Modern Magick

The Fifth Britain: 15

'In the hopes of warding off a beating,' said Jay as we trooped up the stairs, 'I did try to find a way to get word to you, but phones from our Britain don't work here — big surprise — and Millie can't go back and forth all that often. It tires her.'

I am afraid I declined to be pressed into service as a messenger, Melmidoc put in, though Mr. Patel is tiresomely persuasive. In another day, perhaps two, I would have been dispatched quite against my will, I am sure of it.

'Ves worries,' said Jay, with a shrug.

She appears to me the very picture of a composed young woman.

'All a lie. Underneath that calm exterior, she's stewing over at least a dozen things.'

I blushed, for this I could not deny. 'Maybe not a dozen...'

'Anyway,' Jay continued, 'I wanted to share. Who wouldn't?' We reached the top of the spire, where the cosy library had once been. The room was still bare in comparison with before, but Jay had acquired a few chairs from somewhere and hauled them in — somehow — and he now collapsed into one. 'It's amazing,' he enthused. 'You have to get a look around, Ves. This is what our world could've been like, if we hadn't screwed everything up.'

'You know,' I said, taking the chair beside his. 'That's more or less exactly what Fenella Beaumont was saying before she kidnapped us all here.'

'Uh huh. And who is she?'

I explained.

Jay looked nonplussed, but he shrugged. 'Never thought I'd be in agreement with Ancestria Magicka, but she's not wrong.'

'No, indeed. But what of it? It's too late to turn our Britain into this one.'

'Is it?' One of Jay's brows went up.

The world shifted under us, but subtly. Melmidoc had moved us, but it came in a smooth, unobtrusive feeling of motion, nothing like Ashdown Castle at all. The effects of practice, I supposed.

'It is,' said Alban. 'Well — it is too late to come out of the shadows. Can you imagine the result if we tried?' He had eschewed the chairs in favour of perching on the windowsill, and he did not look at us as he spoke: his attention was fixed upon the island flying by outside.

'Total uproar,' I said, for I had to agree.

'True,' Jay conceded. 'But all our lost arts? What could we relearn, with help from the fifth?'

'You did not have much luck learning to jump sideways, right?'

Jay rolled his eyes, and slouched disconsolately in his chair. 'I've had only two days to practice. It took more like two years to learn to jump at all, as you put it. If I could stay here—'

'Wait.' I stared, shocked. 'You want to stay?'

Jay avoided my eyes. 'Think about it, Ves. All the things we could learn. All the things we could do.'

I had been thinking about it, pretty much without cease ever since Fenella had opened her big mouth and let all these delicious and dangerous secrets come tumbling out. It was, as I have already said, a seductive prospect. 'But.' I rallied, with a struggle. 'This is exactly why we have to go home. We're needed there. We aren't remotely needed here.'

'And we could do our work much better there if we've been properly trained here. I don't propose to stay forever, Ves. Just long enough.'

'How long is long enough?'

Jay just shrugged.

'Melmidoc,' said the Baron, finally turning around. 'I don't think we should leave that lot roaming around Whitmore for very long. Certainly not without supervision.'

Do not be concerned, said Melmidoc coolly. They are not unsupervised.

'Oh?'

Almost every house on Whitmore has its own occupants with my general characteristics, he supplied. Most have more than one. I am receiving regular reports as to the movements of your friends.

'Not our friends,' Zareen said coldly.

'Hey,' said George. 'Some of them are mine.'

'Yes, about that?' Zareen threw him a challenging look. 'You need better friends.'

'So you've said.'

I held up a hand to forestall further argument. 'Are you saying every building on the entire island is haunted?' I said to Melmidoc.

Haunted. His dry, aged voice registered amusement. If you wish to call it by such a term.

'It's the best I've got,' I apologised. 'I come from the diminished sixth, remember? These things are rare and weird back there.'

Rare and weird. Melmidoc was definitely laughing at me.

'You know what I mean.'

'What are their movements?' interrupted Alban.

At present they are nearing the top of the cliff. They seem to be engaged mostly in pointing at things and saying the word wow unnecessarily often.

Tourists.

Which raised an unpleasant prospect for the fifth Britain, for this was what Fenella's decisions would initially condemn them to. Endless trips from starry-eyed magickal tourists. Whitmore awash with wistful and marvelling magickers from the sixth Britain, eager to see and experience every single little thing they could — and to take as much of it back with them as possible.

What's more, Jay would not be the only person who'd try to stay. Far from it. Our own, beloved Britain would be half emptied of magickers by the time the excitement died down, which would only cripple it further.

We had a full-scale emergency on our hands.