Angela's house looked like any other semi-detached built between the wars. It had bay windows and a small arched porch sheltering the front door. There were pins for the gate-hinges in the brick wall where the short driveway emerged into the road but unlike its neighbours, the iron gates which had originally fronted the other houses had been removed.
The house had skipped the fashion for whitewashed rendering and survived as plain brick. As I walked along the opposite side of the road I noted the net curtains hung for privacy, the shrubs in the front garden which had been recently pruned and the brass padlock on the side gate. It suggested cared-for and careful. There was no car on the front drive, but that was true of many of these houses in the middle of the day. It didn't tell me whether there was anyone home.
Strengthening my glamour, I diverted attention away as I reached the end of the street, then crossed to the other side. Reversing my course, I walked back towards the house. The gardens at the rear backed onto one another, providing a possible escape route for me, as well as for her. I wondered what Garvin would do in these circumstances, but then he rarely did anything this trivial and he didn't work alone. He'd have another Warder backing him up at least.
I began to wish I'd asked one of the other Warders to come with me and watch the back of the house; no amount of magic meant you could be in two places at one time. Still, this job didn't warrant a team. It shouldn't need more than one Warder for a lone woman with no history of violence. More than that would simply scare her, and scared people were irrational and dangerous — there was no reason to turn this into a fight.
Reaching the house again, I looked for signs of occupation. There were empty milk bottles on the step, but they could have been there for days. All the windows were shut, and given the heat of the day that would indicate that no one was home. Maybe I could let myself in and wait for Angela to return.
Movement at the upstairs window caught my eye — not empty then. There was a vague figure behind the net curtains. With my glamour concealing me I should not stand out, even for someone watchful. I continued walking until I reached the end of the street.
With the house occupied, it was more complicated. I couldn't guarantee it was Angela and I wasn't sure if there was more than one occupant. It increased the risk and added uncertainty. I could sneak around the back and try and see who was in, but I had no way of knowing whether she might have set wardings around the back of the house in case of unwanted visitors. The front was safer; anyone could approach the house from the front — milkman, postman, cold-callers. It made sense to stay where the traffic was.
I turned back on myself again, wondering if any of the houses opposite were unoccupied. I could let myself in to one of those and watch Angela's house from across the road. As I reached the house I noticed a change. In the front downstairs window of the house there was a white rectangle in the window. As I got closer I could see that a sheet of paper had been taped to the glass. On it was written, 'What are you waiting for?'
So much for stealth.
I brought the sword alongside my leg allowing my glamour to conceal it. If necessary I could draw it quickly. I turned into the drive.
As I reached the front door it opened. Angela's face appeared in the gap.
"Oh, thank goodness you're here," she said.
I glanced behind me, wondering if I was being followed by someone else. I was alone.
"You'd better come in, the kettle has just boiled," she added.
This was turning into a strange day.
She opened the door wider and allowed me into the dimly lit hallway. After the heat and brightness of the summer day outside, the cool of the tiled hall was welcome. Angela was careful to keep her distance.
"Shut the door, you'll let the heat in."
I pushed it closed behind me, wondering momentarily if I'd just entered a trap. My hand slid down to the hilt of my sword.
"Come through, I'm making tea, if that's OK?"
It didn't sound like much of a threat, so I followed her down the hall to the kitchen at the back. It would once have been small, but someone had put in a joist and opened it into the sitting room next door to make a kitchen-diner. There was a large French door looking out over a meticulously cultivated garden. After the dark of the hall it was light and airy, and still much cooler than outside.
"Is it?" she asked.
"What?"
"Is tea OK, or would you prefer something cold."
"A cold drink would be fine."
"I have some home-made lemonade if you would like?"
"Great. Thanks."
I watched as she opened the tall fridge and took a jug from the shelf.
"You knew I was coming?" I asked.
She glanced up, hesitantly, and smiled. "I thought you'd be here earlier." She poured the cloudy liquid into a glass and then added a spoon of sugar. "It's a little tart," she said.
"You know who I am?"
