SEVENTEEN

With a name like Tangleways, and so much talk of strange feuds, Eluned was disappointed when Li Sen turned down an orderly driveway bracketed by regimented and freshly clipped rows of cypress. The building ahead looked no more interesting: three stories of windows arranged in a flat horseshoe around a gravelled courtyard.

“Boring,” Griff said, as Li Sen drew them around a plain central obelisk and stopped neatly behind a horse-drawn carriage.

“Looks new,” Melly said, following Eleri out the door. “Perhaps they knocked the original building down.”

“That would be a rather dull approach,” Aunt Arianne said. “Let’s hope the promised refreshments can make up for it.”

She paused to speak briefly to Li Sen, while Eluned stole admiring glances at the occupants of the carriage, now crowding the wide entry-way. Three sisters, very handsome, with wonderful manes of bronze hair.

“…don’t care whether it’s convenient or not,” one was saying, in a carrying whisper. “Any school run by Folly Fennington’s bound to be a madhouse.”

“…half the fun,” another replied.

“Just because you think school is for swinging from the chandeliers,” the first said bitterly, while the third cast an apologetic, amused glance at their accidental audience, and followed her family indoors.

“This trip will be worth it to see whether Lord Fennington’s half as strange as they say,” Melly murmured. “Or are we all gullible for believing he never wears the same shendy twice, and has an automaton for brushing his teeth?”

“And a whole mechanical menagerie,” Griff said, striding ahead up the broad, flat stairs. Animal automatons rarely bothered him, unless they were covered with fur. Then he stopped short.

Eluned quickened her pace, but Griff’s reverential sigh told her there was no crisis.

“Oh, they built in front of the old house,” Melly said, glancing around at orderly stairways and halls leading off to either side, and then through a matching set of double doors to a semi-enclosed garden where a festive marquee and a clock tower partially blocked the view of a house where logic and symmetry had long been abandoned.

“Two front doors,” Eleri murmured. “Moat.”

“Sunken garden,” Eluned corrected, catching glimpses of the tips of what looked like a collector’s bounty reaching up around the two separate bridges into the main house.

There must once have been a simple square building, large but unexceptional. Eluned could see a patch of bricks of a slightly different red where the original front door would have stood, before being replaced by the tall, skinny green door and the fat, nearly rounded blue door. Impossible to guess what came next: the tower on the right or the crenellations on the left. The bulbous bay windows or the opposing series of portholes. The statues or the ironwork filigree. And then the extensions, entire wings of completely contrasting design bulging to either side. Beyond them, smaller buildings.

“Follies,” Melly said, grinning widely. “Appropriate.”

“There’s tunnels,” Griff said, in an urgent whisper, pointing to the arch of a brick drain out of the garden moat, and then he was off, circling the house.

Eluned wanted very much to join him in exploration, but she could not forget what they were there for, and looked around for the real reason for their visit. Both the green and blue door were firmly closed, and there was no movement behind the many windows in either the new or old buildings.

“Follies and folies,” Melly said, half under her breath. “Fools, follies, folies.”

“But no Fennington,” Nabah said. “There’s hardly anyone here. Are we early?”

Eluned looked about for Aunt Arianne, who had detoured toward the shade of the marquee. Yesterday she had instructed them to look around for anything unusual while she approached Lord Fennington—though Eluned had no intention of missing out on his answers—but the whole trip would be wasted if the man wasn’t even there.

Eleri and Nabah started after Griff, and Eluned hesitated between following and checking the marquee. They shouldn’t let their guard down. Even if Lord Fennington did turn out to be the person who had commissioned the stolen automaton, that didn’t guarantee that he hadn’t found a reason to hide any discoveries Mother had made. They needed to be careful.

“Is your sister feeling ill?” Melly asked. “She seems very quiet today.”

“Ah…” How to answer that? “I guess she’s been thinking a lot about her future.” Would Eleri want the whole neighbourhood to know her feelings for Princess Celestine? “Mother and Father were both brilliant in their fields, and for Eleri no school is going to be able to replace them. This place, or the one in Lamhythe, will be a total waste of her time without at least a very good science teacher, let alone a practical mechanics workshop.”

