The Devil's Looking-Glass

Barely had the thought crossed his mind before he saw his reflection melt away. In its place loomed up the yellowing and hideous skull beneath the skin. Death is waiting for you, it told him, and it is closer than you think. His heart began to pound and a sheen of sweat glistened on his brow.

Reeling, he tore open another mirror and stepped through to the next small chamber, and the one after that. He felt hours pass; days; years. His reflection aged, the skin hanging from his face in loose folds, until it crumbled to dust, then became young and vital once more.

Wrenching open one mirror, he was greeted by an image of Dee. The old man sat in a high-backed wooden chair that resembled the Confessor’s throne in Westminster Abbey. His eyes were black pebbles in a frozen face. Brooding, he was, plotting death; not the Dee that Will knew at all. The vision vanished in the blink of an eye, but not before Will felt it sear itself upon his mind.

More mirrors glittered, endless Will Swyftes.

As he stumbled into another chamber, the glass showed no reflection, nor a hint of what might be, but a memory. It was night, and he stood by the well in Arden on the day and night that had changed the course of his life for ever. It was the day Jenny was stolen from him, but that had not been the only assault upon his life. He was there, washing his hands over and over again, desperately trying to rid them of the blood that now turned the water brown. And he heard the soft tread of small feet at his back, and knew that it was Grace. He could not let her see his crime, his failure. And so he turned to her and smiled and spoke as sweetly as he could. But that was the moment he knew he was not a good man, and could never be again. Redemption would never come for him. All that remained in life was saving Jenny. If he could do that, at least he could achieve something good in his miserable existence.

And then, in his befuddled mind, a single clear thought surfaced. It felt like a revelation, a burning truth. The Unseelie Court steal our innocence, he thought. That is their greatest crime. They corrupt our highest aspirations and force us to be base and grubby.

With shaking hands, he ripped open the mirror and teetered on the brink of a pure black abyss. Buffeting wind lashed rain into his face. Somehow his fingers clutched on to the jamb. The door had opened in the wall of the tower and he half hung over a vertiginous drop into the night. The blast of air and the wet cleared some of the delirium from his mind, and he understood what a trap Dee had set. Only reactions honed by a lifetime of battle had prevented him from plunging to his doom; others would not have been so fortunate.

As he dragged himself back, he glimpsed movement below him. Even in his feverish state, his senses jangled. Gripping on to the jamb, he leaned out into the storm once more and peered down. Squinting, he could just make out shapes shifting on the sheer wall. Like fat grey spiders, the Enemy scaled the tower, clinging on to the gale-lashed stone with supernatural skill.

Bypassing the mirror maze, they would be upon Dee in no time at all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

THE MIRROR SWUNG open without a sound. Blinking in the glare of candlelight after so long stumbling through the dark, Carpenter looked round a small antechamber lined with leather-bound books. On a trestle in a corner stood rolls of yellowing charts, a human skull with a fragment of pate missing, an ivory-handled knife with a curved blade and a small silver casket. He could still smell the sweet aroma which had hung in the air since they had entered the mirror maze. But over the top of it now drifted the reek of human sweat.

His head swam from the visions that had floated across his mind’s eye since he had become separated from the others. His love, Alice Dalingridge, calling to him, still as beautiful as when she had been alive. His father, now so long in the grave, showing him how to chop wood behind the thatched cottage in the forest clearing. And that thing tearing at his face in the frozen Muscovy woods, when Swyfte had left him for dead and he had felt all hope desert him. Time no longer meant anything to him. He might have been in that black, glass world for years.

With a shaking hand, he wiped the sweat from his brow and steadied himself. At least that damnable whispering had left him in peace. Creeping forward, he listened at the door to the next chamber. When no sound reached his ears, he opened it a crack and peered inside. Amid shelves of books, Dee sat on a stool in front of the cold hearth, his back to Carpenter. The old man had his head in his hands, deep in thought.

The spy drew his dagger in case he had to prick the alchemist to urge him to obey. As he prepared to step into the chamber, a hand fell on his shoulder. He almost cried out and lashed out with his knife. The steel whipped a hair’s breadth from Launceston’s throat. Pulling the door shut, Carpenter pushed the Earl to the other side of the antechamber and whispered, ‘You fool. I could have killed you.’

He flinched at the other man’s penetrating gaze. ‘What was your intention?’ the Earl asked in his blank, emotionless voice.

‘To capture Dee, of course.’ Carpenter’s gaze flickered away from the other man’s probing eyes.

After a moment, the Earl spoke, his tone measured. ‘I have had little comfort in my life, despite the land my family has owned, and the wealth we have amassed – or perhaps because of it. My father was not a man given to sentiment. Ledgers and balance sheets prescribed the limits of his life; the cold stone of our castle, rarely heated even in winter, was the womb of his existence. He sought to teach me harsh lessons, feeling, mayhap, that it would best prepare me for the kind of life he lived. Cellars and drains and holes were my billet. Days spent in dark and damp, with only rats and beetles for friends. Blood and bruises and broken bones. No traitor in the Tower fared worse. I wonder sometimes if God made me the monster I am, or if it was my father.’ He wrinkled his nose and shrugged. ‘It matters little. We are what we are.’

Carpenter glanced towards the door, half expecting Dee to come out and cast some vile spell on them. ‘Why are you telling me these things?’ he asked in irritation.

‘I killed him. My father. He was my first. At the time I thought it would ease the ache that reached deep inside me.’ Launceston cocked his head, narrowing his eyes as he stared into the middle distance. ‘It only increased my appetite. When something has been taken away, we try to replenish the space left behind with other things, but that is like filling the sea with sand.’

‘You are a madman. Why speak like this, now, here?’

‘You have lost the woman you loved, seen your face scarred and the very foundations of your life shaken. You are trying to fill the sea with sand,’ the Earl said.

Carpenter furrowed his brow, trying to tease out the meaning in his companion’s words. He sensed a weight there and it puzzled him. Launceston rarely spoke, and never expressed his innermost thoughts or feelings. Indeed, Carpenter had come to believe the Earl had none.

‘I know not what Lansing offered you when you were his prisoner, but it was a deal with the devil,’ the aristocrat said, his voice now a whisper. And then Carpenter understood: no one saw into the Earl, but Launceston had seen into him. ‘Your belief that you can achieve your heart’s desire has blinded you to the truth.’

‘The bastard offered me nothing,’ Carpenter lied, with a derisive laugh. ‘I resisted all his attempts to torture me.’

‘The Unseelie Court rarely have need to torture. And I know you better than you know yourself,’ the other man replied, turning his gaze towards the candle flame. Carpenter thought he appeared to be trying to dredge up the remnants of whatever human emotion had survived from his earliest days; a monk trying to comprehend the ways of a Bankside doxy might have looked equally baffled. ‘The decision you make this day will define the course of the rest of your life,’ Launceston continued. ‘I will not stand in your way, whatever you choose. You have stood by me when most other men would have walked away in disgust – that is something I have never known in my life, and I value it more than you could understand. For the first time in my dismal existence, I have found a place where I am at ease, here among men who deal in false faces and deceit yet hold themselves to a higher standard than most honest men—’

‘I made no deal with Lansing,’ Carpenter interrupted, trying to hide the bitterness in his voice.

Launceston continued as if the other man had not spoken. ‘—and I feel there is a place here for you too, if only you would open your eyes to it. In the midst of all this strife, we can find peace – yes, and Swyfte too – to replace the things that have been stolen from us. Seek out the morals that have always guided you—’

Carpenter laughed. ‘I am being lectured on morals by a man who has killed children.’ If he had expected the Earl to be stung by the gibe, Launceston did not show it.

‘We must not become the men the Unseelie Court believe us to be,’ the aristocrat ended. His searching gaze fixed upon the other man’s face.

Carpenter felt the guilt rise inside him. How weak he had been, and he had known it and tried to deny it. Yet here was a man without a heart refusing to judge him and wanting him to aspire to greater things. What a mad world they had entered when they had stepped within the tower.

‘I made no deal with Lansing,’ he repeated, adding in a gentler tone, ‘and I would never have given Dee up to them. Let us work together to capture the old man and deliver him to the Tempest. Then perhaps we can escape this steaming hell and return home.’

But as they crept back to the door, he felt his falsehoods lying heavily upon him. Amends would need to be made. He shook his head to dispel the bitter taste of failure and saw traces of candlelight stream through the air. ‘There is still magic at play here,’ he muttered.

Easing open the door, he peered through the crack. Dee still sat in the same position, bowed in front of the hearth. Carpenter wondered if the old man had died, so still was he, but he drew his dagger none the less. With a man like Dee he would take no chances. Holding his breath, he eased towards the hunched figure. His head throbbed and his mouth felt dry. When he crooked his arm to slip it round the alchemist’s neck, he suddenly felt a fist grab the back of his shirt and drag him backwards.

A breeze whisked past his face as an axe-blade swung from the shadows above and smashed into Dee’s side, throwing him to the flagstones. Carpenter gaped. One step further and it would have been his head rolling across the floor. Launceston knelt and picked up a thread that had been broken as Carpenter entered. Another of Dee’s traps, but with this one he had paid the price.

Yet as Carpenter whirled back to the fallen figure, he saw the truth in the shapeless robes. Pulling them to one side, the spy revealed a frame of twisted saplings. ‘How could I ever have believed that was Dee?’ he muttered.

‘You were entranced by whatever spell the alchemist has woven here,’ Launceston said. His tone was flat, but he clearly did not want Carpenter to blame himself.

Carpenter sighed. ‘So the old man still hides away. We must resume our search.’ He turned towards the door so that the aristocrat would not see the worry in his face. Deep inside, he could feel the Caraprix wriggling, and whispering its seductive words. Deep inside, he could feel himself dying by the moment.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

THE TORCH GUTTERED and hissed. Will watched its endless reflections in the glittering mirrors, deep in thought. No shadows could exist in that blazing world of light, and for the first time the spy thought he could see clearly. Outside, the Unseelie Court still climbed the tower, drawing closer by the moment. He pushed his anxiety to one side and remained calm, focused.

When he had slammed the door and escaped back into the mirror maze, he realized the blast from the storm had cleared his head. The whispers from the carvings washed around him, but now he paid them attention. The dancing light of the torch flame was no more a mere distraction. He sucked in a deep breath, letting the sweet smell with its bitter undertones envelop him. All he needed had been there from the beginning, but as Dee had no doubt suspected, his attention had been elsewhere. The alchemist was a man of intellect, given to rigorous thought and reflection. He enjoyed his games of strategy, his chess, his nine men’s morris. Puzzles with solutions that could be extracted through reflection. Will nodded to himself, ignoring the call to urgency.

Kneeling, he waved the torch close to one of the mirrors. Around the area where a hand would push the door open, a faint, sticky residue smeared the surface. Will smiled. Cunning Dee, who loved his concoctions, his herbs and clays and bubbling pots of lamb fat. In times past, the wise man had demonstrated the mysterious but effective potions he had brewed in his chambers. Some had been poisons with rapid lethal effect. Others sent a man to sleep, or made them foam at the mouth in a wild rage. And some turned wits to quicksilver and conjured visions out of thin air.

The spy stripped off his sodden shirt and flicked it round his right hand. With his skin covered, the paste would not seep into him and he would have time to recover from earlier contact. He held the torch high and watched the flames whip away from the hollow mouths of the whispering carvings. The unsettling sound had been designed to add to the off-kilter effects of Dee’s paste, he realized, but they required a strong draught to work. The torch flame pointed away from the source. He lowered his eyes, refusing to look into the mirrors as he fought to overcome the subtle effects of the drug. Then, when he was ready, he pressed open the door with his covered hand and began to follow the trail back.

Watching the torch as he progressed through the mirror chambers, he saw the draught grow stronger. When the whispering became the chattering of madmen in Bedlam, the dancing light revealed the edges of a trapdoor in the vaulted ceiling. The breeze blew through small holes on each of the four sides. Will reached up to a shallow indentation in the centre of the trap and pressed. With a click, the door swung down followed by a coiled rope ladder. He squinted into that dark square and thought he could see a distant glimmer of faint light.

Determination burned through his foggy thoughts. The time of confusion had ended. Laying the torch on the cold flagstones, he set one foot on the ladder and began to climb into the dark.

He found himself at the foot of a flight of narrow stone steps, leading up to a small arched door standing slightly ajar. Candlelight gleamed through the crack. The sweet fragrance of incense drifted on the draught, and he could hear faint mutterings of incantations in Latin. Drawing his dagger, he crept closer. Through the slit of open door, he could just discern a small circular room. On the wall hung a purple tapestry covered with magical symbols of crescent moons, stars, runes, circles and squares in gold. Open volumes with stained pages were scattered across the flagstones.

Dee stalked past, his gown swishing across the floor. The animal skulls clinked on their silver chains at his chest. His wild mane of silver hair swung as he flung out his arms, gesticulating at invisible companions. Now he was near, the spy realized that what he had taken for Latin incantations was gibberish. The old man was lost to his world of madness.

As soon as the alchemist’s back was turned, Will kicked open the door and barrelled inside. Dee let out a bestial howl of rage. His eyes glinted with insanity, his lips pulling away from clenched teeth. The spy crashed into the older man, knocking him across the carpet of mildewed tomes. Pinning him down, Will pressed the tip of his dagger beneath Dee’s eye and said, ‘I will not insult you by treating you like a frail old man.’

Dee thrashed like a wildcat in a sack, but as the spy dug the steel deeper into his flesh he quietened. A trickle of blood ran down his ashen skin. Yet still his eyes ranged with madness and he snarled animal sounds.

‘What have you done to yourself, doctor? Where is that sharp wit that could cut a man half your age?’ Acutely aware of the Fay drawing nearer, Will searched the alchemist’s flickering gaze for any sign of comprehension and began to wonder if all their sacrifices had been for naught. ‘Let us talk, you and I,’ he said, ‘as we did so many times in the Black Gallery, and perhaps the echoes of those days will stir some sense within you.’

In a calm voice that belied the urgency he felt, Will recounted how Dee had taken him under his wing when he had first arrived at the Palace of Whitehall from Cambridge within days of Jenny’s disappearance. Though as gruff and uncompromising as always, the doctor had shown him some kindness then, recognizing the scars that had been inflicted and the worse things that lay ahead. Patiently, he had instructed Will in the ways of the Unseelie Court, and the horrors they had perpetrated for generations, and their wiles and their magics, and over days he had led the freshly minted spy to an accommodation with his new life.

‘Remember, doctor, how you spun your fable of an English empire, stretching across the shining seas, a world lifted free from the yoke of the Unseelie Court?’ he continued, lulling the old man with his steady tone. ‘Remember how we stood side by side at the court of Stephen Bathory, when you conjured the ghost of the Polish King’s long-dead father? How he trembled.’ Will smiled at the memory, another of Dee’s tricks to bend the foreign royal to the will of the English. ‘And how you poured a flask of sack over the head of that preening popinjay, the Earl of Leicester. What a waste of good wine.’

His soothing voice worked its spell and the old man calmed. Cautiously, Will removed the dagger and stood up, unsure if Dee would slip back into his madness. His heart pounding with awareness that time was slipping away, he looked around the small, windowless chamber until he found an ink-pot and a quill. Hastily, he sketched a few lines on a page torn from the front of a book. Once done, he dangled his work in front of Dee’s face. It showed a horned circle with a dot in the centre, a cross beneath and under that a wavy line, a representation of a devilish man.

‘Do you recognize your glyph, Dr Dee, the one you described at such length in your vast tome, the Monas Hieroglyphica? You see the astrological symbols? The power it represents? You laboured over this design for years, did you not? You told me how this glyph showed the true secret of all there is, how everything is connected at the smallest and highest levels, and that all we see around is illusion, a stage on which we are the players. Once this wisdom, this glyph, is understood true power comes, you said. Here is your great work, doctor. Here is you, in essence. Remember.’

The alchemist’s eyes widened and the page was reflected in their depths. His madness was no natural loss of wits, Will felt sure, and if anything could breach his defences and reach the Dee that was, it was his true obsession, his life’s work; the source of all his beliefs, and, perhaps, his powers. The old man’s gaze swam, and for a moment Will felt sure he had failed. But then a mist appeared to rise in the depths of those eyes, and the brows drew together. Dee blinked once, twice, and his gaze drifted to Will. He scowled. ‘So, I am in Hell,’ he croaked.

‘As are we all, doctor,’ Will replied. But his smile faded as the lilting strains of pipe and fiddle floated through the smoky air like the waking echoes of a dream. The scent of honeysuckle wafted on the draught. When a drop of blood fell from the spy’s right nostril and spattered on the flags, Dee closed his eyes and mouthed a silent curse.

The spy drew his rapier and backed against the wall. His gaze drifted up as he heard a clattering overhead. ‘Time to leave, doctor,’ he called.

Amid the sound of rending, a hole appeared in the ceiling as tiles and wooden laths were torn away. Rain gusted into the dry atmosphere and the crack of thunder rolled all around.

‘Too late,’ Will said through gritted teeth. ‘If your wits have fully returned, now is the time to use them.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

THE CANDLE GUTTERED. Shadows flew across the chamber as the storm crashed against the tower like waves against a reef. In the flickering light, Will levelled his rapier and waited for the first of the Unseelie Court to crawl through the holes in the shattered ceiling. He could sense them, clinging to the rain-lashed roof as they waited for their moment. And then they would come like the storm, he knew, teeth and swords and talons, wild eyes and blood.

Dee clambered to his feet and lurched to an iron lever protruding from a slot in the flagstones. Gripping it with both hands, he wrenched it back. A deep grinding reverberated through the walls. ‘There,’ he exclaimed. ‘The path through the maze is open.’

‘Go, then,’ Will replied. ‘The Tempest waits in the cove. I will hold them off.’ Though death was closer than it had ever been, he set aside fear and doubt. He breathed deeply, bringing the stillness inside him. The storm faded away. The flickering light troubled him not. He was ready.

As Dee stumbled through the door, Will heard a distant shout, and another answering. Tapestries flapped in the gale. Rain pooled on the flags, soaking the age-old books. Still the Unseelie Court waited. Were they taunting him? Trying to frighten him? They knew what strategies worked from generations of torment at lonely farms and on paths through dark woods, but this time they would be disappointed.

The door crashed open and Carpenter and Launceston burst in, blades drawn. Behind them, Strangewayes stumbled, delirious. ‘Ignore him; he is less than useless,’ Carpenter sneered with a nod. ‘He failed to discover Dee’s paste upon the mirrors.’

‘Ah, John, you are sharp as a knife, as always,’ Will said with a flourish of his left hand.

The other man shrugged. ‘Only a fool would have failed to find it, sooner or later.’ Muttering to himself, Strangewayes stumbled back out of the door.

Launceston eyed the holes in the roof. ‘So, they wait for their moment, like rats in a barn at night.’ He shook his head and called, ‘You waste our time. Come now and be done with it.’

The candle guttered one final time and then winked out.

As the dark swept across the chamber, Will braced himself. He had the door at his back, Carpenter to his left, Launceston to his right, but they were at a disadvantage. The Fay always wrapped themselves in the night.

When the wind dropped for a moment, he heard the soft thud of someone dropping to the flagstones, then a second. He could sense the other presences in the room, like a yawning grave, but how many had entered he did not know. Gooseflesh prickled on his skin as the chamber grew colder.

For too long a moment an unnatural silence hung and then Lansing’s icy voice floated through the void. ‘This is what awaits you, a mere taste of death. No heavenly reward, no soothing fields of green or long-lost loved ones. An endless nothing.’

‘Reassuring words from the masters of deceit,’ Will replied, one eyebrow arched. ‘Why, whatever I hear from your lips, I believe the opposite.’

‘We speak the truth when it suits us,’ Lansing replied. ‘What say you, Master Carpenter? Shall I tell a tale of weakness and betrayal? Or—’

‘Your lies are wasted on us,’ Launceston interrupted, unfamiliar passion edging his voice.

Will swished his rapier from side to side. He was ready should the other Fay creep forward in the impenetrable dark. If he could keep Lansing engaged, at least he could pinpoint the Fay lord’s position in the chamber. ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘In all the stories we are told, your form and nature change with the teller. Imps, sprites, spectres, bloodsuckers. Fallen angels and demons from the depths of Hell. Are you the devil’s children?’

