by Emma Newman
Dave leaned back in his chair and scratched at the stubble on his chin. “You could get the next round in.”
Sam was glad to have a chance to back off from the conversation. He ordered two pints from the landlord who smiled at him just a bit too much and paid for them with a twenty-pound note his PA had given him. He couldn’t even go to a cash point without there being some ridiculous song and dance about it.
A night that was supposed to make him feel more relaxed was giving him a headache. He watched the pints being pulled and realised he didn’t really have anything to say when he got back to Dave. What did they used to talk about? Football. He hadn’t had time to watch any since taking on the burden of being Lord Iron. Work. Nothing in common there anymore. His marriage.
He frowned at the bar as the lump rose in his throat. Six months ago he would have been three pints into the evening and moaning at Dave about how Leanne was never home. Dave would be drunkenly sympathetic in the way a bloke who’d never had a relationship longer than three months could be. Dave would remind him how lucky Leanne was to have him, how selfish she was to put her career first and how stupid she was to think Sam would stand for it much longer.
Now she was dead, the beer was doing nothing to fill the hollowness inside him.
“Mr Ferran?” One of his minders had come to his side. “We have to leave.”
The landlord placed the second pint down and smiled again. “So nice to see you back in here, Sam.”
Sam had no recollection of the landlord knowing his name before everything had changed.
“Sir,” his minder leaned closer once the landlord moved away. “The pub owner has phoned the local newspaper and there’s a journo and some paps on their way right now.”
“Why?” Sam couldn’t understand why anyone would be interested in him being there, let alone wanting to take a picture of him.
“We should take your friend home too,” the minder said, ignoring his question. Sam nodded, trying not to think about how thick the man’s neck looked in the polo shirt. Being surrounded by huge blokes who could crush his skull like a ripe plum didn’t make him feel safe, even when they were on his payroll. “We can’t guarantee what he’d say to the press in his current state.”
“Shit.” Sam wasn’t looking forward to explaining it to Dave. He shouldn’t have come.
An hour later, with Dave’s complaints still echoing in Sam’s thoughts, he was in the back of a limousine on the M5 back up to Cheshire. He was supposed to be staying in the hotel he now owned in Bath but once word was out that he was back, fuelling rumours that the local boy made good was planning to buy his old local and half the city, he just wanted to avoid any more reminders that it could never be his home again. That hotel was the place where they’d held Leanne’s wake. Perhaps he wasn’t as ready to face seeing it again as he’d thought.
He ignored a text that came through on his work phone. He didn’t have the energy, but then he started to worry that it was Cathy, as she had that number as well as his old one, so he checked it.
It was from Des, his PA, a six-foot-tall polyglot with a passion for order. Sam liked his quiet efficiency and the fact that he’d never worked closely with Amir. He was sick of constantly being compared to the previous Lord Iron by the team he’d inherited and was stuck with for the next ten years. Your mother phoned and would like you to call back as soon as possible. It’s currently 6:30 a.m. local time if you want to call now. Sam also liked the way Des prevented time zone befuddlement. A second text arrived. I’ve emailed you the crib sheet for the meeting with the Elemental Court. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
He didn’t open his email. He’d look at that in the morning. There was a lot to remember, mostly names, faces, and how those people’s businesses intersected with his own. From the look of the notes he’d been given already, and the small amount of coaching Mazzi—or Lady Nickel, as she was also known—had given him, the Elemental Court was nothing like he’d imagined it would be. It was a relief; he was worried he’d have to face some weird shit like Cathy mentioned about her court, with thrones and bowing and all that bollocks. It sounded more like he was going to give a speech at some sort of symposium for the wealthy elite, none of whom he’d ever heard of before. So elite, the newspapers couldn’t get near them. Certainly the articles about him demonstrated ignorance of the extent of Amir’s empire. His empire now. He shook his head. He just couldn’t think of himself that way.
He looked back at the first text and then searched his contacts for his parents’ phone number. They rarely called and Sam tried not to imagine news of a heart attack as he dialled. They would be awake, both early risers.
“Hello?”
“Mum?”
“Sam! Hello, dear, how are you?”
She sounded okay. “Fine. You called.”
“Yes. I wanted to talk to you about something I saw on the telly.”
Sam slid down the soft leather until his nose was level with the bottom of the windows. Had she found out about one of the atrocities carried out by CoFerrum Inc under Amir’s stewardship? “What was it?”
“It was about this charity that looks after cats. In London.”
He released his relief with a protracted sigh. “What about it?”
“Oh, these cats, Sam, people do terrible things to animals. I cried, I did.”
“You called me to tell me that?”
“No, I called to ask you to support them. They need money to stay open. And I thought that you could give it to them. They might put your name on a plaque. Wouldn’t that be nice? And you’d be saving them from—What’s that noise? Where are you?”
“In the car. I’m on my way home.”
“You called Australia on your mobile?” Sam had to move the phone away from his ear to protect it from the shriek. “That will cost a fortune!”
“Mum, just…just email me the details about that charity, okay?”
