Dark Embers

by R. L. Giddings

  “Did you see that?” Millie said.

  “What?”

  “Someone just turned off the kitchen light.”

  *

  We cautiously approached the back of the house. We’d planned to climb onto the shed and try and jump onto the rear of the extension but that changed when Millie tripped over a ladder hidden in the grass and twisted her ankle. Edwin and I climbed onto the roof of the extension taking care where we stepped. Millie stayed behind nursing her injury. Which was a real shame because she was by far the best climber.

  That left me and Edwin about a metre and a half short of our kitchen window.

  “You’ll have to climb on my shoulders,” Edwin said.

  This proved to be a real struggle but eventually we managed it.

  I grabbed hold of the windowsill and from there could see straight into the kitchen. I struck the frame with the flat of my hand and then had to duck as the sash window juddered open.

  There’s a locking arm on the inside of the window but the spindle it’s supposed to attach to is missing.

  Opening the window turned out to be the easy part.

  Then I had to pull myself bodily up and through the gap and I’m not known for my upper body strength. Somehow though – after a lot of cursing and swearing – I managed it.

  Once inside, I had to stop to draw breath. I waved down to Edwin and mimed to say that I was going to carry on up to the top flat on my own.

  But first I had to retrieve the key. I’d stashed it under the television set in the lounge. Just as I tipped the TV back in order to grab it, someone flushed the toilet.

  Taking the key, I ran back to the kitchen and pressed myself into the far corner. From there I couldn’t be seen from the lounge area but I could still hear everything.

  “I’m not interested,” someone was saying. “No, she crossed the line with me. My own home, yes. No, I’m telling you: I’m just not interested.”

  Cardoza.

  He was in the lounge area talking on his phone.

  The kitchen window started to swing open, I hadn’t thought to close it assumed that I’d be using it again on the way down. And I couldn’t shut it now for fear of being seen. I just had to stay where I was and hope that he wouldn’t come over and close it himself.

  “Yes, but the flat’s empty. No, they’re outside. Parked opposite. Yes, saw your lot. The van, yes? May as well call them off. You’ll be the first to know. Yes. No, no point. Okay, you do that and I’ll let you know if there’s any developments.”

  The phone call ended and I heard him moving about the flat. Then, just before he left, he came across and deposited a glass on the edge of the sink. If he’d looked over to his left he’d have seen me clear as day, only he was too busy with his phone.

  He went back through the lounge and thirty seconds later the front door slammed.

  *

  I waited until we got back to Millie’s car before showing them the knife. They were all slightly awed to see it again. Macrory wanted to hold it but I said no. Too much had happened already and the last thing I wanted was for someone to cut themselves accidentally.

  I was tired and I was hungry. And, as I’d come back through the flat, it had been really tempting to just hunker down on the sofa and just go to sleep. But there was no way that was going to happen and that just didn’t seem very fair.

  Edwin wanted us to stay in Millie’s car until we’d work out a plan of action but Millie and I had had enough. Plus, the windows were starting to mist up from the inside. We needed a bit of down-time if we were going to be able to carry on with this for much longer. We needed a drink.

  Edwin argued that if we were going to get a drink then we should find some anonymous pub miles away and sit in there, but Millie and I weren’t even listening. She drove us to “The Faltering Fullback” and parked in the street outside.

  I ordered Thai food from the serving hatch downstairs while Millie went out the back to find some seats in the terraced garden. By the time I located where she was sitting, Edwin had arrived with the drinks.

  “Oh, thank God for this!” I said, as I took a sip of my Sauvignon Blanc. “I thought this day would never end.”

  Millie said, “Weren’t you worried that there might be someone hiding in the top flat?”

  “I didn’t really think about it. Cardoza obviously assumed the knife was still somewhere in our flat. They’d trashed both our bedrooms. Sorry. They weren’t to know that the top flat was empty.”

  “Where had you hidden it?” Edwin asked.

  “I hadn’t really had time to ‘hide’ it. I just stuck it in their knife drawer. I thought I’d be able to go back and find a better hiding place but I never got round to it.”

  “Ha! The knife drawer,” Macrory raised his pint in my direction. “I like it. The knife drawer!”

  “The question now is what do we do with it?”

  Edwin leaned in. “I was thinking about that and I’ve got it down to one of three proposals. There’s no way that we’re going to keep hold of this thing if we hang around here. We need to make a deal with either this Cardoza guy or Salazar. Failing that, we could talk to your mother.”

  “Really?” I said, slightly disappointed. Ever since he’d saved me from Florian that afternoon, I’d looked on him with a new found respect. “You want to make a deal with my mother?”

  “Well, as far as I can see we don’t have much option. She is the elected representative of the Inner Council.”

  “True, true, but she’s also the woman who tried to kill me in the hope of being able to extend her life-span by a couple of years.”

  “I’m not saying that she’s the ideal choice but at least she’d be able to offer us some form of protection.”

  “What about throwing in our lot with Prince Florian?” Macrory said. “Give him the knife. He takes out the Winter Queen and all our problems are solved.”

  I looked at Macrory in astonishment. “He tried to kill me earlier.”

