The home of the Seven Courts isn't so big. Yes, there is the main house, the east and west wings, the solar, the garden, the orangery, the cellars, the stables, and the ice house, all of which is very grand and mostly deserted, but it isn't so big that you can permanently lose someone. Where, then, was Angela?
She and I had arrived unexpectedly, and there had been the session with the vision, and despite my less-than-optimal condition after that experience I distinctly remembered Garvin insisting that Angela would stay. So where was she?
The only signs of habitation in the west wing was where Alex had been staying and that was deliberately away from the other residents. I had been in all the rooms, even the pokey attics and servant quarters on the third floor, and there was no sign that anyone had been living there. The ground floor of the east wing was where a number of the staff were living, where the kitchens and laundry, the offices and the pantries were, and despite the curious looks from many of the staff when I poked into cupboards and crannies, I had not found her there either.
The upper floor was where Blackbird and I had our suite of rooms. I was sure I would know if anyone else was staying there, or in the rooms above. Even so, that didn't stop me looking.
After a circuit of the gardens, the orangery, the stables and the outbuildings I was starting to get irritated. Of course, I could go and ask Mullbrook where she was being housed, but that would get back to Garvin, but I might as well ask Garvin myself if that was the plan.
No, I wanted a conversation with Angela without Garvin's assistance and for that I needed to know where she was — unless she wasn't anywhere? It had crossed my mind that Garvin might simply be disposing of the people I brought back, but why go to all the trouble of bringing them in if you were going to kill them anyway? While Blackbird questioned Garvin's motives, I thought he was straight. Garvin did what Garvin said he would do. There was no pretence about him, and in this case, Garvin wouldn't waste the resources. He'd have someone kill them where they were and save time.
I walked back through the gardens, and went back to Alex's room in the west wing. I still hoped to walk in and find her on the bed, sulky and resentful, but that hadn't happened. I'd tried to locate her through the mirror, but she had shielded herself from me. My attempts had been met with a blank wall, which at least meant she was still alive. I dreaded the vague dissipation that occurred when I used my power to find someone and they were no longer findable. Losing her had been bad enough the first time, I didn't think I could deal with that again.
That didn't stop me using the same power to find Angela, though. I placed my hand on Alex's mirror and felt the glass chill under my hand.
"Angela?"
The glass clouded, and the sound in the room opened out. "Angela? Are you there?"
There was a restless shuffling under a background that sounded not unlike the room I was in. It was like listening to a live broadcast and the real thing at the same time. Sounds were repeated moments apart — a crow cawed and then repeated itself in a softer echo a second later. The sound of the breeze was resonant rather than distant.
"Can you hear me?"
Unless there was a mirror in Angela's room, or something that acted like a mirror, she would not be able to speak back to me. It was clear, though, that she was close, wherever she was. Yet I was sure I'd been all through this part of the house and seen no sign of her.
I opened drawers in the chest below the mirror and then in the bedside cabinet. In the top drawer of the cabinet I found what I was looking for — a small portable mirror that Alex must have used for plucking her eyebrows or some similar personal ritual. I rested a finger on it.
"Angela, can you hear me?" This mirror also clouded, but now I could hold it near to my ear as I left the room. I walked down the corridor, first one way and then the other, trying to discern whether the sounds came more into sync or less. The difference wasn't great either way.
There were spiral stairs at the end of the west wing, with windows looking out on the lawns and over the countryside. Stepping quickly downstairs, I went back along the lower gallery. If anything the sounds were fainter here, and louder from the mirror. Was that because most of the doors were closed down here? I opened the door into a drawing room, the curtains half-drawn and dead flowers on the grate. No, the sound was definitely fainter.
I closed the door behind me and went back to the stairs, going up two flights to the smaller corridor on the top floor where it was hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. These slanted roof rooms would have been given over to domestic staff originally, but now those that weren't used to store redundant furniture were empty and unused. There was loads of light, but it felt oppressive and stuffy. I walked along and found myself back at the stairs in the main house.
