The Rookery

by Deborah Hewitt

  The labour had become part of her training. Her application to join House Mielikki would involve an entrance test and Alice had to sharpen both her reflexes and her understanding of their legacy. She allowed her eyes to trace the window frame, still miraculously bursting with life weeks after she’d grown it: proof she was capable of creating as well as destroying; proof that she was more than an architect of death.

  ‘It’s good,’ Holly offered grudgingly. ‘Except here,’ she said, turning a vine over and directing Alice’s gaze towards it. ‘The leaves are starting to crisp and curl at the edges. It’s drying out. Or dying out. One or the other,’ she said casually as Alice’s stomach clenched. ‘You should redo it before it spreads.’

  There was a heavy pause. Holly stared curiously at Alice, taking in the dark circles ringing her brown eyes, her dull hair and too-thin face. Alice’s vanity had become laughably unimportant to her lately. She wondered what Crowley would make of her now.

  ‘You look like there should be a plague cross on your door,’ said Holly finally.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Whatever you’ve got – is it contagious?’ she asked, a note of concern creeping into her voice. Not concern for Alice, of course. Holly had all the warmth of an iceberg – specifically, the iceberg that had downed the Titanic.

  ‘No.’ Alice pulled a tight smile. ‘You’re safe enough, don’t worry.’

  Holly raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘So what’s wrong with you then?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Alice murmured, wiping moisture from her top lip. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘the book you’ve come for . . . Which one was it?’

  Holly moved away from the window, turning on the spot, her eyes searching. ‘Dugdale’s Exercises in Advanced Blooming,’ she said. ‘I need it by this afternoon. Lester wants to quiz me on it.’ She tutted. ‘As if I can’t already recite the whole book backwards and forwards in my sleep.’

  Lester was Holly’s mentor. Every candidate applying for membership of a House was assigned one. The idea had been introduced about two decades before in an apparent bid to make the membership process more democratic, to ensure that no candidate was disadvantaged by their lack of House experience. Holly had little need of a mentor; she’d been primed for membership since birth.

  ‘I returned it to the library on Tuesday,’ said Alice. ‘I don’t think anyone else had reserved it so it might still be available.’

  Holly gave a peeved sigh and turned to go, then paused and retraced her steps to the window. As her fingers caressed the branches and leaves, there was a rustle and clusters of yellow-green flowers burst open beneath her palm, their growth spreading rapidly through the dense ivy.

  A dark bud surged up through the tangled vines and bloomed into a red rose before Alice’s eyes – then another appeared, and another, on thorny stems.

  ‘There,’ said Holly, stepping back with a satisfied expression. ‘A little pre-test gift for you. Forget Dugdale, I should be writing my own guide to blooming.’ She gave a tinkling laugh that faded into a sigh. ‘I’ll be glad when this is all over,’ she said, strolling towards the door. ‘Won’t you?’

  Alice stared at the new window frame. If she had wanted roses, she’d have installed them herself. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. A familiar fluttering sound whispered by her ear, and Alice opened her eyes to find her nightjar clacking its beak in Holly’s direction. She frowned. It was the first time the bird had seemed to share her thoughts. It was unsettling. Narrowing her eyes, Alice willed it to leave, and it vanished with a quiver of feathers.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ said Holly with a wicked grin, ‘if I can’t find the book you’ve cost me.’ She laughed again and waved her comment away before closing the door smartly behind her.

  Alice crossed to the kitchen, poured a glass of water and sat at the battered wooden table. Most days, Holly was perfectly tolerable, but Alice did sometimes have to grit her teeth. The muscle under her right eye twitched and she took a mouthful of water. She would indeed be glad when this was all over – assuming she passed House Mielikki’s tests, which was increasingly doubtful.

  Joining House Mielikki had become vital to Alice after her disappointment at The Necropolis.

  Though Eris Mawkin knew of no way to shut off her connection with death, Alice refused to allow it to kill her. Her father might be Tuoni, the former Lord of Death, but she also possessed the Mielikki gifts, presumably through her mother’s bloodline.

