"I want to make it clear," the Scot seated at the end of the table said, "that this meeting never happened. You were never here. These words were never spoken. We'll deny it all."
Garvin lifted his chin very slightly. "You're saying this for whose benefit?"
Garvin looked at me and I raised my eyebrow very slightly. I wasn't even sure why I was here. I knew these meetings went on, but I'd only ever been to one, and that was in rather unusual circumstances.
The Great Hall of Oakham Castle was special — its walls were home to hundreds of horse-shoes, gifts from visiting dignitaries over the centuries. Whether by design or accident, the proximity of the horse shoes had the effect of dampening the sense of truth and falsehood that all who were fey possessed. It meant that within these walls, the fey visitors did not have the advantage of knowing whether their human counterparts were telling the truth. It levelled the playing fields for negotiations between humanity and the Feyre, at least in part.
The guy at the end of the table had been in charge of security during my last visit, but not part of the negotiations. Secretary Carler had conducted those and I was wondering whether this was the new guy's way of letting us know he'd been promoted. That also made me wonder what had happened to Secretary Carler.
"Questions have been asked," said the Scot, "and denials have been issued."
Garvin folded his hands on the table and looked from one to the other. "As I understand it," he said, "our meetings are with Secretary Carler or his replacement. I don't have a remit to negotiate with anyone but the Secretary himself." He looked pointedly at the security guard at the door, the goatee bearded tech across the table, and then at the Scot.
"We're not here to negotiate," said the Scot.
"Then what's this about?" asked Garvin.
"Certain material has come into our possession which implicates certain other people in acts which may compromise the agreement between our respective principals. I have been tasked…" he paused for effect, "…with making certain that this does not become a security issue."
"What are you referring to?" asked Garvin.
"Show them," the Scot said to the tech, who sat with an expensive looking widescreen laptop computer open in front of him, positioned so we couldn't see the screen. The portable white screen which had been set up on a tripod stand at the end of the dais glowed blue and then white as it came to life.
"This is all pre-event," said the tech, "and I'll fast forward through it. It's really just to show that everything was working fine up until the incident."
The screen showed an array of tiled feeds in a composite grid view from cameras around a large building. I counted six rows of eight cameras. I was trying to think why the view was familiar, and then I caught sight of Tower Bridge in one of the views.
"This the the Tower of London," I said.
"Cut to the chase," said the Scot. "Show them why they're here."
The tech sighed and operated a control on the laptop so that the tiles flickered forwards in time and then paused.
"Nine twenty-seven, the gate guards are there to collect a party of visitors from the front gate. The visitors were checked and vetted before entry and there's no sign of collusion. They were as surprised as everyone else." The feed showed two soldiers in uniform marching up to the gate and allowing a small group of tourists inside.
"Nine thirty-four they arrive at the main gate. They're challenged and allowed through. They meet with the Yeoman Warder who is escorted to the keys. Now watch here," He used a laser pointer to circle on one of the tiled images. It was stepping through a single frame at a time. For a moment in one frame a shadow passed across the courtyard, but in the next frame it had gone.
"See it?" he asked.
"See what?" said Garvin. "Is this a ghost sighting? Is that what you brought us to see?"
The tech backed up a frame. There was a streak of darkness across the grass. "These cameras are taking twenty-four frames a second. Whatever it is, it appears to be moving very quickly."
"Or it's simply a trick of the light?" said Garvin. "It could be a moth close to the lens so that its relative movement appears fast?"
"No, it's not close to the lens and there's no point of origin for a shadow," said the tech.
"It's a glitch in the system," said Garvin, "You brought us here to show us this?"
"It gets more interesting," said the Scot. "Roll it forward."
"We're moving frame by frame now, so each one of these is a twenty-fourth of a second." The views of the walls and courtyards continued, as the frame count and time-stamp in the corner advanced. Then in ones and twos the images disappeared from the screen.
"What you're seeing here is a systemic attack. The cameras are being taken out one by one, very rapidly."
Progressively the pictures were blanking out. "Power failure?" I asked, earning a look from Garvin, but intrigued by this development.