"I've known ever since I touched you in the isolation units under Porton Down. Take a seat." She gestured to the chairs around the dining table.
"I'd rather stand." I glanced at the chairs. "You knew I'd say that?"
She shook her head. "That's not how it works, but you already know that."
Placing the glass on the table beside me, she returned to the kettle and made herself a cup of tea.
"Lovely house," I said.
She smiled as she added milk to the tea, moving around the kitchen, watching me from the corner of her eye.
"Have you been here long?"
"I was born here. My mother had me in the bedroom upstairs. I was a home delivery."
"Is your mother here now?"
"She died."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"
"It was a long time ago. She was an old lady."
I watched her reaction. "How old?"
"She was in her nineties, so she had a good span. I think she held on for grandchildren. Not to be, I'm afraid."
"You're married?"
"No. There's just me if that's what you're worrying about. You won't be needing a sword."
"What makes you think there's a sword?" I thought I had concealed it. I had been practicing carrying it without anyone noticing.
"It's in your posture. You stand like a dancer, but you're not here to dance."
I tried to look more relaxed without relaxing. I didn't work. "So you live here alone?"
"Company would be nice, but it's difficult finding someone who…" She shook her head. "Touch isn't really…" She looked up. "It's very limiting. I'm sure you understand. Even animals seem to pick it up."
I sipped the lemonade, looking out of the window at the garden, realising that she must spend a lot of time there. Plants were so much less complicated than people. They were living things you could touch without sparking visions of other people's lives.
"You'll start to remember soon," she remarked.
"Remember what?"
"What I saw, in the rooms under Porton Down. I've given you the memory."
"You've given it to me? How?"
"It's in the lemonade."
I looked down into the translucent liquid, then put the glass back on the table, wondering what she had poisoned me with and how long I had.
"It's only a memory, not the full experience. I stirred it in with the sugar."
"Why?"
"Because I want you to understand what I saw. Think back, there's a memory that's not your own."
I thought back to the night Raffmir and I broke into Porton Down, to the people we had killed and those we had saved.
I remembered the rooms with glass walls reinforced with iron wire. I could see myself taking the key from the nurse's hand, the swish of the blade, the spatter of blood across the glass, the slowing ooze as the blood ran down the glass, black and glossy in the dim light.
Strangely I can see both sides of the glass.
I remember the sudden trepidation that the dark figures would kill me too, followed by the realisation that we were being set free. These were not my memories. I could see myself through another's eyes; a shadowed outline under the faded safety lights.
The key is turned; hope outweighs my fear while my heart pounds in my chest. I edge closer; the overwhelming urge to touch. My hand finds its way to his cheek. I am momentarily blinded, a piercing light — so much brightness — then darkness and an afterimage, a rising sun. The sun will rise, and they shall fall. I can hear myself saying it.
The image of the sunrise is burned into my retina. My logical mind says that it could be a sunset, but my power knows different. I stumble away down the corridor, away from the man. I can barely see. My eyes fill with a searing light that hasn't happened yet…
I blinked, vaguely disorientated by the foreign memory. I couldn't escape the feeling that something alien was planted there.
"How can I have your memory? Can you remove it?" I said.
"The memory? Now that would be interesting, wouldn't it? If I could make you forget things, how could you trust your mind? I could make you forget why you're here, where you came from, who you are." She shook her head, "No, I can't remove it."
"You could have just told me."
"Do you know what it means?" she asked.
"Some of it. The light could have been me. There was a helicopter spraying bullets onto the roof. I created the light to destroy it."
"I saw the aftermath when I left. What about the rest of it? The sun will rise and they shall fall. What does it mean?"
"I was hoping you were going to tell me," I said.
"Come with me." She went into the hall. "Come on, I won't bite."
I followed her upstairs, careful to keep the sword where I could draw it if I needed to. There was a landing at the top, a bathroom and two bedrooms. At the front of the house was a closed door. A small sign on the door said, Caution! Woman at Work.
