by Mike Shevdon
"Wh… wh… who's…" She couldn't stop shivering. Clinging to the blanket, she wrapped herself tighter, trying to stop her teeth chattering.
"Eve? Don't mind her. She's a bossy boots, but she knows some stuff. She must like you though. She don't take to strangers normally."
"Wha… wha… this place?"
"Oh, it used to be a squat, somewhere to chill out, you know? They used to do raves and stuff here, but Eve cleared them out. It was attracting too much attention."
"You're from P… P… Porton Down?" She was finally warming up and getting the shivering under control.
"That's where we met Eve. She knew Gina, and Gina came up with this place, except there was a bust up about them nicking some of Eve's stuff. As they say, Gina don't live here any more."
"Where is she now, do you know?"
"Gina had an accident," Eve spoke from the stairway. "She bit off more than she could chew."
"You killed her," said Alex.
"She took something that wasn't for her. I simply took it back."
"And you killed her for that?"
"You killed Naylor," Eve pointed out.
"He was going to rape me!"
"Sometimes it's kill or be killed. I would have thought you'd understand that."
"She was one of us," said Alex. "She was at Porton Down."
"She was there, but she definitely wasn't one of us. You don't steal from your friends. You don't sell you friends out for drugs, money, sex or whatever else you want. We look after each other, because no one else looks after us." She walked over to stand in front of Alex. "And what about you Alexandre?"
"We didn't meet at Porton Down, did we? No one calls me Alexandre, except maybe my mum," she challenged.
"We did meet, or at least I saw you there. Three girls dead. It was in your file. That's quite a tally."
"That was an accident. How did you get access to my file?"
"Those girls, you drowned them, like you accidentally drowned Naylor?" asked Eve.
"How do you know about that?" asked Alex.
Eve studied her for a moment. "When everyone else ran, I stayed. While others screamed and died I went through files looking for what I needed. Why were you looking for Gina?"
"I dunno. I guess 'cause we're the same. We all went through the same things. I thought maybe she'd have somewhere I could hang out for a bit until I get my shit together."
"Why don't you go home to mummy?"
"Can't, can I? Burned that bridge."
Eve turned away and went to stand behind Chipper, looking over his shoulder out onto the desolate estate. She stood so close that Alex wondered whether they were an item.
"I need someone," she said, still staring out the window. "Gina died, not because she stole — though that was reason enough, but because she knew things — she'd done things. Through her treachery she proved that she would sell us out for a fix, or a bottle, or something she wanted, sooner or later. We couldn't risk that and she paid the price for her indiscretion."
She turned away from Chipper without touching him. No brush of affection, not even a sidelong look. "If you would even dream of selling us out, Alexandre, you would be better to leave now, while you can."
"Are you offering me a place to stay?"
"Here? No. This place is compromised. We only came back to retrieve certain items. We'll be gone soon and you won't be able to follow us."
"So where are you going?" asked Alex.
"We move around, but there are places that can provide what we need. The rules, as I think you already know, do not apply to us. Do what you wilt shall be the whole of the law."
"That's a line from a movie isn't it?" said Alex.
"Hardly," said Eve. "We are engaged in a struggle that goes beyond anarchism and political structure. We will change the world itself. Our goal is more fundamental than tinkering with the system. All of that will be swept away."
"Are you a bit bonkers?"
Eve turned on her like a snake, her eyes narrow, her voice squeezed out between her teeth.
"There are some who cannot encompass the vision of what we will do, and they may think it outlandish or impossible, but they are limited by their feeble imagination and stagnant ability. They are bound by convention and compromised by their own wants and needs. We are none of that, and we will change the world."
There was a fervour in her eyes that alarmed Alex, but she could hear that Eve believed it. She glanced sideways at Sparky. He shrugged, as if it was obviously true.
"What kind of change?" she asked.
Eve smiled. "This world was not made for us. We do not fit. We are not accepted in any part of it. We are alien and unwanted, rejected at a fundamental level. But what if that could be changed? What if we could remake this world as we want it?"
"I don't understand," said Alex.
"You don't need to," said Eve, "you just need to want it enough to be prepared to act. Sacrifices will need to be made. The only decision is which end of the sacrifice do you want to be on — the one making the sacrifice, or the one being sacrificed?"
"Is that a threat?"
"You can't change the world without changing everything," said Eve. "But you can decide which side of the change you're on. The world will change whether you like it or not. Work with us and you can be part of it."
Alex turned to Sparky. "Is she for real?"
He shrugged again. "I've seen some weird shit. Hell I've done some of it, but she's right. We don't fit. They're not going to change the world for us, so we have to change it for ourselves."
"This is your decision, Alexandre," said Eve. "You can walk away now and what will happen will happen. But if you stay, you're part of it."
Alex looked from Sparky, to Eve, to Chipper, who still stared resolutely out of the window.
"OK," said Alex. "I'm in."
