The Rookery

by Deborah Hewitt

  Bea sighed. ‘Just what he needed,’ she said.

  ‘He can administer mine,’ Alice told Cecil. ‘He made up the draught I took last time – I know there was nothing wrong with it.’

  Cecil peered at her over his glasses. ‘That’s very . . . confident.’

  Her cheeks warmed. Of course – she’d jumped to the assumption she was going to pass the test well enough to be offered the binding draught. Well, she thought, sitting up straighter, she wasn’t going to apologize for her optimism.

  Bea winked at her and mouthed, ‘Good luck, darling,’ before hurrying out.

  ‘So,’ said Cecil. ‘You feel prepared?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ He poured her a drink from a teapot, pressing a cup of piping-hot amber liquid into her hands.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I don’t really—’

  ‘Drink it,’ he said simply.

  She hesitated and then nodded. She sipped at it, careful not to burn her lips. She recognized it as valerian root tea and quickly set it down on the table. Valerian was a known herb to treat insomnia; it made you drowsy and dulled the mind. Why had he given her this? She’d sabotage herself if she drank it all.

  ‘Thank you for the book,’ she said.

  He blinked as though surprised, and smiled with pleasure. ‘I hope it proves useful to you.’

  ‘Can I ask about the front cover? About the portrait of Leda Westergard?’

  ‘It was from the day she took her oath of office,’ he said, gesturing at the wall behind Alice.

  She turned in her seat. Her eyes quickly picked out the same image, but this time framed and lined among the pictures of other luminaries from the House’s history.

  ‘And am I right in thinking it’s an official portrait, released by the Council?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They commemorate every new chancellor in the same way.’

  ‘So there’s nothing especially significant about the picture itself,’ she said, more to herself. Reid only had it because they’d known each other in their childhood, then, and she’d kept a photo of an old friend who’d gone on to achieve success.

  Cecil smiled fondly. ‘Oh, I’d say the picture is very significant – to us, certainly. Chancellor Westergard may have ruffled a few feathers in her time, but no one was more loved by the public. Which is why Governor Whitmore insisted she be given pride of place on our alumni wall. They made quite the pair, in their heyday.’

  ‘A pair?’ said Alice, frowning.

  ‘Oh,’ said Cecil with a smile, ‘nothing like that. They were the youngest chancellor and the youngest governor the city’s ever had,’ he said. ‘A formidable duo. We could have asked for none better.’

  Alice stared at the picture a moment longer. It was a little more prominent than the others, the frame a little bigger. ‘The ring she’s wearing – is that ceremonial, along with the chain of office?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of,’ he said, and she knew it must have seemed a strange question. His eyes flickered to the portrait, his expression ponderous. ‘It looks like a signet ring to me. Usually they’re adorned with family crests, but I couldn’t say for sure.’

  Alice curled her fingers to hide her own ring. She’d studied the portrait on Cecil’s book cover and the one she’d taken from Reid’s office. Whatever Jude had said about the Westergard crest, she was becoming convinced it was the same ring. The scratches were clearly now birds, thanks to Jude’s handiwork, but their placement was identical.

  ‘And she was never married?’ asked Alice.

  Cecil gave her a considering look. ‘No, never.’

  She had thought that perhaps the ring Leda wore actually belonged to someone else. If it didn’t bear the Westergard crest, it was reasonable to think it might have belonged to her husband’s family, except she didn’t have one. Leda could have been in a serious relationship without a marriage, however.

  Alice ran a thumb over the engraved surface. Reid had left this with her as an infant. Leda Westergard was wearing an identical ring in her official portrait and in the picnic photo. How had Reid ended up with it, and why had she passed it on to Alice? Had Reid stolen it? Or – was the truth quite different?

  ‘You are aware of the unfolding political situation?’ asked Cecil, and she was jerked from her thoughts.

  She nodded, wondering briefly if this was part of the test.

  ‘The issue with the Summer Tree has lost us some support. The harm caused at Crane Park Island and the subsequent problems . . .’ His voice faded away. ‘But we lost some of our own that night, too,’ he added.