"There was a power failure, four seconds after this, but these cameras have separate power supplies and battery backup. Also, if this were a power failure then they would all fail at once. These are going out one at a time." He continued until the screen was blank.
"Any comment?" said the Scot.
Garvin shrugged. The Scot looked at me.
"Some sort of software failure?" I suggested.
"Evidence says not," said the tech. "The systems returned to full working condition, but not until later. Fortunately we have a backup." The screen glowed white again and then showed a wide-screen monochrome view of the castle courtyard from the river side over the wall.
"This view is from the top of Tower Bridge, the only remote camera with this angle — consequently the resolution isn't brilliant, but it's apparently far enough away to be unaffected by whatever is causing the disruption."
He zoomed in on the courtyard and then started advancing frame by frame. "Three, two, one… now." The screen showed two indistinct blurry images entering the courtyard. They appeared to be in no rush, though the image was unstable, as if it was looking through intense heat-haze. He stepped through the images until they crossed out of sight.
"The internal cameras are time-matched so this is the same scene we saw before, but as you see, internally they're only recording a tiny fragment of the data coming from the high remote camera, which implies that some sort of editing has taken place, yet the integrity of the frames is valid — they have not been tampered with." He looked up, expecting some sort of response. Garvin and I stared back.
"The alarms start shortly after. There are generalised power failures, a number of incendiary devices were used though we have yet to identify the accelerant. It appears to be extremely volatile leaving little trace. The White Tower came under sustained assault, the building was accessed and a number of the secondary alarm systems were triggered, though as in the case of the outside cameras, the inside feeds were ineffective."
"The White Tower is where the Crown Jewels are kept," said the Scot.
"How much did they get away with?" asked Garvin.
"Nothing, at least not from there," the Scot said. "The jewels are separately secured overnight, and there's no ready access. It's not like the Queen phones up overnight and sends for the crown to be sent round to Buckingham Palace on a whim."
"So they left empty-handed?" I asked.
"Not quite," said the Scot. "You're going to love this bit."
The tech went back to the camera, zooming out to full field view. He let it run fast-forward for a few minutes and then slowed it to normal speed.
"There was a disturbance in the outer courtyard during the alarms — we assumed that this was a backup team or an exit strategy, but that isn't played out by what followed. The tourist party shadowing the ceremony of the keys was immediately detained, pending investigation. In the event it appears they were innocent bystanders. The gates to the courtyard were secured, though, and armed guards posted to the exits in accordance with security procedure. They were attacked by one or more assailants and physically assaulted. The gate was opened and there is a brief glimpse here…"
He panned the view to the corner of the screen where three shadows crossed open grounds and disappeared under some trees. "Injuries to the guards were not severe, though there is a disciplinary pending on how four armed soldiers can't defend one gate from what appear to be a group of unarmed teenagers."
He panned back again into full-field view.
"More interesting is just under six minutes later." He fastforwarded and then slowed. "Watch here."
A dark blur slipped along the top of the wall facing the river. It seemed to cling to the edges and veer around like a candlelight shadow in a breeze, flickering and dodging. It hesitated, then continued, tracking along the wall, then hesitating.
"She's looking for a way out," said the tech.
"She?" said Garvin.
The shadow slipped along the wall to a gate structure, flanked by square towers.
"Traitor's Gate," said the Scot. "Quite appropriate in the circumstances."
The tech continued. He seemed "The water gate itself is wood reinforced with iron. It's old and not really intended as an effective barrier. On the other side of it, though, the entrance to the Thames has been bricked up and there's a significant barrier. The Thames is high, as you can see, but the water doesn't enter the tower itself. The water behind the wall is quite shallow — a few inches only. The tide turned twenty-three minutes before this and is on the ebb. The current is downstream towards the estuary."
He panned across the wall where the gate had been sealed. "According to witnesses there was no splash or ripple, and they initially discounted the water as an exit route. It's not as easy a way out as it appears and has trapped the unwary before. Instead they focused their attentions on the parapet and any attempt to abseil or scale down the wall. Only when the water started to move did they realise where's she'd gone."
