Page 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

New Deal

Every day after school when Miss Cheery dropped Unit 919 at their private station, she waved them off and shouted, ‘Be good! Sleep well! See you in the morning!’, before the lights of Hometrain disappeared into the tunnel. Every day the platform echoed with last-minute plans and jokes and chatter, a noisy chorus of see-you-tomorrows and smell-ya-laters. Every day the nine station doors swung open, each as individual as the scholar it belonged to, and out drifted little hints of home life. Warmth and light and cooking smells and murmuring voices. The ecstatic barking of Asparagus, Francis’s yappy little schnauzer, and the boisterous bellowing of Baby Dave, Hawthorne’s younger sister.

Behind Morrigan’s glossy black door, she knew, was always the promise of a cheerful family-style dinner with the hotel staff, or a cosy supper and fireside chat with Jupiter in his study. Afterwards she might fill her clawfoot tub with floral bubbles and sink into it with a book, or recruit someone to play board games with her in the Smoking Parlour. That moment of crossing the threshold from school to home was full of lovely possibilities, and usually Morrigan’s favourite time of day.

But tonight, she stood outside her door as the others all slammed shut one by one, gripping the handle. The possibility that Jupiter would be home and the possibility that he would still be off-realm sat uncomfortably side by side in her mind, and she honestly didn’t know which outcome was preferable.

‘Wanna come over?’ she asked Hawthorne before he could disappear through his door. (Cadence had already rushed home for the Monday night pottery class she was taking with her mum and gran.)

He looked tempted but shook his head. ‘Can’t, it’s meat-free Monday at my place. Mandatory for all members of the Swift family. You should come! Dad’s doing his world-famous Pumpkin Soup Surprise.’

‘What’s the surprise?’

‘It’s just pumpkin soup, but when he ladles it into your bowl, he yells, “SURPRISE!”’

Morrigan considered it, then reluctantly turned her door handle. ‘Better not. Just in case … you know.’

‘Yeah.’ Hawthorne grimaced sympathetically. ‘Still no word from the League?’

She shook her head and, grasping for a change of subject, said, ‘Do you think Cadence can solve Dario’s murder?’

‘I reckon Cadence can do pretty much anything she sets her mind to.’

‘Mmm. Pity I can’t do Tempus yet. I could just make a ghostly hour from the time of the murder. It’d all be over in five minutes.’

Hawthorne’s face lit up. ‘Hang on. Why couldn’t you—’

‘I was joking!’ she said, before he could get too carried away with the idea. Ghostly hours were small, preserved pockets of time – useful or interesting moments plucked from history to be observed in the present. Morrigan had visited plenty of them on Sub-Nine, to watch lessons given by Wundersmiths past. But creating one was another thing altogether. ‘I’ve never had a single lesson in Tempus. One time—’

She stopped abruptly as something faltered in her memory. It was like running through the woods and feeling her jumper snag on a sharp branch.

What was that?

‘One time what?’ Hawthorne prompted, and Morrigan blinked dazedly at him, mentally retracing her steps.

‘Oh. Um, one time … one time Rook said it’s the hardest Wundrous Art to learn and we’ll probably have to save it for last, which means I’m years away from making a ghostly hour, if I ever manage it. Hopefully by then the murderer will have been—’

‘ OW! I’m coming, Baby Dave, geez !’ Hawthorne shouted, snatching his hand back from the half-open door. He held it up to show Morrigan the angry red bite marks on his fingers. ‘I’d better go, sorry. My sister turns into a goblin if she doesn’t get dinner at five o’clock sharp. See you in the mor— OW! STOP IT, BABY DAVE, THAT’S NOT NICE . ’

The door to Hawthorne’s place slammed shut behind him, leaving Morrigan alone on the platform. Shaking off her hesitation, she cracked open her own wardrobe door and felt the Deucalion beckoning her home.

Before she could step inside, however, an unearthly howl sounded from deep within the Wunderground. Skin prickling all over, she let the wardrobe door click softly closed again.

The eerie sound was joined by galloping hooves getting louder and closer, until finally a lone black horse emerged from the dark mouth of the tunnel, eyes burning red. It leapt from the track to the platform in a single bound.

