‘I’m not sure what I’ve just done,’ I admitted to Mother and Jay.
‘Given her something to think about,’ said Mother.
I’d hoped that showing off Addie would have answered a question or two. Was she King Evelaern’s favourite mount? Were these extra-super-special-and-magickal pipes or just the common-or-garden, incredibly-rare-and-rather-very-magickal variety? Inquiring minds were not to be satisfied today.
7
‘Right, then,’ I said, searching in vain for somewhere to stuff my new collection of music. ‘New plan?’
‘Find the lyre-thief,’ said Mother promptly.
‘You think it was stolen?’ said Jay.
‘Sounds like it.’
‘By whom?’
‘How should I know?’
Jay did his arms-folded-and-staring thing. ‘It occurs to me that you might have been the last person to see that lyre.’
‘If I was, why would I be looking for it now?’
‘Are you looking for it now?’
‘Why else would I be here?’
Jay shrugged.
Mother gave a sigh, and rubbed at her eyes. ‘It’s possible that it went missing on the night that I saw it,’ she allowed. ‘But if it did, it certainly wasn’t me that took it.’ She paused. ‘Not that I wouldn’t have, given half a chance. It had that effect on people.’
‘What effect?’ Jay said, looking at Mother intently.
She shrugged. ‘You couldn’t see it, and hear it played, without wanting it. That’s why they kept it in a vault, I suppose.’
‘The effect is long-lasting, it seems,’ said Jay.
‘In that I still want it, three decades later? Mm.’
That noncommittal mm at the end sounded off to me. ‘Is there anything you haven’t told us, Mother dear?’ I said. ‘Is this only about the lyre?’
‘What do you mean?’
I mimicked Jay’s folded-arms posture and icy stare. ‘What about the lyre-player that you mentioned?’
‘Could he have taken it?’ said Jay.
Mother spread her hands. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he could have.’
‘Who is he?’ I prompted.
‘I never knew his name.’
‘That’s going to make it pretty difficult to find him, then, isn’t it?’
‘Few people can play a lyre like that. It can’t be that hard to track him down.’
I felt like grabbing my mother and shaking her silly. ‘Mother. Please. Just tell us the whole story.’
Mother gave me a tight-lipped nope look.
‘Ves,’ said Jay. ‘I know this is a highly inappropriate question, but…’
‘But?’
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty—’ I stopped.
‘Thirty-one,’ said Mother. ‘And a bit.’
My mouth felt suddenly dry. ‘And how long ago was this wild party you’ve never forgotten?’
She smiled, very faintly. ‘Thirty-two years, or thereabouts.’
There followed one of those pauses people call pregnant. In this case, it was pregnant with an imminent explosion courtesy of me. ‘No,’ I said, backing away. ‘I know my father. His name is Richard Rosser and he’s a dragon photographer. Last known location somewhere in Croatia.’
‘It probably is Richard,’ said Mother.
‘Probably?’
‘I’ve never been certain. And that’s eaten away at me over the years.’
I said a few inarticulate things at considerable volume.
Jay, rather uncharacteristically, came my way and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. ‘Calm,’ he said. ‘Everything will be fine.’
I breathed a bit. Fine. Everything would be fine. ‘So I might be the daughter of Richard Rosser, absentee father extraordinaire and who could blame him considering I’m only probably his daughter, or my dad might actually be some kind of faerie lyre-player.’
‘Yeah. Also,’ said Mother.
‘Ohgod,’ I said.
‘I’m not totally sure he isn’t King Evelaern.’
If my previous explosion was colourful, the next one was still more interesting. I may have turned purple in the face. Mother even put up her hands to ward me off, like I might have hit her or something. That’s how livid I was. (No, of course I didn’t hit her).
Jay hung onto me as though I might levitate with pure fury otherwise. ‘Ves,’ he said, soothingly (he had to say it a few times before it registered with me). ‘Ves. He’s not King Evelaern. The king’s dead, remember? Everyone says so.’
