Gregory Grey and the Fugitive in Helika

by Stanzin

CHAPTER 13

  Tribes and Thievery

  The next morning, the class once again lay wrung out and exhausted on the grassy ground. The post-sprint burn in Gregory’s lungs and legs had begun to feel good – there was something wonderfully cleansing about it.

  The Headmistress had something new for them. After their leg exercises, she seated them in a circle around her, a neat row of black tiles standing in front of each of them.

  ‘Most of you have been looking forward to this,’ the Headmistress said anticipatorily. ‘The goal is simple – using your thauma, and only your thauma, reach out to the furthest domino in front of you. Push it over!’

  Gregory forgot his fatigue at once – finally, he would wield magic!

  Thauma felt like malleable gel. It lay over every surface, yet it also filled the air, and the ground. Concentrating with all his might, he focused on that sparse gel. He willed it to build, condense, and coil with power and purpose right behind the furthest domino he could reach.

  He nudged.

  The domino fell over… as did the domino closer to Gregory. With a sad sound, the whole line of dominos collapsed.

  ‘Whoa…’

  He wasn’t the only one, most of the class had set off dual chains of collapse, and looked rather sheepish.

  ‘Magical strength is important,’ the Headmistress said, ‘but it’s nearly useless without fine control. So…’ At a weep of her bracelet, the fallen dominoes all stood back up again. ‘Focus.’

  Gregory left the class downright worried about his magical prowess. Not everyone, but a good number of people nevertheless, had gained enough fine control over their thauma to knock over exactly those dominoes they wanted to. He was relieved to learn that Susannah’s hold over her thauma was sloppy too… and then immediately felt ashamed.

  Hiding his own failure within the failures of others made him feel small.

  The lesson finished with breath-thauma extensions, where they were directed to steady their thauma on the inhale, and then reach out as far as they could on the exhale. Gregory’s thaumic radius had extended to ten feet – now solidly the shortest in the class, and two whole feet behind the next shortest. He couldn’t even hide it.

  Thankfully, there were other issues on people’s minds. At the Grotto, Mango brought up Domremy’s latest buzz.

  ‘So I hear we fought off a zombie apocalypse?’ Mango said.

  ‘Yeah, look at us go,’ Gregory said. He was sure the others were being kind - surely if his thaumic radius had been more impressive, they would have rather talked about how far they could magically flick pebbles or something?

  ‘Though technically it wasn’t a zombie apocalypse,’ Zach said.

  ‘Of course it was,’ Mango said.

  ‘Nope. Zombies means walking-moaning dead human bodies,’ Zach said. ‘All zombies are undead, but not all undead are zombies.’

  ‘It wasn’t an apocalypse either, was it?’ Mango said. ‘We’re all still here, after all.’

  ‘So, does this mean that the Shamanic mumb-jumbo about the Voidmark demon recruiting from us was right, only they were talking about the undead all along?’ Gregory asked.

  The others had clearly not considered this.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Susanna said finally. ‘But who knows what’s what about anything anymore. Everything magi anywhere thought they knew about magic is wrong.’

  ‘Our pasts are shrouded in mystery.’ Zach affected a hoarse, mystic voice, eyes flashing theatrically. ‘Speaking of pasts – anything interesting in your parent’s school records?’ he asked Gregory

  Gregory recounted the contents of his parent’s thesis to them. He left out, however, everything about trying to speculate at his parent’s movements through tracing old gypsy routes. They’d probably think it was far-fetched.

  ‘Your mum and dad are so cool,’ Mango crooned. ‘I mean, I knew from Uncle Rafi that the Falstead Reflectives are gypsy-descended, but I hadn’t realise that’s probably true of many more places.’

  ‘Oh, that reminds me!’ Susannah said excitedly. ‘I asked Daddy about checking in with your uncle, and he said we could this weekend – that’s when we’re unveiling the Tree!’

  ‘Unveiling?’

  ‘Commencing operations. We needed the refugee blood samples from Helika, and they just came in,’ Susannah said happily. ‘You can attend the ceremony – it’ll be small – then Daddy can show you around. I think your mums and dads have already been invited.’

  ‘What, mine too?’ Gregory and Zach said together.