“Oh.” Expression lightening, Melly led them off toward the corner where Griff had disappeared. “I’m not much for the sciences, so I couldn’t say how good the teachers are at Tollesey. Nabah would probably know. Though, all other things being equal, I’d choose this place over Tollesey—for the sheer entertainment value, to say nothing of the connections. Lord Fennington would be enormously useful.”

“For poetry?” Eluned asked, startled.

“For the business empire I will one day command,” Melly said, with a quick, amused smile. “Though for poetry too, since Folly Fennington’s mad keen on Prytennian literature, and I’d love to get among his collection of folios and first editions. I’ll have to get my hands on the prospectus and see if they’ve bothered to put the prices, so I can work out whether I could swing the fees.”

“What kind of business empire are you going to run?” Eluned asked, fascinated. She could not have been more wrong about Melly’s reaction to this trip.

“I call it ‘Finders Keepers’. People were always coming into the store and asking for discontinued products, or things that aren’t sold locally. My Da and I had a lot of fun tracking remainders down—you just need to know the right people to ask—and it’s turned into a nice sideline. I’ve lots of plans for expansion, for mail order and advertisements, and one thing I particularly want is to break into the kind of clientele who could afford to send their kids here. Not,” she added, glancing back toward the marquee, “that this Tangleways looks like it’s going to end up with much in the way of students.”

“I guess a reputation for inspired silliness isn’t the best basis for setting yourself up as a teacher.”

“I’d feel sorry for him, but I expect all that money will console him.”

They rounded the corner of the sprawling house and found stables to their right, a pair of long heads tossing restively. Knowing Griff would never head that way, Eluned moved in the opposite direction, toward a smaller building like a pepper pot. There were three more of different shapes behind it.

“This place is like a little village,” Melly said. “What did they want all this for?”

“Lots of guests?” Eluned looked around, and spotted Griff leading the others toward a white pavilion full of people. Headless people.

“Oh, clothes mannequins,” Melly said, sounding as relieved as Eluned felt. There were only two real people: one very tall and a bit fleshy, and the other lithe and lightly muscular.

The taller one had noticed them approaching, and turned, beaming. “Halloo!” he said. “Welcome, welcome, welcome! What perfect timing. I need a second opinion, and a third and fourth as well!”

“Folly Fennington in the flesh,” Melly murmured, and hurried to catch Griff up.

Eluned took a moment to steady herself before following. Here he was, this man, finally standing right in front of them. He might be a murderer. He might simply have commissioned an automaton. Or he might have had nothing to do with them at all. Now was their chance to find out.

Lord Fennington had a mournful face, floppy brown hair, and a booming sort of voice, and he rounded out his words as if playing with the way they sounded. “Come, come, come,” he said, beckoning them toward the pavilion and holding out an anxious hand toward the display he’d apparently been working on. School uniforms. There were a dozen mannequins, all dressed in dark blue and creamy-beige.

“Now tell me bluntly, no holding back. Should it be the double line of red, or the single?”

Eluned didn’t see any red at first, then spotted a pencil line around the cuff of one of the jackets. And the four-panel summer shendy had a plummy double line making a border around the two side panels.

“There’s hardly any difference,” Griff said, as Griff would. “But I like the double more.”

“One vote for the double!” Lord Fennington said. “Can we gain a consensus? Any champions for the opposing view?”

“Two is better,” Nabah agreed.

“One,” Eleri said immediately.

“One,” Melly said.

“A tie! But one last vote to settle the matter.”

Since he sounded so serious, Eluned took a moment to study the collection of uniforms, personally doubting most people would even notice the difference. Then she fished in the small pouch she had laced to her new day-belt, and found one of the coins Aunt Arianne had distributed earlier that week as an allowance.

A simple toss and catch, and then she said: “Two.”

Lord Fennington, fortunately, found this funny, his long face lighting as he laughed. “Yes, yes, the judgment of Sucellos! Two it shall be.”

“Lakshmi’s smile,” Nabah added, looking pleased.

“And how nice that the Daughters are taking an interest in Tangleways!” Lord Fennington added approvingly to Nabah, before saying to his companion, an excessively handsome blond man, “Matthiel, take these appalling one-line variations away.”

