Fyre

by Angie Sage

  “Is that yours?” she asked, pointing to the albatross.

  “Yes.” Septimus sighed. “It is.”

  Jenna grinned. “You can bring your, er, bird too, Sep. This place even has an aviary.”

  The albatross gave a raucous squawk of protest and pecked at Septimus’s foot.

  “Ouch!” he said. “Okay, Jim Knee. I give you permission to Transform.”

  With another pop and a yellow flash Jim Knee was once more back in human form, shivering in the chill wind. Albatross feathers were remarkably warm.

  “I thought it might be you,” said Jenna with a smile. “The yellow beak was a giveaway.”

  Jim Knee bowed politely. “Good evening, Your Majesty.”

  To Septimus’s surprise Jenna did not object—as she certainly would have in the past. She merely replied, “Good evening, Jim Knee.”

  Jenna turned to Septimus and Simon. “We’ll go in now.” She leaned forward and placed her hand on the old bricks. The bricks shimmered like stone on a hot day and slowly disappeared to reveal a ghostly archway. Septimus and Simon were impressed, Jim Knee less so—he’d seen plenty of these Arcane Alleys before, although this one looked rather smart compared to many of the dingy dives he had known. The name of the alley, he noticed, was The Queen’s Way.

  “Okay, now it’s like going into the Queen’s Room. We all need to hold hands to get across the threshold,” said Jenna, holding out her hand to Septimus. He took Jim Knee’s hand, who took hold of Simon’s, and the chain followed on quickly, afraid that both the alley and Jenna would disappear. As Jenna crossed the threshold, a line of candles in golden holders sprang alight showing a narrow alley, glittering in tiny red and gold tiles snaking away into the darkness along the side of the Customs House.

  Once everyone was safely in, Jenna waved her hand across the entrance and the view of the harbor faded away and was replaced by the other side of the brick wall. “Okay. We’re safe now,” she said. “No one can get in here. Now you can tell me what all the fuss is about.”

  “It’s a long story,” said Septimus.

  “It usually is, Sep,” said Jenna with a smile, “especially when you’re telling it. Come on, then, let’s get somewhere warm. And there’s someone else who’d like to hear the story too,” she added mysteriously.

  Jenna set off along the winding Queen’s Way, which was quiet and still after the blustery harbor front and carried no sound from outside. She hurried forward and Septimus, Simon and Jim Knee followed in single file, their footfalls quiet on the smooth mosaic. Soon they were around the first bend and another line of candles sprang alight, illuminating the next stretch of the alleyway. This way and that the Queen’s Way took them until they had lost all sense of direction. As they rounded yet another bend Septimus—who was now a little taller than Jenna—could see over her shoulder to a wide wooden door, which formed the end of the alley. From a small window in the middle of the door shone a bright yellow light. The light grew brighter as they approached and soon Jenna was taking a large golden key from her pocket, unlocking the door and holding it open.

  “Welcome to my Port Palace,” she said.

  They stepped inside. A few fat candles on a table lit a wide passageway—which Jenna called the cross passage—with a warm glow. In the dim light Septimus could see that to his left was an ancient screen of dark wood carved with a series of crowns and initials, in the middle of which was an ornate door covered in gold leaf that glowed a deep red gold in the light of the candle flames. To his right was a plainer wooden screen, which had two smaller doors set into it.

  Jim Knee put his hand out to touch the right-hand wooden screen, which was warm from the heat of the kitchen behind it—as he knew it would be. The jinnee felt a little strange. He took advantage of his Master being occupied to lean against the warm wood and think. Sometimes the incessant clatter of humans, particularly young ones, was too much for the jinnee and he longed for some stillness. The shadows of the cross passage gave him just that.

  Septimus had forgotten about Jim Knee. He and Simon followed Jenna along the passage and watched her turn left, as he expected she would—nowadays Jenna and gold seemed to go together. He saw Jenna lean on the gold-leaf door and give it a shove. The door protested with a creak—as Jim Knee knew it would—and reluctantly opened a little. Jenna put her head around the gap and yelled, “Hey! Guess who I’ve found!” Then she turned to Septimus. “Come on, Sep. Push.”