  Susannah nodded. ‘A project like this doesn’t happen alone – I think pretty much every one important in the Domremy chipped in one way or the other.’

  ‘Any word from your Uncle Rafi at all so far?’ Zach asked Mango, who shook her head in melancholy.

  ‘Greg, what about you? Your friends in Pencier like your gifts?’

  ‘They loved it!’ Gregory lied easily. ‘Sent me a letter too… I replied to them just before I came for Prep.’

  He had replied to Mixer… he counted as a part of ‘they’, after all.

  Gregory’s performance in class plodded along through the week. He was beginning to get looks. Half-looks. Zach half-looked at him in encouragement. Mango and Susannah half-looked at him in puzzlement. The Headmistress half-looked at him in understanding. The rest of the class half-looked at him in amusement. The Boy With The Stick was poor at magic, and that wasn’t according to the script.

  So every afternoon, he half-explained and half-excused his absence to the others and ensconced himself in his room, and worked on his maps. The only one who gave Gregory any sort of full looks at all the whole week was Johanna, and they were looks of blatant annoyance.

  On Sunday, the furious scribbling in his room paused.

  Johanna took her eyes off her illustrated novel (a very exciting if dark read called Death Note).

  ‘Did you say something?’ She thought she had heard him say ‘white apple’.

  Gregory shook his head, and Johanna scowled. Whatever it was that had persuaded him to pause, it wasn’t enough to stop his mysterious and manic stream of thought. More than annoyed though, Johanna was also getting a little worried.

  He’d gone completely mad – in in a quiet and scary way. The scatter of pages strewn about his room had grown into a perfect storm. She wasn’t allowed to clean them up though, or even touch them. He apparently knew exactly where each page was. There was method to his madness.

  Still, she’d had a look at them when he’d fallen asleep.

  They made no sense and she could barely read his handwriting. The scribbling was all frantic; arrows had led everywhere pointing to notes scribbled into tiny margins; there had been great bits all slashed out; strange diagrams she hadn’t understood; and the pile of papers had just kept on growing.

  For six days now, he’d been completely absorbed in this, coming back immediately after school, distraught about something, to frown fiercely over either that awful An Atlas of Human Migration, a volume she itched to set afire or that mysterious, square grey tablet, which Gregory spoke to in low, loving tones. His eyes had become lightly bloodshot – and dark circles were deepening under his eyes.

  Sometimes he’d punctuate the air with grunts, sharp intakes of breath, and an impatient scoff or two. Sometimes he’d drum his fingers, staring blankly forward and then start as if struck, his eyes wide. Occasionally he’d mutter a word she couldn’t make out. Then there’s would be more furious scribbling. Sometimes he’d get up and stalk up and down the room in deep thought with fingers clenched to his mouth or pulling at each other behind his back.

  That first day she had had more fun watching him than reading. She had been amused when he’d done the same on the second day. On the third day though, he’d begun to bore her and now she was positively annoyed at being so thoroughly ignored. Giving him the silent treatment hadn’t worked for obvious reasons.

  Gregory noticed none of his cousin’s resentment. His work on
isolating the gypsy routes had given him long hours to dwell on the endless questions that surrounded his parents.

  Assuming that his parents were alive, then why would they pretend to be dead? Were they running from someone or something? What could possibly have threatened them? Had they simply decided to adopt the gypsy life? Why would they need to pretend death if so? Vera Grey had often mused of living the nomadic life. Had they done exactly that? If so, why leave Gregory at the orphanage when they’d always taken him along before? Because he had been slowing them down? Or perhaps because he’d contracted that terrible illness and they’d had no idea how to deal with it? What had happened on his seventh birthday – and where had they been when it had happened?

  Gregory couldn’t sing enough praises of An Atlas of Human Migration. He couldn’t imagine trying to draw his maps without it… or the Index! It had taken roughly a day for Gregory to fall irrevocably in love with that unassuming looking device. He could sum up the reason for that love in one word – convenience. After the first two hours that he’d spent carefully uploading and tagging all the newspapers, An Atlas of Human Migration, and the gypsy anthologies, the device’s power had become quickly apparent – navigation. It didn’t matter what he wanted to search, the Index would return it instantly. He barely even had to look at the newspapers anymore.

