Between Two Thorns (6 page)

“Who else would he connect with?”

“I don’t know. Then what happened?”

“That’s where it got a bit hairy.” Its huge stone brow furrowed. “He came to knock you off and get our chain. So I had to knock him off first.”

“He’s dead?”

“I reckon. He landed on the hard bit at the bottom. And you fell, when I was dealing with him. Sorry about that. I couldn’t catch you. It took a while to realise I could still move after we broke contact. He didn’t land on the trees like you did. There was a
splut
.” Its muzzle wrinkled at the memory. “Not nice. Then there was screaming and blue lights and I expected the Chapter Master to send someone through pretty sharpish, but then…” Its stone shoulders heaved a shrug. “Then it all went… wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“It felt very bad… the bit of us that could still feel the cloister… something bad happened there, and then we were fully here. Not there at all.”

“Has the Chapter Master been in contact at all? In Mundanus or via a messenger?”

“No, that’s not it.” The gargoyle shook its head. “I don’t think the Chapter is there any more. I think someone… broke it.”

Max looked back up at the grey tiles as he struggled to think despite the morphine haze. “How does someone break a Chapter? Maybe…”

“Look, we reported a serious breach, we showed the Chapter Master a kidnap in progress with the support of the London Arbiters and nothing happens? The Chapter is either cut off or just not there any more. Either way, we’re on our own.”

“Have the London Arbiters followed up?”

“The mundane police got there faster than they did. They were distracted by something, maybe cutting off the Bath Chapter. I don’t know. Anyway, you were brought here and so was the one who shot you. But the London Arbiters busted him out of the morgue.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve been listening to the police talking. They want to know what you were doing at the top of the hotel.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Max muttered.

“Of course you’re not, I’m worried for both of us.” The gargoyle jabbed its clawed thumb at its chest. “In fact, I passed worried several hours ago and I’m well into the land of seriously frightened. This is bad enough without us being corrupted.” It sniffed at the blanket. “We can’t walk around with titanium in us for eighteen months.”

“I don’t have much of a choice. At least not until I get back to the cloister.”

“If it’s still there.” The gargoyle’s voice matched its grim expression. “And I’m not sure it is, otherwise how could we be having this conversation?”

“Then I’ll go straight to the Sorcerer and tell him and see if he’ll take it out.”

“Are you mad?” The gargoyle’s twitch made the bed shake. “He’ll kill us!”

“I have to report it.”

“These are unusual circumstances, and look, if the Bath Chapter has been cut off – or worse, we’re the only ones who know what’s going on here...” The gargoyle lowered its head and extended its stone body to lean over him as it had out of the clock tower. Its stone teeth were only inches from Max’s nose. “If you tell the Sorcerer about the titanium, he won’t listen and more innocents will be taken. You know what he’s like.”

“It’s a good argument,” Max said, and the gargoyle withdrew. “We have to leave before the London Chapter knows where I am; they won’t be distracted for long.”

Mustering all the effort he could, he sat up and pulled the blanket, and the frame designed to keep it off his bandaged leg, off the bed. He frowned at the hospital gown, wondered where his clothes were. His coat and hat were hung on the back of the door. They’d suffice in the short term. He started to get out of bed.

The gargoyle howled. “Stop! Stop! Oh! The pain, stop!” It was gripping the sides of its head, its stone eyes rolling like marbles in cups.

Max was aware of the pain too. It was rather extreme. He lay back down, scrabbled for the button and pressed it.

“We’re not going anywhere yet,” he said, breathless, as the gargoyle whimpered. “You’d better go back outside; you made enough noise to bring every goddamn nurse in this hospital here.”

He watched the gargoyle leap across to the window ledge as little blue pinpricks of light peppered the outer edges of his vision. “Keep a lookout,” he added, his words slurring.

“Just keep pressing that button,” the gargoyle muttered as it climbed back outside. “And hope that Lord Titanium doesn’t take an interest.”

 

7

 

It took two cups of tea and half a bowl of noodles to fortify Cathy enough to pick up the letters and take them through to the front room. She flicked on the light, comforted briefly by the shelves of DVDs, books and the life-size cardboard cut-out of Han Solo standing in the corner.

She dumped the letters on the sofa, closed the curtains and put on the TV. Somehow checking that all of the things she’d set to record whilst she was working at the Emporium seemed so much more important than reading her mother’s words. After another sideways glance at the letters, rearranging her entire book and DVD collection alphabetically took on a sudden urgency. She scanned the shelves, dithered over the
Battlestar Galactica
box set for a few moments before plucking out
Aliens
instead. Survival horror seemed more appropriate.

Finally she mustered the courage to read the letters. She had considered burning them, but she’d only wonder what had been said, and besides, if her mother realised she hadn’t read a single word when she got back, it would only make things worse.

Cathy turned the pile upside down so the top one would be the first sent. If she was going to do this properly, she needed to see the progression.

She noted the wax seal and quality of the paper. A dull throb was building behind her eyes as she picked it up. She turned it over and read the elegant calligraphy.

