Strangeness and Charm: The Courts of the Feyre (9 page)

  "Through sheer luck, but that luck won't hold forever."

  "Thank you for the vote of confidence."

  "That's the trouble, you're cautious when you should be bold and overconfident when you should be cautious."

  "I'll try and do things backwards in future, is that today's lesson over with?"

  "Close your eyes."

  "Is this the lesson now or are you still berating me for letting Angela touch me?"

  Blackbird looked sideways at me under the brim of her hat, and then forward again. "Close them," she instructed.

  I did as I was bid and closed my eyes.

  "What can you see?"

  "Nothing, I've got my eyes closed."

  "Really? You see absolutely nothing?"

  "Well, not nothing, but nothing that makes any sense. Splodges of colour, sunlight I suppose, the light through my eyelids."

  "You can make no sense of it, so you ignore it."

  "What am supposed to do, make shapes out of it like you do with cloud formations?"

  "What can you hear?"

  "You." She waited while I listened again. "I can hear the birds singing, there are cows in the fields across the way there."

  "What else?"

  "A plane, maybe?" I lifted my face into the light to hear better. "Is that a plane or is it traffic from the road? I can hear noise from the kitchens now that you mention it, and if I listen very carefully I can hear the breeze."

  "Anything else?"

  "What else is there?" I asked.

  "Your heart."

  "My heart? I'm supposed to listen to my heart? What's it telling me?"

  "It's not telling you anything, at least not in sound. It is pumping blood through your ears fifty or sixty times a minute. Each pump has a pulse, and if you were to listen to my chest you'd hear my heart pumping much the same," she said. "Say Dockweed."

  "Dockweed, why?"

  "Does it sound louder to you when I say it, or when you say it?"

  "When I say it, because I can hear it inside me."

  "Then why can't you hear your heart?"

  "Sorry?"

  "You are able to hear my heart, if you listen, and a word is louder when you say it then when I say it, but when I asked you what you could hear you did not hear your own heart. It is pumping blood through your veins, through your ears, and yet you do not hear it. Why not?"

  "I suppose because I'm used to it."

  "More than that."

  "Because it's my heart?"

  "Yes, and no."

  "Why then?"

  "Because, if you could hear your heart then you would hear nothing else. It's loud in your ears but your brain has learned to ignore it because it contains no useful information. Instead you can hear the bird in the woods or the tiger sneaking up on you, conditioning and survival has made it so."

  "Evolution in action," I said.

  "Not evolution, perhaps. Some say that in the womb we hear our heartbeat and that of our mother, and that only later do we learn to filter it out. Not evolution, but choice."

  "What's this got to do with my lesson?"

  "What can you feel?"

  "I don't know – the seat we sit upon, the breeze on my back, the dampness of my shirt. Am I supposed to be feeling my breakfast digesting in my stomach?"

  "So seldom do we truly listen, truly feel, that we forget that the world exists whether we perceive it or not. We hide our heads under the blankets like children and pretend there's nothing there."

  "Are you saying that there really are monsters under the bed?"

  "I'm saying that for reasons of comfort and the freedom from being overwhelmed by our sense of the world, we choose to ignore a great deal of it, but we forget that we have chosen and continue as if what we have chosen is all there is."

  She let me think about that for a moment, and then continued, "I'm saying that you block your sense of the world, and that to perceive it better you will need to unblock your sense and see the world anew."

  "How do I do that?"

  "You learn to listen. You take time to feel. You pay attention to what your brain is telling you to ignore until you can hear your own heart, if you so wish."

  "And where will that get me?"

  "You want the reward before the work, Niall Petersen." She frowned in disapproval.

  "No, but it's not unreasonable to ask what the benefit will be if I accomplish this task, is it?"

  "It's a fair question." She considered. "A violinist teaches themselves the fine distinction between a note that's sharp or true. A painter knows every shade of blue that his paints can render. A tumbler can sense their balance no matter which way they tumble, and yet none of these begin that way. They practice what they do until they have it right. They don't attempt to play a symphony, or paint a masterpiece, until they have mastered the basics.

  "And this is basic?"

  "No, this is fundamental. It is the beginnings of power and the end. Knowing the nature of things, being able to name them truly despite their appearance, or attempts to deceive, is a great gift."

  "So you're not fobbing me off with trifles?"

  "Triviality ended some time ago, Niall. The play is in progress and the stakes of the game are survival itself. I will leave you to practice."

  I opened my eyes, squinting up at her in the sunlight as she stood and smoothed her long skirt, then walked easily back towards the house leaving me on the bench seat. I was still there some twenty minutes later trying to hear my own heartbeat when Tate found me.

  "Trouble," he said.

  "What's up?" I stretched. Having absorbed the tranquility of the garden I had the sense that I might have been asleep when Tate's footsteps alerted me to his approach. I wasn't sure that's what Blackbird had in mind.

  "One of your escapees has broken cover."

 
 

"This isn't trouble, this is a circus! What am I supposed to do with this lot watching?"

  Tate's only response was to shrug and look back at the crowd gathered at the end of the road. Police officers in black stab-proof vests were keeping people back and I could see a similar barrier at the other end of the road. In between were an array of police vehicles and ambulances, blue lights flashing. I could hear sirens in the distance, so maybe more were on their way.

  "We don't even know if it's him, do we?" I was referring to the file that Garvin had pushed into my hand before we had left the courts and travelled down the ways to Streatham in south London.

  "The address matches that of his estranged partner," said Tate. "It was issues with her that sparked the whole thing off, at least that's what the file says. There's an injunction against Difford being within a mile of the house."

  "It looks like he's within a mile of it now."

