Oof. Archibald swept me up, then Jay. Mabyn he caught in one back foot, almost as an afterthought as he rose into the skies. I heard her distant squawk of protest, and silently sympathised.
Archibald’s getaway was not quite so speedy as I had hoped, for he paused, circling the air, to admire his handiwork. The ground below was rather more ablaze than I had bargained for.
‘Note to ourselves,’ said Jay, eyeing our retaliatory diversion with dismay. ‘Be careful when playing with dragons.’
‘I would not hurt you,’ said Archibald, in an injured tone.
Jay patted his leg comfortingly. ‘I know you would not.’
Archibald smiled, and puffed a jaunty little ball of fire into the air.
‘At least, not deliberately,’ Jay amended, as Archie’s fireball missed his head by inches.
Mercifully, Archibald flew on after that.
The house of the headmistress proved to be a humble-looking place, though it was amply provided with a large garden ringing the cottage all around. Timber-framed, white-washed and crooked, with a neatly thatched roof, it was spriggan-sized, which must cause Jenifry no end of inconvenience.
It was not, of course, unattended. Archibald landed in the middle of the stone-cobbled street outside of it, but he had trouble squashing his huge bulk even into the widest part of the thoroughfare, and a sweep of his wings upset a cart full of fruit an outraged spriggan was trying to hawk on the corner.
‘Jay,’ I said, when my adorable and well-meaning partner began picking up spilled produce. ‘Focus. Urgent task at hand.’
He smiled sheepishly, handed off the fruit he had collected to the stall holder (who cursed him roundly for his efforts, and tried to box his ears), and re-joined me. Mabyn was already halfway up the street, striding towards Jenifry’s cottage with her Minister demeanour firmly in place. Brisk of step, chin high, she swept towards the two guards stationed outside of the front door, looking formidable indeed.
Jay and I hastened to catch up, leaving Archibald to reason with the stallholder.
‘I request access,’ Mabyn was saying when we reached the house. ‘As a former headmistress of Redclover School, and on behalf of the Hidden Ministry, who has reason to suspect—’
‘Nobody goes in,’ said one of the guards, a relatively beefy-looking spriggan with a domed, shinily bald head and a fine purple uniform. ‘Ms. Redclover’s orders.’
‘I am Ms. Redclover,’ said Mabyn impatiently.
I was beginning to think that half the citizens of Dapplehaven were called Redclover, and perhaps they really were, for the guards looked most unimpressed.
‘We were told that somebody might make an attempt,’ said the second guard, a near perfect match for the first, save that he had a full head of dark hair scrupulously coiffed. He looked us over, his leathery face cold. ‘If you persist, we are instructed to arrest you at once.’
‘You cannot arrest me!’ spluttered Mabyn. ‘As a representative of the Hidden Ministry, I am immune to all—’
‘Ms. Redclover said to make special effort to repel any Ministry folk,’ interrupted Guard the First. ‘You are immune to nothing, and I suggest you leave at once.’
Mabyn was slow on the uptake and continued to argue. Jay and I exchanged a thoughtful look.
‘Usual trick, then?’ said Jay.
‘I’m thinking so.’ I rooted in my heavy and ever-present bag — I will have the right shoulder of a wrestler, at this rate — for my usual supplies, though it took me a moment to find them around the soft, sleeping bulk of Pup and the angled, leather-clad shape of Mauf. I really ought to organise my things a bit better.
But I found them. Two of Orlando’s best sleep-pearls, each about an inch across, and encased in a jellyish coating. I gave one to Jay.
I’d retrieved my Wand, too. I threw my pearl up in the air, zapped it with a wave of the Wand, and it burst in a shower of pearly rain all over the nearest guard.
Jay threw his, and I zapped that too.
‘Hey—’ said Guard the First, as he fell sideways into the road.
Guard the Second followed suit, without uttering so much as a syllable.
They lay there, charmingly inert, and snoring repulsively.
‘That shouldn’t keep working so well,’ Jay said, stepping over the nearest guard.
