by Emma Newman
“I know you’re in there, Catherine. I have a message for you. It’s very important.”
Sam went to the window and peered down. “Tom’s going out to talk to her.”
“Shit!” Terrified that Elizabeth was going to cast a Doll Charm on Tom and use him against her, Cathy opened the hatch to the room below, jumped down, and hammered down the stairs, almost colliding with the gargoyle on the way up.
“Don’t go out there,” it said.
“I’m not going to,” she replied. “I have to make Tom come back.” She pushed past and reached the bottom of the tower. Max had followed Tom out, thankfully, so he would be safe.
“I cannot believe you’ve taken her side,” Elizabeth was saying to Tom in a horribly shrill voice. “Don’t you realise what she’s planning to do?” Cathy couldn’t make out Tom’s reply but it was clear Elizabeth wasn’t impressed by it. “I have a message for Catherine from the King of Exilium. And if you have any love for me or loyalty to our kind, Thomas, you will help me.”
“I’m not interested in anything Will has to say,” Cathy called from the doorway.
Elizabeth peered round Tom, looking like a child next to his height. Max moved to stand next to her, ready to intervene. “So you do have the decency to speak to me.”
“I would have thought that playing messenger for an Iris would be beneath you, especially considering what they did to our family.”
“Since when did you have a care for our family? You didn’t even bother to pay your respects to Father. You always were the most selfish wretch.”
Elizabeth’s hateful glare was enough to make Cathy fold her arms protectively. Even now, Elizabeth still got under her skin. “How did you get here?”
“Oh, the King knows exactly where you are.” She looked down her nose at Max. “It isn’t against the Treaty to open a Way into the Nether, after all.”
Cathy pinched the skin across the bridge of her nose. “Then just say what you have to say and piss off.”
Elizabeth’s shocked expression would have been funny in any other circumstances. “You always were uncouth.” She held up a silk bag and pulled out something that looked like a skein of brown embroidery silk. “The King requires that you return to Exilium and honour the marriage between you. He is currently entertaining Miss Rainer, who will remain at his pleasure until you accept the crown. Quite why he insists upon you being the Queen is beyond my understanding.”
“So much is beyond your understanding, Elizabeth, that’s hardly a surprise.” It was a cheap shot and Cathy said it without thinking; she was too busy panicking. Of course holding Miss Rainer was within his power. He could demand anyone be brought to him and the Fae would obey without question.
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “He said you would be difficult, not that I needed to be reminded of how awful you are.”
“Elizabeth,” Tom said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Please, don’t—”
She shrugged him off. “Unlike you,” she said to him, “I can see what’s best for our family and the Nether.” She held up the skein. “In case you don’t believe me, this is a lock of Miss Rainer’s hair.”
Cathy gripped the doorframe, forcing herself to not run out there and swipe it from Elizabeth’s hand. She couldn’t stop the tears welling, though.
“That’s disgusting!” Tom said. “How can you do this, Elizabeth?”
She shot Tom a foul glare. “Because I know what’s best for all of us. Catherine, the King said that for every minute that you fail to go to him, he will cut another lock from her head. When he runs out of hair, he will start taking fingers.” Cathy tried to blink, to stop herself from showing her hateful sister how upset she was, but it only sent the tears running down her cheeks. “He’s sent for Margritte Tulipa, too,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “So if he runs out of ways to hurt that horrible governess, he’ll still have—”
“Shut up!” Cathy yelled. “You evil little shit!”
Elizabeth flung the lock of hair towards her. It landed on the path a few feet away. “Anyone would think you were being asked to go to the gallows. You’re being made a queen and you’re the last woman in the worlds who deserves it! If you’re too selfish to do as he wishes, that’s your problem. And Miss Rainer’s.”
Cathy moved forwards, not sure whether she was going to retrieve the hair or hit her sister first. Arms wrapped around her waist and she felt Sam’s breath on her ear. “No, Cathy,” he whispered. “Don’t let her bait you, it’s what they want.”
