by Laura Powell
Fae was the common term for a witch’s abilities, the so-called Seventh Sense. It was reckoned that one in a thousand people would develop it, and since the fae was practically always hereditary, anyone who’d had a witch-relative within the last three generations of their immediate family was barred from working in the Inquisition. ‘Fae runs thicker than blood, quicker than water’, the saying went. And the strict background checks worked: in the last twenty years, only two inquisitors had turned witchkind after joining the service.
Ollie, however, didn’t seem bothered by his exclusion. ‘You should bunk off and join me,’ he told Lucas. ‘It’s not like you’re going to hear anything you don’t already know.’
‘Ah, he just wants to chat up the lovely lady inquisitress,’ said Tom.
Lucas grinned, and swung ahead to the hall. ‘Try and stop me. You know how those uniforms turn me on.’
An air of ritualised boredom hung over the assembly hall whose stained glass and odour of wilting flowers gave everyone who entered it the feeling of being at church. A projector screen had been set up in front of the stage curtains, and a woman in the scarlet and grey inquisitorial dress was waiting to one side. The school’s career advisor and Year Heads were seated on the other, together with a slim fair-haired boy. He was the real focus of interest in the room. Gideon Hale had left Clearmont last summer, and was taking a year out before university to join the Inquisition’s Accelerated Development Programme.
Tom and Lucas slipped into their seats just as the Recruitment Officer got up from hers. Her face was sunny and dimpled, her smile determined, as she began her introduction. The screen next to her displayed the image of an eye, drawn in black, with the iris quartered by a red cross. It was the emblem of the British Inquisition.
‘Now then,’ she said, ‘I’m sure you’re all familiar with the work we inquisitors do. However, it’s still important to challenge the mythical image of our organisation being full of mean old men in black robes, getting their kicks out of persecuting innocent witches.’
The inquisitor gave a cheery laugh. Her audience stared back with blank politeness. Clearmont always had a strong showing at the Inquisition; the school had a proud tradition of preparing its students for public service.
‘Over the years,’ the inquisitor continued cosily, ‘the Inquisition has made great progress in developing good relations between ourselves and the witchkind community. We have a duty of care to the witches under our surveillance and we take a lot of pride in finding fulfilling work for them within the State. Public safety is our priority, but the personal welfare of law-abiding, registered witches is an important aspect of our service.’
‘Yeah, right,’ whispered Tom. ‘Next she’ll say, “Some of my best friends are witches.”’
‘. . . In fact, I myself am proud to have made several good friends within the witchkind community . . .’
The boys’ shoulders shook with silent laughter.
‘However, as I’m sure you know, national security is our principal responsibility.’ The inquisitor’s face grew grave. ‘The main challenges faced by the Inquisition are the use of witchwork in organised crime – the gangster societies known as covens – and witch-terrorism practised by extremist groups such as Endor. Thankfully, Endor hasn’t been active in Britain since the late 1990s, but this does not give reason for complacency. Witchcrime prevention, detection and punishment is what the Inquisition was created for.’
There was a solemn pause. Then the dimples and twinkles returned.
‘That doesn’t mean we only recruit people interested in law enforcement, of course! We also offer exciting opportunities in sectors as diverse as technology and research, education and PR. And it’s my job to tell you all about them . . .’
The rest of the presentation lasted about forty minutes. By the end, her listeners were shifting restlessly. It was Gideon Hale they had come for, and the Accelerated Development Programme.
This involved recruiting students into the Inquisition while they were in their final year at school. They would spend a year before university on an intensive training scheme, which they would continue part-time while studying for their degrees. In return, trainees got their tuition fees paid, and would join the inquisitorial officer class once they graduated. The programme had only been running a few years and was somewhat controversial. It had been established partly because witches usually developed the fae in their early twenties, and it was therefore thought useful to have inquisitors within the student body. It was a deterrent too, to the Witchkind Rights campaigners and protesters who targeted university campuses. However, since the student inquisitors were not undercover – in accordance with the agency’s new policy of ‘outreach and transparency’ – there were grumblings that the surveillance benefits were limited.