"That's the second time you've used a female pronoun," said Garvin.
"The wave oscillated three times, initially moderately but with increasing force. On the third oscillation the gate is forced open. That's when the outer wall starts to collapse. Within moments there's water flooding through. A section of the wall collapses and the Thames is through."
He looked up at them.
"The wall was inspected a month before. There was no sign of any weakness then, though subsequent inspection shows water damage to be the cause. We're at a loss to explain it. That would have been it," said the tech, "except that there are cameras under the bridge which monitor boats passing underneath. One of them caught this image…
The screen changed to a black view with a small white spot in it. He zoomed into the spot until it resolved into a face in the water. The girl had her eyes closed, arms extended, carried by the strong current downstream. It was Alex.
Garvin and I exchanged glances.
"Good," said the Scot. "I thought you'd recognise her."
Garvin interlaced his fingers on the table. "We are not unaware of this individual's activities."
"Excellent," said the Scot, opening a file in front of him. "The girl has been identified as Alexandra Dobson, nee Petersen, daughter of Katherine Dobson and Niall Petersen, who, if I'm no mistaken, is about three feet to your right at the moment. Any comment?"
"We are not currently aware of her whereabouts," said Garvin quietly.
"Not currently aware? Is that shorthand for you've fucking lost her?"
"You try my patience," said Garvin.
"We're not talking a bit of mindless vandalism here. These are the crown jewels. They are a symbol of this country's integrity and lawfulness. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if we'd had them stolen?"
"About as embarrassing as having it discovered that you're conducting illegal and immoral experiments on human beings?" said Garvin.
"They weren't human," said the Scot.
"That's an interesting point of view," I said, earning a sharp look from Garvin.
"Nothing human can do that!" the Scot said, pointing at the screen.
I was standing before I knew it, the power boiling up inside me, aching to be released. Garvin was up beside me, pressing down on my shoulder, making me sit, pushing me back down, and the power with it. If we hadn't been surrounded by the dampening effect of the horse shoes, I don't think I could have contained it. I allowed myself to be re-seated, slowly and carefully, acutely conscious of how close I'd come to killing him.
The Scot was elated that he'd provoked a reaction. "You're on every alert list we have, Petersen," he said. "The only thing missing is a bounty on your head."
"Are you threatening me?" My voice was low and level, but far from how I felt.
"Enough," said Garvin. "Niall, hold your tongue. You're not helping and there's more at stake here than you're dignity."
"It's not my…"
"Enough!" Garvin stared me down. When I looked away he turned to the Scot. "You've already admitted they didn't take anything. I'll ask you again, is there any point to this exhibition?"
"I didn't say they didn't take anything," said the Scot. "I said they didn't get the jewels"
"So what did they get?" he asked.
"Will you stop pacing up and down?" said Blackbird, "You're distracting the baby."
I looked down at our son, resting in Blackbird's arms and watching me rather than latching on to her to feed.
"Sorry." I sat down, but that just provoked a bout of wriggling and tipping his head back until he could reach a position where he could see me again. He was developing fast, and had become much more aware of his surroundings in the last few days.
"Here, you take him for a moment. It's you he wants to see anyway. You might as well hold him."
I took him from her and he kicked his legs while I manoeuvred him into a comfortable position resting on my forearm. He waved his arms around until I gave him a finger to hold, at which point he promptly pulled it to his mouth and started to suck and gum it.
"You see?" I said to him. "You were hungry after all, and you're not going to get much out of that, are you?" He continued sucking my finger, despite my advice. Sometimes children just don't listen.
Blackbird stacked up some pillows on the bed, made herself comfortable and then offered her arms. "Shall we try again poppet, and your father can sit down and keep still this time."
I passed him back to her and in a moment he got the idea and settled down to sucking noisily.
"So what exactly are they accused of taking?" she asked me.
"Alex was identified by one of the Yeoman Warders as the girl in the aviary. They're trying to establish whether she can be tried for treason for interfering with the ravens, assuming they can catch her. According to the man responsible, one of the ravens has a tail feather missing and Alex is being blamed for it."