“But my friend…” Cathy tried not to break down as the tears splashed onto his sleeves.
“You’ve delivered his message,” Sam shouted at Elizabeth. “Go back to wherever you came from.”
Elizabeth’s eyes took in the way Sam held Cathy. “You whore,” she hissed, and then marched off towards the mansion.
Tom followed for a few steps until Max said something to him that made him turn around and head back to the tower as the Arbiter followed Elizabeth. Sam tightened his embrace as Cathy pulled herself back together, the initial shock and fear for her friend shifting into anger at Will. “That fucking bastard.” She wept. “I knew he was going to do something, but this? Fuck!”
Tom came over, the hair in his hand. “Could he be lying, Cat?”
It was certainly the right shade of brown. “Why would he need to? Miss Rainer could easily have been brought to him. And if I do go, he’ll need her there to pressure me into wearing the crown.”
“He’s a disgusting man,” Tom said. “What are we going to do?”
“You’re not going to him,” Sam said. “I’ll go. I’ll bring her back.”
“And then what?” Cathy asked. “Kill him?”
“I couldn’t do that,” Sam said, letting her go so she could face him. “I’ll take the crown.”
“No,” Cathy said. “If you take the crown, nothing changes. Someone else will have to wear it and if it’s one of the Fae we’re back to square one, and there’s no human being decent enough to be the King who deserves to be trapped there.”
“Then I’ll take a load of iron with me and seal him in a fucking box.”
“I think that would be unwise, Lord Iron,” Tom said. “William is devious and I think there’s every chance this has been designed to lure you in, rather than Cat. He knows how stubborn she is—no offence, darling, but you are. And he knows that you are close friends. I know that iron breaks Fae magic, but he has Miss Rainer. He could easily manipulate you, without recourse to magic. Then Cathy would be even more at risk, without your protection.”
“Tom’s right,” Cathy said. “Fuck Will. Fuck all of this! We have to restore the worlds. And we have to do it before he hurts my friend.”
31
Sam followed Cathy and Tom to the topmost room. A space had already been cleared around the glass that Beatrice had written on before. It was cleaned, ready for the new working to be started.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” Tom said as Cathy hurriedly checked her notes. When she nodded, he said, “Really? Are you absolutely certain?”
“Shit, Tom, you’re not helping!” She picked up the paintbrush and it quivered in her hand. “Give me some space.” She noticed Sam. “Get ready to go through. I’m going to send the Letterboxer first.”
They moved to stand near the mirror to the right of Cathy. “Ready,” he said. It all felt too rushed. He didn’t know what was going to happen when they started breaking the cables between the worlds. He still wasn’t certain if he should just go to Exilium and wrap William Iris in a coil of iron and throw him off a cliff or something.
“But you don’t know how to complete the formula,” Tom said. “Are you sure you should start something you can’t finish?”
“I need you to take another look at the notes,” Cathy said. “I’m hoping that when I work the rest of the formula, I’ll have a better feel for the right answer.”
Tom shared a worried look with Sam, but they both knew there was no stopping her, so th
ey remained silent as she worked.
“That’s the Letterboxer done,” Cathy said. “Opening the Way to the first forge now. Tom, make sure no one comes in here. That Way has to stay open. I don’t know how to open them without the lenses here, so if the Way closes when we’re on the other side, it’ll be a pain in the arse.”
Sam focused on the mirror, watching his reflection distort and then disappear, to be replaced by the interior of his forge at home. He stepped through and turned to see a portion of the wall replaced by the view of the tower room. The Way seemed stable. Cathy was finishing off a brushstroke, then picked up the pot of paint and stepped through into the forge with him. He went to the anvil and dragged it from its usual place, dusting off the dirt to reveal the core of iron and the slivers of copper in cross-section.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s where this cable joins Mundanus. When I found it before, and just concentrated on it, I ended up in the Nether.”
Cathy knelt down, pulled out a pouch from her pocket, and blew a pinch of sparkling dust over the top of the seal. Symbols that Sam had never seen before seemed to catch the dust and glow. Muttering to herself, she dabbed the paintbrush once in the pot and then started to work.
