The Slanted Worlds

by Catherine Fisher

  The drone of aircraft, high above.

  “I’m sorry to leave you here. I hope you’ll be okay. But I have to go. I want you to tell Allenby that I’m not a spy—he’s got it all wrong. I just walked in on this. Understand?”

  The sergeant swore again, furious and indistinct. Then his eyes slid with fear. Gideon leaned over him, a strange flint knife in his hand. “Why don’t we make sure he stays silent.”

  “Are you crazy?” Jake stared in disbelief.

  “If he gets free . . .”

  “You’ve been with the Shee too long. You’re turning into one of them.”

  “I’m as human as you are, mortal!” Gideon’s eyes were bright and fierce as a bird’s.

  For a moment he and Jake shared a bitter doubt.

  Then Gideon stood abruptly. “Do what you like. But let’s go.”

  In the doorway Jake winced as the building shook again. He was worried about leaving the man here during the air raid, but there was no choice—he had to get away. “Sorry,” he said. “Really sorry.”

  He slammed the cell door, and locked it.

  Then, after a second of bitter hesitation, he turned and tossed the keys in through the grille.

  “What are you doing!” Gideon grabbed him. “He’ll untie himself . . .”

  “I’m being human. We’ll be long gone. But first, I have to find that suitcase.”

  Wharton strolled into the kitchen just as Piers was saying “. . . must never know anything about it. But the teacher—”

  “What about the teacher?”

  Standing by the fire, Venn glanced up. His cold, clear gaze was an icy chill; it seemed to weigh Wharton in a second’s acute scrutiny. Then, surprisingly, he said, “I think the teacher is a man who can be trusted.”

  Piers sighed. He was sitting on the inglenook bench, absurdly cross-legged, wearing a white chef’s apron splashed liberally with what looked like tomato sauce. His small alert face was twisted in thought. Then he shrugged. “Your call, Excellency.”

  “Trusted with what?” Wharton demanded.

  Venn didn’t answer. Instead he went to the door and opened it, looking cautiously up the dim paneled corridor. He shut the door and came back, one of the seven black cats pacing behind him. Striding to the fire and staring at it, his back to Wharton, he said, “There’s something you should know. Unless . . . Has Jake ever spoken to you about the coin?”

  “What coin?”

  Piers scrambled up. “I’ll make some tea. Or coffee?”

  “He hasn’t told you.” Venn turned. “So he has some discretion.”

  Wharton went and sat at the table. He pushed the unwashed dishes aside and said, “Coffee please, Piers. So maybe you should tell me, then.”

  Venn was wearing his usual dark jacket; his hair was dragged back with an easy carelessness that Wharton envied hopelessly. To Wharton’s surprise, he came and sat opposite, leaning his long arms on the table, his fingers interlocked.

  “The night Sarah left. Christmas Day. On that night the man called Maskelyne told Jake and me something important about the mirror.”

  Wharton nodded. “The scarred man. He’s a strange character. He knows more than he’s letting on.”

  “I agree. Clearly his connection to the mirror is an old one. He owned it before Symmes, remember. He traveled through it unprotected—with no bracelet—and just about survived. He hungers to get it back.”

  “Have you seen him since then?” Wharton asked.

  “Not a sign.” Piers put a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. “Not a whisker. Not on the cameras, not on the estate, not even in the village. As if he’s vanished from the earth. And that girl, Rebecca, with him.”

  “Never mind her.” Irritated, Venn watched Wharton add sugar and stir, savoring the aroma. “Maskelyne told us that the obsidian mirror cannot be destroyed. Not by force or fire, by wind or water. There is only one way to destroy the mirror. Those were his very words.”

  Wharton frowned, sipping. “And that is? By the way, mega coffee, Piers.”

  Piers smiled, modest.

  “For God’s sake! Will you pay attention!” Venn’s frail patience snapped. “He told us that there is an artifact shaped like a golden coin, a Greek stater with the head of Zeus on it. This device contains enough energy to destroy the mirror. He said that the coin had been cut in half and the halves separated in time and space, so that they might never come together accidentally. God knows what happened to the left half. But the right half is here.”

