Gregory Grey and the Fugitive in Helika

by Stanzin

CHAPTER 18

  A Home That Wasn't

  Later, on the same Monday afternoon that Gregory met Vincent Grey for the first time in his memory, a sharp crack resounded through Gregory’s room.

  Thwak!

  Johanna jumped in alarm from the book she’d been absorbed in and looked up at Gregory. Her cousin had struck his desk hard enough to send papers flying and an inkbottle spilling. He looked thunderous, jaws clenched, lips thin, and nostrils flaring. He caught her looking at him.

  ‘Wanna get out? I’ve got to visit Coffer Street.’

  ‘Not if you’re going to behave as crabby as you look right now,’ Johanna warned.

  ‘I’ll be fun… enough,’ Gregory said with a grim smile. ‘Come on, I’ll treat you to something nice.’

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Oh, I’m going to be…’

  ‘Alright, then.’

  Minutes later, they shot out of the Slide’s Coffer Street exit. Gregory walked fast, and Johanna had to run to keep up. They reached the green-marble, triangular and tiered building where all of Domremy city bought its instruments.

  As ever, the two proprietors of the shop were obscured behind their newspaper, with two streams of smoke rising from where their heads must be.

  ‘Mr and Ms. Toohey, I’d like to purchase a knife – show me the finest ones you have.’

  Two wispy haired heads emerged from either side of the paper and nodded. Minutes later, a collection of highly unfriendly looking blades lay spread out over black velvet.

  ‘What do you say, Jo?’

  Her hand began to reach for a pretty if cruel-looking keris of silver, when she saw it – a blade she’d almost missed on the dark cloth because of its obsidian black colour – a kukri, about eighteen inches long, spine gently angled, blade notched at the base, butt flaring at the bottom.

  She handed it to Gregory, who whipped around and slashed the air with it.

  ‘It’s perfect, Jo. My friend’s going to love it.’ He turned to the Tooheys. ‘Please beef it up in every way you know how.’

  When they were outside again, Johanna was struck by how unusually quiet Coffer Street was.

  ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘At the Peoplesmeet, I suppose,’ Gregory said. ‘Want to drop in?’

  ‘Nah. I want an éclair.’

  They found a patisserie in the centre of a bridge over Fate. A kindly old man prepped Johanna’s éclair and brought it to their table, which had a lovely view downriver. Johanna tucked into her éclair; Gregory fidgeted with the package containing the unblooded instrument.

  ‘Ok, have a bite!’

  ‘I’m good.’

  ‘Either have a bite or stop looking like a sour-puss,’ Johanna snapped, thrusting the éclair out at his face. ‘I told you I wouldn’t have you moping about like this.’

  Gregory chuckled, leaned forward and sank his teeth into the éclair. It was terribly satisfying.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘Good. Why are you so foul?’

  ‘A friend of mine was an idiot... it got him hurt.’

  ‘He broke his instrument? That’s why you bought him another one?’

  ‘He didn’t break his instrument…someone saw Mixer had one, and he didn’t – so he broke Mixer’s instrument… and then he broke Mixer’s nose. Mixer won’t say who it was, but I bet it was Joshua.’

  ‘That’s horrible!’ Johanna looked appalled.

  ‘If I get my hands on whoever did it,’ – Gregory mimed punching someone – ‘there are consequences for messing with someone’s instrument.’

  ‘Why do you keep buying…Mixer… instruments, though? Maybe he wants something else?’

  ‘Do you want anything more than you want your own instrument?’

  ‘No, but I’m not old enough. Mixer must be fourteen already, isn’t that right? Why can’t he just use his own?’

  Gregory looked at Johanna incredulously. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mixer doesn’t have… he can’t have any instrument other than the one I give to him!’

  ‘What! Why not?’

  ‘Coz it’s an expensive bloody thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s only seven Caesar!’

  ‘Only seven…’ Gregory paused, seeing complete bewilderment on Johanna’s face.

  She has no idea, he realised with not a little awe. She has no idea, just like I had no idea until the Bobbin and the Director sat me down and told me all about it…

  ‘Do you have any idea what seven Caesar means? Outside the city… in the country? Actually wait… tell me this – do you think we’re rich? You and me, that is, and your father. Do you think we’re rich?’