  He sighed gently, and in the silence Alice felt an old, nagging fear rise to the surface. ‘You told me once,’ she said, her voice tentative, ‘that when we bind ourselves to the Summer Tree, it can . . . damage us through that connection, but that we can’t damage it in return.’

  He looked at her, blinking in mild confusion. ‘That’s correct. Are you concerned you might be harmed by the changes in the Summer Tree?’

  She shook her head. ‘What if, somehow, I – we’re damaging the tree? Sending something bad through the link, and that’s causing—’

  ‘The tree isn’t damaged, Alice,’ he said kindly. ‘If anything, it’s the very opposite. The tree has never been stronger.’ He paused, noting her unconvinced expression. ‘Think of the connection like a river pouring from a towering mountain. The water flows downwards. A stream at the foot of the mountain can’t force the water back up it, to its source at the top. And if the source of the river is polluted, that will spread down the mountain. But if a stream at the bottom is polluted, it can’t spread upwards to the river’s source.’

  ‘So it’s . . . one-way,’ she murmured.

  He nodded, and she lapsed into thought. Reid was convinced she was to blame. Even if she was to be believed, how had her work caused the tree to grow?

  Cecil shuffled his papers pointedly, and she sat straighter in the chair, giving him her attention.

  ‘The political situation,’ he said. ‘We have always counted House Ahti as an ally. The link between our legacies is clear, since nature is sustained by water. House Ilmarinen, on the other hand, has always maintained a neutral position towards us; nature, trees and plants give oxygen to the world, and fire feeds on oxygen. But House Pellervoinen and House Mielikki have always been at odds,’ said Cecil, clasping his hands on the tabletop.

  ‘Because the legacies are . . . opposing?’

  ‘Because the whole world was once a garden,’ he said. ‘And then men carved houses from rock, cut back the trees and grew brick and stone cities where forests once stood.’ He paused. ‘But nature . . . fights back. Fungus and mosses layer themselves over damp stone, tree roots damage building foundations, and weeds grow through the cracks of abandoned buildings. The battle between urbanization and nature has lasted thousands of years. And so, House Mielikki has been forced to adapt, to coexist despite the battle for dominance. House Mielikki itself is made of brick and branch – a display of power our neighbour calls arrogant.’

  How could their Houses dislike each other so much if they’d built the Rookery together?

  Cecil paused and gestured at the cup of valerian tea. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Drink.’

  She reluctantly took a sip and set it down again.

  ‘Our Houses are side by side,’ he continued. ‘Geographically, we are the closest of the Houses, but in every other way, the furthest apart.’

  ‘We balance each other out,’ she said, ‘with our differences.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with a grunt of laughter. ‘Well put.’

  There was a moment’s pause while he examined her curiously.

  ‘You should remember these things when you take your test. There are four candidates, but only two will go forward. The strongest. Once they have succeeded in the test, they must make their way to the grove to imbibe the binding draught.’

  She nodded. Two spots. Two chances.

  ‘Alice?�
� Cecil was watching her calmly. ‘You must now finish your drink. I insist.’

  She exhaled softly and looked down at it, her lip curled. It tasted vile, and would leave her too drugged to compete. But maybe this was part of the test – drink the herbal tea and resist its effects. She took a large mouthful while he watched patiently.

  As the valerian began to cloud her mind, she tried to sharpen her focus on the room in a bid to stay awake.

  ‘Where are the other candidates?’ she asked, turning to look about for them. But there was no sign anyone else was coming. She squinted at the sea of framed faces on the wall, tilting her head sideways to better study them through the descending haze.

  ‘Cecil,’ she mouthed. ‘Are you trying to make me . . . fail?’

  A dense fog began to settle on her brain, coaxing her to close her eyes, and she swallowed hard, trying to resist. Her breathing slowed and the room seemed to be fading away as the valerian swamped her senses.

  ‘No,’ she moaned softly as her eyelids slammed shut. ‘Mustn’t . . . mustn’t sleep . . .’

