The Fate of Farringale: 9

The first time I met the king and queen of the trolls, they were rather informally dressed. They were wearing leisure kit, to be precise—pyjamas, almost (excepting the coronet sported by her gracious majesty Ysurra).

When there’s an emergency council of war, though, they bring out the sartorial big guns.

Alban escorted Jay and me into a sort of grand presence chamber, dating, probably, from the 1600s. Its vaulted ceiling swooped away to impossible heights – or so it seemed, from my modest vantage point. Quite a few people occupied an array of silk-upholstered chairs, but the room dwarfed us, the chatter of voices echoing in the emptiness of the space.

Enthroned in the centre—more or less literally—were their joint majesties, King Naldran and Queen Ysurra, draped in sumptuous state regalia. Both were coroneted; both wore robes of crisp silk brocade, and sat with a kind of statuesque posture which couldn’t help but seem imposing. I wondered as to the identity of some of the other attendees, several of whom bore the grandeur of visiting dignitaries. Most of them were trolls, but not all: I saw a few other humans, like myself; one or two Yllanfalen; and several fae. I looked for Emellana Rogan, hoping to see her familiar face, but she wasn’t there.

Alban seated Jay and I at the front, where we sat feeling like prized exhibits in some grand museum (or I did, anyway; Jay appeared as composed as ever). Alban settled nearby, in between us and their majesties. I felt a little reassured by his familiar bulk so close, like a bulwark against the storm.

Our arrival appeared to signal the beginning of the meeting, for the great double doors were closed behind us (with an echoing boom), and King Naldran began to speak.

‘We thank you for your prompt attendance of this impromptu council. The matter at hand, as you may imagine, is of some urgency, and does not admit of any delay. I believe everyone here is acquainted with the situation of ancient Farringale; in particular its impassibility, at least by those of the troll people. It has therefore been impossible for us to reclaim the vast wealth of our cultural heritage which remains within its walls, reports of which we have lately received in some detail from the Society.’ His august gaze rested, briefly, upon me, and I couldn’t help wincing a bit. Here we came to the crux of the matter. He was, thus far, characterising our involvement in positive terms; however I was as aware as he must be that a more negative construction could be placed upon it. If Jay and Alban and I hadn’t breached the walls of Farringale a year ago, and carried out tales of its marvels (not to mention examples of it, like Mauf and his predecessor), well then Ancestria Magicka would never have been alerted to its treasures either. And the current incursion probably would never have happened.

The king said none of this, thankfully. ‘Unfortunately,’ he went on, ‘there are those who covet the unique treasures of Farringale, and who are, even now, carrying away some portion of its irreplaceable artefacts. If we do not act, and quickly, we are like to see the total devastation of the priceless heritage of our ancient court. The extent of the cultural loss to the troll people can scarcely be described.’

‘We call for aid,’ said Queen Ysurra. ‘The might of the Troll Court stands at naught in this instance, for our people can only enter Farringale at the greatest cost. Queen Mab assures us the full support of the Society and all its expertise, but against the might and the ruthlessness of Ancestria Magicka it must struggle to prevail alone.’

Queen Mab! I felt a jolt, a shock, to hear that name so openly pronounced. Milady’s identity, if it had ever been a secret to these people, was secret no longer.

‘Who will answer this call?’ continued Ysurra. ‘We and all our Court shall stand forever in your debt.’

My hand shot up before I’d had chance to think things through. ‘I can promise the assistance of the kingdom of Ygranyllon,’ I said, with a confidence it in no way merited, for did not my mother delight in being difficult?  

The queen inclined her head at me. ‘If they are so inclined, then we are grateful.’

Which was a polite way of saying: if my mother actually backed me up on my promise, great.

She would. I’d get her to help us, by hook or by crook.

I remained silent after that, as others offered aid. The emerging picture proved serious: if I’d been minded to name Ancestria Magicka’s move into Farringale as an invasion, well, this was an army mustering in response. If Fenella Beaumont had imagined she could rob the city with impunity, she was sorely mistaken.

She might have imagined just that, I supposed, for had not Farringale been left, all these long centuries, in its abandoned state? A whole year gone by since Jay and I had first set foot in the decaying city, and all its treasures remained therein: untouched. Unwanted?

No, she could never imagine them unwanted. She must know that the Court would exercise its right to the contents of Farringale, as soon as a solution was found to the infestation which rendered it impenetrable to the trolls. That’s why she had acted now: before there would be any chance of the entire Troll Court descending in all its fury to oppose her plundering of the city.

What a pity they could not. For all the ready assistance of the Court’s allies, there’d be nothing quite like a legion of infuriated trolls to send a wily thief packing. And it was their ancestral home: who had the right, if not they?

‘Jay…’ I whispered, as voices rose and fell around us, determining the fate of Farringale in a few hastily agreed deals.

‘Yes.’

‘What if we could…’

He waited, and then prompted: ‘Yes?’

‘I mean, wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could…’

He turned his head to look at me when I trailed off again. I knew that my idea was written large across my face: blazoned there in awe at the sheer audacity of my thinkings. I could hardly pronounce the words.

‘We’ve done many marvellous things,’ he said, encouragingly. ‘I daresay we could manage one more.’

Poor fool. He imagined I had something sensible in mind, something halfway achievable, and I wondered where he had got that idea. ‘Orlando’s got another couple of regulators ready,’ I said in a rush. ‘If we’re taking everyone down there anyway—Milady’s committed us already—well, what if we could—what if we could—’

‘Just say it, Ves,’ said Jay, his patience expiring.

‘What if we could—fix it?’

Jay’s brows rose. ‘Fix it? Fix Farringale?’

‘Yes. What if we could—sort it out. Mend the magickal surges. Get rid of the ortherex. Fix it. And then the Court could send all the might of the trolls out there, and wipe Ancestria Magicka off the face of Farringale forever.’

Jay stared. ‘I hardly dare ask, but… do you have an actual plan? Something workable?’

‘Well—no, not exactly, but I’m stronger than I used to be, and I think Merlin’s powers might be able to accomplish quite a bit. And we’ve got the regulators now, and Baroness Tremayne to help us—she’s Morgan after all, there must be something she could do that would help—and—’

‘Ves.’ Jay’s eyes were very wide. ‘We cannot just barrel in there and take on the entire mess that is Farringale without having a solid plan. No!’ he said, when I tried to interject. ‘We aren’t winging this. It’s crazy.’

‘It’s crazy,’ I agreed. ‘Wonderfully, superbly crazy. Don’t you trust me?’

‘To—to take on centuries of disease, neglect and decay at the age-old capital of the troll kingdoms more or less single-handedly, in the face of serious opposition from Ancestria Magicka, and without any clear idea what you’re going to do? Am I supposed to have a ready answer to that?’

‘You’re supposed to say “yes”.’

Jay passed a hand over his face, as though to clear the mist from before his eyes. ‘You know, the craziest thing is that I probably do. But I shouldn’t.’

‘Come on, Jay! Imagine how incredible it will be if we can pull this off.’

‘I’m imagining how much of a disaster it will be if we can’t.’

‘It could be a disaster if we don’t,’ I returned, grimly. ‘We’re sitting here talking, while Fenella Beaumont and her horrible friends are looting the libraries, enslaving the griffins, and conducting who knows what other nefarious activities within its unprotected borders. We’ve got to do something.’

‘We are doing something. This entire council is for the doing of something.’

‘And that’s wonderful, but it is also slow.

We had attracted Alban’s attention with our whispering. ‘Ves,’ he said, leaning over. ‘Is this true? You’ve got a way to make the site safe for us?’

‘No,’ said Jay.

‘Maybe.’ said I. ‘I could try—’

‘That would change—everything.’ Alban stood up, and went away to confer with his royal parents—leaving me to face Jay’s wrath alone.

And he was wroth with me. ‘Ves, this isn’t just a you-and-me adventure anymore. This is serious. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Don’t make promises to these people when you can’t keep them!’

I could have protested that I hadn’t promised; I’d only said I could try. But that would be quibbling. Jay was right: I’d raised an expectation and now I had to find a way to fulfil it. ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ I said instead. ‘We try and we don’t succeed, leaving us no worse off than we are now.’

‘The worst that could happen,’ answered Jay, with that terrible, elaborate patience he gets when he’s entirely at his wit’s end with me, ‘is that we wreak some fresh disaster upon Farringale, unleashing unknowable but doubtless appalling havoc upon a city already sorely beleaguered, and emphatically make things worse.’

‘That isn’t likely.’

‘It’s a more likely outcome than success.’

Jay, I knew, was no risk taker. He was steady and methodical; he liked to feel fully in control, to know exactly what to do and what to expect. That he put up with me at all was a source of wonder to me; when I asked him to take a leap of faith on my account, and barrel down the road of recklessness in hope of a good outcome, I asked a great deal.

I’d never asked more of him than I was asking right then. I took a deep breath. ‘Jay,’ I said, very seriously. ‘Will you trust me? This one last time?’

‘It won’t be the last time.’

‘I’ll never ask anything this crazy of you again.’

He pointed a finger at my face. ‘That is a promise you definitely can’t keep.’

I tried a smile. ‘How many lost and devastated cities can I possibly find to test my powers upon?’ A moment’s thought forced me to add, hastily, ‘Don’t answer that.’

His mouth twitched: a smile, ruthlessly suppressed. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you.’

‘Yes!’ I said, elated. ‘I agree.’

‘You haven’t heard my terms.’

‘I trust you. I agree to any terms you name.’

He eyed me. ‘You can’t do this alone, and I absolutely decline to try it as your sole support. Thus. If Milady—Queen Mab herself—is in favour of this insane scheme, then I’ll go along with it.’

I clutched at Jay’s arm in delight. ‘Yes. Thank you. I know she’ll want us to try.’

‘Do you know that?’

‘Yes,’ I said, a bare-faced lie.

Jay, finally, grinned. ‘You’ve got your mother and Mab to convince; you’d better get cracking.’

I looked over at Alban, still in conference with the king and queen, along with a severe-looking Yllanfalen lady and a pair of trolls I didn’t know. He gestured at me, and several pairs of eyes fixed upon my tentatively smiling face with clear intent. Whether I liked it or not, I’d convinced them; I could only hope that I hadn’t finally, irrevocably, bitten off far more than I could chew.

The Fate of Farringale: 8

It took me altogether too long to remember a couple of things—which, I might as well add, would have been immediately apparent to Jay (not to mention Indira).

One: I was travelling with a small forest, yes, but said forest had one of the greatest libraries in the world dangling from its swaying branches.

Two: I might not have been similarly festooned with knowledge, but I did still have Mauf somewhere about my person.

‘Does anyone know the way to Mandridore?’ I’d said, not really expecting a response.

Response, however, there had been: an immediate susurration of rustling leaves—tree chatter—had gone up, with a babble of ancient, learnèd voices mixed up somewhere therein.

—thou’rt a fool; it is not westerly, thou hast the pages upside down—

—manner of nonsense is this. Ha! Mandridore! There is no such place, nor has ever been—

—past Mount Battle and over the River Winding—

And over the top of this babble, Mauf’s refined accents raised to a near roar: ‘My good tomes and volumes—my very dear lexicons and folios—WE are the greatest library this world has ever known. Such conduct is highly unbecoming of our situation in life.’

The chatter did not appreciably lessen, but Mauf went on, inexorably shouting over them: ‘IF you would be so good as to hold your tongues, all of you, I believe we may swiftly find our way to a resolution of Merlin’s little difficulty.’

I didn’t immediately recognise myself by the name Merlin—I required a moment’s reflection, for that—but it was clever of Mauf to use it. These ancient volumes could never have received any information about the Society, nor would they care; but Merlin, that was another matter. The books’ quarrelling stopped, became instead an excited babble in which that hallowed name, Merlin, was many times repeated.

‘Precisely,’ said Mauf, at a more decorous volume. ‘Merlin. Shall you now comport yourselves with some dignity?’

The books, duly shamed, fell largely silent, barring an occasional rustle of pages—and one, slightly disturbing giggle.

‘Thank you. Now then. Mandridore, as most of you will not know, is as Farringale once was: the great, and very grand home of Their Majesties, Queen Ysurra and King Naldran, noble heirs as they are to Their  Majesties Hrruna and Torvaston; seat of the Troll Court, and therefore, home to the current Great Library of Magick. And if you would like to be restored to your rightful places upon such august shelves, you will assist me in directing Merlin to the gates of Mandridore forthwith, and without further ado.’ Mauf paused, and added, ‘The next volume to giggle shall instead be cast into the nearest brackish stream.’

The giggling, mercifully, cut off with a choking sound.

‘Thank you. Now. Which among you contain maps of England?’

Several books piped up.

‘And which among you contain some manner of reference to the Old Roads of the Court?’