In the ringing silence that followed his question, Will thought he was being ignored, but then Lansing began, ‘You think this world belongs to man? We were here first.’ Bitterness swelled his voice. ‘No man could ever understand our pain, our grief, our loss. You call us devils, but in truth we are angels. Saviours—’

Carpenter snorted with derision. ‘Our saviours?’

‘This world’s saviours. From our new homes under hill and lake and sea, we watched your slaughters and your brutality, the destruction you set in motion with barely a thought for consequence. When you put women and children to the spear, and burned others at the stake, and seared flesh with hot iron and put out eyes and lopped off limbs, we saw you were unworthy of this land that you inherited.’

‘All men are flawed. But we deserve the right to aspire to greater things,’ Will replied. Sensing a presence only a hair’s breadth from his cheek, he whipped his rapier around, but the steel met only thin air. He felt cold eyes upon him nearby, and flexing fingers keen to tear out his throat or turn his innards to straw or stone.

‘It is too late for that,’ the Fay lord replied. ‘Perhaps . . . once . . . before you stole our Queen and meted out your atrocities upon our kind. But now this world will be better without the infestation of man.’

‘A fight to the death, then,’ Will said.

‘’Twas always going to be that way,’ Launceston sighed. ‘Could you imagine our two races living side by side? Let us be done with it, though the world burn down in the process.’

‘And there is man in essence,’ Lansing whispered. ‘Let us be done with it.’

Trusting his instincts, Will lashed his rapier downwards. The blade sliced into one of the Fay creeping towards him through the dark. A furious howl filled the chamber. Beside him, he could hear Launceston and Carpenter putting their blades to work, and cursing at their inability to see. As he swept his sword back and forth, a haunting song reached his ears from the stone steps beyond the door, the words growing clearer as the singer neared. A woman’s voice, it was, and it could only be Meg.

‘

There were three ravens sat on a tree

,

They were as black as they might be

.

With a down, derry, derry, derry, down, down

.’

Dee’s potion still gripped her, Will thought, and he called out to warn her away, but still she sang.

‘

Then one of them said to his mate

,

Where shall we our breakfast take?

Down in yonder green field

,

There lies a knight slain under his shield

. . .’

Notes of sadness and regret drifted out through her lilting voice. Even the Unseelie Court seemed entranced, for Will sensed them pause in their attack. When the door swung open, candlelight glowed. Glancing back, he saw Meg framed in the archway. Bafflement filled him; he saw no trace of stupor in her face. But then he noticed her smile, darkly triumphant, and he recognized the Meg of old, when such a smile preceded a length of bloody steel. Yet her eyes were filled with the deepest sadness, and that puzzled him.

‘

His hounds they lie down at his feet

,

So well they can their master keep

.

His hawks they fly so eagerly

,

There’s no fowl dare him come nigh

. . .’

. . . she sang, and then she raised her candle up so her red hair was all aglow, and beckoned behind her. The roar that echoed up the stairs would have chilled even the most hardened warrior. Will thrust Carpenter and Launceston to one side. On the other side of the chamber, the Fay crouched like cornered animals, mouths black slashes in their bone-white faces.

Something thundered up the stone steps. Will glimpsed only a flash of oily black skin and fierce white eyes as the Mooncalf bounded past him with a full-throated roar that made his ears ring. No male could fail to be entranced by Meg, he laughed to himself, and even this wild beast danced to her tune.

As a tumult of rending and tearing, howls and shrieks erupted, the three spies tumbled from the chamber. ‘Your surprises always come with a sting in the tail, Mistress O’Shee,’ Will murmured.

‘You can thank me later, my sweet,’ she replied, ‘and fulsomely, I would hope. But let us not tarry here. Fierce though the Mooncalf is, I fear he is still no match for a pack of those predators.’ A shadow crossed her face, and Will thought he glimpsed there a hint of regret, or guilt, that she had sent the beast to its doom. Perhaps her heart was not as hard as she liked to pretend.

Carpenter and Launceston hauled the barely conscious Strangewayes to his feet and the five spies made their way down the steps to the mirror maze, each trying to shut out the awful sounds – as if a bear were being set upon by a pack of dogs – coming from the chamber above.

‘Fear not for Dr Dee,’ Will told the others. ‘He has gone on ahead, safe and sane, I would hope.’ But as they passed the final looking glass, he grabbed Red Meg’s hand and slowed her descent. ‘What was that creature?’ he asked.

The Irish spy looked away, her voice but a whisper. ‘The captain of our ship, transformed by Dee’s deviltry to be his servant when first we washed up on these shores.’

Now Will thought he understood her dismay. What suffering had that man endured, should his wits have remained in his new misshapen form? And what corresponding monster lurked in Dee’s heart that he was capable of such a thing?

Launceston caught his arm. ‘We have an opportunity here,’ he breathed. ‘Our Enemy are engaged at the summit of this tower. It would be good if they could not leave. I have little stomach for nigh-on three months of sea battles all the way back to England.’

Will understood the Earl’s mind. He turned to Meg and asked, ‘Would there be such a thing as a powder store in this place?’

She smiled.

Down winding steps and into the dank cellars, they ran in her wake. And in the lowest point where water pooled and rats as big as cats ran from the light, she threw open a door to release the bitter reek of powder. Six barrels stood by one wall. ‘Where they came from, I do not know,’ Meg said. ‘Many things were left behind by whoever occupied this place before us.’

‘’Twill suffice,’ Will said with a grin. He nodded to Carpenter and Launceston, who found a chest containing ample fuse. Once they had laid a long strand, Will took out his flint. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘let us see how hot those devils like their Hell.’

CHAPTER FORTY

WILL AND THE other spies raced from the door at the foot of the tower into the blustery night. The rain had stopped, but the encircling trees thrashed in the gale. As they splashed through pools of rainwater, the spies saw torches dancing in the dark along the edge of the courtyard ahead of them. Will caught a momentary glimpse of Dee sweeping towards the lights. Courtenay’s voice boomed out: ‘Finish off those dead bastards. Hack them to pieces.’ Swords rose and fell, glinting in the flickering light. Without the help of the Fay, the remainder of the ghastly pirate crew didn’t stand a chance.

‘Take cover,’ Will yelled as he ran. The captain and the crew gaped. Waving his hand to force them away, he shouted again, and this time the men scattered beyond the lip of the courtyard. When Meg struggled to keep up in her skirts, Will swept her into his arms without missing a step.

‘How dashing a protector,’ she teased, flicking her hair away from her face.

‘Even in the face of death, Meg?’

‘Especially then.’

As they reached the edge of the courtyard, the night cracked in two. Fire blazed across the sky, the earth shook and the thunderous explosion sounded like a hundred cannon. The force of the blast flung the spies down the incline from the courtyard. Chunks of masonry rained about them. Ahead of a wave of smoke and dust, fire-flakes of wood and parchment spun by.

Coughing, Will staggered to his feet, throwing one arm against his face as protection against the choking fog. He found Meg, leaning dazed against a tree, and dropped beside her, taking her slender hand. He felt his fears subside as her eyelids fluttered open. She smiled when she saw his face. ‘The angels have come to claim me,’ she said wryly.

The spy pulled her to her feet and she half fell into his arms. ‘Our lives are hard fought, Meg, but the richer for that,’ he said. Blowing a strand of auburn hair from her face from the side of her mouth, she rolled her eyes, feigning aloofness, but Will sensed the warmth between them.

As the smoke and dust cleared, they searched in the gloom among the trees until they had rounded up everyone and gathered at the end of the courtyard. From somewhere in the trees, Courtenay’s bellow assured them that he too was hale and hearty. Will turned to survey the wreckage of the tower. The wavering torchlight revealed a jagged stump licked by flames beneath a plume of black smoke reaching up to the lowering clouds. Of the Unseelie Court and the Mooncalf, there was no sign, nor did he expect one.

Courtenay strode into the circle of torchlight with Dee and Grace by his side. He raised an eyebrow when he saw Will’s accusing glance and said, ‘She insisted on coming ashore. Filled with fire, that one.’

‘I am glad to see you well,’ she said as blithely as if she had met him in the palace gardens.

‘Grace,’ Will sighed, ‘you are a fine bundle of trouble. Can you not stay out of harm’s way just once?’

‘I can well look after myself, Master Swyfte,’ she snapped, stepping past him to tend to Strangewayes, who sat on the low stone wall with his head bowed. ‘A fine thing to be scolded for worrying about close friends and loved ones,’ she called back.

Will shook his head wearily and turned to Dee, who seemed to have recaptured some of his vitality along with his wits. His back was straight, his eyes flashing with intelligence, his stride purposeful, but still Will worried that he might slip back into insanity. ‘I have had enough of cowering away like a whipped cur,’ the alchemist exclaimed, jabbing a finger at the spy. ‘My blood is up, and I am ready for the fight with those pale-skinned bastards back in England.’ He paused, then added, ‘If Elizabeth will have me, and if that hunchbacked plotter Cecil isn’t whispering in her ear to have me sent away to the darkest parts of the realm.’

‘We need you, doctor. And the Queen needs you,’ the spy reassured him.

Dee nodded curtly, satisfied. ‘I need the sun on my face.’ Glancing up at the clouded night sky, he spun on his heel. Off to work his magics, Will guessed. The island mirrored the alchemist’s mood.

While Courtenay’s men took the captured pirate Jean le Gris, still limping from the wound in his thigh, back to the Tempest to face justice, Will sat with Carpenter and Launceston, watching the dark sky. Steadily, the wind dropped until an eerie stillness lay over the woods. It seemed that all of nature was holding its breath. The storm clouds overhead scudded away without a whisper of a breeze and after a moment a silvery glow lit the sky on the eastern horizon.

‘At last,’ Carpenter muttered. ‘I thought this night would never end.’

Launceston pursed his lips, watching the light shade to gold. ‘Four hours, I would say.’

‘Four hours until what?’

‘Until I have to listen to you bemoaning the oven heat that beats you down to the deck and wishing it was night again,’ the Earl sniffed, walking away.

Carpenter hurled a stream of abuse at the other man’s back. Laughing to himself, Will stood and went in search of the sorcerer. As he walked, he sucked in a deep breath, relieved that this long night had ended far better than he could have hoped when he first set foot upon the island. Along the path to the beach, he found Dee resting beside a moss-draped statue of a nymph. ‘You have completed your ritual, then, doctor?’ he asked.

‘That business came so much easier when I was hiding behind the walls of my madness,’ the old man grumbled.

To the west, the lightening sky flickered with folds of a rainbow of illumination. Will felt reminded of the green lights he had seen in the northern skies in Scotland. ‘What is that strange display?’ he asked, his brow creasing. ‘More of your magics?’

Dee glanced up, the odd radiance playing in his eyes. ‘This island stands on the boundary between the world we know and whatever lies beyond.’

‘The place where the dead go?’

‘Some call it such. Since our most ancient times we have always looked to where the sun sets . . . the light fades . . . and thought it the home of those who have moved on. When I was a boy, my father told me about the boat that waits by the shore to ferry the souls of the newly departed across the great wide ocean for judgement. And then, on the night he died, I saw the boat waiting and his own pale shade walking the lane from our house.’ He shook his head as if to dispel the memory, and looked away. ‘It is the home of the Unseelie Court,’ he said in a quiet voice.

Will sensed a confusion of thoughts in the old man. Dee had spent his days probing the great mysteries that enveloped life, and here was one of the greatest, a puzzle that wrapped up life and death and grief and yearning, the promise and threat of greater powers than man’s, and all man’s fears about the purpose of life.

‘What if,’ Dee had said to him once, staring deep into the blazing fire in the Black Gallery, ‘man was only placed upon this world as sport for higher powers?’

Without another word, the old man trudged down the path towards the shore. Will was about to follow, but heard Courtenay calling him. With a sigh, he returned to the courtyard where a few men had been sifting through the wreckage of the tower for anything that could be salvaged.

‘Le Gris’s men have been released from their torment and can now face their just rewards in Heaven or Hell,’ he said, cracking his knuckles. ‘Another triumph for England’s finest. By noon I will have charted a course for the island of Hispaniola to take on fresh water and supplies. And if we encounter any Spanish dogs, it will be a joy to despatch them after the things we have battled these past weeks. And then to fair Albion. With a good wind, Dee can be rebuilding our defences with his cursed sorcery before the bluebells have gone from the woods in Kent.’

‘May good fortune watch over you, Captain Courtenay,’ Will said, clapping a hand on the other man’s arm. ‘You and your crew have earned the Queen’s gratitude, and a joyous release in the stews of Bankside.’

Courtenay’s eyes narrowed. ‘You speak as if you are not sailing with us.’

The spy glanced back to the dancing lights in the western sky. ‘It was never my intention to return to England. I am a lost soul, captain, and I must find my way to the land of the dead. This morning I will take le Gris’s ship and a skeleton crew and sail to the home of the Unseelie Court. Nothing shall stop me finding the answers I seek. And then I will bring the walls of that fortress crashing down, though it cost me my life.’

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

THE RIBBON OF white sand glowed in the morning sun. Sparkling blue sea lapped in the cove and a cooling breeze rustled through the woods as the two men wandered along the shore. The intoxicating scent of the large pink flowers on the spiky-leaved shrubs along the treeline drifted down to meet the salty air.

‘You are a fool,’ Dee growled. The skirts of his purple robe swept a wide path along the beach.

Will felt an unfamiliar lightness now he had finally given voice to the inevitability of his destination. ‘If it is foolishness to want an end to the torment of unanswered questions, then so be it.’

‘The answers may be worse. Have you thought of that?’

Will shrugged. ‘It is a gamble I am prepared to take.’ If only the alchemist knew how much he had risked, he thought. How long it seemed since that night in the Liverpool rooming house when he had first started to form his plan. The sight of Jenny in the obsidian mirror had let loose a rush of desperate emotions and thoughts, as if the dam holding back all those years of misery had suddenly broken. He still felt surprised how little it had troubled him to put the Queen, and all England, up as his stakes in his great gamble. Never would he alone have been able to amass the fortune necessary to fund a galleon to sail to the New World in search of Jenny. But once Meg had told him that was Dee’s destination, he knew he could trick the Crown or the School of Night into giving him what he needed. And so he had let the alchemist go, knowing full well that the old man could have fallen into the Unseelie Court’s hands and everything he held dear been washed away in a tide of blood. All for Jenny.

‘You have always been a gambler, Swyfte, with your own life and with others’. That recklessness will be your downfall.’ Though the tone of his voice was accusatory Dee’s look was not unkind.

‘My life was blown off course that day – the day the person I cared for more than any other disappeared,’ the spy replied, looking to the far horizon. ‘I have made do as best I can, but not a day has passed when I have not thought of her. I am trapped in a maze where my mind keeps me in one place, and I would be free of it. What happened to her that day? Why was she chosen, and not me? Has she suffered? Has she endured—’ The words caught in his throat. ‘These questions haunt me.’

Dee snorted. ‘You speak as if these things matter.’

Will’s head whipped round. ‘They matter to me.’

The old man swept out an arm to indicate the sea and the island. ‘All this is illusion, this world, a stage on which we play out parts assigned to us. We wallow in the mundane detail of our life, all the petty hardships and the struggles that occupy our every waking moment, and we lose ourselves in them. They take on an import that far exceeds their worth. They are a distraction, no more, and we are complicit in allowing ourselves to be distracted because those things, however hard, are easier to comprehend than the greater questions that hang over us. Who plays the fiddle and pipes, and why must we be forced to dance? The answers we seek are here, but they are hidden amongst the illusion, in the smallest detail.’ He snatched up a handful of sand and let the grains trail out of his clenched fist. ‘We only have to sift and look and pull the jewels from the mud.’

‘And yet these things you dismiss so easily cause us so much pain. That cannot be discounted so readily, doctor. Though all be illusion, we still hurt.’

Dee smiled. ‘Perhaps that is one of the jewels. When you hurt, you are forced to look more closely. The mundane details . . .’ he snapped his fingers, ‘dissolve.’

‘Perhaps.’ Will turned his face to the sun, enjoying the unfamiliar warmth on his skin. ‘But I know this, doctor. When you look away from that mortal suffering, you become inured to it, and thereby allow it to endure. Indeed, if there is no substance to it, only one further step is needed to perpetrate that hurt, for it is like the mist, insubstantial and soon gone.’ He waved his fingers in front of him. ‘There are dangers in thinking too much and removing yourself from human concerns, doctor.’

‘And you feel too much,’ the alchemist snapped before catching himself. ‘Perhaps the true path lies somewhere between, I give you that. I am not blind to my many and varied flaws, Master Swyfte, though you think me as hard-hearted as the rocks of that reef.’

‘I know the true nature of the Mooncalf.’ Will found himself unable to keep the cold tone from his voice.

After a long moment, Dee replied, ‘In my defence, I can only say that I was in the throes of my self-inflicted madness.’

‘You destroyed a man’s life to provide yourself with a guardian.’

The alchemist sighed. ‘You know as well as I that this business makes monsters of all of us. We each do things we never dreamed of in the days of our youth. You say I am too distracted by scholarly pursuits, but I have devoted my life to this long battle with the Unseelie Court, to keep men safe and dreaming sweet dreams in their beds at night. I have sacrificed my youth, driven an ache deep into my bones and shattered my mind. Sometimes we are forced to do terrible things to prevent even greater atrocities. Should one man suffer to prevent the deaths of a hundred? A thousand? These are questions we should not have to ask ourselves. Most men can hide away and pretend such dilemmas do not exist, or turn up their noses and pass judgement upon those forced to make sacrifices to keep the realm secure. We are faced with the harsh reality every day, and we cannot flinch from its glare.’

When they reached the end of the beach, Will perched on the rocks where he had peered into the devil’s looking glass the previous night. He felt a troubling confusion. ‘Not too long ago, I might have agreed with you, doctor. But now I wonder if we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. The question you ask – should one man die to save a hundred? – is too simple. There is comfort in making the choice so easy, but good men should always suffer to uncover the more challenging but truer course.’

With the toe of his shoe, Dee flicked a green-shelled scuttling crab into a rock pool. ‘And I am not a good man, is that what you say? There is some truth in that. I was certainly a fool for losing myself in intellectual pursuit and failing to see that the angels with whom I thought I communed were in fact the Unseelie Court. How they must have laughed at my arrogance. Dr Dee, who thought he of all men had the power to speak with Heaven’s messengers. How easy it was to expose my weakness and then play a game to try to twist me to their ends.’

‘You were not unprepared, though.’

Dee smiled, rubbing his hands together. ‘I knew the Fay would come for me at some point, just not in that way. Long ago, I built defences deep inside me that would come into play should they ever try to seize control of my wits. Madness would consume me and I would flee England to a place where the Unseelie Court could not find me and use me against the Queen and Albion.’

Will came to a halt, in awe of what the alchemist had done. ‘Why here, so close to their home?’

‘Because if all seemed lost, I would allow them to take me into their midst and thereby destroy them.’ Dee stretched his arms wide as if rising from a deep sleep.

The spy’s ears pricked up. ‘How so?’

‘By denying them access to our world and trapping them in their own miserable land.’

‘But it is a place of wonder.’

‘So they say.’ Dee laughed. He waved his arm across the sunlit view. ‘More wonderful than our own home? Why, then, do those fiends sweat blood to take our green fields from us? No, there are more wonders here than you realize, and all the secrets the Unseelie Court need to understand their own forlorn existence. They are lost, Master Swyfte, and sometimes I believe more lost than us.’ He folded his arms, nodding to himself. ‘The “angels” told me of a beacon that keeps open the way between our worlds—’

‘The Tower of the Moon,’ Will interjected, recalling what he had learned from his conversation with the Faerie Queen.

The alchemist eyed him askance. ‘You are better informed than you appear, Master Swyfte. Yes, the Tower of the Moon. I would bring it crashing down and seal them in their dismal land for ever.’

‘And you with it?’

Dee shrugged. ‘A small price to pay.’

‘You are a courageous man.’ Will shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked out across the azure sea.

