The Pyramids of London

by Andrea K Höst

  "For something I wanted, at least. I take it this means you've done whatever was needed to complete the binding?"

  He didn't reply, but did something. Rian swayed, overwhelmed by a wave of dizziness. It felt like all her blood was running backward. Groping for the nearest chair, she dropped into it

  "I've asserted control over the colony," he said, watching with a complete lack of sympathy as she gasped and shuddered. "An interesting sensation. Part of myself, sitting before me."

  Refusing to lose her temper, Rian closed her eyes briefly, then managed to say: "You've never bound anyone before?"

  "I've no interest in building a herd. Or keeping you as a pet. Forest House should sufficiently cover whatever income I can be said to have cost you."

  This was excellent news. "How long before the binding wears?"

  "One to two months, usually. We'll see what happens."

  There was a note to this answer that she didn't like, and she studied him narrowly. "But?"

  He lifted a shoulder. "The colony is at a self-sustaining level, dominant in your system. It's unlikely to diminish naturally."

  In the pause that followed Rian could distinctly hear running feet, could sense the bright river that was Griff, racing not to miss out on any excitement. She thought of strawberries, and sex, and hoped the Wind's Dog would do her the favour of not dying in the near future.

  "So I will inevitably become...a kind of vampire that can tell when people are lying?"

  His expression changed, the smallest alteration, and for the first time Rian truly believed that this boy was Heriath, famous for dealing in death.

  Then he tch-ed, and sat down at the opposite end of the table, dropping the air of menace—or perhaps simply hiding it once again behind the guise of something less dangerous. "That tedious prig told you."

  "I was curious to see whether you would. And yet, I can tell if people are lying, sometimes."

  "The heart beats faster. The liar's emotions intensify, are more controlled, or don't match the words. It's not so sure as the Ma'at line, who simply see lies as a colour. But more nuanced."

  Aware of Griff's rapid approach, Rian said: "I'll keep that in mind," and philosophically abandoned any thought of giving him half-truths.

  The Amon-Re line, that of Egypt's god of air and sun, was rumoured to possess all manner of gifts, but none were confirmed beyond the usual unnatural speed and strength, and the pharaoh's unique ability to command other stone blood. Makepeace—it would be simpler to call him that—had also done something to hold the sphinx in place. As his Bound, Rian would possess only a pale echo of his powers, but they would still be useful for her investigations.

  "Did you catch it? Did you kill it?"

  All bright enthusiasm, Griff approached her vampire with far less caution than Rian would prefer, but Makepeace didn't seem bothered, merely turning his head to study the boy.

  "Should I have killed it? Would you have liked that?"

  Griff, who had somehow managed to achieve scrubbed-pink cleanliness in less time than it would take Rian to walk to the bathroom, plucked at the seam of his shendy, but showed no other concern at the question.

  "Well, I don't want it to come back," he explained. "Could you kill it? If all you can do is tell when people are lying?"

  "I also hit quite hard," Makepeace said, as Eluned and Eleri arrived, less obviously excited, but almost as speedy as their brother. "And killing it wouldn't tell me why it was here, or what it wanted." He turned back to Rian. "Though perhaps you can answer that."

  "Does that mean you didn't catch it?" Rian asked, and suspected from his lack of response that he had expected to, and was annoyed. "And no, I don't know either. I have at most some wide guesswork." She surveyed her small audience, then said: "Sit down, you three. We can talk while we eat."

  Makepeace waited without comment as food was dispensed, but when Rian introduced the Tennings he said: "Is this something you want children involved with?"

  "They were involved before I," Rian said. "Eluned, will you tell him the start of it?"

  Eluned, however, had other points to cover first. Finely-sketched brows drawn together, she said: "How did you get here? The grove might be in shadow, but most of the streets weren't."

  "Perhaps I've been here all along."

  "What? Is there a secret room?" Griff stood up, clearly ready to race off to hunt for it. "It would be in the cellar, wouldn't it? Do you live down there?"

