The House on Durrow Street

by Galen Beckett

  It had not been Ivy’s intention to make him feel a compulsion to call on her and her sisters. Yet she could not say she was sorry. Lily and Rose would be happy to see him—the former especially so if Mr. Garritt was brought. A plan was quickly made for him to call next quarter month.

  After that they spent some time exploring the far end of the parlor. They did not speak of anything weighty, but instead enjoyed the pleasure of idle talk and agreeable companionship. They examined a stone sphinx with lapis eyes, which Mr. Rafferdy said had been exhumed by Lord Marsdel from the sands of the Murgh Empire. There was a similar sphinx at Asterlane, he said, for Lord Rafferdy and Lord Marsdel had served in the army together as young men, during the time after the last war with the Empire.

  They reached the door of the library, and Ivy remarked that she had never been inside. The room was usually the purview of the men; besides, she was generally expected to remain within sight of her ladyship. Of course, upon hearing this, Mr. Rafferdy at once suggested they enter. Ivy began to say she did not think they should presume. Only then, through the door, she caught a glimpse of a shelf of books.

  “Come on, then,” Mr. Rafferdy said in a conspiratorial tone. “Before we are seen.”

  He took her arm, and she let him lead her through the door into a room that was all she would expect of a library of a great house. There were many shelves of tomes bound in leather, but the books were almost incidental to the variety of objects that filled the room. Maps adorned the walls, and antique compasses and sextants cluttered the mantelpiece. There were jade gryphons from the Principalities, urns glazed red and black in the Tharosian style, and bronze figurines of animals whose primitive and expressive design made her believe they must date to the era before the first Tharosian ships landed on Altania’s shores.

  Despite these curiosities, it was the books that most interested Ivy. She went to a shelf and perused the titles there. Many concerned sea voyages or travels to far-off lands. However, as she ran a finger over their spines, there was one that caught her eye. It was bound in black leather with silver writing on the spine that read Arcane Sites in the Murgh Empire.

  “I see you have not abandoned your interest in magick.”

  Ivy realized she had taken the book from the shelf without thinking to do so. It was an impertinent act; she had not been given leave to examine the books. Yet for so long it had been her habit to look at any book on magick she could find, hoping to find a way to help her father. Even now, when it was in science that his hope lay, the old habit remained.

  “I suppose not,” she said, somewhat embarrassed, though she did not put the book back. “Just because I cannot work magick does not mean I cannot read about it.”

  “Indeed, just as priests like to read from the Testament even though they seem unable to practice the virtues espoused within.”

  “Mr. Rafferdy!” she exclaimed, but she could not help laughing. “But what of you? While I might have an interest in magick, it is you who has a real ability. Have you done any magick since I saw you last?”

  He tucked his right hand into his pocket. “No, not even the smallest spell.”

  Ivy could not deny she was saddened by these words. For so long she had wished that she could work magick, only to be denied the opportunity by the circumstance of her sex. That Mr. Rafferdy, who possessed the talent, should show no interest in developing it further was difficult for her to understand. However, she did not express these thoughts. Instead, to conceal any look of disappointment that might have registered on her face, she lowered her head and opened the book in her hands.

  “Oh!” she said as a stiff sheet of paper slipped out.

  Mr. Rafferdy caught it before it could fall to the floor. “Well, that’s a rich bookmark,” he said, looking at the square of silvery paper.

  Ivy shook her head. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s an impression. Such things don’t come cheaply—as many a person who has acquired one has announced in a loud voice at a party. Generally, if someone has such a thing, they don’t hide it in an old book. Rather, they display it in a frame on the wall, as an extravagance can only be really enjoyed when it is viewed by others.”

  Ivy had heard there were illusionists who could hold an engraving plate in their hands and somehow transfer a scene they pictured in their minds onto the plate, from which copies of the picture could then be printed.

  “May I?” she said, curious to see such a thing.

  Mr. Rafferdy handed her the impression.