  Wharton was staring now. He put the cup down so sharply it clunked in the saucer. “Oh my God. The one Sarah had? On a golden chain?”

  “Precisely.” Venn’s fingers tapped the table. “She brought it with her from the World’s End. It was the same half coin that Symmes was given, to lead him to the mirror.”

  “But . . .” Wharton was so agitated he had to stand up. “But she gave it to Summer!”

  The stark horror of that statement seemed to hang in the air like a wisp of smoke.

  Piers sighed. “She doesn’t realize its power. Didn’t know.”

  “And she never must.” Venn stood too, facing Wharton. “Sarah’s mission is to destroy the mirror. I can never let her do that. If she should find out about the power of the coin, she might . . .”

  “But if the other half is lost . . .”

  “That won’t stop her looking for it. I must have the mirror safe. Or I’ll never see Leah again.” Venn swung away. For a moment Wharton glimpsed the tension in the man, wound so tight a hasty word, a forbidden thought might snap it.

  The cat on the windowsill stopped washing and gazed over.

  Venn took a breath, dropped his voice. “Sarah must never know. And neither must Summer.”

  Wharton sat down again slowly, trying to consider this calmly. “What if Summer knows already? She demanded the coin as her reward, after all.”

  “Then we’re in worse trouble than even I feared.” Venn walked to the window. “Let’s assume, for the moment, the Queen of the Wood has no idea of the power she wears round her pretty white neck. In that case, my plan is—the only plan possible is—to get it from her. But with Summer nothing is simple. Nothing is easy. If she had any notion how much I want it, she’d take great delight in keeping it from me.” His face was set and hard. When he spoke again it was in a bitter whisper Wharton had to strain to hear. “Is this my punishment, Leah? . . . As soon as I command the mirror I will come for you. I swear.”

  He turned, abrupt. “I need a plan, Piers.”

  Piers looked worried. “Tricky.”

  “And you”—Venn turned to Wharton—“must never breathe a word of this. I’m only telling you because I may need you. You might be useful. That’s the only reason.”

  The man’s arrogance made Wharton ball a fist with annoyance. “Don’t talk to me like that. He may be your slave, but I’m not.”

  Venn shrugged. “Fine. Then go. Get out of here.”

  “I go nowhere until Jake is safe. As for Sarah, I don’t like deceit. I’ll decide what I say to her.”

  “About what?” Sarah’s sharp question alarmed them all; turning quickly Wharton saw her standing there in the scruffy jeans she had worn in London, her hair washed and clean, her eyes curious.

  There was a silence so pointed it hurt. Venn’s arctic glare was fixed on Wharton. They were all looking at him. What could he do? His bold words still echoed, but at once and to his own dismay, he knew his first priority had to be Jake’s safety. The mirror must be preserved. He pulled a face. “Well . . .”

  Venn watched him sidelong with the attention of a hawk on a scurrying rat.

  Piers seemed to be holding his breath.

  Sarah said, “Well what?”

  Wharton squirmed. Then he licked his lips and murmured grimly, “Only that there’s been no wor
d. From Gideon. Or from Jake.”

  The police station was deserted. Jake ran down the dusty corridor “We need to find his office. Allenby. The name’s on the door.”

  Gideon shrugged. “Then you’ll have to read it.”

  Jake glanced back, astonished. “You can’t read?”

  “Learning wasn’t for the son of a hovel, great magician.”

  The sarcasm was bitter. As Jake found the door and burst through it, he spared one thought on what Gideon’s life might have been in that long-lost far-off century; then he was ransacking the drawers and flinging open the filing cabinets. One was locked. He grabbed a metal ruler, slid it in, and forced the drawer hastily. It swung wide.

  “Got it!”

  The suitcase had been propped inside. He had it out and open at once. At the door Gideon watched the grimy corridor. “Listen!”