  Alice woke with a jolt. She was on her hands and knees in a dark room. The floor beneath her was cold, rough and gritty beneath her fingertips. She licked her lips and gave herself a mental prod. Her head was clear and her senses alert. The valerian seemed to have passed out of her system.

  She pushed herself into a sitting position, and something in the darkness skittered and clanked along the ground. She fumbled for the source of the noise – a heavy metal chain screwed into the floor – and followed it to her ankle, where it was clamped in place. An iron band pinched her skin tightly. She tried to claw it off but it was immovable, and panic began to march a beat in her chest. Stuck fast.

  A bead of dancing light bloomed in the shadows above her and she flinched. It was a firefly. Lampyridae. Then another flared to life, and another, until so many glowing specks of light hovered and buzzed overhead that if she squinted, she could work out where she was.

  It wasn’t a room. It was a concrete box. If she attempted to stand, she would bang her head on the ceiling, and with both arms stretched wide, her hands would scrape the sides. The concrete was in poor condition. It had been invaded by some sort of plant growth. Clusters of purple bamboo-like stalks had burst through the stone, sprouting heart-shaped leaves. The concrete had warped under the intrusion and angular cracks criss-crossed every wall. Knotweed, she realized.

  Alice sat very still while she considered her position. She was chained to the floor of a concrete box infested with knotweed. A brief examination of the box suggested she was inside a real-life Jenga game. The walls were fragile and unsteady. If she attempted to yank her chain out of the ground, the ceiling and dislodged slab walls would collapse on top of her. If she used Mielikki’s legacy to force the knotweed to recede, it would destabilize the concrete block and falling slabs would crush her. At the moment, as much as the plants were responsible for the instability, they were also the only things stopping the concrete from collapsing – the walls were balanced against the cane-like stems, each supporting the other.

  She adjusted herself to see better, leaning back on her hands. So . . . she couldn’t will the knotweed to leave the box – but maybe if she drew it further in and used it to choke the concrete – to destroy the slabs before they fell? She frowned. No. She might avoid being crushed, but the falling chunks of concrete would be like bricks raining down on her head.

  Cecil’s pre-drink conversation about a political crisis now gained new meaning. Pellervoinen, she thought, her eyes wandering over the concrete, and Mielikki, entwined. Stone and plant, the eternal battle for control. Alice exhaled slowly. She knew what to do. This wasn’t about gently extricating the weed from the concrete. This was about dominance.

  Alice spread out her arms and walked her scrabbling fingers along the walls so that she could lay her palms flat. The coarse stone scraped her skin and she leaned into the sensation. There was more knotweed, right there, just beyond the walls. And those were the plants she needed, pressed against the outer walls. Her hands grew warm. Her fingertips tingled. Alice closed her eyes, focusing every thought on the pulsing electricity in her hands. She sucked in a sharp breath, reached into her mind and pulled.

  An explosion of knotweed smashed through the concrete like a bomb. The slabs disintegrated on impact, the sheer force of the invasion blasting them to dust. A cloud of powdered grit mushroomed upwards and Alice gasped a lungful of clean air before the dusty flecks dropped back to settle on her hair and clothes and what remained of the box.

  Coughing and spluttering, she shuffled sideways. There was no resistance from the chain around her ankle; it was no longer anchored to the wall. She grabbed handfuls of the knotweed surrounding her and used it to wrench herself upright. She was in a forest. Another one. How many doors in House Mielikki opened into forests? Turning, she found that there were other concrete boxes nearby, and her pulse quickened. The other candidates? Was she the first to finish?

  She listed sideways to peer into the distance, shifting her weight to see between the trees. Their concrete blocks . . . She squinted. The others’ boxes seemed intact, their knotweed twisted and woven through the cracks in the concrete, combining stone and plant more tightly together, knitting them like the walls of House Mielikki. But how, then, had the inhabitants of the boxes escaped – or had they even attempted it? With a sinking feeling, it occurred to her that the point might not have been to evacuate the box. Maybe she was supposed to stay inside it and render the precarious walls more stable. Stabilize, not destroy. A case of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.

