Dancing and Disaster, page 12
Okay. Playing chicken with the glaistigs. That’s one way to distract them.
‘SILVESSSSSEEEN,’ I screamed again, because Zareen wasn’t much daunted by my voice-of-the-gods routine and was coming at me again. ‘Don’t make me hurt Zareen or I WILL HURT YOU.’
I would have, too, in that mood. It had been a difficult day, I was tired, and worst of all, I was hungry. And the carrier bags containing my carefully chosen repast were lying scattered in the street getting rained upon because Silvessen’s miserable cronies fancied a possession party, I mean, who’s got time for this?
Thankfully, I wasn’t obliged to do either of those things because she’d heard me. Well, she could hardly help it.
Another voice rolled through the heavens, almost as thunderous as mine. ‘Alaiona. Celaena. Fanessel. Desist.’
Zareen stopped dead. Behind her, Indira and Emellana came to an equally abrupt halt, so sharply they almost toppled over. All three shuddered convulsively, and then all three screamed, which was super fun.
And then all three of my colleagues and friends collapsed in the dirt.
‘Thanks,’ I muttered weakly, and dropped to my knees beside Zareen.
She was already coming around; her eyes were open, and when she looked at me I knew it was Zar because she was angry.
She came up spitting with fury. ‘Bitches tricked me,’ she snarled. ‘And they teamed me, too, because they knew I was the threat. Let me at them.’
‘Nope,’ I said, planting a palm on her chest when she tried to jump up. ‘Silvessen recalled them because walking your carcasses around rather contravened the terms of the deal we just made. I’m afraid forcibly exorcising her only friends would have much the same effect.’
Zareen’s only response was a wordless snarl, but she made no further attempts to tear off in a murderous rage, so I let her be while I checked on Emellana.
‘Why does my head hurt,’ I heard Zareen mutter as I left her.
Em was on her feet by the time I reached her, brushing mud off her coat.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I feel like we shouldn’t have left you.’
Unruffled as ever, she twinkled at me. ‘Food was important. Where is it, by the way?’
‘Over there.’ I pointed. ‘You seem remarkably unperturbed for a recently possessed woman.’
‘It’s happened before. Never pleasant, but you can get used to anything.’ With which wisdom, she ambled away in the direction of food, leaving me to unhappy contemplation of her words.
What do you have to go through to get used to malevolent possession?
Did I want to know?
I did not.
I turned in search of Indira.
No need. Her big brother had her in a big hug, which was good, because even from here I could see she was drawn and shaking. Poor girl. She was so young, she’d had none of the experience Emellana benefited from.
‘I shouldn’t have left you,’ Jay was saying, echoing my own words. ‘If I’d been here—’
‘If you’d been here, what?’ Indira interrupted, and pulled away from him. ‘What were you going to do?’
Jay seemed at a loss for an answer. Fair, because it was a really good question. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally said. ‘Something to protect you—’
Indira became icily dignified, unconsciously mirroring Emellana’s gestures as she brushed herself down. ‘Bad things happen sometimes. You can’t prevent that.’
‘Even so—’
‘No. It isn’t up to you to protect me from the world, and it wouldn’t help me much if you could. How am I supposed to become competent myself if you never let me experience anything that might be challenging?’
‘There’s challenging, and then there’s forcible possession by a dangerous spirit—’
‘Jay.’ Indira looked him dead in the eye, ice-cold. ‘Resilience is the product of encountering adversity, and surviving. You do want me to grow into a strong and capable adult?’
There was no good comeback to that, and Jay didn’t try. Wise man. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I hear you. I’m sorry.’
She nodded, and that was that.
‘Thanks for the hug,’ she said. ‘It helps.’ And then both of them were looking around for me, and for food, possibly in that order or possibly not.
The mood as we tore through our repast was subdued. I don’t know what had led any of us to expect a nice, easy mission; when did that ever pan out? But we had, and instead we’d been emotionally tortured, our wits were tested, our physical bodies were pushed to their limits (and beyond), and finally several of us had been used as sock puppets.
