Everyone had made the best of the solstice festival, though there was a looming shadow over the whole thing. There had been a feast, and dancing, and people telling stories. Rathna’s French had improved, of course it had, but she still wasn’t fluent enough to catch the wordplay or innuendo, even with Grietje murmuring in her ear.
After a bit, she’d gone off to sit a bit further from the circle of people sharing tales and songs and dances to find a bench where she could observe. The little ones hadn’t exactly gone to sleep, but they were in little piles on blankets and cloaks, curled up against a mother’s leg or a father’s.
Five minutes later, Ferdinand joined her. “Are you all right, Mistress?”
Rathna grimaced, rubbing her face. “That obvious?” She let out a long breath. “I was thinking what it would be like, at home. Worrying a bit less this morning than I was last night.”
“You had said your husband was.” He stalled and tried again. “There was something?” Ferdinand was tentative, exceedingly tentative.
Thinking back, she hadn’t said much about what Gabe was up to. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it if it didn’t work. And now that it had, she wasn’t sure how to talk about it at all, though it was, in fact, relevant to their next few days. “Ah. Last night, my husband made a petition of the Fatae, and it was answered. Or at least, he got what he asked for. It remains to be seen how that plays out.”
“Mistress?” Ferdinand pulled back, blinking at her. “But he’s...”
“He had the Council’s permission. For something he’s working on with them. But he’s the one who did the asking.” She shook her head, feeling the long braid down her back rock, the weight of it. “I don’t know all the details yet. Some things defy writing about. But it went well. He’s hopeful. We’re hopeful.” She let out a puff of breath. “That it went well for him. I hope it means it will go well with us too. Though we’re not asking quite the same thing.”
“No, Mistress.” Ferdinand coughed. “What are we doing, then?”
“You are observing, we very much hope. Helping carry the offerings, but I will do all the talking, or with the help of our translators. It is not entirely clear to me how the Fatae manage the variety of human languages.”
Ferdinand smiled a little at that. “And we have rather a lot, don’t we? You said your French was better, so is mine.”
“And you’re fluent in German, which I hope we won’t need.” If they did get caught up by the advancing German army, there was a slim chance he’d be able to talk them out of trouble, but a very slim one. She did not want to rely on that fragile a hope. “And I’m reasonably fluent in Bengali, though that’s not much use here. A little Hindi, but mostly ordinary needs, nothing complex. And Latin, of course. A bit of Hebrew and Yiddish, but again, either for ritual or very practical. That’s plenty to keep me busy.”
If she’d had a different childhood entirely, she might also have picked up Sanskrit, for ritual use. But that would have meant a different family, a different upbringing, parents from a different caste and background.
Ferdinand nodded. “What do you expect when we go back to the cave?”
She took a breath and laid it out for him. Her goal, first and foremost, was to pass on what she knew about what had damaged the Paris portals, and whether it would impact any of the others. Gabe, bless and keep him, had been informative at length about what he’d got from the Council. Mostly from Alexander, if she was reading between the lines correctly.
If so, Alexander was being unusually informative, perhaps because of a touch of guilt on some front or another. Thesan had shared a few more notes, snatches she’d picked up from the conversations her husband had had with his brother. The two of them at least knew what might matter, and she’d make more offerings of thanks for that when she could.
When she got home. Which brought her to, “I was sitting alone because I was thinking of what I’d usually be doing. There would be the bonfire on the estate, solstice eve. The day itself, of course, we’ve obligations at the Council Keep for the offerings, and usually some small gathering after, with friends. And then, tomorrow, the whole next week, we’d be at the Midsummer Faire.”
It was still happening this year, even with the war, because the harvest mattered, the harvest rituals mattered, and this was the beginning of them. Muted, of course, with many people fighting or in war work, but food was essential. Solstice was the promise of harvest, as Geoffrey had put it once. It was the pause in the agricultural cycle where you could wipe your brow and take a short rest between planting and gathering in. No matter what else happened in the world, that needed to happen for them to make it through the winter. “And I miss my children.”
Ferdinand cleared his throat carefully at that. “Not like my family. Though,” he sighed, “I suppose Mutti misses me.”
She was sure they had one of the more distant sorts of families, with the children trotted out when clean and scrubbed for a few minutes. Not how Gabe had grown up, or his sister Charlotte, nor the way they’d brought up their three. But it was quite common in the First Families. Not at all good for them, if anyone asked Rathna, but no one did, generally. “I am sure she does, whatever else. With any luck, we’ll make it home safely soon, and you can see her.”
He looked up at her, blinking several times. Then he nodded and quickly excused himself to go have a cigarette while leaning against one of the ancient trees, looking out across the vineyard trellises.
