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.