  Macrory waved me away. “No. He was just trying to scare you. That’s what they’re like, these princes. They’re all idiots.”

  “You weren’t there, Macrory. He was deadly serious.”

  The discussion went on like this for some time and continued well after the arrival of our food. We kept going over the same ground, with Edwin trying to accommodate everyone’s opinions, while I became more and more defensive.

  It was Millie who eventually acknowledged the one issue which, so far, everyone had managed to avoid.

  “We can talk about this all night if we wanted but there is another option. An option which allows us to get rid of the knife and free Silas without anyone getting hurt.”

  I hadn’t trusted myself to even mention Silas up until this point. I’d worried that if I had have done then everyone would have sat there secretly feeling sorry for me. Silas was a hostage with whom I was emotionally involved. To factor him into any of our negotiations would be to argue from a position of weakness.

  But because Millie had addressed the issue, it meant that we could talk about him openly. It was not for nothing that I considered her my best friend.

  “Alright,” said Edwin who’d had three pints by this point. “Let’s hear it.”

  Millie continued. “Aleena, the Winter Queen, kidnapped Silas as a way of getting to Bronte. It wouldn’t take a genius to work that out. But at the same time, the Seelie Blade actually does belong to Aleena’s court.”

  Macrory held up a hand. “Actually it belongs to neither the Winter Queen nor the Summer Queen. The blades are shared between the two courts.”

  Millie gave him a strained smile. She found Macrory’s patronising attitude particularly difficult to accept.

  “Okay, it belongs to them both. But if we were to return the knife to the court of Arcadia then we couldn’t actually be accused of doing anything wrong. Also, no one would be chasing us after it.”

  Edwin said, “That’s a lovely thought, but I’m not sure the Inner Council w
ould approve.”

  “Perhaps not but then we were the ones who stole it from the Sidhe in the first place. If the knife is returned then there’d be no reason for them to keep hold of Silas.” Millie added.

  I wanted to jump in at that point; to add one important caveat. Silas should be released only after Ib Ure had been used to render him human. I wanted to blurt it out: to ensure that they understood the importance of my discovery. And yet I remained silent, fearful of how they might respond.

  “Actually,” Edwin conceded. “That doesn’t sound like a terrible plan.”

  “No,” Macrory said. “And if you were working with reasonable people you might have a point. But this is Aleena’s court, remember. Everyone is looking to advance themselves to the detriment of everyone else. There’s no love lost towards humans at the best of times but now, with the humans about to launch – as they see it - an unprovoked attack, reason has gone right out the window. You wouldn’t get half a mile into Arcadia before they tracked you down. Plus, if they found you with Sigurdsil in your possession it would be much worse. They’d immediately assume that you were planning to use it to assassinate the queen. There’d be no chance of negotiating with them because you’d already be dead in a ditch somewhere, along with anyone foolish enough to accompany you. Other than that, I think it’s an excellent plan.”

  Suddenly, I was standing. “What’s wrong with you all? Can’t you see what’s happening? They’re trying to split us all up. To get us fighting between ourselves. And I’ve had enough. Enough of all this talking. I’m going to Arcadia and I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I’m going to find Silas and I’m going to drag him back if I have to; only without the fur this time. You watch if I don’t.”

  As I made to leave, I became aware of the fact that Edwin was tugging on my sleeve.

  “You won’t stop me. I’ve made up my mind.”

  Suddenly, everyone was moving, pressing me over towards the far staircase. Millie had looped an arm over my shoulder.

  “Come on,” she was saying, limping slightly with her ankle. “Over this way.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  And still didn’t as the four of us quickly made our way down the blocky wooden stairs, Macrory’s staff beating out a rhythm as we descended.

  “Wait up,” I said straining against them. “I’ve left my jacket.”

  “That’s okay,” Millie said. “We’ll get you another one.”

  “But I don’t want another…”

  The first flash of magic registered on a spectral plane humans would need special optical lenses to identify. It was immediately followed by two stronger, brighter flashes.

  I heard Edwin say, “Good girl” and then we were running through a fire door, between two pool tables, past an incredulous bouncer and out onto the street.

  We made to turn left as we had always done when exiting the Fullback but then, after a little jostling, we began heading right.

  “Come on,” Millie was saying. “This way. Don’t look back. Just keep walking.”

  Of course, I looked back. I’d been drinking.

  A group of figures was massing around Millie’s car.

  “This way, Bronte,” Millie spoke directly into my ear. “That’s them.”

  We were about to break into a run when the street lit up as bright as day. It’s called the Corona Effect. Once it’s triggered, the light is bright enough to temporarily blind anyone unlucky enough to be looking straight at it. The effect wears off after about a couple of hours but leaves an after-image on your retina that can last for several days. Luckily, we were facing away from it at the time.

