by Emma Newman
“Okay,” they heard Kay say. “So I get that accuracy is a good thing in sorcery. I get that. But I can work out exactly where she is from the data we have now. She hasn’t moved for the past ten minutes. Look, you can see that here. And we know she is in the house. Is it a three-dimensional issue or something?”
There was the slap of Rupert’s lips as he chewed on something. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, do you need to know if she’s on the ground floor or the first floor or something like that?”
“Your brain is brilliant,” Rupert said. “Have one of these jelly snakes. They help me think. If you had one, you might think up something really spectacular.”
“I don’t want one,” Kay replied. “I want you to explain this to me. You want me to learn. This is important. Why do you need Max to get closer?”
“Are you worried about him?”
A long pause. “It’s like trying to do a crossword with only half the clues. How can I use this data efficiently without knowing what the plan is?”
There was nothing except the sound of Rupert working on a jelly snake for a few seconds. “All right. Fair enough. Your instinct is sound. Why else would I want my man up close?”
“But that’s what I can’t work out,” Kay replied. “I thought this woman was too dangerous to risk that. What can Max do to her? He doesn’t have a weapon to subdue her, capture her, or…kill her. If that’s what the plan is?”
“Sure you don’t want one of these snakes? There’s a red one, they’re the best. You can have it.”
Another pause. “The only things he has are the tools. None of them have anything that could be used against her as far as I can tell. Then there’s the tracker, but that—”
Max reached into his pocket and pulled the tracker out so Cathy and Sam could see it. It was longer and heavier than the Sniffer Rupert had made him, and he had assumed that it was because it was a more complex device. Was that assumption drawn from his experience of mundane objects? He considered the phone he held and how much it could do. The tracker wasn’t that much smaller. They were hardly comparable, but something about the fact that Rupert hadn’t made the tracker smaller was…unsatisfactory on some level.
“Unless the tracker itself has more than one purpose,” Kay said. Rupert must have reacted in some way, as Kay said, “Oh my God, I’m right! Okay, okay, so the tracker does something else and you need Max to get it as close to the target as possible. So that means it must have some sort of effect. Something that can only happen when close enough to her. Maybe it needs her presence to trigger it…no, that doesn’t seem right. Maybe because whatever the effect is, it’s only short range…”
“Warmer,” Rupert said.
“Maybe only within a small radius…”
“Warmer.”
“Shit, like some sort of bomb?”
“Close enough. Not a bomb, those are messy, but same effect. See, I reckon she is warded to fuck against anyone or anything designed to attack her, right? Which means Max is the ideal choice. So I designed this thing that destroys all flesh within a two-metre radius using this badass formula that only completes when—what? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Destroys all flesh?” Kay’s voice was louder, higher-pitched. “What do you mean ‘destroys all flesh’? Even Max’s?”
“Well, yeah, duh. I needed to be sure.”
“But Max is a person, Rupert! And so is she, for that matter! You can’t just go around melting people!”
“Eh? What did you think I planned to do with her? She tried to kill me! She killed all of the other Sorcerers!”
“And so that makes it okay for you to melt her and your own staff?”
“It’s an acceptable loss.”
“No, it fucking isn’t! Max? Max, did you hear that? Don’t go to the target! It will kill you!”
There was the sound of a paper bag being crumpled. “What the fuck?” Rupert shouted and then there was a muffled scuffling noise and then a thud. Max heard Kay cry out, as if in pain, but she sounded farther away. Had the phone been knocked from her hand? “I fucking trusted you!” Rupert shouted, but again, it sounded further away, as if the phone were on the other side of the office.
Cathy’s eyes filled with tears and she covered her mouth and they listened to the sound of someone choking, and then another thud.
“He killed her!” the gargoyle shrieked, and pounded the floor.
Max turned away, cupped his hand over the phone more to try and block out the sound of the gargoyle’s distress. He couldn’t hear Kay, only approaching footsteps. “Fuck!” Rupert’s shout was much closer, and then the call ended.