Looking back along the corridor, I was sure I had been all the way along and yet it didn't seem as far as it had to walk along the lower floors. Was this floor shorter? Surely they were all in the same building on top of one another and all the same length? A suspicion formed in my mind. I walked back along the corridor and found myself back at the spiral stairs, but too quickly, too easily. It left me with the irrational desire to measure the corridors and see if they were the same length.
I held up the mirror to my ear. There was still a difference, but less so, than downstairs, or maybe that was simply that we were higher up and more open to sounds from outside? Nevertheless I had the sense that I was missing something.
Positioning myself in the middle of the corridor, facing the opposite end, I closed my eyes and walked forward, counting five paces. I stopped and opened my eyes. The corridor was still there, it hadn't changed. I repeated my actions, and then again. Each time I opened my eyes and checked where I was. By the time I reached the end I was fairly sure I hadn't missed anything, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that something didn't fit.
If I gathered enough power into myself, I knew that I could see the world in a different way. Raffmir, my old enemy had taught me how in order to get me into Porton Down and rescue my daughter. He'd given me the ability to see the fabric of reality itself and even step behind the curtain to cross distances. Fortunately the rest of his plan hadn't worked, and both Alex and I had escaped the fate he had planned for us, but having learned the trick of it, I knew I could do it.
At the same time, if someone was hiding something here then I did not want to call attention to the fact that I'd found it. Blackbird always admonished me for using power without subtlety, as a blunt instrument. Here was a chance to prove I could be subtle if I wanted to.
I had noticed that every time I called power there was a sharp drop in temperature. It was as if I was taking the heat from my surroundings and converting it somehow. That sudden cooling marked my use of power like a red flag — it had given my presence away before. There was, however, plenty of heat up here near the rafters.
Closing my eyes, I tried to empty my thoughts in the way that Blackbird had taught me. At the same time I reached inwards to the core of power inside. It flared inside me and I felt the surroundings cool, forcing me to release it again. That was too much. I wanted something smaller.
I tried again, letting my senses expand, feeling the warm air drifting with dust and musty smells. I imagined the air cooling slightly, just enough to start an air current to bring more warm air. The core inside me remained closed and the air remained warm. The trouble was, air just wasn't my thing. Blackbird could twist the breeze through her fingers but to me it was just air.
And perhaps that was part of the problem. I was trying to do what Blackbird did, but she was a creature of fire and air. My element was the void, the space between things. So how could I use that to my advantage?
The void was a curious thing — the Feyre believed that everything was made of four elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This made sense because their power was expressed in four distinct ways which loosely correlated to these elements. The void was different. It was what held everything apart and stopped the other elements from collapsing in on themselves. It was the space in which everything else existed, and where the other elements shared space with each other. In contrast, the void and the wraithkin, whose element it was, existed alone.
So if the corridor really was the wrong length, I would know. If somehow the space had been compressed or altered in some fundamental way, as a son of the void, that should be obvious to me in the same way that if someone made the wind blow the wrong direction it would be obvious to Blackbird. Therefore it had not been altered.
But I was also aware that it wasn't the length it should be. On some fundamental level, the corridor was wrong and it set my senses jangling to walk down it. It was just…odd. I had an idea that with enough power I could change the nature of a space and distort it — bend it — to my will, but this was not what was happening here. That would take far more power than was apparent.
But what if the corridor was not changed, but only the appearance of it, like a glamour? That would take considerably less power and would leave the corridor fundamentally unchanged but apparently shorter.
I closed my eyes and let myself drift, sensing around me. It was hard among the layers of wardings in the courts to discern one thing from another — like listening for a coin spinning on the floor of a busy railway station — but it was there. The corridor had a net stretched along it, like the glamour I used to turn eyes away when I did not want to be noticed. It lay along the corridor like a multidimensional mesh of misdirection and concealment.
I found the threads and followed them, gradually teasing them apart, unravelling the magic until it finally snapped apart and the corridor shifted. I opened my eyes and the formerly light corridor had acquired a dark section, within which was a door.
I stood outside listening. There was no discernible sound from inside but maybe that was also cloaked in glamour. I turned the handle and pushed the door open. Inside was a plainly furnished room with a chair next to a table with a book open upon it. It looked clean but bare. The windows were set low and looked out over the countryside, and there was a door through to another adjacent room. I looked as if it had been occupied recently.