‘I am a fool and never you forget it. Only one thing troubles me now: the devil’s looking glass. Tell me you were not such a simpleton as to bring it here.’

‘I left it in your chamber at the Palace of Whitehall,’ Will lied. So Dee would not see his face, he ducked down to pick up a pebble.

‘At least some sense resides in that thick head of yours. I have spent my life keeping that mirror out of the Fay’s hands.’ His face darkened. ‘So much power resides in that thing it could change the course of this war in the blink of an eye.’

‘You have mastered it?’ Will asked. He threw the pebble out into the crashing waves.

‘I have heard tales,’ Dee mumbled, clearly knowing more than he was saying. ‘It keeps its secrets well. But the Unseelie Court could unlock it. Never must it be allowed to travel anywhere near those pale-skinned bastards.’

Will swallowed his guilt. Another gamble, worse by far than all the others. Yet the mirror was his only link with Jenny and he could no more give it up than his own life.

Reflecting on what he had learned, he lowered his eyes to watch the crab take shelter in a crevice in the rock pool. ‘It is so easy to hate our eternal Enemy for the miseries they have inflicted upon us – upon me, and Jenny. The Unseelie Court think us the wicked ones in this game. And there are many times when I am inclined to agree.’ He furrowed his brow, his voice reflective. ‘We have committed some terrible crimes in pursuit of victory, doctor. Yet, what a mess this business is. How simple it all seemed when we thought we were on the side of the angels, fighting devils. Now we know there are devils masquerading as angels on both sides.’

Further down the shore, a longboat pulled up and two sailors clambered out and splashed into the surf. They began to haul their vessel up the sand. Amongst a group of onlookers, Will saw Carpenter, Launceston and Strangewayes, and Meg and Grace.

‘Here is my question, doctor,’ he added. ‘When we fight monsters, must we become monsters?’

Dee shook his head, his face preternaturally sad. ‘Set me free from this damnable island,’ he muttered. Without answering the spy’s question, he strode across the beach towards those gathered on the shore. After a moment, Will followed.

Picking up her skirts, Grace hurried to meet him. ‘It is true, then?’ she enquired, her eyes gleaming with hope. ‘You travel to the home of the Unseelie Court to rescue Jenny?’

‘Do not think for a moment that you are accompanying me, Grace.’

‘I am coming,’ she snapped, her cheeks flushing. ‘Do not try to abandon me here on the brink of discovering my sister’s . . . my sister’s fate, Will Swyfte.’ She was close to tears.

‘When I return—’

‘And if you do not return? How can I live my life knowing I came so close to the answers I have prayed for and then walked away? No, I am coming too. And if you try to put me back on the Tempest, I will leap into the waves and drown myself.’

‘Grace—’

‘You have no power over me. I make my own decisions.’ She glared at him.

After a moment, he nodded. Grace was no different from him; she deserved a resolution too, for good or ill. Over her shoulder, he saw Strangewayes look at him, his eyes daggers. Will knew he had made a bitter enemy in the younger spy, and he wondered if there was any way he could change that. Tobias was misguided, nothing more. He only wished to protect the woman he loved, but he could never understand the deep currents in Grace and Will, and the ties that bound them. ‘And you?’ he called over to the little group.

‘Why, my sweet, I could not leave you to look after the children.’ Meg blew him a kiss. Grace scowled at the other woman. Will recognized the truth, and the tragedy the Irish spy tried to hide. She had failed in her purpose and now was a woman without a country. An enemy in England, with Dee returned to London she had betrayed her chieftain and risked pain or death if she returned to her own home. And yet, knowing what was at stake, she had aided Will every step of the way. He walked towards them, relishing the sound of his feet scrunching on the sand.

‘I wish you well,’ Carpenter said, an unfamiliar smile of relief upon his lips, ‘but I have no desire to die young. I will ensure the doctor reaches London safely, and then I will leave this mad world behind and find a new life, though Cecil and his dogs pursue me to the ends of the earth.’

‘And good luck to you,’ Will said. ‘You have earned it.’ He turned to Launceston, who was cleaning his nails with a knifepoint. In the sun, his skin seemed paler than ever.

‘John is incapable of looking after himself, and so it is my burden to watch over him,’ the Earl said, his face expressionless, though Will thought he saw a surprising hint of humour in his eyes.

When the two men had walked back to the longboat, Strangewayes muttered to Will, ‘I will accompany you.’

‘Very well.’ Will nodded. ‘We are going to take the Corneille Noire and I have asked Captain Courtenay to supply a handful of men to crew her. Once we reach our destination I will send them home. I would not have their deaths on my conscience.’

‘And how exactly do you intend to return?’ Dee asked. He eyed Will from under his overhanging brows.

In reply, Will smiled tightly.

A cry from the longboat interrupted their debate. Carpenter was bent double, clutching his stomach. After a moment he appeared to recover. He exchanged a few words with Launceston and then the two spies trudged back along the sand to the others. Will frowned at the sight of Carpenter’s ashen face and sweat-lined brow. ‘What ails you?’ he asked.

‘My conscience,’ Carpenter croaked. ‘I cannot allow you to sail to your doom alone. Another sword . . . or two . . . might mean you return with your life. We will join you.’

Will grinned, shaking the other man’s hand firmly. ‘Brothers in adventure, then,’ he said cheerily, adding in a more serious tone, ‘I would thank you, John. With a man like you at my side, who knows what we will achieve.’ Yet the compliment seemed to fall on deaf ears. Carpenter’s expression darkened and his eyes skittered. Will thought he saw a hint of despair there, although he could not guess what it meant. He banished it from his mind.

‘Then it is agreed,’ he continued, looking around the assembled group. ‘Put steel in your hearts, for this day we take the fight to the Enemy.’

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

SUNLIGHT GLINTED OFF the waves in the bay. Out on the rising swell, the Corneille Noire strained at anchor. The full-throated shanties of the seamen preparing for sail drifted over the water. Carpenter squatted in the thin shade of a barrel among the last few provisions on the beach, watching Strangewayes glowering at the galleon where his woman waited with that guile-filled Irish spy.

He shook his head, struggling to dampen his rising despair. A puppet, that’s all he was, with strings tugged by the Enemy so that he danced when they played their tunes. Deep inside him, the Caraprix squirmed, flooding his head with its whispers. Why had he been so foolish? A new life free of worry had seemed close enough to grasp when Lansing had woven his deceitful promises, but in his weakness he had set in motion the events that would deny him his heart’s desire. He’d been so close, too. One foot placed upon the longboat that would take him to the Tempest and the first leg of his journey back home, and then the hated thing inside him had snatched him back and propelled him in the opposite direction; away from freedom, away from hope, towards only doom.

He jerked his head up at the crunch of sand and saw Will and Dee deep in conversation, their heads nodding seemingly in time as they walked towards the cove where the Tempest lay at anchor. Carpenter noticed what seemed to be an unfamiliar bond between them, a new understanding, perhaps.

He overheard Dee saying, ‘When you leave this island, you must pass through the Pillars of Medea.’ Carpenter watched as the old man pointed out to sea, past the galleon to where two columns of black rock protruded from the waves in the hazy distance.

‘Why there?’ Will asked. ‘Surely it is safer to sail around them.’

‘They are a gateway. Once you have passed the pillars, you are in the territory of the Unseelie Court, may the gods have mercy upon your soul.’

As the two men made their way along the sand, Carpenter hauled himself to his feet and trudged towards the treeline where he had seen Launceston prowling earlier. He had begged the Earl not to accompany him on Swyfte’s mad voyage of the damned, but the aristocrat would have none of it. Carpenter felt only more guilt at that loyalty. Not only was he dooming himself, he was dragging Launceston down with him.

When he stepped into the shade of the trees, he breathed deeply, tasting the sweet scent of the pink blooms. Unfamiliar birdsong rang out through the gnarled branches, whoops and cries that reminded him of the chatter of the women who hung the dyed cloth out to dry on the tenter grounds beside Moor Fields. A red butterfly as big as his hand fluttered by, the green eyes upon its wings mocking him.

Through the fronds, he glimpsed a grey shape: Launceston wandering among the flora, he guessed. But then a low whine rolled through the undergrowth and Carpenter stiffened. Fearing the worst, he dashed across the twisted roots and burst into a small clearing lit by a shaft of brilliant sunshine. Blinking, he discerned Launceston on the far side, hunched over something. He felt his heart sink.

As he edged round the clearing, the object of the Earl’s attention fell into view: a wild pig, not yet fully grown. It appeared to be half stunned; a bloodied stick lay nearby. The Earl hovered over it, knife at the ready. Carpenter watched a look of disgust cross his colleague’s face. When Launceston saw his friend, he murmured dismally, ‘I thought I could still the urges within me with the life of a beast, but, God help me, it is not the same. I hunger still for a human life—’

His anger searing through him, Carpenter felt all control drain away. In a blaze of white heat, he flung himself at the Earl, knocking him to the tangle of half-buried tree roots. His blows rained down as he took out all his self-loathing and hopelessness upon the other man. Finally, he realized Launceston was not defending himself. Rolling off, he sat with his head in his hands, fighting to contain the rush of emotion and the sobs that threatened to follow.

‘Damn you, Robert. Why can you not control yourself?’ he croaked. ‘Must I spend the rest of my days pulling you back from the brink of another atrocity?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘This is my life in essence.’

After a moment, he heard the aristocrat climb to his feet and move to stand in front of him. Carpenter bowed his head, waiting for the blow. When none came, he looked up to see Launceston holding out a hand to help him to his feet. The pallid face was dappled with bruises.

‘I realize this is a burden for you. I cannot control my urges alone,’ the Earl said, his whispery voice almost lost in the rustling of the leaves.

Carpenter sagged, his guilt magnified. ‘We are both lost souls,’ he muttered. Dazed, the wild pig lurched upright and with a squeal crashed away through the undergrowth.

The aristocrat slipped the dagger into his grey breeches. ‘The world can look as black as pitch, but there are things which bring a little light in. When I first recognized my desires, on the third night of my incarceration in the hole beneath the cellar, with the rats and the beetles scurrying around and my father above ordering the fiddler to play louder to drown out my cries, I thought I would follow a solitary path for the rest of my days. But when you offered me the hand of friendship in my bleakest moment, I realized there was still some hope, even for a rogue like me.’ He hauled the other man to his feet. ‘We are who we are, and we do our best to struggle down this long road, but the journey is better for having someone at your shoulder.’

Carpenter sucked in a calming gulp of air. ‘Then I have a request, from one friend to another.’

‘Anything.’

‘If there comes a time when I ask you to kill me, you must do so without a second thought.’

Launceston blinked slowly, the endless depths of his pale eyes revealing nothing of his thoughts, nor any dismay he might have felt that such an act of friendship would condemn him to the life of loneliness he feared. Carpenter strode away, without waiting to hear if an answer would come.

Back at the beach, he helped load the remaining provisions into the rowing boat, sweating in the mid-morning sun. When they were done, the two men sat in silence for the journey across the waves to the Corneille Noire.

With everyone now aboard, the small crew spared by Courtenay prepared the ship for departure. Sails were unfurled and the anchor raised. An apprehensive mood seemed to have fallen across everyone, Carpenter noted. On the forecastle, Swyfte leaned against the rail watching the shore where Dee still stood. His mood seemed to have darkened. Was he now regretting taking a path that could only end in death for all of them, Carpenter wondered? Did he feel anything?

As the anchor burst from the waves trailing glistening diamonds, a low, plaintive howl rolled out across the lonely island. Carpenter felt the hairs on his arms prickle at that sound, and he shuddered. Had the Mooncalf somehow survived the destruction of the tower? But when he glanced to the prow, he saw a curious thing: Swyfte was smiling.

On the beach, Dee gave a slow wave and then turned and walked into the trees. Amid the cries of gulls, the Corneille Noire heaved away across the swell, and after a while steered a course for the columns of black rock protruding from the crashing sea. Carpenter felt the galleon judder as it slammed into the currents that swirled around the towering formation. There were easier routes away from the island, but Dee had been adamant.

Sanburne, the acting captain, was a seasoned voyager and had accompanied Courtenay on many a foray into enemy waters. Lean and weather-beaten, with a shaven head and a gold hoop in his ear, he was more taciturn than the Tempest’s captain, but he commanded no less respect. He kept a weather eye on their destination and the surging currents, shouting adjustments to the line of approach.

Carpenter gripped the rail as the ship bucked. How much simpler it would be to leap into that blue-green swell, he thought, but even if he found the courage, or the cowardice, he was not sure if the Caraprix would let him.

Salt spray misted the air. Above the white-topped waves, a haze hung around the looming rocks. The brassy light thinned, and the temperature dropped in the growing wind.

‘There is no going back now.’ Swyfte had appeared at the rail beside him, his gaze fixed on the Pillars of Medea.

‘An ending is all I want,’ Carpenter muttered.

After a moment, Will said, ‘I would thank you for accompanying me, John. We have had our differences, you and I, but you are a good man.’ Carpenter felt a spike of guilt in his heart at that.

And then the shadow of the basalt columns fell across them, and the sea heaved and they could only grip the rail and pray for the calm waters on the other side. In the boiling cauldron between the pillars, the haze closed around them, and the far horizon and the island both fell from view. Gripping on to the stays, Sanburne stood as if made of stout oak, unyielding in the face of the elements. His barked orders rose above the roaring of the ocean and rang out across the deck with the rhythm of a galley’s drums.

Carpenter craned his neck to look up the length of the black columns. How unnatural they appeared. Through the mist, he thought he could discern carvings of grotesque figures and symbols etched into the rock face, but the tossing of the deck threw him so violently he could not be sure. He shivered in the chill of the shade, but then the Corneille Noire heaved one final time and swept them out of the most turbulent water. The wind subsided, the spray eased, and as the Pillars of Medea fell behind them, the sun beat down once more.

Swyfte was smiling. Carpenter noticed a faraway look in his eyes and wondered what was on his mind. Was he not afraid of what lay ahead?

As the galleon turned towards open waters, Sanburne strode up, frowning. ‘Trouble, captain?’ Will asked.

‘You might say that, Master Swyfte.’ In his right hand, he held out the ship’s compass and with his left he jabbed a finger towards the sky. ‘Though I be bound for Bedlam, it seems we now sail in a world where the sun rises in the west.’

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

BLOOD PUDDLED ON the stone flags. Five bodies lay scattered across Queen Elizabeth’s antechamber in the Palace of Whitehall, all good men and true, all despatched in an instant by the thing that had swooped through the open window on leathery wings. Cecil hauled himself on to shaking legs from the corner where he had cowered like a frightened child. His white ruff was now stained, and more blood speckled his right cheek, but he had survived, by little more than the grace of God.

As he wiped his face clean with his kerchief, he looked around the scene of slaughter and tried to compose himself. How close they had come to disaster this time. The door to Her Majesty’s bedchamber flew open and a rush of bodies swept out: the Queen herself, wrapped in a cloak of midnight blue, her frail body hunched over, her face hidden in the depths of a cowl; Essex at her elbow, aglow in his white doublet and hose as he guided her towards safety; and three pikemen with faces like Kentish ragstone.

Essex flashed an anxious glance at the spymaster as he went. What passed between them moved from desperation to dread. How much longer could they carry on this way was the question they asked each morn when the sun finally rose. The threat crept ever closer to Her Majesty’s door. Soon they would not be able to repel it.

Once Essex had led the Queen out of the antechamber, silence settled, but only for a moment. Raleigh slipped in, the pink lining of his half-compass cloak looking unnecessarily flamboyant in that butcher’s shop. ‘Gone, like the wind,’ he said, going over to the open window and looking out across London. ‘Our Enemy never fail to find inventive ways to make us suffer.’

‘You speak as if you envy them their skill in murder,’ Cecil snarled.

‘I respect a dedicated foe. That is the only way to find a means to defeat them.’ The adventurer inhaled a deep draught of the cool air, scented with the coal-smoke from the first home fires of the day.

‘One day the Queen will find you skulking around the palace, and then your only view will be of the rats in your cell in the Tower,’ the spymaster muttered. He joined the other man at the window, relieved to see the first silver streaks of dawn. ‘Food is short and people starve. Fresh water is fouled and cows deliver young with two heads. We are assailed on all sides.’

‘But spring is here. The winter cold is gone,’ Raleigh replied wryly.

‘At least the damnable plague has finally departed. The order has been given to open the playhouses and inn yards so the Queen’s subjects have something to take their minds off their miseries.’

Raleigh closed his eyes, enjoying the breeze. ‘This play would have long since ended if not for the School of Night, you know.’

Cecil gritted his teeth. Loath as he was to give any credit to the secret society, he knew the other man was right. ‘But still no news of Dee from Swyfte and his band. Even the great resources of the School of Night cannot keep us alive for much longer.’

‘You plot and scheme from the shadows, as Walsingham did before you, seeing only the ends, but not the road that takes you there. How has that served you?’ The adventurer pulled the casement window shut and turned to inspect the bodies, his expression grave. ‘You and all your kind have lived a life of compromise,’ he continued, moving to each corpse in turn. ‘You said, not long ago, that the Unseelie Court whittled us down by degrees. But you and Walsingham have done that to yourselves.’

‘Watch your tongue, sirrah.’ Cecil glanced at the kerchief in his hand and, disgusted, threw it away as if it had burned him.

‘I know the agreement Walsingham made, which you perpetuated,’ Raleigh said in a cold voice. The spymaster flinched. ‘You think one life here or there makes no difference when weighed against the security of the Queen and all England?’

‘All is a balance—’

‘Look here,’ Raleigh said with passion, sweeping his arm across the fallen guards. ‘Where is your balance? Where is your security? Those poor souls you sacrificed suffered for naught. And the ones who were stolen, they suffered too.’

Cecil cast his eyes down.

‘As for Swyfte, why, no better man has served you,’ the adventurer continued. ‘Yet neither you nor Walsingham could find it in you to tell him what happened to the woman he loved? No, because then you would have had to explain why you allowed her to be taken, and for what reason. And the others too.’

‘It was a gamble,’ Cecil snapped, rage born of guilt rising inside him. ‘If it kept us safe, it was worthwhile.’

‘It did not.’ The adventurer took a deep breath to calm himself and walked to the door. He paused on the threshold and looked back. ‘Your compromises have failed to deliver what you hoped. You have failed. This world is changing fast, Sir Robert, and you are yesterday’s man. This new age demands better principles. Sooner or later it will be time to step aside and let those who measure themselves by a higher standard guide this nation to glory.’

Raleigh fixed his penetrating gaze upon the spymaster for a long moment, and then, with a flamboyant sweep of his cloak, he strode out. Cecil watched the space he had left behind as the shadows in the room slowly melted in the thin light. After a long moment, he strode to the door and called out. Two pikemen came running.

‘Find Sir Walter Raleigh,’ he ordered. ‘Tell him the Queen says he is no longer welcome here and escort him from the palace grounds. Should he resist, take him to the Tower.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

LANTERNS GLOWED DEEP in the hot night. Spikes of reflected light shimmered across the black waves as the silent fleet sailed towards the east. Haloes of green and red flickered around the grey-sailed galleons, the otherworldly illumination fading like marsh lights. Will watched the Unseelie Court ships, feeling troubled by the display of firepower.

‘Extinguish the lights, Master Dusteby,’ Captain Sanburne called. The lanterns winked out one by one and the Corneille Noire sailed on westwards, wrapping herself in the dark. Tense moments passed as Will and the others aboard held their breaths, but the Fay cannon was not trained upon them.

‘Even if they glimpsed us, we are insignificant,’ the spy said with a nod. ‘They have more pressing matters to hand.’

‘Dee,’ Launceston whispered, spectral in the gloom.

‘When you sent the magician back to England, you knew the Enemy would pursue him.’ Strangewayes narrowed his eyes accusingly. That gaze had barely left Will since the galleon had departed the island.

‘Was there any possibility that the Unseelie Court would let the prize they valued more than anything in our world sail away freely?’

The younger spy snorted. ‘And in no way did this enter your calculations as you dragged us all on your personal quest for destruction.’

‘You chose to come,’ Launceston interjected. ‘No one forced you. Indeed, we might have found more joy on this voyage if you had been left on that island.’

Strangewayes glared at the Earl.