"I wouldn't fancy taking a tail feather from a raven. They're big birds and they tend to put up a fight. Maybe it fell out on its own," she suggested. "Proving any of this is irrelevant anyway, it's never going to come to court."
"Maybe not a human court. I don't know what the Feyre courts are going to think of this. At the very least it's an embarrassing incident, and at worst a treaty violation. Who knows what Kimlesh will say."
"Alex isn't part of the courts. She never joined, and therefore she's not anyone's responsibility. Unfortunately she doesn't have any of the court's protection either. If she's caught, she could just be killed without a hearing."
"That's comforting," I remarked.
"Sorry, Niall, I didn't mean it like that, and it's not like she's stolen anything of national importance. It's a feather for goodness sake. The bird can grow another one."
"That doesn't apply to the other item that was stolen," I said.
"Oh?"
"Supposedly the Queen's keys are stored in the gatehouse and used to lock up the Tower of London at night, but not all the keys fit the locks."
"And why would that be?" asked Blackbird, shifting our son from one breast to the other in a nifty move that was too quick for him to wail before another breast was presented. There was some wriggling and waving of arms, and then he settled again.
"One of the keys was a gift to the crown, found as part of a treasure trove in long barrow in East Anglia, buried with a Angle nobleman."
"The Sutton Hoo burial?" asked Blackbird.
"No, a smaller horde, but in some ways more significant. Some of the items were hard to identify — the key was out of time. The metallurgy was too sophisticated for the period and therefore the key was thought to have contaminated the find at some later point and somehow been included with the horde as a less valuable item."
"An anachronism."
"Except that the horde was otherwise intact. The items were very well preserved and various valuable items were included, which would have been stolen if the horde was discovered by treasure hunters."
"Something shiny like a key could have been dropped in a hole by a magpie, and just ended up with the rest of the horde by accident," she pointed out.
"Except it wasn't shiny. It was dull grey, and the exact metal it was made of was never determined."
"Dull grey?" she asked.
"Not tarnished silver, and iron would certainly have rusted. It was the wrong colour for gold and was unlikely to have been aluminium — far too early for that. Where else have you seen a dull grey metal object that's hundreds of years old?" I asked her.
"You're comparing it with the Quick Knife, the knife from the Quit Rents Ceremony?"
"I'm trying not to leap to conclusions, but I'm running out of alternatives here. The key was not corroded, even though it is easily over four hundred years old, and may be more like a thousand. It was made of an unidentified grey metal."
"Perhaps it was an aluminium key which got mixed up with the horde much later?"
"It was given to Elizabeth I in 1593 as part of the horde, but the key was passed to the Tower of London for safe-keeping. Nothing else from the horde was taken there, though there may have been other items that weren't documented. Aluminium wasn't discovered in a metallic form until the eighteenth century — I checked."
"Perhaps it was discovered earlier than we thought?" she said.
"Perhaps it wasn't aluminium. Why else would a team of part-fey teenagers break into the Tower of London and steal it?"
"Are you sure that's what they were after?"
"The only other thing unaccounted for was the feather which Alex took. The group made a big fuss around the jewels but made no serious attempt to steal them."
"A distraction."
"Quite. But how did they know there was a key there? It's mentioned in the internal inventory of the tower, but you'd have to know where to look. It's not a published treasure of the tower and even the museums were unaware of its existence."
"If you wanted to hide a key, where would you hide it?" asked Blackbird.
"Amongst a lot of other keys?"
"Inside a guarded Tower with soldiers and a sophisticated alarm system," she added.
"The alarms are a recent addition."
"But they replaced earlier alarms, which have been upgraded by each generation according to the times. Someone tried to protect it, both physically and by hiding it, which implies that someone knew what it was and what it opens."
"You think it opens something?"
"It's a key, Niall. That's what keys do."
"It could be decorative?"
"If it was purely decorative then why steal it? No, whoever took it knows what it's for, and when we know that, we'll know why they stole it."
"What about the feather?"