The gargoyle snatched the tracker from Max’s hand and threw it out the window. “Fuck Rupert,” it said to Max. Max was still processing what he’d heard during the call. The gargoyle grabbed his arm and there was a staggering rush of rage and betrayal and grief. “Fuck Rupert,” the gargoyle repeated, its grip tight as Max reeled. “We are so done with being screwed over by Sorcerers. Right? We’re on our own.”
But how? Max thought, struggling to think clearly as he was bombarded by the gargoyle’s anger, and somewhere deeper, that he didn’t understand, a building…panic? Was that the right label for it? He did his best to suppress it, to focus on more pressing concerns: How could they sever themselves from the last Sorcerer of Albion? Where would they go? How could they police the puppets without Rupert’s assistance? What was he for, if not to do that?
“We can’t trust Sorcerers,” the gargoyle said. “We can trust Cathy.”
“You can’t go back there, Max,” Cathy said. “Rupert knows you heard that. He won’t trust you now. Sam, Max and the gargoyle need to stay here, with us.”
“But that Sorceress is there!” the gargoyle said.
“We’ll have to tell her that you two are different,” Cathy said. “You don’t have anywhere else to go. And we need to stick together. Sam?”
“She’s waiting for me to tell her…that thing I told you about in the forge,” he finally said to her. “I’m going to give it to her now. I think once she has it, she’ll leave, and Max and the gargoyle can stay with us then. Wait here until I give the all clear.” He went to the door, coaxing Cathy along with him. “Don’t say anything more,” he said to her quietly, as they embraced. “And if there’s even a hint of any magic, come through the gates, right away.”
“Don’t worry. We’d know if the ward wasn’t working by now.” She watched him go. “I’m so sorry about your friend,” she said to Max and the gargoyle once Sam had left. “That Rupert sounds awful.”
“The woman that Lord Iron is protecting killed dozens more of my colleagues,” Max said, disliking the way that the gargoyle’s proximity was making his throat clog with unshed tears.
Cathy groaned and dropped back into her chair. “This is all a such a huge fucking mess.”
“What’s going on with that Sorceress, Cathy?” the gargoyle asked. “Why are you both defending her?”
“She’s taught me how to protect myself from the Irises with her kind of magic, and it seems to be working,” Cathy said. “And…and she explained why she killed all those people. It’s all part of a plan.” She nibbled her thumbnail, staring at the floor for a few moments before swearing beneath her breath and looking back up at them. “She wants to unsplit the worlds.”
“Eh?” the gargoyle sounded just as confused as Max felt.
“I know it sounds insane. And I don’t condone what she’s done so far, but I think she’s right about the Sorcerers not being the saviours they’ve painted themselves to be. Sam and I decided to support her because the Elemental Court need to be counterbalanced by the Fae. That Court has lost its way and Sam has done everything he can to change them, but they’re hellbent on trashing everything. Have you met any other people in the Court?”
“No,” Max said as the gargoyle moved away from him, letting him think clearly again as it curled up next to Cathy. “I was told we shou
ld be careful as Arbiters to maintain a respectful distance, lest we be compromised.” He rubbed his leg, thinking of the titanium within that the gargoyle had been so worried about. “It seems it’s not as much of an issue as the one who trained me believed.”
“Beatrice said the Sorcerers split the worlds because they couldn’t control the Fae, rather than because they wanted to protect people from them. We both know the Sorcerers don’t—didn’t—give a shit about looking after people.”
“And you believe that undoing the work of the Sorcerers will be best for everyone?” Max said. “Even though you have experienced the interference of the Fae firsthand?”
He watched her nibble her nail again. “We’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t. We think that the planet is screwed if we don’t do this. And we’re putting together a plan for educating people about the Fae, ready for when the worlds are put back together again. I think if people know how to protect themselves, that will be much better. At the moment, it’s all on your shoulders to protect them.”
