Chapter Forty-Two I Would Trade Ten Years
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I Would Trade Ten Years
Morrigan overslept on Sunday morning. It was getting harder to drag herself out of bed lately, mostly due to her increasing dread of being in any room with Lady Horrible.
Darling House felt like a sort of limbo to her now. She couldn’t go back to the Hotel Deucalion while things with Jupiter were still … the way they were. And she felt more determined than ever to stay in the Silver District until she figured out who the murderer was. But all the same … she thought she could almost understand now why her mother ran away from this place. Sometimes the still, serene air in Darling House felt so stifling it was hard to breathe.
By the time Morrigan came downstairs to join the Darlings for breakfast, the dining table had been cleared of the usual platters of fruit, pastries, eggs and toast. It was covered instead with a dozen different flower arrangements, swatches of fabric, tiered stands of multi-coloured layer cakes and several large stacks of white envelopes and cardstock.
‘Winterberry punch and elderflower wine, I think, Hounslow,’ Aunt Margot dictated to the butler, who was diligently taking notes. ‘And be sure to finalise the supper menu by— Oh! Morrigan, there you are. Modestine, darling, bring her the cake samples.’
Aunt Modestine set down twelve different cake slices in front of her with a cheerful ‘Good morning, sleepyhead!’ and a kiss on the cheek. Still groggy, Morrigan stared at the plate, unable to comprehend why she was having cake for breakfast.
‘Try a little of each, dear, and tell Hounslow your favourite so Cook can make it,’ said Aunt Miriam from across the table, where she was intently examining two slightly different swatches of white silk. ‘I still say the eggshell, Margot.’
‘Noted. Morrigan, the invitations arrived from the printer this morning,’ said Aunt Margot. ‘Just in time! We really must get them out today. Will you take a look at them, darling?’
‘Invitations?’ she asked blearily, unable to stifle a yawn.
‘Yes, for your birthday ball! I do hope you like the colour scheme. Modestine’s been fretting that there isn’t enough pink.’ She held a hand to her forehead. ‘Oh! Before I forget, dear – if you’d like to have visitors to the house, do let us know in advance, won’t you? I’m afraid your friend caused quite a stir at the Silver Gates this morning.’
Morrigan looked up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. ‘What friend?’
‘Your large … cat friend,’ said Aunt Margot.
‘ Fenestra came? Why? Is everything okay, did she say—’
‘Everything’s fine – she said your patron sent her to check on you. The gatehouse sentry couldn’t let her through, of course, as she wasn’t on the visitor list. But darling, now she seems to think we’re holding you captive! Shall I write to your patron about it?’
‘Um, that’s okay, I’ll …’
Before Morrigan could process this news – never mind the fact that the party Aunt Margot had mentioned as a possibility barely a week ago was now such a reality that it had a colour scheme – Tobias had handed her a piece of white cardstock. There were watercolour roses in the corners, and the text was printed in shiny pale pink embossed letters.
The Grand Old House of Darling cordially invites you to the Debut Birthday Ball of Miss Morrigan Darling On Spring’s Eve, the Twelfth Sunday of Winter
‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ Aunt Margot effused. ‘It was awfully last-minute, but Tobias had his brothers print them for us.’
‘But my name isn’t Morrigan Darling,’ said Morrigan, with a touch more steel than she’d intended. ‘It’s Morrigan Crow.’
In the silence that followed that statement, she looked up from the invitation to see Miriam and Modestine casting nervous glances at their eldest sister.
Tobias cleared his throat. ‘It’s all right, Margot, we can get them reprinted.’
‘But they have to go out TODAY, Tobias,’ Aunt Margot snapped at him, before closing her eyes briefly. Morrigan could see her reining in her temper. She smiled thinly, then said in her usual warm, honeyed tones, ‘Her birthday is in a week , my love – and on Spring’s Eve, of all days. Everyone in the district will be planning their own celebrations for that night, if they haven’t already. Especially now the newspapers are saying the Skyfaced Clocks could change.’
A sarcastic apology for being born on the wrong day hovered on the tip of Morrigan’s tongue, but she managed to resist it by taking a large bite of coffee and walnut cake.
‘I’m sure I can arrange something today.’ Tobias reached over to take his wife’s hand, but she snatched it away at the last second and began gathering the invitations into neat stacks.
‘It’s your birthday party, dearest.’ Recovering her composure, Aunt Margot gave Morrigan what was probably meant to be a reassuring smile. ‘Of course we’ll have everything just as you like it.’
Morrigan knew she was probably supposed to have backed down, to say it was okay if they wanted to call her by the wrong name. Perhaps even to apologise for offending her aunt.