  "Is he lying?" Eluned asked Rian, but Rian couldn't tell, and said so.

  "Could have been nearby," Eleri said, frowning in response to Makepeace's faintly amused expression. "Or took an enclosed car."

  "But is there a secret room?" Griff repeated.

  "There's a safe hidden about somewhere, I know that," Makepeace said. "Though I haven't a clue where. What, then, is the start of it?"

  "Fulgite," Eluned said. "Artificial fulgite."

  Nine

  She'd intended to shock him, but Eluned couldn't spot any reaction from this strange boy who was really an old man.

  "What about it?" Dem Makepeace asked, when she didn't go on.

  "That's what started it." Eluned had her glass shield well in hand, refusing to act hesitant before this dangerous stranger. "At the beginning of spring term our mother accepted a commission to investigate fulgite that was said to be haunted, and hardly ever released its charge. Mother's early research had been on charge drain, though she'd moved on to advanced automata control mechanisms." Eluned did not look down at the arm that had been the reason for the change. "We don't know who commissioned her, but we do know they gave her two pieces of fulgite, round, about this big."

  She held up thumb and forefinger in a not quite closed circle.

  "Whoever brought the fulgite to her wanted mother to find a way to make the charge release reliably, and create an automaton that did not rely on physical switches to activate movement."

  Dem Makepeace propped his chin on one fist, waiting. Eluned glanced at Eleri, who took up the thread of the story.

  "Mid-term break. Mother hadn't made any progress. Father had nearly completed the automaton, said the charge would release when he triggered functions. Never moved on its own. Mother asked me to create a small second automaton, one that could operate on a weaker charge. Gave me one of the round fulgite. Did that over the rest of spring term. No result. It never released charge that I could verify. Then the—then Aunt Arianne came."

  They'd been called to the head's office and left with a stranger with hair the same colour as Griff's and their father's. Nothing could be worse than that meeting.

  "I was in Lutèce," Aunt Arianne said. "Aedric and Eiliff's lawyer notified me by telegram. I reached Caerlleon two days after they had died, and by that time the Caerlleon coroner had already decided an inquest wasn't necessary, that it was a clear case of accident. They had been working on an industrial automaton, a top-heavy thing. A rope was not properly fastened, bolts had been loose, the bracing had failed and the thing had simply toppled onto them. There were three other people in the house: Aedric's apprentice, and two day staff, a cook and a housekeeper. It was Monday, and the apprentice had only just arrived for the week, and was having breakfast with the day staff in the kitchen when they heard the noise of the fall."

  Aunt Arianne glanced out the window, then back at the vampire. "My brother and sister-by-marriage took safety measures very seriously, and I did not believe they could have been so impossibly careless, but I wasn't certain something was wrong until I brought the children back for the funeral."

  "Commissions Book was missing. And the special automaton." Eleri's voice flattened in remembered irritation. "Fulgite was a secret, so Willa—the apprentice—had been told automaton simply a show piece, but she should have noticed the Commissions Book. Said automaton must have been completed and collected, and mother must have put the Commissions Book away somewhere. Stupid."

  "All our parents' work was recorded there," Eluned explained. "They always
kept it in the same place, and besides, we searched everywhere for it."

  "Someone else had too!" Griff put in. "Searched. They'd been in our rooms."

  The vampire didn't even blink. "The world-shaking discovery of a method of creating artificial fulgite is announced on an almost weekly basis. Unless some hoodwinked investors tracked your parents down, it's as likely a motive for murder as a bottle of Dama Wilder's Patented Cure-All."

  Eluned stood up. "Our parents weren't cheats," she said. Vampire or not, he had no right to suggest anything of the sort.

  "He knows that, Eluned." Aunt Arianne pushed her plate away. "There's a wide difference between finding a way to unlock stored power, and creating an appearance of stored power. I didn't know the exact nature of the commission Eiliff and Aedric had been working on—the children only told me that an automaton was missing. But when I prepared an accounting of the business, there were two large cash deposits that suggested someone had provided funding they didn't want traced. I could find no documentation whatsoever. Aedric had recorded only the fact of the deposits, against the name 'F Project', but there was no contract, no schemata, no correspondence. Every clue to identity was missing."

