by Mike Shevdon
I glanced at the door. In the doorway, out of sight of Angela, Fionh stood listening. Angela saw me look and her face fell.
"Fionh," I said. "Fancy seeing you here."
"You're not supposed to be here," Fionh said.
"I think I gathered that from the way it was concealed," I said.
"Garvin wants to see you," she said.
"How convenient."
"Now," she insisted.
"And if I leave, what are you going to do?"
"My job," said Fionh.
"Promise me you won't harm Angela."
She reached in and grabbed my sleeve, tugging me out of the room. I caught a glance of Angela's mouthing the words, help me, as I was pulled out and the door closed. Fionh placed her hand on the door and I felt the glamour creep back into the passage.
"You've got her well hidden."
Fionh said nothing but walked away and then waited for me to follow.
"It's not like she's a danger to anyone, is it? I mean, what's she done that's so terrible?"
"You're asking the wrong question," she said.
"Why?"
"You should be asking yourself how much patience Garvin has and looking to your own position. You're not here to question the wisdom of the courts, Niall. That's not your role."
"Oh, and who is then?"
"The courts are the final arbiters. That's rather the point."
"Maybe it's time things changed," I told her.
"That's not for you to decide." She led the way downstairs to where Garvin waited.
Garvin was not taking this well. "Tell me again why you think you have the authority to overrule the High Courts of the Feyre."
"That's not what I said," I replied.
"You told Fionh that someone should challenge their authority with the clear implication that the person making that challenge should be you."
"You're putting words in my mouth."
"No, Niall. You're talking treason. Let's not beat around the bush here. As a Warder you serve the courts, not the other way around. The Lords and Ladies do not need your permission, or your consent, or even your knowledge. As far as the Feyre are concerned they are the final and only court. End of story."
"But that's the point, don't you see? The courts are the beall and end-all for the Feyre, but these people aren't fey, not completely. They're part human – all of them grew up in human society. They have no knowledge of fey culture or fey rules, and how would they? This is all as new to them as it was to me."
"This is not about you, Niall. Don't make it personal."
"It is personal. You sent me after these people. That makes me responsible for them. I can't stand by and watch you execute them!"
"Who says they're being executed?"
"Are you guaranteeing they won't be?"
"If they are accepted into the courts then they'll be able to live peacefully for as long as they survive."
"If? You said if."
"It isn't up to me."
"That's what I'm talking about. Teoth told Angela that her power wasn't good enough, that she was insufficiently… endowed. So now what?"
"She awaits the courts pleasure. That's not unusual."
"For how long?"
"For as long as it takes to decide. I expect Teoth is trying to work something out for her. He's not a barbarian. He'll try and accommodate her." There was a hint of dissembling in that sentence and Garvin knew I could hear it. "Either way it is not, I repeat, not, up to you. No one stands between the Warders and the justice of the courts and survives. You do not want to test that."
"So now you're threatening me?"
"I'm not threatening anyone. You're making a huge assumption that Angela will be rejected based on what? Gut feeling? Hearsay?"
"But if she is rejected she will be… what's your word for it? Terminated? Disposed of?"
"She may be allowed to return home."
"Why can't she do that now? She can wait at home as easily as she can wait in that room up there," I suggested.
"Teoth asked for her to await the court's decision. That's normal, and hardly cause for this kind of hysteria."
"I would remind you that her life is at stake. That's hardly hysteria."
"We put our lives at stake every time we act. Life is risk. It's no different from what we do every week," said Garvin.
"No, there is a difference. We choose what we do. We don't have to sit there and wait for the axe to fall."
"You're overreacting."
"Am I? Or have you got so blasé about killing that the taking of a life no longer seems important to you," I challenged.
"I'm not going to be provoked, Niall. You're wasting your time and mine."
"And I'm not going to be the person who brings these people in for execution. You said Teoth isn't a barbarian, well neither am I."
"You can't resign, Niall. This isn't that kind of job. Being a Warder is about making hard choices. It's about doing what no one else will do. You know that."
"Surely, being a Warder is not about killing innocent people? Isn't it about justice?You told me it's about doing what needs to be done, not executing people for the sake of… what? Convenience? That's not justice, that's just protecting vested interests."
Garvin stood, and for a moment I thought he would draw a weapon, but he simply placed his hands on the table.
