Not the Troy Game, surely.
The roar of the aircraft overhead, and the steady thump thump thump of the explosions was almost deafening, and yet…yet…yet still that moth hovered at the edges of my consciousness. Still I could not quite grasp what my sister was trying to tell me, to tell us.
But, oh, the music. It thrummed through my veins with every blast, it thrilled through my flesh, it made me so aware of Jack that every beat of my heart was a scream for him.
I slid my eyes to where he sat at the oars, and saw him watching me.
Do you feel it? I asked him, and he nodded. Tersely, for I think he was hesitant and he did not trust his daughter.
I was excited, and could feel no fear.
Tonight something beckoned.
Part of that something was the heart of the Shadow Game. We wanted to find it, to see it, to know it. To see if it held any answers.
My mother had told us where to look, and in the end it was simplicity itself. We had to find a spot in the centre of the river which lined up with the church of St Magnus the Martyr on the northern bank of the Thames (I tried hard not to think of the deaths of those poor women as I looked at the church, but was unable to repress a shudder of horror at their fate).
By the time we reached the spot, the docklands of London were ablaze. I thought that they had burned to the waterline four days ago, when Jack and I had danced at the Savoy, but, no, there was yet further potential for destruction and the flames reached a hundred feet into the night sky.
By this time Southwark was burning as well. The bombers had started in the east of London and then worked their way south, following the flames. We could hear them overhead, a constant drone of death and, unnervingly, with the power swirling around us, we could also sometimes hear snatches of conversation from the German cockpits as pilots exulted or exclaimed or screamed for fighter protection.
We were becoming as one with the destruction.
That moth fluttered closer, and I began to make out its features.
“We’re here,” said Jack, and I blinked, losing concentration, and the moth fluttered back into obscurity.
I looked at the water. It was running with red and orange, the colour of the flames on both sides of the banks, and it trembled with the force of the pounding explosions.
Thump thump thump…thump thump thump…thump thump thump…
And suddenly that moth was back, save now it swooped directly in front of my face, and I gasped in mingled joy and horror.
Joy at the discovery.
Horror, at all it meant.
Jack was staring at me. I leaned forward, grabbing his hands away from the oars.
Dance with me, I said.
Then, using all the power I had, and all the trust in me that Jack possessed, I summoned forth my Darkcraft and swept us both into the maelstrom dance of the bombs.
In that terrible place, that black, evil place of pain and fear and destruction, we found something completely unexpected.
A stunning new power source.
The pain and horror of the air raid.
No wonder the murders had stopped with the onset of the Blitz—the Shadow Game could gorge on the death the Luftwaffe dealt, and no longer needed the imps’ aid.
It was a vile place to be, and we exited almost as soon as we had entered. The brevity of our visit didn’t matter, what was important was that…oh, gods…even now I couldn’t voice it.
It was too frightful.
Jack had gone white—even the wash of the flames over his face couldn’t hide the fact that he’d gone as white as a sheet—and I had to look away.
I looked directly into the crypt of St Thomas’ Chapel.
I gasped, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Jack follow the direction of my eyes.
On the port side of our little rowboat the waters had opened up, as if they had become a frozen whirlpool. The sides of this still whirlpool were not smooth; instead, the water had formed steps circling down, steps in which the flames and the continuing blasts from the exploding bombs reflected back at us.
There was a stone floor at the bottom of the whirlpool, glistening with a sheen of dampness.
Jack very slowly lifted his face to mine.
“It is the floor of the crypt of St Thomas,” I said, needlessly.
“Grace,” he said, “what did you just do? How did you—”
“Will you take me back to the shore?” I said. I didn’t want to answer those questions just yet.
He glanced up at the sky, and then eastwards. “The night is yet young for the Luftwaffe,” he remarked, and I knew then that he was as attuned to that terrible Danse Macabre as I.
“I know,” I said, and from the look in his eyes, I knew he understood what I wanted. We had to close that final bridge between us tonight, as man and woman, and as Kingman and Mistress of the Labyrinth. We had to do it tonight, while the power rang about us. “The raid will go on for many hours yet.”
Our boat rocked, and we both looked back to where a moment before the steps to the sunken crypt had been.
Now there was nothing but the gently lapping waters of the Thames, and the death and destruction mirrored in its face.
The crypt would wait for another night.
“Take me back to shore, Jack.”
He hesitated a moment longer, then he put his hands back to the oars.
Jack had parked close to the river, but I led him straight past the car into the back alleys of Southwark. The bombing was to the south and east of us; I knew now that tonight it would not touch this section of London where we were.
He caught up with me, taking my elbow, pulling me to a halt.
“Grace, tell me that this isn’t as terrible as I think it is. I don’t want this night to be…”
Terrible.
Here and now was a horrific time to have this conversation, but was there ever going to be a good time? I closed my eyes briefly, prayed for courage and the wisdom to find the right words, and began to speak of what we had both experienced in the rowboat.
“The Shadow Game is so powerful that for us to wield it would be to kill us.”
He didn’t respond, just stared at me as if he didn’t want to hear any more.
“I said that I thought my sister—” his face twisted at that, as if “sister” was too generous a word to use “—may have provided a means for us to use it, and live.”
He looked away, and I didn’t blame him. My sister the White Queen had provided a means, a source of power for Jack and me that served two purposes: to protect us against the power of the Shadow Game; and to infuse that Game with such added power that it would be sure to destroy my other sister, Catling, the Troy Game incarnate.
The problem was that the means was so ghastly—the power of the air raids that battered London.
“Jack,” I said as gently as I dared, “a Mistress of the Labyrinth and a Kingman use the twisting harmonies of creation to build a Game, and creation is and has always been a mix of the good and the appalling and the sheer unfair. That is what life is about.”
“Don’t preach to me about life.”
The words were bitter, but the tone not, and so I pressed on.
“We have to use whatever power is available to us, Jack. We must. The Troy Game is too powerful to be destroyed with the gentle harmonies of daisies and peonies.”
He gave a soft laugh at that, and I was never so grateful for anything in my life.
“Ah, I shouldn’t complain,” he said, “for who was responsible for the monstrosity of the Troy Game in the first instance? It is just that…that…”
And neither of us could speak the unspeakable at that moment. The Shadow Game had not needed to feed, to sustain itself, until Jack returned to London and its Kingman and Mistress were finally in place. On Jack’s return the Game appeared as a shadow hanging over the city, and to manage that it had needed sustenance—thus the murders. When the Blitz began it could feed properly. Even worse than that knowledge was that if the White Queen had created the Shadow Game as a means to deal with the Troy Game, then she had also created the power source by which it fed. The power source which the Game’s Kingman and Mistress needed to access in order to work the Game.