by Mark Hayden
It sounded like a piece of Eastern nonsense, and it was hard to take seriously. ‘What about me?’
Again, the sad headshake. ‘You have committed to no god, Tom. Who knows what will happen to your atman after you die.’
Oh. That was a stumper. His mind slid away from that thought and focused on something he knew better: the slippery nature of Conrad Clarke. ‘What if Conrad breaks his promise?’
‘Do you have a family motto, Tom? Your father is Lord Throckton, so there must be a coat of arms or something.’
There was. ‘We don’t talk about it.’
‘Ooh! Tell me more, Tom. Look on this as a chance to get to know each other properly.’ She spoke like she was flirting with him, and she even patted her knee while she said it. When she’d been under arrest last year, she’d barely given anything away, using her long hair as a curtain to shut out the world. Now she’d pulled back the curtain, and was it the original, pre-assault Mina Desai coming out, or had she become someone new entirely?
She was right about one thing, though. There wasn’t a lot else to do. ‘It’s my Great Grandfather’s fault. We call him The Original, because he was the first Thomas Morton. I should have been called Alex, but that’s a story for later, when we get really bored. The Original married a very wealthy woman, so he took as his motto Spurn not the Distaff.’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘Don’t ignore your women.’
‘Aah. A wise man. Well, Conrad’s motto is A Clarke’s Word is Binding. He can’t break his word. Completely and utterly.’ She smiled. ‘One of the side effects is that he rarely makes promises.’
‘I see. So he might sacrifice his life for me but not you?’
She sighed. ‘I’m afraid so, yes. Hopefully it won’t come to that.’
Clarke had once risked his own life to do something that Tom couldn’t do for himself; something that he shouldn’t even have wanted, but Clarke had done it, and that sort-of obligation was one of the reasons he hadn’t blocked Clarke’s number and forgotten about him. The thought of Clarke dying for him, or worse still, of saving him, was one Tom couldn’t bear, so he went back to families. ‘Do they go in for mottoes in India?’
‘We do. The literal translation is: The Wise Tiger Fears the Shepherd. That’s what Desai means. Shepherd. Conrad modernised for me: No one pushes a Desai. As the Octet will discover.’
Was it a movement of air? A noise he didn’t register consciously? A newly discovered magickal sixth sense? Whatever the reason, Tom suddenly knew that they were being watched by someone on top of the bales of straw. Not someone. The watcher was a creature, because what farm has flip-flops lying around in October? A farm with a pack of werewolves living on it, that’s what.
He turned his head to where the watcher was lurking but didn’t look up. ‘Hi there. I won’t tell anyone you’re in here. I promise. You can come down and say hello if you want.’
There was a rustle of straw and the sound of light feet dropping on to the floor behind the wall of bales. Tom and Mina listened for a few seconds. ‘He or she will be back,’ said Tom. He mouthed the word Mannwolves. Mina’s eyebrows shot up, then she nodded.
‘I’m glad you spotted him or her,’ she said. ‘And even gladder they’ve gone. I need to use my bucket.’
The message came through just before we got back to Middlebarrow Haven: We’ll release them at dawn tomorrow provided you stay away. Don’t try to find us or contact us. At the first sign of you or your friends coming near us, the hostages die and we vanish. You know we mean it.
That was pretty clear. I sighed and spent the last ten minutes of the journey explaining reincarnation to Lucy and what it meant for Mina. And the problem that Tom had just given me.
‘Do you believe what they’re saying?’ she asked.
‘I do. Supposing we look for them and fail: they’ll release Mina because they’ve got what they wanted, and they’ll know I wouldn’t attack them. Not directly.’
‘But that means they’ll have got away with everything. Including at least two murders and two abductions.’ She shook her head. ‘No, Conrad. Tom wouldn’t want you to do that.’
‘How can you be sure you know what he wants?’
‘Because someone he didn’t like was once kidnapped. Tom followed them and put himself in harm’s way. That’s the standard he sets.’
A smile twitched its way on to my lips. ‘Are you saying that I don’t like Tom?’
