by Webb, Holly
But the hair didn’t come off. Instead a sticky, translucent mass like snail slime seemed to appear for a second, then melt away. Her mother sprang up, and hugged her, and then whispered, ‘Run!’
They all piled out into the passageway, and Rose looked from side to side in dismay. She had no idea which way to go, and now they hadn’t Eliza to guide them. Gus slipped past her, and stood scenting the air. Rose was sure she could see his whiskers, despite his human shape.
‘Gus sent the guards at the front to sleep – is that the best way out?’ she asked her mother quickly.
Miranda shook her head. ‘I have no idea. I’ve never been out of that room. But – no. Pike is coming that way. I can feel him, like some great wounded slug, drenched in poison. This way, towards the water, come on.’
There was shouting now at the end of the passageway, and Gus hissed. ‘I missed those.’ His fingernails had grown even longer, and his front teeth were cat-like and sharp.
‘You’ll get your chance,’ Miranda said, not looking back at him. ‘Is this where you broke out this morning? Good gracious, Hope, what did you do?’
‘Rose,’ Bill snapped. ‘She isn’t Hope, she’s Rose. I know it weren’t your fault she got left, but she did, and she’s Rose now.’
Miranda looked stricken, but she nodded. ‘I’m sorry. Later, we can talk about these things.’
Rose smiled. ‘Not now.’ She gazed, rather proudly, at the enormous hole in the wall. ‘We enlivened half a boat,’ she explained, ‘and sailed it away. Through there.’ It was the largest thing she had ever seen her magic do, and she was quite pleased with it.
‘They’ll not have left this unguarded,’ Bill muttered, looking around suspiciously. ‘Where are they… Oh, blast…’
A tall, chronically thin man had materialised from the shadows, wielding a knife, and he was holding it at Bella’s throat. Her eyes were bulging, and she was holding her breath, trying to make herself as thin as possible to escape the blade.
‘Where was he?’ Freddie muttered. ‘How did we miss him?’
‘The others are coming…’ Bill was staring behind them. ‘Or at least, someone is. I think it’s Pike, but he looks – different.’
‘We stole a lot of his magic for the boat.’ Rose was still staring at Bella. Why didn’t she scream? When they got home, Miss Fell was going to have to stop teaching them etiquette and work out how Bella could control her screaming trick so it only hit the right people.
Rose smiled grimly to herself. When. Not if.
The thin man was shaking, they could all see the blade wavering against Bella’s skin.
‘He’s drugged,’ Bill muttered.
Miranda nodded. ‘They trade in opium. They tried to give it to me once.’
There was the faintest squeak, and a thin red line appeared across Bella’s neck. The thin man laughed. ‘Master’s coming…’
Pike had dragged himself up the passageway. His skin was greyish, and his mouth looked wet, as though he’d been drooling. He moved as though he was having to think about every lurching step, but the madness was still there in his pale eyes, and somehow he seemed even more dangerous than before. His eyes were paler now, the pupils shrunk to the merest pinpricks, leaving that flat expanse of blue.
Rose and her mother and Bill and Freddie were pressed up against the edges of the hole in the wall, close enough to jump through and run, but they couldn’t leave Bella.
‘Go!’ Rose hissed to her mother.
‘I can’t leave you all!’
‘You tried to make me promise I would. It’s you he wants back. Run!’
Miranda laughed. ‘I think he’d rather have all three of you. Young and strong, you’re exactly what he needs. I’m not going, not without the little one. Hold hands with me, Rose. We’re going to get her back.’
The china-whiteness of her face was flushing slowly pinker, and she seemed to be growing more alive every minute. Her hair was crackling with energy, and even her dingy greyish dress was a taking on a silvery lustre of heavy silk.
Pike was watching her, grinding his teeth. ‘There’s your escape.’ He nodded at the gaping hole in the wall. ‘But you can’t go,’ he snarled. ‘You won’t leave the child…’ He sounded doubtful.
‘You’re right. You would, but then you are a thief and a child-murderer. I’ll never forget what you did to Eliza, and what you made me do to my baby.’ Rose’s mother seemed to be growing taller as she hurled the words at him, and Pike was cowering backwards. ‘Your magic isn’t even your own to use,’ Miranda snarled, and then she laughed as Pike cried out in horror. ‘Did you think I didn’t know? I saw it in you years ago. All stolen. The very first thing you stole, and from your own brother. You stole his magic, Jonathan Fisher, and that was all it was ever good for, for stealing more things.’
