‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ said Maud, and the wary look melted away with a perplexed chuckle. ‘But no, I’m afraid the political world doesn’t quite work that way. Not here or anywhere else – the Wintersea Party might be stuck in its ways, but I can assure you, your own government isn’t much better.
‘For more than one hundred years the Republic and the Free State have been at an impasse, with little communication and no cooperation in either direction. Even if I could persuade my party to do the right thing – and I’m not saying I won’t try – there’s no guarantee Steed and his government would come to the table. Once upon a time, when I was a young idealist …’ She paused to raise one sardonic eyebrow in Morrigan’s direction. ‘… I hoped to change things. I’ve been trying for years to seek an audience with Steed. Even so-called enemy nations should have an open dialogue, but he’s been utterly unwilling to engage. I’m afraid I can’t imagine the Hollowpox has changed his attitude.’
Morrigan felt a tiny glimmer of hope.
‘What if I could persuade him to talk to you?’
‘Morrigan.’ Maud gave her a kindly, sympathetic look, as if she’d just said something incredibly silly. ‘You are an impressive girl. It was brave and clever and humble of you to travel all this way on the Gossamer Line, to stand alone before the leader of an enemy nation and ask her for help. But even all of that – even being a Wundersmith – doesn’t mean you have the power to change a stubborn man’s mind. Believe me.’
‘I don’t mean me personally,’ Morrigan clarified. She was thinking of the Elders, and of Jupiter, and of Holliday and the entire force of the Wundrous Society – surely someone among them had access to the prime minister. She had the utmost faith in Jupiter to change anyone’s mind if he got the chance. ‘If somebody could get Steed to talk to you, if we could create a – what did you call it, an open dialogue – would you help us then?’
Maud seemed to teeter for a moment between amusement and bewilderment, but finally made a sort of sweeping gesture, yielding to Morrigan’s persistence.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right. I will ask Steed one more time to meet with me, leader to leader. If you can somehow persuade him to accept my invitation, I’ll put our Hollowpox cure on the negotiating table. You have my word.’
Standing aboard the golden-white Gossamer train just minutes later, feeling the rhythmic chug-chug-chug of the invisible tracks disappearing beneath her, Morrigan felt a gentle tug on some corner of her consciousness.
She ought to go straight home, she knew that. She had what she’d come for, after all, even if it was from an unexpected source. She had hope, of a sort. She just had to convince the most powerful man in Nevermoor to do as he was asked. Easy.
She should go straight back to the Deucalion to make a plan with Jupiter.
But there was this little thought in the corner of her mind, a quiet nudge of her curiosity. She should go home, yes, but … since she was already riding the Gossamer, perhaps she should visit Crow Manor. Just a quick visit. Just to see if anything had changed since she’d seen it last. Surely it wouldn’t hurt just to—
And suddenly she was there, as quick as thought. Standing in the grounds of her childhood home, its hulking black façade looming above her against the grey sky.
No need to knock. She walked straight through the closed front door, incorporeal and – she hoped – invisible, just in time to see the swish of Ornella Crow’s trademark grey dress disappear around the corner at the top of the stairs.
‘Impossible,’ whispered a voice from the dining room down the hall. Morrigan jumped, wondering how she would explain herself, but the voice went on, ‘That wretched old vulture is impossible.’
‘Shhh, she’ll hear you.’
‘So what if she does? I’m sick of this place. I’m going to tell the agency that Madam Crow is the worst mistress I’ve ever—’
‘You may not want to keep your job, Hetty, but I do. Now help me clear this table before the old vulture comes back and pecks your eyes out.’
Morrigan rolled her eyes. Ornella hadn’t changed, then.
She scurried silently up the stairs and followed her grandmother down the long corridor, stopping when she saw her take a sharp left into the Portrait Hall. Grandmother’s favourite room in Crow Manor. Her favourite obsession, really. When she was young, Morrigan used to hover near the doorway, too frightened to step inside, watching Ornella stare at the oil portraits of her ancestors and deceased family members.
