“Weyland, just listen to me for a few minutes, and then we can talk.” In a hushed terse tone, Noah told Weyland what had transpired at the meeting at Faerie Hill Manor (keeping silent, for the moment, about the discussion of the Great Marriage). Weyland was shocked by what Jack had to say about Catling (surely she could be destroyed), but when Noah revealed that Grace had trained as a Mistress of the Labyrinth, and that Catling appeared often to her at night, Weyland looked so ill Noah thought he might actually faint.
“Why didn’t we know?” Weyland said.
“We were blind, Weyland. We were too busy trying to protect her, when what we should have been doing was encouraging her to fly.”
“But—”
“I know,” Noah said, taking both of Weyland’s hands in hers. “I tried to shelter her, it is largely what I lived for, and yet I think that ‘shelter’ was the last thing Grace needed.”
Weyland did not reply as he tried to make sense of what he had just heard. They had spent so many years, and so much of themselves, trying to keep Grace from further harm, and trying to protect her, and believing that she was so fragile that she needed to be wrapped in as much parental security as possible, that to consider allowing Grace “to fly” was almost incomprehensible. Even more than Noah, Weyland’s every breath had been devoted to safeguarding Grace. He had lost one daughter; to lose this one as well was unthinkable.
“She is trained as a Mistress of the Labyrinth?” he said, eventually.
Noah nodded.
“And we didn’t know.” Weyland paused. “She’s either very powerful or we are very weak.”
Noah tried a small smile. “I prefer to think that she is very powerful.”
“Who trained her?”
“Stella.”
Weyland gave a soft snort of laughter. “All that time I tried to persuade Stella to teach you, and she wouldn’t. Then, just for the fun of it, she trains our daughter. At least it wasn’t Ariadne. I do not think I could have borne that.”
“There are a couple of other things I should tell you.”
Weyland’s eyes, which had been lightening up, suddenly went cold and hard again, and Noah bemoaned the fact that even now, after so much time together, he found it so difficult to trust her love for him.
“Grace and Harry have been lovers,” Noah said, and watched Weyland digest the information.
“Thank the gods Stella didn’t murder her,” he said, and Noah laughed, squeezing his hands, glad he had accepted it so readily.
“Talking of Harry…” she said.
“Yes?”
“He has asked Jack and me to make the Great Marriage. Unite and strengthen the land as much as possible to face whatever Catling decides to throw at it.”
“Of course you agreed,” Weyland said, and now both his voice and face were flat.
“Yes, we did,” said Noah. “Weyland, it will be a single night. It won’t mean—”
He shot her such a terrible look, composed of equal parts of fear and hatred and despair, that Noah quailed.
“I know,” she whispered, and Weyland pulled his hands away from hers.
All in all, Noah thought later as she sat back on the sofa, a whisky and soda in her hand, alone in the room, it had been a frightful day.
For the moment Noah was not thinking about Grace or Weyland. Two other subjects consumed her: the Great Marriage, and the revelation that the daughter Brutus and Genvissa had conceived had been Catling.
Noah felt a little sick at the idea of the Great Marriage. Seeing Jack again, after all these years, had confused her deeply. She was so sure of Weyland, so sure she loved him, so happy in her choice, and yet when Jack smiled, or slid his eyes her way, or, damn it, kissed her, then doubts assailed her. It made Noah realise that no matter how much she loved Weyland, she could not simply set to one side what she had once felt for Jack. As Cornelia and Caela, and in her early years as Noah, she had loved Jack with an all-consuming passion.
Then had come Weyland, and Noah thought she’d left her love for Jack far in the past.
Now Noah wondered if it was as far behind her as she’d thought.
She loved Weyland. She truly did, and was happy with him, and didn’t want their marriage to fall apart, but, oh, that moment when Harry had mentioned the Great Marriage, and she and Jack had exchanged glances, everything almost had fallen apart.
