When she finishes, the Duke leans back in his armchair and steeples his fingers for a moment, inspecting us both from his chair. Eventually he nods. "Very good, both of you. That is the information we really needed. Once Jeremy came to see me last night, I asked him to visit Downing Street to see what he could pick up on the attack there. He telephoned me from there and, although briefly, confirmed my suspicions. As it transpires, the same Augur who is responsible for the attack on Gregorio’s was also present at the scene of the explosion, and he thinks he has found another connection between one of the girls that was there with an attack in a small village a few weeks ago. So, there’s no doubt about it, stopping the Magic Circle, along with exposing Carlton Munday for the fraud he is, are now our top priorities." He speaks with authority, like a player who knows exactly what their next ten moves in chess are going to be with certainty. I can see why Edward and he don’t get along; it would be impossible to change his mind on anything.
"What did you have in mind, your Grace?" Ella asks, using his formal address.
"Well, initially I had planned to have Lou visit our Augur sympathiser at the papers, but with the PM and her deputy in hospital I worry that either the Magic Circle have done us an inadvertent favour by delaying the talks or, more likely, have created a catalyst for having new Augur laws passed. At such a delicate time it might be better, and faster, if a Normal does that particular duty for us. It also means that I can ask Lou to do something else equally important," he says, without elaborating on what that thing might be. He looks at me, and I feel compelled to say something, but on Ella’s strict instruction I keep my mouth shut. "Curtis, what would you say to potentially running an errand for the good of all mankind?" he asks me, trying to sound casual. But his cold eyes are steadily fixed on me, as if trying to pin me to the backrest of the chair I’m sitting in. I can’t look at Ella because I know that would probably make things worse somehow. I nod slowly, meeting his stare. "O-of c-course, your Grace," I stutter, mentally kicking myself for sounding so uncertain.
"Very good," he gives me an unfriendly smile. "Very good, indeed. I will require you to take the drive that I know Ella has so safely stashed away somewhere to a friend of the Society’s. I shall write down two addresses for you, but you’ll need to memorise them and then we shall throw the paper in the fireplace. These people have agreed to help our cause, and the first is my best kept secret," the Duke’s voice drops to a whisper, as if the bookshelves might overhear him, "and I don’t want him falling into the wrong hands. Visit my friend here and tell him I sent you. He will take the drive and put the information we need for the press onto one drive, and the information that we don't want given to the press on another. Ella, you are to look after the second, and Curtis, you will be custodian of the first. He will securely erase the data from the drive you give him so that we don’t have that information in too many places, and once you have done that you will need to take it directly to the second address I give you.
"This person is absolutely hell-bent on exposing Munday as much as we are and will do exactly what we need to make sure that any laws Munday tries to pass are disregarded due to his bias in the situation."
"Your Grace, do you know what’s actually on the stick?" Ella asks, feigning curiosity.
"My girl, I know that the Augur that obtained that information ended up dying for it. I don’t personally know, oh no. To be in my position and have sensitive information such as this would no doubt compromise my status. You know as well as anybody in the Society that I take a risk on a daily basis just by hiding my true identity. But I have been told that it would bring down the empire that Munday has tried to create with such ferocity that no one would be willing to believe a word the man then says.
"It’s difficult to know when you aren’t always on the front lines how much pain he has caused for Augurs. True, initially he was given the position of Civil Defence Minister because he showed himself to be capable of making unbiased decisions for the protection of all citizens, both Augurs and Normals. But it has become clear over the years that this is nothing but a front and a ploy to raise him in power.
"I’ve never revealed this to anyone," he says, leaning forward and looking at us conspiratorially, his beady eyes darting between myself and Ella as if to make sure he has our undivided attention, "but I discovered that the reason for Munday’s success was because he had direct involvement with the Facility."
Ella can’t disguise her shock, although I’m sure she tries. The Duke nods in affirmation, "Yes, I’m sure of it now. The brutal experiments that so many of us were subjected to were instigated by him," he sighs and clenches his fists as if wrestling with the thought of all those Augurs being tortured. But I doubt that he, in his fancy office with his Royal connections and title, was ever subjected to any pain at the hands of Munday or the facility. Not like Ella and certainly not like her parents, who would probably still be alive if the place had never existed.
I realise what kind of a position this puts Ella in. She can’t not help now, no matter what Edward thinks about his father or how much danger it might put us in. If Munday is connected in some way to her parents’ death, then I’m sure she’ll stop at nothing to put him away.
"But, your Grace," she finally manages to say, "I thought everyone connected with all that was arrested at the time?"
"Not everyone, my dear. It took me years to figure out who Munday was really, and if the information on that drive is what I’ve been told it is, then we have the proof to put him behind bars for a very, very long time." In the silence that follows, the only sounds are the ticking of a large clock on one of the shelves and the crackle of the fire. It would be a peaceful sort of a sound if things weren’t currently so awful, and it brings me no comfort as I sit contemplating the rock and the hard place that we seem to have gotten ourselves stuck in the middle of.
