by Emma Newman
“There are files on everyone in the Nether?”
“Yup, far as we could tell,” said the gargoyle. “It’s where we got that file on Miss Rainer for you.”
“The rest of the building is accommodation for the group of people who run the place, headed by a man called Derne, and the entirety of the top floor is divided into male and female living quarters. There may be babies there, too. There’s no way to know how many staff are being trained there without going inside the building.”
“Trained?” the gargoyle growled. “Brainwashed, more like.”
Cathy’s expression was equally grim. “Are there guards?”
“I saw four on the top floor,” Max said, recalling his earlier reconnaissance trips carried out for Ekstrand. “One on the stairs down to the basement and several in the room with the prisoners there.”
“Okay.” Cathy chewed on her thumbnail. “So let’s make sure we’re clear on our objectives. I want to get the prisoners out of the basement and get them whatever care they need to recover. I want to get the people being trained to be Agency staff out of there and given the freedom to do whatever they like. I think keeping that information in the files safe and in our possession is a good idea and it’ll help us to get in touch with people after the worlds are unsplit. I’m not sure what I want to happen to the people running the place, and the guards. We can’t exactly take them to the police.”
“We can decide what to do with them after the prisoners are freed,” Max said. “At the very least they need to be restrained so they don’t interfere.”
“Right, okay. Is there anything else you two want to achieve?”
“I want to bang some heads together,” said the gargoyle.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Cathy said, making the gargoyle’s muzzle wrinkle with disappointment.
“All right, then. I’ll be good, as long as we make sure they can’t start this racket up again. We get everyone out, and the files, like you said. Then we trash the place.”
“Nuke the site from orbit?” Cathy grinned.
“I think that is a step too far,” Max said.
“It’s from a film!” she groaned. “I agree that we take the place down.”
“I suspect that we when remove the prisoners from the basement, the magic creating the Nether property will fail,” Max said. “That being the case, we deal with the rest of the building first, the basement last. If the Nether property disappears, we might end up with all of the furniture and possessions—and people, if they’re not removed first—crashing down onto the foundations.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. “I know a Charm to make people sleep,” Cathy said. “I learned it when I was a kid, but I haven’t used it on anyone before. I remember it, though, it’s very easy. We could sneak in and every time we find an owner or a guard, I make them sleep.”
“Too risky,” Max said. “If there’s more than one they could raise the alarm.”
“We could ask the Sorceress to come and help,” the gargoyle said. “Not keen on the idea, mind you, but she knows how to make everyone in a building drop dead. I reckon making everyone in a building fall asleep would be dead easy for her.”
“Is that how she killed the people in the Chapters?” Cathy asked.
The gargoyle nodded. “Turned all the hearts to stone. She wrote on the building and they all dropped dead.”
Max watched several expressions cross Cathy’s face. He picked out horror at first, then after a couple that he wasn’t certain of, she looked excited. “I think I could do that! I mean with sleeping, not turning hearts to stone. I know the Charm needed already, I know how to define a space—and of course, marking a building would make it easy—and I know how to link the two. Theoretically.” She stared up, biting her lower lip as she thought. “Yeah. I think I could. I could make sure the basement is left out and put everyone else to sleep.”
“Then I could go in, restrain the owners and guards, then you lift the magic, yes?” Max asked. “If there’s a Fae Charm involved, I would be immune.”
Cathy nodded. “Yes, that works. Do you have any chalk?” Max found some in a pocket and gave it to her.
It took her an hour to chalk the formula onto the Nether building once they’d gone through. As she worked, the gargoyle kept watch on one side of the building, Max on the other, both taking care to stay close to the walls and avoid being spotted from the windows. Max was counting on the fact that now it was moving into the small hours of the morning, most of the people inside would be in bed already. Eventually she came over, twisting the chalk nervously in her hands. “I think it’s ready. I’ve checked it. Three times. I think it’s right.”
Max nodded. “Do it.”
She went to the nearest set of markings, readied herself, and then stopped, turning to look at him. “I can’t do it when you’re watching me.”
“Why?”
“You’re making me nervous.”
Max walked round the corner to wait. He had enough time to check that the cable ties were easy to find in his pocket. He then pulled out his Opener and waited.
Cathy poked her head round the corner. “Done.”
Max nodded, pushed the pin of the door handle into the mortar between the stones, and watched the outline of the door appear. “Wait here until I come and get you,” he said to Cathy, and went inside.
Like the first time he had entered the building weeks before, it was quiet and empty of people downstairs. He peeped into the large room with the desks and files and saw that nothing had changed. He went up the stairs, listening carefully. The sound of snoring made him pause for a moment. Carrying on, he reached the top, went down the hallway, and saw a man, dressed in a suit like the security guards had been before, lying in the middle of the corridor fast asleep where he had fallen. Cathy’s hybrid magic seemed to have worked.
Reassured, Max pulled a couple of cable ties from his pocket and bound the man’s hands behind his back. He used three to bind his feet together, then joined them to the one around his wrists. The man would be uncomfortable when he woke, but unable to even shuffle off for help. Good. The plan could work.
