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Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 18

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‘It’s done,’ I said a little later. ‘I think. So I suppose you can go home again.’

Mum rolled her eyes in wordless contempt.

‘Not that it wasn’t amazing of you to come,’ I hastened to add. ‘Super appreciated.’

‘Farringale has been dead for centuries,’ she informed me. ‘And I don’t mean metaphorically dead. I mean actually dead. If you think it’s going to be easy to drag it into the modern world then you have bats for brains. They are going to need us.’

We were still in the library, though we’d ascended out of the cellar. We found a crowd gathered there, apparently not waiting for us: our appearance came as a surprise.

A welcome one, to Indira and Rob and Zareen. I was hugged again, quite a lot—even by Indira. ‘I found Mab,’ she said to Jay, who had not left my side. ‘She was—busy.’

‘Busy.’ Jay’s brows went up, though he spoke distractedly. I believe he was preoccupied with making sure I didn’t fall over, which was no easy task. My legs felt about as sturdy as lightly blanched asparagus.

‘There’s, um. A new tree.’ She waved a hand vaguely. ‘Where the griffins were.’

‘A new tree? Freshly minted?’ said Jay. ‘Out of what?’

‘Mab’s turned into a tree,’ I surmised, less surprised by this than I might have been a week ago. I’d rather liked being a tree, myself.

But Indira shook her head. ‘Turned someone else into a tree. Take a guess.’ She was grinning, standing there with a smile of pure mischief on her youthful face and stone dust all over her hair: a vision less like cool, reserved Indira I had never seen.

‘It’s Fenella,’ said Zareen, before I could make any sense out of my sluggish thoughts. ‘Rob took the regulator off her, which didn’t make her happy. Then she lost the griffins, too. She came back with murder on her mind, but Mab got to her. Just said “no”, like that, and “I’m afraid I have run out of patience,” and turned her into a tree. She’s a willow. Quite pretty, actually.’

‘A weeping willow,’ Jay mused. ‘Appropriate.’

‘Miranda came through, then?’ I asked. ‘With the griffins, I mean.’

‘Probably,’ said Zareen. ‘Somebody did, anyway. Rob and Melissa and that lot intercepted them. They’re coming back in now.’

‘I also, um,’ said Jay, awkwardly. ‘Stuck a tracker on Miranda’s back when she went past me. Seems she didn’t notice.’

I beamed blissfully at the wonderful man that he was. ‘You’re a wonderful man,’ I informed him, and yawned.

‘Someone get her Home,’ Zareen suggested. ‘You need a week of sleep at least, Ves. You look bloody awful.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, still beaming.

‘We’re okay to go, soon,’ Indira offered. ‘Just waiting to make sure the griffins are safe.’

‘Well,’ Jay interposed. ‘That’s what we’re doing. Your Mum’s reorganising half the world, by the sounds of it.’

I could hear her, distantly, barking orders in the crisp tone of a woman who expects to be obeyed, instantly and without question. And she was. Her Yllanfalen contingent were marching out of the library again in twos and threes, dispatched on various missions of rehabilitation.

Their Majesties would probably be pleased, on the whole. There was no one like Mum for getting things done. This time next week, she’d have it spick and span and well on the way to habitable.

‘Mum,’ I said, and repeated it a bit louder when she clearly didn’t hear me.

She appeared at my side. ‘Ves.’

I blinked at her, momentarily stupefied. ‘You called me Ves.’

By way of answer I received a blank stare. ‘And?’

‘You’ve never done that before.’

‘Did you want to say something? Because I have a lot to do—’

‘Right. Um. Surely it’s a bit late to be—you know?’ I made a hand-wavey gesture, meant to encompass the entirety of everything she and her entourage were doing.

‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a bit late. It’s four hundred years late, to be precise, and if we want to get this kingdom rolling again there’s no time to lose.’

‘Right,’ I said meekly. ‘Carry on.’

I mentally resigned the whole problem of my mother to Mandridore. They’d asked for aid, and they had got it.

Mum stalked off, evidently forgetting my entire existence again between one purposeful stride and the next.

Jay’s hand stole into mine, a warm, strong clasp that conveyed far more than words. Faith and love. Comfort. Stability. I carried his hand to my lips and kissed it. ‘You know,’ I said mistily, ‘I really would like to go Home.’

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 15

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‘You will need the regulators,’ said Milady, unruffled now, and resolute. Magick shone in her green gaze as she looked at me, and I wondered. Had she had one of her hunches about this? Some prophetic dream? In the midst of everyone else’s surprise—or horror—Milady had been an ocean of mildly disapproving calm.

But then, so was she always.

‘They’ve got one in there with the griffins,’ Jay pointed out. ‘Indira’s got two with her and I hope they’ve secured the other one Ancestria Magicka stole. Can you manage with three?’

I have no idea was the honest response, but there was no room to be feeble-minded now. ‘Yes,’ I said stoutly.

Jay, more sensibly, said: ‘Well, if we can’t do it with three then I don’t suppose we can do it with four, either,’ and he wasn’t wrong.

‘Where’s Indira?’ I said. I felt a terrible sense of urgency, of time rushing past and events spiralling more out of our control by the minute. As soon as the griffins were out of Farringale, we had to be ready to act. Fenella wouldn’t leave us much time, not when it became apparent that we weren’t going to simply walk away and leave her to it.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jay, tersely.

‘She is at the bridge,’ said Milady serenely.

How did she know? I saw the question unfurl across Jay’s face, but he didn’t ask it, and neither did I. Mab had her ways.

‘The same bridge that was guarded by several giants and trolls?’ Jay said instead, concern replacing curiosity.

‘She is well,’ said Milady. ‘And I believe she has—’

The ground shifted underfoot, and buckled; for a dizzying instant, the world spun, shimmering like a wave of heat. Milady gasped, and crumpled. I tried to run to her side, but the street tipped sideways and fell on me.

When I opened my eyes again I saw Jay’s face outlined against the clear sky, grim and silent.

‘What happened,’ I croaked.

‘You and Milady fell. I don’t know why.’

I sat up, clutching at Jay. Waves of magick, pure and deep and wild, pulsed through the ground underfoot, each striking me like an electric shock. ‘It’s a surge,’ I gasped. ‘But different. Much—worse.’

‘It only seems to be affecting you and Milady,’ Jay said. ‘Or, mostly. I’m not feeling very much—’

‘Mab is a being of pure magick,’ I said, choking on the stuff as I spoke. I attempted to climb Jay like a tree, the better to regain my feet; he grasped my arms, and helped me up.

‘Apparently, so are you,’ he observed, steadying me.

‘No, but—close to it.’ That, I thought, was the problem: I had so much magick woven through my being that I couldn’t help but be deeply affected. I felt stirred like a bowl of porridge—whisked like a bucket of eggs—Gods, I could hardly form a coherent thought.

‘The griffins are gone,’ gasped Milady, both her hands pressed palm-flat against the earth of Farringale, and her eyes alight with its magick.

‘Already,’ I breathed. ‘I thought we’d have more time—’

‘Ves,’ said Rob urgently, and there was a world of meaning in the word, the tone. You need to move, it said. Now.

He was right. My Society had trusted me. Farringale needed me. I couldn’t let them down.

I felt a moment’s sharp regret for the griffins, and smothered it. I didn’t have time to worry about them now. That was Miranda’s task. I had to focus on mine.

But first, I needed to clear my swimming head.

I considered the lyre, and discarded the idea. Not yet. Not now. Instead I dug out my syrinx pipes, and blew a piercing, jagged trio of notes upon them. The harsh sounds split the air in a discordant jangle, carrying my message to Adeline. Help. Help me.

‘We need Indira,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. ‘We need Baroness Tremayne. And we need every regulator that’s available. If that’s three—two—so be it.’

The surge was still building; we had a little time. But not much. As soon as it ebbed, I needed to be ready.

The air split, and Baroness Tremayne stepped out of nothing. ‘I am here.’

‘I’ll need your—shape-shifting,’ I told her. ‘Soon.’ Conceding the griffins to Fenella’s care left me with a problem. If we weren’t the ones who had taken them out, then we couldn’t decide when to bring them back, either.

The baroness asked no questions, merely nodded her assent, and vanished again. I hoped—trusted—she would stay close, somewhere beyond my perception.

‘We need all the regulators,’ Rob said. ‘Whether you use them or not, Ves, they can’t be left in Fenella’s hands.’

Right. She’d be trying to use them herself. I mentally heaped curses on Fenella Beaumont’s head.

‘She’ll have taken one of them with her,’ Jay warned.

He was right about that. The shifting of that regulator, and the removal of the griffins, had probably caused—or at least were contributing to—the surge. ‘One problem at a time,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to—immobilise her. Later.’

And here came Addie, arrowing down out of the sky in a burst of light. She landed heavily, kicking up a spray of earth, and came for me at a gallop. I grabbed for her, hauled myself onto her back; as soon as my fingers touched the soft velvet of her hide I began to feel better. She balanced me, settled the sickening swirl of magick, and my head cleared. I’d still like a sunny afternoon at the grove for optimum results, but it would do.

‘Right,’ I said, straightening my back. Everything in me ached, like my bones were on fire. ‘Time to work.’

I expected words from Milady, instructions, orders, but she lay prone still, like a fallen flower. She would recover—when Farringale did.

Rob was looking at me, expectant. So was Jay, and Melissa, and—everyone.

I swallowed panic, and thought furiously. They were waiting for orders—from me. Right, then. ‘A few people need to stay with Mab. If you can safely get her out of here, do so. Jay, with me. We’re making a run for Indira. Rob and team: see if you can secure the missing regulator from Fenella. If not, please obstruct her by any reasonably fair, mostly non-violent means available. I need space to do this.’

‘Reasonably fair,’ Rob said, and nodded.

‘Mostly non-violent,’ added Melissa, and smiled, not at all nicely. I didn’t pursue the point. No one would be shedding tears if Fenella emerged with a bruise or two.

Jay swung himself up behind me, like a pro. The days when he’d shied away from riding horseback seemed a long time ago, and I suppose they were. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Which way to the bridge?’

Jay pointed, and we were off, Addie’s hoofbeats thundering against the dry earth like the drums of war.

***

At the bridge, chaos reigned. We came barrelling around a corner at a ground-eating canter and nearly ran into the prone form of one of the giants; Addie jinked around the obstacle at the last moment, the abrupt movement nearly hurling Jay off her back. The giant’s thunderous snores proclaimed him asleep, not unconscious, and I remembered the last time I’d seen Indira: she’d pressed several of Orlando’s sleep capsules into my hands. I still had them.

Indira had put hers to good use, for several other bodies, still as corpses, littered the narrowing white street. Some kind of pitched battle had taken place for control of the gate, but we’d missed most of it. There were people everywhere, spread across the street in a disorganised, struggling mass.

I couldn’t immediately tell who was winning, and for a moment everybody seemed a faceless stranger; I recognised none of the people I saw. My heart sank. Were we too late?

Then Zareen came surging out of a knot of people at a dead run, heading for… oh no, that was George Mercer, face set in a rictus of angry determination, Wand raised—for a horrible instant I felt a stab of fear straight to the heart: Zareen wasn’t—she wouldn’t—

No, of course she wouldn’t. Miranda had made me paranoid. Nothing in Zar’s face registered a welcome—in fact she looked angrier than I’ve ever seen, ready to tear his face off with her fingernails—it took me a second to realise why—and I was too late, we were both too late, for Mercer made a smashing motion with his fist, his Sardonyx Wand catching the light in a black slash, and with a shattering boom the earth exploded.

A massive spray of earth and stone soared skywards—cries of pain rent the air as the dislodged paving stones hurtled down again, striking friend and foe alike.

And something else went flying into the sky—something that glinted eerily silver, flashing like a falling star.

The regulator.

Mercer, in a shattering display of bullish brute force, had blasted the thing right out of the earth. He needed only to catch it, and run…

But Zareen knew George Mercer, and she’d seen it coming. If I’d thought she’d been planning to attack him, I was wrong: with a gravity-defying leap, she snatched the regulator out of the sky, and collided heavily with him on the way down. They fell in a tangle of dirt and stone and limbs but Zar was up again in seconds, ruthlessly smashing Mercer’s face into the earth as she went.

‘VES!’ she yelled. I thought she’d pitch the regulator at me, but she didn’t trust it to the skies again. She tore towards us on foot, dodging felled and sleeping trolls, piles of shattered stones and three unwise people who attempted to intercept.

I spurred Addie forward and we galloped to meet her, clearing a snoring giant in one flying leap.