Gideon Hale would be putting this to the test once he took up his place to read Law at Oxford next year. As he came forward to talk about his experience of the programme so far – the parts that weren’t classified, that is – the audience visibly revived. Gideon was tall and tanned with dusty fair hair and an easy smile; his speech was focused yet relaxed, calculated to charm.
Lucas watched Clara and Daisy, two girls in his class, smirk and flick their hair about in an effort to catch Gideon’s eye. They weren’t the only ones. As Head Boy, Gideon had always had girls sigh over him and younger boys hold themselves straighter in his presence. Now he’d left, even the crabbiest teachers spoke of him with pride. Lucas’s own feelings were mixed. In time, he would be following in the older boy’s footsteps, and although the Inquisition was a vast organisation, once inside, it was a surprisingly small world. No doubt they’d run into each other on a fairly regular basis. In light of their previous encounters, however, Lucas wasn’t entirely sure this was a good thing.
His first encounter with Gideon was in his second year at Clearmont, when he was twelve and Gideon fifteen. Because of a dental appointment Lucas was late for games, and when he went to the locker room to change, he found Gideon there with two other older boys, huddled over a laptop.
The way they looked up when he entered, both shifty and excited, made him wonder if they were watching porn. The sound coming from the laptop was muffled, but then he thought he heard a scream.
‘Come and have a look at this, Stearne.’ Gideon beckoned him forward. He smiled conspiratorially. ‘You’ll find it quite an education.’
Lucas understood he was being granted a favour.
He approached the computer screen. It was showing a film of a balefire. The location was somewhere in rural Africa, he thought, from the hot dusty square, and colourful robes of the assembled crowd. The picture was grainy, shot by a shaky hand-held camera, but you could see what was going on right enough. Three women in white shifts were being dragged to the stake.
‘Look at them,’ said Gideon with slow, soft relish. ‘Look at the dirty harpies.’
One of the witches was very young, maybe even in her teens. She was dumb with terror, but the others were crying and pleading. There were no drugs administered here. The wobbly camera swung round to the crowd, who were singing and dancing. Lucas, who had seen no burnings since Bernard Tynan’s, remembered the gathering on the roof terrace above Trafalgar Square. The clink of glass and fizz of tonic, the party chatter.
The other two boys sniggered furtively. The women were naked under their thin shifts, which clung to their bodies, slick with heat and fear. A man danced forward with a burning brand.
Lucas leaned over and pulled the top of the laptop down.
‘We shouldn’t be watching it,’ he said.
Lucas had already got used, without quite noticing it, to leading other people’s opinions. But that was among his peers. It was only in the ensuing pause – seeing the two older boys tense up, ready for Gideon’s cue – that the enormity of his presumption hit home.
‘A delicate little flower, aren’t you,’ Gideon remarked pleasantly. ‘What would Daddy say?’ From underneath the lid of the l
aptop, they could hear the crackle of flames, and screaming.
‘At a guess, that foreign balefire films are classified,’ Lucas replied, as lightly as he was able. ‘And that distributing and viewing them is illegal.’
Gideon regarded him coolly. His grey eyes were very pale. Lucas kept his own face neutral.
‘Then we’d better listen to Daddy,’ Gideon said at last. He opened up his computer again and pressed a button to send the screen blank. ‘Out in the bush, they do things the old-fashioned way. No red tape.’
‘. . . And what’s so nerve-racking as well as exciting about this scheme,’ Gideon was saying on the stage, ‘is that right from the start, you’re dealing with highly sensitive, classified material. There’s a lot of regulatory stuff to get through, but most of it’s interesting and all of it’s important . . .’
Throughout the rest of his time at school, Gideon was always perfectly agreeable to Lucas, though both maintained a certain watchfulness in the other’s presence. And although the second thing about Gideon that stuck in Lucas’s mind was also to do with witches, it was so trivial he didn’t even know why it had left an impression on him.
