The Pyramids of London

TWELVE

“We walk on the faces of the dead.”

The South London Orientation and Expeditionary Force blinked up at their navigator, Melly.

“We’re walking on grass,” Griff corrected. “And there’s only skeletons below. No faces.”

“Skulls have faces enough,” Melly said. She raised her bag-laden arms, a stretching, expansive gesture. “I love this place, but no matter what anyone says, we’re walking over people. Rooms of bone and teeth.”

Climbing the last few feet to the top of the rise, Eluned turned to gaze back at the city. London was such a flat place that this must be one of the best views of it, unless they could gain permission to scale one of the three major pyramids that rose higher than any other building. One of those was not too terribly far south, but most of the view was a grand sweep of tile and shingle, the spinning blades of roof-mounted dynamos, and the occasional tips of lesser pyramids.

Turning inward, Eluned could remove the city completely from her view, replacing it with rounded green slopes marked by a tinge of brown thanks to the summer of windstorms. London’s Great Barrows were shaped like three overlapping almonds—a perfect triquetra to symbolise the coming together of the Suleviae as Sulis. The south-west barrow was almost deserted, only a handful of kite flyers ahead.

But Melly’s words made it impossible to see simply a hilly park. Beneath them were halls and pits lined with stone and people: the bones of those who had died, separated by type and neatly stacked. Freed by Arawn’s Tears of all the weight of flesh, bones could not anchor spirits in the living world, or hold them from the Grey Shores of Annwn.

A tight bubble had expanded in Eluned’s chest, and she gripped the handle of the carpet bag she carried. They had said their goodbyes at Caerlleon’s Black Pool, and she no longer felt like she was suffocating every moment of the day, but there were times when the thought that her parents no longer had hands to touch made her want to scream.

“Ar-rrooo!” Griff cried, pretending to be one of Arawn’s hounds and chasing Dama Chelwith’s two grandchildren, Redick and Falwen, toward the intersection of the three barrows.

“How does he have so much energy after all today’s walking?” Melly asked, then added in a lower voice. “Stupid thing for me to say. Sorry.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Eleri said, putting her bags down and wriggling her fingers. “Definitely will come back with kites,” she added, critically surveying two girls as they launched a multi-jointed extravagance.

“Not during one of the windstorms.” Even in an ordinary breeze Nabah needed a firm grip on the trailing section of her sari as they followed the younger three toward the centre of the barrows. “Or you will be donating your kites to Danuin. Do they always offer to employ you, these workshops?”

“Caerlleon ones never did,” Eleri replied. “But they knew Mother and Father were teaching me.”

“You did not seem very much interested.”

“Neither of those are worth my time,” Eleri said. “Maintenance shops. School first, university, then a workshop of my own.”

“Why not a workshop now? Or work to put together the money for one?”

“Mother thought a wide view important. And I like lessons.”

Nabah gave Melly an oddly significant glance, but the taller girl simply looked over her head.

“We’ve all of summer break now, before we have to think of school,” Eluned put in, thoughts on a gate and a ruin and a forest. “Plus the last bit of term,” she added, unrepentant about expulsion.

“There are waiting lists for the better ones,” Nabah warned. “Tollesey only has vacancies in the upper forms if someone leaves.”

“Is that nearby? Do you both go there?”

“I’ve already finished,” Melly said. “And Nabah—” She hesitated. “Nabah might be leaving a vacancy there soon.”

“You’re finishing up? Have you decided not to be a doctor?” Eluned knew that children born in the families of the Daughters of Lakshmi didn’t have to go into medicine, but she was willing to bet that it would feel like deciding not to belong.

“A doctor, yes, of course.” Nabah’s voice held no shadow of doubt. “But the Raya…the Raya of Karnata has rescinded the ban on the Daughters.”

“I hadn’t heard that,” Eluned said, sharing a look of surprise with Eleri. When the Karnata Empire’s Raya had forbidden women from practicing medicine and ordered arrests, the Daughters of Lakshmi had fled their homeland, eventually asking for asylum from the Queen of Prytennia. That had been nearly two hundred years ago, and the Daughters had become part of everyday life in Prytennia, particularly in surgical matters where Thoth-den vampires could not always help, or with those who objected to vampire ‘taint’.

