The Huntress spoke, and Princess Leodhild said: “She wants the fulgite taken from the small automaton and placed in the large one, and for the transfer to be as quick as possible.”
This was no problem for Eleri, and she did so briskly, though with one involuntary glance at the two sphinxes, which stood abruptly in the middle of the process. Then she stepped hastily back, and they waited.
Eluned immediately became convinced that the transfer had been a mistake. The larger automaton did not react at all, but the two sphinxes did, rattling their odd wings, and shifting their weight restively. When movement came, it was not from the automaton, but the pile of fulgite at its feet. A thousand fragments of vampire, shifting, shuffling, fitting together.
A woman. Quite short, her cheeks broad, lips full. Hairless, covered in countless fractures. And missing one eye. She stood before them for only a moment, and then the body of Maatkare Hatshepsu turned to dust and was swept away on the slackening breeze.
Some fulgite remained. Glittering crystals that Eluned guessed were pieces of other vampires collected by the thieves. It crunched under the feet of the automaton as she stood.
Taking Latin instead of Egyptian in school had definitely been the wrong decision, though the brief exchange between the Huntress and the princesses had a note that suggested it was whatever polite formalities could possibly be appropriate to the occasion of the revival of one of history’s most famed rulers, after people had been using her as a battery.
Then all of them—Huntress, princesses, Dem Makepeace, and the automaton controlled by the ruler of the Egyptian Empire—turned toward the two sphinxes, and the creature pinned beneath one paw.
Princess Leodhild said: “Fair warning, dama. If you don’t surrender, this delightfully large creature intends to snap your spine.”
Completely overmatched, the bull-bear had long since given up attempting to struggle. Her transformation had an air of a shrug about it. Eluned hadn’t even realised that it was a person. A sturdy, blond woman, as battered as she and Eleri, and wearing a piece of black material on her head like a cap, cloth dangling down to cover her face to just above the mouth. Two golden lines bracketed the outline of an eye.
The sphinx lifted its paw fastidiously, then paced away as the woman sat up.
“Bow,” Dem Makepeace said, and pushed Eluned and Eleri lightly on the shoulder.
Eluned did as she was told, though not quite achieving the depth that he did. The princesses inclined their heads. And Egypt’s Pharaoh mounted one of her guardian sphinxes, and flew away.
“Well now,” Princess Leodhild said. “I do wonder whether the Nesweth will consider that arrival an improvement on the earlier news of the day? Obliging, at least, for her to leave this one alive.” She crossed to consider the woman sitting among the leaves. “Dane Dayson, I presume? Or should I call you Wrack?”
“Wrack?” The response was calm, unconcerned. “Yes. That will serve as well as anything.”
“Did you kill our parents?” Eleri said, sharply, before Princess Leodhild could say more. “Tell me.”
The woman—or the mask—turned slowly toward her. “Do you ask a boon of knowledge of me?”
“She does not!” Dem Makepeace said sharply. “It’s a god,” he added to Princess Leodhild.
“No.” Wrack again, a quiet correction. “Not such a small thing.”
Eluned was not the only one who stared. But before they could ask more, the woman reached up and pulled the cloth off her head, quietly sighed, and passed out.
“Unconscious,” Dem Makepeace said, not moving. “I won’t give odds on how much she’ll know when she wakes. A thief, definitely, but controlled by something vast and unknown.”
Did that mean that Mother and Father’s murderer wasn’t even human? Was something that could never be brought to justice? Eluned struggled with a crushing disappointment, glancing at Eleri and seeing the same reaction. But then she frowned.
“That mask.”
Dem Makepeace glanced at her. “What about it?”
“It’s a quartered eye.”
“Yes it is,” he said agreeably. “And a vampire in rept form is arguably an anchor on the soul of a god, and I do wonder what Wrack wanted with it.”
He looked up at the now very blue sky, at the leaves outlined with sunlight, and the leading edge of airships come to the rescue, and added: “Done with your adventures?”
Eluned started to respond, but realised the remark had been addressed to Lila, who lifted her head, then slid across to Dem Makepeace when he extended his arm.
“She won’t get into trouble will she?”
“For failing in her duty, and then co-opting you two into fixing her mistake? What makes you think that?” He turned away, inclining his head to Princess Aerinndís. “Anything further, Highness?”
“No. I will speak with you tonight.”
Dem Makepeace bowed again, then spoke to the exhausted Huntress, and walked into the shadow of the trees with her. Eluned, feeling defeated, sat down on the log by the remaining fulgite, and Eleri joined her, picking up the abandoned mannequin. This was as over as it would be then. Mother and Father were still gone, and nothing had really changed, and Eluned did not feel better at all.
The Crown Princess walked across to them. Trying to remember royal protocols, Eluned started to stand up, but the princess gestured for them to remain seated, and so Eluned reluctantly settled back down. Princess Aerinndís was such a grand and distant person, not nearly so likeable as the comfortable Princess Leodhild, and Eluned struggled to find the energy to deal with formal and proper when all she wanted was to curl up into a ball.
“The Processional made the Seaforth name famous throughout Prytennia,” Princess Aerinndís observed. “The whole world will know the name Tenning, for the form that Maatkare Hatshepsu will wear as she continues her journey into eternity. I believe she found it a worthy one.”
And that did change things, did make it better. Enough to go on with.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Eluned whispered, but the Crown Princess had already turned away.
EPILOGUE
A single tiny leaf, surrounded by an outline of itself, and another, and another: one for every day since Maatkare Hatshepsu had returned to Egypt. It was a drawing exercise Eluned had set herself, and the only thing she would allow herself to work on, until she had completely filled the page. Not long now, and then she would have to decide what she was ready to move on to.
But she was doing it. The cliff had been climbed, and she was marching steadily onward.
“Boring, boring, boring, boring.”
Griff tossed prospectus after prospectus back onto the pile. Aunt Arianne had given them until the end of the day to make a final decision on their school, and they were fed up trying to find one that they all found acceptable. Part of the problem was they’d left it so late. There were plenty of close schools, but few that met Eleri’s standards for scientific classes, or treated art with any degree of depth. Enrolment at these few involved applying well ahead, or sitting on a waiting list and hoping. None had room for all three Tennings.
Travel by bus across London each morning had been ruled out, and so they had been vetting boarding schools, despite not wanting to be away from Forest House and Hurlstone. No-one was enthused by the shortlist of schools with places available.
“Try this, Ned.”
At least the new arm would be done in time for the trip to France. Eleri was still making fine adjustments, but it was already functional. For the third time that morning Eluned shrugged into the jacket that could be worn over or under her clothes, and had been designed to make putting the arm on and taking it off as easy as possible. But the biggest difference was the control design: rather than pre-set functions, Eleri had had the idea of ‘mirror movement’, and so the jacket came with both a right arm and a wire-threaded left sleeve that extended all the way down to a glove that left only Eluned’s fingertips exposed. If she switched mirror-mode on, everything her left arm did, her right arm would copy: precisely, exactly.