  His parent’s thesis had mentioned that the gypsy paths were rigid and fixed to the whims of the skies and nature. The problem was that all these timetables were charted by the progress of the seasons; or the position of the sun in the sky; or the position of the stars; or by the phase of the moon; or the blooming of a particular plant in an obscure valley; or the mating season of a particular bird – the list was endless – and they followed the tenets of the seasons more zealously than any Shaman. This was especially strange because the gypsies weren’t a religious lot.

  It was also strange in another way; back at Pencier, the villagers had never thought of gypsies as being as different from each other as countries might be, but they were. The more he learned about these curious people, the more he appreciated how little he, or anyone, actually knew about them. Within the nomadic circles, each tribe had it’s own name, ways and paths entirely distinct from the other tribes.

  They were usually in and out so quickly from any place that people gave them less thought than the seasons. All anyone ever said about them was that weren’t to be trusted; that they were half-civilised tramps and thieves. Had no one in the last thousand years wondered about why the gypsies lived as they lived?

  Well, aside from his parents, that was, and now him?

  Even with the helpful book, Gregory had had his work cut out. For though An Atlas of Human Migration neatly and in great detail described the locations various gypsy stops, it was less informative about the times of these stops. Which was why it had been essential to draw maps – to figure out the exact dates of each tribe’s movement going back eight years. Luckily for him, he had been able to cross off nearly fifty-two tribe names for they were nowhere near two hundred kilometres of Pencier. That left six major tribes, and twelve minor ones that did move within that circle.

  He’d painstakingly drawn out a broad map of Eurasia, and then press-copied the maps till he had nineteen of them. Then even more painstakingly he’d assigned each tribe its own map and charted out its route village-by-village, town-by-town, and city-by-city. These he drew out in long coloured lines of green, black, blue, red, orange, purple and brown. Then he’d carefully filled in the dates and general times that the nomads were seen at each place, and for how long, and they time they took to traverse the distance between each destination.

  Then, in the evening hours of Saturday, he carried out the main purpose of his exercise so far – identifying every location at which each tribe was likely to have been within the two-week time zone between the second and the sixteenth of July nineteen-oh-two. These dates and places were filled out in tiny and delicate handwriting. These, he put into a universal map.

  Come Sunday morning, he had four names, four towns within two days of travel from Pencier: Wimmer, Wouters, Brightapple and Mancini.

  ‘Brightapple,’ he muttered. The name and dot on his map were actually just outside the distance he thought his parents might have travelled to get him to a hospital. It was familiar, but Gregory was tired, and after a whole week with his nose pressed into old maps and hard-to-read print, not inclined to spend a single minute longer on gypsy trails. He let that fleeting familiarity pass out of his attention.

  Which was a shame, because he’d have solved a large part of his parent’s mystery a whole week earlier. Still, he had an unveiling, a commencement of operations, to look forward to at noon, and Gregory was glad for the distraction.

  Dressed in his best non-sparkly robes, a dark grey ensemble that was quickly becoming his signature outfit, Gregory flew with Uncle Quincy and Johanna to the eastern banks of the Big Finger.

  The Blood Tree still looked as bloodless as anything could get. Far above the ground, it’s massive wooden boughs spread out, devoid of even a single leaf, branching into the clear and blue sky. At its feet was a grand ensemble of large and ornate wooden drums, but Uncle Quincy didn’t take them down. Instead, he flew them right up to the top of the tree, to a broad and flattened landing.

  Susannah’s ‘small crowd’, roughly two hundred people, were already there, milling about trying to find seats. A raised platform on one end had two giant thrones set into it.

  Seconds before they landed on the platform, Gregory realised something at once awesome and peculiar – the Blood Tree wasn’t just a tree, but a building too. Alien and otherworldly, it had stairs spiralling down its trunk and rooms cut into it.

  Uncle Quincy’s flew in without hindrance, but other flyers were being directed to land some distance away from the main landing, and were being frisked.

  ‘What’s the security for?’ he asked.

  ‘The Kind and Queen are going to be there,’ Uncle Quincy said. ‘Not to mention practically everyone who matters or wants to matter in Domremy.’

