The Wonders of Vale

1

1

Betrayal.

It hurts when your enemies do it, but at least you expect them to stab you in the back at every available opportunity.

It’s six times as bad when it’s your friends. Miranda being approximately my least favourite person on the planet at this time, I… am not in any hurry to work with her again.

Unfortunately, Milady insists.

This is why she’s the boss and I’m the lackey. She was no more impressed than the rest of us when Miranda defected to Ancestria Magicka, indulging in a spot of espionage (at our expense) on her way out. As far as I’m concerned, Miranda’s dead to me, whatever her skills may be, or however useful her particular brand of expertise.

But Milady sees opportunity, and takes it. The job must be finished, progress must be made, and if we need Miranda then we need Miranda.

I just wish she’d sent someone other than me to arrange it.

Ah well. If wishes were unicorns, lots of people other than my good self would ride them, and that’s just a messy prospect.

As for her probable location, well, I did some subtle asking around. And when I say “subtle” I mean I put posters up in all the common rooms and corridors at Home, emblazoned with Miranda’s picture and the words: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN?

Hey, I’m taking leaves out of Milady’s book. Whatever gets the job done.

Anyway, it didn’t take all that long to establish that I am in fact the last member of the Society who’s known to have had contact with Miranda. I’d suspected as much.

I’d last seen her on the fifth Britain, in the halls of the transplanted Ashdown Castle. It hadn’t been an easy conversation, but fortunately it hadn’t been a lengthy one either. Miranda had brought my pup back to me, which had won her back one or two measly points of my esteem (current balance: minus nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight).

And that was that. Where she had gone afterwards, I simply had no idea. Had she been part of the group of Society and Ancestria Magicka members we’d forcibly hauled back to the sixth? Had she made it back here, somehow, on her own?

Or was she still there?

I felt in my heart that she was still on the fifth. The allure of the place affected all of us; I’d practically had to drag Jay back by his hair, and I don’t know anybody more devoted to his family than he.

Meanwhile, we’ve reason to believe that the fifth is absolutely crawling with magickal beasts — the kind that are, at best, highly endangered in our Britain, and at worst outright extinct. The kinds of creatures Miranda would sell her grandmother to gain access to (or her friends, allies and employer, because sure, what are we worth anyway?)

Ahem. As I said, Miranda would want to stay.

So said my heart. Course, my heart has a bad habit for talking utter crap, so what do I know?

‘How do you feel about gut instincts?’ I said to Jay.

He looked up at me, blinking with the dazed look of a man so deeply engrossed by a book as to be having trouble finding his way out of it again. We were in our favourite spot in the first floor common room, tucked into chairs by the longest window. I had a stack of five books balanced on the arm of my chair. Jay had twelve.

‘Context?’ he said.

‘Detective work.’

‘Aha, you mean a good old-fashioned hunch.’

‘I’ve a hunch Miranda’s still on the fifth Britain.’

‘I’ve a hunch you might be right.’

‘Two hunches make a…’

‘Spectacular lack of evidence.’

I sighed, and slouched deeper into my chair. I’d sent Miranda a slew of messages, of course; I still had her number. She hadn’t answered any of them. Was that because she didn’t want to talk to me, or because she was too far beyond reach to receive any of them?

We were waiting for one of two things to happen: either a summons from the great Orlando, genius inventor, who reportedly had a stash of new toys for us to play with; or the arrival of our promised help from Mandridore, which may or may not include Baron Alban.

I’d had trouble focusing on any of the several books I’d purloined from the library. Good, improving reads, all of them, but I was restless and distracted and it was all I could do to stay in my seat. I’d got up twice and paced about, but trailing aimlessly from window to window doesn’t pass the time as effectively as you might think, considering its popularity as an activity.

When at last I heard footsteps approach, the brisk kind that heralded someone on a mission, I hurled aside my book with a carelessness that would’ve turned Val’s stomach, and launched myself out of my chair.

It was Indira.

‘Yes?’ I said, beaming.

‘Orlando’s ready to see you,’ she said to me, with her customary politeness.

Jay didn’t look up from his book.

‘Hey, big brother,’ I said, poking him.

He looked up. ‘Huh?’

‘You’re up, Jay,’ said Indira, and she more or less meant this literally, since Orlando’s secret lair is in the attics.

‘Right.’ Jay rose with considerably more composure than I had contrived to display, and set his book aside with all the tender care I should’ve employed.

Does nothing rattle this man? Honestly.

I confess to experiencing more than a little excitement. I scarcely exaggerate when I refer to Orlando’s workshops as super-secret. Few people are allowed in there; Indira’s one of the very rare exceptions, and she’s only permitted because she’s a genius too, and Orlando’s training her as his assistant.

Everyone else? Forget it.

Even me.

When Milady had told us to “report to Orlando”, I’d assumed she meant he would arrange to have our new stuff delivered by somebody… not him. He’s a recluse, like most geniuses, and I’ve set eyes on him exactly twice in my entire history with the Society.

But no. We’d been sent to the common room, there to await Orlando’s personal summons. Personal.

I wanted to take it as a compliment to Jay and I, but no. Orlando didn’t work like that. Rather, it was evidence of the importance Milady placed upon our particular mission. To get this job done, we all had to step up and do things we hated: Jay and I had to deal with Miranda, and Orlando had to deal with people in general.

As we followed Indira up and up the winding stairs to the attics, I resolved upon being as normal and unalarming as possible. Halfway up the stairs, I surreptitiously adjusted the hue of my hair. Bright pink might be taken amiss by a man of shy habits; perhaps a soothing shade of russet might be more appropriate.

Jay gave me a funny look.

