‘So they say,’ said Zareen. ‘But how many of them are there, now? We’re mostly working with legends of the Truthseekers of old, and you know how those kinds of tales can get exaggerated.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And also, if arts like Waymastery have declined in power down the ages, might not the same be true of arts like Truthseeking? Perhaps Garrogin just isn’t as good at it as his predecessors were.’
‘Both good points,’ said Alban. ‘But there’s one other possibility.’
‘He does know who’s betrayed us,’ said Jay. ‘But he’s a traitor too.’
Jay seemed to be getting awfully suspicious-minded. But the Baron, to my dismay, was nodding. ‘It is possible that he knows very well who your traitor is, and has always known. But if he’s also in the pay of whoever’s bought off your mysterious colleague, then he’d obey an order to conceal that information.’
‘Damnit,’ I said with a sigh, slouching in my chair. I did not like this at all. Suspicion and paranoia proliferating by the day, mysterious dangers around every corner, an inability to trust one’s fellows combined with the necessity of lying to them… it was not my style. I liked openness and co-operation and goodwill.
A pox on Ancestria Magicka.
Then again, if they did contrive to learn the secrets of time-travel, a pox they would most likely have. Smallpox, perhaps, or even the Great Pox itself — syphilis.
Which reminded me. ‘Dear Alban,’ I began, with my best smile.
‘Yes?’ He did not look quite as buttered-up as I was hoping. The look he directed at me was more suspicious than charmed.
I fluttered my eyelashes, just a bit. No change.
Curse it.
‘I’ve some questions,’ I said more briskly, abandoning all hope of sweet-talking the information out of him.
He folded his muscular arms. ‘No,’ he said.
‘No?’
‘No, the Court has no secret information about travelling through time via Waymastery.’
‘Damn. How about the Redclovers of Dappledok Dell?’
‘Which ones?’
‘The interesting ones. Melmidoc and Drystan, of the Striding Spire.’ If our suspicions proved correct, these two spriggans had jaunted around in time quite at their leisure, by way of that sparkly spire I was just talking about.
‘I don’t know,’ said Alban. ‘I can check the libraries.’
‘Lovely. And Ancestria Magicka?’
The Baron conceded to uncross his arms. His tea cup was empty. I offered him a forkful of cheesecake but fortunately this was spurned. ‘Probably we know about as much as you do,’ he said. ‘It’s a fairly new organisation, less than two years old. Extremely rich, though no one seems to know where their funds are coming from. Aggressive, mercenary, and sometimes dangerous. I hope you aren’t planning to take them for your role-model.’
‘But we are,’ said Zareen. ‘They’re perfect. Unscrupulous, uncompromising, and working in mysterious ways. We don’t have funders, so we’ll have to adopt a similarly enigmatic attitude on that score. And we’re plenty unscrupulous enough to investigate the spire in spite of the Ministry’s strict orders not to.’
Unscrupulous. A wonderful word. ‘Not a single scrup between us,’ I agreed, with a big smile.
Jay looked faintly ill.
The Baron waved a hand in a whatever gesture, and stood up. ‘Must go,’ he said, then paused, and withdrew a sheet of paper from an inside jacket pocket. ‘I almost forgot that.’ He bowed to us, handed the paper to me with a wink, and strolled away.
It was a scan of somebody’s hand-written notes, apparently the minutes of some sort of meeting. Neither the author nor the identities of the attendees were specified, but the contents were highly interesting. I read it quickly, and handed it off to Jay.
Zareen raised her eyebrows.
‘Seems there’ve been a few reported sightings of disappearing buildings made to the Court this year,’ I said. ‘One of them sounds like the Greyer cottage, but there are others.’
Zareen snatched the paper from Jay and devoured its contents in hungry silence. ‘I’d heard nothing of these,’ she said when she’d finished. ‘Though I thought I’d dug through pretty much everything.’
‘The Troll Court thrives on mystery.’
Jay retrieved the paper and studied it more closely. ‘The most recent of these sightings was last week.’
‘Which one was that?’ I asked.
