It’s on its way down,’ said Jay. ‘Orlando thinks it absorbs magick, too.’

Emellana Rogan appeared highly interested in this nugget of possibility. ‘Absorbs?’ she said sharply. ‘I understood it to amplify — certain things, at least.’

‘Both, perhaps?’ said Jay.

‘And that would make some sense,’ I put in. ‘The lyre amplifies some arts because it’s full of absorbed magick.’

‘Which arts?’ said Emellana.

‘We have not yet had much opportunity to test it,’ said Jay.

‘Field tests are always so much more amusing,’ said Emellana, with the trace of a smile, and I liked her excessively all over again. ‘Are we, otherwise, ready for departure?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said. Jay and I had been packed and ready to go for days. Our various goods and supplies would have been delivered to Millie’s parlour by now, Mauf included; we awaited only Emellana, and the lyre.

I heard the click of small claws on marble as my pup came trotting in. She gave that little, triumphant yip that says: ‘Found you!’, and galloped past me in favour of acquainting herself with Emellana.

Emellana bent down at once, her face wreathed in delight. ‘I’d heard of your little companion,’ she said. ‘To think! A goldnose, alive again in England!’  She and the pup declared themselves delighted with one another, through a series of ear-rubs, belly-barings and yips. ‘Are there more?’ she added, looking up at me.

‘No… well, not in this Britain, anymore. There are hundreds of them on the fifth.’

‘I have scarcely felt a greater anticipation than when I heard of this fifth Britain,’ said Emellana, her faded blue eyes alight. ‘Is it as wondrous as I imagine?’

‘We have seen little of it, yet, but still I’d say yes,’ I answered.

‘Now’s our chance to see a lot more,’ put in Jay.

Emellana straightened with alacrity, and smiled. ‘Very well, let us not delay any longer. Can this lyre be retrieved? I shall await you in the house.’

We separated three ways: Em to Millie’s parlour, Jay to enquire after the lyre, and me to find Val and the promised article of Miranda’s.

I found her still in Miranda’s room, or what used to be Miranda’s. Was it significant that the room had not yet been reassigned? Was Milady hoping Miranda could be persuaded to come back?

If her expertise was as rare as Milady suggested, then the most likely answer to that was “yes.” Good luck with that. The Society could hardly be in a hurry to welcome her Home.

‘There isn’t much here,’ Val said as I walked in. ‘I’m having trouble finding anything useful.’

I saw her point. Miranda had a suite of three rooms: a living room and kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom. The kitchen still contained its complement of utensils and pans and such, but besides that, the place was mostly cleaned out. Miranda hadn’t planned to come back; that much was clear.

I did recall, though, that Miranda often had a somewhat messy appearance. Her hair was coming out of its tail; her jumpers had holes in; she’d often forgotten something and had to go running back for it.

‘Checked under the bed?’ I asked.

Val just gave me a withering look from her magickal equivalent of a wheelchair.

‘Right.’ I crossed back to the bedroom and dropped to the floor. A few minutes’ crawling about on my belly might have been dusty and undignified, but I did procure one, potentially useful item. I jumped up, waving it triumphantly.

‘A stocking?’ Val said. ‘Really?’

‘I would’ve much preferred an old jumper or something, too, but this’ll do.’ Given the quantity of dust coating the flimsy thing, I wasn’t sure how much of Miranda’s scent might still be discernible from it. But I trusted the pup’s enormous nose.

‘Rather you than me.’ Val floated away towards the door. ‘Call me when you get back. And be careful out there, hm?’

People kept saying that to me lately. ‘Will do,’ I called after her, and stuffed the stocking into my pocket. Next stop, Mellicent Makepeace.

Turn page ->

‘I mean,’ said Orlando, ‘that this lyre possesses considerable power to bewitch, as you have experienced. But it exerts this power selectively, and I have not been able to determine why that is, or how it determines at whom to direct its glamours.’

Faerie glamour. That made more sense than it didn’t. ‘It had no effect on my parents, either,’ I observed. ‘And that’s after it had chosen each of them for the throne of Ygranyllon.’

‘So its interest in you is related to something else,’ Orlando mused.

I shrugged. ‘I haven’t the least idea. Nobody else seemed to, either, among the Yllanfalen.’

