“I know a raven,” Fiona said. “I hope he isn’t down there. If he spots us, he’ll come up here and bother us.”
“If he comes up here,” said her companion, whose name was Charo, “I’ll shoo him away.” He flicked his hand in the air. Fiona heard the wind whistle. It set her long, dark hair flying.
“I’ve been trying to find you, you know,” Fiona said.
“Has it been a while since we met for you? We were talking only last week for me.”
“Was I older?”
He laughed and sat up. “You always look the same.”
“Mm. Clever answer.”
A small boat rode the current out to sea. It was a fragile little thing of wood and hides, carrying a single occupant wrapped in tanned skins. The river valley was home to a loose collection of people; one tribe or several she didn’t know. She had seen the bronze toolmakers before, but the clothes of the man in the boat looked less sophisticated. She guessed his hunting weapons were tipped with flint heads.
He vanished from the dream before he passed beyond her field of view.
“Does your city have a name?” Fiona asked. “The one where you live, I mean. I assume you live in a city. We have names for your cities and I’ve been trying to use those names to find them in dreams. But I guess the ones we have are corruptions or inventions.”
His expression took on some of the gravity that would come to him in a few years. “That’s dangerous, Fiona. You mustn’t try to find our cities. I won’t tell you their names, if it keeps you away.”
“I’m safe in dreams, Charo. I can do anything in dreams.” She didn’t mention that an opposing will, if it was strong enough, could fight back.
He put his hand on her arm. “I mean it. Our cities are surrounded by defences. You could get hurt.”
“Even in dreams?”
He nodded. “The other side have their oneiromancers. They could wreak havoc on our people if they could come to them in dreams.” He stood, restless with the urgency of what he had to tell her. He faced her from a few steps down the hill. “Worse, you could find your way into one of the decoys. Those are traps.”
“What would happen if I came across one of your decoys?”
“Your mind would never come out again. But something else would. It would take over your body and – well, I’m not sure what it would do, if it woke up in your world. But I don’t think anyone wants a nightmare walking around in your body, deciding what to do to your loved ones.”
Fiona pulled the collar of her black coat tight around her neck. “That sounds awful. It’s really like that? You have to create – I don’t know – nightmare minefields around even the dreams of your cities? I don’t think anyone in my time would even guess that was possible.”
Charo smiled and waved at the dream around them. “Fortunate for us.”
They walked away from the water. The ravens scattered out of their path and flew in circles around them, cawing their indignation. For a moment, Fiona saw hundreds of them circling above her in a great stack. Then only a few remained, watching with black eyes as she and Charo moved away.
“Have you been promoted yet?” she asked.
He swung towards her. “Does that happen?”
“Um, I’m not sure. I don’t know what all the marks on your uniform mean.” By unspoken agreement, they didn’t share what they knew of each other’s futures.
Charo’s clothing changed. The white toga was replaced by an outfit of black material, one that covered more of his lean but muscled frame. A sword hung at his hip and on his left hand he wore a gauntlet, leather with bands of gold metal like printed circuits. She had seen him in uniform before, when he was older and had more gold markings on his shoulders.
He sighed. “I’m still only of the first circle. Battle mages of my rank and experience get astonishingly boring postings.”
She thought of her own brushes with death, of the weariness that hung on Rob and Julian when they’d met at the pub. “I wouldn’t be in such a rush for the boredom to end, especially if things are as nasty as you describe.”
“You’ve seen your share of fighting then?”
“You know I have. It’s no day at the park.”
His smile froze. “Day at the park?”
“Um, fun. Although I only seem to go to the park at night, come to think of it. The last time I went to a park during the day was to–”
The dream warped, jumped. They were no longer by the Thames before the first city had been built. Instead they were in a park, beneath the wide, leafy branches of an oak tree. A path ran by their feet and a lamp, unlit, stood on a black iron pole nearby.
“–Primrose Hill,” Fiona said.
Charo scowled. His hand was on his sword. “You did that?” When she nodded, he said, “It’s considered rude.”
Fiona’s cheeks burned. “Sorry.”
He stepped onto the path and put his hands on his hips. “What is that thing?”
The park that Fiona knew was an open space, criss-crossed with pathways, its oak and rowan trees offering shade in the summer. But the hill was kept bare, its views across London preserved for those who climbed it.
In the dream, the hill was covered by a giant pyramid. It was a heavy construction of pale, dressed stone, smooth-sided, topped with an obelisk that glittered in the sun.
“I don’t know,” Fiona said. “There’s no such thing on Primrose Hill. I don’t think there ever has been.”
“Not everything you find in this dream was ever built or made or grown,” Charo said. “Some were merely imagined.”
“It’s a mausoleum,” Fiona said as the knowledge came to her. She stared up at it. “A giant tomb, filled with bodies. Can’t say I blame them for never building it.”
Charo grunted and kicked at the grass. “A tomb.”
“What about it?”
He sighed. “My boring assignment. An outpost in the north. I volunteered to defend my people. I’m not defending my people sitting in the snow. It would be bad if the enemy came here, but they never will.”