“Are you—are all the Daughters going to leave, then?” Eluned asked.

“It’s an individual choice.” Nabah shrugged, though there was a tiny crease between her brows. “I at least can speak the home tongue, although I am told my accent is terrible. This is no easy choice, but…Lakshmi is not here. Our practice might not depend on godly assistance, but Lakshmi is still more than a namesake for the Daughters. In Her name do we offer the riches of health, but our prayers have not brought Her here, so we cannot achieve individual allegiance, and our souls go to Arawn.”

Gods were very territorial. Most of them were not so completely bound by borders as Sulis—else Rome could not have conquered half the world with Jupiter’s lightning—but often travel led to one-sided devotion. Cernunnos was one of the gods who transcended borders. He protected forests all across Europe, and had even been known to answer petitioners in far-flung points around the world.

The two neat punctures by the base of Eluned’s thumb itched, and she tried to think soberly of the consequences of allegiance, but images of Hurlstone took her instead. Yesterday, after sleeping most of the day, she’d had no chance before sunset to do more than check on the mannequin. And she’d looked in again this morning, but only a glance because Eleri was keen to start their tour of workshops, and collect what she needed to create a new arm. It fascinated her how inconsistent the time of day appeared to be in the Otherworld.

Impatient to get back, Eluned stepped up her pace. They had nearly reached the central intersection of the three massive barrows. It made a fourth hill, higher and outlined by a narrow ditch that Griff, Redick and Falwen were currently jumping over in unison, chanting the titles of the Suleviae with every leap.

“The Shadow!”

“The Light!”

“The Song!”

Eluned herded everyone onward, helped along by the arrival of a girl walking a half-dozen dogs of all sizes, sending Griff zooming ahead once again.

“You never stay and listen to the Solstice Singing from your home?” Eluned asked as they passed Melly’s store. “You’re even closer than we are—it must be so loud.”

“It is! But you have to go. There’s nothing like it, and they’re so happy when you sing back. I can’t hardly believe you’ve never seen one of the triskelion.”

“We were too young the last time the Solstice Singing was in Caerlleon. And we never travelled to one.” Always bad timing, too busy, or the crowds would be too big—but perhaps really because their father shared Griff’s travel sickness. Eluned had never known that.

“What if Aunt sends us away for school?” Griff said, dropping back to join the conversation.

“Then we can come home for the Singing,” Eluned said firmly, then paused as a quiver ran up through her feet. “Is the ground…?”

“It’s the tunnel digger,” Nabah explained, clearly used to the odd vibration.

“For the underground rail?” Griff asked, then shifted from eager interest to suspicion. “I thought they weren’t scheduled to go south of the river until next year.”

“That’s so,” Melly said, with a wide grin. “The lines that they’re admitting to. But they’re digging south of the river all the same. Here, and in Skepsey, and in Twitting. People have felt it all over.”

“There are not yet the big cut and cover excavations, like at Paddington,” Nabah added. “And if you go where they’re using the digging automatons to tunnel under the Tamesas, the vibration is much stronger. These are smaller tunnels.”

“For the vampires to get about in the day,” Melly added.

“For the Parliament’s private escape route,” Nabah countered. “Or their secret postal engine. Routes to lay electricity lines. Or a tunnel to the centre of the Earth. Or it’s mole people robbing banks, or even the Dragon of the East, restless in her bounds. Officially, there’s no digging yet, south of the river.”

They enjoyed themselves making up more outlandish reasons, and Eluned could see that Griff thought he now knew how Dem Makepeace had reached their house before sunset, and was eager to confirm that theory. But it had been a long day of walking, and the bags full of parts and equipment felt three times as heavy during the final trudge past warehouse after concealing warehouse. And then there were all those stairs to Eleri’s new workroom, though surely they could put that off in favour of a visit to the kitchen, and some quality sitting-about.

Thinking only of putting her bag down, Eluned was not pleased to discover two people in Forest House’s vestibule, one tugging the entry bell. The stranger turned as they crowded the outer door, and Eluned saw with faint dismay that it was a member of the Order of the Oak, her distinctive creamy brown surcoat featuring a triple row of dark brown oak leaves woven into the hem.