  It began to dawn on Gregory that perhaps the Blood Tree was a bigger deal than he’d thought.

  Susannah must have spotted Gregory flying in, because she was right there when he landed.

  ‘Hallo, you’re right on time!’

  Unexpectedly, she swooped in onto Gregory and kissed his cheek.

  ‘Hi… oh, good… thought I was late. And you look nice,’ Gregory managed to stammer out.

  And she did look nice: she wore a pale pink kimono across which cherry blossoms slowly bloomed. Her face, as Johanna and her friends liked to say, was ‘a picture’ – and she was positively beaming at Gregory for the compliment. Gregory introduced her to his Uncle Quincy and Johanna, whom Susannah charmed in seconds.

  ‘Mommy said you’re prettier than your own mum, and she was right,’ Susannah said, warmly hugging Jo. She smelt like roses. Jo decided Gregory could do a lot worse; this girl was nice!

  ‘Come on in and meet my parent,’ Susannah said.

  Susannah’s father, Asclepius Coffey-Sharada, was an expansive man with a big, pale head and large soft hands; his voice was so magnificently deep that when he spoke, the air itself trembled. Her mother, Priyanka Sharada-Coffey, was tall and dusky with spectacularly large eyes. A tall man, paler than milk, stood beside them. He must have been in his twenties, and nervous energy radiating off him, his eyes darting everywhere. Everything he wore was black.

  ‘Oho, here’s Domremy’s other Hero,’ Asclepius Coffey-Sharada rumbled.

  ‘Zach and Mango already met mum and dad,’ Susannah explained.

  ‘Aye, but it’s you I want to talk to, boy! Things are a right storm right now, but we’ll steal a moment sometime. Though seeing Susannah won’t shut up about you, I’m not the only Coffey who’ll be stealing moments with you, eh? You and I might need to talk about appropriate hours soon, I think.’

  ‘Daddy!’

  Leaving Uncle Quincy with the
other grown-ups, a red-faced Susannah led away a red-faced Gregory and a giggling Johanna to where Zach and Mango were already waiting – second row seats, which were right behind two, large throne-like seats.

  ‘Why’re you two carrot-faced?’ Zach asked as soon as he saw them.

  ‘We’re not carrot-faced,’ Gregory and Susannah said together.

  ‘Oh yes you are,’ Mango said.

  ‘Mr. Coffey wanted to talk to Gregory about-’ Johanna began, but Gregory cut across her in a loud voice:

  ‘That tree really couldn’t look any more bloodless than if it were dead! Even that guy,’ – Gregory jerked his thumb back at the slender man in black – ‘might have more color about him than the Tree.’

  ‘Don’t point,’ Mango hissed, ‘he’s looking this way.’

  ‘Looking… at you, mate,’ Zach told Gregory.

  Gregory’s eyes met his observer – he looked curious. And though Gregory had endured his fair share of curious looks, this gaze felt different.

  ‘What am I, his lunch?’ Gregory muttered, ‘He looks like he’s making up his mind whether he really wants to eat me.’

  ‘So romantic,’ Zach scoffed.

  ‘No, really – look at him.’ But at that moment, the man looked away to speak to Susannah’s father. ‘Who is he?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘That’s Remy Schuyler,’ Susannah whispered. ‘He’s weird but Daddy’s in love with him. Mamma says she’s always surprised they haven’t exchanged rings yet.’

  ‘And why does your father love… Mr. Death-face?’ Zach asked.

  ‘The Blood Tree was all his idea.’

  Before she could explain further, an enhanced voice called through the air: ‘Visitors, be seated.’ As soon as everyone had complied, a hush fell over the crowd. The King and Queen appeared and took their seats. The Queen nodded and smiled at Gregory and Mango, and they bobbed a clumsy curtsy.

  Asclepius Coffey-Sharada and Remy Schuyler took the stage with Augusta Lovelace-Zeppelin right beside them.

  ‘What’s your mum doing up there?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea… but then, mum always does have a secret project or ten that no one, not even father, knows about,’ Zach said, looking as surprised as Gregory.