‘Eighteenth-century farm house, in the Cotswolds. Observed vanishing into the mists on the edge of the village of Owlpen.’ He collected his phone from a pocket and after a moment’s work added: ‘Which is only a couple of miles from the Owlcote Troll Enclave.’
‘George was in Gloucestershire recently,’ said Zareen. ‘Stroud area. Wouldn’t say why.’
‘I’m guessing this is why,’ said Jay.
‘Excellent.’ Zareen gave the satisfied smile of a spider about to devour a particularly plump fly. ‘I’ll ask him about it.’
We checked ourselves into a B&B for a couple of nights. There is one in the vicinity of Home called, for reasons unknown, the Scarlet Courtyard. The proprietors are both witches, so they’re tolerant of our sort. Mrs. Amberstone is about eighty years old but unbelievably spry. I can’t get her to tell me what dark magic makes that possible.
‘I’ve got a coffee cake in the oven,’ she informed me as she showed me to my room, a cosy little space under the eaves with a sloping dormer window.
‘I love you,’ I said with total sincerity.
She winked at me as she withdrew.
Anyway, having spent the afternoon arguing about our various options and what we might be disposed to do about them (‘The spire,’ said Jay. ‘The Cotswolds,’ said Zareen. ‘The Troll Court,’ said I,) we arrived at The Cupboard shortly before seven.
‘Off you go,’ said Zareen silkily. She’d done all the eye-makeup and looked incredibly sultry.
‘You promised!’ I said.
‘Actually, I remember myself saying “no”.’
‘She did,’ confirmed Jay at my elbow.
‘Then why did you let us come with you?’
‘I don’t mind your being in the same building. Just keep away from my table.’
I wanted to protest, but Jay grabbed my arm and steered me towards a table on the far side of the pub from Zareen’s chosen spot. I wilted into a chair, disappointed.
‘You don’t seriously want to play gooseberry on Zareen’s date?’ Jay said, his expressive eyebrows going up.
‘Is it a date?’ I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of Zareen across the crowded room. ‘She hardly sees him.’
‘If I showed up for dinner and found all that waiting for me, I’d definitely call it a date.’ He inclined his head in Zareen’s direction as he uttered the word that, and I realised he meant the dress and the up-do and the eye-makeup.
‘She’s just trying to impress him so he’ll talk.’
‘Yes,’ Jay agreed. ‘By taking him on a date.’
I wondered how far Zareen’s interest in George Mercer really went. Was she just being manipulative, or did she really like him? She was as enigmatic as the Troll Court.
The door opened then, and George Mercer came in. He wore a dark blazer over a t-shirt, his unruly brown hair artfully windswept. I hadn’t taken much note of his physical characteristics before, as the first time we’d met he had been trying to knock me off my airborne pegasus and the second time he’d got straight into a fight with Jay. But now I noticed his height — at least 6’2”. He was well-built, too, and good-looking in a rugged sort of way. I could see why Zareen had kept in touch.
So intent was I upon my scrutiny of his personal charms that I failed to notice he was not alone. By the time this fact had registered with me, Katalin Pataki was halfway across the pub and heading straight for our table.
‘Curse it,’ I muttered. ‘What’s she doing here?’
3
There are definitely people I’m f
onder of than Katalin Pataki. It isn’t just that she happens to belong to the enemy. She also has a lamentable way of making me feel just a touch inferior. She’s about a foot taller than me, with the long, sleek look of a supermodel. Why should that make me feel deficient? Well, it shouldn’t. Apart from the practical advantage of being able to reach the top shelves in the cupboard without fetching a step, there is no real superiority to being taller.
Such is the folly of womankind.
Mind you, I say that but I’d noticed Jay eyeing the bulky figure of George Mercer as he came in, and his face registered the same kind of scowling irritation with which I beheld Katalin Pataki. So I’ll amend that.
Such is the folly of humankind.
Anyway, Katalin waltzed up to our table with her slinky supermodel stride and stood looking down at Jay and me. She said nothing.
‘Yes?’ I said after a while.
She still said nothing, and I realised it wasn’t me she was surveying so much as Jay. And Jay was meeting that stare with no sign of discomfort.