‘Maybe I need a new signature trick,’ I agreed. ‘You know, the last time I tried to re-order a batch, I got an interrogation from Enchantments? They thought I might be putting them to some manner of misuse.’ I reached the door, and tried it. Locked. ‘Any keys on those gents?’
‘What kind of misuse?’ said Jay, bending down to pat the guards’ pockets. He shook his head.
‘They asked the usual kinds of questions. Was I experiencing any excess pressure at work, that I had been unwilling to report? Was I feeling any strain? When had I last taken time off?’
Jay shook his head at me: no keys. ‘People use them to self-medicate?’ he said incredulously.
I shook my head back at him, but in my case it indicated despair. ‘You are so very new, aren’t you?’
Mabyn gave a vast, noisy yawn, and toppled slowly into the street.
‘Oops,’ I said, regarding her recumbent and deeply asleep form with a twinge of guilt. ‘I hoped she wouldn’t get caught in it.’
‘She could probably use a nap,’ said Jay. ‘Seems stressed.’
Jay and I quickly moved all three of our victims, the intended and the unintended, to the edge of the street, out of the way of any passing dangers.
‘Time for the big guns,’ I said, and dived back into my bag. I had a lot of bits and pieces in there, rattling around in the bottom. Not quite as many as usual, since Ornelle, Keeper of Stores, had lately made me hand back virtually everything I’d had on loan (joy-killer extraordinaire). But Orlando’s people keep me well-supplied with consumables, and I had a really juicy one in there.
Somewhere.
‘Ah!’ I crowed, and from the depths of the Receptacle of Everything I produced a stick of bubble gum.
Jay looked at me. He had That Face again. ‘Gum? Really?’
‘It looks like gum.’ I unwrapped it, softened it in my fingers for a moment, then stuck it to the front door of Jenifry’s house. ‘But you really do not want to eat it.’
I waited.
It began to crackle after a moment, and then it melted into a trickling slime which dripped slowly down the door, taking the wood with it. All of it. Fine old oak planks dissolved into slush and dribbled away, leaving the doorframe nicely empty.
‘Don’t ever let me eat one of those by mistake,’ Jay said as he followed me inside.
‘You won’t. They taste like poo, and I mean that more or less literally. Safety measure.’
Jay made a gagging noise.
Jenifry had not left it to her guards and her locked door alone to keep us out, of course, but I was ready for that. I flicked the Sunstone Wand as we walked in, surrounding us both in one of my best wards. When the magickal alarm flared, sending waves of searing purple light flooding the interior of the cottage, the surge of power bounced harmlessly off our shared shield, making my ears ring but causing no lasting harm.
‘What is it with purple around here?’ I muttered.
‘You love purple.’
‘Exactly. It’s my signature colour.’
‘At least it proposes to be pretty while it fries us to a crisp,’ said Jay. ‘That has to count for something.’
‘My room defences have rainbow fire,’ I said proudly.
‘Really?’
‘No. But not for lack of trying.’
‘Is it purple?’
‘… Yes. Yes, it is.’
The cottage, as Mabyn had warned us, appeared to be just that: a modest abode, with only a few rooms, and everything in them of the most mundane. Jenifry had a small living room equipped with a worn green velvet sofa and matching chairs, and an array of suitable books. Her kitchen was charmingly old-fashioned, and she had a bedroom at the back.<
br />
That was it.
It took Jay and I less than five minutes to explore all this, and we met back in the little hallway, wearing, I imagine, identical expressions of frustration.
‘No signs of any secret doorways, I suppose?’ I said.
‘Nothing so promising. You didn’t run into any hidden staircases or trapdoors?’
‘Nope.’
It occurred to me to wish that we had asked Mabyn for more detail, though in fairness I imagine every inhabitant of the cottage has their own ways of concealing the secret spaces. Would Mabyn’s information have been of any use?
It might at least have been a place to start. Now we had nothing, and Mabyn lay outside in the street, asleep. She would remain so for at least an hour.
My bag rustled, and the pup poked up its head, sniffing the air. I patted her. ‘Sweet pup, I wish you could help, but I do not suppose there is anything around here that might interest—’ I stopped, because she was writhing like a mad thing to be let down, and succeeded in falling out of the bag altogether before I could catch her. She landed with a snort, but she was up again in seconds, her enormous nose drawing in great gulps of air.
