Aunt Arianne followed a narrow path between the trees and the kitchen windows, and stopped to survey the service passage leading to the street. The outer door to this had been concealed by more posters, and it opened only from the inside. A wholly practical space, it featured a freshly restrung clothes line, a collection of stone bottles, two bins, and, currently, many trodden fragments of thistle.
A shrunken, white-haired man was busily sweeping this last away, but stopped when he spotted them, and propped his broom against the passage wall so he could come to greet them.
“Dama Seaforth. You will keep the Grove open a little longer, won’t you? So those held up by their professions can visit?”
“While the light holds,” Aunt Arianne replied. “After that, it will be up to Dem Makepeace.”
As the man retreated, Aunt Arianne tilted her head back, her veil swaying. At first Eluned thought that she, too, was praying, but her stance was wrong, and following what seemed to be the direction of her gaze, Eluned spotted a curious patch on a branch near the top of the garden’s dividing wall. Not mistletoe, as she first guessed, but a finer, denser clump of leaves, tucked flat against the branch. Tiny spots of colour caught the eye: flowers or berries among the foliage.
“Why is it interesting?” Eluned asked.
“Because it has a heartbeat.”
Two startling revelations in the one serene comment. Eluned responded to the more immediate. “That’s a folie?”
“Most likely.”
“It’s so small! The way they’ve been talking about these things, I was expecting something more impressive.”
“The most dangerous thing I ever met didn’t exactly make a strong first impression.”
Aunt Arianne dropped her hand from where it had crept beneath her veil, then walked away. The clump of leaves above didn’t so much as quiver, but Eluned still found it difficult to turn her back on it. She took a long breath, and—as she sometimes did when particularly nervous—activated her right arm and made the precise movements of her shoulder to bend the artificial arm as if to applaud. Meeting the hand with her left, she pressed skin to metal joints and beautifully-carved wood, and closed her eyes against fear.
Then she returned her arm to resting mode and hurried to catch up with her aunt, who was inspecting the freshly-polished gate blocking entry to the rest of the garden.
“You can hear heartbeats?”
“Blood. I am enormously aware of blood.”
“That’s not a very reassuring thing to say, Aunt Arianne.”
Her aunt laughed, and turned away from the coiling metal snakes. “I am being very grim and portentous, aren’t I? I shall balance myself thinking up intricate plans of revenge, should Dem Makepeace leave me to pass some point of no return. How are you feeling?”
“I like the house,” Eluned replied, sidestepping the question.
“So do I. Your sister has been rearranging the attic into a workroom, somewhat hampered by Griff’s attempts to discover kite-making materials.”
The long attic, when they reached it, had been dusted and then divided into two distinct halves. Anything resembling a bench had been cleared and placed down the right end, and all the other furniture crammed into the left half. This done, Eleri had joined Griff in unearthing the attic’s hidden treasures, ably assisted by Melly Ktai, the Daughter of Lakshmi called Nabah, and a handful of others closer to Griff’s age. Eluned was always impressed by how her brother and sister could start chatting away to people.
“No,” Griff was saying. “Dem Makepeace was chasing the monster when it fell through the ceiling. And when the monster nearly killed him, he killed Aunt, nearly. And bound her to keep her from dying, which meant that she couldn’t be bound to Lord Msrah. Then he didn’t even stay to finish the binding properly, just sent her that key. Is he always like that?”
Melly Ktai shrugged. “Like we’d know? He talked to Dama Chelwith when Dama Fulbright died, asked her to have the house shut up, but otherwise he’s like the folies: we all know they’re there, but hardly anyone’s seen them.”
“Still the real Keeper?” Eleri asked. “How long?”
“Grandama says he used to come to Forest House parties, back when there were lots of Fulbrights,” offered the youngest of the helpers, a boy around ten.
“And he’d been Keeper before there were Fulbrights there,” added a slightly bigger girl. “He’s old old.”
Griff, excavating a chest of old-fashioned clothes, held up a girdle curiously, then said: “What sort of vampire is he, Aunt? You said he wasn’t a Thoth-den.”
“No, not Thoth,” Aunt Arianne said as—to Griff’s obvious glee—the other occupants of the attic spun to look at her. “Your trunks have been delivered, and are waiting in your rooms. Re-pack these first, and wash for dinner.”
With unusual abruptness Aunt Arianne retreated down the stair, and Eluned supposed that the attic, bathed in a lovely sunset, was still too bright for her. Forest House was definitely not arranged for the convenience of vampires.
“Didn’t answer the question,” Eleri said.
“I’m not sure she knows.” Eluned picked up a red pleated shendy and tossed it into the nearest trunk, well aware that Eleri and Griff wouldn’t remember being told to clean up when there were more interesting subjects taking their attention.
“Ma‘at,” said the girl called Nabah. She also stooped to collect a piece of clothing, and folded it neatly. “My mother checked at Demar House when first we heard of this vampire who is the true Keeper. Dem Makepeace is one of only five Ma’at vampires in Prytennia, and has been on the Register of Blood since twenty-nine fifty-five.”
“Over two hundred and fifty years old?” Melly clicked her tongue. “I wonder if Ma’at’s a particularly strong line?”
“Or if the Aunt’s vampire is close to becoming stone.” Eleri ignored the re-packing in favour of examining an old lantern.
“I didn’t even know there was a Ma‘at line,” Eluned said, and poked Griff until he started helping to clean up. “What can they do?”
“Ma‘at is Order, isn’t she?” Melly said. “And she weighs the spirits of the Egyptian dead. And Ma’at’s wings protect, of course. Maybe it’s something to do with protection—that would go with being Keeper.”
“Ma‘at vampires can tell when you’re lying.”
A boy a few years older than Eluned strolled from the stair to the clear area set aside for Eleri’s workroom, and Eluned reflected that Forest House was going to be a difficult place to live if the whole neighbourhood thought themselves free to wander about as much as they pleased. But it was an unusual day, and after all the front doors were wide open.
“Only that?” Griff asked. “How boring.”
“Very much so,” the boy agreed, ignoring how they all stared at him. He looked out of place, dressed formally in a tunic and ankle-length pleated shendy of pristine white. “An incredibly dull lot. They usually end up as judges. The occasional detective.”
He started to say something else, but paused, stepping closer to the line of open windows. Eluned immediately crossed to the nearest.
“They’re back?” Griff hurried to join her. “This is the third time. Did you see them after lunch, Ned?”
Eluned shook her head, trying to make out the dividing wall. The south-western sky might be cherry-painted, but during the climb to the attic the grove had been swallowed by shadow. The one clear point below was the path up to the near edge of the circle, where a family were nervously heading toward the light of Forest House.
“I can only sort of see the top of the wall,” Griff complained. “How many are there? There were five after lunch, and there should only be four…”