The horse slowed to a trot and then a walk, its head bobbing up and down as it approached her like a friend. Morrigan stared, unblinking, and instinctively reached up to touch the strange, velvety softness of its muzzle – somehow both shadow and solid, both there and not there. The horse responded by lowering its head and nickering softly against her hand. A tingle shot through her fingers and all the way up her arm.

‘Oh,’ she murmured, as the Hush lifted like a stage curtain in her head and her memories quietly returned.

Itching with new purpose and excitement, Morrigan climbed smoothly onto the horse’s back and, without missing a beat, it launched them both onto the track and headlong through the black tunnel. The cold wind whipped at her face, making her eyes stream, and for a time she couldn’t see anything at all … then suddenly she was rushing towards a speck of light growing bigger and brighter until it surrounded her … and Morrigan and the shadow horse were flying through it, flying across a golden Gossamer bridge and finally emerging in a strange, circular room awash with pale pink light, at what felt like the top of the world.

Ezra Squall was a small silhouette in an enormous round window, apparently contemplating the early-evening hustle and bustle of Old Town far below. Beyond the gates of the city’s first borough, Greater Nevermoor sprawled for miles – a rose-tinted ocean of twinkling lights, split by the twisting black snake of the River Juro. A blood-orange sun sank behind the skyline.

Morrigan dismounted with ease, and as her shadow horse disappeared into the Gossamer, the words were already tumbling from her mouth: ‘I want to learn Tem—’ She cut herself off, stopping abruptly in the middle of the room to stare at him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Testing a theory.’

‘Looks like you’re sniffing a window.’

‘I’m not sniffing a window. ’ He ran the tips of his fingers down the curved ledge, one cheek pressed up against the glass. ‘I’m trying to get close enough to sense a very subtle shift in energy. It’s difficult through the Gossamer.’

He beckoned impatiently and she joined him with a resigned sigh. ‘Stand there, in the centre. That’s it. Hold up your palms and place them gently on the glass – gently, you should be barely touching it. Can you feel the vibration?’

‘There is no vibration.’

‘Close your eyes and wait until you feel it.’

Morrigan closed her eyes.

‘The only thing I feel is ridiculous,’ she muttered. ‘If this is a joke it’s not … Oh.’

‘Move slowly outwards, to the edge of the window,’ Squall instructed. ‘Pay attention to where your skin touches the surface; notice any changes in sensation?’

Morrigan narrowed her attention to her fingertips and took slow, deliberate steps to the right. The vibration remained constant almost all the way to the edge of the enormous circular window.

‘There,’ she said, stopping. She tapped the glass softly, a few centimetres from the edge. ‘It changes right there.’

‘What does it feel like? What’s the difference between the centre and the outer edge?

‘The centre is like …’ Morrigan hesitated, trying to think of the exact right words to describe it. ‘You know that feeling when you’re standing on a Wunderground platform, and if you’re still, you can sense the first rumble of your train arriving, even when it’s deep inside the tunnel? It’s like that. And not just the physical vibration of it, I mean … it sort of … makes me feel like my train is about to arrive. The anticipation of it. It’s like my legs are getting ready to step on board.’ She opened her eyes to look at Squall, expecting him to scoff or say it didn’t make sense. But he was watching her with a thoughtful frown, taking in her words as if she was an academic expert on the niche topic of Windows Doing Weird Stuff. Morrigan let her hands travel slowly to the right, over the invisible seam where the energy shifted. ‘The outer edge is … noisier. It feels like …’ She bit the side of her mouth. ‘It feels like that moment when the train flies out of the tunnel and everything is bright and loud, and there’s a rush of wind and for a second you feel unbalanced. Like if you stand too close to the edge you might be swept away by it.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah.’ She closed her eyes again, just for a second, frowning. ‘It’s moving. This outside bit is sort of … pushing into the centre. I think.’

Squall nodded decisively. ‘The clocksmiths are right, then.’

‘Come again?’

‘The Age marches onwards,’ he explained. ‘Morningtide is ending. Basking will arrive in the spring.’

Basking is coming. Dario had said that to Gigi, she remembered, outside the boathouse on the night of the wedding.

