‘Why did you . . .?’ Questions swarmed her mind, but she couldn’t seem to latch on to any one of them.
He leaned forward, planting his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his fists. For some reason, she couldn’t stop staring at his extravagant cufflinks. Maybe it was better than staring into his eyes, which were scrutinizing her carefully.
‘Where’s your nightjar?’ she asked, suddenly noting its absence.
He tilted his head to watch her with greater interest. ‘You’re an aviarist like your mother? She taught me to hide my nightjar when we were children,’ he said.
Silence fell and Alice’s thoughts raced. Leda was an aviarist too?
‘You were children together?’
‘We were. The Whitmores and Westergards were neighbours.’
Alice blinked rapidly. ‘So you’re not . . .’ She stared at him. ‘You’re definitely not my father, are you?’
The tightness in his face relaxed and his bright eyes regarded her with something like sympathy.
‘No. I’m not your father.’
She nodded, but her thoughts slammed into a brick wall. Leda’s message. The book. I remind myself that I didn’t lie when I took my oath of office – though I have broken it since . . . The Houses are blind to what we’ve done, and Gabriel, if he ever loved me, will let me have this one, final secret.
‘Leda said . . . She thought . . .’ Alice stopped and shuddered a breath. Not my father. Whitmore isn’t Tuoni. Her wits were in danger of deserting her. She shoved aside the uncertainties and renewed her focus on the things she did know.
‘You were in love with her,’ said Alice. ‘You knew her secret. You knew it, and you didn’t tell anyone because you loved her.’
His face paled and he sat more stiffly in the chair, his hands falling from beneath his chin to clasp over his desk.
‘I was young. What’s the point of youth if not to fall in love a dozen times a day, with every pretty girl that crosses your path?’ He winked at her, as though inviting her to join him in laughing at his charming caddishness. She didn’t laugh.
‘I saw you coming out of the forest after my first test,’ she said, squeezing the arms of her chair until her fingers whitened. ‘I saw you leave that door, just before the siren went off. And I saw you with Tilda at the Summer Tree before it erupted.’
Whitmore’s eyes flicked over to her face. ‘Your point?’
What did she have to lose now? He could hardly refuse her the final test because of poor manners. ‘Have you done something to the tree?’ she asked baldly.
He slammed his palm on the desk, his expression bitter. ‘Your mother is the cause of all this,’ he snapped. Whitmore seemed to rediscover his restraint, leaning back in the chair, his arms casually draped over the armrests.
Alice tried again to seek out his nightjar. ‘Leda is the cause of the Summer Tree’s problems? But she’s been dead for over twenty years. How could she possibly—’
‘First, do no harm: the Hippocratic oath,’ he said in a soft, unsettling voice. ‘It forms part of the chancellor’s oath of office. And quite the hypocrite she became in the end.’
Alice swallowed thickly. ‘What did she do?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re sure you want me to taint her memory for you?’
‘Tell me,’ she croaked. ‘Please.’
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Your mother was a Gardiner. Did you know?’ He paused to study her reaction before continuing. ‘The Summer Tree was linked to a stone laid by Pellervoinen.’
‘Both of them?’ she interrupted. ‘The London and the Rookery Stone?’
He paused. ‘Well. You have done your research, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her eyes never leaving his face. ‘I’ve been trying to find a book to complete my research. The title is a Latin quote from Sir Isaac Newton. It vanished over a century ago.’
He frowned at her, his expression wary. ‘As to your question,’ he said stiffly, refusing to be drawn on the book, ‘the stones were linked together, that’s true – but only the Rookery Stone was directly linked to the Summer Tree. The aim was to use it as a counterweight. An opposing force to prevent the Summer Tree from uncontrollable, damaging growth.’
All the breath rushed out of her, but he didn’t seem to notice. So she’d been right, there was a link between them. The stone’s task, as an opposing legacy, was to keep the tree in check. It must have been damaged.
