Fire & Water

by Alexis Hall

  Something was still confusing to me. “And yet, you feel that appearing in Miss Kane’s apartment and giving me the smallest possible amount of information required to precipitate a confrontation will somehow leave him adequately vanquished?”

  “The way I see it,” said Mr. Halfdan, with another of his dualistic smiles, “it’s your friend who’s going to be sacrificed.”

  “And I have already stated that I will attempt to rescue her, irrespective of what stands against me or who stands with me. But, the way I see it, it is your eternal rival and enemy who is going to acquire so much power that he no longer need fear the consequences of destroying you utterly. Or perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps you believe that Mr. Douglas has attained his current position of influence and authority as a result of his habit of leaving loose ends.”

  Mr. Halfdan gazed at me for a long moment. “I can’t tell if I really like you or really don’t like you.”

  “That detail is quite irrelevant to our current situation, but I hope I have persuaded you that accompanying me in this endeavour is the only rational course of action available to you.”

  “He will d-destroy us,” muttered Mr. Percy.

  “Probably, but is it not best to—as I understand they say—go down fighting?”

  At this, Mr. Halfdan said a number of things in a language I did not understand but which I took to be some manner of expletives. “You realise,” he told his companion, “even though we’re plotting his downfall Sebastian is still playing us.” He rose impetuously from the sofa and turned to me. “Fine. We’ll come with you. But you better bring a fucking army.”

  I promised the gentlemen I would do my best, a reassurance that seemed to bring them little comfort. They gave the precise location in which Mr. Douglas would need to perform his ritual—a small and unremarkable farmhouse on the Ettrick water that I should never have found if not for their intervention—and departed soon after. In truth, I was glad for them to leave as the disconnect between Mr. Halfdan’s form and essence was disorientating to me.

  Lisbeth had said little throughout the meeting. I hoped she was well, and not feeling too lost. Though I did not like to admit it, I did not know what to do for the best. My own early experiences had seemed natural at the time but, since my abandonment and subsequent rescue by the Multitude, I had come to quite different conclusions about them. As such I did not know and could not guess what the most correct way to manage the first days in the life of a constructed entity was. I had no wish to simply turn her into a copy of myself, but as a being that had existed for something shy of a hundred hours I was not certain that she had an own self to which to be true.

  I had endeavoured to speak to her a little about these matters, but it had soon become apparent that she lacked a conceptual framework within which to engage with them. Under different circumstances I would have liked to devote more time to her, to introduce her to things she might have liked or found interesting—although perhaps that would have been more for my benefit than for hers. As it was, I simply had to hope she was gaining something from our current adventures. If nothing else, she was learning about the world she would inevitably find herself living in.

  I watched her a while. She sat perfectly still, but that was natural for us. Behind that, however, I was pleased to see a shifting in her. She had received a great deal of new information and it comforted me to note that she was processing it appropriately. I reached a decision.

  “Lisbeth, would you like to meet some people?”

  She nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I Am Doing My Best to Resolve Things

  When I first met Miss Kane, she had assembled an alliance of sorts to rescue Miss Saint-Germain from an entity called the King of the Court of Love. It would appear that this situation called for a similar response. I was less capable than Miss Kane in these matters, and the intersections between her personal and professional lives were such that it was sometimes difficult to determine who were her allies and who were her enemies. Miss Vane-Tempest, for example, seemed very capable of falling into either category. I had elected to start my own recruitment drive with Miss Locke. She was not my employer’s greatest admirer, their having parted acrimoniously a little over two years ago, but I surmised that she would be the individual whose motivations in this matter incorporated the fewest complicating factors.

  The Locke Enterprises building was at once cheerful and aloof, seeming as if it was happy to see me, but also seeming as if it would have been equally happy to see anybody. It did not have a reception so much as an informal receiving area scattered with beanbags. An enthusiastic-looking young man whose essence was at odds with his demeanour bounded up to us and asked our business.

  “We are here to see Miss Locke. It is most urgent.”

  His face and posture betrayed none of the frustration that he evidently felt. It is a point of interest to me that biological humans must learn to stop their bodies responding to their emotional states, while I have had to learn the opposite. “Okay, great. Just pull up a beanbag and I’ll see what we can do for you. Latte?” He directed my attention to a relaxed coffee machine.

  “Thank you, but I am quite alright. It really is very important that I see Miss Locke immediately. If you could inform her that I am a friend of Miss Kane’s and that something extremely unfortunate has happened, and that her assistance is needed most swiftly, I would be very grateful.”

  We were left to ourselves for a moment. Lisbeth seemed to have found the coffee machine rather enticing, and was in the process of running highly pressurised hot water onto her hand. I intercepted.

  “Do be careful. The people who work here might be alarmed.”

  She looked at me. “I was interested to discover what the sensation would be.”

  “We can purchase such a machine on the way home. But most humans would be profoundly damaged by the actions you are presently undertaking, and as such they will be surprised and concerned to witness you undertaking it.”

