Chapter 36
“How long do you think we’ll have?” Yannick said, folding his arms and squinting nervously at the door, through which the winter light filtered wanly.
“I don’t know.” I was pacing by the cat cages and made myself stop. “I’m amazed the police have waited this long. Even with the distraction of Valérie’s apprentices.”
I’d slept little the previous night. Havelock and I had been awake until the small hours of the morning, putting the shelter back in order—him with enchantment, I with a mop, broom, and conciliatory rations of cat food.
Despite the late hour, several neighbours had visited, including Rémy, unsurprisingly concerned by the peculiar noises that had shaken the shelter.
From them I learned that the police were occupied on the other side of town, chasing magicians as they dashed from street to street, lighting fires and setting off minor explosions.
Eventually, Yannick had arrived and confirmed our suspicions: before coming to the shelter, Valérie had ordered several dozen of her apprentices to draw the police’s attention, so that she could make her final assault upon Havelock’s lair without petty interruptions from the law.
Someone knocked at the door and we all jumped. We stood motionless, eyeing it nervously, but the knock wasn’t repeated.
Yannick scrubbed a hand over his face. “I wish we knew where Valérie went,” he said.
“She takes after His Majesty, it seems,” I said drily.
After Havelock had cast Vortigern’s enchantment, we’d been required to turn our attention to the shop, ensuring all the fires had been put out and the foundations were secure and in no danger of crumbling from the sheer volume of magic unleashed within the building’s walls.
Amidst the chaos, Valérie had slipped away with two of her apprentices, perhaps using the same escape route as His Majesty.
“It doesn’t matter,” Havelock said. He was frowning at nothing in particular, his gaze abstracted. “She isn’t a danger anymore.”
“We’re not certain of that,” Yannick said. “I like certainty where your sister is concerned. I would prefer not to be magically blasted into unconsciousness again. I still have a headache.”
Havelock had examined Valérie’s apprentices, those she had left behind like spent matches, sprawled unconscious on the floor of Havelock’s workshop.
They were no longer magicians. Or, at least, they no longer possessed the innate power to reach the Rivenwood.
Their gift had been drawn out of them by the lantern, just as it had pulled the magic out of every Artefact and spider on the first floor.
Not even Havelock understood how Vortigern had woven it—he kept declaring, in increasingly plaintive tones, that such a thing should be impossible—but even I could see that it was true.
The apprentices now lacked the characteristic look of a magician—when one held a light to them, it played over their features in a way that was utterly ordinary, not seeking to avoid touching them.
Havelock eventually sent them away, either by magic or by simply dragging them outside and leaving them on a park bench; I didn’t see, as I had been too occupied with élise and the cats.
“That headache is your own fault,” Havelock said. “Do you think I gave you that ring with the shield enchantment as a token of my regard? Come here.”
Yannick, who had been rubbing his temples, gave a sigh of relief. When he reached Havelock’s side, Havelock removed one of his earrings and placed his fingertips against Yannick’s head with surprising tenderness and murmured a spell. Yannick’s expression was one of relief.
“There,” Havelock said. “And the next time one of my enemies tries to fight you, run the other way. You’re too new to magic to win any duels.”
“No, I’m just too used to duelling you,” Yannick said, regarding him with exasperation. “You always let me win.”
“Shouldn’t you stay below?” I said to Havelock.
He was perched on the counter again, looking as conspicuous as ever.
Havelock’s presence had always been like a shout in a quiet room, but now, in addition to his usual otherworldly attire and the shadows he carried everywhere, he flickered slightly when he moved, like firelight, as if he’d absorbed some of the magic from the lantern.
I kept worrying he would set something on fire.
He shrugged moodily. “I’m not going to let you get arrested.”
“What does that mean?” Yannick said nervously. “I thought we were trying to avoid entanglements with the police.”
“It seems a bit late to worry about that,” I said. “What are you planning?” I didn’t want Havelock harming anyone, not even Laurent—whom I was no longer angry with, as he had only been doing his job, as I’d told élise the previous night. (élise had expressed her disagreement in colourful terms.)