‘What?’ I said, hiding the hand that wore my colour-changing ring behind my back.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Last-minute emergency personality recalibration.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t want to startle the genius.’

Jay’s eyes registered amusement, but his face remained perfectly grave. ‘I liked the pink.’

‘It did go nicely with this dress,’ I allowed, glancing down at the cream silk confection I was wearing.

‘Geniuses are notoriously eccentric, you know.’

He had a point.

By the time we’d finished trudging up staircases, my hair was back to vivid pink and Jay was smiling.

Indira, blissfully oblivious, led us down a rather dark corridor and paused outside of a nondescript door. We were way at the top of the House, but on the opposite side to Milady’s tower, and I’d barely set foot up there before. I couldn’t say I had missed much. The walls were plain white, the passages featureless, and the windows draughty. Not so much as a curtain or a shutter was to be seen.

Indira knocked. ‘Mr. Orlando, sir?’

That was extra polite, even for Indira. I felt a faint flicker of apprehension. Was Orlando a recluse because he was of monstrous personality? No, don’t be absurd, Ves. Shy Indira wouldn’t have survived a week if that was the case.

No answer came, and silence stretched.

Then the door opened an inch. I saw an eye peep through the crack: dark in colour, bright in expression, and penetrating. That eye took in me, Jay next to me, and Indira on her best behaviour, and then the door opened slightly farther.

‘Cordelia Vesper?’ said Orlando.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Jay Patel?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jay.

‘Lovely.’ The door swung wide, then, and the great Orlando stepped back to let us in. I smelt the enticing aroma of coffee — that would please Jay — and bread, the freshly-baked variety. Milady kept our genius well fuelled.

I have, as I said, glimpsed Orlando once or twice before, so I was prepared for his bulk. But on both occasions he had been in retreat, so I’d never seen his face. He proved to have greying dark hair cut ruthlessly short, an olive complexion, and a weathered enough visage to place him somewhere in his fifties. He wore graceless dungarees and an obviously well-loved white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. All these characteristics clearly proclaimed the practical man, so I was surprised to note the simple bronze pendant resting in the hollow of his throat, tied on a length of leather cord. I didn’t recognise the symbol.

Poor pup received a sharp check at the door. ‘No,’ said Orlando sternly, as she made to follow at my heels. He pointed one finger straight at her, then pointed imperiously out into the corridor.

Pup gazed up at him with adoring eyes, and wagged her tail.

‘She won’t do any harm—’ I began, but honesty compelled me to stop right there. What kind of an i***t would turn a goldnose pup loose in a workshop like Orlando’s? Obviously I’d been planning to be exactly that kind of an i***t.

‘Dear pup,’ I said consolingly as I scooped her up. ‘It’s time to go on grand adventures in some other, less obscenely expensive part of the house.’

I hardened my heart, turfed Goodie out into the corridor, and shut the door in her face. Her doleful eyes seemed to follow me as I rejoined Jay, Orlando and Indira.

Animals are heart-rending.

‘…made by a faerie king,’ Jay was saying.

‘For what purpose?’ said Orlando, rather sharply. He spoke with a faint accent, though I couldn’t place its origin. He was said to be Italian, but then he’d also been described as Polish and Croatian by various (most likely clueless) members of the Society, and on another occasion, Russian. Top marks to Orlando for mystique.

‘That isn’t known,’ said Jay, glancing at me. ‘Its present use is—’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Orlando, transferring his intent gaze to the lyre itself. ‘I know all about its current role. But I am not convinced that is what it was originally intended to be used for.’

I’d been trying to avoid noticing the lyre, and largely failing. Orlando treated it with much less reverence than Milady and House had shown, for he’d merely stood it in the middle of a workbench set against one wall, and left it there. It looked incongruous, to say the least, surrounded by the half-finished or half-dismantled paraphernalia of Orlando’s work, but nothing could hide its glorious beauty. It sat there and glimmered, its watery strings rippling, and I swear, it exuded a rosewater perfume to boot. I could smell it from the other side of the room.

‘Ves,’ said Jay warningly, and I averted mine eyes.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Orlando, and I found myself awarded the unsettling honour of his full attention. He looked at me as though he could see my inner workings, and I experienced a touch of sympathy for the artefacts that had crossed his workbenches over the years. This is how they must have felt. ‘Cordelia Vesper,’ said Orlando, like my name was a talisman, or a magick word. ‘You are attracted to it.’

‘Profoundly,’ I said in despair. ‘Don’t ask me why. I mean, I like shiny things as much as the next person—’

‘A bit more than the next person,’ put in Jay, a truth which I could not deny.

‘—but this is something else.’

‘Describe how it makes you feel.’

I groped for the right words. ‘Lustful,’ was the best I came up with.

Orlando blinked.

‘I don’t mean like— I mean, it’s like hunger, but much deeper. Half of me would give just about anything to take that thing up and never let go of it again.’

‘And the other half?’ prompted Orlando.

‘The other half is scared to death of it.’

Orlando’s eyes crinkled in a faint smile. ‘Let us call that the sensible half.’

‘And it’s mesmerising. I find it hard to stop looking at it.’

‘But you can manage to do so, with Jay’s help.’

‘He does have a way of recalling me to my senses.’ It occurred to me that this was true of our friendship in many ways; the lyre was only the most obvious manifestation.

Given that I was meant to be the wise mentor here, there might be one or two things wrong with that arrangement.

Orlando said: ‘It is not possible, I suppose, that Jay should embark upon this errand with some other companion?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘Someone less at risk from the lyre’s glamours.’

‘Leave Ves behind?’ Jay said, and I was gratified by the note of incredulity in his tone. ‘No. Not an option.’

‘I’m going,’ I said firmly. But that said… ‘When you say at risk, what do you mean?’