SEVENTEEN
With a name like Tangleways, and so much talk of strange feuds, Eluned was disappointed when Li Sen turned down an orderly driveway bracketed by regimented and freshly clipped rows of cypress. The building ahead looked no more interesting: three stories of windows arranged in a flat horseshoe around a gravelled courtyard.
“Boring,” Griff said, as Li Sen drew them around a plain central obelisk and stopped neatly behind a horse-drawn carriage.
“Looks new,” Melly said, following Eleri out the door. “Perhaps they knocked the original building down.”
“That would be a rather dull approach,” Aunt Arianne said. “Let’s hope the promised refreshments can make up for it.”
She paused to speak briefly to Li Sen, while Eluned stole admiring glances at the occupants of the carriage, now crowding the wide entry-way. Three sisters, very handsome, with wonderful manes of bronze hair.
“…don’t care whether it’s convenient or not,” one was saying, in a carrying whisper. “Any school run by Folly Fennington’s bound to be a madhouse.”
“…half the fun,” another replied.
“Just because you think school is for swinging from the chandeliers,” the first said bitterly, while the third cast an apologetic, amused glance at their accidental audience, and followed her family indoors.
“This trip will be worth it to see whether Lord Fennington’s half as strange as they say,” Melly murmured. “Or are we all gullible for believing he never wears the same shendy twice, and has an automaton for brushing his teeth?”
“And a whole mechanical menagerie,” Griff said, striding ahead up the broad, flat stairs. Animal automatons rarely bothered him, unless they were covered with fur. Then he stopped short.
Eluned quickened her pace, but Griff’s reverential sigh told her there was no crisis.
“Oh, they built in front of the old house,” Melly said, glancing around at orderly stairways and halls leading off to either side, and then through a matching set of double doors to a semi-enclosed garden where a festive marquee and a clock tower partially blocked the view of a house where logic and symmetry had long been abandoned.
“Two front doors,” Eleri murmured. “Moat.”
“Sunken garden,” Eluned corrected, catching glimpses of the tips of what looked like a collector’s bounty reaching up around the two separate bridges into the main house.
There must once have been a simple square building, large but unexceptional. Eluned could see a patch of bricks of a slightly different red where the original front door would have stood, before being replaced by the tall, skinny green door and the fat, nearly rounded blue door. Impossible to guess what came next: the tower on the right or the crenellations on the left. The bulbous bay windows or the opposing series of portholes. The statues or the ironwork filigree. And then the extensions, entire wings of completely contrasting design bulging to either side. Beyond them, smaller buildings.
“Follies,” Melly said, grinning widely. “Appropriate.”
“There’s tunnels,” Griff said, in an urgent whisper, pointing to the arch of a brick drain out of the garden moat, and then he was off, circling the house.
Eluned wanted very much to join him in exploration, but she could not forget what they were there for, and looked around for the real reason for their visit. Both the green and blue door were firmly closed, and there was no movement behind the many windows in either the new or old buildings.
“Follies and folies,” Melly said, half under her breath. “Fools, follies, folies.”
“But no Fennington,” Nabah said. “There’s hardly anyone here. Are we early?”
Eluned looked about for Aunt Arianne, who had detoured toward the shade of the marquee. Yesterday she had instructed them to look around for anything unusual while she approached Lord Fennington—though Eluned had no intention of missing out on his answers—but the whole trip would be wasted if the man wasn’t even there.
Eleri and Nabah started after Griff, and Eluned hesitated between following and checking the marquee. They shouldn’t let their guard down. Even if Lord Fennington did turn out to be the person who had commissioned the stolen automaton, that didn’t guarantee that he hadn’t found a reason to hide any discoveries Mother had made. They needed to be careful.
“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!”