“My Lord,” said the man, then picked up two of the mannequins with effortless grace, and walked off.

“Have you been on the tour?” Lord Fennington asked then. “You mustn’t miss it. Hedley’s been with the estate for decades, and has endless tales of Lord Webley’s experiments and inventions.”

“Inventions?” Eleri said. “Engineer? Or scientist?”

“Both, in a manner of speaking. He called himself a deiographer and was devoted, you might well say, to the Science of Gods. What sparks them to Answer? Is there some unifying purpose or meaning? Can devices be constructed to quantify their energies and boundaries? A brilliant man, though, of course, more than a little mad.” He gave them a small, shy smile. “Speaking as an authority on the subject, quite potty.”

“Eccentric,” Griff corrected, before Eluned could decide if it would be rude to laugh. “If you have money, you get to be eccentric, which sounds a lot more fun.” Then he held out his hand with the grave formality that he sometimes produced to get his way, and said: “My name is Griff Tenning. These are my sisters Eleri and Eluned Tenning.”

Eluned held her breath, searching the man’s face for any hint of recognition, but all he did was shake Griff’s hand with matching formality and say:

“Dyfed Fennington. And do only two of your companions have names?”

“Melly Ktai,” Griff said slowly, a little too obviously still searching for some hint of reaction. Then he shrugged, adding: “Nabah hasn’t told us her last name.”

“Satkunan,” Nabah said. “Do you mean to say there are machines here designed to—to measure gods?”

“Indeed! Or there were. Unfortunately the Mini-T carted most of it off years ago, and handing over anything interesting left behind was part of the conditions of sale. Not,” he added, with a conspiratorial gleam, “that we didn’t give everything a good and thorough dusting before shipping it off. And you can see the housing of some of the larger pieces during the tour, since it’s not as if they could pack up the clock tower.”

“My Lord, the podium is ready,” said the man called Matthiel, returning with a sheaf of papers.

“Already? Where, where is the day going?” Lord Fennington took the papers and fanned his face with them. “My young friends, I must rush. Do, do enjoy yourselves.”

He was striding off as he spoke, and there was no more time for leading questions. They’d lost their chance, at least for now.

Eluned turned to the man called Matthiel: “Can we help you with the other mannequins?”

“Thank you, but there’s no need,” the man said. “Don’t miss My Lord’s speech, damini.”

Exchanging a glance with Eleri, Eluned decided that it would be best to wait for another opportunity before they tried the blunt approach. “We won’t,” she said, as neutrally as she could manage.

“What’s a Mini-T?” Griff asked, as the man lifted another two mannequins and departed.

“Ministry of Science and Technology,” Eleri said. “In charge of airships, the Patent Office, things. Let’s go find the Aunt.”

This proved less easy to do than to say. When they reached the central garden, they found it packed with people, apparently back from touring the school facilities. It gave some measure of how large Tangleways must be, that there’d been so many people about, completely unseen.

It took half Lord Fennington’s speech just to spot Aunt Arianne, and by the time they’d worked their way nearly to her the speech was over and everyone was streaming about chasing refreshments, lining up for other tours, talking to the teachers, or gossiping.

“Too many hats,” Melly said, standing on tip-toe as she tried to spot where Aunt Arianne had gone.

“Give it up,” Eleri said.

“Shall we try one of the tours?” Nabah suggested, and that’s what they did, and then stopped for refreshments before splitting up—ostensibly to hunt individually, but more so Eleri, Griff and Eluned would have a better chance of button-holing Lord Fennington again.

Tired of crowds, Eluned abandoned the chase altogether, and found stone stairs down into the sunken garden moat. There in cool quiet she found moss, lacy ferns, and a treasury of saxifrages clinging to rocks and tucked in hollows.

Memory of that morning soured her appreciation. What was wrong with her? It was silly and senseless not to have brought her sketchbook on a trip like this. But she loathed constantly trying and failing and not understanding what was wrong.

Hating that this was tying her in knots when she was supposed to be concentrating on finding Mother and Father’s killer, Eluned followed the high arch of the drainage channel out of the garden, trying to decide whether Lord Fennington had really not recognised their names, or was a very good actor. And what did they do if he simply denied everything?

