All Good Things

by Emma Newman

  He had to see if it was her. He followed the Arbiter in, watched him enter an empty lift, and waited to see which floor it stopped at from the numbers lit above the doors. When he saw it was only the next floor up, Will raced up the stairs two at a time. Panting, he emerged cautiously from the stairwell to catch sight of the Arbiter knocking on the door of a room down the hallway. When he saw the Arbiter enter he crept to the same door, still catching his breath, and pressed his ear to it.

  He could hear the murmur of voices, one male, one female, and his heart splashed against his chest. Was that Cathy? It was hard to tell when it was so faint. It certainly wasn’t a Way to a Nether property, though.

  Now it was a choice between speaking to the woman in that room—surely it was Cathy; who else would an Arbiter be visiting in a hotel room in Bath?—or following him once he left. Of course, the room could contain a Way through to the Sorcerer’s house, but it seemed unlikely.

  He decided to wait until the Arbiter left and then confront the occupant. If she wasn’t Cathy, he might still learn something he could use against the Arbiter, some leverage that could make the Arbiter tell him if the Sorcerer had someone hidden away from Iris.

  Back in the stairwell, Will tried to work out what he’d say if it was Cathy. Now Lord Iris was no longer interested in him, and by extension, a child of their making, the pressure was off. He could let her go.

  The thought sat uncomfortably within him. At first he thought it was simply a matter of being dissatisfied with things left unsaid. Apologies unmade. Then he wondered if it was his pride; he hated the thought of her out there, thinking him a monster without hearing his side of it all. He wanted to tell her how much he regretted his actions—not just what he’d done to her, but to all the people he’d hurt—and how he intended to get Sophia back and lead a quiet life away from such foul social engines that made men monstrous. He wanted her to know he had woken up to what he’d done. He could only hope it wasn’t too late and that she’d forgive him.

  Then he remembered that kiss in his study, when she’d been filled with that fire of hers and he had wanted her so badly. He pushed away the memory of what came after—the former Dame Iris’s horrific death—choosing instead to remember the feel of Cathy pressed against him. The need to possess her resurfaced, to somehow capture that fire, but not with magic and tricks. With love.

  The lift bell rang and when he peeped back into the hallway he saw the Arbiter stepping into the lift, alone, only now carrying a suitcase. He waited until it had closed again and was well on its way before stepping back into the corridor and moving to the room the Arbiter had visited. In front of the door, he hesitated, trying to work out how to open the conversation. He knocked with the same pattern that the Arbiter had, confident that once he saw her, he’d know what to say.

  The door opened right away, a blonde woman he’d never seen before, saying, “Did you forget something, M—” She frowned at him. There was something familiar about the set of her lips, the shape of her cheekbones, even though Will was certain they’d never met. “Oh. I thought you were someone else,” she said with an uncertain smile. “I think you have the wrong room.”

  Will ran a hand through his hair, crushed by the fact that she wasn’t Cathy—and that he’d just lost the Arbiter. His judgement was clearly impaired when it came to his wife. “I was hoping to find someone else here,” he said. “This may sound dreadfully…forward, but are you sharing this room with another lady? With brown hair?”

  She was staring at his hand, then his hair, her eyes darkening as they dilated. “No. Who are you? You…you seem familiar.”

  “My name is William,” he said. “May I come in? Or, if you’d be more comfortable, perhaps we could continue this conversation downstairs in the lobby.”

  She stepped back, waving him in, still staring as she closed the door. She rested her hand on her stomach, as if trying to steady her nerves. “I’m not in the habit of letting strangers into my room, William, but I am almost certain I know you. Or…perhaps a relative of yours.”

  Will appreciated how striking she was, tall, elegant, and poised, even in her confusion. He looked at her hand, at the ever so slightly crooked index finger, and with a start, he realised Imogen had exactly the same-shaped hands. “My God, I believe you’re right.” The sense of familiarity wasn’t born from having met her before; it was the simple instinct that they were of the same family. The features that marked his family as different from the Rosas and the Papavers were there in her face too. He dared not say it, but he would have wagered a small fortune that she was either an ancestor of his or the product of a secret branch of the family. The former was far more likely, but why hadn’t he met her before? He reached for her hand, which she gave him. He held it gently, laying her fingers over his palm. “My sister has exactly the same-shaped fingers as yours. As does my grandmother.” A strange mixture of relief and uncertainty played across her face. “Who are you, dear lady?”

  “I only know my name,” she said with a sigh. “Petra. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Will shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Only your name? Have you lost your memory?”

  “I’ve lost everything. But this is a strange conversation to have with someone I’ve only just met. And yet…there is something about you…” She closed the distance between them and for a moment Will thought she intended to kiss his forehead. Instead, she merely sniffed his hair. “You smell of…magic!”

  He released her hand. This was no mere mundane; she recognised the scent of the luck egg! Could this be the woman Lord Iris had lost? The slightly crooked finger—something his sister and grandmother took great pains to keep secret—and the way her features reminded him of them made him suspect she was a relative at least. Perhaps, when the Sorcerer who kept her died, she’d escaped with the Arbiter’s help, and then he’d unwittingly led him to his prize. “This is going to sound like a rather strange question, but have you recently been a prisoner of a Sorcerer?”