An image came to mind of the Skyfaced Clock in Jackalfax. The last time she’d seen it she’d been with Jupiter, in his arachnipod, and they were climbing right through its inky black face. Before the black of Eventide, it had worn the twilight blue of the Gloaming, and before that the sunset orange of Dwendelsun … and before that, the golden yellow of Basking.

Morrigan blinked, looking around the vast circular room in its rose-coloured glow. The colour of Morningtide.

‘Are we … inside a Skyfaced Clock?’

‘We’re inside the Skyfaced Clock,’ Squall corrected her. ‘The original one, above the Houses of Parliament. A Wundrous Act to which all other Skyfaced Clocks in the realm are connected, the one from which they take their cue to change colour as the phases turn.’

‘Wait.’ Morrigan surveyed the vast, empty space. She’d seen it from the street once or twice, but up close it was much bigger than she’d realised. ‘You’re saying this clock decides when Morningtide turns to Basking, and Basking turns to Dwendelsun and so on?’

‘It doesn’t decide anything,’ he said. ‘A clock can’t decide when the Age will turn, any more than it can decide when the sun will rise. It was designed to pick up on certain signals and track shifts in energy as the Age progresses, and to convey the moment when those shifts reach a critical point. When one kind of energy,’ he tapped the outer edge of the window glass, ‘overtakes another.’ He tapped the centre. ‘That’s what we mean when we talk about the phases of the Age: they are periods of differentiated energy, with the power to influence events both personal and universal.

‘The energy of Morningtide is forward-facing, optimistic, calm. Not passive, but expectant; the realm breathes in, and plans may be quietly set in motion. Morningtide is a ballerina rising to her toes, just before the stage lights come up. The calm before the storm.

‘Basking, on the other hand, is a cymbal crash. It is a spotlight at full force, an orchestra at full volume. The ballerina in flight. The storm itself.’

‘In a good way or a bad way?’

He shrugged. ‘Could be either. Could be both. Basking is a time of surprises, danger and sweeping change. A time when the Age will decide what it wants to be remembered for.’

‘How will we know when it’s decided?’ Morrigan asked, feeling a little shiver.

‘It will make sure we know.’

They stood quietly at the window for a minute or two, watching the evening unfold on the streets below. Lanterns blinked into life across Old Town. Commuters finishing their workdays swarmed the closest Wunderground and Brolly Rail platforms.

Master and apprentice inhaled in sudden unison. Without taking her eyes off the view, Morrigan said, ‘I want to learn Tempus,’ at the exact moment Squall said, ‘Time to learn a new Wundrous Art.’

They glanced sideways at each other in surprise.

Morrigan gave a hesitant nod. ‘We’re agreed then.’

‘Not quite,’ said Squall. ‘You will learn Tempus, eventually. But not now.’

‘Why not? I’m ready. You saw what happened at Darling House. I made time stop. So why can’t I—’

‘Why the sudden rush to learn Tempus, specifically?’ He turned to face her, curious.

Morrigan wondered how much she should tell him about her motivations, and ultimately decided on the bare minimum. ‘I want to learn how to make a ghostly hour.’

Squall looked for a moment as if he might burst into laughter, but he managed to control himself. ‘To create a ghostly hour, you must be able to balance your mind on the point of a needle: to maintain the sharpest and most delicate focus imaginable, without getting distracted for even a fraction of a second. There have been great Wundersmiths – talented, fully trained, adult Wundersmiths – who never managed it in their lifetime.’

‘Professor Onstald managed it,’ Morrigan pointed out. ‘And he wasn’t even a Wundersmith.’

‘Hemingway Onstald was, I grant you, a very interesting case. He was an exceedingly peculiar man with exceedingly peculiar talents, even if his mastery of the art was incomplete.’ He turned to face the window again, clasping his hands behind his back. ‘Regardless, Tempus is not for beginners—’

‘I’m hardly a beginner. ’

‘—and certainly not for one as impatient as you are. Indeed, the very worst time to begin learning Tempus is when you are most impatient to learn it. It would be like chopping off both hands before learning to play the piano.’

