by Kim M Watt
“Forty,” Beaufort said, his voice carrying across the packed dragons.
“Forty-one,” Lord Margery said, and she didn’t sound as happy as Mortimer thought she might. He supposed she’d been hoping for a clean victory, whereas this was sort of an accidental one – the last two dragons had virtually done eeney-meeny-miney-moe to decide which side to go on.
“No!” Amelia wailed. “And where is Gilbert? At least we’d have had a tie. Hey! Hey, my brother isn’t here!”
Her voice was lost in the chattering of eighty-one dragons – far more dragons than Mortimer still felt had any right to be here. If they had nothing to do with the clan, why should their votes count? But he had to admit that as not all of the recluses had aligned themselves with Lord Margery, maybe it hadn’t mattered that much in the end. Wendy’s gaudy blanket and purple beanie seemed to have converted quite a few. He covered his face with his paws and took a deep breath, his belly hollow and sick. Okay, so this was terrible. Just awful. But it wasn’t a complete disaster, not with such a close call. All Beaufort had to do was agree to an alliance with Lord Margery, then they could get all this bauble thief business sorted and figure the rest out later. Yes. An alliance. The whole situation wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it could be.
“Dragons,” Beaufort said, and the chattering settled down.
An alliance, Mortimer thought. That could work. It might actually be quite helpful. Lord Margery was terribly conservative, but maybe she could balance some of Beaufort’s wilder ideas.
“Thank you for attending,” Beaufort said, “and thank you for voting. It matters enormously that you have taken responsibility for your own futures like this. This is how we will find our way forward, through cooperation and mutual respect.” He looked around, and now Mortimer noticed the droop in his wings, the sad line of his tail.
“Oh, no,” he whispered, and Amelia looked at him in alarm.
“What? Mortimer, what?”
“It has been my pleasure and my honour to serve as your High Lord, but all things must change.”
“No, oh, Beaufort, no …”
“You have spoken, and I will listen. I will step down, and go into exile, as seems only fitting, allowing Lord Margery to take you forward.”
“Dammit, Beaufort!” Mortimer’s exclamation was lost under a sudden babble of alarmed chatter, of protests and uncertain cheers. Even Lord Margery looked more discomfited than triumphant. “Beaufort, what are you doing?”
“Quiet!” Beaufort’s roar cut through the clamour, leaving a wisp of dark smoke hanging above him. All eyes turned to the High Lord. “This was a vote for the future of the clan. You have spoken, and I will go. This is not up for discussion.”
“Beaufort,” Lord Margery said, “it was too close. I can’t claim this as a majority.”
“You’d have claimed it without any majority if I’d just stepped down as you asked me to.”
“I thought I had more support.” Her voice was level. “This doesn’t seem right.”
“I’m stepping down, Margery. The seat of the High Lord is yours.”
She looked at the Weber dubiously. “I don’t think I want it like this.”
“Sometimes we don’t get to name the way things come to us.” He slipped off the rock and trotted toward her with his head high, the crowd shuffling to let him through. On the ledge above, Mortimer rocked back and forth with his paws over his snout. He didn’t want to watch this. He hated it. And he wouldn’t stay. He couldn’t. If Beaufort left, he left.
As if hearing his thoughts, Lord Pamela shouted, “We’ll go with you, Beaufort. We’ll make our own clan!”
A roar of agreement greeted this, and Beaufort paused, looking back. “I’m going into exile, my friends. I don’t know where that may take me.”
“South!” someone shouted. “The weather’s better!” A ripple of laughter greeted that, then someone else called, “No, north! There’s more room!” There was more laughter, and other suggestions were called out, in a wild kind of excitement that had an edge of panic to it.
“Cloverlies,” Beaufort said, “What sort of life would that be? Trailing about the countryside, looking for a hole to hide in, cold and wet and hungry? We searched a long time for this place. We worked hard to build it into what it is. Plenty of dragons and hatchlings died before we found it, and the land was much emptier then. I remember. No one should leave this place lightly.”