I stepped in, intending to see if there was anyone in the next room. The door swung closed behind me and it was only the glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye that made me veer away. A heavy chair crashed against my shoulder and I was thrown sideways by the impact.
"What the…! Angela? What are you doing?"
I nursed my shoulder where the chair had collided with it. Angela was stood behind the door holding the back of the chair like she was going to ward me off with it.
"Niall? Sorry, I thought you were that woman."
"You nearly cracked my head open. What on earth were you trying to do? What woman?"
"The blonde one. Fionh."
"You're lucky it was me and not her. She would have spilled your guts onto the carpet and sliced your head off for good measure. What were you trying to do?" I rubbed my shoulder where the chair had caught me.
"I was trying to leave."
"Can you not just use the door like any normal person? Do you have to hit people with chairs?"
"You don't understand," she said, "Until you came in there was no door. Once she leaves I'm trapped in here. I thought if I could stun her, I could lock her in here while I found a way out."
"Put the damn chair down, or are you planning to hit me with it again?"
"No, no, I…" She took the chair and placed it back against the wall.
"That would never work anyway. It's her glamour that's keeping the door hidden. She could unravel it as soon as you closed the door and follow you, and you would not like what she would do to you after you bashed her head in."
She glanced at me, then made a dash for it. Fortunately she had to get past the door to the open doorway and I managed to grab hold of her.
"Let me go! You don't understand. They're going to kill me!" She struggled and kicked until I threw her onto the floor and put myself between her and the door. She was breathing hard and looked up at me with narrowed eyes. "You're with them, aren't you?"
"I'm not with anyone."
"Yes you are. You're a Warder like she is."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.
"You kill people. You bring people here and haul them up in front of the Lords and Ladies and then when they don't meet some arbitrary standard, you kill them."
"I've never k…" I could hear in my own voice that she would hear the lie in that. "OK, that was different. Those men were drowning young girls. I've never killed anyone that didn't deserve it."
"I expect that's what Fionh says too," said Angela.
"Look, this has to be some sort of misunderstanding. They'll find you a place in the courts. Garvin said they would."
"Oh yes. They'll find you a place all right, as long as you fit within their narrow definition of what it means to be fey. Only problem is, I don't"
"What do you mean you don't? You showed me a vision. You have the power. Garvin was there, he saw everything."
"Except that's not what Teoth is looking for. He made me create a vision for him. We saw things — most of it I barely understood — but it was all the past, not the future. I watched them as they made some kind of deal, he wouldn't say what it was for. I saw them culling their own kind. They killed children, even before they'd grown into their power. They executed innocent people because their power wasn't true, whatever that means. I saw them do it."
She was staring around her now, looking for a way out. "I don't really know how I see things or why, I just do. Teoth kept asking me about you — that phrase — 'The sun will rise and they shall fall' — he kept asking me what it means. He said my power is corrupted, that my humanity has poisoned my power. It's why I can't see the future, only fragmented versions of the past. He says I'm not worthy."
"Not worthy? What does that mean?"
"It means that sooner or later they will kill me like they did the others. You've got to get me out of here, before it's too late."
"You're overreacting. Why would they kill you? You're not doing any harm."
"No, but I've seen what they're doing now. They're not going to let me take that knowledge elsewhere, are they? You got me into this. You brought me here. You've got to get me out of here."
I glanced at the door. In the doorway, out of sight of Angela, Fionh stood listening. Angela saw me look and her face fell.
"Fionh," I said. "Fancy seeing you here."
"You're not supposed to be here," Fionh said.
"I think I gathered that from the way it was concealed," I said.
"Garvin wants to see you," she said.
"How convenient."
"Now," she insisted.
"And if I leave, what are you going to do?"
"My job," said Fionh.
"Promise me you won't harm Angela."
She reached in and grabbed my sleeve, tugging me out of the room. I caught a glance of Angela's mouthing the words, help me, as I was pulled out and the door closed. Fionh placed her hand on the door and I felt the glamour creep back into the passage.
"You've got her well hidden."
Fionh said nothing but walked away and then waited for me to follow.