Thinking fast, Morrigan tried to negotiate. ‘Teach me Tempus and you can remove the Hush.’

‘You appear to have forgotten we already made this deal,’ he said, looking genuinely amused by the feeble attempt. ‘You’ve had your last one more week. I’ve already removed the Hush. For good.’

Morrigan felt her stomach drop.

‘I’ll ask again, and this time I’d prefer to hear the truth,’ Squall continued. ‘Why the sudden rush?’

‘My aunt’s husband was murdered. Two nights ago. At their wedding. And I need to find out who the murderer is.’

‘Why?’

Morrigan made a face. ‘Because he was my aunt’s husband ! And because I was there when it happened. And because—’

‘You think they’re going to blame you.’

She paused, pressing her mouth into a stubborn line. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. That’s not the point.’

‘And how exactly do you think Tempus is going to help?’

‘If I can go back to the moment Dario Rinaldi was murdered—’

‘Ah,’ Squall murmured. ‘The Falling Star.’

‘—then I can see who did it, and we can catch the murderer. What do you mean, “Ah, the falling star”?’

He shook himself from his thoughts. ‘Doesn’t matter. As for making a ghostly hour, you can put that out of your head. It won’t work.’

Morrigan groaned. ‘At least let me TRY before you say I can’t do it!’

‘It’s not that,’ he said with a dismissive wave. ‘Maybe you’ll be a Tempus prodigy, who knows. Regardless, it’s pointless to create a ghostly hour from an event that fresh. Recent history is too volatile, too fluid.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning time needs to settle before it can be plucked and bottled. Older events have had time to crystallise, even to fossilise. Newer events are soft and malleable. They can be bruised. Altered. Reaching into the very recent past can affect it in unpredictable ways.’

‘You’re saying … Wait.’ Fresh possibilities sprung up in Morrigan’s mind, bursting like tiny fireworks. ‘You’re saying the more recently something happened, the easier it is to change it?’

‘ Y-e-s, ’ he said slowly, suspicious of the new zeal in her voice. ‘And no. Notice I said unpredictable ways.’

‘But Tempus can let you alter the past ?’

Squall pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut in tired frustration. ‘Stop. I know where this is going, and no, you cannot go back in time and stop a murder. You are wilfully misinterpreting my words. You’re also demonstrating my point: you are far from ready to learn Tempus. It’s not just the most difficult art to learn, it’s also the most dangerous to wield. The last person I’d entrust it to is an over-eager thirteen-year-old with stupid ideas about preventing a murder and no understanding of the consequences.’

‘But if it’s possible then surely—’

‘IT. IS. NOT. POSSIBLE.’ He raised his voice above hers. ‘I do not wish to discuss Tempus any further. I have a far more interesting plan for this evening.’

With a snap and flutter of wings, Squall was gone. In his place, a small brown sparrow flew up and up and up to the full height of the ceiling, swooping and diving before finally landing on a wooden beam.

The sparrow became a cat, sleek and soft of foot, gracefully balancing along the length of the beam … then a tiny white mouse, scurrying down the wall and across the toe of Morrigan’s boot.

The transitions between Squall’s unnimal Masquerades were so smooth, Morrigan barely registered them. A handsome red fox became a mangy three-legged dog. A fat little gecko. An enormous rat. A butterfly. A great, hulking bear, rising onto its hind legs with such a convincing roar she felt it reverberate through her feet.

And finally, Ezra Squall himself was back in the room, as cool and calm as if he hadn’t changed in the first place.

Morrigan shrugged, trying not to betray how impressed she was. ‘No need to show off.’

A quick grin flashed across Squall’s face before he tucked it away behind his usual calm containment. ‘We will make a new deal, Miss Crow. Once you’ve acquired three more Wundrous Arts … Once you’ve taken three more pilgrimages to the Divinities and received their respective seals to prove your acquisition … Then we will begin Tempus.’

She thought about it for a moment, watching him with a guarded expression, and then clarified, ‘ Any three Wundrous Arts?’

‘Any three.’

‘All right,’ Morrigan said with a determined nod. She hummed and wiggled her fingers lightly, feeling Wunder thread between them. ‘Masquerade. Let’s go.’