Too late—Mercer was up—however fast Zareen could run, he was faster. He’d be on her before she could reach us.

With a snarl of pure fury, Zareen threw herself forward in a perfect and utterly reckless rugby tackle. She fell heavily, with a sharp cry of pain—but cool metal stung my fingers, and my hand closed on intricately-worked argent.

‘Get it out of here!’ she roared, looking ready to tear my face off if I didn’t obey.

No fear of that. ‘Up!’ I ordered, kicking at Addie’s flanks, and we were airborne, winging away from the carnage at the gate with the regulator securely clutched in my fist.

‘That woman must’ve been a terror on the lacrosse pitch,’ I gasped, half winded.

‘Indira!’ Jay shouted in my ear, pointing. ‘There.’

The distant shape could have been a bird—I’d have taken it for such—but I trusted Jay. And he was right: the dark blur was bombing towards us at reckless speed, and soon gained a more distinct shape. Indira, not demonstrating improbable powers of flight, however it may appear, but seated rather precariously atop a witched slab of something stony, and hurtling our way.

‘What the bloody hell—’ yelled Jay in my ear. ‘She’ll fall.’

She looked like she might, any second, and she was far too high up. If she fell, she’d die.

‘Right,’ I said, and spurred Addie on to lightning speed. We had to catch her—now.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 14

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‘You’re saving Farringale,’ I repeated, with perhaps an unwise emphasis on the first word. I was conscious of a stir around me: a reaction from the assembled Society, but I couldn’t turn to gauge what it was. I kept my attention on Fenella.

‘Of course,’ she said grandly. ‘Urgent work, I am sure you must agree. The Court won’t thank you for getting in the way of it.’

‘Oh? You’re here on the authority of Mandridore, are you?’

‘Of course,’ she said again, to my great surprise. I’d expected hedging, deflection, excuses, but not a bare-faced lie.

For an instant, I wondered if it might be true. The king at Mandridore had tasked us with rehabilitating Farringale, if we could; might they have contracted Ancestria Magicka to do the same? From their perspective, the end goal was important, not the tool they used to achieve it. It was plausible.

But I remembered the patent horror with which the Court had heard the news of Fenella’s incursion. The urgency with which they’d appealed for aid. It was possible they had employed Ancestria Magicka, and that grubby organisation had betrayed them—but I didn’t think so. More likely a lie.

But a believable one. Now I understood how Fenella had recruited trolls to her cause.

‘That is untrue,’ I said. ‘We’ve just come from Mandridore, and they certainly didn’t send you.’ Futile, really; my word against hers; their word against ours; people would go on believing whatever they wanted to believe.

Fenella waved this away with visible scorn. ‘I suppose you’d like me to believe they sent you.’

As though it was so far-fetched a possibility, considering she’d called me Merlin herself. ‘What’s your plan?’ I said, tiring of the tit-for-tat.

Fenella, off-balance, blinked at me. ‘What?’

‘Your plan. For saving Farringale.’ I swept an arm out, indicating the sorry state of the noble griffins, the clusters of her people guarding the mews, and the expanse of our people ranged in opposition. ‘This is all part of it, I suppose?’

I was curious to see whether the whole story was a lie; the “saving Farringale” a story spun to justify the looting, the thieving. Or was there some truth to it after all?

‘I’m sure you don’t need me to explain it to you,’ she answered, which was a cop-out, but also true. I didn’t.

I was looking at everything they’d done in Farringale with fresh eyes. What they’d done to the griffins.

If we—I—wanted to restore Farringale, we had to neutralise its wild magick, which meant neutralising—temporarily—the griffins. Is that what they were doing?

And what of the library? Had they been looting it, or extracting it prior to potentially damaging magickal procedures?

They’d stolen our regulators from Silvessen, but not, apparently, to sell them, or even to copy them (though I’d be willing to bet they’d be doing the latter at some point). They’d brought them here, to Farringale, and—used them. Hmm.

‘And what happens once you’ve saved it?’ That was Jay, his tone ringingly sceptical. ‘Who gets control of it?’

‘Why, Mandridore, of course,’ said Fenella, sweetly.

I sighed, frustrated. It might have been true; it wasn’t hard to imagine the kind of fame and favour they could win by such a feat. The Troll Court would owe them for generations.

It might have been a lie, too; I wouldn’t put it past Fenella to covet a small kingdom of her own, given half a chance.

We had no way of knowing, and we were wasting time arguing about it. I opened my mouth to say—I don’t even know what, I was running out of ways to counter such slippery insincerity from Fenella—but at that moment Milady materialised, as if from nowhere (and, being Mab, she might have).

Her abrupt appearance caused a fresh stir, on both sides—and stopped Fenella cold. It helped that she was laying it on rather thick, hovering at near eye level with the proud leader of Ancestria Magicka, her wings a glittering blur. She shimmered with myth and magick, a palpable power beyond anything most of us had ever experienced. She inspired the purest awe—and, I hoped, a modicum of fear.

For the first time, I detected uncertainty in Fenella’s face. She knew a great many things she shouldn’t have, but she had not discovered this secret.

Milady spoke, and her voice rang with all the power and majesty of a legendary queen. ‘Fenella Beaumont.’ The syllables rolled and echoed, like suppressed thunder. ‘This is not your task to perform.’

Fenella straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and stared right back at Mab. ‘I say the task belongs to anyone who can perform it successfully.’

‘And can you?’

‘Yes,’ said Fenella, without hesitation. Bravado? Or did she truly have a workable method?

A pause. Then Milady spoke—Milady again, not Mab; those low, calm, soothing tones I’d heard so often at the top of the tower at Home. ‘In that case, you will agree to a co-operation pact.’

‘We require no assistance,’ said Fenella, instantly, and with scorn.

‘You may enjoy our assistance or endure our opposition,’ replied Milady coolly. ‘You will, of course, make the wisest decision.’

I wanted to object. They were not to be trusted; they had not honour enough to keep to their promises. They would pretend cooperation, and then betray us at the first opportunity.

I needn’t have worried, however. Fenella had not the wisdom Milady credited her with, nor the guile I’d expected. ‘There will be no cooperation,’ she declared. ‘Farringale is in safe hands. Ours.’

Another pause. This was not the response Milady had expected; she did not have an immediate answer to offer. Tension built; Rob and his team shifted, gathering themselves, preparing to oppose Fenella with force, if necessary.

A terrible prospect, and one Milady had always dedicated herself to avoiding. The Society did not cut swathes through our opponents, maiming at will; we certainly did not kill.

But we could not simply walk away, and leave Farringale in their hands. Theirs were not safe hands; never that. If they would not work with us, then we would have to remove them—by any means possible.

Rob lifted his Lazuli Wand, letting Fenella see it. He was legendarily fearsome with it. ‘Release the griffins,’ he said, deadly quiet.

Fenella levelled her own Wand at him, stared defiance. Giddy gods, had she such unshakeable faith in the might of her own people? Or was this foolish recklessness, an inability to admit herself bested?

Was she bested? I felt a creeping sense of unease, felt it radiating from Jay beside me. We didn’t know the extent of either her forces or the powers they mustered between them. We’d seen giants at the bridge, and trolls; we knew she had the likes of Katalin Pataki and George Mercer at her disposal. As to what, or who, else… we were woefully underinformed.

What if we were the ones outmatched, and unable to see it?

‘Stop,’ I blurted. ‘Please. Wait.’

Everyone looked at me. The combined weight of so many surprised, shocked, wondering, tense, frightened, enraged gazes made me shrink, for a moment, bowed under the combined pressure.

And it made it so much harder to continue. Milady wasn’t going to like what I had in mind; the glimmers of a plan so risky I felt nauseated from the strain of it.

But it was that, or—disaster.

‘You’re right,’ I said to Fenella. ‘The important thing is that Farringale is saved, and if you’ve got a surefire way to do that then you should go ahead and do it.’ I was babbling a bit, not at my most eloquent by a long shot: but I was committed now, and rushed on. ‘I expect you’ll be wanting to take the griffins out of here, and we won’t oppose you, but as a gesture of good faith we would like to offer you the assistance of one of our best agents. She’s a world expert on the care and handling of magickal beasts, including mythical ones, and will assist you very creditably in keeping them safe and well.’

There, let her refuse that without losing face. She could hardly reject my offer, not without undermining her own claim to be “safe hands” for Farringale—and the griffins. I couldn’t see Miranda in the crowd, but knew she must be somewhere nearby. She’d stay as close to the beleaguered griffins as she could.

Jay was silent at my side, rigid with tension and (probably) anger. He wasn’t questioning me, he wouldn’t undermine me in front of Fenella. But he had, must have, grave doubts. I could only hope he—and Milady—would trust me.

I could only hope I deserved to be trusted.

Fenella took several long, terrible moments to consider my proposal, and I couldn’t breathe for fear that she would decline, this too—or that my own people would break, that Milady would publicly overrule me.

‘Very well,’ said Fenella, though the questioning look she cast at Milady showed how well she understood the limits of my authority.

I waited in fresh agonies for Milady’s response. Would she trust me this time? Could she? What I asked required a huge leap of faith, and I couldn’t explain why—

‘Stand down, Society,’ said Milady, softly, and I could almost have wept with relief—and panic.

We were committed. Now I had to make it work.

Miranda went past me, heading straight for the griffins, now she had official leave—directing at me a tense, questioning look en route. I met that gaze squarely, trying, probably futilely, to telegraph reams of thoughts with a mere glance: keep the griffins safe. Stay close to them. Tell us exactly where they’re being taken.

I knew she would perform the first two without question, but the latter? I was gambling on Miranda, too, on the chance that her confused loyalties had settled: that she was a Society agent again, through and through.

Nothing in her face told me whether or not I was right to put faith in her. Time would tell.

A great deal happened after that, and quickly. Milady mustered our people, and pulled them back; Fenella consolidated hers around the griffins, now surrendered into her dubious care.

Jay bristled with something: either rage or fear, I couldn’t tell. I followed him over to Milady, and Rob, and about thirty other Society agents all staring at me like I must be crazy. Or a traitor.

We fell all the way back, leaving the mews to Ancestria Magicka, and regrouped at a safe distance. Handsome townhouses rose on either side of me, looming in judgement, empty windows staring out of stuccoed facades.

‘Well?’ said Milady.

Jay, beside me, didn’t move, or barely so. But he’d stopped very close to me: his arm pressed against mine, a reassuring pressure. He might think I was crazy, but he was standing beside me anyway.

My courage rose.

‘The thing is,’ I began. ‘She’s right. Someone’s got to save Farringale. We can’t just leave it like this, and now we have the technology to—’

‘Our objective in coming,’ interjected Milady, severely, ‘Was to eject Ancestria Magicka, and reverse any damage they may have caused. That is all.’

‘I know, but we can’t do that without a fight, a very damaging one, which nobody wants, and we might be—we might be the ones driven out. But if the griffins aren’t here—’

Rob said, in a voice of controlled anger, ‘Ves, the griffins are not safe in Fenella Beaumont’s hands. She’ll never return them. You cannot conceive how priceless they are—’

‘I know, which is why I sent Miranda with them. She’ll see to their safety and make sure we know how to get them back, later. We didn’t come prepared to remove them, but they did, so it’s actually quite perfect. And in the meantime—’

‘Later? She could take them away and kill them and there would be no later—’

‘She won’t. Not when they’re so priceless. Please, Rob. I’m going to need your help.’

He eyed me with a look of frank disbelief, a boundless exasperation, and my heart sank.

Milady hadn’t relented either, and I couldn’t blame her. At last she said, ‘Ves. Are you certain you can do this?’

I was silent for a second, in consternation, the full enormity of what I proposed to do settling over me like a leaden cloak. Was I sure? Truly?

‘With the right help,’ I said, mustering my courage. ‘Yes, I think I can.’

Milady nodded once, and that was it. We were committed. I was committed.

Giddy gods. What had I done?

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 11

by

Jay and I were not to go with the main force. Ours was the role of scout: we were to whisk away on the Winds and get back to Farringale well ahead of Milady and the rest of the Society. We left Rob (apparently in field command) organising our colleagues into teams—or, one may as well say, units—and hurried back down into the cellar.

Indira emerged from the crowd as we pushed and apologised our way back to the cellar stairs. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting something into my hands; I caught it reflexively, felt rather than saw what it was. Smooth, jellyish spheres, cool to the touch: Orlando’s spellware.

‘Restoratives?’ I asked in hope.

