Mike Shevdon: Strangeness and Charm

"If I even hint that Alex is alive then Katherine will want to see her. After all she's been through she'll need to see Alex for herself."

"Then you're just going to have to grasp the nettle, aren't you?" she pointed out.

"I'm trying to think of a way to do it that won't seem like I lied to her. Alex does have a point."

"By delaying you are only making it worse," she said. "If you'd told her as soon as Alex got back you might have a leg to stand on, but as it is…"

"Alex had no control whatsoever to begin with. She was still in shock after what happened. How could I take her to her mother in that state? With her emotions driving her power, anything might have happened. She was a danger to herself and everyone around her. She still is."

"Nonsense. She's no worse than any other teenager."

"I spoke to Fionh earlier and she said she's not ready to join the courts."

"And what would Fionh know? When was the last time Fionh had anything to do with anyone under a hundred years old?"

"She's the one coaching Alex. She has the most contact with her."

"She's a Warder, Niall. With all that entails."

"What does that mean?" It didn't escape my attention that I was also a Warder, so that particular criticism was aimed at me too.

Blackbird shook her head and went back to reading the files. "Where did these come from?"

"Originally they were from Porton Down. They were passed to Garvin from Secretary Carler, the civil servant who looks after relations with the six courts."

"What are you supposed to do with them?"

"I'm supposed to find the people mentioned in them. Why?"

"They read like scientific mumbo-jumbo. What do you think morphological instability is?"

"In what context?"

"Andy exhibits signs of morphological instability, exhibiting severe disassociation and fragmentation," she read from the file.

"The doctors at Porton Down were experimenting on these people. Maybe Andy couldn't control his glamour. That would lead to sudden changes in appearance that might be called instability. I had trouble with it myself at first."

"Pyrokinetic projection?"

"That would fit with the guy who burned down a shopping centre. Garvin says the fire spread without an accelerant and through fire barriers, killing one guy and injuring another. Plus the CCTV wasn't working. That would point to someone with a fey affinity."

"If this person is throwing fire around, then that would tend to indicate a degree of control. You don't just throw fire — air doesn't burn on its own."

"So maybe there was an accelerant, but not something they'd recognise, or they don't have the language to describe it."

"Or maybe they don't know what they're talking about." She tossed the file back onto the pile. "This is just jargon and speculation. The language is so technical you'd need a glossary to decode it. It's as if it was written to deliberately obscure what they were doing."

"Perhaps it was," I said.

"I read through the file on Alex and didn't understand it, even though I know what happened to her."

"I don't need a file to tell me how Alex is."

"They thought she was delusional, and schizophrenic," said Blackbird.

"Was that before or after they tortured her?"

"It's nonsense, in either case."

"Well since you've had the chance to read through the files, maybe you could suggest which of these people I go after first?"

"Do you think you're ready to go after any of them?"

"Thank you for making that a question," I said.

She ruffled through the files and extracted one, handing it to me. "How about this one?"

I opened the file to a picture of a middle-aged woman staring out of a passport sized photo. Her name was Angela.

"I've seen this woman before."

"You have?"

"She was in the isolation cells below Porton Down. There were a bunch of people locked up in there. I got Raffmir to get me a key to let them out."

A spray of blood spattered onto a glass wall as Raffmir's sword took the head from the nurse who brought us the key to the cells. Her head bounced down the corridor, right in front of me. Black blood ran down the glass leaving a dark smear in its trail. The smell of fear and death was in my nostrils…

"Niall?"

"Hmm? Sorry?"

"You've seen her before?"

"Sorry, yes. When I opened the door to the glass cell, she touched me on the cheek."

I touched my face where she'd placed her hand. When she had reached out for me I had tried to push her away, but it had been like it was glued there.

"You let her touch you?" Blackbird was incredulous.

"I was helping her escape."

She sighed. "You see what I mean now about not being ready."

"She went all wide-eyed on me, started talking about brightness."

"And there was brightness, wasn't there? You lit up everything in a five mile radius," said Blackbird.

"Then she said something else: 'The sun will rise, and they shall fall'."

"I beg your pardon?" Blackbird suddenly focused back on me.

"It's what she said, just before she ran into the dark."

"That's what Deefnir came out with, at the Highsmith's farm. He started blabbering about the felicitations of the Seventh Court and wanted to touch me." She put her hand on her stomach. "Amber wouldn't let him. Deefnir said, 'The son will rise and they shall fall'. I thought he was talking about our son."

"I thought Angela was talking about the sun in the sky, she'd mentioned brightness. I thought I'd hear it before somewhere, but I couldn't remember where."

"Kareesh."

"What?"

"When I took you to see Kareesh, on the day you came into your power. You bargained for your vision, but before she granted it, she said something. Evader of traps, bringer of hope — it ended with, 'the sun will rise and they shall fall', don't you remember? At the time I thought she was finally losing it, she never volunteers things — not usually."

"I don't understand the connection. Why should Kareesh say the same as this woman — and what's Deefnir got to do with it?"

"There's not enough in the file to tell us what's going on. They seemed to think she was a fantasist — they weren't sure she had any power at all."

"But she said the same thing as Kareesh."

"And she was touching you at the time. You're the link, Niall. You were there, both times."

"But not when Deefnir said it."

"But your son was there inside me. You thought it was the sun will rise, but maybe this woman was referring to your child."

"What does it mean?"

"I've told you before, Niall. Prophesy is fickle and uncertain. You can't rely on it. It could mean anything. Even those who see the future don't know what it means."

"I've got to find this woman."

"It won't be difficult. They've given her address. Apparently she's living there."

Turning to the back of the file, there was a photograph of her in a raincoat leaving the front door of a house. Below it was a street map of Tamworth, along with her address.

"Isn't she worried she'll be arrested?"

"What for? As far as I can see she hasn't done anything, except maybe witness things that no one else knows about. If they were going to pick her up they'd have done it by now, so I expect they're leaving her for you."

"I guess I'd better go and see if she's still there then."

On the back of the dresser was a wooden stand, holding the scabbarded blade that came with my job. I took it down and unsheathed the blade, checking the edge for nicks and straightness, then pushed it smoothly back into the scabbard.

"What are you planning to do?" she asked.

"I'm going to talk to her, and find out what she knows."

"You don't need a sword to talk to her," said Blackbird.

"As you pointed out earlier, I need to be ready for anything. Who knows what she's capable of?"