Max could see some sense in that; in the early days of being an Arbiter he had wondered whether it would better to give people as much information as possible to help reduce risk, rather than preserve their total innocence. He’d never been given a satisfactory answer for why that wasn’t the done thing, and the decision had been made so many hundreds of years before his birth, it was generally agreed that there was no way to change things.
“I’d really like you to help us, Max,” Cathy said. “You have so much experience. You’d be invaluable.”
“I’ve been trained to keep the Fae out of Mundanus. If there were no distinction between the worlds, that would change things a great deal.”
“Yeah, it would. No more Arbiters will be made, for a start,” Cathy said. “And I think it’ll be pretty chaotic. Your being immune to Fae magic will be critical.”
“You’re speaking like this is definitely going to happen.”
She nodded. “I think it is, if Rupert doesn’t screw things up for Beatrice first.” She looked down at the gargoyle, who had covered its muzzle with its paws, thoroughly miserable. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked it.
It shrugged. “How are you coping so well?”
“I didn’t know Kay.”
“No, I mean, how are you coping so well after your father died?”
What little colour was left in Cathy’s face drained away. “What?”
The gargoyle groaned. “You didn’t know. Shit. Sorry. Kay told us, just before we arrived. She wouldn’t get that wrong.”
“Tom,” Cathy whispered, standing up. “Stay here. I…I have to write a letter. I have to make sure my brother is all right.”
The gargoyle looked at him after the door closed behind her. “We staying? We going along with this?”
“We’re staying,” Max said. “I don’t trust that Sorceress. We need to see if she is telling the truth. And if she is, we’ll do more good with Cathy and Lord Iron than with Rupert.”
The gargoyle nodded, settling down again. “Good. I was worried you were going to be an arsehole again, and I don’t have it in me to fight you right now.”
10
Will paused at the green baize door that led to the nursery wing. He didn’t want Sophia to think anything was wrong, so he made sure his brow wasn’t wrinkled and a smile was on his lips when he went through.
With every step from his study to that door he’d imagined Lord Iris summoning the Patroon and demanding to know who the child was. It was easy to imagine the conversations that would ripple outward from that encounter and it would be only a matter of minutes before his father would be summoned.
He could predict his father’s denial of any knowledge when faced with the head of the family; there was no way he would want any of his superiors to think he could not only sire an illegal child but also hide it for years. The only thing Will found difficult to foresee was what his father would do after his conversation with the Patroon. Would he want to hide Sophia somewhere else? It wasn’t what Will feared the most. He’d heard a number of rumours of how ruthless his father could be. How far would he go to preserve his own honour and status? Surely not harming his own child?
But the fear wouldn’t leave him and Will found his thoughts bouncing between the threat of Sophia being delivered to Iris and his father killing her or taking her into Mundanus and abandoning her there like an unwanted child in a fairy tale. Every time he told himself his father would never do anything like that to his own child, the next thought was that his father had never even seemed fond of the poor girl. Not even Mother wanted her back home. The temporary arrangement of having Sophia live with him had stretched into normality. Even after the attack that had scarred her, they hadn’t pressed for her to go back to Aquae Sulis. Perhaps they were satisfied that she was happier there, but Will suspected they’d been glad the problem of hiding her away was no longer their concern.
“Sophia!” he called, and was answered by the sound of running feet. The smile he’d fixed in place became genuine when she peered round the schoolroom door and beamed at him.
“Will-yum!” She wriggled her fingers, covered with paste and snippets of newspaper, at him in delight as she ran to him for the usual hug. “We’re doing papaver-mashey! I’m making Saturn and Uncle Vincent is making Mars. We’re doing the whole solar syphon, and then we’re going to hang them from the ceiling. Then I’m going to make a rocket for my dollies so they can fly to them and do sciencing. Where’s Cathy? Why hasn’t she come to see me?”
As she babbled, Will scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the schoolroom. “Cathy had to go and visit a friend who is unwell.”
