“Are you a dryw as well?” Griff asked as he poured, his chin still tucked and shoulders stiff, clearly wanting to be angry because he’d been frightened. “I thought the Keeper was always a dryw, except for here.”
“Sometimes the oakfire takes them strongly,” the Keeper said. She looked down at her big husband, and smoothed brown curls back from his forehead. “Then it falls to their coafor to manage the day-to-day needs of the Grove, along with recording all visions. Thede will begin to recover himself, now that he’s spoken, but he is never fully in this world any more.”
This seemed an awful thing to Eluned. The Keeper of the Tasset Grove, near Caerlleon, had been a sharp, humorous man, showing no sign that the poisonous brew of mistletoe and oak bark used to bring on visions had any permanent impact. His official recorder—his coafor—had been his younger brother, and had loved to tease him about whatever he might have said under the influence of the oakfire, since he couldn’t remember his visions at all.
“Is it you who sends the ravens?” Griff was still trying to be angry, but revealed his sympathy by dumping several spoonfuls of sugar into the cup of tea he was preparing.
“Rav—?” Keeper Tyse stopped short, then clicked her tongue. “How senseless. Yes, if you’re being plagued by ravens, it’s most likely members of the Order. I do apologise.”
“The folies kill them,” Griff added, clearly pleased by the knowledge.
“I gather this appointment would be hotly contested,” Aunt Arianne said.
“Oh yes. Outside White Hill Grove, there is none more desirable, but no need to fash yourself. The vampire Makepeace is beloved of the Horned King, and there is no arguing that, even if he doesn’t stir himself over the day-to-day duties. Because Forest House has sat empty there has been a deal of talk, but nothing can come of it.” Keeper Tyse accepted the cup Griff offered, and bravely took a sugary sip. “The foreseeing will complicate matters a touch.”
Aunt Arianne’s response to this massive understatement was forestalled by the dryw, who abruptly tried to sit up. Griff stepped forward, and Eluned decided to distract him with a murmured reminder about tunnels. Judging Aunt Arianne safe to be left, she and Eleri made their pardons, and followed their brother’s bee-line for the cellar.
By mutual assent they didn’t discuss the dryw’s pronouncement, but simply began pushing bricks and tapping wood, regretting the sweeping efficiency of the cleaning party, which had left little in the way of helpful dust to betray vampiric entry-points.
It was at least half an hour later when Aunt Arianne tracked them down, finding them all crammed between two of the wine racks, intently pressing bricks.
“Is that wall particularly interesting for some reason?”
“Shiny spots,” Eleri replied, steadily winding the dynamo torch they’d fetched for light.
“And they go click!” Griff added, avidly trying another combination. Nothing could have been better designed to soothe over upsets than the prospect of a genuine hidden door. “This can’t be a new tunnel, though. This has been here as long as the house.”
“Why would there be a tunnel, new or otherwise?”
Eluned started to explain the rumours of underground passages, then broke off as the entire wall between the two racks swung in. Griff let out a crow of triumph and plunged forward, but Eluned managed to catch hold of his collar.
“Could be traps,” Eleri said, winding faster in an attempt to boost the inadequate beam of the torch. “Or vampires.”
“There’s no-one in there,” Aunt Arianne said, with a confidence that spoke of night vision and an awareness of blood. “I rather think you’ve found the hidden safe.”
“Safe? This is a whole room!”
Griff wriggled loose, and no traps stopped his excited progress. Aunt Arianne went to find a better light, and they were both proven right, for it was a safe the size of a room, and was full of treasures. Boxes of jewellery. A little cabinet of delicate ornaments. A drawer containing neat stacks of banknotes. A chest of sovereigns. And whorled, golden evidence of the long connection between Forest House and the Great Forest.
“We could have a dragonfly,” Griff said, struggling to lift an amasen horn the size of a pumpkin, far larger than any they’d seen on their visit to the Great Forest. “We could have a dragonfly each.”
“They did look rather fun, didn’t they?” Aunt Arianne said, with an odd note to her voice, but then she added briskly: “I’ll have to do a proper inventory. For now, however, there’s a few matters I wish to discuss, and there’s an hour or less until sunset—presuming that’s relevant.”
That meant she wanted to go to Hurlstone to talk: surely the safest place, even though there weren’t likely to be any raven eavesdroppers in the cellar. Ignoring protests, Eluned chivvied her reluctant siblings into shutting away the hoard and heading upstairs.
“That all belongs to us, to you, right?” Griff asked. “That’s what he said.”
“Dem Makepeace owns this house and all its contents,” Aunt Arianne said, her attention on the roofs surrounding the grove as she lowered her inevitable veil. “He has given me disposition of it, which is not technically the same thing as it belonging to me. Though I expect it will feel much the same in practice.”
Eluned followed her gaze, and then nudged Eleri, for a line of eight ravens had hopped forward to the edge of the roof on the left, where the trees were thinnest, bobbing and watching.
Griff, noticing, made a rude gesture. “Sneaky snitches.”
“Folies aren’t driving them off?” Eleri asked.
“That spot must give them enough time to get away.” Eluned considered hunting for a rock and trying her arm, but Aunt Arianne didn’t linger, heading for the gate. “Maybe the Order always spies, and ravens are why it’s called Hurlstone.”
“Since before London?” Griff shook his head.
The bite mark on Aunt Arianne’s hand had healed by the previous evening, but she still called the key without difficulty. Eluned stepped eagerly into the lead as her aunt closed the gate behind them, and they slipped through the shielding trees into a sun-drenched afternoon.
Drinking in drowsy perfection, Eluned gazed around at drystone walls and scatters of flowers against a backdrop of trees. But all her satisfaction dropped immediately away because the broken pillar that should hold an automaton was empty.
“Where—?” Eleri began, then wasted no more words, hunting for any sign of the missing experiment.
“Look for the amasen,” Aunt Arianne suggested. “Dem Makepeace said it would stay here on guard. Perhaps it rained, and the amasen put Monsieur Doré somewhere dry.”
Wondering if a snake would know anything about rust, Eluned gazed vainly around. They spread out through Hurlstone, even Griff daring the possibility of lurking wildlife, and it was he who called out: “Here!” only a short time later. Eluned hurried between waist-high walls, and spotted him standing with the statue—the vampire in rept.
A block of stone rested in the grass a few feet to one side of the vampire, and the automaton was seated on this, paddle-like hands arranged neatly on the stone either side of its narrow thighs, and its metal-jointed ankles crossed. The wooden head was tilted back, as if it was gazing up at the stone girl.
“Would the amasen pose it like that?” Eluned asked doubtfully, as Aunt Arianne and Eleri came up.
“Think it walked?” Eleri reached for the automaton, but Aunt Arianne touched her arm.
“Let’s wait. We can talk here, and see if it reacts to us at all. Any sign of the amasen?”
Griff indicated with his chin the exact opposite side of the square of grass from him, and sunlight on gold led the eye to the horned snake, basking in the sun on the highest point of the surrounding wall.