by ‘Nobody thought to mention this before?’ I asked, unable to suppress a trace of bitterness.
‘It was not considered wise to make this ability widely known.’
Waymasters are rare. That is an understatement. One who knows the Ways can make use of all the ancient portals that are spread all over Britain — and indeed, the world. Around here they take the form of henges, for the most part. The big, shiny, popular ones like Stonehenge are never used anymore; too many tourists in the way. But the country is littered with the more humble kind, henges of rock and wood and earth. If you can walk the Ways, you can step from one to another in the blink of an eye. It is an ability that used to be common, but like so much else of magick it has been fading away for generations. Nobody knows why.
I understand that some would find all kinds of interesting, nefarious ways to exploit such an ability as Jay’s. But I wouldn’t. Did they not trust me?
‘Jay was assigned to you because you were the best person to train him,’ said Milady. ‘I wanted you to treat him as an ordinary recruit. I wanted him to learn how we manage day by day, with or without a Waymaster to hand, for he will not always have the ability freely at his disposal. It was not intended that you should be kept in the dark about it forever.’
I did not feel much mollified, but I kept my dissatisfaction to myself. It is unprofessional to put one’s irritations on display. ‘Very well.’
‘What would you like us to do?’ asked Jay.
‘Baron Alban is well-travelled, and frequently visits the more populous and central Enclaves. He is not concerned about the well-being of any of those. There are a few far-flung or mildly reclusive settlements, however, whose fate is more in question. I need you to discover whether they are showing any signs of decay, like South Moors, or any unusual behaviour.’
A mission that proposed to take me all over the country in a trice, and gave me the opportunity to explore several places I had never before visited, could only be welcome to me. ‘Yes ma’am!’ I said with enthusiasm.
‘Thrice the usual budget, Ves,’ added Milady, ‘and take whatever you need from Stores. You have one week.’
Resources: Great. Time: Less so. I swallowed a mixture of mild panic and exhilaration and made my usual obeisance. ‘We’d better get started at once, then.’
‘That would be lovely.’
It is possible that when Milady said take what you need from Stores, she did not mean rob the place of everything that might conceivably come in handy, under any circumstances whatsoever. But if that wasn’t what she meant she ought to have particularised, for Jay and I had a daunting job to do and no time at all to do it.
‘See, when Milady says “a week”,’ I said to Jay as I palmed a handy sustenance charm, ‘she really means about three days.’ I found an unlocking charm — enchanted, unimaginatively, upon a huge bronze key — and pocketed that, too. The Stores at Home are wonderful: half a dozen rooms of varying size, the walls all lined with shelves and cabinets laden with all manner of artefacts, trinkets and Curiosities — and even a few genuine Treasures. Some of them are aged and delicate; you need a special permit to take any of those out. I didn’t touch them. I was more than contented with enchantments more recently Wrought, for they offered everything we could need, and one did not have to live in fear of breaking or losing one of them along the way.
‘Three days,’ murmured Jay. ‘Let’s see that list again?’
I handed over the slip of paper I’d received from Nell: a computer print-out of all known Troll Enclaves still extant in Britain. The list consisted of twenty-six names, more than half of which she had subsequently crossed out in red pen. Baron Alban’s territories, I presumed; we did not need to investigate those. South Moors and Farringale were also crossed off, which left us with nine places to visit.
Nine towns in three days.
Feasible, I hoped, since one of us was a Waymaster. But damn. It was going to be intense.
I could see when Jay had finished counting up the names, for his face registered the same dismay as I felt. I quickly took back the list. ‘One at a time. That’s all we have to think about.’
‘Right.’ He returned to watching me strip Stores of everything remotely useful, though I felt that his gaze rested more on me than on the surrounding treasures. How did that make sense? New recruits tended to salivate when we brought them in here, and I’d taken Jay straight to the largest of the storerooms. A fabulous late nineteenth-century statue of a mermaid rested on a shelf about three inches from his face, a lovely thing Wrought from jade and something nacreous which visibly rippled with power. A protection charm of some kind was probably embedded therein; it was the kind of thing the wealthy used to like to keep on display in their fabulous houses, to keep thieves and such away.
Jay didn’t even glance at it.
‘What?’ I said after a while.
Jay chewed his lip. ‘I, uh. Think we may have got off on the wrong foot, just a little.’
Well, he was right. I turned away again to hide my blush, for I had messed up. ‘I fear I have been patronising, and I apologise. But really. If they’d just told me that you were—’
‘Relevant?’ Jay offered.
‘Yes. Exactly.’ I took down a sweet little teacup painted with viper’s bugloss, but regretfully put it back again. I wanted it, but the chances of either of us coming down with a fever in the next three days were not high.
‘Apology accepted. But I was speaking more of myself.’