  Shit.

  There was a faint rumble, like the crashing of distant waves, and Alice’s skin prickled. She clambered from the undergrowth, her feet sinking into the mossy forest floor. Where was the grove with the binding draught – perhaps she had to find it? She spun in the other direction, peering through the trees and listening for signs of movement.

  It began as a shudder in the belly of the earth. Soil vibrated and brushwood began to bounce in the undergrowth. With a thunderous clap, stems of knotweed burst out of the soil, one after the other – two dozen, three dozen . . . They erupted from under tree roots, tilting their trunks until they fell. Echoes of crashing trees, whining as their roots pulled taut and snapped, ricocheted through the air.

  A crooked oak swung towards Alice, its branches snagging and leaves raining from its shattered crown. She dived to clear the area, watching in horror as it landed squarely on her disintegrated concrete box with a terrific whump. She scrambled over the collapsed trunk, scraping her arms on the rough bark and sharp branches. The grove. Get to the grove.

  ‘Help!’ a panicked voice, muffled and hoarse, called out.

  Alice spun round, her eyes widening.

  ‘Get me out!’

  There was someone in the nearest box! Her stomach churned as she glanced in the opposite direction, grinding her teeth. Stay or go? The grove or—

  ‘Please!’

  Alice exhaled sharply and powered off through the grass. She held her breath as she skirted a teetering pine. The shaking had stopped, but she had no doubt the respite was only temporary. This was part of the test. It wouldn’t stop until there were two winners.

  Alice skidded to a halt at the first concrete box. A hand poked out through one of the holes.

  ‘I’m here!’

  The hand drew back inside and a man’s face pressed against the gap.

  ‘Part of the ceiling’s collapsed on the metal chain. I can’t move it. I’m still bolted to the floor.’ He was panting in distress. ‘If another quake hits, I can’t escape!’

  Overhead, the leaves rippled on the trees, fluttering far more than was natural, and Alice watched them warily.

  ‘Tell me what you did with the knotweed,’ she said.

  ‘Wove it through the concrete,’ he replied. He reached out a hand again and rapped the outside with his knuckles to show her. ‘It was stable, but I can�
��t get out. It’s not going to be stable enough if it happens again.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Just . . . hang on.’

  She moved around the box, trying to find a weakness, her mind discarding dozens of possible solutions as too dangerous. Something cracked – something above. Alice’s head darted up. The trees had begun to sway again. No time.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Get me out!’ he shouted hoarsely.

  Alice hurtled over to the fallen oak, scrabbling through the splayed branches, searching. There! An acorn! Snatching it up, she raced back to the trapped candidate and slammed down onto her knees.

  ‘Use your legacy to hold up the roof in the corner!’ she barked.

  She thrust the acorn into a tiny crack in the concrete, a small gap where the knotweed had been laced through.

  ‘This is going to be fast,’ she said. ‘I’m going to smash the concrete where the chain’s bolted. Pull your leg clear as soon as the chain breaks.’

  ‘Just do it,’ he rasped.

  Alice pressed the flat of her hand against the acorn, focusing her thoughts on the pressure point against her skin and the feel of its smooth base. With her mind, she pushed. The acorn’s skin split open. Tiny roots poured out, unravelling to the forest floor, thickening, and then with a ferocious whip-crack a sapling burst from it – with such force it shattered the concrete piled inside. Grey dust bloomed out through the gaps.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Alice shouted, coughing on grit.

  ‘It worked!’ he yelled. ‘And it broke through the other side. Can you move the cracked piece?’

  She sprinted around the box and found a broken chunk of concrete leaning against the roof. Alice hastily shouldered it aside; it thunked into the grass. The man trapped inside released the knotweed he’d been using to shore up the roof and bolted clear. Collapsing in a heap in the grass, he grinned up at her; his short blond hair and even his eyelashes were caked in dust.