by K. E. Mills
Melissande looked at him. “What-you think the other Gerald has plans to come and visit us?”
She’d surprised him. If she weren’t so sad and tired she’d be a bit insulted.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d thought that far ahead,” he admitted. “I think it’s possible. Don’t you?”
“Yes. What does Sir Alec think?”
“We didn’t discuss it. But I’ll bet he thinks it’s possible too,” said Monk, his own tea forgotten. “Which complicates everything. Because if we charge into this half-cocked, if we make the wrong choices? Not only could we end up getting Gerald killed, we could cause the destruction of that world and this one.”
Nobody spoke for a while. Even the flames in the fireplace sounded subdued.
Melissande looked at Bibbie. “I hate to say it, Bibs, but he’s right. Not about not rescuing Gerald-but we do need to take this one step at a time.” She picked up Shadbolts Through The Ages from the seat of the reading chair and held it out to him. “Come on. You can start with this.”
“Good idea,” said Reg, and rattled her tail feathers. “Plop your ass down here, Mr. Markham. I’ll read over your shoulder and explain all the big thaumaturgical words.”
Despite the tension, everyone laughed. Well, everyone except Reg. “Thanks, Your Majesty,” said Monk, crossing to the chair. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Trust me, sunshine,” said Reg, sniffing. “Neither do I.”
Melissande felt herself shiver as Monk’s fingers brushed hers, taking the book. He gave her a small smile, resigned and affectionate. Smiling back, she hoped he couldn’t tell how hard and fast her heart was beating.
He will end up going. I can feel it in my bones. Oh, lord. Oh, Saint Snodgrass. Please, please… bring them back.
He kept the object in a hexed and lead-lined box in a secret storage pit at the bottom of his East Ott garden. Seventeen years ago, when he’d found the appalling thing, this had been his father’s garden. This had been his father’s house. But that hadn’t mattered. Prompted by an odd premonition, he’d built the hidey-hole two years before that, and never once did his father suspect it was there. His father had been a useful wizard, but no match for the obfuscation incants he’d learned from the Department. In the long years since his finding and hiding of the object, Father remained blissfully ignorant of the object’s existence.
How bitterly did he wish he’d been granted the same respite.
Being an only child, in due course the property had come to him. As well as sorrow, he’d felt relief. Unlike his father he lived a solitary life. With no regular parade of visitors the hidey-hole was almost certainly safe from discovery.
Because he was a janitor, traveling the world’s less savory places, over the years, from time to time, other things had been stored at the bottom of the garden… but none approached the malevolence of the object in the box. To this day-especially on this day-he did not regret his failure to report what he’d found, nor his decision not to surrender it to the man who, in that time, had headed his Department. Harfield Gravesend had been a good man, a trustworthy man, and competent enough in his unimaginative way. But Gravesend had been too quick to trust his political superiors. Too bullishly convinced that the government was and would ever be an instrument of good. Whereas Alec Oldman was born a cynical child, and subsequent experience had only honed his wry suspicions.
Besides. Some things were so tempting they should never see the light of day.
The obfuscation hexes around the old hidey-hole melted like mist at his command. Kneeling on the damp grass, his fingers chilled by the rising dew, he unhexed the hole’s lid and eased it open. Immediately he felt the tingle of incants binding the lead-lined box within. And even though they shrouded the thaumic signature of the object, still in his imagination he could feel its sinister touch. Twice, he’d used it, and had nightmares for days after. Remembering those dreams, which returned now and then, usually after a particularly vexing case, a prickle of sweat broke out on his skin. If he did indeed ask Monk Markham to use the object he’d be condemning the young wizard to a lifetime of dismay.
Which hardly seemed fair. Ralph’s nephew wasn’t one of his agents. And this time he’d not willingly become involved in grim affairs. This time his only crime was being friends with Gerald Dunwoody.
Which only goes to prove the old saw right: there is no good deed that finds itself unpunished.