‘To answer your question, Tobias, of course I knew the attention of the Unseelie Court would be drawn to Dr Dee, allowing us to sail quietly by,’ Will said with a grin, seemingly unruffled.

‘Then should we not have accompanied him? Two galleons could better fight off—’

‘Two galleons are neither here nor there against the overwhelming power of the Enemy.’ Will leaned on the rail, staring into the night. ‘The Tempest is the finest galleon in all the world, race-built and fleet. We would only have slowed her down.’

Gnawing on a ship’s biscuit, Carpenter added, ‘Courtenay has four days’ start, and he will give them a good fight if they want one—’

‘Against the Unseelie Court fleet?’ Strangewayes interrupted, incredulous.

‘—and with Dee in his right mind once more,’ Carpenter continued as if the younger spy had not spoken, ‘there will be magics and trickery aplenty if battle is joined. In truth, I would not wish to be on a Fay galleon.’

Will watched Grace walk up to the clutch of men, her brow furrowed in suspicion. ‘Why do you argue?’ she asked. She kept her voice light, but Will sensed in it a hint of caution for the one who professed to love her. She was more than aware of Strangewayes’ loathing for Will, and she had taken it upon herself to prevent any trouble from developing between the two men.

‘Nothing,’ Strangewayes muttered. He turned away, seeing the other men were closing ranks against him too. But Will sensed that not only Strangewayes but all there recognized that he had taken a gamble with the lives of men he knew; and indeed with England itself, for if he had truly sacrificed Dee to gain an advantage, all would be lost. They still trusted him, for now, but he wondered when they would begin to suspect he would sacrifice even their lives to bring Jenny home.

Will watched as the Unseelie ships disappeared into the night. ‘Enjoy this moment of peace. The Unseelie Court will become aware of us soon enough, and then we will feel the full force of their fury.’

‘You have a plan?’ Carpenter asked.

‘I always have a plan.’

For near three weeks, with the crew surviving on meagre rations, the Corneille Noire seethed under a merciless sun, heading towards the west away from the main trade routes. Though the compass remained reliable, Captain Sanburne would scowl and stare up to the heavens as the sunrise flipped from west to east and back again with no rhyme or reason. Will wondered if the land the Enemy called home was like the autumn mist on the Thames, flowing in and out of every nook and cranny along the crowded banks of the city. He took comfort from the fact that they sighted no other Fay vessels, and that only one Spanish treasure galleon crossed the blue horizon.

As they neared the New World, Will felt the obsidian mirror calling to him. Time and again, he found himself in one of the cabins with the looking glass on the trestle in front of him, hoping against hope that Jenny would appear before him. Only once did he catch a fleeting glimpse of her face. Her eyes seemed heavy with worry, and that only spurred him on. She lived, and that was enough. And soon he would bring her home or die trying.

As he climbed back into the sweltering sun from his latest attempt to use the looking glass, he glimpsed Meg watching him with a curious expression from the narrow strip of shade near the forecastle. It was as if she knew every doubt that plagued him. He turned away, pretending not to see the beautiful Irish woman’s searching gaze, but she glided over and hailed him in a jaunty manner. ‘Such a handsome face should not be troubled by a brooding look. You need good company to raise your spirits,’ she said with a smile, flapping a hand to cool her flushed brow. ‘Indeed, we both do. Life aboard ship has little in the way of excitement, or comfort, and it seems I have been looking at nothing but blue waves for a lifetime.’

‘I fear I would be poor company,’ he replied, putting on a practised smile. ‘My mind is weighted down by plans and strategies.’ He heard a splash and watched Carpenter draw up a flapping silver fish on a line at port. As if standing guard, Launceston stood nearby with his arms folded and a blank expression, studying his colleague.

Meg cocked her head to one side. ‘There is still time to turn this galleon round and sail for more entertaining climes.’ When she saw he lacked enthusiasm for her suggestion, she sighed and added, ‘But no. There will be no turning away while the memory of your long-lost love has its hook in you.’

‘I have waited too long to discover the truth, Meg. I would have some peace in my life.’ He grabbed a stay and looked up to the yards and the blue sky beyond, but the intensity of her attention drew his eyes down to her once more.

‘You would have her back beside you, more like.’ Her features softened briefly and he glimpsed some honest concern there. ‘I hope you gain your heart’s desire, I truly do,’ she added on a wistful note.

Her words struck too close to home and he changed the subject, nodding towards Strangewayes and Grace locked in intense conversation by the mainmast. ‘I have a favour to ask. Grace is not accustomed to the life we lead. I allowed her to accompany us against my better judgement, but she deserves her answers and her own peace, and I know she would rather die than live the way she has been.’ He ignored the Irish woman’s searching gaze. ‘If you could do all within your power to keep her safe, I would be in your debt. Should we return to England, I will find as much gold as you require.’

‘It is not gold I need,’ she replied with a teasing smile. ‘Sometimes she buzzes like a fly, and I must resist the urge to swat her, but I will do as you ask.’

‘I fear I cannot trust Tobias to protect her. He is too raw, too fired by his passions.’

Meg’s eyes narrowed as she flashed a glance towards the younger spy. ‘You cannot trust him at all. He is a lovesick fool who can only see the world with the simple eyes of a child. Black and white, good and evil. He thinks you place his girl in danger and so you are his enemy. If only he knew the truth. How much you harm yourself—’

‘Enough.’ Will waved a dismissive hand. ‘Let us not wish upon him this grey world of compromise. He will arrive here soon enough.’

He saw a softness in her look, but she hid it quickly. ‘And yet there is some truth in what he says.’

Will watched the cut and thrust of dolphins’ fins slicing the waves alongside the galleon. He sighed. ‘I presume you are going to tell me your thoughts, whether I wish to hear them or not.’

Meg leaned in close so no one could overhear. ‘Your desire to save your lost love has consumed you,’ she said. ‘I understand that it is driven by more than just the heart, and that for long years now the wound has festered.’ He felt that she wanted to hold his hand, to comfort him or to share their hidden bond, but she restrained herself, knowing it would be unseemly. ‘But young Strangewayes sees your blood quicken as you perceive the end of your long quest, and how in your eagerness you are prepared to risk others’ lives to achieve your ends.’

Will rested on the rail, not meeting her eyes. All she said was true, he knew, but he had reached the stage where no gamble was too great.

The Irish woman smiled to soften her words. ‘I care little. John and Robert too, I feel, and even young Grace. We are with you in this and do not mind your . . .’ she fluttered a hand while she searched for a word that carried no poison, ‘insensitivities.’

‘Insensitivities.’ He nodded, smiling wryly.

‘But all men can be pushed too far, and you must remember who your friends are,’ she continued. ‘They will walk through fire, if you would but ask them.’ A shadow crossed her face as she leaned against the rail, watching the waves. ‘This long war kills us all by degrees. We begin as good and decent but gradually edge away from the light, so slowly we barely notice, until one day we look up and we are surrounded by night. Do not let that happen to you, my sweet.’

Before he could respond, she turned and walked towards the forecastle. But after a few steps she paused as if she had recalled something vital, and then turned back, her expression sad. ‘You have more faith than any priest,’ she said, ‘more hope than I could ever have, but think, Will, what has happened to every soul ever taken by the Unseelie Court?’ He showed her his back, not wanting to hear, but she continued. ‘Men lured under hill by the sound of fiddle and pipe, only to crumble to dust upon their return to the daylight world. Knights and dancing maidens turned into stone. Others twisted into straw men, or bound by unbreakable briar, or dissolved into water. You must ask yourself how many have survived contact with the Unseelie Court.’

None, he knew. None, damn her.

‘You must prepare yourself,’ she said quietly. ‘I do not wish to be cruel, but I would not see your heart broken when we reach our destination. Do not hope too much.’ And with that, she walked away.

Two more days had passed when the lookout bellowed that land had been sighted. Soon gulls were wheeling across the blue sky, their hungry calls filling every heart with relief that the days of endless blue had passed. A line of green smudged the horizon. In the cabin, Will and Sanburne pored over the pirate captain’s charts and the one that Courtenay had given to them, which showed all that was known of the New World coast. Will thought back to everything he had gleaned from the Faerie Queen of her distant home that night so long ago in the Lantern Tower. Legends of the Unseelie Court’s bastion had circulated since the first European had set foot upon that mysterious land. The City of Gold. Manoa. The Fortress Crepuscule. The home of all wonders and terrors.

The chart showed a river system reaching out from the dark interior like a skeletal hand. From his discussions with Raleigh, Will knew some of the tributaries had been partially explored, but the land was wild and inaccessible, heavily forested and filled with villages of brown-skinned people who hated strangers after so much of their blood had been spilled by the Spanish over the years. Sanburne traced one dirty-nailed finger along the main river. ‘Then we take the Orinoco to here, and then the Caroni?’ he said. ‘The river is navigable for a ship of this size?’

‘So I am told.’

‘And then?’

‘Then, Captain Sanburne, your passengers will be set ashore and you may depart this devil-haunted land and anchor offshore where we now sail. Should we survive, we will find a way back to you.’

‘And how long should we wait?’ Sanburne said in a dismissive tone that suggested he did not expect any survivors.

‘Take on fresh water and sit here for no more than two weeks. And if you come under attack from the Unseelie Court, leave immediately.’

Sanburne nodded, hiding his apprehension. Nor did he show any sign of fear to his men as he ordered them to steer the galleon into the mouth of the wide river; a brave man, as were all of them, to risk so much in the service of the Queen, Will noted. He joined Carpenter, Launceston, Strangewayes, Meg and Grace at the rail, where they watched the nearing land with some trepidation. Hardened by the long struggle, they had become adept at putting on brave faces, but here, so close to the source of their worst fears, they could no longer hide the truth in their hearts. Only Grace held her chin up as she studied the verdant line with an unflinching gaze. Will understood her hope – that whatever waited there was better by far than the endless hell of not-knowing that she had lived through for so long. As if she could read his thoughts, she suddenly turned towards him. Their gaze locked in shared understanding. She smiled and nodded.

‘Is this our world or the Unseelie Court’s world, or something of both?’ Launceston asked.

Carpenter rubbed at the scar under his lank hair. ‘That is the damnable thing about those foul creatures,’ he growled, his eyes darting. ‘They play so well with illusion that nothing can be trusted. One moment you think you are on solid ground, the next you are sucked down into the bottomless bog.’

‘We travel into the very heart of madness and death,’ Strangewayes muttered, crossing himself. ‘God save our souls.’

As the Corneille Noire entered the river mouth, the dense forest loomed up, a blanket of green stretching towards purple, mist-shrouded mountains far to the south. In the sweltering heat, stillness lay across the wild country. For all they could see, no human had ever walked there, nor within a thousand miles. They felt alone. Unfamiliar birdsong echoed all around, whooping cries and staccato clicks, punctuated by the low roar of some wild creature that sent shrieking rainbow flocks swelling into the blue sky. River dolphins stitched the shimmering water alongside the hull, and what they had perceived to be a log slipped off the muddy bank with a yawn of a wide mouth revealing rows of ferocious teeth.

‘Paradise, the first explorers called this place,’ Will remarked as he surveyed the lush countryside.

‘Hell, more like,’ Carpenter muttered. ‘Give me the Mermaid and a cup of sack any day. That is my paradise.’

As the galleon sailed on along the twisting river, the stifling forest closed around them and the sea and the freedom it promised fell away from view. Though they kept to the centre of the channel, Sanburne plumbed the depths regularly, afraid that his ship might become beached. As the day drew on, the mood of unease became more oppressive. Silence enveloped the deck, all eyes flitting towards the trees. When night fell, the captain ordered that the anchor be lowered and no naked light be allowed on deck. The watch changed every hour so no lookout had the time to be lulled to the edge of sleep by the gentle lapping of the river and the breeze through the swaying branches. In the choking heat of the berth, the light of a single candle flickered across Sanburne’s grim face as he told them, ‘We are at war. Let no man lower his guard. Our Enemy could come at any time.’

At first light, they raised anchor and set sail once more. Will watched the tree-lined banks press closer with each turn of the river. When the narrow Caroni river appeared in the wall of vegetation, the birdsong died away and the wind dropped. The water frothing around the ship’s hull looked almost black. Climbing up to the forecastle, he searched for the landmarks the Faerie Queen had shown him. When he glimpsed a familiar range of hills rising up above the treetops, he felt a chill. Here was the stuff of nightmares, the haunted realm of the Unseelie Court.

He waved a hand to Sanburne, who ordered the anchor to be dropped. ‘We continue the rest of our journey on foot,’ he said when the other spies had gathered around him by the mainmast. He added wryly, ‘Will it not be good to stretch our legs after so long on ship?’ Only Meg and Grace smiled. They had dressed for the hard trek to come, and were wearing rough woollen kirtles of the kind a country girl might own, with the sleeves of their chemises rolled up.

The longboat was loaded with a small sack of ship’s biscuit and skins of water attached to twin staffs for ease of transport. Within the hour, the four men and two women had said their goodbyes and stood on the bank watching the Corneille Noire sail out of view round the bend in the river.

After a moment Will turned and strode into the dark among the trees. There was no going back.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

FOUR BLACK BASALT towers punched through the sea of green. Blades of light stabbed out from the gold roofs, each one burning like the sun. As he pressed aside the thin curtain of leaves, Will shielded his eyes against the glare. The narrow branch bounced and shook under his feet and threatened to hurl him down the dizzying drop to the forest floor far below. Steadying himself, he screwed up his nose at the bitter taste of sulphur on the wind, but though he strained he could hear no sounds echoing from the fortress. Truly, it seemed a city of the dead.

He let his gaze run down those grim towers, noting the proliferation of grotesque carvings silhouetted against the silver sky, and the bands of gleaming gold encircling each column at regular intervals. He saw echoes there of the Pillars of Medea, those towering columns through which they had sailed to reach this mysterious place. Surely there could be no doubt that this was the Unseelie Court’s fortress? He felt a seething power radiate from it, prickling the skin on his bare forearms into gooseflesh. His nose began to bleed.

Will bowed his head, peering through the branches to where the others waited below. He felt proud of the way they had coped with the hardships he had thrown in front of them. The trek from the river had been harder than any of them had anticipated. Under the forest canopy, the heat sweltered like a baker’s oven. Over tangled roots they scrambled, sweat stinging their eyes and plastering their clothes to their bodies. Buzzing insects with wingspans as large as their hands hunted for exposed skin to bite and draw blood. No amount of water seemed to ease their thirst. Yet tempers had not frayed. As they struggled steadily uphill from the river, hands never strayed far from weapons and eyes continually searched the green world all around. Will had seen the strain in every face and had marvelled that he could not hear the throb of their hearts.

While they had rested, Carpenter had sidled alongside him and whispered, ‘When will you reveal your plan?’ With a reassuring smile, he had replied, ‘In good time.’ The response seemed to satisfy the other man, at least temporarily, but Will knew that soon the questions would become more pointed. What could he say? That he needed them to help him survive the forest trek, but then he planned to abandon them and sneak into the fortress alone? They would never let him go. Yet for all that he had manipulated them to his own ends, it was time for him to stop risking their necks, and once inside that merciless fortress there was little chance of emerging alive. It was his burden alone, his misery and suffering, his one chance of redemption.

Edging back along the branch, he swung down the towering trunk and dropped the final few feet to the mossy ground with feline grace. ‘We should be there by dusk,’ he said. ‘Steel yourselves.’

Launceston’s whistle rolled out of the undergrowth. The others darted through the trees to where the Earl waited on the edge of a clearing. Sallow-faced and seemingly unruffled by the heat, he waited by a broad-trunked tree, immobile. His eyes flickered towards them and then he nodded towards the clearing.

Dropping to his haunches, Will crept forward. The aristocrat had been scouting ahead for signs of the routes the Enemy took through the forest. What seemed to be a village stood on the other side of the clearing, ten or so log dwellings on stilts beside a creek. Several hide-covered boats had been dragged up the bank. Nothing moved. Will sniffed the air, but could smell no smoke from cooking fires. He had heard tales of the forest folk who, armed with bows and arrows, moved like ghosts among the trees. He gestured left and right. Drawing their daggers, Carpenter and Strangewayes loped in opposite directions round the clearing, then hunched down behind trees and watched and waited.

Long moments passed. Will spied no hint of movement, nor heard any sign of life. The inhabitants of the village could have overheard their approach and be waiting to strike, he knew. But he noted the straggly, unbroken grass around the wooden buildings and the holes in the boats where the hide had rotted, and he chopped his arm forward. The spies edged into the clearing, eyes flashing all around. When no arrows struck Will felt the tightness in his chest ease.

Launceston ghosted to the nearest house, slipping inside with his dagger raised. He moved on to the next, and the one after, and returned, sheathing his blade. ‘Long since deserted,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘Rats as big as cats in there, and spider-webs trailing from every corner.’

‘If all you have told me about the Unseelie Court is true, surely they would never tolerate any human village within their purview,’ Grace said, showing not a trace of fear. Will felt proud of her.

The Earl grunted. ‘I still cannot tell if I am in their world or our own.’

‘Wherever we are, it is our world, because we make it so.’ Meg strode past the men, tossing her red hair. ‘Are we to stand here gossiping like maids, when there is work to be done?’ Grace followed her.

‘Gentlemen, we are put to shame,’ Will said with a sweep of his arm.

Carpenter bowed his head and followed, muttering, ‘Will they jump in our graves afore us too?’

In single file with Meg at the head, they made their way across the clearing and past the silent houses. As they reached the treeline on the other side, Will frowned. Something had made the hairs on his neck prickle, though he could not tell what. He called for the others to stop and turned slowly in an arc, scrutinizing everything that fell before his eyes. A faint movement on the trunk of a golden-leafed tree gripped him. Still unsure what he was seeing, he felt the hairs on his neck prick erect as he eased past the others to investigate.

White eyes blinked in the brown bark.

Carpenter and Strangewayes leapt back in shock, daggers at the ready. A figure was submerged in the trunk, a man, with brown skin, a broad nose and black hair. Will thought he looked as if the tree had grown around him, so that it was impossible to tell where flesh ended and wood began. And yet he was still alive. The eyes blinked again, and as the lips twitched a dark hole appeared where the mouth would have been.

‘Put him out of his misery,’ Carpenter growled. ‘No man should have to live like that.’

Grace’s hand flew to her mouth when she realized what she was seeing. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, blanching.

‘Do not look.’ Meg caught the other woman’s arm and tried to turn her away.

‘I would know what monsters we face,’ Grace said, resisting. Her expression hardened. ‘If we flinch from the truth, we cannot be prepared for what is expected of us.’

‘Kill him,’ Carpenter pleaded, his face contorting. ‘Let him suffer no more.’ Will was surprised by the vehemence in his voice.

Launceston slid his dagger out of its sheath once more and stepped forward, his face impassive. Will wondered if it was even possible to kill the poor soul, short of chopping down the tree that contained him. But as the Earl raised his blade, those lips in the wood finally recalled their ability. With a twitch, they formed an O. Caught by the sight of that dark hole in the trunk, the spies recoiled in shock when a rumble reverberated deep inside the wood, rising up until it burst free as a high-pitched squeal of alarm. Clear and unending, it soared up above the treetops. Even as the aristocrat struck out with his dagger, other voices picked up the sound until the forest rang with warning shrieks.

‘What do we do?’ Grace cried.

‘Run.’ Will beckoned for her to follow as he turned to dash into the trees.

As if in answer to the cries, the air filled with the sound of mighty wings. Black shapes wheeled across the brassy sky. Will squinted, unable to tell if they were winged men or giant birds, but he had already guessed before Meg spoke. ‘The Corvata,’ she said, her features darkening. ‘The eyes and ears of the Enemy.’

The spies darted beneath the verdant canopy, hoping they had been quick enough to avoid being seen by the flying sentinels. As they stumbled through the thick forest, tripping over roots and crashing into trunks, Carpenter snarled, ‘We were fools to think we could approach the fortress without discovery. We were fools, and now it will cost us our lives.’

