A Little Knowledge (28 page)

Then Will realised that a queen had been removed from the board. He had another one, waiting. What had been a grotesque warning for Cathy could actually be an opportunity for him.

“Don’t worry, my love,” he said softly, bending down to kiss her hair. “I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe.”

As excited as he was to have discovered another of the first Lord Iron’s forges on the edge of Bath, and to confirm the theory that the seven lumps on the slab of iron mapped out the locations of six others, Sam couldn’t put everything else off forever.

Eleanor had told him he needed a project, something grand to fulfil him. One idea was starting to form, still too nebulous to put into action, but one he had been brewing at the back of his mind following the night he had met Max and Robert Amesbury at the old forge.

Sam wanted to protect people from the Fae. When he lifted the curse from that man and saw the overwhelming relief and gratitude in his eyes, Sam felt happier than he had in a long time. It was the same when he’d broken the curse on Cathy’s old teacher, and it felt right on a deep level, like it was what he was made to do. He had all sorts of fanciful notions about expanding the number of buildings protected from their magic, perhaps even setting up protective barriers around public spaces. What he really wanted to do was find a way to give a place the same quality that he had: the ability to break their magic. The buildings he owned that worked as a block didn’t go far enough; they could only stop the Fae entering or magic finding someone inside, and besides, people still had to go out.

He’d tasked Des with hunting through Amir’s files, looking for anything that might have been passed on to him from the other Lord Irons, but nothing had turned up yet. So he’d gone back to his other legacy, the one left by his wife.

Every moment he hadn’t been occupied since, his mind had replayed the speech he’d made to the Elemental Court. Though the details were fading, the sense of shame was not. He’d stood in front of those people with the mindset of a man with no career prospects who lived in a terraced house and fretted over whether he should buy a brand-new computer game or wait for it to be cheaper secondhand. His life had changed and he had just as much right to stand up in that room and make his case to those people, and he’d wasted it.

Leanne would have been appalled.

Sam had decided that if anything was going to change, it wasn’t enough for him to sort out Amir’s legacy; he had to push the rest of the Elemental Court to start taking responsibility for their actions too. He’d prepared everything using a laptop he’d disconnected from the internet and kept with him at all times. Sam knew he was taking a risk, but if he made an example of one of them, surely the rest would fall into line.

He moved onto his main computer and opened his email client to look at the draft letter he’d saved the night before.

Copper,

The last time I saw you, in Manchester, it was pretty clear you and I have different ideas about how a cost-benefit analysis works. You said “the benefits far outweigh the costs” when expanding upon your thoughts about how you and the rest of the Elemental Court make the world a better place.

Look, we’re both busy people, so I’m not going to dress this up. You were talking utter shit. Your activities do not make the world a better place for the thousands of people directly affected by your mining activities.

You have dozens of companies and hundreds of mines, so let’s get specific. Attached to this email is evidence that the people who work in your largest Zambian copper mine are paid less than they need to survive, and are given poor-quality safety equipment or in some cases, none at all. Accidents are common. There have been several deaths as a result.

You’ll also see several reports that your PR monkeys have managed to keep hidden from the press, detailing how gross negligence has led to no fewer than seven major environmental incidents over the past three years. Your mine, that you own and are ultimately responsible for, has polluted rivers and groundwater supplies and resulted in the poisoning of several thousand people with copper sulphate and manganese. Your company has failed to compensate the victims who are continuing to suffer the effects of this. The reports also feature grim reading about the sulphur dioxide air pollution in the area surrounding the nearby refinery and smelter, owned by your company.

If you don’t replace the current management of the mine, lift its pollution control and health and safety practices to those of the highest world standards and then compensate the people whose lives your activities have damaged or destroyed, then I will release this information and the original evidence to the press. And I will make sure your name is tied to this. No hiding behind subsidiary companies and parent companies and all that crap. You will be held responsible in the eyes of the world press.

You have twenty-four hours to demonstrate a commitment to improving the conditions for the people who work in and live near your mine before I go public with this.

Lord Iron

Sam read it through, decided that he’d made himself clear and didn’t just sound like an arsehole, and clicked ‘send.’