She stood with her hand on the door. "I was a writer, you know? Freelance; mainly brochures and advertising copy, before all this."
"All what?" I asked.
"The facility at Porton Down. Did you know I volunteered? Initially they took volunteers. We were treated better than the other inmates, though that changed towards the end."
"I'm surprised you went, given that you must have known what would happen there."
"Oh I had a fair idea what they meant to do, but it was that or be taken there. It was going to happen anyway. Easier on me if I went willingly. It's all in here."
"What is?"
"See for yourself."
She pushed open the door and stepped back, leaving me room to come forward. It opened into a small room at the front that had been converted into a study. There was a desk and chair, a pile of books and notepads — an ancient looking computer and keyboard had been pushed to one side. A desk lamp stood on one corner angled down so it wouldn't dazzle.
The walls were covered in notes of every size, colour and shape. Every patch of wall-space had been tagged with stickynotes of different colours, pieces of ruled paper pinned to the wall, fragments torn from pads. I pushed the door open further. They were on every wall, as high as she could reach.
"What's it all for?" I asked.
"It starts on the wall behind the door," she said. "See for yourself."
I hesitated.
"It's OK," she said. "I won't lock you in there. There'd be no point."
I stepped into the room and pulled the door back from the wall, trying to discern what I was looking at. Some were scribbled notes, others inscribed in calligraphic letters. To begin with, most were notes on lined paper, carefully cut from the page, but as they progressed around the room they degraded to pages torn from books, scraps of newspaper, napkins, pieces of cereal packet.
There were random images scattered amongst the notes. Some were instant scribbles, like the moon and stars on a sticky-note, others carefully sketched, like an engraved medieval sun, shining down beneficently. Initially it was chaotic, but then themes started to emerge.
The phrase, the sun will rise, was scattered throughout, but as the notes became more frantic, the writing became less legible.
After that the fragments became more diverse with pieces I recognised. The words, Gauntlet Runner, written over a newspaper photograph surrounded by pictures of rabbits cut or torn from magazines — cartoon rabbits, rabbit symbols, photos of rabbits. In another there were dogs of all different shapes and sizes. One section had spikes, nails and all manner of pins and the distinctive curve of horseshoes.
"What's it all for?" I asked her, where she stood outside the door watching me scan around the room.
"I've written nothing except this since I came back," she said, "I can't pick up a pen without this coming out. I dream it, I find myself repeating it when I'm cooking, I end up humming it to myself. Nails, rabbits, stars, the rising sun. It's all I can think of since I touched you."
Her manner was becoming more anxious. Her tone was clipped and she pushed her hand through her hair. "It's in my head and I can't get rid of it, God knows I've tried. I need you to tell me what it means. I've been waiting for you to come so you can tell me what it means."
She was rubbing her hands together, dry-washing them.
"I don't know what it means."
She must have heard the slight hesitation in my voice. "But you suspect."
"I recognise some of it. I doesn't make any sense, though."
"Tell me."
"I'm not sure it helps."
"Tell me!" She reached for me and my sword was in my hand. We faced each other, her outstretched hand close to the edge of the blade. She met my eyes.
"Are you going to use that on me?"
"If I have to."
"You can't imagine what it's like. It's driving me to the edge. If you can tell me what it means then maybe it will leave me alone. If you're here to kill me, then do it. It'll be a mercy."
"I'm not here to kill you."
"Then tell me what you know, or you might as well use that sword before I kill myself."
I glanced again at the walls. "A lot of it is about me, I think."
"What about you?"
"The rabbits — I'm called Rabbit by some, Dogstar by others…"
"Sirius — that's the dogstar isn't it? I have a picture of Orion on the wall there. Sirius is below it — look there."
"There's a ceremony with nails and horseshoes. It's an ancient ritual."
"I have nails — horseshoes too, what's it got to do with you?"
"I was involved with it, last year. It was going wrong but we fixed it."
"This is all about you…" her eyes tracked around the walls.
"I don't know what the rising sun means, but it's come up more than once — not just with you but with other people. Maybe whatever it means hasn't happened yet."
