A Split Worlds Omnibus

by Emma Newman

  “Why are you doing that?” he asked the gargoyle. “Can you even smell anything?”

  “I don’t know,” it replied. “I get this urge to sniff at things. It’s been coming on stronger lately.”

  “Have you told the Sorcerer?”

  “No.” They looked at each other for a moment. “Do you think we should?”

  “I’ve found it,” Max said, distracted by the needle spinning round. “Have a dig about here, will you?”

  The gargoyle did as it was asked and Max pulled out a penlight torch. He pointed it where the gargoyle rooted in the grass and a sparkle ended the search. The gargoyle scooped out a divot and handed it to Max.

  Max plucked the Tracker from the clod of earth. It looked like a tiny clockwork ladybird with a brass shell. Max dropped the compass in a pocket and rummaged in another for his jeweller’s loupe. He tucked it under his right eyebrow to inspect the details.

  “It’s a wonder you don’t clank like a tinker’s cart with all that stuff in your pockets.”

  Max ignored the gargoyle as he checked the Tracker was still intact, then inserted the tiny key he’d been given, which looked like a pin to the naked eye. The Tracker’s shell opened and the workings inside looked in order as far as he could tell. Nothing was broken; it all seemed to be in the right place and when he pressed the minute nubbin at the heart of the workings with the key the six legs-cum-hooks extended and retracted exactly as they should.

  Trackers were used for covert ops. They were designed to hook into clothing, or even sometimes into the hair of an animal, and stay hidden to monitor the movement of the target in and between Mundanus and the Nether. The formulae, too tiny for Max to read even with the loupe, could be altered to effectively programme the Tracker to alert the Chapter to whatever variable they needed. This Tracker had been set to wait for the target to stay in a location for more than three hours, then detach, leave the building and slip back into Mundanus to send a signal by arcane means beyond Max’s understanding. Ekstrand told him that wherever the Tracker was would be less than two metres from the anchor property, but the top of the hill was devoid of any structures at all.

  “Don’t blame this on Cathy,” the gargoyle said.

  “I wasn’t even thinking about her.”

  “You were about to. She wouldn’t have screwed up with the Tracker, I know she wouldn’t.”

  “Why are you so keen to defend her?”

  “Because no one else will.”

  “I’m not sure she’d appreciate that. She seems capable of fighting her own corner.”

  The gargoyle wrinkled its muzzle. Max focused back on the Tracker. There was no way to tell if it had failed or not, so he closed it up again and put it into the pouch Ekstrand had given him to bring it back safely.

  “What do we do now?” the gargoyle asked.

  “We could go back to Ekstrand and verify if the Tracker failed,” Max said, “but we’d miss the perfect time to look around. Everyone will be asleep now. So, let’s assume it has worked but has ended up further away from the anchor property than it should have.”

  “Maybe it mostly worked, then crapped out at the last moment,” the gargoyle suggested.

  “The Tracker couldn’t have moved all the way up here, to the other side of the country and outside of the Heptarchy, all by itself.”

  “Perhaps the guy found it and attached it to something else to lead us to the wrong place.”

  “That’s possible. Or he could have come through the Nether to a place in Stirling and walked up here to dump the device. I doubt that.”

  “Maybe they were watching the hill, saw me and thought, ‘Bloody hell! A walking gargoyle! I’m not touching this with a six-foot bargepole,’ and went home again.”

  “Perhaps…” Max looked around the hill. “But why here?”

  “No witnesses.”

  “True. But what if the Tracker did work? Ekstrand was right when he talked about assumptions. We’re assuming that, just because we can’t see an anchor property, there isn’t one here. What if there’s a place hidden inside this hill?”

  The gargoyle grinned. “I like it. Where shall we start?”

  Max pointed to a spot close to where the Tracker was found and shone the torch at it. The gargoyle started gouging out huge clumps of earth until there was a scrape of stone against stone. “Found something!”

  Max directed the torch beam, peered in and saw a large block, buried. “Dig around it a bit, see if you can work out some dimensions.”