  Together they pushed the complaining door open to reveal an ancient hall, as tall as it was wide, with finely carved oak timbers soaring up into the shadows of the roof. Layers of woodsmoke hung in the air, blurring the light from candles placed in alcoves in the walls and giving the place a mysterious air. A blazing log fire in a wide, low-arched fireplace set into the right-hand wall threw a semicircle of light into the gloom—and standing in the middle of the light was Nicko. Grinning.

  Septimus was amazed. “Nik! What are you doing here?” he asked, hurrying across to his brother.

  Nicko looked amused. “Same as you both, I should think. Pootling around the Port minding my own business—well, Jannit’s business, actually. Bumped into Jenna.”

  “The Queen’s Way from our Journey Palace came out here,” said Jenna. “See that cupboard?” She pointed at a small cupboard near the fireplace, with faded gold letters that read UNSTABLE POTIONS AND PARTIKULAR POISONS. “I was expecting to end up at home, or maybe at Aunt Zelda’s, so I was really surprised. I had no idea where I was. I had a look around, and eventually I found the way out along that alleyway. I was so relieved to find I was in the Port. And then I saw Nik and it was so good to talk to someone normal again.”

  Nicko grinned. “There I was, looking forward to a nice, cold night on the supply boat when I got dragged back to yet another Palace—sheesh, how many do you need—to hear all about Mama.”

  “Aha, Mama,” Septimus said. “I’ve not heard about her yet.”

  “You will,” said Nicko with a grin.

  “No, you won’t,” said Jenna sternly. She joined them by the fire and threw herself down on the pile of cushions in front of it. “Not unless you tell me what’s going on first. Sit down, Sep. Simon. Spill the beans.”

  Septimus held his hands out to the fire to warm them. “This is so weird, Jen. I’ve never seen this place before. Where actually is it?”

  “You know the last of the really old houses on the waterfront? Just before you get to the beach?”

  “I think so . . .”

  “There’s a boarded-up old warehouse just past them—well, it looks like an old warehouse. But it isn’t. It’s a façade built around this place. Listen. We’re right by the beach; you can hear the waves outside.”

  The hall fell silent and they listened. Septimus realized that the background sound he had thought was the hissing of damp logs on the fire was actually the muffled swash of waves on the shore.

  “Okay, Sep,” said Jenna. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

  And so Septimus explained all that had happened since Jenna had left the Palace for her Journey. At the mention of her uncles, Jenna exclaimed, “I’m not surprised. I thought there was something weird about them.”

  Septimus shook his head. “I think they were just unlucky, Jen. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shamandrigger Saarn and Dramindonnor Naarn were—”

  “Shh!” hissed Simon. “Don’t say their names.”

  Septimus laughed. “I didn’t know you were superstitious, Simon. That’s witchy stuff.”

  “No, it’s . . .” Simon looked around; he could not get rid of a feeling of being unsafe, sitting with his back to the room. “Darke stuff too, you know,” he whispered. “Names matter. You know that, Sep.”

  Jenna looked surprised at the new familiarity between her brothers.

  Septimus remembered his own Darke name, Sum. “Yeah. Okay,” he admitted.

  To the background of an increasingly noisy sea crashing onto the beach outside, Septimus told the who
le story of the Two-Faced Ring—apart from one thing. He didn’t want to spook Jenna. But she knew.

  “But it’s not only Merrin who’s the bait, is it, Sep?”

  “Well . . .”

  Jenna got out her little red book and with a practiced ease of one who knew her way around it backward, she flipped to a page titled Feuds and Enemies and passed it to Septimus.

  It was a long list and Septimus wondered about the confrontational nature of some of the Queens. But he did not have to look far—right at the top of the list were the names of the Ring Wizards. “Ah,” he said.

  “I know about the Queen shooting them both in the heart, Sep,” said Jenna. “I know it was her ring they were Committed to. I know they swore revenge on her descendants. And, right now, I know that means me.”