She twisted some of her curly hair round her fingers and gave a very Italian shrug: stylish and asymmetrical. It was better than a Spanish shrug, but not quite as good as the French, and it was all the answer I was going to get.
‘Have you got any hidden talents, Lucy?’
‘Nope. Well, first aid, I suppose.’
‘Don’t knock it.’
‘Let’s hope it won’t be necessary.’
I didn’t disillusion her.
Lloyd was the first to check in, and did so by asking me to meet him at the White Horse. I told him I’d be ten minutes and that I’d see him outside. I took Scout and enjoyed stretching my legs. Real autumn was in the air, with sunshine and a lazy warmth that would turn into a cold night.
Lloyd wasn’t alone at the table. I wasn’t surprised to see young Albie, but I was very surprised to see Lloyd’s uncle. When I’d first met the clan, Wesley Flint had been chief. He’d made some very bad decisions, and had also been duped by a woman. He was lucky to have survived the turmoil. What under the earth (as they say), was he doing here?
There was a pot of coffee in the middle of the table. Lloyd poured me a cup, using his left hand as naturally as I use mine, then jerked his head towards another table, further away. On the way over, he asked if there was news.
I told him about the message, and he nodded thoughtfully. ‘And you’m going ahead with this?’
‘I am.’
I left it there because he clearly had something to say before he signed up to the mission.
‘If it was just me on this, I wouldn’t hesitate,’ he said, ‘but we need more, and I can’t ask Albie to join in to rescue Mina and a policeman, no matter how much I like Tom Morton.’
‘I understand. What about Wesley?’
‘I’ll come to that. If we break the Octet before the consecration, I want the land.’
Of course. That’s why Wesley was here. ‘Can you take over another clan’s First Mine like that?’
‘No. Totally forbidden. Wouldn’t work, either, but until the consecration, it isn’t a First Mine, it’s just a hole in the ground.’
‘Where are your other five potential clansmen?’
‘On their way. They won’t be here until much too late.’
I offered my hand. ‘As Deputy Constable and Guardian of the North, I offer you the spoils of war.’
He shook and said, ‘So who else is in on this? Have you called up the girls from Clerkswell?’
We walked back to the other Flints. ‘Too risky. They really would be in serious trouble if they joined in on this. I’ve gone outside the King’s Watch.’
‘Why? Who?’
‘How would you find the target, Lloyd?’
He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Dunno.’
‘Let’s go to the Haven, and I’ll explain.’
Tom heard the rustling again in the middle of the afternoon, followed by a more serious sound of metal bending. It only lasted half a second, then one of those magickal silences descended. He could tell that partly because Mina looked at her left arm, where the scar was, just hidden by the sleeve of her kurti.
They were being watched from the top of the bales. A child. No, a cub. Like young humans everywhere, one of the cubs had found a way into the barn, and now the adults had followed, bending back the steel sheets to let their larger bodies through. The adults didn’t climb on the bales, they walked round and stood at the end of the corridor.
There were two of them, and they looked very young, no more than sixteen or seventeen in human
years. They were both wearing kilts and flip-flops below the waist, with a rugby shirt for the male and a white smock for the female. The tartan in the kilts, pale purple and light green, looked distinctive, and wasn’t one of the obvious chain-store patterns. Mackenzie tartan, maybe? The boy was full-on ginger, cut to a tight fuzz, while the girl’s jet black mane tumbled down her back. They stood and stared, as if what they were seeing were as incredible to them as the existence of Mannwolves was to Tom.
‘Namaste,’ said Mina, pressing her hands together. ‘Please excuse the smell.’
‘Who’re yoo?’ said the boy, his Highland Scottish accent like the wind whispering over the heather. ‘And what’re yee doing here?’
Mina bowed again. ‘I am Mina Desai, the Peculier Auditor and also the betrothed of the Dragonslayer, Lord Guardian of the North.’
‘No way,’ said the boy to the girl. ‘It cannae be.’ He looked up. ‘And who’re yoo?’
