The Autumn Palace (2 page)

Ondine said, ‘The Duke will find something for me to do. I'll work for free if I have to.'

‘Don't debase yourself like that!' Old Col tisked for good measure. ‘Clearly I arrived just in time, before you made a total fool of yourself. If you followed politics at all, you would know the Duke and his family always spend the autumn in Bellreeve. He'll be there soon enough, so we'll be spared the hassle of relocating. If anything, we could scout the area for anything untoward.'

‘Oh!' That threw an entirely new light on things.

‘When the three of us arrive in Bellreeve tonight, we will have travelled so far and for so long that our gracious host will feel obliged to offer you some kind of employment. No decent person would send a young girl on such a long return journey alone.'

It was almost as if Great Aunt Col was going out of her way to help Ondine. The thought should have
been reassuring, but instead it made her uneasy. A few moments ago she and Hamish had been in charge of their destiny. Or as in charge as you can be when you're relying on a duke to give you a job. Now her great aunt had taken over and Ondine didn't like it one bit.

 

1
   The Duke of Brugel is the hereditary head of state for the Serene Duchy of Brugel, a former Soviet bloc country in eastern Europe that still hasn't won Eurovision. Venzelemma, where Ondine lives with her family, is Brugel's capital city
.

Some people might ask, if Brugel was a Soviet state, how did the Duchy survive? Good question. For answers, read
The Complete History of Brugel,
by Shaaron Melvedeir – 250 pages of folklore, facts, figures and the occasional photo. Another book
, Everything Shaaron Melvedeir Says is Rubbish,
by Isaak Drixen, 745 pages, is the subject of Brugel's longest-running defamation action
.

2
   City Savers are very good value, but only for off-peak travel. All visitors to Venzelemma should buy a ten-pack to see the best the city has to offer. The central hospital with its neo-gothic exterior, flying buttresses and vaulted ceilings in the foyer are a must. The hospital is conveniently located within staggering distance of Brugel's largest fish market, so visitors overcome by the stench of rotting seafood can get prompt treatment
.

3
   In Brugel, each dropped object carries a unique verb. For example, dropped cutlery clatters, dropped luggage cludders
.

4
   This was no disparaging comment, merely the truth. Colette Romano was a witch. The fact that she needed less than an hour to be ready for travel – and levitate five packed cases across a street – proved it
.

5
   Second is the logical yet slightly insulting term used by Bruglers (the residents of Brugel, who speak Brugelish) to describe any thing that is not first. It can mean as much as missing the 100-metre final by a gnat's wing, or losing three sets to love in the first round of the Venzelemma Grand Slam
.

6
   ‘Palechia' is Brugelish for ‘palace'. It is pronounced ‘pe-cha'. Scholars insist the word was originally pronounced ‘PAL-e-CHEE-a' as recently as two hundred and fifty years ago. When Wiwyam The Gweat became Duke in 1799, his fondness for removing people's heads from their shoulders made the rest of his advisors wewuctant to cowwect his many speech impediments
.

7
   ‘Numpty' means ‘unwise'. If a witch has previously become very cross with you and turned you into a ferret, you'd be numpty to think you could ever trust her
.

8
   See
Ondine, book 1.

9
   When the Duke met Old Col, he took a shine to her. Naturally, he wanted someone with her witchery skills to be working for him. If not, she might end up working against him, and that was a chance the Duke wasn't willing to take
.

T
he train's first-class carriage was at the very end of the platform, directly behind the engine. Negotiating the crowds involved lots of ‘Sorrys', ‘S'cuse mes' and ‘Did you have that bruise alreadys?' as they squeezed their way through. Finally they arrived and Hamish dumped the cases on the ground with a satisfying cludder. Joints clicked and creaked as he stretched his back.

‘Oh, look, there's a trolley. Hamish, why didn't you use that?' Old Col put her hand to the side of her mouth and laughed. It was supposed to come out as a giggle, but it sounded more like a cackle.

Although it would be impossible to be inside two people's heads at the same time, Ondine knew she and Hamish shared a thought:
That was deliberate
.

A porter arrived and began loading the cases into the luggage van. It would have been nice if the porter had been somewhere near the ticket counter when they'd first arrived – he could have saved them a lot of backache.

‘In you get, children.' Old Col pointed to the carriage door and they climbed aboard.

Inside looked like a plush lounge room. Correction, a
series
of plush lounge rooms, with leather recliner chairs and nifty little tables by the windows. It smelled like money. When Ondine touched the nearest headrest, she felt the soft leather squish beneath her hand.

‘It's so lush!' she said. No rubbish on the floor, no graffiti on the walls, no missing light fittings or torn seats. The carpet was so thick she left dents in it as she walked.

‘Aye, it's Barry!'
¹⁰
Hamish said as he walked behind her.

The aroma of walnuts filled the air. Ondine could also smell coffee, honey and a sprinkling of nutmeg. Further up the carriage a passenger sipped a steaming mug of coffee and nibbled a delicate pastry.

They sank into their chairs – no hard bench seats in here – and Hamish smiled at Ondine. Fresh bursts of warmth flurried across her skin.

‘Ahh, young love,' Great Aunt Col said, giving them a stern look. ‘May I remind you, Ondine, you are only fifteen and not an adult, no matter how much you pretend to be one. Hamish would do well to remember that.'