  The gargoyle dug a shallow trench quickly, exposing more of the stone and a couple of new ones. Max inspected them. “This isn’t the top of a bunker,” he said as the gargoyle groaned with disappointment. “These are old foundations. There was probably a fort here a long time ago. That disproves my theory.”

  The gargoyle shook its head. “I’ve got a feeling there’s something here.”

  “You just don’t want to go back to the Sorcerer and admit defeat.”

  “No, it’s not that.” It dug another couple of feet down. “You got that Peeper you used on the stolen house in Aquae Sulis?”

  “Of course.”

  “Use it on this stone.”

  “Don’t be daft.”

  “It’ll only take two minutes.”

  Max shrugged, located the Peeper and gave it to the gargoyle. “Let’s see if you can use it,” he suggested, not wanting to struggle down onto his belly and lay his leg against damp, cold earth.

  The gargoyle nestled down in the hollow and pressed the Peeper up against the stone.

  “You’ll have to adjust the lens to cope with the thickness of the stone,” Max instructed.

  “I know.”

  Max expected the Peeper to detach after alignment, as it would with any mundane surface without a Nether property anchored to it. Then they’d be left with no choice but to force the puppet to reveal how she’d stayed hidden.

  “There’s something there!”

  “A bunker?” Max asked.

  “No, I can see the floor, this is at ground level. The room goes up about another eight feet.”

  It made no sense; the gargoyle was looking through the side of the stone as if it formed a wall, not a ceiling. “But that’s impossible, there’s nothing above that stone for a room to be anchored to.”

  “Come and look for yourself.”

  The gargoyle helped Max to lie down and the cold penetrated his clothes immediately, making him all the more aware of the stubborn ache in his leg. Max peered through the circular device and saw a polished wooden floor stretching ahead of him. There was a row of desks, like an office rather than a schoolroom, and filing cabinets lined one of the walls, with shelves and shelves of huge ledgers above them. It was all visible thanks to the familiar pale grey light of the Nether. Max noted the lack of curtains on the windows. It wasn’t like a private residence where heavy drapes were used to give the illusion of day and night. It looked like whoever worked in that room still kept a day/night schedule, however, because all the chairs were neatly tucked under the desks and it was empty of staff.

  The gargoyle was right; the stone formed part of an anchor wall, close to the floor, but only the foundation seemed to remain in Mundanus. He’d never seen or heard of anything like it before. In fact, he wasn’t sure how it was possible. Buildings owned by the puppets could only exist if anchored to a property in Mundanus. The cloisters that housed each of the Chapters were sometimes combinations of several reflections, but all of the parts were still anchored to a physical property in Mundanus. As far as he knew, the Fae were incapable of doing the same and the Sorcerers had taken great care to ensure it remained that way.

  Had a Sorcerer revealed a secret technique? With the corruption in London the Sorcerer of Essex was the prime suspect. But why provide the Agency with that knowledge? If it became widely available to the puppets it could undermine most of the techniques used by the Arbiters to keep close tabs on Fae-touched society.

  “This is big, isn�
��t it?”

  “It’s big,” Max said and detached the Peeper. “Just goes to show that it pays to be thorough.”

  “How do we get in?”

  Max got the Opener and pushed the pin into the place the Peeper had been, the powerful formulae making it as easy as pushing a stick into mud. He twisted it and watched the familiar burning outline of the doorway form in the stone. He expected it to fail once it tried to progress past the stone but instead the outline continued upwards, as if a thin line of the air itself began to burn. The doorway formed just as it would have if the anchor property had been there. Max made mental notes of the details as the gargoyle jumped up and down, gushing about how it hadn’t expected that and how exciting it all was. Max found it hard to believe it really was his soul trapped inside it.

  The door formed. Max opened it and pulled out the Opener. He let it close behind him once the gargoyle was inside too. At least it had the sense to shut up.

  The air inside the room had the familiar staleness of any Nether property. Max went to the one internal door that led to the rest of the house and gestured to the gargoyle to stay out of sight should anyone be walking past outside. It dropped low on all fours and slunk between the tables to lie beneath one of the large sash windows.