 
 

Miss Catherine Rhoeas-Papaver,
 

Where-so-ever-you-are
 

Mundanus
 

 

She shuddered at the sight of her mother’s handwriting. Something about the slant of the upward strokes in “Where-so-ever-you-are” conveyed her mother’s irritation at her being so difficult to contact and the sight of her full name brought back her old life with a monstrous clarity.

She broke the seal and opened it out. The red poppy of her family’s crest was emblazoned at the top of the paper. The date was one week after she’d cast the Shadow Charm and fled Cambridge.

 

Dear Catherine,
 

 
 

I have no idea what you think you are doing, but I’ve received a letter from your former chaperone informing me of her resignation and giving profuse apologies that she was unable to improve your wilful nature. She had more courage than your minder who has singularly failed in his duty to keep you safe and seems to have absconded.
 

I do hope the two of you are not together, lost in the foolish romantic notion of running away to elope. I will be able to keep this from your father for less than a week, so I suggest you return immediately and explain to me why you have abandoned the university course you demanded so brazenly. It embarrassed us immensely to have to acquiesce to such a selfish and unreasonable request. The Patroon was not impressed as you well know.
 

Do not make this worse. Come back before your father realises what you have done, otherwise I am sure you can predict his response.
 

 
 

Your Mother
 

 

Cathy folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope. It was too easy to predict her father’s reaction when he saw her again and she didn’t want to think about it. She sucked in a deep breath and made herself eat the rest of the noodles. As she twisted them around her fork she remembered when Josh had introduced them to her as a good thing to keep in the cupboard. They only needed boiling water and were quick to make, as he demonstrated. That was the first afternoon they’d spent together after he came across her in the laundry room of the first-year halls of residence. She was standing in front of the machine with a palm full of coins trying to read the instructions without looking like she had no idea what she was doing.

“Are you OK?” he’d asked and made her jump, sending the coins rolling in all directions. She hadn’t got used to men just being able to come and talk to her when she was unchaperoned and her inherent shyness wasn’t making it easy to get used to.

They picked up the coins together. She liked his smile and his soft brown eyes. He was skinny and tall and when they stood up again after collecting the errant coins she only came up to his shoulder even though she wasn’t exactly short herself.

“Want me to show you how they work?” he offered and she nodded. “You put two fifty-pence pieces in here. Is the powder in?”

She blinked at him. Only two powders sprung to mind: face powder and the powder used in pistols for duelling and she was certain it couldn’t be either of them. She regretted not having her laptop and wished she’d Googled it all before leaving her room.

“Washing powder?” he said slowly.

“Oh, is that what goes in that tray bit?”

“So your mum did all your washing then? I’ve got some you can use, give me the fifty pences.”

She searched through the coins in her palm, still getting used to handling change. He gawped at her. “Have you been living abroad or something?”

“…Sort of,” she replied and managed an awkward smile. When he returned it the constant terror she’d felt for the past two weeks subsided. Even though she’d spent an academic year at Cambridge, the maid her family insisted on sending with her dealt with all the practical matters, including all the things involving small change. She researched as much as she could before running away, but it was impossible to learn about every aspect of life in Mundanus, and the more time she spent there the more she realised how ill-prepared she was.

He helped her with the washing machines and chatted as they waited. That was the first time she lied about where she’d come from to someone she wanted to spend time with, and it made her guts knot as she lied again and again, weaving threads of lies to make an unusual but plausible story.

The noodles finished, Cathy turned her attention back to the letters. The next one was similar to the first, only more angry, so she chucked it aside. In the third her mother detailed how the minder had finally turned up, cap in hand, and had been interrogated by her father.

 

He assures us that there were no signs of your plans to leave, and only the brief note you left apologising for the inconvenience is stopping us from assuming you’ve been kidnapped. Your father has not ruled out that possibility, so for goodness sake, Catherine, return home immediately and explain yourself before we’re forced to report this to the Patroon.
 

 

Cathy shook her head at the empty threat. There was no way in the split worlds they’d go to the Patroon and tell him their wayward daughter had run away. She wondered what they’d been telling him. They were lucky he was such a relic and had no real understanding of life in Mundanus anymore. He was hundreds of years old and had no concept of how much the world had changed as he spent all of his time in the Nether. They’d be able to string him along perfectly well until he suspected something and asked for verification from one of the other Papaver lines. If that happened, her family would be in serious trouble.

That made her pause. Was that guilt she felt?

She ripped open the next letter, dated a month after she’d left.

 

Dear Catherine,
 

 
 

We are beside ourselves with worry and missing you terribly.
 

 

Rubbish, Cathy thought, but carried on reading.

 

I know you must be afraid to come back, but I want you to know I understand this isn’t your fault. You were corrupted at a tender age by Miss Rainer. Ultimately, the blame lies with me for letting that evil woman into our household, and I will never forgive myself.
 

Her wicked scheme to put the most ridiculous ideas into your head and expose you to entirely unsuitable literature is what brought about this terrible situation we find ourselves in.
 