  As much as Alice would have liked to believe she was the product of a grand love affair between her parents, the likelier explanation was that she had been born of some sinister bargain or ritual. House Mielikki was the very antithesis of such a union and would likely react badly to Alice’s heritage should they discover it. Their House produced even fewer necromancers than the others – their legacy was life, not death.

  And they were the masters of it. When the Rookery had been created, Mielikki’s greatest contribution had been the Arbor Suvi – the Summer Tree – a tree so powerfully magical that its roots had provided the city’s foundation and given it life. Even its sap possessed healing qualities – thanks to Crowley and Sasha, it had once saved her life.

  This Tree of Life, House Mielikki and the hope they represented had quickly become an obsession for Alice. If she could pass their test, the House could help her to balance the two halves of her biology: death constrained by life. She was sure of it. Joining House Mielikki could save her.

  She glanced at the window frame, searching for the decaying leaves, but Holly had buried them beneath abundant fresh growth. Alice shook her head and turned away. She had no hope of success while Tuoni’s legacy prevented her from showcasing her true Mielikki potential. Eris Mawkin had been her last hope of solving the paradox. Alice bit her lip and stared through the glass. If only oracle bones really could reveal the future.

  A storm was brewing. An academic storm, Alice called it. Her boss, Professor Reid, was in one of her moods. Alice sat by the lab window, pretending to leaf through an old dissertation while her eyes flicked sideways to follow Reid’s rigid motions.

  The older woman’s temperament fluctuated with the successes and failures of her research. A month ago, Reid had discovered a Finnish-to-Latin translation error that would set her research back six months and, in a rage, she had smashed a window with a mug of tea. Alice’s tea. Three weeks before that, Alice had found a sought-after reference to René Descartes in a book on metaphysics, and a tearful Reid had almost embraced her. Almost. Alice was faster than she looked.

  The professor’s footsteps cracked sharply on the wooden floor as she paced in front of the research lab’s vast arched window. It was a big, airy room, but it seemed to shrink whenever Reid was in one of her frenzies, as though the woman’s mood acted on the space like a vacuum.

  ‘Ethereal transcendence?’ mumbled Reid, her horsey teeth chewing her bottom lip. ‘Animism?’

  Reid scraped a hand through her hair, fingers snagging in the grey streak running through dark chestnut. Her hair was always a reflection of her frame of mind. Neatly pinned back was a good sign, but if her curls escaped their nest throughout the day, it was an omen of her temper unravelling.

  ‘Pardon?’ Alice asked cautiously, one eye on Reid’s mussed-up hair. She wondered if it was too late to cloak herself from sight and sneak out. Two little words, look away, and she could make Reid’s nightjar – and therefore its owner – simply stop seeing her, an invisibility trick that lasted a few minutes. Just long enough.

  ‘Doesn’t it all come back to dualism and trauma?’

  Alice sighed. ‘Is this rhetorical or—’

  Lips tight, Reid waved a dismissive hand and Alice bristled. Reid ripped a Post-it from her desk and shoved it at Alice, before turning away, muttering to herself. Clement weather with clear skies and low-pressure winds, Alice noted. Storm abating. She glanced down at the Post-it: another library book request.

  Alice was employed by the university as a research
assistant, a job title that she and Reid had interpreted in very different ways. To Alice’s mind, her role was to assist with research. Reid, however, understood the job to be researcher’s assistant, which was quite similar and also wholly different.

  ‘It’ll take me a while to find this,’ said Alice, holding up the Post-it note and wondering how long she could drag out the library search. An hour? Two? Perhaps until Reid retired? Unfortunately the professor was in her early fifties, so there would be a long wait.

  Reid shrugged, then paused and took a step towards Alice, her unfocused eyes suddenly sharpening. She frowned.

  ‘Are you ill again?’

  Alice tensed. After her morning encounter with the sick bowl and Holly, she’d taken a hot shower and washed her weariness and nausea away. Her headaches and fever tended to come and go, but as long as she didn’t overdo it physically, right now, she felt . . . adequate. Alice’s whole future was riding on the next two days, so adequate was the best she could hope for under the circumstances.