Mother snorted. ‘And if everyone is saying something then it must be true.’
‘There has been way too much royalty in my life lately,’ I spat, with venom. ‘First sodding Baron Alban’s a sodding prince, then Torvaston the Second’s a runaway absentee monarch with a bad magick habit, and now I’m a faerie princess?’
‘You probably aren’t,’ said Mother.
‘Probably?!’
‘That’s what I’d like to find out. Wouldn’t you?’ She looked blandly at me, with that unshakeable calm of hers that I’ve always envied. If someone had given my mother this kind of news, she would have thought it over in silence, nodded and said, ‘Interesting.’
I tried it. ‘Interesting.’
‘Isn’t it?’
Jay said, ‘So this is why you really brought Ves in?’
‘Pretty much. Though the fact that she’s got those pipes is a highly convenient coincidence. Or then again, what if it isn’t?’
‘A coincidence?’
‘Right. Who’d that unicorn be more likely to give the King’s pipes to than his daughter?’
We all looked at the unicorn in question, who was unconcernedly dozing in the sun.
‘So you found out that I had those pipes,’ I said, more calmly. ‘Is that when you started this crazy mission to get back into the Yllanfalen kingdom?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. And why do we need Jay?’
‘Hey,’ said Jay.
I patted his arm. ‘No offence meant. I mean, my execrable parent made rather a point of my bringing our Waymaster along.’
‘We need Jay in case your maybe-father’s not here,’ said Mother. ‘It’s been decades. I’m hoping he’s still somewhere in these parts, but if he’s not, we’ll need a whirly wizard.’
‘Whirly wizard,’ Jay repeated. ‘I like it.’
Mother flashed him a swift grin. ‘Shall we get on, then?’ she said, briskly business-like.
I leaned on Jay for a second as every organ I owned sank into my boots. Then I straightened. ‘Fine, sure. Let’s go and turn the life of one Cordelia Vesper upside down.’
‘Mine, too,’ said Mother.
‘Fun for all the family,’ said Jay.
When the lady at the shop said theirs was a musical society, she really wasn’t kidding. Finding the lyre-player turned out to be not so much looking for a needle in a haystack as looking for a needle in a needlestack.
We went into every shop we saw, especially those with a musical bent, and asked after lyre musicians. Every single one furnished us with a long list. We asked after the moonsilver lyre, too, only to receive the same news we’d heard before: that lyre is lost. Gone. Missing for years, lost for decades.
Mother began asking about the party that lived so vividly in her memory, and the man who’d played the moonsilver lyre on that night.
Rather a mistake.
‘That must have been the Feast of Luirlan,’ everybody said — except for those who called it Anhaernyll’s Day, or Ellryndon, or something-or-other else. ‘Anyone can play the moonsilver lyre at the Feast of Luirlan.’
‘But nobody played it like the man I’m looking for,’ Mother insisted. ‘He was like… like a god.’
She won herself a nice selection of strange looks, but no real information. Not even when attempting to describe him. A tall, graceful man with pale skin and rich brown hair worn on the long side? Dressed in an embroidered tunic, with a blue jewel at his t
hroat? We saw at least half a dozen men fitting that approximate description inside of an hour.
‘This is hopeless,’ I said at last. ‘We could do this all week and get nowhere. Are you sure you don’t remember the man’s name, Mum?’
‘People weren’t bothering so much with details, that night.’
‘Right.’ I mentally brushed aside the images conjured of my mother, deep in dissipation. ‘You know, if he was secretly King Evelaern not being as dead as generally supposed, I feel like that’s a thing people would notice.’
‘There’s no one to beat the Faerie at glamour,’ said my mother. ‘He’d be keeping a low profile.’
‘Why?’ I retorted. ‘Because he got bored with being the ultimate lord of a faerie kingdom?’
‘Maybe he did,’ said Jay. In response to my look of enquiry, he added, ‘Alban doesn’t seem to be enjoying the idea very much, does he?’
‘You know Prince Alban?’ said Mother sharply.