That nose adhered itself to the floor, and off she went, tail high and wagging with excitement.
She went into the kitchen.
‘Right, then,’ said Jay, and we followed.
But when we reached the kitchen, the pup was not there.
I went back out into the hallway, in case she had sneaked past us somehow, but she was not there, either.
‘Huh,’ I said.
Jay joined me, and stood regarding the doorway thoughtfully. ‘She didn’t go straight through, did she?’
‘She was circling a bit, but she was following a scent of some kind, so that would account for it.’
‘It might.’ Jay approached the door again. Rather than walking in a straight line into the kitchen, he did as the pup had done: circled his way over the threshold in an arc, turning a full circle before he went through.
He still ended up in the kitchen, but that had given me an idea.
‘I think she went the other way about,’ I told him, and stepped forward to try it. ‘And with these kinds of things, it is nearly always widdershins that—’
‘—does the job,’ I finished, after a pause, for my own anti-clockwise circle had landed me in another room, but it was not the kitchen, and there was no Jay.
There was, however, the pup.
15
‘Good job, puppy,’ I whispered, awed.
For this room was larger than the rest of the cottage put together, and it was packed full. It looked like it might once have been a barn, or something of the like, for it consisted of a large open space with a high ceiling supported by thick, crooked beams, and the windows were near the top of the walls. Shelves, chests of drawers and bookcases were everywhere in evidence, to the pup’s delight, for many of them bore objects of obvious value: jewellery, Wands, trinkets and Curiosities, even one or two genuine Treasures as far as I could tell. There were a great many books as well, and — to my relief — a section which was clearly designated for the storage of papers.
I made straight for that, and by the time Jay found his way through the sneaky enchantment on Jenifry’s kitchen door, I was up to my eyeballs in crumbling old documents. Figuratively speaking.
‘Soooo,’ said Jay with a low whistle, walking up behind me. ‘Do you suppose all this is legally held?’
‘Probably not, considering how eager they’ve been to hide it. Help me with this, Jay?’ I had found a set of four bookcases fitted edge-to-edge and back-to-back, and their shelves were stuffed with old books, proper scrolls with ribbon bindings, notebooks, journals, and everything of that sort. There was so much of it, and we did not have much time before Jenifry would appear — or send someone else to intercept us.
Jay took a look at the job that lay before us, and blanched. ‘Try Mauf,’ he suggested.
‘He says he needs time to absorb this much information.’
‘We don’t need him to absorb it all, but he may be able to identify what we need.’
So I extracted Mauf. ‘Dearest book, if you can contrive to find out whether any of these books and such were written by, or predominantly about, the brothers Melmidoc and Drystan Redclover, our gratitude would know no bounds.’
‘I cannot do much with gratitude,’ remarked Mauf. ‘Do you have something more concrete?’
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I want a proper ribbon bookmark. Silk, not polyester. And a sleeping bag.’
‘A sleeping— never mind. I will get you anything you like, as long as you’re quick.’
‘Bookcase to your left,’ instructed Mauf. ‘Second shelf from the top, third book from the end. Melmidoc’s journal of his discoveries, covering the years 1618 to 1630. Bookcase behind that, bottom shelf, a small notebook with crumbling pages — how embarrassing — entitled “A Mayor’s Recollections of Service,” written by Drystan Redclover.’
We hurriedly collected both.
I took the liberty of kissing Mauf’s front cover soundly. ‘Best book ever.’
The book gave what sounded like a cough, if the rustling of dry pages could ever be termed such. ‘That spire you were asking me about. Is that also of interest?’
‘Yes!’
‘Scroll, bottom shelf. The one with the sumptuous tassels. “An Account of the Deliberations of the Dappledok Council Regarding the Matter of the Spire.” I advise you to take all three in that pile.’
I gave him another kiss. ‘I love you,’ I said as I stuffed him back in the bag.
His response was too muffled to be understood.