Havelock scrubbed his hands through his hair and scowled at both of us. “Everyone always expects me to have plans and plots,” he said. “All I’ve ever wanted is to be left alone with my experiments.”
Thoreau hopped up beside Havelock, making him start. “What does this one want?” he said, then looked astonished as the old cat unceremoniously laid himself down upon Havelock’s lap, as if it were his usual habit at that time of the morning.
“Is this supposed to be part of the charm?” Havelock said. “Being treated like a piece of furniture?”
“It is,” I said, trying to suppress my amusement. “You’re lucky Banshee has never grasped the concept of jealousy.”
Banshee, indeed, was lying on her side against the counter, having followed Havelock there, absorbed in bathing herself, and would only look up if Havelock shifted position, as if having made a resolution to shadow his every move.
“They all seem to take to him,” Yannick said to me. “Have you noticed?”
“They’re kindred spirits,” I said, pretending to be nonchalant, when in fact something about the sight of Havelock grudgingly scratching Thoreau’s head filled me with a sparkling sort of pride. “Solitary and cantankerous.”
“I take exception to cantankerous,” Havelock said. “And I see no evidence these creatures are not motivated by a simple desire to torment me as they do the poor spiders.”
“Did you truly spend the last three years thinking I was Vortigern?” I asked.
He seemed for a moment like he did not wish to respond, tapping his heel against the counter and pretending to be absorbed by Thoreau. “In truth,” he said at last, “I continued to wonder about it for a few days after we met in the shelter. I thought perhaps she was playing some prank on me.”
“What!” I cried through my laughter. “A curious prank, to come into your life with a lot of cats.”
“Vortigern was at least half mad,” Havelock said.
“And had a fondness for mischief in her youth. She was a recluse for most of her adult life—she kept to her hovel in the Breton woods, scaring away anyone foolish enough to visit with nasty enchantments, or possibly just her personality, depending on which story you believe. And she kept cats.”
“Ah,” I said. “Until that last, I was about to ask if you are secretly Vortigern.”
Yannick let out a snort.
“I eventually assured myself that you were not her,” Havelock said, “and thus you must have used Vortigern’s book to visit me in the past. Which meant, most likely, that I did have Vortigern’s book somewhere in the shop, proving Valérie correct, which I did not much appreciate.
But it was clear you had no memory of having met me before, which meant your need for the lantern, and your visit to the past, had not occurred yet.
After I worked that out, I didn’t really know what to do.
I couldn’t fathom why an unassuming cat herder would have need of Vortigern’s lantern.
I also lack Vortigern’s intuition regarding time-walking—the whole thing makes little sense to me.
But I have no particular desire to end the world again by unravelling time itself, so it seemed safest not to say anything to you about it.
When you were mucking around in my shop, rearranging my Artefacts, I kept expecting you to unearth the book at any moment. ”
“Mucking around!” I exclaimed. “In order for me to rearrange your Artefacts, they would have needed some particular arrangement before, which they did not have, any more than does a squirrel’s acorn hoard.”
Yannick was shaking his head. “I should have paid more attention to the oven. The enchantment always felt peculiar. But, well—” His gaze strayed to Havelock. “This is a peculiar place.”
Another knock came at the door, hesitant and too quiet, as if the visitor half hoped to be ignored. I realized that it was past nine, and thus past opening, and also that what I had taken for the murmur of the wind was actually the murmur of human voices, which had been gradually growing in volume.
“What now?” I said despairingly. I found it hard to believe the police would bother knocking if they had what they needed to bring the full weight of the law down upon us, but that didn’t mean we were not about to be beset by some new peril.
I cracked the door, and then let it swing open, too astonished to do anything but stare.
A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk beyond the shelter.
Not only the sidewalk; there were enough of them to spill out into the street, requiring the carriages to pass single file to get through.
When the people standing nearest saw me, they cheered.
Others turned at that, and suddenly the entire crowd was cheering and applauding.
An older man bundled into several layers of scarves came up to me and shook my hand.
“There she is!” he said warmly. “Don’t you worry, Agnes—we won’t let them through! ”