Sam watched her paint over the formulae in deep concentration. The paint seemed to seep into the metal, leaving an etched impression of the new symbols she was leaving there instead. After a couple of minutes, she pulled back. “I think it’s done.”
Somehow, the seal looked less solid to Sam, more like a foil lid on a yoghurt pot than something embedded into the ground. He picked at the edge, unsurprised when it peeled upwards, away from the iron core beneath. “Whatever you did, it worked,” he said with a grin, tossing the old seal aside to grab a handful of charcoal from the nearby ashes of the fire.
He crumbled the black chunks into dust and smoothed it over the surface, thinking back to when Beatrice taught him how to purify iron. Would this simply be a matter of reversing that? He grabbed the knife from the box on the other side of the room and cut the outer edge of his thumb. At Cathy’s sharp intake of breath, he said, “It’s okay. I heal really quickly these days.”
After a few drops had spattered onto the dust, Sam focused his mind on the iron beneath it. Initially there was the tug to think of the entire length of it and he could feel the misty detachment starting that had landed him in the Nether before. Forcing his mind to think of only the top two inches, he imagined the iron opening up, being receptive, as an opposite to the working of pure iron in which he focused on a sense of pushing out impurities.
The dust on the top seemed to seep into the iron, almost like sugar melting on the top of Mrs M’s apple pie. There was a terrific shudder that ran through the floor of the forge. “Did you feel that?” he asked Cathy.
“Yeah. I reckon they felt it in Exilium, too. Get some more charcoal and don’t forget the knife. One down, six to go.”
• • •
Max followed Elizabeth back to the mansion, his steady pursuit making her glance over her shoulder and quicken her pace. He had no interest in stopping her; he simply wanted to see where the Way was and close it.
Once they were in the house, Elizabeth went up the stairs and Max followed, unconcerned when she started to run. He noted the bedroom she went into and by the time he’d limped there, she was gone.
The mirror she must have used remained even though the Way had closed. He approached it, noting how it had been recently polished, before spotting a small oak leaf that seemed to be stuck to the glass. He pulled it off, seeing that it was in fact a pendant that could be worn around the neck. Someone at the tower must have smuggled it here. Not Cathy; there was no way she’d be interested in any communication with her ex-husband. Nor could it be Lord Iron, as he would break it. Obviously it hadn’t been the gargoyle, which left only Thomas or Lucy Papaver.
He’d seen Thomas helping Cathy with the unknown symbols in the Sorceress’s work and he’d seemed appalled at his youngest sister’s behaviour. That could not guarantee his innocence, however. It was possible that he could have been deliberately misleading Cathy in her work and acting out a plan with Elizabeth. It was unlikely that Thomas would be able to support William Iris, however, considering how he’d worked with Cathy to destroy his family in Aquae Sulis.
It had to be Lucy. She’d been utterly disengaged from any of the work in the tower that day, and seemed withdrawn even from her own husband. Max didn’t have the greatest faith in his ability to read people’s emotions, but even he could see she’d been struggling. Then he remembered how she’d Charmed her husband to sleep at Lord Iron’s house and how Tom had found her. That was ample time for her to open a Way to Exilium and appeal to William.
He put the oak leaf into his pocket and then smashed the mirror. He was sure it wouldn’t keep Will at bay for long, but smashing all the mirrors in the house seemed to be a wise precaution. If Cathy decided to go there, she was more than able to open a Way with her own knowledge now.
Methodically, Max went to each of the rooms on the top floor and smashed any mirrors he found within, no matter how small. Once he was certain the top floor was clear, he went downstairs and started at the kitchen at the far end of the house. Just as he was heading for the dining room, its door opened and Petra came out. She was wearing a medieval-style gown with her blonde hair loosely braided, looking very different to the last time he saw her at the hotel.
“Max!” she smiled, came over and kissed him on the cheek. “Where’s the gargoyle?”
