by ‘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.