Pike sat down suddenly, as though someone had sliced across the backs of his knees. ‘You know my name.’
‘And Jacob’s. The brother you killed.’ Miranda nodded, but behind her back she was pulling Bill’s sleeve, pointing him towards the thin man and Bella.
‘I didn’t! I didn’t kill him!’ Pike screamed. ‘I didn’t. He’s over there, look at him!’
Startled, they looked across at the thin, shaking man, and saw that he had red hair too, under the layers of dirt. He was staring back, looking frightened, and his hands were shaking even more. He wasn’t looking at Bella.
Miranda glanced between the two of them. ‘You drugged him, then. So you could take his power. You really are a slug. Was that why you tried to get me to take the stuff? So that you could steal my magic for ever too?’ She shuddered. ‘Was it what you were planning for these three?’
‘No one’s stealing anything from me!’ Bella suddenly screamed, as she stamped her pretty high-heeled boot down on Jacob Fisher’s foot. Gus leaped from behind him to rake his claws across the man’s face, and Bill snatched Bella as she ducked out of his grip, and bundled her through the hole in the wall, grabbing Freddie’s arm and dragging him after them. ‘Come on, Rose!’
Rose pulled her mother’s hand, and they scrambled over the rubble, leaving Jacob moaning behind them, and Pike dragging himself in their wake, as they raced along the narrow stone pathway that ran around the crumbling warehouse, a ribbon of safety between the walls and the water.
When they were back at the mouth of the alley, Rose threw her arms around Bella, the scarlet line across Bella’s pretty throat filling her with fury. She had never thought she would want to kill anyone. She had hated and suppressed and fought against her magic, but now she would never give it up. Pike had stolen it once before by taking her mother and her history away from her, and now he was planning to steal it again.
‘Bella, could you scream that building down?’
Bella nodded, her teeth showing in an angry little smile. She had wiped her nice glove across the cut, and she was staring at the stain. ‘But won’t it hurt you all?’
Rose shook her head. ‘Not if we’re in the hiding spell first, I hope. We never tried to ward it off before.’
‘Take hands,’ Gus snapped. His bloodstained claws had retracted into normal fingernails again as he stretched his hands out to the others. ‘The strongest you’ve ever done the spell.’
The shimmering bubble wrapped them all, leaving Bella standing alone in front of them.
‘I can’t do it,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve never done it on purpose!’ She looked round at Rose, her face panicky.
‘He’s coming!’ Freddie yelped, pointing at the gap in the stone wall, and Bella wheeled around and screamed out of pure terror, a wave of sound that the others felt even inside their protection spell, battering and swinging against the stone walls and their own fragile wall of magic.
‘He wasn’t coming,’ Gus muttered to Freddie, and Freddie shook his head. ‘But he would have been in a minute. She needed scaring into it.’
Bella jumped back suddenly, the scream dying away into a yelp of fright, as the building seemed to shimm
er. ‘It’s pulling me in,’ she gasped, her lace-edged skirts suddenly sucking towards the warehouse. As the others broke out of the disguise spell and seized her, they felt as though a strong wind was sweeping them back towards the crumbling stones of Beloveds.
Rose’s mother stood there, her feet planted on the stones, her long, bronze-gold hair streaming out past her face towards the old warehouse. She had grabbed Bella’s coat, hauling her back like a sailor rescuing a man overboard. ‘Hold on to her,’ she hissed through her clenched teeth to Rose, Bill and Freddie, and she stood like a rock, her face growing impossibly whiter, until the warehouse seemed all at once to sink into itself, leaving a cloud of choking dust.
The last shreds of the disguise spell faded away, and they stared gaping at the devastation.
‘He’s gone,’ someone whispered, and Rose found that she was holding her mother’s hand.
They straggled back through the dirty alleys, gradually reaching the smarter, cleaner streets, but there was still a curious air of desolation. Hardly anyone was about, although it was mid-morning now, and those people who were out were hurrying, heads down with anxious faces.
‘Something’s happened,’ Freddie muttered, walking faster.
