There, sheltered from the rain, worked the Grand Master.
She was a short East Asian woman in her late twenties, dressed in jeans, sensible steel-toed work boots and a scarred leather apron over a long-sleeved grey cotton sweatshirt. She had an angular face with a dramatically pointed chin, a small mouth, snub nose and black hair pulled back into a ponytail. Behind her thick protective glasses her eyes were large and black.
Those eyes flicked up briefly to clock us arriving, but then it was back to work. The workspace looked like every other modern smithy I’ve been in. Shelves and workbenches, bundles of metal rods, sturdy metal and plastic containers full of useful bits and pieces, metal sinks, a water tank for quenching, racks for tools, gas tanks to drive the forge and a utilitarian cement floor with a drain. The Grand Master had two anvils – a standard farrier’s type for dropping on cartoon characters, and a broader-topped one with no horn that she was currently using. A blade-maker’s anvil.
If the weird lens flare flashes weren’t a sufficient giveaway, as I got closer I could sense the spell she was using to enchant her workings. Too fast and concussive to get a read on her signare, but it was different. Not like mine or Nightingale’s, or even the weird yin–yang thing Guleed was rocking these days.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘My name’s Peter Grant.’
The Grand Master ignored me and continued hitting the blade with a hammer. A leaf-bladed spearhead, I saw, with a long neck and flanges to stop it going in too deep.
‘You know that’s an illegal weapon, right?’ I said – more to make conversation.
‘Wait until she’s finished,’ said Caroline. ‘Have you got no manners?’
The Grand Master gave the spear blade a last smack, held it up in front of her face and turned it left and right to examine it before laying it down on a stone-topped workbench to cool. I noticed that she only wore a glove on her left hand, which held the tongs – the right, in which she held the hammer, was bare.
Once she’d carefully placed her hammer in a rack, she turned to Caroline and started signing.
I’d learnt a bit of BSL in training, just enough to say ‘yes/no’, ‘police’, ‘are you OK?’ and ‘please make your way to the nearest emergency exit.’ All of which I realised I had completely forgotten.
Caroline signed back and the Grand Master signed again.
‘This is Grace Yutani, Grand Master and current custodian of the archive of the Sons of Wayland,’ said Caroline. Then, after another flurry of signing by Grace, ‘And keeper of the true secret flame.’
Seawoll signed his own name, but Caroline had to introduce me and Danni.
I had a million questions, but when you don’t know where to start you go with trivia to break the ice. I pointed at the spearhead cooling on the workbench.
‘What’s this for, then?’ I asked, and Caroline signed.
Grace signed back.
‘Dragon spear,’ said Caroline, but I remembered to keep my eyes on Grace.
‘Are you expecting to meet a dragon?’ I asked, and remembered Brook had mentioned them, too. Perhaps dragons were a northern thing, like flat caps and an ingrained sense of grievance.
‘I don’t know,’ signed Grace. ‘But it’ll work with fish as well.’
I wanted to touch it and see what vestigia it had, but I figured that would be a mistake and not just because I would burn my fingers.
‘We heard you had a break-in?’ said Seawoll. ‘Somebody stole a lamp.’
Grace flinched when Caroline translated, and frowned at her friend, who then signed back. I didn’t need a translation to know that Caroline was denying she was the source of that information.
She didn’t want us to know, I thought. I wonder why?
‘We had a break-in,’ signed Grace, and then crossed her arms across her chest.
‘But you didn’t think to report it?’ asked Seawoll.
Grace kept her arms crossed and glared at Caroline.
‘You’ve seen who lives here,’ said Caroline. ‘Whom do you think I should have called?’
‘You should have called Peter here,’ said Seawoll. ‘He likes cats.’
‘We didn’t think it was any of the Folly’s concern.’
‘Two people are fucking dead,’ said Seawoll. ‘Perhaps if you’d fucking reported this we might have got to them first.’
This, I thought, was highly unlikely, but it had its effect. After Caroline had signed her the gist, Grace uncrossed her arms.
‘We had no reason to think it was a significant item,’ she signed. ‘We thought the thief had snatched it while running away from the ladies.’
Because, while sleeping, eating and watching soaps were the ladies’ primary activity, a couple of them liked to go out at night and prowl around the forest.
‘And do what?’ asked Danni.
‘We don’t ask,’ said Caroline. ‘But they have to wash up before they’re allowed indoors. Anyway, the screaming woke me and I ran out to see what was going on.’
‘Who was screaming?’ asked Seawoll.
Danni had her notebook out by then and was taking notes.
‘The ladies,’ said Caroline. ‘They have a very distinctive scream but I didn’t think it was anything important – sometimes they can be very cat. So I got up and went out to tell them to shut up.’
Seawoll asked Grace, through Caroline, where she’d been when the screaming started. When Caroline went to answer for her, she slapped her hand on the bench. They exchanged looks and Caroline dutifully signed the question. Grace signed back.
‘She was fast asleep because nobody bothered to wake her,’ said Caroline. ‘We share the pool house, and the ladies are my responsibility so I didn’t think it was worth ruining her beauty sleep.’ She signed the last bit with more emphasis.
Grace signed again – also with emphasis.
‘We’re a couple,’ said Caroline to us wearily, and then she signed something angrily back at Grace, who crossed her arms again.
Two monomaniacs and a litter of cat-women, I thought. That’s got to be an interesting family dynamic – not to mention the basis of an exciting new reality show.
‘Anyway, I saw someone dodging out of here carrying something heavy, with Mildred and Sophia in hot pursuit,’ said Caroline. ‘They were having a great time, by the way.’
That ‘someone’ looked like a woman, according to Caroline, but she was dressed in black or dark blue, ‘with one of those tight hoods, like a hijab but not’, so Caroline couldn’t be sure.
That would have been Lesley, I thought, in full ninja mode.
Caroline had done what she called an ‘assisted jump’ to close down the distance.
‘Nearly hit a tree, by the way,’ she said. ‘Which is why you shouldn’t fly on instruments without instruments.’ Grace laughed when Caroline signed that – a sort of breathy giggle like one of Abigail’s foxes. ‘Then I hit them with a tangle and down they went.’
I was dying to know what a tangle was, but knew I’d have to wait.
‘My main concern was getting to them before Mildred and Sophia,’ said Caroline. ‘But I think she hit them with a serious impello and, the next thing I know, they’re flying in my direction. So I had to catch them, didn’t I?’