"But now, the best cure for this particular malady is going to be a good dose of action," the Duke says, slapping his knees. He stands, and we follow suit, taking it as our cue to be prepared to leave. Walking over to the desk that is still littered with papers, he takes an expensive-looking pen and writes several lines on a small thick card. He hands it to me and I read the two addresses, showing them to Ella as I do so. She nods when she feels she can remember them and I try desperately to commit them to my own memory before tossing the card into the fireplace. The whole thing feels like a strange ritual, and watching the card brown and curl up at the edges until it disappears is almost like an omen in itself.
"Ella, I would ask that you accompany Curtis for the first meeting. My contact is not the trusting type, and he’ll want some proof that you are an Augur before doing anything for you.
"However, I insist that you keep well clear for the second meeting. I don’t want you within a square mile of that building when Curtis is handing the information over. Do you understand?" he asks, his expression serious.
"Of course, your Grace. I understand," she says quietly, "but how will your first contact know that we are representing you and aren’t some people from the Magic Circle?"
"Ah, of course. Show him this," the Duke fishes out an object from his desk drawer. It’s a pocket knife with a delicately carved handle set with mother of pearl, and Ella barely looks at it as she passes it to me for safe keeping.
With another kiss on each cheek for her and a hearty handshake for me, we leave the magnificent study, me with a pit in my stomach that only feels like it’s getting deeper with each step.
"Well," I say when we are far out of sight of the Duke’s house and marching through the throngs of London shoppers on Regent Street, "now I really don’t know what to think."
"I do," says Ella, keeping her eyes firmly ahead of her and speaking with a low voice. She threads her arm through mine so that we don’t separate in the crowds, and I welcome the feeling. She’s like an anchor keeping me firmly fixed to the ground, and I never seem to feel like it’s all getting too much, even when it obviously should be. Any
sane person would have gone completely mad by now with the pressure, the surprises and the constant threats to our survival. But, I muse to myself, that just goes to show that I can’t have been completely sane to start off with. What’s that line from Alice in Wonderland? We’re all mad here… All the best people are.
"So, he tells us to do exactly what Edward warned us against, but we’re going to do it anyway?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
"I don’t see what choice we have, Curtis," she replies sadly. We veer around a group of tourists taking selfies outside Hamleys, and I think how nice it must be to go somewhere completely different, a total change of environment, not just for a holiday but for good. We could go to France or Spain or even to Africa. I hear that Augurs are actually respected over there, and although in most of Europe magic is restricted, I’m sure they must be more lenient than here.
"Okay, this may sound crazy," I blurt out, pulling her to one side and stopping for a moment in a closed doorway, allowing the strangers to pass us by. "Why don’t we just take off? Go somewhere that no one knows us and start over? Where you can, you know, be yourself," I say quietly. Ella gives me a sympathetic look and then to my surprise she kisses me hard on the mouth. I welcome the feeling that it brings, a warmth inside me as I kiss her back, my hands finding their place around her waist. When she pulls away, she keeps her face just inches from mine.
"Curtis, I’m sorry about all of this, I really am. But I can’t run away. Apart from the fact that it would be letting all of my friends down, I can’t leave the country. I mean physically I can’t leave the country. I’ve no passport, and it’s been the law for decades that if you are an Augur you have to have it printed on your ID. I’ve never left England because it would mean that there would be some record of my existence on the government database. My parents almost didn’t bother with birth certificates for Agnes and me, that’s how mad it was.
"Look, if you don’t want to do this, it’s not a problem to me. I’ll tell the Duke that we’ve broken up and that you won’t be helping us any more—"
"Oh my God, Ella, please don’t say things like that," I say and hold her all the more tightly. "I told you that I’m here for good, whether you like it or not. If you told the Duke that we weren’t together, no matter whether that was true or not, he’d probably send Mumbe to come and finish the job he started on me yesterday. I want to help you, all of the Augurs, but I just can’t stand seeing your life being taken away from you by the constant fight for other people!" I sigh irritably and place my forehead against hers. "I just think that we’ve gotten ourselves into something and I don’t see a way out."
"I know, I know," she says, placing her hands on each side of my face, "I can’t say I’m sorry enough, alright?"
"Ella, I don’t want an apology from you — it’s not even your fault, I just wish that there was some way to get out of doing their dirty work without endangering your life," I say, feeling an anger rise in my chest that isn’t aimed at her, but at the stupidity of it all. "I may not like where we’re going, but I’m not giving up. For as long as you’re willing to put up with the danger, I’m willing to stick it out with you. But please, please promise me that if at any point you genuinely see a way out, you’ll take it, alright?"