But instead, she put her fork down, unable to stomach eleven more bites of cake, and said to Hounslow, ‘Coffee and walnut, please.’
At lunchtime that Friday, Detective Blackburn held court in the dragonriding arena stands on Level Sub-Five of Proudfoot House, valiantly ignoring the screeches and roaring jets of flame from the ancient reptiles training with their riders less than fifty metres away.
To her frustration, it had been virtually impossible to get all of Unit 919 together for longer than ten consecutive minutes in the past fortnight. It was the time of year when classes and extracurriculars were ramping up, so lunchtimes were increasingly occupied with additional training sessions and frantic studying, and catch-up naps for the overscheduled and under-slept (which, at this point, was most of them).
‘Is anyone actually listening?’ Cadence asked at the end of her suspect rundown. When nobody immediately answered, she tore a piece of paper from her notebook, scrunched it into a ball and threw it at Thaddea, who awoke with a start. ‘Am I the only one who still cares about finding this murderer?’
‘Yes,’ grumbled Thaddea, settling her head back onto her hand and dropping off again instantly.
‘We’re listening, Cadence,’ sighed Morrigan, holding up the suspect list she’d been dutifully scribbling updates on.
‘ You might be,’ Cadence snapped, ‘but Lam’s drooling in her sleep, Thaddea’s snoring, Mahir and Anah are both reading books they think I can’t see hidden behind their bags. Arch keeps getting distracted by Hawthorne’s practice session. Hawthorne promised if we held this meeting here he’d be able to take a break and join us, but I guess he lied. And Francis is busy eating … I don’t even know what. Fish food?’
‘Thirty-three different species of dried riverweed,’ said Francis, nibbling anxiously on a handful of delicate green flakes from one of many paper bags balanced in his lap. ‘I have to identify them all while blindfolded in my next lesson, sorry.’
Morrigan’s focus on the investigation had been reignited by her growing suspicion of Aunt Margot. But Unit 919’s interest was definitely on the decline, and she could understand why.
Cadence originally got them fired up about it because it seemed like Morrigan was in danger of being accused of the crime, but it was apparent by now that she was probably in the clear, since neither the Stink nor the Silk had asked to speak with her. Even the Concerned Citizens were leaving her alone; there’d been no more sly references to her in the newspapers, no choreographed ambushes led by a megaphone-wielding Laurent St James. When Morrigan had cautiously mentioned this to Louis and Lottie, they’d laughed and admitted he was probably too scared.
‘St James is a Lesser House,’ Louis reminded her. ‘Father’s not going to make trouble for a Darling, especially now you’re so popular with everyone in the district. He does have some sense of self-preservation.’
(The fact that none of Holliday Wu’s dire predictions had come true, despite Morrigan’s refusal to stay away from the Silver District, also meant that she was mostly left alone in their ongoing Civic Tasks sessions – a state of affairs she couldn’t have been happier with.)
Hawthorne was still faithfully attending the Winter Trials every Sunday, and reporting back on the progress of Alights on the Water (who continued to slowly climb back up the leaderboard) and her riders (who continued to change every week). But Morrigan knew he would have been there as an obsessive dragonriding fan anyway, mystery rider or no mystery rider. This Sunday was Spring’s Eve, the last day of the trials, and he was already showing signs of post-tournament malaise.
‘Sorry, Cadence,’ said Anah distractedly, without looking up from the book she was no longer bothering to conceal. ‘It’s research, though.’
Cadence scowled. ‘Reading Clarissa Cloistered for the fourth time isn’t research.’
Anah coloured slightly and put the book down, clearing her throat. ‘ Third time.’
‘Any news from the Silver Sleuths?’ Morrigan asked.
Anah sighed. ‘Morrigan, I’m sorry, but I think it’s time to give up on Madeleine Malcontent. Nobody can find a copy.’
‘Even if they could, we’d probably have to sell our kidneys on the Ghastly Market to afford it,’ added Cadence. ‘Don’t know why anyone would pay a fortune for one of the nosedive books, even if it has gone out of print.’
‘Nosedive books?’ said Morrigan.
‘That’s what people call the latest few books in the series, because the quality’s taken such a nosedive,’ Anah explained. ‘Our club president, Mike, says they stopped being witty and gossipy and romantic, and started to feel sort of … mean. Some of the Sleuths are convinced the author died and someone else is writing the books now, because they feel so different.’
‘Wouldn’t they know if she’d died?’ asked Morrigan.
Anah shrugged. ‘Nobody knows who the real Hillary D’Boer is. She’s never done any interviews or bookshop signings, or even had her photo on a book jacket.’