“Nearby,” he said. “What are you doing here? Has King William sent you?” He couldn’t understand why, but it was the only explanation—how else would Petra be able to open a Way, let alone know where to find them?
“Lord Iris did,” she said. “The King has no idea I’m here. I don’t have a lot of time. I’ve been restored. The Prince of the Fae stole me from Iris hundreds of years ago, took my heart and cursed me to serve Ekstrand. William worked out who I was and then somehow he became King and reunited me with my heart and my love. It was a genuine act of kindness.”
“He’s holding a woman hostage and threatening to harm her unless Cathy goes to be his Queen. Hardly kind.”
“He’s obsessed,” Petra said. “Iris is convinced it’s the crown’s work. He needs a queen and Cathy is his wife.”
“That’s not how she sees it.”
Petra nodded. “I know. Poppy has told us that one of his own has betrayed Cathy, and is helping the King to try and get her back. We must stop this from happening!”
Max felt like he’d missed something. “Are you telling me that Lord Iris and Lord Poppy are in support of Cathy’s desire to remain free? That doesn’t seem to be in keeping with their previous behaviour.”
“Everything has changed, Max, now that Iris and I are reunited. I need your help to protect Cathy from the King. She is the only one who can put an end to all this misery and madness.”
It made sense now. “Of course—the Fae want her to release them from Exilium.”
“They aren’t the monsters you think they are,” Petra said. “Their confinement makes them cruel. Iris has told me the things he did to try and bring me back to him and I was so shocked. The Treaty harms everyone, Max: innocents, Fae, and those in the Nether. Poppy says Cathy has the potential to destroy Exilium and free them. Help us to help her!”
Max sighed. Whom to trust? Whom to support?
“Cathy’s already started,” said the gargoyle. Max had been paying such close attention to Petra he hadn’t noticed its arrival. “And because of that bag-of-cat-sick husband of hers, she’s not ready.”
“We can’t stop the King,” Petra said. “But we can slow him down. Iris has been working on a way to resist the power of the crown, and with Cathy’s help he can make Poppy strong enough to stop the King from hurting that woman, giving Cathy more time.”
“She needs it,” the gargoyle said. “We’ve got to do this,” it said to Max. “We’re committed. Anything half-arsed h
ere isn’t going to work. This is one of the few times when we know the Fae want the same as we do.”
“If we work together now,” Petra added, “it makes it easier for us all to work together once the world is restored.”
Max nodded and Petra produced a poppy in full bloom from behind her back. “Cathy doesn’t know me well, so you’ll be better to get this from her. Make her express her desire to fight the King, as forcefully as you can, then bring it back to me.”
The gargoyle took the bloom and raced off. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” Max asked Petra. “Iris had people stolen from Mundanus, without giving a second thought to the pain he caused their families. What will they do if they have free rein?”
“I was born before the worlds were split,” Petra said. “People knew how to protect themselves from magic. The old ways will need to be brought back. Iron scissors over cribs, horseshoes on doors, the rule of hospitality…these are not difficult ideas. There will be places the Fae will favour and humanity will have to learn to avoid them or suffer the consequences. It worked well in the past.”
“Did Iris steal you away?”
She shook her head. “He saved me from the idiocy of my father and the then-king. Without him I would have died. The Sorcerers made sure that everyone hated the Fae as much as they did. They learned the language of the world and still couldn’t bring the Fae fully under their control. They were too chaotic for the minds of men. So they tricked them and imprisoned them. And Mundanus has suffered for it.”
Max had a sudden image of Thomas in his mind, blocking the gargoyle’s way into the topmost room of the tower. “No one can go in there!” he was saying.
“But I have to speak to Cathy,” the gargoyle said. “It’s about Will.”
“You mustn’t disturb her. She’s just got back from the first forge. They’re right in the middle of it all.”
“Cathy!” the gargoyle shouted. “We think you need to go and be Queen. It’s the best thing to do. Maybe then the King will settle down and stop being such a—”
