Bea strode off to collar one of the workers holding a clipboard while Alice peered up through the tree’s branches. She couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of affection for it. She’d had a single dose of the binding draught, and all of her aches and pains had vanished – she’d felt well again, after months of illness. She owed this tree a debt of gratitude.
Her eyes drifted down the trunk and followed the course of the tangled roots. The courtyard stones were laid over them unevenly. Had they been so irregular on her last visit a year ago? She bent down to trace a hand along one of the exposed roots, her fingers tingling at the throb of power emitted by the tree. Magellan must be right: if any plant was likely to have a soul, this one surely would. A single humming firefly drifted closer, and Alice hurriedly removed her hand from the bark – but it landed on the back of her palm, glowing gently. She stared at it in fascination.
‘Governor?’ said the redhead behind her in surprise. The firefly darted off at the noise.
Gabriel Whitmore was standing by the wall at the edge of the courtyard, his arms folded across his broad chest and his brow furrowed. He was so still that Alice wondered how long he’d been watching, unseen.
‘If I’d known you were coming, sir . . .’
Whitmore’s mouth pinched.
‘Pass me your measuring tape,’ said the governor dismissively. He approached the group of librarians, his usual elegance replaced with abruptness.
The group of badge-wearers hovered uncertainly around the perspiring redhead, apparently unsure how to behave in the presence of the head of their House.
‘You don’t have a yardstick?’ Whitmore asked him, striding purposefully around the trunk.
‘No, sir,’ he replied. ‘If I’d known you were coming, sir, I’d have—’
‘Well perhaps in future,’ said Whitmore, his voice laced with sarcasm, ‘I’ll ensure you’re fully briefed on my daily diary. That way, you’ll always have precisely what I need, when I need it.’ Staring up at the tree from the other side of the courtyard, he shook his head and tossed the tape measure aside. ‘The clinometer,’ he said, clicking his fingers for attention.
The redhead snatched it from someone else’s hands and hurried to hand it over. Then they watched in silence as Whitmore squinted up at the crown and made some measurements from a distance. Finally, he returned and handed back the equipment.
‘Everything is as expected,’ he said with a tight smile.
A middle-aged woman with hair in old-fashioned rolls frowned at her clipboard. ‘But Governor, our measurements suggest—’
‘Do they suggest,’ he interrupted smoothly, ‘that the tree is being tended as it should?’ The light in his eyes was cold despite the thin-lipped smile. ‘Is that . . . what the numbers on your clipboard suggest?’
Silence.
‘Good,’ he said brightly. ‘That’s as I thought.’
He turned sharply and his gaze fell across Bea and Alice. A flicker of interest crossed his face. ‘Beatrice,’ he said with a nod of acknowledgement. ‘And our successful candidate. You took the binding draught in the end, I see.’
‘Yes,’ said Alice.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, his smile widening. ‘I do like the brave ones.’ Then he turned and swept up the winding staircase.
Bea watched him go with a shrewd look, before murmuring so that only Alice could hear. ‘It looks like someone’s trying to avoid a scandal,’ she said. ‘The Council and Houses must be putting real pressure on us to order an investigation like this.’
‘Has the tree actually grown?’ Alice asked quietly.
‘Who knows, darling?’ said Bea, glancing up at it and ushering Alice further away from the others. ‘It’s been stable for hundreds of years, but you felt that rumbling in the grass the other night.’
‘Surely it’s a good thing,’ said Alice. ‘The tree is growing stronger.’
‘If it gets out that the tree is growing,’ said Bea, glancing around and urging Alice to keep walking, ‘the other Houses might consider it a challenge to their authority. There’s been a rivalry between the four Houses since they were founded. It doesn’t help that we currently have a Pellervoinen chancellor in charge of the Rookery, and frankly, darling, they hate us.’
Alice’s forehead grew lined. ‘Why would that be a challenge? Because it’ll look like – what? Posturing, if Mielikki’s tree grows?’