She nodded once. ‘And sleep pearls. Don’t eat the red ones.’ With which words of wisdom, she vanished into the crowd.

I checked the contents of my palms: I had several red ones, and four green ones. I gave two of each to Jay, and pocketed the rest of the spheres in separate pockets: red ones left, green ones right.

Well, one green one; one of them went straight into my mouth. I blessed Indira’s forethought as it dissolved on my tongue, tasting of peaches. They’re fast-acting: within a minute or two, a lot of my fatigue had receded, and that delicious fizz of energy began racing through my veins. I was bouncing on my toes as we ran down to the henge, bursting with vigour.

‘If only it were possible to feel like this all the time,’ I mused, as Jay’s Winds of the Ways began to swirl through the room.

‘Exhausting prospect,’ Jay disagreed, absently. ‘You’d never sleep again.’

‘I’d never need to.’ Jay hadn’t taken his yet, that I had seen. I hoped he wasn’t going to pull a manly manoeuvre, and stubbornly go without. He had to be at least as fatigued as I was, after several trips through the Ways.

There followed a period of scrambling hurry, Jay too tense and focused for conversation. I chose not to distract him, for fear he might fly us into the side of a building, or smear us, pancake-like, up and down the unforgiving face of a cliff.

Once we emerged near Winchester, it was my turn: my job, to get us over the several miles to Farringale as fast as possible. Addie bore both of us proudly, and shot like an arrow through the balmy skies of southern England. The nearer we got, the greater my sense of urgency; all thoughts of Mandridore faded, and of Mab, replaced by a growing disquiet.

We’d been absent from Farringale for too much of the day. The sun remained high, but the afternoon was wearing away, and what had become of the griffins while we’d been mobilising? What of the rest of the city? For there must be some ultimate purpose behind the raiding of the library, and the subduing of the griffins—not to mention the theft and installation of at least one of Orlando’s regulators. What if we were too late? We had—I had—given away our presence, earlier. They knew their activities there were no longer a secret. If I were Fenella, I’d have accelerated my timeline to warp speed, and got out as fast as possible—before, for example, the Society and the Troll Court could form a devastating alliance (aided by several other magickal communities), and descend upon them in force.

We might arrive to find the city empty, of griffins and anything else of value. Our enemies gone, absconded with innumerable priceless and irreplaceable articles of troll culture and heritage.

Were I to give voice to my real fear, though, it was nothing of the sort. Why bother with the regulators, if the goal was only to rob the city? Why subdue the griffins, and then—rather than taking them out of the city, as I’d have expected—leave them in situ? They would never kill them: griffins were far too valuable. But if they weren’t stealing them, what were they doing?

They’d arrived in force—as we were doing. Was that in order to empty the city as fast as possible? Was it merely a question of bringing as many hands as possible, the better to thieve at speed?

Or had they brought so much manpower to Farringale because they were taking over the city?

Such unhappy thoughts kept me silent with mounting worry through the ten-mile flight, conducted at a speed that might, ordinarily, have set my guts churning with exhilarated terror. As we drew near to the bridge, my reverie came to an abrupt end, and with it, my long silence.

The site was no longer deserted. Stationed either side of the bridge, right there in the open, and very obviously armed with Wands, stood a pair of giants, the largest I’d ever seen. Each had a small unit of mixed troops with them: humans side-by-side with, to my very great dismay, several trolls.

‘Crap,’ I uttered eloquently. ‘That’s not—good.’

‘That,’ said Jay, ‘is very bad indeed.’

I pulled Addie up, halting our flight. ‘They’re entrenched. That’s a hostile takeover going on down there.’

Jay nodded. He understood the implications: if they were guarding the gate, and so openly, then they were declaring control of the city. This was a shameless, blatant attempt to seize Farringale entirely, and all its contents.

My heart sank to see trolls down there, supporting a cause so flagrantly founded upon greed. But perhaps it wasn’t so surprising, after all. The romance of Farringale could seduce the hardest heart; and since, as far as I knew, the Court at Mandridore had not, until today, publicised their own intentions in the direction of their lost enclave, it mightn’t have been difficult for Fenella to sway these to her side.

‘What do we do?’ I asked Jay, momentarily stymied. Milady’s plan to surge through the gate en masse, and attempt a quick overthrow of Ancestria Magicka’s forces, had suffered a check already. If Fenella had stationed so many on this side of the gate, I was willing to bet many more waited on the other side.

True, our numbers were still superior; hers would be scattered across Farringale, enacting the various parts of her plan. But still. A pitched battle at the gate was not what anyone wanted.

‘We need another way in,’ Jay decided. ‘And fast.’

‘There is no other way in,’ I protested. ‘That’s why we’ve always faffed around with the keys.’

‘There must be. Or there must have been, at one time. It’s an entire city. They can’t have managed with only one way in.’

‘You’re right, but it’s been closed for centuries. Sealed. Those old ways must be long gone, and even if they aren’t, how do you propose to find—and unseal—one of them in the next couple of hours?’

‘You’ve got the lyre.’

I had. I was unlikely to forget it, for the thing sang ceaselessly at me at the back of my mind; an alluring, enchanting melody, hard to resist. I was mentally postponing the moment when I would, inevitably, have to take up the beautiful, dangerous instrument, and play it again. The last time I’d done so, the results had been—explosive. Especially for me.

‘What do you imagine me able to do with it?’ I asked, cautiously.

‘I don’t know. But you’ve got the lyre, and you’ve got all of Merlin’s magick. If anybody can find a way in, and fast, it’s going to be you.’

In other words: this problem was all mine.

I felt a surge of panic, and suppressed it. No time for that. Farringale needed me; the Society needed me. Think, Ves.

Jay, a warm weight at my back, squeezed my waist. ‘You can do this,’ he said, sensitive, apparently, to the intense pressure my mind was trying to buckle under.

Addie was beginning to tire: unicorns aren’t made to hover. I turned her, and bade her fly a slow circle around the environs of Farringale. ‘Can you ward us from sight?’ I asked Jay. ‘I don’t want that lot to spot us, yet.’

‘Done,’ said Jay, and fell silent. I felt a little surge of magick from him, a charm woven around Addie and her riders: if we were visible at all to those below, we’d appear as a large bird.

One problem solved. I let Addie and Jay take over our direction: my mind shifted to the problem of entry.

Jay, broadly, was right: there must have been another way in, once upon a time. Any fae settlement or enclave typically had two ways of entry and egress: one between the enclave and the outside world, and one communicating with the wider magickal dell in which it was situated.

The bridge over the river Alre belonged to the former category. What of the latter? Was there a way into Farringale Dell, besides going through Farringale itself?

I fished in my trusty satchel, and withdrew the glorious, glittering lyre. Time was, they’d never have simply handed the thing to me: far too dangerous. Its deep, wild powers were wont to overwhelm me. That they had done so now—my mother, anyway, apparently on Milady’s orders—disquieted me rather. Was it that I was powerful enough now to bear it? Or was the threat to Farringale so dire, and so important, that I was considered an acceptable sacrifice?

No. My mother might throw me under the proverbial bus, if it suited her, but Milady wouldn’t. I had to trust her judgement—and my own strength. I was, after all, much mightier than I used to be.

I took a breath, and did my best to dismiss such an unhelpful spiral of fear. The lyre, cool in my hands, greeted me with a ripple of its airy strings, and a soft swell of its distinctive Yllanfalen magick. At least one of us was pleased to be working together again.

It wasn’t hard to lose myself in it. I began to play, one of the plaintive airs I’d once acquired from Ygranyllon: the melody didn’t matter, it was merely a conduit for the magick.

The effects were neither so intense, nor so terrifying, as when I’d played the lyre in the town of Vale. There, I’d been on another world: a more deeply magickal world than ours. Here, there were no such currents to sweep me away. This was our own plain, stolid Britain, a magickal backwater, and the threads of latent power I was able to perceive, even with the lyre, were meagre indeed.

I closed my eyes as I sank into the spells I was weaving; when I opened them again, an altered landscape lay spread before me. I saw, through Merlin’s eyes, a blanket of rolling green, dotted with knots of trees, and the clustered rooftops of towns. Laced through this verdure ran rivulets of ancient magick, latent and weak, half smothered by technology and time, but they held; oh, they held.

And there, away towards the Farringale gate: a savage pull of deep power, like the undertow of the ocean. Farringale lay tucked between the spaces in this landscape, on the other side of its fortified gate; but a city so ancient, so magick-drowned, could not help but exert its influence.

‘That way,’ I murmured to Addie, and it seemed to me that my voice echoed, throbbing with profound magick—painfully so. The currents shook me to my bones, and on some deep, frightening level I wanted to hurl myself into it—merge with it—drown in that sea of power. I would emerge—changed. Something other.

I gritted my teeth, and focused afresh on Farringale. On the dell I sought, and the way through. My mind skittered across that landscape of leylines, testing, probing, touching—there. There, a concentrated knot of magick, a thousand layers deep. An ancient cluster of charms, dormant now, shuttered like a window against the sun: but they had opened something, once, had presided over the passage of a thousand long-dead souls.

A gate—or what had once been a gate. It would be so again.

‘I’ve got it,’ I said.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 10

by

The meeting didn’t close so much as peter out, dissolving into ragged knots of people promising aid and plotting tactics.

Jay and I were called on to describe the situation in Farringale, and to express the Society’s intentions regarding its resolution. Once done, our part was largely finished. Alban excused us, and escorted us out.

‘Our regards to Milady,’ he told us outside the great meeting hall, evidently about to zip off somewhere.

‘You mean Mab,’ I said, spurred by some spirit of mischief.

An odd look crossed his handsome face: the sort that spoke of indecision. To dissemble, or not to dissemble?

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ I accused. ‘The Court’s known forever, probably.’

‘I did know about Milady’s identity,’ he admitted. ‘I was asked to keep it to myself.’

I fumed a bit, though silently. I could hardly blame Alban for keeping his sworn word, and it wasn’t his fault that Milady had never decided to trust us with the knowledge.

‘She had her reasons,’ he said, gently enough.

I sighed. Of course she did, and if I could put aside my own feelings for a moment, I could take a guess at hers. Knowing some part of the truth about Milady changed things, there was no question about that. I’d known her – sort of – for over a decade, and yet, now that I knew her to be Queen Mab, my impression of her was markedly different. She hadn’t ceased to be the solid, wise, reliable chief of our odd little organisation, exactly; she was still that. But she was something much larger, too.

And I hadn’t known. Hadn’t even guessed.

‘Everything’s changed so much lately,’ I said, a little plaintively. ‘I can’t keep up.’

‘Things have changed,’ he agreed. ‘But some things haven’t, and won’t.’ He winked at me, kissed my cheek and left, with a nod to Jay.

‘Which things aren’t changing?’ I asked Jay.

He took my hand, and squeezed it. ‘Most of the things that matter. A few of the things that do, but we’ll manage.’

‘I like that “we”,’ I offered, and leaned on him for a moment.

‘I’ll be here,’ he said. ‘That isn’t changing. Come on. Let’s go talk to Queen Mab.’

***

The atmosphere at Home proved unusually tense. Jay and I whisked our way back to the henge in the cellar, and stepped smartly up the stairs. We were suffering a fair degree of weariness at that point, after a long day of events; but our dreams (or mine, anyway) of a quiet moment with a cup of chocolate were instantly dashed.

I’d no sooner stepped off the stairs than several people dashed by, almost mowing me down as I emerged. One of them was Melissa, offering a distracted greeting as she bombed past, clearly on a mission. Halfway down the passage towards the kitchens—if I couldn’t have a peaceful hour in the first-floor common room, I could at least bother Magnus for a snack—I ran into Zareen, or the other way about.

‘Ves! Where’ve you been,’ she proclaimed, snagging me by the arm as she passed, and dragging me along with her. ‘Everything’s gone mad. We’re being mobilised. You’d think there was a war on, or something. If anybody knows what it’s all about, it’d be you. Is it true that Farringale’s under siege? They’re saying Milady’s some kind of fairy queen? I’m telling you, it’s mental.’

Preoccupied with doing my best to keep up with Zareen’s frantic pace, I managed no more than a few, vaguely assenting syllables.

They were enough. Zareen stopped dead. ‘No. It’s all true?’

‘More or less,’ I said. ‘I mean, Farringale isn’t exactly under siege, but it’s certainly under a kind of attack. And Milady—’

‘Queen Mab,’ Zareen interrupted. ‘That’s what they’re saying, but surely not, that’d be crazy.’