‘Recent acquaintance. Anyway—’
My mother gave a long whistle. ‘You’re on the rise, my girl.’
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Jay, grimly.
‘Let’s shelve that topic for another time, shall we?’ I interposed. ‘One incredibly complicated personal problem at a time, if you please. Let’s get back to maybe-Dad. If we can’t find him by description, we’ll have to play detective.’
‘The lyre,’ Jay said.
‘Right. We have one missing artefact of improbably enormous power, and at least some reason to think that your erstwhile lover might know something about that. Therefore: if we find out what became of the lyre, maybe we’ll find the player, too.’
Mother looked sceptical, but she nodded. ‘Which means what?’
‘I knew all those Nancy Drew novels would come in handy someday.’
‘We’re hiring Nancy Drew? Cordelia, you do know she isn’t real?’
‘We’re going to find the lyre through detective work,’ I said, shooting Mother Dearest a look of supreme annoyance. ‘I’m Nancy Drew.’
Mother rolled her eyes.
‘You can be George.’
‘Remind me which adventure featured George losing a hand.’
‘Details.’
‘Don’t tell me I’m Ned.’ Jay took a step back.
I felt faintly injured at that. ‘You don’t have to play with us if you don’t want to.’ Then my brain caught up with the implications of that sentence. ‘Wait. You’ve read Nancy Drew?’
‘Who hasn’t?’
I beamed at him, all injury forgotten. ‘Forgiven.’
Jay brushed this aside. ‘All right, lady sleuth. Where do we start?’
‘Hm. Well. Since no one can agree as to when was the last time the lyre was played — and that’s hardly surprising if it was many years ago — then maybe we start with the last place it was known to occupy.’
‘The vault,’ said Jay.
‘The one which that nice lady at the music shop specifically discouraged us from bothering to enquire about.’
‘Significant?’
‘Could be. I mean, it seems like the best time to wander off with the lyre would be during one of those feast days, when it’s no longer under lock and key. But you heard what all those people said. Anyone can play the moonsilver lyre on days like those, and probably a lot did. You don’t think that would maybe be a bad time to try to take it? When everyone’s waiting their turn to play? If your turn came up and you promptly did a runner with the lyre, I think someone would notice.’
‘Fair point,’ said Jay. ‘So it could have been lifted from the vault after all.’
‘Most likely. No one’s been saying that a thief took it and ran, they’re just saying that it’s not in the vault anymore. So, I want to see that vault.’
‘Great.’ Jay subjected the square we were standing in to a brief, business-like survey. ‘Where is it?’
‘Really good question.’
8
Faerie being what it is, the Vault of Promise couldn’t be in some mere ordinary location. There’s no Central Bank of Goodies in the lands of the Yllanfalen, with lock boxes and safes; there isn’t even a secret room somewhere, complete with armed guards and unpronounceable passwords.
No, the Yllanfalen have an island in the middle of a lake. The island in question is called Lyllora Var, it’s literally about fifty feet across, and it’s made out of white rock laced with starry quartz. On this island is a bubble of light, and in that bubble of light is — or was — the moonsilver lyre.
So far, so lovely.
The catch with Lyllora Var? It isn’t there.
Neither is the lake.
Because this is Faerie, so there’s a magic fountain that usually isn’t there either. When it is, it’s under the old king’s palace. When it feels disposed, it is so obliging as to pour forth the waters of this wondrous lake, and when the lake’s restored then the island appears.
By the time we had got the entire story pieced together, I was no longer surprised that the Yllanfalen seemed so happy to share details of this super-secret vault. I mean, why not? It’s not like we were ever going to reach it.
‘Are we at all inclined to reconsider the idea that someone swiped the lyre from this vault?’ I said, as we turned away from our latest interrogee. The woman in question had outright sneered at us. Sneered! I judged we were not the only hopeful treasure-hunters to show up with searching questions about this lyre. She, too, had trotted out the same line about the lyre’s being missing.
‘No,’ said Jay. ‘They retrieve the thing every festival, remember? Or did, before it vanished. So it’s achievable.’
