by K Childs
We landed in Cardiff after I finally got through the first few pages of the dense text. I was copying out what I thought might be useful, but so far all I had was a rough description of overgrown lizards and how the common dragon and wyvern were not to be mistaken; one had four legs, the other had prehensile hooks on the wings. The poorly-formatted text started on the stories of Saint George after a tedious description of the beasts. Interestingly, the author proposed that dragons had been around since the time that dinosaurs walked the earth. I’d thought dragons were from biblical texts, but I was hardly an expert.
The ship landed in Ceredigion in the late afternoon about an hour from the Cardigan estate. Darrien had called in cabs ahead of time and we loaded up.
They were old horse and cart drawn vehicles this far out from London and I kept my distance from the horses; I was awful with beasts. Charlie had liked to joke that I could drown a goldfish.
I was stuck with Darrien and his mother, through no fault of my own.
“I am glad they at least teach officers to read these days,” she announced over the rim of the book.
I glanced up at her. “I was taught to read in school, like most folk, Duchess Montagu.”
“No doubt. Then I don’t see why you are struggling with that book.”
“It’s in Latin.”
“You weren’t taught your Latin at school?”
“I was, but it’s a dead language and I’m afraid I spend most of my time speaking the King’s English.”
“Quicumque damnantur praeteritis memoria repetere,” she said.
“Mother, what is your problem with the inspector, really?” Darrien growled.
“The inspector has failed to impress me with any actions so far.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I shall endeavour to try harder, then, Your Grace.”
For as many as the memory of the past are condemned to repeat it. My brain caught up to her words.
She sniffed. “I doubt you shall succeed.”
Darrien placed a hand on his mother’s lap. “Mother, please. Rose is here to stop me from being killed. A few manners can be spared.”
“If the good inspector had found our murderer back in London already, we’d be free of her. Isn’t that her job?”
“Be that as it may, perhaps you might find some charity in your soul along with a little slip of patience?” Darrien snapped.
The Duchess gave him a withering glare.
We passed some time talking about the weather in Cardigan and then lapsed into uncomfortable silence. I was delighted when the stone walls to a large estate loomed in the dark and we clattered over a stone bridge.
It was built over eight-hundred years ago, when the Normans hoped to set up stronger fortifications. I knew there had been an offer to buy the place and use it as a prison, which had been declined a few hundred years ago. The Duke’s grandfather had added a mansion house to the tower rising over the fortress walls.
The castle sat surrounded by a moat, the waters black and still at this hour of night. The township was a far cry from London, but I could never really escape that damp stone smell that clung to the landscape.
We pulled up at the coach-house and servants came out to meet us, taking away luggage and whisking us inside where supper waited.
In some ways, Cardigan stepped us back in time. The War had been fought with pistols and tanks, with airships dropping bombs and the telephone conveying information to this orchestra. This was a castle built to stand against siege, built to weather ballista, knights on horseback. Dragons. I was staring at a prominent chunk of British history, a bastion of the Old World.
The mansion was splendid inside. Golden-polished buttresses, a canvas of Renaissance artwork had been spread across ceilings, family portraits lined walls, suits of Welsh armour stood in the stairwells and the Cardigan crest, a phoenix wrapped around a cross, was carved into banisters and shields mounted from on high.
I expected the place to be chilly, but a fire crackled in the East wing guest room I was ushered into. My escort was a round woman, with a cheeky grin and stained sleeves and apron. She had a large mole and a look of a matron who baulked no fools.
“Is there another house on the grounds, removed from the mansion?” I asked, the question a little out of the blue, but a coach house or separate apartment would be the best place to secure the Duke for the night. If we could work on the suspects during the day and keep him alive, we would gain the advantage. My plan was to hide him. Not valiant, but I was playing it cautiously.
The maid placed a heavy log on the fire, bustled to the bed to turn one of the edges over and adjusted the drapes. “There’s the coach house, Ma’am. Is there something you not liking about your room?”