He moved swiftly through the first-floor rooms, finding the members of the management team asleep in their rooms. He restrained them all in the same way as he had the guard. Derne was the only one not asleep in his bed, instead slumped over a desk in his room, ink staining the page that his fountain pen had been left resting against when he fell asleep. Max bound him to his chair, trying his best to ignore the man’s stinking breath as he snored loudly.
There were four guards sleeping in the hallways of the second floor, all dealt with in exactly the same way. Once he was certain all of them had been restrained, Max went through every room, counting the number of people asleep in the male and female dormitories. Ten men and fourteen women in total, one of whom was heavily pregnant. He found dormitories for children, too, three girls and five boys, along with a nursery containing six cots, filled with babies sleeping peacefully, along with a nanny asleep in a bed next door. She wasn’t dressed as a guard and he considered whether she should be treated the same way. He decided against it, seeing as all the men and the management team had been taken care of. If he recalled the number of people in the basement correctly, it was likely that the two buses would easily be enough.
Satisfied that everyone in the main part of the house was accounted for, Max went back outside. “Twenty-four adults, one nanny but I’m not sure if she is a mother or staff or part of the management team, eight children, six babies. They can all fit in one bus if there are no more than twenty prisoners in the basement. We use the other bus for guards and the staff.”
“But where do we take them?”
“Back to Cheshire for now,” Max said.
“We can’t do that! It’s kidnapping,” Cathy said. “Look, I hate those people, but we can’t have them prosecuted in Mundanus. There are no Chapters left to deal with them. I say we drive them to a mundane ser
vice station or something and let them fend for themselves.”
“Agreed,” said the gargoyle. “I might give that Derne bloke a black eye first, though.”
“No,” Max and Cathy said simultaneously.
“So shall I break the formula now?” Cathy asked. “They’re likely to stay asleep, especially if they’re already in bed, given the time.”
Max nodded. “You should probably wake the staff they are training and the nanny. Explain what’s happening, give them a chance to pack and get them onto the black bus. We’ll get the guards and the management team out and into the red bus, then we’ll load the files into the van before we deal with the basement.”
“If there’s any noise upstairs, won’t it alert the guards below?”
The gargoyle grinned. “I’ll be very happy to make sure no one comes upstairs to make trouble.”
“We keep everything as quiet as possible,” Max said. “And we block off the door from the basement to the main part of the house to give us time if we need it. You,” he said to the gargoyle, “will be more use getting files into the van. We’ll park it round the side next to the windows and out of sight of the bus drivers. I need you to carry the guards and management team down to the hall first. I’ll escort them to the buses after I’ve explained the situation to them.” With a grumble too low-pitched for anyone to make out, the gargoyle agreed.
“How are we going to explain all this to the bus drivers?” Cathy said.
“They’re Mr Ferran’s people,” Max said. “They’ve been given the human trafficking story. It worked well for the ones rescued from the asylum.”
They got to work. Cathy ran upstairs to start mobilising the people on the top floor while Max and the gargoyle started shifting the others downstairs. Each of them protested when they woke, but soon realised there was nothing to be done but accept what was happening. Some of them just needed an extra threatening growl from the gargoyle to make them settle down.
The woman that Max had always suspected was high up in the Agency’s hierarchy, Matilda, was already awake when they got to her room, sitting on the edge of her bed, hands and ankles still tied. “These are very uncomfortable,” she said. “I’m not going to fight you.” She eyed the gargoyle. “That thing is clearly much stronger than I.”
Max cut the cable tie connecting the ones around her ankles. “You can walk, then.”
“Did the Duke tire of this portion of his empire or is this yet another change in ownership?”
“Duke? What Duke?” the gargoyle asked. “We’re from Ekstrand, the one who took over.”
Matilda smirked to herself. “I told Derne that Ekstrand had no idea. The Duke of Londinium has been in control of this establishment for some weeks now. Were you unaware?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. This place is being shut down.”
He ignored her protestations as he escorted her to the bus. The driver was now wide awake and took responsibility for her at the door. “They’re trying to bribe me with all sorts of things,” he said. “Don’t worry, though. I know what these dodgy bastards are like.”
Only Derne was left to remove. Max could see the other bus was filling up too, all of the passengers staring up at the moon and stars in varying degrees of shock. A baby was crying and a couple of people were moving around inside the bus, reunited with each other, from what he could tell.
The gargoyle was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. “Cathy is upset.”
“She’ll recover.”
“It’s horrible. All of this is horrible. It’s all right for you. You don’t have to—”
“We haven’t got time for this,” Max said. “Let’s get Derne onto the bus, then move the files.”
It was silent in Derne’s bedroom when they opened the door and at first Max assumed the lack of snoring meant that he had woken up, before he saw the empty chair.
“Oh shit,” the gargoyle said as they approached. “He got away.” It went out to fetch Cathy as Max picked up the cut cable ties.
Cathy arrived with the gargoyle. Her eyes looked reddened. “What’s happened?”