With a tiny shiver of distaste he reached into the hidey-hole and withdrew the heavily hexed and lead-lined box housing the object. Thrust it into the thick felt bag he’d fetched from indoors, re-sealed the otherwise empty hidey-hole and returned to the car with his burden. Threatened by dawn, the world’s rim was growing light. Soon now there’d be traffic, and an expectation that he could be found behind his desk in his office at Nettleworth. Knowing that expectations were about to be confounded-and that more problems would arise because of it-he drove with unwise speed back to the Markham madhouse, where Ralph’s nephew and niece and two unlikely royal women were waiting. Where a dead man who should not exist lay stiffening with rigor on the bed of a man who also, some believed, should not exist.
Was he doing the right thing? He had no idea. But, like his hiding of the object, he was doing the only thing he could live with. And for better or worse, that was the best he could do.
Monk and the ladies greeted his return with wary courtesy. Cautious, untrusting, belligerent and afraid. They showed him into the old house’s library where a fire burned with inappropriate cheer, and a scattering of books about shadbolts suggested that at last Ralph’s intractable nephew was learning to do as he was told.
The other Monk’s portal opener sat on a low table, outwardly innocent, wholly repellent. He withdrew the object in its lead-lined box from the thick felt bag and put it on the same low table. Then he unhexed the box and flipped back the lid, revealing the object’s existence for the first time in years.
“Blimey,” said Monk Markham, peering down at it. “That thing’s got a kick to it.”
He nodded. “It has.”
Stepping back, Markham’s sister shivered. “I don’t like it, Sir Alec.”
He flicked a glance at her. “Nor should you, Miss Markham. This is a thaumaturgical abomination. Created by a man afflicted by… interesting ideas.”
As Monk Markham winced, the appalling bird tipped her head to one side. “Oh yes? In that case, sunshine, what’s it doing in our library?”
He’d often wondered just how much Mr. Dunwoody and his friends knew about the former Queen of Lalapinda. He had to believe-very little. For if they’d known what he knew they would hardly be so relaxed in her company. If he weren’t convinced she’d been hexed into comparative harmlessness he’d not be relaxed either.
Miss Cadwallader, as she so quaintly insisted she now be called, stood stiffly behind the wingback chair on which the bird perched. “I appreciate that in your profession, Sir Alec, a certain amount of circumspection is required. But really, given our current dilemma, I hardly think it’s appropriate.”
“In other words, ducky, get on with it,” said the bird. “In case you haven’t noticed, the sun’s about to rise.”
And that was true. With nowhere to sit he dropped to one knee beside the low table, and the box. “This device,” he said, tapping its lead-lined container, “is the only one of its kind. At least, as far as I know. I’ve never come across another and it’s my devout hope I never will.” He swept his gaze around their faces, slowly, and let them see what that meant. “Until this moment I was the only one who knew of its existence. The wizard who created it is long dead and while he lived he kept it a secret. In revealing it to you four now I imperil not only my own career and quite possibly my life, but yours as well.”
“Without asking?” said Miss Markham, frowning. “Thanks for nothing, Sir Alec.”
He nodded. “You’re welcome.”
“So this long dead wizard you nicked it from,” said the
bird. “Killed him, did you?”
“Is that relevant?”
Her disconcertingly human eyes gleamed. “No. But it’s interesting.”
“It’s ancient history,” he said flatly, and looked again at Ralph’s inconveniently brilliant nephew. “Mr. Markham. There is a short time after death during which echoes of the deceased’s experiences remain imprinted on his or her etheretic aura. This device will allow you to read them.”
“Bloody hell!” said the bird. “No wonder you kept that thing under wraps. In the wrong hands it could do a bit of mischief.”
He gave her a thin smile. “Precisely.”
Monk Markham and his sister were staring at the object with oddly-alike expressions: shock mixed with a cautious and regrettable admiring excitement. The term “cut from the same cloth” might have been coined just for them.
Ralph, Ralph. Does your brother know about his children?
Miss Cadwallader folded her arms. “You want to read our visitor, don’t you?”
