‘When I used it? It opened up a sort of… thing. Just there, in the air in front of me. Like it did today.’
‘What did you do?’ Mella asked.
‘Nothing the first time,’ Aisling said. ‘I mean, it looked like a fire and I didn’t want to get burned.’
‘And what about the next time?’
Aisling glanced away to one side. ‘The second time I realised there was no heat, so I stuck my finger in carefully and the fire didn’t burn me. Then I tried my whole arm and it still didn’t burn me. I thought it might be some sort of doorway from something I heard Henry say to Mr Fogarty once. Well, I thought it might be anyway. So eventually I walked through.’
Mella blinked. ‘Into the Realm?’
‘A sort of desert place. It’s the Faerie Realm, isn’t it? What they used to call the Faerie Realm. I knew it! I absolutely knew it!’
‘Parts of it are desert,’ Mella said.
‘One time I was inside a building with a long corridor with purple carpet and crystal chandeliers.’
The Purple Palace, Mella breathed. Aloud she said, ‘So you went more than once?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t go very far – I was being careful. And responsible. Usually I just stepped in and looked around and stepped back out again and then I closed the gateway or whatever it was. I never met anybody. Nobody ever saw me.’
‘This is very important,’ Mella said. ‘Did you ever make adjustments to any of the dials on the control? Any buttons or switches or sliders or anything? Did you ever fiddle with anything except the on-off button?’ She already knew the answer. Unless Aunt Aisling reset the control, it would have continued to take her to the same place. But it hadn’t kept taking her to the same place, so she must have been fiddling with the settings, maybe not knowing she was doing it, but fiddling with them just the same. Fiddling a lot.
‘I may have,’ Aisling said defensively. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t. And I only used it a few times. After a while it wouldn’t work for me at all. I mean until today when you told me about the safety switch and that broke it.’
She could have reset it for anywhere, Mella thought. They could be anywhere in the Faerie Realm, in any country, friendly or unfriendly. Worse still, Aunt Aisling had broken the control, so they had no means of getting back.
‘Come on,’ Mella said and began to move cautiously down the winding staircase.
Aisling stood up quickly and followed. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To try to find out where we are.’
‘Is that safe?’
Mella was getting fed up with her aunt. ‘What else do you suggest we do?’
The staircase descended into a low-ceilinged room with an open door. There was a murmur of voices from along the corridor outside. Aisling had been hanging back nervously, letting Mella take the lead. (Letting Mella take the risks!) Now she stopped dead. ‘There’s someone there!’ she hissed.
‘Yes,’ Mella murmured. The voices were low-pitched, like a group of people engaged in a discussion. ‘We’d better find out who they are.’
‘What happens if they’re hoodies or soccer hooligans or something?’ Aisling asked. ‘They might mug us.’
Mella threw her a contemptuous glance. ‘And they might invite us for supper.’ All the same, Aunt Aisling was right: it would be silly to barge into something without checking first. ‘We’ll just take a look. If we’re careful, we should be able to scout things out without them seeing us.’
‘You go,’ Aisling said quickly. ‘You’re smaller.’ When Mella stared at her, she added, ‘You can hide more easily.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Mella demanded.
‘I’ll stay here.’ Aisling looked around, clearly searching for a place of concealment.
Mella moved to the open doorway and looked out cautiously. What she’d taken for a corridor turned out to be a narrow balcony. She edged towards the railing and peeped over.
The balcony overlooked some sort of conference room, a little like the Discussion Chamber in the Purple Palace where her parents met up with visiting heads of state. It was equipped with three cabinets and a large oval table around which sat four men and three women, all dressed in identical red robes. Cowled hoods threw their features into shadow so that it was impossible to see their faces clearly. Double doors at one end of the chamber were conspicuously bolted and barred. A heady scent of incense magic wafted upwards. At least Mella assumed it was incense magic: she’d never seen it used before.
One of the men was talking in a precise, high-pitched voice. ‘… Just short of two thousand current stocks.’ He looked around. ‘You will recall the setback we experienced last year.’ There was a murmur of angry agreement.
The woman at the head of the table had eyes that flashed red from under her hood. ‘Our target figure is ten thousand, is it not?’
It was another of the men, a tall, upright figure, who answered. ‘That was the minimum military estimate to ensure a successful campaign. Assuming suitable troop back-up, equipment and spell power.’
‘There was some talk of less,’ the woman said.
‘There was,’ the tall man agreed. ‘Companion Marshal Houndstooth’s plan called for only four thousand three hundred, but the troop back-up doubled, the necessary spell power tripled and so did the costs. That’s why we abandoned it in April.’
‘I am concerned about the timing,’ the woman said flatly.
‘Astrologically?’ another of the women asked.
‘Yes.’
The tall man said, ‘That has been taken into consideration.’
‘I don’t see how it could be,’ said the woman at the head of the table. ‘If we still haven’t managed to produce two thousand units and what we have managed to produce has taken more than a year, it will take at least five years to reach our goal total. I appreciate the loss of our prototype was something of a setback, but it cost us no more than a month or two as I understand it. Am I not correct in this?’
‘You are correct, Companion,’ the precise man said in his high-pitched voice. ‘But you must appreciate that we are now no longer manufacturing, but breeding – a process that proceeds exponentially and is thus considerably faster.’
‘Exponentially?’ the woman echoed.
‘To convert one item into one thousand items exponentially requires the time it takes for eleven separate operations, which is quite considerable. But to produce the next one thousand items requires only one further operation, as does the next two thousand and the next four.’
‘The process accelerates?’
‘Dramatically.’
‘Are you claiming,’ the woman said, ‘that we may still reach our target in time for the eclipse?’
‘We shall reach our target before the eclipse,’ the man assured her.
‘So our invasion of the Empire may proceed as planned?’
Mella’s throat tightened abruptly. Invasion of the Empire? There was only one Empire in the Faerie Realm, the Empire ruled by her mother.
‘Undoubtedly,’ the man confirmed.
Twenty-Three
Henry had the taxi drop them off at Mr Fogarty’s old house. It was as good a base as any for their operations in the Analogue World; and better than most. Clearly nobody was using it and, situated as it was at the end of a cul-de-sac, it was not overlooked and there were no casual passers-by – all reasons, no doubt, why Mr Fogarty had bought it in the first place. After his experience with D. I. Tyneside, what Henry wanted, quite desperately now, was somewhere quiet where he could think and talk to Blue in private without interruption.
As they closed the kitchen door behind them, Blue asked, ‘Did he have some sort of living room? I find it a bit creepy in here.’
So, in fact, did Henry, although that was mainly old memories. ‘Yes, he did. It’s a bit cluttered – at least it used to be.’
It still was, mainly with piles of Mr Fogarty’s abandoned books, but there was room on the couch for them to sit down side by side. Henry reached for Blue’s hand. ‘What do you think?’