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

SHAFTS OF SUNLIGHT pierced the canopy of leaves. Branches lashed the faces of the six humans as they raced over the soft, treacherous, mossy ground. All around them, screams rang out through the hot, humid air, offering no respite or chance to catch a breath. High overhead, mighty wings beat like the sound of rending sailcloth. Will glanced up, but he saw nothing and hoped that meant the things could not see him.

Strangewayes ran up to Will. ‘We cannot outrun them. Let me take Grace and return to the river,’ he gasped. ‘We can follow the course more easily.’

‘Fool,’ Launceston breathed. ‘That is the first route the Fay will investigate.’

Will raised a hand to bring the group to a halt. As they gathered around him, eyes searching the green world, Strangewayes cried, ‘What, then?’ Tears of desperation stung the corners of his eyes. He let his gaze fall upon Grace as he blinked them away. ‘Do we run wildly like stags before the hunt until the Enemy bring us down one by one?’

‘This forest is vast and the Unseelie Court few,’ Will replied. ‘Even with their vaunted supernatural powers, we can evade them.’

Meg’s green eyes glinted, her face now as hard as marble. ‘Take heed of Will,’ she said. ‘Anything but a calm head will lead us into the Enemy’s hands.’

‘His recklessness and wilful disregard for our safety have brought us to the brink of disaster,’ Strangewayes protested. ‘And you say we should follow him still?’

‘If he makes much more noise, I can silence him with one stroke,’ Launceston volunteered, his stare unwavering.

‘Tobias, you must listen to Will.’ Grace clasped his hands in hers as she addressed the youngest spy. ‘I know you fear only for my safety. But Will has never failed us—’

‘How can you say that?’ Strangewayes threw his hands wide.

‘The Fay will expect us to flee in panic,’ Will continued in a calming tone. ‘In their arrogance, they think us weak, driven by our passions, our fear. We must show them we are better than that. If we run like rabbits, you are right, Tobias, they will hunt us down with ease.’

‘What do you suggest, then?’ Carpenter sucked in a deep breath to calm himself.

‘Stealth is the only way we can win this fight,’ Will replied. ‘We continue towards the Fortress Crepuscule—’

‘No.’ Strangewayes shuddered. ‘Into their very arms?’ His hand slipped to the hilt of his dagger.

The unearthly shrieks had ebbed away, but the beating wings still circled overhead. Will held up a hand. ‘We must keep our wits about us, and maintain a clear head. While they look for us running towards the river, we can steal to the very walls of their home, unseen, unexpected.’

‘Please, Tobias, listen to him,’ Grace implored.

The hot-headed young spy seemed agitated still. ‘I will not stand idly by and watch him lead you to your death.’

Strangewayes was acting like a fool, but Will pushed aside his irritation; he had seen this behaviour too many times before. When the Unseelie Court entered someone’s life, the world suddenly looked strange and terrifying. Men coped with it in different ways, and some, like Strangewayes, were driven to extremes to try to hold on to things they valued and people they loved. It was a kind of madness that oft-times passed, if the person was given space to recover. The ground had moved rapidly under Strangewayes’ feet, and Will only hoped the young man could find the strength within him to survive this turbulent time.

Carpenter and Launceston were less tolerant, Will knew. They exchanged a quick look and he could see they were poised to act. ‘We must not fight,’ he insisted, trying for a calming note. ‘They are listening for us. That is why the warning cries have stopped.’

Then, just when Will thought he was about to relent, Strangewayes lunged with the dagger. As Grace cried out in shock, Will threw himself back, feeling the blade whisk past his neck. He sensed that the younger spy had been waiting for a long time to make his move. As he regained his balance, Strangewayes’ fingers closed on Grace’s slim wrist and he dragged her with him through the undergrowth. She struggled to free herself.

‘Tobias, do not do this!’ she cried out, turning to look back at Will with pleading eyes. In that glance, he could see she was torn between the man she loved, though she knew he was a fool, and her belief in Will himself.

Cursing, Will dashed after her, the others close behind. Each moment increased their risk of being heard. ‘He will be the death of us, not you,’ Launceston hissed through clenched teeth.

‘Do not hurt him,’ Will ordered. ‘He is deluded—’

‘And dangerous in his foolishness,’ Meg said. Her eyes narrowed, her patience exhausted.

Through the curtains of low branches, Will glimpsed Strangewayes twisting and turning. Grace was now stifling her urge to call out so as not to attract attention, but he could see she was struggling to break free. As the younger man stumbled over a fallen tree, Carpenter, Launceston and Meg circled him like a wolf pack.

Drawing his rapier, Strangewayes levelled it at the other spies. He clutched Grace to him. ‘You waste precious time,’ Will cautioned, unable to keep the crack out of his voice.

Strangewayes took a step back, his heel pressing against a moss-covered mound. White eyes snapped open in the green, a black mouth tore wide, and the buried man screamed. The call was picked up in an instant. Shrieks rang out from trees and grassy banks and bubbling streams as the lost inhabitants of the village summoned their masters. The blood drained from Strangewayes’ face as he realized that through his own naivety he had put Grace’s life at more risk than Will ever had.

Cursing, Carpenter whirled, looking for a way out. Before any decision could be made, the screams stopped, leaving an unnatural silence that was even more chilling. ‘What have you done?’ Carpenter croaked.

From the direction of the fortress, the mournful sound of a single bell rang out.

‘The first alarm prepared them,’ Will growled, trying to pierce the forest gloom. ‘Now they are coming.’

A tremor ran through the leaves above his head; the branches began to sway. After a moment, a tremendous wind tore at the branches like a herd of wild beasts marauding through the forest. The angle of the sunbeams shifted as if the sun had been hurled towards the horizon, and a deep, abiding gloom began to unfurl among the trees.

Will grabbed Grace’s wrist and wrenched her out of Strangewayes’ grasp. ‘They took Jenny. They will not take you,’ he snarled. Beaten, the younger spy cried out in impotent fury, but Will was already picking a path away from the gathering dark. A drumbeat began to roll out deep in the forest at his back, the pounding growing louder by the moment. It was the sound of pursuit.

‘Will, do not fear for me,’ Grace cried out. ‘I chose to come with you in the full knowledge of the dangers that awaited.’ Her breath caught as they scrambled up a steep bank. ‘I am not afraid to die,’ she gasped.

‘Death is the least of our fears,’ Will growled. Forcing aside what might lie ahead, he thought back to the charts he had studied on the Corneille Noire. The vast Caroni river’s meanderings had been punctuated by falls and rapids, fast water gushing by high banks. There lay the one chance of escaping their pursuers.

Crashing through the branches with one arm thrown across his face, he yanked Grace along so hard her feet barely touched the ground. The drumming swelled behind them. Out of the corner of his eye, Will spied Meg, Launceston and Carpenter pushing through the undergrowth in the same direction, but the young fool Strangewayes was nowhere to be seen. He glanced over his shoulder and instantly regretted it.

Spectral, cadaverous faces snarling like wild beasts were emerging from the gloom. The pursuers thundered ever closer, bounding like hounds on all fours or swinging off branches and springing from tree trunks. Some were shaven-headed and bare-chested, with belts crossed over their torsos and axes or swords strapped to their backs. Others were ghosts in grey and silver doublets, white hair streaming, wicked-looking blades clenched in their fists. Will counted at least twenty of them: the Unseelie Court’s dreaded Hunters. Never slowing, never stopping, until they had their quarry; no more ruthless predators existed on the face of the earth. He had confronted them before, in the dark of an Edinburgh night and on the rain-lashed roof of Nôtre Dame cathedral in Paris, and it had taken all of his skill and experience and a dose of good fortune to survive.

Twenty. Will’s blood ran cold.

The glowing green world darkened as if storm clouds had swept across the sun. The suffocating heat of the day gave way to an unnatural chill. On the breeze rode the loamy stink of the grave. The drumbeat turned to thunder and Will knew their time must be near. Yet ahead the gloom looked a little brighter and he thought he could hear cascading water. So near, he thought. Grace was trying to hide her fear and in that moment he loved her more. He raised his head, showing his defiance.

On the edge of his vision, a flash of movement. Carpenter sprawled across the forest floor, one of the Hunters clinging to his back like an ape. Clawed hands rose and fell. There was blood. Realizing his friend had fallen, Launceston skidded to a halt. Whirling round, he drew his rapier and ran towards his companion.

Will ran on, feeling the ground shake under his feet. Grace’s hand was, it seemed, his only link with life.

Skirts held high, Meg danced through the undergrowth to his left, her red hair flying. With a frustrated cry, she flung her back against a tree and waited. Will locked eyes with her, and for one moment she smiled defiantly before her features hardened and her gaze flicked back to the approaching threat. As one of the Hunters leapt at her, she slashed at the thing with her dagger. Will felt grim pleasure as the agonized cry rang out.

Meg slipped from view. The gloom closed all around until he could see only that small circle of bright light ahead, drawing him on. Grace gasped and sobbed for breath, trying to keep a brave face. Behind him, more screams rang out – man or woman, he couldn’t tell – and the sound of rending and tearing, like a pack of dogs fighting over a ham bone. For Grace’s sake, he hid his growing despair.

Through the thinning screen of leaves and branches, the sunlight blazed brighter. He could smell the dank aromas of the river, and over the pounding of his own feet he could clearly hear the rush of water.

As he broke out of the gloom under the trees into the hot sun, he felt a weight slam into his back. Losing hold of Grace, he pitched forward and hit the ground hard. Skidding across the sward, he rolled over and then felt his legs swing out over a drop. He kicked wildly and dug his fingers into the turf as he slid round, and down. The roar of the rushing river rose up from somewhere beneath his boots. He forced himself not to look down. Saving Grace was now all that mattered.

As he tried to haul himself up on shaking arms, he caught sight of her terror-stricken face. She lay sprawled, two sword-lengths away from him, one desperate arm outstretched. From the dark around her head, ghastly faces appeared, baleful eyes fixed upon Will. Bony hands clawed out of the gloom, snatching her hair, pulling at her arms, her kirtle. Grace screamed, the sound drowning out Will’s cry.

His clutching fingers failing, Will felt leaves, twigs, slide under his nails as he scrabbled desperately to hold on. He called again, his voice cracking as those ghostly hands dragged Grace back into the dark.

And then his fingers tore free and he felt himself falling, Grace’s expression of sheer terror branded on to his soul.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

WILL PLUNGED INTO the icy torrent. The black water closed over his head. Muffled booms rumbled in his ears, and then he kicked out, grabbing one precious gulp of air before the flow wrenched him along. The roar of the crashing river engulfed him. Spun round, he slammed against a rock, and another, almost dashing his wits from his head. His chest burned as he fought to savour his last breath. Snatches of the world around him flickered through the constant dunkings: soaring banks of grey rock, overhanging trees against blue sky, spikes of sunlight punching into the water, but no hideous white faces peering down at him.

After what felt like an eternity, the flow eased. The narrow gorge gave way to low, tree-lined banks as the river broadened. With the last of his strength, Will crawled towards the shallows, stumbling out of the lapping black water to crash down on the muddy bank. As he heaved in great lungfuls of air, the thunder of his heart subsided and the realization of his grim situation settled on him. He shook his head and tried to drive that last sight of Grace’s dread-infused face from his thoughts, but it lingered, haunting him. The cries of his companions still rang in his ears too, and he felt a deep guilt that he had brought them all to this terrible point. But then he shook his head and sat up. Nothing would be gained from wallowing in self-pity. Rescue or revenge, those were the twin paths that lay ahead of him now.

Soaked to the skin, he rose on shaking legs and checked he still had his dagger and his rapier, and that the velvet-wrapped mirror was still safe in his pouch. Once he had recovered, he forged on into the trees.

The sun was slipping past its highest point by the time he had followed the course of the river back to where the Unseelie Court had mounted their attack. He cocked his head, listening for any sound of the others, but heard no human voice. Stealth was the only way to proceed, however long it took. He would not make Strangewayes’ mistake. His eyes grew accustomed to the strange world of leaf and moss, slanting sunbeams and whirling insects, and whenever he encountered any misshapen tree or hummock that might hide one of the subsumed people he gave it a wide berth. There in the glade he saw signs of struggle, the odd spatter of blood, but no worse. That meant there was still hope, he told himself, though a part of him feared the opposite.

Will ignored the growling of his stomach; it had been almost a day since he had gnawed on the last of the ship’s biscuit. He pushed and hacked his way through trailing vines and thorny bushes in the direction of the Unseelie Court’s Fortress Crepuscule.

For the rest of the day, he weaved through the thick forest, occasionally pausing to clamber up the soaring trees to get his bearings. The gold caps on the black basalt towers were like beacons, drawing him inexorably towards them. It was as shadow slid into dips and hollows, and the bloated red sun settled down on the horizon, that he reached his destination.

He felt a chill as he crept to the treeline and looked down the slope into a hollow where the massive fortress stood. The Unseelie Court’s dwelling place dwarfed any he had seen, even the Escorial of Philip of Spain. Towering black walls enclosed a lake of shimmering gold covering every roof and dome of the castle buildings. In the ruddy light, it glowed like fire. Along the battlements, nothing moved. Will scanned the walls, frowning. When it came to the Unseelie Court, human eyes could never be trusted, and he suspected unseen sentinels would be looking out over the surrounding forest.

As Will gathered his thoughts a low groan disturbed the eerie silence. The main gate – the height of six men – ground slowly open and a column of figures moved out into the fading light. At the front was a Fay on a black stallion, his head raised as he surveyed the darkening forest with slit eyes. He wore a silver helm and armour with whorls etched on it in black filigree, and in his right hand he held upright a silver-tipped spear. Behind him marched a raiding party of around twenty armoured Fay, bristling with swords and axes. Flanked by four others holding sizzling torches aloft, the column moved across the cobbles and on to the broad path leading into the forest. The gate shuddered shut.

A search party? Could any of the others yet live? However powerful the Fay were, they still could not see or know all. Perhaps one man could creep under their noses like a spider entering the Queen’s bedchamber.

Once darkness had fallen, Will left his hiding place and crawled down the incline among the thick, spiky-leaved bushes. Around the fortress perimeter he crept, until the full moon cast long shadows over silvered ground. The rear wall was cut off by a dense barrier of thorny bushes. When he tossed a stone over the top, but never heard it fall, he guessed the fortress sat on the edge of a sheer drop. His heart sank as he concluded there was no obvious way to steal inside, no drainage tunnels, no sluices, no handholds on the soaring glass-smooth walls. Returning to the main entrance of the colossal fortress, he sank into the shadows at the foot of the wall and pondered his options. Determination gripped him; he would not be defeated.

Barely had the thought crossed his mind when he caught sight of a lone figure stumbling along the road out of the forest dark. No Fay this, Will saw from the rolling gait, but he still felt shocked when the moonlight revealed Strangewayes. The young spy looked broken, shambling like a man in his cups, his head bowed, his shirt torn, his face streaked with dirt and blood.

Will wondered if the torment of what he had done had driven him mad. Why else would he be stumbling up to the gates of Hell, alone and unarmed? Will pressed himself against the wall, which felt icy against his skin despite the heat, ready to drag Strangewayes off the path when he neared. But a stone’s throw from the vast door the younger man shuffled to a halt and raised his head, looking up at the dizzying height of the imposing edifice. Before Will could move, he shook his fist at the fortress and roared in a cracking voice, ‘Give her back to me.’

Will stiffened; it was too late now.

‘You cannot have her,’ Strangewayes raged. Spittle flew from his mouth. ‘Take me instead. I deserve to die. But set her free, I beg of you.’

With a resonant rumble, the gate began to grind open once more.

Strangewayes, you fool, Will thought. You have ordered your own death – or something far, far worse. If he tried to save the other man, he knew his own life would be forfeit. Then what of Jenny, and what of revenge for whatever had happened to the others? Sickened by his powerlessness, Will could only watch as the younger spy peered into the black maw of the gates. After a moment, the blood drained from his face, but he didn’t run and Will admired him for that.

Two figures walked out, their faces obscured by shadow despite the moonlight. Guards, Will guessed, dressed in out-of-time grey bucklers and breeches. Their too-pale hands rested on the sculpted silver hilts of their swords.

‘I am not afraid of you,’ Strangewayes shouted, his voice cracking with fear. ‘Take me . . . to Grace.’

Will’s hand hovered over the hilt of his own blade. His every instinct told him to rush to Strangewayes’ aid, but he forced himself to hold back: this was his moment. Sneaking along the wall while the guards were occupied, he slipped round the door and darted into the dark interior. Yet as the shadows swallowed him, for all Strangewayes’ folly, he couldn’t help but feel guilt that he had turned his back on a companion . . . and so consigned him to death.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

BLOOD DRIPPED FROM will’s nose as he stepped from the grim darkness of the gateway into a soft glow. He felt shock at the stark transition, as if he had stumbled into a half-remembered dream. Gold sheathed the walls of soaring halls, gleamed off statues of slender figures with severe features, and glittered in the swirls and knots of finely wrought screens and porticos. Along paved walkways running between the jumble of buildings torches hissed and spat, bathing the entire scene in a rippling, flickering light. Drifting from the windows and doorways came the delirious whirl of fiddle and pipe, and when Will inhaled, the heady scent of sweet honeysuckle swaddled him. He felt light-headed at such a rush of sensations.

For a moment, the spy marvelled at this magical world. Slowly, though, the brooding sense of menace that lay behind the glitter began to envelop him like an encroaching tide. He must never forget that whatever charm and beauty danced before his eyes he was in Hell, and no man could survive here for long. He shook himself and tensed, every sense afire for a sign of threat. Drawing his sword, he padded along the pathway to his left, seeking out every pool of shadow as he slipped from doorway to doorway. He looked up the vertiginous walls and wondered once more at the vastness of the Unseelie Court’s home. How could he expect to find Jenny before the devils found him and tore him limb from limb?

Yet he refused to be daunted. He eased open the nearest door and slipped inside. In the hallway of gold and stone, the music throbbed so loudly that his ears rang. Now he heard a frenzied edge to the jig that spoke of madness. Buried behind it rumbled a low pulse that reminded him of the pounding of a blacksmith’s hammers. He traced his fingers down the cool wall and felt the vibrations running through the stone, seemingly rising up from deep underneath the castle. An oppressive heat seethed through the building as if mighty forges were being stoked under the floor.

Crossing the entrance hall to the next door, he opened it a crack, taking care that he would not be seen. He peered into a great hall, lit only by the ruddy glow of a fire. Long tables creaked under platters of meats and pies and bread, silver goblets and wooden flasks, and tall jugs of drink. Around the trestles, the Fay were at play. They whirled around to the wild music of the fiddler and pipe player, or tore at meat and swigged down mouthfuls of wine, the red liquid spilling down their chins. Others fornicated in full view, the women sprawled on their backs on the tables or on all fours, while the men thrust into them.

Will pulled the door shut with great care, his head swimming from the sights, sounds and smells. Once back on the pathway, he sucked in a deep breath, feeling as if he had spent a night drinking in the Mermaid. He could now feel the dull, deep rumble everywhere he went. It ran up through his legs and into the pit of his stomach. He forced himself to move further into the heart of the castle, though every sense rebelled. After a while, he began to feel that all he saw was illusion, created by his own wits to hide the true madness and rot that lay behind it. Was that a keep, or a hellish pit where foul things writhed? If the walls were really gold, why did he keep smelling the reek of spoiled meat when he brushed by? The world he remembered back in England receded into the depths of his mind, and that sickening place became the only thing he knew, as if he had always lived there and always would. And the music roiled wherever he went until he could no longer trust his own thoughts.

In one chamber he found a strange creature like a shaven ape throwing dice on a long table. When he entered, it stared at him with golden eyes that contained an unsettling intelligence and then proceeded to mimic every movement he made as if it were his mirror image. In another chamber, ten pendulums as long as a ship’s mast swung from the high, vaulted ceiling. In the gloom, Will could just discern on each one a long-beaked figure, seemingly asleep, strapped upside down, hands crossed on its chest. As he moved deeper into the fortress, the sense of being part of a troubling dream swallowed him whole and he had to fight to keep his hold on his purpose there. How easy would it be to give himself up wholly to these wonders and mysteries?