  ‘We’re alright,’ Johanna said cautiously.

  ‘Who do you think is poorer than you?’

  ‘Uh… the people in Lotown? I know they can’t send their kids to the Caverns… so they homeschool.’

  ‘Right, right. But at least they’ve got enough money to buy instruments right? And runestuffs? And the books to learn magic from – they’ve got all that, right?’

  ‘Sure…’

  ‘Outside the city, Jo, no one’s got even that. No one’s got enough money to buy their own instrument. Seven Caesars… that’s just a little less than what Mrs. Moser – that’s the innkeeper back in Pencier – than what Mrs. Moser makes in a year. And Mrs. Moser is one of the rich ones in Pencier. Most people don’t even make half of that.’

  ‘What! That’s impossible. How do they even eat?’

  ‘Jo… the kind of breakfast we have every day… at the orphanage, we’d be lucky if we got food like that for someone’s birthday! The cake’s about the only nice thing there is. We eat cheap, that’s how we eat… also, food’s a lot more expensive here than there.’

  ‘Where do people get their instruments from, then?’

  ‘You’re not getting it – they don’t get instruments! There’s two thousand people in Pencier (before the Voidmark, at least), and only about a dozen of them have real, full-fledged instruments.’

  ‘Then how does anyone get any magic done?’

  ‘They don’t! You remember the Voidmark? – and how everyone lost their minds when magic wouldn’t work? That’s what it’s like outside the city! All the time! Most of us outside… don’t. Do. Magic. We can’t afford it! We don’t have the money to buy instruments. We don’t have the money to buy books! We don’t have the money to buy runestuffs! And we definitely don’t have the money to buy lessons of any kind!’

  Johanna’s eyes stared in wide horror, éclair frozen for a long moment on the way to her mouth, so Gregory went on, getting more agitated with every sentence.

  ‘Imagine you saw all the kids around you getting instruments, but you were told that you couldn’t ever have one of your own – it’d make you feel sick, wouldn’t it? That’s what it’s like for us when we think about mages – sick! We hate that you can do magic and we can’t, and most of us just hate most of you in principle! We hate that you call us Mundane! We make fun of the way you dress and act, because that’s all we’ve got. It’s all we can do!

  ‘I’m angry because Mixer knew this and still went around waving his new toy – like an absolute idiot. Someone who didn’t have, saw someone who did have, and took their anger out on Mixer… well, he’ll know better now.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ Johanna said, shaken and upset. ‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard… I didn’t know…’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Gregory said quickly, ‘I once thought I’d never get to be a mage… so I asked some grown-ups why… almost no one in Pencier did magic, when they obviously wanted to – and this is what they told me…’

  And he told her more, including about the Incident With The Bobbin’s Staff.

  ‘… it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done… and if I was still in Pencier – I’d do it all over again! Being a mage in Pencier makes you one of the most important persons in the who
le village – everyone looks up to you, comes to you with their problems.’

  ‘Wow,’ Johanna said, obviously overwhelmed.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have dropped it all on you like this… but you’ve got to know! And… and it wasn’t just me, y’know – Reggie, Alf and Mixer all wanted to learn magic too – we all wanted to learn it together… and I thought maybe, if I was here… I could get them instruments, write down my lessons and send it to them – I thought we could do it together… it’s why I wanted to come to Domremy… more than anything, it’s why I wanted to…’

  And then Gregory was crying, silent shudders shaking him, fists-clenched and nails digging into palms, face-reddening as he tried to hold the sobs back, but he couldn’t, and all at once, there was release – his shame at his magical mediocrity… his frustration at having met Vincent and nothing changing… and above all, his grief at losing Reggie and Alf, his terror at how with every day that passed, there was less of them within him… less in memory, and less in deed… his strain in needing to move on, and feeling too guilty to… every sob dragged a louder, more powerful sob behind it… Gregory covered his face with one hand…

  Johanna looked very alarmed. She dragged her seat closer to Gregory, looked around frantically, put her hand on his shoulder, and then his hair; stroking it, quite at a loss for words… Gregory seemed to be mumbling something to himself; she leaned in closer to hear…

  ‘… not fair… it’s not… it’s not fair…’

  ‘Then make it fair, silly!’ Johanna said without thinking… she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Make it fair…’

  And then, she knew exactly what to say.

