A Little Knowledge (41 page)

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Sam felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. His room was dark save for a shaft of light pouring in from the hallway.

“Mr Ferran. Wake up, sir.”

It was Ben, the head of his security team. “What’s going on?”

“Sir, there’s been an attack on the—”

Sam sat up, instantly awake. “Is Mrs M okay? Beatrice?”

Ben nodded. “Something strange happened. The cameras on the perimeter went down, that was the first sign that something was going on. John—one of the men patrolling the grounds—was knocked out and the door to the conservatory was broken into.”

“What?”

“But the intruders stopped and gave themselves up.”

“Who?”

“Three men, sir. They…” He swallowed and Sam noticed the sheen of sweat on his upper lip. “They came to kill you. They wouldn’t have got to you, sir, there’s motion sensors—”

“They broke in, though!” Sam said, getting out of bed. “Shit, what were you lot doing?”

“We were on the way in,” Ben said. “There’s a reinforced door between the conservatory and the rest of the house—they would still be there, trying to get through, by the time we got there if they hadn’t given themselves up already.”

Sam turned on the light and put on his dressing gown. It was three thirty in the morning. The fact that Ben—a huge black man almost seven feet tall—looked freaked out was the most frightening thing.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said as Sam found his slippers. “They were just kneeling there, hands on their heads like we’d already busted them.”

“Where are they now?”

“In the gatehouse, sir. We didn’t want them anywhere near the house just in case it was a ploy to do something worse. We’ve checked and double-checked the perimeter for others, and the house too. My men are just giving it all a second sweep.”

“It’s the first time you checked this room.”

Ben straightened. “The second, sir. I move quietly, when I need to.” He tapped the goggles resting on top of his head. “And I don’t need any light either. Yours was the first room I checked.”

“Sorry,” Sam said. “I’m just a bit freaked out. Have you called the police?”

“Not yet, sir. Given the circumstances, I thought I should check with you first.”

“Yeah, maybe hold off on that for a bit. Are Mrs M and Beatrice okay?”

Ben nodded. “Mrs Morrison is fine. She checked the silverware and the safe and then went back to bed. Beatrice is fine too. She wants to speak to you. I’d like to stay in the house for a while, keep an eye on things. My second has everything in hand at the gatehouse.”

“That’s fine,” Sam said, and they went out into the hallway together before heading in different directions. Sam went to Beatrice’s door at the end of the hallway and knocked.

“Come in.”

She was sitting on the bed, dressed as if she’d never been to bed. Her dress was clean, though, and she looked calm.

“You okay? You wanted to see me.”

“I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Okay. They didn’t make it into the house. You’re safe here.”

“I know. I stopped them. Sit down. You are quite pale.”

Sam perched on the stool that went with the dressing table. “You made them give themselves up?”

She nodded. “I knew they were coming. I could have killed them, but I thought it might…upset you.”

Sam gawped at her. “Um, yeah, that was the right thing to do.”

“I want to know why they were sent here to kill you.”

“You’re sure they were?”

“Yes. They were going to come into the house, find your room, and shoot you in your bed with silent guns. They could have done that. They were very skilled. They have killed lots of people, some of them very important. Lord Copper sent them. Why?”

“How do you know all this?”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “Magic.”

He rested his head in his hands. He was shaking. Copper sending someone to kill him just seemed…ridiculous. “But if this was a hit, why not do it somewhere I’m not so well protected?”

“They had a key to the house, and they knew the movements of your men. Someone helped them. A woman who is angry with you called Susan.”

“Jesus.” Now it made more sense. She was helping Copper, to rid him of a problem and to clear a way for her to take what she saw as rightfully hers.

“I want to know why Copper wants to kill you. This is not natural.”

“No shit!”

“I mean, within the order of the Elemental Court, Copper should ally with you. It was always thus.”

Sam told her about the mining scandal, the threats he’d made to Copper and the rest of the Court and the reasons why. Then he told her about going to the caves with Nickel.