TWELVE
The home of the Seven Courts isn't so big. Yes, there is the main house, the east and west wings, the solar, the garden, the orangery, the cellars, the stables, and the ice house, all of which is very grand and mostly deserted, but it isn't so big that you can permanently lose someone. Where, then, was Angela?
She and I had arrived unexpectedly, and there had been the session with the vision, and despite my less-than-optimal condition after that experience I distinctly remembered Garvin insisting that Angela would stay. So where was she?
The only signs of habitation in the west wing was where Alex had been staying and that was deliberately away from the other residents. I had been in all the rooms, even the pokey attics and servant quarters on the third floor, and there was no sign that anyone had been living there. The ground floor of the east wing was where a number of the staff were living, where the kitchens and laundry, the offices and the pantries were, and despite the curious looks from many of the staff when I poked into cupboards and crannies, I had not found her there either.
The upper floor was where Blackbird and I had our suite of rooms. I was sure I would know if anyone else was staying there, or in the rooms above. Even so, that didn't stop me looking.
After a circuit of the gardens, the orangery, the stables and the outbuildings I was starting to get irritated. Of course, I could go and ask Mullbrook where she was being housed, but that would get back to Garvin, but I might as well ask Garvin myself if that was the plan.
No, I wanted a conversation with Angela without Garvin's assistance and for that I needed to know where she was — unless she wasn't anywhere? It had crossed my mind that Garvin might simply be disposing of the people I brought back, but why go to all the trouble of bringing them in if you were going to kill them anyway? While Blackbird questioned Garvin's motives, I thought he was straight. Garvin did what Garvin said he would do. There was no pretence about him, and in this case, Garvin wouldn't waste the resources. He'd have someone kill them where they were and save time.
I walked back through the gardens, and went back to Alex's room in the west wing. I still hoped to walk in and find her
on the bed, sulky and resentful, but that hadn't happened. I'd tried to locate her through the mirror, but she had shielded herself from me. My attempts had been met with a blank wall, which at least meant she was still alive. I dreaded the vague dissipation that occurred when I used my power to find someone and they were no longer findable. Losing her had been bad enough the first time, I didn't think I could deal with that again.
That didn't stop me using the same power to find Angela, though. I placed my hand on Alex's mirror and felt the glass chill under my hand.
"Angela?"
The glass clouded, and the sound in the room opened out. "Angela? Are you there?"
There was a restless shuffling under a background that sounded not unlike the room I was in. It was like listening to a live broadcast and the real thing at the same time. Sounds were repeated moments apart — a crow cawed and then repeated itself in a softer echo a second later. The sound of the breeze was resonant rather than distant.
"Can you hear me?"
Unless there was a mirror in Angela's room, or something that acted like a mirror, she would not be able to speak back to me. It was clear, though, that she was close, wherever she was. Yet I was sure I'd been all through this part of the house and seen no sign of her.
I opened drawers in the chest below the mirror and then in the bedside cabinet. In the top drawer of the cabinet I found what I was looking for — a small portable mirror that Alex must have used for plucking her eyebrows or some similar personal ritual. I rested a finger on it.
"Angela, can you hear me?" This mirror also clouded, but now I could hold it near to my ear as I left the room. I walked down the corridor, first one way and then the other, trying to discern whether the sounds came more into sync or less. The difference wasn't great either way.
There were spiral stairs at the end of the west wing, with windows looking out on the lawns and over the countryside. Stepping quickly downstairs, I went back along the lower gallery. If anything the sounds were fainter here, and louder from the mirror. Was that because most of the doors were closed down here? I opened the door into a drawing room, the curtains half-drawn and dead flowers on the grate. No, the sound was definitely fainter.
I closed the door behind me and went back to the stairs, going up two flights to the smaller corridor on the top floor where it was hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. These slanted roof rooms would have been given over to domestic staff originally, but now those that weren't used to store redundant furniture were empty and unused. There was loads of light, but it felt oppressive and stuffy. I walked along and found myself back at the stairs in the main house.
Looking back along the corridor, I was sure I had been all the way along and yet it didn't seem as far as it had to walk along the lower floors. Was this floor shorter? Surely they were all in the same building on top of one another and all the same length? A suspicion formed in my mind. I walked back along the corridor and found myself back at the spiral stairs, but too quickly, too easily. It left me with the irrational desire to measure the corridors and see if they were the same length.
I held up the mirror to my ear. There was still a difference, but less so, than downstairs, or maybe that was simply that we were higher up and more open to sounds from outside? Nevertheless I had the sense that I was missing something.
Positioning myself in the middle of the corridor, facing the opposite end, I closed my eyes and walked forward, counting five paces. I stopped and opened my eyes. The corridor was still there, it hadn't changed. I repeated my actions, and then again. Each time I opened my eyes and checked where I was. By the time I reached the end I was fairly sure I hadn't missed anything, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that something didn't fit.