Well. Jay may not be half muscle, like Mercer, but he’s got all that black windswept hair and those cheekbones, and with that black leather jacket he always wears there’s a touch of the roguish about him. I began to wonder whether Ancestria Magicka’s pursuit of him (by way of Katalin) was about more than just his juicy Waymastery skills.
‘How can we help you?’ said Jay, and to my irritation that prompted a half-smile and, at last, a response.
I refuse to admit that the looming-over-us-without-speaking thing was in any way intimidating.
‘What are you doing on Saturday night?’ she said.
Oh, please. If she must ask Jay on a date, did she have to do it right in front of my nose? As though I didn’t even exist! The cheek.
To my secret relief, Jay did not have the flattered look of a man delighted to accept. His eyes narrowed, and he said with scepticism: ‘What would you like us to be doing on Saturday night?’ I liked the us in that sentence.
Katalin produced cards. Not business cards but lovely invitation cards on thick creamy paper. There was even a flash of gold gilding as she presented them to us — one each.
I examined mine in silence.
Ancestria Magicka’s Summer Ball, it said, amid the usual flourishings and faff. Ashdown Castle, Saturday 13th of May.
If I wanted to be picky I might note that referring to the 13th of May as summer was a touch optimistic. This is Britain, after all. But that aside: what?
‘Why?’ said Jay, perfectly expressing my own feelings in that one syllable.
‘You’ll see,’ she said mysteriously, and walked away.
Hm.
I exchanged a raised-eyebrow look with Jay. ‘Apparently they’re ready to stop hiding their HQ,’ I noted.
Jay had laid his invitation on the table and sat frowning at it. ‘Big event,’ he said. ‘And if they’re inviting the enemy then they’re up to something.’
‘Declaration of war?’
‘Maybe not quite that, but something of the kind. Taking their place on the game board, so to speak.’
I tucked my card away in my handbag. ‘We’ll go.’
‘Definitely.’
I watched as Katalin made her way over to George and Zareen’s table and repeated the procedure, though this time she only produced a card for Zareen. As a member of Ancestria Magicka, I supposed, George needed no separate invitation.
Zareen’s brows went up. She said something to Katalin, but we were too far away from their table and there were too many chatty diners in between for me to hear what she was saying. Katalin’s response was equally lost.
Away went Ms. Katalin Pataki, and Zareen fell into conversation with George. None of which I could hear either. I sat chafing, chewing a fingernail.
‘You know,’ said Jay conversationally, ‘it’s customary to look at your date once in a while.’
My head swivelled. ‘This isn’t a date!’
‘No. But if you want people to think we are here for normal reasons, like, say, to have dinner and talk to one another, then stop staring fixedly at Mercer.’
He had a point, though I suspected the note of grumpiness I detected in his tone was prompted by something else. ‘Sorry,’ I said as graciously as I could.
Jay offered me a chip, the biggest one on his plate, which I took to mean I was forgiven. I ate it in some abstraction, for I was busy casting a charm. Only a small one, I swear. It was a charm to bring far voices near, and a busy pub was not the best place to try it, for of course it brought all the far voices near and for a moment I was deafened. It took a little effort to sort through all that chatter and focus on the voices of Zareen and George, during which period I stared through Jay’s face, glassy-eyed.
‘Well, whatever the reason for it I’m always up for a good shindig,’ said Zareen clearly.
‘Want to go with me?’ That must have been Mercer.
‘Ves,’ said Jay.
‘I’d be delighted,’ said Zareen, and I pictured her smile.
‘Great,’ said Mercer, and then added smoothly: ‘Where do I pick you up?’
‘Ves,’ said Jay.
‘Moment.’ That sounded like a probing question from Mercer, and I didn’t want to miss Zar’s reply.
‘I’ll find my way,’ she said.
‘You’ve been to Ashdown before,’ said Mercer.
‘Mm,’ said Zareen. ‘What, you couldn’t afford a castle that wasn’t derelict?’
‘It’s not entirely derelict,’ objected Mercer. ‘Parts of it are sound, and we’ll restore the rest.’
‘Still, your lot clearly doesn’t lack for money. I’d have thought you would go for something better. Castle Howard, say, or Harewood House.’
