by K Childs
“Y-yes.” Alston’s tone was not so affirmative.
“Do you know what he was working on last night?”
“I don’t know, he said he had to monitor a boring beat. I’m sorry, but unless there anything else I can do, I ought to finish what I’m doing here.”
Not so boring. He and Charlie were dead. “Thank you. I might have some follow-up questions tomorrow.” I drained my glass.
He showed us out. Robert Howard was in the hall outside; he jumped away from the door with a small noise and then turned away, furiously trying to look inconspicuous.
“Lord Howard,” I said.
The small boy shook his head. “I want to know what is going on.”
“Your mother can tell you,” Darrien said, not ungently.
The young boy crossed his arms, a frown creasing his little face.
“I intend to find your father’s killer, Lord Howard. Will you put your trust in the police, as he did?” I asked. The eight-year old gave me a long, sombre, searching look. He fled without answering.
I glanced at the Duke. I was getting a similar look from him.
The kitchen was one of the few rooms whose location I had been able to securely locate with any reliability. I followed the smell of potato bake and too much sugar in tea. Half the staff were clustered in this room, muttering in hushed tones that cut off every time someone approached. The Howards employed four maids and two gentlemen to see to the care and maintenance of the mansion. Given its size and decadence, I half expected a whole army of maids to keep the place under
control.
Most of them regarded me as a nervous mouse being approached by a hawk.
I interviewed the staff and came up with little. None of the residents had heard anything strange or seen anything. No one had any unusual dreams or woke up unexpectedly in the night. It was afternoon when we escaped the house. My voice had faltered only once or twice. Charlie would have been proud of how well I was holding it together.
The storm of reporters now descended on the gates of the Howard estate and cameras flashed; voices called to me from the fence, asking for a comment. More than a few knew my name and it didn’t take a genius to work out that the Agency was investigating this. As the only female DI in the country, my face was about to be in the newspaper.
The Duke of Cardigan smiled and waved to all the reporters calling for information before I could yank him into the car, trying not to look like I wanted to strangle him. Hopefully my expression was serene and not murderous.
The Foreign Office had confiscated a crate of pixies overnight from black-market raids. The sound of drunken, off-tune singing was drowning out most of the upstairs offices and I could still hear some caterwauling in the basement archives. The pixies, by way of Russia, had been at sea long enough to be as cantankerous as their species got. Luckily, I had a very public murder to solve. No time for the small nicety of taking the little bastards to the Sidhe embassy. It wasn’t the AOC’s job to deal with the immigration of Sidhe and fairies, but they were deemed citizens of the demi monde and that usually made them our problem to solve. Personally, I was glad to have an excuse not to deliver the little devils. The Sidhe gave me chills.
The Duke had left me in the stacks and gone off to fetch himself a pot of tea.
“DI Beaumont. I see you’ve returned.” Douglas Asher was the resident gatekeeper of the Foreign Office’s archives. He was a portly fellow with liver-marked skin, a sour-turned expression, and glasses that seemed three sizes too big for his face.
“Yes, I was hoping to book some time with the Cawthorne Treatise.”
“We sent to the AOC for assistance with the mess upstairs. I had thought you would be here about that.” Douglas did not move nor open the gate to let me in.
“No, I am working a case, I am afraid. I am sure we will send someone over soon.”
“It had better be soon. If those pixies get down here, we risk losing materials. That will affect your work as well, Beaumont.”
“Yes, I see the conundrum. Who did you phone in the Agency?”
“Puttick,” he sneered.
“I’m sure Inspector Puttick will handle the problem.” My tone was diplomatic.
“You ought to do it since you’re here.”
“As I said, different case. I wouldn’t want to interfere in
Puttick’s work.”
Douglas shook his weathered head. “Sign in then.”
I signed in, listening to the pixies’ caterwauling limerick about a man shooting pips out of his willie.
Douglas, the prim and proper sort that he was, seemed to be in a great deal of pain from the noise.