  “Oh,” she said again, but it was a murmur this time. She studied the image on the paper, rendered in fine shadings of ink. In it, three young men stood together, clad in regimental coats but with turbans upon their heads, arms around one another’s shoulders. In the background were the blurred shapes of date trees and sand dunes.

  Mr. Rafferdy was looking at her now, not the impression. “What is it?”

  It took Ivy a moment to find her voice. She had seen an impression like this before, the day she entered the forbidden room at Heathcrest Hall. Indeed, the image was so identical it could only have been produced from the same engraving plate. She turned it over. On the back, written in faded ink, were the words The Three Lords of Am-Anaru.

  “That’s just what was written on the other one!” she exclaimed.

  Mr. Rafferdy gave her a puzzled look, and she explained to him how she had seen this very same impression at Heathcrest.

  “Wait a moment, can I see that again?”

  She handed the paper back to him.

  Now it was his turn to look astonished. “Yes, I’m sure of it now. I’ve seen paintings of him when he was young, in the royal army. It can only be him.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “My father, Lord Rafferdy. That’s him on the right.”

  Ivy looked again at the picture. Two of the young men were grinning, but the one on the right had a more serious look about him, his dark hair curling down over his brow. Now that she knew it was Rafferdy’s father, she could see the resemblance to him. She was about to remark on this when Lord Baydon entered the room.

  “There you are!” he said, huffing for breath. “I knew it would not matter where I began my search, for I was confident you would be in the very first place I looked. My sister is wondering what became of you. What are you doing in here?”

  Ivy’s cheeks flushed. “We didn’t mean to … we were only …”

  “We were only looking at an old impression we found by chance,” Mr. Rafferdy said.

  Lord Baydon clapped his hands. “Capital! I do so like looking at impressions. Uncanny things. They make me feel very queer, but in a pleasant sort of way. Do you mind?”

  Mr. Rafferdy handed him the silver paper.

  “Well, it’s not chance at all you found this, Mr. Rafferdy. For there’s your father, Lord Rafferdy, looking very young. There beside him is Lord Marsdel. They served together in the army long ago, you know. I couldn’t join up with them. You wouldn’t know it now, but I was very sickly as a young man, and had not the strength!” He patted his bulging waistcoat.

  Ivy was intrigued by this news. “But who is the other man?”

  “That would be Earl Rylend, of course,” Lord Baydon said. “He whom your own Sir Quent used to serve, as I imagine you know. He and Lord Marsdel and Lord Rafferdy were all three inseparable when they were young. I remember how they used to come and go, always off on some adventure or another. How I wished I could go with them! They were such a merry band. Well, except for your father, Mr. Rafferdy. He was the solemn and sober one. I think they might have marched right off the end of the world in their travels if your father had not reined them in with his counsel. What did they used to call themselves? They had a name for their little band, but I can’t quite remember it.…”

  “The Three Lords of Am-Anaru,” Ivy said.

  “Yes, that was it! But how could you know that, Lady Quent?”

  She showed him the back of the impression, and explained how she
had seen a copy at Heathcrest Hall with a similar caption.

  Lord Baydon was delighted by this. “How marvelous! I suppose they each must have had a copy made when they were in the Empire, just after the war. I’m surprised they found an illusionist to make it. The Murghese don’t go for that sort of thing, you know.”

  Ivy was surprised as well. Yet perhaps it was no great mystery. After all, wherever soldiers went, others followed to serve their needs in exchange for coin—the lure of profit proving greater than fear of war’s perils.

  “What a jolly band of rogues they were!” Lord Baydon went on. “Yes, the Three Lords of Am-Anaru—that was what they took to calling themselves after they came back from the south. I never did find out why. It must have been some place they went together when they were there. They had other names as well, one for each of them. What were they, now?” Lord Baydon shook his head. “I fear I can’t remember. You might ask Mr. Bennick, if you can find him. I am sure he would know, for all the time he spent with Lord Marsdel or went out to the country to Earl Rylend’s house.”

