‘In that case, I wonder who bound her to the house? She must be buried somewhere in there, no?’
‘Right. Someone purloined her corpse, post-hanging, and sited her in the farmhouse. We’ll ask her sometime.’
I thought. ‘Do you suppose she went back to Newmarket?’
‘To the place of her crime and subsequent execution? Doubtful. I mean, would you?’
It occurred to me that our options were severely diminished without our pet Waymaster. If Jay were here, I’d have suggested we pop down to Newmarket to check. But here we were, hundreds of miles away and with no convenient means of transport.
‘Options,’ I said. ‘We can go to Newmarket the slow way and see if Millie’s there with Jay. We can wait here a while and hope the house comes back. Or we can move on to the next thing.’
‘What’s the next thing?’ If Zareen wasn’t already best friends with that pup, she was working on it. The pup was rubbing its furry little face all over her cheek. I felt a tiny bit jealous.
‘The spire,’ I said. ‘Jay wanted to go back there. He had some plan in mind, which being Jay he did not impart. I think I’ve an idea what he was up to, though.’
‘Gets my vote.’ Zareen spoke around a huge, soppy smile, and kissed the pup’s face.
‘But Jay—’
‘Is a grown man. I know you feel responsible for him, but you aren’t. He can handle himself.’
She was right, but still. I called Rob again. ‘Rob, about Jay. The Mellicent Makepeace house came from the Newmarket area and it might have gone back there. Can we possibly send someone to check?’
‘We?’ said Rob. ‘I thought you three were going it alone now.’
‘Rob.’
He laughed. ‘I’ll go myself. Send me the address.’
I did that, feeling better. Zareen was probably right on all points, but it still didn’t sit right with me to just leave Jay to his fate. If he was at Mellicent’s old village and in some kind of trouble, there was no one better than Rob to help get him out of it.
If he wasn’t at Mellicent’s old village, well… I had no way of finding out where else he might have been taken to.
Focus, Ves.
‘Right,’ I muttered, and fished my tiny syrinx pipes out of my shirt. ‘Soon as someone gets here to pick up these pups, we’re airborne. Where did you say the others were?’
We enjoyed an entertaining time chasing down the rest of the Dappledok pups. There proved to be four, at least that we discovered, and keeping them with us was no easy task. I’d privately hoped that Mellicent might consent to return Jay while we were waiting for Miranda, but I was to be disappointed. When at last Miranda appeared with two of her kennel aides and a quartet of travel-baskets between them, there remained only an empty space where the farmhouse had previously been.
Miranda barely looked at Zareen or me. She had eyes only for the pups, and the feeling was apparently mutual, for they mobbed her at once. I told myself it was because of the treats she kept in her pockets, some of which were duly distributed as she coaxed them into the baskets. Only once all four pups were safely confined and ready to go did she focus on me. ‘No further info on where they’ve come from, I suppose?’
‘Nope.’ We’d explored the area a bit more while we waited, but without turning up anything of use. ‘They were most likely brought here in Mellicent’s farmhouse, like the one we found at the Greyer cottage. But where they came from before that, we’ve no idea.’
‘Jay might, though,’ said Zareen.
‘True.’ I called him again. Still no answer.
‘Well, let me know if you get hold of him,’ said Miranda. She quirked a smile at the both of us and added, ‘How’s the rogue life treating you?’
‘We’re doing great!’ I said enthusiastically. ‘I’ve only called Rob about five times today, and this is the first time since at least this morning we’ve had to call in for help.’
Miranda grinned. ‘You know, nothing would’ve stopped me from coming down here for these little chaps, but I did feel obliged to run it past Milady first. She said to give you anything you needed.’
‘Did she indeed?’
‘So you’re rogue with Milady’s official sanction? That’s different.’
‘You should know, Mir. Life with the Society is never simple.’
She gave me a tiny salute. ‘Got it. Oh, Val sent this for you.’ She drew a little book out of the pocket of her waxed jacket and handed it to me. ‘And…’ She rummaged for a moment, then produced a shabby-looking pamphlet for Zareen.