‘It’s true.’ I looked around for Jay, hoping for backup, but he was nowhere in sight. ‘You remember Baroness Tremayne?’ I caught her up on recent events as we walked—half ran, really—and wondered, idly, where she was taking me. I was too tired to care overmuch. Milady would want me soon enough, and until then, I might as well go along with Zareen.

I did wish Jay hadn’t vanished, though.

‘That explains a few things,’ Zareen said, when I’d finished. ‘Miranda’s holding some kind of council of war in the convention room. Everyone who’s ever so much as looked at a magickal beast is in there with her. And Rob’s got half the rest mobilising to mount what he’s calling “a firm defence” but it sounds more like it’s going to be the bluntly aggressive kind. Ornelle’s handing out Wands like she’s running a sweet shop, though I don’t suppose you need any of that sort of thing now—’

‘And where are we going?’ I managed to interject, slightly out of breath after two flights of stairs.

‘Indira said—’ Zareen began, but as she spoke a great bell sounded out of nowhere, tolling three times. It had the deep, sonorous roar of those massive cathedral bells, and it seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. Zareen and I both stopped dead, and clapped our hands over our ears—not that it did us much good. The tolling vibrated right through to my bones.

In the wake of the third strike of the bell, Milady’s voice rolled and echoed through the corridors of the House. ‘My dear Society. We find ourselves in a state of emergency, as you are no doubt all aware. I call upon each and every one of you to answer the call of Mandridore, and of Farringale. Those willing to participate in a mission of great urgency and likely danger shall assemble in the great hall immediately.’

‘Right.’ Zareen changed course, heading for the hall, and I dashed after her. We were going—going now, right now, there would be no more time to prepare. So great was the confusion of my thoughts that I scarcely blinked when my mother appeared around a corner, heading our way, and fell into step beside me.

‘Cordelia. Good. Here.’ She thrust something at me, which I absently took. Only when my fingers closed around the cool, smooth metal of the thing, and felt its latent buzz of magick, did I understand. She’d brought the moonsilver lyre, the lyre of Ygranyllon, her kingdom. Milady must have requested it: one of those moments of prescience she seemed to have, a hunch that we’d need it.

‘Mum?’ I said, fuzzily. The lyre was singing to me already, all the deep magick woven into its ancient frame calling to all the magick woven into mine. ‘What are you doing here?’

She looked at me like I was a complete idiot, and perhaps I was at that moment. ‘I’ve brought that,’ she replied, indicating the lyre I was clutching.

‘Yes, but—you’re the—you could have sent someone else?’

‘Could’ve,’ she allowed. ‘But I’m going with you.’

‘Oh.’ Several more questions blossomed in my mind in response—my mother didn’t often volunteer herself to clean up other people’s messes; what in the world was she doing involving herself with this one?—but I didn’t have chance to ask them. We were arriving at the hall, which was bristling with far too many people, and more were arriving every moment. I caught a glimpse of Jay’s face, and Indira’s, and felt reassured.

The double doors were open, affording me a glimpse of the green and blue spring day beyond. Several large vehicles waited outside, waiting to convey our forces south.

Our forces. It hadn’t seemed real, listening to Zareen babble about mass mobilisation of the entire Society. But now I was here, in the thick of it, it felt terribly real. At last, after considerable and varied forms of provocation, Milady had declared a kind of war on Ancestria Magicka. For the crime of looting the priceless heritage of Farringale, they were going to pay.

Milady’s voice rolled over the assembled crowd, loud enough to drown out the tense, excited chatter. ‘Quiet, please,’ she said, sternly, and the noise died instantly. ‘For those unaware: Ancestria Magicka, an organisation with which we have long endured an uneasy relationship, has violated the sovereign borders of the city of Farringale and committed several acts of theft and vandalism against it. This is unacceptable.

‘The Troll Court of Mandridore has begged our aid in securing the city, and expelling the intruders. You will all have received instructions: follow them. We are not coming home until Farringale is restored to peace and sovereignty.’

‘We?’ I ventured, and heard the question echoed around me by several other voices.

‘We,’ repeated Milady, ringingly, and then added, in a softer tone: ‘I am coming with you.’

‘I must have misheard,’ I said to Zareen. ‘She can’t have said—’

‘She did.’ Zareen pointed. ‘She’s here.’

I couldn’t see what she meant, at first: only a wall of people crowded near the doors, Jay among them. But a space was clearing there, people drawing back, away from something I couldn’t see.

No. Away from someone. I don’t know if Milady arranged it herself, or someone else did, but a shaft of golden light beamed down from somewhere above, illuminating the diminutive—very diminutive—form of a person I’d never seen before.

She stood a foot tall, if that. In fact, she hovered, for at her back fluttered a pair of gossamer wings, a blur of pale colour and light. Her hair was a white cloud about her face; that face both aged and ageless, for she was not, could never have been human.

That, at least, did not surprise me. I had long imagined her as, possibly, troll; the hints of her connections with the Troll Courts, and with Farringale, had been plentiful. But this, I could never have guessed.

Understanding dawned, like a brick to the face. ‘Giddy gods,’ I breathed. ‘She’s Mab.’ Not Mab in the same way that I was Merlin—a modern avatar of an ancient power. She was older, far older, than I could ever have suspected, for she was Mab herself, the Mab of legend and of myth.

She’d spoken, once, of feelings which had sent her into the heart of our House for comfort, as I had done: I myself once spent two days complete in this very room, quite alone. She had been offered her current role, she’d said, and did not know whether to accept.

I, full of my own concerns, had assumed she had meant a role like mine: a role like Merlin. That she was an archetype, like me, and the Baroness Tremayne. But she’d never confirmed that.

She had been speaking of her role as Milady. As the Society’s leader. Her other role—Mab—was no role at all: just her.

‘Giddy gods,’ I managed, near prostrated with awe. No wonder she had so many connections—so much rare knowledge—so many secrets. ‘Zar. Am I dreaming?’

‘We all are,’ she answered. ‘We’ve been dreaming her dream for years. We’re a part of it.’

Milady, with effortless stage presence, held her pose long enough for the rising chatter to peak, and die away again. Then she said, with a soft smile on her ageless face: ‘Are we ready, then? Shall we go?’

We were; we went. Our rag-tag band of scholars, scientists, inventors, librarians, and magicians, led by mythical Mab, filed en masse out of the safe world of our beloved Home, and off to something horribly like war.

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 7

by

The last time I’d experienced one of Farringale’s magickal surges, the effects had been entertaining as much as they’d been alarming. Indira had flown, quite literally, like a bird. Rob had conjured creatures of scintillating light out of the tip of his Lapis Wand, and sent them soaring about the library. I’d turned myself into a pancake. The fact that we’d all been so totally out of control of ourselves hadn’t been great, with hindsight, but none of us had been inclined to do anything dangerous.

This, though. This was something else.

My lovely, flourishing trees, books hanging from their branches like streamers, roots tearing out of the earth with appalling rumbling, crashing, cracking sounds—those trees were angry.

‘Oh,’ I said numbly, spellbound with horror. I watched as several trees mustered themselves into formation and—eight thousand books screaming in cacophonous concert—ran at the hapless looters.

Not that so many of the latter had stuck around for it. About half had left the library after my impromptu intervention, probably to seek advice, and most of the rest had sensibly legged it the moment the first tree had torn itself loose.

George Mercer was among the foolhardy souls who remained. For a split second, I felt glad—let him pay for his many offences, a good skewering wouldn’t be undeserved—but I thought better of it almost immediately.

I was responsible for this.  If I hadn’t interfered, there might have been no surge happening at all; and if there had, there’d have been no ornery oaks on the warpath, feeling a wee bit bitter about being hacked down and turned into shelves. I didn’t want to be the reason somebody died today.

An enraged oak thundered past far too close—Jay hauled me out of the way, thankfully before we could establish whether or not their fury extended all the way through the echoes of memory and time. I felt a strong whoosh of air as it passed; shock had me clinging, just for a moment, to Jay.

‘Thanks,’ I gasped, and took off running.

What I was planning to do, I couldn’t have said. I couldn’t hear Mauf anymore, not over the tumult of vituperative voices, but his indignant presence at my side was an extra spur as I shot into the heart of the library, dodging warring trees and fleeing agents of Ancestria Magicka. At least I had thoroughly disrupted their plundering party: nobody would be trying to touch those books anymore.

I ran through chambers that had once held thousands of books, several somnolent birch or elm or ash trees still slumbering in the corners. I was making for the room we’d come to think of as the museum: an unfathomably tall-ceilinged space filled with artefacts behind glass, the lost relics of a vanished Troll Court. There would be no trees in there, most likely, for there hadn’t been any bookcases: only starstone and glass.

I found it intact, and—relatively—peaceful. The cacophony of disaster went on beyond the rounded archways, all too audible; I winced at a particularly devastating crash. Small hope that the books weren’t coming to collective, and terrible, grief: my fault, too.

‘Mauf,’ I gasped, dropping to the floor, and hauling him out of my satchel.

‘I cannot sufficiently express the extent of my disappointment,’ shouted the book, and snapped—actually snapped—at my fingers.

‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. I intended none of this to happen, and you’ve got to help me stop it.’

‘It cannot be stopped!’ shrieked Mauf, rather hysterically. ‘These blundersome, quarrelsome creatures are beyond anyone’s control.’ He began, shockingly, to sob. ‘My books. My poor, poor books…’

‘Never mind the books right now,’ I snapped back. ‘We’ll mend them. Later. We need to focus on the trees.’ I thumped the heavy weight of him smartly against the floor: the equivalent of a ringing slap. ‘Focus, Mauf. I need your help here.’

The wrenching sobs stopped, to my relief. A long moment’s silence followed, before he said, much more coolly, ‘Logic suggests that, when the surging of magick in these environs should ebb, then the trees will settle.’

‘It does suggest that,’ I agreed, ‘but that may be some time in happening.’

‘Then the best thing to do would be to turn them back into bookcases—’ His words cut off as I abruptly slammed his covers closed again, struck with a piece of genius I hadn’t, in the end, needed Mauf for.

‘I could,’ I answered him rapidly, ‘I think. Maybe. But that would just put us right back where we were, wouldn’t it? This is Ancestria Magicka we’re dealing with. They aren’t going to slink away like whipped dogs just because a couple of trees tried to butcher them like pigs. The moment the trees are gone, the shelves are back, and the books are accessible, they’ll be out the door with the lot.’

Mauf uttered something, rather muffled. ‘—fear you are contemplating further madness—entreat you to see reason—’

‘You’re quite right,’ I told him, stuffing him back into my satchel. ‘I am contemplating madness.’ Possibly the magick was getting to my brain by then, for I was far too pleased with myself, grinning like an idiot, and nowhere near as sensible of the risks as I should have been.

I laid my palms against the buzzing starstone floor, felt the ripples and waves of burgeoning magick shocking the atmosphere. It was easy, in that environment: barely cost me a thought.

Poor Jay came haring into the museum just an instant too late. I was already growing taller—much, much taller—my trunk thickening, arms and tendrils of hair lengthening into lithe, supple boughs. My eaves bristled with a glittering crop of silver leaves, and as I shook myself a spray of purple fruits flew out and splattered across the walls.

‘VES!’ Jay bawled at me from a long way below. ‘You can’t do this—come back from there, this is insane, what are you thinking—’

I heard no more, for I picked up my winding roots and stomped off, causing only a little damage to an unoffending wall in the process.

I’d already noticed that these trees seemed to possess the capacity to order themselves. They’d formed up like a battalion, attacked in concert—and that meant they could be lead.

By, for example, me.

‘FORM. UP,’ I roared, though it wasn’t words that reached them. I rumbled and crashed in a cacophony of bough and branch, a roar of spraying earth and shaken, shattering leaves: and they heard.

I’d popped out from between the echoes, I distantly realised—burst out of it, a shattering tide of magick too vast to be contained—swollen with Farringale’s own disordered currents, burgeoning into an unstoppable wave.

Nobody stopped me. Nobody could have, in that moment. I stomped out of the wreck of the library and away down the bright white boulevard, a pied piper of the forest, with a legion of irate trees stamping along in my wake.

What tales they might tell of this in days to come: the thought came to me dimly, prompted by the awed stares—nay, flabbergasted—I was receiving from Ancestria Magicka’s rotten agents as we passed (just before they scurried out of my path, like rats deserting the proverbial sinking ship).

The legend of Farringale, already a place of myth, story and song, had just grown a little larger and more improbable. I smiled to think of it, somewhere beneath leaf and bark, for as strange a story as they’d tell of this day, the truth was stranger still.