Again and again, as he made his way through the fortress, Will had to duck into doorways to avoid the Fay themselves as they moved silently through their realm. The air of corruption heavy around them, males and females walked side by side like courting couples, heads bowed yet occasionally glancing at each other as if they communicated without words. Some Fay passed on horseback, their silvery cloaks and helms suggesting a higher status. Occasionally, their heads would turn, their eyes wide and staring as if they could see him in his hiding place, but they rode on without a sound.

It was as if time had no meaning there. It felt as if the walls, the paths, the vast hallways, went on for ever. Will paused and leaned back against a golden wall. Though Dee’s warning still rang in his mind, he found himself reaching into the pouch that rested on his hip. After a moment fighting with his conscience, he pulled out the obsidian mirror. Even knowing all of the Unseelie Court could swoop down upon him in an instant, he was so lost that he felt he had no choice but to use the looking glass if he were to find Jenny.

As he hunched over the mirror, the mist in the glass cleared and Jenny appeared. Her face looked uncommonly pale in the gloom, and though she gave a faint smile when she saw him her brow was furrowed. Despite the dangers, Will was overjoyed to see her. He could scarcely believe he was so close now after so many years of wondering whether they would ever meet again.

‘Where are you?’ she asked, squinting. He knew she could see the gleaming gold on the halls around him. ‘Will,’ she exclaimed, her eyes widening. ‘I told you not to come.’

‘That conversation has long since sailed, Jenny,’ he replied, his eyes scanning his surroundings. Would he even hear a footstep when they came for him? ‘Quickly now, tell me where I can find you, afore I feel a dagger at my neck.’

She hesitated for an instant, then said, ‘The highest hall is always lit by moonlight. Turn to the left once you enter and climb the steps. On the third floor, behind the third door, you will find me.’ She flashed the smile that he remembered so well and then whispered, ‘Take care, my love.’

Will felt his heart swell. So close now, so close. He darted ahead, looking up the towering walls every time he reached a courtyard. At the centre of the fortress, the highest hall was indeed silvery with moonlight, the shadow of every grotesque carving stark on the upper reaches. With each step, it loomed ever closer.

His heart pounded fit to burst. If the Fay discovered him when he was so near to the prize he had desired for so long, he thought his spirit would be broken for ever. Silently, he prayed that his enemies would continue to search beyond the fortress walls, but he knew the time must surely be near when they would turn their cruel eyes towards the dark streets of their home. When he reached an arched doorway at the base of the highest hall, he finally sucked in a deep draught of hot, fragrant air. His head was spinning with the rush of conflicting emotions. All he wanted now was to feel Jenny in his embrace. Steeling himself, he eased open the heavy gold and jet door and stepped into searing heat. The deep rumble of hammers rang through the walls louder still, reverberating in the pit of his stomach.

His pulse racing, the hand that held his sword now clammy with sweat, England’s greatest spy took the steps two at a time. Fiddle and pipe music swirled dimly from the chambers below, but above him all seemed still.

At the top of the steps on the third floor, he leaned against the throbbing wall and drew in a deep breath to steady himself. Ahead lay a corridor lit by a single torch with doors along the right wall. Will noticed his sword hand trembling as all the years of yearning for this moment rushed out of him, and he knew he had to steady himself.

Calm descended on him. He was ready. He crept along the corridor, his senses alert to the slightest sign of danger. At the third door, he raised the latch and pushed gently with his shoulder. It didn’t move. It was locked.

His heart beat faster. He pressed his ear against the rough wood, listening for any sound from within. All was quiet. Visions of what horrors might lie on the other side of that door flashed through his mind. He hesitated for a long moment, his chest tightening. Dare he call out?

When he had weighed his choices, he leaned closer until his lips were almost brushing the timber and whispered, ‘Jenny. It’s me.’

Silence followed, and his heart grew heavy. But then he heard movement on the other side of the door, drawing closer. He held his breath. After a moment a woman’s voice hissed, ‘At last.’ It was Jenny.

The hairs on the nape of his neck tingled with anticipation. How much richer her voice sounded in life than coming through the glass of the obsidian mirror.

A bolt was drawn. The door swung open.

The only light came from the ruddy glow of a hissing brazier in one corner of the chamber. Will’s eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. A figure loomed in the half-light: tall . . . much taller than he remembered. He saw the silhouette of a staff, pale fingers wrapped around it. They looked unnaturally long, the curved nails sharp, like talons. Other details emerged as if a curtain were being drawn back. Robes, seemingly too thick for the unbearable heat, a faint gold filigree glinting in the brazier’s light. Yellowing skulls of birds and mice, and trinkets, all braided into gold and silver hair. And finally the face appeared from the shadows, hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked.

Deortha, sorcerer to the Fay High Family, reached out his right hand, palm up. With a sly smile, he murmured, ‘The looking glass, if you will.’

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

THE BRAZIER’S ACRID smoke drifted across deortha’s cold features. Will’s mind reeled as he watched the shadows play on the Fay’s face in the incarnadine glow of the chamber. ‘You made a play of being Jenny all along?’ he croaked. Despair flooded him.

He remembered the first time he had ever cast eyes upon the Unseelie Court’s sorcerer, on that awful moonlit night on Dartmoor six years gone. It was after Deortha had departed that he had found Jenny’s locket upon the grass, his first real evidence that she was still alive and a prisoner of the Unseelie Court, or so he’d thought. At the time he should have questioned the coincidence, but he had wanted to believe it so much it had clouded his wits.

There had been so much more: the whispered words of Christopher Marlowe’s devil telling him Jenny still lived in a hot land across the sea; his love’s face in that devil’s looking glass, insisting he ignore her while encouraging him to do the opposite, all of it luring him to this place, this moment. And all of it a play, an illusion. He was a fool to have believed so easily, because he wanted to, because he loved, and the Unseelie Court were nothing if not expert in finding the flaws in every man. Time meant nothing to them. They wove their schemes across the years, not caring how long it took to achieve their aims. And in his weakness he had delivered into their hands the one thing they wanted: that terrible mirror.

Deortha smiled as if he could read all his thoughts.

‘Where is Jenny?’ Will asked in a low voice. Yet he was afraid to hear the answer. He raised his rapier until the point quivered over the sorcerer’s heart. ‘Where is she?’ he asked again, this time raw anger flaring from the embers of his dismay.

‘You wish to know if she is alive or dead.’ Will sensed mockery in Deortha’s calm tone and felt his anger grow hotter still, but the sorcerer only gave a low laugh.

Will snatched the devil’s looking glass out of the leather pouch and held it high, ready to dash it on the flags. ‘I will destroy this before I would ever let you use its power.’

‘And you think that here, in our home, at the very heart of our authority, you have any control over your own actions? Here you are a puppet, no more than that, and I hold your strings.’

Will’s sword arm felt as heavy as stone. He thrust his blade at the sorcerer’s chest, but something unbidden stayed his hand. However much he tried, he was powerless to drive the point home.

He felt the chilly touch of despair caress his spine. ‘Tell me now,’ he said, his voice low and hard, ‘what befell her?’ And as the words left his lips he realized how afraid he was of the answer.

Deortha eased the obsidian mirror from his fingers. Peering into the glass, the sorcerer nodded and caressed the black rim. ‘She lives,’ he said, distracted. ‘She is here.’

All thought of the mirror vanished. Will’s breath left him in a rush, but he hardly dared believe the sorcerer. ‘And you have not harmed her?’ he demanded.

Deortha raised his head and gave a strange smile. ‘She is safe. She is an honoured guest of the Unseelie Court.’

‘Take me to her. Please.’

‘That was always my intention.’ The pale eyes glinted. ‘It was my intention from the moment we met upon the moor.’

‘What trick are you playing, devil?’ Will’s voice was hoarse with grief, anger and hope.

‘All life is illusion,’ the sorcerer replied, echoing the words Dee had spoken shortly before the Corneille Noire departed the island for the New World. ‘And in the midst of that, all appears trickery when the truth is hidden.’

Will’s eyes narrowed. There was no gain in showing the pain he felt, he knew – he might as well bare his throat to the cruel Fay – and so he forced himself to put on a grin, and with a swagger that he didn’t feel he sheathed his rapier. ‘Then I can take from your words that it is not your intention to kill me yet,’ he said. ‘I would see Jenny, now.’

‘All in good time.’

Will nodded, trying to seem unruffled. ‘What plans do you have for the mirror you have fought for for so long?’

Deortha turned over the mirror as if it were unimportant. ‘For those who know how to use it, this mirror reveals all places, all times. No secret can ever be hidden. Whoever wields this mirror controls everything.’ Waving his right hand as if wafting away a foul smell, he added, ‘But for now that is of no interest.’

The spy frowned. ‘Of no interest? A weapon that can uncover the flaws in any enemy’s defence, and divine future plans? The world is now yours.’

‘The world always was ours.’ Deortha stepped towards the door and beckoned for him to follow. ‘Will Swyfte, I have work for you.’

CHAPTER FIFTY

THE TORCHES SIZZLED at the bottom of the vast gulf of dark. In the pool of light, pale faces gleamed, eyes frozen wide in terror. Captain Sanburne showed a cold face to the ones who waited in the shadows, but his men shook as the deep rumble of mighty hammers enveloped them. High above the knot of frightened sailors, Will gripped the stone wall of the gallery whither Deortha had brought him. As he peered down the well of the great hall, he wondered how the captain and his crew had been seized. He felt relieved that they were all still alive, but he feared for their future.

Deep grinding echoed all around. Disoriented, he felt as if the basalt and gold of the hall were revolving like a millstone, crushing the husks of the men cowering below. More torches hissed into life, widening the circle of light. The hidden figures flickered into view, a near-army of Fay guards surrounding the men. Grey and indistinct, their faces were cloaked by shadow. Silver breastplates and helms glinted in the dancing flames. The guards bristled with cruel weapons: spike-topped halberds, double-headed axes and broadswords.

The circle of guards parted to allow four figures entry. Will’s heart thundered with joy as he watched Meg, Carpenter, Launceston and Grace step forward. He could scarcely believe they lived. Bloodied and bedraggled, they still held their heads up defiantly, he saw.

Halberds levelled at their necks brought them to a halt, and Will’s jubilation drained away. He looked back at Deortha, but the brooding sorcerer gave no sign of what was to come.

A distant door slammed shut, the echoes rippling through the hall. A moment later he heard another door, and then another, the successive booms growing louder as they approached until the hall rang with the steady beat of a funeral drum. The sailors’ heads turned in the direction of the sound, the men fearful at the thought of what was approaching.

Finally the Unseelie Court circle parted once again. Agleam in a silver winged headdress, glistening robes and a white cloak that swept the flagstones, a tall, slender Fay stepped forward. Will leaned over the stone wall, squinting to get a better look. Here was a leader of sorts, perhaps even a King, he thought, his eyes narrowing; the architect of all their suffering.

The regal Fay glided towards the Englishmen. Beside him came a smaller figure, and Will gasped. His memory reeled across the vast ocean of years to the day when Jenny had been swept away into mystery. Her face as she had crossed the cornfield was burned into his mind’s eye, every moment they had shared, the depth of the emotion he had felt, all wrapped up in that single sunlit image. Could this be another of the Unseelie Court’s cruel tricks, he thought, as he peered down at the woman who stood beside the King?

Cold breath chilled his ear. ‘Yes,’ Deortha whispered, ‘it is she.’

Jenny. His heart pounding, his thoughts awhirl, he drank in every familiar movement, feeling a pang of bittersweet remembrance. His gaze drifted to her white skirts edged in gold, and the gold at her wrists and in the band snaking around her forehead, and he saw that she walked at the King’s side without any sign of defiance or resistance. As far as he could tell, she seemed to look on the Englishmen without compassion or recognition. No prisoner this, Will thought, growing cold. She accompanies the Fay willingly.

‘You have spun your magics to seduce her to your side,’ he snarled into the dark of the gallery. ‘For that you will pay a harsh price, I vow.’

‘There is no glamour. She is what she seems,’ the sorcerer replied.

‘You lie, as your kind always lies,’ Will spat. Yet he knew there could be no other explanation. His knuckles whitened round the hilt of his rapier as he fought the desperate urge to rush down to the floor and tear Jenny – his Jenny – away from those foul creatures.

Until then Grace had remained silent, head bowed, eyes fixed on the stone floor. Now, as if waking from some deep slumber, she twitched as if someone had called her name, and looked up. When her gaze alighted on Jenny, her mouth fell open and tears flooded her eyes. Arms outstretched, she rushed to embrace her, and would have fallen under the Fay guards’ halberds had Meg not lunged to stop her. She staggered back with Meg’s arms wrapped round her, incomprehension turning to devastation when Jenny turned her calm, cold face towards her. No sign of recognition flickered in the elder sister’s hard features.

The Fay King looked down on the tableau before him, the group of confused and frightened humans caught in the small circle of light, and said, ‘I am Mandraxas, highest of the High Family. In my sister’s absence, the Golden Throne is mine, here in this place beyond places that your kind call Manoa. It is my word that rings out across this world, across all worlds; my design which shapes this war; my judgement that hangs over all the heads of your people. Do you fear me, men?’

Sanburne showed a defiant face, but the other seamen cowered.

From a pouch, Mandraxas pulled out a black oval stone on a silver chain. He let it swing in front of him like a pendulum. ‘We are the oldest beings in the great sweep of existence. We are the silver of the moon and the cool mist of dawn and the dark shadow of night. And we are the gold of the sun and the searing heat of the forge. And we will no longer be defied.’ He paused and looked around him, still swinging the stone from side to side. ‘In that time before times, we knew only beauty, only wonder. And then your infestation spread across the fields in which we played. Your urge for blood, and power, consumed you and corrupted all that had been made. And then you sought to challenge us. Is there no end to your arrogance? Now, though, the age of man is passing.’

Launceston raised his head, a finger’s breadth from an axe’s blade. A trickle of blood on his pale skin gleamed in the torchlight. ‘I know you,’ he said, fixing an eye on the Fay King. ‘I know you as I know myself, for we are much alike. A pale shell hiding a monster. For all your high words, you are the parasites, preying upon the flesh of the world. Creatures like us, we cannot survive for ever, for we are against nature. The things I see in other men, the small kindnesses and the great loves, they cannot be crushed by the millstone of your midnight power. They will survive. You will not.’

A hint of a smile ghosted on to Mandraxas’s lips. He allowed the pendulum to come to a halt and stared at the stone for a moment, as if weighing his next words.

‘And yet, for all your deceit and your cruelty and your brutality, you are fools. Poor, witless sheep,’ he continued as if he had not heard the Earl, his voice so low it was almost lost beneath the deep rumble. ‘You dared to trespass on the province of the Unseelie Court. You thought you could wander here, in the borders of the Far Lands, with impunity. This is not your world, mortals. This is a land of madness and terror beyond imagining.’

Shadows raced across his face as he began to swing the stone on its length of glinting chain just above his head. A low whistle echoed through the vast space, growing louder the faster Mandraxas whirled the sable stone. Will felt a corresponding queasiness in the pit of his stomach. He watched the Fay King’s smile grow.

‘The Spree-birds are coming,’ Mandraxas said.

Deep in the shadows high overhead, a shrieking rang out from all parts of the hall. Will was reminded of the haunting cries of hungry crows on a grey autumn morn. A moment later, the beating of wings filled the vault with thunder. The spy looked up, shocked by the thought of how many birds it would take to create such a roar.

Wind rushed by his face, the draught of that swooping flock as it passed, and his ears rang with the piercing shrieking. He clutched the wall and peered down, the circle of light now hidden behind a swirl of black bodies. Torchlight flickered through the flapping wings. When the shrill human screams soared up to the roof, Will tore out his rapier. Deortha grasped his shoulder to restrain him and whispered in his ear, ‘I have ensured your friends will be safe. Reveal yourself and they will surely die, as will you.’ His breath was icy.

Will felt sickened by what he saw, but he fought to contain himself. After a moment, he sheathed his blade and turned back to the carnage. The Spree-birds were feeding. In the torchlight, their black feathers gleamed, but their heads were little more than skulls. Most of the flock wheeled around the hall above, but many perched on the thrashing sailors, their long bony beaks stabbing like daggers. Blood pooled across the flagstones. Amid the cacophony of bird-cry and dying screams, Meg, Grace, Launceston and Carpenter looked on in horror as one by one the hellish birds rose and flapped away, white skulls stained red. A picture of starkest horror revealed itself. Where Sanburne and his crew had huddled, now only bones clotted with chunks of meat remained. As the last bird disappeared back to its hidden roost, a sickened stillness fell over the surviving mortals.

His anger boiling, Will turned to Deortha and whispered, ‘You have shown me this savagery so that I would know it hangs over the heads of my friends. Another way to bend me to your will.’ He glanced down to that bloodied circle of light and saw Jenny studying the scene without a trace of emotion. How far the Unseelie Court had twisted her away from the innocent woman he had known.

‘Come with me,’ Deortha demanded.

Will followed the sorcerer down flight after flight of steps until he found himself in a small, bare antechamber lit by a single torch. The Fay left him there, alone, for what seemed like a lifetime. He paced and brooded and made silent vows until he heard the door creak open.

Turning, he stared into the sorcerer’s pale eyes. Deortha stepped aside with a sweep of his arm to reveal Jenny, her expression dark with suspicion. Will felt his heart leap. His head spun with the thousand imagined speeches he had dreamed of making when they met again, but he uttered none of them. Instead, he found himself transfixed by the luminescence of her youth and beauty.

She had not changed in the fifteen years they had been apart. Her milky skin was smooth, her brow unlined, her cheeks full and her eyes bright. Unconsciously his fingers crept to his own unkempt, unshaven face, tracing the pattern of years, the wrinkles round his eyes from long spells under a mediterranean sun, the laughter lines bracketing his mouth from lush days in the Mermaid with Kit Marlowe and spicy nights with the doxies in Liz Longshanks’s stew. There was the true tragedy. He had thought her only a prisoner, but trapped in this timeless place she had drifted away from him in years and experience, the commonality of their life and the bonds forged by being in the same place at the same time shattered for ever. Though she stood only a sword’s length from him, she might as well have been a thousand miles away.

And yet it was still Jenny. He refused to allow sour thoughts to tarnish the moment, and moved to embrace her.

Sharper than a slap to his face was Jenny’s cold look. She half turned to the sorcerer and demanded, ‘Who is this?’

Will recoiled. In her eyes, he could see no trace of the Unseelie Court’s taint. Jenny truly did not recognize him.

His voice barely a whisper, he said, ‘This dark place has swallowed your memories. Cast your mind back to England, to Warwickshire and the village of your birth. Remember the hours we walked in the woods together, or dallied on the banks of the millstream.’ He watched her brow knit, but no recognition sparked in her features. ‘I am Will.’ He felt a lump rise in his throat.

She shook her head. ‘If we knew each other once, it is long gone. This place is all I remember. How could it not be? I have dwelled here now these past thousand years.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

SILENCE LAY LIKE a shroud across the antechamber. In that emptiness, Will could hear his world crumble and fall away. At the door, Deortha listened for any intruders. ‘Dreams are elusive,’ the sorcerer said without emotion. ‘And sometimes the most fervent wishes float out for long years and return like an arrow through the heart.’

‘No,’ Will snapped. ‘I will not accept that.’

‘And what will you do? Stab it with your dagger? Plunge your sword through its heart?’ Deortha turned back to him, his pale eyes glowing in the gloom. ‘Here is an enemy that is immune to all your vaunted martial skills.’

Reaching out one imploring hand, Will stepped towards Jenny. She near-leapt away from him. ‘Stay back,’ she said. ‘No stranger can approach the King’s consort.’

Will felt his blood run cold.

‘And there lies the heart of this great tragedy,’ Deortha said with a sour undertone. ‘We are thrust together in a bitter struggle of monumental proportions. Many lives hang in the balance, and power, and the very shape of what has been and what will be. And all that we fight to achieve has been placed at risk. By this.’ He waved a contemptuous hand towards Will and Jenny. ‘By the insignificant desires of three lovesick fools.’

‘Enough,’ Will said. ‘Tell me some truths.’

‘Truths?’ Deortha glowered. ‘Do you remember aught of how you came to us?’ he asked Jenny.

‘I have always been here,’ she replied, her chin raised defiantly.

‘You are not one of us. You are a mortal.’