 

The words blurred. Miss Rainer. Every single day she wondered what had happened to her old governess. “Ridiculous ideas, Mother?” she muttered under her breath. “I suppose you would call human rights and women’s suffrage ridiculous.” Cathy looked up at the bookshelves, filled with “unsuitable literature”: science fiction, fantasy, volumes of political discourse and social history, feminist masterpieces and graphic novels. Pride of place, with a shelf all of their own, were the works of HG Wells, Jules Verne, the
Dune
novels, Asimov and all the others Miss Rainer had smuggled in and hidden under her pillow. Not the originals. They’d been ripped apart and burnt by her father. She could still feel his hand on her throat and smell the burning paper as he’d forced her to watch.

Everything had changed that day. It was hard to believe it had been over four years ago; the memory of it was so fresh. She remembered the beating that had taken weeks to recover from fully, the hours alone, locked in her room, sobbing until the turn of the key in the lock made her wipe her eyes and sit up straight and be polite to whoever came in, be it her mother or the maid. She recalled the hours her mother had spent coaching her in the lead-up to her coming of age, the sleepless nights spent weighing up whether to play by the rules or risk everything on asking for the wrong boon.

It had taken months to get to university. They’d had to say yes, it was the family tradition, but most good little Papaver children diligently requested whatever their parents had told them to.

Cambridge was a stepping stone to freedom; it gave her the chance to get out of the family home, which was her first objective, and saved her from the stress of being launched onto the social scene in Aquae Sulis. Whilst she didn’t have the same freedom as all of the other students there, she had enough exposure to others in lectures and her tutorial partners to learn enough about Mundanus to know where to look for more information. Everyone had computers and it didn’t take much persuasion to convince her minder she needed one for the course. A fellow student bought a dongle for her and helped her get online in return for lunch, and that was the breakthrough she needed. It took a year in Cambridge to plan and execute her escape to Manchester and it had worked perfectly, until that bastard Shopkeeper had ruined it all by tipping off Lord Poppy.

Cathy still had no idea what happened to Miss Rainer. After the night her father found the books hidden in her room all of her lessons stopped, but she’d learnt enough to know that she could never live the same life as her mother.

She went back to the letter.

 

Your absence has cast a shadow over our household and I am worried about how this is affecting Elizabeth.
 

 

Cathy snorted. Her younger sister was probably still gloating about her victory and was glad that her plain older sister wasn’t there to jeopardise her chances of a good marriage. Cathy would never forgive Elizabeth for what she did.

 

Thomas hasn’t been the same since he learned of your disappearance and asks whether there has been any news every evening. He’s lost weight with worry. I beg you to consider your brother and his feelings, Catherine. I know how close you are.
 

 

It was a low blow and the guilt brought tears with it. She wept at the thought of what Tom must think of her, how he must hate her now for being such a coward and fleeing instead of sticking it out like him. But then he was a son and the eldest child; it was different for him. He wasn’t seen as a piece of property but as the heir apparent.

She shoved the rest of the letters onto the floor and let herself curl into a ball. She imagined calling Josh, asking him to come over and telling him everything and somehow coming up with a new solution, but that was a stupid fantasy. Even if he did believe her tale of secret families with Fae patrons living just outside of everyday reality, she would only endanger him. She wanted to be held, to smell his aftershave and talk about Xbox games and music and do all the stuff that any other student at the same university could do. A week from now she’d be back in Aquae Sulis in her family’s grip once more and she would never see Josh again.

She needed a big cup of tea. She wiped her face and blew her nose on the way back to the kitchen. She needed to think, not cry like some helpless woman. Did Ripley fall apart when they were trapped on an alien-infested base with no rescue for days and limited supplies? “No, she did not,” she said out loud.

Dealing with her family wasn’t as bad as facing aliens with acid for blood, but they were still an unavoidable horror. And failure to impress Lord Poppy would lead to a worse fate than having to face her father again.

As the kettle boiled for the next round of tea, she leaned against the worktop and turned her mind to what she could possibly wish for. The Fae lords and ladies were fickle and fundamentally inhuman. How the Patroons managed to keep them happy she had no idea. She’d spent as little time as possible thinking about politics and the struggles of the Great Families when she was growing up in their world, and for the first time in her life she regretted it. The problem wasn’t a lack of ideas; like all Fae-touched children she’d diligently spent days of her early years dreaming up clever wish combinations just in case. She’d never prepared any to impress a Fae, however.

She made the tea, stirred in the milk. There was no one to ask for help, no books to consult, no website designed for fellow escapees of the bizarre Fae-touched life. If only she knew what would–

“That’s it!” she said with a laugh. “It’s so obvious!” She took a sip of tea and then a deep breath. “I wish–”

With a tiny pop and a shower of poppy petals, the faerie appeared, just above the pedal bin, making Cathy squeak in surprise and drop her mug. It smashed on the lino, the brown liquid landing in the shape of a faerie’s silhouette.