Андреа Хёст - The Pyramids of London

“Who would be in charge of us? If—if what the dryw said is right?”

Aunt Arianne didn’t answer immediately. Then she reached up and took off her hat and veil, wincing only a little in the deepening haze of the late afternoon light. She wasn’t smiling.

“Tante Sabet,” she said. “Your great-aunt, Sabet d’Lourien. Once things have settled down, I must take you to Lutèce so you can meet her.”

“If you’re alive,” Eleri said, because Eleri of all of them could.

“If I’m alive.” Aunt Arianne glanced up at the girl gazing forever at the sky, and her hand lifted briefly, then she dropped it down. “I own, the shadow of death looms less large when you’ve recently had your throat torn open. Besides, even if that was what he meant, the pronouncements of dryw are not considered inevitabilities, but instead in the nature of warnings and challenges. Did you notice that there were two separate foretellings?”

Griff straightened. “When he pointed?”

“Yes. Nor are either of those foretellings necessarily for a single person, but Keeper Tyse felt quite certain that the visual indication was to make clear that the second was for one or all of us standing inside the house. Possibly still me, of course, but we’d already established that this undertaking had risks. I must teach you three to shoot, once the trunks I’d put into storage arrive.”

Without denying the danger, Aunt Arianne made it all seem far less dramatic, and Eluned felt herself relax even though the acknowledgement hadn’t changed anything at all.

“The first foretelling is the larger problem,” Aunt Arianne added. “The coafor are obliged to report them, you know, though given the audience we had, I wouldn’t be surprised if half the borough is already discussing it over evening meal. Talk of the fate of Albion and a shattered dragon is bound to attract attention—not even counting the Unionist and the aide of Prince Gustav playing witness. That will make quiet investigation a great deal more difficult. Not, I admit, that we’ve succeeded in escaping notice so far. You’ll find when you go upstairs that someone found a way in and started searching the attic, until the folies chased them off. That one bothers me because I didn’t notice them. The attic is on the edge of my ability to sense the living, but I can usually tell when someone’s up there.”

“You think maybe it was a shabti?”

Aunt Arianne smiled at Griff’s eager tone. “I hope not, since that would suggest we’re at risk of a visit from those sphinxes as well. But at any rate it seems safest to leave Monsieur Doré here, and to never discuss things we particularly don’t want overheard anywhere but Hurlstone. How did your tour of the workshops go?”

“Have what parts can be bought now. And recommendation for a foundry able to cast the others. Used up the money.”

Eleri had also bought three vices, and it had been lucky Nabah and Melly had been along to help carry them back. But that surely wasn’t what their aunt had meant.

“There was lots of talk of haunted automata,” Eluned said. “We didn’t have to ask, just listen.”

“They were making it up to impress each other,” Griff put in.

“Maybe. No-one there had seen any automata activing themselves, anyway.” As their own automaton continued to sit unmoving—at least while they were there.

“We’ll go further tomorrow,” Eleri said. “The best workshops are north of the river, near the airship fields. We can look for the one that makes dragonflies.”

But Aunt Arianne was shaking her head.

“No, tomorrow we’ll be clothes shopping. Because the day after, we’re going to the palace to take afternoon tea with Princess Leodhild. And, I hope, hear the results of Dem Makepeace’s investigations in Caerlleon.”

As Aunt Arianne paid the taxi driver, Eluned carefully straightened her new ankle-length shendy and matching split tunic, immensely aware of the guards standing behind soaring gates, and the crowds of sightseers on the enormous paved area in front of Gwyn Lynn Palace. Only visitors for the palace drove up onto this paved area, but they’d normally have the gates opened for them and drive on through, rather than walk.

Griff, the reason for the eccentricity, was indifferent to their audience, clutching his new sketchbook and spinning in a circle to drink in his surroundings, and then keeping on for several further rotations, delighting in the way his long, pleated shendy flared out into a bell. They were all rather pleased with the new clothes. Mother had been impatient with impractical clothing, so the fine cloth and exact tailoring Aunt Arianne deemed necessary for afternoon tea with a princess became a treat in itself.

It was a pity Aunt Arianne still couldn’t quite manage full sunlight, and so looked odd in comparison, though entirely self-possessed as she handed her invitation to the guard standing to the left of the big gates.

“Shall I send for an autocarriage, Dama?” the guard asked, barely glancing at the invitation, and instead marking a list.

“We wished to take our time admiring the bridge,” Aunt Arianne said. “If that’s permitted.”

“Of course, Dama,” the guard said, smiling at Griff, who had stopped whirling and was now standing on tip-toe to better view the three finials that crowned the centre of the otherwise rather plain gate. A slender, stylised hare and a coiling dragon bracketed the centre finial, a silvery triskelion, three delicate wings springing from a single central point.

The uniformed woman opened a small side gate, and summoned a page from some hidden recess, instructing the girl to take them to Princess Leodhild. In short order they were striding down the perfectly flat paved drive toward the bridge that had had Griff in a welter of excitement for the last two days. Eluned could not pretend to less eagerness, at least for the splendours of the palace, and because she was going to meet one of the Suleviae. Her. Eluned Tenning.

Wanting to rub a few noses in that fact did not fit with the person Eluned tried to be, and so she only briefly allowed herself to picture Retwold School exploding with disbelief and envy. That helped stifle nerves, and with Griff and Eleri by her side even a princess could not be so very daunting. Eluned only had to remind herself of that with every step.

“Two penny tour, damini?” their guide was asking, surveying Aunt Arianne’s heavy veil with bland interest.

“Why not?” Aunt Arianne said.

Caught up in not being daunted, Eluned only listened absently to details of the vast parkland surrounding the lake, and spared less than her usual attention on Griff as he delighted in the Three Dragons Bridge, a rather dull flat arch over the widest part of Gwyn Lynn Lake. More than embarrassment was at stake with this visit. They’d had little choice but to trust Aunt Arianne’s vampire, given his control over her, and he had clearly intended to pass on to the Suleviae the things he’d found out. The secrecy of their investigation would be inevitably lost if shared among whoever knew how many royal advisors and friends, and the chance of one of Them hearing about clues and a second automaton and hidden fulgite increased with every confidant. Not that Eluned expected to be attacked at the palace, but just by visiting they drew more attention to themselves.

“Step to this side, please, damini,” the page was saying. “Car coming.”

It was a tiger, large, sleek and powerful, and Eluned was diverted into wondering if they were now rich enough to buy such an extravagance, and whether that meant they had been poor before. They hadn’t owned any sort of autocarriage, back in Caerlleon, but they’d had a house, and people who looked after it, and though there’d always been a separation between necessities and indulgences, because money had been tied up in projects, Eluned could never remember truly feeling conscious of it before.