  Max listened for movement on the other side of the door but all he could hear was the ticking of the clock above his head.

  “I think they’re all asleep,” he whispered to the gargoyle.

  “We should go outside, see what the whole place looks like,” it replied. “These windows are too big for a fort, I want to see what kind of a building it is, and how big.”

  Max shook his head. “We only do that if we have time. We need to prioritise finding the information about the Rosas.”

  He went to the nearest filing cabinet. There was a small card in the holder on the first drawer he came to, with the letters “Y—Z” written on neatly. Max walked down the row to the one with “Ra—Re” written on it and moved down the drawers until he got to one labelled “Rosa”. It made sense that one of the largest family lines should have an entire drawer dedicated to them.

  He glanced up at the shelves above the filing cabinet and saw “Rosa” plus a range of numerals inscribed on the spines. “Come and get one of those down,” he said to the gargoyle, pointing at a ledger on the nearest shelf. “Look through and tell me what’s recorded in them.”

  He opened the drawer as the gargoyle did as it was told. It was stuffed with files, all labelled with names in alphabetical order, making locating the Gallica-Rosas very easy. He pulled out the one on Horatio Gallica-Rosa first, knowing he was involved intimately with the kidnapping of the Master of Ceremonies. There was a yellow dot next to his name on the file tab.

  There were only two sheets of paper inside. One was a yellow slip with “Archived: HGR2475-L” written on it. The second listed his name, gender, family line, height, weight and physical description, even down to locations of scars and birthmarks. It read like a processing sheet at a mundane hospital or police station. Beneath the basic data, in a box labelled “Preliminary assessment” there were a few lines of cryptic notes.

  Emotionally unstable without int & man.

  GTs—good rfs, nat. athl

  PSs—fencing, chess

  T—Strategy

  VS—8

  Sf AS? = 0

  Sf An? = High

  Recommended for: BP AP1 & An. entry prog.

  Focused on the information, Max stretched out a hand to rest it on the gargoyle’s shoulder. “This is a report to the head of Chapter intelligence, to be filed under—”

  “What are you doing?” The gargoyle twisted round to look at him, the open ledger resting on top of the filing cabinet.

  Max shook his head. “Habit.” He felt a flicker of irritation, then sadness before breaking contact. “It was trained into me so hard, I wasn’t even thinking. We need to get this data back to Ekstrand for analysis.”

  “We need a Chapter, we can’t do this by ourselves. Look at all this stuff. This would take our Chapter months and months to process.”

  Max nodded. “I bet there’s a file on every puppet in Society here. It could revolutionise how we monitor them.”

  “I know, it’s very cool.” The gargoyle grinned. “I think these ledgers list everything the Agency has provided, and what they’ve been paid in return.”

  “What do the puppets pay with?”

  “I don’t understand most of it, a lot is in code, but they use the Queen’s coin sometimes, which is interesting.”

  “Very,” Max agreed. “And important.”

  “And worrying. It just goes to show how little we know about Fae-touched society. If all of this has been going on, what else are we missing?”

  “Let’s just gather the data and leave the wider implications to the Sorcerer,” Max said, not wanting the gargoyle to get any more anxious. “I’ll make some notes—you put the ledger back and take a look outside. Get a sense of how big this place is but just look, don’t go out there, in case someone is looking out of a window. We need to get as much information as we can back to the Sorcerer so we can better prepare for the next time we come here.”

  Whilst the gargoyle obeyed, Max copied the notations listed in Horatio’s file and that of his parents. Flipping through the rest, he theorised the yellow dot next to the names indicated they’d been brought in by the Agency. At a glance, he saw that several Rosas were still unaccounted for and their files were still fat. He settled for making a note of their names for now. The sight of a couple of white dots in the Alba-Rosa section drew his attention and he pulled out the files on Amelia and Cornelius Alba-Rosa, the other roses who’d been in Aquae Sulis that night.

