Modern Magick

The Striding Spire: 17

'Oh, it would,' I agreed. 'And that would give, for example, the Hidden Ministry strong reason to keep it secret, wouldn't you say?'

'No wonder Val had a hard time digging anything up.'

The pup jumped up onto one of the chairs and lay down in a cloud of dust. I could almost swear that she winked at me. 'The Greyer cottage. John Wester was a more powerful Waymaster even than we thought, Jay, for that cottage — it must have taken a jaunt back a few centuries, and quite recently.'

Jay eyed the sleepy pup with an air of dejection. 'And Zareen nuked it.'

'She is going to be gutted.'

'But the Spire?' Jay looked around at the room we were in, as though its décor might yield some manner of clue. 'It seems dead to me.'

'Long abandoned,' I agreed. 'Can you, I don't know, sense the presence of another Waymaster somehow?'

'How would I do that?'

I shrugged. 'Mauf, is there anything in those papers about how the Starstone Spire worked?'

'Or what it did?' put in Jay.

'Little that is likely to be of interest to you,' answered the book. 'Its recorded purpose was merely residential. It was a private project of the Redclover brothers, and its tendency to perambulate was only noted much later. And without the full approval of the Dappledok Councils.'

'There's no mention of its time-wandering capabilities?' I asked.

'None, but there are notes regarding its habit of disappearing without trace fairly often. I believe the writer assumed the Spire had simply gone to another Dell, or to somewhere in Britain. They may not have been aware of the possibility of an alternative.'

That was interesting. It implied that those brothers had developed the Spire's more remarkable capabilities themselves, privately, and without sharing it with the school or the town. Then again, why should they? Had we not already agreed that such powers would attract all kinds of attention, some of it very wrong indeed?

But what had happened to them?

The light dimmed momentarily, as though a cloud had crossed in front of the setting sun — or something moving much faster than that. I looked out of the window.

A trio of winged horses was on the approach. With the sun behind them, they were in silhouette, and I could not see who was riding them. 'I really hope this is Rob,' I said to Jay. 'Because I am starving.'

It wasn't Rob, but it was Zareen, and Miranda, and to my particular surprise, Baron Alban. It was the Baron who contrived to bring his steed up outside the window, and grinned in at us. 'Need a ride?'

'That, and dinner.'

He doffed his hat — a grey trilby, today — to me. 'Yours to command, my lady.'

We opted not to climb out of the window again, not when there were perfectly good stairs to be used. I took the pup under one arm, only to be immediately relieved of her by Miranda at the bottom, who gathered her up with a mother's tenderness and cooed something incomprehensible at her.

I realised, guiltily, that I had missed her last couple of feeds. I hoped Miranda would forgive me, considering the circumstances.

'You haven't been feeding her, have you?' said Miranda, fixing me with a gimlet eye.

So much for that. 'Yes!' I yelped. 'Except for the last few hours, but there was that whole stuck-on-the-roof thing, and we were distracted by...'