Strangeness and Charm: The Courts of the Feyre (25 page)

  "There may not even be a book," she said.

  "I'd bet money on it."

  "You want to look for a book – one among how many? Millions? You don't know what it's called, or who it's by, or where it's kept."

  "It was in a library."

  "Well that narrows it down." She shook her head.

  "It was old, and the person reading it was using lamps. That means it'll be even older now."

  "There are a lot of old books, Niall. Some are in private collections. Some are in museums, galleries, libraries, private houses… you need somewhere to start looking."

  "There was a design in the middle with four shields in a circle. Three symbols to each side of it."

  "There are entire books filled with symbols, the sole purpose of which is to get their readers to contemplate what they might mean. They were meant to provoke and inspire, to get people thinking about eternity and their place in it. They were not meant to be interpreted as literal truth."

  "You were an academic, though. You know how to research things in books, don't you?"

  "You mistake my meaning. You're not talking about a needle in a haystack now, so much as a piece of hay in a haystack, among other haystacks, when you don't even know what field it's in."

  "But if I could prove that Angela's prophesy was worth something, that it gave us a vital clue to what is happening, then maybe Teoth would accept her into the courts. At the moment he's dismissing her out of hand."

  "The problem is not the prophecy but whether you can change the attitude of the courts. At the moment they want their cake and eat it – bring in the part-fey humans, but reject them when they're not fully fey. They can't have it both ways," she said.

  "How long do you think she's got?"

  "Angela? You can't save everyone, Niall."

  "I brought her here."

  "And you think that makes you responsible? The responsibility lies with those taking the decisions. You've said your piece. You can't blame yourself if they overrule you."

  "She wouldn't be here but for me."

  "Garvin would have sent someone else, and how that would be better?" she asked.

  "Maybe I wouldn't feel so responsible?"

  "It wouldn't prevent it from happening. You need to learn to accept what you not going to be able to change."

  "Perhaps, or maybe I need to stop being part of something that I think is wrong," I said. "You said yourself that this all comes with strings. You said we should leave."

  "I did, but think about this. You and I are the only ones challenging the status quo. If we leave, there's no one to gainsay them. They will continue as they always have. Maybe we are here for a reason, and maybe that reason is to be the thorn in their thumb."

  "I think Garvin would say pain in the arse."

  "Now that," she smiled, "is a noble cause in itself."

 
 

Alex leaned over the wall and looked down on the people walking below. "It's pretty busy," she said. "I've never seen so many tourists."

  "They'll thin out towards the end of the day," said Eve. "They have coaches and trains to catch. The guards will stay, though."

  "It's not the police we're dealing with here, is it? These guys are military," said Alex, looking at the soldiers in red uniforms and flat black hats posted around the courtyard and in front of the White Tower.

  Eve sat on the edge of the wall and conversationally pointed out the guards posted at the gates and those leading gaggles of tourists around. "They're military," she said, "but at the end of their careers. This is a cushy number for them. They just have to stop tourists from poking their noses where they're not wanted and there's almost no chance of getting shot. It's a better gig than Afghanistan."

  "Beefeaters, aren't they?" said Alex.

  "They're called Yeomen Warders. Beefeaters is a nickname."

  "My dad's a Warder," Alex spoke before she meant to, eliciting an inquiring look from Eve. "He's in security," she said dismissively, "he spends all his time looking after people with too much money."

  "Interesting," said Eve. "You must get to meet lots of famous people."

  "Nah," said Alex. "This is old money. They keep it amongst themselves and they're totally stuck up. They don't mix with normal mortals."

  "Sounds horrendous," said Eve.

  "You don't know the half of it," said Alex. "So what are we after? The crown jewels?"

  Eve glanced reprovingly at Alex. "The crown jewels are the obvious target. They're very heavily guarded. It's all just glitter, though."

  "Some glitter."

  "Chipper and Sparky are going for those, but there's too many alarms – heat sensors, pressure pads – this place is state of the art. Even we can't get in and out without anyone noticing," said Eve.

  "So how are we going to steal them?"

  "We're not. They're a distraction, not the main event. The idea is that Chipper and Sparky keep the guards busy while we focus on the main targets."

  "Like what?" Alex stared around.

  "One of those." Eve nodded towards an enclosure at the far end of the courtyard.

  "A crow? What are you going to do with a crow?"

  "They're not crows, stupid. They're ravens. As in Nevermore?" said Eve.

  "'Quoth the raven, nevermore'. Yeah we did that in English. He was a funny guy, Poe," said Alex.

  "The ravens are symbolic. It's said that when the ravens leave the Tower of London, the monarch and the country will fall."

  "Is that what you're planning?" asked Alex

  "No, that's just superstition. Besides, we don't want a whole raven, just a feather. A pinion of the raven's wing."

  "This gets better with every moment," said Alex. "Have you seen the beaks on those things?"

  "We need a feather Alex. And once this goes off, security here is going to go berserk. We won't be able to attempt it again this year."

  "Why don't you go and get it?"

  "It's time for you to earn your keep," said Eve. "We looked after you. We found you new clothes and sorted you out after you got in a mess. You wanted in, Alex. Either you can get me a feather, or you can't."

  "Yeah, well you hold onto the bird while I get the feather out. How's that for a plan?" Alex's chin was up.

  "I'll be otherwise engaged."

  "Doing what?" challenged Alex.

  "It's all a matter of timing. We could take a crack at the jewels now, and the feather is easy – you'll be fine. The other thing we've come for is harder. It's only exposed for a limited window, and we need to get in and out before the place is locked down."

  "What are you after?"

  "A key," said Eve.

  "What's so special about a key?"

  "This key opens more than just locks. It's kept in the wardroom near those houses just near the main gate. Every night they have a ceremony where they lock up the tower and set all the security up."