We were out of Farringale and halfway to Winchester before I faltered, paused, and, ultimately, stopped. Fields surrounded us, rippling with burgeoning wheat, or barley, perhaps: a verdant blanket of growth, dotted with copses of my fellow oaks and birches and yews. I turned about, spirits sinking with the velocity of a brick turfed off a tall building.

‘Um,’ I uttered in a rustle of silverish leaves. ‘Does anybody know the way to Mandridore?’

***

The day may yet come when I’ll be so used to Ves’s antics as to feel no surprise, however mad her methodology.

That day is a ways off, I reckon.

Yelling sense at Ves as she turns herself into a gods-forsaken tree and strides away: why did I imagine that would work? Off she went regardless, tossing her leafy canopy in a maddeningly Ves-like gesture despite the arboreal format and for a painfully long minute, Rob and I were left in frozen silence.

Rob permitted himself an audible sigh.

‘What’s interesting is,’ I said at length, ‘she seems to have taken most of the magick with her.’ The magickal surge that had been steadily building was ebbing away again, and perhaps that wasn’t so surprising. I couldn’t even dimly imagine the power it must have taken Ves to perform those several improbable feats in such quick succession.

‘She’s going to need help,’ said Rob.

I blinked, and straightened. Good point. Where in the name of her giddy gods did she imagine she was going with the library of Farringale? ‘Perhaps she can, I don’t know—’ I spread my hands in a hopeful gesture—‘Merlin her way to somewhere?’

Rob just looked at me.

‘Right. No, you’re right.’ Ves might be magickal beyond sense, marvellous beyond reason, and impossibly, dazzlingly competent, but she was still Ves. She’d be lost inside of half an hour.

I succumbed to a momentary burst of panic. I wanted to dash after her instantly—she needed me—but I couldn’t just abandon Farringale. Ves herself would kill me if we bombed out of there without completing the mission.

We’d have to get a move on.

‘Regulators first,’ I said. ‘Then Ves.’

‘Thought,’ said Rob. ‘Griffins.’

I nodded. The notable lack of them as we’d come in had struck me forcibly, only to be swept out of my mind by the chaos that had immediately ensued. There were several that lived atop Mount Farringale, not far beyond the borders of the city. They’d violently opposed our entry, the first time we’d stepped through the portal. Why hadn’t they dealt with Ancestria Magicka?

‘Oh no,’ said I, struck by a horrible thought. ‘You don’t suppose they used the regulators—?’

I couldn’t finish the thought in any detail: just what might they have used the regulators to do as regarded the griffins? Something, anyway: the likelihood that those regulators were here and the griffins unaccountably missing, purely by coincidence, was slim. They had to be related.

Rob nodded grimly. ‘Baroness? Do you know what’s become of the griffins?’

A long pause followed, and I began to fear we’d lost her somewhere. But then she spoke: ‘One is no more; two are captured. The rest bide yet in Farringale, but they are ensorcelled.’

I wished, fleetingly, that we had brought Indira after all: my sister would know at once how they had used Orlando’s regulators to ensorcel—or capture, or kill—a griffin. ‘Where are they?’ I asked.

‘Come,’ she said briefly, and the shadowed shape of her flickered into view, limned in pallid light. She led us away from the library, through streets largely deserted, now; wherever Ancestria Magicka had gone, their attempts to divest the city of its knowledge had been permanently foiled, to Ves’s credit.

We didn’t need to go far. A few minutes’ slinking around shadowed corners brought us to a kind of stables, or mews: rows of tall, handsome stone buildings arrayed around a square courtyard, grand in both size and style. Once upon a time, horses and perhaps even unicorns had resided here, I supposed, along with those who cared for them.

The stalls stood empty, as far as I could see, but the courtyard bustled with activity.

Three griffins crouched there, bound in a strange kind of lassitude: not asleep, quite, but fuddled, dreaming. So secure was their confinement that they were not even bound, save by a shackle chained around one furred leg, and attached to the stone walls.

Several people lingered near them, only a little wary of demeanour: with a wave of fury I recognised Fenella Beaumont. She was playing overseer, three of her henchmen engaged in the operation of one of Orlando’s regulators: I could feel the odd pulse of its magick thrumming through the floor.

It took me a moment longer to realise what else was so wrong with this scene. The griffins, hunched in their demi-slumber, lay inert: not so much as a flicker of lightning wreathed those handsome, feathered forms. That was what the regulators had done; of course it was. The griffins were the magickal heart of Farringale, the source—we surmised—of its deep, wild magick, and the regulators had—well—regulated them.

Helped along, doubtless, by Ancestria Magicka, with the specific aim of subduing them.

I took a long, slow breath, too consumed with fury to speak—at least for a moment.

‘Well,’ I said at last. ‘It’s maybe a good thing Ves isn’t here to see this.’

Episode 12

The Fate of Farringale: 3

by

I know this may seem hard to believe but I am actually the very soul of discretion, most of the time.

Not that my new status as the current Merlin is a secret, exactly. But I haven’t broadcast it to the far corners of the earth (or, at least, the Society), and neither have my nearest and dearest. I’d like to hang on to my identity, I suppose: I’m Ves, most of all.

That being so, I had no intention of instantly spreading the news of Milady’s secret identity all through the House (or Baroness Tremayne’s, either). In fact, I was incredibly restrained; I told absolutely no one at all.

Well: no one except for Val, anyway. Sort of.

ALERT, read the text I sent her the second I was at liberty. Code reddest of RED: urgent information requisition. What have you got on Morgan le Fay and Queen Mab?

Note that I didn’t say why I was asking. I felt quite proud of myself.

OH! Came Val’s response. Been wondering about that for the LONGEST time.

SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED.

Stand by: information overload incoming.

I didn’t ask her which suspicions, or to whom they pertained. I didn’t dare.

So much for subtlety.

Morgan le Fay. Said to be one of the most powerful enchantresses in British history. Connections to the supposed King Arthur, etc. Unlike the aforementioned probably did exist in some form—known archetype but hasn’t been heard of in ages and I mean literal ages, Ves.

Trust Val to text in words of several syllables.

Known or at least reputed powers: shape-shifting, especially into animal forms. Also illusions, famously castles-in-the-air or like mirages.

I filed those thoughts away: maybe there’d be something we could use.

Mab: info sparse, Val went on. Famously mentioned in Shakespeare; facility with dreams implied; once monarch of a now defunct faerie kingdom.

Mention in same bracket with Morgan suggests subjects related?? Never heard of Mab as an archetype but could be. Would explain a lot.

I hastily wrote back. I don’t know what you mean nothing is explained I’m explaining nothing.

Lol, said Val, most uncharacteristically. I took this unusual utterance to be expressive of profound sarcasm.

Nothing to see here, move along, I returned, and put my phone away before I could compromise myself—or Milady—any further.

I’m practiced at packing light and packing fast, and these days—to Ornelle’s relief—I don’t tend to need much from Stores. I was ready to go in under an hour, buzzing with energy and alarm, and with nothing to do but wait for go time.

I went out to the Glade.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but nothing soothes the spirit like a tranquil hour or two in a magickal grove littered with unicorns. Extra points for being One with the Horn Squad yourself. I was feeling rattled when I came in, head all awhirl, nerves on highest alert; not the ideal state in which to undertake a top secret mission of the greatest importance. I needed the prismatic calm of a mountain lake, especially if I was going to have to go in there and Merlin all over the place. People expect more from the living embodiment of the most famous wizard in Britain than they do from a mere, common-or-garden Ves (including me).

An hour or so of sweet, juicy grass, dulcet spring sunshine, and (inevitably) fragrant roses and I more or less had it. Serene, smooth waters, fathomlessly blue. Doves cooing peacefully as rose-stained dawn breaks over a softly rippling meadow. The unearthly tones of panpipes at—

‘VES!’

My head shot up, several half-chewed stems of grass falling out of my gaping jaw. That was—that was not Jay, that was another male voice, a familiar one—I was off at a gallop before I’d even finished the thought, and so much for the mountain lake.

Baron Alban stood at the mouth of my sacred glade, inflating his lungs in preparation for another earth-shattering bellow. I ran at him full-tilt and planted my nose into his massive chest, almost knocking him over (and with a person of Alban’s stature this is no mean feat).

‘Oof,’ declared he, grabbing my face. He planted a smacking kiss on my nose, and glowered at me: a confusing combination. ‘I’m here to deliver a key,’ he informed me as I went questing through the pockets of his jacket (I could smell baked goods somewhere in there, I swear). ‘Which means I’m here to dispatch you on a mission of probable danger and I can’t go with you.’

Alban had been part of our first, only minorly disastrous mission to Farringale. It could have been catastrophic: Alban could have fallen prey to the ortherex, the malignant creatures infesting the depths of Farringale (and several other Troll enclaves). They were deadly; they’d have eaten Alban alive, if we had been unlucky.

We wouldn’t—couldn’t—risk that again.

‘I wish you could come with us, too,’ I informed him, though little of it emerged past my equine teeth.

Alban patted my neck. ‘I would understand you better if you were Ves-shaped. Just saying.’

I felt a curious reluctance to step out of my glade, my sanctuary. Once I did, I was committed—off to Farringale, and whatever fresh disaster awaited us there. Off to wield some of the most ancient and powerful magick in the country, in one of the most ancient and powerful magickal courts in the country, and try desperately not to mess it all up.

Courage, Ves.

I took a deep, whinnying breath, and stepped over the invisible threshold of the glade. The moment I did so, the transformation began: within a few shuddering, uncomfortable seconds I was myself again, with arms as well as legs, and fabulous hair.

The hug I immediately received was, I felt, recompense enough. It was engulfing.

‘Mmf,’ I said against Alban’s grey silk shirt.

‘Sorry.’ He eased the pressure of his massive arms, and I could breathe again.

‘It may sound shockingly ungrateful,’ I told him, ‘but I wish just a little bit that I’d got Morgan’s magick rather than Merlin’s. The Baroness showed up as a griffin, Alban. A griffin! And flashed out of it again easy as pie. Imagine that.’

‘Ves, two minutes ago you were an actual unicorn. Four legs, horn, everything.’

‘I know. Exactly. That only happens when I step into the glade, and fades again as soon as I step out. And I’m only ever a unicorn. I have no control over it.’ I indulged myself in a few moments of green-eyed envy, picturing myself soaring over the land upon the wings of a creature of legend.

‘Surely you’ve accomplished something equally marvellous as Merlin?’ said Alban, proving himself as superb a diplomat as ever.

‘This morning I turned myself into a chair,’ I concurred. ‘That’s not nothing.’

‘A chair.’ Alban twinkled at me, wordlessly.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I admitted. ‘I haven’t really got the hang of this Merlin thing.’ Merlin’s magick seemed to be of the land: the magick of tree and stone, of air and water, and the vastness of it appalled me almost as much as the poeticism of it enchanted me. I probably needed a solid decade of practice before I could call myself a creditable Merlin—if then.

‘You’ll be marvellous,’ Alban replied, apparently reading my thoughts.

I put away my anxious face, replacing it with a set expression of firm resolve. ‘Marvellous or not, I’ve got to go.’

He nodded, and dug a hand into a pocket in his trousers. The keys, when he handed them to me, were blissfully cool against my hot fingers: thoughts of that serene lake returned. They were gold and bronze, exquisitely worked, and set with rubies and emeralds: the fanciest of fancy. Typical of the Troll Court. ‘I half expected to hear they’d been stolen,’ I told Alban, tracing a finger over a glimmering ruby.

‘I don’t know how these intruders got into Farringale, but it wasn’t with the keys,’ Alban confirmed.

I sighed, and carefully vanished the keys into an air-pocket: Indira’s trick. It’d taken me much longer to master it than I liked to admit, and I might never have been able to do it at all without Merlin’s magick. ‘I’ll take the best care of them,’ I said.

‘And of yourself, too, please.’

I nodded. ‘Always. All right, here I go.’ I dropped a hasty kiss on Alban’s cheek, flashed a beaming, confident smile, and took off at a run for the House.

***

Jay and Rob were already waiting for me. I found the pair of them in the cellar, pacing in circles around the Way-henge House keeps for our resident Waymaster’s particular use. Jay displayed a key for me the moment I stepped in: wrought silver and gleaming sapphire-blue: the third key we needed to open the gate into Farringale, the one House has in its keeping.

‘I’ve got the other two,’ I told him. ‘Alban just brought them.’

Jay nodded. He was tense and terse, barely speaking: I was oddly reassured to learn that it wasn’t just me feeling the pressure.