The drainage channel ended in an ornate grate: interlinked hands, with oxalis growing up through it. Eluned crossed this and found a slope of green down to a river—a tributary of the Tamesas, according to Griff. To her left was a path and she followed it as it curved through a small patch of trees to, inevitably, another folly: a circle of columns with a domed roof.

There was a woman sitting alone on the steps, and Eluned started to turn away, then recognised the hair colour and reversed direction.

“You’re not wearing your hat,” she said, as Aunt Arianne turned her head at her approach.

“A disguise of sorts. A great many people want to discuss foreseeings, but all they know of me is that I’m recently bound and wearing a veil.”

The pavilion was shaded by trees, but it was still the first time since she’d been bound that Aunt Arianne had been outside during the day without a veil, and Eluned suspected that the curious crowd must have been particularly trying.

“What do you tell them?” Eluned asked, sitting down on the circular stair beside her aunt. There were no proper seats, the floor of the folly being taken up by a beautiful, if sadly cracked mosaic depicting constellations in a night sky.

“I tell them as much as I know, which is nothing at all, at least where the Dragon of the North is concerned.”

“Do you think it might really happen? That you’ll find Albion’s fourth dragon?”

“I think I’m not going to waste my time on guessing games. Better to simply prepare as best we can for whatever tests are thrown our way.”

“But Cernunnos accepted you as Keeper. Why do that and then test you?”

Aunt Arianne tipped back her head, studying the inside of the pavilion’s dome. More stars, brilliant against a wash of dark blue. She looked tired.

“Oakfire speaking comes from the forest, not Cernunnos,” she said. “The Horned King is one of the Great Forest’s many gods, one aspect of something vast. There’s very little of this world that was not forest at some point. Even deserts have ancient forests beneath them. Perhaps only the oceans are outside its bounds. Can’t you feel it? All around us is forest.”

Eluned started to point out that there was a stand of trees only a few feet away. But a cool breeze whisked her face, bringing a hint of loam. And was Aunt Arianne looking up at the inside of the dome, or at sky through sheltering branches?

“The trees are always with us,” Aunt Arianne said. “We asked to be part of it, and we must prove ourselves worthy.”

“You keep saying ‘we’,” Eluned said, almost under her breath, though it was not as if she could forget Lila’s bite, or the key that would come when she called for it.

“Keeper Tyse cannot say with complete certainty who those foreseeings were intended for. She recorded me officially because my arrival triggered the speaking, but given that you received the same blessing from Cernunnos, it seemed to her a high probability that you and I are both the subject of these challenges. Pretending that you are not involved is not going to prevent you from being drawn in.”

“I don’t know anything about the Dragon of the North either,” Eluned said.

“No. But if that ‘shopping list’ was in chronological order, dragons will be the last of our problems. What, to you, most strikes you as an ‘unfinished one’?”

Since Aunt Arianne was being so serious, Eluned cast her mind about for something that seemed unfinished to her. It could be anything, although the phrasing had made it seem like a person, and people usually weren’t…

Stiffening, Eluned stared at her aunt’s profile. “The independent automatons. Eleri doesn’t consider them finished, because she hasn’t verified reliable movement. They are—” She choked, head spinning.

“I spent some energy on the question of cause and effect”, Aunt Arianne said, serene as ever. “Were we accepted by Cernunnos because we had already become embroiled in the first of the challenges? Or were we chosen, and then matters arranged so that we would be willing to give allegiance? Is it possible that what the Swedes would call a ‘fate’ was laid on us, and that your parents’ deaths were part of that fate? I have yet to decide my feelings on this. To be angry at the gods is to scream at the stars. Even if they hear, they will not stop shining.”

“Wh-what?” Eluned could not think through what she’d been told. Had Cernunnos caused—no, that wasn’t what Aunt Arianne had said. Fate. When the Swedish gods laid a fate on someone, the world would rearrange itself to bring that fate about. A wholly different thing to oakfire foretelling.

“Or, of course, the unfinished ones might have nothing to do with automatons. Perhaps we are simply people who were in the right place with the right reasons. I may need to choose to believe that, to be able to not waste myself in anger. I can’t be sure which case is true, but I felt you were entitled to know my suspicions.”