  The contrast between the two was striking. Susannah’s father was as robust as robust gets, and Remy could make a sick man look robust if he stood next to him; Augusta Lovelace-Zeppelin was a vision of loveliness. But Susannah was right; there was camaraderie between the two men, a friendship in their glance and a harmony to their mannerism – and it extended to the lady who stood with them. They looked like master showmen about to put a great act to play.

  ‘My wife and daughter,’ Asclepius Coffey-Sharada began, ‘accuse me of baiting people to ask – ‘What is the Blood Census, and what’s a great ugly tree got to do with it?’ And then they say I won’t shut up. Well, sorry darlings, because it’s only going to get worse right now.’

  The crowd laughed and clapped; Asclepius beamed, and even Remy’s mouth twitched.

  ‘It’s said that the first Census was conducted in Atlantis,’ said Mr. Coffey began. ‘But after the Sentinel Wars, there was no point, because almost all the big cities were wiped out. A lot of time passed, and new cities were built. And still, it wasn’t until thousands of years later, about a hundred years ago, that the rulers of Huaxia thought – ‘Wow, we have a lot of people here! If only we could track them! Two years – it took them that long to draw up the first list. Over three hundred million souls counted. It was a big deal, handshakes and jolly good shows all around.

  ‘In ten years that list was obsolete – somehow they had a whole bunch of new people coming out of nowhere! They had to do it again… all a very tedious and long process… but they’ve been doing it every decade for the last hundred years… a massive endeavour.

  ‘Now, ten years ago, the Veles’ Curse had me flummoxed. The accursed illness destroyed one’s mana, and there was no illness a wizard could fear more! I thought I saw a way to attack it, but I needed to study thousands of samples of the disease first! I only had a few score cases to begin with, and it took me three years to build up the numbers I needed to get any sort of measureable pattern. Collecting them was a massive pain – a million times, and a million times again, I wished to know whole country’s health information at hand instead of having to solicit hospitals everywhere one by one.

  ‘Anyway, I found my cure, but I never really forgot about the headache I’d had simply trying to gather data. I must have gone around complaining, because one day, a patient of mine from Huaxia – he worked for the Census bureau there – told me all about how the Emperor there was using the census for reforms in education, in infrastructure…

  ‘I thought, ‘Alright, let’s bring that to healthcare.’

  ‘So I got him to invite me down there and I learnt everything I could about Census taking: I came back and set up a system. Domremy had its first Census almost a decade ago, and it was the coolest census ever done in history… because it was one of the only fourteen we know of, but let’s not nit-pick.

  ‘But I wasn’t happy. It’s a curse with us Healers, we’re never happy. I in particular, was sad that we had to go through thousands of medical histories and visit actual patients one at a time – tedious, tedious, tedious. Slow. Boring.

  ‘Three years ago, I met Remy Schuyler,’ Asclepius said, clapping the smaller man on the back. ‘Perhaps one of the most intelligent minds to have ever come out of Gurukul Caverns. Remy Schuyler had an idea, a vision… a technology to change the world.

  ‘Remy Schuyler dreamt of the Index.’

  Gregory and Mango exchanged startled looks. That wasted looking man had created the tool the Queen thought was the most important invention in magical history?

  ‘Some of you have already heard of the Index, at tradeshows and magic summits – it is a counter and a sorter – perfectly adapted to the task of counting through millions of specimens to find the patterns that matter. Augusta Lovelace,’ – Zach looked as surprised as Gregory felt – ‘was kind enough to introduce us, and within the hour, Remy, who’d already been running experimental runeflows in a prototype Index, and who had thought to rune-link blood itself, was convinced that the combination of our three technologies – the Census, the Index, and Neo-Runecraft – would produce a tool powerful beyond anything ever before seen in human history.

  ‘My King, my Queen, and Domremy,’ Asclepius Coffey-Sharada said grandly – he, Remy Schuyler and Augusta Lovelace-Zeppelin brandished their instruments – ‘We give you the Blood Census.’

  He, Remy and Augusta flourished their instruments, and something rumbled far below. There was a susurrus, during which everybody looked to the edge of the Tree’s platform or into the sky, but the sound came from all around.