‘The minute they go up for sale, we’ll be first in line,’ said Mercer tartly. ‘Until that day, we’ll have to make do with Ashdown.’
Not a bad answer, for he was right: properties large enough to house an organisation of Ancestria Magicka’s size were not plentiful, not if one wanted a historic place. But Zar was onto something interesting, for why did they want a historic place? So much so that it was worth buying a house half fallen down?
‘You’re listening in, aren’t you?’ said Jay in disgust.
‘Shh,’ I whispered.
He stared at me, brows lowered, eyes narrowed. I expected further objections from him — something along the lines of you can’t eavesdrop on somebody else’s date! — but actually he just said: ‘Fine. Are you hearing anything good?’
So I began to relay everything I heard to Jay, which to nearby diners probably resembled something vaguely like dinner conversation.
Mercer said: ‘How did the Society come by your house, anyway? Got any tips for us?’ He said it lightly, as though it were a joke. It could easily have passed as such.
‘No idea,’ said Zareen, equally lightly. ‘Well before my time.’
‘What, aren’t there stories?’ Mercer laughed. ‘That I cannot believe.’
‘All kinds of stories — at least six for every event. Milady spreads them herself. I think it amuses her to mess with us.’
Good move, Zar, I thought silently. If there was still a traitor at Home feeding rumours to Ancestria Magicka, perhaps that would sow some doubt.
‘She sounds difficult,’ said Mercer.
‘Terribly, but we love her.’
‘Right.’ Mercer’s voice was sceptical. ‘So you walked out on her.’
Zar waved this off with admirable insouciance. ‘Sometimes it’s necessary to part ways with those we love. This is important.’
‘This?’
Zar lowered her voice. ‘You know. Wester and the Greyer cottage. The pups. What happened to the Redclover brothers. All of it.’
George Mercer sat back in his chair, scrutinising Zareen with an unreadable look.
‘You’re staring again,’ said Jay, and I slumped back with a sigh. ‘Worst sleuth ever,’ he added, though his lips twitched in a smile.
I rolled my eyes at him.
Mercer was speaking again. ‘What am I doing here, Zar?’
‘Having dinner with me.’ I could hear the bright smile in her voice as she said it.
‘To what end? It’s been years since you and me, and all of a sudden you want to have dinner? I don’t buy it.’
‘Quite right.’ Zareen was suddenly brisk. I heard a clatter of cutlery as she, presumably, set aside her plate. ‘I’ve come with an offer.’
‘Oh?’
‘A pact. We have the same goals, George. Ves and Jay and I, we know what the Waymasters of old used to be able to do. The Redclover brothers at least, and possibly others besides. The Ministry might be intent on hushing it up but I know that Ancestria Magicka is determined to discover the whole truth — and so are we. Help us, and we’ll help you.’
I saw my own horror reflected in Jay’s dark eyes, for that certainly had not been part of the plan. Just what did Zareen think she was doing?
4
‘I’m building alliances,’ said Zareen a little later, once George Mercer had gone. ‘Which is the first thing anybody in our situation would do. What can we expect to achieve with exactly three people?’
Jay was not impressed. ‘You couldn’t have consulted us about this brilliant plan?’
Zareen wasn’t impressed either. ‘You couldn’t have chosen a different pub to have dinner? Or did you think George couldn’t see you sitting there?’
Jay shot me a look, which I interpreted to mean it was all my fault.
‘Mercer was never going to believe you just wanted to see him, whether we were there or not,’ I said, in my own defence.
‘Quite,’ said Zareen shortly. ‘And I wanted to distract him. Note all those questions he was asking?’ She smiled mirthlessly. ‘You were listening?’
‘We were,’ I said. ‘And I did.’
‘If Katalin knew he was with me, so did his superiors. He was sent to bleed me for information, just as I was trying to bleed him. Well, he can take that snippet of gossip back with him and we’ll see what they do.’
‘They’ll agree,’ I said. ‘It’s the perfect way to keep tabs on us.’
‘Supposing they want to,’ said Jay.
Modern Magick 4 Page 2