‘The what—’ I put in, but stopped as the answer occurred to me. The Troll Roads. He was talking about the magickal Ways I’d once or twice travelled over of late, usually with Baron Alban. ‘Oooh, that’s clever,’ I said instead.

Mauf radiated a quiet, smug pleasure. ‘Yes, it is. Do not worry, Miss Vesper. We shall have you in Mandridore in a trice.’

***

They did, as well. I was obliged to promise, later, that I would not say exactly how; such knowledge is for the rarefied few, and those tomes whose pages offer some useful clue will doubtless disappear very quickly into Mandridore’s protected archives.

I can only say that our little ambulatory forest was very soon in motion again, and it was not long before we were out of England Proper and sauntering joyously down the wide, rose-strewn boulevards that the trolls built long, long ago.

Had I been obliged to walk those Ways as myself, I would have tired in due time, for despite the Way-wending magicks infused into the white stones of those roads, the journey was a considerable one. I did not tire, though, as a tree; a tree has no muscles, that can grow weary with use. I was powered by magick, and not only my own: the fizzing, ferocious magick of over-burdened Farringale was in me still, and wafted me with the greatest ease all the way to Mandridore.

We caused rather a stir, let me tell you. It’s not every day an entire copse of English trees in full and varied leaf trundles en masse through the gilded gates of the Court Enclave. We accumulated curious followers as we went, and by the time we stopped outside the palace we had an entourage at least as large in number as we were.

Things became somewhat confused after that. I recall being ushered, by what means I know not, into the vast formal gardens that lie behind the palace, into which my arboreal fellows cheerfully dispersed. I must have dropped into a doze, I suppose, for such an excess of magick cannot help but weary a woman eventually.

I drifted out of slumber again to find myself parked in a quiet corner of the queen’s garden, flanked by fragrant orange trees, and with an ornate stone bench positioned under my eaves. Two people were seated upon it: the soft murmur of their conversation had woken me.

‘—most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen,’ Jay was saying. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea how she thought of it.’

‘She’s Ves,’ answered Alban. ‘Her mind works in mysterious ways.’

‘Turned the whole damned library into a forest and walked off with it.’ Jay was shaking his head. ‘Some damage to the building in the process, of course, but nothing the Court can’t fix.’

‘They won’t object to that. Not when Ves has brought them the entire lost library of Farringale.’

Not the entire library, I tried to say, without success: my leaves rustled frenetically, but no words emerged.

Both faces looked up into my branches. ‘Have another go,’ said Jay, laying a hand against my trunk.

I did, with much the same result.

‘I hope you aren’t planning to remain a tree forever,’ Alban said. ‘Not that you aren’t a splendid, majestic tree, of course.’

‘The very best of trees,’ Jay agreed. ‘But there’s a cup of tea with your name on it, Ves, and it’s getting cold.’

‘And a plate of pancakes,’ Alban added. ‘The enormous ones, with the fruit and the ice cream.’

I rustled a bit more, dropping a purple fruit into Jay’s lap, which burst juicily.

Jay looked at it in silence, then said to Alban: ‘It’s not the entire library. That’s probably what she’s worried about. Ancestria Magicka took some books before we could stop them.’

‘Excellent,’ said Alban, in an uncharacteristically grim tone. ‘Those books are lawfully the property of the Troll Court. We’ll prosecute them for theft.’

‘Later. The griffins need help first.’

Griffins? What was amiss with the griffins? My brain exploded with questions; several more fruits sprayed juice over the pristine gravel walk.

‘Maybe have those pancakes brought out here,’ Jay suggested. ‘Where she can see them.’

With careful intent and precise aim, I dropped a fruit on Jay’s head.

‘You’re welcome to do something terrible to me,’ Jay correctly interpreted, ‘but you’ll have to turn human again first.’

I sagged, my branches drooping. I’d love to turn human again, I told him (rustle, rustle).

Jay patted my trunk soothingly. ‘I know. But if you conquered the chair problem, you can do this, too.’

‘Chair problem?’ Alban queried.

Jay shook his head. ‘Best not to ask.’

***

They brought out the pancakes. And when those turned cold and congealed, another plate of pancakes—not to mention huge, troll-sized pots of tea. Jay and Alban sat with me for an hour straight, and then another, swapping stories of our escapades, reminding me of my human self.

I chafed under the delay, and so did they, I’m sure, though they hid it well. Something was gravely amiss with the griffins of Farringale; Ancestria Magicka had got away with a lot of the library’s books; who-knew-what other mischief was brewing; and I was stuck in the shape of a tree.

Trying to perform difficult, unfamiliar magicks under a sense of intense pressure isn’t my preferred way of doing things.

At length—at very great length—my bark softened and became cloth; my leaves and withies dissolved into jade-green coloured hair; and I had eyes again, lips to talk with, arms to wrap around Jay and Alban in the hugest, bone-crushing bear hugs I (in my diminutive frame) could manage.

And questions. I had a lot of questions. ‘What do you mean about the griffins—thank you, by the way, for all this—this—but what’s afoot in Farringale—oh, did you find out what became of the regulators?—can we get the lost books back—’ I uttered all this in bursts, in between enormous gulps of tea (sweet, and milky), and forkfuls of pancake.

Jay apprised me, fairly succinctly, of the Griffin Problem, which made my blood boil with impotent rage. ‘Rob’s back at Home, updating Milady,’ he concluded. ‘I came here to find you, I hoped, and also to report to the Court. We’ll need help, at this point. We couldn’t take on all of Ancestria Magicka with just the two of us.’

Perhaps he’d read a certain mulish accusation in my face, for that last bit came out slightly defensive. ‘I know,’ I assured him. ‘I wish you could’ve, but—’

‘So do we,’ Jay said bleakly, and I saw what it must have cost him to walk away and leave those noble griffins in captivity.

‘Their Majesties are holding an emergency council soon,’ Alban told me, and checked his watch. ‘In about half an hour, in fact.’ I burst into speech, and he held up a hand to forestall me. ‘Your presence is required, don’t worry. We’ll need you and Jay to explain the situation at Farringale, and you’re to represent the Society while we debate how best to launch a sensible opposition.’

Sensible meaning: they couldn’t send many of their own people with us. No troll could safely enter Farringale, not yet. Maybe not ever.

But they were a large, cosmopolitan Enclave: they had people who weren’t trolls, and besides that they had some of the brightest minds in the country. We wouldn’t have to handle a problem of this magnitude alone.

‘That being so,’ I said, ‘I’d better fortify myself with plentiful comestibles. I’m hungry.’ In fact I was ravenous: a tree may thrive on sun and water alone, but I couldn’t.

Jay handed me another mug of tea, and downed the dregs of his own. ‘We’re as ready as milk and sugar can make us,’ he proclaimed.

Which, I hoped, would be enough.

The Fate of Farringale: 7

The last time I’d experienced one of Farringale’s magickal surges, the effects had been entertaining as much as they’d been alarming. Indira had flown, quite literally, like a bird. Rob had conjured creatures of scintillating light out of the tip of his Lapis Wand, and sent them soaring about the library. I’d turned myself into a pancake. The fact that we’d all been so totally out of control of ourselves hadn’t been great, with hindsight, but none of us had been inclined to do anything dangerous.

This, though. This was something else.

My lovely, flourishing trees, books hanging from their branches like streamers, roots tearing out of the earth with appalling rumbling, crashing, cracking sounds—those trees were angry.

‘Oh,’ I said numbly, spellbound with horror. I watched as several trees mustered themselves into formation and—eight thousand books screaming in cacophonous concert—ran at the hapless looters.

Not that so many of the latter had stuck around for it. About half had left the library after my impromptu intervention, probably to seek advice, and most of the rest had sensibly legged it the moment the first tree had torn itself loose.

George Mercer was among the foolhardy souls who remained. For a split second, I felt glad—let him pay for his many offences, a good skewering wouldn’t be undeserved—but I thought better of it almost immediately.

I was responsible for this.  If I hadn’t interfered, there might have been no surge happening at all; and if there had, there’d have been no ornery oaks on the warpath, feeling a wee bit bitter about being hacked down and turned into shelves. I didn’t want to be the reason somebody died today.

An enraged oak thundered past far too close—Jay hauled me out of the way, thankfully before we could establish whether or not their fury extended all the way through the echoes of memory and time. I felt a strong whoosh of air as it passed; shock had me clinging, just for a moment, to Jay.

‘Thanks,’ I gasped, and took off running.

What I was planning to do, I couldn’t have said. I couldn’t hear Mauf anymore, not over the tumult of vituperative voices, but his indignant presence at my side was an extra spur as I shot into the heart of the library, dodging warring trees and fleeing agents of Ancestria Magicka. At least I had thoroughly disrupted their plundering party: nobody would be trying to touch those books anymore.

I ran through chambers that had once held thousands of books, several somnolent birch or elm or ash trees still slumbering in the corners. I was making for the room we’d come to think of as the museum: an unfathomably tall-ceilinged space filled with artefacts behind glass, the lost relics of a vanished Troll Court. There would be no trees in there, most likely, for there hadn’t been any bookcases: only starstone and glass.

I found it intact, and—relatively—peaceful. The cacophony of disaster went on beyond the rounded archways, all too audible; I winced at a particularly devastating crash. Small hope that the books weren’t coming to collective, and terrible, grief: my fault, too.

‘Mauf,’ I gasped, dropping to the floor, and hauling him out of my satchel.

‘I cannot sufficiently express the extent of my disappointment,’ shouted the book, and snapped—actually snapped—at my fingers.

‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. I intended none of this to happen, and you’ve got to help me stop it.’

‘It cannot be stopped!’ shrieked Mauf, rather hysterically. ‘These blundersome, quarrelsome creatures are beyond anyone’s control.’ He began, shockingly, to sob. ‘My books. My poor, poor books…’

‘Never mind the books right now,’ I snapped back. ‘We’ll mend them. Later. We need to focus on the trees.’ I thumped the heavy weight of him smartly against the floor: the equivalent of a ringing slap. ‘Focus, Mauf. I need your help here.’

The wrenching sobs stopped, to my relief. A long moment’s silence followed, before he said, much more coolly, ‘Logic suggests that, when the surging of magick in these environs should ebb, then the trees will settle.’

‘It does suggest that,’ I agreed, ‘but that may be some time in happening.’

‘Then the best thing to do would be to turn them back into bookcases—’ His words cut off as I abruptly slammed his covers closed again, struck with a piece of genius I hadn’t, in the end, needed Mauf for.

‘I could,’ I answered him rapidly, ‘I think. Maybe. But that would just put us right back where we were, wouldn’t it? This is Ancestria Magicka we’re dealing with. They aren’t going to slink away like whipped dogs just because a couple of trees tried to butcher them like pigs. The moment the trees are gone, the shelves are back, and the books are accessible, they’ll be out the door with the lot.’

Mauf uttered something, rather muffled. ‘—fear you are contemplating further madness—entreat you to see reason—’

‘You’re quite right,’ I told him, stuffing him back into my satchel. ‘I am contemplating madness.’ Possibly the magick was getting to my brain by then, for I was far too pleased with myself, grinning like an idiot, and nowhere near as sensible of the risks as I should have been.

I laid my palms against the buzzing starstone floor, felt the ripples and waves of burgeoning magick shocking the atmosphere. It was easy, in that environment: barely cost me a thought.

Poor Jay came haring into the museum just an instant too late. I was already growing taller—much, much taller—my trunk thickening, arms and tendrils of hair lengthening into lithe, supple boughs. My eaves bristled with a glittering crop of silver leaves, and as I shook myself a spray of purple fruits flew out and splattered across the walls.

‘VES!’ Jay bawled at me from a long way below. ‘You can’t do this—come back from there, this is insane, what are you thinking—’

I heard no more, for I picked up my winding roots and stomped off, causing only a little damage to an unoffending wall in the process.

I’d already noticed that these trees seemed to possess the capacity to order themselves. They’d formed up like a battalion, attacked in concert—and that meant they could be lead.

By, for example, me.

‘FORM. UP,’ I roared, though it wasn’t words that reached them. I rumbled and crashed in a cacophony of bough and branch, a roar of spraying earth and shaken, shattering leaves: and they heard.

I’d popped out from between the echoes, I distantly realised—burst out of it, a shattering tide of magick too vast to be contained—swollen with Farringale’s own disordered currents, burgeoning into an unstoppable wave.

Nobody stopped me. Nobody could have, in that moment. I stomped out of the wreck of the library and away down the bright white boulevard, a pied piper of the forest, with a legion of irate trees stamping along in my wake.

What tales they might tell of this in days to come: the thought came to me dimly, prompted by the awed stares—nay, flabbergasted—I was receiving from Ancestria Magicka’s rotten agents as we passed (just before they scurried out of my path, like rats deserting the proverbial sinking ship).

The legend of Farringale, already a place of myth, story and song, had just grown a little larger and more improbable. I smiled to think of it, somewhere beneath leaf and bark, for as strange a story as they’d tell of this day, the truth was stranger still.