"Another distraction? Who knows? You can get a raven feather anywhere there are ravens, but there looks to have been only one key like that one."
"So how do we find out what the key is for?"
"You ask a man who knows," she smiled.
"A locksmith?" I asked.
"No, a wizard," she smiled.
"You sodding well abandoned me!" said Alex. "You saved your own skinny arses and left me there for the ravens."
"Nonsense," said Eve. "You're here now, aren't you?"
"No thanks to you. You could have waited for me. You could have stayed at the gate, I was seconds behind you."
"And therein lies the problem," said Eve. "We didn't have seconds. You were told to be at the gate at the appointed time. You weren't there. They had armed guards and reinforcements on the way. If we'd stayed we would have been caught."
"Chill out," chimed in Sparky. "We'd have had to started killing people if we'd stayed any longer."
"Which would raise the profile of our little adventure a tad too far," said Eve. "Much better that you made your own exit."
"I could have drowned," Alex said. "I could have washed out to sea and then you'd never get your sodding feather."
"You can't drown," said Eve. "I don't think it's possible for anyone with your abilities to drown, even in sea water. Besides, you've shown yourself to be resourceful and quick-witted, independent and capable of defeating the best security that man can devise. You should be proud of yourself."
"It was a pretty cool way out, wasn't it?" said Alex.
"It rocked," said Sparky. "Even I wouldn't have thought of that."
Mollified, Alex flopped down on the old sofa, the springs protesting as she sank into it. "This is messed up," she said. "We need a new one."
"When we're done, the world will be at your feet," said Eve. "Where's the feather?"
Alex looked up. "Somewhere safe."
Eve held out her hand.
Alex sighed, and pulled down her top and fished into her bra, while Sparky made a show of not staring at her cleavage while she did it. Chipper was too busy playing Xbox to notice anything. She extracted a polythene zip-lock bag containing the long feather and handed it to Eve.
"You kept it dry, that's good," said Eve.
"It's a tail feather."
"I really wanted a wing pinion," said Eve, examining the sheen. "But this will do well enough, I think."
"I had to bargain for it."
Eve's head lifted. "You spoke with the birds?"
"Kind of," said Alex. "They understood what I was saying, or maybe they're like that with everyone?"
"No, you are favoured, Alex. The birds have knowledge beyond human comprehension, and they must have seen something in you to act so. They have acknowledged what I saw in you when you first came to us — the capacity for great things."
"Great thing, huh?" Alex shrugged it off, but she was smiling as she did.
"Your time will come Alexandre, and when it does you should not flinch from the task. It will take courage and faith, a leap into the dark to gain a path to enlightenment."
Alex shook her head slowly, sceptical of Eve's grand words. She glanced at Sparky who raised an eyebrow slightly, implying that even if Eve wasn't all there, she had engineered a theft from one of the most closely guarded places in the country. She deserved their respect simply for that.
Alex folded her arms. "So what's next? What's the next step in the plan for world domination?"
"We seek not dominion, only the reordering of the universe, to better reflect that which resides within us," said Eve.
"Yeah, whatever," said Alex, but she watched Eve admiring the feather twirling between her fingers.
"Our assembly is almost complete. Once we have the key, the well will open. Then we will hold the fate of the universe in our hands."
"I thought we already had the key?" said Alex.
"That is only a part of the key, one piece of the whole. We will have the other parts soon and then we will see what can be done."
Alex watched Eve's intense fascination with the blue sheen on the feather and wondered not for the first time whether Eve was firing on all cylinders.
"I should have stayed with the baby," I told Blackbird. "You don't need me for this."
We were marching down yet another corridor of the maze of buildings in Bloomsbury where the University of London has whole blocks dedicated to academic pursuits. Blackbird had reverted to her older persona of the older lady I had first met in London a year ago. I still found it hard to reconcile the young vibrant Blackbird I knew with the lecturer in medieval history from Birkbeck — the role she adopted to fit into human society.
"He'll be fine. Stop worrying," she said over her shoulder.
"What if he cries?" I asked her.