“And even though you felt the way she expected you to, it made you more eager to fight Copper?” Beatrice said, and Sam nodded. “Even though you wanted to do just the same as he does?”

“Yes,
because
I felt that! I knew that if there was some…
other
reason for the Court being the way they are, there’s no use asking them to stop. I have to force them. Just like I have to force myself to not be like them too.”

“Do you know why they are this way?”

Sam heart quickened. “No.”

“Because it is all out of balance. The Elemental Court. The Fae. They are both victims. It wasn’t always this way.”

“Is this something to do with the Sorcerers?”

Beatrice smiled. “It is everything to do with the Sorcerers. It is what they did. They sundered the world and pushed the pieces apart.” She held her hands together and then moved them apart as she spoke. She raised her left hand. “The Fae, imprisoned by the Sorcerers, driven mad by the severance from humanity.” She raised her right hand. “The Elemental Court. Yoked by the Sorcerers, divorced from self-knowledge, left unchecked as their hunger devours the world.”

“But they had to split the worlds, right? I mean, those Fae, they’re evil bastards. They had to keep them away from people!”

Beatrice let her hands fall to rest on her lap. “That is what they told everyone, and themselves, right until the end.”

“The end?”

Beatrice opened her mouth and then closed it again, tilting her head. She seemed to be considering something as she looked at Sam. “You are not happy with the Court as it is,” she finally said.

“No. They’re doing far more harm than good.”

“And you are not happy with the way the Fae behave.”

“No. I don’t like the way they use the people in the Nether, either.”

“I feel the same.” She looked away, frowning to herself. “This is very hard for me. I have spent a lot of my life alone, and I have never had a friend.”

“What about your brother, the Sorcerer? Don’t you get along?”

“We did, once. We were very close. So close that we said we were one soul split into two bodies.” A pained expression crossed her face. “I find myself wanting to tell you things. Secrets. My soul is burdened, it seems, in a way I did not appreciate until now.” She fixed her eyes on him once more. “I have never felt the desire to share this with another person. But then, all people before you have disappointed me. You have exceeded my expectations, and it is a strangely pleasant feeling.”

“What did you expect me to be like?”

“The rest. I thought you would be nothing more than a greedy man, obsessed with nothing more than iron and money. Like your predecessor, and his before him. For six generations I have come to meet Lord Iron and commission a piece from him. Every time, I left disappointed.”

Six generations? Sam didn’t want to think about how old she was. There was enough to take in already. “So that’s why you came? To see if I was like all the others?”

“Partly.” She stared at the floor again and he had the impression that a great number of calculations were being made behind those eyes. “I came to measure your skill, to see if the recent changes had affected your power and to find information I need. I also planned to manipulate you into doing something for me. I hope that is not needed now.”

“Oh. Okay. Listen, Beatrice, I’m feeling kind of out of my depth here. What you showed me today was awesome. I never thought I’d be able to do anything like that.” He looked at the palm of his hand and the faint line of healing skin that looked as if it had been cut over a week ago, rather than a matter of hours before. He thought of her standing next to him in the forge, coaching him to believe things about himself, his blood, and the iron in his hand that sounded ridiculous to most of his mind but utterly true and immutable to the rest of it. He’d watched the impurities bubble out of the iron and drip to the floor, at first unable to understand that it was really him doing it. He’d thought it was some sorcery on her part until he did it again and again, long after she’d left him to go back to the house. “But,” he continued, “I get the feeling you’re holding stuff back that’s…big.”

“I will tell you the truth if you make a pact with me, Lord Iron, one that binds. You to me and me to you. In truth alone, no more than that.”

“With more magic?”

“Yes. Something simple.”

“But how do I know it isn’t doing something more than what you say?”

“You have met the Fae,” she said with certainty. “Caution serves you well. It will simply be a promise, witnessed by these walls, heard by our hearts, honoured by our souls. If one of us seeks to betray the other, the betrayed will know and will have the right to destroy the other.”

“I don’t want to destroy anyone!”

“Good. I have no intention of betraying your trust. Do you have intention of learning from me to use the knowledge against me?”

