All is Fair (27 page)

“I want you to be here,” he said, more calmly than usual. “I like you. I shouldn’t, but I do.”

Margritte tensed and silently berated herself for accepting his invitation so readily. “But I’m in mourning.”

“That doesn’t stop me liking you. It stops you liking me back, I know that – I’m not a complete twat. I’m just… trying to be more honest and open. Like the Yanks.”

“The who?”

“The… colonials, I think your lot calls them. The Americans. You ever met one? They’re so fucking open. Probably because they didn’t live through Victoria’s reign. I don’t know what their Fae-touched are like, but the mundanes are fantastic. There are loads at the university.” He shrugged, her silence wearing his words down. “We hang out. Sometimes.”

Margritte had no idea why he’d taken such a liking to her but it made everything far more complicated than it needed to be. She didn’t want to manipulate him like one of the Rosas would without a thought, but she didn’t want to lose him as an ally. Could he detach his strange affection from the way they could work together to achieve their own goals? Either way, she had to be truthful and she had to try and keep him focused on what was important.

“I’m sorry, Rupert, I just can’t think about anything like that at the moment.”

“Shit, yes! I know, it’s cool, I… Let’s just kill Ekstrand, shall we?”

To her immense relief he set down the popcorn bowl and activated the screen. After a moment the white screen changed and displayed a map of a city. Once she saw a couple of the street names she realised it was Bath.

“The thing about Sorcerers is that they’re bloody hard to find, especially when you want to kill one.” Rupert pressed another button and the map was overlaid with dozens of red dots. “I’ve always known he was somewhere in Bath, just from the way he talked about the place, but I had no idea where. I sent some of the Proctors to release some of my gadgets down there to see if they could find anything that might be an anchor. I found something much better instead.”

“What are the dots?”

“Sensors, ones that Ekstrand has placed all over the city to monitor the Fae-touched there. See, this is what happens when you have a Sorcerer who doesn’t have a fucking clue what’s going on because he doesn’t work
with
you people. I realised – hundreds of years ago – that you weren’t the enemy. The Fae are the ones who cause all the problems, you guys just get roped into doing stuff for them. You can’t turn around and say bugger off to the Fae so you’re just as much victims as the mundanes are.”

Margritte just nodded, keeping quiet. She’d wondered why Oxenford was run so cooperatively.

“I figured that if we worked together the innocents would be more likely to stay that way. But Ekstrand is a paranoid little shit and has set up this network all over Bath so he can track the residents of Aquae Sulis going in and out of the Nether.”

Margritte didn’t have to fake her surprise. “And they have no idea?”

“Nope. It’s probably why his Arbiters are so low profile,” Rupert said. “Now, my boys did a bit of work on these things and they’re all wired – he’s so nineteenth-century! – to send the data back to this location.” He tapped another key and all the dots disappeared, leaving one large house highlighted on the outskirts of the city.

“Is that where he lives?” she asked and he nodded, his eyes bright with excitement. “What are you going to do?”

“Watch and see.”

The image changed from a map to that of a house in Mundanus. It was a beautiful property with a fountain in the centre of the drive and stone pillars either side of the door. A bird flew out of a tree and she realised they were somehow watching what was probably the anchor property of the Sorcerer’s home. Margritte clasped her hands together in an effort to keep her nerves under control. She didn’t want to watch a man being murdered, even if he had tried to kill Rupert – and her, albeit inadvertently. Rupert was acting as if he was about to show her a music-hall performance he’d enjoyed, rather than an act of violence, and it made her feel unsafe. If he succeeded, he would be the only Sorcerer in Albion. What would that mean for the other Nether cities?

“Fly, my pretties,” Rupert whispered, and Margritte saw a dark cloud appear in the top left corner of the image, which headed straight for the house.

“Are those insects?”

“Really fucking amazing nanotech insects made of a completely new material he can’t have possibly warded against.”

“Are they going to sting him to death?”

Rupert laughed. “No, they’re going to give me control of the anchors in his property. Once I have that…” He focused on the screen, forgetting to finish the sentence.