  ‘You look terrible,’ said Reid. ‘You realize your contract says nothing about sick pay?’

  Alice gave the woman a saccharine smile. Reid’s heartfelt concern for her welfare made Alice feel like such a valued employee. ‘I’m fine; it’s just my hay fever playing up.’

  Reid stared at her, her long, humourless face scanning Alice’s tired eyes and pallid complexion. Then she turned away.

  Professor Vivian Reid’s research was funded entirely by the Magellan Institute, a small offshoot of the university subsidized by a bursary from the Magellan Estate. When Alice had first arrived and realized exactly where she’d be working within the Department of Natural Sciences, she’d assumed it was Crowley’s idea of a joke. Then she’d wondered if it was another olive branch. Or perhaps a whole olive tree. Magellan had been a renowned aviarist and had written the Nightjar Compendium, the guide Alice had used to help hone her skills. It was Crowley who had managed to source her a copy of the rare text. Magellan had also written about the nature of the soul, an uncomfortable subject, given Alice’s history. He was the one who had theorized, in his seminal work, Sielun, that Tuoni’s nightjar had a different function to others – that it didn’t protect his soul but imprisoned it.

  The Magellan Institute could only afford to fund one research project at a time, and Reid and Alice made a team of two. Alice had quickly discovered that the professor was a woman whose grudges ran so deep she could have used them to tunnel to Australia. Her work had once been mocked during a brief post at the Sorbonne in Paris, and she was now fixated on producing a paper so groundbreaking it would wipe her critics off the map. Privately, Alice thought this was a stretch. She’d read the professor’s research and, despite an initial fascination with the topic, she’d soon realized that Reid’s focus was not exactly titillating stuff.

  The project, as might have been expected from an institute linked to the most famous aviarist of all time, was related to the concept of the soul. Alice very much doubted that Reid’s work would ever receive the acclaim she was hoping for. It wasn’t going to cure disease or end famine; it only sought to prove a centuries-old philosophical argument that had bothered bearded old men and no one else.

  Even so, before signing the employment contract, Alice had scoured the woman’s nightjar for any sign of ulterior motive in offering her the post. She had to be careful. After Sir John Boleyn’s actions at Marble Arch, she’d even considered that he might be funding the Magellan Estate. But Reid’s nightjar had shown nothing more dangerous than a foul temper and a propensity to throw mugs. Alice was satisfied that the woman’s ambition had no significance to her own troublesome soul. She kept her mouth shut and got on with the job.

  Reid trusted Alice to carry out mundane errands like photocopying, but nothing more. For a while, it had given Alice some spiteful pleasure to know that Reid had overlooked the one person who could have given her project some real insight. But her aviarist skills were better off hidden; nothing good had ever come from people knowing she could reveal their secrets and read their lies.

  Reid’s dismissal of her talents had worked to Alice’s benefit in the end. As long as she was available for humdrum tasks, she was free to do pretty much as she liked. She had a living wage, somewhere to sleep, and she didn’t have to spend her time and energy on someone else’s business, which was just as well, since her time was running out and her brain felt like it was barely functioning some days.

  ‘Bring me back a coffee,’ Reid called over her shoulder. The professor was obsessed with two things: her project and caffeine. ‘Use those beans I like – the arabica. And make it black. I’m working late.’

  Alice reluctantly bit her tongue at Reid’s tone and slipped out. She had no plans to hurry back; library errands were the best part of her job description. Not only did they keep her out of Reid’s way, they were also a legitimate reason to while away hours with a book. Never the ones Reid asked her to find, of course, but usually books related to Mielikki’s legacy. Today, however, would be different. Today she would set aside the texts on botany, trellising and blooming, and use the time to sharpen her reflexes and prepare. At sunset, she would be taking part in the first membership test for House Mielikki.