We were out of Farringale and halfway to Winchester before I faltered, paused, and, ultimately, stopped. Fields surrounded us, rippling with burgeoning wheat, or barley, perhaps: a verdant blanket of growth, dotted with copses of my fellow oaks and birches and yews. I turned about, spirits sinking with the velocity of a brick turfed off a tall building.

‘Um,’ I uttered in a rustle of silverish leaves. ‘Does anybody know the way to Mandridore?’

***

The day may yet come when I’ll be so used to Ves’s antics as to feel no surprise, however mad her methodology.

That day is a ways off, I reckon.

Yelling sense at Ves as she turns herself into a gods-forsaken tree and strides away: why did I imagine that would work? Off she went regardless, tossing her leafy canopy in a maddeningly Ves-like gesture despite the arboreal format and for a painfully long minute, Rob and I were left in frozen silence.

Rob permitted himself an audible sigh.

‘What’s interesting is,’ I said at length, ‘she seems to have taken most of the magick with her.’ The magickal surge that had been steadily building was ebbing away again, and perhaps that wasn’t so surprising. I couldn’t even dimly imagine the power it must have taken Ves to perform those several improbable feats in such quick succession.

‘She’s going to need help,’ said Rob.

I blinked, and straightened. Good point. Where in the name of her giddy gods did she imagine she was going with the library of Farringale? ‘Perhaps she can, I don’t know—’ I spread my hands in a hopeful gesture—‘Merlin her way to somewhere?’

Rob just looked at me.

‘Right. No, you’re right.’ Ves might be magickal beyond sense, marvellous beyond reason, and impossibly, dazzlingly competent, but she was still Ves. She’d be lost inside of half an hour.

I succumbed to a momentary burst of panic. I wanted to dash after her instantly—she needed me—but I couldn’t just abandon Farringale. Ves herself would kill me if we bombed out of there without completing the mission.

We’d have to get a move on.

‘Regulators first,’ I said. ‘Then Ves.’

‘Thought,’ said Rob. ‘Griffins.’

I nodded. The notable lack of them as we’d come in had struck me forcibly, only to be swept out of my mind by the chaos that had immediately ensued. There were several that lived atop Mount Farringale, not far beyond the borders of the city. They’d violently opposed our entry, the first time we’d stepped through the portal. Why hadn’t they dealt with Ancestria Magicka?

‘Oh no,’ said I, struck by a horrible thought. ‘You don’t suppose they used the regulators—?’

I couldn’t finish the thought in any detail: just what might they have used the regulators to do as regarded the griffins? Something, anyway: the likelihood that those regulators were here and the griffins unaccountably missing, purely by coincidence, was slim. They had to be related.

Rob nodded grimly. ‘Baroness? Do you know what’s become of the griffins?’

A long pause followed, and I began to fear we’d lost her somewhere. But then she spoke: ‘One is no more; two are captured. The rest bide yet in Farringale, but they are ensorcelled.’

I wished, fleetingly, that we had brought Indira after all: my sister would know at once how they had used Orlando’s regulators to ensorcel—or capture, or kill—a griffin. ‘Where are they?’ I asked.

Come,’ she said briefly, and the shadowed shape of her flickered into view, limned in pallid light. She led us away from the library, through streets largely deserted, now; wherever Ancestria Magicka had gone, their attempts to divest the city of its knowledge had been permanently foiled, to Ves’s credit.

We didn’t need to go far. A few minutes’ slinking around shadowed corners brought us to a kind of stables, or mews: rows of tall, handsome stone buildings arrayed around a square courtyard, grand in both size and style. Once upon a time, horses and perhaps even unicorns had resided here, I supposed, along with those who cared for them.

The stalls stood empty, as far as I could see, but the courtyard bustled with activity.

Three griffins crouched there, bound in a strange kind of lassitude: not asleep, quite, but fuddled, dreaming. So secure was their confinement that they were not even bound, save by a shackle chained around one furred leg, and attached to the stone walls.

Several people lingered near them, only a little wary of demeanour: with a wave of fury I recognised Fenella Beaumont. She was playing overseer, three of her henchmen engaged in the operation of one of Orlando’s regulators: I could feel the odd pulse of its magick thrumming through the floor.

It took me a moment longer to realise what else was so wrong with this scene. The griffins, hunched in their demi-slumber, lay inert: not so much as a flicker of lightning wreathed those handsome, feathered forms. That was what the regulators had done; of course it was. The griffins were the magickal heart of Farringale, the source—we surmised—of its deep, wild magick, and the regulators had—well—regulated them.

Helped along, doubtless, by Ancestria Magicka, with the specific aim of subduing them.

I took a long, slow breath, too consumed with fury to speak—at least for a moment.

‘Well,’ I said at last. ‘It’s maybe a good thing Ves isn’t here to see this.’

The Fate of Farringale: 6

‘What’s the plan,’ Jay whispered to me as we stood there, frozen with horror amidst the destruction of the great library of Farringale.

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, already reaching with those other senses, hooking my mind and my heart into the landscape around me. ‘I think I’m about to wing it.’

If he replied, I didn’t hear it. My consciousness winged away from him, from Rob; away from the hideous spectacle of looters emptying those long-neglected shelves; brushed past Mauf, still asleep in my satchel—a mercy upon him; I left him undisturbed—past Baroness Tremayne, a distressed shadow haunting the scene, just out of sight or hearing; sank at last into the bones of the earth below.

Trees. I joined a tangle of their deep roots, a web running beneath the paved streets and stone houses, oak and ash and elm; we’d seen some few of them flanking the library, their heavy boughs still shading the deserted boulevards, long ages after those who had planted them had gone.

Something else lingered there: a memory, a ghost; trees-that-were, once; had ceased to grow, ceased to soak up the sunlight and rainfall of Farringale. The last of their sweet, spring leaves lay far behind them: hundreds of years had passed since they had last borne fruit, borne seed, let their green leaves turn the colour of amber and drift down into the slow death of autumn.

They had not forgotten. The memories lay locked inside every knot, every whorl, and I realised at last what it was I had encountered.

Shelves. The bookshelves of the library of Farringale had been built here, out of the siblings of those same trees that rose so proudly outside: and they were trees still, somewhere inside.

An idea unfurled in my own mind, like a leaf in spring: fresh and lovely and perfect. It was the work of a moment to touch those slumbering sparks with a thread of magick, to whisper to them of light, and fresh-fallen water. They responded, stretching themselves as they woke, reaching with fresh life and growth for the heavens.

And the leaves of Farringale—the thousands, hundreds of thousands, of bound and inked and printed pages, each one pressed from the mulch that had once, also, been a tree—these they carried with them, unfurling them like banners, opened to the sun.

I came back to myself slowly, through a greater exertion of effort than it had cost me to lose myself, for that little space of time. How simple, how easy, the life of a tree: the slow turning of the seasons around me, the crisp freshness of rainwater, the dulcet warmth of sunlight upon my upturned leaves…

In what stark, sharp contrast, the life of a Ves: hurry and haste, pain and turmoil, pressure and distress—I liked being a tree, could easily come to prefer it over any other shape—I fought to grasp the beauties of my little human life, the details: strong cups of tea in the morning, with lashings of milk; carrot cake, and Bakewell tarts; dance parties at midnight, when I couldn’t sleep—hugs, preferably from Jay; the velvety softness of Addie’s nose; the snap in Milady’s voice when I’d displeased her—

I flailed, halfway Ves and halfway tree, and then someone was shaking me, shouting my name in my ears and—

I had eyes again; I felt them; I opened them.

Jay, a vision of concerned fury. I was still a creature of heightened and layered senses, every pore tuned to the myriad cues of my environment. I felt every wave of Jay’s distress, felt it begin to ebb, when he saw me looking back at him.

‘We are really going to have to talk about this,’ he growled at me, his fingers digging into my shoulders where—I concluded—he had been shaking me.

‘Agreed,’ I breathed, gulping air. The ease with which I meld with landscapes, turn myself into boulders and bridges and chairs—it’s exhilarating, in the same way as a rollercoaster, the kind where you’re only mostly certain that you aren’t going to go hurtling off the rails at the next corner, and sail off into oblivion, screaming.

If I could only turn myself back with the same ease I wouldn’t mind it half so much.

‘Was I a tree?’ I whispered, half afraid of the answer.

‘Something like that—’ began Jay.

‘Ves,’ Rob broke in, and I tore my gaze away from my fascinated scrutiny of Jay’s expressions. ‘Was that you? I really hope that was you.’

He gestured, widely, and I beheld, with some awe, the fruits of my impromptu labours.

The library-as-was would, in all likelihood, never be the same again. The bookcases were gone, the very walls had shifted, and the roof gaped open to let the sky in; I wondered distantly what had become of the rafters, not to mention the roof tiles.

A forest had sprung up out of the earth. Chiefly oaks, these handsome trees: not so very old yet, their trunks still slight and lithe, but they were growing, thickening: changing, changing back, into the grand old trees they had been long ago, before men of Farringale had come with axes, and chopped them down.

A thick canopy shaded us from sun and wind: a rustling, green arbour, smelling of spring, and among those unfurling leaves there were: books.

I breathed out, a note of relief, for I had not, in my haste and carelessness, disassembled every book in the library, turning every separate page into roots and leaves. The books looked intact, as far as I could tell from some distance below: hanging from the branches like tempting fruits, far out of reach.

I watched as a quick-thinking looter jumped, reaching for a low-hanging tome; his hands never closed upon it, for the tree snatched it back, quick as lightning. The earth shook in palpable warning.

‘Yes, but before you ask,’ I informed Rob, and Jay, ‘No, I don’t have the slightest idea how I am going to get them down from there.’

‘Noted,’ said Jay.

‘But they seem to be safe, for the moment.’ So I fervently hoped; it was always possible that I had done as much damage to the books with my magick as the thieves had with their careless, grabbing hands, but I couldn’t think of that now. It was too late. I would have to hope that the love and fear I had laced into my magick had preserved them; the trees’ obvious protectiveness of their bookish burdens boded well.

Of course, I had been anything but subtle. Only some of the book thieves’ attention remained upon their prize, now hanging out of reach; others were raising the alarm, shouting questions at each other, beginning a search for the culprit. For me.

They wouldn’t find us: not yet, not while we remained tucked behind the echoes of space and time, swaddled in shadows and silence. But we couldn’t stay that way, and we had other objectives before we could hasten back to the Society.

I paused long enough to watch as several more energetic souls attempted various methods of retrieving the hanging books: jumping; boosting each other on cupped hands, or shoulders; climbing into the boughs of the trees themselves. All failed: the trees retaliated, swatting and swiping away the climbers, or shaking the looters out of their branches.

‘Right,’ said Jay, shaking himself out of his absorbed appreciation of the scene. ‘We need to find out what’s become of the regulators.’

The regulators, freshly ripped from Silvessen and—what? What were these people intending to do with them in Farringale? Whatever it was, I didn’t think they had yet deployed them. Surely there would be some sign already, some shift in the conditions of Farringale. Or would there? Could two regulators have much of an effect on an entire, magick-drowned city?

Someone passed by me, almost close enough to touch, and my train of thought shattered—I knew him, I was sure of it—shadowed as he was in my sight, his movements juddery and jerky, the strange effect of my disconnected state—even so—I followed him at a trot, noting his height, the breadth of his shoulders, the public schoolboy cut of his hair—

‘That’s George Mercer,’ I hissed, and stamped my foot in sheer rage. ‘Ancestria bloody Magicka.’

‘You’re certain?’ Jay called, following me.

‘Yes. I suppose he might have defected to some other soulless organisation devoted to the plunder of magickal heritage, but I doubt it.’

Jay seemed unsurprised, and so was I. Fenella sodding Beaumont: she just couldn’t go more than a month or two without kicking up fresh trouble.

Rob was hulking. It’s a squared-shoulders, chin-raised, threatening sort of posture he does when he’s contemplating destroying someone (to do him justice, he hardly ever actually does).

‘Now’s not the time,’ I told him. He’d have to step out from behind the echoes to actually lay hands—or Wands—on Mercer directly, and we were vastly outnumbered in here.

Rob gave me a terse nod, and his shoulders relaxed. ‘We’d better get a move on,’ he told me. ‘I may be wrong, but I think we have a surge coming on.’

I glanced at what was left of the library’s mullioned windows, forest-bound as they now were. I might have imagined it, but was that a slow flush of pale colour creeping across the glass? A soft, palpable hum of magick building in the air?

‘That seems—’ I began, but was unable to finish the sentence for the sheer sinking of my heart. It seemed like improbably prompt timing, but what if it wasn’t random? I had just unleashed a small tidal wave of magick in the great library. I’d turned the previously inert bookshelves into Merlin-trees, and now that I had occasion to think about it they were rather fizzy with magick—

‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed, exchanging one fraught glance with Jay. The same realisation was written all over his face.