The swarm landed on the house, giving it the appearance of being smudged with charcoal, then coalesced in certain places until it looked like the house had been splattered with huge ink blots.

“Go on, go on!” Rupert sounded like a man watching a cricket match.

A couple of minutes crept by and Margritte wanted to go home. She wasn’t interested in facilitating his fantasies; she didn’t want to be there just to smile at him when it was over and congratulate him on winning this lethal game. That’s all it was; even though he was a Sorcerer, he was still a typical man wanting the approval and adoration of someone he liked but considered beneath him. He didn’t realise she was only there because she hoped he’d help her deal with William Iris. But now, watching his attempt to kill another man, she was losing the desire to make the boy suffer. She just wanted him to clear Bartholomew’s name. She didn’t want to get sucked any further into this downward spiral of hatred and bitterness. She didn’t want to be like Rupert.

“What the fuck… come on!” Rupert glanced at a wristwatch and then back at the screen. “Why’s it taking so fucking long?” He jabbed at the computer keyboard and the image switched to the back of the property with a different distribution of ink blots.

The back door opened and a man dressed as a butler stepped out, holding out a hand to test the weather. Margritte sucked in a breath, fearful that the poor man – only a servant – was about to be bitten to death. But he simply went back into the house and emerged moments later wearing an overcoat.

“Rupert…” she whispered. “Don’t hurt that man.”

He didn’t reply. They both watched the butler walk a few steps and glance back at the house as he probably did every time he left it. He stopped and wheeled around, his back to them as he scanned the house and its infestation. Calmly, but with more speed than when he’d left, the man went back inside the house.

“Shit,” Rupert said, scratching the stubble on his neck. “They’d better break through soon or–”

“You have to call them off,” Margritte said. “That man’s in there now. If you do whatever it is you plan to, he’ll be killed as well.”

“All staff know the risks,” Rupert said, keeping his eyes on the screen. “I could have had staff in my place when he attacked – I had a guest! He almost killed you.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to murder a man who happens to work there.”

“A man who knows what Ekstrand is like and helps him to murder–”

“Don’t be so ridiculous.” Margritte went to him and touched his arm. “This is wrong, Rupert, you must see that.”

He looked down at her hand and stared at it until she started to pull it away. He pressed his own hand over it and held her there, now staring into her eyes. She saw that his were hazel, with flecks of brown around the iris, and her instinct was to get away before he tried to kiss her. As his eyes started to close and his head leaned forwards she looked at the screen, desperate to see something that would distract him.

The door opened and the butler emerged, this time wearing an apron and long rubber gloves, holding something made of brass that looked like a cross between a plant sprayer and a rifle.

“Look!” she said, as grateful for the distraction as she was concerned for the butler.

Rupert let her go and clasped the sides of his head with his hands. “That can’t be–”

Margritte backed away, as slowly as she could, so as not to draw his attention. When she was out of his reach she watched the butler spraying at the clusters of insects. Whatever was in the device was cleaning the insects from the stone walls as easily as water washing chalk off a blackboard. Rupert made a series of agonised groans, transfixed by the sight of his failure. He hung his head when the last of the swarm was removed and didn’t look up again until the butler came back out of the house with a dustpan and brush and proceeded to sweep up the detritus left by Rupert’s failed assassination attempt.

“Fuck!” He yelled and slammed his fist onto the keyboard, making the image of the butler play backwards, before he threw an empty tea mug at the button at the corner of the screen and made it black again. He leaned against his desk, hunched over the computer, shaking his head and muttering to himself.

Margritte stayed still and silent, as did the golem.

Eventually Rupert straightened up and turned to her. “Well. That was fucking embarrassing.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “That cock always was good at warding. Seems he actually deserves that reputation. I brought you here for nothing.”

She didn’t agree but she didn’t say so. “Perhaps you should open a Way for me. I think you need to be alone.”

He sighed. “I said I’d sort out William Iris after this. Ekstrand’s going to be a hard nut to smash into fucking smithereens but I don’t see why you should have to wait any longer.”