"Will you let me touch you?"
"No."
"Just for a moment. I swear I won't harm you."
"What for?"
"I just need to see… maybe I'll be able to say what it means. It could help you."
"It could make it worse," I said.
"I don't think so." She gave that nervous shake of the head again.
I watched her and realised how thin the veneer of sanity was, and how close she was to doing something stupid. I couldn't leave her like this, not when it was my fault.
"I have a proposal," I said.
We arrived at the High Court without warning, which might not have been the best idea. Amber was in the room where the Ways terminated, sword drawn as she realised I was not alone.
"Who's this?" she asked.
"A guest — my guest." I glanced at the sword, and she lowered the point minutely.
"You're not supposed to bring visitors, Dogstar."
Angela was looking around wildly, disorientated by the unexpected landing.
"She's not a visitor. Garvin told me to bring them in, well here's one of them. Angela, this is Amber. You can trust her. She'll protect you."
Angela glanced warily at Amber, who raised an eyebrow minutely.
Angela looked around. "Where are we?"
"Somewhere safe. I need you to stay with Amber for a moment while I make arrangements. Will you do that? Just don't touch her or anything."
"I won't touch her," said Angela. "She wears death like a shroud."
"Great," said Amber. "One of those."
I led Angela away from the centre of the floor in case anyone else tried to use the Way. Collisions were unlikely, but it wasn't a good place to stand. I led her so she could lean against the wall and I watched her take in her surroundings.
"How do you feel?" I asked her.
"I'm fine — that's quite a ride."
"It's exhilarating to start with, but you'll tire quite quickly. It takes it out of you."
"I went hill walking once, in the Lake District. We came down a scree slope and everything started sliding. Travelling on the Way — it was like that, only more so."
"Sit down here, against the wall. I'll only be a few moments. I just need to let people know that you're here and get you somewhere to stay.
"I'm not staying."
"We'll see. It'll be OK."
She slid down the wall, crossing her legs and watched Amber warily. Amber made a point of not watching her, leaning against the wall, closing in on herself. I had seen her stand like that for hours without moving, but with the potential to strike at any moment. No wonder Angela watched her.
I left them and went up into the house, searching for Garvin. I found him in the hall talking to Fellstamp.
"Dogstar. I was just coming to see you."
"You were? I only just got back."
"Yes, and you brought someone with you. Fellstamp, go and give Amber a hand, would you? I need a brief word with Niall."
Fellstamp grinned at me as he passed. There was no sign in his movements of where I had run his shoulder through with a sword during my initiation as a Warder. The old swagger was back and his dark curly hair fell across his eyes, which sparkled under his fringe with amusement. To me his nose was too broad, his lips too full, but I also knew that among the female Stewards he was considered very attractive. It was rumoured that he'd slept with most of them.
"I'll go keep our guest company, then, shall I?" He executed a neat half turn that kept him facing me as he passed, and as I came between him and Garvin, he winked. He spun back neatly and walked the way I had come.
"What's up with him?" I asked Garvin.
"Hard to say," said Garvin, "Our visitor wouldn't be female, would she?"
"How did you know that?"
"You know how Fellstamp loves to flirt."
"I don't think Angela's his type."
"I didn't know Fellstamp had a type. So she's called Angela. What's her affinity?"
"I didn't ask. She's like Kareesh, though, she can see the future, or possible futures."
"Earth and Fire then. I'll arrange for an audience with Teoth for her. Is she house-trained?"
"What does that mean?"
"Is she dangerous? Do we need to lock her up?"
"No, she's fine. I need to do something, though. She's had a vision and I think it's about me. She wants to touch me, but I didn't want to do it alone."
"You're going to let an untrained seer touch you?"
"The sun will rise, and they shall fall."
Garvin gazed steadily at my eyes. "She said that?"
"Not just said it. She has diagrams of it and poems of it. She draws it and dreams it. It's all over the walls of her office. She's been able to write nothing else since she encountered me in the cells under Porton Down."
