by Emma Newman
“Yeah,” Sam said, glaring at Max. “Is he your boss too?”
“Yes,” Max replied. “We think you might be a witness, but you can’t tell us what you saw because something has been done to you.”
“Maximilian!” The boss held up his finger. “No more, I want my students to work this out for themselves. But first…”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a magnifying glass unlike any Sam had ever seen before. The large circular lens was held in an ornate brass frame, engraved and decorated elaborately. He moved closer, holding it up towards Sam.
“I’m not going to stay here and be treated like a bloody lab rat! You lot are mental, I’m off!”
He headed for the hall but something stepped in the doorway that looked disturbingly like a big gargoyle. “Sorry, mate, can’t let you go anywhere.”
He yelled and jumped back. “What fuckery is this?”
“Hardly subtle,” the boss said to Max, as if he had something to do with it.
The detective just shrugged. “I didn’t tell it to do that.”
“Just stand still, there’s a good chap,” the boss said.
“Bugger off!” Sam said, tripping over the edge of the rug in his fluster.
“Sam,” Petra said, setting her drink down and coming over to him. “We’re so sorry to upset you like this, we don’t often have guests like you.”
“What, normal?”
She smiled. “In a manner of speaking.” She touched his arm and he thought of her stockings again. Sometimes he hated his brain. “If you could just bear with us for a few minutes. Mr Ekstrand is going to see if something has been done to you, to stop you talking about what happened the other night.”
“I don’t give a rat’s arse about what happened.”
“But a man is missing, Sam. He might have been murdered and you’re the only one who might’ve seen something.” Her voice was so soft, so soothing he almost forgot about the boss and the other crazies. “It won’t take long, we need you to be brave. Can you do that for us? For me?”
Somewhere at the back of his mind he knew she was playing him, but he found himself capitulating all the same.
She nodded to her boss who came closer and inspected him with the magnifying glass, slowly and methodically looking at every square inch of his head and shoulders and then down his arms. He paused over the wedding ring. “Very interesting,” he muttered, and then carried on. When he was finished, he stood back and peered at Sam in the same way a man might peer at an exotic insect kept in a glass tank. “Tell me about the night you lost your wallet.”
Sam looked over at the detective, expecting him to chip in, but the ugly man just nodded to him.
“I went to the pub on the way home from work and half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle.” He squeezed his eyes shut, certain that wasn’t what he meant to say. “No, hang on, he had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of the – oh, sod it!”
The boss turned and looked at the group that had followed the detective in, all of whom had pencils poised and were shuffling closer. “What could cause that sort of behaviour?”
“A Charm, sir!” a young and gangling lad said eagerly.
“Of course, which one?”
“A Fool’s Charm sir!”
“Good, good. What else?”
“But that’s the most likely, sir,” said another, who was sweating profusely.
“A good sorcer–”
Petra coughed loudly, distracting him. He glanced at Sam and frowned, nodding to himself.
“Err, it’s always better to be thorough. Other lines of enquiry could be…?”
The first shoved his hand in the air. “May I ask the subject a question, sir?”
“Subject?” Sam said, offended, but none of them seemed to notice.
“By all means, yes, you may ask,” the boss replied.
“Did you sustain any injuries on the night in question?”
“I had a bump on my head when I woke up the next morning.”
“Ooh!” The eager one bounced on his toes. “It could just be a head injury, sir!”
“Interesting point, good. How do we rule that out?”
They stood chewing the ends of their pencils for a few moments. “Ask him how many fingers you’re holding up?” one at the back said hopefully, earning an irritated groan from their teacher.
“Perhaps I can offer a suggestion?” Petra said, and they all looked at her. “We need to know where the bump is.”
“It’s here,” Sam said, brushing the back of his head. He wondered whether to make a dash for the window.
“That disproves the head injury theory,” she said. “The visual cortex is at the back of the brain so none of the language centres would be affected, and besides, his symptom only presents when he tries to recall the event. It’s not Tourette’s either,” she added as the sweaty one took another breath. “That’s completely different.”
“You are just a librarian, right?” Sam asked.
“I do actually read some of the books too.”
“Any other possibilities?” the boss said. “I can think of one and whoever names it may read a book in my library. As long as you don’t remove it. And you can’t touch any on the shelves down the lefthand wall. And not any books that begin with P, S or W.” When no one said anything he sighed. “Are we certain he is actually speaking gibberish?”
“Oh!” Eagerboy, as Sam now thought of him, leapt in the air. “It could be a variant of an Apollo’s Curse sir! He might be speaking the truth in his mind, but the curse may be acting on everyone around him so he can’t be believed.”
The suggestion was met with a nod from his teacher and then a variety of congratulatory grunts and pats on the back from his bizarre peers.
“Yes, that’s the only other possibility. But there is an obvious way to disprove this. What is it?” He didn’t give them as long that time. “Because the Arbiter heard the gobbledegook too, and as you all know, Arbiters are immune to–”
Petra coughed again.