Two days later, they made the long trek by cart, through the winding roads and up into the foothills of the mountains, back to the cave. Rathna was dressed as well as she could manage at this point. She wore the one of her dresses that had taken the least damage over the past months, in a vibrant green that at least felt suitable to the height of the summer growth. They had a basket of items to offer, pastries and good bread and wine, as well as some of the berries and early fruits, a quarter wheel of one of the best cheeses. And a bit more of the same for food when they were done. Offer your best, that was the rule, but always what you would gladly eat yourself.
This time, Rathna went first, with Ferdinand carrying the basket of offerings. Miren and Grietje followed behind. None of them was sure how this would work. The other two carried two lanterns each, enough to illuminate the cave properly, at least where they expected to be. Rathna moved to take her place in front of the flat stone they’d made the offerings on. Before she could decide what to do, there was a pop, like the pressure before a thunder crack or a bolt of lightning. There had been no one there, and now there was.
Before them stood a woman. Her hair was pulled back and covered by a net of silver and sparkling beads, closely framing a rounded face with a broad forehead, high cheekbones, and a generous mouth. It was a face that would not be out of place on any modern city street, and yet it was ageless. Rathna had no sense of how old she was, but she didn’t even have much sense of what age meant on such a face. The woman before her might have been any age between the youngest adulthood and that point where she visibly aged, well into her later years. She wore a gown of deep green, darker than Rathna’s, but very much of the same intensity.
There was nothing immediately that marked her as being one of the Fatae or of being anything other than entirely human. Her skin was pale, about the shade of Ferdinand’s, but it did not glow with unearthly light. Her ears were not visible, but the shape of the netted hood suggested they were not unduly pointed. There were five fingers on each hand, not the sixth finger that some lore ascribed to those of witchblood. But there was something about the speed of her gestures, the slow flow of them, that was not at all like any human Rathna had ever met, as if she were dancing to an entirely different drumbeat than a human heart.
Rathna inclined her head and made the sort of bob she had learned to make when making the offerings during the Council rites. It was not entirely a curtsey, as she understood it, but it was a reverence and a sign of respect. When she straightened up, the woman was watching her intently now, and that was more than a little uncomfortable.
“How may I call you?” Ah, that was something she’d been warned to expect. The giving of a true name had power, of course, but at the same time, she would need to establish her credentials, such as they were.
“I am called Rathna. I am of Albion.” It was terribly hard to know how to begin, what was enough, what was too much.
“You come from…” And then a pause. “You are from many places and many peoples. How is that?”
It was a question Rathna had heard far too often, and she could not quite restrain the slight sigh at it even here. No one ever thought she belonged where she did, apparently. Even the Fatae. It was almost a moment of feeling anchored in the normal expectations of the world.
“I am a child of Bengal, born among London’s dockside tenements. I am family to a people without a home for many years. I am woven with an ancient line of Albion by marriage. All these things are true, and I call the magic of the portals to my hand and it comes.” The last came out not sharp - she was doing her best to avoid that - but with a hint of frustration that she had to keep proving herself.
The woman shifted, like wind blowing through clothing hung outside to dry, a long length of silk or cotton moving, then it settled. “Peace, keeper of Albion. Your magic is not what I expected.”
Well, that wasn’t any more reassuring, but at least it was a different sort of confusing puzzle than the usual. Rathna let out a breath. “Lady. I do tend the portals of Albion.”
That got a nod, perhaps approving. “Your husband is Gabriel, yes?”
Rathna blinked. “Yes, mistress of magics, he is.” She had a flash back to the moment before she’d met him, where that name had sounded like a woman’s to her. Even more so in this Fatae woman’s accent, the lilt of the local French and Basque underlying everything.
“My sisters across the sea have met him and spoken well of him.” The woman inclined her head, once in acknowledgement. “You may call me Urdin.” Rathna had picked up that much Basque from Miren. It was a colour word, one of those that meant blue, green, grey, the shades of water and other depths. A potent use name for this sort of meeting, then.
“Is there a proper form of respect I might use? I do not know what is polite.”
There was a laugh, cascading off the walls of the cave, joyfully scattering like the sound of bells. In almost any other situation, Rathna might have read it as a half-mocking laugh of her naivety or youth. Here, that did not matter. Chances were good this woman was hundreds, thousands of years old. If the question amused her, well, all to the good. “We do not need titles between us, do we? Whatever would we do with them?”
Rathna suspected that near any of the Council, confronted with this question, would have their formalities shattered into pieces. The framing, though, made her ask, “May I ask, then, do you know Alexander Landry? He would have stayed in these parts thirty years or so ago.”
It brought forth another peal. “What makes you ask that, then? Oh, yes, we remember him, quite well. He made, how do you say, an impression. A generally good one.”