‘She could be a he,’ mumbled Mahir, without looking up from his book of Dragontongue translations. ‘Like Dr Hillary Mortimer, Professor Emeritus of Dwarven Languages at Nevermoor University.’
‘Anyway, the Sleuths say I should pretend the nosedive books don’t exist,’ Anah went on, ‘and stick with the classic early titles, like Clarissa Cloistered. It’s so wonderful! Want to hear some of my favourite bits?’
Without waiting for an answer, Anah started flipping through the many pages annotated with colourful sticky notes. Cadence ignored her, taking the seat next to Morrigan so they could read over the updated suspect list together.
SUSPECT
MOTIVE
OPPORTUNITY
ALIBI
NOTES
The Rival House: Lord and/or Lady Devereaux (Noelle’s mum and dad)
Furious at Dario, Modestine and the Darlings because of Gigi Grand ‘prank’. Quote: ‘Someone is going to pay.’
Left the wedding early. Might have gone to seek out Dario.
?
Noelle said her mother thinks Darling House is ‘plotting revenge’ on their family.
The Missing Mistress: Georgette Devereaux AKA Gigi Grand
Jealousy. She and Dario were having an affair and she was tired of waiting for him to leave Modestine.
Left Dario at the boathouse but could have circled back after Morrigan left. Not photographed at cake-cutting. Didn’t return to wedding after conversation with Dario at boathouse.
?
Missing since the night of the wedding, according to Modestine. Did she flee because she’s the murderer, or has something bad happened to her?
The Vulture: Mr Smithereens
Unclear. Didn’t RSVP but came anyway even though he obviously wasn’t welcome and doesn’t normally attend events. Wasn’t even dressed for a wedding so must have decided to come at the last minute. Why?
Not photographed at cake-cutting
?
Continues to show up to parties and events since the wedding. Continues to be a weirdo.
Connection to Dario: built a travelling chair for his sister.
Noelle claims she saw him spying on her and Morrigan, and that he has it in for her family. Accused Morrigan of conspiring with him against Devereaux House.
The Ice Queen: Margot Darling
Could have discovered Dario was cheating on her sister and killed him for revenge?
Not photographed at cake-cutting. According to Tobias, she was ‘in a tizz’ trying to round people up for it.
?
Seems to be conspiring against Devereaux House. Something to do with the Silver Assembly.
Revealed an explosive temper when she saw the copy of Madeleine Malcontent that Noelle gave Morrigan, and in the ghostly hour when she fought with her sister and hit her.
‘This Silver Assembly thing is curious,’ said Cadence, tapping a pen thoughtfully against her chin. ‘Confusing, though. Even if the Darlings are plotting against Devereaux House, what’s that got to do with Dario ?’
‘“ … but I confess that I adore you, Lady Clarissa,” Lord Sebastian Saviour spoke in an impassioned whisper. “And I shan’t let your wicked Great Aunt Edith hide you away any longer!”’
‘If the Devereaux are voted out of the Greater Circle, the Rinaldis will be voted in,’ said Morrigan, doing her best to tune out Anah’s amateur theatrics. ‘At least that seems to be Aunt Margot’s plan.’
‘But if it’s Margot’s plan, why would the Devereaux kill Dario?’ asked Cadence. ‘Unless they were warning the Rinaldis off, or … making some kind of pre-emptive strike against them?’
‘“Oh Sebastian, my angel, my brave knight! Come with me to the chapel and let us be joined forever as husband and wife, as we always should have been …”’
‘If Dario’s murder was a warning, it doesn’t seem like the Rinaldis have taken it,’ said Morrigan. ‘Like Noelle said, they’re front and centre at every big event, and they’re always splashing money around. Aunt Miriam told me they just donated enough to the Silver Council to fully refurbish the chapel in the Paramour Pleasure Gardens. Doesn’t that seem like they’re keen to advance?’
Cadence hummed in agreement. ‘What about this revenge business? What did the Devereaux do to the Darlings?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Morrigan, shifting eagerly in her seat. ‘At the feast, Lady Prisha said it would be the most delicious karma to get Devereaux House voted out, after what they tried to pull at the last Silver Assembly. And when Aunt Modestine first told me about the Silver Assembly, she said the last one was nearly a disaster . What if it was the Devereaux who tried to get the Darlings voted out first?’
‘“Clarissa, darling Clarissa,” Lord Sebastian cried. “Were it possible, I would gladly trade ten years of my future to have shared just one week of your past!”’