  She pulled her hand out of the stream of water and dried it on her skirt. “I apologise. It was not my intent to cause anybody distress.”

  I turned back to the informal receiving area. I did not think I would enjoy sitting in a beanbag. I have always found something unpleasantly nothing-like about very yielding surfaces. Surveying the room, I noticed a small white-haired woman approaching us. She was almost certainly human, her body moving a little unsteadily and showing signs of erosion. Beneath that, she was a tangle of secrets.

  “Terribly sorry. Couldn’t help but overhear. Did you say you were a friend of Kane’s?”

  “She is my employer. And my flatmate.”

  The woman extended a hand. “Claudia Underhill. Dame Claudia if it means anything, which it doesn’t. We should have a word sooner rather than later.”

  At which moment, the earnest young man returned. “Real sorry, but I’ve checked and Ms. Locke’s got back to back meetings pretty much all of today, so if you guys could maybe come back some other time, that would be really great.”

  “They’re with me,” returned the small, deteriorating woman. “I think they’ll be useful.”

  His enthusiasm did not waver. “Okay, great. Thanks for the input Mrs. Under—Dame Claudia. You folks just head through to the Rhomboid Briefing Room whenever you’re ready.” He backed away bobbing his head to Dame Claudia in a way that signalled either deference or an incipient spinal condition.

  We followed her through to the lifts. I thought they were a little self-satisfied, but then there must be something rather pleasing about a life with such clear and unambiguous direction. We were whisked up several floors and taken into a room which was indeed rhomboid in its layout. It contained a large, equally rhomboid conference table, and even the chairs had a parallelogram-like quality. Miss Locke sat cross-legged in the middle of the table working on several devices at once. She, the table, and the d
evices seemed perfectly content with the arrangement.

  “Dame Claudia.” She nodded. “And you’ve brought Elise? And”—she looked at me, then back at Lisbeth—“you’ve brought two versions of Elise?”

  “My sister,” I explained.

  “Delighted to meet you.” Lisbeth gave a flawlessly executed curtsey.

  “I found her in reception,” added Dame Claudia. “I thought she might have some insight into the ongoing situation involving the recent magical war, its abrupt conclusion, and the unseasonable weather.”

  Miss Locke turned to me. “Please, please, please tell me Kate didn’t get tangled up with this.” She lay down on the conference table and covered her face with her hands. “Who am I kidding? Tell me how Kate was tangled up with this.”

  I did my best to explain the situation as I understood it. That the battle had been the continuation of one that began the better part of a decade ago, that the recent escalation in the conflict had been a consequence of the surfacing of something called the Tears of Hypnos, and that virtually every supernatural faction in the city had been drawn into it in one way or another, including my creator. I omitted Miss Kane’s role in the death of Mr. King’s grandmother, fearing that Dame Claudia would not appreciate the extenuating circumstances.

  “Well,” observed Dame Claudia, when I had finished. “This does seem to be a pretty state of affairs.”

  “Did you not want to lead with the whole Kate’s been abducted angle?” The tone in Miss Locke’s voice was a mixture of anger and concern.

  “That had been my intent, but I felt that a complete answer would be more likely to result in a favourable outcome.”

  She ran a hand through her hair. “What do we know about the Prince of Wands?” This question seemed to be directed at Dame Claudia.

  “Annoyingly little. He’s old, and therefore personally very powerful, but aside from making sure that the public at large doesn’t find out too much about the weird and wonderful things in the world, he tends not to do much.”

  Miss Locke sat up again abruptly. “Apart from trying to become a god. How the hell did you miss trying to become a god?”

  Dame Claudia stiffened slightly. “While your assistance has been valuable to the Department, do strive to remember that you are a contractor. I take a dim view of back-seat intelligence work. Especially since I seem to recall that you unearthed this very conspiracy last year, and attributed it to the wrong vampire.”

  Much about Miss Locke reminded me greatly of Miss Kane. For example, the way in which she swung herself off of the table and began to pace the conference room in agitation highly resembled my employer’s habits in similar circumstances. “Okay, so right now he’s still just a regular vampire?” She seemed to be primarily addressing herself.

  “Not entirely,” I interjected. “He was capable of functioning far more effectively in full daylight than should have been possible.”

  She stopped and leaned against a wall with her arms folded. “But high explosives should still work?”

  “They might also prove injurious to Miss Kane.”

  “Which might prove regrettably necessary.” Dame Claudia sounded hesitant, although her voice in this case may not entirely have reflected her nature.

  “Getting Kate out,” insisted Miss Locke, “is non-negotiable.”

  Dame Claudia folded her hands gently in her lap. “Preventing the Prince of Wands from enacting his plan is non-negotiable. I am not about to go back to the Prime Minister and tell him that we are going to let the Scottish border get sucked into another reality. The SNP would skin him alive.”