And we hadn’t eaten all day. At least that was a problem we could fix.
We ate huddled inside one of the more intact of Silvessen’s cottages, which at least kept the rain and some of the wind off us. But a half hour sitting in one place left us shivering with cold and very ready to be going home.
I made the last morsel of my second eclair last, savouring the sweetness and the cream.
And when it was finished, and the last drops of cooling tea drained, I — and Jay and Zareen and even Emellana — turned a hopeful look upon Indira.
‘Let’s have a look,’ said she, rising (a little stiffly) to her feet.
She crossed the street and sat in the dirt next to the regulator, sat there for a while with her palms to the earth and her brain on some other plane of reality. I don’t know what she was doing, but after ten minutes she stood up, made a hopeless and ineffectual attempt to wipe the mud off her trousers, and shrugged. ‘It seems to be okay,’ she said.
Which is as good a way of tempting fate as any I’ve ever heard, and she really ought to have known better.
Because that was when the horde of carnivorous unicorns showed up.
Okay, just kidding about the unicorns. What actually happened was nothing, which at that point could scarcely have surprised me more.
‘It’s okay?’ I repeated dumbly.
Indira nodded. ‘I think so. Nothing anomalous is going on, and it seems stable.’
‘Can you… get it out of there?’
‘No.’
‘Milady won’t be happy.’
Indira looked pained. ‘I know, and I would prefer to remove it, but I can’t.’
‘So we leave it here.’
‘Yes. It’ll have to be checked regularly for a few weeks to monitor the results, tweak and recalibrate as necessary, but for now it’s fine.’
‘And we can go home.’
‘Yes,’ said Indira, and added, fervently, ‘please.’
18
Explaining the dance party to Milady wasn’t as hard as you might think. She’s met me before.
‘So the only conceivable way to avert total disaster and certain death was to challenge the tormented and wronged inhabitants of Silvessen to a dance battle,’ Milady said, just to make sure she had it straight.
‘Exactly,’ said I.
It was the next day, which was nice, because we’d had a free evening before we’d been summoned to make our report. An evening in which to get clean, and warm, and fed (again), and hugged (thank you Jay), and then to sleep the deep, peaceful slumber of Society agents who aren’t being mercilessly tortured by a quartet of unhappy glaistigs.
I had, however, been summoned particularly bright and early: it was barely seven o’clock, I hadn’t had breakfast yet, and was it my imagination or was the light getting steadily brighter in Milady’s tower-top interrogation room? Searingly bright, like I was under police questioning and nobody wanted me to feel very comfortable anytime soon.
I shifted nervously, and made myself stop.
‘And this worked out… well,’ Milady continued.
‘I mean, we lost,’ I admitted. ‘But I sort of did that my own self, so it’s not the same as actually being beaten, and the results were—’
‘Ves,’ Milady interrupted. ‘You’ve committed us to single-handedly restoring an entire town to its former glory. A town uninhabited for centuries, I might add, with no functional buildings and a magickal status best described as bleak.’
‘Yes! Isn’t it an exciting opportunity?’
There was a long and awful silence.
I didn’t even have my staunch and trusty comrades to back me up, because I’d been brought up here alone.
‘It’s not exactly single-handed when there are a couple of hundred of us at the Society,’ I ventured. ‘And I’d be happy to lead this project myself.’
‘Cordelia Vesper,’ said Milady, in a terrible voice. ‘If you think I will be landing anybody else with this — project, you are very much mistaken.’
‘Understood,’ I said quickly.
‘It is fortunate that some parts of the… necessary undertakings will dovetail, to some extent, with Orlando’s proposed programme of magickal restoration via the regulator.’
‘That’s what I was hoping.’
‘And the Troll Court may take an interest, considering that this restoration is similar to their hopes for Farringale.’
‘Exactly!’
‘As for the rest.’