  Her eyes, round with surprise, filled with tears. “Yes! Well…it didn’t feel like I was a prisoner. I worked for him. I was his librarian. But there was a spell on me, and it was broken after he died. And now I have no idea where I came from nor how I came to be in his service. It’s…absolutely awful. But how did you know? Do you know who I am?”

  “I have a suspicion,” Will said. “I’ve been looking for you, in the hope that returning you to the one who loves you would…make things better. For all of us. I thought it likely that the woman I sought was kept with a Sorcerer, and probably the one who lived in Bath. I simply didn’t expect to come across you this way. I thought you’d still be in the Nether.”

  “I was, for years and years…centuries. But while the spell was intact, I didn’t question it. I…just wanted to please the Sorcerer, and take care of him.” She pulled her hand back, wrapping her arms about herself as if suddenly cold. “I have no idea how Ekstrand could bear someone clouded with Fae magic to be in his employ, but that’s the truth. He was too skilled to be ignorant. Either he knew and was glad to benefit from my addled state, or he knew and didn’t care. Either way…I’m lost. I’ve been trying so hard to find something of what I was before, but it’s like I’m…empty. Just a shell.” She paused. “Wait. Returning me to someone who loves me? That’s what you said, isn’t it? Who do you think I am?”

  His heart was racing to keep up with his thoughts. It was hard to think it all through rationally, he was so excited, but it all seemed to fit. He tried to regain some clarity of thought. It was a dangerous conclusion to leap to; if he presented her to Iris and she wasn’t the one he loved, he could take out his wrath on her. On them both.

  “I think you could be Lord Iris’s love. I think you might have been taken from him, by the Prince of the Fae, and hidden somewhere my patron couldn’t find you.”

  He’d hoped for some flash of recognition, but there was none. “Can you take me to him?”

  Will wanted to, but he had to be certain
it was her. “I need to be sure I’m right. Could I take a lock of your hair? If it is you, he’ll know, just from that.”

  She went to a chest of drawers and for the first time, Will took in the nice, but fundamentally impersonal, hotel room. How awful to lose oneself, he thought. He would much rather be disowned and left intact than be put into this twilight state she suffered. What could possibly have made the Prince do something so terrible?

  Newly armed with scissors, she cut a lock of her hair, wrapped it in a tissue, and handed it to him. “I’m so grateful. Who were you hoping to find here? Perhaps I can help you in return.”

  “My wife. No one you would know. I’ll be back as soon as I can with the answers we need, but it may be a few hours, perhaps even a day.”

  She opened the door for him. “I look forward to seeing you again, William. And thank you. You’re very kind.”

  • • •

  “Lord Iron. It’s time.”

  Sam looked up from the arrowhead, resting his hammer on the anvil as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. Beatrice was standing at the doorway to his forge, dressed only in her white dress, her silk slippers sodden and covered in mud. “Forget your wellies?”

  She looked down at her feet as if they belonged to someone else, disinterested. “You need to go to the forge near Bath. Tell none of your people. Take nothing modern with you. No phone, no wristwatch. Wear no metal. Once you are there, I will give you your instructions.”

  He didn’t like the way she treated him as if he were an employee. “I was waiting for Cathy to get back. Can’t I—”

  “No. You must leave now. And tell no one where you are going. It reduces risk of interference. Anything else would be a betrayal of my trust.” The slightest crease appeared in her brow as she studied his inaction. “Please?”

  With a sigh, he put the hammer into its usual place where it hung on the wall and began to take his apron off. “So what do I do when I get there? Just wait?”

  When he turned to see why she hadn’t answered, Beatrice had already gone. Sam went to the door and looked out over the darkening meadow but she was nowhere to be seen. “Bloody Sorcerers,” he muttered, and set off for the house.

  22

  Back in his hotel room, Will made sure the door was locked before he went into the bathroom and cast the Charm on the mirror to open a Way to Exilium. He had to climb onto the sink and then stoop to step through, which was horribly undignified.

  When he straightened up on the other side of the mirror, the green fields and blue sky that he’d seen through the glass were no longer ahead. Instead, the white stone of the royal palace stretched up before him, blocking everything else out of his sight. He staggered back a couple of paces, momentarily confused, before remembering the Princess and her insistence that he pay a forfeit after he had won their game.

  He swore at his own forgetfulness. He’d been so thrilled to finally have something to take to Lord Iris to bargain for Sophia’s return that he’d forgotten everything else. What did she say he had to do? Sneak into the palace and reach her without being seen by the Prince. That was it. And perhaps something awful involving a kiss.

  The oak doors that he stood in front of now were framed by beautifully carved stone. It had the same splendour as the building he and Cathy had been married in, simply scaled up. It was so big he couldn’t see all of it from where he stood. Unprepared, he had no idea how he’d find the Princess in there with no Charms or artefacts that could help.

  The only thing he could be certain of was that standing there, despairing, was the most direct route to failure. There were no guards outside, nor patrolling the palace perimeter as far as he could see, so he pushed experimentally on one of the doors. To his surprise, it opened.