There was no text of any kind on the cover or the spine of my book, but the pages inside were covered in faded hand-written script. The title page read simply: Mellicent Makepeace, 1778.
‘How the bloody hell did Val get hold of this?’ I squeaked.
‘Never question the Queen of the Library.’ Miranda collected her two baskets, nodded to us, and retreated to her car, her aides trailing behind her. It occurred to me, distantly, that I had never seen either of them before. New recruits? I felt an odd sensation of devastation. Barely two days away from the Society and I was already out of touch.
I shook off the feeling. ‘What’s yours?’ I said, showing Zareen the title page of my book.
She whistled. ‘It’s a treatise on the Stranger Arts and their connection to “dark deeds”, as the author puts it. More or less what Mauf was saying. Late 1600s, anonymous.’ It was bound in what looked, to my reasonably experienced eye, like human skin, which could not but make me shudder a little to behold.
My satchel was vibrating. I opened it and hauled out Mauf, who was (in his bookly fashion) spluttering with indignation. ‘I’ve never met such books!’ he said. ‘Let me have them at once.’
Meekly, we put Mauf back in the satchel and added Val’s donations. Mauf consented to settle down.
‘Just as well,’ I said. ‘It’s hard to read on horseback anyway.’ I lifted my face to the wind and blew a ditty on my silver pipes. The melody rang out, bright and clear.
As ever, Adeline appeared within minutes. I probably never would understand quite how she managed it. She trotted up to me, her silvery-white coat gleaming in the sun, and nuzzled me with her velvety nose.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t have any chips today.’
She snorted.
‘Later,’ I promised.
She had brought her night-black friend with her, who walked calmly up to Zareen and stood waiting. I wasn’t altogether sure that Zareen knew how to ride a horse, but I was soon reassured: she jumped nimbly onto the unicorn’s back and settled there, her eyes bright. ‘I’ve never flown by unicorn,’ she told me.
I mounted up — Addie is obliging enough to lower herself a bit to help me out, seeing as I am rather short — and took hold of her silver harness. ‘Hold tight,’ I advised, and clucked my tongue to Adeline. ‘To Nautilus Cove, darling!’ I told her.
She broke into a gallop, her powerful wings beating in time with her stride, and we rose smoothly into the air. The fresh, spring wind enveloped me, bringing with it (somehow) the scents of honeysuckle and chocolate, and I swear a sparkling, rosy mist blew lightly past my eyes.
I do love travelling by unicorn.
6
All right, usually I love travelling by unicorn.
I tend to assume that Addie knows her way from everywhere to anywhere, which, as it turns out, is far too much to expect of the poor girl. Also, as anyone who’s ever taken more than an occasional leisurely hack across the countryside will tell you, the delights of being on horseback tend to wane after a certain point. Zareen and I made the long journey to Norfolk in a state of increasingly grim determination, wrestling with mobile navigation systems which had no idea that Nautilus Cove even existed.
I might have been ungenerous enough to curse Jay and his inconvenient absence, but that was only while I was still airborne, gritting my teeth against the surprisingly cold wind while my hair blew into my mouth and my derriere voiced vocife
rous complaints about its treatment at my uncaring hands. Once Addie brought us down on a quiet little slip of a beach along the Norfolk coast and we were able to dismount — and once the warmer air down there had somewhat thawed out my face — I lost all desire to eviscerate Jay and was able to remember that I was worried about him.
I checked my phone. Nothing.
Patting Addie’s steaming neck, I whispered foolish compliments into her ears and promised her the biggest bag of chips she had ever seen in her life, just as soon as I made it to a chippie. She rolled her eyes at me and wandered off, her shadowy friend trotting amiably in her wake.
‘Right, then,’ I said, looking up and down the deserted beach. The greyish sea lapped apathetically at the rocky sand, a few clouds hung listlessly in a patchy blue sky, and behind us a cliff rose vertically to an unscaleable height. ‘Addie?’ I called. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know how to get in?’ I cursed myself for not having paid more attention on the way out, a few days before. Riding with the baron had proved to be a distracting experience.