‘Oh?’
‘I think it was the unicorn symbol, and your…’ He trailed off. When I looked back, his gaze was travelling thoughtfully from my wildly-coloured hair, past my madly-coloured dress and all the way down to my whimsically-coloured shoes. He wisely chose not to finish that sentence. ‘Ves,’ he said instead. ‘That’s all anybody ever calls you. But you turn out to be Cordelia Vesper.’
‘Does that name mean something to you?’
He grimaced. ‘I read your thesis. “Modern Magick and—”‘
‘—Magickal Heritage: The Changing Times. I remember.’
‘Right.’
I waited, but that seemed to be it. ‘Did you…’ I paused to reflect, discarding my instinctive question, because did you like it? sounded appallingly needy. ‘Did you find it… useful?’ I hazarded.
‘It was interesting.’
Interesting. Right.
I took down one last Curiosity — a floral charm bracelet which, if I knew my charms, purported to change the colour of any bloom I chose to so deface — and stuffed it into my pocket. There was no possible way we could find a use for it, but what did that matter? Life is complicated, and happiness is made up of the little things. I’d bring it back when we got home.
‘Shall we go?’ I proposed.
‘At once, and immediately. Faster than the speed of light. We’ll arrive yesterday.’
I blinked. ‘Really?’
‘Wha— no. No! It was a joke.’
‘Oh.’ Anything Jay did could only seem sadly mundane after hype like that, but perhaps that was well enough. Who knew what could be going on behind that impassive visage? Maybe Jay suffered from performance anxiety.
And lo, it was my turn to be ignorant.
Jay led us down into the cellar. This is not a part of the House I have ever had much cause to visit, before. It is mostly used for storage — the boring kind, not relics and artefacts and such — and one or two minor departments I never go to. Our destination therein proved to be a small chamber tucked into one corner, which we reached by way of a lengthy staircase and three winding corridors.
The heavy oak door creaked horribly as Jay coaxed it open.
‘Here we are,’ said Jay, ushering me inside and closing the door behind me. ‘The Waypoint at Home.’
I looked around, unimpressed. The room was barely furnished; naught but a single couch rested against one wall, looking inviting enough with its plump upholstery and overstuffed appearance, but it was not at all elegant. The walls could have used a new coat of paint, or perhaps just a thorough scrubbing; what had probably once been white had dulled to a drab cream. The floor was well enough, but its bare oak boards had not been swept in about a decade either, if I was any judge.
There was nothing else in there, save only for one thing: a ring of nubs of wood, set into the floor. The remains, I judged, of an ancient henge, over the top of which the House had been built.
Clever.
Jay puttered about doing nothing that I could make any sense of, and I waited. I was already beginning to regret my excess of enthusiasm in Stores; the shoulder bag I carried seemed to be growing heavier by the moment. I occupied myself in transferring some of the smaller of its contents into the pockets of my long purple coat, pleased to find that the redistribution helped. A little.
Curse my magpie tendencies.
‘So,’ I said after a while, when Jay still did not appear to be doing anything productive. ‘What happens now?’
‘Seriously?’
‘Uh… yes?
‘How can you have no idea how a Waymaster works?’ Jay was incredulous, which was unfair of him.
‘Jay. Nobody knows how a Waymaster works. Our last one left eight and a half years ago to take up a tempting employment offer in Jaipur, and that was the last I saw of her. And she never took me travelling with her anyway.’
‘Really?’ Jay was silent for a moment. ‘What kind of employment opportunity?’
‘Jay. Focus.’
‘Just how tempting was it?’
‘Jay!’
He rolled his eyes, and… a lot happened all at once. He was standing in the middle of the room, and when he raised his arms the air swooped and whirled and gathered itself into a vortex of stars. That is the nicer way I can think of to describe it. If I said it also resembled a twinkly tornado, however, perhaps that better conveys its more alarming qualities.
‘Why do people call you Vesper?’ he yelled. I still couldn’t figure out what he was doing, but it involved some effort, for sweat was forming on his brow. ‘Why not Cordelia?’
‘I hate my name!’
‘It’s… it’s pretty.’
‘Cordelia? Yes! It’s a doll name, for pretty, well-behaved girls who take a lot of ballet classes and wear their hair in buns.’
I thought he actually laughed, though that might have been a trick of the light — which was turning awfully peculiar. ‘Why not shorten it?’
‘To what? Cord? That’s a type of string. Dell? That’s a magickal reservoir. Or a computer.’
‘Ves is unique.’
‘Exactly. It—’
I did not make it to the end of this sentence, for with a roar and a swoop and a nauseating sensation of the world tilting upside down, we were gone from the Waypoint in the cellar and deposited in an untidy, aching heap somewhere altogether else.