It happened last summer, one sun-drowsy evening near the end of term, when Lucas and a couple of friends were on their way back from the park. Along the High Street, they became aware of people stopping to stare, exclaiming and pointing upwards. Two sky-leapers were moving along the roofs, skimming over the gaps between buildings and swooping over chimneys with dizzying ease. They were dressed in the blue uniform that WICA, the witchkind division of the security services, wore when engaged on public witchwork. It seemed to be a training exercise, for their progress was leisurely. Gliding between the shadowed bricks and gilded sky, they were remote as angels.
Lucas had seen footage of sky-leaping on the news and as part of Witchkind Studies but never in real life. Even among witches, the ability was rare. Flying dreams were, of course, a common childhood nightmare, and though Lucas hadn’t had one for ages, seeing the real-life equivalent gave him a shiver of dread. The fluid, graceful movements were so wrong. Defying gravity, defying the solidity of bricks and mortar, and the frail human bonds of flesh – it went against nature. But, thought Lucas, all the same . . . how bold, how beautiful it must be to skim above the city in golden evening air. And, for a fleeting moment, he knew the other people gazing at the sky thought so too.
Suddenly self-conscious, Lucas let his eyes drop. It was then he saw Gideon standing in the entrance to a bar across the street. He too was staring at the sky-leapers. As they vanished into the horizon, his face twisted. Unnoticed by the other bystanders, he spat into the gutter.
‘. . . and I’m really looking forward to liaising with witch-agents in law enforcement and the intelligence services. It might sound pompous, I know, but to be able to engage with different people from all kinds of backgrounds, in service to your country, is such an amazing privilege . . .’
Gideon’s speech ended in warm applause. Lucas joined in, taking care to look as animated as everyone else. He was conscious of a slight pressure in the back of his head, which had been there since he got up this morning and was probably the start of a headache. It would be good to get out of the stuffy hall.
He saw Bea Allen in the lobby outside. Michael had left for boarding school in Year Nine but his twin had stayed at Clearmont. The solemn little girl who’d cried at the balefire had grown glossy and self-assured, with a rosebud mouth and hair like dark treacle. Now she stopped and smiled at Lucas. Was she waiting for him?
‘So . . . does the Inquisition have a new recruit?’ Lucas asked.
‘Maybe if they changed the uniforms.’ Bea pulled a face. ‘Grey’s so not my colour.’
‘That’s a shame,’ Tom said from behind. ‘Because Lucas was just saying how he’s hot for girls in inquisitorial dress. Or was it the “old men in long black robes” you meant?’
Lucas gave him a friendly shove. Tom shoved him back and moved on, with a theatrical wink.
Bea pretended not to notice.
‘Have you really never thought of doing anything else but the Inquisition?’ she asked.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Becoming a racing driver. Astronaut. Rock star.’
He laughed. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you heard me sing. I’ll have to leave the pop-idol-astronaut stuff to you.’
‘I wish. I’m thinking about medicine, actually. Like Mum.’ Bea gave a half smile, half grimace. ‘So I guess I’m destined for the family business too.’
They came to the foot of the stairs, ready to go to their different classrooms. She fiddled with a strand of hair. ‘Are you . . . will you be going to Nick’s party tomorrow?’
‘Should be.’
‘I’ll maybe see you tomorrow, then.’
‘Sure. See you there.’
It seemed that Lucas had known Bea for ever, yet lately it was as if they had become different people; working each other out afresh. It felt new, exciting. He returned home in a buoyant mood, even though the pressure in his head had moved behind his eyes. Now he came to think about it, the tension had been building for a couple of days. He hoped the headache would work itself out before the party tomorrow.