“You’re guarding a tomb in the north?” she asked. “Not one with a crystal skeleton in it, I suppose?”
He stopped and turned to her. His hand went to his sword again. For the first time since they’d met, she felt the threat in the gesture. She wondered why their paths had crossed that first time. Her gift had brought her to the dream of London without her conscious volition. What had drawn him so far into his own future, even in a dream? “What do you know of crystal skeletons?”
“I’m trying to find out who or what this person was.” She remembered Julian’s relief when Jessica said the skeleton was, other than being made out of green crystal, human in form. “Emphasis on what.”
“I told you,” he said. “I’m only of the first circle. They don’t tell me much.”
She stepped closer. “But you know something?”
He dodged around her and started to walk again, following the path away from the pyramid. “I would leave it alone, if I were you.”
“This is important.” It wasn’t, but she was tired of the way everyone kept things from her.
Like you keep things from your friends? the voice in the back of her mind asked. How much does your good friend Tamara really know about you?
She raised her voice. “Tell me what you know.”
He stopped and turned to face her where two paths met. “You come from so far in the future, I imagine the events of my time must be myths to yours. Well, we have our own myths. Myths of elemental beings, whose coming was like a hurricane or earthquake or flood.”
“And these creatures had crystal skeletons?”
“So the stories say.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Just keep away from them, Fiona. We’re small creatures compared to them. Walk in their path and we can only be crushed underfoot. As you yourself keep telling me, you cannot even light a candle.”
She made her mouth smile in acquiescence. “I’m sure you’re right.”
/> When she woke it was dark. The red LED numbers on her clock radio read 4:02. Her room was cold. Fiona pulled her duvet up to her chin.
Mum, she thought with a pang of guilt. Amelia was trying to treat her the same as she did before, since Fiona had told her she wasn’t the first Fiona Kendall. But she caught Amelia staring at photographs sometimes, like she was trying to see the girl she couldn’t remember.
She still thought telling Amelia the truth had been the right thing to do. But she wondered if she wasn’t just being selfish. If she just wanted a mother who she could tell her problems and get a reassuring hug in return.
The curtain of her room did not quite fill its frame and she could see a narrow slice of night. The sky was starless, the light pollution from the surrounding neighbourhood scrubbing them away. She stared at the slice of blank darkness, put aside her worries about Amelia and thought.
She remembered her conversation with Charo by the banks of the Thames, two thousand years ago. She always remembered those kinds of dreams. What he had said to her left her furious.
No. Stay away. Keep out. Not for you to know. For your own good.
People kept telling her that. Mysterious corpses, ancient secrets, even simple magic – everyone had decided that it was in her best interests that she be kept in the dark. Because she was too weak.
She was tired of being too weak.
There might be a way to find out about the crystal skeleton, if Julian couldn’t be convinced to tell her. There might be some way to unlock the gift within her, a way she would find if she kept pushing at different approaches.
But there was one thing she could think of that she could do right away. One mystery she felt she could solve herself, or with the help of those who had never denied her, like all the men in her life seemed intent on doing.
She would unravel the mystery of who – or what – Sorcha was.
Chapter 10 – Astra
Astra played the part of Crispin’s personal assistant at his official swearing-in. No one paid much attention to personal assistants. It made it easier for her to listen.
The reception afterwards was in a tall room of long red curtains, its vaulted ceiling resplendent with an elaborate chandelier. Thanks to some small piece of magic, the chandelier shone with collected starlight. A string quartet strummed out a background tune in one corner and white-clad waiting staff circulated amongst the several dozen guests. The reception was in Murdoch House, not far from Westminster, in a building sufficiently unremarkable from the outside that no one would ever have suspected it was the office of those who ruled Britain’s shadow world.
At least, they told themselves they ruled it.
“Alistair,” Crispin said, holding out his hand. “I’m so pleased you made it.”
Alistair Sacker, director of the Shield Foundation, had lines of permanent bad temper creased into his features. He gave no indication that he noticed Astra as he shook Crispin’s hand. For entirely different reasons, he also pretended not to notice the vampire Nathaniel, standing at Crispin’s other side.
“I’m glad everything went well with your confirmation,” Alistair said. “I expected Orson Mandellan to use some procedural detail to stall for time.”
Crispin’s smile was a clear sky to Alistair’s black clouds. “I’m only on the Council until the next proper election.”
“Which of course you’ll win,” Nathaniel said. If a figure from a painted portrait were to step out of its frame, it would in all its perfection still appear scruffy next to Nathaniel.
“I’m sure that will go well for us too,” Alistair said, his gaze rigidly on Crispin.
“Delighted to have your support, Alistair. We must meet next week and start making our plans to bring order to our troubled times.”
“I look forward to it.”
Crispin made further small-talk. He had a gift for it that Astra admired. She let her attention move around the room, knowing that Alistair was too blunderingly straightforward for Crispin to need her extra observations.
The councillors from the other two old magician families spoke together, each with a cluster of magicians at their flanks. Trajan Blackwood appeared at ease, a glass of champagne bubbling in his hand. Orson Mandellan rested both his hands on his snake-headed walking stick and glared at Trajan as though the other man’s presence was an insult.