‘It has to be the invasion. There must have been news.’ Gus was a cat again, dancing ahead of their feet, and sniffing the air luxuriously. No one cared enough to be surprised by him right now.
‘But Papa was going to stop it!’ Bella murmured anxiously. ‘It can’t be.’
‘Who are we invading?’ Rose’s mother asked, and they stared at her.
She sighed. ‘Eleven years – no one talked to me.’
‘Talis is invading us,’ Rose explained. ‘Or they were going to. Bella’s father went to the palace – yesterday? The day before? I can’t think.’
‘The day before.’ Bella’s hands were clenched inside her bloodstained gloves. ‘What if he’s hurt?’
Gus suddenly stopped, and turned back to them, his tail swishing in agitation. ‘We’ve been gone overnight.’
Rose and the others nodded, unsure what he meant.
‘Don’t you see?’ Gus snarled. ‘The one thing guaranteed to draw Aloysius away from the war committee. Bella, and you two, gone. He’ll be back at the house, searching. We have to run!’
‘Oh no,’ Rose muttered, starting to dash after him, pulling her mother with her, and all six of them raced through the streets, back to the tall house in the square.
Freddie hammered on the front door, and it opened so suddenly that Rose was sure Mr Fountain had been pacing the hallway, waiting for them.
‘You’re safe!’ He caught Bella up in his arms. ‘I heard you screaming.’
‘She collapsed a warehouse, sir!’ Freddie told him. ‘On purpose,’ he added quickly. ‘We needed her to.’
But Mr Fountain had seen Rose’s mother, standing nervously in the doorway with Rose still clinging to her hand.
‘Rose?’ He looked at them both, frowning. ‘Who…’
‘Miranda!’ Miss Fell was hurrying down the stairs, her stick forgotten, a new life in her face. ‘Oh, Rose, you found her!’
Mr Fountain swallowed. ‘Miranda Fell?’
‘Miranda Garnet.’ Rose’s mother’s voice was proud, and her shoulders were unyieldingly stiff, as her aunt embraced her.
‘Miranda, where have you been? I shall never, ever forgive you for going off without telling me!’ Miss Fell stared at her niece. ‘Did you think I would disown you?’ She stood holding Miranda, staring at every line of her face. ‘Oh, my dearest. So changed. But then, eleven years, and it’s seemed so much longer.’
Miss Bridges, the housekeeper, had appeared discreetly through the green baize door. ‘Tea, ma’am?’ she murmured, and Miss Fell nodded, towing Miranda after her into the drawing room, pushing her into one of the button-back velvet chairs, and simply staring at her.
Mr Fountain had followed them in, still holding Bella, who looked exhausted, and Rose and Freddie and Bill were lurking in the doorway.
‘Come here, child!’ Miss Fell commanded, beckoning to Rose, and delicately kicking a footstool towards Miranda’s chair. ‘Sit there. I want to see you together.’
Her cheeks burning, Rose did as she was told. She felt as though she was sitting for a portrait, like the handsome oil painting of Bella as a baby with her mother that hung over the fireplace. The thin white hand that brushed her cheek and then settled cautiously on her shoulder was only part of the pose. Except that it was shaking.
Rose reached back, suddenly ashamed of her dry, stained hands, and held it, and felt it still, and heard her mother sigh.
Miss Fell stared at them, her eyes glittering and hungry. ‘I was right. Ever since I saw you in Venice that day, Rose, running along the quay. I should never have doubted it – look at the pair of you! I told you, Rose, didn’t I, that I thought I would have known if Miranda had died? You found her for me, after all this time…I should have trusted my instincts better.’
‘Aunt, what is happening?’ Miranda’s voice was husky, as though she had hardly used it over the years. ‘The streets were dead. Fear seems to be seeping into the air.’
‘It’s definite,’ Mr Fountain said flatly. ‘The Talish are bringing the invasion force to Cormanse. They’ve been constructing barges – dreadful, flimsy things, but then, they only have to make one journey. Now they’re waiting for a clear day to make the crossing. February – stupid time to do it, of course. But the Talish emperor has his spies everywhere, and I think the agreement I made for the king in Venice wasn’t as secret as it was meant to be. Clearly the emperor didn’t want us having any extra help.’