I had not really expected a response, but a moment later Zareen said: ‘Up there!’ and pointed a ways back along the beach.
Something was glittering upon the sheer cliff face. Fittingly, it shone in rainbow colours.
We went that way.
The glow was coming from a sliver of jagged crystal embedded into the otherwise drab rock. When I touched it, the colours faded, leaving it an unremarkable chunk of opaque white stone. But the world shifted around me and dissolved, and when everything stopped spinning I was on another, whiter, pearlier beach, and the sea had gone all iridescent. Nautilus Cove.
I mentally doubled Addie’s upcoming chip rations.
Zareen materialised a moment later and stood smiling for a moment, taking great inhalations of the balmy air. It did smell rather heavenly, come to think of it — like the brightest, freshest sea air mingled with something flowery. I couldn’t see any flowers, but one doesn’t question things like that when one is prancing through a magickal dell. It’s the way they are.
I’d had a private, lingering fear that we might return to find the Striding Spire had, somehow, gone. Stridden Off, in the way that it used to, or perhaps been somehow relocated by an indignant Ministry. But it hadn’t. The clear, white beach gave way to an expanse of sleek, jade-coloured grass dotted with frondy bits (botany is not among my specialities). In the near distance the ground began a steep climb up into some rolly hills, and halfway up those was the spire. I hadn’t previously had occasion to see it from this perspective, and the sight was breath-taking. So graceful a building! Tall and slender, crowned with an elegantly sloping roof (I’d seen as much as I wanted to of that part), its windows glinted gently in the sunlight and its pale walls displayed a hint of the bluish radiance that would come in with the twilight.
‘The Redclovers had style,’ Zareen said.
They certainly did. ‘Why, then, is it abandoned out here?’ I mused aloud. ‘If you’d built something that lovely, why would you ever leave?’
‘The passage of four hundred years is neither here nor there, I suppose?’
I strode off in the direction of the spire, my boots swishing through the crisp grass. ‘Not with these people. Their bodies may have died long ago but I doubt they went far after that. I’m willing to bet that the spire had a Waymaster-in-residence, John Wester-style, for a long time, and maybe it still does.’
‘So that’s what Jay had in mind?’
‘Yes. Especially after Millie. Wester obviously wasn’t some kind of a fluke, and if there have been more of them — why not Melmidoc?’
‘You saw no sign of him before?’
‘He’s an old man. He fell asleep over his newspaper a hundred and ten years ago, and has yet to wake up.’
Zareen grinned. ‘Right, then. Let’s go rattle his door handles and throw stones at the windows.’
My previous visit to the spire had been only a few days prior, but I found a much-changed building when we went inside. Rattling the doorknobs proved unnecessary, as the door was unlocked. And why not? There was nothing left in there, nothing at all. The kitchen on the ground floor was reduced to a collection of aged wooden counters, probably left in situ because they were both unlovely and (I imagined) heavy. The bright, circular room near the top which had previously held all the accoutrements of a comfortable living space was completely empty. The chairs were gone, the knick-knacks and ornaments, and above all, the books. All of them.
Someone had cleaned, for not a speck of dust floated up as Zareen and I tramped up the winding stairs. That was nice, I supposed.
‘They did a thorough job,’ Zar said as we stood in the doorway of the Redclover brothers’ decimated library.
‘I wonder why.’ I was wondering that pretty hard. Taking the books I could understand, even if I was disappointed. They were a valuable resource, and were liable to be damaged if left uncared for on such remote shelves. But the furniture?
I felt that unwelcome but sadly familiar sensation of foreboding.
Jay and I made the acquaintance of Mabyn Redclover during our previous investigation of the Dappledok pups, a spriggan who was somewhere high-up in the Forbidden Magicks division of the Hidden Ministry. I blessed my forethought in making sure to secure her number, and called it.
‘Ms. Redclover, Forbidden Magicks.’ Mabyn’s voice came crisply over the line.
‘Mab. It’s Ves. I’m at the spire, but nothing much else is.’