The woman at least wasn’t frowning, and the very large man with her didn’t even seem to notice them, staring vaguely at an umbrella hanging from the coat hooks. He and the woman made something of a matched set in their Oak-mark garb, both with glossy brown curling hair and skin tanned almost dark enough to match. On the chest of the man’s surcoat a single large oak leaf was woven, showing he was a Wise of the Order of the Oak—a dryw. He would have a grove of his own to look after, and people would come to him for foreseeing.

“There seems naught home, children,” the woman said, a border accent softening her words. “The price paid for rudely arriving without writing ahead.”

“Aunt’s probably upstairs,” Griff said, as Eluned put her bag on the nearest bench. “It takes an age to get down, unless you run.”

Before the woman could respond, the towering man made a pleased noise—the same sound Griff would make spotting a thick wedge of cake—and caught up Eluned’s left hand in both of his.

“What—?” Eluned started to flinch away, but the Wise’s hold was careful and she realised that it was the bite mark that had caught his attention.

“The Horned King’s blessing,” he said, his voice a gentle rumble. “To see His mark fills the day with light.”

Eluned supposed it was new to have people stare at her left hand rather than her right, but the man, although a little strange, radiated such genuine delight that it was impossible not to smile back at him.

“What does he mean?” Nabah asked, clearly fascinated.

Difficult. They were not supposed to talk about their visit to the Great Forest. “There was a little amasen in the grove,” Eluned began, and was saved from more when the main door of the house opened. Aunt Arianne looked out, along with the man from Sheerside, Dem Carstairs, and a blond man and woman behind them.

“Lost the key?”

The smile dropped from the Wise’s face, and he let go of Eluned’s hand, turning and straightening as he did so to a rigid uprightness that looked painful.

“The unfinished ones,” he said, breathless yet the words ringing out. “The near hounds. The knife of echoes. The path of cobweb. The shattered dragon. The trials of Albion are set.” He was shaking, and made a horrid gulping sound, as if he had swallowed his tongue, and then one of his arms jerked upward to point at Aunt Arianne. “Land’s throat. The quartered glance. Heart’s blood falls.”

Then, like a lamp switched off, all the light went from his eyes and he slumped. The woman with him caught him adeptly by the arms, and despite his considerable size slowed his fall and eased him into a sitting position.

Aunt Arianne’s face had gone completely blank, and everyone was staring from the Wise to her, but then she gave a little shrug and produced the faintly amused smile that made it seem like nothing ever touched her.

“Indeed the one thing the day lacked was a doom-laden prophecy. Perhaps you’d care to come in?”

Aunt Arianne sailed through drama as if it was a light headwind, asking Dem Carstairs and the tall blond woman to carry the barely-conscious Wise into the nearest sitting room, and sending the South London Orientation and Expeditionary Force to the kitchen to get themselves something to drink. Melly, perhaps catching signs of strain on Griff’s face, helpfully brought the Expedition to an end, and tidied everyone off, leaving only the adult visitors to deal with.

“Tea tray,” Eleri said, and kept Griff occupied hunting down the teapot so a fresh brew could be made.

Aunt Arianne must have tidied her own visitors away as well, since by the time Eluned led the way into the long, thin receiving room it held only their aunt, the Wise lying on one of the divans, and his companion sitting beside him, expression rueful.

“…first time it’s sent us will-ye nill-ye to London,” she was saying. “But once he’s taken the oakfire, there’s no other path until he’s spoken. And if it’s a foreseeing for a particular person, he must seek them out.”

“You’re his coafor?”

“Yes. Thede came to the Order soon after we married, when he discovered his gift, and so recording naturally fell to me. Ah, and I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Nedani Tyse, Keeper of the Banebury Grove. I’d love one, thank you, lad,” she added, as Griff held up a cup.

“Are you a dryw as well?” Griff asked as he poured, his chin still tucked and shoulders stiff, clearly wanting to be angry because he’d been frightened. “I thought the Keeper was always a dryw, except for here.”

“Sometimes the oakfire takes them strongly,” the Keeper said. She looked down at her big husband, and smoothed brown curls back from his forehead. “Then it falls to their coafor to manage the day-to-day needs of the Grove, along with recording all visions. Thede will begin to recover himself, now that he’s spoken, but he is never fully in this world any more.”