Rose gasped. ‘Sir, did we stop you fighting it? We had to go, I’m so sorry.’
Mr Fountain sighed, and sat down on one of the brocade sofas with Bella in his arms. ‘I don’t think it made much difference that I had to leave, Rose. I’d gathered as many magicians as I could – old friends – and we’ve managed to keep the channel too rough to cross. But we can’t do that for ever. The Talish magicians are so strong, so many of them, and we’re worn out.’
‘You can’t give up.’ Freddie stared at him, horrified.
Mr Fountain smiled sadly. ‘I’m not giving up, Freddie. I collapsed. Since Gossamer stabbed me, I don’t have the same strength. They brought me home. Then when I got back here I discovered that you were all missing. Since then I’ve been trying to scry for you. I found you in some dank warehouse, but then you were on a boat – it was all muddled, and the wound kept making me lose the vision.’ He hid his face in Bella’s hair for a moment. ‘I don’t know if we can disturb the sea again.’
Miss Fell glared at him. ‘Aloysius Fell, get up, and stop mooning about. Don’t you realise what you have here?’ She swept a hand around the drawing room. ‘Three generations of the strongest magical talent in Europe. Plus Isabella, who may be objectionable, but is capable of screaming down buildings. And Frederick, who probably could too, if only he would make the effort.’
Freddie shrugged crossly, but Rose thought he was secretly rather pleased.
‘Tell His Majesty that magicians cannot work in that dead stone monstrosity of a palace,’ Miss Fell commanded. ‘The sea spells are still working, are they not? The invasion cannot be for a few more days, surely?’
Mr Fountain shook his head dumbly.
‘Then we must move somewhere more suitable. Your gathering of magicians from the palace, too.’ She searched Miranda’s face anxiously. ‘Dearest, I must tell you…your parents…they died, a few years back.’
Miranda swallowed. ‘I wondered,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know if I could have gone back and seen them, not even now.’
‘The house will be yours,’ her aunt pointed out gently. ‘And Rose’s.’
Gus mewed irritably. ‘It won’t be soon! A bunch of Talish officers will be using it for a billet if we don’t do something!’
‘Quite,’ Miss Fell told him frostily. ‘We need every advantage we can get, so t
he Fells will gather at Fell Hall. Miranda, you will have to be strong. Once this is all dealt with –’ she waved a hand dismissively, and Rose had to stifle a little snort of laughter, for Miss Fell looked as though she was having problems with a lippy second footman, not an invasion – ‘then you and Rose will be able to go wherever you like. But for now, we need the house on our side, my dear.’
Miranda nodded – and Rose noticed that her hand was shaking again.
Miss Fell stood up, in a grand sweep of stiff silk. ‘William, send for the carriage, and tell the admirable Mrs Jones that we need provisions for a journey to Derbyshire.’
‘So many of them…’ Rose murmured, peering out of the carriage window. She and her mother were sharing a carriage with Miss Fell, and Gus, who had apparently abandoned his master for the sake of better gossip in Rose’s party. ‘They look exhausted already. They must have been marching for days.’
The column of soldiers stumbled past, their weapons jingling. But the polished swords were dusty, and the men themselves were no better. They hardly glanced up as the carriage sped past. ‘Are they going to the coast?’ Rose asked. ‘In case – in case the plan doesn’t work?’
Miss Fell nodded grimly. ‘Or perhaps to the manufacturing towns. There are metalworks around here. It would be disastrous if the invading force should seize those.’
Rose watched the tail end of the dusty column disappearing behind them. They didn’t look capable of defending a great deal. The plan had to work – or she could imagine the Talish forces simply sweeping their way across the country.
Miss Fell’s determination that morning had seemed to fire Mr Fountain up. He’d slid Bella, who was now fast asleep, worn out by her destruction of the warehouse, off his shoulder, and lain her on the sofa, while he paced up and down the drawing room.
‘You’ve never worked together, of course,’ he’d muttered, suddenly glaring at Rose and her mother. ‘And no time to test it. But three Fells, as you say… Immensely powerful.’ He stared at his perfectly shiny shoes for a few seconds, and glanced up. ‘If we were to gather the whole invasion fleet close together – all those hundred barges that our agents have been gabbling in panic about – could you destroy them? With my help, and the other magicians I’ve recruited?’