Leaning back, Sam wondered what Copper would make of his demand. “Bring it on,” he thought. He imagined Leanne smiling at him.

A ping indicated new email. That was quick.

How I run my operation is no business of yours. I suggest you focus on your own affairs. If you threaten me again, I’ll take it to the rest of the court.

Copper

He was about to reply when there was the sound of a helicopter coming in to land. Shit! Mazzi! He’d forgotten about her offer to help him understand what it meant to be one of the Court.

Des knocked and entered. “Sir, Lady Nickel is arriving. There wasn’t anything in the diary.”

“That’s my fault. I’ll be going out with her and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I’ll call you when I know what I’m doing.”

“I’ll carry on with the file search then. Have a good trip, sir.”

Once Des had left, Sam switched off the laptop and locked it in the safe, then went out to greet Mazzi. Instead of her usual sharp suit, she was wearing jeans and a thick padded jacket with stout walking boots.

“Where are we going?” Sam asked.

“Forest of Dean,” she replied. “Get changed into something warm and easy to climb in. You need to wear boots. I’ll wait for you. Okay?”

Within the hour they were flying over England, Mazzi more introspective than usual. He was happy to look down at the dull green fields and the naked trees, thinking through his plans. He still wasn’t sure if he trusted her, even though he couldn’t deny that he found her company strangely reassuring. Perhaps it was simply the fact that she was so comfortable in her own skin and at ease with her power. Would he ever be like that?

They landed in the grounds of a private house a mile or so from the edge of the forest, where a car was waiting for them. Once they were ensconced in the back of the Mercedes and the glass dividing them from the driver was closed, Mazzi turned to him.

“I’ve thought a lot about the last time I saw you,” she said. “I wasn’t truthful with you. I’m going to put that right.”

Sam folded his arms. “Okay. Which bit?”

She shifted, as if uncomfortable. “The Fae, Sam. Listen, Amir never said anything about Sorcerers or Fae for most of the time I knew him, and we were very close. A couple of years ago he told me about them. He said he’d had dealings with the Fae in the past—unpleasant ones—and that he’d made a few pieces for Sorcerers.”

“And you didn’t believe him.”

“Well, no, not at first! Come on! Of course I didn’t. I thought he was going senile. The Court was already worried about him. He was supposed to name a successor—we do that as far in advance as possible—so everyone can get to know him or her. He kept being evasive. He told me, in private, that he thought the Fae-touched were trying to infiltrate his business. He was paranoid, I suppose, because things kept going wrong with the hopefuls. Then he realised it was him. Not the Fae or Sorcerers or anything like that. Him. He was somehow poisoning them.”

Sam nodded. “I met one of them and I heard about a few others. It’s why he chose me—at least, that’s what he said. Because I hadn’t been poisoned or contaminated or something.”

She nodded. “Amir was very well respected in the Court and a very powerful man outside of it. But then he started asking the others weird questions. Especially Copper. Asking if they’d noticed the same thing. If they’d had dealings with the Fae or the Sorcerers.”

“Copper must have!”

Mazzi shook her head. “He hadn’t. Not directly. No one else had. People started to turn against him. A group of them came to me. Copper, Silver, Lead, a couple of others. They said they thought Iron was losing it and made it clear that if I believed him, I’d be frozen out of some critical deals. I went to Amir and laid it out for him and he agreed that regardless of what he really knew, it was clear the Court couldn’t handle anything out of the ordinary. So he stopped talking about it. And then he picked you.”

“And then I stood up there in front of everyone and started spouting the same shit that he did.”

She smiled. “More or less. If I’d supported you in front of the others, it wouldn’t have gone well for me. And I didn’t want to tell you that they thought Amir was crazy, not after you started saying the same things.”

“So do you think Amir was crazy?”

She shook her head. “No. He wouldn’t make anything like that up. And it fit with a few things I’d been wondering about. That’s why we’re here. I want to share something with you that makes me think there’s more to us than the others think. I hope it will make you realise you’re closer to being one of us than not.”