  "When they were first commissioned, Mother and Father were pleased because the payment was good," Eluned said. "They didn't tell us anything until the mid-term break, but I remember the day they came back from the first meeting, and put all this money in the cash box to be banked. That was before we left for the beginning of spring term. When she put the money away, mother said that it would be an interesting challenge, and she'd have to 'thank Lyndsey'. Then there's this."

  Pressing two sections of her right arm exposed a storage slot—for Eluned always liked to have a secret space in her arms—and she drew out paper, curled into a tube. The vampire accepted it with lifted eyebrows, and unrolled three sheets: a sketch of the missing automaton as they'd last seen it, and two envelopes that had been flattened out, then decorated on both sides with minutely detailed sketches of rooftops, all chimneys and gabling.

  "Mother always gave envelopes to Griff," Eluned said. "Because he uses up so much paper."

  "Date on the first sketch is the day they went to that meeting," Eleri added. "Second is the mid-term break. Hold them up to the light."

  The vampire silently obeyed, and even sitting a seat down from him Eluned could clearly see the translucent shape of a tower with outstretched wings.

  "Took us a while to track down who that belonged to," Eleri said, with the satisfaction of the one who had been successful.

  Dem Makepeace lowered the envelopes, looking down the length of the table at Aunt Arianne.

  "You sold yourself to Msrah on the strength of a watermark?"

  "It was the best lead."

  "A watermark." The vampire looked like he was trying—not very hard—to stop himself from laughing. "You realise that whoever commissioned your automaton would have no reason to steal it? That there may be a second party involved?"

  "That's a strong possibility. But knowing more about the first could lead us to rivals, saboteurs, or at least reasons. Besides, the desire for secrecy suggests a strong motive to tidy up loose ends, and it's very odd that whoever it is hasn't inquired after Eiliff's progress. Griff is quite certain about when he was given the first envelope, and the second clearly arrived while the children were away at school, during the period a second cash deposit was made. Other than a passing reference to someone called Lyndsey, the only information we have about Them—about whoever commissioned this—is the fact that their payments came in envelopes marked with the crest of Sheerside House."

  Dem Makepeace muttered something under his breath, then said: "Where is the second automaton?"

  Aunt Arianne left to fetch it, and the vampire propped his head back on his fist, idly turning over Griff's pictures.

  "You could ask Willa questions and know whether she was lying," Griff said, getting up to search the covered dishes for sweets. It was typical of Griff that he would chat to the vampire like he was simply an interesting neighbourhood boy. He might back away from a bird, but even what had happened to Aunt Arianne wouldn't faze Griff when it came to a person, unless that person was behaving in a way that made Griff uncomfortable.

  Dem Makepeace at least seemed fairly tolerant—or not hungry at the moment. "That's the assistant? Do you think she's lying about something?"

  "She was lying about who finished the last of the treacle tart. And she's lying about something that happened after the funeral." Griff triumphantly lifted a wedge of nut-studded cake, and turned to enjoy their expressions.

  "What?" Eluned exchanged a glance with Eleri, who clearly shared her surprise. "What do you mean?"

  "When we went back at the end of spring term, and Aunt had us pack up the bits she was letting us keep, Willa came around. She wanted to know what Aunt was going to do with all of Mother and Father's things. Said she wanted to buy pieces to add to her tool set."

  "More likely wanted schematics," Eleri said. "Not creative."

  "Whatever she wanted, what was she going to pay for it with? Willa never had any money, and she got taken on by Theyan's Workshop. They're room and board only for the first year. She said that herself when father took her on."

  Griff's prodigious memory could be more than useful, though he also tended to remember tiny grudges, like who had the last slice of a treacle tart made for the New Year's Feasting. And he'd obviously hugged this fragment of news to his chest all through the first half of summer term, waiting for the right moment.