‘It’ll be all right,’ he said reassuringly. ‘We’ve weathered these surges before.’

We had, but that was before I’d emerged from the fifth Britain in a state of dangerous magickal excess. Before I’d set eyes—or hands—on the strange old lyre from my mother’s Yllanfalen kingdom. Before I’d become a Merlin. No one could say what the effect would now be upon my shrinking self.

I had two choices. Wait and see—or run away.

I took a big breath, squared my shoulders, and hulked. ‘It’ll be okay,’ I echoed Jay, trying to sound like I meant it.

I could feel it now, pulsing through the floor under my shoes and thrumming in the air.

From the depths of my satchel, an irate voice began shouting. ‘Miss Vesper. Permit me to ask—with the utmost esteem and respect for your ordinarily unimpeachable judgement—what in the name of every conceivable god have you done to my LIBRARY.’

Mauf had woken up. And I saw his point fairly quickly, for quite apart from the unusual elevation of the formerly neat rows of books there was something else going on. They were—swaying. Their pages were fluttering, as though riffled by invisible fingers. As I watched, a cloud of butterflies erupted from the pages of one handsome old tome, and exploded in tiny flashes of light.

A discordant chorus of babbling voices rose in volume, rising with the magickal tide: the books of Farringale were gibbering, cackling, screaming in rage—

–And then, horror of horrors, the bright young oaks I’d conjured out of the bookshelves ripped their roots out of the earth and began to walk.

The Fate of Farringale: 5

Whisht.

The sound broke in upon my reverie. Light splintered.

I woke up, partially.

I wasn’t Ves just then. I couldn’t have said what I had done with my eyes or my limbs or my fabulous hair, nor what shape I presently wore. I felt at ease with the landscape, as though I had grown there. Perhaps I had.

Cordelia Vesper, came the voice again, and I had regained enough of myself to recognise Baroness Tremayne’s tones.

How she perceived me in that state, I couldn’t imagine.

Baroness? I attempted to reply.

I sense you but I see nothing of you. How comes this about?

I mulled over how to answer that, when I had so little information myself. What had I done, exactly? What did I look like, just then? I’ll explain later, I decided, for time pressed, and I had no idea how long I had spent in my sunlit haze. Can you get Jay and Rob in, without their being seen? They’re waiting just outside the portal.

Cannot you?

Fair question, that. Since I had no real idea what I had done to myself, I had no real idea how to do the same to anyone else—nor even if it were possible. I was hoping you could take all of us into the echoes, I went on, ignoring that question too.

A moment.

A flash and a sickening shift; I felt wrenched out of the earth, like an uprooted tree.

Golden light dimmed to a pale, muted silver, and the soft sounds of the city—birdsong, the wind through ancient eaves, and, somewhere, voices—faded. I felt swaddled in mist, my senses muffled.

I had passed into the baroness’s strange world.

Ves,’ someone was calling, thin, distorted sounds, as though we hung suspended underwater. Jay. He was here somewhere.

I steadied myself with a breath or two, and looked about me. The baroness had moved me in distance as well as time; I stood in a white-walled room, small by troll standards. A single armchair rested, lonely, in a corner, besides which the chamber bore scant decoration: a plain stone mantel crowned a narrow fireplace; shelves built into the walls might once have held books; the bare boards of the floor might once have been covered with a cheerful rug. Perhaps I was in one of those modest merchant’s townhouses I’d seen on a prior visit. Shadows flickered oddly in the corners, light crackled and shifted; I blinked, shaking my head. I don’t know how Baroness Tremayne has contrived to live in this odd, mutable space for so many years. Perhaps she finds solidity disconcerting, now.

A door stood open opposite me, and in another moment Jay barrelled through it. ‘There you are,’ he said, with palpable relief.

My heart eased a notch at the sight of him. ‘Is Rob with you?’

He jerked his head in terse reply: behind him.

I couldn’t see the baroness, but this was her turf: she, of all of us, could be relied upon to handle it.

Her voice emanated out of nowhere even as I framed the thought, and I jumped. Art prepared?

Were we prepared. For what? Disasters innumerable and unnameable? Almost certain catastrophe? Slight, but not insignificant risk of actual death?

Eh, probably. I’ve got used to calling that “Tuesday”.

‘Art prepared,’ I answered firmly. ‘Ready for mission briefing.’

This puzzled the baroness; there was a palpable pause. I’d forgotten, for a moment, how she lived—giving new meaning to the term “out of touch”. ‘Occupation,’ she said after a moment, ‘seems centred around the library, though there are pockets of activity in other places.’

The library. Of course, the first thing these people had done upon invading Farringale was take control of the library.

Although… I frowned, rapidly revising my ideas. The first thing I would do upon invading a sovereign territory—however empty—would be to take over the library. But this wasn’t me. ‘Who are these people,’ I muttered, though I was beginning to develop an idea. If the library was their first, or even sole, objective, then they were a lot like us—only more ruthless.

‘Three guesses,’ said Jay.

‘Too generous,’ put in Rob.

I was beginning to agree. If I didn’t find Fenella Beaumont somewhere at the back of this mess, I might be eating a couple of hats.

I sighed. ‘Let’s go to the library, then,’ words I usually uttered with more genuine joy, it has to be said.

I braced myself against another sickening lurch through space and time, but nothing happened. ‘Tis but a short distance,’ the baroness told us. ‘This is the librarians’ quarters.’

I imagined a complex of dormitories, like a university campus, all housing the multitudinous librarians that must once have staffed the sprawling archives of Farringale: part of a bustling hive of intellectual activity, the likes of which the world may never have seen again. The shattering tragedy of its loss hit me afresh.

‘Oh,’ said Jay, realisation dawning, as I continued to stand there. ‘I’m up.’

‘Delighted as I generally am to lead,’ I confirmed, ‘I’m still me.’ Merlin or not, I still couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag without assistance.

Jay went to the door and passed out of the room, Rob motioning me to follow. He brought up the rear, guarding us, I supposed, from threats materialising behind us. Strange feeling; Farringale, as yet, seemed almost as empty as it had ever been, the only signs of other life hitherto being a faint babble of voices—and only then when I’d been merged with the land, Merlin-style. It felt almost like playing some kind of game; let’s pretend we’re on a quest to save a lost kingdom from a terrifying threat. I’ll be Merlin, you can be a Waymaster of indescribable power…

I followed Jay into a large vestibule, high of ceiling, with a pair of griffin statues flanking the tall door to the outside. Jay went straight out; I paused only to pat one of the statues on its smooth stone head as I passed. I couldn’t have said why. It seemed friendly.

The moment we stepped outside, all my comforting notions of make-believe fell into tatters.

Someone whisked past the librarian’s house, close enough to touch Jay: he halted abruptly. My heart stuttered; for an agonising moment I expected to be seen, to be caught; then the odd dimness of the noontide light, the shimmering, flickering haze over everything we saw, reminded me that we were undetectable. Hopefully.

We waited in brief, frozen silence, immobile—my mind spiralled back into childhood games and Granny’s Footsteps—a most inapposite desire to giggle rose in me, and I choked it down. The pressure was making me hysterical.

The person, whoever it was, passed by at a near-run, and it struck me that the hive of activity I’d been imagining moments before had returned to Farringale after all. If only they weren’t uninvited, irresponsible, and destructive—

‘This way,’ Jay whispered, stepping confidently out. I trailed after, heart pounding—it takes serious nerve to wander down a street, out in the open, and just trust that nobody will be able to see you.

Nobody did, but we saw plenty. Jay led us on a short, winding route around a cluster of stone-built houses—the rest of the librarians’ quarters, I supposed—and several people passed us, moving at considerable speed.

Now that we were closer, I was able to see that they were carrying armfuls of stuff. Books.

‘They’re stripping the library,’ I hissed, a surge of such rage swelling my heart that I couldn’t breathe.

‘I feel bound to point out that we did the same thing,’ Jay said. ‘Not that I mean to defend them, of course.’

‘We did not. We took several books, and only to save them. They’re taking—everything—’ I shut up, and breathed.

‘Maybe they’re saving them,’ Rob put in, but in a dry tone.

I scoffed audibly at that. ‘Of course they are. Zero personal interest involved.’

They were all human, these bustling thieves, which did not surprise me. Though the notable lack of any trolls did interest me a little: was that mere happenstance, or had these invaders known about the state of Farringale, known that any trolls they brought here would be in severe danger?

The existence of the ortherex; the fate of Farringale, and other Troll Enclaves; these things were not secrets, exactly. It had taken a huge, concerted effort to save some of the beleaguered Enclaves, involving the Society, the Troll Court, and other organisations; word of it must surely have spread.

Still. This was looking more and more like a carefully planned operation by somebody with considerable information. Someone who’d been paying close attention to what we had been doing this past year.

We turned a corner, and the library rose before us: a statuesque construct, a cathedral to knowledge, its gleaming white walls glittering with glass. Another person came barrelling out of the entrance as we watched and hurtled down the steps, a woman with soft brown hair, an armful of books, and a harried expression. They weren’t wasting any time: clearly they expected this incursion wouldn’t remain a secret for long.

Was this their only goal? Robbing the library?

Would that alone have rattled the unflappable baroness so?

Jay stealthed up the wide stone steps to the entrance, neatly evading further bandits dashing out with more books. I wondered where they were taking them, pictured trucks driven up to the gates of Farringale somewhere and filled up with stolen material. What a coup—if they could pull it off.

I smothered a rebellious corner of my soul that traitorously wished we had thought to come here with trucks and empty the library—there were reasons why we hadn’t, we had ethics and standards and we didn’t do this sort of thing, let it go, Ves—and followed Jay up the stairs.

Inside, chaos reigned.

On our last visit here, the library had been shrouded in dust and silence, like Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted tower. Spellbound, as though the city had fallen asleep, and might wake at any moment.

Now it bustled with the worst kind of activity. Easily twenty people were looting the shelves, hastily, haphazardly, scooping armloads of delicate tomes onto the floor and shoving them into boxes. Others merely grabbed eight or ten off the nearest shelf and ran for the door. I winced at the thud, thudding as more and more books fell off their shelves and landed in crashing heaps, sending waves of dust into the air.

Rage set my heart afire; I could have screamed my fury.

As much as I could understand the desire to loot every single page of precious knowledge out of the lost library of Farringale, I could never condone this—this—this travesty, this piracy. Nobody cared if the books were damaged during this shambles of a process; nor did they care that the right of ownership over them was emphatically not theirs.

They weren’t emptying the great library of Farringale; they were destroying it.

My feelings were echoed in Jay and Rob, for the three of us stood frozen in shared horror for some minutes. It defied belief, that anybody with a value for knowledge could treat the place with such a total lack of respect—how could they—

‘Right,’ I said, crisply, and the syllable contained worlds of steely resolution.

‘Right,’ Jay agreed, grim as death.

Rob merely nodded. We were agreed. Whatever it took, we were stopping these people.

But we were here on reconnaissance only. We didn’t have the numbers to mount a counter offensive, and it would take days to muster that kind of a force and get it all the way down here (we had only the one Waymaster, and there was no conceivable way Jay could be expected to cart a hundred Society members across such a distance).

By the haste with which these thieves were working, they knew this. They weren’t planning to be here in a few days’ time; they were getting the goods and getting out. By the time reinforcements arrived, it would be too late—at least for the library.

If there was ever a good time to go catastrophically, devastatingly Merlin on somebody, this was it.

The Fate of Farringale: 4

An odd feeling, retracing the steps of our first (and at the time, secret) mission to Farringale. We were almost the same company again, missing only Alban; the journey through the Ways was the same, bringing us out on the same sun-dappled hilltop near Winchester. Even the season was the same: had it really been a year ago? A whole year! And yet, only a year. We might be the same team on the same mission, but we were not the same people.

I wasn’t the same Ves.

Nor was this mission conducted in the same exploratory spirit as before. Where previously I had felt excitement, curiosity, a twinge of guilt (see: aforementioned secret status), now we were tense and focused, prepared to encounter a very different Farringale. I scarcely noticed the vivid yellow-flowered shrubs, or the shimmering blue bowl of the sky. I went straight for my syrinx pipes, played a distracted melody thereupon: down came Adeline, for me and Jay to ride, and her larger, darker friend for Rob.

Jay, once rendered almost prostrate by the effort of carrying three or four people through the Ways, stood superbly composed and in control: not even the prospect of a horseback ride through the skies had the power to unsettle him now. How far we’ve come, I thought, with an odd twist of pride; a feeling I had no time to indulge or to share, for we were in a hurry. I paused only to touch noses with Addie before I mounted up, and Jay scrambled up behind me. Rob took the lead, a godlike figure enthroned upon stallion-back: I spared momentary wisp of pity for whoever had been so unwise as to mount a foray in Farringale. They were going to regret it.