I waved the comment down. “No, no, I like it plenty. Now, the coach house: does it have a bedding room?”
She could not have looked more affronted than if I had slapped her. “Well yes, Ma’am—but this room is made specially for you. I cleaned and set the bed meself.”
“I’m sorry, there isn’t anything wrong with the room.” I tried a smile but apparently I’d affronted her enough with the impertinent questions.
She bustled out and I sighed. It was a lovely room. Much nicer than my own apartment. I was tired. I wasn’t used to being awake for long periods of time, and I certainly wasn’t used to all the travel and activity.
I washed up and dressed for dinner.
“Inspector, good of you to join us,” Alston announced me as I entered the dining hall. I was the first of the women to arrive, although this hadn’t stopped the gentlemen from pouring drinks.
“Thank you, Lord Alston.”
“Ian, please. If you’re dining with us, you ought to shave off the formalities,” he chuckled and tipped his glass toward me. “Scotch?”
“Please.”
“Your man, Ben here, tells me you’ve a hand at magic.”
A glass with a generous lick of brown liquor made its way into my hand. Ben was looking rosy-cheeked and I suspected he would be regretting enjoying the scotch in the morning. Simmons was struggling with his bowtie and talking to the Duke in a tone that I found conspicuous. Simmons loved airship races; his animated tone suggested they had come up. The boys, then, were settling in.
“Oneirology, not magic,” I corrected.
“Oh, fascinating stuff. One of the men in my unit during the war was an Oneirologist.”
“Are you a student of the art?” I didn’t correct him on the terminology.
“Heavens no. I’ve got a bit of Tenebrology in my family, but I had little interest in the study.”
This was news; I hadn’t placed him as capable of anything in particular. “What branch of Tenebrology?”
“Illusion, mostly,” he said. Most Tenebrologists fell into one of two sets, concealment and illusion. The latter was far more common than the nobility liked to admit.
“Ian’s being modest. I’m sure he’s one of the best Tenebrologists in the Kingdom,” Darrien announced.
“Oh Darrien, don’t exaggerate. I know a few parlour tricks.” The Earl finished his drink and poured himself another.
It was good scotch, smooth on the tongue without the usual burn.
The women joined us, the Duchess first and then Winchester and Innsford. The two ladies held themselves further apart here, and I wondered if they had fought. Mary looked distressed. Elizabeth wore a deep ruby flapper dress for dinner, her hair styled in tight curls. Mary’s dress was a modest shirt and skirt, again, neat and clean, but plain. The Duchess, bedecked in jewellery and taffeta, wore a heavy dress from a time when she must have been a child.
There was a pang in my chest, knowing that I probably triggered the confrontation between the two younger women. I made an awful gossip.
“Lady Winchester is much more a natural talent at Tenebrology than I. Your family has always been one of the strongest and most reliable bloodlines for the power.” Ian saluted her wi
th his drink.
“Ian, really, I think it is a dying art form and nothing more,” Elizabeth chuckled. “Have you any talent of the blood, Inspector?”
“She’s an Oneirologis-gist,” Mary supplied.
“Oneironaut,” I said. “One who voyages in the Dreamscape.” I sipped my drink so I didn’t look too offended.
“Oh, I studied that at school! Great fun.” Elizabeth took an offered drink and sat next to me. “My friend Nancy was very into all that hedgery, but I loved the instructor. It was all the rage.”
I bit back an urge to defend the art. I was in polite company and I didn’t need to defend my livelihood. Although she had studied both types of magic—curious. Most people ignored Oneironautics as a study.
She poured herself a glass of wine and sat back down. “I’ve never met a female police officer. I am curious how one gets into that sort of position.”
“The same way one succeeds at any endeavour: through knowledge, bravery, and practice.”
“Have you ever been shot at?”
I smiled. “I’ve been shot, stabbed and bitten more times than I would care to count.”