‘Obscurity of origin is not uncommon among ancient Great Treasures.  Your mother, I understand, had some theory as to its function?’

‘She’s one of those who can detect traces of past magick performed in a location. She said it… amplified that ability, in some way.’ Mum had been injured, drugged up and half asleep at the time, so her explanation hadn’t been all that coherent. I remember the word whoosh featuring rather prominently.

‘How?’ said Orlando, with that intent look.

‘I don’t know. She was in no condition to explain.’

‘I shall send an enquiry to Ygranyllon. For now, understand that its nature remains somewhat obscure and it must be handled with great care.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jay.

Orlando looked him up and down, as though sizing up whether or not he could be trusted with such a charge. I considered telling him that Jay was the most trustworthy person I’d ever known or could possibly imagine, and much more fitted to haul Great Treasures around than me, but a vote of confidence was clearly unnecessary. Orlando gave a satisfied nod. ‘I do believe it to possess some influence over magickal residue,’ he said, incomprehensibly.

‘Magickal residue?’ I echoed.

‘Yes. But I am not sure it is the sort of influence that might be considered… desirable.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I suspect it of absorbing magick.’

‘Absorbing?’

‘The way you or I might absorb, for example, a fine wine.’

‘So it’s a tippler.’

‘Well on its way to becoming an alcoholic, I would say.’ Orlando’s eyes crinkled at the corners again. ‘I advise keeping it separate from your Wands, or any other such artefacts.’

Jay eyed the lyre with a hard look. ‘I’ll keep it under control.’

The crinkles deepened. ‘Doubtless. Now then, I have been instructed to share one of my newest creations with you.’ His eyes brightened; if I’d imagined him reclusive due to a disinclination to share his work, I’d been wrong. ‘Just a moment, please, I must find it…’ Orlando set off, weaving through the multiple benches with surprising grace considering his size; he’d had practice at this dance. Every workbench was liberally strewn with objects and debris, very little of which I could put any name to. He hunted through these with such single-minded focus, he did not notice Indira at his side until she lightly touched his arm.

‘It’s here,’ she said, and handed him the indeterminate object she had quietly picked up from a trestle table on the other side of the workshop.

I suppressed a smile as Orlando straightened up, and took the thing with alacrity. ‘Wonderful girl. Thank you. Now, this is an entirely new artefact! And therefore, I hope you will not be too surprised if its form or function strikes you as unusual.’

Its form certainly did. He held the precious treasure up for us to admire, and I beheld: a glass disc. At least, it looked like glass. Something indeterminate flickered in its depths, which was interesting, but this aside there was nothing remarkable about it at all.

‘What does it do?’ I said.

‘It… well, hm.’ Orlando gave the disc to Jay. ‘It is a thing of perfect chaos. There is no way at all to predict what it will do.’

‘That seems…’ I paused to consider what the right word might be. Weird? Unfathomable? Completely useless?

‘Unusual,’ Jay supplied.

‘It is!’ said Orlando. ‘At times of difficulty, it is not always easy to determine at a moment’s notice what would be best to do. No? And there is not always time to consider, either. That is where this treasure can help you. When employed, it will add a little chaos to the occasion, in just the right place.’

‘The right place for what?’ I said.

Orlando shrugged. ‘The right place.’

Genius-speak was clearly beyond me.

‘And I should tell you that it has not yet been fully tested,’ added Orlando.

Wonderful. ‘Jay?’ I said. ‘How about you hang onto that, too.’

Jay rolled his eyes at me, and put the panic button into his jacket pocket. ‘Thank you,’ he said to Orlando. ‘We’re very grateful.’

‘I think that you will be.’ Orlando looked upon both of us with vast amusement. ‘Now, if that is everything, I must return to my work.’

‘Almost,’ I said quickly. ‘I could do with some more of those sleep-spheres, if you have any.’

Orlando gave me a measuring look. I found it unsettling. ‘More?’ he said succinctly.

‘They’re handy…’

‘For what?’

‘For levelling inconvenient obstructions.’ I held his gaze, trying not to look innocent, because what could possibly look more suspicious than that?

‘I believe I have one or two around somewhere,’ Orlando said at last, and released me from the scrutiny.

‘Here.’ I found Indira at my elbow, a scant three of the sleep-potion jelly-spheres in her hand. These she tipped into my palm, and I quickly transferred them to a pocket in my dress.