Ten miles or so winged away in no time at all; ten miles of crisp, clear air, Addie’s velvet hide shimmering in the sunlight, and Jay a warm, comforting weight against my back.

Then we were spiralling down and down, alighting near Alresford, at the bridge over the River Alre. How sturdy, how dependable a construct, this thing of dark bricks and weathered stones: staunchly guarding the entrance to Farringale for hundreds of years, immoveable by time or mischief; untouched, and untouchable—

These high-blown musings upon time and change came to an abrupt end as Addie planted her four silvery hooves upon solid ground, and I got a closer look at the agèd bridge.

Not so untouchable after all, and not untouched. It’s the type of bridge that looks like half a small castle: built from pale grey stone in great, heavy blocks, with a handsome pointed arch spanning the river beneath. It’s been there for eight hundred years, probably, and you’d think nothing could touch it, but something had.

That majestic arch lay shattered in several pieces, each one as large as my entire body. The back half of the bridge had crumbled, fallen in, lay blocking the river; water was forming a new path around the obstacle, split into a streaming fork. It was as though the hand of some kind of god had smashed it in a fit of pique: a single, stunning blow, and an irreplaceable piece of architectural history lay in ruins.

I stared at the devastation, too numb with shock to think, let alone speak. ‘Who—’ I began, but words failed me. I felt a tear spill down one cheek; more in anger than grief, though surely some of both.

Who could have committed an act of such wanton destruction? Who could have so little respect for history, for heritage, for art—

I’d forgotten Farringale, for a moment. I was recalled to duty by Rob’s grim pronouncement: ‘Well. We know how they got in.’

‘What?’ I looked up, away from the tumbled mess of stone and time. ‘But—just destroying the bridge shouldn’t open the gate, surely. It should make it inaccessible.’

‘I know it should,’ Rob agreed. ‘But it hasn’t.’

I saw what he meant. A nimbus of light hung somewhere under the remains of the bridge, a light I recognised: we’d passed through it before. On the other side lay Farringale.

Whatever they had done, it hadn’t been a physical act of destruction. The bridge had been wrecked by magick, and whoever had done it had hacked the gate open by the same means. A vicious, brutal, graceless stroke, committed by one whose only goal was to get inside, and hang the consequences.

Jay was already on his phone, talking in crisp, short sentences to someone from the Society. ‘—completely wrecked—gate’s clearly accessible—seriously urgent—’

I stepped nearer to the destroyed gate, my stomach flipping with alarm. Baroness Tremayne had talked of many intruders, too many to count, but hearing about it at some distance was one thing: seeing the evidence of this savage incursion was quite another. This was an invasion indeed, the destroyed bridge the kind of collateral damage inflicted by a hostile army.

‘Shit,’ I whispered, my head spinning. Farringale was in deep trouble.

Rob had been quiet for some minutes. At last he said: ‘This is much more serious than we anticipated. I’m half inclined to abort mission. Come back with greater numbers.’

I saw his point. We were woefully overmatched. But on the other hand—

‘We aren’t here to try to remove these people, yet,’ I reminded him. ‘We’re here to get a clear picture of the situation, so we can counter them more effectively later. What are we going to tell Milady, if we walk away now? We’ve learned almost nothing.’

‘Ves, there are three of us. Three, against—’ He waved a hand illustratively at the destroyed bridge, unable to specify precisely what the three of us faced.

And it was that very vagueness that worried me. ‘We’ve got to learn more,’ I argued. ‘Who are these people? What do they want with Farringale? Giddy gods, how did they get past the griffins? If we’re to have the slightest hope of besting them then we’ve got to answer these questions.’

Rob gave me one of his grim looks. I don’t mind admitting that it is a little intimidating. ‘And how do you propose we proceed? We’ll be spotted as soon as we step through that portal.’

‘Not necessarily.’

Rob stared at me, waiting. Unimpressed.

‘Did I never tell you how I first met Baroness Tremayne?’

‘Not in any great detail, no.’

‘She was—she doesn’t exist in the real world, precisely.’ I held up a hand as he made to object. ‘Yes, I know she does; we saw her, not long ago. But she’s ancient, Rob. She’s hundreds of years old. She’s survived by existing outside of our reality, for the most part. She calls it between the echoes. I was in there with her, for a bit. It’s like—you can’t be seen by anyone outside of it, not even if you’re standing right next to them. She can pull us in, she’s done it before, and we can sneak around as much as we need to.’

A light of interest dawned in Rob’s dark eyes, and I knew I had him. ‘Are you sure?’ he said, ever the health and safety manager. ‘There’s no danger?’

‘There’s probably some,’ I admitted. ‘But not much.’

Rob’s mouth twitched in a smile, mostly suppressed. ‘Right,’ he said.

‘It’s too much to hope for no danger. I mean, when was the last time that happened?’

He answered with a shrug, or perhaps he was merely rolling his powerful shoulders, preparing for action.

Jay appeared at my elbow. ‘They’re sending some people to have a look at the bridge situation,’ he informed us.

‘We can’t wait for them,’ I said. ‘There’s no time to be lost. Who knows what they’re doing to Farringale while we’re dithering out here.’

‘I told them we can’t wait,’ Jay agreed. ‘This mess is out of our hands. That mess—’ he pointed at the portal—‘is entirely our problem.’

Right. I squared my shoulders, too, a smaller, feistier version of Rob. ‘I’ll go in first,’ I said.

Both men looked at me, and I could see questions and objections crystallising in their faces.

I held up a hand. ‘Hear me out. I know I said the baroness will help us, but we’ve got to reach her first. And you’re right, if we waltz straight through we’ll probably be spotted immediately.’ I wondered how Baroness Tremayne had got in and out, presumably without being observed. But she was a griffin. She had other, skyborne pathways. ‘I expect Milady told her where we’d be going in. She’ll be waiting for us nearby. So I’ll just—Merlin in, and let her know we’re here.’

‘Merlin in,’ Jay said.

‘Yes.’

‘I wasn’t aware that “Merlin” was a verb.’

‘If that’s an oblique way of asking me how I propose to accomplish this feat, I can only tell you: accidentally, via means I can neither anticipate nor plan for.’

I saw the escapade of the Fairy Stone pass behind Jay’s eyes, not to mention the episode with the chair. ‘This is—haphazard,’ he objected.

‘I know.’

‘Disorganised, uncertain, chaotic, and therefore dangerous.’

‘That’s me,’ I agreed.

He smiled in spite of himself. ‘I meant dangerous to you.’

‘Do you have a better idea?’ I hated to challenge him with the deal-breaking what-else-would-you-suggest manoeuvre, it’s crude. But we were not furnished with a great many options, nor with a great deal of time in which to laboriously reject most of them.

Jay didn’t like it either. His smile vanished into grimness: his stare was flinty. ‘If you get killed,’ he said ominously, ‘I’ll—’

‘Get Zareen to wake me up just so you can kill me again,’ I finished for him.

‘No. I’ll mourn you for the rest of my life.’ It was said very seriously, with real feeling.

Ouch. That hit me where it hurts. ‘I promise,’ I said, really meaning it. ‘I’ll be careful as pie.’

‘As pie? Careful as pie? Pies are easy but I never heard they were careful—Ves!’

While he was busy muddling his way through my very mixed simile, I was off, striding for that beckoning nimbus of light with all the courage I couldn’t quite muster. I’d spoken with outrageous certainty, as though I had any real control over these accidental brilliancies of mine. I hadn’t been trying to turn into a Fairy Stone, or a chair either; what made me think I could accidentally-on-purpose stealth my way into Farringale via some mysteriously mystical means, and without getting caught?

Only the fact that I’d lucked or catastrophised my way into—and out of—a lot of interesting situations already. And that was before someone had been mad enough to make a Merlin of me.

This jumble of doubts and hopes drained away as I neared the portal, for I was assailed by a—by a deep, shimmering, compelling awareness of it, and of the land beyond, that briefly shocked me into immobility. This certainly hadn’t happened before. My senses were awash with magick, and with Farringale: the scents and sights of its golden-paved streets and overgrown gardens; water, fresh and chill, or sharply, greenly stagnant; the mulch of old earth, the perfume of spring roses—those damned roses were everywhere—I inhaled, closing my eyes, and I could almost see the winding streets, the grand boulevards, the timber-framed townhouses. That sky. That sky, twilight-coloured and roiling with angry, devastating, glorious golden clouds.

Warmth wreathed my limbs, a warmth that came—I thought—from the light itself. The gentle warmth of an afternoon in early summer, like bathing in liquid sunshine.

I felt no movement; there was no sensation of passage. Time passed, and I knew, in some distant way, that I had gone out of England, and into Farringale; that I was a part of it, like a tree rooted in the deep earth; like a stream rushing, bubbling through grassy banks; like a rose, petals unfurled to drink in the sun.

The Fate of Farringale: 3

I know this may seem hard to believe but I am actually the very soul of discretion, most of the time.

Not that my new status as the current Merlin is a secret, exactly. But I haven’t broadcast it to the far corners of the earth (or, at least, the Society), and neither have my nearest and dearest. I’d like to hang on to my identity, I suppose: I’m Ves, most of all.

That being so, I had no intention of instantly spreading the news of Milady’s secret identity all through the House (or Baroness Tremayne’s, either). In fact, I was incredibly restrained; I told absolutely no one at all.

Well: no one except for Val, anyway. Sort of.

ALERT, read the text I sent her the second I was at liberty. Code reddest of RED: urgent information requisition. What have you got on Morgan le Fay and Queen Mab?

Note that I didn’t say why I was asking. I felt quite proud of myself.

OH! Came Val’s response. Been wondering about that for the LONGEST time.

SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED.

Stand by: information overload incoming.

I didn’t ask her which suspicions, or to whom they pertained. I didn’t dare.

So much for subtlety.

Morgan le Fay. Said to be one of the most powerful enchantresses in British history. Connections to the supposed King Arthur, etc. Unlike the aforementioned probably did exist in some form—known archetype but hasn’t been heard of in ages and I mean literal ages, Ves.

Trust Val to text in words of several syllables.

Known or at least reputed powers: shape-shifting, especially into animal forms. Also illusions, famously castles-in-the-air or like mirages.

I filed those thoughts away: maybe there’d be something we could use.

Mab: info sparse, Val went on. Famously mentioned in Shakespeare; facility with dreams implied; once monarch of a now defunct faerie kingdom.

Mention in same bracket with Morgan suggests subjects related?? Never heard of Mab as an archetype but could be. Would explain a lot.

I hastily wrote back. I don’t know what you mean nothing is explained I’m explaining nothing.

Lol, said Val, most uncharacteristically. I took this unusual utterance to be expressive of profound sarcasm.

Nothing to see here, move along, I returned, and put my phone away before I could compromise myself—or Milady—any further.

I’m practiced at packing light and packing fast, and these days—to Ornelle’s relief—I don’t tend to need much from Stores. I was ready to go in under an hour, buzzing with energy and alarm, and with nothing to do but wait for go time.

I went out to the Glade.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but nothing soothes the spirit like a tranquil hour or two in a magickal grove littered with unicorns. Extra points for being One with the Horn Squad yourself. I was feeling rattled when I came in, head all awhirl, nerves on highest alert; not the ideal state in which to undertake a top secret mission of the greatest importance. I needed the prismatic calm of a mountain lake, especially if I was going to have to go in there and Merlin all over the place. People expect more from the living embodiment of the most famous wizard in Britain than they do from a mere, common-or-garden Ves (including me).

An hour or so of sweet, juicy grass, dulcet spring sunshine, and (inevitably) fragrant roses and I more or less had it. Serene, smooth waters, fathomlessly blue. Doves cooing peacefully as rose-stained dawn breaks over a softly rippling meadow. The unearthly tones of panpipes at—

‘VES!’

My head shot up, several half-chewed stems of grass falling out of my gaping jaw. That was—that was not Jay, that was another male voice, a familiar one—I was off at a gallop before I’d even finished the thought, and so much for the mountain lake.

Baron Alban stood at the mouth of my sacred glade, inflating his lungs in preparation for another earth-shattering bellow. I ran at him full-tilt and planted my nose into his massive chest, almost knocking him over (and with a person of Alban’s stature this is no mean feat).

‘Oof,’ declared he, grabbing my face. He planted a smacking kiss on my nose, and glowered at me: a confusing combination. ‘I’m here to deliver a key,’ he informed me as I went questing through the pockets of his jacket (I could smell baked goods somewhere in there, I swear). ‘Which means I’m here to dispatch you on a mission of probable danger and I can’t go with you.’

Alban had been part of our first, only minorly disastrous mission to Farringale. It could have been catastrophic: Alban could have fallen prey to the ortherex, the malignant creatures infesting the depths of Farringale (and several other Troll enclaves). They were deadly; they’d have eaten Alban alive, if we had been unlucky.