“Not… exactly,” he said. “I want Mr. Markham to read him.”
“Me? Why me?” said Ralph’s nephew, startled.
He shrugged. “Because much of the information gained through this device is, for want of a better word, intuitive. And given that you and he are the same man in many respects, it seems likely you’ve a better chance of connecting with his memories. Especially since he’s been dead for some time.”
“Fine,” said Miss Cadwallader. “Say our Monk connects. What do you intend to do with the information?”
“Whatever I must in order to avert disaster,” he replied, with another thin smile. “That is, after all, my job.”
Melissande Cadwallader was a perspicacious young woman, with a spirit forged in fires the heat of which thankfully few would ever know. She stared at him in silence, her green gaze measured and cold. One by one the others, even the bird, turned to look at her.
“Mel?” said Ralph’s nephew, a young man in love. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Sir Alec… nobody official knows you’re here, do they?”
Ah. Very neatly, very deliberately, he clasped his hands on his bent knee. “No.”
“Do they know Gerald’s missing?”
“No.”
“Do they know about the other Monk?”
“No.”
“In other words, whatever you’re planning to do isn’t sanctioned.”
He nodded. “Correct.”
“And are you going to tell them? Your political masters?”
Political masters. Oh, how he disliked that term. “In my opinion this situation is too complicated for a politician to grasp. If we’re going to act we must act quickly, decisively, with a minumum of interference.”
“So, in other other words,” she said, still so cool and watchful, “you want to go on keeping your secrets.” She nodded at the lead-lined box and its contents. “Like that thing.”
“Yes. That is, if you’ve no objection, Miss Cadwallader.”
Her lips tightened. “Have you heard of the saying, Who watches the watchers?”
“We watch each other, Miss Cadwallader.”
“Ha!” scoffed the bird. “Then why weren’t you watching my Gerald?”
“Are you suggesting I should’ve anticipated the manner of Mr. Dunwoody’s disappearance?”
“He didn’t disappear, sunshine, he was kidnapped!” said the bird. “Right from under your sleeping nose!”
“Reg,” said Miss Cadwallader, and nudged the chair with her knee. “Be fair.”
The bird subsided. Interesting.
“Miss Cadwallader,” he said, “is there a point you’re trying to make? If so, please make it. Every minute we delay makes Mr. Markham’s task more difficult.”
“My point, Sir Alec,” she retorted, “is that you should stop treating us like children and instead spell out exactly what you’ve got in mind.”
“You tell him, ducky,” the bird snapped, and chattered her beak. “Bloody government stooges. They’re all alike and they never change.”
Mr. Markham cleared his throat uncomfortably, hands shoved deep into his pockets. “Look. Sir Alec. I know when it comes to your dealings with us the road so far’s been a bit bumpy. I know that one way or another we haven’t always followed the rules. At least, not as they’re written. But that doesn’t make us the enemy. We might be unorthodox but I promise, you can trust us.”
Sighing, he shook his head. “Mr. Markham, if I didn’t know that already then instead of remaining here in your comfortable house you and your sister and your unorthodox friends would be under lock and key in an undisclosed location.”
“Oh,” said Ralph’s nephew, blinking. “Right.”
The bird cackled. “So now that you’ve put us all at ease, Sir Watc h-Me-Throw-My-Weight-Around-Because-Intimidating-Civilians-Is-So-MuchFun, why don’t you cut to the chase and lay your dog-eared cards on this nice antique table?”
He looked at the bird and the bird looked back. Bright eyes, dull feathers, and deeds long behind her that would make these children weep.
Does she weep, I wonder, in the dark of night, with her memories?
“My cards,” he said, and looked again at Ralph’s frustrating, well-intentioned, oblivious nephew, “are indeed dog-eared. And my plan, such as it is, might well be regarded by some as insane.”
“Yes, but will it get us Gerald back?” said the bird. “Because that’s the only thing any of us give a rat’s ass about, sunshine.”