“That sounds terribly exciting, Rose.” Lady Innsford was sitting on Elizabeth’s other side.
I had the Earl’s attention as well, so I tried my best to imitate Ben’s troubadour nature and spin a tale of a case where I’d had such an encounter.
“It can be exciting, I’ll grant you that. Last winter, we had Gakki robbing cafes and food storage. They are Japanese demons; they stay in the Dreamscape until they manifest and then gobble up anything they can. There was a whole gang of them infecting East London.”
“Robbing cafes?”
“Gakki are hungry beasts; the Japanese legend says that they were greedy, selfish souls who died and now suffer insatiable hunger. They mostly crave food, but they’ll eat anything. Anything that comes across their path when they hunger. And they always hunger. Two beggars were eaten whole. Down to the shoes.”
Elizabeth paled. “Surely not.”
The Duchess regarded me coolly, saying nothing and sipping her wine. Her look was as a cat observes a rat.
I focused on the story, cold creeping down my spine.
“Surely, Lady Winchester. There is an officer on Potter’s Lane who lost his foot during the scuffle. The Gakki had guns; not much use in the Ether, but a lot more use when we finally flushed them out of it.”
“I’m not sure this is a good story for dinner, Rose.” Ben coughed. He knew where I was going—we’d watched the Gakki eat their own wounded, and just managed to chop the survivors apart like wood before we lit them on fire.
“You’re probably right,” I said.
Elizabeth sighed. “Please finish it later, I would like to hear how you survived something so awful.”
“I’d no idea life in the Yard had such incidents,” Ian told me. “I do live under a bloody stone.”
Dinner arrived and it was roast pork with all the trimmings; lashings of potatoes, minted peas and salt-crusted crackling. A roll of bread and a small chicken cream soup on the side.
I wasn’t used to as many meals as I’d been eating lately but it was delicious. I stuffed myself until the thought of the French brie for desert made me feel as if I would explode.
Ben looked proud at my effort, but Elizabeth made a small remark that she hoped I wasn’t holding back because of the company. I didn’t know what to make of that.
I caught Ben and Simmons before they slipped into the parlour to smoke with the other gentlemen. “There’s a coach-house not connected to the main building. I will set up the wards. Make sure to leave after everyone else has retired. I don’t want any of them knowing where he is tonight.”
They nodded. “Not a worry Detective, we’ll get him there.”
“Good. I’ll arrange to have beds enough and I’ll sort the wards out. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Understood.”
Convincing the maid took a bit of effort, especially explaining to her that I needed no one to speak about the setup in the coach house. In the end I walked with her, carrying blankets and pillows across the castle grounds in the dark.
The coach house was cold, but it was clean and only smelled mildly of horse. There were serviceable beds that we dragged into one room and I warded it with chalk. I laid an anchor-bell under each ward and then marked the walls, floor and ceiling.
I doubted the dragon would get through that.
I left back to my room.
They had gas lamps, so I set about reading until my eyes began to lose the struggle. I closed my eyes, sleep sucking me under. The darkness of my eyelids whorled into an untamed spread of colours as my mind and body separated. I fell into the Cardigan Dreamscape.
I’d never been in a wild Dreamscape before and this one was very like the lands in my hometown. The Cardigan castle was here; a tower and walls that had overgrown with moss and felt empty. Outside of London, the strangeness of the demi monde became pronounced. A cloud, white, solid and fluffy hovered near a rainbow ending under a bridge. On a hill in the distance, I spotted a green stag, racing through foliage.
I climbed to the roof of the tower and found a good vantage point to watch the landscape. It was forests and houses, small flares of children crossing into the Dreamscape, chasing dreams that melted into the essence of clouds and led from houses to wilderness and back again. The river here swelled and churned in the midst of a storm that never broke and never ceased. No fog crept about the shifting landscape.
I watched the landscape, silent and wary.