This seemed an awful thing to Eluned. The Keeper of the Tasset Grove, near Caerlleon, had been a sharp, humorous man, showing no sign that the poisonous brew of mistletoe and oak bark used to bring on visions had any permanent impact. His official recorder—his coafor—had been his younger brother, and had loved to tease him about whatever he might have said under the influence of the oakfire, since he couldn’t remember his visions at all.

“Is it you who sends the ravens?” Griff was still trying to be angry, but revealed his sympathy by dumping several spoonfuls of sugar into the cup of tea he was preparing.

“Rav—?” Keeper Tyse stopped short, then clicked her tongue. “How senseless. Yes, if you’re being plagued by ravens, it’s most likely members of the Order. I do apologise.”

“The folies kill them,” Griff added, clearly pleased by the knowledge.

“I gather this appointment would be hotly contested,” Aunt Arianne said.

“Oh yes. Outside White Hill Grove, there is none more desirable, but no need to fash yourself. The vampire Makepeace is beloved of the Horned King, and there is no arguing that, even if he doesn’t stir himself over the day-to-day duties. Because Forest House has sat empty there has been a deal of talk, but nothing can come of it.” Keeper Tyse accepted the cup Griff offered, and bravely took a sugary sip. “The foreseeing will complicate matters a touch.”

Aunt Arianne’s response to this massive understatement was forestalled by the dryw, who abruptly tried to sit up. Griff stepped forward, and Eluned decided to distract him with a murmured reminder about tunnels. Judging Aunt Arianne safe to be left, she and Eleri made their pardons, and followed their brother’s bee-line for the cellar.

By mutual assent they didn’t discuss the dryw’s pronouncement, but simply began pushing bricks and tapping wood, regretting the sweeping efficiency of the cleaning party, which had left little in the way of helpful dust to betray vampiric entry-points.

It was at least half an hour later when Aunt Arianne tracked them down, finding them all crammed between two of the wine racks, intently pressing bricks.

“Is that wall particularly interesting for some reason?”

“Shiny spots,” Eleri replied, steadily winding the dynamo torch they’d fetched for light.

“And they go click!” Griff added, avidly trying another combination. Nothing could have been better designed to soothe over upsets than the prospect of a genuine hidden door. “This can’t be a new tunnel, though. This has been here as long as the house.”

“Why would there be a tunnel, new or otherwise?”

Eluned started to explain the rumours of underground passages, then broke off as the entire wall between the two racks swung in. Griff let out a crow of triumph and plunged forward, but Eluned managed to catch hold of his collar.

“Could be traps,” Eleri said, winding faster in an attempt to boost the inadequate beam of the torch. “Or vampires.”

“There’s no-one in there,” Aunt Arianne said, with a confidence that spoke of night vision and an awareness of blood. “I rather think you’ve found the hidden safe.”

“Safe? This is a whole room!”

Griff wriggled loose, and no traps stopped his excited progress. Aunt Arianne went to find a better light, and they were both proven right, for it was a safe the size of a room, and was full of treasures. Boxes of jewellery. A little cabinet of delicate ornaments. A drawer containing neat stacks of banknotes. A chest of sovereigns. And whorled, golden evidence of the long connection between Forest House and the Great Forest.

“We could have a dragonfly,” Griff said, struggling to lift an amasen horn the size of a pumpkin, far larger than any they’d seen on their visit to the Great Forest. “We could have a dragonfly each.”

“They did look rather fun, didn’t they?” Aunt Arianne said, with an odd note to her voice, but then she added briskly: “I’ll have to do a proper inventory. For now, however, there’s a few matters I wish to discuss, and there’s an hour or less until sunset—presuming that’s relevant.”

That meant she wanted to go to Hurlstone to talk: surely the safest place, even though there weren’t likely to be any raven eavesdroppers in the cellar. Ignoring protests, Eluned chivvied her reluctant siblings into shutting away the hoard and heading upstairs.

“That all belongs to us, to you, right?” Griff asked. “That’s what he said.”