‘And you have always despised me for it,’ Jenny snapped.

Will was surprised to see anger in the sorcerer’s face. ‘If you have only contempt for humans, why did you steal Jenny away?’ he asked.

‘We are strong and you are weak,’ Deortha replied, pursing his lips, ‘but sometimes . . . some of my kind . . . are infected with a flaw of the spirit. A black corruption that eats away at their hearts. We keep our secrets well. We lie to ourselves and pretend. But our history is littered with the failures of those who have turned their affections towards your kind.’

Will watched Jenny’s face, a chill rising as he began to understand.

‘Our King . . .’ Deortha formed the word as if he had a pebble in his mouth, ‘came across this woman while at play in your land. It is in his nature to give himself to foolhardy pursuits. Day after day, he watched her, until he believed his heart held affection.’ He waved a hand as if dispelling a stench. ‘Love.’

‘So he took her,’ Will said with quick anger. ‘He forced her to submit to his will.’

‘We have nothing but time.’ A cruel smile flickered on the sorcerer’s lips. ‘We can wait for the waves to turn the rocks to sand if we wish. Time does our work for us. Mandraxas only had to wait. Here in this place, the years eroded her resolve, which at the beginning was great indeed. Removed from the comforts of her own life, it became like a half-remembered dream. She saw only our home, and the wonders it contained, and slowly she fell into its embrace.’

As she listened to the sorcerer’s words, Jenny hung her head, a faraway look in her eyes as if something deep was stirring inside her.

‘How can it be,’ Will asked, ‘that only fifteen years passed in our world and a thousand here?’

‘The rules of existence are not as simple as your “wise men” would have you believe.’

Will felt hollow. He had always believed the solution to his suffering was simple – to bring Jenny home. But this . . . this seemed insurmountable.

‘And still you think us devils, even though we show love for your kind,’ Deortha said. ‘Let me reveal one more secret. Then perhaps you will see who are the true devils. Your own kind knew where this woman had been taken, and why. Indeed, they encouraged it.’ The contempt was barely restrained.

‘Why would they?’ Will snapped, all his long-held suspicions turning to hot anger. This must have been what Grace overheard Cecil and Essex discussing as the court left Nonsuch.

‘A good question. Yes, why?’ The sorcerer smiled, but his eyes remained icy.

‘Tell me!’ Will fought the compulsion to beat the answer out of the Fay.

‘In good time.’ Deortha raised an index finger. ‘Firstly, nothing is ever lost. You must know that this is true. What was still stirs within her, if you can but find it.’

Will saw Jenny studying him. When he smiled, she did not look away. Perhaps there was hope yet, he thought. ‘And you tell me this out of the goodness of your heart?’ he said to the sorcerer sardonically. ‘What is it you require in exchange?’

‘I wish you to take this woman away from here.’

‘What gain is there for you in that?’

‘He would not have me whispering in the King’s ear,’ Jenny said acidly.

‘She has stolen what little steel Mandraxas had.’ Deortha ignored Jenny’s glare. ‘We cannot win this war while she sits beside the Golden Throne. And we will never have our Queen returned to us.’

‘How so?’

‘The King does not want the Queen returned from her imprisonment at your hands.’ Deortha circled Jenny like a carrion crow eyeing a wounded rabbit. She stared at the torch through heavy lids, pretending to ignore him. ‘He would lose both the Golden Throne and this woman he loves so much. The Queen would never allow such an abomination to continue. If she knew a mortal sat as King’s consort beside the Golden Throne, her fury would be terrible indeed.’

Will paced beside the black basalt walls, weighing the Fay’s words. His thoughts raced, confused by the revelations, and he fought to make sense of everything he had heard. After a moment, he smiled to himself. ‘Mandraxas does not want to free the Queen for he would lose what he cares for most,’ he mused. ‘And so the plots of Elizabeth’s court are reflected here. You are more like us than you realize.’

‘The King plays his games.’ Deortha nodded. ‘He shows the face of a determined ruler who will do all within his power to free our Queen. And yet he undermines every attempt, and obfuscates, and delays. Some would even say,’ the sorcerer said with studied disinterest, ‘that he plots to have the Queen, his sister, killed while she is in your hands.’

‘And to blame us for the murder. And thereby unleash an even greater fury among your people, a greater desire to commit atrocities against us.’

Deortha shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I would not pretend to know the King’s mind.’

‘You speak of love between Fay and man.’ Walsingham, the long-dead spymaster, and Cecil, the present one, and the grey faces of the Privy Council, paraded across Will’s thoughts, and his anger burned hotter still. He felt that at last he was beginning to understand. ‘Your King reached some agreement with my masters,’ he said finally.

The sorcerer steepled his fingers in front of him. ‘Mandraxas was allowed to wander your land with impunity to find a woman who met his desires. And then he was permitted to spirit her away, with no questions asked and no effort made to recover her.’

Will clenched his fist in anguish.

‘And she was not alone,’ Deortha continued. ‘We have been granted the right to take whom we wished from your people. Not many, not near as many as we stole before you built your defences. A child here, a wife or husband there. For the sake of love, in the main.’

The spy seethed. All those years of lies and deceit, all the pain he had suffered with the connivance of those he served. ‘And in return?’

‘The King agreed to contain those of the High Family who demanded slaughter on a grand scale to regain our Queen. His work has become more difficult in recent times. His brothers and sister have grown impatient with his failures and so his attempts to undermine their best endeavours have grown more determined.’

Will bowed his head. He felt devastated. Hearing the truth in the sorcerer’s words, he now understood so much. Deortha had been right. The epoch-shaking clash of high power between England and the Unseelie Court that had been rolling across the world with increasing brutality was little more than an illusion. In truth, the high drama of vast sweeping schemes and strategies came down to nothing more than raw emotions: passion, and yearning, and two suitors aspiring to the hand of one woman. He laughed bitterly at the irony of it.

‘Though you keep your teeth hidden, I suspect you have venom enough,’ he said, eyeing the sorcerer. ‘I would have thought if such an obstacle existed to the great plans of the Unseelie Court, it could be solved with a dagger in the night.’

‘And risk the terrible wrath of the King? Only a fool would follow such a course.’

While the Fay and Jenny glared at each other, Will slipped his fingers into his boot and withdrew his dagger. He hid it behind his back as he circled towards Deortha. Yet he felt the sorcerer’s words lying heavily on him. ‘If I take Jenny away from here, the King will be forced to act to reclaim her. You will find whatever it takes to win this war and bring about the destruction of humankind.’

‘If you leave her, you destroy yourself. Can you bring yourself to do that?’

‘You cannot take me away,’ Jenny said, her tone dismissive. ‘My King would never allow it.’ She clasped her hands behind her back, showing her face to each male in turn.

Will studied her features, seeing the fire he had admired so long ago. ‘You love this King?’ he asked.

‘I am his consort,’ Jenny replied, as if that explained everything.

Will stepped in front of Deortha, the unseen dagger cold in his hand. ‘And there is the difference between our people. Your King steals Jenny from her life because he sees something he must have, with no more thought for her than a beast in the field. And you expect me to take her back in the same way – because I want her more than the world itself. But she is no rag doll to be torn between warring children. She commands her own life and she must decide her own path.’

‘And you would allow her to choose life here in this fortress of madness and dark? Even after you have sacrificed the years of your youth to find her?’ Deortha asked, uncomprehending.

‘All I want for her is joy and peace. I would not see her heart broken to salve my own ache.’

He watched Jenny’s face soften at his words. Her gaze flickered across his features, a question in her eyes.

Will stifled his swirling feelings for her, ready to plunge the dagger into the sorcerer’s chest. If nothing else came of this dismal affair, the death of the Unseelie Court’s scheming adviser would strike at the heart of their aspirations.

Before he could decide, the door crashed open. Jenny cried out in shock, her hand flying to her mouth. In a flurry of snow white, Mandraxas swept into the antechamber, eyes afire, with three Fay guards at his side. The sorcerer’s eyes widened with fear, and in an instant he had pressed something hard into Will’s hand. The King hurried to Jenny to see she was well. As the spy slipped the object under his shirt and into the waist of his breeches, Deortha whispered an instruction. He had barely finished when Mandraxas turned his coruscating gaze upon them.

At the King’s order, the guards forced Will and Deortha against the stone wall with the cruel blades of their halberds. Will felt the tip of the spear dig into his neck; one thrust and his head would be gone. He cursed.

Mandraxas fixed his attention on Deortha and intoned, ‘Take the traitor to the Scalding Rooms.’

Horror flitted across the sorcerer’s face, but he fought to retain his composure. He glared coldly at the King, but reserved a more lingering glance for Will, urging, perhaps, that they had business in common. He strode out with a halberd pressed against his back. The King stepped to Jenny’s side, and placed one slender finger under her chin to raise her head. He gazed into her eyes for a long moment and then brushed his lips against hers.

Will felt a flare of fiery anger, and jealousy too, he could not deny that. He struggled to reach the Fay King, only for the remaining guards to press their halberds harder still. He felt sticky blood trickle down his neck. And yet, as Jenny’s lips met her master’s, he swore he saw her eyes look towards his own.

Leaving her at last, Mandraxas strode towards him with a triumphant grin. ‘I saw you once, long ago in your terms,’ he said with contempt. ‘A callow youth. Not fit to dally with this proud woman, my consort.’

Though the King held the upper hand, the two faced each other as equals in love, their faces cold. ‘I have sailed across an ocean of years and half a world to find Jenny,’ Will said. ‘I have sacrificed my youth, my innocence, my dreams, my morals, to get her back. I have turned my skin to flint and my heart to steel. There is nothing I would not do to free her from your cruelty.’ He could feel Jenny’s eyes upon him, but he kept his gaze upon the King.

Mandraxas’s face loomed a finger’s width from Will. His eyes gleamed golden, his pale skin almost translucent, his breath ice-cold. ‘I always knew you would come for her,’ he whispered. ‘I welcomed it. I needed you here, in my hands. You were always the one who might waken her from this long, peaceful sleep, even after a thousand years, but now I have you she will be mine for ever. And you will suffer a thousand hells for your failure.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

THE FIRE ROARED in the grand stone hearth like a black-smith’s forge. Golden sparks surged up the chimney as shadows fluttered across the whirling figures. Dresses of mildewed grey swirled around in furious dance to the delirious rhythm of fiddle and pipe. Their cloaks flying, the Fay males caught the hands of their partners and whipped them around faster still. And with every spin the faces altered, hauntingly beautiful one moment, cadaverous the next. With the music ringing up to the vaulted roof, the fiddler and the piper danced along the twin tables running the length of the hall, deftly avoiding the platters of meat and bread and cheese which seemed at once both bounteous and corrupted by rot. On the Golden Throne, Mandraxas steepled his fingers and watched the Unseelie Court at play with the easy eye of a victor. Beside him on a smaller throne, his consort folded her hands in her lap, unable to bring herself to look upon the knot of prisoners who huddled at the heart of the madness.

Meg held up her head defiantly, refusing to reveal the terror she felt in that hell. Amid the choking heat, she sucked in a deep draught of air, the sickly-sweet smell of honeysuckle and rose so strong she felt as if she was in her cups. Surely the end was not far away now. It would not be pleasant, she knew, and there would be agonies aplenty for a time. But it would at least be an end.

The Irish spy saw Grace kneading her hands as she watched her sister beside the Fay King. ‘She lives, and for now that is enough,’ Meg shouted above the din. A little comfort in the final hour was no bad thing.

‘She is remembering, can you not see?’ Grace replied. ‘The coldness has drained from her face. Soon she will know me, and then she will save us all.’

‘We are fortunate indeed,’ Meg lied. She studied Jenny with a sharp eye. A country girl, nothing more. Was this really the one who had filled Will with such passion that he had travelled to death’s door to bring her home? She shook her head, unable to comprehend how Swyfte could prefer that child when she herself offered passion and life and experience.

As the wild music reached a climax, Carpenter clutched at his head as if something squirmed in his skull. Meg had sensed that something was wrong with the spy ever since they had left the island, but what it was she could not guess. She saw that Launceston was concerned for his friend too, his raptor eyes rarely leaving the other man.

The Fay swooped closer as they whirled, white faces flashing past in a blur of mad, staring eyes. Jagged fingernails caught in Meg’s hair and raked across Grace’s breast. The two women pressed back to back against Carpenter and Launceston, all of them determined to fight to the last when the ravenous pack fell upon them.

It was then, just as the Irish spy began to fear the worst, that a bell rang, its tone crystal clear. The dancers swept to the perimeter of the hall where they continued to circle, and the music quietened a little as the fiddler and pipe player retreated to the hearth. When the door flew open, two guards in winged helms dragged Will in. Meg felt a rush of joy to see him still with the living, and, despite everything, a flicker of hope warmed her heart. Blood caked the edge of his left eye and a bruise swelled on his cheek, but he flashed a grin when he saw her. Even at the last, he knew how to make a girl’s heart beat faster, she thought with a quiet laugh.

The guards flung Will on to the flagstones in front of Mandraxas. Climbing to his feet, the spy brushed the dust from his shirt with lazy strokes. He paid no attention to the Fay King. Yet when he was done, he locked eyes with Jenny in a gaze heavy with emotion. In that look, Meg saw such depth of feeling that it touched her heart.

‘You are creatures of few days,’ Mandraxas said, looking down upon Will, ‘and they pass in a blink of an eye. We, however,’ and he gestured to those around him, ‘we continue for ever. You move slowly, through a fog of ignorance. We race across fields of wonder. How high you raise yourselves up, insisting you are not beasts of the field. How pitiful you are in truth.’ The King reached out his left hand for Jenny to take, no show of affection but one of ownership, designed to wound. ‘Shall we see how little you mean to us? Shall we have fine sport? For now your days are truly at an end.’

Will drew himself up and spat a mouthful of blood on to the flagstones. ‘You think you have our necks upon the block, but we are exactly where we wish to be.’ He turned to the spies and flashed Meg another grin. She recognized the familiar heat in her belly. Could he really have a plan, even here in the heart of Hell, friendless, weaponless and surrounded by an army of enemies? She would have mocked the suggestion if it were any other man, but Swyfte, he was a schemer and a gambler, perhaps the greatest one she knew. England’s greatest spy. How the other rogues in Cecil’s service laughed at the sobriquet concocted to assuage the fears of the good men and women of England. And yet it was true, it was true.

As if unsure of what he was hearing, Mandraxas’s eyes narrowed. ‘We are masters of torment and suffering. We can pluck agony like the string of a lyre and sustain it for eternity. Do you doubt me?’ He clapped his hands once and the musicians stepped in front of the throne. The fiddle player began to increase the tempo until the music whirled into a frenzy, his silver hair lashing the air with his passion. The piper spun round and round, atonal notes seemingly in opposition to his partner’s melody.

The din set Meg’s teeth on edge at first, but gradually she felt her heart begin to beat faster, and her cheeks flush, and euphoria begin to burn inside her. Under the clashing tunes, she thought she could hear another song being played. Despite herself, her feet and hands began to twitch to the rhythm.

And yet it was Grace who seemed most affected by the music. Carpenter clutched for her, but she danced away from his fingers, spinning on light feet into the space in front of the musicians. Sweat glistened on her brow as she turned faster and faster still, her brown hair flying. Yet Meg saw none of the joy the girl would have exhibited at one of the court masques. Instead, her eyes were wide with fear, her expression fixed.

‘She cannot stop,’ the Irish spy murmured with dawning realization.

‘Dance your hours away,’ Mandraxas called. ‘Dance until your flesh withers and falls from your bones.’

When Meg heard the piper alter his tune once more, she saw shadows cross the faces of Carpenter and Launceston. Their eyes gleamed and faint, beatific smiles flickered on their lips. It was as if they had forgotten all that transpired in that hall and were instead looking deep within themselves to some glorious time of their youth. Gradually Meg noticed that it seemed as if a light was slowly going out in their features.

Will’s expression darkened, but he held firm. Meg saw his hand reach behind his back where his shirt hung loose above the waist of his breeches.

‘Do not harm them.’

Though the voice was quiet, it rang out with such intensity that it cut through the raucous music. Mandraxas recoiled as if he had been slapped. It was Jenny who had spoken. Tears glimmered in the corners of her eyes, but her expression was fierce. And Grace’s mad dance began to slow.

Meg looked from the woman to Will. He was smiling in triumph, and she knew that he had gambled on his love’s awakening.

‘It seems your Queen disagrees,’ he said. ‘Spite her and show we mortals mean nothing to you. Or accede to her request and accept that our kind, in certain circumstances, have power over you.’

Meg watched Mandraxas wrestle with the net that seemingly snared him. The dancing of the Unseelie Court slowed and all eyes turned towards their King. They had the look of a hungry wolf pack ready to pounce, the Irish spy thought.

‘You have not forgotten,’ Will continued. He swallowed, nearly choking on his passion as his gaze locked upon Jenny. ‘One thousand years may pass, but still the heart calls out.’ Her cheeks flushed. ‘You remember your sister, Grace, who whispers a prayer for you to return home every day. And you remember me—’

‘Enough,’ Mandraxas snapped. Gone was the striking, regal face, replaced by a death’s head of sunken cheeks, thin lips and hollow eyes.

Meg brushed the hair from her face, standing taller as she looked with hope to Will. A faint but familiar smile played on his lips. It was the smile of a man who saw his carefully laid snare tightening around his prey’s neck. ‘There is one way to solve this knotty affair of pride and human emotions,’ he said, as if the notion had only just come to him. ‘A duel.’

The King snorted with derision. ‘Between you and me? But a duel is a fight between equals.’

‘Before I left London, I visited your Queen.’ Will raised his voice so the other gaunt-faced members of the Unseelie Court would focus upon his words. ‘The true ruler of this place and people. She yearns to return to the City of Gold—’

‘And so she will,’ Mandraxas said, too quickly.

‘She spoke to me of your people, of the rules that bind you, and the beliefs, and she told me of honour,’ Will pushed on, his voice louder. ‘You believe mortals are a dishonourable breed, yes? That our kind are filled with deceit, shaped for betrayal. Honour is what separates your kind from ours, that is what your Queen said.’

‘And she spoke true.’

Meg smiled as she watched the Fay King move towards the trap step by step. Seemingly unable to look away from the dancing fire, he appeared oblivious of what lay in the dark around him.

‘Then we duel, you and I,’ Will said, his tone lazy. ‘And honour dictates the outcome. If you win, you will have your cruel sport with us. And if I win, we have safe passage to leave this place and return to the world of men, my friends and I.’ He paused, for effect. ‘And Jenny.’

Mandraxas’s eyes widened for a moment, but then he settled back into his throne and folded his hands in his lap. His smile was corpse-cold. ‘But you cannot win. I am faster, stronger, more skilful than even one of our Hunters. Will you brag as much when you wriggle on the end of my cold steel?’ He threw his arms wide, looking around his court with a wolfish grin. ‘A duel, then. Fine sport for all.’

‘A duel conducted with honour,’ Will said. ‘You will use no magics or illusions to turn my head. No music to make me dance like a fool. No whispers that turn my bones to straw or whisk my wits away to Bedlam.’

‘Rest assured, all I need is my rapier.’

‘I have your word?’

Mandraxas nodded slowly. ‘You have the word of the King of the Unseelie Court.’

Had Will truly lost his mind? Meg was torn between apprehension and belief in the man she now realized she loved. His plan remained hidden, but with Will Swyfte that was always the case.

With a deep bow, Will said, ‘Then let our dance begin, and may the devil take the loser.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

WILD SHADOWS DANCED across the stone walls. Beyond the crackle and spatter of the flames in the hearth, silence lay heavily across the hall. Feeling bruised and battered but ready for a fight, Will weighed the rapier in his hand, checking that it was indeed the one that had been taken from him when he and Deortha had been captured. He whisked the tip of the blade through the air, making a play for the eyes of the Enemy he felt upon him. He glimpsed the Fay’s cold, haunted faces. Were they hungry for his death, fired at the prospect of bloody entertainment, filled with loathing for one of the men who had taken their Queen from them? Of one thing he was certain: none of them could countenance anything but his defeat.