Rob, though, smiled at me. I was even more reassured by his presence, and it’s partly because he’s a big, visibly capable man, the exact sort you’d like to have around if there’s trouble in the offing. But he’s also the collected type, radiating calm and cool, and I breathed a little easier in consequence. ‘All set?’ he asked me.

I patted my satchel. It wasn’t as burstingly full as it used to be, my need for paraphernalia being somewhat diminished. But it held an article of supreme importance: Gallimaufry, or Mauf, our semi-sentient encyclopaedia of everything. We had acquired the book from Farringale in the first place (or its predecessor: Mauf was a clever copy). I didn’t know for sure that we would need his extraordinary reserves of knowledge, but it never hurts to have a know-it-all along, now does it? ‘I’ve got two magickal keys and one remarkably well-mannered tome,’ I informed Rob. ‘All set.’

‘Then we’re going,’ said Jay, in a tone one doesn’t argue with. But he squeezed my fingers when I took his hand, a note of affection I very much welcomed.

‘Wait, we’re forgetting Baroness Tremayne,’ I pointed out.

Jay shook his head. ‘She’s already gone back. Griffin shape. She’s waiting for us.’

Right. Great. I stayed quiet as he mustered the Winds of the Ways: he’s well practiced at it by now, but it seems a delicate process. A strong breeze circled about the henge, tossing my hair; the world began to turn around me; I shut my eyes.

A vast, slightly sickening whoosh, and we were gone.

Episode 11

Dancing and Disaster: 19

by

My errand was of a peculiar nature. It related to employing my Merlin magick at Home, in ways that hadn’t occurred to me to do before. Ophelia had only loaned me that power, but she had made no move to take it back, yet. We’d agreed on a week, so I had time.

And I had questions. Lots of them. I’d had questions ever since I had joined the Society, of course; everyone did. But I’d learned a lot since then, and I finally had an idea about the nature of our Home and how it worked.

And that being so, I was curious, so I had to test it. Right? Who could possibly resist temptation like that?

It couldn’t be done just anywhere, though. I made my way, slowly and uncertainly, through the winding corridors of our beloved and enormous House, and after wrong turns aplenty (even superpowered, I still have to be me), I found myself at the door to House’s favourite room.

I knocked.

‘Dear House. I know it is a trifle rude to arrive uninvited and unannounced, but this is important. Would you be so kind as to let me in?’

Silence.

Then, a click. The door had unlocked.

I turned the handle, and went in.

The room stood quiet and empty. I closed the door behind me, and took a seat on one of the upholstered ivory chairs. A fire flared to life in the grate, and a comforting warmth began to permeate the October chill in the air.

I sat in comfortable silence for a while, enjoying the ambience of the parlour. The grandfather clock tick-tocked to itself in the corner, a peaceful sound, and I began to relax.

The portrait of the troll lady in court dress was still there, above the chair Emellana had lately occupied. I studied it more closely than I’d had occasion to do before. She was of Emellana’s age, I judged: fairly elderly, but still spry. Her gown was an extravagant blue velvet creation, seventeenth-century in style, with a wealth of lace and ruffles and jewels. She was a court lady, no doubt about it. But: which court?

I looked around at the rest of the paintings. There were five more: two depicting figures in seventeenth-century dress, one male, black and Yllanfalen, one female, white and human. Another showed a young man with dark brown skin wearing the plain garb of an eighteenth-century tradesman. The final two depicted a little girl in a plain white Edwardian dress, and an elderly, blue-eyed lady in an eighteen-thirties day dress and sun bonnet.

The child’s portrait didn’t fit my theory, but the rest just might. My gaze lingered in particular on the older lady in the sun bonnet.

I closed my eyes. Time to listen; time to feel. I’d connected with the odd, old house at Silvessen in deeper ways than I’d ever connected with anything before; could I do the same at Home?

I sat there enveloped in near silence, breathing deeply, listening to every slight sound that reached my senses. The tick, tick of the clock. The soft crackle of flames in the hearth. I breathed in the dust of hundreds of years with every inhalation; I felt the softness of carpet under my feet and silk under my hands, a cold wind in my eaves, the chatter of birds sheltering from the weather somewhere under my roof. A comfortable babble of voices, the warmth of many bodies gathered under my embrace. The odd cocktail of smells from the kitchens, from the lab, from the surrounding woods and fields.

A knock came softly from somewhere; a door opened in response, and closed again. Not the parlour. Somewhere farther off.

I gathered my strength, and pushed gently against the door that had just closed.

It opened again.

‘Sorry,’ I gasped, surprised, and retreated, slamming the door behind myself again.

There was a pause.

‘Hello?’ I said into the silence.

I felt a palpable surprise exceeding even my own. Then a questing, curious touch on my senses, all my senses: they were exploring me.

‘I come in peace,’ I offered. ‘I’m just— interested. In who you are.’

An answer came, finally. Merlin, uttered a voice in the depths of my mind. It has been a long time.

‘I’m only a new Merlin,’ I explained. ‘Brand new. I’ve been here at the Society for a while, though.’

We know you, Cordelia Vesper.

We. That tallied with my suspicions.

I felt a rising excitement, and had to take a breath. Focus, Ves. Don’t get overexcited and ruin everything. ‘May I know who I am addressing? Are these your portraits?’

The faces we once wore are here commemorated, answered the voice. They are but echoes, now.

‘Memories,’ I supplied.

Yes.

Time for the million-pound question.

‘You recognise me as Merlin. Is that because you are archetypes, too?’

A fresh wave of surprise. Not now, came the answer.

‘Former archetypes. And when you passed on the role, and passed away, you chose to remain here.’

Not all of us chose to remain. Some journeyed on.

I felt thrilled, the delight you get from solving a fiendishly difficult puzzle. For more than a decade, I’d wondered how House came to be so — animated. Everyone had. And now I finally had something like an answer.

The spirits of former archetypes resided here. They were haunting the House, after a fashion; the way the Greyer sisters had haunted their cottage after death, and the way the Yllanfalen women of Silvessen haunted the craggy old house on the edge of the town. Except, not like that. They didn’t linger out of bitterness and rage, and they hadn’t been enslaved. They were here because they had loved the House in life, and they chose to remain with it after death.

I thought of the painting of Cicily Werewode, the way some part of her spirit was bound into it. Probably some part of those arts was employed here, too. The people depicted were dead, and yet they weren’t; they lived on, their consciousness laced through canvas and oils, through brick and stone and tile. Bound to the House, and to each other, but bound in love, not hatred.

‘Greetings,’ I said brightly. ‘It’s an honour to meet you. Which archetype did you embody, if I may ask? Were you all the same archetype, at different times? Or different ones? Is it the same one Milady currently embodies?’

Too many questions. I knew it as I uttered them, but they poured out of me anyway. I was just so interested, and Milady was so maddeningly vague.

I felt a flicker of something like amusement. More than just a flicker. A wave of it, coming from everywhere at once.

So much curiosity, said a voice, and it felt like a different person speaking. An enquiring mind.

I hoped I wasn’t imagining the approval that came with the statement.

‘I have more,’ I offered. ‘Lots more.’

There followed a pause. Were they thinking? Don’t think, I silently pleaded. Just answer!

The next voice, though, was very recognisable to me. It sliced through my thoughts with enough force to give me a blinding headache. Ves. Leave this alone.

Milady.

Curses.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly, and not altogether sincerely. ‘Can’t I ask?’

It is rude to pry, came Milady’s somewhat flabbergasting answer. Kindly remember your manners.

My manners?

I ground my teeth in silent frustration. I could see her point, more than I liked. I was poking and prying, trying to find my way through to secrets about Milady’s identity which she hadn’t chosen to share. I did not have that right.

Even so, it was maddeningly frustrating to have to leave it alone and back away. I was so close to solving the mystery!

I know, Ves, said Milady. It is very disappointing. But I remain unmoved.

I sighed, and relinquished the argument. I withdrew my senses from the dear old House, returning to the Ves I’d left behind: a pint-sized human with fabulous hair, slumped in an ivory silken chair. My limbs had gone dead in my absence; I shook life back into them, and took some care as I stood up.

I made a curtsey, to Milady and also to the various souls inhabiting the House. ‘Thank you for your time,’ I said, scrupulously polite. ‘I’ll show myself out.’

The door didn’t quite slam shut behind me, but it did lock in a manner I’d term decisive.

I wouldn’t be getting back into House’s favourite room any time soon.

***

My last errand for the day was of a less pleasant nature. As if bearing Milady’s disapproval (twice over) wasn’t enough, I was going to have to put up with my mother’s, too.

Oh well. I’d dropped myself in it, and had nobody else to blame.

I trailed back to my room, and picked up my phone.

Taking a deep breath, I dialled my mother’s number.

She picked up after the first ring, taking me by surprise. Normally she ignores my calls. ‘Cordelia. What do you want?’

‘Can’t I be calling just to say hel—’

‘Don’t bother. Get on with it.’

‘Right. Fair cop. I’ve got a problem.’

‘And?’

‘Well, to be accurate I’ve created a problem.’

‘And now you’re making it my problem.’

‘Sort of. A little bit. Are you disposed to help me or not?’

‘Depends what it is.’

So I launched into the Tale of the Dance Battle yet again, though I offered Mother a somewhat curtailed version.

Despite this, the silence when I’d finished was liberally flavoured with incredulity.

‘Yes, I know, I’m a complete screw-up,’ I said, before she could have a chance to say it herself.

‘Did it work?’

‘Well, it did. More or less.’

‘Then it wasn’t a screw-up, was it?’

‘Are you being supportive? Because I’m not sure I can take any more surprises today.’

‘Did we get to the part where you tell me what you want yet?’

‘Right. So Silvessen was probably an Yllanfalen town, and if we’re going to rebuild it sensitively then we need Yllanfalen aid.’

‘That can probably be arranged.’

‘And materials. Lots of those.’

That gave her pause. ‘I can’t just spirit up sufficient building materials to reconstruct an entire town, Ves.’

‘I know, but I’m stuck, so whatever you’ve got I’ll take.’

‘Noted. Oh, call your father.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because it’s his birthday tomorrow.’

‘Right. I know stuff like that, of course, because I’ve had a long and rewarding relationship with him up until now.’

‘Also, he’s a stonemason.’

‘He’s what?’

‘Did you not hear me, or are you just being difficult?’

A stonemason. Whose birthday was tomorrow. I realised afresh how little I knew about my father. ‘I don’t have his number,’ I said.

‘I’ll send it. Tell him I told him to help you.’

‘Will that work?’

‘It will if he knows what’s good for him.’

She hung up.

A moment later, my phone buzzed with a message. Dad’s number unfurled across my screen.

All of this was rather unexpected. I took my time over saving his number to my contacts, and adding his name. Thomas Goldwell. Tom.

I was procrastinating, probably because I was nervous. He hadn’t seemed super pleased to learn of my existence before, and though I had given him my number the one time I’d met him, he had yet to call me.

That suggested he didn’t want anything to do with me, didn’t it?

Still. I wasn’t calling him to propose a happy family gathering. I was calling him to engage his professional services for Silvessen. Mostly.

The phone rang several times before he answered. ‘Hello?’

I swallowed a flutter of nerves, and pasted on a smile. ‘Hi. Thomas Goldwell? Tom? This is Cordelia Vesper. You might not remember me—’

‘Of course I do,’ he interrupted. ‘Adult women claiming a near relationship with me don’t show up every week.’

‘Right. Well, Dad, I have to tell you happy birthday. For tomorrow. Mum said so.’

‘Thank you.’

That seemed to be it, so I went on. ‘Also, I hear you’re a stonemason.’

‘I don’t practise the trade much any more, but I do have that skillset, yes.’

‘Okay. Then I’ve got a job for you.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s important. We’re restoring an Yllanfalen town, and we need people with the right skills and insight.’

‘Interesting, but I’m busy.’

‘Also, Mum said you have to help me.’

‘She said what?’

‘I’ll quote: “Tell him I told him to help you, if he knows what’s good for him.” Those exact words.’

He might have sighed, or there might have been a passing gust of wind, I couldn’t be sure.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Tell me when and where.’

I was speechless with shock, too much to muster more than a strangled ‘thank you’ in reply.

He hung up on me without saying goodbye, demonstrating that he and my mother had at least one thing in common.

‘Great,’ I said into the phone. ‘See you soon.’

I put my phone away, uncertain as to the state of my feelings.

Mum was helping me out, and she hadn’t even argued that much.

And I would finally get to meet my dad again, even if he didn’t seem too excited about it.