“I don’t want to kill William,” she said hurriedly.

“Not right away, I understand that,” Rupert said, nodding. “You need him to clear Bartholomew’s name first. I just figure that if he’s tied to a chair, horribly sleep-deprived and scared out of his tiny mind, he’ll be more willing to do that for you.”

Margritte nodded. She didn’t want the boy to just carry on with his life with no punishment for his crime but after seeing Rupert’s behaviour she was feeling less certain of how to go about it. Asking nicely wouldn’t get what she needed, though. “He’ll be protected by his patron, I don’t see how I could get him to–”

Rupert held up a hand. “Don’t worry about that. All you need to do is get yourself alone in a room with him. Let me know the time and place and I’ll do the rest.”

“And what about the Irises that live here?”

“When we move against William we’ll take them into custody too, otherwise Iris will use them against us. I won’t hurt them – they’ve been good to the university for a long time. But you said it yourself – William Iris is working with Ekstrand to take over Albion. We can’t be too careful about the other Irises already here.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, Rupert? The university has already lost the Rosas.”

He shrugged. “Shit happens. I was thinking about giving you Magdalen when the Irises go down. If you want it.”

She would be the first woman to have a position of power in Oxenford. “Not Lincoln?”

“I want Alex to stay as Vice-Chancellor and you to have your own college.”

So that was it; he wanted her to give up on taking the throne back. “I’ll think about it.”

He opened a Way for her and she stepped through, greatly relieved to see him remain on the other side. “See you soon,” he said and gave a sad smile before it closed.

She let out a long breath and rang for tea. Getting William Iris to meet her seemed impossible; he would expect revenge or foul play. The rattle of a Letterboxer made her jump and she realised how tense the time with Rupert had made her. He was offering her the chance to show everyone that a woman could have responsibility outside the household. If she made a success of it, the cause could be reignited. But could she accept in the knowledge that Bartholomew’s dream would never be realised and there would never be a Tulipa on the Londinium throne?

Once the letterbox disappeared she picked up the letter and was surprised to see a fleur-de-lys on the wax seal. She opened it and looked at the end of the letter first: “Catherine Reticulata-Iris”, with no mention of her new title.

She wanted to meet. Margritte knew it was the opportunity she needed to get to Will. Just as she was about to pen a reply there was a knock at the door.

“Please don’t be Rupert,” she whispered and then invited the caller in after tucking Catherine’s letter into the top drawer of her bureau.

Georgiana Persificola-Viola swept into the room wearing an austere black dress and the first genuinely joyful smile Margritte had seen on her face for many years.

“Georgiana?”

“Oh, Margritte,” she said, rushing to clasp her tight. “The most wonderful thing has happened. Freddy is dead!”

19

Max decided to put his efforts into learning more about the Agency whilst waiting for Ekstrand to have a good enough day to tell him where the tracker was located and thereby the location of Faulkner’s Chapter. The gargoyle had managed to wait two days before convincing Petra to go into Ekstrand’s study and take the reading herself. Max had been in the middle of the tour of the upper floors of the Agency Headquarters at the time, aware of what the gargoyle was doing but unable to stop it. By the time he’d got back the gargoyle had the location and Petra hadn’t seemed concerned about their activities.

As Max followed Derne into another room lined with more filing cabinets, the gargoyle was posted in the Nether, watching the Chapter Master’s movements. It was the third day of the gargoyle’s surveillance and a pattern had already emerged. Max planned to make his move the next day.

Max located the right drawer and pulled the file from the cabinet as Derne watched in silence. Cathy had led him on an interesting paper trail and between them they were uncovering more dirty nooks in Fae-touched society than in an abandoned house. The latest was a secret asylum in Mundanus.

“This isn’t a breach of the Treaty,” Derne said as Max scanned the top page. “There’s nothing to state that those who are no longer innocent cannot be returned to live out the rest of their days in Mundanus.”

“Are you concerned about something, Mr Derne?” Max looked up from the page at him. “I never said anything about the Treaty, or any breaches.”