‘Wait,’ called the woman upon whom I had just resolutely turned my back.
I turned around.
Her gaze, though, was not fixed upon me. She was looking at Addie, who had wandered off for a large part of the afternoon, and had now wandered back. ‘That unicorn,’ she said. ‘Where did you…?’
Having grown tired of the sneering lady already, I merely waved my pipes by way of response.
‘Let me see those,’ she snapped.
‘No—’ I began.
‘Ves,’ Jay said, apparently having anticipated this response. ‘She may have something useful to tell us.’
I handed them over with great reluctance, and stood vigilant, in case she should make a break for the hills with my pipes in hand.
She did not, however. She inspected them most closely, her young face intent, and ran her fingers several times over the silver. Then she put them to her lips, and played a ditty of a tune I’d never heard before.
My lovely Adeline paused in the act of nibbling grass by the roadside, and lifted her head. She stared at the woman who’d moved in on my perfect pipes, and the woman, damn her, stared back.
If I was expecting some explanation as to what that was all about, I was out of luck. The woman merely handed my pipes back to me, her face unreadable, and said: ‘Why are you interested in the moonsilver lyre?’
‘We’re from the Society for the Preservation of Magickal Heritage,’ I rattled off, feeling obscurely annoyed. ‘It’s our job to research ancient artefacts.’
‘Research?’ she said. ‘Why this one?’
‘It’s also our job to rescue ancient artefacts,’ said Jay.
‘So you came to “rescue” the lyre,’ she said, her mouth curving satirically. ‘Did you know it was missing before you arrived?’
‘It’s my fault,’ said Mother. ‘I brought them here. I’ve seen the lyre before, you see, and I wanted to see it again.’
‘Why?’
‘Research.’
The woman looked from me to Jay to Mother, exasperated. ‘Do you even have any idea what you are trying to accomplish?’
‘Nope,’ I muttered.
Jay elbowed me. ‘Look, we’d like to get the lyre back for you,’ he said. ‘It’s our job. We’re hoping to begin at the vault, find out what happened there.’
He received a
strange look in response. ‘What if it does not wish to return?’
‘Wish?’ faltered Jay. ‘It has wishes?’
‘It has… a destiny,’ she said, spectacularly unhelpful. ‘The same as you or I.’
‘Was its destiny to be purloined by a thief?’
‘Is that what happened?’ Her head tilted.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jay flatly. ‘Is it?’
The woman looked dreamily up at the sky, probably preparing another fatuously mystical statement for our benefit.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ I said. ‘By my unicorn’s silky nose hairs, will you help us or not?’
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘For the sake of Ylariane, and those pipes.’
‘Who or what is Ylariane?’
Adeline whickered, and bumped my elbow with her nose.
‘…Oh.’
The woman’s sardonic smile was back. ‘I will need your sworn word,’ she said, gravely. ‘If you find the lyre, you will return it to the Yllanfalen.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘The Society always repatriates artefacts, wherever possible.’
‘Very good. You will be held to that.’ There was a shiver of something in her voice as she spoke, something rather dark. It occurred to me that, however obliging the Yllanfalen appeared to be about answering our questions (for the most part), they would not be easy to fool, or to betray.
Fortunately, we had no plans to do either. Did we? I eyed my mother with momentary misgivings, for she was wearing an expression of mild congeniality which seemed at odds with her character.
I’d have to keep a close eye on her.
We had interrupted the Yllanfalen woman in the middle of shopping, I’d judged from the quantity of small parcels tucked into a willow basket she carried. She now lifted the basket as though placing it onto a shelf — whereupon it disappeared. Then she turned to us with a nod, dusted off her hands, and said: ‘We’ll be needing a few of Ylariane’s friends, I imagine?’
‘You are going with us?’ said Mother.
‘Did you want a guide to the lake, or not?’ answered the woman with faint irritation.
Mother held up her hands. ‘Actually, we do.’
‘Then first we must return to the palace. The unicorns?’
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