Uncle Vincent was standing when they reached the schoolroom, wiping his hands on a damp cloth, pieces of the shredded newspaper clinging to his trousers. The table was covered in a riot of paste and balloons partially covered with papier-mâché. His face was grim, his mouth set in a hard line that told Will he was ready for trouble. Will set Sophia down. “Now, I need to talk to Uncle Vincent so you carry on whilst I talk about boring things with him next door, there’s a good girl.”
Vincent followed him out and they stepped into the room next door. “I’m not going to Jorvic,” Vincent said. “I don’t care a jot for what George thinks is best, he can send some other poor bastard to do his dirty work. If he—”
“Forget Jorvic,” Will snapped. “Lord Iris knows there’s a child he wasn’t informed of. No doubt the Patroon knows by now and I’d be surprised if Father wasn’t being given a grilling as we speak.”
“Hell’s teeth.” Vincent went to the window and looked out onto St James’s Park. London rumbled on around them, oblivious. “Iris can’t summon her; he doesn’t know who she is, so that’s something. How did he find out?”
“Something Poppy cooked up, but I’ve no idea how. It was a painting, but the only Papaver who knows about Sophia is Cathy and she can’t paint her own fingernails.”
“Could she have told anyone else? Poppy even?”
“No,” Will was certain. “You know how fond of Sophia she is. Cathy would never do anything to endanger her. I made sure she knew how important it was to keep her true identity secret.”
“I’d like to wring the neck of the one who did it.”
“After I’ve run him through,” Will said. “But we need to get Sophia to safety first. I have to keep her out of Londinium; no doubt Father will come for her.”
Vincent turned, arms crossed in front of him, shoulders hunched. “You’re afraid he’ll hand her over?”
Will moved closer and lowered his voice. “I’m afraid he’ll do worse. Do you think he’d…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
Vincent chewed his thumbnail, his eyes shadowed by his brow. “If it came to his position or her…I don’t trust my brother to do the decent thing. We have to keep her away from him.”
Will hoped to keep one step ahead of his father, but as soon as Iris knew who she was, no C
harm in the worlds would protect her from being summoned by their patron. For all he knew, Iris might just be able to summon her, without even knowing her name. “Do you think he’d tell Lord Iris who she is?”
Vincent shook his head. “No. I think he’ll cover it all up. The only question is how thoroughly he’ll do that. We’ll keep her in Mundanus whilst—”
“Not in London, though,” Will cut in. “The Arbiters here are corrupt. The Patroon may well know that and use them against us. I wouldn’t be surprised if he used them to raid our houses. No one can deny an Arbiter entry, after all.”
“The staff here are loyal, at least,” Vincent said. “I’ll take her to—”
Will held up his hand. “Don’t tell me. They could get the location from me.” He stopped as the idea of Vincent whisking Sophia away to a location outside of his knowledge sunk in. His chest tightened at just the thought of it. No, there had to be a better solution. He would be better at hiding her than his uncle would, with everything at his disposal.
Lord Iron could protect her. The idea slipped into his mind like a foul snake.
No. He couldn’t bear the thought of taking Sophia to that house. But Cathy was there, and Sophia adored her, and—as Cathy was exploiting so effectively—it was the only place she could be protected from Lord Iris. Perhaps it was the best… No. He couldn’t give that odious man such ammunition against him.
Tate. Yes, Tate made all the artefacts and potions supplying the Emporium of Things in Between and Besides. Surely she would know a way to make the Shadow Charm more potent. Permanent, even. “I have an idea, but I can’t tell you.” As Vincent’s frown deepened, Will added, “You’ll be implicated far too much should all this come out.”
Vincent snorted. “It’s all over for me, Will m’boy. And anyway, you’ve got far more to lose than I do. We don’t have time to argue. I’ll take her—”
“No,” Will said, and put a hand on Vincent’s shoulder to take the sting out of his tone, even though he outranked his uncle. “No, I—”