He followed me into the stacks. He was awfully precious about the archives and hated anyone causing disruption or putting a book somewhere it didn’t belong. Considering the size and scope of his job, I did not harbour any surprise about this.
I found the treatise I was looking for in the exact spot I had last placed it. Cawthorne’s treatise was the only book on foreign Dreamscapes. Ethereal Phantasi & Demi Monde.
Cawthorne ascribed to the old school of dividing Oneirology into three castes between the three Greek Gods. These Gods, Cawthorne believed, were the source of all Oneironautic occurrences. My professor had taken great pleasure in denouncing the book and the man. Trouble was, Cawthorne was one of the few Oneirologists to travel and note down his experiences in a Dreamscape outside of England, in an English text. The Latin was where we got much of the named arts of magical study from. However, the Dreamscape didn’t exist solely in one place at one time. The Egyptians called it Rasetjau or Sokar’s realm, a place similar to the underworld where the dead roamed. It was also called the Hidden Realm, Tír na nÓg, and many other names, as you might imagine. Ancient worlds controlled it far better than modern Oneironauts could; we’d lost most of that ancient understanding over centuries of war and social upheaval. Cawthorne, a devotee of Greek culture, tried to fit all the Dreamscape—and much of its strangeness—through the one filter of the Greek legends. While it was likely a man could pose as a swan and make love to a woman in the Dreamscape, I hoped stories about Zeus’ wild exploits in ancient Greece remained in the ancient past.
Lord Howard had been working on his own text; I’d seen a few drafted pages around the office. Until someone else made a study of the many variety of Phantasi around the world, Cawthorne was all I had.
I frowned as I flipped through the text slowly. Cawthorne’s work was a mess, but… here, finally. The list I was after: Servants of Phantasos, Beings of the Ether. Many could appear in dreams; the Chinese Quilin delivered messages to important people, three-eyed apes in Peru would possess your body and move you about at night, Liderics in Hungary would take on the guise of a man and drink your blood, slashing your throat with chicken talons.
Hungary… there were plenty of ships that crossed between Hungary and the USSR. The vagaries of Charlie’s last conversation about the next few ships coming in caught in my mind. The Eye kept his gaze on the docks regularly, especially after the last vampire infestations in ‘06. There stood a good chance that something might have been spotted last night.
None of the other European monsters in Cawthorne’s menagerie fit so perfectly.
There had been a lot of blood on the ground. If the beast drank it, the act had been rather inefficient. Cawthorne’s book was as much folktale as fact, and most folktales had a few truths in them mixed in with all the rubbish. The Lideric may not even drink blood. The drawing in the book outlined a naked man with a feather tail and bird claws instead of hands and feet. The man perched erect over a woman’s bed, feeding her happy dreams of wealth and family while feasting on her arm. Gruesome.
I copied my list down and circled the Lideric. There was one in the city. Charlie must have seen it in the Dreamscape and been accosted.
I read over the few notations for the devils—they were born of black hen’s eggs and attracted great fortune. Most monsters, Cawthorne wrote,
descended from Phantasos, but the Lideric was a scion of Phobetor, the prophetic dream goddess. This, the text surmised, was why the Lideric could slip in and out of the Dreamscape, leaving behind nothing but feathers. Some monsters, I’ve experienced, walk into the Dreamscape physically. I’ve heard of ancient Oneironauts able to perform similar feats, but whatever method enables physical transport into the demi monde has been lost since before the Renaissance.
“Douglas, can you check the manifests from the docks for the last week? I need to know about any Scandinavian or USSR originating ships,” I asked.
He rubbed his chin. “That is going to take about an hour, DI Beaumont.”
“I understand, but I need you to confirm if we’ve any poor travellers come in from these countries. I have a potential foreign entity on the streets.”
“The Foreign Department should have a register—shouldn’t your Eye have more details on what I’m looking for?”
“Douglas, I am afraid neither the Eye, nor I, can narrow it down any further,” I snapped.
He clicked his heels together and fled.