  ‘… yes, make it fair! You’ve got a boon, you idiot! Make it fair! What are you moping on about?’

  ‘I’ve got a boon…?’

  ‘Yes, for the thousandth time, you’ve got a boon! You’ve got three, actually! You’re about to become Hero – there’s almost nothing you can’t get done! – so stop sobbing and do something!’

  Gregory looked stunned, as if she had hit him in the face with a running train… no, a mountain… no, a running mountain…

  ‘Jo… you crazy genius, you angel, you… we gotta get back home! I need my diary!’

  And when they were home, Gregory wrote long and frantically for many hours. If someone had been close enough, they would have actually seen his pupils become tiny pinholes as idea after idea flared through his mind, down his arm and out of his quill, pages piling up in an untidy mess all around him. He refused to come out for dinner, and when Uncle Quincy wanted to go investigate why, Johanna put her hand on his, and shook her head. So they ate, and left him to his madness.

  The next morning found Gregory slumped over his table, face pressed to the diary, and stiff. For a moment, he couldn’t remember why he was so tired, but when he remembered he leapt up with more energy than even last night. He scarfed down some breakfast without tasting it, and rushed out to the Caverns without bathing or changing his robes from yesterday, diary in hand.

  He whooshed out of the slide at Bezyl (a town on the opposite bank of Little Finger from the Caverns), sprinted out, caught the closest carpet, and shot off across the lake. The carpet hadn’t even landed properly before he was leaping off, sprinting up the gates past startled seniors, to the Dome, up the spiralling stairs, up the tower, and knocking sharply on the door, which swung open at once.

  The Headmistress looked up in astonishment. ‘Gregory. Do come in. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure? And why do you have -’

  Gregory strode into the room, his excitement causing nearly all of his hair to stand on end.

  ‘I know my boon!’ he barked breathlessly.

  The Headmistress looked nonplussed. ‘Your… boon?’

  ‘Yes! I know what it is,’ he said, and began to speak.

  He spoke quickly, like the words couldn’t come out fast enough. Alf would have been proud. Sometimes, the Headmistress who was Queen looked like she wanted to ask something, but there was no getting an edge in between Gregory’s words. He had his diary in his hand, and he wouldn’t pause even when he glanced down at his notes. The Headmistress’ expression went from bemused, to intrigued, to thoughtful, as she listened to him, nodding along at times.

  When Gregory finally ran out of words, his mouth kept on opening and closing for a moment.

  ‘Is that all of it?’ the Headmistress asked warily.

  Gregory searched in his head. ‘…Yes.’

  ‘I’ve wanted to ask something, if I may.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you know you’ve got ink all over the side of your face?’

  ‘What?’

  She pointed, lips twitching. ‘Ink. Face. Black.’

  He touched his cheek, and his fingers came away smudged and dirty. It must have come from his diary, when he’d slept on it. Exhaustion and embarrassment overcame him at once. He blushed as deeply as he’d ever blushed in his life.

  And only then did he truly realise where he was, and how he hadn’t bathed, and how his yesterday’s clothes were rumpled and scruffy, and how he’d actually barged into the Queen’s office without an appointment, and he practically trembled with embarrassment.

  The Queen took pity on him. ‘Why don’t you head on over to the showers, and I’ll see if I can’t get someone to arrange a fresh uniform for you to wear. And then, when you’re a little more presentable, we can go meet the King.’

  Gregory’s eyes widened. ‘You think it’s a good idea?’

  ‘I think it’s the finest boon that’s been asked in the last hundred years, and I’m willing to wager the King will think so too. Go, Gregory. We’ll excuse your classes, and I’ll teach you in private when I can. Let’s talk about your boon.’