Paul, the guard at the gate, who had been with the family for nearly ten years, gave his usual smile and waved as Lucas entered his access code into the keypad. Security was tight at the Stearne residence, a handsome Regency town house set well back from the road. Its enclosing walls were monitored by CCTV and visitors had to present ID to gain admittance. Biometric ID cards were issued to all UK citizens from the age of twelve, partly to prevent witches who’d altered their appearance with a glamour from gaining access to places they shouldn’t.
The house also had the usual witchwork defence of bells encased in perspex boxes over the outside doors. They were wired to a central alarm system, in order to give a warning if a witch hexing a bane approached. Banes were any kind of witchwork that caused harm to living things and so emitted a particularly strong kind of fae, a malignant radiation that the iron in the bells reacted to. ‘Bells warn, iron prevents, water reveals’, the maxim went. As a High Inquisitor, Ashton Stearne took his and his family’s safety very seriously. He had learned the hard way.
Once inside the house, Lucas followed the sound of voices to the drawing room, where his father and stepmother, Marisa, were having a drink with a neighbour. Lucas was surprised to find his stepsister there too. Philomena was rarely home on a Friday evening. Although she and Lucas went to the same school, she was two years older than him and took considerable pains to lead as separate a life as possible.
‘Lucas!’ Marisa waved him in. She was looking even more elegant than usual, in a cream silk cocktail dress, and Lucas remembered that she and his father were going to dinner with Sir Anthony Brady that evening. Sir Anthony was the Witchfinder General, head of the UK Inquisition, and it was widely expected that Ashton Stearne would be his successor when he retired. ‘Come and say hello to Mr Pettifer.’
Lucas went over to shake hands. He had met Henry Pettifer, a plump and cheerful civil servant, on a couple of occasions before.
‘Philly’s been telling us about your careers talk this morning,’ Henry said. ‘How did you find it?’
‘Predictable. A lot of warm fuzzy stuff about witchkind welfare.’
‘Hug a harpy,’ Philomena put in, with a snort.
Ashton Stearne raised his brows. ‘It’s easy to mock, but community relations are important. You don’t want to bully people into cooperating with the authorities – the results are never as good, particularly when it comes to intelligence-gathering.’
Lucas settled into the chair beside him. ‘I know, Dad. But the way that Recruitment Officer was going on, you’d have thought “inquisition” was a dirty word.’
‘Political correctness gone mad,’ said Henry, shaking his head.
‘Even so, some of the persecutions suffered by witchkind have been very regrettable,’ A
shton remarked. ‘And there’s no denying the contribution that witches have made to our society over the years.’
He stared down at the whisky in his glass, and took a meditative sip. ‘However, the stark fact remains that most of the work that law-abiding witches do is simply counteracting the damage that other witches inflict.’
‘Quite right, quite right,’ Henry agreed. ‘Which is why I so admire you chaps for working alongside them when the occasion demands. Jack Rawdon might be flavour of the month, but he needs watching. No doubt about it.’
Jack Rawdon was the Director General of WICA, the office of Witchkind Intelligence and Covert Affairs. It had been established after the Second World War but its work was controversial. Its witch-agents were not trusted to run their own operations, and were instead assigned to assist MI5 and MI6 officers on a short-term, case by case basis.
According to the statistics, witches made up less than one per cent of the population, yet their work was connected to twenty-five per cent of all crime. Officially, the police only dealt with ordinary law-breaking and if they or anybody else found evidence of a witchcrime, they were supposed to bring it to the Inquisition. In particularly complex cases, or those relating to national security, the Inquisition’s Witchcrime Directorate would work in partnership with the secret services. The increasing involvement of WICA agents in such operations was something many inquisitors found hard to accept.
However, during Endor’s terrorist campaign in the late 1990s, the notion that witchcrime was best defeated by witchwork had gained new ground. It was an idea that Jack Rawdon was keen to promote. As a young witch-agent, he had helped dismantle Endor’s network in Britain. He was the first director in WICA’s history whose name was publicised on appointment, and one of the UK’s most high-profile witches. It helped that he looked like a man you could trust, with the rugged, square-jawed appeal of an old-fashioned action hero.