I put the books and scrolls in on top of him, trusting that he would enjoy the company sufficiently to forgive me the indignity.
‘Time to go,’ I told Jay.
He cast a brief, agonised look at the contents of that building, and I could hardly blame him, for I, too, desperately wanted to explore. But he did not argue, perhaps because there came a kerfuffle from the doorway at just that moment, and a voice called belligerently: ‘You are trespassing upon private property, and are hereby arrested on the orders of the Mayor!’
Interestingly, whoever it was did not burst straight in, as might be expected. ‘I think they are afraid of us,’ I remarked.
‘Maybe it was the pile of unconscious bodies outside the front door that did it,’ mused Jay.
‘Could be that. Can you levitate?’
‘Badly.’ He looked up at the distant windows, and sighed. ‘You’re thinking of those, aren’t you?’
‘I am afraid so.’ I looked around in irritation, for while there was no shortage of storage spaces, and even a desk against the far wall, there was not a single chair in sight. So much for flying.
‘Come on in!’ I trilled. ‘We give ourselves up!’
On which note, I grasped Jay’s hand and shot up into the air, dragging him with me.
I cannot say it was our most successful effort ever. We made it about four feet before we began to wobble, and promptly sank halfway back down again.
Our assailants found their courage and came striding through the door, looking warily about. They were guards like the two we had felled, wearing the same uniforms, though these were equipped with proper Wands: a Jade, and by the looks of it an Opal.
These they levelled at us. ‘Stop where you are,’ commanded one.
Well, we tried. Hovering for long in mid-air is a talent neither of us possesses, however, so we drifted inexorably back floorwards again. ‘Sorry,’ I giggled.
The pup trotted over to me, grinning a canine grin, her tail wagging exuberantly. She had an amethyst Wand in her mouth, which she presented to me with great pride.
‘Oh, thank you!’ I said, accepting it with alacrity. I gave her a luxurious pat, for what a clever, good pup she was!
A guard took it off me moments later.
‘That was a gift,’ I said indignantly.
‘It is stolen property. What else have you taken?’
I rolled my eyes, and sighed. ‘Fine, fine.’ I unpacked the bag again, offloading all our acquisitions into the wrinkled palms of the belligerent guard.
‘Any more?’ he prompted when I had finished. ‘You will submit to a search.’
Jay did so quiescently enough, but I was not feeling so docile, for if they found Mauf, were they going to believe that the book belonged to me, and not to Jenifry? So as they searched Jay, I cast about for an alternative solution. Sadly, I couldn’t get at my brilliant sleep pearls without attracting notice, and I was not perfectly certain that I had any left, anyway.
‘I suppose it doesn’t have to be a chair,’ I said, and kicked over the nearest bookcase. It took a couple of attempts, for it was heavy oak, but it toppled with a nice bang, and all its books fell off onto the floor. I felt a pang of guilt over that, for many of them were old and fragile. But needs must.
The other guard had more of his wits about him than I was hoping. He flicked his Opal Wand at me, and succeeded in paralysing my every muscle. I fought, but to no avail; I could barely breathe.
Then the pup sank her teeth into his ankle, making him screech in a fashion I found most satisfying. She followed that up with an athletic jump, closed her slightly bloody jaws around his Wand, and cheerfully pinched it from him.
The paralysis eased.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘We’re going.’ I bent to scoop up the pup, Wand and all, and at the same time persuaded the nice, empty bookcase that it was feeling energetic. Jay took care of the guard who had hold of him with a solid punch to the face, and jumped onto the bookcase with me.
Up we went.
‘The books!’ Jay cried.
‘Never mind. Mauf’s got it.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Me too. Hup.’ I didn’t bother opening the nearest window, for the guards were still down there, and one of them still wielded a Wand. So I smashed it, and sent Jay through first.
‘Woah,’ he gasped as he clambered out. ‘Careful, Ves.’
‘It’s not that far up.’ I accepted his help, however, letting him pull me through the window and out onto the roof.
I was immediately obliged to retract my statement, for the ground yawned a long way below; plenty far enough for a mere Ves to go fatally squish, should she fall.
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