“I don’t know,” he said, after a long, considering pause. “All I can tell you is that I believe it’s his only hope. Our only hope. And that if we don’t do something-even something insane-every instinct informs me we will most certainly live to regret it.”
Nearly half an hour later, with Sir Alec’s insane plan explained and them all shifted from the library up to Gerald’s bedroom, Melissande took Monk’s arm and drew him aside. “Look,” she said, her voice strategically low. “I realize I’m probably wasting my breath saying this but-you do understand there’s no way he can force you into using that infernal device?”
With an effort he dragged his gaze away from the sheet-covered body on Gerald’s bed. Tried to pretend that Sir Alec and Bibbie and Reg weren’t standing a small stone’s throw away. “I know. But how else can we find out what’s happening in this world next door? Short of just barging through the portal, of course, and for once I’d prefer to look before I leap.”
Her eyes were anxious. “But after you’ve looked you’ll be leaping, won’t you? Monk…”
“What? So now you’re saying we should leave Gerald stranded there? Give him up for dead?”
“ No,” she said, flushing dark pink. “But-but Monk, what happened to being objective?”
“It’s overrated.”
“And what if something goes wrong while you’re using that device? You heard Sir Alec. It’s sent men mad in the past.”
“Yeah, well, I’m mad already, aren’t I? So I should be safe.”
She shook his arm. “Monk, please. It’s not just the device, it’s the rest of it as well.”
Wanting to kiss her, he patted her hand. “I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know that!”
True. “Maybe not, but here’s what I do know. If I don’t follow Sir Alec’s plan a lot of people could die. Sure, it’s going to be tricky, but-”
“Tricky’s one word for it,” she said grimly.
Sir Alec cleared his throat. “Mr. Markham. Time is a factor here.”
Time was always a factor. When were they going to run into a nice, leisurely crisis? He stared again at the shrouded shape on Gerald’s bed. “Are you all right?” Sir Alec had asked. And of course he’d said he was, because admitting weakness to that man would be the gravest of tactical errors.
Except I’m not all right. I watched myself-felt myself-die. It was probably my fault. I was pretty rough dismantling that sha
dbolt. But I can live with that if I rescue Gerald. I think.
“Mr. Markham…”
He glanced at the bedroom doorway, where Gerald’s superior stood with Bibbie and Reg. “I know.”
“Then stop piss-assing about, sunshine,” said Reg, hunched on Bibbie’s shoulder. “I’m losing so much beauty sleep waiting for you I’m going to have to put a bag over my head come morning.”
Oh, Reg. He managed a sort of grin. “Yeah? Well, if you’re looking, we keep them in the second-bottom kitchen drawer.”
Fingers tugged on his arm. “ Monk…”
He knew his Melissande pretty well by now. She was fighting fear and embarrassing, unroyal tears. Ignoring Reg’s bubbling kettle impression, he brushed his knuckles against his young lady’s cheek.
“Don’t worry, Mel. I’m just going to rummage through what’s left of the poor bugger’s memories.”
“And after that?” she demanded, unmollified. “Monk, please, at least don’t let Sir Alec send you alone. You need us to come with you. There’s safety in numbers.”
Who cared if they had an audience? He kissed her chastely on the forehead and then, on impulse and far less chastely, on her severe, unhappy lips.
“No. It’s far too dangerous for you to go. Hell, it’s too dangerous for me to go-and I really wish I didn’t have to. If you came with me and something went wrong-I can’t afford to lose my focus. I have to get to Gerald.”
“ Mr. Markham! ” Sir Alec snapped. “When I say time is a factor, do you imagine-”
“Sorry,” he said, turning. “I’m ready.”
“Come and stand with us, Mel,” said Bibbie kindly. “You’ll only be in the way if you hover.”
His little sister never ceased to amaze him. First that shadbolt business, and now this. She cared a great deal for Gerald, and for him. She was afraid for both of them. But she was also excited and fascinated by the realm of thaumaturgic possibilities opening up before them. He was starting to wonder if she wasn’t the maddest member of the Mad Markham clan. In a good way, of course.