I turned back to the book I was holding. Lideric were weakened by silver, like werewolves. They followed family groups, acting as wicked protectors and tormentors. Not undead, thank goodness. I’d had enough problems with undead.
“There you are. I raided the Ministry’s kitchen and summoned us up a spot of tea.”
I dropped the book, jumping at Darrien’s voice.
He had a clerk in tow, carrying a silver tray laden with tea and crumpets.
“I’m not sure I have the time, I’m afraid.” My stomach growled.
“Your stomach says differently.”
I shook my head, giving him a small embarrassed smile and held my hands up in defence. “Alright, alright. Ben would approve.”
I joined the Duke at a desk crowded with books and poured us tea, serving him with three sugars at his request and allotting a crumpet to each plate.
The Ministry had good tea on hand and my stomach stopped cramping. I poured some milk into the cup and watched it swirl.
“Find anything?”
His interest was genuine. Lord Howard had been Darrien’s friend. His position meant that even if I tried to withhold my findings, the Duke could walk in and have the Superintendent force me to share the information. I liked him more this way, asking questions and listening. Men rarely displayed such refined manners, in my experience.
When he forgot to flirt, Darrien was much better at making himself likable.
I welcomed the calming distraction of explaining my findings. Anything to keep me focused, keep me from the turmoil churning in my head.
Displaying the picture from Cawthorne’s tome, I explained, motioning to the taloned humanoid figure. “I believe we are dealing with a Lideric. It must have been on the boat that the Ministry raided last night. I have a good idea of where to find it, too.”
His brow shot up. “Impressive work, Inspector.”
I scratched my nose self-consciously and took a sip of my tea.
The Agency operated at night. There was no point patrolling an empty Dreamscape.
I managed a few more bites of a crumpet, but left it unfinished.
“You lack appetite,” Darrien said, waving at the partially eaten food. His tone was one I knew too well.
He hardly knew me. I didn’t need him fussing. I knew I looked like a wastrel; it was a side-effect of the job. “I found my cousin’s body this morning, Your Grace. It has put me off my meals.”
He grunted, clearly having an opinion, but he did not deign to enlighten me.
The cup shook as I replaced it in the saucer.
Darrien waved at the book. “What about you; does
Oneirology have any value in the waking world?”
“Some people think they can use it to tell the future.”
“I don’t believe in fortune-tellers. A bunch of hacks.”
I tended to agree. “Others would answer that waking up from monsters trying to eat your brain is its own practical use.”
“Well I would agree with that. I imagine that is how the study was approved for university in the first place.”
While Tenebrology and Animancy had been studied for hundreds of years, Oneirology courses had only started fifty years ago.
His life depended on a magic that he knew very little about. I was not surprised that Darrien showed interest in the study of dreams. Animancers were skilled healers; they could subvert normal human limitations with their manipulation of life-energies, and during the War, you lived or died by the Animancer’s ability. Being confronted with something he couldn’t fight and barely understood must have been terrifying.
“No, the professor who proposed it was Adrian Hollowsby. Hollowsby was an Oneironaut. Most of the people who study Oneirology are lucid dreamers; trained minds. Ben, Simmons, most of them. Hollowsby was born with the power. He wrote one of the first theses on the full extent of the ability. He was able to show that true Oneironauts have power equal to that of Tenebrologists and Animancers.”
“How?” He leaned forward, eager.
“The same way that most of the creatures from the Ether do it.” I opened my palm and drew Ether into it, forming a rock. The act itself required intense concentration as I parted the veil between the Dreamscape and the real world, tugging the Ether from there into reality. The same way monsters were able to pull someone in or step out of that place. Unlike such beings, Oneironauts no longer knew how to perform such grand deeds. The rock could smash or hurt a man, but it was not a real object and would vanish if my attention wavered. Pulling Ether like this could make me drowsy if I kept at it, or worse, develop into a narcoleptic collapse.
Darrien froze, staring at the manifestation. “That’s impossible. I’ve never seen an Oneironaut do that.”