“Okay, dear. And we love the new house, by the way.”
Sam smiled.
“And now you’re not strapped for cash, you can come and visit.”
The smile faded. “I’d better go, Mum. Speak to you soon.”
She said goodbye three times before hanging up. He tried Cathy’s mobile in case she was in Mundanus, but it went straight to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. She had her own life in the Nether with that twat of a husband. He couldn’t expect her to drop everything and come and see him. He frowned as he stared out into the darkness. Cathy had all those ideas about changing things, but he knew they wouldn’t have any of it. It wasn’t like the struggle Leanne faced, researching the atrocities carried out by CoFerrum Inc from the inside, gathering enough evidence to expose them catastrophically when the time was right. In Cathy’s world there was no press or public to put pressure on those in power. She had no leverage.
Fuck. Did he actually think that? The word leverage was on a “corporate wank” bingo sheet that he and Dave took to conferences. If he ever used it in conversation, along with “blue-sky thinking” and “pushing the envelope” he’d have to trash everything and go and live in a bin somewhere.
Restless, he phoned Des, killing the hours of the journey by tackling what he could from the car to free up the following morning for a lie-in. Then he filtered his emails to show the ones from Susan, the most obstructive member of his inherited team. Sure enough, every single one she’d sent him over the day contained reasons why he couldn’t just change things as he saw fit. He deleted them, a petty pleasure, knowing that it didn’t really matter. He hadn’t just been sitting around, hoping they’d change their minds. There was another team of experts he’d put together that only Des knew about and was under strict orders to keep secret. One that would start getting Sam the information he needed about CoFerrum Inc so he could start making a real difference.
By the time he got home it was late enough for the roads leading to his estate to be pitch black and devoid of any other traffic. He still wasn’t
able to see the mansion without being faintly surprised that he lived there now. It wasn’t as if it felt like Amir’s home anymore, but it certainly didn’t feel like his either. He’d let the butler go, unable to cope with how awkward he made him feel, and kept the housekeeper, Mrs Morrison. She treated him like a normal person, unlike the butler, who’d talked to him like he was some nobleman from Pride and Prejudice or something. And Mrs M was happy to cook and organise the cleaners, which were a necessity with so many people staying there at the moment.
At least there were lights on and more people living there than when it had first passed into his ownership. He’d taken in just over twenty people that Cathy had rescued from some kind of dodgy asylum, people who used to live in the Nether but couldn’t handle it anymore. They kept to themselves mostly, uncertain of him and fearful of his being the enemy of their former patrons. Perhaps on some level they were afraid he’d kick them out one day, and planned to be able to tell the Fae truthfully that they didn’t fraternise with him.
Only one of them, an elderly lady called Eleanor, actually sought him out to speak with him from time to time. Unlike the other guests, Eleanor never seemed afraid of him. Cathy told him Eleanor used to be the matriarch of the family she’d been married into. From what Sam had seen of Cathy’s husband, he was unsurprised that Eleanor seemed fearless. After dealing with men like William Iris for hundreds of years, some clueless bloke with more money than he knew what to do with was probably as frightening as a kitten.
She was standing outside on the steps when the car drew up, wrapped in a shawl and leaning against the wall next to the front door. He didn’t wait for his car door to be opened for him.
“Eleanor? Is something wrong?”
She shook her head. Even now, well past the bloom of youth, she was attractive in a fiery, imperious sort of way. She wore her grey hair up in the sort of bun they had in period dramas. “I stand out here sometimes, when I’m bored of talking with them all.” She pointed up at the sky. “There are no stars in the Nether. I don’t think I’ll ever be bored of them.”
“Aren’t you cold?”
“No.” She stared at him as the limousine was driven off to be parked. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Let’s have a brandy.”
She wasn’t the kind of lady to deny a drink so he followed her in and they headed to his study. She sat down in the chair opposite his desk as he poured two glasses and placed one next to her. He already knew not to hand her a glass directly but had never been able to bring himself to ask why.
“You have the look of a man who went looking for something and has returned empty-handed.”
He shrugged.
“Out with it,” she said, picking up the glass to cradle it in both hands. “In my experience it’s better to tell someone than to let it fester.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” He managed less than ten seconds beneath her stare and then downed his drink. “I went back to where I used to live and met up with an old friend. But it wasn’t the same.”
“Someone you knew before you were Lord Iron?”
Sam nodded.
“When you were just a mundane.”
“…Yeah.”
“Why the hesitation? That’s what you were then and most certainly are not now. No matter how much you might want that.” Her smile did little to soften her words. “My dear man, one can never go back, not once you’ve left their world.”
“But I haven’t…” Sam didn’t finish the sentence. He might still live in England—or Mundanus, as Eleanor called it—but he didn’t live in the same world as Dave anymore. “I see what you mean.”
“It can be hard to adjust. You might think you need an old friend—or any friend—at the moment, but what you actually need is a project.” When he didn’t say anything, she said, “It’s the best thing for a lonely man. Looking for solace in others never leads to any good. A grand project, however, fills you up from the inside.”