  And that’s the direction in which we kept on going. We ended up back at the Holiday Inn we’d stayed at the previous night. I was hot and sweaty from all the climbing and headed straight for the shower. Afterwards, Millie explained what had happened back there while she dried my hair. Salazar’s men had been trying to break into her car but had only managed to activate her unique anti-theft device: the Corona Effect. Without that acting as a diversion, we’d have surely been captured. There had been two teams tracking us so it looked as if neither side trusted the other. Perhaps we could use that to our advantage.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Edwin had wanted us to climb the gate in into Hyde Park but the general mood was against him. Millie’s ankle hurt, I’d only just had a shower and Macrory couldn’t climb into bed. I was ready to blow the lock off when Millie stepped in. She didn’t approve of needless displays of magic but she was quick enough to trip the lock when she saw that I was serious. It was just after midnight so I doubted that anyone would see us.

  “What exactly are we doing here?” I said.

  “Didn’t you hear,” Millie said. “We’re looking for the entrance to Fairy Land.”

  She ran to catch up with Macrory. “That is right isn’t it?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t call it Fairy Land – it’s Arcadia - but, yes. That’s why we’re here.”

  “But do we have to do that right now?” I complained. “Couldn’t we just go back to the hotel and start again tomorrow?”

  “We don’t have that luxury,” Edwin said. “From what I’ve seen, your mother is keen to start hostilities as soon as possible. When I spotted her this morning, she was in the process of organising her first offensive strike.”

  “But how long is that going to take to organise? You said yourself that she needs other practitioners to join her.”

  “True enough, but she can’t wait around forever. I would imagine that we’ve got, at best, forty eight hours. She needs to be seen to be decisive and, once she’s struck that first blow, all bets are off. You were the one who came up with this plan in the first place. Now, what’s it to be?”

  At that, we all fell silent, as if everyone was waiting for me to make the final decision. But it was so hard. I was sure that Macrory hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d sketched out the potential dangers we faced and yet I was adamant that I had to make this one last effort to save Silas. But, even if I were to be successful, there was no telling of the cost I might incur. It was a terrible dilemma to be faced with. Really, I should have gone alone but then I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to survive in this alien place.

  “But we can’t just blunder into this unprepared. I mean, we haven’t even got a map. Or any provisions. What about weapons?”

  Macrory tapped his forehead. “Map’s up here.”

  Edwin lifted up two rucksacks. “I put these two together earlier. No luxuries, but they should last us for a couple of days.”

  “And don’t forget,” Millie said. “We’ve got the famous fire-drake champion along for protection.

  I ran my fingers over the shape of the knife. I’d stuck it down the back of my jeans so that I could get to it in a hurry. Millie’s faith in my abilities was probably misguided. I’d had the element of surprise on my side when I’d tackled the fire-drake. I wasn’t sure that would be the case where we were going.

  “Anyway,” Macrory said. “Look at that moon. You’re not going to find a better night to travel than this.”

  *

  Such was our confidence in Macrory’s navigational powers that no one thought it the least bit odd when he suggested that we should steal a rowing boat. They were all secured by a long length of chain but that posed no problem for Millie whose sudden fondness for breaking and entering was really starting to worry me.

  What concerned me even more though was the idea of this whole ill-considered plan. Ever since Macrory had talked himself into it, I’d developed a growing sinking feeling deep in the pit of my stomach and, now that I thought about it, I think I knew why. I wasn’t scared of what I might find in Arcadia, I was scared of what I might not find.

  What if I we were too late? What if Silas had been changed so radically by his experiences that there was no way of redeeming him? What if I managed to change him back only to discover that he had gone completely feral? Lost all vestiges of hum
anity. Would I really want to care for him then? Was my love strong enough to contend with that?

  There had been precious little that I’d recognised as Silas the last time I’d seen him. Both Carlotta and I had noticed it, though neither one of us was brave enough to say it. And that had been well over a week ago. And that was the crux of it. I wasn’t scared of the journey, I wasn’t scared of being hurt, I wasn’t even scared of the Summer Queen herself, despite her fearsome reputation. I was scared of the thought of losing Silas.

  With two worlds pitched on the brink of a terrifying conflict, I realised I was being incredibly selfish but I just couldn’t help it. That was how I felt. And as Ma Birch had once said: you can only be true to your own feelings.

  I thought about that as I struggled to clamber into the boat, the underside scraping across the bottom as we prepared to head out into the Serpentine.

  The moon was directly overhead, its face split into a thousand glimmering fragments across the surface of the lake. If Silas had been there at that moment it would have been incredibly romantic, but he wasn’t and so I had to content myself with sharing a seat with Macrory who smelled of linseed, thyme and hay lofts.

  Edwin had taken control of the oars and so he sat in the middle while Millie sat behind him, alert to every sound the boat made. She wasn’t smiling but she looked far happier than I’d seen her in a long time. I felt a rush of warmth towards her. Like that pang you get when you recognise the face of a friend in a crowd. It gave me a strange kind of hope: that things would change and there would be a future for all of us.

  But, for the moment, the important thing was that we were all joined together with a shared purpose.

  We would do our best. It was all that could be asked of us.

  Edwin missed his stroke on one side, accidentally splashing me and Macrory.

  “Can’t you look where you’re going,” Macrory complained.

  “Not really. For one thing, I’m going backwards. And what about you? Do you even know what you’re looking for?”

  “You can’t rush these things. I’ll know it when I see it. Now if you don’t mind…”