She stopped and turned. "Will you stop it! This is the first time I've managed to get away and I will not have you spoiling it for me by reminding me at every verse-end that I've left him behind. If he cries then I expect Lesley will change his nappy. That's what I would do if he cried. For goodness sake, Niall, you have to stop fretting. You've been a father before; you know they don't die if you leave them alone for five minutes."
"Yeah, well. I felt more in control the first time, and look where that got me."
"So that's it, you're not fretting about the baby, you're fretting about Alex." She turned and continued down the corridor.
"I tried to reach her again last night."
"And?"
"Little fragments of things, but nothing you could make any sense of. She's still blocking me. Who knows who these people are that she's fallen in with."
"She doesn't want you interfering, and the way you've been behaving I can hardly blame her." Blackbird stopped at a Tjunction in the corridor. "They've repainted all this since I was last here, but it's this way. At least I think so." She marched off along the corridor again.
"What if something happens to her? What if the authorities catch her and imprison her again?"
"Do you honestly think they're going to catch her? The guards at the Tower couldn't, so what makes you think the police are going to do it? And if they do? What are you going to do about it? March in there and demand her release? Bring the penal system crashing down around their ears?"
"I rescued her last time," I pointed out.
"So you keep reminding me," said Blackbird. "Down here." She took the staircase that led down to the floor below ground.
"Who is this guy, anyway?" I asked her as she pushed through double doors into a corridor lined with small rooms, mostly vacant, with the occasional sign indicating that offices were occupied by postgraduates or administrative staff.
"I met him at an academic gathering and we got chatting. He was very charming and said I should look him up."
"You mean he chatted you up?"
"Well I don't think he was interested in my research, if that's what you mean."
"Did you sleep with him?"
Blackbird stopped and turned so fast that I almost walked into her. "That's a very ungallant question, Niall Petersen. Could it be that you are pricked by jealousy?"
"It's not me that was…"
"Enough! Stop that," she said. "It's unbecoming and quite inappropriate. I've had many lovers and I do not intend to discuss them with you. Who I chose to take to my bed before I met you is none of your business."
"Except we're going to meet this guy and I'd like to know how the land lies," I pointed out.
"We have not spoken for some time, and I am expecting that he will be surprised to see me. We are old friends and nothing more."
"If you say so." Already I didn't like the guy.
"I do, and we are here to ask a favour, so I would prefer that you refrain from upsetting him."
She continued down the corridor through another set of double doors. In this area the lights came on as we approached, making it look as if no one had been here in days.
"I haven't said a word."
"You don't have to," she said. "We need Gregor's knowledge if we're going to figure out what Alex and her friends are up to before Garvin does. I think that's in everyone's interests, don't you?"
She came to a side corridor and turned down it, coming to a wooden door with a sticky note on it. The note said, "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here".
"Hell?" I asked Blackbird.
"Gregor's lab," said Blackbird, knocking on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again louder.
"Maybe he's not home and it's been a wasted journey," I suggested.
"Except for the notice on the door. It's his little joke," Blackbird explained. She knocked again louder and opened the door.
Inside was an expansive room well-lit by overhead fluorescent lights. There were three large benches, each crammed with equipment and scraps of notes. Broad-leafed plants stood in tall glass cylinders wrapped around with copper wire connected with crocodile clips to an array of car batteries. A tank of liquid stood to one side, filled with murky looking water and illuminated by a black-lamp that hummed quietly. It looked like the specs floating around in there were glowing.
"What subject did you say he was teaching?" I asked.
"I didn't. He teaches modern history, we met at an academic convention."
"This doesn't look like history to me."
"His research follows a rather wider remit. Gregor is a scientist and a magician — he's into all sorts of esoteric ideas and sees no distinction between science, philosophy and magic. Last time I was here he was trying to show me a perpetual motion machine."
"That's not possible," I stated with some certainty.
"You're a fine one to talk about what is and is not possible," she reminded me. "Gregor, are you here?"
"Can't you see I'm busy?" A voice came from a smaller office attached to the lab. "The tutorials have all been rescheduled — new dates have been sent out by email. Check your spam filter — it's probably in the spam folder."
