She hadn’t actually been struggling, but now she ceased to resist altogether and covered her suspicions with a sudden smile. ‘Thank you, Aunt Aisling,’ she said cheerfully. ‘That would be wonderful.’ She even managed a second smile flashed in the direction of his pervy Lordship and felt Aisling’s grip on her arm relax at once. The woman was an idiot. So long as Hairstreak did not come with them, escaping from her should be a doddle.
To her delight, Hairstreak didn’t. Aisling led her from the chamber and along a corridor. The guard on her door did not accompany them, nor did any others. The sun was still climbing over the horizon as they reached the outside and Mella found she was leaving an enormous building set in its own grounds. Aisling took her arm again. ‘Just a moment…’ They stood at the top of a short flight of stone steps and watched as armed soldiers left their guard posts one by one to form what Mella at first took to be an escort detachment. But to her surprise, they simply marched off and disappeared without once glancing in their direction. As they disappeared, Aisling said, ‘Come on…’
The ouklo was obvious. Its gold plating gleamed copper in the early-morning sun. Mella licked her lips. Perhaps the Hairstreak person really was a Lord: he was certainly extremely rich, whoever he was. But being a Lord didn’t mean he was her uncle and being her uncle didn’t mean he was telling the truth. Her mistrust was deepening. There was something about Hairstreak she simply didn’t like. And the dislike extended to Aisling. Besides, if they weren’t married… yet… how could she be her aunt if Hairstreak was her uncle? Mella frowned. Actually she could, quite easily. She could be her mother’s sister or her father’s sister with no married ties to Hairstreak at all. And Hairstreak could be her mother’s brother or her father’s brother or a stepbrother or even a friend of the family – family friends were sometimes given the honorary title of ‘uncle’. And it still didn’t matter because there was something positively creepy about Uncle Hairstreak and Aunt Aisling.
‘Come on,’ Aisling said again, impatiently this time.
Mella went with her. Aisling, she could see, was almost blinded by the ouklo; and not just in the literal sense. She had the look of a child shown the greatest toy in the entire world, the most precious plaything. Gold obviously unhinged her; at least the amount of gold that was plated on the carriage. Which meant, Mella thought, she was vulnerable because she was distracted.
Mella glanced around. A straight road led away from the entrance steps. To her right were open fields. To her left, beyond the sentry posts, were lawns, some ornamental shrubs and, beyond them, a treeline. Neither the road nor the open fields would give her any cover if she ran, but the terrain to her left looked more promising. She wondered why the guard posts had been vacated. Clearly there was more going on here than she knew, but this was no time to worry about it: just give thanks to her guardian gods that she would not have soldiers chasing her… at least not until Aisling sounded the alarm and got them back. But by then she might have a decent head start.
She walked to the bottom of the steps. The ouklo was less than a hundred yards away. She glanced left again, surreptitiously. She could see distant trees now, tall shapes against the lightening sky. They might be no more than a copse, or a single stand, but if they were the edge of a wood, or, better yet, a forest, they would give her good shelter. Once there, she had an excellent chance of hiding herself from any pursuit; once there she had an excellent chance of escape.
What then? a small voice whispered in her mind. You have no memory. She pushed it away. She would worry about the what then? later. For now she had to concentrate on getting away from creepy Uncle Hairstreak and Aunt Aisling.
She made the decision. She would run left. She would run through the space between the first two sentry posts, run fast until she reached the ornamental bushes, then use them as cover until she reached the trees. Even if Aisling came after her at once, Mella was younger and lighter and fancied her chances of being faster. But she didn’t think Aisling would come after her. Somehow she seemed a little too… soft, a little too concerned about dirtying her fine clothes. Mella reckoned if Aisling did anything, it would be to call for help; and by the time help arrived, Mella could be long gone.
As they passed the gap between the first two sentry posts, Aisling took her arm again; and there was nothing soft about her grip.
‘It’s all right,’ Aisling said reassuringly, her voice positively dripping with insincerity. ‘There’s someone in the ouklo I have to take back. You can wait while I do so, then we will take you home and make you well again.’
There were four guards by the ouklo! Their black uniforms bore the same insignia Lord Hairstreak wore on his tunic. She hadn’t noticed them before: they were standing behind the ouklo and shielded by its bulk. How could she escape now? They would be after her at once – fit, strong young men who were probably equipped with net and other capture spells. And how could she break away from the tight grip Aisling had on her arm? With surprise on her side, she might jerk herself free, but if she failed first time it would result in a struggle. Once Aisling called the guards – and Aisling would certainly call the guards – her chances of escape vanished.
It was too late for her to run through the gap as she’d planned, probably too late for anything much now. The black-uniformed guards were moving forward to meet Aisling. Oddly, they seemed almost threatening, but they stepped back at once when Aisling opened her right hand to show them an authorisation token. The scent of magic wafted into Mella’s nostrils and she saw, beyond doubt, that Aisling was authorised by Lord Hairstreak, the genuine, the one-and-only, Hairstreak. (Whoever Lord Hairstreak might be; but the guards accepted him all right.) After that, it was definitely too late for anything. Mella was being bustled towards the ouklo, Aisling’s grip still firmly on her arm, the guards now ranged around her so there was no possibility of escape. The door of the carriage opened.
‘Mella!’ called Aunt Aisling: it was a strangely familiar name.
Mella dived inside, shot across the carriage and out the other door. She had the faintest impression of someone crouched inside the coach, but no time for anything except slamming the door behind her, racing across the lawn, diving behind shrubs and then, at last, headed like an elated gazelle towards the treeline.
She had almost reached the forest by the time stupid old Aunt Aisling thought to raise the alarm.
Forty-One
There was the sharp snap of a breaking branch some way behind her. Mella felt her heart sink. She’d been so certain of her luck when she reached the treeline. It was not a single stand, not a copse, not even a small wood, but exactly what she had hoped for: the edge of (almost certainly) a forest – a forest that would provide her with a thousand places to hide from her pursuit. There was pursuit, of course. She’d heard the guards blundering through the shrub beds, but by the time they reached the trees she was deep inside the forest, surrounded by exotic plants, and had no difficulty at all in losing them. All had been silence for a while, except for the expected background sounds, but now there was something following her; and somehow she didn’t think it was a guard.
It was gloomy in the forest. A leafy canopy filtered the sun into a pale, green light, but once her eyes adjusted, she could see well enough. She stopped to listen, staring behind her. There was no sign of pursuit, no further sound of any sort. Gradually she began to relax. Eventually she started off again.
She didn’t know where she was going. But now she’d made her escape, her mind was racing. She needed desperately to retrieve her memories, find out who she was, where she was, what she was doing here. Only then could she work out what to do. In her mind, she began with first principles, starting with what she knew and what she could know.