  I raised my hand. “I believe that the timings required for the correct execution of the rite give us sufficient opportunity to attempt a rescue before matters approach, as it were, criticality. I shall be endeavouring to gather a small number of additional allies in advance of any attempt, and I feel confident that we will be successful.”

  “How charmingly optimistic. Very well, Eve. I will give you two days to solve things as you see fit. After that, I am afraid that we will be treating the situation as irrecoverable. Now if you will excuse us”—Dame Claudia turned to me—“there are other matters that I must discuss with Ms. Locke. Matters you are not cleared for.”

  I nodded. “I understand. It has been a pleasure meeting you, Dame Claudia. I wish you well in your future endeavours.”

  We left. Perhaps I was becoming complacent, but I felt that things had gone as well as could reasonably have been expected. I expressed as much to Lisbeth in the car.

  “Oh, yes, sister. I thought you performed excellently.”

  “You were very quiet. I hope you did not find the situation too overwhelming.”

  “Not at all. It was most edifying. Although I confess that I do not like Dame Claudia. She seems both callous and dishonest, and I do not believe that those are desirable traits in anybody.”

  I was very much inclined to agree, although my experience over the past year had shown me that sometimes people found themselves in complicated situations, and that those situations forced them to take actions that others might find unpalatable. The more I saw of the world, the more I was learning how seldom it fit into neat and comprehensible patterns.

  Having secured Miss Locke’s support, I decided next to pursue the assistance of Miss Vane-Tempest and her pack. I reasoned that Miss Nimue’s court would be in no position to assist anybody, while Miss Saint-Germain’s support should be easily obtained. I had never accompanied Miss Kane on her visits to Safernoc Hall but, like many stately homes, it was easily located with the assistance of a diligent and hardworking satellite navigation device.

  It was only as I drew closer to the hall that I realised how limited my experiences had hitherto been. Not only had I yet to accompany Miss Kane on one of her sojourns to the Vane-Tempest family seat, I had also not spent any extended period of time in the countryside. It was strange for me to find myself surrounded by so much that was growing. The trees were different here, less friendly than those in the city. They gathered in unwelcoming mobs and glared angrily at the car as we passed. I suppose I could not blame them, for they were losing their homes to the roads and the bridges, and that must have been terrifying for beings that had persisted for centuries.

  Safernoc Hall was deep in the forest. The roads here were subdued, and almost fearful. They lurked in long shadows and cowered under trees. The gate up to the house was more confident, even forbidding. It wore its moss like a robe and its years like a crown. I parked the car in front of the main house and approached the doors. They were opened by a reserved gentleman who harboured secret regrets.

  “Good day,” I said. “We wish to speak with Miss Vane-Tempest.”

  It was interesting to observe how impassive the gentleman was capable of remaining. “The Marchioness does not entertain uninvited guests.”

  “It is very important.”

  “It always is, ma’am.”

  “This is especially important.”

  “I shall enquire within.”

  The door closed. Lisbeth and I waited a short while, and it opened again.

  “Her Ladyship will meet with you in the red drawing room.”

  The gentleman stood aside, and we entered the building. The red drawing room was aptly named, with red wall hangings and red-upholstered furniture, supercilious in its antiquity. Miss Vane-Tempest was not present, rather we were met by an older, severe-looking woman in a dark green dress.

  “And who might you be?” she asked.

  I approached her and extended my hand. “Elise. I work for Miss Kane. This is my sister. Her name is Lisbeth.”

  She stared down her nose at me. “How singular.”

  “I confess that I was expecting to meet the younger Miss Vane-Tempest.”

  “I am certain that you were. Your mistress’s influence over my granddaughter was becomin
g toxic. I have elected to intervene.”

  “Miss Kane is not my mistress, she is my employer. And she has been taken.”

  “It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.”

  Oh, dear. This was not going well. “She has been taken by the Prince of Wands.”

  “You still appear to be speaking.” The elder woman’s tone suggested that this was not an acceptable state of affairs.

  “I am still attempting to impress upon you the gravity of the situation.”

  “I assure you, I apprehend the gravity of the situation more completely than you possibly could.”

  “He is attempting to become a god.”

  She responded to that, slightly. Like her door-attending gentleman, she gave little physical reaction to such things, but those were not the responses that I found easiest to interpret. “This is entirely your mistress’s fault. Tara should never have given the Tears into her guardianship.”

  I confess that this stung somewhat, especially since it was my own physical resemblance to Alissa which had permitted Mr. Fisher to procure the Tears in the first place.

  Lisbeth raised her hand. “If I might observe, what is done is now done. Surely the most appropriate course of action is the one which produces the most desirable outcome working forwards from our present circumstances.”

  It was pleasing to me to see Lisbeth making a greater contribution to our collective endeavour. She may only have been days old, but I felt it very important that she begin exploring the possibility space of ideas and interactions as soon as possible.