We wouldn’t—couldn’t—risk that again.

‘I wish you could come with us, too,’ I informed him, though little of it emerged past my equine teeth.

Alban patted my neck. ‘I would understand you better if you were Ves-shaped. Just saying.’

I felt a curious reluctance to step out of my glade, my sanctuary. Once I did, I was committed—off to Farringale, and whatever fresh disaster awaited us there. Off to wield some of the most ancient and powerful magick in the country, in one of the most ancient and powerful magickal courts in the country, and try desperately not to mess it all up.

Courage, Ves.

I took a deep, whinnying breath, and stepped over the invisible threshold of the glade. The moment I did so, the transformation began: within a few shuddering, uncomfortable seconds I was myself again, with arms as well as legs, and fabulous hair.

The hug I immediately received was, I felt, recompense enough. It was engulfing.

‘Mmf,’ I said against Alban’s grey silk shirt.

‘Sorry.’ He eased the pressure of his massive arms, and I could breathe again.

‘It may sound shockingly ungrateful,’ I told him, ‘but I wish just a little bit that I’d got Morgan’s magick rather than Merlin’s. The Baroness showed up as a griffin, Alban. A griffin! And flashed out of it again easy as pie. Imagine that.’

‘Ves, two minutes ago you were an actual unicorn. Four legs, horn, everything.’

‘I know. Exactly. That only happens when I step into the glade, and fades again as soon as I step out. And I’m only ever a unicorn. I have no control over it.’ I indulged myself in a few moments of green-eyed envy, picturing myself soaring over the land upon the wings of a creature of legend.

‘Surely you’ve accomplished something equally marvellous as Merlin?’ said Alban, proving himself as superb a diplomat as ever.

‘This morning I turned myself into a chair,’ I concurred. ‘That’s not nothing.’

‘A chair.’ Alban twinkled at me, wordlessly.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I admitted. ‘I haven’t really got the hang of this Merlin thing.’ Merlin’s magick seemed to be of the land: the magick of tree and stone, of air and water, and the vastness of it appalled me almost as much as the poeticism of it enchanted me. I probably needed a solid decade of practice before I could call myself a creditable Merlin—if then.

‘You’ll be marvellous,’ Alban replied, apparently reading my thoughts.

I put away my anxious face, replacing it with a set expression of firm resolve. ‘Marvellous or not, I’ve got to go.’

He nodded, and dug a hand into a pocket in his trousers. The keys, when he handed them to me, were blissfully cool against my hot fingers: thoughts of that serene lake returned. They were gold and bronze, exquisitely worked, and set with rubies and emeralds: the fanciest of fancy. Typical of the Troll Court. ‘I half expected to hear they’d been stolen,’ I told Alban, tracing a finger over a glimmering ruby.

‘I don’t know how these intruders got into Farringale, but it wasn’t with the keys,’ Alban confirmed.

I sighed, and carefully vanished the keys into an air-pocket: Indira’s trick. It’d taken me much longer to master it than I liked to admit, and I might never have been able to do it at all without Merlin’s magick. ‘I’ll take the best care of them,’ I said.

‘And of yourself, too, please.’

I nodded. ‘Always. All right, here I go.’ I dropped a hasty kiss on Alban’s cheek, flashed a beaming, confident smile, and took off at a run for the House.

***

Jay and Rob were already waiting for me. I found the pair of them in the cellar, pacing in circles around the Way-henge House keeps for our resident Waymaster’s particular use. Jay displayed a key for me the moment I stepped in: wrought silver and gleaming sapphire-blue: the third key we needed to open the gate into Farringale, the one House has in its keeping.

‘I’ve got the other two,’ I told him. ‘Alban just brought them.’

Jay nodded. He was tense and terse, barely speaking: I was oddly reassured to learn that it wasn’t just me feeling the pressure.

Rob, though, smiled at me. I was even more reassured by his presence, and it’s partly because he’s a big, visibly capable man, the exact sort you’d like to have around if there’s trouble in the offing. But he’s also the collected type, radiating calm and cool, and I breathed a little easier in consequence. ‘All set?’ he asked me.

I patted my satchel. It wasn’t as burstingly full as it used to be, my need for paraphernalia being somewhat diminished. But it held an article of supreme importance: Gallimaufry, or Mauf, our semi-sentient encyclopaedia of everything. We had acquired the book from Farringale in the first place (or its predecessor: Mauf was a clever copy). I didn’t know for sure that we would need his extraordinary reserves of knowledge, but it never hurts to have a know-it-all along, now does it? ‘I’ve got two magickal keys and one remarkably well-mannered tome,’ I informed Rob. ‘All set.’

‘Then we’re going,’ said Jay, in a tone one doesn’t argue with. But he squeezed my fingers when I took his hand, a note of affection I very much welcomed.

‘Wait, we’re forgetting Baroness Tremayne,’ I pointed out.

Jay shook his head. ‘She’s already gone back. Griffin shape. She’s waiting for us.’

Right. Great. I stayed quiet as he mustered the Winds of the Ways: he’s well practiced at it by now, but it seems a delicate process. A strong breeze circled about the henge, tossing my hair; the world began to turn around me; I shut my eyes.

A vast, slightly sickening whoosh, and we were gone.

The Fate of Farringale: 2

Jay and I stayed frozen like that a moment longer—and then ran, full tilt, down the corridors and stairways to the ground floor—to the nearest of the many side-doors—I reached it first, hurled it open, pelted out onto the lawn, breathless and staring. A few others were spilling out of the House around me, and the griffin, when it came to land, had an audience of adepts readying Wands and spells and hexes—

‘Wait!’ I shouted, half involuntarily, hardly knowing what I was saying, but—

‘Ves, are you crazy?’ That was Marian, readying a devastating blast of something aimed to kill, or at least maim, and she was good, she’d hurt it for certain—

‘Don’t,’ I pleaded. ‘Just give it a moment.’ I’d seen griffins when they were intent on destruction and this didn’t look at all like that. There wasn’t nearly enough lightning.

‘She’s right,’ said Jay from right behind me. ‘I don’t think we’re in danger.’

The griffin loomed right over us by then, unthinkably huge; a long shadow fell, the sun momentarily hidden behind enormous, feathered wings.

‘You’re both crazy,’ Marian opined, and I could see her point: if the griffin had attacked us from such a vantage point we’d all have been dead in seconds.

It didn’t. Its desperate speed slowed; it drifted lazily down, wafted like dandelion seed, until its great, taloned feet connected with the rich green grass—

Light flashed—

I blinked rapidly, my eyes streaming—and when the blindness faded and I could see again, the griffin had gone.

Before us, statuesque, and making a grand, sweeping curtsey of effortless elegance: a lady of unmistakeable troll heritage, and a great, grand lady at that.

I knew her. I’d seen her before.

‘Baroness Tremayne? Surely not—it can’t be—’

Jay said: ‘Wait, Baroness Tremayne? The one you met in Farringale—’

‘Yes.’ I returned the lady’s curtsey; she isn’t so much old-fashioned as old, impossibly so, survived somehow since the days before Farringale’s fall, and she’s an aristocrat. One shows respect.

She nodded to me, and to Jay, her gaze sweeping unseeingly over the crowd assembled around us. She looked: harried. Her white hair formed a dishevelled halo around her troubled face, and her gown, as handsome and rich as ever, was soiled with cobwebs and grime.

I’d never quite seen her in the flesh before; not like this. She lived—or existed—a step outside of time; “between the echoes”, she called it, a hazy, indistinct state that preserved her indefinitely. A lonely existence: she watched over Farringale, had done so down the long ages since its fall.

Previously I would have said nothing could have brought her out of Farringale.

Now: only the very direst emergency could have done so.

A stab of profound unease unfurled within.

She spoke, her voice rusty with disuse. ‘I must—I bring dire news. I must see Mab.’

She hadn’t come all this way looking for me, then. I smothered a twinge of disappointment. ‘Mab?’ I echoed. ‘I don’t think we know anyone by that name—’

She interrupted me; the heights of rudeness in so grave, so courteous, a woman, but she could not wait for me to finish my trailing, unhelpful syllables. ‘She is here. I know her to be. I must see her.’

‘I—’ I began, and stopped, for at that moment my phone, tucked into a pocket in my dress, began to buzz. Not an unusual occurrence, but a feeling of foreboding swept over me, and I hurriedly fished it out.

An ornate, silver chocolate pot dominated the screen: Milady calling. As Jay interrogated the baroness about the identity of “Mab” (assisted, or impeded, by numerous interpolations from others), I stepped away to answer the call. ‘Milady?’

‘Ves,’ she said crisply. ‘We have a problem.’

‘It seems so,’ I agreed. ‘Although this particular griffin isn’t a danger to us—’

‘Griffin?’ Milady uttered the word sharply, with a snap: unmistakeably a question.

‘You… you aren’t calling me about the griffin?’

‘I am calling about Silvessen,’ Milady said. ‘You will have to explain to me what you mean about the—’

‘I’m coming up,’ I said, shamelessly interrupting in my turn.

‘Quickly,’ Milady agreed, and hung up.

I grabbed Jay’s elbow. ‘This morning grows ever more interesting,’ I informed him. ‘Baroness? I believe you should come with us.’

***

House took pity on the ancient baroness—or perhaps its attendant colony of obliging fruit-fanciers had grasped the sheer urgency of our various missions;. Either way, we entered the House via a side-door and emerged, with a single step, into Milady’s tower-top chamber. A plump arm-chair materialised almost immediately, and I assisted the baroness into it: she, winded and weak, sank into its comfortable embrace with a sigh. Her eyes closed, briefly: when they opened again, she said, ‘Ah, Mab.’

The air sparkled frenetically. ‘Who is—I don’t quite—Ves, enlighten me.’

Having never before encountered anything but a perfectly self-possessed Milady, I could only gape; my uneasy feelings deepened into a yawning crater of alarm.

It was Jay who said: ‘Milady, this is the Baroness Tremayne, of Farringale. Baroness, Milady is the leader of our Society. Whatever has occurred at Farringale, I am sure she will be able to assist—’

‘Morgan,’ said Milady. ‘Ves, you never mentioned the baroness was also Morgan le Fay—’

‘I didn’t know,’ I put in, distressed.

At the same time, Baroness Tremayne said, again, ‘Mab. I did not know these were emissaries of yours.’

Jay said, ‘You mean Milady—’

‘What’s happened with Silvessen?’ I interjected, my head whirling.

‘The regulators are gone,’ Milady said, clearly, into a sudden silence.

‘From Silvessen?’ I said, recovering my wits. ‘The regulators are gone from Silvessen?’

I hadn’t had occasion to visit Silvessen for a few weeks, but when I’d last been there, everything had been progressing beautifully. Our artisans (including my father) had rebuilt large parts of the village; a small but enthusiastic population of Yllanfalen were moving in, most of them from my mother’s kingdom; and the regulators were doing a resoundingly good job of restoring and balancing the magickal flow in Silvessen Dell.

My head began to whirl again. ‘You mean they’ve—they’re faulty, or—’

‘I mean that someone has taken them,’ said Milady.

Someone had dug out the regulators from Silvessen Dell—and, just as that news reached us, so had Baroness Tremayne.

Surely, not a coincidence.

Jay and I, silent with consternation, looked at the baroness, and waited.

‘Farringale is no longer inviolate,’ Baroness Tremayne told us. ‘There has been—an incursion.’

‘Who,’ I said, faintly.

‘I hardly know,’ said the baroness—Morgan, as she also was—that explained her griffin shape, legends claimed Morgan le Fay could take the form of any animal, and surely that would include the magickal ones—my brain was spinning; I forced it to focus.

Milady had been silent, absolutely silent. At last she spoke: ‘These things cannot be unconnected.’

My thoughts exactly. ‘Baroness, did these intruders bring devices with them—they are made from argent, highly potent things—’

‘I do not know what it is they have done, but it has—the disruption is—severe. The city stands in sore need of aid.’

I could well imagine what kind of disruption might afflict Farringale, if someone had taken Silvessen’s regulators there.

Well, scratch that: I couldn’t imagine it, nobody could. We had tested the devices in a town where magick was, had been, dead; drained away down the ages, its Dell dormant and inert. We hadn’t yet tested what the regulators could do, would do, in a place like Farringale: potent still, disordered, chaotic. Dangerous.

Ideally, they would help restore balance: the lost city would be calmed, settled, by them. But if that had been the case, would Baroness Tremayne have come here, desperately seeking help? No.

Besides, there had been only two regulators installed at Silvessen: nobody knew, no one could guess, how many might be required in so gravely disordered a place as Farringale. More than two, anyway.

A question circled in my gut, sickening me with foreboding: I had to ask it. ‘When you speak of an “incursion”, Baroness. Just…how many people do you mean?’

‘I hardly know,’ she said again. ‘You must understand. It is—chaos.’

