Андреа Хёст - The Pyramids of London

“Is your sister feeling ill?” Melly asked. “She seems very quiet today.”

“Ah…” How to answer that? “I guess she’s been thinking a lot about her future.” Would Eleri want the whole neighbourhood to know her feelings for Princess Celestine? “Mother and Father were both brilliant in their fields, and for Eleri no school is going to be able to replace them. This place, or the one in Lamhythe, will be a total waste of her time without at least a very good science teacher, let alone a practical mechanics workshop.”

“Oh.” Expression lightening, Melly led them off toward the corner where Griff had disappeared. “I’m not much for the sciences, so I couldn’t say how good the teachers are at Tollesey. Nabah would probably know. Though, all other things being equal, I’d choose this place over Tollesey—for the sheer entertainment value, to say nothing of the connections. Lord Fennington would be enormously useful.”

“For poetry?” Eluned asked, startled.

“For the business empire I will one day command,” Melly said, with a quick, amused smile. “Though for poetry too, since Folly Fennington’s mad keen on Prytennian literature, and I’d love to get among his collection of folios and first editions. I’ll have to get my hands on the prospectus and see if they’ve bothered to put the prices, so I can work out whether I could swing the fees.”

“What kind of business empire are you going to run?” Eluned asked, fascinated. She could not have been more wrong about Melly’s reaction to this trip.

“I call it ‘Finders Keepers’. People were always coming into the store and asking for discontinued products, or things that aren’t sold locally. My Da and I had a lot of fun tracking remainders down—you just need to know the right people to ask—and it’s turned into a nice sideline. I’ve lots of plans for expansion, for mail order and advertisements, and one thing I particularly want is to break into the kind of clientele who could afford to send their kids here. Not,” she added, glancing back toward the marquee, “that this Tangleways looks like it’s going to end up with much in the way of students.”

“I guess a reputation for inspired silliness isn’t the best basis for setting yourself up as a teacher.”

“I’d feel sorry for him, but I expect all that money will console him.”

They rounded the corner of the sprawling house and found stables to their right, a pair of long heads tossing restively. Knowing Griff would never head that way, Eluned moved in the opposite direction, toward a smaller building like a pepper pot. There were three more of different shapes behind it.

“This place is like a little village,” Melly said. “What did they want all this for?”

“Lots of guests?” Eluned looked around, and spotted Griff leading the others toward a white pavilion full of people. Headless people.

“Oh, clothes mannequins,” Melly said, sounding as relieved as Eluned felt. There were only two real people: one very tall and a bit fleshy, and the other lithe and lightly muscular.

The taller one had noticed them approaching, and turned, beaming. “Halloo!” he said. “Welcome, welcome, welcome! What perfect timing. I need a second opinion, and a third and fourth as well!”

“Folly Fennington in the flesh,” Melly murmured, and hurried to catch Griff up.

Eluned took a moment to steady herself before following. Here he was, this man, finally standing right in front of them. He might be a murderer. He might simply have commissioned an automaton. Or he might have had nothing to do with them at all. Now was their chance to find out.

Lord Fennington had a mournful face, floppy brown hair, and a booming sort of voice, and he rounded out his words as if playing with the way they sounded. “Come, come, come,” he said, beckoning them toward the pavilion and holding out an anxious hand toward the display he’d apparently been working on. School uniforms. There were a dozen mannequins, all dressed in dark blue and creamy-beige.

“Now tell me bluntly, no holding back. Should it be the double line of red, or the single?”

Eluned didn’t see any red at first, then spotted a pencil line around the cuff of one of the jackets. And the four-panel summer shendy had a plummy double line making a border around the two side panels.

“There’s hardly any difference,” Griff said, as Griff would. “But I like the double more.”

“One vote for the double!” Lord Fennington said. “Can we gain a consensus? Any champions for the opposing view?”

“Two is better,” Nabah agreed.

“One,” Eleri said immediately.

“One,” Melly said.

“A tie! But one last vote to settle the matter.”

Since he sounded so serious, Eluned took a moment to study the collection of uniforms, personally doubting most people would even notice the difference. Then she fished in the small pouch she had laced to her new day-belt, and found one of the coins Aunt Arianne had distributed earlier that week as an allowance.

A simple toss and catch, and then she said: “Two.”

Lord Fennington, fortunately, found this funny, his long face lighting as he laughed. “Yes, yes, the judgment of Sucellos! Two it shall be.”

“Lakshmi’s smile,” Nabah added, looking pleased.

“And how nice that the Daughters are taking an interest in Tangleways!” Lord Fennington added approvingly to Nabah, before saying to his companion, an excessively handsome blond man, “Matthiel, take these appalling one-line variations away.”

“My Lord,” said the man, then picked up two of the mannequins with effortless grace, and walked off.

“Have you been on the tour?” Lord Fennington asked then. “You mustn’t miss it. Hedley’s been with the estate for decades, and has endless tales of Lord Webley’s experiments and inventions.”

“Inventions?” Eleri said. “Engineer? Or scientist?”

“Both, in a manner of speaking. He called himself a deiographer and was devoted, you might well say, to the Science of Gods. What sparks them to Answer? Is there some unifying purpose or meaning? Can devices be constructed to quantify their energies and boundaries? A brilliant man, though, of course, more than a little mad.” He gave them a small, shy smile. “Speaking as an authority on the subject, quite potty.”

“Eccentric,” Griff corrected, before Eluned could decide if it would be rude to laugh. “If you have money, you get to be eccentric, which sounds a lot more fun.” Then he held out his hand with the grave formality that he sometimes produced to get his way, and said: “My name is Griff Tenning. These are my sisters Eleri and Eluned Tenning.”

Eluned held her breath, searching the man’s face for any hint of recognition, but all he did was shake Griff’s hand with matching formality and say:

“Dyfed Fennington. And do only two of your companions have names?”

“Melly Ktai,” Griff said slowly, a little too obviously still searching for some hint of reaction. Then he shrugged, adding: “Nabah hasn’t told us her last name.”

“Satkunan,” Nabah said. “Do you mean to say there are machines here designed to—to measure gods?”

“Indeed! Or there were. Unfortunately the Mini-T carted most of it off years ago, and handing over anything interesting left behind was part of the conditions of sale. Not,” he added, with a conspiratorial gleam, “that we didn’t give everything a good and thorough dusting before shipping it off. And you can see the housing of some of the larger pieces during the tour, since it’s not as if they could pack up the clock tower.”

“My Lord, the podium is ready,” said the man called Matthiel, returning with a sheaf of papers.