"I promise. And you promise me that if at any point you feel like you can’t handle this life anymore you’ll run as fast as you can away from us and never look back, okay?" The vow she’s asking me to make is impossible for me to keep. I’d never leave her now, and I know it. I run my hands nervously through my hair and she gives me a look that stops me half way through the motion. I can’t help but laugh. "Sorry, sorry. Look, I can’t promise you that I’ll ever run away but I can promise you that I’ll never get to the point where I can’t handle it, so help me God." She gives me another kiss as if to seal the deal and we head toward Piccadilly Circus where we can take the Underground to our first stop.
The Duke no doubt expects us to go to wherever the drive is stashed and retrieve it before visiting his ‘contact’, but he doesn’t realise that Ella has been keeping it on her the entire time, so there’s no need to make any extra stops.
The first address I memorised is in Golders Green which is straight up North from where we are by about half an hour. Although Ella advises against it, I use the map on my phone to at least find the general area of the postcode, as I’d be lost otherwise. I can’t imagine that any spies will be checking out my browsing history any time soon and I doubt that my phone is on MI5’s most wanted list, so I figure that it’s fairly harmless.
The map takes us from the tube station down the main road and into a network of terraced houses, cramped together and in need of repair. The area itself is generally quite nice, so I’m surprised to find the house in question looks dilapidated. The windows evidently haven’t been cleaned in at least a decade and ancient net curtains that hang in the front are grey with age. There are three buzzers at the front door, which means that the house has been split into apartments, which isn’t uncommon in most of London, but the outside of the house almost looks two small to house three separate flats. The paint on the front door is peeled off, although it looks like at some point it was painted blue, maybe in the 80’s. There are scratches around the front door keyhole and there are round dents which look like someone has tried to bash it in a few times.
"Which bell is it?" I say, looking at the three buzzers, none of which have names on them. Ella peers at them for a few moments before taking a calculated guess and trying the top one. There’s no intercom so if it’s not right we’ll find out soon enough. After a moment we hear a door open and a scrape of feet on carpeted floor. The door is unlocked and opens just a crack, the chain still in place as a precaution.
"Hello?" comes a quavering, elderly voice.
"Sorry to trouble you, Madam, but a friend told us this was the house of Marvin. Did we get the right address?" Ella asks with such sincerity you’d have to be mad not to want to trust her.
"Oh, that boy," the lady says crossly. "Yes, yes, his flat is upstairs, but I don’t know if he’s in. It’s the second buzzer if you want to try," she offers. I can see a milky green eye examining us through the space between the door, and although it’s an old voice with cataract vision there’s an alertness there, as if she’s used to having to fend people off.
Ella pushes the middle buzzer and we can hear it ring somewhere above our heads. The bay window above us looks down onto the doorstep and there’s a twitch of a net curtain, although I don’t actually catch a glimpse of anyone.
"Hmm. Sounds like he might not be in, sorry my dear," the lady says, closing the door and locking it behind her before we can protest.
"Well that didn’t go so well," Ella says to me.
"But he’s there —I saw something in the upstairs window so he’s probably just hiding from us. Want to, you know, do your thing?" I suggest, not wanting to get her into trouble but not seeing any other way.
"You think that’s really a good idea out in the open like this?"
"Well, the Duke did say that he’d want some proof that you were, you know."
"There’s a lot of ‘you knows’ in there, Curtis. We’re going to have to figure out some kind of code," she jokes, but I can see she’s working out the best way to proceed. We listen in silence for a moment to check that there’s no one waiting on the other side of the door and when we’re confident the old lady has returned to her flat Ella places her hands flat against the door, top and bottom of where the locks should be. Within seconds I hear the chain sliding back in its place and the latch lifting up, and all it takes is a gentle nudge from me for the door to open. The stale smell of old cooking that has ingrained itself into the wallpaper and carpets hits us as we enter, and I let Ella take the lead as I close the door silently behind me.
We tiptoe past the door to the ground floor flat and step lightly on each step on the staircase, keeping to the sides where the wood is less worn and therefore unlikely to creak as much. On
the first landing, which is where I assume Marvin is living based on where his window was, is a door that was painted white some decades ago but is now an off yellow colour. The locks look brand-new though, and I wonder if he has to get them changed often.
"What now?" Ella asks me, whispering.
"You’re asking me?" I say, taken aback.
"This is technically your mission, so I’m going to let you take the lead."
"Bloody hell. Okay, I would say best to use your mojo again, but we have no idea what this guy is like. He could be standing on the other side of the door with a gun in his hand or he could be about to dive out the window at the first sign of trouble."
"So? What’s the plan?"
"Argh. Okay, open it, but be ready for trouble," I sigh, not sure if I’m making the right call at all. I’m not really used to being put into the position where I have to call the shots. Ella places her hands on the door like before but this time she frowns with the effort.
"There’s at least eight separate locks I’d reckon," she says. "Not impossible but not great either —as I’ve no idea where they are I could just as easily take the door off its hinges by accident."
Divided by Magic Page 15