"You have an overblown sense of your own importance," he said, but there was something in the statement that didn't quite sound true. It made me look at him afresh.
"What is this about, Garvin?" I was sure he knew more about this than he was letting on.
"It's about your ability to carry out the tasks assigned to you. We've had this discussion. These people are dangerous."
"When Angela granted me her vision, she said that this all started long ago. She said it was about me. What did she mean?"
"If I knew the answer to that question, I'd be a lot happier," he said.
"You know something," I accused him.
"I know lots of things," he said, "I know that if you won't bring these people in to the courts then I'll have to get someone else to do it. "
"You can't coerce me into imprisoning people so you can have them killed."
"Once again you wilfully misunderstand me. Your role as a Warder depends on your ability to do the job. If you won't do it then I'll give it to someone who will. Until then, stay away from Angela."
"What about Teoth's decision."
"She will be informed in due course."
"With the sharp end of a blade?"
"Don't push it, Niall. My patience isn't infinite."
I turned and left.
"He knows more than he's saying," I told Blackbird. I was pacing up and down our room while Blackbird sat near the window with her book.
"Garvin, devious? That should hardly come as a surprise," she said.
"Angela told me that Teoth asked her about that phrase, 'The sun will rise'."
"'And they shall fall,'" said Blackbird. "Prophesy is notoriously bad at predicting the future, Niall. Half the time it's better not to know. By the time you've figured out whether the prophesy is causing the future or the future is causing the prophesy, you may as well not bother."
"You took me to see Kareesh. That was for a prophesy."
"I was desperate. Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. It worked, didn't it?"
"I'm not sure," I said. "Maybe the jury is still out on that one."
"You survived. Sometimes that's all that counts," she said.
"I couldn't have been there before, could I?"
"Been where?" She closed the book and set in on her lap.
"To see Kareesh. I couldn't have been there without you, could I? Before we met?"
"You didn't even know about the Feyre, Niall. How could you have been there without me?"
"I'm… in Angela's vision, I saw myself with Kareesh. You weren't there but Gramawl was."
"That's not how it happened," she said.<
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"I know, but in the vision it was real. She said things, she referred to things that happened later. I was there."
"I don't use the words 'notoriously unreliable' by accident," said Blackbird. "Prophesy at best is a view of what might be, the nodes and points of the future that are most likely to happen."
"But this already happened. This was the past, not the future."
"How do you know? How do you know that next week you're not going to have that conversation with Kareesh?"
"Teoth said – Angela's power is corrupted. She doesn't see the future, she sees the past."
"I would take issue with your use of the word corrupted. Different, perhaps?"
"I'm only repeating what Angela said. But if Angela sees the past then it is certain, because it's already happened."
"But you also said there was a burning man on the Underground platform. Was he burning when you saw him that day?"
"No. He was normal, like anyone else."
"There you are, then. Yes, she showed you the past – your past – but your brain interprets that in its own way. It inserts imagery and assigns meaning, even where meaning doesn't exist. Some things just are, Niall. They don't mean anything."
"She couldn't make me forget, could she?"
"Angela?"
"Kareesh. She couldn't bring me there and then make me forget?"
"Why? Why would she do that?" Blackbird spread her hands in frustration. "She didn't even know who you were until I introduced you."
I tried to sift through the tangle of images and things I knew. If Angela's vision was true then who was the burning man? No, it was like looking into a distorted mirror. But what if I had met Kareesh and Gramawl before Blackbird had taken me to her?
"You didn't answer my question," I said.
"Which question?"
"Could Kareesh make me forget meeting her and Gramawl so that I didn't even know it had happened?"
Blackbird stared at me for a long moment. "You know quite well that your perception of the world is governed by your senses and your senses can be manipulated, by glamour and other magic. You have to trust what's true, though. You have to find the truth and hold on to it. Otherwise you will mire yourself in a tangle of speculation and you will never get free."
"But she could have done it?"
"Yes," she confirmed. "Even I could have done it."
"Did you?"
"Niall." She was exasperated. "That is exactly what I just asked you not to do."
"Sorry. It's just… There's something going on. All this stuff about 'the sun will rise' means something. Garvin won't reveal what he knows and Teoth was probing Angela about it. Something important is going to happen and I'm involved."