After that Aunt Arianne didn’t say anything at all for a long while, and they sat contemplating a sweep of grass down to a river, and the vast forest that would always surround them. Only after Eluned’s thoughts had progressed through a circle of incredulity did her aunt go on.

“Tomorrow evening I will be visiting this fencing school that Lynsey Blair recommended. In part because I want to investigate her separately from Lord Fennington. But also because I now have a need to learn to better defend myself physically. If the school seems suitable, I want you to attend as well. Unless you prefer Tangleways, of course. Do you think you’d like it here?”

“It’s no good,” Eluned said, struggling to shift her thoughts away from fates and gods. “Did you listen to that speech? All that time spent on sports. Horse-riding. And raising animals? At school?”

“Yes, those are reasons Griff and Eleri wouldn’t like it here. I asked what you wanted.”

“I want to go to the same school as Eleri and Griff,” Eluned said firmly. “But otherwise, yes, I think this place would be fun. You were right about Melly, by the way. She likes it here enough she’s working out ways to afford it.”

Aunt Arianne picked up her hat. “I expect she’ll manage it. She seems very capable. And, Eluned, it never hurts to check rather than fret. Don’t ever hesitate to ask me if something is worrying you—or even if you’re simply curious. The most I’ll do is not answer. Or lie.”

Smiling weakly, Eluned wondered whether the possibility of lies was meant to be comforting. Not that lies or truth were going to help with the problem that had been troubling her all summer—or even the new one her aunt had shared.

Instead, Eluned hauled her mind back to the task at hand. “We talked to Lord Fennington already,” she said, realising she hadn’t even mentioned it. “Griff introduced us, but Lord Fennington didn’t seem to recognise our names at all, and with all these people here I’m not sure we’re going to have a chance to talk to him again.”

“No need to worry there. As I said, a great many people want to discuss foreseeings.”

“You’ve talked to him?”

“Accepted an invitation to view a painting of my father’s that he owns, and sample the Towering Folly, a cocktail invented for him. Rather ripe for double entendre, but I gather that’s unlikely to be the intention.”

The clock in the school’s central tower began to toll.

“And there’s my cue,” Aunt Arianne said, picking up her hat. “Given his ambitions to play principal, he’s less than likely to open up in front of prospective pupils. You might find it worthwhile to track down Monsieur Telaque, the drawing instructor, while I’m gone. Alain Telaque is a master of line work, and you’d probably find even a short discussion with him very useful indeed. You’re still working primarily with line and floral patterns, yes? It’s been a while since Aedric last sent me an example.”

“Father sent you my pictures?” Eluned asked, trying not to sound appalled.

“Oh yes. He was very proud of all three of you. If you’re nervous about speaking to Monsieur Telaque by yourself, wait until I return and I’ll introduce you.”

“No, no I’ll look for him,” Eluned said hastily, cast her mind about for something else to talk about, and asked: “What did he mean, your Roman friend? What was badly done?”

It was a conversational leap, but Aunt Arianne took it with her usual aplomb.

“Oh, when Felix knew me I was in the throes of a serious romance with one of his cousins, the younger son of the Dacian Proconsul.” She settled her hat back on her head, lips curving. “At least I thought I was, until his marriage was arranged, and he tried to…tidy me away, so to speak.”

“Tidy…?” Eluned didn’t know what to say.

“A neat demonstration of what Nabah was trying to ask earlier today. There are many different lands, all with their own gods, and their own laws, and their own definition of right behaviour. Rome has come a long way since the example of Lucretia, but there is a notion of…injury and false promise that I could have used to cause trouble with the very influential friend who had recommended me to the Proconsul. I didn’t understand that I posed a threat to arrangements, any more than I had recognised in the first place that in the Republic I’m someone to have affairs with, not the kind of person you marry. At least to people bound up in notions of tradition and respectability.”

She shot Eluned a faintly amused glance, then lowered her veil. “Mortifying at the time, of course, but something I look back on as a narrow escape. I hope I can claim to have become a better judge of character.”

After confirming arrangements for when they should meet for the return trip, Aunt Arianne left, and Eluned looked out at the shadow of a forest, and wondered if she’d ever had a real conversation with her aunt before. And whether she’d dare to ask her any more questions.

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