I did understand. Farringale was subject to great surges of magick; when such chaos as that held sway, there could be no maintaining any sound grip on reality whatsoever.

‘Have you an estimate?’ said Milady. ‘I must have some idea of the extent of the problem before I can decide how best to help.’

‘They are…’ Baroness Tremayne shook her head. ‘They seemed to be everywhere.’

My hopes, feeble as they were, lay in pieces. She wasn’t talking about the kind of minor incursion I had made into Farringale, once or twice in the past; just me and a few others poking at things and taking notes. This was on another scale.

She wasn’t talking about an incursion so much as—as an invasion.

‘Giddy gods,’ I breathed. ‘This is some kind of war.’

‘I do not know what their goal may be,’ answered the Baroness. ‘I did not show myself to them—yet.’

She had got straight out in search of help, and had come to us.

Well, who else could she go to? The Troll Court couldn’t intervene; the ortherex infesting half of that city were supremely dangerous to them.

Wait, though. She hadn’t come to ask the Society for help.

She’d come to ask Mab for help.

A living archetype herself, when faced with an unanswerable threat, she had fled to another—the only other, perhaps, that she knew.

Milady.

‘I’ll help,’ I blurted. ‘I mean, I’m only a new Merlin, but there must be something I could do—’

 ‘Ves,’ said Milady.

‘Yes ma’am.’

She was quiet for a moment. Jay and I, and possibly Baroness Tremayne, sat in breathless silence, awaiting her decision.

‘We will, of course, assist in every way we can,’ she decreed. ‘But first we must understand what we are up against. Ves.’

‘Yes ma’am!’

‘And Jay. As two of the very few who have set foot in Farringale at all, I will be requiring you to conduct reconnaissance.’

‘Anything,’ I said.

‘It appears that this assignment may be dangerous, so you will be taking Rob with you.’

Jay seemed about to speak, but Milady forestalled him: ‘Not Indira. Not yet. I would like you to go unseen by these interlopers, if you can, and I am therefore inclined to limit this assignment to the three of you. Ves, any special assistance you are able to offer as Merlin will be fully necessary.’

In other words, I had a carte blanche.  

‘I will requisition the appropriate keys from Mandridore immediately. You will leave as soon as they arrive.’

Which begged an interesting question: how had these interlopers got in? There was only one known way into Farringale at present, and it took three separate keys, one of which we held. If that were missing, Milady would have known about it already.

One of the several questions we would have to find answers to, and quickly.

‘Baroness,’ said Milady. ‘Will your state of health permit you to—’

‘I shall return with your representatives,’ said Baroness Tremayne, firmly.

‘That would be ideal,’ said Milady, with palpable approval. ‘Rest assured they will attend to your safety.’

‘And I, to theirs,’ answered she, with just cause. She was Morgan le Fay: what strange and ancient arts might she have at her disposal?

‘Please, prepare yourselves,’ concluded Milady. ‘And quickly. You may requisition anything you require from Stores.’

Meeting adjourned. Jay and I filed out in a tense silence, leaving the Baroness to confer with Milady further.

Outside, I stopped, momentarily overwhelmed.

Someone had plundered our prized new tech from Silvessen, Farringale was under some kind of attack, and Milady turned out to be the living embodiment of a faerie queen.

‘Shit,’ I observed.

Jay said, ‘Verily.’

The Fate of Farringale: 1

At Home in Yorkshire (or Derbyshire, one is never so impolitic as to specify), spring is, at last, springing, and deliciously. I don’t know whether House is celebrating something, but there are early roses everywhere, and most of them are pink. The air smells like heaven; I’ve taken to leaving my bedroom window open all the time, though it’s only April. It’s warm enough.

Over the course of the winter, two possibilities have emerged:

Either the voices behind the wallpaper are holding an interminable greengrocer’s market, or—

I am, at last, going quite mad.

If I sit, as I often do, on the floor in some out-of-the-way corner of the House, with my face pressed inelegantly to the wall and my eyes closed, I can hear….something. Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb, says somebody. Several somebodies.

I mentioned this to Jay, once or twice (which was brave, wasn’t it? If anyone is going to imagine me stark raving bonkers I’d rather, above all, that it wasn’t Jay). He didn’t seem appalled so much as… tired. ‘Oh?’ said he, mildly enough. ‘Is this to be the beginning of another whirlwind magickal adventure?’

I don’t know that he was ecstatic at the prospect, which is fair enough. It isn’t so long since I contrived to drag him into a dance-off with a horde of the unquiet undead, and a man doesn’t get over a thing like that in a hurry. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, honestly enough. ‘They really do seem to be talking about comestibles.’

‘Comestibles,’ Jay echoed. ‘There are voices in the walls and they’re talking about provender.’

He said this with a certain flatness in his tone, and a hint of the wary side-eye. Bad signs. ‘Rhubarb, mostly,’ I hastened to assure him. ‘Nothing particularly bizarre.’

‘Very reassuring,’ agreed Jay. ‘No one has ever launched a bloody rebellion over fruits and vegetables, but confectionery, now. That would be a different matter entirely.’

I nodded enthusiastically. ‘Who among us hasn’t at least thought about it, occasionally? Let’s overthrow the government and install the Pastry Queen.’

‘Armies of ladyfingers and eclairs,’ Jay concurred. ‘Brutally efficient, and really rather sweet about it.’

‘No, but really,’ I persevered. ‘That is what it sounds like.’

Jay attempted no further remonstrance. I suppose, given everything that has occurred of late, the notion that there are voices chatting behind the wallpaper and they’re partial to summer fruits isn’t particularly strange. ‘Let me know if there’s any mention of cucumbers,’ he said, wandering off. ‘Then we should definitely be concerned.’

There hasn’t been, that I’ve been able to discern. Just the rhubarb.

The thing is that I’ve learned how to listen, and I mean really listen. It’s part of being the new Merlin. Even rocks have something to say for themselves, if you can catch the trick of their language. Houses, now: houses have a lot going on.

And our beloved House is a positive hive of industry and conversation, if only I could catch the trick of that language. I can’t, quite, and I’m convinced House is doing it on purpose.

I began this morning in fruitless (so to speak) communion with the ladies and gentleman behind the wallpaper, as I too often do; parked, this time, in the first-floor common room, cross-legged upon the floor by the window and with my face pressed to the wainscot.

Rhubarb rhubarb, whispered someone.

The fine folk of the Society have ceased to question me on this behaviour, which can only mean I am developing a reputation for such eccentricity there is no further use in even trying to understand me. I can’t say that I mind. Where’s the fun in being the living embodiment of Albion’s most ancient magick if you can’t be battier than a belfry at Halloween?

Today’s adventures progressed, shall we say. The process of deep-listening to the land (as Ophelia, previous caretaker of Merlin’s magick, would have it), is delightfully mindful: I sit and breathe and listen and absorb until I am one with the world around me. Not quite literally, although sometimes very literally, and in this case—

Rhubarb rhubarb, the voices uttered, tantalisingly just beyond the range of clear hearing, and I pressed my face closer to the wall with eyes closed and mind very much on another plane of reality; listened to our beloved House in its every feature: the gentle creak of its timbers, the wordless steadiness of its stones; the warm, spring breeze wafting through its open windows; the rattle and clatter of its occupants, busily engaged with the nothings and somethings of the day. I felt myself sinking, by slow degrees, melding my consciousness with that of the House until I could almost have been one of those voices behind the wallpaper; I could almost reach them, almost distinguish real, whole verbiage—there were words in the midst of the garble—I had only to stretch a fraction farther and I’d have it—

A sense of sudden pressure assailed me, fracturing my concentration. A weight, resting heavily upon me, stopping my breath: I twitched, and then heaved.

The pressure lifted; somebody uttered a surprised syllable.

Then I heard my name.

‘Ves!’ said the somebody, and as my consciousness separated from the House and drifted slowly back into its rightful spot I realised that it was Jay. ‘Ves, is that you? What the—’

I stretched, or tried to. My limbs did not cooperate; seemed, in fact, to be warped into some unfamiliar configuration; I shook myself mightily.

Jay thumped my head, or what had taken the place of my head: it came to me, dimly, that I had developed upholstery.

‘Ves,’ Jay said again, impatient now. ‘This is ridiculous, even for you.’ Rather irritable, for Jay: I detected in the irascible words a strong note of concern.

‘To be fair,’ I uttered, manifesting vocal chords from somewhere, ‘this isn’t as bad as it could have been.’ I referred, of course, to a prior escapade, in which I had turned myself (inadvertently, I hasten to add) into a large rock; a Fairy Stone, to be precise; an object so impervious to human interference that I might, were I unlucky, have remained in said shape eternally.

‘Come out of that,’ Jay said severely. ‘Or I’ll be forced to sit on you again.’

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘You’re an exquisitely comfortable armchair.’

I felt obscurely pleased by this tribute. ‘Exquisitely! No, am I really?’

‘The living replica of my own, very favourite chair, except for the general purpleness of you. A discrepancy I might have noticed sooner, were I not very absorbed in this treatise on Yllanfalen architecture.’

Ooh. ‘I want to read that,’ I said, instantly.

‘It’s just arrived. Your mother sent it over.’ Jay, curse him, was smug.

My mother—being the current queen of an ancient Yllanfalen kingdom (don’t ask)—has access to all sorts of delicious intellectual goodies, though I usually have to twist her arm rather hard before she’ll share them.

Of course, if I wanted to read anything ever again, I’d have to stop being a chair first.

‘Jay,’ I said in a small voice.

‘Yes.’

‘I think I’m stuck.’

‘Do you want me to fetch Zareen?’

I never did learn exactly what Zar had done to me, on the occasion of the Fairy Stone debacle. I only knew that it had hurt, even when I was a slab of rock. ‘No,’ I said hastily. ‘I can do this.’

Jay waited. He did a creditable job of appearing coolly unconcerned by my plight, like a man whose confidence in my capacity to get myself out of the absurd fixes I get myself into can only be described as “boundless”. But I can detect an aura of supreme, if suppressed, tension from a hundred paces, even as a chair.

‘I’ll be all right,’ I told him.

 ‘I’d be glad if you could demonstrate that in more tangible fashion. Fairly soon.’

‘Is that Jay-speak for “I’d like to hug you so tight you can’t breathe?”’

‘I might crack a rib. Possibly two.’

An enticing prospect. Hm.

If I’d thought myself into an involuntary oneness with the House, surely I could think myself into a voluntary restoration of Self. I could start with that purpleness Jay had mentioned, my favourite colour; the moment I was Ves again I’d switch my hair to something vivaciously violet. I thought about cuddling Goodie, the unipup; the soft, velvet feel of Adeline’s gorgeously equine nose; my best dress, and – of course – the relatively new, but perfectly delightful sensation of being wrapped in the arms of Jay.

And when that didn’t work, I went on to hot chocolate – the kind Milady served in silver pots, if she was pleased with me; to stacks of pancakes with ice cream; to laughing with Jay over some trifling joke, and the thunderous expression on Val’s face if she thought I might have dog-eared a page in one of her precious tomes (and I would never).

‘Jay,’ I said, in an even smaller voice. ‘I really am stuck.’

‘Okay,’ he said, with forced calm. ‘Wait one moment, I’ll get help—’

I didn’t have time to prevent him from dashing away (don’t leave me, the small, frightened part of my soul pleaded). I was kicked; not physically but psychically, somehow; as though some obliging, never to be enough revered personage had delivered a swift clout to the insides of my brain; and there, I had eyeballs again, and hands, and limbs with which to cling (a little shamefully) to Jay.

‘What happened,’ said he against my hair.

I attempted a breath, and achieved a slight one; he hadn’t been joking about the cracked ribs, quite. ‘I think—I think House helped me,’ I managed; and at the back of my mind, as though uttered from a great distance away, came the immortal words: Rhubarb, rhubarb.

Thank you, I responded, and added, for good measure: strawberry, strawberry.

‘This Merlin thing,’ said Jay, without in the slightest degree loosening his grip on me. ‘Are you sure you’re getting it right? I mean, legend says he was capable of shape-shifting, but he tended to choose useful things, like birds. Never heard anything about chairs.’

A fair question.

All the inherited wealth that is Merlin’s ancestral magick was now mine entirely (until I chose to retire, and pass it on). Ophelia had deemed me ready a month or so prior—or perhaps she had simply grown weary of carrying it all around herself; it is no inconsiderable burden.

I wasn’t ready, of course. We’d both known that. But no one’s ever ready, not really; not for the thorny, meaty, complex challenges of life. One merely throws oneself in, and manages, somehow—or hovers on the bank for eternity, never quite mustering up the nerve to step off.

I was managing, sort of. And I still had Tuesdays with Ophelia; I’d ask her about the Chair Debacle next time—

My train of thought ended there, for Jay had gone tense again—was positively rigid with it, it was like cuddling an ironing board—‘What’s the matter?’ I prompted.