Things among Family Ves were looking up. Vaguely. A little bit.

Sod it. If I didn’t need a husband, I didn’t need a mother or a father either. I’d managed just fine without those things.

Still, a girl can hope. Right?

Right.

And in the meantime, there’s Jay, who’s everything my family isn’t, and presently waiting to whisk me away to a dream dinner that I hadn’t even been able to scare him out of.

I dismissed my mountain of problems from my mind, opened my wardrobe and devoted myself to choosing a dress.

Enough work, Ves. Time to enjoy life a bit.

Episode 11

Dancing and Disaster: 18

by

Explaining the dance party to Milady wasn’t as hard as you might think. She’s met me before.

‘So the only conceivable way to avert total disaster and certain death was to challenge the tormented and wronged inhabitants of Silvessen to a dance battle,’ Milady said, just to make sure she had it straight.

‘Exactly,’ said I.

It was the next day, which was nice, because we’d had a free evening before we’d been summoned to make our report. An evening in which to get clean, and warm, and fed (again), and hugged (thank you Jay), and then to sleep the deep, peaceful slumber of Society agents who aren’t being mercilessly tortured by a quartet of unhappy glaistigs.

I had, however, been summoned particularly bright and early: it was barely seven o’clock, I hadn’t had breakfast yet, and was it my imagination or was the light getting steadily brighter in Milady’s tower-top interrogation room? Searingly bright, like I was under police questioning and nobody wanted me to feel very comfortable anytime soon.

I shifted nervously, and made myself stop.

‘And this worked out… well,’ Milady continued.

‘I mean, we lost,’ I admitted. ‘But I sort of did that my own self, so it’s not the same as actually being beaten, and the results were—’

‘Ves,’ Milady interrupted. ‘You’ve committed us to single-handedly restoring an entire town to its former glory. A town uninhabited for centuries, I might add, with no functional buildings and a magickal status best described as bleak.’

‘Yes! Isn’t it an exciting opportunity?’

There was a long and awful silence.

I didn’t even have my staunch and trusty comrades to back me up, because I’d been brought up here alone.

‘It’s not exactly single-handed when there are a couple of hundred of us at the Society,’ I ventured. ‘And I’d be happy to lead this project myself.’

‘Cordelia Vesper,’ said Milady, in a terrible voice. ‘If you think I will be landing anybody else with this — project, you are very much mistaken.’

‘Understood,’ I said quickly.

‘It is fortunate that some parts of the… necessary undertakings will dovetail, to some extent, with Orlando’s proposed programme of magickal restoration via the regulator.’

‘That’s what I was hoping.’

‘And the Troll Court may take an interest, considering that this restoration is similar to their hopes for Farringale.’

‘Exactly!’

‘As for the rest.’

I waited.

‘Do you have the first idea what it will cost to rebuild a town, Ves?’

‘Not really, but—’

‘And this is a heritage site of historical interest, so we cannot merely level the town and build whatever we’d like. Each of those buildings will have to be carefully restored, and rebuilt in a fashion that’s respectful to their origins. Which means special materials, expertise—’ She stopped with a gasp, as though the mere thought of everything had exhausted her.

I waited in meek silence for her to continue.

And when that didn’t work, I piped up with: ‘We have people for that!’

Which, in my defence, was true. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d had to intervene to save ancient buildings of magickal import, and among the permanent employees at the Society were a range of people with exactly the sorts of skills in woodcarving, thatching, stonemasonry and ironworking that Milady was talking about.

‘And the materials?’

This was a question I didn’t have a smart answer for, a fact I betrayed with a lengthy and unpromising silence.

‘I’ll think of something,’ I finally said.

‘I would consider it advisable that you do,’ said Milady, still rather awfully, and I trailed away feeling chastened.

***

Explaining the dance party to Ophelia was considerably more challenging.

I hadn’t had the courage to face her straight after my grilling at Milady’s hands, so I took refuge in the first-floor common room.

Where she found me, an hour later, nursing a cup of tea and staring sadly out of the window.

Tea, note. Not chocolate. Milady was definitely not quite pleased with me.

‘You’re back,’ Ophelia observed, sitting down opposite me in the chair Jay usually occupies.

It wasn’t that I was unhappy to see Ophelia; she’s a nice lady. But I wasn’t pleased to see her right then, before I’d had chance to recover from my undignified drubbing at Milady’s hands. As I watched her sit down, cool and calm and full of questions, I may have actually quailed a bit.

I forced a smile. ‘As you see. How are you?’ At least the common room was empty apart from the two of us. Nobody else would have to witness my attempts to explain the inexplicable to Merlin.

‘Very well, thank you,’ she said serenely, but I didn’t miss the narrow look she shot me as she spoke. As usual, she saw through me. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened?’ she went on.

I heaved a sigh, finished the dregs of my tea, and set down the emptied mug. ‘So. Silvessen was uninhabited, except not quite so uninhabited as we were expecting.’

The story took a while to get through, rather longer than I’d had to spend recounting everything to Milady. This was partly because Ophelia had questions. Lots of questions.

‘You did what?’ came up fairly often.

And twice she said: ‘Oh?’ in that dangerous way parents adopt while their children try to explain why they’re covered in chocolate spread from head to foot (example entirely hypothetical, definitely not something drawn from the storied experience of Tiny Ves).

Jay came in while I was about halfway finished. Finding his chair occupied, he took the seat next to me instead, and sat there in supportive silence while I stumbled through the rest of the story.

When I was finished, Ophelia looked at both of us in silence.

Finally, she spoke.

‘So you used the ancient magick of Merlin to hold a dance competition.’

I suppressed a sigh, and nodded. Take it like a queen, Ves. ‘It seemed the best thing to do,’ I offered.

Her eyes widened at that. ‘Did it?’

‘What would you have done?’

She just stared helplessly at me. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But definitely not that.’

I waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. She seemed shocked speechless.

‘Ves did great,’ Jay interjected. ‘The mission objectives were fulfilled, a rapport was established with the incumbents of Silvessen and a deal reached which will be of mutual benefit. Above all, no one was hurt.’ He smiled slightly, wryly, and amended that. ‘Save for a few pulled muscles all round.’

Ophelia was shaking her head. ‘To call it an unorthodox approach would not begin to cover it.’

‘That’s Ves for you.’

‘I see that.’

The look on her face. I tried not to feel like she was experiencing a crushing regret at having picked me for her successor.

Her next words dashed those hopes.

‘I chose you as the best candidate to inherit Merlin’s magick. Would you like to explain to me how that’s still true?’

I opened my mouth, and closed it again. I had a surplus of smart answers I could’ve given, but this was serious. For once, I had to be serious too. Why was I the right person to be the next Merlin?

Was I, even? I wasn’t certain of that myself. How could I convince Ophelia?

In the end, Jay saved me.

‘Permit me to point out a couple of things,’ he said. ‘For one, Ves has a boundless imagination and an inexhaustible supply of creative solutions to difficult problems.’

Ophelia snorted with laughter, which seemed favourable, and shook her head, which didn’t. ‘Demonstrably true.’

‘And for another. Let’s consider the hazards of this kind of a power handover. The greatest danger has to be that you’ll pick someone who won’t prove trustworthy. Someone who’ll abuse Merlin’s magick, turn it to ill effect. Someone who’ll be corrupted by it. Right?’

The ghost of a smile crossed Ophelia’s face. ‘I see where you’re going with this line of thinking.’

Jay smiled, too, much more widely. ‘So you gave Ves the opportunity to test drive Merlin’s magick, and what did she do? She figured out right away that she could use it to influence, if not outright control, other people’s behaviour, but what does that mean to Ves? The idea that she could enslave people to her will wouldn’t even occur to her, let alone interest her. There’s no puppeteering, no power tripping, and definitely no bloodbaths. No, you give Ves awesome cosmic powers and what does she do? She holds a dance party. That’s Ves. And that’s why she’s the right person to be Merlin.’

I felt tears pricking behind my eyes, and had to swallow a lump in my throat. I couldn’t even speak, so Jay had to be contented with a look of heartfelt gratitude. He smiled back, his eyes lingering on my face with an expression of such tenderness I had to look away.

Ophelia digested Jay’s words in silence for longer than I was comfortable with. I felt like my fate hung in the balance here; if she didn’t accept Jay’s argument, she’d take back all the beautiful, ancient magick and go find someone else to embody the archetype.

I wasn’t deeply committed to becoming the next Merlin; my life would go on even if I was passed over for it. But failure stings. And besides, I had stuff to do with those powers. I had heritage to save, people to help, magick to revive.

‘A dance battle.’ Ophelia was shaking her head again, but then, to my intense relief, she began to laugh.

She laughed and laughed until tears streamed from her eyes, and when she’d finally finished laughing she said: ‘I’ll say this: your turn as Merlin is going to be a lot more colourful than mine.’

Colourful. Good point. I touched a fingertip to a lock of my hair, and with a wisp of magick I turned it into a fluid purple-blue ombre. ‘I’ll consider it a point of honour,’ I told Ophelia, who smiled, so that was all right, then.

Later, when Ophelia had gone back to her cottage-out-of-time, Jay and I lingered a while in the common room. I had a great many things to do: arrange for a burial crew to tend to the remains of the deceased at Silvessen; negotiate with the Troll Court for assistance with the rebuilding, via Emellana; exercise my Yllanfalen contacts in hope of further aid; and figure out where in the world I was going to get a town’s worth of rare and expensive building materials.

But I didn’t feel motivated to work on any of it. I was tired, which was fair; yesterday was a long, long day, and I’d exercised my physical and magickal powers in all manner of unusual ways.

I was also feeling a little deflated. Nothing had turned out quite the way I was hoping, and I wasn’t sure what to make of where I’d ended up.

I must have heaved a little sigh, for Jay looked over at me and said: ‘All okay?’

I gestured at the emptied teapot. ‘I can’t remember the last time Milady gave me tea.’

Jay knew what that meant; he grimaced. ‘You deserved chocolate, though.’

‘I think it’s the rebuilding that she’s unhappy about. It is going to be expensive, for sure.’

‘That’s fair.’

‘And it is good tea. I think there was even some cream in it.’

‘Not entirely in the doghouse, then.’ He smiled at me, in a way that was probably supposed to be encouraging. I tried to smile back.

Jay leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees so he could give me one of his long, intense looks. ‘Ves. I meant what I said. You did a great job.’

‘Thanks.’ I managed a better smile. ‘I hope Orlando’s happy with us, at least?’

‘Reckon so. Indira vanished into the attic last night, and I haven’t heard from her yet. They’re probably up to their eyeballs in data.’

‘That’s good. Probably be another test mission going on soon.’

‘Maybe. Indira’s going to be busy monitoring Silvessen for a while yet. All we’ve established so far is that the regulator’s basic functions appear to work. What the effects will be on the Dell is a whole other question.’

‘So we’ll all be busy down at Silvessen for a while yet, thanks to me.’

Jay smiled and shrugged. ‘Yes, but I for one am looking forward to it. I don’t think anyone’s ever brought an entire town back from the dead before. And if we can do something like that at Silvessen, what does that mean for Farringale?’

I nodded. ‘I’m hoping the Troll Court will see it that way, too, and help us out.’

‘Em will get them on board.’

I tried to picture anybody standing up to a serenely determined Emellana and prevailing. I couldn’t. Even Their Majesties were outmatched there.

‘Em and Alban,’ I amended. ‘Pretty sure he’ll support us.’

Jay frowned slightly, and hesitated over his next words. ‘About Alban.’

‘Yes?’

He straightened again and leaned back in his chair, watching me. I wasn’t sure what for. ‘Are you… are you and he definitely not—?’

He didn’t seem disposed to finish the sentence, so I took a guess. ‘Going to be a thing? No. Definitely not.’

He scrutinised me with a rather dark gaze. I couldn’t read his expression. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Are you?’

‘Maybe. Are you?’

I thought about it, but I didn’t need to think for very long. ‘A little,’ I admitted. ‘But not as much as I might have expected. I think I was… dazzled.’

‘He is pretty dazzling.’

‘I doubt it would ever have worked out.’ Saying that out loud hurt, a little. Part of me had really wanted it to work out, but that was probably the dazzled and stupid part. ‘Anyway,’ I went on. ‘I so rarely date. I don’t have time, or… inclination, much.’

‘Really? You don’t want to date?’

‘I know that sounds weird.’ I tried not to feel defensive; it wouldn’t be the first time someone’s reacted badly to the idea. ‘I don’t hate dating, but it’s a lot of trouble and I don’t feel in need of a relationship.’

