Captive Magics

14 - Little Old Lady

A/N: A few weeks ago a reviewer used the words boring and uninteresting, and...well, basically, I was struggling to make something of this chapter anyway.

I gave up.

Wasn't going to update again, like, ever, but someone's generously popped it in the Editor's Choice list which was encouraging. There's a whole world, the lives of people who exist only in a hundred-thousand word document, hidden on a hard drive. Maybe nobody but me will ever read it, but a novel kept secret is a sad sort of thing. Why not put it online?

If you've actually read as far as this chapter, I dedicate it to you. Have a cupcake.

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Whatever had been said, it didn't look like she was going to forgive him for it soon and by the next morning, as they rushed through the city in a hansom with branches whipping past the windows, he still had neither any idea what was wrong nor of where they were going.

The cab driver seemed to be taking them through Winton, the outskirts of the north edge of the city where mansions tucked into absurdly picturesque parkland, so detached from the daily realities of ordinary people that they may as well have floated in the clouds. The borough had once been the project of a mad royal consort who divided the empty land and offered each lot for entrants into a best architect competition, and the results were a spectrum of the bizarre and marvellous. Leander knew no one wealthy enough to own property there, and like everyone else in the city was slightly in awe of it.

They rolled to a stop with a creak of coach-springs before a fanciful iced-cake-like house. The whole building, bedecked in a crown of lace crenellations, sprawled pale and opulent within a woodland garden and reminded Leander of the great pavilion at the city heart. Lissy jumped out without pause and marched up the front steps. They were met by an officious middle-aged woman in oversized glasses and taken up several flights of stairs to a huge cupola-shaped glasshouse which looked across the turrets and spires to the parkland beyond.

Seated in great state was a tiny ancient woman nestled like prized jewellery in velvet cushions with an oriental print rug across her knees. What was the connection between the rich and powerful and solariums? Leander wondered. They had met the King in a sunroom. Perhaps if Leander sat below glass he would be rich and powerful too. This musing momentarily delayed his realisation that the lady they were approaching was floating a foot off the ground in her chair. In fact, everything in the room was floating slightly, except the two visitors.

"My dear, you don't visit often enough," the old lady said in mild rebuke, turning milky white eyes on them.

"I know," Lissy sighed, leaning to kiss her on the cheek. "It has been too long, and I must own it is my fault. Are you well, Madame?"

"Quite well, quite well thank you, aside from my cataracts. Who is this person with you?"

"This is my manservant, Leander," Lissy said. The pale eyes turned on him and narrowed.

"Oh, is that so? Well, take a seat, both of you." Two chairs floated over of their own volition and Leander sat, fascinated by the way it sank slightly as it took his weight and then bobbed up again.

"Did you get the job?" she asked, straight to the point.

"No."

"What?!"

"They gave it to Nathaniel Monk-Fustifer."

"That smug-faced useless donkey? What in the name of all things good were they thinking?!"