“Dem Makepeace owns this house and all its contents,” Aunt Arianne said, her attention on the roofs surrounding the grove as she lowered her inevitable veil. “He has given me disposition of it, which is not technically the same thing as it belonging to me. Though I expect it will feel much the same in practice.”

Eluned followed her gaze, and then nudged Eleri, for a line of eight ravens had hopped forward to the edge of the roof on the left, where the trees were thinnest, bobbing and watching.

Griff, noticing, made a rude gesture. “Sneaky snitches.”

“Folies aren’t driving them off?” Eleri asked.

“That spot must give them enough time to get away.” Eluned considered hunting for a rock and trying her arm, but Aunt Arianne didn’t linger, heading for the gate. “Maybe the Order always spies, and ravens are why it’s called Hurlstone.”

“Since before London?” Griff shook his head.

The bite mark on Aunt Arianne’s hand had healed by the previous evening, but she still called the key without difficulty. Eluned stepped eagerly into the lead as her aunt closed the gate behind them, and they slipped through the shielding trees into a sun-drenched afternoon.

Drinking in drowsy perfection, Eluned gazed around at drystone walls and scatters of flowers against a backdrop of trees. But all her satisfaction dropped immediately away because the broken pillar that should hold an automaton was empty.

“Where—?” Eleri began, then wasted no more words, hunting for any sign of the missing experiment.

“Look for the amasen,” Aunt Arianne suggested. “Dem Makepeace said it would stay here on guard. Perhaps it rained, and the amasen put Monsieur Doré somewhere dry.”

Wondering if a snake would know anything about rust, Eluned gazed vainly around. They spread out through Hurlstone, even Griff daring the possibility of lurking wildlife, and it was he who called out: “Here!” only a short time later. Eluned hurried between waist-high walls, and spotted him standing with the statue—the vampire in rept.

A block of stone rested in the grass a few feet to one side of the vampire, and the automaton was seated on this, paddle-like hands arranged neatly on the stone either side of its narrow thighs, and its metal-jointed ankles crossed. The wooden head was tilted back, as if it was gazing up at the stone girl.

“Would the amasen pose it like that?” Eluned asked doubtfully, as Aunt Arianne and Eleri came up.

“Think it walked?” Eleri reached for the automaton, but Aunt Arianne touched her arm.

“Let’s wait. We can talk here, and see if it reacts to us at all. Any sign of the amasen?”

Griff indicated with his chin the exact opposite side of the square of grass from him, and sunlight on gold led the eye to the horned snake, basking in the sun on the highest point of the surrounding wall.

Aunt Arianne inclined her head formally, and they all awkwardly followed her lead, and then sat down with her in the grass, ending up in a rough circle with the stone vampire and the automaton, as if all six of them were having a meeting.

“That was Lynsey,” Aunt Arianne announced. “Leaving as you arrived.”

So much had been happening that Eluned had almost forgotten the one solid lead they’d hoped to pursue—the person who had brought the artificial fulgite commission to their parents. She had barely looked at the tall, blond woman.

“Right one?” Eleri asked.

“Impossible to say. She did not react to me—or to sight of you—with any obvious awareness or guilt. But she has a very interesting connection to pursue.”

Unhurriedly, Aunt Arianne took them from Lynsey Blair to Lord Fennington, a person Eluned had heard of mainly for hosting dinner parties on the Tamesas during the autumn feastings. But he apparently funded a great deal of scientific research, and so they agreed it was a good idea to pretend to be interested in going to his school.

“Can we take Melly?” Eleri asked, unexpectedly.

“Melly’s left school,” Eluned said, surprised. “Why would we take her?”

“Because she’s left school. I asked Nabah about it. Melly loves words. She writes poetry. But Melly thinks that she has to look after the store for her father, even though Dem Ktai would far rather she did something she loved. Melly says she can write poetry anywhere.”

“But that’s true.”

“I don’t need to keep up school to make automatons. You don’t need to go to that atelier you keep talking about: you can draw already. But you know that to keep on alone would be like leaving yourself still a sketch. Half the person you could be, a plant that never got enough water. Why should Melly not be everything she could be because the Crown only pays for schooling until you’re sixteen?”

“How does taking her to this Tangleways place help? If it’s a boarding school, won’t it be more expensive than the school she was already going to?”