I waited.
‘Do you have the first idea what it will cost to rebuild a town, Ves?’
‘Not really, but—’
‘And this is a heritage site of historical interest, so we cannot merely level the town and build whatever we’d like. Each of those buildings will have to be carefully restored, and rebuilt in a fashion that’s respectful to their origins. Which means special materials, expertise—’ She stopped with a gasp, as though the mere thought of everything had exhausted her.
I waited in meek silence for her to continue.
And when that didn’t work, I piped up with: ‘We have people for that!’
Which, in my defence, was true. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d had to intervene to save ancient buildings of magickal import, and among the permanent employees at the Society were a range of people with exactly the sorts of skills in woodcarving, thatching, stonemasonry and ironworking that Milady was talking about.
‘And the materials?’
This was a question I didn’t have a smart answer for, a fact I betrayed with a lengthy and unpromising silence.
‘I’ll think of something,’ I finally said.
‘I would consider it advisable that you do,’ said Milady, still rather awfully, and I trailed away feeling chastened.
Explaining the dance party to Ophelia was considerably more challenging.
I hadn’t had the courage to face her straight after my grilling at Milady’s hands, so I took refuge in the first-floor common room.
Where she found me, an hour later, nursing a cup of tea and staring sadly out of the window.
Tea, note. Not chocolate. Milady was definitely not quite pleased with me.
‘You’re back,’ Ophelia observed, sitting down opposite me in the chair Jay usually occupies.
It wasn’t that I was unhappy to see Ophelia; she’s a nice lady. But I wasn’t pleased to see her right then, before I’d had chance to recover from my undignified drubbing at Milady’s hands. As I watched her sit down, cool and calm and full of questions, I may have actually quailed a bit.
I forced a smile. ‘As you see. How are you?’ At least the common room was empty apart from the two of us. Nobody else would have to witness my attempts to explain the inexplicable to Merlin.
‘Very well, thank you,’ she said serenely, but I didn’t miss the narrow look she shot me as she spoke. As usual, she saw through me. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened?’ she went on.
I heaved a sigh, finished the dregs of my tea, and set down the emptied mug. ‘So. Silvessen was uninhabited, except not quite so uninhabited as we were expecting.’
The story took a while to get through, rather longer than I’d had to spend recounting everything to Milady. This was partly because Ophelia had questions. Lots of questions.
‘You did what?’ came up fairly often.
And twice she said: ‘Oh?’ in that dangerous way parents adopt while their children try to explain why they’re covered in chocolate spread from head to foot (example entirely hypothetical, definitely not something drawn from the storied experience of Tiny Ves).
Jay came in while I was about halfway finished. Finding his chair occupied, he took the seat next to me instead, and sat there in supportive silence while I stumbled through the rest of the story.
When I was finished, Ophelia looked at both of us in silence.
Finally, she spoke.
‘So you used the ancient magick of Merlin to hold a dance competition.’
I suppressed a sigh, and nodded. Take it like a queen, Ves. ‘It seemed the best thing to do,’ I offered.
Her eyes widened at that. ‘Did it?’
‘What would you have done?’
She just stared helplessly at me. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But definitely not that.’
I waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. She seemed shocked speechless.
‘Ves did great,’ Jay interjected. ‘The mission objectives were fulfilled, a rapport was established with the incumbents of Silvessen and a deal reached which will be of mutual benefit. Above all, no one was hurt.’ He smiled slightly, wryly, and amended that. ‘Save for a few pulled muscles all round.’
Ophelia was shaking her head. ‘To call it an unorthodox approach would not begin to cover it.’
‘That’s Ves for you.’
‘I see that.’
The look on her face. I tried not to feel like she was experiencing a crushing regret at having picked me for her successor.
Her next words dashed those hopes.
‘I chose you as the best candidate to inherit Merlin’s magick. Would you like to explain to me how that’s still true?’