  The whine was distant and alien, the metallic howl of a strange beast. Gideon had his flint knife out, alert, but Jake said, “It’s just the all-clear. It means the air raid is over.”

  Gideon listened a moment. “I don’t understand what’s happening in this time. This war—is it fought with machines? Do the machines make war against each other, or against the men?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Grim, Jake was rummaging through the contents of the case. He found the birth certificate and stuffed it into his pocket.

  Gideon frowned. “I can hear voices. People coming back.”

  Jake couldn’t hear a thing, but he knew the changeling’s senses were Shee-sharp.

  He tossed aside the photo albums and the letters—fascinating, but no time—and just as a door slammed far down in the buildings his fingers touched the softness of the black velvet bag. He pulled it out.

  “Ready?” Gideon turned.

  Jake had the bag open. He tipped out the metal film-case. What was on this? Was this what she had wanted him to see?

  “Jake. Jake, we have to go! Now!” Gideon locked the door and crossed to the window. Even Jake could hear the shouts now, the banging on cells, the sergeant’s furious yell.

  The window was barred; Gideon shivered at the touch of the metal, but climbed up and had slithered lithely through before Jake realized what was happening. “Wait! I’ll never fit.”

  “You have to.”

  Voices in the corridor. The door handle turned, was rattled angrily. Allenby yelled.

  “Wilde! Open this door.”

  “Take this. Get them back to Venn.”

  Jake thrust out the velvet bag and the papers into Gideon’s pale hands. Then he climbed up and gripped the bars and slid his arm, then his left shoulder through. Turning his head sideways he breathed in, sweating, willing himself between the rods of steel.

  The door shuddered.

  Gideon grabbed him.

  “Don’t! Don’t pull me! I’m stuck!”

  He was thin and agile, but the bars were too close. They squeezed his head. He was caught in a vise. He would never get free.

  Panic gripped him. There was no way on, no way back. “I can’t do it! I can’t!”

  “You can!” Gideon grabbed him, fierce. “Push.”

  “No! It’s too late.”

  Something crashed and gave. For a second he thought it was him, that he was out, then behind him the lock burst. Pinned halfway to freedom, he slipped off the bracelet and flung it at Gideon, who caught it with astonished speed.

  “To Venn. Not Summer! Promise me!”

  Hands grabbed him, hauled him out from the bars with careless, brutal force, knocked him down. He crashed into a black circle of boots.

  The window was empty.

  Gideon was gone, and if he answered, Jake didn’t hear it.

  7

  What doth my mirror show?

  It showeth not what a man looks like but what he is.

  Not what he sekes for but what he hath found.

  From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

  The diary of Alicia Harcourt Symmes:

  After the strange demise of my dear papa, and now that I am truly his heiress, I think it would be a suitable tribute for me to continue his diary. His name was John Harcourt Symmes, and he was a Victorian gentleman of science, in those distant days when the study of the occult could still be scholarly, and respectable. Unlike now, where I am called a foolish woman and people smirk at me behind my back.

  I knew hardly anything about him until the day the letter came.

  I was a young girl of 19, living a quiet life with my aunt and uncle in the rectory at Charlecote Thorpe in the county of Yorkshire. It was a remote, windy hamlet on the moors, the nearest town ten long miles away. I had lived in that dingy and depressing house since I was eight, the year when my dear mama passed over to the Other Side. She had separated from Papa very early in her marriage, and no one ever told me why. I was kept in complete ignorance. It was never even spoken of by my aunt and uncle. I could only suppose there had been some terrible scandal, some wonderfully thrilling disgrace. Mama had even reverted to her maiden name of Faversham, though in secret I practiced my true forbidden name over and over in my books in childish handwriting.

  Alicia Harcourt Symmes.

  It had a refined sound to me, even then. It made me feel like a different person, as if I had some hidden dark mirror image of myself.