One of us
. He’d never liked that phrase. It always meant there was a “them,” and he was usually in the latter. “If the others don’t think the same way, what ‘us’ are you talking about?”

“The Elemental Court,” she replied as the car slowed. “Just keep an open mind—you’ll understand what I mean soon.”

“Have you brought any of the others here?”

She shook her head. “This is your place. Not theirs.”

He saw a sign for Clearwell Caves. “Why are you so keen for me to become part of the Court?”

“Because we all need each other,” she replied. “And because I’m worried that if you don’t, you’ll make more enemies than you can handle. You’re planning to fight them, aren’t you?”

“Not all at once.”

“Don’t.” The car stopped. “We’re here. Remember, keep an open mind.”

• • •

The only advantage of being born a Poppy was that the Charm to put oneself into a deep, peaceful sleep was one of the first ones Cathy was taught. That night, she was tempted to use it for the first time.

It had taken over an hour to stop shaking and even now, after a poor night’s sleep, she could still see the Dame’s face every time she closed her eyes. When she was able to think with any clarity at all, she made Will promise that he wouldn’t send Wilhelmina home until they’d discussed a long-term solution. Will seemed to recover much faster and had agreed.

The last thing Dame Iris had tried to do was give her a pregnancy Charm. That Lord Iris would murder her over such a failure both terrified and enraged her. Yet more proof that women were disposable things. Would he have done the same to Sir Iris for a similar misdemeanour? She doubted it.

Regardless, she felt responsible, even though she’d had to defend herself to maintain sovereignty over her own body. Dame Iris was determined to rule her life, and she couldn’t endure her harassment. She clung to the idea that Lord Iris didn’t have to kill Dame Iris to make his point. It wasn’t her fault he was such a cold, inhuman bastard.

But there was no getting away from the fact that he was capable of such things, and that she had avoided pregnancy longer than he wanted. Will simply refused to discuss the topic, as if their having a child was inevitable. He was more concerned that they conceive the child enjoyably, rather than having something foisted upon them with Fae magic. He just didn’t understand.

It felt like every conversation they had now was just a breath away from another argument. She could see him just switching off whenever she tried to explain her actions, as if he’d already decided she’d done the wrong thing and the reasoning behind it was irrelevant. If anything, she felt she was making things worse. The longer he was Duke, the more motivated he was to keep all the men happy. What did she expect? They perpetuated their own dominance.

She’d pretended to be asleep when he woke, his slow stirring into consciousness enough to make her wide awake in moments. He’d been wrapped around her and his arm had felt heavy. She’d wanted to push him off and run out of the house, out of the Nether, just keep running from this toxic life where women could be turned into death statues just to form an exclamation mark at the end of an order. But she stayed still, waited until he had stretched and held her breath when he kissed her experimentally in the hope she’d wake. She felt wretched, needing comfort but frightened that if she reached out to him, he’d be lustful again. She was certain the death of Dame Iris had made him all the keener to give his patron the child he desired.

Will left and in the silent bedroom she could feel the pull of despair. She’d considered her freedom from Dame Iris one of the few victories she’d had, and now it was a source of guilt and fear. She’d managed to save Natasha, free Charlotte from her curse, and inspire Wilhelmina to ask for help, but what else? The fabled Ladies’ Court still didn’t have a date for its first session, and she had never even wanted a separate court. She was planning to use it as an opportunity to tell more women about how the Agency treated its staff, and to urge more of them to do what she had. Max’s news about Ekstrand made it riskier, though. Not that Ekstrand would have defended her against any retribution, but at least Max would have been able to warn her, maybe.

Margritte had stopped answering her letters, and she doubted Will was going to even consider a change to the law regarding the status of wives as property. Once word of what she’d done got out, she knew the number of hate-filled letters would increase. Not that the idiotic ones sent by frightened men really bothered her; it was the more considered ones from women that really stung. The ones begging her to consider the example she was setting for the younger women of the city, the ones trying to persuade her that being a woman in Society was all about subtlety and the persuasive arts. One even offered to teach her how to manipulate her husband into doing what she wished. It made her want to scream.