“Gods,” muttered Noah, putting her drink down so she could rummage about the room looking for a cigarette. She didn’t smoke, or only rarely, and right now she felt a cigarette might just save her life.
Five minutes and no cigarette later, Noah slumped back on the sofa and drained her drink. She forced her mind away from Jack, and thought about the child he, as Brutus, had conceived with Genvissa.
Catling! Noah wasn’t too sure whether to be glad she’d murdered Genvissa when she had, delaying the Troy Game’s emergence into flesh, or to wonder if she’d only increased Catling’s malevolence in the doing. Did I make things worse?
For hours Noah sat there, drinking too many whisky and sodas, thinking about Jack and Catling and, eventually, the daughter Noah had lost in her first life. Genvissa and she had both lost daughters. Genvissa’s had been Catling…but what had Cornelia been carrying? Just an innocent baby, the victim of Genvissa’s (Catling’s, more like) hatred, or something else?
Noah remembered how her daughter had been conceived using the power of Mag’s Pond.
“Surely nothing bad could have come of that,” she whispered, eventually, when the apartment was cold and dark. “Surely.”
Then she sighed, set the empty glass to one side, and went to look for Grace.
Weyland had gone to find the imps. He discovered them wandering the Embankment, not too far from the Savoy, as if they knew he would be needing them.
“Well?” said Weyland, leaning over the stone wall and looking at the Thames.
“My, we’re in a fierce mood today,” said Jim.
“I am in no mood for your witticisms,” snapped Weyland. “What have you learned?”
“Jack has been doing what anyone who knew him, and you, and Noah, could have expected,” said Bill, instantly professional. He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small notebook, flipping through the pages. “He has established himself at Copt Hall. Spends many nights running the forests. Has an eccentric manservant.”
At that Bill looked up from his notebook and both he and Jim intoned as one, “We don’t like Malcolm.”
“Why is that?”
“He is unreadable,” said Bill.
Weyland gave a slight shrug. “He’s working for Jack. Isn’t that enough reason to dislike him?”
The imps grinned, and Bill went back to his notebook. “Your wife has been out to see Jack. Twice.”
“I know that.”
“She went for a walk in the woods with him.”
“So?”
“We could have taken photographs, if you had asked.”
Weyland felt like reaching out and strangling the damned imp. “Photographs of what?”
“They kissed,” said Jim.
Weyland closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “And?” he said, opening his eyes again.
“That’s it,” said Jim. “Just a kiss.”
“But she clung to him,” said Bill.
Then he fell silent, and both imps looked steadily at Weyland. For his part, Weyland suddenly wished he’d never set the cursed creatures on Jack’s trail. He realised he didn’t want to know what Jack and Noah got up to.
“And this wrongness that Jack has been carrying on about?” said Weyland.
“Don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Jim.
“But it sounds scary,” said Bill.
Weyland narrowed his eyes. “You’re hiding something.”
“Never,” said Jim.
“You’re looking way too pleased with yourselves,” Weyland said.
The imps looked steadily, brightly, at him, but didn’t say anything.
“What about these murders?” said Weyland. “What do you know about them?”
“Why ask us?” said Jim.
“Lucky guess,” said Weyland. “Look at you, all bright confidence one moment and shifty-eyed discomfort the next. If there is one thing, lads, that you should have learned over the past three hundred years it would be a greater knowledge of the art of dissembling.”
“We don’t know anything,” said Bill. “Nothing.”
This time his voice was surer, and both imps were back to regarding Weyland as if they had never been guilty of anything more foul than stealing a pie left to cool on a windowsill, but Weyland knew, with every piece of intuition available to him, that they were involved somehow.
Weyland felt sickened, and suddenly wanted nothing more to do with the imps. “I think we can consider our arrangement at an end,” he said. “You’re not as useful as I’d thought you’d be.”
“Wait!” said Jim. “What about some payment, then?”
Weyland looked back over his shoulder as he walked away. “I gave you life and freedom. Is that not payment enough?”