She was older now, and she wanted to follow her grandmother inside. But she couldn’t. The idea of it suddenly made her feel ill, and flashes of memory from her last visit choked her thoughts.
Her grandmother’s terrified face on Christmas night. You shouldn’t be here.
Corvus Crow, her father, walking straight through her as if she didn’t exist. We swore we’d never speak that name again. That name is dead.
Through her haze of dread, Morrigan was struck by a sudden wave of nausea. She swivelled on the spot, turning to hurry back down the corridor in the opposite direction, away from the Portrait Hall where her scowling eleven-year-old self was now immortalised alongside the other dead Crows.
Stupid. What was she thinking, coming here of all places?
Morrigan paused near the top of the stairs, one hand pressed to her diaphragm, willing the nausea to subside. She needed to leave.
She was going to walk out the front door. She was going to call the Gossamer train and go home to Nevermoor and never, ever return to this house. She was going to—
She was going to vomit. She was going to vomit, right here, through the Gossamer, she was suddenly sure of it. (How exactly would that work? she somehow had the presence of mind to wonder.)
A noise from behind made her turn to see her grandmother leaving the Portrait Hall, firmly shutting and locking the door behind her with a large iron key.
Don’t see me, Morrigan thought desperately. Don’t let her see me.
She lurched sideways into the nearest room and found a darkened corner to slide down onto the floor, where she sat trying to catch her breath.
Across the room, something else was breathing. Two something elses. Two small lumps in two little wooden cot beds, rising and falling beneath the bedclothes. In the very moment when Morrigan realised whose room she’d entered, the door opened quietly. A familiar young, pretty blonde woman tiptoed inside with a rustle of her blue dress. She was humming something sweet.
Morrigan felt somehow certain that, unlike her grandmother, her stepmother wouldn’t be able to see her. But even so, she stayed hidden in shadow while Ivy checked on her sons and then left the room.
Pausing for a moment at the door, the young mother cast a quick look back at her snowy-haired boys, light from the hall illuminating her face. Morrigan had never seen Ivy look like that – all softness and maternal affection and quiet, contented joy. She felt a strange little curl of something, right in her centre, and it made her flinch to realise the something was envy.
Not just envy. Longing.
But that couldn’t be right. She didn’t long for Ivy. She didn’t even like Ivy!
It was something else Morrigan longed for, some piece of her that was missing. She couldn’t say exactly what it was. But in the darkest, most secret part of her – the part she would never share with anyone – Morrigan knew that whatever that missing thing was, she’d never had any of it at all. And little Wolfram and Guntram Crow had somehow taken her share without asking.
She felt a shadow fall across her heart.
You have a wonderful life, Morrigan reminded herself sternly. You have everything you need.
She really did. She had things in Nevermoor that these boys would never have, things they could never even imagine! She had rides across rooftops on the Brolly Rail, and trips to the opera, and spectacular battles on Christmas Eve. She had an actual magical bedroom that transformed itself according to her wants and needs, for goodness’ sake.
M
ore importantly, she had Jupiter and Jack and Fenestra and all her friends at the Hotel Deucalion. She had Hawthorne and Cadence and Miss Cheery and Hometrain and Sub-Nine. She was a member of an elite society of Wundrous people with remarkable talents, and she had eight loyal sisters and brothers of her own! What more could she possibly want? How greedy could one person be?
But they’re not your real sisters, are they? said a small, annoying voice inside her mind. Not your real brothers.
Morrigan angled her head to the side. She stood up, stepped gingerly out of the darkness and crossed the floor to peer into the two wooden cribs, side by side. Each had a name carved across the top. Tiny, rosy-cheeked Wolfram slumbered peacefully. Little Guntram seemed to have a cold; he snuffled in his sleep.
These, she supposed, were her real brothers. Her half-brothers.
Morrigan knelt in the narrow space between the cribs.
‘Hello,’ she whispered. ‘I’m your sister.’ The words felt strange, but nevertheless, she persisted. ‘Your big sister. I bet you wouldn’t believe that. I bet nobody’s told you about me. But it’s true. My name’s Morrigan.’ She paused, considering for a moment. ‘You probably won’t be able to say that, because you’re too little. Just … call me Mog.’