“He is a friend to my family, and family to our close friends. A recent one, a handful of years, but a welcome one.” Without his aid, she’d never have known how to make the original offering as properly as she had. Clearly, she’d done something right, given how this was going. “He sends his good wishes and asked me to say something.” She then repeated the phrase in Basque he’d shared with her, which Miren had refused to translate, which made Rathna fairly sure it was about magic or ritual or both. She’d practised it carefully.
Urdin arched one eyebrow, then nodded once. “We are glad to be remembered so.” Approving, whatever else she was, Rathna was reasonably sure of that. Or, possibly, entirely wrong, and all of them would be turned into frogs or snakes or something else out of a fairy tale at any moment. Then she glanced around the cave. “You had information to bring to us, and also a request. The portals, in Paris.” It was very much as if she were in a conversation with her fellows of the guild, or another of the most powerful guilds, treating her as an acknowledged mistress of her art. Not, as Gabe had described, being decidedly a petitioner. Rathna filed that away for contemplating later.
The information first, obviously. Rathna took a breath. “Yes, mistress of magics. You must know, I am sure, that the Grand Salle des Portes in Paris, as we call it, has been badly damaged, possibly destroyed. I know something of how it came to be so, and I wished to share it with you, in case it was a help in the mending.”
“Did you.” That was calculating, all of a sudden. “How do you come to know this?”
“My husband was present when first anyone was told what happened. Others, friends of the family, have told him more in the last few days.”
“And you do not bargain with this information?” Urdin seemed taller now, certainly more impressive. Ferdinand was still a foot or two behind her, but she rather thought Miren and Grietje had stepped back.
“Some things are not for a bargain, lady. Some things are shared because it is right to do so.” She had her own ethics, whatever anyone else in Albion might have done. “I speak on my own behalf, judging that you have a right to the knowledge. That I would want to know, if a door I had tended might be mended better, by the knowing.”
“We might not mend it at all.” There was a sudden sharp sorrow there. As if it were one straw too many, one stone that caused an avalanche. Urdin looked away, up to the corner of the cave for a long moment. “Go on.”
“As I understand it, two of the Council Members of Albion were in Paris, getting those last magical treasures out of the Paris library and museums before the German army took the city. Many are now safe in Albion, to be protected and guarded until they may be properly returned.” Rathna could only hope that would happen. The alternatives did not bear thinking about.
“That is,” there was a slight catch there, before Urdin continued. “It is better than not, though we feel the wound of their absence. But that would not destroy the portals.” Urdin’s voice was no less musical now, but it had something of the open octaves and spaces of someone playing on a great pipe organ, something that reverberated uncomfortably through body and bone.
“I am glad to take a message back, for those who might answer.” Rathna wasn’t at all sure how that would go over, but she could try. And she did, in fact, know Alexander, who had his own opinions about a country’s magical heritage being away from home.
Urdin nodded once. “Go on, what happened?”
“They were pursued to the portals by fighters, mages and magicians, duellists, seeking to stop them. As told to me, Livia Fortier, born to an ancient line and married into an equally ancient one that stems from France herself, called down a final strike, spending her life to drive them back. She sought to prevent them from taking the last of the treasures and wanted to seal the portals. Her husband mourns her greatly.” All of that was true, without editorialising. One did not do that when conveying what must be said. “I have information about the portal readings when they came through, in my notes.”
“I wish that, yes. And you have been tending the portal at Dax.” That seemed more neutral. At least if Rathna were reading Urdin’s expressions at all accurately, and she had no idea. She had been warned, more than once, that the Fatae might look human, but they were not human at all. Their priorities and reactions were based on entirely different lines of thought.
“To the best of my ability, yes. We did all we could to keep it open for those fleeing Paris, then from Rennes. It is, pardon, I do not quite know how to describe it outside the terms we use with each other. It is a frayed cloth, still, but we have been mending it, weaving in new strength as best we can.”
“A serviceable gown.” That had a moment of amusement again. “A fair description. And you have something you need?”
Rathna had had a fine speech ready for this, and now, in the moment, she could not bring herself to make it. “Mistress of magic, if it pleases you and your sisters and your brothers and your kin, I wish to go home. We wish to go home, we of Albion, and those who have ties there.” She gestured slightly behind her, where Grietje was. “We have done as much as we can here, and I fear we will be a burden if we stay much longer.”
“A burden and at great risk.” That had a sharpness to it, like the bite of a tart apple, the flavour of it bursting in Rathna’s mind like Urdin had placed it there with her words.
“Both of those, lady.”
There was a slight nod and a long pause. Rathna did not speak. Jogging the elbow of the immortal power who might do you a favour was never a good idea. In fact, the whole thing was making her deeply suspicious about the truth of certain myths and tales she’d learned from her mother. Though, she supposed, some people would be eternally foolish when presented with this particular challenge, no matter what the cost.
