Андреа Хёст - The Pyramids of London

“Why would there be a tunnel, new or otherwise?”

Eluned started to explain the rumours of underground passages, then broke off as the entire wall between the two racks swung in. Griff let out a crow of triumph and plunged forward, but Eluned managed to catch hold of his collar.

“Could be traps,” Eleri said, winding faster in an attempt to boost the inadequate beam of the torch. “Or vampires.”

“There’s no-one in there,” Aunt Arianne said, with a confidence that spoke of night vision and an awareness of blood. “I rather think you’ve found the hidden safe.”

“Safe? This is a whole room!”

Griff wriggled loose, and no traps stopped his excited progress. Aunt Arianne went to find a better light, and they were both proven right, for it was a safe the size of a room, and was full of treasures. Boxes of jewellery. A little cabinet of delicate ornaments. A drawer containing neat stacks of banknotes. A chest of sovereigns. And whorled, golden evidence of the long connection between Forest House and the Great Forest.

“We could have a dragonfly,” Griff said, struggling to lift an amasen horn the size of a pumpkin, far larger than any they’d seen on their visit to the Great Forest. “We could have a dragonfly each .”

“They did look rather fun, didn’t they?” Aunt Arianne said, with an odd note to her voice, but then she added briskly: “I’ll have to do a proper inventory. For now, however, there’s a few matters I wish to discuss, and there’s an hour or less until sunset—presuming that’s relevant.”

That meant she wanted to go to Hurlstone to talk: surely the safest place, even though there weren’t likely to be any raven eavesdroppers in the cellar. Ignoring protests, Eluned chivvied her reluctant siblings into shutting away the hoard and heading upstairs.

“That all belongs to us, to you, right?” Griff asked. “That’s what he said.”

“Dem Makepeace owns this house and all its contents,” Aunt Arianne said, her attention on the roofs surrounding the grove as she lowered her inevitable veil. “He has given me disposition of it, which is not technically the same thing as it belonging to me. Though I expect it will feel much the same in practice.”

Eluned followed her gaze, and then nudged Eleri, for a line of eight ravens had hopped forward to the edge of the roof on the left, where the trees were thinnest, bobbing and watching.

Griff, noticing, made a rude gesture. “Sneaky snitches.”

“Folies aren’t driving them off?” Eleri asked.

“That spot must give them enough time to get away.” Eluned considered hunting for a rock and trying her arm, but Aunt Arianne didn’t linger, heading for the gate. “Maybe the Order always spies, and ravens are why it’s called Hurlstone.”

“Since before London?” Griff shook his head.

The bite mark on Aunt Arianne’s hand had healed by the previous evening, but she still called the key without difficulty. Eluned stepped eagerly into the lead as her aunt closed the gate behind them, and they slipped through the shielding trees into a sun-drenched afternoon.

Drinking in drowsy perfection, Eluned gazed around at drystone walls and scatters of flowers against a backdrop of trees. But all her satisfaction dropped immediately away because the broken pillar that should hold an automaton was empty.

“Where—?” Eleri began, then wasted no more words, hunting for any sign of the missing experiment.

“Look for the amasen,” Aunt Arianne suggested. “Dem Makepeace said it would stay here on guard. Perhaps it rained, and the amasen put Monsieur Doré somewhere dry.”

Wondering if a snake would know anything about rust, Eluned gazed vainly around. They spread out through Hurlstone, even Griff daring the possibility of lurking wildlife, and it was he who called out: “Here!” only a short time later. Eluned hurried between waist-high walls, and spotted him standing with the statue—the vampire in rept.

A block of stone rested in the grass a few feet to one side of the vampire, and the automaton was seated on this, paddle-like hands arranged neatly on the stone either side of its narrow thighs, and its metal-jointed ankles crossed. The wooden head was tilted back, as if it was gazing up at the stone girl.

“Would the amasen pose it like that?” Eluned asked doubtfully, as Aunt Arianne and Eleri came up.

“Think it walked?” Eleri reached for the automaton, but Aunt Arianne touched her arm.

“Let’s wait. We can talk here, and see if it reacts to us at all. Any sign of the amasen?”

Griff indicated with his chin the exact opposite side of the square of grass from him, and sunlight on gold led the eye to the horned snake, basking in the sun on the highest point of the surrounding wall.

Aunt Arianne inclined her head formally, and they all awkwardly followed her lead, and then sat down with her in the grass, ending up in a rough circle with the stone vampire and the automaton, as if all six of them were having a meeting.

“That was Lynsey,” Aunt Arianne announced. “Leaving as you arrived.”

So much had been happening that Eluned had almost forgotten the one solid lead they’d hoped to pursue—the person who had brought the artificial fulgite commission to their parents. She had barely looked at the tall, blond woman.

“Right one?” Eleri asked.

“Impossible to say. She did not react to me—or to sight of you—with any obvious awareness or guilt. But she has a very interesting connection to pursue.”

Unhurriedly, Aunt Arianne took them from Lynsey Blair to Lord Fennington, a person Eluned had heard of mainly for hosting dinner parties on the Tamesas during the autumn feastings. But he apparently funded a great deal of scientific research, and so they agreed it was a good idea to pretend to be interested in going to his school.

“Can we take Melly?” Eleri asked, unexpectedly.

“Melly’s left school,” Eluned said, surprised. “Why would we take her?”

“Because she’s left school. I asked Nabah about it. Melly loves words. She writes poetry. But Melly thinks that she has to look after the store for her father, even though Dem Ktai would far rather she did something she loved. Melly says she can write poetry anywhere.”

“But that’s true.”

“I don’t need to keep up school to make automatons. You don’t need to go to that atelier you keep talking about: you can draw already. But you know that to keep on alone would be like leaving yourself still a sketch. Half the person you could be, a plant that never got enough water. Why should Melly not be everything she could be because the Crown only pays for schooling until you’re sixteen?”

“How does taking her to this Tangleways place help? If it’s a boarding school, won’t it be more expensive than the school she was already going to?”

“So? We can pay her fees. It’s not like we can’t afford it.”

Eleri waved a hand to encompass a distant room crammed with treasures, but Eluned looked instead at their aunt, ominously silent behind her veil. Would being suddenly rich loosen previously tight purse-strings? Or make her worse?

“I suspect you overlook the small matter of pride, Eleri,” Aunt Arianne said, voice quiet but at least not sounding annoyed. “I have no objection to you inviting your friends along on a trip to the country, however. I expect you’ll all find a visit to Tangleways enjoyable. The original house was inherited by a brother and sister who spent the rest of their lives competing with extravagant extensions and outbuildings. And then the whole thing passed on to a man of a very odd and secretive nature. It sat empty for a long time after his death.”

That word brought them all up against the thing that none of them had spoken of, but which had filled their minds ever since they had returned home. It was Griff who asked, in a shy voice very unlike his usual manner.