‘There’s a—’ He stopped.

I poked him in the ribs: no response.

I tried, then, to withdraw myself from the circle of his arms, but that proving ineffectual, I turned us both about, so I was facing the window, and he had his back to it.

A familiar, placid scene met my searching gaze: the prismatic green lawn that is House’s pride and joy stretching away to a horizon clustered with old oaks, one or two of my esteemed Society colleagues strolling about upon it; those roses, roses everywhere, in a thousand shades of pink and peach; the vast, fathomless expanse of the sky soaring above, lightly streaked with wafts of drifting cloud—

And a shape there, a shadow, a distant winged form coming closer—

Jay released me and spun, visibly shaking himself. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s odd, but for a minute there I thought I saw—’

‘Griffin,’ I croaked.

‘Yes, I thought I saw a griffin, but that can’t possibly be…’

We fell into a mutual silence, for the dark little silhouette bombed over our beloved old oaks and shot towards the lawns: and there could be no mistaking it, as the seconds passed, no mistaking it at all. We had seen these before, these glorious, majestic beings, the kings and queens of mythical creatures, in undisputed possession of lost Farringale; had declined absolutely to tangle with them, unless obliged; and now here—here came one of them, at speed.

Dancing and Disaster: 19

My errand was of a peculiar nature. It related to employing my Merlin magick at Home, in ways that hadn’t occurred to me to do before. Ophelia had only loaned me that power, but she had made no move to take it back, yet. We’d agreed on a week, so I had time.

And I had questions. Lots of them. I’d had questions ever since I had joined the Society, of course; everyone did. But I’d learned a lot since then, and I finally had an idea about the nature of our Home and how it worked.

And that being so, I was curious, so I had to test it. Right? Who could possibly resist temptation like that?

It couldn’t be done just anywhere, though. I made my way, slowly and uncertainly, through the winding corridors of our beloved and enormous House, and after wrong turns aplenty (even superpowered, I still have to be me), I found myself at the door to House’s favourite room.

I knocked.

‘Dear House. I know it is a trifle rude to arrive uninvited and unannounced, but this is important. Would you be so kind as to let me in?’

Silence.

Then, a click. The door had unlocked.

I turned the handle, and went in.

The room stood quiet and empty. I closed the door behind me, and took a seat on one of the upholstered ivory chairs. A fire flared to life in the grate, and a comforting warmth began to permeate the October chill in the air.

I sat in comfortable silence for a while, enjoying the ambience of the parlour. The grandfather clock tick-tocked to itself in the corner, a peaceful sound, and I began to relax.

The portrait of the troll lady in court dress was still there, above the chair Emellana had lately occupied. I studied it more closely than I’d had occasion to do before. She was of Emellana’s age, I judged: fairly elderly, but still spry. Her gown was an extravagant blue velvet creation, seventeenth-century in style, with a wealth of lace and ruffles and jewels. She was a court lady, no doubt about it. But: which court?

I looked around at the rest of the paintings. There were five more: two depicting figures in seventeenth-century dress, one male, black and Yllanfalen, one female, white and human. Another showed a young man with dark brown skin wearing the plain garb of an eighteenth-century tradesman. The final two depicted a little girl in a plain white Edwardian dress, and an elderly, blue-eyed lady in an eighteen-thirties day dress and sun bonnet.

The child’s portrait didn’t fit my theory, but the rest just might. My gaze lingered in particular on the older lady in the sun bonnet.

I closed my eyes. Time to listen; time to feel. I’d connected with the odd, old house at Silvessen in deeper ways than I’d ever connected with anything before; could I do the same at Home?

I sat there enveloped in near silence, breathing deeply, listening to every slight sound that reached my senses. The tick, tick of the clock. The soft crackle of flames in the hearth. I breathed in the dust of hundreds of years with every inhalation; I felt the softness of carpet under my feet and silk under my hands, a cold wind in my eaves, the chatter of birds sheltering from the weather somewhere under my roof. A comfortable babble of voices, the warmth of many bodies gathered under my embrace. The odd cocktail of smells from the kitchens, from the lab, from the surrounding woods and fields.

A knock came softly from somewhere; a door opened in response, and closed again. Not the parlour. Somewhere farther off.

I gathered my strength, and pushed gently against the door that had just closed.

It opened again.

Sorry,’ I gasped, surprised, and retreated, slamming the door behind myself again.

There was a pause.

Hello?’ I said into the silence.

I felt a palpable surprise exceeding even my own. Then a questing, curious touch on my senses, all my senses: they were exploring me.

I come in peace,’ I offered. ‘I’m just— interested. In who you are.’

An answer came, finally. Merlin, uttered a voice in the depths of my mind. It has been a long time.

‘I’m only a new Merlin,’ I explained. ‘Brand new. I’ve been here at the Society for a while, though.’

We know you, Cordelia Vesper.

We. That tallied with my suspicions.

I felt a rising excitement, and had to take a breath. Focus, Ves. Don’t get overexcited and ruin everything. ‘May I know who I am addressing? Are these your portraits?’

The faces we once wore are here commemorated, answered the voice. They are but echoes, now.

‘Memories,’ I supplied.

Yes.

Time for the million-pound question.

‘You recognise me as Merlin. Is that because you are archetypes, too?’

A fresh wave of surprise. Not now, came the answer.

‘Former archetypes. And when you passed on the role, and passed away, you chose to remain here.’

Not all of us chose to remain. Some journeyed on.

I felt thrilled, the delight you get from solving a fiendishly difficult puzzle. For more than a decade, I’d wondered how House came to be so — animated. Everyone had. And now I finally had something like an answer.

The spirits of former archetypes resided here. They were haunting the House, after a fashion; the way the Greyer sisters had haunted their cottage after death, and the way the Yllanfalen women of Silvessen haunted the craggy old house on the edge of the town. Except, not like that. They didn’t linger out of bitterness and rage, and they hadn’t been enslaved. They were here because they had loved the House in life, and they chose to remain with it after death.

I thought of the painting of Cicily Werewode, the way some part of her spirit was bound into it. Probably some part of those arts was employed here, too. The people depicted were dead, and yet they weren’t; they lived on, their consciousness laced through canvas and oils, through brick and stone and tile. Bound to the House, and to each other, but bound in love, not hatred.

‘Greetings,’ I said brightly. ‘It’s an honour to meet you. Which archetype did you embody, if I may ask? Were you all the same archetype, at different times? Or different ones? Is it the same one Milady currently embodies?’

Too many questions. I knew it as I uttered them, but they poured out of me anyway. I was just so interested, and Milady was so maddeningly vague.

I felt a flicker of something like amusement. More than just a flicker. A wave of it, coming from everywhere at once.

So much curiosity, said a voice, and it felt like a different person speaking. An enquiring mind.

I hoped I wasn’t imagining the approval that came with the statement.

I have more,’ I offered. ‘Lots more.’

There followed a pause. Were they thinking? Don’t think, I silently pleaded. Just answer!

The next voice, though, was very recognisable to me. It sliced through my thoughts with enough force to give me a blinding headache. Ves. Leave this alone.

Milady.

Curses.

I’m sorry,’ I said quickly, and not altogether sincerely. ‘Can’t I ask?’

It is rude to pry, came Milady’s somewhat flabbergasting answer. Kindly remember your manners.

My manners?

I ground my teeth in silent frustration. I could see her point, more than I liked. I was poking and prying, trying to find my way through to secrets about Milady’s identity which she hadn’t chosen to share. I did not have that right.

Even so, it was maddeningly frustrating to have to leave it alone and back away. I was so close to solving the mystery!

I know, Ves, said Milady. It is very disappointing. But I remain unmoved.

I sighed, and relinquished the argument. I withdrew my senses from the dear old House, returning to the Ves I’d left behind: a pint-sized human with fabulous hair, slumped in an ivory silken chair. My limbs had gone dead in my absence; I shook life back into them, and took some care as I stood up.

I made a curtsey, to Milady and also to the various souls inhabiting the House. ‘Thank you for your time,’ I said, scrupulously polite. ‘I’ll show myself out.’

The door didn’t quite slam shut behind me, but it did lock in a manner I’d term decisive.

I wouldn’t be getting back into House’s favourite room any time soon.

***

My last errand for the day was of a less pleasant nature. As if bearing Milady’s disapproval (twice over) wasn’t enough, I was going to have to put up with my mother’s, too.

Oh well. I’d dropped myself in it, and had nobody else to blame.

I trailed back to my room, and picked up my phone.

Taking a deep breath, I dialled my mother’s number.

She picked up after the first ring, taking me by surprise. Normally she ignores my calls. ‘Cordelia. What do you want?’

‘Can’t I be calling just to say hel—’

‘Don’t bother. Get on with it.’

‘Right. Fair cop. I’ve got a problem.’

‘And?’

‘Well, to be accurate I’ve created a problem.’

‘And now you’re making it my problem.’

‘Sort of. A little bit. Are you disposed to help me or not?’

‘Depends what it is.’

So I launched into the Tale of the Dance Battle yet again, though I offered Mother a somewhat curtailed version.

Despite this, the silence when I’d finished was liberally flavoured with incredulity.

‘Yes, I know, I’m a complete screw-up,’ I said, before she could have a chance to say it herself.

‘Did it work?’

‘Well, it did. More or less.’

‘Then it wasn’t a screw-up, was it?’

‘Are you being supportive? Because I’m not sure I can take any more surprises today.’

‘Did we get to the part where you tell me what you want yet?’

‘Right. So Silvessen was probably an Yllanfalen town, and if we’re going to rebuild it sensitively then we need Yllanfalen aid.’

‘That can probably be arranged.’

‘And materials. Lots of those.’

That gave her pause. ‘I can’t just spirit up sufficient building materials to reconstruct an entire town, Ves.’

‘I know, but I’m stuck, so whatever you’ve got I’ll take.’

‘Noted. Oh, call your father.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because it’s his birthday tomorrow.’

‘Right. I know stuff like that, of course, because I’ve had a long and rewarding relationship with him up until now.’

‘Also, he’s a stonemason.’

‘He’s what?’

‘Did you not hear me, or are you just being difficult?’

A stonemason. Whose birthday was tomorrow. I realised afresh how little I knew about my father. ‘I don’t have his number,’ I said.

‘I’ll send it. Tell him I told him to help you.’

‘Will that work?’

‘It will if he knows what’s good for him.’

She hung up.

A moment later, my phone buzzed with a message. Dad’s number unfurled across my screen.

All of this was rather unexpected. I took my time over saving his number to my contacts, and adding his name. Thomas Goldwell. Tom.

I was procrastinating, probably because I was nervous. He hadn’t seemed super pleased to learn of my existence before, and though I had given him my number the one time I’d met him, he had yet to call me.

That suggested he didn’t want anything to do with me, didn’t it?

Still. I wasn’t calling him to propose a happy family gathering. I was calling him to engage his professional services for Silvessen. Mostly.

The phone rang several times before he answered. ‘Hello?’

I swallowed a flutter of nerves, and pasted on a smile. ‘Hi. Thomas Goldwell? Tom? This is Cordelia Vesper. You might not remember me—’

‘Of course I do,’ he interrupted. ‘Adult women claiming a near relationship with me don’t show up every week.’

‘Right. Well, Dad, I have to tell you happy birthday. For tomorrow. Mum said so.’

‘Thank you.’

That seemed to be it, so I went on. ‘Also, I hear you’re a stonemason.’

‘I don’t practise the trade much any more, but I do have that skillset, yes.’

‘Okay. Then I’ve got a job for you.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s important. We’re restoring an Yllanfalen town, and we need people with the right skills and insight.’

‘Interesting, but I’m busy.’

‘Also, Mum said you have to help me.’

‘She said what?’

‘I’ll quote: “Tell him I told him to help you, if he knows what’s good for him.” Those exact words.’

He might have sighed, or there might have been a passing gust of wind, I couldn’t be sure.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Tell me when and where.’

I was speechless with shock, too much to muster more than a strangled ‘thank you’ in reply.

He hung up on me without saying goodbye, demonstrating that he and my mother had at least one thing in common.

‘Great,’ I said into the phone. ‘See you soon.’

I put my phone away, uncertain as to the state of my feelings.

Mum was helping me out, and she hadn’t even argued that much.

And I would finally get to meet my dad again, even if he didn’t seem too excited about it.

Things among Family Ves were looking up. Vaguely. A little bit.

Sod it. If I didn’t need a husband, I didn’t need a mother or a father either. I’d managed just fine without those things.

Still, a girl can hope. Right?

Right.

And in the meantime, there’s Jay, who’s everything my family isn’t, and presently waiting to whisk me away to a dream dinner that I hadn’t even been able to scare him out of.

I dismissed my mountain of problems from my mind, opened my wardrobe and devoted myself to choosing a dress.

Enough work, Ves. Time to enjoy life a bit.