  Their files were also practically empty, both containing a yellow slip detailing where their previous information had been archived. But there was a piece of white paper in each with a simple form detailing how Amelia and Cornelius were no longer formally of the Alba-Rosa family, to the extent they’d been given a new surname: White.

  Max read the note underneath, the same in both files. “Exempt. Taken in by William-Reticulata Iris. Formerly AS, now L.”

  “What!” the gargoyle exclaimed as if Max had read it out loud. “Why didn’t Cathy tell us her husband saved those Rosas?”

  Max put the files back. “I told you the puppet can’t be trusted. She’s been hiding those Rosas from us all along.”

  “There must be a good reason.” The gargoyle sounded a little desperate. “What do we do?”

  “I’m going to see if I can find the information about Miss Rainer, then we need to take this all back to Ekstrand and plan the next move.”

  “So you’re still going to keep the deal with Cathy?”

  “No. But I want the information on this governess if I can get it. It could be useful in more ways than one.”

  “Mrs Lucy Rhoeas-Papaver,” Morgan announced, and Cathy did all she could to make the smile fixed on her face look genuine. At least the new butler seemed nicer than the interim one.

  “Catherine.” Lucy entered, dropped a reticule and a small package wrapped in brown paper and string on the nearest chair, and reached towards her with both hands.

  Cathy stood reluctantly and accepted the kiss on her cheek. Lucy’s blonde hair was pinned up and she was wearing a green travelling dress with gold detailing that suited her fair skin. Lucy was so petite that Cathy felt Amazonian next to her.

  “It’s so good to see you again,” Lucy said as Morgan brought in the tea.

  “And you,” Cathy replied, but she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Since her return from Exilium everything seemed dulled. Even now, sitting down as Lucy retrieved her package and arranged her skirts, Cathy felt like she was watching everything through a pane of glass.

  “Tom sends his love,” said Lucy with a smile.

  “How is he?”

  “Oh, fine. He’s a little worried about you, I guess.”

  Lucy sought eye contact so Cathy b
usied herself with the tea to avoid it. “How’s Aquae Sulis?”

  “Things are settling down again. The Master of Ceremonies hosted a soirée last night and he seemed very well.” She accepted her cup with thanks and handed over the package in exchange. “I brought you a gift. I almost bought an ornament, for house warming, but Tom advised me against it.”

  Cathy let Lucy’s gabble wash over her as she untied the string and pulled off the brown paper. When a corner of the hardback cover was revealed her heart quickened, but when the title was exposed Cathy’s expectations collapsed. “Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management,” she said, barely able to keep the disappointment from her voice. “How…thoughtful.”

  Lucy grinned. “Look on the title page. I wrote a little something there.”

  Cathy struggled to contain a deep sigh as she opened the book. Lucy’s handwriting was extravagant in its loops and curls. “Sometimes the most remarkable things can be found in unexpected places” read the dedication. Cathy wanted to drop it on the sofa and go back to bed but then her eyes flicked up to the title printed above Lucy’s words. She untucked the front flap of the dust jacket and lifted it to reveal the true identity of the novel: To Kill a Mockingbird. It made her genuinely smile for what seemed like the first time in days.

  “Have you read it?” Lucy asked.

  “No.” Cathy folded the dust jacket back into place. “I fell for your trick.”

  “I thought I should play it safe. I was at a dinner party a couple of weeks ago and these two women were talking about how the novel constitutes one of the greatest threats to the moral fabric of Aquae Sulis. Can you believe that?”

  “Which novel?”

  “Any of them. If they come to visit and poke around your bookshelves they won’t disapprove. Honestly, Cathy—may I call you Cathy?” She didn’t pause for an affirmative. “Between you and me, I think the ignorance of some ladies in Aquae Sulis constitutes the greatest threat to the city’s moral fabric.”

  Cathy didn’t know what to say to that even though she agreed. Was Lucy testing her?

  “This house is so beautiful,” Lucy said, snapping the strand of silence growing taut between them. “How are you finding it here?”