Guntram stirred a little, one eye cracking open to peer up at her sleepily. For a breathless moment Morrigan thought he might wake up and scream the house down, but she whispered a soft, ‘Shhh,’ and he nestled back into his blankets.
That was close, she thought. It was definitely time to go.
As Morrigan crept out of the room, however, something caught her eye – another chubby little lump, slumped over on the windowsill behind the gauzy curtain.
She gasped. ‘Emmett!’
He was just as she remembered him. Her battered stuffed rabbit with his missing tail and black glass eyes … only now he was covered in a thick layer of dust, as if he’d been left there for a long time and forgotten. She reached out to grab him but her hands, of course, fell straight through.
Morrigan felt her throat tighten uncomfortably, and she blinked against the sudden stinging in her eyes. Emmett was the one thing in Crow Manor she missed. She imagined holding him tight, as she used to. She would never have left him slumped on the windowsill like that, all on his own. He might catch a cold, or … or get a crick in his neck!
As Morrigan looked around the room in dismay, she filled up with a mingled anger and sadness that her body felt too small to contain.
Look at all these things, she suddenly wanted to shout. All these piles of toys and books and blocks, and yet the one thing that had been hers, the one piece of her left in Crow Manor, had just been handed over to these ungrateful little beasts like he was nothing. Just another toy for them to neglect and forget. And now he was all alone.
Morrigan wanted to reach right through the Gossamer and grasp Emmett tight and take him home with her, where he belonged.
But that was impossible.
She squeezed her eyes and fists tight and pictured her oilskin umbrella. The Gossamer train whistled in the distance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Squid Crow Po
A red haze of anger accompanied Morrigan all the way home on the Gossamer train. It was with her when she snatched up her brolly from the platform handrail, and by the time she got to the Deucalion her anger was so unwieldy it had swung all the way back around to grief.
She ran up the spiral staircase from the lobby without stopping or even noticing where she was going. She thought she was headed for her bedroom, and was most surprised when she arrived in Jupiter’s study.
It was only when Jupiter looked up from his desk, a confused smile sliding off his face, that Morrigan realised what a sight she must be to him.
‘Mog?’ he said, suddenly stricken with worry. ‘What is it?’
What could he see, she wondered? How much of what had happened today was still hovering around her? Grey clouds and dark smudges and goodness knew what else – a visual history of the world’s longest morning. (Was it still only morning? Was it not next year yet?)
‘It’s … it’s Emmett!’
Morrigan felt herself spill over, face crumpling like an empty milk carton. Trying to herd her sadness back towards anger (an infinitely more manageable feeling), she stalked across the little room, picked up a cushion from one of the leather armchairs and threw it so hard it knocked a picture frame off the wall. Jupiter watched in bewilderment.
‘They d-don’t even need him, and he’s mine, he’s been mine since I was a baby, and Ivy always said he was so filthy, why would she give Emmett to them?’
‘Them who?’
‘Wolfram and Guntram! My … brothers.’ She paced before the fireplace, hands curling into fists, tears stinging in her eyes.
‘Okay … but who’s Emmett?’ Jupiter looked quite at sea trying to make sense of her monologue through the jagged crying.
‘My rabbit!’ she sobbed. ‘My toy rabbit. My friend.’ My only friend, she thought. ‘I left him b-behind. He was my friend and I just … left him behind.’
She was thinking of Eventide night, two and a half years ago. The night she’d been cursed to die. The night Jupiter had arrived without warning and rescued her, brought her to Nevermoor and given her an unimaginable new life.
She remembered how the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow had arrived at Crow Manor close behind him, and together she and Jupiter had run from her certain death without looking back. In all that excitement and danger, she hadn’t given a single thought to small, grubby Emmett, tucked among the pillows on her bed. Waiting faithfully for her to return.