‘Because it will look like a power grab,’ said Bea, clutching her jangling necklace in one hand. ‘There’s always been speculation about our connection to the tree. Rumours – started by us, of course – that if the tree grows, the strength of Mielikki’s legacy could grow with it.’
Alice’s blood began to race at the prospect. The grass had grown so quickly outside the maze.
‘And is it true?’ she asked quietly.
Bea sighed. ‘I want to say no,’ she murmured. ‘But really, who knows?’
Alice swallowed and peered up at the canopy. Her pains and fevers had stopped after a normal dose of the binding draught. If the tree’s growth signalled a power surge for the members of the House, then she could only imagine how invigorated she would be by a second, more powerful draught. And if her Mielikki legacy were strengthened, might it enable her to control the flight of her deadly soul and ensure it was never released again?
Excitement and relief fluttered together in her chest, and she smiled as she peered into the depths of the tree’s branches. She needed that second binding draught to increase her link with it. Fast.
‘Watch this,’ said Tom, peering over his glasses.
Alice had plonked herself in one of the squashy university library chairs, hunched over as she tried to organize copies of Magellan’s notes for Reid. Tom was lounging in the modern languages aisle, a book open on the floor next to him. He twitched his fingers over the paper and the pages began to turn of their own accord.
‘That’s the laziest use of our legacy I’ve ever seen,’ said Bea, appearing from an aisle to shove an armful of books onto a metal trolley shelf.
‘I’ve never been able to do it before,’ said Tom.
‘Oh give over,’ Bea scoffed. ‘I’ve seen you move wooden tables with a flick of your wrist.’
‘Brute force,’ said Tom. ‘This is different. The fine motor skills are harder. It’s . . .’ He slowed the movements of his fingers and the pages followed the pace. His jaw was tight with concentration. ‘Very delicate work.’
He pinched his fingers and the book snapped shut. ‘Have either of you noticed things getting easier?’ he asked, a curious look in his eye.
‘If you’re finding the mastery of books so easy,’ said Bea with a heaving sigh, ‘feel free to help me sort out the shelf that’s been infested with booklice.’
‘Booklice?’ said Alice, twisting her mum’s signet ring around her finger. Slightly too big – she wondered if she ought to have it altered so it wouldn’t fall off. She glanced down at it. With its scuffs and the four scratches over its face, she doubted anyone else would care about losing it.
‘Our waterlogged books have somehow, despite hours of care, grown mould – and booklice can’t get enough of the stuff,’ Bea said bitterly. ‘If I lose the whole collection because of that bloody janitor, I’ll go after his topiary ducks again. I mean it.’
She marched off with an irritable huff and Alice turned back to Tom, wondering about his sharpened skills. A sign the Mielikki legacy was growing, surely?
‘I’ve started reading Cecil’s book,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s actually quite good.’
‘Swot,’ said Tom with a grin.
She swiped up a book and was about to throw it at him, when a disapproving look from Bea, at the end of an aisle, forced her to lower it.
‘Tell us what it says,’ he said. ‘No one’s ever got further than the front cover before.’
‘Well, it has a foreword from Chancellor Litmanen—’ she started.
‘Abort, abort,’ Tom hissed urgently.
‘Is the worst chancellor the Rookery has ever had,’ spat Bea, drawing closer. ‘A big Pellervoinen lummox who thinks far too much of himself!’
Alice’s eyes widened at the strength of Bea’s reaction. ‘He’s . . . quite complimentary about the last Mielikki chancellor,’ she said. ‘Speaks . . . very highly of the House in general.’
‘Well, he would,’ said Bea with a moue of distaste. ‘It’s a book of House Mielikki’s biggest stars and he’s good at playing to a crowd and telling them what they want to hear. Insufferable man,’ she muttered. ‘He’s not fit to speak the name of Leda Westergard. She was the best leader this city’s ever seen, and everyone knows it.’
She stormed off with a stack of books under her arm, and Alice looked to Tom for an explanation.
‘Lady Pelham-Gladstone has moved in the same circles as the Rookery’s finest,’ he whispered. ‘She and our current chancellor had . . . a bit of a falling out.’ He smiled, shoved his glasses further up his nose and went back to his book.