  Ivy gave a nod; however, she was quite sure she would never speak to Mr. Bennick again. She placed the impression back in the book, then put the book on the shelf.

  Lord Baydon gave a cough, and Mr. Rafferdy took his arm to help him return to the parlor. As they went, Ivy glanced at the sphinx by the fireplace. Mr. Rafferdy said his father had a similar artifact at Asterlane. But if Earl Rylend had been in the Empire as a young man with Lord Marsdel and Lord Rafferdy, why had she not seen a sphinx at Heathcrest? Had the earl not brought back some memento of his journey south?

  They were reunited with the others, and Captain Branfort, whose color was even higher than usual, looked very grateful for their return. Ivy decided it was time to relieve the good captain of his post, and so took a turn on duty at Lady Marsdel’s side. At last the afternoon waned, and the hour came for Ivy to return to her sisters. Mr. Rafferdy offered to walk her out.

  “I will look forward to our meeting next quarter month,” he said.

  “As will I,” Ivy replied with a smile, “though I am sure I will see you in the meantime.”

  “In the meantime?”

  “At Lady Crayford’s house. But why do you look at me so? Surely you are going. I cannot imagine a fashionable party in Invarel to which you were not invited!”

  “I am glad you cannot,” he said, “for that means I am assured I will receive an invitation to any party you might throw. But as for the viscountess’s affair—no, I was not invited.”

  Ivy might have thought he was making a jest; however, his expression was too solemn for that.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Rafferdy. I thought … that is, I believed you …”

  “You need not be sorry, Lady Quent. The party will benefit far more from your presence than mine. Besides, I have other business to attend to. Indeed, I am happy I received no invitation, as it saved me the inconvenience of writing a note declining it. In fact, I should write the viscountess a note thanking her for doing me such a kindness.”

  He spoke these words with a mock seriousness that could only make Ivy laugh. She clasped his hand warmly, and told him she would look forward to their meeting next quarter month.

  As the carriage pulled away, Ivy leaned back in the seat. How good it had been to see Mr. Rafferdy again! It had been far too long to go without the benefit of so special a friend. A smile still upon her lips, she turned to wave at him through the rear window of the carriage.

  But the steps before Lady Marsdel’s house were empty.

  DUSK WAS FALLING by the time Ivy returned to the inn. According to the old rosewood clock, night had come a quarter of an hour sooner than the almanac predicted. Yet, as always, the right-hand face seemed in perfect accord with the heavens, for she looked at the clock just in time to see the last sliver of gold vanish as the black disk turned into place.

  As improbable as it seemed, there was only one conclusion that could be drawn: whatever errors plagued the almanac of late, there was no fault in the workings of the old rosewood clock, just as the clockmaker’s apprentice had said. She marveled, wondering what complex mechanisms resided within the clock that let it calculate, without the benefit of any timetables, just when a lumenal or umbral would begin and end.

  “I am sure you could have told me more about how it worked, Father,” she said softly as she touched the clock. And perhaps he would one day, if the treatments at the hostel had their intended effect.

  She went to the small sitting room to let her sisters know she was back. Lily was thick in the midst of her latest book, and Rose had retired to her room. Even Miss Mew had no need for Ivy, curled up out of reach atop a wardrobe.

  Being neither wanted nor needed, Ivy returned to the room she and Mr. Quent occupied. She had hoped Mr. Quent would be here by now, but he was not; he must still be at the Citadel seeing to his work. She knew that every day reports came from the lord inquirer’s agents who kept watch on the Wyrdwood around the country, and that all of these must be read and responded to. In addition, work must be done to find funds and materials to effect repairs on the fortifications around every known stand of Old Trees.

  Well, she hoped Mr. Quent would be finished soon. In the meantime, she could at last make an examination of her father’s journal. It was her idea to go through it, to see if she could detect any evidence that there were hidden words upon its pages. She recalled how several times, when she was a girl, her father had written her secret messages using a vinegar for ink, and she had been delighted when the words appeared while holding the paper over a candle’s flame, as if by magick.