  They did more than talk. The next few days passed in a blur for Gregory. Every minute that he wasn’t studying, he was ensconced with the King and Queen, and a panel of their closest advisors. This panel was made up of lawmakers and philosophers, moralists and scholars of every kind, anthropologists and scientists – all of them the undisputed leaders of their fields – and he was terrified that he’d never remember all their names and that’s why it would all fall apart.

  It was all a little bit overwhelming; especially the parts when he would speak, and they would listen. He felt like a child gone mad; there were grown-ups, like the Bobbin and Uncle Quincy; and then there were the so grown up that they couldn’t possibly ever have been children. They spoke to him as an equal! He couldn’t understand why they were taking him so seriously. Every so often, he expected someone to start laughing, saying it was a big joke.

  The thought of his boon kept him sane, though, and he went on speaking when they asked him to.

  He told no one else what he was doing. The Queen and King had insisted on strict secrecy from everyone. It made the whole thing all that much more exciting and mysterious. Mango, Susannah and Zach were stupefied with the regularity with which he missed classes. Being cryptic was turning out to be a wonderfully fun way to be.

  ‘You’re just being rotten now,’ Mango huffed at him, after Gregory had skived off lessons for the third day in a row.

  ‘It’s too important to just gossip about,’ Gregory said pompously. ‘The Queen and King don’t want people blabbing away…’

  He’d been forbidden from telling even Uncle Quincy, though the older man had been told it was all about Gregory’s boon. ‘How many of these mysterious little shut-ins with the King and Queen will you continue to have?’ he asked over Wednesday morning’s breakfast

  ‘A few more up to the boon – they’re trying to make sure everything’s ready for Sunday’s ceremony… and maybe some more after,’ Gregory said, happily biting into his buttered toast.

  ‘I have to admit, I’m almost deathly curious about what your boon could possibly be. I can’t remember the last time a boon was favoured with this much interest. Some word of it is
starting to circulate about the offices, so don’t be surprised if you see some speculations in the newspaper.’

  ‘Right,’ said Gregory, who had absolutely no time to read newspapers. Almost every hour that he was not cooped up with discussions on his boon, he was ensconced with the humourless Mr. Fester, the man designated with the task of making sure that Gregory would not embarrass himself or the Throne in any conceivable manner at the ceremony. Dress, etiquette, procedure – Gregory would master them all even if Mr. Fester’s face froze into a permanent hard stare in the attempt.

  ‘You’ll have to learn to waltz too,’ drily said the man dressed in immaculate black. ‘Thankfully, the ceremony is to proceed with expedience, so we while the nation shall be spared the inevitable travesty of your performance… those at the ball will have to endure your feet – you are unlikely to learn how to lead, but perhaps you can learn to be led?’

  They were beginning to develop quite the healthy dislike for each other.

  Johanna found her cousin somewhat extra affectionate that week. Everyday, something or the other found its way into her hand: a pretty trinket, a book; and always, with an accompanying éclair. She lapped up the attention.

  On Friday morning, with fewer than seventy-two hours till Gregory and Mango were proclaimed Heroes of Domremy, there were no meetings scheduled, and there was no more skiving off classes. His friends would be smug, Gregory knew, but the week had been worth it. When Uncle Quincy had left for the Peoplesmeet after breakfast, Johanna did ask, ‘You’re doing a lot more than just make sure that your friends get here aren’t you?’

  ‘Maybe. And I have something for you, by the way.’

  ‘Again?’ Johanna said with pretended exasperation; she was getting quite used to being spoiled like she had been over the past week.

  Gregory rummaged in his bag, found something that clinked against his finger, let it go, and pulled out a exquisite little whistle. She took it, and blew into it, and it chirped ridiculously sweetly. After his delighted cousin had kissed him, and waved him off to the Caverns on the carpet, Gregory looked again into his pouch, and pulled out the piece of metal.

  It was the key to The Mushroom at Oakroot Hamlet – Vincent had given it to him on Monday, in the clearing… and said that he would be there sometime during Friday… today.

  The past week had entirely driven the meeting with his father from his head… no, Gregory thought, that wasn’t it. He’d wanted to forget that meeting. Gregory’s first real meeting with his father left him feeling rather melancholy. He couldn’t shake the feeling there was something deeply wrong with picture that his father had painted for him.