“Derne is gone.”
“Oh shit,” she said, coming closer.
“That’s what I said,” the gargoyle replied.
“Oh my God, look at this!” she cried, pointing at the book resting on the desk. “This is a sorcerous formula! Derne was a Sorcerer?”
“No, he wasn’t one of them,” Max said. “Not of the Heptarchy, that is.”
“Maybe he was an apprentice,” the gargoyle suggested. “One that got away and set up shop here.”
She started to rifle through a trunk at the foot of the bed and then pulled out a couple of huge books. After flipping through the pages, she grinned. “Books! This one’s basic-level stuff, by the look of it; I recognise some of the exercises from what Beatrice gave me.” She picked up another. “Whoa, that one is more advanced. That explains the weird way this building was made. He probably set it up.”
“Maybe he left the Sorcerer he was apprenticed to because he didn’t like the way he was doing things,” Max suggested.
“It certainly wasn’t over ethical concerns,” Cathy said. “It’s sick. All of it. He probably just realised he would make more money and have more power if he broke away and set all this up. They’re all monsters. All the Sorcerers. They dislocated your soul! Rupert killed your friend. Beatrice has killed over a thousand people. I mean…what the fuck? I don’t want to spend another moment with her. But I need her to teach me. These books are only going to get me so far.”
“There has to be another way,” the gargoyle said. “You seem pretty good at it. What if we got some more books so you could teach yourself? Ekstrand’s place is still full of them.”
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Max said.
“Why?” the gargoyle said.
“We’ve seen the damage this knowledge can do.”
“We’ve seen what it can do when arseholes have it,” the gargoyle countered. “Cathy is different. She’s one of us.”
“Us?”
“One of the people that’s been screwed over by them. Remember what happened to Kay. Remember what nearly happened to us! And what actually did happen to us! Cathy could put things right.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but at least she’d bloody try. Wouldn’t you?”
Cathy blinked at the gargoyle’s expectant face. “I wouldn’t kill anyone with it, I can promise that,” she said. “And I wouldn’t make any more Arbiters. And if you wanted me to undo what happened to you, I’d try to find a way.”
“Now isn’t the time for such decisions,” Max said. “We haven’t completed all of our objectives. The people are still in the basement.”
Cathy stripped a pillowcase from the bed to carry the books in and slung it over her shoulder. “Come on, then. Let’s get this finished.”
When she left, the gargoyle looked at Max. “She’s already started to learn, you can’t stop that now. We should help her. Better to have a friend who’s a competent Sorcerer rather than an incompetent one, right?”
“I’ll think about it,” Max replied.
“Don’t you trust her?”
Max considered the question. “I don’t trust sorcery,” he replied. “Whether Cathy can be trusted with it remains to be seen.”
18
Cathy couldn’t shake the nebulous feeling that something bad was going to happen. Since the night at the Agency she’d been studying hard for a few days, then catching up on sleep, so she had barely seen Sam, who was busy preparing for being in demand when the worlds were unsplit. She was glad to have the time to herself, while Max and the gargoyle sorted out the files taken from the Agency. She’d helped them debrief the victims and make sure they had all they needed in the safehouses Sam had provided before closeting herself away. It was frustrating not having Beatrice around to tutor her, but it was also a relief.
Then one morning she realised her father’s funera
l had taken place the day before and she hadn’t even thought about it. One moment she was looking out at the snow, thinking about the formula she was developing, then the next she was sobbing into her coffee. Once it had passed, the sense of dread lifted. Right up until she received a call from Tom telling her a ball had been arranged in Aquae Sulis to keep the Irises busy and out of the house at the appointed time. She and her brother finalised the plan, agreeing that Lucy had handled the Lavandulas perfectly.
It was time to return to the Nether and strike a blow against the Irises.
The time away had not made Aquae Sulis more palatable. Cathy scowled at its silver sky. She knew that with everyone at the ball there was no real risk of being spotted, but she was still tense. It was worth the risk, though. There was no way she was going to sit back and let the Irises get away with their crime. And if Will went down in the process, all the better.
She’d come into the Nether at King’s Circus, as close to the Royal Crescent as she dared to come through. Dressed in the most innocuous clothes with her black cape, she had to simply hope that no one would notice her.
“Cathy, dear, wait for me!”
Uncle Lavandula stepped out from behind the trunk of one the huge sycamore trees reflected into the Nether, dressed in black satin and white hose. The elaborately embroidered black waistcoat and frock coat glittered with tiny gems.
“Uncle Lavandula, you’re supposed to be at the ball! You’ll be missed!”
“Nonsense, dear girl, Claudia is taking care of everything. I’ll only be gone for ten minutes at the most.” He came over and kissed her hand. “I’m coming to enjoy some delightful criminal activity with you.”
“You can’t,” Cathy said. “It’s too much of a risk.”
“But I had this outfit made specially. Watch and learn, dear girl. One must always be suitably attired for every occasion. Just because one is about to break into another’s house, it does not mean fashion should be overlooked.”