‘It obviously didn’t work,’ mused Cadence. ‘But yeah, if Lady Margot’s been stewing on it since the last Basking—’
‘Wait, what ?’ said Morrigan, snapping out of their conversation with the sudden force of a train crash. She sat up straight, turning to look at Anah and the hideous cover of Clarissa Cloistered. ‘Anah, say that last bit again.’
‘Isn’t it so romantic? I told you!’ said Anah, delighted someone was finally taking an interest. She struck a gallant pose, addressing the imaginary Lady Clarissa. ‘“ I would gladly trade ten years of my future to have shared— ”’
‘… just one week of your past,’ Morrigan finished in unison with her, as the bell rang to signal the end of lunch.
The rest of Morrigan’s afternoon held a ghostly hour lesson in the Gossamer-spun Garden on Sub-Nine. It was a fascinating workshop in camouflage and shadowmaking from the Wundersmith Horatio Vine, all about the importance of developing an artist’s eye for value and hue, and the various ways in which the Wundrous Arts of Weaving and Veil intersected.
At least, Morrigan assumed it would have been fascinating, if she’d been listening to a word of it. Instead, she spent the entire afternoon in a daze, ruminating on those twenty-one words (she counted them).
Were it possible, I would gladly trade ten years of my future to have shared just one week of your past.
‘You know that line from Anah’s book?’ she asked Cadence, the second she saw her and Hawthorne in the entrance hall after school. ‘The thing Lord Whatshisname says, about trading ten years of his future?’
‘To have shared one week of her past, yeah. Brace yourselves!’ said Cadence, leaning into the heavy front door. Morrigan and Hawthorne buttoned their coats all the way up before following her into a cold winter sleet that felt like tiny needles. They hurried down the front steps of Proudfoot House and across the frosty lawn until they reached the Whinging Woods where, puffing to catch her breath, Cadence carried on as if there’d been no interruption. ‘Stupid line … doesn’t make any sense. They’re about to have a future together and he wants to cut off ten years of it in exchange for one week that’s already been and gone? Dumb.’
‘Don’t you remember me reading that to you?’ asked Morrigan. ‘My grandmother wrote it in the note she sent to me.’
‘Cheesy!’ Hawthorne laughed, stopping when he saw Morrigan’s expression. ‘I mean … sweet.’
Cadence frowned. ‘Wow. Bit weird to quote a line from a romance novel the first time you meet your long-lost granddaughter, but okay Lady Darling.’
‘Well, I liked it,’ Morrigan admitted. ‘I thought it was quite … lovely .’ She paused, trying to swallow past the lump forming in her throat. ‘But I also thought she was speaking from the heart, not quoting from a book .’
‘A Silverborn Saga book, no less,’ added Hawthorne. ‘So, she does read them, the sly old fox! I bet everyone in the Silver District secretly does.’
‘Maybe it’s a coincidence,’ Cadence suggested, a little half-heartedly.
‘You think she wrote the exact same words, completely independently?’ Morrigan said, casting her a sceptical look. Cadence didn’t answer.
‘Sorry to say it, Morrigan, but I think your gran might be a plagiarist,’ said Hawthorne. ‘She better hope D’Boer really is dead, or she might get sued.’
‘You can’t sue someone for writing a line from a book in a personal letter, idiot,’ Cadence said irritably, and the two of them argued about it the rest of the way up the woodland path to Proudfoot House Station.
Morrigan trailed behind, deep in thought. She opened her satchel, pulling out the copy of Clarissa Cloistered Anah had reluctantly agreed to lend her for the weekend. She flipped to page two hundred and seven, and stared at the words she’d read at least a hundred times that afternoon already.
Were it possible, I would gladly trade ten years of my future to have shared just one week of your past.
She didn’t think the line was dumb. Whoever Hillary D’Boer was, they understood the aching, exquisitely homesick feeling of missing somebody you never knew. Of realising too late how much time you’d lost, when you hadn’t even been looking at the clock. Cadence might not have known that feeling, but Morrigan did, and D’Boer did, and Lady Darling did, too, even if she’d had to borrow someone else’s words to express it.
Just then, as they reached the bustling train station, Morrigan had a thought that physically stopped her in her tracks. Her focus narrowed to one absurd, insane idea: that perhaps her grandmother hadn’t borrowed someone else’s words at all.
That she was, in fact, the author of the Silverborn Saga herself.
Lady Darling had been getting rapidly sicker since the shock of Dario’s murder, but hadn’t Aunt Margot said she’d been slowly deteriorating for some time now? That could explain the ‘nosedive’ books.
Things started snapping into place in Morrigan’s head, and she felt her heartbeat quicken with each realisation.