  Everyone looked around uncomfortably. Hearing Jenna say what they all knew made it sound far too real. Jenna lowered her voice. “This place is kind of creepy. I reckon something bad happened here and that’s why they closed it up.”

  Nicko lightened the atmosphere. “Doesn’t it say in your Queen instruction manual, Jen?”

  “If you are going to be rude, Nicko Heap, I won’t tell you about my Journey. Or anything else, for that matter.”

  “Oh, go on, Jen. You know you want to tell us.” Nicko’s stomach rumbled loudly. “You know,” he said, “the weird thing is I can smell roast potatoes.”

  Jim Knee had once spent a short but not unpleasant life as a jinnee-cook in a Palace kitchen. As soon as he walked into the cross passage, Jim Knee knew he was back. After getting over his shock, Jim Knee remembered how much he had enjoyed his time there—until the very last ten minutes. And so, when Jenna, Septimus and Simon had gone into the hall, Jim Knee had taken a deep breath and, remembering the motto—in left, out left—he had pushed open the little left-hand door and stepped into the kitchen.

  A trail of goose bumps swarmed over Jim Knee’s skin as he had walked into the room. It smelled the same. It looked the same. It was the same. This was where he had spent twenty years of his last life and to Jim Knee’s surprise, all was exactly as he had left it.

  Because there was a Queen-to-be in residence, the kitchen and all its contents, like the candles in the Queen’s Way, had Magykally come to life. Jim Knee wandered around, looking at everything he remembered so well, and very soon he was pottering happily. He found a large roast chicken and a pile of cooked potatoes exactly as he had left them, and set about carving the chicken and roasting the potatoes using his high-speed fire method, which worked well and left surprisingly few scorch marks on the wall.

  Ten minutes later Jim Knee pushed his way into the hall carrying a huge plate of cold chicken and hot roast potatoes. He paused a moment and studied the smoke-filled room. It was the just the same: the soaring beams, the inefficient fire, the crest on the massive lintel above it. Jim Knee gritted his teeth and inspected the wall behind him. Yes, there it was—low down, carved into the plaster in old-fashioned angular writing:

  TALLULA CRUM

  HAS A BIG BUM.

  IF SHE EATS ANY MORE

  SHE’LL GET STUCK IN THE DOOR.

  Jim Knee harrumphed quietly to himself. He was surprised to find that it still annoyed him. He remembered the little brat of a Princess who had taken a dislike to her—for Jim Knee had been a her in that life. He remembered how the child had very carefully written the graffiti in her best pen and made sure she, Miss Tallula Crum, a cook of generous proportions—and portions—had seen it. And how the Queen had insisted it stay because “children must be allowed to express themselves.”

  Jim Knee set his plate of chicken and potatoes in front of the fire. He offered it to all, as a jinnee is bound to do, but to his relief there was plenty left for him. And so, to the background swash of the waves outside and Jim Knee’s quiet sucking of chicken bones, Jenna began the story of her Journey.

  31

  JENNA’S JOURNEY

  “Well, after she, I mean my mother, the Queen, nearly had a fight with Mum—yes, Sep, she was really rude to Mum—we went up to the Queen’s Room, like I expected, and through the Queen’s Way. Only we didn’t come out at Aunt Zelda’s, we came out into . . .” Jenna shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, it was so weird. One minute I was in a tiny dark cupboard with the ghost of my mother; the next I was standing in a boat.”

  “A boat?”

  “Yep. And not just any old boat. It was amazing. Long and narrow with a sweeping-up pointy thingy at the front—all right Nik, a prow—covered in gold. The inside of the boat was all shiny and black and there was a big red canopy at the back with lots of tassels hanging down from it. Underneath the canopy were three chairs, just like these . . .” Jenna waved her hand at the line of little red-and-gilt chairs that were set back against the wall.

  “Two of the chairs were empty but sitting on the right-hand one was an oldish lady—a Queen—who had spoken to me at the Dragon House. I was really pleased to see her; I felt like I had a friend there.