  Gregory remembered the month between finding out he had a family and coming to Domremy. He remembered the feverish hours he’d spent reading his parent’s collection of tales over and over again. He’d felt connected to the writers who’d penned those fantastic stories. He’d felt no connection to the man he’d met that Monday afternoon.

  There had been no warmth, no feeling of belonging.

  Like a broken promise, that’s how it had felt.

  Who are you, Vincent Grey? What role have you been playing?

  What had happened to his mother? His father seemed to think it was serious but he had not looked overly worried either. He should have asked his father when he might see his mother, he though to himself, cursing.

  But he was done putting it out of his mind now.

  After classes, Gregory lied to Zach, Mango and Susannah, saying that he had to meet with Uncle Quincy. A half hour later, he found himself at the address engraved on the key.

  To his surprise, Oakroot Hamlet lay in the valley that The Apple overlooked. The Veil was only a short distance away, its curtain dissipating into misty spray far before it reached the ground. The door of the Mushroom was orange, the only one in a street full of blue doors. The brass key turned easily in the ancient looking lock.

  It looked as if someone had been about to move in, but never gotten around to it. The walls were bare. The cushions on the sofas, still springy, bellowed a cloud of dust when he slapped them. The kitchen and washrooms were sterile, unused. A white central spiral staircase climbed up to landing with three doors, each of them leading to a bedroom. The middle-door’s bedroom led into a room decorated for a child, a circular room with the walls painted in midnight blue; stars dotted the walls, as did two white orbs… one of which was directly overhead – with a jerk, Gregory realised it was the Sun, plotted on the ceiling, matching the movements of the star in the sky.

  It’s a planisphere, he realised with a pleasant thrill; a star-map, charmed into the very walls of his bedroom. For it was his bedroom; above the half-moon bed, there was a single book, a thin volume labelled Leisl and Oddy.

  Whatever Gregory had been expecting, it had not been a home. He sat down on what might have been his bed, and then lay down. He inhaled the scent of the pillow. Smell was supposed to be a powerful trigger of memory. Gregory remembered nothing.

  The homeliness of this place felt false, like Vincent’s words in the clearing had felt false. He recalled the conversation wistfully, played over and over again in his mind, searching for nuances he might have miss, and clues he had overlooked, surely there must have been some detail he could cross check somehow…

  Gregory fell asleep.

  An hour passed before he woke, and when he did, he knew his Vincent’s lie… or more accurately, Vincent’s misdirection. He prodded and poked his thoughts for flaws and found none.

  Gregory and Lesley Greene had fallen sick in the exact same manner. But while Vincent claimed that the fever had affected both, Gregory’s magic (by way of keeping him alive during the malaise, and becoming stronger for it) and Gregory’s memory (by way of erasing it), Lesley claimed the fever had affected neither of those parts of her.

  Why would the same disease with the same symptoms, affect two people so differently? Any brain fever capable of scrabbling Gregory’s head must have been equally traumatic to Lesley Greene’s brain – brains were made of the same stuff after all. And yet Lesley Greene had said her mind and memory were intact.

  Now, while Gregory knew for sure that his memory had been affected during that time, he was less sure that his magic had been similarly affected. After all, grief was a reasonable explanation for magical under-performance and Gregory had improved… and if he had to guess why, he’d go with the Headmistress’s explanation – that he was learning to deal with his grief.

  Then why had Vincent been so quick to assume that Gregory’s magic would be strengthened by the illness? It could be argued, Gregory supposed, that perhaps Vincent had prior anecdotal evidence for the illness’s behaviour (perhaps he’d seen someone else struck by the same fever before, and seen their magic strengthen)… but in that case, Lesley’s magic should have been similarly affected… and she said it had not!

  And that meant…

  One of them, Lesley Greene or Vincent Grey, had probably lied to him.

  Who was it?

  The nervous, aggressive and demanding girl who’d been so incredulous of his story, and yet nevertheless was more consistent in her ignorance about his loss of memory and magical ability? Or the inscrutable parent who’d been gone so long, claimed to have all the answers, offered very few of them, and was inconsistent in his ideas about Gregory’s condition?