Defying her great aunt, Ondine planted a kiss on Hamish. Zap! Electricity arced between them as their lips touched.

‘Wow!' Ondine shook her head in astonishment.

Hamish pulled away and gave her a wicked grin. He rubbed his old borrowed shoes against the carpet a few times and kissed Ondine again.

Ping!

Static electricity crackled across Ondine's skin and made the fine hairs on her arm stand up. Every
little kiss jolted her with bursts of electricity.

‘Behave yourselves,' Old Col said, but she didn't sound all that serious.

The electric kisses proved addictive and Ondine rubbed her shoes against the carpet again. She licked her lips and moved in for a kiss.

Pow!

‘Ouch!' Hamish said. ‘That was really strong!'

‘I'm so sorry!' Had she hurt him?

‘Och, that's all right. Kiss me better, then.'

She received another delicious electric shock.

‘That's enough now, both of you. Remember, you're in public,' Old Col said.

Buildings moved past the window at increasing speed, taking them away from the city at an alarming rate. The summer with Hamish had been truly wonderful, but all too brief. Memories tugged Ondine into backstory, to the time when she and Hamish met. She'd been leaving Psychic Summercamp. He'd been a ferret. A talking ferret who, after an exasperating series of events, finally became a gorgeous lad. Which everybody, especially Ondine, agreed was a rather
excellent turn of events.
¹¹

Ondine was happiest when Hamish was his handsome self instead of his animal incarnation. Over their summer together, the curse had pretty much worked itself out. Hamish could be human as long as he was near Ondine, which suited her just fine. Yet they were about to work for the Duke, and the Duke would probably prefer Hamish to remain a ferret as much as possible.

‘This is going tae be so exciting I cannae wait tae make a start,' Hamish said. ‘And Col, at first I didnae like yer interfering, but now I can see ye'll help Ondi get a job and then we'll be working together and having adventures, so we will.'

Ondine loved hearing him talk. There was something magical and a little bit naughty in the way he spoke. Just thinking about how they could stay together and work together made her glow. It really felt like everything would turn out wonderfully.

The afternoon tea trolley arrived. Col ordered a pot
of Darjeeling for herself and some nibbles for Ondine and Hamish.
¹²
The waiter made a few deft moves and extracted side tables from within the armrests.

‘This is tha good stuff, eh, lass?' Hamish gave Ondine another of his lopsided smiles. The ones that made her go all silly in the head. The next moment he cut a small piece off his marinated artichoke and offered it to her.

There was something so tender and touching about the action, Ondine felt overcome. She accepted the morsel and chewed it as delicately as she could. ‘It's heavenly.' She shut her eyes to savour the moment. When she opened them, she found Hamish gazing at her with adoration. They were lost in a bubble of love as she returned the favour, feeding him a tidbit from her plate.

‘Easy on tha salad, hen.'

‘Oh, sorry, I forgot you're still not used to it.' Ondine picked the leafy greens off her fork and replaced them with chunks of chicken and ham.

‘It's taking a while tae adjust, like,' he said.

It sure was. As a ferret he ate nothing but protein and fat. Not through choice but necessity, because carbohydrates could put him in a coma. And they didn't like salad. But now he was human, surely he could vary his diet?

As if reading her mind, he added, ‘Old habits die hard.'

‘They certainly do,' Old Col said, interrupting them. At which point Col tipped the remains of her tea into the saucer and then studied the tea leaves. ‘Oh, look, we're going on a journey.'

Ondine rolled her eyes – probably a safer option than going
Pfffft
, because she had another mouthful of scrumptious food. Since when did her great aunt look for signs in a teacup? Col had scorned her old friend Mrs Howser for doing just that at Thomas and Margi's engagement party.

‘No, really, look.' Old Col held out the teacup for Ondine to see.

To Ondine's surprise, she saw the clear outline of a locomotive in the wet leaves. ‘That's a . . . it really
looks like a train. Mercury's wings, I never thought you'd be into reading tea leaves. It's even got a carriage and everything.'

‘Really?' Old Col knitted her brows and had another look in the cup. She turned the cup this way and that, then shook her head. ‘That's not a carriage, dear, it's a coffin. What a shame, that means somebody's going to die.'

 

10
   ‘Barry' means ‘very nice', ‘great' even. Nice meal, great place, fabulous view, etc. Outside Edinburgh, ‘to Barry' means to be sick. It's really important not to confuse the two, otherwise you might end up insulting someone
.

11
   Usually backstory does not belong at the front of the book. Ondine is aware of this and she has kept her episode of reminiscing brief
.

12
   Darjeeling is expensive fancy-pants tea. It was introduced to Brugel when Marco Polo opened up the spice trade to Asia
.

A
s much as Ondine didn't want to believe in the power of tea leaves, she couldn't shake the image of that small coffin outlined in Darjeeling in Aunt Col's cup.

On their train chugged, through the valleys of Novorsk Kallun
¹³
and the dramatic Lake Obski, where sunlight glittered on towers of crystalline rocks.
¹⁴
As the sun headed for the hills, they arrived in the northern borough of Bellreeve, where the air smelled like wet leaves. Judging by the puddles on the road, it had been raining. Judging by the dark clouds above, it would rain again soon. There were rows upon rows of
buildings, but none of them over two storeys high. It looked like the kind of place that called itself a city, but was barely more than a town. Aunt Col waved a fan of banknotes at the porters to have their cases brought to the palechia.