  “I’m sure you would not have used so simple a trick as that, Father,” she said aloud, sitting at the small writing table where the box of Wyrdwood rested. All the same, maybe there was something she could detect if she looked closely enough at the journal.

  She opened the box—it required the slightest thought to make the fine tendrils of wood unweave themselves—and took out the leather-bound book within. She opened to the first page, whereupon he had written the dedication to her. She read it again fondly, then turned to the next page. It was blank, as were those that followed. Not knowing where exactly to begin, Ivy thumbed through the pages, all of them fluttering by as white as snow.

  A flicker of darkness.

  Startled, Ivy ceased moving through the pages of the journal. Then, carefully, she turned back a page, then another, and finally one more.

  The page was filled with words.

  URSENTUS RISING, ANARES RETROGRADE IN BAELTHUS

  There, the deed is done.

  I have hidden Tyberion. I do not believe they will be able to find where I have concealed it—though I know with utter certainty that some of them will try. However, it is not anywhere they would expect it to be. They will imagine it is now as far away from here as possible, for that is what they would do to keep such a thing secret; they would never think I would keep it so close.

  I wish I might have guarded it with an enchantment. An aura of magick they would sense, and they would try to break whatever protections I might have placed upon it. I am a better magician than most of them, but even I could not make an enchantment to stop them if they worked in unison. Or at least, I could not do so without grave cost—one I may yet have to bear.

  But do not fear, my dearest Ivoleyn. I hope it will not yet come to that! Tyberion is safe now. And they never knew about Arantus, for I hid it long ago. There is no chance they will ever seek it, for they do not know of its existence.

  How I wish they did not know about Tyberion either. Would that I had never shown it to them! But I hardly understood the true nature of it when Mr. Bennick and I discovered it, and I was giddy with excitement at what we had uncovered. Nor did I apprehend the true nature of those within the order who had intentions besides the pure study of magick.

  I can only be thankful for Mr. Bennick, who even then must have had some inkling of the intentions of the others. Why else would he have
told me to show them only Tyberion, and to keep Arantus concealed? I am inclined to think the best of others. But Mr. Bennick has ever been of a more practical character, and he possesses a keen insight into the hearts and minds of other men. His advice has, I am sure, saved us from great grief. He is a friend of the deepest and truest sort, and I am fortunate beyond measure to know him.

  Well, that is all for now. I will write more when I can, my dearest little Ivy—little now, I say, though you are sure to be far from little as you read these words. Yet so you are at this writing, and even now I am sure you are nestled in your bed at Whitward Street, asleep beside your sisters. Thus I will close this journal, and leave this “awful magician’s house” as your mother calls it, and come home to you all.

  G.O.L.

  Ivy stared at the page. She supposed it was possible that, for all her prior thumbing through the journal, she had somehow missed this page. Perhaps it had been stuck to the page that followed it.

  Even as she considered this, she knew that was not the case. She was sure she had turned through every page of the journal before. Just as she was sure it was due to some magick that writing had suddenly appeared on a page that heretofore had been blank. Yet as astonishing as this was, the words her father had written amazed her even more. For it was like hearing his voice in her mind, and being reminded of how he used to be, how he used to talk to her.

  Yet it was more than that. To think he had considered himself fortunate to know Mr. Bennick—the same man whose betrayal would force him to cast the very spell he hinted about in the journal, the spell whose cost was his very mind. That Mr. Bennick knew others in the order were not to be trusted came as no surprise to Ivy, for she knew what her father could not—that Mr. Bennick had been conspiring with them all the while. He had tried to seize the Eye of Ran-Yahgren all those years ago. He failed, only later to scheme to use Ivy and Mr. Rafferdy to unwittingly unlock the house on Durrow Street so that the magicians of his order could enter to gain the Eye.