Finding the wards was a matter of listening for the chime of the bells.
Time passed and a green fog crept over the landscape. It rolled around the castle grounds, pouring out of the windows and cloaking the ground in shadows and a sinister promise. Was the fog the dragon’s doing?
Any number of unconscious thoughts could draw up green fog. Sometimes the Ether spat it out without effort on your own part.
The faint chime of bells told me that the wards were active, and someone had gone to sleep in them. A little while later and I heard two more chimes.
The men in the coach house were asleep.
It didn’t take long—the fog thickened, then rose and drifted inside the castle.
Searching for a sleeping Duke.
I pulled a sword from my belt, keeping it at the ready, but in honesty, my first reaction to the dragon materialising in the Dreamscape again would have to be to run.
The little I had deciphered of the book said most dragons were killed with swords and spears. Some were dipped in silver, others were enchanted by great magicians. They were cunning beasts who breathed fire and flew, hoarding gold.
I could manifest a silver coated sword from the Ether, but I didn’t know if it would work on the beast in the real world. I knew that Saint George had been a famous Animancer; he’d slain Brinsop—the last known dragon in England—with a lance. No idea if Animancers had a way of enchanting or warding a weapon for dragon slaying still.
I could bind Ether into a physical object. A dragon made of Ether, a thing of pure essence and magic made manifest, it stood to reason that only Ether could hurt it.
The green mist thickened and my pulse jumped in my throat.
Fog formed shapes and shadows, and slowly, a gigantic image manifested; a pair of glowing, green eyes drew from the Ether. The sky churned, shadows fell over the tower, and the beast appeared.
It let out a bellow that shook the shingles under me. The roof shifted and began to fall, forcing me to flail and reach for a handhold. The stone and clay crumbled at my fingertips and I rolled to the edge of the tower roof, dropping the silver sword in my attempt to gain purchase on the difficult terrain.
The beast swooped below me, crashing into the tower and tearing at the stone.
The tower shook and began to fall. I was going to crash into the ground and be crushed by the tiles and stones. Very lu
cky this was the Dreamscape and the monster had not manifested in the real world. The demi monde echoed the waking world, but the waking world did not echo the demi monde.
I caught the edge of a shutter, pawing at the stone until I crawled on top of it.
The tower rolled. Forcing me to move and plant my feet.
It spun as it fell, and the Dreamscape slowed that fall, making it seem as if an eternity of falling and spinning lay ahead of me.
I took a few steps, trying to gain balance on uneven, falling stones and finding none. Fire blazed overhead—the creature’s breath burned across the face of the castle, shattering wood under the explosive force. The flags fell away, and I smelled smoke and charred lumber.
I pulled wings from the Ether. A pair of wings sprang from my boots and I stepped off the falling tower. The Dreamscape lurched around me, my stomach churning with fear and vertigo.
It was like skating on ice, I told my mind, and the motion of the boots smoothed.
The tower hit the ground and broke apart.
Rock rained around the gardens and grounds.
The beast burrowed into the castle and fire exploded where it went, bathing the Dreamscape in red and black.
Jesus Christ.
I conjured the silver sword to me once more. The dragon was easily the size of three or four cabs together, a towering winged behemoth of shadow. I expected it to be green or red—those were the colours of dragons in the stories—but it was a black so dark that it smothered any reflection from the scales.
Shadowy figures began to manifest in the castle house. Running through the halls, swirling Ether roiled overhead. The dragon shrank as it entered the hole in the castle it had created. The thing became small, a hunting beast, it ferreted into the other helpless dreamers.
I landed on the ground and flung open the door of the castle. My hands were shaky but there were innocent people in there.
If I could kill the beast here, I could face it in the waking world.
The castle was hot, the walls warped and wriggling as I entered. Smoke and shadow crawled at every corner, whispers and voices murmured up and down the halls. I didn’t smell anything in the Dreamscape.