"It's not like she's a danger to anyone, is it? I mean, what's she done that's so terrible?"
"You're asking the wrong question," she said.
"Why?"
"You should be asking yourself how much patience Garvin has and looking to your own position. You're not here to question the wisdom of the courts, Niall. That's not your role."
"Oh, and who is then?"
"The courts are the final arbiters. That's rather the point."
"Maybe it's time things changed," I told her.
"That's not for you to decide." She led the way downstairs to where Garvin waited.
Garvin was not taking this well. "Tell me again why you think you have the authority to overrule the High Courts of the Feyre."
"That's not what I said," I replied.
"You told Fionh that someone should challenge their authority with the clear implication that the person making that challenge should be you."
"You're putting words in my mouth."
"No, Niall. You're talking treason. Let's not beat around the bush here. As a Warder you serve the courts, not the other way around. The Lords and Ladies do not need your permission, or your consent, or even your knowledge. As far as the Feyre are concerned they are the final and only court. End of story."
"But that's the point, don't you see? The courts are the beall and end-all for the Feyre, but these people aren't fey, not completely. They're part human — all of them grew up in human society. They have no knowledge of fey culture or fey rules, and how would they? This is all as new to them as it was to me."
"This is not about you, Niall. Don't make it personal."
"It is personal. You sent me after these people. That makes me responsible for them. I can't stand by and watch you execute them!"
"Who says they're being executed?"
"Are you guaranteeing they won't be?"
"If they are accepted into the courts then they'll be able to live peacefully for as long as they survive."
"If? You said if."
"It isn't up to me."
"That's what I'm talking about. Teoth told Angela that her power wasn't good enough, that she was insufficiently… endowed. So now what?"
"She awaits the courts pleasure. That's not unusual."
"For how long?"
"For as long as it takes to decide. I expect Teoth is trying to work something out for her. He's not a barbarian. He'll try and accommodate her." There was a hint of dissembling in that sentence and Garvin knew I could hear it. "Either way it is not, I repeat, not, up to you. No one stands between the Warders and the justice of the courts and survives. You do not want to test that."
"So now you're threatening me?"
"I'm not threatening anyone. You're making a huge assumption that Angela will be rejected based on what? Gut feeling? Hearsay?"
"But if she is rejected she will be… what's your word for it? Terminated? Disposed of?"
"She may be allowed to return home."
"Why can't she do that now? She can wait at home as easily as she can wait in that room up there," I suggested.
"Teoth asked for her to await the court's decision. That's normal, and hardly cause for this kind of hysteria."
"I would remind you that her life is at stake. That's hardly hysteria."
"We put our lives at stake every time we act. Life is risk. It's no different from what we do every week," said Garvin.
"No, there is a difference. We choose what we do. We don't have to sit there and wait for the axe to fall."
"You're overreacting."
"Am I? Or have you got so blase about killing that the taking of a life no longer seems important to you," I challenged.
"I'm not going to be provoked, Niall. You're wasting your time and mine."
"And I'm not going to be the person who brings these people in for execution. You said Teoth isn't a barbarian, well neither am I."
"You can't resign, Niall. This isn't that kind of job. Being a Warder is about making hard choices. It's about doing what no one else will do. You know that."
"Surely, being a Warder is not about killing innocent people? Isn't it about justice? You told me it's about doing what needs to be done, not executing people for the sake of… what? Convenience? That's not justice, that's just protecting vested interests."
Garvin stood, and for a moment I thought he would draw a weapon, but he simply placed his hands on the table.
"You have an overblown sense of your own importance," he said, but there was something in the statement that didn't quite sound true. It made me look at him afresh.
"What is this about, Garvin?" I was sure he knew more about this than he was letting on.
"It's about your ability to carry out the tasks assigned to you. We've had this discussion. These people are dangerous."
"When Angela granted me her vision, she said that this all started long ago. She said it was about me. What did she mean?"
"If I knew the answer to that question, I'd be a lot happier," he said.
"You know something," I accused him.
"I know lots of things," he said, "I know that if you won't bring these people in to the courts then I'll have to get someone else to do it. "
"You can't coerce me into imprisoning people so you can have them killed."