“There are dozens of projects going on.”
“Are any of them truly yours? Did you think them up? Or did that team of suited monkeys tell you that they needed to be done?”
Sam smiled at her description. He wasn’t fond of the committee that helped him to run Amir’s—no, his empire. And she was right, none of the dozens of things that ate his time up were truly his. He’d only just put his secret team together, and it would take time for them to gather the information he needed. He’d been able to reverse some of the damage CoFerrum Inc had done to the environment in a few scattered locations, but trying to change the company on a fundamental level was a deeply frustrating experience.
“You need to stop thinking like one of them, too,” she added. “You’re no longer a mundane man with a tiny little life. Let yourself imagine doing something bigger than you ever have before.”
“I want to help people,” he said.
“That’s a place to start.” She stood up. “When you know what you want to do, don’t tell me. Write it down. Keep it close. Think it through. Then when you’re ready, call your monkeys and tell them what they are going to do.”
He pulled open a drawer to find some paper. Maybe if he sketched out the iron gates he had in mind to make next, something else would come to him.
“And, Sam,” she said, and when he looked up she was by the door. “You’ll need a wife, too, one day.”
“Someone to give me sons?” he said, thinking of the world she came from.
“Someone to make you smile,” she said sadly, and bid him good night.
4
Will stepped through the mirror in his private chamber at the Tower and found himself in the anteroom outside Sir Iris’s study. It was a modest oak-panelled room with a handful of uncomfortable chairs designed to keep anyone waiting in exactly the state Sir Iris intended. He was greeted by a smartly dressed page wearing livery emblazoned with the fleur-de-lis who told him to wait. Will eyed up the chairs and decided to remain standing, too tense to sit and relax.
Will had never been summoned to Sir Iris before and had only met him briefly on his wedding day. As Patroon of all of the branches of the Iris family, his time was in great demand, and it was rare for anyone other than the head of a family to speak to him in person. Will appreciated the reinforcement that he was no longer a mere second son, relying on his father to pass on guidance (and often orders) from the Patroon. Now, he enjoyed a higher status in Society than that of his own father. It was hardly a comfort.
There were no windows, no paintings on the walls, nothing except a stucco frieze running around the top of the wall with predictable stylised fleur-de-lis at regular intervals. He clasped his hands behind his back and started to pace, resenting the urgency of the summons only to be kept waiting. Will reined in his impatience. He might be a duke now, but Sir Iris could strip that title from him and give it to another Iris he felt was more deserving. Will reminded himself that speculation only led to worry, and that neither would help him now.
The page returned and invited Will to follow him. He was led down a short panelled hallway, lit by sprite light, with no sound save the clipping of their shoes on the polished floorboards. His guide knocked once on a large door at the end of the hallway, opened it, and then stood to one side, gesturing to Will that he should enter. When Will did so, the door was closed behind him and footsteps receded down the hallway.
Sir Iris’s study was larger than the antechamber and far more comfortable. A huge stone fireplace took up most of one wall, a fire crackling in the grate, and the wooden floor was covered by a large dark blue rug. The same wood panelling covered only the lower half of the walls; the rest was covered in flocked blue fleur-de-lis paper punctuated by various portraits of men Will could only assume were ancestors or distant relatives. A window to his right overlooked a beautiful formal garden with a large fountain in its centre, all reflected into the Nether at immense cost to keep the plants alive without sunlight.
The room was dominated
by a huge oak desk behind which sat the Patroon, fingers steepled in front of his mouth, staring at Will. He was rumoured to be hundreds of years old, but looked like he was in his late sixties.
Intimidated, Will clicked his heels together and executed a tight formal bow. The Patroon’s stare lingered, long enough for Will to wonder whether he should say something, until it was finally broken with a wave of the hand towards the chair in front of the desk.
“Sit,” the Patroon commanded, and Will obeyed. “I’m supposed to be at a recital,” he said, his dark eyes still piercing beneath his bushy eyebrows. “While I am always grateful to have an excuse not to go and listen to that damned Bach for the hundredth time, I do not appreciate it being the need to speak to a man about his wife’s appalling behaviour.”
Will hoped his cheeks weren’t burning as much as it felt they were. “Sir Iris, I—”
“Is it so hard to keep that woman’s mouth shut? Are you not aware of the Charms available at the Emporium?”
“I am well aware—”
“If you have some sort of misguided distrust of them then just beat her a few times. Put her in her place.” He leaned forwards, scowling at Will like he was a mouse to pounce upon. “Well? Kindly explain to me why you didn’t do either of these things before the Court this evening? Was the debacle at the previous Court not enough of a warning?”
Will rested his hands on his knees, keeping his back straight. “Sir Iris, I gave Catherine permission to speak on both occasions. I felt—”
“I have no interest in what you felt, boy. This is what comes of pushing a child onto a throne mere weeks after returning from the Grand Tour. This isn’t Mundanus. We still know how to keep women in their place and that place is not in our politics. You took the throne, against all the odds, and now you are letting your rule be undermined by your wife. What possessed you?”