The silence went on, well beyond comfort. Finally, Urdin nodded once. “You must open a door to somewhere that we know. An ancient portal, one not locked against us. Your school, your keep, your city, none of them will do.”
Rathna swallowed. “We are still working on arrangements, but we believe the portal in the Tower of London may yet open to your call.”
Urdin’s chin jerked up. “That would do.” It was something made up of praise and just a hint of surprise. “You will need to strengthen the portal here, to have the reach. Across the ocean is a challenge, and that path has been asleep for many years.”
“Near enough five hundred, lady.” Rathna spread her hands out slightly, the way she did when she was pointing out something to her seniors in the guild. “Is there any specific rite we should tend to?”
“Give me your hands, if you would learn. You will, I think, know what to do.”
Rathna swallowed hard. Gabe had told her about climbing onto a horse’s back, and this was like that, reaching out without knowing what might come. It could destroy her, it could change her utterly, it could swing her life in some new direction. She could only trust she was making the right choice. She lifted her hands, palm up, in the supplicant gesture. A moment later, Urdin reached her hands, palm to palm, then fingers brushing Rathna’s wrists, resting right at the pulse point.
The knowledge swirled into her head. She’d have gone to her knees except that there was an arm there behind her, holding her up at the waist, giving her something to brace against. She swallowed twice, grabbing for any sense of self in a torrent of understanding. It washed over her like an ocean, going from the coastal waters into something deep and full of dangers she didn’t begin to understand. Best she could, she stood her ground. She let it soak in; she did not fight any of it. Morah Avigail had taught her this, built it from the bedrock up, how to be present and feel and know and listen.
Slowly, steadily, she made enough sense of it to let it flow better. It turned, somehow, from a downpour to a soaking rain, filling her up, seeping into crevices and hollows she’d never known she had. The magic had flavours to it, tastes she’d had and loved, of chocolate and pastry and smoked fish, of wine and coffee and ripe cheese. The bright and melded spices of India. It had flowers in it, the ones that were the height of summer here, in Albion, in India, all tangled together. There was honey there, fresh from the hive, and made into sweets. And then there was the pure crystal water, cold as if from some deep well underground, ageless and perfect.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, but when she finally began to come out of it, her knees were trembling. She kept standing through sheer force of will, as she felt Urdin’s fingers brush one last time, then part. It left a gaping hole in her magic, in her palms, and she could not think about stemming that void, not yet.
Instead, Rathna forced herself to focus on Urdin’s face. Now, the other woman glowed, with an unearthly light, like the moon distilled into silver. It made the cave shine brightly, enough that Rathna had to blink against it. “Leave your notes. And you will need this back.” Urdin twisted her wrist, and then she held up the single aquamarine stone that Rathna had left a few days before.
Morah Avigail’s aquamarine. Rathna’s aquamarine. She could have wept, and she couldn’t, not yet. Rathna simply held out her hand, feeling the weight of it drop into her palm. Then, between one of her too-rapid heartbeats and the next, Urdin was gone, taking all the light but the two dim lanterns with her, and leaving them all in an echoing silence.
In a story, in a novel, the heroine would have pluckily turned to her companions and said something like, “That went well!” If people wrote novels about something like this, which they didn’t. All Rathna could do was breathe. Breathe, and try not to collapse. She could feel the sweat pooling in the small of her back, the dampness of it and the way the cloth was sticking. Her feet ached as if she’d walked a dozen miles or more, her knees were throbbing, and her head was about to join them.
Ferdinand’s arm was still at her back. He hadn’t moved. She swallowed. “First things. My notes.” Her voice cracked audibly, and she didn’t try to speak again, just reaching into the small pouch over her shoulder for the folded paper. Five steps brought her to the flat altar space. She left the sheets on the top, adding a stone from the ground to hold them in place as a precaution.
She finally turned to look at the rest of them. “I—” Then she took in their faces. “Pardon?”
“Mistress? Did it go well? We - I saw you react to things several times, but I could not hear anything, or see anything.” Ferdinand was hesitant.
Ah. Well. A very personal visit, then. Right. She’d have to recalibrate that later. With any luck, with Gabe’s help. He would at least understand. “It went well. We need to do some additional work on the portal. We need to find one willing to open to us on the other end. But there is hope. And they were, I think, pleased I could give them more information about the Paris portals.” Then her knees threatened to give way. “Can I have your arm, please, back to the cart? And a rest before we go back?”
She wondered, for a moment, if Miren had seen a tad bit more than the others. The older woman kept looking at Rathna curiously, as if she couldn’t believe whatever she’d glimpsed. It wasn’t fear, though; it was more like awe or wonder, the same way Rathna had felt, to be honest.
Rathna had expected some catch. There likely would still be one. That was how this went. It was worth it, or so she hoped. And telling them about Paris had been the right thing. They could only go forward as best they could.