Tom took his cue from Mina. She clearly thought that it was important to establish their identity, and he had a clue as to why that might be, given that the Mannwolves were sneaking into the barn and had no idea who they were. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Morton, mundane police. Whom do I have the honour of addressing?’ Get me, he thought, I haven’t spoken like that since I gave up being a lawyer.
The girl snickered, and looked even younger; the boy’s pale skin probably disguised his true age. He frowned, a deep frown that Tom knew well. It was the frown of a rookie police constable who found himself at the centre of a major incident. ‘Wha’s goon on? Why’re you here?’
Tom lifted his chains and tried to remember the terminology. ‘We are hostages. Your Protectors are breaking the King’s Peace, and the King’s Watch are coming. So are others, with Quicksilver weapons.’
The girl clutched his arm and whispered something in his ear, then spoke aloud. ‘You know who we are?’ Her accent was Irish, with a lilt that marked her as coming from a different place to Colleen.
‘Yesterday we visited the Darkwood Pack,’ said Tom.
‘No, no, no,’ said the girl. ‘Mistress promised we’d be kept out of all their affairs. We need to go.’
‘Go where? I’m not leaving without ma boy,’ said the lad.
‘They’ll come for us next. We need to talk to Oma.’
She more or less dragged him away, and neither of them looked back. When they were behind the bales, the girl hissed, ‘Fiona, get your arse down here now!’
Mina waited a beat, then finally lost patience with her hair. She attacked the hem of her kurti with her teeth until it ripped, then tore off a strip. She tied back her hair as best she could and looked up. ‘Why did you go in heavy, Tom? You must have had a reason.’
‘They didn’t know we were here. The Darkwood Pack fought to protect their own, but they’re like, I don’t know, they’re so used to being kept. Like a pack of dogs. Or slaves.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘And the adults came to see for themselves, once the little girl had told them we were here.’
‘Yes. Do you remember what Conrad said about their status in England? They’ve not been here long, I don’t think. That girl, the Irish Mannwolf, she talked about their affairs, meaning the Gnomes. Conrad said that the Octet had help, and I think that a Fae noble has loaned them a small pack of Mannwolves.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘You tell me, Mina. I’ve only been in the world of magick for twenty-four hours.’
She mulled it over. ‘You’re trying to make them think they’re in danger.’
‘Precisely. I want them to think of the King’s Watch as a potential saviour, not a deadly enemy.’
‘Because their so-called Protectors might not be anything of the kind.’
‘That’s it. Who’s Oma?’ he asked
‘Grandmother. Those poor children must be the King and Queen, with Oma as the elder. Do you think they’re holding the boy’s cub as a hostage?’
‘Sounds like it.’
Tom sat back down again, as did Mina. She also wrapped her blanket round herself and shivered. Tom looked at his handcuffs, specifically at the way they stopped him taking his coat off and offering it to her.
‘Where were we?’ said Mina.
‘You were telling me what makes Gujarati cooking different.’
The third part of the plan descended from the sky in the middle of the afternoon and landed in a meadow behind the Haven.
‘Who chose that colour?’ said Lloyd. ‘It’s ’orrible.’
‘It is rather striking,’ said Lucy.
‘And noisy,’ added Evie.
‘It’s known as the Smurf,’ I said. ‘For obvious reasons.’
The Mowbray family helicopter was painted Mowbray blue, which is the sort of thing you do when you’re the second biggest landowner in Cornwall (after the Prince of Wales). One of the passengers crouched very low when he got out, which is what you do when you’re very tall, and when I say someone’s very tall, most people call them giants.
Chris Kelly, Earthmaster of Salomon’s House, had two bags with him, one full of magickal apparatus and the other full dirty washing (I presume). The other passenger, his apprentice Kenver Mowbray, had three bags. When you’re the apprentice, you always have to carry the extra bags.
We shook hands, and I made brief introductions, then said, ‘Excuse me while I do a handover with the pilot.’