Alice cleared her throat and smoothed a hand over Magellan’s notes. Reid had split them into sections and had insisted Alice allocate each its own folder. A tedious job, because the professor had not seen fit to label each section properly, making it impossible to find where one ended and another began. With a sigh, Alice flipped through them, and then suddenly she stopped.
There was a piece of paper that didn’t belong. It was a different texture to the rest of the stack – thin, with a light sheen. She slid it out and frowned at it, a flare of anger rearing up from nowhere.
It was a leaflet, emblazoned with the words He is Coming above the picture of a white feather. It belonged to the Fellowship of the Pale Feather – August’s one-time employer, and the hopelessly twee name of a Rookery death cult who worshipped Tuoni. She glanced at the feathers of her own pale nightjar, sitting on the back of her chair, and back at the picture.
She felt disconcerted. Why did Reid have this in her stack of notes? It could be accidental; Alice had seen other leaflets and fly posters around the university, trying to spread the word of Marianne Northam and increase her followers. Or maybe . . . Reid was one of those followers herself? Marianne had infiltrated the Runners with her people, so why not the university too?
Alice pinched the thin paper carefully between two fingers as though it might contaminate her. By rights, a death cult who worshipped her biological father should have extended its worship to Alice – their very own messiah. Except that Marianne had seen Alice as a rival and they’d hated each other at first sight. So what might it mean for her if Reid was in the Fellowship?
‘Oh,’ said Tom. ‘You’ve got one of those as well? They’re everywhere.’ He held up his book with a smile. ‘I’ve started using one as a bookmark.’
Alice stared at it. Maybe she was being too suspicious. She scrunched it into a ball and let it fall into her lap. However, in light of recent events, she didn’t feel like taking any chances, and decided to examine Reid’s nightjar again at her earliest opportunity.
With a puff, Bea slapped a handful of books down on the nearest table, causing the students nearby to jump. ‘If we’re doing this properly, we should do it at a table,’ she said.
Alice watched, confused, as Tom staggered to his feet.
‘Doing what properly?’ Alice asked.
Tom licked his lips nervously. ‘Lester’s meeting us here. To talk.’
Alice’s eyes widened in alarm and she rose from the chair. ‘Now?’
Bea nodded. ‘I thought a public place was best, and this is a more neutral ground than the House.’ She opened a book at random and sighed. The pages looked like Swiss cheese. ‘You can sit in, if you like. The big wazzock’s due any minute—’
‘I’ve had better welcomes,’ grunted a voice over Alice’s shoulder.
She gritted her teeth but didn’t turn to face him. Lester limped to her side, stopped and bent down. She could see the back of his head and his thickset neck, glistening with sweat. An old scar stretched up into his hairline. When he stood again, the scrunched Fellowship leaflet was in his hands. He opened it, glanced at the text and shoved it at her.
‘Thinking of joining?’ he asked with a sly smile. His tiny rosebud mouth was too small for his broad face. ‘What makes you think Marianne would have you?’
First-name terms? Alice thought, her eyes narrowing. She glanced at his offering, her stomach tensing at the sight of his stocky arms, where other scars crossed his skin. Marianne was a powerful hemomancer who controlled her little cult using their blood. She cut them with a lancet to do it . . . and she enjoyed leaving a scar. Were Lester’s scars ordinary, or something more menacing? She stared at him, at the calculating glint in his eye, then snatched the leaflet from him and stuffed it into Reid’s folder.
With a snap of wings, Kuu rose higher, fluttering about in a supportive temper and clacking her beak at him. Alice felt a rush of affection for the bothersome bird and raised a single eyebrow at Lester, emboldened.
Lester’s gaze flickered down and Alice hugged the folder to her chest, hiding the Magellan Institute name stamped on the front. The less he knew about her, the better. If he was one of Marianne’s, he might already know everything. She swallowed hard, the message carved in wood flashing across her memory. Murderer.
‘I’ll leave you to your mediation,’ she said, her face carefully blank.