  Blood red flowers soared out from below - no, fronds, Gregory realised. The crows let out collective ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’. Like iron filings drawn-up to a magnet, the crimson stream sought out its place at the boughs and branches of the great tree – in seconds, a vivid red canopy bloomed above their heads, thickening and growing as the magic of the fronds bound into the magic of the Tree.

  ‘Computing, neo-runecraft, and civic health – three futures united in one grand vision!’ Asclepius Coffey-Sharada cried. ‘Each of the fronds is rune-linked to a refugee Reflective in Helika – some sixteen thousand in all! Not only that, but the thaumic linking actually sustains the Tree itself! Upto this moment, the Tree was dormant… now, it draws on the magical potentials of those linked to it – both mage and mundane, drawing only a sliver of energy from each, but enough to function. Whatever may ail them, we’ll know it even before they do! Imagine a world where you’re cured before even you find out you were ever sick! And so His Grace The King shall monitor our kin across the borders. Today, the refugees, tomorrow the world! We give you, the future of civic healthcare!’

  The whole crowd was already on their feet; and at that applause light, they cheered
and stamped. Gregory, Susannah, Mango and Zach cheered and stamped right along; the implications might have been lost on them, but the mood was infectious.

  ‘And we’re not going to wait years and years before the Tree begins to show its promise either,’ Asclepius continued. ‘Our initial trials have already revealed things we’ve never seen before! In the Falstead Refugee Camp, at this very moment, we’ve already been able to head off an epidemic of cholera! My own predictions for early symptoms of the Veles’ Curse have been proven true. And we’re discovering new illnesses: there is a patient, a girl, who suffered and recovered from a fever that burned high enough to take her life, and indeed, it seems to have burned away all her hair! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Without the Tree, this anomaly would have passed unseen. Now, as soon as the Emperor ends the Emergency, we can bring her here to study her!’

  ‘Five times now the human race has been threatened by plague! We didn’t see the disease until it was too late! No more! Our lives have been unfairly short! No more! Our ends have been painful and prolonged! No more! The strongest of us have been struck down by the merest virus! No more! We were destined to become gods of this world, and today, we’re one step closer! Rejoice, Domremy!’

  Colour crackers burst around the tree. The swelling ovation hid Gregory’s stunned silence. He had not misheard. His mysterious childhood illness had struck another! His hands clenched into fists, excitement roaring in his blood.

  He had to speak to her, no matter what! But how could he, when a hundred kilometres and a hostile border lay between them? He looked up and saw the answer soaring above his head – a canopy of blood that coursed with arcane magic! To know about this girl, he had to speak to her. The only way to speak across vast distances then, was to Scry. To Scry the girl, he needed her blood. For that, he needed the girl’s own blood frond, hidden in the pulsating red boughs above him. And to get that he would need –

  Ten minutes later, Gregory and Susannah, hand in hand, had sped down the stairs cut into the Tree’s trunk.

  ‘Alright, hold on mister,’ Susannah said, jerking Gregory to a stop. ‘Exactly what is this ‘adventure’ you’re going on about? We’re not sneaking off into secluded corners any second you fancy!’

  ‘This adventure is a crime,’ Gregory said. ‘A theft, actually.’

  ‘A theft? Really? What are we stealing and who are we stealing it from?’

  ‘That day of our Blooding, you said that you’d do anything, give anything, to help me uncover my past. Did you mean it, Susannah? Because I swear that that’s what this is about. I think I’ve just found something important, and I need you to help me understand if it means something.’

  ‘I meant it! But if you want my help, explain!’

  ‘Alright then. That sick girl your father spoke of…he said no one’s been sick that way before – he’s wrong! It happened to me, seven years ago, the day I arrived at the orphanage. Insane fever and baldness! I don’t know how I fell sick that way, but I’ve always believed it had something to do with my mum and dad. If I knew how this Helikan girl fell sick… if I knew what she knew… I must find out! Will you help me?’

  ‘Of course, I will! You haven’t said what you want, Gregory.’

  ‘It’s illegal, and wrong, and could get me into a lot of trouble… but I swear to you no one gets hurt. Even if you refuse to help Susannah, promise me you’ll keep this secret! If I tell you, swear to me you’ll never tell a single other soul! Otherwise we’ll go back up, and pretend we never spoke.’