  The cool interior felt like one of the many impressive cathedrals he’d visited on his Grand Tour. The high vaulted ceiling was painted with a blue background and gold stars, not unlike several of the medieval buildings he’d seen in Mundanus, but this one was lit by what looked like hundreds of sprites flitting about. In the Nether they were always trapped in globes of glass and fixed to walls or lamps. It was strange to see them flying free. Worried that one would spot him and cause a spectacle, Will darted behind one of the many stone columns that stretched up from the entrance hall floor. It was carved stone, like everything else he could see, a stylised design of oak leaves and branches weaving in and out of one another, each of the leaves a vibrant green. Unlike many of the comparable mundane buildings he’d seen, it was riotously colourful everywhere he looked.

  Quiet, and seemingly empty of people or Fae, it was eerie, rather than a bustling centre of rulership he’d assumed it would be. The Fae palace felt more like a tomb.

  There had to be dozens of rooms and he daren’t ask any of the sprites for help in case they alerted the Prince to his presence. The ridiculous forfeit was getting in the way of what he needed to do, so he picked a nearby archway that was straight ahead and went through it, finding himself in a long corridor with an arched doorway leading off it on both sides, taking him right into the heart of the palace.

  Pressing his ear against the door on the right, he heard the faint sound of a harp being played and risked opening the door just far enough for him to peep inside. The room had a high ceiling and windows opposite that looked out on the countryside. The back wall that he was closest to was covered by a huge tapestry showing a party with hundreds of revellers. He was just about to risk peeping round the door to see the rest of the room when a movement made him freeze.

  The figures in the tapestry were moving to new positions, as if the party were being played out in the threads. Breathing out in relief, he looked round the door to see a very long room that seemed to stretch the length of the corridor with a small dais at the far end. A woman was seated there, playing the harp, dressed in a gown that looked like it was made of oak leaves. One of her legs was visible where the dress had slipped and he saw a sparkling band around her ankle.

  There was no one else in the room. Who was she playing for? It was a beautiful melody, but sad, especially coupled with her solitude. He knew better than to approach a slave, having heard tales of how they were bound to answer their masters with only the truth. Fearing she would be compelled to tell the Prince of his presence, Will withdrew without speaking to her and closed the door. He tried not to think about who she used to be and how long she’d been in this place.

  He crossed the corridor and listened at the opposite door. It was silent, and a brief peep inside revealed an empty room which was the mirror of the one he’d just seen. Its tapestry showed a night sky with the tiny stitched stars twinkling and steadily moving across the fabric sky.

  There was one more door right at the far end of the corridor, very elaborately decorated with oak leaves and branches like the column he’d hidden behind in the entrance hall. He approached it slowly, uncertain, wondering if the throne room was on the other side. Just over halfway down the corridor he decided to turn back, thinking it far more likely that the Princess would be elsewhere, but when he paused he heard the sound of weeping.

  It was definitely coming from the far end of the corridor. He moved closer, trying to work out if the sniffling could belong to the Princess, when the doors flew open. He barely had time to register a rush of something behind him and then the dozens of sprites he’d seen before were pushing and pulling him towards the newly visible throne room ahead. They were surprisingly strong for such tiny things.

  He was deposited just inside the doors, which swung shut behind him. The throne room was dazzling in its beauty, every inch of its cavernous vaulted ceilings decorated with gilded stars and over a dozen of the oak leaf pillars supporting it. The walls featured exquisitely carved friezes of cavorting revellers that reminded Will of classical nymphs he’d seen in museums, only unlike these, they’d been static.

  There were two thrones on a dais before him and seated upon them were the King and Queen of the Fae wearing robes of shimmering dark green
embellished with golden oak leaves. The crowns upon their heads were a striking combination of golden circlets and green oak leaves that sparkled with the reflected sprite light. Shafts of sunlight illuminated the thrones too, pouring through the huge windows high on the walls showing the blue sky outside.

  Will tugged his clothes back into place, regretting having changed out of his white tie, and then bowed deeply. He could barely look at the monarchs, such was the power of their presence.

  “What’s this?” the Queen asked. “A new slave?”

  “No, I think not,” the King said with a miserable sigh. “Would it make you happy, dear, if I were to make him one?”

  “We have so many,” she said with a sniff. “None of them have made it better.”

  “Stand straight, mortal,” the King said. “Tell me how you would make the Queen happy.”

  They hadn’t even asked who he was or why he was there. Will straightened himself. “I would offer no entertainment as a slave, your majesty. I cannot sing, dance, or perform an instrument to the level you’d require.”

  “Surely you can suffer?”

  Will did his best to look straight at the Queen, but it was like trying to stare into a gale force wind; all he wanted to do was keep his head down. “I have the feeling many slaves have suffered for your entertainment, your majesty, and yet you remain sad. Were I to retain my freedom, I am certain I could end your sadness more effectively.”

  “I doubt that,” the Queen said, sighing heavily once more.

  “Who are you, entering the palace without announcement?”

  Will lowered his head beneath the King’s scrutiny. “A mortal man named William.”