And meanwhile all the teachers at school would glare at me in particular whenever they read us the disapproving lectures about drugs: the half-Indian commune kid, obviously I was a yogurt weaving tofu welding friend of Henry the Eighth. Ha. I couldn’t actually have risked any drugs even if anyone had been willing to offer me some, except the boring kind that just make you better at homework and drudgery. It’s hard enough fending off every mal within a hundred miles without being in an altered state of mind that odds-on would make me believe they were even more powerful, which would cause them to in fact be so.
That said, I would actually have been quite prepared to try some interesting magical drugs at a party full of grown wizards who could probably kill mals even while drunk and high as Valhalla, and do some dancing along with them. It’s something I wasn’t likely to have many opportunities to try. But I didn’t particularly like the idea of doing it on the actual graves of children who’d died in the Scholomance. I’d been expecting to be one of those for the better part of my own Scholomance career, only without even a stone for Mum to remember me by.
Alfie only got back a round of tittering. “Oh, Lord,” Yancy said, unperturbed. “You’ll be as bad as your father in five minutes, won’t you. Your whole enclave’s built on dead children, love. Is this nice lawn to be off-limits just because here’s where you keep a few of them on display? Don’t fuss. You’ll have it barred in the rules by next week along with any other real fun anyone might have, and surely we’ll all have landed on the persons-not-welcome list before the year’s out. So we’ll take advantage while we can. Come on, then, sit down. We’ll drink to their memory, if you like. Gaudry! Play us some lamentation.”
The violin player immediately went into Danse Macabre, and the dancers obligingly turned themselves into skeletons—metaphorically, which I suppose needs saying given that we’re all wizards—and started capering round like they hadn’t any muscles anymore and could only swing their bones awkwardly from the joints. Alfie only got angrier, of course, but Liesel snapped at him, “We have no time for this.”
Yancy gave her a squint. “Haven’t you?”
“Not all the council’s feeling as grateful as you,” I said.
“Martel doesn’t fancy Sir Richard being crowned in his place?” Yancy said, obviously both well informed and unsurprised. “Well, it’s no skin off our noses, whichever way it ends. Martel is a sack full of ferrets, but he’s been one forever, and still the sun rises. It’s not as though Richie will be any better once he gets in. The job devours the man.”
“I don’t care who wins either,” I said. “But Martel’s decided I’m a handy lever, and he’s got people on all the doors. I was hoping you might have a quick exit somewhere else.”
“Quick exit? No, love, sorry,” Yancy said. “I can get you out, but it won’t be quick. Half a day at the least, and you might be seeing music for a bit afterwards, if we get out at all. Our little secret ins and outs are halfway in the void anyway; loads of them fell off the rest of the way when the mana store blew, and the ones that didn’t are still all wibbly-wobbly. Still want to go?”
“I’ll have to take my chances,” I said, without enthusiasm. It didn’t sound very appealing, except by comparison to getting into a violent altercation with the kind of people who did passionately care who ran London enclave and didn’t know that I was a tertiary-order whatsit who could utterly drain their enclave and smash them into jelly, and therefore would do their best to provoke me into doing just that.
Yancy shrugged and heaved herself up, swigged from her flask generously, and held it out to me. I could tell the offer was practical; presumably I was going to have to be a bit more disconnected from reality to make it into whatever this unreal space of theirs was. I took it gingerly—especially after the lizard lifted its head up and gave me a pointed hiss, and wasn’t actually sculpted at all but just playing chameleon. Precious stuck her own head out and squeaked back imperiously. She was roughly a quarter of the lizard’s size, but it gave her a wary sidelong look and crawled round to the other side and peered out at her with the flask between them. “It’s all right, I’m not going to knock you off,” I told it, and then carefully had myself a healthy gulp.
It tasted like a light sea-green with streaks of polished brass and autumn leaves falling. If that doesn’t sound drinkable to you, my digestive system vigorously agreed. Yancy reached out and put her hand over my mouth, or I’d immediately have spewed it back out, and vomited up whatever had already gone down. “No, you’ve got to keep it down. Have another,” she said. With an effort I managed to take a second swallow, and by the time it finished forcing the first one down into my belly, I was already seeing the swaying bones of the music going around us, weaving in and out of the dancing wizards, and the stones of the labyrinth were all but invisible, weirdly vanishing into the grass and laughter, which were making quiltlike billows around us.
“Oh, I don’t like it,” I said involuntarily. In retrospect, having a pint with a pub lunch would probably have been a better first foray into the world of recreational substances.
“Gets worse from here on in,” Yancy said cheerfully. “A third dose, I think, and then we’ll be on our way.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, mostly to delay the last swallow.
“A hundred years ago, give or take,” Yancy said. “That’s when they demolished the old riding ring and laid out the meadow instead. We’ll have to see where we can hop from there.”
I needed a few deep breaths to make myself take the last choking gulp, but down it went in an explosion of trumpets. “Be seeing you,” I told Alfie and Liesel, the words coming out of my mouth in blue-green sparkles, just as if I’d drunk something smoking-hot on a cold day, and my breath was billowing out in fog.
Alfie nodded, a bit furrowed, and said in an undertone, “You’re sure you’re all right to go with her? Yancy may think she knows a way, but her ways lose people. Most of her lot don’t last twenty years, once they join up.”
“There is no reasonable alternative,” Liesel said impatiently, and then she reached out and intercepted the flask when I’d have handed it back to Yancy. “I will go with you.”
“What?” I said, sufficiently baffled that I wondered if I’d just started hearing things. What reason did she have for coming after me now?
But Liesel was already swigging from the flask—Alfie looked nearly as surprised and dismayed as I was myself—and squeezing her eyes shut against the effects for a moment before forcing herself to open them. She got through the three swallows with grim determination and quicker than I had, then passed the flask back to Yancy and told Alfie, “We must get El home safely, or they will keep making attempts.”
“I’ll be all right on my own, thanks,” I said, which worked exactly as well as protesting any of Liesel’s plans ever worked. Less, really: the attempt came out in wafts of sunset gold and orange, and I trailed off staring in dazzlement at the swoosh of it floating away from me.
“Don’t start any more quarrels with the ravers,” she went on lecturing Alfie, paying no attention to me. “So long as they are here, that means the gardens are open to visitors. You had better go guard your father’s back instead. Martel will try that, next, when this plan has failed.”
“Right,” Alfie said, a little dismally. “Watch your own back, will you? And don’t trust Yancy,” he added, soft enough not to be overheard, but with even more urgency. “She and hers have always had it in for us.”
That seemed uncharitable to me, since it was fairly clear to me that Yancy had been on the verge of helping his dad try to save London. She and the rest of her crew were used to handling unstable sources of mana; I imagine Sir Richard had recruited them to channel the power out of the wobbly mana store to him.