I opened my mouth, and closed it again. I had a surplus of smart answers I could’ve given, but this was serious. For once, I had to be serious too. Why was I the right person to be the next Merlin?
Was I, even? I wasn’t certain of that myself. How could I convince Ophelia?
In the end, Jay saved me.
‘Permit me to point out a couple of things,’ he said. ‘For one, Ves has a boundless imagination and an inexhaustible supply of creative solutions to difficult problems.’
Ophelia snorted with laughter, which seemed favourable, and shook her head, which didn’t. ‘Demonstrably true.’
‘And for another. Let’s consider the hazards of this kind of a power handover. The greatest danger has to be that you’ll pick someone who won’t prove trustworthy. Someone who’ll abuse Merlin’s magick, turn it to ill effect. Someone who’ll be corrupted by it. Right?’
The ghost of a smile crossed Ophelia’s face. ‘I see where you’re going with this line of thinking.’
Jay smiled, too, much more widely. ‘So you gave Ves the opportunity to test drive Merlin’s magick, and what did she do? She figured out right away that she could use it to influence, if not outright control, other people’s behaviour, but what does that mean to Ves? The idea that she could enslave people to her will wouldn’t even occur to her, let alone interest her. There’s no puppeteering, no power tripping, and definitely no bloodbaths. No, you give Ves awesome cosmic powers and what does she do? She holds a dance party. That’s Ves. And that’s why she’s the right person to be Merlin.’
I felt tears pricking behind my eyes, and had to swallow a lump in my throat. I couldn’t even speak, so Jay had to be contented with a look of heartfelt gratitude. He smiled back, his eyes lingering on my face with an expression of such tenderness I had to look away.
Ophelia digested Jay’s words in silence for longer than I was comfortable with. I felt like my fate hung in the balance here; if she didn’t accept Jay’s argument, she’d take back all the beautiful, ancient magick and go find someone else to embody the archetype.
I wasn’t deeply committed to becoming the next Merlin; my life would go on even if I was passed over for it. But failure stings. And besides, I had stuff to do with those powers. I had heritage to save, people to help, magick to revive.
‘A dance battle.’ Ophelia was shaking her head again, but then, to my intense relief, she began to laugh.
She laughed and laughed until tears streamed from her eyes, and when she’d finally finished laughing she said: ‘I’ll say this: your turn as Merlin is going to be a lot more colourful than mine.’
Colourful. Good point. I touched a fingertip to a lock of my hair, and with a wisp of magick I turned it into a fluid purple-blue ombre. ‘I’ll consider it a point of honour,’ I told Ophelia, who smiled, so that was all right, then.
Later, when Ophelia had gone back to her cottage-out-of-time, Jay and I lingered a while in the common room. I had a great many things to do: arrange for a burial crew to tend to the remains of the deceased at Silvessen; negotiate with the Troll Court for assistance with the rebuilding, via Emellana; exercise my Yllanfalen contacts in hope of further aid; and figure out where in the world I was going to get a town’s worth of rare and expensive building materials.
But I didn’t feel motivated to work on any of it. I was tired, which was fair; yesterday was a long, long day, and I’d exercised my physical and magickal powers in all manner of unusual ways.
I was also feeling a little deflated. Nothing had turned out quite the way I was hoping, and I wasn’t sure what to make of where I’d ended up.
I must have heaved a little sigh, for Jay looked over at me and said: ‘All okay?’
I gestured at the emptied teapot. ‘I can’t remember the last time Milady gave me tea.’
Jay knew what that meant; he grimaced. ‘You deserved chocolate, though.’
‘I think it’s the rebuilding that she’s unhappy about. It is going to be expensive, for sure.’
‘That’s fair.’
‘And it is good tea. I think there was even some cream in it.’
‘Not entirely in the doghouse, then.’ He smiled at me, in a way that was probably supposed to be encouraging. I tried to smile back.
Jay leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees so he could give me one of his long, intense looks. ‘Ves. I meant what I said. You did a great job.’