If I gathered enough power into myself, I knew that I could see the world in a different way. Raffmir, my old enemy had taught me how in order to get me into Porton Down and rescue my daughter. He'd given me the ability to see the fabric of reality itself and even step behind the curtain to cross distances. Fortunately the rest of his plan hadn't worked, and both Alex and I had escaped the fate he had planned for us, but having learned the trick of it, I knew I could do it.
At the same time, if someone was hiding something here then I did not want to call attention to the fact that I'd found it. Blackbird always admonished me for using power without subtlety, as a blunt instrument. Here was a chance to prove I could be subtle if I wanted to.
I had noticed that every time I called power there was a sharp drop in temperature. It was as if I was taking the heat from my surroundings and converting it somehow. That sudden cooling marked my use of power like a red flag — it had given my presence away before. There was, however, plenty of heat up here near the rafters.
Closing my eyes, I tried to empty my thoughts in the way that Blackbird had taught me. At the same time I reached inwards to the core of power inside. It flared inside me and I felt the surroundings cool, forcing me to release it again. That was too much. I wanted something smaller.
I tried again, letting my senses expand, feeling the warm air drifting with dust and musty smells. I imagined the air cooling slightly, just enough to start an air current to bring more warm air. The core inside me remained closed and the air remained warm. The trouble was, air just wasn't my thing. Blackbird could twist the breeze through her fingers but to me it was just air.
And perhaps that was part of the problem. I was trying to do what Blackbird did, but she was a creature of fire and air. My element was the void, the space between things. So how could I use that to my advantage?
The void was a curious thing — the Feyre believed that everything was made of four elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This made sense because their power was expressed in four distinct ways which loosely correlated to these elements. The void was different. It was what held everything apart and stopped the other elements from collapsing in on themselves. It was the space in which everything else existed, and where the other elements shared space with each other. In contrast, the void and the wraithkin, whose element it was, existed alone.
So if the corridor really was the wrong length, I would know. If somehow the space had been compressed or altered in some fundamental way, as a son of the void, that should be obvious to me in the same way that if someone made the wind blow the wrong direction it would be obvious to Blackbird. Therefore it had not been altered.
But I was also aware that it wasn't the length it should be. On some fundamental level, the corridor was wrong and it set my senses jangling to walk down it. It was just…odd. I had an idea that with enough power I could change the nature of a space and distort it — bend it — to my will, but this was not what was happening here. That would take far more power than was apparent.
But what if the corridor was not changed, but only the appearance of it, like a glamour? That would take considerably less power and would leave the corridor fundamentally unchanged but apparently shorter.
I closed my eyes and let myself drift, sensing around me. It was hard among the layers of wardings in the courts to discern one thing from another — like listening for a coin spinning on the floor of a busy railway station — but it was there. The corridor had a net stretched along it, like the glamour I used to turn eyes away when I did not want to be noticed. It lay along the corridor like a multidimensional mesh of misdirection and concealment.
I found the threads and followed them, gradually teasing them apart, unravelling the magic until it finally snapped apart and the corridor shifted. I opened my eyes and the formerly light corridor had acquired a dark section, within which was a door.
I stood outside listening. There was no discernible sound from inside but maybe that was also cloaked in glamour. I turned the handle and pushed the door open. Inside was a plainly furnished room with a chair next to a table with a book open upon it. It looked clean but bare. The windows were set low and looked out over the countryside, and there was a door through to another adjacent room. I looked as if it had been
occupied recently.
I stepped in, intending to see if there was anyone in the next room. The door swung closed behind me and it was only the glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye that made me veer away. A heavy chair crashed against my shoulder and I was thrown sideways by the impact.
"What the…! Angela? What are you doing?"
I nursed my shoulder where the chair had collided with it. Angela was stood behind the door holding the back of the chair like she was going to ward me off with it.
"Niall? Sorry, I thought you were that woman."
"You nearly cracked my head open. What on earth were you trying to do? What woman?"
"The blonde one. Fionh."
"You're lucky it was me and not her. She would have spilled your guts onto the carpet and sliced your head off for good measure. What were you trying to do?" I rubbed my shoulder where the chair had caught me.
"I was trying to leave."
"Can you not just use the door like any normal person? Do you have to hit people with chairs?"
"You don't understand," she said, "Until you came in there was no door. Once she leaves I'm trapped in here. I thought if I could stun her, I could lock her in here while I found a way out."
"Put the damn chair down, or are you planning to hit me with it again?"
"No, no, I…" She took the chair and placed it back against the wall.
"That would never work anyway. It's her glamour that's keeping the door hidden. She could unravel it as soon as you closed the door and follow you, and you would not like what she would do to you after you bashed her head in."
She glanced at me, then made a dash for it. Fortunately she had to get past the door to the open doorway and I managed to grab hold of her.
"Let me go! You don't understand. They're going to kill me!" She struggled and kicked until I threw her onto the floor and put myself between her and the door. She was breathing hard and looked up at me with narrowed eyes. "You're with them, aren't you?"
"I'm not with anyone."
"Yes you are. You're a Warder like she is."