“…immune to coughs and colds,” the man said, eliciting a number of confused expressions.
“Is this some kind of school?” Sam asked. “Will someone just please tell me what the arse is going on here?”
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, I think,” Petra said, rubbing his arm gently. “Weren’t you at all worried that you couldn’t remember that night?”
“Well, I was, but then my mate had just about convinced me it was cause I’d been on a bender.”
“Do they all talk like him in Mundanus?” the boss asked the detective, who nodded. “Well, I’m confident it’s a Fool’s Charm, though with the way he talks it’s hard to tell when he’s talking about that night or just spouting rubbish.”
“Oi!”
“So, putting this hypothesis together with the fact that he was in the vicinity of a serious incident involving foul play, I’m happy to press on with treating him as a victim of the Fool’s Charm. Now, we also have reason to believe that the individuals involved are actually…” He glanced at Petra who was shaking her head at him. “Ah. Yes, that they are of the highest status amongst the criminal fraternity who live on the other side of the…divide, so to speak.” He winked at his students theatrically.
“Do you mean one of the Fae lords, sir?” Eagerboy asked and Petra tutted.
“Did he just say–”
“Shush,” Petra said to Sam, patting his arm again.
“That being said, I think there’s only one option. We need to dislocate his soul and then interrogate him whilst we can. As you all know, their Charms only work on the soul and–”
“Now wait just a cocking moment!” Sam interjected. “Look, Mr…Ekhart?”
“Ekstrand. Mr Ekstrand.”
“Look, Mr Ekstrand, I haven’t got a scooby what you lot are on about, but when people start talking about dislocating souls, it puts the shits up me. That just doesn’t sound natural.�
�
Ekstrand took a moment to reply, as if he was still working out what he’d said. “Some very naughty people,” he began, in his talking-to-a-child voice, “have done something very bad to your head. They are very powerful naughty people, so we have to do something very serious to you to get the information we need.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m some sort of chimp, what exactly do you want to do?”
“It would kill him,” Max said. “He’s too old, the body would die after dislocation.”
“What the–”
Petra put a finger to his lips. “Sir, there’s also the wedding ring. You made a remark when you saw it through your glass.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks and flapdoodles!” Ekstrand pounded his temples with the palms of his hands. “He’s protected by Lord Iron. Damnation.”
“Lord who?”
“Just be quiet,” Ekstrand snapped, now pacing. “This is disastrous. Options.”
“We…we could try hypnosis,” one of the students called out.
“Rubbish. Next!”
“We could brainwash him into thinking it’s a different day of the week,” Eagerboy said, “so that when he tries to remember, the Charm is tricked into disguising the wrong day.”
Ekstrand paused with one foot still in the air. “Interesting, but no, it assumes the Charm is only tied to time, and not context. Rubbish, you can’t go in my library now, you’re clearly not intelligent enough.”
“There’s only one option sir,” Max said. “One of them has to unravel the Charm.”
“And how on earth could we make that happen?”
“I think it’s possible,” Max said, as the gargoyle nodded in the doorway.
“Oh, now wait a minute, I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” Sam said, reaching the only conclusion that made sense. “How do I wake myself up?”
“You’re not dreaming, Sam,” Petra whispered.
“Lady Lavender will be very motivated to have the Master of Ceremonies found, otherwise she’ll lose a huge amount of influence in Aquae Sulis,” Max said. “We could approach the Censor, ask her to help.”
“He would have to be taken into Exilium,” Ekstrand muttered, looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye. “This is an appalling breach.”
“If we want that information, and Lavandula agrees to help, we have to bring him in or kill him afterwards.” Max was so matter-of-fact that Sam believed he would kill him then and there if it served their purpose.
“We bring him in,” Petra said, her hand tightening on his arm. “It isn’t his fault he was there. Look at him. He’s harmless.”
Sam tried his best to look as harmless as possible, disturbed by what he’d heard. He hoped their attention would shift and he’d be able to make a run for it.
“He’s clearly an idiot,” Ekstrand said.
“Hey! Stop talking about me like I’m not even here!”
“He knows about computers,” Petra said and Ekstrand narrowed his eyes at him.
“Really?”
“He speaks their language,” Petra added.
“Is this true?”
“Yeah.”
“And he’s protected, as you said,” Petra said. “We can’t kill him.”
“We can if there’s a breach involved, Lord Iron would understand,” Max said.
“Would he?” Petra raised an eyebrow. “Do we want to take the risk?”
“No,” Ekstrand concluded. “I have enough to worry about. Max, go to the Censor first thing in the morning and make it clear to her that if she doesn’t secure help from her patron, we may never find her brother. All of you,” he looked at the students, “need to write up this evening’s investigation and make a list of the questions you may want to ask the subject about life in Mundanus. Dismissed.”
They all bowed and left, once the gargoyle stepped aside.
“And Petra–” Mr Ekstrand stroked his chin, looking at Sam. “Ask Axon to find our subject a secure room for the night.”
“I want to go home,” Sam protested.