“Because there is a difference between the study and the power.” I released the Ether and the rock cracked, fading into glistening dust. I took a small bite of the crumpet on my plate. “Trained minds, those who have just studied Oneirology, cannot do it. The Dreamscape exists for anyone to enter or exit. Monsters have been slipping in and out of it since we first crawled out of the Garden of Eden. But the Ether—the essence of the Dreamscape—it is like your Anima. It exists in the waking world as well. Just beneath the surface.”
“Is it a bloodline power?”
“Indeed. Though like Animancy and Tenebrology, you still need to understand and master it. Hollowsby proved that true Oneironautic power was as dominant as the other two. He founded the study proper to ensure that other Oneironauts wouldn’t have to suffer as he had.”
“I had no idea.”
“It isn’t a secret. You can read about it in most texts on the subject.”
“How common is the bloodline?”
“No idea. I know of only one other operating Oneironaut in London and that is Chief Inspector Andrew Caudroy. He supervises most of the Agency. Lord Howard was one; but his bloodline is an exception.”
“An exception?”
“The Eye, the Howards, have always been a dual bloodline. Sidhe true bloods.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t know that Oneironautics were so powerful. David never let on about it! Wait, this explains how he got the damned mattress on the roof in summer camp…”
“Ether isn’t stable. It takes a lot of concentration to keep its form and shape. Simple objects only. In Dreamscape, the Ether is like clay; anyone can mould it. There are a few divides in schools of thought on the topic. I personally prefer Hollowsby’s explanation over the Greek.”
“Tell me about the Greek?”
It was a little off-topic from the investigation but I rarely got a chance to explain it. A genuine interest in my art relaxed me. I took another sip of tea.
“It’s a hold-over from the Roman teachings. You know the three Oneiroi of dreams? Morpheus, Phobetor and Phantasos? Some myths say they are children of Hypno
s and Pasithea. There is a belief that they comprise the three fundamentals of Oneironautics: Morpheus, the Dreamscape, Phobetor, the prophetic, and Phantasos, the phantoms and objects, or Ether. Anyone can learn the first two, but only those blessed by Phantasos can create from the Ether. Since he is a god of objects, you can’t make a person out of Ether. That would be Phobetor’s domain.”
“You don’t hold with it?”
“Oneironautics predates the Greeks. Besides, I have more Celtic in my heritage than Roman. I suspect it’s like Tenebrology and Animancy—a genetic predisposition. Just as green eyes or brown hair.”
“I suppose,” the Duke said.
“There are aspects of Animancy that don’t require power, aren’t there? Surely there are things you can do that require training. Wards, enchantments?”
He nodded.
“Then anyone can learn the fundamentals of the abilities; that’s where hedge magicians come about.”
“My professor would eat her hat if she heard that.”
“I’m sure. Oneironautics have always been easier to learn and pick up because most people enter the Dreamscape every few days, whether accidentally or not. You don’t die if you die in a dream, unless something kills you with Ether. It’s why the Dreamscape is dangerous. There are things that form out of pure Ether that will eat you there. An untrained dreamer is like a lamb in a paddock it can’t see, running from wolves it cannot smell or hear.”
“Do I strike you as a lamb, Rose?”
I blushed. “Apologies.”
“I am teasing. You have enlightened me; I never took the study seriously. I see that I have underestimated you.”
Douglas was back, holding up a small piece of paper with the words I expected: Potter’s Lane.
My eyes blurred, burning, and I stood hurriedly, refusing to blink. “I am going to Potter’s Lane in East London. I would suggest you return to Piccadilly.”
“Potter’s Lane is not a place I would allow an unmarried woman to walk on her own, uniform or no.” He stood, brushing crumbs off his jacket lapels.
I smiled, wryly. “I am a police officer, Darrien, I can handle myself in Potter’s Lane. I cannot have the Duke of Cardigan tagging along. It is a filthy place. The gear-makers and the diesel sniffers will mob you.”