Jay nodded slowly. ‘I see.’

‘That’s what I meant when I said I was dazzled. I was so swept away by Alban that I forgot who I am, for a little while.’

‘And who is that?’

I hesitated.

‘If I may ask,’ Jay said quickly. ‘I don’t want to pry.’

I eyed Jay for a moment in silence. How much could I tell him? How much did I want to tell him?

‘I’m fine on my own,’ I answered. ‘I know people say that and sometimes it isn’t true, it’s a pose adopted against the loneliness that comes from wanting a relationship and not finding one. But in my case it’s the truth. I’ve never felt a strong drive to get into romantic or sexual relationships, and if I go through the rest of my life without one, I’ll be happy with that.’

Jay just nodded, giving me space to say more, if I wanted to.

I found that I did.

‘I don’t think I feel… attracted to people, the way others do,’ I said. ‘Not even Alban. I mean, he’s aesthetically delightful, and I might’ve liked to be kissed a bit, maybe, but that’s… that’s all.’

Jay nodded again, silent with a watchful attention which felt welcoming, not condemning. There was warmth in his gaze.

So I went on. ‘It’s hard to talk about, because… because people think that you must be broken, you know? They say you just haven’t met the right person yet, or that you must be damaged somehow. And maybe I’ve wondered, sometimes, if they’re right. You know how people talk about love and sex and soulmates — like it’s the crowning experience of all of humankind — and I’ve felt, sometimes, like I must be missing out on all that magic and beauty and — that my life must be the poorer for it.

‘So when Alban showed up and I was a bit starry-eyed over him I thought… maybe this is it, maybe this is the “right person” who’ll change those things about me, and I’ll finally learn what all the fuss is about. My life will finally be right and healthy and complete, in all the ways people talk about.

‘But that didn’t happen, because it isn’t that I haven’t met the magical person who’ll change me. It’s that I don’t need to change. My life isn’t broken and I’m happy as I am. So, no, I’m not too disappointed about Alban. I have a fantastic life and I don’t need a romance to complete me.’

I realised as I was speaking that I was trailing into defensiveness after all, but hey ho. I’d said it.

And far from condemning me, or recoiling from me, or arguing with me, Jay was smiling. ‘You’re dazzling,’ he said. ‘Never mind Alban. You’re the complete package all by yourself, and I agree: you don’t need a soulmate. Your soul’s perfect as it is.’

That sunk in all the way down, and lighted a little glow around my heart. ‘Thanks,’ I managed, through a fresh wave of threatened tears. Twice in one day, I must be tired. ‘It’s not that I don’t love people,’ I added. ‘I do. Deeply. You can love people completely even without sex or romance. I don’t think they’re the same things, at all.’

‘I have no trouble believing that,’ said Jay.

‘So… why were you asking about Alban?’

‘Um, well…’ Jay looked away, looked back at me, shifted in his seat. Uncomfy. What can of worms had I opened? ‘I had thoughts of… asking you to dinner. Or something. If you were free.’

‘You mean if I wasn’t hanging my heart on Alban like a coatrack.’

‘Something like that. But if you don’t want to date—’

‘I’d like to,’ I said quickly.

Jay hesitated, perhaps waiting for a “but something” to follow.

‘That’s it,’ I clarified. ‘I’d like to.’

A smile, somewhat relieved. ‘Let’s rephrase what I was going to ask,’ he said. ‘Would you like to have dinner with me with a view to developing a deeper relationship in a largely non-romantic way, and which certainly isn’t intended as a prelude to sex?’

‘Would that be… okay?’

‘Completely. Wonderfully.’

I smiled, too — then stopped as a thought occurred to me. ‘But wait. Weren’t you dating someone?’

‘Briefly. Not now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not. The idea was of interest to our parents, so we gave it a chance. But we found it wasn’t of similar interest to us.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re friends. It’s okay.’

‘And your parents are okay with that?’

‘Of course. They aren’t tyrants.’

‘Dinner’s on, then.’

Jay beamed. ‘How about tonight? Are you too tired?’

‘Tonight’s great. I do have something I want to do before then.’

‘Oh? Do you need backup?’

I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but not this time.’

Episode 11

Dancing and Disaster: 17

by

‘Zareen,’ I said, clearly and warily, as she approached me with that odd, jerky gait. Whoever was wearing her skin hadn’t had to operate a real, living body in a long time, I judged. She’d lost the knack of it. ‘Zar. Snap out of it. Please.’

There was a definite pause, or at least a slowing of the inexorable approach. Zareen was still in there somewhere. Good.

I danced back a few steps, searching my weary brain for an idea. Dealing with misbehaving spirits is Zareen’s job; what are we supposed to do when she’s the one who gets possessed?

‘Jay,’ I said. ‘I have no idea what to do here.’

‘Then it’s time for some of your trademark brilliant improvisation, because neither do I.’ We were backing up together, which worked fine until we ran out of street.

Zareen was closing on us, and— here came Indira and Emellana, neither of them in their right minds either.

‘We need Zareen back to fix this,’ I muttered to Jay. ‘Can you keep the other two busy while I work on that?’

‘Right.’ He took off at a run.

I didn’t see how he chose to carry out my somewhat peremptory request, because Zareen was getting in my face and I had more urgent problems. ‘Zareen, come on,’ I said, sharply clapping my hands. ‘You’re a boss and a queen and you’ve got this.’

She hadn’t got it. I could tell from the way she tried to grab my face with her red-lacquered fingernails (rather chipped).

Merlin time. What do I do, Ophelia, what do I do?

Go deep? Somewhere inside Zareen’s commandeered head my friend was still lurking, but how could I reach her? I didn’t have time to sit and commune with the elements, not while she was determinedly trying to claw out my eyes.

I tried anyway. I focused and I listened, and for a few seconds, I thought I had it. An echo of the Zareen I knew, something that felt like her. Yes. I grabbed hold of Zareen and I pulled.

And when that didn’t work, I lost my shit for a moment and tried the age-old art of headbutting. Why, you might ask? Did I think I could shock the ghost out of her by sheer brute force?

Hey, it was worth a try.

She shrieked, so did I (headbutting hurts), and nothing changed, except that on the next swipe she got hold of my face. Her thumb shoved into my mouth and her fingers were in my eyes and I was mad.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake—’ I spat, and bit.

She shrieked again, and released me.

I took immediate advantage.

I opened my mouth and, with a wisp of Merlin-magick, amplified my typically dulcet tones to impossible volume. ‘SILVESSEN!’ I roared, and the syllables split the air with the force of a thunderclap, echoing off the bowl of the sky. ‘THIS IS SOMEWHAT CONTRARY TO THE SPIRIT OF OUR AGREEMENT, DON’T YOU THINK? PLEASE RECALL YOUR ESTEEMED COLLEAGUES TO A SENSE OF DECORUM OR WE DO NOT HAVE A DEAL.’

Jay shot past, high-tailing it to gods-knew-where. Pursued, a moment later, by Emellana and Indira, and then Jay came back around again.

Okay. Playing chicken with the glaistigs. That’s one way to distract them.

‘SILVESSSSSEEEN,’I screamed again, because Zareen wasn’t much daunted by my voice-of-the-gods routine and was coming at me again. ‘Don’t make me hurt Zareen or I WILL HURT YOU.’

I would have, too, in that mood. It had been a difficult day, I was tired, and worst of all, I was hungry. And the carrier bags containing my carefully chosen repast were lying scattered in the street getting rained upon because Silvessen’s miserable cronies fancied a possession party, I mean, who’s got time for this?

Thankfully, I wasn’t obliged to do either of those things because she’d heard me. Well, she could hardly help it.

Another voice rolled through the heavens, almost as thunderous as mine. ‘Alaiona. Celaena. Fanessel. Desist.’

Zareen stopped dead. Behind her, Indira and Emellana came to an equally abrupt halt, so sharply they almost toppled over. All three shuddered convulsively, and then all three screamed, which was super fun.

And then all three of my colleagues and friends collapsed in the dirt.

‘Thanks,’ I muttered weakly, and dropped to my knees beside Zareen.

She was already coming around; her eyes were open, and when she looked at me I knew it was Zar because she was angry.

She came up spitting with fury. ‘Bitches tricked me,’ she snarled. ‘And they teamed me, too, because they knew I was the threat. Let me at them.’

‘Nope,’ I said, planting a palm on her chest when she tried to jump up. ‘Silvessen recalled them because walking your carcasses around rather contravened the terms of the deal we just made. I’m afraid forcibly exorcising her only friends would have much the same effect.’

Zareen’s only response was a wordless snarl, but she made no further attempts to tear off in a murderous rage, so I let her be while I checked on Emellana.

‘Why does my head hurt,’ I heard Zareen mutter as I left her.

Em was on her feet by the time I reached her, brushing mud off her coat.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I feel like we shouldn’t have left you.’

Unruffled as ever, she twinkled at me. ‘Food was important. Where is it, by the way?’

‘Over there.’ I pointed. ‘You seem remarkably unperturbed for a recently possessed woman.’

‘It’s happened before. Never pleasant, but you can get used to anything.’ With which wisdom, she ambled away in the direction of food, leaving me to unhappy contemplation of her words.

What do you have to go through to get used to malevolent possession?

Did I want to know?

I did not.

I turned in search of Indira.

No need. Her big brother had her in a big hug, which was good, because even from here I could see she was drawn and shaking. Poor girl. She was so young, she’d had none of the experience Emellana benefited from.

‘I shouldn’t have left you,’ Jay was saying, echoing my own words. ‘If I’d been here—’

‘If you’d been here, what?’ Indira interrupted, and pulled away from him. ‘What were you going to do?’

Jay seemed at a loss for an answer. Fair, because it was a really good question. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally said. ‘Something to protect you—’

Indira became icily dignified, unconsciously mirroring Emellana’s gestures as she brushed herself down. ‘Bad things happen sometimes. You can’t prevent that.’

‘Even so—’

‘No. It isn’t up to you to protect me from the world, and it wouldn’t help me much if you could. How am I supposed to become competent myself if you never let me experience anything that might be challenging?’

‘There’s challenging, and then there’s forcible possession by a dangerous spirit—’

‘Jay.’ Indira looked him dead in the eye, ice-cold. ‘Resilience is the product of encountering adversity, and surviving. You do want me to grow into a strong and capable adult?’

There was no good comeback to that, and Jay didn’t try. Wise man. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I hear you. I’m sorry.’

She nodded, and that was that.

‘Thanks for the hug,’ she said. ‘It helps.’ And then both of them were looking around for me, and for food, possibly in that order or possibly not.

The mood as we tore through our repast was subdued. I don’t know what had led any of us to expect a nice, easy mission; when did that ever pan out? But we had, and instead we’d been emotionally tortured, our wits were tested, our physical bodies were pushed to their limits (and beyond), and finally several of us had been used as sock puppets.

And we hadn’t eaten all day. At least that was a problem we could fix.

We ate huddled inside one of the more intact of Silvessen’s cottages, which at least kept the rain and some of the wind off us. But a half hour sitting in one place left us shivering with cold and very ready to be going home.

I made the last morsel of my second eclair last, savouring the sweetness and the cream.

And when it was finished, and the last drops of cooling tea drained, I — and Jay and Zareen and even Emellana — turned a hopeful look upon Indira.

‘Let’s have a look,’ said she, rising (a little stiffly) to her feet.

She crossed the street and sat in the dirt next to the regulator, sat there for a while with her palms to the earth and her brain on some other plane of reality. I don’t know what she was doing, but after ten minutes she stood up, made a hopeless and ineffectual attempt to wipe the mud off her trousers, and shrugged. ‘It seems to be okay,’ she said.

Which is as good a way of tempting fate as any I’ve ever heard, and she really ought to have known better.

Because that was when the horde of carnivorous unicorns showed up.

Okay, just kidding about the unicorns. What actually happened was nothing, which at that point could scarcely have surprised me more.

‘It’s okay?’ I repeated dumbly.

Indira nodded. ‘I think so. Nothing anomalous is going on, and it seems stable.’

‘Can you… get it out of there?’

‘No.’

‘Milady won’t be happy.’

Indira looked pained. ‘I know, and I would prefer to remove it, but I can’t.’

‘So we leave it here.’

‘Yes. It’ll have to be checked regularly for a few weeks to monitor the results, tweak and recalibrate as necessary, but for now it’s fine.’

‘And we can go home.’

‘Yes,’ said Indira, and added, fervently, ‘please.’