The night she’d found the wedding photos, when she saw her grandmother in the little study … there was a typewriter on the desk! Why would a member of the Silver District aristocracy – who supposedly abhorred the idea of working – need a typewriter? And why would it be tucked away in a tiny, narrow office, in a distant corner of Darling House, unless she was using it for her secret job as a novelist ?
It was so obvious, Morrigan could hardly believe she hadn’t seen it sooner. Who better to write about the intrigue and scandal of Silverborn society, than one of the Silverborn themselves?
Jolted from this world-shattering revelation by the sound of a steam whistle, she looked up to see Miss Cheery waving at her from Platform Two and started hurrying for the footbridge. She was halfway across, struggling to fit Clarissa Cloistered back into her satchel among the mess of pencils and books and loose notepaper, when she ran into somebody headfirst, scattering half the contents of her bag onto the ground.
‘Oh! Sorry, I didn’t see—’
The words died in Morrigan’s throat as she looked up to see a familiar pair of bright blue eyes, in a familiar wild ginger head.
‘Mog!’ Jupiter’s face lit up in surprise, before he remembered himself and shook his head. ‘Morrigan. Apologies. Hello! Sorry—’
‘It was my fault, I wasn’t looking.’
‘Not at all! I was daydreaming.’
The awkwardness of the moment was doubled somehow by their frantic scrambling to fetch all the bits of paper now strewn across the footbridge. Morrigan hurriedly shoved handfuls of them back into her bag without much care, while Jupiter stacked his neatly, making sure they were all smooth and facing the right way up. Morrigan had the impression he wanted to say something, but didn’t quite know what.
She wanted to say something, but didn’t quite know what.
The moment stretched excruciatingly, until finally Jupiter blurted out, ‘It’s your birthday on Sunday!’ at the exact moment Morrigan said, ‘You didn’t need to send Fen.’
A frown creased the spot between his eyes. ‘I— Sorry?’
‘On Sunday morning. She told the guard at the Silver Gates that you sent her to check up on me. There’s no need, I’m fine.’ Morrigan swallowed. She’d been trying to say something reassuring, but it was coming out belligerent instead. ‘I just mean … I know you’ve probably been worried, but I’m not in any—’
He held up a hand as if swearing an oath. ‘Morrigan, I didn’t send Fenestra. I would never ask her to do anything on a Sunday morning; do you think I want to find prawn heads in my suede loafers again? I think …’ He smiled, looking suddenly amused. ‘Honestly, I think perhaps Fen sent Fen to check on you.’
‘Oh.’ Morrigan felt awkward now for an entirely different reason. ‘Right.’
‘But of course I’m very happy to know you’re well,’ he added in a rush.
‘No, I didn’t mean to … of course it was Fen!’ Morrigan said with an embarrassed half-laugh, thinking how terribly convenient it would be if the ground opened like a dragon’s mouth and chomped her down in one bite. She held out her hand for the stack of papers he was still clutching. ‘I should go, Miss Cheery’s waiting.’
‘Really, Morrigan, I am relieved to hear it. But I don’t need to send anyone to the Silver District to check up on you, and there are few people in the world on whom I would spring a surprise Fenestra. I’m saving that for my worst enemies.’
Morrigan laughed again, genuinely this time. In that moment she wanted to extend an olive branch somehow, to say the magical combination of words that would crack open the closed door between them. But she was rummaging in every corner of her mind and coming up with nothing.
‘I know you’re safe and healthy and … happy, I think?’ Jupiter continued quietly. ‘I’m still your patron, after all. I receive the usual reports from Miss Cheery and Rook. Of course, I’m curious about …’ He trailed off, straightening up the stack of papers and holding them out to her. ‘But you told me to back off, and I’m respecting that. I promise I won’t— what’s this?’
His tone changed abruptly, like the arrival of an afternoon storm in summer. Morrigan saw now that the freshly updated suspect list was right on top of the pile, made glaringly obvious by the words SUSPECT, MOTIVE, OPPORTUNITY and ALIBI across the top.
His eyes ran down the page, bright with fear. Morrigan tried to grab for the list, but Jupiter’s reflexes were quicker, and he held it out of reach.
‘We talked about this,’ he said sharply. ‘Morrigan, tell me you are not investigating Dario Rinaldi’s murder. Tell me you are not so foolish —’
‘Hometrain’s leaving, I have to go.’
‘ MORRIGAN CROW —’
His voice disappeared amid the clamour of chugging train engines and whistling steam and boisterous scholars excited for the weekend. Morrigan wove through the busy station, sprinting for the refuge of Hometrain 919.