He snorted a laugh. ‘I’m not here for mediation. I’m here for an apology.’ He cast an accusing eye over Tom, who was sitting at the table, his legs twitching underneath, and Bea, who looked back at him critically.
‘One of you has been bad-mouthing me to the Mowbrays,’ he said, his gaze pausing on Tom. ‘They’re sending solicitors after me for something you fucked up.’
‘None of us have spoken with the Mowbrays,’ said Bea coldly. ‘But unless you want us to speak with the Runners about your assault on Tom, and on university property, I suggest you sit down so that we can iron this out.’
Lester didn’t move a muscle.
‘You’ll get one chance to do this Tom’s way,’ said Bea, her voice bright but edged with steel, ‘or we can do it my way, which ends with you thrown out of the House on your arse, darling. Which is it?’
He yanked a chair aside and thumped down into it. ‘Talk, then,’ he muttered.
Alice hovered for just a moment and gathered up the rest of her things. ‘I’ll catch you later,’ she told Bea and Tom – who was white-faced.
Lester turned his whole body around to watch her, his right hand rubbing his knee unconsciously. The limp, she realized. She’d given it to him.
Alice walked away, certain she could feel his eyes on her back. But when she reached the corridor and glanced over her shoulder to check, he was staring at Tom across the table. She paused, taking advantage of the space between them to concentrate. Her eyes narrowed. There. His nightjar stood on his forearm, which rested on the tabletop. A small bird with plain, light brown feathers, its wings were stretched as wide as possible and its head was bowed, its beak tucked down into its feathery chest. It exuded menace. But if it showed signs he was a member of the Fellowship, she couldn’t see them. She would have to look into its memories to confirm that, which required her to get right up close and personal with him.
Lip curling at the prospect, Alice breathed deeply and slipped away.
‘More copies,’ Reid had demanded. She wanted a second copy of her notes run through the Ditto machine – one to keep in the lab and another to keep at home, presumably in case she was struck by inspiration while she was brushing her teeth for bed.
The Ditto machine was close to the library. After her brief run-in with Lester, Alice had been tempted to put off Reid’s request until another day, to avoid bumping into him on his way out. But she’d had a swift change of heart when she’d realized that a one-on-one meeting with the hulking brute was exactly what she needed
.
If she could just get him alone, without Bea or Tom or anyone else seeing her, she could try sliding into his nightjar’s memories. It was unlikely his soul-bird would agree to this, so it would require either guile or force. Since Lester was twice her size and a fully fledged member of House Mielikki – a mentor, no less – it would have to be guile. Maybe she was leaping to conclusions about the Fellowship, but she needed to know for sure. If Lester was a member of the death cult, it added a disturbing new dimension to his attack. It might be a sign Marianne was moving against her . . . a sign the new life Alice was building could still fall apart.
Alice breathed shakily. She wished one of her friends from Coram House were here. People who knew her secrets, who had been there when she’d dealt with Marianne before. It was exhausting keeping parts of her identity hidden all the time. For the first time in months, her need to see Crowley felt overwhelming. But of course, Crowley knew exactly what it was like to live with secrets, and to lie to those closest to you. She swallowed thickly and shook it off for another time. Right now, Lester was still in the building. She needed to find him.
Alice grabbed Reid’s folders and set off with a determined stride. The Arlington Building was quiet. Alice could sense the scholarly industry behind the doors in the corridors: the hum and murmur of lectures and seminars on law, English, philosophy, art, languages and history. She passed the offices of the various deans, and the reprographics room loudly churning out papers in purple ink. She paused outside, just briefly, before continuing past, the folders clutched under one arm.
The library was nearby, and her shoulders tensed as she rounded the corner towards it. No sign of Lester. No sign of anyone. She breathed in the perfumed polish on the wainscoting which reflected the light from the tall windows along the hallway. Huge paintings sat on the walls between the rooms, adorned with elaborate gilded frames and depicting the sort of pseudo-religious scenes that she felt sure Marianne Northam would admire. A shiver of disgust rippled down her spine at the thought of the woman, and she hastened along the corridor, eyes scoping left and right.
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