An uneasy silence followed his words. Lord Margery had come forward to meet him, her wings folded down tight to her body. “Neither should you, Beaufort.”
“I don’t,” he said, and placed a paw on her shoulder. “I truly don’t.”
There was so much sadness in his voice that Mortimer trembled with it, already tasting the loss of long summer days fraught with frustration at the High Lord’s stubbornness, and a lingering panic about what he was going to do next, and the utterly bewildering turns of the old dragon’s mind, and the way he encouraged everything and everybody, and was both the most infuriating and uplifting creature Mortimer had ever come across.
“I don’t go lightly, either,” he shouted, before he could think about it too much more. He started scrambling down the slope. “I’m coming with you, Beaufort! I’m coming!”
“Mortimer,” Beaufort said sternly. “It’s not exile if I have an entourage, is it?” He turned back to Lord Margery, ignoring the young dragon pushing his way through the crowd toward him. “Lord Margery,” he said, his paw still on her shoulder. “I, High Lord Beaufort, do—”
“Stop! Stop!”
All heads turned toward the entrance as a smallish dragon came tumbling down the tunnel, less flying than ricocheting off the walls. It looked painful, and there was a general intake of breath as he hit an overhang particularly hard, still shouting, then an oooh as he spun, apparently out of control, into the centre of the cavern.
“Gilbert!” Amelia shrieked. “Gilbert, come down right now!”
“Trying!” He barrel-rolled across the hall, his wings and legs and tail going in all different directions, hit a wall with a rather solid-sounding thump, and fell to the ground while the dragons below hustled to get out of the way.
“Gilbert!” Amelia bellowed, but before she could even leap from the ledge he bounced up again, missing a few scales and bleeding from his snout. He ignored her.
“Everything has to stop,” he said, panting.
Lord Margery sighed, and pushed Beaufort’s paw off her. “This makes it a draw, I take it.”
“A draw?” Gilbert squawked. “You toadstools!”
“Gilbert,” Beaufort said, “That’s uncalled for. But to be clear, your vote is for me?”
“It is called for. And yes.”
A few cheers went up, and Mortimer stopped where he was, not far from Beaufort, feeling himself flushing lilac. He’d just made a complete spectacle of himself, hadn’t he?
“It’s a draw,” Lord Margery said. “So no more of this exile nonsense. I withdraw my challenge.”
Beaufort looked thoughtful, but before he could say anything further Gilbert shouted, “That’s not important right now anyway!”
“Why not, lad?” the High Lord asked.
“Because I know who’s been kidnapping the postmen and stealing the baubles! It is one of us, and I know who!”
A gasp went up around the cavern, and Mortimer forgot to be embarrassed, his eight-chambered heart hammering against his chest as he spun in place, trying to spot the culprit.
18
Miriam
Miriam’s mobile rang in the warm cocoon of the car, making both her and Alice jump. The cat ignored it. Miriam dug the phone out of her coat and frowned at the display.
“Oh dear. It’s Colin. What do I do?”
“Just tell him we’ve gone out for the night. Dammit. I rather hoped he wasn’t at that van back there.”
Miriam nodded, and tried to put on her most normal voice as she answered. “Hello, Colin, love.”
“… ty
Mir …” The reception was bad, his voice cutting in and out, and she let out her breath in a gust of relief.
“Colin? Can you hear me?” Now her voice sounded normal. Cheerful, at least.
“… lo?”
“It’s no good, dear, we must be out of range. I’ll call you later.”
“… iam!”
She hung up and looked at Alice. “He sounded a bit agitated.”
“Did he? Oh well. Can’t be helped.” Alice looked at the cat. “Are we on the right track, here, Thompson?”
The cat yawned, exposing neat white teeth, and stared out into the dark.
