Андреа Хёст - The Pyramids of London

“Already? Where, where is the day going?” Lord Fennington took the papers and fanned his face with them. “My young friends, I must rush. Do, do enjoy yourselves.”

He was striding off as he spoke, and there was no more time for leading questions. They’d lost their chance, at least for now.

Eluned turned to the man called Matthiel: “Can we help you with the other mannequins?”

“Thank you, but there’s no need,” the man said. “Don’t miss My Lord’s speech, damini.”

Exchanging a glance with Eleri, Eluned decided that it would be best to wait for another opportunity before they tried the blunt approach. “We won’t,” she said, as neutrally as she could manage.

“What’s a Mini-T?” Griff asked, as the man lifted another two mannequins and departed.

“Ministry of Science and Technology,” Eleri said. “In charge of airships, the Patent Office, things. Let’s go find the Aunt.”

This proved less easy to do than to say. When they reached the central garden, they found it packed with people, apparently back from touring the school facilities. It gave some measure of how large Tangleways must be, that there’d been so many people about, completely unseen.

It took half Lord Fennington’s speech just to spot Aunt Arianne, and by the time they’d worked their way nearly to her the speech was over and everyone was streaming about chasing refreshments, lining up for other tours, talking to the teachers, or gossiping.

“Too many hats,” Melly said, standing on tip-toe as she tried to spot where Aunt Arianne had gone.

“Give it up,” Eleri said.

“Shall we try one of the tours?” Nabah suggested, and that’s what they did, and then stopped for refreshments before splitting up—ostensibly to hunt individually, but more so Eleri, Griff and Eluned would have a better chance of button-holing Lord Fennington again.

Tired of crowds, Eluned abandoned the chase altogether, and found stone stairs down into the sunken garden moat. There in cool quiet she found moss, lacy ferns, and a treasury of saxifrages clinging to rocks and tucked in hollows.

Memory of that morning soured her appreciation. What was wrong with her? It was silly and senseless not to have brought her sketchbook on a trip like this. But she loathed constantly trying and failing and not understanding what was wrong.

Hating that this was tying her in knots when she was supposed to be concentrating on finding Mother and Father’s killer, Eluned followed the high arch of the drainage channel out of the garden, trying to decide whether Lord Fennington had really not recognised their names, or was a very good actor. And what did they do if he simply denied everything?

The drainage channel ended in an ornate grate: interlinked hands, with oxalis growing up through it. Eluned crossed this and found a slope of green down to a river—a tributary of the Tamesas, according to Griff. To her left was a path and she followed it as it curved through a small patch of trees to, inevitably, another folly: a circle of columns with a domed roof.

There was a woman sitting alone on the steps, and Eluned started to turn away, then recognised the hair colour and reversed direction.

“You’re not wearing your hat,” she said, as Aunt Arianne turned her head at her approach.

“A disguise of sorts. A great many people want to discuss foreseeings, but all they know of me is that I’m recently bound and wearing a veil.”

The pavilion was shaded by trees, but it was still the first time since she’d been bound that Aunt Arianne had been outside during the day without a veil, and Eluned suspected that the curious crowd must have been particularly trying.

“What do you tell them?” Eluned asked, sitting down on the circular stair beside her aunt. There were no proper seats, the floor of the folly being taken up by a beautiful, if sadly cracked mosaic depicting constellations in a night sky.

“I tell them as much as I know, which is nothing at all, at least where the Dragon of the North is concerned.”

“Do you think it might really happen? That you’ll find Albion’s fourth dragon?”

“I think I’m not going to waste my time on guessing games. Better to simply prepare as best we can for whatever tests are thrown our way.”

“But Cernunnos accepted you as Keeper. Why do that and then test you?”

Aunt Arianne tipped back her head, studying the inside of the pavilion’s dome. More stars, brilliant against a wash of dark blue. She looked tired.

“Oakfire speaking comes from the forest, not Cernunnos,” she said. “The Horned King is one of the Great Forest’s many gods, one aspect of something vast. There’s very little of this world that was not forest at some point. Even deserts have ancient forests beneath them. Perhaps only the oceans are outside its bounds. Can’t you feel it? All around us is forest.”

Eluned started to point out that there was a stand of trees only a few feet away. But a cool breeze whisked her face, bringing a hint of loam. And was Aunt Arianne looking up at the inside of the dome, or at sky through sheltering branches?

“The trees are always with us,” Aunt Arianne said. “We asked to be part of it, and we must prove ourselves worthy.”

“You keep saying ‘we’,” Eluned said, almost under her breath, though it was not as if she could forget Lila’s bite, or the key that would come when she called for it.

“Keeper Tyse cannot say with complete certainty who those foreseeings were intended for. She recorded me officially because my arrival triggered the speaking, but given that you received the same blessing from Cernunnos, it seemed to her a high probability that you and I are both the subject of these challenges. Pretending that you are not involved is not going to prevent you from being drawn in.”

“I don’t know anything about the Dragon of the North either,” Eluned said.

“No. But if that ‘shopping list’ was in chronological order, dragons will be the last of our problems. What, to you, most strikes you as an ‘unfinished one’?”

Since Aunt Arianne was being so serious, Eluned cast her mind about for something that seemed unfinished to her. It could be anything, although the phrasing had made it seem like a person, and people usually weren’t…

Stiffening, Eluned stared at her aunt’s profile. “The independent automatons. Eleri doesn’t consider them finished, because she hasn’t verified reliable movement. They are—” She choked, head spinning.

“I spent some energy on the question of cause and effect”, Aunt Arianne said, serene as ever. “Were we accepted by Cernunnos because we had already become embroiled in the first of the challenges? Or were we chosen, and then matters arranged so that we would be willing to give allegiance? Is it possible that what the Swedes would call a ‘fate’ was laid on us, and that your parents’ deaths were part of that fate? I have yet to decide my feelings on this. To be angry at the gods is to scream at the stars. Even if they hear, they will not stop shining.”

“Wh-what?” Eluned could not think through what she’d been told. Had Cernunnos caused—no, that wasn’t what Aunt Arianne had said. Fate. When the Swedish gods laid a fate on someone, the world would rearrange itself to bring that fate about. A wholly different thing to oakfire foretelling.

“Or, of course, the unfinished ones might have nothing to do with automatons. Perhaps we are simply people who were in the right place with the right reasons. I may need to choose to believe that, to be able to not waste myself in anger. I can’t be sure which case is true, but I felt you were entitled to know my suspicions.”

After that Aunt Arianne didn’t say anything at all for a long while, and they sat contemplating a sweep of grass down to a river, and the vast forest that would always surround them. Only after Eluned’s thoughts had progressed through a circle of incredulity did her aunt go on.