A water-logged hare gusted in to swirl around Princess Aerinndís’ hands, and Rian pulled loose the voluminous wrapping from her sword to offer up as a towel. Then she surveyed the mess. Would there be proof among all this that could remove the tarnish from Aedric and Eiliff’s reputation? It seemed clear that the aim had been to destroy evidence, and it was particularly unfortunate that the safe had been open.
“Where did the fire come from?” she asked, puzzled. “They were using fulgite lamps.”
“Where did our bull-bear come from?” Makepeace replied. “Some fire-breathing, teleporting animal whose existence no-one has ever reported?” He picked up a wad of scorched, sodden black cloth and held it up to display the design: a vertical and horizontal line meeting in the centre, like the hands of a timepiece at three o’clock. A sinuous eye filled the section within the two lines. “Nothing to do with the Aesir, I think—I can spot their thumbprints—but we can’t overlook Gustav’s possible involvement. And he might become even more of a headache if we haul off one of his aides for interrogation.”
Princess Aerinndís retrieved the ledger, and used it to write a short note, which she then tore out. A transparent bird—perhaps a nightjar—whisked the sheet away.
“Do you propose anything further tonight?” she asked.
“I won’t waste my time sitting around here,” he said. “Delway’s lot can sift and door-knock and give us a better picture of what’s survived this. I’ll find out what the Blairs have been up to.”
“Lyle was having dinner with me,” Rian offered. “It can’t be more than an hour since I was with him, over at Westing Gate. Lynsey is theoretically at Tangleways.” She briefly summarised the conversation she’d had with Lyle.
Makepeace eyed her narrowly, then said: “Him dancing attendance makes sense if he thinks you have that fulgite. Perhaps we can use it—or you—as bait.”
Princess Aerinndís carefully tore the two portraits out of the ledger, and handed the volume back to Makepeace.
“We will leave mention of Albans out of official discussions, to minimise the chance of warning our target. Tomorrow evening Commander Delway and Professor Bermondsley can present their reports on their respective investigations, and we will decide a plan of action. I will return Dama Seaforth.”
“Highness,” Makepeace said, with a nod of acknowledgement, surprising Rian since he’d called Princess Leodhild “Hildy”, and the otherwise formal Crown Princess treated him with a familial lack of ceremony.
Rian was now almost used to being whisked from her feet by a wind with antlers, and at least the pace was less unnerving as they slipped out of the warehouse and rose above London’s rooftops. Events had moved as rapidly as the Night Breezes—after such achingly slow progress she had at last had confirmation that the fulgite thieves had been interested in the house at Caerlleon. The proof would come.
A gibbous moon had crested the horizon, thinning the blue tones of Rian’s night vision and picking out the glistening capstone of the nearest pyramid. The major pyramids were the only structures rising above the ever-present shadow forest, and they reminded Rian forcibly that Egypt was part of this hunt, and that spies more formidable than ravens were waiting back at Forest House. But, oh, it was hard to be serious beneath this grand sweep of sky, above a forest that existed beyond the world, with curl-tailed hounds lolloping at her side, and Aerinndís Gwyn Lynn directly ahead. She rode with the gods.
And they were already descending, the trip just long enough to make Rian ache for more. Half-expecting to be deposited precisely where she’d been collected, she managed to hide any reaction when they swept directly over the roof of Forest House and stopped in front of an innocuous chimney. Two pairs of golden eyes blinked from the shadows, but the caracal and cat did not stir.
More wind hounds began to gather: long-legged, narrow of body, heads elegant, ears streaming back, and feathery tails low. They were sisters to Arawn’s hounds, and they could strip fields, flatten towns, and easily tear even vampires apart. The damage wrought by the summer’s scouring wind was nothing to the force the Night Breezes could muster, and here they massed, dozens, hundreds, until the whole of the grove was covered by a swelling wave building and yet not crashing upon the shore the warehouse roof.
Although most of their power was being held in check, the Night Breezes still produced a gale that tore at the leaves of the grove and made the tiling rattle. The two small felines that were the focus of the intensifying blast hunkered down, eyes slitted to nothing, only the chimney behind them keeping them in place.
And then the massed winds were gone, a hammer-blow dissipating before it landed, and there was only the stag and the three-tailed mare, cantering slowly in place.
“Goals may be obtained more quickly through co-operation,” Aerinndís Gwyn Lynn observed, in passable Egyptian.
The cat and the caracal stood—with a hint of trembling muscles—then turned and walked unhurriedly away. Utter disdain, as represented by slowly switching tails, and twin nether eyes.
Below, the grove had filled with folies, but their numbers began to decrease. Forest House, thankfully, remained quiet. Rian glanced at Princess Aerinndís’ face, expecting affronted hauteur. The Crown Princess was undoubtedly angry: the confrontation had been an expression of the Sulevia Sceadu’s opinion of a foreign power offering help while prosecuting its own agenda. But the princess was smiling through her annoyance, her response more grim amusement than rage.
“Very likely they are under Command,” Princess Aerinndís observed, as the wind whisked them to the attic windows. Tiny mice worked on latches, and dark hares gently gusted the casement open.
Rian ducked her head as they wafted inside, and found herself intensely glad that Makepeace was not there to know her feelings, to look at her and see her excitement. What did it say about Rian that she was so enormously aroused by the display, by the sheer power of the Sulevia Sceadu? Rian did not know whether to be entertained by herself, or embarrassed.
“I do not see what it is that makes you less than an artist.”
Wrenching her thoughts back to less exciting paths, Rian saw that the Crown Princess was still holding the sketches of Lyle and Lynsey Blair. The question at least was a familiar one, and she used it to pull herself together, to shrug lightly, as she had so many times before.
“I could bore you with a long monologue on the nature of art, but the short answer is that I grew up thinking that I was an artist, and spent many years diligently training my skills, because it never occurred to me to be anything else. When I eventually realised that the whole of my motivation revolved around my parents, and none of it for the work, I gave it up.”
“You do not miss it?”
“Not particularly. It’s not as if I swore never to pick up a brush again—I help one of my cousins painting theatre backdrops whenever I visit Lutèce. I’ll draw something if I particularly want to remember what it looked like. But I don’t…” She paused, pushing aside an impulse to explain properly. “I treat it as a craft. A semantic quibble, perhaps.”
Princess Aerinndís had crossed to the workbenches, which fortuitously were no longer strewn with studies of her young sister. Instead it seemed that Eleri had at last started work on Eluned’s replacement arm. She had shaped the forearm from a length of dark wood, and all the small joints of the fingers had been laid out, leaving a gap for the back of the hand.
“Did you consider your brother an artist?”
“Oh, yes. I hope we recover this missing automaton. His work was always beautiful.”