“I hope he’s not taking us anywhere awful,” Miriam said. “You know, because of the D-R-A—” She stopped as the cat gave her a look which said, as clearly as if he’d spoken, that he didn’t appreciate her doubting his spelling ability. “Sorry.” The cat stared at her for a moment longer, then looked back at the road.
“I’m sure we’ll find out soon,” Alice said.
“Where are we?” Miriam asked. The fields stretched long and dark to either side of the car, barely glimpsed beyond the range of the headlights, and they’d left the last houses behind ten minutes ago, turning onto a rutted, unsealed road. The weeds whispered along the flanks and undercarriage, and if she’d opened the window she could have touched the dry-stone walls outside.
“I don’t know exactly,” Alice said. “I’ve never been up here before.”
“I hope he knows where he’s going.”
Despite the fact that he was looking up at her, the cat somehow managed to look down his nose at Miriam, his tail twitching. She flushed and rubbed her own nose. Being in such close quarters to him was making her snuffly.
They came to a junction, and Thompson indicated left, paws still steady on the dashboard, taking them up a farm track that headed into open ground, leaving the walls behind them. It didn’t need to be marked private. It wasn’t the sort of road you’d find by accident, and Miriam didn’t even think that that you could call it a road without really stretching the definition. It was nothing more than an ill-defined trail climbing into the fells, a mix of mud and gravel making the wheels slip here and there. Miriam clung to the door and hoped they weren’t going to suddenly slide off sideways into a bog.
“You better not get us stuck, Thompson,” Alice said. “My poor little car is not made for this sort of thing.”
“Well, she’s doing better than Bessie would have.” Miriam’s elderly Beetle probably would have taken one look at their route and expired in shock.
Alice snorted. “That’s true enough. I do wish we’d had time for dinner, though.”
Miriam dug through her bag, but only found some Tic Tacs. She offered them to Alice and they drove on in silence, surrounded by the scent of mint.
Lights appeared up ahead, still a long way off, but Miriam took a deep, relieved breath at the sight. She’d been starting to wonder if the damn cat was going to drive them straight off a cliff, out here in the dark. Or just strand them in the fells to freeze. After all, they still didn’t know whose side he was on, if anyone’s. She wondered if cats even had sides. But they’d been safe so far. There had been a few dicey moments when the car had started to slide, but Alice had recovered them before they did more than spin a little sideways on the path. The undercarriage had bottomed out on the raised ridge between the wheel tracks rather nastily more than once, and an unpleasant clanking had started up beneath them. Miriam suspected that something had gone wrong with the suspension. Whatever it was, it sounded expensive.
Thompson looked at Alice, and mewled.
“What?” she said, her voice sharp. “What now?”
He pawed the indicators.
“Stop that! It’s hard enough to keep on the road without you messing around distracting me.”
“I think he wants you to turn the lights out,” Miriam said, as Thompson batted the lever again.
The cat mewled approvingly. Or disapprovingly. Who knew what a cat meant, Miriam thought, as Alice brought the car to a stop. It didn’t take much. They’d been creeping along in first for the last mile, barely quicker than walking, and the car seemed to shudder with relief as the engine died.
Silence rushed in around them, followed by a thick and hungry darkness as Alice switched off the lights. They were high up in the fells now, and with her eyes unaccustomed to the heavy dark, for a moment all Miriam could see were the distant house lights floating ahead of them, like a deep-sea jellyfish in the far reaches of an abyss.
She swallowed audibly, and Thompson started purring.
“We’re here then, are we?” Alice asked, and jumped as the cat walked over her lap to scratch the door. “And you can stop that right now. You’ve done enough damage to my poor car.”
She opened the door to let the cat out, and Miriam followed her lead, the air cold enough on her face to make her gasp as she stepped into the dark. Her back ached after jolting along the rough road, and she stretched the kinks out, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The stars were painted in broad, crowded sweeps above them, and the night was still. No traffic noises, no mumbling sheep. Just the wide still sky with a sliver of moon and ahead of them, the distance impossible to gauge, the yellow lights of that desperately lonely house.