They were across the room, but Astra eavesdropped without difficulty.
“We could have stretched this out until the next election, Trajan.” Orson’s voice was a rasp. Some old injury, she’d heard, though she hadn’t discovered what. “A Northfield on the council in Eleanora’s place would have given us the stability we need right now.”
“As a candidate, Philip Northfield has his drawbacks.” Trajan might have been talking about the snack food the waiters were circulating, for the concern he showed. “There are limits to your powers to rig an election.”
“Do you know how hard it’s going to be to dislodge this Chalk troublemaker with Nathaniel’s money behind him?” Orson said. “We have to show a strong hand. We can’t do that with only two seats on the Council under our control.”
“It isn’t the end of the world quite yet, Orson.”
“It will be if your nephew and that rabble he larks about with have anything to do with it.”
She coiled her attention back in to close range as Crispin greeted another dignitary. “Lady Isabella, a pleasure.” Crispin caught her hand and bent to kiss it.
Isabella smiled enough to show her sharp canines. “My congratulations, Master Crispin. Welcome to our august company.” She had an old-fashioned beauty to her, along with a hint of French in her accent that Astra suspected she worked to keep.
“My congratulations to you as well, my lady. I understand you too have only just joined the Council.”
Astra glanced at Nathaniel. He had laced his fingers together in front of his chest and presented himself as a portrait of pleasantness, as though he didn’t mind that Isabella had become councillor after the other vampires had torn Nathaniel from the position.
“Our society is undergoing what you might call a reorganisation,” Isabella said.
“And how is the renowned Alice?” Crispin asked. Astra suppressed the urge to kick his ankle.
But Isabella’s blue eyes twinkled with mirth. “I won’t bore you with our rather elaborate tree of bloodlines. Suffice to say that Alice is of a kind who prefers a different battlefield to this.”
“That’s too bad,” Crispin said. “I’d rather hoped to meet her.”
Isabella touched his wrist. “I’m sure you will soon. Why, many in our court are eager to be the one to extend the hand of friendship to the renowned Alice.”
Isabella oozed charm, as her kind always did, but most of it was aimed at Crispin. He held his own against it, which Isabella appeared to enjoy rather than regret, so Astra let her attention wander again.
Two men and a woman argued beneath a tall painting of a grey-robed figure leaning on a twisted wooden staff. The two men were both powerful figures, bristling with a werewolf’s strength, for all that their hair was grey through and through. The woman was smaller and though she appeared younger, she stood with a poise Astra recognised and envied.
“He’s one of us, Utam,” said one of the men. He was shorter than average, his skin pale from lack of sun.
“He’s a failure, Antiere,” said the other. He was stocky of build, the strength implied by his heavy shoulders and arms intimidating. “We don’t pollute our ranks with failures.”
Ah, she thought. They meant Crispin. She would tell him about the conversation later. It would make him angry, but he liked that.
“An extra voice on the Council is too good an opportunity to miss. With the vampires killing each other, now is our chance to make them bleed. Chalk can get us Shield Foundation support and we can–”
Antiere bared his teeth and his voice took on an animal growl. “We do not need the Foundation. We don’t need anyone. When th
e time comes, we’ll tear the vampires apart with our own claws.”
“I think you gentlemen have missed a detail,” said the woman. “Our kind is in disgrace in the shadow world right now.”
“Thanks to Utam and his stupid alliance that tied us to the mess in Bromley-by-Bow.”
Utam’s voice took on the same growl as Antiere’s. “If you had listened, we–”
“However we came to this situation,” the woman said, and both men fell silent, “it is where we are. We need to mend fences. The magicians value stability over all things. If we give them that, they’ll be grateful.”
“The magicians value stability because it favours them,” Utam said. “They keep us down, limit our numbers, offer their support but always ask for too much in return. We–”
Crispin’s hand on her arm brought Astra back to herself. She discovered Isabella had left. Nathaniel regarded her from behind Crispin with polite indifference, as though he wasn’t still trying to divine who she was and what she could do.
“Would you excuse us, Nathaniel?” Crispin asked.
He inclined his head. “Of course. Enjoy your party, Crispin.”
Crispin steered her towards the reception room’s main entrance. In a voice so low only she could hear it he said, “I think we’ve stayed here long enough. Did you hear what Isabella said about the werewolves?”
“Actually, I happened to be listening to the werewolves just then. Where are we going?”
“Isabella has it on good authority that the magicians are about to withdraw their assistance from the werewolves, after their involvement in the Bromley-by-Bow incident.”
“The werewolf elders were arguing about the same thing.” Astra allowed him to draw her along the halls of Murdoch House, past the empty offices where clerks and staffers worked by day. “No more help turning their scions safely into werewolves. They’re furious.”
Crispin’s smile was hardened by old pain. “I bet they are. The magicians aren’t distinguishing between those who helped Mitch Longfield at Bromley-by-Bow and those who stood aside. The dynasties are turning on each other. Elements of Isabella’s court want to take advantage of the confusion to strike at the werewolves while they’re in disarray.”
Immortal Make Page 10