Whitmore paused and ran his index finger over his bottom lip, deep in thought.
‘Your mother, as a Gardiner, was entrusted with maintaining the link between the stone and tree, as every Gardiner and Westergard had done before her. But instead . . . she severed it.’
Alice’s head snapped up and her eyes searched his face, but he stared calmly back at her. He was serious. Her blood chilled. Leda broke the link between the Rookery and London? She removed Pellervoinen’s safeguard?
‘Not alone,’ he said. ‘She had help from Helena Northam. And then, Helena was never heard from again, and your mother went not long afterwards.’
Alice’s muscles turned to stone. Oh God. This was what Leda had meant in her diary. This was their shameful secret.
‘And so I was left to monitor their mistakes,’ said Whitmore. ‘Just as they expected me to clean up their messes when we were children. I’ve been watching the miniature for years, and I’ve been trying to access the Rookery Stone, waiting for the pigeons to come home to roost. And now they have.’
Alice’s mind was racing, trying to keep up. Whitmore had been trying to keep an eye on the tree?
‘You . . . you know where the Rookery Stone is?’ she murmured.
‘Yes. But no one can get to it. It’s in a lower chamber of the Abbey Library, behind a concealed door in one of the corridors. It won’t open.’
She caught herself just in time. Didn’t he know Crowley was Helena’s son and Marianne’s nephew, and that he might be able to open it? She took a breath. If he didn’t, she decided it wasn’t her place to reveal it. Not yet. Without being able to pry on his nightjar, she wasn’t willing to trust Whitmore. She’d been burned before.
‘I can help,’ she said. ‘I’m a Gardiner too. I have a link to the tree – I’ve felt it.’
‘You won’t even be allowed within two feet of the Summer Tree,’ he said, with a bite to his voice. ‘The Council has seen fit to remove our privileges. The House no longer has any jurisdiction over the tree.’
‘What do you—’
‘They’ve banned us from it,’ he said. ‘They no longer trust us to discharge our duty. Fools. No one is allowed inside – not our representatives, no one. The Runners are in charge now.’
‘But . . .’ Alice frowned, trying to hurry her thoughts. ‘I might be able to help. A Council ban is irrelevant if I can just—’
‘You’re not yet even a member of this House,’ he said silkily.
‘Then bring the final test forward and let me take the binding draught,’ she said. ‘If I’m a Gardiner, it’s a formality anyway, isn’t it? Seal my membership. Strengthen my link to the Summer Tree and let me fix this.’ She paused to gather herself, continuing more calmly. ‘Tilda thought I could help. So let me.’
He stared at her for a moment, his eyes narrowed in deliberation. Then he stood abruptly and moved to the door. ‘Wait here.’
She couldn’t sit still. Her pent-up energy made her knees bounce and her fingers tap involuntarily.
He returned sometime later with a small folder of paper. He nodded for her to open it and she pulled it out. It appeared to be the torn-out pages of a handwritten book. Blue ink scratched across the pages.
‘This book was what caused the damage,’ he said softly. ‘Leda was always so curious about it, and I . . .’ He swallowed. ‘I gave it to her because I always gave her what she asked for.’ He paused and sat up straighter, the look in his eyes hardening. ‘She found a ritual in it about how to sever the link. Not specific instructions,’ he said,
‘but that it was possible. It was my great-uncle’s book. He wrote about—’
‘I know it,’ she managed. ‘I know the book. I have the covering the pages were ripped from.’
Whitmore’s words echoed through her mind as she left the House in a daze. He was not her father, and Leda had caused the tree’s destructiveness. Leda and Helena, custodians of the Summer Tree and the Rookery Stone, had severed the link between the two, reneging on their duties together. Leda had been filled with shame and guilt even at the end of her life. How could she have been naive enough to think that the other anchors would be strong enough to keep the city safe? All those changes she’d made to improve the Rookery for the better were gone, wiped out in the face of her selfish and reckless act. How could she have taken such a risk?