Sam paused. “No,” he said, feeling three steps behind and not liking it at all.

“Then let us begin.” She reached over and pressed her hand over his heart. She felt hot—too hot, almost. “You do the same.”

He rested his hand over her heart, feeling it pound beneath his palm.

“When I speak a secret to you, you will know it for what it is and its worth. When you speak it to another against my wishes, you will know if you are about to betray me, and in betraying me, yourself. The same for any secret you share with me. Now, Lord Iron, you say the same to me, and mean it.”

She led him through the words. He didn’t feel any different when he was done, but she smiled and withdrew. Perhaps it was too subtle to be felt, perhaps she was just making him feel he was about to learn something special. Either way, he felt that learning more about what he was and how everything fit together was never going to do him any harm.

“I have lied to you,” Beatrice began.

A shudder went through Sam, every hair on his body standing on end as she spoke. He knew, without a mote of doubt, that she was speaking a truth that was something precious, something that had its own worth and something he would have to keep secret too.

“I lied to you to protect myself because I did not trust you and I apologise, Lord Iron. I see your worth now. I told you that I was sent here by the Sorcerer of Essex, but the man bearing that title is dead. I came of my own volition, acting of my own free will, as I have for many hundreds of years.

“Over those years I have studied and I have made deals and I have looked for answers and I have seen the way of the worlds. I have mastered the magic of the soul and the magic of the mind, and I have woven them together in a way that men cannot fathom and Fae cannot conceive. I have listened to the Earth and read forbidden texts and scraped away the truth that was hidden from us all. The worlds were not split to protect mankind. They were sundered to give the Sorcerers dominion over all. But they were mere mortal men, so terrified that others would take their stolen knowledge that they withdrew from the world and slowly went mad. They cared more about what they had forgotten than whether their knowledge benefitted anyone but themselves.

“Lord Iron, I confess to you that I killed all the Sorcerers that plagued the mundane plane. I hunted them down and I ended their lives and those of the creatures they had enslaved and manipulated.”

Sam shuddered. He was certain that no one should ever kill another, but the way she spoke sounded weird, almost mythical. Did she really mean it? “You killed Ekstrand?”

“Yes. It was necessary.”

“Wait, all of them? Even your brother?”

“He was the first. But that was different. He had come to kill me, with smiles and soft words and a keen blade. That’s what the Sorcerers had to do, to be recognised as such; they had to finish their training, have their knowledge tested, and then, when they had proven themselves, they had to kill the one they loved most in the world to be seen as complete. I thought my brother loved me more than he cared about becoming one of the Heptarchy. He was my first teacher. I learned sorcery from him, even though it was forbidden to teach those arts to a woman. And I learned that love is nothing compared to the lure of power.

“Every sorcerer that I killed was already a murderer, many times over. They wrenched souls from bodies and enslaved them. They took children from their parents, parents from their children, all to grease the wheels of their power. I have worked for over five hundred years to cleanse Mundanus of them, and now that it is done, I have only one task left to complete.”

Sam’s mouth went dry. “It isn’t to kill me, is it?”

She laughed. “You would already be dead.”

“You might be waiting for me to finish those chains.”

“Ah, true, but I have no intention of killing you. I have ended so many lives, I have no desire for more death. Each one takes a little more from me. Yours would take too much.”

“So what’s the thing you have left to do?”

“I have removed the Sorcerers, but not their legacy. I want you to tell me where the other six forges are, Lord Iron. I want to know where the iron roads begin in our world.”

“So you can go to Exilium and kill the Fae too?”

She shook her head. “No, Lord Iron.” She held up her hands as she had before and slowly drew them back together. “So I can undo the damage that the Sorcerers wrought.”

The clock was striking ten in the morning when Will heard Cathy’s footsteps on the stairs. His valet was presenting a tray of cufflinks for him to choose from as he listened to her lady’s maid say that an outfit had been prepared and the bath already run before the door to her private chamber slammed shut. Morgan came to find him in the dressing room.