  The evidence said Lesley Greene was winning out. It said that his father was a Less Than Trustworthy Source Of Information.

  The illness probably had nothing at all to do with Gregory’s magical ability. Which in turn suggested Vincent had some other reason to expect changes in Gregory’s magical ability… and he had blatantly tried to throw Gregory’s suspicion onto the illness instead.

  It was just as well, Gregory thought, gritting his teeth, that he hadn’t told his father what Lesley Greene truly meant to him, and that he’d thought to compare Lesley Greene’s statements to his father’s.

  Gregory chewed his lip. There could be a good reason
Vincent was lying to him… perhaps they thought he needed protecting from something he wasn’t ready to handle. He would go over his reasoning with a quill and paper later, but it sounded solid. Gregory’s frustration slowly gave way to a cold anger. He’d been looking for answers for too long, and these absurd games were beginning to wear on him.

  ‘If things hadn’t turned out the way they did, you would have grown up here.’

  Gregory jumped; Vincent stood at the doorway.

  Vincent walked around the room, touching little bits of décor, as if they bought back memories.

  ‘I lived here?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘Not for long. Perhaps a week at the most. We had just finished building this place, but we never got to move in. These walls have no memories.’

  ‘There’s a bed in the room next to mine… whose was it?’

  ‘You were going to have a sister,’ Vincent said.

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘She would have been Kendra.’

  Gregory turned away – if he stared at his father a second longer, he’d probably attack the man – the cold anger quickly turned to hot at his alarm at Vincent’s sudden appearance.

  ‘Well?’ Gregory asked. ‘Did you find anything out about the address?’

  ‘The place is very innocuous looking. Too innocuous looking. There are a few cottages, nothing too fancy. The people living there are old. Of the address itself… I tried to get in at night, and failed. I’ve never seen any civilian property put up wards that strong.’

  ‘Then it’s not a civilian property.’

  ‘No… though what it is, I could not tell from the outside.’

  ‘Did anyone say something about who lived there?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. Too innocuous, remember? It won’t do for your benefactor to hear that someone had come sniffing around.’

  Vincent was looking at him contemplatively.

  Gregory frowned. ‘There’s a but, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, but give me a moment to think it through,’ Vincent said. Smiling a little now, he pulled some eats out of his sack. ‘You’ve never had these before. Tuck in.

  Good food had a wonderful way of breaking ice. A part of Gregory noted that his father was trying to manipulate him. It was working too; strange though the dishes looked, they smelt incredible. He held on to his anger though – anger could be quite useful when you wanted to keep your guard up.

  They chomped away in silence, each lost in his thoughts, sometimes looking at each other, then looking away, returning to the safe silence of the meal. It got darker, and the corners of the house began to glow on their own accord, a soft red light, that combined with the food, almost made Gregory drowsy again. When they were finished, Gregory helped Vincent clear away the mess.

  It felt absurdly normal, and despite everything, it was nice to pretend that things weren’t completely messed up – some part of Gregory hated the thought it might end. However, Vincent sank back down on one of the plushy divans in the living room, and lit up a strange contraption. He puffed into a pipe that extended from the device, and blew out a huge cloud of smoke, sighing deeply.

  Silently, he held the pipe to Gregory, who took it, and in imitation of his father, took a lungful, and coughed hard. The smoke left a cool sensation in his lungs. A pleasant light-headedness swept over his mind.

  ‘You’re a clever fighter – I watched you at the arena,’ Vincent said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘A Hero of Domremy should know how to fight. The ceremony of your knighting… it’s in two days, yes?’

  Gregory nodded.

  ‘Sometime after that, duelling lessons will be arranged for you… your friend’s mother will likely instruct you.’

  ‘Ms. Piper?’

  ‘That’s right. Have you thought of a boon to ask?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ Gregory said, smiling a little.

  ‘You’ve settled in well? All’s steady at home?’

  Gregory snickered. ‘You mean, other than the Voidmark, the whole Hero thing, and finding you? Yes, everything else is steady.’