  Susannah matched Gregory’s sombre look. ‘I promise I won’t tell anyone anything.’

  And so Gregory told her his plan.

  ‘You want to Scry her?’ Susannah said, more fascinated than horrified.

  ‘A Caller’s Scry,’ Gregory said quickly. ‘I just need to speak to her. People do it all the time.’

  ‘Thieves and criminals and murderers!’

  ‘Families and loved ones,’ Gregory corrected. ‘The gypsies do it if you pay them. They don’t do the darker kind of Scrying. I must speak to her Susannah… and if you’re gonna help me, you’ve gotta help me now. Will you?’

  Susannah fidgeted, but Gregory thought it was more in excitement than in worry.

  ‘And if we get caught?’ she asked.

  ‘We just say you were giving me a tour of the place,’ Gregory said immediately, grinning, ‘and since half the people upstairs must’ve heard your dad wanting to speak to me about hours… well, they’ll think up their own reasons why we’re out and about.’

  It was all about phrasing things the right way.

  Looking mischievous, Susannah took his hand and took Gregory down several more landings, stopping at a dark doorway barred by a magical barrier.

  ‘This is the control room,’ she said. ‘Come on. We can get your frond from here.’

  Gregory tried to reach through the ward; it felt as if he were pushing against air made solid.

  ‘It’s sealed off,’ he said.

  ‘Not to me,’ Susannah said. Holding his hand, she stepped through the ward as though it didn’t exist, and pulled him right along with her. ‘There isn’t a place in this whole tree that I can’t get into. Daddy gave me full access.’

  ‘Not that I’m complaining, but that doesn’t sound very clever. What if someone forced you to bring them in?’ Gregory said, looking around the room. Smooth and plain panels covered one wall of the circular room, and there was a panel that reminded Gregory of the zeppelin control room.

  ‘No one comes in that I don’t want to let in,’ Susannah said. ‘Someone could trick me, I suppose, but you can’t trick the wards. They’re too clever.’

  There was a small alcove at the back, with complicated runes carved into its floor. ‘What’s that?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘A Scrying circle,’ Susannah said, and then, seeing Gregory’s expression, ‘Don’t get excited. You can’t use it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Only Daddy, Remy and Zach’s mum are allowed to… and only Remy really uses it anyway,’ Susannah said. ‘It won’t even activate if you try it… unless you’re the King or Queen, I suppose.’

  ‘Right,’ Gregory said. ‘So… how are we going to find one blood frond from thousands?’

  ‘We are going to do nothing,’ Susannah said firmly. ‘I am going extract that blood frond. Luckily for you, Mr. Grey, I was with Daddy on all his test runs of the Tree… including the one in which we found the girl with the weird fever. We’re going to have to be quick – don’t disturb me.’

  At a touch of her hand, the control panel lit up and the screens flickered to life. Susannah’s hands moved over the panel, and though Gregory wasn’t sure quite what she was doing, he did see the writing that sped across the screens – the functions seemed familiar.

  ‘It’s an Index – a giant Index!’ Gregory said.

  ‘What! How do you know that?’ Susannah stared suspiciously at him.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that – a Hero-to-be can get around. I’ve seen smaller ones… how does this thing work?’

  The text resolved into: Search test element: Surname .

  ‘I thought I said don’t disturb me.’

  ‘Oh, come on. This is incredible.’

  Flattery was a lovely thing. Susannah smirked. ‘Well, if you know how Indexes work… it’s really not all that different. The process runeflows are written into the tree’s core, and it allows basic function that all Indexes have. But if you want to do a lot of complex calculations, or ask a specific question, or execute a specific command… then you can write those commands into a runecard – they’re basically square blocks of runewood, rewritable, so you can erase one set of runeflows and write in another – and those runecards all go into these array towers at the base of the Tree… you can get them to say or do pretty much anything if you know how.’

  A few seconds later, the wooden screens had a new message: Returned: Greene, Lesley FRCID: 4057 Status: Homeostasis. Command?

&nb
sp; Susannah typed in: Extract Secondary Specimen. ‘There are two of every frond, just in case once gets damaged,’ she said. ‘Your blood frond ought to be here any second.’