‘Thanks.’ I smiled at her, and received a brief smile in return.

And then we were outside the workshop again, ushered out by Indira, for Orlando had already turned back to his work. I cast a final glance at his broad back, bent as he was over one of his many projects, and wondered if or when I would ever meet him again.

‘Odd fellow,’ I murmured once the door was shut on Jay and I, and bent to pick up the pup. I’d expected her to be halfway across the mansion by the time we emerged, but she hadn’t budged an inch.

‘Geniuses are like that,’ Jay said. I realised he was eyeing me carefully, while attempting to appear casual.

I stopped halfway down the corridor. ‘All right, what is it?’

‘The sleep elixir,’ he began.

It was my turn to roll my eyes. ‘No, I’m not using them to self-medicate.’

‘Really? And how are you sleeping lately?’

‘Like a baby.’

‘So fitfully, and waking up screaming.’

‘Jay. I’m fine.’

He took a moment to consider that, and emerged from his reflections unconvinced. ‘You’ve had some difficult times lately,’ he said, very seriously, and held my gaze with those velvety brown eyes of his. ‘It wouldn’t be… surprising, or shaming, if you’ve been unsettled.’

Part of me felt a vast indignation at such an intrusion. ‘I am Ves,’ I retorted, turning away again. ‘I can handle this.’

The rest of me felt rather warmed by the concern, even if it had come wrapped up in a parcel of doubts. Last year I’d been sent to the infirmary for a check-up. Milady’s orders. Rob had kindly but firmly questioned me on my health, my habits, and my sanity, even as he’d delivered the requisite physical examination. I’d been declared fighting fit, to my relief, but I’d seen doubt in Rob’s eyes as he’d dismissed me. He’d given me strict instructions to come back the very instant I needed anything, and that had been nice.

He hadn’t quite cared, though. Not like this.

Jay gave a tiny sigh, and I felt a pang of remorse for my ungraciousness. ‘I’m fine,’ I said in a more reasonable tone, and threw Jay a smile. ‘Really.’

Jay saluted. ‘You know best, ma’am.’

Did I? I wondered about that as we trailed down and down the stairs, clutching pup’s warm little body to my chest as I thought. Is there a person alive who isn’t a champion at self-deceit?

Was I fine?

‘Ves,’ a voice called as we reached the main hall. Valerie came floating up in her majestic velvet chair, wearing her most impish smile. ‘The Baron’s here. He wants to see you.’

‘That’s Prince Alban,’ I corrected, swallowing down the flutter of… something that promptly threw a riot in my stomach. Apprehension? Excitement? Terror?

‘I think not, when he’s with you,’ said Val. ‘Also, there’s a house.’

‘A house?’

‘In the driveway.’

‘Great. Our ride’s here.’ The question of whether Alban had arrived with the house, and with the intention of going with us, hovered upon my lips. Considering the mischief already bound up in Val’s grin, I decided not to ask.

‘Then it seems we’re about to ship out,’ I said instead.

‘The pup’s going with you?’

‘Yes. Actually… I need something of Miranda’s.’

Val blinked. ‘What?’

‘I’ve got to find her, and no one seems to know where she is.’ I brought Val up to speed, feeling secretly gratified by the angry set to her lips as I spoke. I wasn’t the only one who hated her guts.

‘I saw the posters,’ Val said when I’d finished. ‘I don’t think she’s here, Ves. I haven’t heard a peep about it.’

Val somehow heard just about everything, so that weighed a fair bit with me. ‘Right. So we’re going to ask Zareen, and if she can’t help us, we might need to put this critter’s nose to good use.’ I hefted the pup.

‘You go deal with the prince,’ said Val. ‘I’ll get you something stinky of Miranda’s.’ Her tone said, shouldn’t be too hard.

‘Thanks.’ I watched as Val sailed out of the hall, and took a deep breath.

Jay was staring at me again. Darkly.

‘What is it now?’ I sighed.

‘Are you going out there?’

‘To the driveway? Why wouldn’t I?’

‘He should stay away from you.’

I didn’t need to ask who he meant by he. ‘He’s not going to hurt me.’

Jay merely raised his brows.

‘Come on. Millie’s waiting for you.’ I turned and stepped smartly towards the door, shoulders back, chin high; queenly posture, Ves. Zero doubts shown.

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