  I was an isolated child. Not ill-treated but certainly unloved. It was clear to me my aunt had only taken me in out of duty to my dead mother. I had only my dolls to play with, as the village children were thought too rough and uncouth to come to the house. Sometimes I used to peep at them from between the heavy velvet curtains, as they ran on the moor and small scruffy dogs chased after them. I envied them their wild fights, their screeching arguments, their real families. Because, though I seemed outwardly a quiet and reserved child, respectful and silent in company, the truth was that I was seething with rebellion.

  I loathed my life!

  Maybe that was why I was fascinated to learn more of my father. Once, coming very quietly into the room, I heard my aunt in conversation with one of her cronies, the curate’s wife, and she was saying: “. . . My dear, he experimented in the occult, in fiendish, terrible things Of course, he was a most depraved and villainous creature. How my sister came to fall under his spell remains the sorrow of my life. Do you know, they say at one time he even kept a girl from the streets and she actually became . . .”

  Then they saw me, and fell silent.

  How I pondered those words in the curled cave of my bedclothes! How in secret I would imagine and dream of my father! Depraved and villainous! I shuddered with delight. I pictured him tall and devilishly handsome, with a curled mustache, and I prayed that one day he would come in a great carriage and whisk me away from the tedium of the dull dark house, to Paris, to Rome, to London!

  But he never came.

  Instead, on my twenty-first birthday, the letter arrived.

  Sarah spread the photocopies of the Dee manuscript on the kitchen table. Piers had enlarged them, so that the page of scribbled drawings, the tangles of coded words, could be seen more easily.

  Venn picked one up and examined it.

  “Total and utter gibberish.” Wharton turned a copy, not even sure which way up it should go. “I mean look at this. A tower, a bird-mask, some sort of crane? Then an equation. Then a scratchy picture of what might be, well . . . a man on a horse?”

  “A centaur,” Venn muttered.

  “Well, maybe. But what does it all mean? How can this help us get Jake back?”

  Venn flicked a glance at Piers. “Any idea?”

  The little man looked at the page almost hungrily. “Not yet, Excellency. But I’d love to have a go. Puzzles! I love puzzles.”

  Venn frowned. “Be quick. We need the information.”

  He turned to Sarah and she faced him. That sh
arp blue gaze they both had, Wharton thought. How hadn’t he seen before how similar they were?

  Venn said, “So. My great-granddaughter.”

  Sarah knew there was one question that had burned in him since their last meeting; he asked it at once, unflinching. “Is it true that Leah comes back?”

  She looked away. “In my history, she didn’t die in a car crash. But I don’t know details. All our family documents were lost in the fire, or Janus took them. But that painting of her—the one you have in her room? We still had that.”

  “So I’ll succeed.” He seemed numb with relief, dizzy with disbelief. He glanced at Wharton, then back at her. “If only I knew how. As for what happened with Summer . . . I’m trusting you, Sarah. You have to help me. When Leah is back, I don’t care about the mirror. You can blow it to smithereens if you like.”

  He turned and went to the door.

  “What about David?” she said.

  He stood stock-still, as if he had forgotten the name. “Yes, David. David too. Of course.” He went out. A moment later they heard the front door slam.

  “He’s not going to the Wood, is he?” Wharton said anxiously.

  Piers shrugged. “The estate has many footpaths. He’ll roam up on the moors for hours.”

  “That Summer creature gives me the creeps.” Wharton turned to Sarah. “Come on. We need to check the mirror.”

  On her way out, she looked back. Piers had seated himself at the table. He had poised a lamp over the papers and was making hasty notes with a long red pen. From nowhere he seemed to have found a green visor to shade his eyes.

  “Looks like a newspaper hack,” Wharton said.

  She smiled. As she closed the door, three of the cats jumped up and sprawled on the table, mewing for food.

  “Get lost,” Piers said absently.

  The house was silent and musty. As they walked its corridors, they passed through slants of pale light from the windows, watery with tiny running raindrops.

  “It seems so empty without Jake,” Wharton said.

  “Yes.”