  "So we're coming back tonight?" said Alex.

  "No. We're not leaving. That's why we sneaked in in here in the first place. They count all the tourists in and then out again to make sure they all leave, except we weren't counted."

  "So they won't know we're here," smiled Alex. "If it's all locked up, how do we get out?"

  "We wait until the sun goes down. Most of the guards will change out of their Yeoman Warder gear into military uniforms. As soon as that happens it gets serious. There's a group of guards who will go up to the gate to escort the tourists through the ceremony of the keys."

  "I thought you said the tourists went home?"

  "There's a small party led through the ceremony. I checked and there are no spare places for tonight. We should have a full party. They're led through to the tower, it all gets locked up, and then they're escorted out."

  "What about us?"

  "We hit them just as they start to lock up. Sparky sets the alarm off at the jewels, you get the feather, and for a brief few moments the key will be unattended. I grab the key, we meet down there by the gate. They'll want the tourists off site as fast as possible. We just merge in with the party as it leaves. In the confusion, they'll never know they escorted us out as well."

  "You make it sound easy."

  "No magic until after the alarms are triggered and then only glamour so they don't notice us. We don't know what they have set up. They may have infrared, night-vision, all sorts of stuff. I told you, it's state of the art. They may look like toy soldiers but they have real weapons with real bullets."

  "What if we get caught?" asked Alex.

  "Don't. It's not theft, it's treason."

• • • •

Borough market is a great place to shop, but not an easy place to find someone. It's crowded, noisy, and there are lots of ways in and out, so that you can't just watch the entrance and wait. You have to wander.

  It's also smelly. Not in an odorous, noxious way, but it's filled with smells. The cloying scent of frying onions mixes with the ripe pong of French cheese. Sticks of broken celery stalks compete with the sickly sweet of overripe strawberries. There are spices and herbs, complex high-notes from the flower stalls overpowered by the meaty wafts from the butchers' stalls and the fishmongers. All of this is laid on the faint odour of river water and mud from the Thames, only a few hundred yards away.

  The smell is distracting, and so is the noise, but I was here on business and tried to focus. This was the haunt of one of the escapees, Andrew Warner – Andy to his friends. He'd been picked up here originally and taken to Porton Down, and he'd been under surveillance for some time before that.

  His file indicated that he was classified low-risk, high potential, and talked of fragmented personality disorder, and morphological instability, whatever that might mean. I was hoping it meant he wouldn't try to kill me.

  It also said that he'd tried to bring together the inmates at Porton Down into some sort of community support group, to help them help each other. The idea hadn't been popular with the leadership and there was much discussion of crosscontamination and the introduction of combined effects into experimental data, plus concerns about collaboration from the security people where there was any kind of gathering.

  The idea had been scrapped, but not before Andy had managed to pull together an initial meeting and put the idea before some of the other inmates. The doctor responsible for that meeting had been sacked, and the report roundly condemned his actions, but a first meeting had already taken place. If Andy had met some of the other inmates, there was a strong chance he would know more about them, and might even be able to communicate with some of them.

  The chance to open up a dialogue and offer them sanctuary in the courts, while at the same time being able to negotiate with the courts as a group rather than on an individual case-by-case basis had brought me here. If I could pull people together, then maybe we could make this work. Otherwise there was a strong chance that Garvin would lose patience and send in the dogs, and then there would be blood.

  Of course, I had Andy's photograph from the file, but I wasn't sure that would help me. Appearance is flexible among the fey, and if he really didn't want to be identified then he had every chance to change his appearance and disappear. At the same time I'd noticed that the fey had a habit of returning to certain ways of looking. It was as if changing your image too much, too often, left you looking like everyone and no one. I had felt this myself, and although I looked younger than I used to, most of the time I still looked like me.

  Blackbird was one of the few fey I knew who could switch her appearance between multiple personalities without slipping back to her usual appearance after a while. She could stay an old lady, or a young girl, for an indefinite period. I'd asked her about this after the baby was born and she got her glamour back. I knew what she looked like without glamour, and I'd got used to it while she was pregnant, so I asked her why she switched her appearance as soon as her power returned.

  "Habit," she told me.

  It didn't seem like much of an answer, so I pressed her on it.

  "When you've looked one way for long enough, you don't forget," she said. "Before I met you I was Veronica for what, forty years? Before that, I was someone else. And before that too. I can be any of those people if I want to."

  "Why can't you be you?"

  It was the wrong question to ask, I could see that from the crinkle at the edge of her lips, but having asked it, I couldn't let it drop.

  "This is me," She gestured at herself. "When I lost my power, I would look in the mirror and see a face I didn't recognise. I was looking into the eyes of a stranger. It was one of the things I didn't like about being pregnant. It made me feel exposed – almost naked."

  It was a moment of rare vulnerability, and I held her close for a long while after, switching the conversation to safer subjects, such as what she would wean the baby on and whether Garvin was going to get me killed.

  On that subject, I'd let my mind drift from the task at hand while I wandered through the stalls, which was not a good way of ensuring survival.

  My eyes drifted to a guy in a long coat. He was holding out a rounded jar of amber liquid to one of the stall-holders. It caught the light, somehow absorbing stray rays of sunshine and magnifying them so it looked like he held a pot of shining gold. The stall-holder was shaking his head and holding up his hands but the guy was persistent.

  There was a brief exchange of words and the guy's shoulders dropped. He turned towards me, tucking the jar back into a rucksack, searching the stalls for new opportunities and our eyes met. It wasn't his face I recognised. He'd grown a stubbly beard and his hair was longer than it had been in the photo. It was the look in his eyes, the look of someone who's been hunted, imprisoned, and tortured.