“So? We can pay her fees. It’s not like we can’t afford it.”

Eleri waved a hand to encompass a distant room crammed with treasures, but Eluned looked instead at their aunt, ominously silent behind her veil. Would being suddenly rich loosen previously tight purse-strings? Or make her worse?

“I suspect you overlook the small matter of pride, Eleri,” Aunt Arianne said, voice quiet but at least not sounding annoyed. “I have no objection to you inviting your friends along on a trip to the country, however. I expect you’ll all find a visit to Tangleways enjoyable. The original house was inherited by a brother and sister who spent the rest of their lives competing with extravagant extensions and outbuildings. And then the whole thing passed on to a man of a very odd and secretive nature. It sat empty for a long time after his death.”

That word brought them all up against the thing that none of them had spoken of, but which had filled their minds ever since they had returned home. It was Griff who asked, in a shy voice very unlike his usual manner.

“Who would be in charge of us? If—if what the dryw said is right?”

Aunt Arianne didn’t answer immediately. Then she reached up and took off her hat and veil, wincing only a little in the deepening haze of the late afternoon light. She wasn’t smiling.

“Tante Sabet,” she said. “Your great-aunt, Sabet d’Lourien. Once things have settled down, I must take you to Lutèce so you can meet her.”

“If you’re alive,” Eleri said, because Eleri of all of them could.

“If I’m alive.” Aunt Arianne glanced up at the girl gazing forever at the sky, and her hand lifted briefly, then she dropped it down. “I own, the shadow of death looms less large when you’ve recently had your throat torn open. Besides, even if that was what he meant, the pronouncements of dryw are not considered inevitabilities, but instead in the nature of warnings and challenges. Did you notice that there were two separate foretellings?”

Griff straightened. “When he pointed?”

“Yes. Nor are either of those foretellings necessarily for a single person, but Keeper Tyse felt quite certain that the visual indication was to make clear that the second was for one or all of us standing inside the house. Possibly still me, of course, but we’d already established that this undertaking had risks. I must teach you three to shoot, once the trunks I’d put into storage arrive.”

Without denying the danger, Aunt Arianne made it all seem far less dramatic, and Eluned felt herself relax even though the acknowledgement hadn’t changed anything at all.

“The first foretelling is the larger problem,” Aunt Arianne added. “The coafor are obliged to report them, you know, though given the audience we had, I wouldn’t be surprised if half the borough is already discussing it over evening meal. Talk of the fate of Albion and a shattered dragon is bound to attract attention—not even counting the Unionist and the aide of Prince Gustav playing witness. That will make quiet investigation a great deal more difficult. Not, I admit, that we’ve succeeded in escaping notice so far. You’ll find when you go upstairs that someone found a way in and started searching the attic, until the folies chased them off. That one bothers me because I didn’t notice them. The attic is on the edge of my ability to sense the living, but I can usually tell when someone’s up there.”

“You think maybe it was a shabti?”

Aunt Arianne smiled at Griff’s eager tone. “I hope not, since that would suggest we’re at risk of a visit from those sphinxes as well. But at any rate it seems safest to leave Monsieur Doré here, and to never discuss things we particularly don’t want overheard anywhere but Hurlstone. How did your tour of the workshops go?”

“Have what parts can be bought now. And recommendation for a foundry able to cast the others. Used up the money.”

Eleri had also bought three vices, and it had been lucky Nabah and Melly had been along to help carry them back. But that surely wasn’t what their aunt had meant.

“There was lots of talk of haunted automata,” Eluned said. “We didn’t have to ask, just listen.”

“They were making it up to impress each other,” Griff put in.

“Maybe. No-one there had seen any automata activing themselves, anyway.” As their own automaton continued to sit unmoving—at least while they were there.

“We’ll go further tomorrow,” Eleri said. “The best workshops are north of the river, near the airship fields. We can look for the one that makes dragonflies.”

But Aunt Arianne was shaking her head.

“No, tomorrow we’ll be clothes shopping. Because the day after, we’re going to the palace to take afternoon tea with Princess Leodhild. And, I hope, hear the results of Dem Makepeace’s investigations in Caerlleon.”