Андреа Хёст - The Pyramids of London

“Kites,” Eleri said, and they gave full attention to bright points of colour rising above rooftops. Eluned’s mood remained as high as the dancing scraps of silk until she noticed the area they were moving into, which was full of tidily-kept but very compact houses. This did not bode well for an expansive garden.

“Do you worry about your fulgite getting stolen?” Griff was asking their driver.

“Not from Ha and Mu here. With hummingbirds, all you need do is lift up the driver’s seat and do some sharp work with a crowbar, but these old models are a good deal sturdier.”

“Is that why you keep it?” Griff had his head thrust between Mama Lu and Eleri’s shoulders. “I can’t remember the last time we rode in one.”

“Not many of them about any more, duck. Too much maintenance. Too noisy. Never did make much sense in the first place, but that’s Romans for you—the show’s half the point. I keep Ha and Mu for old time’s sake. I got my start driving for First Minister Halned, and when he retired he gave me his autocarriage. Gave me a big step up, that did.” Mama Lu let out a satisfied sigh, then added: “Turn right up here, duck, and we’ll be on Vine Street.”

Eleri, always quick to master anything mechanical, turned neatly, and a long stretch of terraces opened before them. Well maintained, but many looking as if they had no garden at all, or only a tiny yard. Down at the end of the street, though, taller buildings loomed on the right, and Eluned eyed them hopefully as they rolled past a public house.

“That’s the Lyre and Razor,” Mama Lu said. “Run by a pair of sisters. Aquitanian, but none the worse for it. From this cross-street ahead, to our right and one block down, is a grocer and post office. If you need a cab, run down there and if there’s not one waiting ask for one to be sent on. It’s a good neighbourhood, near but not amongst the playhouses, and quiet most weeks, though lively during the solstices, of course.”

She nodded genially toward the green slopes in the near distance, but all Eluned cared about at that moment were the buildings up ahead. Warehouses. Another terraced row facing them, a little less compact than the houses they’d been passing, but lacking more than postage stamp gardens. Despite that inner flatness, she found herself disappointed.

Inevitably, their driver told Eleri to pull up, and Eluned saw her own feelings reflected on Griff’s face, but at least he kept his mouth shut as he contemplated their future.

Take the positive and move on, their mother would say, and so Eluned resolutely admired the fresh paint and clean windows.

As their driver said, “Here we are ducks,” the door of the house Eluned was studying opened, and a girl dressed in a sari of the medical clan the Daughters of Lakshmi stepped through.

Ducking her head at having been caught looking, Eluned turned away. The doors of the warehouse opposite were papered thickly with posters proclaiming the latest offerings of the playhouses, of the Brass Menagerie, of fine soaps, and silks all the way from the Huaxia kingdoms.

“Would you mind waiting until I’m certain we can open the door?” Aunt Arianne asked, as she handed over coin.

“Not a problem, my pet. Fish under the lad’s seat and you’ll find a tool or two you can put to clearing some of that paper away.”

Blinking, Eluned followed the driver’s gesture toward what she had thought a warehouse. Just a blank wall of bricks and an enormous double door, so coated in posters that only the top and bottom were visible. There were no windows until the top third of the building, where squares of glass were protected by stern metal bars.

“Closed up long?” Eleri asked, as Griff fished up a chisel and crowbar from beneath his seat.

“Eight years since Dama Fulbright,” Aunt Arianne murmured, stepping down. “There seems to be a service door built into the right half of the larger one. Shall we see if we can find a keyhole?”

Eluned glanced back at the terrace house in fascinated comparison, and again met the eyes of the Daughter of Lakshmi, who pulled her own door shut and marched off down the street as if to deny any staring.

“Why is it disguised as a warehouse?” Eluned asked Mama Lu.

“The Deep Grove has always been a guarded place.” The driver laughed. “In more ways than one. Ah, it’s a fine thing to have some good news.”

Fired with curiosity, Eluned clambered down to help tear away the layered posters, exposing the person-sized door built into the weighty and very solid larger entrance. Griff eagerly fished the key up from inside his shirt, where he’d been wearing it on a bootlace, and turned it with only a little difficulty. The door didn’t budge, but Eluned and Eleri together dug their fingers in and pulled it free of the grip of old poster glue.

“Rather an oversized vestibule,” Aunt Arianne remarked of the room beyond. “Breach the inner fastness for me.” She gathered up the tools borrowed from Mama Lu and turned back to the autocarriage.

Griff headed to a shadowy second door, and Eluned turned to the one they’d passed through, finding two thick wooden slides.

“Lend me your shoulder, Eleri.”

With the accompaniment of much tearing of paper, they pushed open the two great outer doors, exposing a room the same width as the doors, and around six feet deep. There were benches to either side, racks for shoes, places for umbrellas, and dozens of coat hooks. Dust swam in the air.

“What is this place?” Eluned could not imagine any family needing such an entrance.

The second set of doors were paned with dark glass and far from warehouse-like, though still on the large side. They unlocked easily and glided open when Griff pushed them inward.

His delighted inhalation—followed by an enormous sneeze—told Eluned that the place at least offered something of interest to their architecture-mad brother, and she and Eleri eagerly stepped around him into a hall that filled the whole three stories of what was most certainly not a warehouse.

Two trees of glass. They rose first as leadlight columns then spread, opening fingers of twig and leaf until the entire upper half of the far wall was lost to transparent foliage. Most of it was frosted white, but pale motes of colour glimmered where translucent branches supported flowers, fruit, and tiny birds.

Between the windows of intertwined trees was a third doubled door, a tall pointed arch of dark wood, severe and plain. Again there were sturdy bars, and Griff was already racing to slide them open.

The rest of the hall was empty but for stairs that began halfway back along the walls to either side, and curved up to join a walkway above the vestibule then climbed again to a second walkway. Discreet doors revealed the place extended to either side of the hall.

“And so the Deep Grove?” Aunt Arianne murmured, coming up behind them. “I was expecting trees, but my imagination seems to have fallen short. Lead on, Griff, lead on.”

Griff needed no urging, throwing open the hall’s rear doors, pausing to survey the wealth of greenery, and then letting out a yelp and racing forward along a slate path between the trunks of ash trees.

“Got yourself a garden,” Eleri said.

“More like a forest,” Eluned replied, wondering what about trees had so fired Griff, whose interest in greenery was usually confined to removing any from his plate.

The open doorway was easily wide enough for all three to pause on the heavy stone doorstep. Aunt Arianne lifted her umbrella against the play of sunlight through a canopy of green, and they surveyed a long rectangle bounded on all sides by brick walls over which only the roofs of warehouses rose. The rectangle was divided into two squares by a shorter central wall, and on the near side of the dividing wall the slate path led through comfortably spaced trees and split around a circle of standing stones almost completely buried in a thick spread of purple-crowned thistle.