The chopper had flown up from Cornwall to Lincolnshire to collect Chris and Kenver, then over to Cheshire (with a brief refuelling stop). No wonder the charter pilot looked bug eyed. The Smurf was behaving himself, and all was good, so I took the keys and pointed at Lucy, now resplendent in Versace or whatever it was that she’d picked up. Shall we just say that although it was the right size, the dress had been designed for someone a lot taller and less curvy. At least her trainers fitted properly, even if they did clash. Or so I’m told. Lucy had forbidden photographs, so I couldn’t get a second opinion.
‘Lucy will give you a lift into Chester,’ I said. ‘And someone will pick you up in the morning.’
‘Thanks. What’s my accommodation allowance?’
‘Whatever you want, within reason. Don’t overdo the wine, though.’
He looked at my uniform and nodded. ‘Understood. See you tomorrow.’
They left, and I asked Evie to take everyone through the Wards except Chris. This conversation needed to be private.
‘What’s going on, Conrad?’
Chris Kelly is now Britain’s top Geomancer. The previous holder of that honour had been Kenver Mowbray’s father, until he was murdered. Who knows, perhaps Kenver will be as good one day. My first question had nothing to do with Geomancy.
‘How’s Tammy and the girls?’
‘The girls are fine. Growing by the day. Tammy is … Well, I hear she’s fine, too. We haven’t spoken for a while. She doesn’t believe I’ve forgiven her.’
I heard Saffron’s salacious tone in my head You’ve met the bodysnatcher! Tamsin Kelly, going by physical body, had once been someone else, and Chris’s then wife had taken over that body. It’s a difficult story, made worse by the fact that Tammy lied about the circumstances, and it had been me who uncovered the truth. Families, eh?
‘Sorry to hear that, Chris. Perhaps if we can rescue Mina, she might put in a good word.’
His eyes, always slightly prominent, bulged right out. ‘Rescue her? What’s happened?’
I took him to Nimue’s spring and told him the story while Scout chased after something. Rabbits, probably. Mad dog. I had to call him back twice.
At the end of my story, Chris got straight to the point. ‘How in the name of Albion are you going to find them? They could be anywhere!’
‘How good are you, Chris? How low would I have to fly for you to detect a new spur off one of the Ley lines?’
He looked at the silent form of the Smurf. ‘How low can you fly?’
‘With Kenver spotting for me up front, as low as you want. Once we
find the spur, we’ll gain height and follow it. Lloyd has a good idea what to look for.’
‘Won’t they hear us coming? Or sense the magick?’
‘I haven’t told you the tricky part yet. The Gnomes will lock themselves into the new mine at dusk. We’ll have to do some of the flying at night.’
‘Are you mad? No, don’t answer that question. I’ve heard the stories.’
We walked back to the Haven while Chris mused on what I’d suggested. ‘So let’s get this straight,’ he said. ‘We have to identify the site of a new First Mine, then carry out an assault on a group of desperate Gnomish wives who are holding hostages. And then we have to attack the mine.’
‘That’s right. I’ve got a plan for the mine, though.’
‘That’s so reassuring, Conrad.’
I ignored the sarcasm. ‘Good. Lucy will be back from Chester in ten minutes, then it’s time for tea.’
‘Now I know you’re joking. You’re not going to stop for tea, are you?’
I felt the Wards of Middlebarrow Haven pressing against me. ‘We need to eat, and I didn’t think it would go down well if I called it a Last Supper. Got to keep morale up and all that.’
25 — Armed Race
Mina curled up in her blanket and went to sleep about four o’clock, and Tom gave thanks yet again that they hadn’t taken his watch off him. When Mina was flat out, he tested the limit of his chains. She’d already told him about Gnomish metalwork and magick, and that not even Houdini could get out of these handcuffs.
If he stretched and twisted and extended his leg, he might, just might be able to touch toes with Mina if she were doing the same thing. So not a lot of use in other words. He had more joy getting to the straw bales, and pressed his foot against the stack. Useless. He couldn’t topple that stack on someone the other side to save his life. Or Mina’s.