Alice had a sudden and desperate need to see the tree in person. The tree and the stone. She knew where the stone was now. She glanced down at the pages in her arms – and soon she would know how to fix them.
Crowley stared into the fire. The twisting flames licked the sides of the grille, spitting and hissing sparks, casting shadows across his face. His legs were stretched out in front of him and his arms rested on the sides of the worn green armchair in the corner of the kitchen. His shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, his top button loose, and a glass of whisky dangled from his right hand.
‘Why did they do it?’ he murmured.
The flames crackled in the grate. Alice watched them as she skirted past the hearth and drew out a wooden dining chair from the table.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered, though she sensed he was talking only to himself.
Alice turned slightly to watch him. She’d never seen Crowley so dejected; he prided himself on being able to think two steps ahead, and now he looked like someone whose footing had been utterly lost. Alice was worried about him.
‘Crowley . . .?’
The leaping fire was reflected in his pupils. He swirled the amber whisky dregs around the bottom of his glass.
‘Our mothers took it upon themselves to destroy our city – our home. It makes no sense. So much . . . for her fairy tales.’
Draining the whisky, he wiped his mouth on his wrist. He stood abruptly and walked to the sink. Planting his glass on the counter, he slid it away and rested his elbows briefly on the edge of the metal basin. His head dropped into his hands, and he waited there a moment, before releasing a deep sigh and straightening up. ‘Maybe,’ he said slowly, ‘we’re not supposed to save it. Maybe we’re supposed to let the city burn.’ He gave her one last anguished look before striding from the room. As the door swung shut behind him, the fire exploded in the grate and she shoved her chair back in shock.
‘I need your help, Crowley,’ she called after him. ‘We have to put this right.’
She lapsed into silence, her gaze fixed on the flames. How did you sever a link from one object to another? Had something similar to a nightjar cord linked the tree and stone? Something tangible that had been physically cut in half?
She looked down at the papers on her lap. Whitmore was right: they didn’t provide specific instructions. All they did was reiterate the importance of the link and the location of the Rookery Stone. As far as she understood, there was a chamber beneath the abbey that led beneath the Summer Tree. It was there that the Rookery Stone sat, in a tangle of the tree’s roots.
Whatever the case, Alice needed Crowley to be on his best game. This wasn’t something she could do alone, even if somehow she was able to get close to the tree. Two legacies had caused this. Two would have to fix it.
‘The steel girders were still attached?’ Jude asked for the third time.
‘Yes,’ Alice confirmed. When the Summer Tree had smashed through the atrium ceiling, most of the girders supporting the glass roof had still been in place. ‘They were attached a while ago. But I can’t guarantee that’s still the case.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Jude, stowing a container of ball bearings in his wheelchair’s travel bag. ‘Our back-up plan is the water pipes.’
‘The water pipes are not our back-up plan,’ said Sasha, affronted. ‘They’re our plan A.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, dissipating the nervous tension. ‘They’re our plan A, but my plan B if the girders have already fallen.’
Sasha nodded and turned away to pull on her long burgundy coat. But Alice had spotted the strain in her jaw. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she asked.
Sasha flicked a glance at her and pulled a tight, dismissive smile. ‘Please. I was born for this. Uncontrollable destruction is my middle name.’
‘Sasha Marie-Antoinette Uncontrollable Destruction Hamilton?’ drawled Crowley from the doorway. ‘It rolls so beautifully off the tongue. The traditional names really are the best, aren’t they?’
Before Sasha could fire off a retort, he turned to Jude. ‘You have everything you need?’
‘I think so,’ said Jude.
Alice watched Crowley carefully. He had needed this call to arms. The sense of purpose spurring him on had lifted him from his despondency.
‘The ball bearings are magnetized steel,’ Jude continued. ‘I can get them to the girders, but I might need some help with the heat.’