"OK. I'll have her brought up to the drawing room."
"That was too easy. You've heard that phrase before."
"Perhaps."
"There's no perhaps about it, Garvin. Blackbird told me that Deefnir used exactly that phrase when he cornered her at Highsmith's Farm."
"Then you are well-informed, Dogstar." His use of my Warder nickname was intended to remind me of my position as newest and most junior of the Warders.
"It's not just there, though is it? You already knew about it."
"You're guessing, Dogstar." He led off towards the drawing room.
"It's a good guess, though, isn't it?"
"Perhaps. Let's see what your seer has to say."
"You'd better sit on the floor. You can't fall off that," said Garvin.
Angela stood in the doorway, watching Fellstamp move the dust-sheeted armchairs back and create some space in the middle of the disused room. Amber drew back the drapes and let the sun back-light the lace curtains. It should have made the room warm and inviting, so why did I feel cold?
Perhaps it was the memory of when Kareesh had held my hands in the tunnels beneath Covent Garden Underground Station, gifting me with a vision of my future, or at least my probable future. It had set me on a path that saved me from a gruesome death at the hands of the Seventh Court, but left me wondering how much was preordained and how much was down to chance, or fate, or decisions that I or the people around me made.
Blackbird said that the future was uncertain, that even seers could not predict — they could only show you the points on your path that were most likely to occur. My last attempt at this with Kareesh had worked out for me — I had escaped the Untainted and found a place in the courts — maybe that's why I was willing to give Angela a chance. There was a risk, but by doing it here in the presence of the other Warders that risk was limited.
Garvin's reaction bothered me. He had been all about business as usual until I mentioned what Angela had said, and then he had become interested. If I had proposed letting Angela touch me in normal circumstances then the answer would have been no, I was sure. I was expecting to have to persuade him, to argue my case. Instead he had agreed almost without discussion and made immediate arrangements. He caught me watching him across the room and I looked away. I never had any doubt that Garvin was trustworthy, that he had the best interests of the Courts and the Warders at the centre of everything he did. I just wondered how much of that included me.
"Sit here," Garvin said to Angela.
A clear path had been created for her to take a seat in the middle of the rug. The other Warders kept a wary distance from her. No weapons were displayed, but after her words about my stance and posture I noticed that the other Warders moved in a similar way. It wasn't that they danced, but that they looked like they could dance, or they were ready to dance. Perhaps that's what training as a Warder did to you. I smiled to myself for a moment, wondering whether I should actually learn to dance and whether Blackbird would like that. Would she dance with me, I wondered?
Garvin must have caught my smile. "Looking forward to this?"
"Not especially. Too late to back out now, though, eh?"
"You don't have to do it if you don't want to. It was your idea."
"So it was."
"Gain as much knowledge and insight into your enemy before you make contact," said Garvin. "It's a sound approach."
"What enemy, Garvin? What am I looking for?"
"That's what we're trying to find out." He squeezed my shoulder in a gesture of reassurance.
Once again I thought that there was more that he was avoiding telling me. It would do no good to ask, though. He would tell me when he thought I needed to know.
I sat cross-legged opposite Angela, about a hand-width apart. She smiled reassuringly, but I could see she was nervous. She kept glancing at the Warders around the room, assessing distance, looking back at me, seeking reassurance herself.
"Do you still want to do this?" I asked her.
"I don't have any choice."
"There's always a choice." I found myself echoing Blackbird's words and smiled at the irony.
Angela smiled back, taking it as a positive sign. She reached out to touch my cheek, but I shook my head. I held out my hands, palms upward and open, forearms resting on my knees. "Trust me, this is how it's done."
She looked at my hands and then positioned hers above them. "Ready?"
"No one ever is," I told her.
Her hands clasped mine.
Cold rushes down my arms — I thought I remembered the cold from last time, but my memory was blunted. It sears and burns through my veins, running like rivers of quicksilver, killing sensation. My eyes blur with tears and my teeth grind together until my jaw aches. Humming vibrates through me, a note so low I can feel it in my bones.