  ‘Wow. So if I, say, burn down the base of tower, the whole Tree just… shuts down?’ Gregory asked, fascinated.

  ‘Nothing quite so terrible. Yes, things would slow down for a bit… but we’ve got backup runecards for all the important runeflows; and while they repair the base of the tree, and while Pappa kills you, the Tree’s most basic functions can be restored from right here, actually – see this pillar in the wall, with all the slots in it?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘That’s an array tower – the Tree can function off any runecard we slot into it.’

  ‘And the tree really draws power off the rune-linked themselves?’

  ‘Daddy said it needs about twelve thousand links to work.’

  ‘And what happens if you don’t have twelve thousand?’

  ‘It dies, I think.’

  ‘Then what was holding it up before it got the links?’

  ‘Dormant runewood has its own latent magic, silly. And the tree’s not all runewood, just reinforced by it.’

  ‘Right. Man, this is really cool… it might be cooler than Zeppelins.’

  ‘Don’t even compare. Now, there’s something else I can do for you…’ Her hands flew over the panel.

  A wide and squat runestone block with many thin sheets of runestone slid into its grooves made a crackling noise.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A Book of Memory,’ Susannah said, rushing over to it and smacking down a large square sheet of paper on top – words materialised onto the parchment – Susannah thrust it at Gregory. ‘There you go – everything we know about Lesley Greene.’

  ‘You’re a genius!’

  ‘Don’t you forget it. Now where’s that-’

  A tube in the left wall made a sound like rushing air. Something red and leafy shot out; a force field in the centre of the room seized the missile. The blood frond hovered in the air, twisting gently. It looked frail and delicate.

  ‘Don’t just gawp at it, we need to get out of here,’ Susannah hissed.

  Gregory snatched the frond and carefully tucked it into his robe-jacket. Susannah turned the Index off, and the two adventurists jogged back up the spiralling stairs.

  ‘I owe you huge,’ Gregory said fervently.

  ‘I will collect on that,’ Susannah promised, panting a little. ‘Now lets get back before tongues start wagging.’

  ‘True. Why don’t you go on ahead? I’ll come up a few minutes later.’

  Susannah nodded; he appreciatively watched her bounce up the stairs.

  He couldn’t believe how easy that had been! Less than half an hour had passed since he had thought to Scry a strange girl, and he already had her blood in his jacket! All he had to do now was wait until the next gypsy camp rolled into town.

  Lesley Greene. He closed his eyes and thought of her, a girl in a land far away and south of the mountains. What have you got to tell me, Lesley Greene? What did we share?

  Suddenly, Gregory felt exhausted. His mind swam with too many questions, was focused on too many avenues – magic, history, parents, and mysteries. He yawned hugely and stared at the nice view in front of him.

  The blue waters of Big Finger shimmered peacefully below. White birds flocked above the high hills to the north. The scene was so perfect it was almost vulgar.

  Something flew into his eye.

  ‘Argh!’

  Gregory rubbed and kneaded his burning eye, cussing up a thunderstorm. Blinking furiously with his good eye, he looked up the Tree. Something dark and light as a feather fell from above – it looked like black snow. He wondered if someone had set off fireworks, and carefully began to climb the stairs to the top. The higher he rose, the more thickly that black snow fell, silent and sinister.

  He knew something was dreadfully wrong the second he reached the top. The smiles had faded from everyone’s faces, replaced by grimaces of horror. The cheer had given way to dread. Johanna’s arm, like the arms of some others, was outstretched to catch that strange black snow. Mr. Coffey and Zach’s mother looked stricken.

  Susannah stood only a little way away from the stairs. She was frozen and looking up at the canopy from which the black snow fell. Gregory touched her shoulder; she turned to him, dazed.

  ‘What’s going on? What’s this black stuff?’

  ‘It’s… it’s the fronds.’

  ‘The fronds?’

  A rather large snowflake fluttered down onto Gregory’s wrist. The shrivelled form was nearly unrecognisable, and at his mere breath, crumbled like ash. In sudden panic, Gregory reached into his jacket – his own frond was whole.

  Across the landing, Mango’s face had turned white.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked worriedly. ‘Is the tree failing?’

  ‘No… it’s the refugees in Helika. They’re dying.’