Crowley nodded, glancing at Alice and offering her a brief reassuring smile. ‘I’ll make sure to find a suitable position around the square.’
It was a relatively simple plan: destruction and distraction. Alice wanted to access the Abbey Library, and with every possible doorway guarded by Runners, the only way to reach it was through the main entrance – which was, incidentally, also cordoned off by Runners. Far too many of them to cloak herself from sight – at most, she’d only ever managed to blind three nightjars to her presence.
The only people allowed through the entrance were the team of Runners guarding the tree inside, and they had been camping around it in shifts. The only circumstance in which the Runners would leave en masse was if the tree grew and damaged the building. If this happened, Risdon had ordered every Runner to evacuate immediately and find safety. If the Runners fled the building, Alice could slip inside unhindered.
However, she couldn’t chance waiting for the tree to burst into spontaneous growth; the pattern of its growth was unpredictable – she might be waiting weeks and still miss it. It was Sasha who had scoffed at their cautious wait-and-see plans and thrown the wildcard into the mix: the tree didn’t have to grow; the Runners just had to believe it had. They were going to convince Risdon’s men that the tree was disturbing the abbey’s foundations and threatening to crash it down around their ears.
They staggered their arrivals to prevent suspicion. Crowley and Sasha went first, striding across the road together and vanishing through the door of the derelict building opposite. August went through alone, and Alice and Jude hurried over soon after.
As they approached, the steps that led from the pavement up to the doorway shuddered. The mortar thinned out and there was a clanking thud, followed by the rasp of stone scraping stone as the steps repositioned themselves. The steep angle of the steps decreased, pavement cobbles rising and the first few steps sinking lower. It was the only thing Crowley ever gave the Council any credit for: half a century ago, they’d ordered House Pellervoinen to adjust every set of steps in the Rookery so that they’d be more accessible to those who might otherwise find navigating stairs difficult. The steps responded to a small piece of white Bath stone bracketed to Jude’s wheelchair, morphing into a ramp whenever the stone was sensed nearby. The gradient now shallow, Jude’s wheels rolled up the flattened steps and through the open doorway. Alice pulled the door closed behind them and shivered at the biting winds knifing through her jumper in the darkness.
‘I think we left the ball bearings on the—’ she started in a sudden panic.
‘I have the ball bearings,’ he said with a calming smile. He patted his side bag and she nodded. They were using them as pressure points to rip the girders from the library ceiling.
‘Do you think I should’ve brought my—’
‘Alice,’ he said. ‘Open the door.’
She flexed her fingers and took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Okay, yes, the door.’ She thrust her arm into the shadows, the sharp wind needling her fingers, and fixed the image of their destination in mind. Three swipes of her hand and her palm glanced off a solid metal ring. The door handle. She latched on to the ring, turned it and pushed the door open an inch. Crooked light folded into the gap, and she scanned left and right before she shouldered the door aside and exited. There were no steps this time, and Jude followed her out, directly onto a quiet side street. The others were nowhere to be seen.
‘You know where you’re going?’ she asked. This suddenly felt like a bad idea – it was one thing for her to take the risk, but to put this on her friends too? The whole square would be swarming with Runners.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And Sasha and August too. Sasha is focusing on the mains water pipes, and August on the sewers.’
She glanced anxiously at the top of the road. Something popped, and she looked down to see Jude prising open a vial of amber liquid.
‘Rosemary and willow bark,’ he said.
‘For pain relief?’ she asked, concerned.
He nodded and swallowed the liquid. ‘It’s been one of my bad weeks.’ He stowed the empty vial in the side bag on his wheelchair.
‘Jude, are you sure—’
‘It’s fine.’
‘But—’
‘I’ve got some of Mowbray’s lavender waiting for me when we’re done,’ he said. She hesitated, before nodding and glancing back up the street.
‘Did you know that August thinks he’s related to Bazalgette?’ Jude said mildly.
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