  "Tools are a good investment," Eleri said, unimpressed. "Probably borrowed money for them." Eleri certainly would have if she'd been able, and had yet to forgive Aunt Arianne for not keeping their parents' workshop intact.

  "She was asking for someone else," Griff said, with complete confidence. "Even I could tell that."

  The vampire said: "Tell me more about how these automata were to be constructed."

  Eleri did that, producing a flood of technical detail on how their parents had been trying to create an arm for Eluned that was as fully responsive as a normal arm.

  "I can currently trigger a few set movements," Eluned added, her glass shield steady. "Position one, position two, hand grip. Nowhere near precise control. Our Thoth-den had told Mother and Father that my upper arm still contained all the...the body's telegraph wires that carried messages to the missing part of my arm. If they could find some way of reading the signal, they could give me greater control."

  "Did they succeed?"

  "Not yet," Eleri said, as Aunt Arianne returned, carrying a long box with a square tin sitting on top. "Not reading the commands of the body. More progress on the other half of the problem: an array of movements triggered by a flow of fulquus. Used that."

  "So the commission, substantively, was for an automaton that treats fulgite as a mind capable of issuing commands?" Dem Makepeace had lost the lazy note to his voice.

  Aunt Arianne, lifting the mannequin from its box, said: "Eleri passed this to me when I visited on my way to Sheerside. I didn't open it until my first night there, when I heard it trying to get out."

  The mannequin, familiar for the many weeks Eleri had worked on it, stayed upright when Aunt Arianne propped it in a sitting position against the box, the small head with its painted monocle and moustache tilted quizzically to one side.

  Explaining how she'd seen it move, and removed the fulgite, Aunt Arianne opened the tin and fished inside, lifting out a purple sphere. She looked down at it, brows rising, then crossed to Dem Makepeace and held it out to him.

  "I don't think these monsters are chasing me about. I think they're chasing that."

  She dropped it into his hand, and there was an odd quiet moment as Dem Makepeace simply sat there, the fulgite resting in the palm of his hand. The whole room felt strangely more focused, as if an unexpected light had flickered into life.

  Then the stillness passed, and he put the fulgite on the table and said: "You were surpri
sed when you touched this. Why?"

  "I could hear a noise. Distant and strange. I thought it was wind at first, but..."

  Aunt Arianne shook her head, eyeing the fulgite as if she expected it to move. Dem Makepeace put out one finger and pushed the crystal lightly, so that it rolled a couple of inches before curving to one side around the nub that stopped it from being a perfect sphere.

  "Whether this is the target, or you are, the decision to put you here seems to have been a good one," he said, suddenly brisk. "Fit that back into your toy, and we'll see how much of the Keeper role I'm handing over to you."

  "So there's more to it than letting people into the Grove?" Aunt Arianne asked, as Eleri moved to obey.

  "Not necessarily. But I can't simply give you the key, and Cernunnos often rejects, and has been known to strike down particularly unworthy petitioners." He offered Aunt Arianne a provoking sort of smile. "If you don't consider yourself equal to the risk, you can use the house and the Keeper's income until I find someone to truly act in the role."

  Aunt Arianne gave no hint of being daunted. "Do you consider yourself equal to three able assistants?"

  He glanced at Eluned, Eleri and Griff. They stared back at him, and though there was no reason whatsoever for him to replace Aunt Arianne as guardian if something happened to her, they all pictured it, and no-one looked pleased.

  Then Dem Makepeace shrugged irritably. "The danger's probably only significant if you should be, say, a disguised Roman with a pocket full of curse tablets," he admitted. "There's a good chance of being ignored, though."

  "Then by all means let us resolve that question. But first a few of my own."

  While they tidied away dinner, Aunt Arianne asked more about being Keeper. Having settled whether she would be able to come and go from Forest House as much as she liked, and who she was obliged to let in, she said:

  "Lord Msrah recognised that sphinx. Did you?"

  Still busy propping up his chin, Dem Makepeace said: "Any vampire who has made the Century Passage knows those sphinxes."