  The wind had picked up. When Alice opened the door to the university’s central courtyard, a gust nearly snatched it from her fingers. She took a moment to savour the cool draughts across her clammy skin. The mulberry tree in the centre rattled its branches at her, its wine-coloured berries swaying precariously. It was her favourite tree; she often had her lunch beneath it – a strategic feat because Professor Reid usually insisted on breaking for lunch just after noon, at the same time as the undergraduates. On warm days, when no one wanted to be stuck in the dark dining room in the Arlington Building, it was a race to grab the bench under the tree before the undergrads did.

  As she hurried across the cobbles, Alice glanced up at the tree’s dangling fruit. Her eyes narrowed in concentration and she squeezed her hand into a fist. Her fingers tingled and throbbed. Then there was a susurration of leaves waving in the breeze . . . and the berries began to lengthen, growing bloated at unnatural speed. A rich, tangy scent hit the air, bursting out from the tree in clusters, like the residue of a dozen tiny explosions. A small robin hiding among the branches hopped out and darted towards a clump of mulberries. Its beak attacked the fruit’s flesh, staining its feathers purple as it gorged itself on the juices.

  Alice smiled as the robin suddenly paused and darted its head to watch her pass.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she told it. The weeks spent poring over Dugdale’s Exercises in Advanced Blooming had been worthwhile after all.

  But as she reached the back door to the Arlington Building and pulled it open, Alice saw the bloated mulberries drop from the branch and splatter across the cobbles, decomposing at a rapid speed. A pain began to tick behind her eyes and she turned away, disappointment pinching her throat.

  ‘Alice!’

  She sidestepped small pockets of students ambling through the corridors with satchels and armfuls of books. In keeping with the Rookery’s 1930s fashion, the boys all wore shirts with club collars and high-waisted trousers and the girls tended towards long skirts and blouses, though a few were in wide-leg culottes similar to Holly’s. Up ahead, a larger group held a heated discussion outside the dining hall – literally: one of them was gesticulating with a sandwich until the others groaned in unison and flicked their hands, laughing uproariously when his bread roll went up in flames. A familiar face appeared over the tops of their heads, playing peacemaker and trying to put out the fire – a bearded face with serious eyes and square glasses: Tom Bannister, one of the technicians in the environmental engineering department.

  Tom spent almost as much time in the library as Alice did; it was the best place to hide from his departmental bosses. He liked to hunker down by the pharmacology shelves, where there was no chance he’d be found by anyone who was actually looking for him. She waved at
him. He gave her a thumbs-up before he vanished down a corridor, carried along by the arguing students like a piece of driftwood.

  When Alice reached the library, Bea was kneeling on the rug, surrounded by piles of water-damaged books.

  ‘Look at this,’ said the librarian, holding up Vancy’s Nine Methods of Incision. ‘The entire foreword has faded. That bloody janitor attached the outdoor fountain’s pipes to the mains upstairs, and it blew the whole lot. Two hundred fucking gallons of water. The ceiling nearly fell in.’

  Alice smiled briefly. Why was it that swearing sounded so brilliantly wrong in a cut-glass accent? Last term, the Dean of Ancient Languages had insisted on Bea using a swear jar in a bid to stop her corrupting the younger students.

  Bea staggered upright, her beaded necklace jangling against her brashly patterned dress and large hooped earrings. A London-born aristocrat in her late thirties with a penchant for eccentric clothes, Lady Beatrice Alberta Pelham-Gladstone hadn’t been so much born with a silver spoon in her mouth as a forty-eight-piece cutlery set. She could always be found tending her books, a pencil tucked behind one ear.

  ‘Go on then,’ said Bea, sorting through her ruined pile. ‘What’s she sent you in for this time?’

  ‘Philosophy section,’ said Alice, glancing down at the title on her Post-it note, and then at the waterlogged hardbacks. ‘Do you want some help with those?’

  Some of the editions had turned to pulp, others papier mâché bricks where their soggy pages had fused together. If they were allowed to dry out, they could be used to build a very flammable house.

  Bea clasped the leather cover of one sodden block between her fingers. Very slowly, its mushy contents let go of their binding, slid from the cover and hit the rug with a dull splodge. Bea stared at it with a mournful expression and shook her head.