  "Then I don't think the injunction is working," said Tate, mildly.

  "What's he doing in there?"

  "Not a social call."

  I went forward to the line of onlookers. "What's going on?" I asked a man in a sweatshirt and shorts who was craning his neck to see.

  "It's a siege," he said gleefully, "Some bloke's got himself holed up in the house – they reckon he's got a hostage. Gonna have to shoot him, I reckon."

  "Won't that risk the hostage?"

  "Nah. They'll use one of them sharpshooters from the windows opposite, you wait and see."

  I stood on tiptoe, watching the police moving around the vehicles and talking into radios. There was no sign of weapons being deployed, but they were unlikely to have them on show. I went back to where Tate leaned against a tree in the shade.

  "Will the police try and storm the house?"

  "Not unless obvious violence breaks out. They want a peaceful outcome. They won't push it, at least not yet. Armed response will be on the way, so that could change."

  "We need to move quickly then, what about you?"

  "Garvin said it was your problem, but I'll watch your back."

  "Thanks. You're a great help."

  Tate grinned. "I have confidence in you."

  I glanced back towards the gawkers and then turned and walked away from the police line, heading back towards the end of the row of houses.

  These houses were built in red-brick terraces, originally two stories high but every one had a loft conversion or a gable window as a third floor. Some had whitewashed rendering on the upper floors or a mock balcony with french doors, painted shut through disuse. The front doors were set two by two along the row with no access to the rear from the front of the house. The bins were all in the front gardens, waiting for bin-day. I counted the numbers on the houses to make sure I had the right house.

  The police would be aware that rear gardens backed onto each other and would have people in the house behind, but the presence would be significantly lighter than out here on the street. They were only there to prevent the suspect from bolting over the back fence. If I wanted a quiet entry, that's where it would be.

  In a northern town there would be a service alley, dark enough for muggings and illicit drug-taking, but here the original substantial gardens had no access from the street. Each owner had taken advantage of this by building blocky extensions onto the back of the row, leaving a square of green as a token garden, except for the end-house that had taken advantage of the road access by building a garage which faced the side road. It was simplicity itself to cloak myself in glamour and trip the lock to the garage with a pulse of power, pulling the door closed as Tate followed me through.

  The garage let me out of a side-door into a passageway and from there I could lift myself up on the fence and peer into the next garden before vaulting over, one at a time. Tate and I settled into a natural rhythm, only one of us moving, the other watching.

  The gardens were in contrast to each other, some strewn with children's toys and trampolines while others grew couch grass and thistles to waist-height. Counting the houses back to the one with the police vehicles parked out front, I paused a couple of doors down, letting myself become accustomed to the noise of the city. The sirens were getting closer, but it wouldn't help to climb over the fence and land on top of one the officers watching the rear of the house. I couldn't see them, but I knew they must be there.

  I waited while Tate joined me. He pointed over the back fence and was rewarded with a cough from the garden of the houses opposite. There was a low conversation and then silence again. I stared at the windows of the houses facing the back of the row, noting where shadows moved at windows or curtains twitched. There were either a lot of policemen or some nosey neighbours. Probably both.

  With everyone watching it was going to be more obvious if I went through the back door of the house, even concealed by glamour. I could ask Tate to create a distraction, but that would only attract more notice. I wanted the attention at the front where all the police cars were. I didn't want them raising the alarm and drawing attention to the rear of the building because they thought something might be happening inside. If I was going to bring my target back with me I needed a way in, and a way out. I looked again at the backs of the houses. The back doors, like the front doors, went in pairs along the row, separated by high fences.

  The extensions at the back were two stories high. I moved quietly to the door of the neighbouring house and listened. In all likelihood, if anyone was home, they would have either been moved out by the police or told to stay indoors and out of sight. I wondered which.

  I pointed to the door, and Tate nodded and pointed to the ground where he was, indicating that he would stay and make sure no one disturbed me.

  A hand on the back door released the locks and I eased the door open, listening for sounds of occupation. The door led into a white-painted kitchen with a very modern range cooker. I closed the door behind me and listened again. There were sounds from the front of the house, but that was probably coming from the road. I crept through the hall, seeing the blue flashes from the emergency vehicles refracted through the glass in the front door. There was a coat-rack, mostly empty, and post on the doormat from earlier in the day.

  Taking that as a positive sign I slipped upstairs and listened again on the first floor. The sound of approaching sirens had stopped which either meant that they were not headed this way or that whoever had been making all that noise had arrived and sirens were no longer necessary. I hoped for the former, but suspected the latter.

  Reinforcing the glamour, I went quickly up a second set of stairs that looked like they had been added to reach the loft conversion. It was decorated for a child's room, posters of comic heroes and video games. There was a front window, which I avoided, and a back one that looked out over the flat roof of the rear extension, which was what I'd been hoping for.

  With my glamour locked tight, I let myself out of the upper window onto the flat roof and moved quickly across the open space, leaping the gap to the next house. This was the one next to my target, so I kept the momentum and leapt again, relying on my glamour to conceal my movements. I knew that they would be watching the back door and that I had to trust my glamour to turn their attention away from the rooftop and me.

  On the roof above the extension of the house I kept low until I could peek into the window identical to the one I had exited. My neck prickled as if there were cross-hairs trained on the back of my head. I ignored it, trusting to my magic to conceal me.

  The room was similarly furnished for a child – from the pink hairband on the unmade bed and the brushes and combs on the dresser, I'd guess it was for a girl. There was nothing in the file that mentioned children, and for most fey child-bearing was not an option, but this child could be from a different relationship, and was probably safely at school. Even so, I watched the room as I used my power to trip the window catch and quietly slide up the sash window.