She could also just make out the cat, standing in the path ahead of them, waiting.
“You sure about this, Thompson?” Alice asked him, and he turned and started padding toward the lights.
“Are we sure about this?” Miriam asked. “There could be anything up there. Those things in the Audi, for a start. And I’ve still got no phone signal. We can’t even call for help.”
Alice considered this for a moment. “Even if we had signal,” she said, “We’ve got nothing to tell the police. ‘Oh, a cat led us up here’? I hardly think even Detective Inspector Adams would buy that one.”
“What about Beaufort?”
“We haven’t seen them since they went back for their own investigations, Miriam. We don’t know what happened. They might have their own problems. And we have no way of getting in touch with them.”
Miriam sighed. “I’m going to get Mortimer a mobile for Christmas.”
“Well, wishes and fishes.” Alice opened the boot of the car and took out a cricket bat. “Can you swing this?”
“Um. I think so?” Well, she knew she could swing it, but Alice probably meant could she hit anything with it. That was another question entirely. She also wasn’t sure why Alice just happened to have one in the car, but she supposed it wasn’t that important right now.
“Good.” Alice handed her the bat, closed the boot and opened the back door, taking a black cane with a silver handle from behind the seat. The cool starlight slid off the silver, revealing the lines of a dragon’s head as Alice gave it a couple of experimental swings. “Ah, yes,” she said. “There we go.”
Miriam tried a couple of moves with the bat, although she wasn’t quite sure it had the same style as the cane. Alice locked the car, and they turned up the path after Thompson, still waiting ahead of them with an impatient line to his tail. As soon as they started walking he jumped up and began trotting away.
“Why a cat?” Miriam asked. “Why couldn’t it have been a big, scary dog, like a Rottweiler or something?”
Thompson looked over his shoulder and hissed.
The house took a long time to get any closer. Alice seemed to be as comfortable as the cat in the dark, following him on light, quiet feet with the cane sometimes resting against her shoulder, sometimes helping her over the rougher ground. Miriam, on the other hand, found herself slipping on loose gravel, suddenly ankle deep in a muddy puddle, and (judging by the smell) she’d also manged to find the only cow pat out here. She tried to carry the cricket bat as casually as Alice was carrying her cane, but eventually resorted to using it for balance, and occasionally as a walking stick.
They staggered – well, Miriam staggered – up a final rise and found the house directly in fro
nt of them. It was a big old thing, probably Edwardian, with stern windows and gardens that had likely once been full of topiary and small gravel paths. Now, in the depths of a winter night, the grounds seemed to be mostly populated by skeletal bushes and dead grass, with muddy patches where the rabbits had been at it. There was a light on in one upstairs room, seeping through thin curtains, and another downstairs, where they could see into an empty living room. There were a few ramshackle outbuildings, one with the roof caved in, plus a double garage with a potholed gravel drive leading up to it. Miriam frowned at the drive and squinted into the dark, seeing Alice doing the same.
“That’s a road,” Alice said, stabbing her cane toward it. “We just about destroyed my car on that damn track, and there’s a road?”
Thompson shrugged, and headed toward the garden gate.
“Do we have a plan?” Miriam asked.
“Follow the cat. I need to keep an eye on him so when we’re done here I can skin him for breaking my car.”
Miriam didn’t think it sounded like much of a plan, but she fell into step with Alice anyway. What else was she going to do, stay out here on her own?
Up close, the house didn’t look much better. The mortar was crumbling between the old bricks, and one of the panes in the front door had been replaced with plywood. There was an old rotary washing line lying on its side in the garden, like the bones of something long-dead, next to a dog house with a wall missing and, thankfully, no occupant. Thompson trotted straight to the front door, but when Alice and Miriam reached him he bared his teeth and pointed his nose to the back of the house.
“That way?” Alice asked, and he purred.
“What’re you going to do, cause a distraction?” Miriam demanded.
He gave her a disdainful look and sat down, watching them expectantly.