  ‘How’s Quincy?’ Vincent asked.

  ‘Busy. Jo and I don’t see him much… he’s up to his neck with rebuilding Domremy and organising the Peoplesmeet.’

  ‘And Jo? You get along?’

  ‘She’s an angel.’

  Vincent looked pleased. ‘I haven’t seen her since she was four… she had a thing for muffins.’

  ‘She still does.’

  ‘Gets it from her mother – Alice could whip up the meanest muffins you’d ever have. Three-year-old Jo would follow her about… she’d say she ‘twenny’ percent of the whole effort was hers, so she ought to get ‘twenny’ percent of the muffins.’

  ‘She… it was a fire, I heard.’

  ‘Spell gone wrong, yes. I wish you could have met her – a tremendous person – and maybe the kindest soul I’ve ever met.’

  ‘They don’t… well, I haven’t asked, but they don’t talk about her, at home. I don’t think I’ve even seen a portrait of her.’

  ‘Jo has one – it’s on the locket she wears about her neck. Maybe she’ll show it to you someday.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Vincent took another deep puff from the device; Gregory copied him.

  ‘You’ve made friends?’

  And so it went; Vincent prodded Gregory for stories from his life, and Gregory told him everything he could remember – Vincent was probably going to tell it all to Vera later, wherever she was… she’d be eager to hear it all, and maybe it would help her recover. Vincent listened eagerly, his body leaning forward, head cocked to a side, a gentle half-smile on his face. Gregory spoke as he’d wanted to speak at the watchtower – freely. Now that he knew the reason for his earlier hesitation, all he had to do was avoid letting Vincent catch on to the fact that he was aware of Vincent’s attempt at misdirection. For all that still roiled quietly within him, he’d been waiting too long to speak as he spoke now… he’d waited forever for a chance to connect…

  Finally, after an hour or so, Vincent’s questions ceased, and he sank back into his couch, his eyes closed.

  ‘Before you return, would you like to hear about the ‘but’?’ Vincent asked languidly.

  ‘You’re gonna tell me?’ Despite Vincent’s promise earlier in the week, Gregory had been sceptical that Vincent would be would tell him anything of importance.

  But Vincent nodded. ‘I looked up Schuyler Inc. If it was ever listed, all records of it have vanished. There are no records of an enterprise of that name with any registrar in the nearest five hundred miles. The only thing to do was to check out the address.

  ‘I examined the wards on that house. There are a few kinds of passes built into them, specific I think, to particular individuals, who most likely come and go as they please. There are other passes, for those who must speak a secret password, and yet others, for those who are bound in particular chains.

  ‘However, from what I can tell, there’s another specific kind of pass – a very specific one, for just one particular person. So long this person comes, bearing the device that will give them access, they may enter, but they may not leave. The device that will let this unfortunate person in – it seems to carry a particular kind of runecraft signature.’

  Gregory wasn’t slow, or stupid. ‘It’s me. That’s what the place is for, isn’t it? It’s a trap for me.’

  ‘Very clever. And the device?’

  ‘It’s the newspaper – the poster,’ Gregory said without hesitating. ‘It’s probably got some kind of Runic signature that only activates for me.’

  For the first time since they’d met, Vincent looked positively delighted.

  Yay, father, you have a smart kid! Gregory thought, and explained:

  ‘There was a book I read where the hero wanted to capture a villain. Only they went about it in a really long and roundabout way. I
thought it was stupid, so I came up with a different way to do it, and it was very like this.’

  Vincent actually laughed then, a loud and hearty guffaw. ‘You’re exactly like your mother!’

  Gregory felt embarrassed and proud at the same time. He took another long drag of the smoke-thingy. That fresh burst of light-headedness made him grin too, and then he was immediately struck by melancholy. Was this what it would have been like all those years, had Vincent and Vera had not had a war to fight?

  Before that thought could affect him, Vincent said, ‘What say you, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, someone went to great lengths to build you a prison. I think we should go show our appreciation.’

  ‘You… you want me to come? You want me to get you into the house?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘But you said I wouldn’t be able to get out of there!’

  Vincent smiled again, but it wasn’t the nice kind.