Mandraxas shrugged off his white cloak and pushed his shoulders back. For a moment he watched Will with undisguised contempt, then drew his own rapier and flexed the tip against the flags. Will ignored him, looking instead at Jenny, drawing strength from the concern he saw in her face. She leaned forward on her throne, and her eyes did not waver when they met his. She remembered him now, and what they shared, he could see. If he were to die there and then, that would be reward enough for all the years of searching and striving and disappointment.

He bowed. ‘Consider now what we fight for,’ he said, levelling his blade at the King. ‘This is not man against Fay, or two bitter enemies waging war for the good of their country. No, we are rivals of the heart, about to clash swords for the hand of the woman we love. No great affair, this. Indeed, ’tis a private matter.’

Mandraxas all but snarled. ‘Like all your kind, you are deluded. That matter has already been decided. I have my Queen and you have nothing, and soon less than nothing.’

‘Look in your Queen’s face, Your Highness, and repeat your words with conviction,’ Will taunted, enjoying the anger that sparked in Mandraxas’s features. In any sword fight, such emotion was weakness.

‘Let us be done with this,’ the King said with a theatrical sigh. He levelled his own rapier and gently tapped the end of Will’s blade.

And the storm broke. The cold sea of predatory white faces seemed to fade away as Will’s vision closed in upon his opponent. Barely had their swords clashed before he found Mandraxas as threatening as he had boasted. Will moved with the speed of a snake as the Fay struck with quicksilver strokes. The King’s rapier glowed with the reflected flames from the hearth, slashing high, for Will’s throat, then low, to disable. A thrust to the heart ripped open the spy’s shirt, drawing blood on his chest. Unable to anticipate the rapid strokes, Will knew he must rely on instinct.

And yet when he looked past Mandraxas’s lupine grin into those haunted eyes, Will thought he understood his foe. The Unseelie Court always found the flaws in men’s hearts, but now he had discovered the Fay’s weakness. No monster of the night, this. The King was weighted with all the fear of any man afraid of losing the woman he loved.

As if he could sense Will’s probing of his vulnerability, the Fay snarled in fury and suddenly lunged at his opponent’s face. The spy skipped back a step, feeling his cheek bloom hot from the steel’s breath. Will knew he would not last much longer in the face of such an onslaught.

The time had come.

Parrying another lightning thrust from the Fay King, Will reached behind him with his left hand and withdrew the object that Deortha had pressed on him earlier, and he’d hidden under his shirt. In the firelight, the devil’s looking glass burned like the sun.

Mandraxas hesitated, suddenly unsure. Will sensed the rest of the Unseelie Court bracing itself, claw-like hands clutching, barely resisting the urge to fall upon him and tear him apart. He refused to acknowledge the threat, and glanced into the smoky depths of the obsidian mirror.

The mist cleared, and there was the hooded gaze of the sorcerer. Deortha’s whispered words sizzled in his head: ‘Fulfil our agreement. Slay the traitor.’

As Deortha’s lips shaped some silent incantation, his visage faded. It was replaced by Mandraxas, as though the mirror was but a window on the scene in front of him. Yet the mirror-King thrust upwards a moment before the real King, and as Mandraxas struck the spy stepped aside. Will smiled as a flicker of surprise crossed his opponent’s face. How the sorcerer must hate his King, to give up such a prize so readily, a mirror which could see across all time, even if it were only one moment from now.

As Will parried each of his foe’s strikes with ease, so the triumph ebbed from the Fay King’s face. Balancing on the balls of his feet, the spy danced around his foe, making his opponent look a fool. As the looking glass revealed the weaknesses in Mandraxas’s defence, so Will jabbed and thrust with growing confidence and fervour. He slit the King’s doublet, his breeches, his silk sleeves, then nicked his cheek. And each strike could have been a killing blow.

The Fay stumbled back under the relentless assault until he sprawled against his throne. A murmur rippled through the Unseelie Court. Mandraxas’s features grew taut with shame.

‘Herein lies a lesson,’ Will said, the tip of his rapier hovering over the King’s heart. ‘Pride comes before a fall.’

‘Deceit and trickery,’ the King snarled. ‘Your nature remains true – your kind are lower than snakes.’

‘I would not wish to disappoint you, Your Highness. And yet, in your arrogance, you saw no need to define the rules of my engagement, as I did of yours.’

His face twisting with rage, Mandraxas flung himself forward. Almost lazily, Will stepped aside, and tripped his opponent. The Fay King tumbled across the flagstones. The spy could feel how close he was to being ripped limb from limb by the ghastly figures hovering close by, and he spun away from the duel to the huddle of his friends.

‘Be prepared,’ he whispered. ‘When I give the signal, we make our move.’

‘You are as mad as always,’ Carpenter snapped, nearly hysterical. He frantically raked his fingers through his hair as though his head was fit to burst. ‘Those pale bastards will be on us like wolves before we have taken a step.’

‘John, you must trust Will,’ Grace implored. Though her hands trembled, she kept a brave face.

Will heard Mandraxas scramble to his feet, but before he could turn Launceston caught his eye with his unsettling gaze. ‘What deal have you made to gain the advantage that mirror gives you, I wonder?’ the Earl hissed.

‘I have agreed to kill the King,’ Will replied without emotion, ‘thus damning all mankind to immediate destruction at the hands of a vengeful Fay army.’ Sweeping out one hand, he added with a sardonic smile, ‘But at least we will be allowed to leave unharmed, with Jenny.’

Grace’s face drained of blood. ‘No. Will, you cannot.’

Will felt a twinge of hurt when he saw Meg’s face harden. ‘Some would say that is too high a price, even for the love of your life,’ she said with faux-sweetness. ‘I would think again, my darling.’

‘The only choices worth making are the hard ones,’ he replied, turning back to Mandraxas. Clearing all extraneous thoughts from his head, he added, ‘And I would have an end to my suffering, one way or another.’

When Will raised his rapier, the King feinted and thrust, though his attack lacked guile or power. His confidence was ebbing, the spy saw. It was time to finish this play. As Mandraxas searched for an opening, Will wiped the sweat from his brow. He had been delaying that moment of no return, he knew.

The mirror glinted, and once again he glimpsed Deortha’s cold, watchful eyes urging him on to damnation. He dealt a flurry of ferocious blows, catching the King off guard and driving him back. With a flick of his wrist, he whipped his foe’s blade from his hand and thrust his rapier towards the Fay’s throat.

Jenny leapt from her throne. ‘Do not kill him,’ she cried. Will ignored her, though his heart ached at her concern for his foe.

The Unseelie Court surged closer, white faces contorted with bestial rage. Sword poised to strike, the spy thundered, ‘Stay back. I will slay your King without a moment’s thought for my own safety.’ Hands hooked, the Fay slowed close enough for Will to smell their loamy odour. ‘Meg. Robert. Some help, if you will.’

Launceston and the Irish woman grabbed daggers from two of the nearest Fay and held the blades against the King’s neck. Stepping back, Will sheathed his sword and then held out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Jenny took it. He could feel the fury of Mandraxas’s gaze upon him as Carpenter and Grace hurried to his side. The Fay surrounded them and, Will guessed, countless more were gathering in the fortress beyond.

‘How can we ever escape?’ Grace whispered as if reading his thoughts.

‘Deortha, show me the way out,’ Will commanded into the looking glass.

The surface cleared and he heard the sorcerer speak: ‘First, kill the King.’

‘Do you take me for a fool? Once we have our freedom, you can have your monarch’s life.’ After a moment’s hesitation, the sorcerer uttered the words Will needed to hear. He grinned at the others, a reassuring show of bravado. ‘Stay close at my back. And if any here dare threaten you, prick the King till he squeals. Our Enemy will think twice before daring to lay a hand on you.’ With Launceston and Meg guarding their prisoner, Will slid out his rapier and brandished it in front of him. The wall of Fay parted and he began to lead the way through them. Cadaverous faces loomed from the half-light on either side, hungry eyes staring and jaws snapping. A choking sense of dread enveloped him.

At the hall’s great door, he turned back and looked across the Unseelie Court. Waving the tip of his rapier towards Mandraxas’s face, he announced, ‘Your King has betrayed you. He has conspired to leave your Queen a prisoner of men so that the Golden Throne can be his alone.’

‘Lies,’ Mandraxas bellowed.

With a smile and an arched eyebrow, Meg dug her blade deeper into the King’s neck and breathed into his ear, ‘Quiet now, my sweet. I can cut out your tongue and still keep you alive. For a while.’

‘Trust not my words,’ Will continued, his voice clear and strong. ‘Seek out your court’s wise adviser, Deortha, who is now incarcerated, upon your King’s orders. Free him from his cell where he has been locked away along with the truth and listen to what he has to say. Then you will learn that we are not so different, Fay and men.’

Will turned to Jenny and drank in all the things he had missed, the sparkle in her dark eyes and the way her brow knitted as if she was always questioning, and the colour in her cheeks and her lips, in case this was their last moment. Gently, he cupped the back of her neck and pulled her to him. She showed no resistance. He closed his eyes. Their lips met and he felt a jolt run through him, and all the lost years melted away. Once again he was in Warwickshire with the sun on his shoulders and the future ahead of him. Blood throbbed through his head, driving out all thoughts. And when he opened his lids, he watched a light appear in her face as if she were waking from that dream. All is illusion, and sometimes the truth is hidden, he thought with a surge of pure joy, the first he had felt in many a year. But it is here, now.

Turning back to the ranks of glowering faces, he called, ‘Our time here is done.’ He bowed deeply, flinging out his left arm with a flourish. ‘And so I bid you farewell.’

And with that, he pushed open the doors and led the others out into the dark alleys of a fortress teeming with the Enemy.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

TORCHES HISSED ON the black basalt walls. In and out of swooping shadows, six figures ghosted along the narrow, labyrinthine ways, bundling a seventh. Darkness as thick and impenetrable as the grave shrouded the spaces in between the too-small pools of light. Will ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair, wondering how long they had before their pursuers caught them.

At a crossing of the ways, the fleeing figures pressed back into an archway as two grey sentries marched past. Once they had gone, the spies slipped by, but at every turn more Fay drifted like ghosts emerging from churchyards at dusk. Will’s chest tightened. It was only a matter of time until their escape route was discovered.

‘Can you not use the mirror to predict where these foul things lie in wait?’ Meg hissed as they huddled by a wall.

‘Without Deortha’s guidance it is useless to me,’ he replied, ‘but to keep it out of their control is victory in itself.’ He squeezed Jenny’s hand, never wanting to let it go, and she returned a wan smile, but the light of recognition gleamed in her eyes with increasing brilliance.

‘You damn yourself with each step you take,’ Mandraxas snarled. His head was pulled back, his long hair held in Launceston’s fist, his throat bared for a simple, swift slash of a blade. ‘Your agonies will be never-ending.’

‘Keep a close eye on our guest,’ Will warned the Earl. ‘Given half a chance he will violate your wits with his whispered words and turn you upon yourself, or he will use his magics to leave you nothing but a straw man ripe for the harvest bonfire.’

It was then that he noticed Carpenter. The man was tearing and scratching at his face as if insects crawled there. ‘John? Are you sick?’

‘He is well enough,’ Launceston cut in, too quickly. ‘I will watch over him. Your task is to guide us safely through this hell. Or lead us to a quick death, at worst.’

Barely had the words left his lips when the funereal tolling of a bell tore through the hot dark once again. Will felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck.

‘The night unfolds and releases its terrors,’ Mandraxas whispered with a low laugh. ‘Run. Run.’

Across the City of Gold, they could hear the wind rising. In the high eaves and along the twisting alleyways it moaned. Doors crashed open. Feet pounded on stone. A high keening, of inhuman voices raised in anger, tugged at their ears.

‘The sands have run out, my love,’ Meg said with an edge to her voice. ‘This is no time for caution.’

Urging the others to follow, Will broke into a run, following the directions Deortha had whispered in his head. But the alleyways twisted and turned in a confusing manner, and the dark lay heavy around them.

Running feet echoed on all sides. Will could feel the rising anxiety of his friends as the activity milled closer. But just as he feared the worst, he saw the landmark he had been searching for, a golden globe spinning with no visible means of support at the centre of a small courtyard. He ran forward, only to be confronted by a high, black, featureless wall. Despairing glances darted among the others as they realized they were trapped.

Footsteps and calls echoed all around. The Unseelie Court were drawing near.

‘Why do you tarry?’ Carpenter barked. ‘Make haste before we are undone.’

Jenny squeezed Will’s hand as he scanned the length of the wall. ‘What is it you search for?’ she asked.

‘A door. Deortha told me our path of escape would begin here, at his chambers.’

‘The sorcerer has betrayed us,’ Launceston snarled, glancing back.

‘Deortha keeps his secrets well,’ Jenny said. ‘With him, nothing ever lies in plain sight.’

Will weighed her words. After a moment he snatched a sizzling torch from the wall and reflected its ruddy light with the obsidian mirror. Lines of silver filigree glimmered on the basalt: stars, a moon, a sun, a host of magical symbols of the kind he had only ever seen before in Dee’s shadowy chamber in the Black Gallery. And there, at the centre of them, the faint outline of an arched door shimmered. Handing the mirror and torch to Grace, Will pressed round the edge of the shape until he heard a click and the hidden door slid open.

The spies dragged their prisoner into the dark space. It was not a moment too soon. The tumult crashed against the edge of the courtyard as the door whispered shut behind them. His hand trembling, his face pale, Carpenter levelled his rapier, ready to repel any who followed. Shrieks and cries rang through the stone wall, but after a moment they began to pass by. Carpenter exhaled, his shoulders sagging as his blade fell.

Will took the torch and held it high to reveal a flight of stone steps disappearing down into the dark. As they paused to catch their breath, Grace could contain herself no longer. She threw her arms round Jenny, burying her face in her sister’s shoulder. Awkward and unsure, Jenny’s hands wavered over the younger woman for a moment before she returned the embrace.

‘Do you know me yet?’ Grace said between juddering sobs. ‘My heart will break if you remain a stranger. So long have I yearned for your return.’

Jenny held her sister’s tear-streaked face between her hands and gazed into the young girl’s eyes. Her brow cleared, and she smiled. ‘I remember holding a little girl’s hand as we searched for wild flowers in the wood. And telling stories under the covers when we were supposed to be asleep.’ She stroked the centre of her forehead. ‘I thought it a dream, insubstantial. But now I see you here, the visions grow clearer by the moment.’

As she pulled back, Grace bit her lip. ‘I feared you dead. Oh, I lost faith, Jenny. Only Will . . .’ She choked back the words. ‘Will never lost his belief that you would return to us. Even in the darkest days, he kept a candle in his heart, and that in turn brought comfort to me.’

Jenny looked beyond her sister’s shoulder to where Will was beginning to descend the stone staircase. While Meg and Launceston pricked Mandraxas with their daggers to follow, Will sensed Jenny hurrying to catch him up. Looking back, he saw her glance at the Fay and whisper, ‘I beg you not to hurt him.’

‘He is our foe and I have reached agreement with Deortha to take his life in exchange for our freedom. Your freedom,’ Will replied, ignoring a pang of jealousy.

‘Whatever you might think of him, he has shown me many kindnesses during my long years in the City of Gold.’ He felt her breath on his ear as they descended into the dark.

‘You love him? Even though he stole you from all you knew?’ he whispered, his voice sounding too harsh in the stillness.

‘When I was first brought here, I cried every day. I cried for the man I had lost.’ She swallowed and added quietly, ‘And you?’

He nodded, feeling the rawness of the memory, even after all the time that had passed.

‘But over the days and years, the life I had faded like a dream,’ she continued. ‘Soon this place, and Mandraxas, was all I knew. And he was gentle and caring, and he showed me love—’

‘They are not capable of love,’ Will interrupted, his voice hard. Moisture now glistened on the walls.

‘They are,’ she protested. ‘They are no different from us.’

‘And did you love him?’ Will asked coldly. He paused, looking into her face. From further up the steps, he heard the shuffle of feet as Grace, the other spies and their prisoner descended cautiously.

‘You must understand, it was all I knew—’

Will turned away and continued his descent, his expression unreadable. ‘My plans for the King’s future were made long ago. Nothing will alter them.’ He increased his pace before she could protest.

The staircase opened out on to a long, low-ceilinged chamber barely lit by the glow of four candles arranged on the cardinal points of a circle inscribed on the dusty flagstones. Along the walls, a multitude of gilt-framed mirrors each as big as a man glittered in the reflected light. As Will stepped into the room, rapier drawn, shadowy figures formed in several of the mirrors, each one growing more distinct as if they were stepping out of a thick fog. He recognized several members of the Unseelie Court’s High Family, including Malantha, seductive and cruel, the silver-haired Lethe, a grotesquely fat, bald Fay he had glimpsed in Paris the previous year, and others he did not know. Each seemed to be standing in a different chamber, at courts across the world, Will guessed, where they wove their manipulations of men. And among them stood Deortha, his eyes ringed with shadow, the bird and mice skulls braided into his hair trembling with each faint movement.

‘What is this?’ Carpenter muttered, shuddering. ‘Are we betrayed?’

‘I am sure the High Family care little for us at this moment,’ Will murmured in reply. ‘Greater matters must now occupy their minds.’ He nodded to Meg and Launceston, and they forced Mandraxas to his knees in front of the mirrors. The Earl pressed the tip of his dagger against the nape of the King’s neck.

‘They are here to pass judgement,’ Will said to Carpenter. And to witness an execution? He wondered how much Deortha had told the other members of the High Family. He watched Jenny look along the row of Fay lords, her face cold, and knew there was no love lost there. She took Grace’s hand in her own, perhaps an unconscious desire to protect her sister from these predators.

A faint click echoed from the shadows behind them, but as Will peered into the gloom Mandraxas turned his face towards his siblings and uttered, ‘You will not judge me. I am King.’

‘King.’ Deortha shaped the word with cold precision. ‘You keep the Golden Throne safe for our Queen at the pleasure of the High Family. It is a privilege.’

Mandraxas’s brow knitted as he looked along the row of emotionless faces. Silence swaddled the chamber. After a moment, Will realized that the cold-faced Fay were communicating in some manner beyond speech. The King’s features darkened, and he flashed a threatening look at Deortha before he glanced back at Will.

‘I will not be your prisoner,’ he said.

It was then that Carpenter cried out, stifling the sound with a trembling hand. Will turned to look at the man. It was not in his nature to be scared of any Fay, Will thought, not even one with the power of a King. Yet tears now streamed down the man’s face, and his brow was beaded with sweat. Muttering under his breath, he lurched out of sight behind Will as the latter turned back to the mirrors.

Deortha’s pale eyes shone like the moon, urging the spy to complete their agreement and take the King’s life. Will felt Jenny’s apprehensive gaze heavy upon him too.

With a hard smile, Mandraxas was saying, ‘Nothing is left to chance.’ As Will struggled to understand the context of the King’s words, he glimpsed Meg’s brows snapping together and heard Grace’s startled gasp. Movement flashed on the edge of his vision.

Dagger drawn, Carpenter lunged. The blade shimmered as he thrust it towards Will’s right eye.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

THE GLINTING STEEL filled will’s vision. And one thought seared: Carpenter’s great betrayal had doomed them all. He jerked back in anticipation of the blade’s sinking into his skull, just as he sensed a flurry of movement and a sudden impact. His attacker spun away. The deflected blade ripped through the flesh above his cheek and tore into his tangle of black hair. Blood dripped on to the flags.

In agony, he stumbled back, wiping at the burning wound with his sleeve. His gaze fell upon Carpenter, who was sprawled across the stone floor, pinned down by Launceston. ‘Kill me,’ Carpenter pleaded, staring into the aristocrat’s pale, impassive face. ‘Do it now, as you vowed.’ When the Earl didn’t respond, Carpenter blinked away tears and wailed, ‘If you do not end my life, I will betray you again and again until I have slain you all. You will not leave this place.’

Will saw Meg hovering over Mandraxas with her dagger drawn, Grace and Jenny beside her, all of them gripped by Carpenter’s plight. Blood trickled between his fingers. He saw the truth in the treacherous spy’s words. Sooner or later, Carpenter would attack them again. With a surge of bitter regret for the friend he once knew, he drew his own dagger from his boot.