Morrigan flopped heavily into an armchair. She knew it was irrational; she was old enough to know that her stuffed toy didn’t have a mind of his own, didn’t have any feelings to hurt. But that didn’t matter. She’d poured so much of her heart into that little rabbit, told him so many of her fears and hopes and secret wounds over eleven years. He carried them all inside him. Her one friend in a cursed, lonely childhood.
Jupiter clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘Oh, Mog. You didn’t leave him behind. You were running for your life. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I’m the one who swept in and spirited you away without any warning.’
‘I want to go back,’ she said, jumping up to pace the floor again. She felt skittery and electric, full of nervous energy. ‘Not on the Gossamer. For real. I want to rescue him—’
She stopped when she saw the alarm on Jupiter’s face.
‘We can’t do that. You know we can’t,’ he said in a careful voice. ‘I’m so sorry your brothers haven’t cared for Emmett as they should have. As you did. But, listen – I bet they love him more than you think. And if they don’t now, they will. When they get older and smarter, they’ll know who he belonged to, even if they don’t know they know. That’s how it works with friends like Emmett, who have been so dearly loved. They wear that love like an invisible coat. It never comes off, it’s always there, and in the quiet moments, you can feel it. Wolfram and Guntram will feel it one day.’
Morrigan wanted to find reassurance in his words, she really did, but she knew they were just that – words. He was trying to make her feel better. She didn’t believe a bit of it.
Jupiter frowned. ‘What in heaven’s name were you doing there, anyway? You shouldn’t be using the Gossamer Line on your own, Mog – I told you, it’s dangerous!’
‘Oh. Right. Um …’ She shook her head as if trying to dislodge water from her ears, feeling ridiculous all of a sudden. Why was she talking about her toy rabbit? The visit to Crow Manor had thrown her so completely, the real news had fallen out of her brain. ‘I … I went to find a cure. Squall said—’
‘Squall said—?’
‘Yes, on the rooftop that day, remember? I told you, he said he had a cure for the Hollowpox and he’d hand it over if—’
‘If you agreed to become his apprentice, yes I do remember that conversation, believe it or not.’ Jupiter had his hands o
ver his face now and was watching her through the gaps in his fingers. ‘Mog, please, please tell me you didn’t—’
‘No!’ she said quickly. ‘I mean … I was going to find him –’ (Jupiter uttered a faint moan) ‘– but the Gossamer Line got confused and took me to the wrong place and I met – Jupiter, will you stop pulling at your hair like that and listen – I met President Wintersea!’
He stopped pulling at his hair. He listened.
‘Right.’ He stared at her. ‘Okay.’
‘Yeah.’ Morrigan shrugged. ‘I think … I was thinking of the wrong thing and the Gossamer Line misread my intentions and – anyway, it doesn’t matter. I met her, and she knows who I am, and that I’m a Wundersmith, and she knows about the Hollowpox and everything.’
She told him all that had happened in the Chancery, and Jupiter listened intently with his mouth slightly agape.
‘—and then Maud said the Wintersea Party was like a big old dragon, impossible to steer—’
‘Wait – you’re on a first-name basis,’ he interrupted her, ‘with the president of the Wintersea Republic?’
‘Yes, shush. Maud said the Wintersea Party might help if there was a squid crow po.’
‘Quid pro quo?’
‘Right, one of those. She said they won’t do something for nothing, but if we could convince Prime Minister Steed to meet with her, just to have a conversation, then she would try to convince her party to share their cure. So, can you? Or can the Elders? One of you must know Steed, surely.’
‘I do know him, as it happens, and I can’t say I’m overly fond of the man, but Morrigan …’ Jupiter paused, shaking his head. He looked horrified. ‘President Wintersea is the leader of our enemy nation. Making a deal with her on behalf of the Free State government without their knowledge or permission is technically, well … treason. We can’t tell anyone about this.’
‘It’s not treason, it’s negotiating! It’s asking for help! Anyway, it’s not like she’s asking to rule over the Free State or chop off the queen’s head or anything, she just wants to talk to Steed. Even so-called enemy nations should have an open dialogue.’
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