There is Angela behind the glass screen, reinforced with iron wire, her face illuminated in the pale nimbus-glow surrounding me. Blood slashes across the glass, running down in black rivulets, and the door is open. Her hand touches my cheek and her eyes fill with light.
"The sun will rise and they shall fall." This is not the future, it's the past.
The world spins and I fall, plummeting into a funnel which narrows so that I am rushing down a tunnel, twisting and buffeting, this way and that, until I stop, suddenly and immediately, standing in the room below Covent Garden Underground Station in the dim orange glow from the lamps with the smell of new turned earth and recent rain. Kareesh sits in her nest of cushions, reaching for me, grinning with pointed teeth.
I looked around for Blackbird, but she isn't here. Gramawl looms in the background at the edge of the lights from the filigree lanterns hung from the ceiling. Blackbird was here when this happened and Gramawl wasn't, why isn't she here now?
Kareesh speaks in her crackly voice, "Here you are at last, gauntlet runner, witness and suspect, evader of traps, bringer of hope. Rabbit will be your name, but not for always. Another name will be yours, Dogstar, when you have earned it." She reaches forward and touches my face. "The sun will rise and they shall fall. So say I."
"So say I." My eyes are glazed as I hear my voice acknowledge hers, but that's not what happened. She never called me Dogstar — that happened later when Raffmir named me at the anvil under the Strand. Are we changing the past?
There's a cawing sound behind me and I turn to look. I am outside, a path leads up through a graveyard to an ornate archway with a wooden door of grey bleached wood. The arch over the door is carved with impossible creatures, serpents, griffins and manticores, the carved face of a man with ivy growing from his mouth stares down at me. The door swings open and two men stand before the door speaking in low tones.
"The work is completed?" The first is tall, dressed as a priest.
"It is done, though why you need such protection on God's house is beyond me, Father." The second looks worried. He has the tan of a man who works outside. His hands are rough and criss-crossed with old scars.
The priest clasps the man's wrist. "Never speak of it. Understand?"
"I still say, it ain't right," says the man.
"He moves in mysterious ways, and we are His servants. This will stand well for you in the life to come," says the priest.
"I hope so, vicar. I surely hope so."
As the door closes, everything is inside out and I am in a tall room lined with books. Shelves vanish into the dimness on all sides. A dark-haired man sits at a desk, a lamp at either side. Open in front of him is a book, its pages brown at the edges, the paper as thin as tissue. Each facing page has three intricate symbols aligned down each page and between them is a central design which spans the join. The symbols shiver and squirm on the page but the central design is clear, a circle containing four symmetrical shields arranged in a cross. The symbols have text beside them in the tiniest writing. I squint to see what they say, but my eyes blur and the text runs into grey.
The grey resolved into mist. I begin to see that there are people around me. There is a noise I recognise, the distant squeal of brakes and hum of an electric train. The mist pulls back revealing a London Underground platform crowded with people.
I have been here before.
The train is getting close, I can hear the clack and rumble as it approaches. I am standing in the same spot as on the morning I first learned about my fey heritage, on the same platform with the same people. On that morning, the man beside me fell deliberately onto the tracks as the train reached the platform. He committed suicide by tube train.
I look at the person next to me, but it's not the same man. It's a skinny boy with spiky hair. He glances at me with knowing eyes and then at the approaching train. He looks calm, relaxed. I look back to where the train is clattering onto the platform. Aware of what is going to happen I turned back to the figure next to me to find him wreathed in fire. Long curling yellow flames ripple up his arms, his clothes smoke, his face shimmers in the haze. No one else notices, no one steps back from the heat that radiates from him.
He steps around and stands on the edge with his back to the track, looking at me, his eyes filled with orange fire. He extended his burning hand to me. I lift my hand to take his, but the heat from his hand is incredible.
"It's too hot!" I tell him. My hand blisters as it nears his. I can't take his hand.
"How can you save me," he asks calmly, falling slowly backwards into the path of the train, "when you can't even save yourself?"