‘I was going to call you this afternoon,’ said Mabyn, and she sounded grim. ‘The Ministry finished emptying the building day before last. There was a bloodbath over the books, as you may imagine, with strong competition from the Troll Court to secure them. In the end they split the books, but the Ministry took everything else. I’ve only just found out why. It’s scheduled for demolition, Ves, and soon. They want it gone, no delay.’
‘I thought it must be something like that,’ I said. ‘Any idea why?’
‘None whatsoever. I’ve spent the whole morning trying to get an audience with the right people and I’ve largely failed. They won’t talk to me. I was reduced to loitering in the hallways hoping to run into the Chief or Vice-Chief Ministers. Well, I did see Honoria Goodenough — that’s the Vice-Chief — but she said I’m too close to the situation and wouldn’t listen to me. Just because I’m a Redclover! It’s not like I have any real connection to a pair of Redclovers from four hundred years ago. I tried to argue that it’s a rare and precious example of seventeenth-century magickal architecture and its starstone composition ought to be enough to secure instant and eternal protected status but she wasn’t having it. Nor would she tell me why. I’m sorry, Ves. There’s nothing more I can do.’
I hadn’t known Mabyn for very long, but long enough to learn that it was unlike her to gabble. She was genuinely upset. ‘It’s all right, Mab. I’m glad you tried. Do you know when it’s due to be demolished?’
‘They’ve kept that information from me. What do they expect me to do, throw myself in front of the demolition force? It’s ridiculous. But it’ll be soon. As in, possibly this week. I have set something in motion which I hope will delay them, but I don’t know if it can be there in time. I’m sorry, Ves.’
‘Right. Don’t worry, we’ll fix this.’ I hung up.
Zareen’s face was grave as I relayed Mabyn’s news, but she spoke composedly. ‘That ties in with our suspicions, doesn’t it? This building’s completely unique and irreplaceable. If they’re willing to wreck it anyway, that more or less confirms that it’s been used for something they’d consider seriously questionable.’
‘More than that. They think it could be used the same way again.’
Zareen was nodding emphatically. ‘Jay’s not the only one who thinks Melmidoc’s still here.’
‘Yes, but I’m wondering how he arrived at that conclusion. I was hoping for just such an outcome last time I was here, but I swear, I felt not a flicker of a presence. Does it take a Waymaster to
spot another? Jay’s rather discouraged that idea, but in that case, why was he in a hurry to come back?’
‘I know that look.’ Zareen eyed me with sour suspicion. ‘You want me to do something, don’t you?’
I might have been wearing the pleading eyes, at that. I hastily composed my face. ‘Those Stranger Arts you aren’t supposed to talk about? Could you somehow sense a spirit presence, even if it’s dormant?’
‘Or determined to hide from me? I don’t know.’ Zareen looked annoyed, for no reason I could understand. Then she sighed, and passed a hand over her eyes. It occurred to me that she was looking tired, dark shadows etched under her deep brown eyes. Her shimmery green eyeshadow did a fine job of deflecting attention from them. She hesitated, apparently struggling with herself. ‘Look, Ves,’ she finally said. ‘The Stranger Arts — or the Weird Stuff — it’s not quite like your magick. It… takes a toll. I’m not supposed to talk about it partly because I’m not supposed to use it, except at great need. And there are good reasons for that.’
‘What kind of a toll?’
A deep frown clouded Zareen’s brow. I almost hadn’t wanted to ask, for the matter clearly troubled her. But if it was important…
‘It’s to do with Mauf’s bright idea about the… amplifying effects of… of—’ she stopped. ‘Look, if all power corrupts, let’s just say that some kinds of power corrupt faster than others. And the link isn’t as clear-cut as Mauf, or those wannabe scholars, suggested. If I get too immersed in the weird stuff, I… it changes me. I feel a need to do some terrible things, Ves, and if I give in to them… I will be more powerful. Only for a short time, of course. It’s like a hit of caffeine, or steroids. When it wears off, you feel as weak as a newborn kitten, and to add to the fun it’s like the worst kind of withdrawal you can experience — crack is nothing to it—’ She stopped again, her expression turning wary. She’d said more than she meant to.
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