  “My mother took my hand very formally, like we were at a dance or something; she led me to the chairs and we both sat down. It was then I realized something really amazing. She wasn’t a ghost anymore—my mother was alive! I didn’t know what to say—I kind of wanted to jump up and hug her but she just sat on her chair and smiled at me like I was some kind of visiting aunt or something. But the old lady put her hand on mine and squeezed it and said, ‘Hello, Jenna, dear. I am your grandmother and I’ve been so looking forward to this.’

  “I must have looked really shocked because she said, ‘Do not worry. We’ve all been on the Journey. It was just as strange for me.’ Which was lovely, but my mother still said nothing, which upset me. I’ve always been disappointed that she had never Appeared to me at home but since I read The Queen Rules, I knew there was a reason for that. But now there was no excuse for her being so distant with me. My grandmother seemed to understand, though. She kept hold of my hand and squeezed it tight. Oh, Sep, she was lovely.

  “Anyway, I decided that if my mother was going to be so stuffy with me then I would be the same way with her. So I got into Princess mode and sat on my dinky little chair, looking around me like I did this kind of thing every day. I decided to try and figure out what was going on. The first thing I realized was how hot it was. I longed to take off my winter cloak but I was determined not to move a muscle before my mother did. We were definitely at sea because I could smell the salt in the air, but it was weird, because it wasn’t like the sea at all. It was so flat that the surface looked like it had a skin over it and it glistened like a mirror. But I couldn’t see much more than that because we were surrounded by mist with just a pool of light around our boat. The light came from two big candles, one in a lantern set high on the prow and the other in a lantern behind us set on a smaller prow—yes, Nicko, I know it’s not a prow at the back, but you know what I mean. Sternpost? Okeydokey, sternpost, then.

  “The boat was being rowed by four men—two at the back and two at the front—dressed in black and gold with funny red hats a bit like Mum’s gardening hat. They were standing up and had long oars that they kind of twisted into the water. The boat moved very smoothly and I could tell we were making good progress because through the mist I suddenly saw a glow from a flame about six feet off the water. We went past it quite fast and along came another and another, and I realized we were following a line of lights. I felt a bit less scared then, because the boat had felt really flimsy to be out at sea and I was relieved that we must be near land.

  “Soon I saw some beautiful buildings a little bit like the Palace, only taller and much thinner, looming out of the mist. They went right down to the water and had big striped posts in front of them that glinted in the sun that was beginning to break through the mist. The oarsmen steered our boat through a line of gold-and-red posts and up to a landing stage in front of a big archway. My mother stood up. She arranged her cloak and spoke to me for the first time since we had arrived.”

  “What
did she say?” asked Septimus.

  “‘We are here,’” said Jenna, pulling a face.

  “Nice,” commented Nicko.

  “Yeah. The oarsmen helped my grandmother, then my mother, then me, out of the boat and we walked up some wide pink marble steps into a massive hall that smelled of damp stone and seaweed. It was so cool in there and such a relief not to be boiled like a lobster anymore! The hall was totally empty and I guessed it was because the sea often came up into it, because the old stones were shiny with water. But even though it was just a bare space, it looked full because it was made with hundreds of different kinds of marble laid in complicated patterns. The walls had kind of wavy stripes in lots of different colors and the floor was laid with a black-and-white pattern that kept zigzagging in front of my eyes. So we walked through the hall in a kind of weird procession with my grandmother at the head of it, then my mother and then me. We went up an amazing wide staircase, each step a different colored marble but all with wavy black stripes running through them. By the time I got to the top I felt really sick. I must have looked pretty green or something because my grandmother took hold of my arm and said, ‘Cerys, Jenna is exhausted. She must rest.’

  “My mother looked a little annoyed, I thought, but she nodded and said, ‘Very well, Mama, I am sure you know best as always. I shall see you in the morning . . . Jenna.’ She always said my name like it made a bad taste in her mouth.

  “My grandmother took me to a long narrow room that led off from the big upstairs hall. She was really sweet and told me not to worry and that ‘everything is just as it should be, Jenna dear.’ The bed was cold and lumpy, and when I lay down it smelled damp, but I didn’t care. I was so tired and I just longed to be back home with Mum and Dad and wake up to find that this was all a dream.