"That may be true," she said, "but you can't rely on prophesy. 'The sun will rise' – a literal sun? A particular day? Another sun? Not a sun as in sunshine but a son as in a child? That's clearly what Deefnir thought."
"Maybe he knows something too."
"'And they shall fall'? Who will fall, Niall, and why? How far will they fall? Will that be a literal fall or a metaphorical fall… it's all useless until it happens, and you're only messing with your own head thinking about it."
"So you don't think we should try and find the book?"
"What book?"
"The one with the pages open to show the six symbols."
"There may not even be a book," she said.
"I'd bet money on it."
"You want to look for a book – one among how many? Millions? You don't know what it's called, or who it's by, or where it's kept."
"It was in a library."
"Well that narrows it down." She shook her head.
"It was old, and the person reading it was using lamps. That means it'll be even older now."
"There are a lot of old books, Niall. Some are in private collections. Some are in museums, galleries, libraries, private houses… you need somewhere to start looking."
"There was a design in the middle with four shields in a circle. Three symbols to each side of it."
"There are entire books filled with symbols, the sole purpose of which is to get their readers to contemplate what they might mean. They were meant to provoke and inspire, to get people thinking about eternity and their place in it. They were not meant to be interpreted as literal truth."
"You were an academic, though. You know how to research things in books, don't you?"
"You mistake my meaning. You're not talking about a needle in a haystack now, so much as a piece of hay in a haystack, among other haystacks, when you don't even know what field it's in."
"But if I could prove that Angela's prophesy was worth something, that it gave us a vital clue to what is happening, then maybe Teoth would accept her into the courts. At the moment he's dismissing her out of hand."
"The problem is not the prophecy but whether you can change the attitude of the courts. At the moment they want their cake and eat it – bring in the part-fey humans, but reject them when they're not fully fey. They can't have it both ways," she said.
"How long do you think she's got?"
"Angela? You can't save everyone, Niall."
"I brought her here."
"And you think that makes you responsible? The responsibility lies with those taking the decisions. You've said your piece. You can't blame yourself if they overrule you."
"She wouldn't be here but for me."
"Garvin would have sent someone else, and how that would be better?" she asked.
"Maybe I wouldn't feel so responsible?"
"It wouldn't prevent it from happening. You need to learn to accept what you not going to be able to change."
"Perhaps, or maybe I need to stop being part of something that I think is wrong," I said. "You said yourself that this all comes with strings. You said we should leave."
"I did, but think about this. You and I are the only ones challenging the status quo. If we leave, there's no one to gainsay them. They will continue as they always have. Maybe we are here for a reason, and maybe that reason is to be the thorn in their thumb."
"I think Garvin would say pain in the arse."
"Now that," she smiled, "is a noble cause in itself."
THIRTEEN
Alex leaned over the wall and looked down on the people walking below. "It's pretty busy," she said. "I've never seen so many tourists."
"They'll thin out towards the end of the day," said Eve. "They have coaches and trains to catch. The guards will stay, though."
"It's not the police we're dealing with here, is it? These guys are military," said Alex, looking at the soldiers in red uniforms and flat black hats posted around the courtyard and in front of the White Tower.
Eve sat on the edge of the wall and conversationally pointed out the guards posted at the gates and those leading gaggles of tourists around. "They're military," she said, "but at the end of their careers. This is a cushy number for them. They just have to stop tourists from poking their noses where they're not wanted and there's almost no chance of getting shot. It's a better gig than Afghanistan."
"Beefeaters, aren't they?" said Alex.
"They're called Yeomen Warders. Beefeaters is a nickname."
"My dad's a Warder," Alex spoke before she meant to, eliciting an inquiring look from Eve. "He's in security," she said dismissively, "he spends all his time looking after people with too much money."
"Interesting," said Eve. "You must get to meet lots of famous people."
"Nah," said Alex. "This is old money. They keep it amongst themselves and they're totally stuck up. They don't mix with normal mortals."
"Sounds horrendous," said Eve.
"You don't know the half of it," said Alex. "So what are we after? The crown jewels?"
Eve glanced reprovingly at Alex. "The crown jewels are the obvious target. They're very heavily guarded. It's all just glitter, though."
"Some glitter."
"Chipper and Sparky are going for those, but there's too many alarms �
�� heat sensors, pressure pads – this place is state of the art. Even we can't get in and out without anyone noticing," said Eve.