"Once again you wilfully misunderstand me. Your role as a Warder depends on your ability to do the job. If you won't do it then I'll give it to someone who will. Until then, stay away from Angela."
"What about Teoth's decision."
"She will be informed in due course."
"With the sharp end of a blade?"
"Don't push it, Niall. My patience isn't infinite."
I turned and left.
"He knows more than he's saying," I told Blackbird. I was pacing up and down our room while Blackbird sat near the window with her book.
"Garvin, devious? That should hardly come as a surprise," she said.
"Angela told me that Teoth asked her about that phrase, 'The sun will rise'."
"'And they shall fall,'" said Blackbird. "Prophesy is notoriously bad at predicting the future, Niall. Half the time it's better not to know. By the time you've figured out whether the prophesy is causing the future or the future is causing the prophesy, you may as well not bother."
"You took me to see Kareesh. That was for a prophesy."
"I was desperate. Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. It worked, didn't it?"
"I'm not sure," I said. "Maybe the jury is still out on that one."
"You survived. Sometimes that's all that counts," she said.
"I couldn't have been there before, could I?"
"Been where?" She closed the book and set in on her lap.
"To see Kareesh. I couldn't have been there without you, could I? Before we met?"
"You didn't even know about the Feyre, Niall. How could you have been there without me?"
"I'm… in Angela's vision, I saw myself with Kareesh. You weren't there but Gramawl was."
"That's not how it happened," she said.
"I know, but in the vision it was real. She said things, she referred to things that happened later. I was there."
"I don't use the words 'notoriously unreliable' by accident," said Blackbird. "Prophesy at best is a view of what might be, the nodes and points of the future that are most likely to happen."
"But this already happened. This was the past, not the future."
"How do you know? How do you know that next week you're not going to have that conversation with Kareesh?"
"Teoth said — Angela's power is corrupted. She doesn't see the future, she sees the past."
"I would take issue with your use of the word corrupted. Different, perhaps?"
"I'm only repeating what Angela said. But if Angela sees the past then it is certain, because it's already happened."
"But you also said there was a burning man on the Underground platform. Was he burning when you saw him that day?"
"No. He was normal, like anyone else."
"There you are, then. Yes, she showed you the past — your past — but your brain interprets that in its own way. It inserts imagery and assigns meaning, even where meaning doesn't exist. Some things just are, Niall. They don't mean anything."
"She couldn't make me forget, could she?"
"Angela?"
"Kareesh. She couldn't bring me there and then make me forget?"
"Why? Why would she do that?" Blackbird spread her hands in frustration. "She didn't even know who you were until I introduced you."
I tried to sift through the tangle of images and things I knew. If Angela's vision was true then who was the burning man? No, it was like looking into a distorted mirror. But what if I had met Kareesh and Gramawl before Blackbird had taken me to her?
"You didn't answer my question," I said.
"Which question?"
"Could Kareesh make me forget meeting her and Gramawl so that I didn't even know it had happened?"
Blackbird stared at me for a long moment. "You know quite well that your perception of the world is governed by your senses and your senses can be manipulated, by glamour and other magic. You have to trust what's true, though. You have to find the truth and hold on to it. Otherwise you will mire yourself in a tangle of speculation and you will never get free."
"But she could have done it?"
"Yes," she confirmed. "Even I could have done it."
"Did you?"
"Niall." She was exasperated. "That is exactly what I just asked you not to do."
"Sorry. It's just… There's something going on. All this stuff about 'the sun will rise' means something. Garvin won't reveal what he knows and Teoth was probing Angela about it. Something important is going to happen and I'm involved."
"That may be true," she said, "but you can't rely on prophesy. 'The sun will rise' — a literal sun? A particular day? Another sun? Not a sun as in sunshine but a son as in a child? That's clearly what Deefnir thought."
"Maybe he knows something too."
"'And they shall fall'? Who will fall, Niall, and why? How far will they fall? Will that be a literal fall or a metaphorical fall… it's all useless until it happens, and you're only messing with your own head thinking about it."
"So you don't think we should try and find the book?"
"What book?"
"The one with the pages open to show the six symbols."
"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."