“That’s out of the question, I’m afraid,” Ekstrand said. “You’re too valuable to send back into Mundanus. You didn’t have anything important to do tonight, did you?”
Sam was too tired and drunk to think of anything quickly enough. “Not exactly.” At least with Leanne being away for the night she wouldn’t freak out. Then he wondered if that was actually a bad thing. “What’s Mundanus anyway?”
Petra steered him towards the door. “We’ll talk about that another time. You need to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
22
Will knocked on the door of his father’s study, not looking forward to the conversation he was about to have. At the call he entered to find his father studying what looked like a property contract. A frown had taken residence and looked like it was settled in for the evening.
“I thought you would have left by now,” he said, setting the paper down, directing the frown at his son instead. “It is the soirée at the Peonias’ tonight, isn’t it?”
“I need to speak to you about something before I go.” Will closed the door behind him. “I’ll pass on your apologies.”
“I’ve already sent a note. Sit down, Will, something is clearly troubling you.”
Will did as he was invited. “Father…I need to borrow your purity opal.”
The frown was swept away by a look of surprise. “How in the worlds did you know about that?”
Will smirked. “A girl in the French Court told me about it. She said all the heads of families have one.”
Father pursed his lips. “You know what my next question is.”
Will nodded. “It is for Catherine Papaver. I’ve heard a rumour and whilst I don’t trust the source, I felt it prudent to have all the facts.”
“A rumour that precipitates such a request is serious indeed, considering the contracts have already been signed.”
“That’s why I want to be thorough, Father.”
“Who’s the source of this rumour?”
“The Gallica-Rosa.”
“Not trustworthy.”
“Even unreliable sources can cause trouble.”
Father nodded and unlocked the top drawer of his desk. “I’m sure I don’t need to emphasise how discreet you must be. Don’t let another soul see you use this.”
Will nodded and took the small velvet pouch. “How do I use it?”
“Press it directly against her skin and hold it there for a few seconds. If it turns black…the rumour is true.”
Will tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Thank you, Father, I assure you I will be careful.”
The Peonias lived in a large house but not in one of the fashionable streets of Aquae Sulis. Nevertheless, their soirée was the place to be that evening; Will and Imogen’s carriage had to wait for a space to clear before they could pull up.
“We wouldn’t have had to wait if you hadn’t taken so long,” she muttered at him.
“But now we can be fashionably late,” he said, and helped her out.
He spotted the Papavers as soon as they entered one of the reception rooms. Thomas and his wife Lucy were chatting with Oliver’s parents whilst Catherine stood near the punch bowl in a world of her own. Will suppressed a surge of irritation. She should have been engaged in the conversation too, but instead she clearly thought herself above it all. When they married – if they married – that would have to change.
She was dressed very conservatively again, the dress far higher in the neckline than everyone else’s. He wondered what her mother was thinking, instructing the maid to dress her so. Did they not care about whether she was fashionably attired now that she’d been promised to him and no longer needed to impress anyone?
Once he had shaken hands with Oliver and kissed his sister’s hand, form dictated that he greet his fiancée before anyone else. Will kept it brief, bowing and kissing her hand, noting her stilted movements even in such a simple interaction. He hoped the opal woul
d turn black and provide a decent reason to break the engagement. Then he remembered what his father had said about needing the alliance to be a success and suppressed his selfish desires.
Free of his initial obligation he headed for the card room, planning to while away some of the evening over hazard and poker, knowing that would remove the pressure to stay near Catherine. He planned to draw her away later on, once people had filled their bellies with punch and stopped watching out for who was there and who was not.
On the way he had brief conversations, maintaining a couple of running jokes with his peers and generally doing his best to make a good impression. The air in the hallway was thick with perfume and the heat of the social throng. He wondered whether the attendance was high because of the sponsorship of the Rosa. Everyone wanted to know the story behind it.
“Good evening, Mr Reticulata-Iris.”
He turned at the woman’s voice. It was a Rosa from the other line, the Alba who’d managed to snare the Indian princess. He bowed and kissed her hand as he tried to remember her name. Her gloves smelt of rose petals. “Miss Alba-Rosa,” he said, smiling. “What a pleasure to see you.”
“And you, Mr Iris. I was commenting to my brother yesterday that it was such a shame I didn’t get a chance to dance with you at the opening ball.”
“I’m sure I can correct that oversight at the next one.”
“I would like that very much. You dance a fine waltz. Your fiancée is very lucky.”
He smiled. “I was on my way to play cards.”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed and pulled him across the hallway to stand next to her against the wall, so they could speak without blocking the way. He was astounded by the gesture, but took care not to show it. She leant closer, the scent of roses floating up from the décolletage at which he was studiously not staring. “I understand it would be a faux pas for me to join you.”
“At cards?”
“Yes. I’ve heard it’s not the done thing for ladies to play at the same tables as the gentlemen, is that right?”
It had never occurred to him for it to be otherwise. “Absolutely,” he replied. “It would not be proper for a gentleman to win a hand and take a lady’s money.”