"Gregor, I'm not one of your students," she called through to the office.
"Then what are you doing in my…" His face appeared around the door. "Veronica! How absolutely delightful to see you. How long have you been there?"
A barrel chested, moustached grandee of a man swept out of the office and picked up Blackbird in a bear-hug embrace, kissing both her cheeks noisily twice.
"Mmmwa! Mmmwa! It is fantastic you are here. I have something to show you. Have you heard of wave energy stimulation? Do you have a bodyguard now?"
"Gregor, this is Niall. He's helping me with some research and we wanted to pick your brains."
He turned to me and extended a hand. "Gregor Leyonavich, at your service." He wore generous sideburns which almost connected with his moustache. Taking his hand, I shook it firmly and slowly.
Gregor smiled. "Sword callous, right hand, a long weapon and heavy by the feel of it, not a practice weapon and not one of those toys, those lightweight foil things. I was joking about the bodyguard, Blackbird, but maybe this is not a funny joke?"
I glanced at Blackbird.
"Sherlock Holmes is one of Gregor's heroes. He observes everyone and everything," she said.
"Sherlock Holmes never existed. He was a fictional character," I pointed out.
"Quite so, but in his genius, Conan Doyle invented the ultimate rationalist," said Gregor, "sceptical about everything but assuming nothing, evaluating all possible alternatives. You have muscle underneath that jacket, which means you work at it. Your weight is balanced towards your toes, so you have been trained. You are no amateur, I think. Your right shoulder is higher than your left, which implies a bias to one side, so not a master swordsman, but very competent. Not often you come across a trained swordsman these days. But when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever you have left, no matter how unlikely, is the truth."
"In my experience the truth is in the eye of the beholder," I said.
"Well said, my friend, but without truth we cannot have beauty, which brings me back to the delightful Veronica. My dear, they told me you had sold your soul to the Americans."
"I'm back for a little while," said Blackbird, "but I am not advertising my presence. I have no wish to get sucked back into academic rivalry."
"An overrated occupation at best," agreed Gregor. "Come, let me show you my wave energy demonstrator." He gestured across the lab to a machine in the corner. "One day, machines like this will power entire cities."
He went to a bank of switches and relays on the wall and clicked on a pair of large red switches. Boxes began to hum and lights flashed on displays. A laptop computer stopped showing screensaver pictures and began displaying a graph with flat-line red and green readings.
"The matter we wanted to discuss…" said Blackbird.
"A moment only, I promise," interrupted Gregor. "This is impressive; wait and see."
An orange indicator turned to green and Gregor threw a switch with a flourish. A laser emitted a blue-white beam which was split by a half-silvered mirror and bounced around various prisms before hitting another pair of prisms which brought the beams together again into a single beam aimed at a detector. Gregor carefully adjusted an instrument that was receiving the beam.
The prisms and the mirror were inscribed with odd symbols — It made me wonder what his native language was. Something Eastern European by the sound of it.
"Watch the display," he said. "The red one shows total energy input while the blue one shows the energy released."
The lines on the graph started to climb until they levelled off about half-way up the screen, the red line on top indicating that energy input exceeded energy released by about a third again. A digital read-out measured the difference at just over minus twenty-seven percent.
"This is the default state. The gaps between the lines indicate the energy used by the system," he explained.
"Gregor, this isn't what we came to talk to you about," said Blackbird.
Gregor ignored her, intent on the rig. "Now," he said, "I'm using microwave transmitters to introduce harmonics into the beams."
He turned a dial and the blue line began to climb towards the red.
"That's just increasing the energy input to the system," I pointed out.
"It would be if the beams were absorbing energy from the microwaves," he argued, "but that's not what's happening. The energy in the microwaves is all accounted for in the measurements. There's no direct transference, or rather there is, but it's already been subtracted from the read-out."
The red line rose slowly as he increased the input, but the blue line rose faster, until it passed the red line and stabilised above it. The read-out said plus eleven point two percent.
"You must have an energy source that's not accounted for," I stated.
Blackbird kicked my ankle hard enough to get my attention. "What Niall meant to say is that we have a question we'd like your view on."
"No," he ignored Blackbird again. "It's all in the measurements. What's more, you can increase the input to the laser, and the percentage yield stays constant without increasing the microwave input." He adjusted the input to the laser and the blue line climbed even further away from the red one.
"That's not possible." I was sure I was right. "Energy has to come from somewhere."
"Niall. You're only encouraging him," said Blackbird.
"You're missing something, surely?" The experiment was interesting, but there had to be a source for the increased energy. It couldn't come from nowhere. It was a long time since I'd done any physics, but it was a basic law of the universe that you don't get something for nothing.
"That's what I thought," said Gregor, "but I'm damned if I can find it." He flipped the master switch and the system clicked off. The lines on the laptop dropped to nothing. "What was it you wanted to ask me?"
Blackbird glared at me, but I shrugged. He was clearly enthusiastic about his experiment. What harm could it do to let him demonstrate it?
"A couple of items were stolen recently," she explained, "and I thought you might be able to tell us what their significance might be."
"What sort of items?"
"A key from an Anglo-Saxon burial mound and a tail feather from a raven," I told him.
His eyebrows lifted. "Not the usual sort of thing," he stated. "What makes you think these thefts are related?"
"They were stolen at the same time," said Blackbird, "from the same place."
"The Tower of London?" said Gregor.
"How did you know that?" I asked.
"Give me another instance where ravens and keys are kept in the same place," he said. "I cannot think of one. Besides, your question answered mine."
"What do you think, Gregor? What are they doing with these things?" asked Blackbird.
"You haven't mentioned jewels, so I assume they didn't succeed in stealing those?"
"As far as we can tell," I said, "they didn't even try to steal them. They used the jewels as a distraction but then went for things that are worthless."
"They are only worthless to someone who does not value them," said Gregor.
"And you would?" asked Blackbird.
"Perhaps. A key and a feather are both potent symbols. A key is for opening, and as a symbol of secrets — things locked away. A feather is also a symbol. The Egyptians believed that the feather represented truth, and that in the afterlife their hearts would be weighed by their gods against a feather of Maat."
"Maat?" I asked.
"The essence of truth, usually represented by an ostrich feather."
"This was a the tail feather of a raven, not an ostrich," Blackbird pointed out.
"But the symbology may transfer," said Gregor. "Symbols are all about the power you invest in them. They could have taken a feather from an old hat, and it would still be a feather, but because there was nothing invested in it, it would have little power."
"So the fact that this feather was stolen from the Tower of London gives it power?"
"In a sense, yes, perhaps."
"So what is it for, Gregor? Why do they need a feather and a key?"
Gregor rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. "I do not know," he said finally. "I am not aware of any rituals that would use just those symbols. They are too ambiguous — too loose, do you see?"
"I'm not sure I do," said Blackbird.
"Most magic is the art of converting something you don't want into something you do," he explained.
"Like alchemy," I suggested, "transforming lead into gold."
"A simple matter. You sell the lead to someone who needs it and they give you money, which you turn into gold."
"That's cheating," I said.
"Is it? Or is it simply using a path which people who do not think do not see? Much of magic is like that — trading one thing for another."
"You make it sound ordinary," I said.
"True magic, though, is very much rarer. In true magic you extend the bounds of the universe to include the infinite, where limits become meaningless and therefore exchanging one thing for another becomes like getting something for nothing. You can appear to get more out than you put in, like my wave energy demonstrator. If I am right, it is drawing power from the universe itself, and therefore exhibits a resource which is, for our purposes, limitless."
"So is it science or magic?" I asked.
"A great question," said Gregor. "You must tell me when you have the answer. A feather and a key? They have no unifying symbology, no theme to draw upon. They do not in themselves define the boundaries of anything."
"You're saying they are insufficient in themselves?" said Blackbird.
"Indeed I am, Veronica. Much of logical deduction is not knowing the answers, but knowing the right question."
"What's the right question?" I asked her.
She grinned at Gregor. "What else have they taken?" "Correct," he said.