Castles Made of Sand (46 page)

She wiped her eyes. ‘Oh, and the Chosen can’t stay in Scotland, I’m afraid Benny could reach them there. Get them to Brittany too, and Sunny (Sunny Preston was Ax’s mum). I wish I could send all the Prestons to the US, but that’s a r-remote possibility. And
don’t fucking argue
with me.’

George accepted defeat, heartsick. ‘Okay, Fio. Anything you say.’

‘Clearing the decks,’ said Peter, nodding gravely. ‘In case things get dodgy.’

‘Yeah, Cack,’ said Fiorinda, with a very loving look, Peter’s old nickname bringing back the ghost of their happy days. ‘Just in case.’

She tried to think, she tried to plan, but it was like trying to jump back onto a racing, spinning fairground ride. She’d been able to think of getting the Heads out of the way, and Mary and Marlon, the Chosen and Sunny, because those tasks had been on her agenda. She could not form new ideas. She spent her hours staring at the opposite bed in her cell; which didn’t have an occupant. She could not believe that this body was her own again. It didn’t feel like her own. What am I supposed to be doing now? Refuse to admit I’m a witch. Ax’s girlfriend can’t be a witch. That would be a real fuck-up.

What else?

Nah. Don’t think there’s anything else.

She recalled the long evenings at Rivermead, and Benny Preminder’s secret little smiles. How he’d enjoyed seeing Fiorinda humiliated, how unfair that grass-cuts like that can still hurt when you’re in far, far worse trouble. Ax was always nice to Benny, and we didn’t understand but Ax knew it was the only answer. If you have to deal with people who hate you, make nice unless you’re going to flat-out assassinate them. But I was rude to him whenever I got the chance, and probably that’s why he turned against us and let Rufus in. All my life, every time I could do something wicked, or stupid, that’s what I did.

Every time I had a choice, I chose wrong.

She wanted to think about Ax and Sage, but the memories wouldn’t come: that part of her was dead already. All she could do was wait for Rufus. Every day, every hour, she waited for him, the way she had waited at Rivermead. The cell door would open and Benny Preminder—or a screw, or someone she loved; whoever magician chose to ride—would walk in. A smoke would fall from Benny’s mouth and Rufus O’Niall’s living ghost would be there.

He didn’t come that way, he came to her mind instead. She could see him: the big lordly man with the chestnut skin and shining black curls. She could hear his voice, rich and strong and so anciently thrilling, telling her that he had not abandoned her. This was a test. All you have to do is use your magic, Fiorinda. Iron bars can’t hold you. I’m waiting for you in Ireland. Remember when you were a little girl, how you wanted me to love you, and make you my bride?

We shall rule the world together.

I can’t do this. I can’t fight anymore.
Please
someone make it stop.

At the end of May Charm and Gauri and Fil visited her. She’d been moved again but it was the same set-up as the Heads had described: Fiorinda behind bars, like Hannibal Lecter, in a basement with no natural light. She was very thin, in her prison overalls.

‘You took your time,’ she said.

‘We’ve been inside ourselves,’ boasted Fil, who was sporting a cast on her arm.

‘What did you do?’

‘Fucking pathetic compared to first degree murder,’ said Gauri, two fingers splinted and a limp. ‘We got beaten up resisting arrest, and they sent us down for that.’

‘It was your arrest we were resisting,’ Charm had a support collar, a bad split lip not yet healed and a crop of yellowing bruises. ‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Vaguely. I never had a degree before. Hey, does
by witchcraft
rates an A*?’

‘Triple First,’ said Fil. ‘Summa cum laude. Defo.’

But tears started in Fiorinda’s eyes. ‘Why doesn’t Allie come to see me?’

‘She can’t,’ said Gauri. ‘None of the Few are allowed.’

‘Oh. Well, I’ve had Benny Prem. He asked me why did I hate my common-law husband, and why did I start a riot? I kind of pointed out I didn’t start the riot, I tried to stop it, and he hinted maybe I should plea bargain.’

An uncomfortable silence. ‘Maybe you should,’ said Gauri.

Fiorinda took this on board. ‘No, I won’t do that. I didn’t kill Fergal. I can’t tell anyone how he was killed, but it wasn’t me. I’m innocent.’

The screws stayed by the doors. They were very upset about the way Fiorinda was being treated, but they wouldn’t leave the room. There was a painted line on the floor, which DARK were not to cross, but it wasn’t alarmed. This room had nothing electronic in it, on the theory that magic interferes with that kind of stuff. They’d been warned not to try and touch her, or give her anything. The visit struggled on painfully. When time was up, Charm stepped over the line and shoved her hand through the bars, closed in a fist. ‘Quick. Here. Take it.’

It was Ax’s carnelian ring.

Fiorinda pushed the hand away. ‘No, it’s no use. The screws would take it from me, and anyway, I’m not the same person.’

That was the last anyone saw of Fiorinda. They heard she’d been moved again, but nobody could find out where. The situation was hardening. It was a case of get out and hope for the best, or stay and end up in the same boat, unable to help her anyway.

Ax was rescued in the middle of July. He had been chained up in that room for a year and two months. He spent a week in hospital, and then flew back to Europe in a gas-guzzler jet plane from the President’s fleet: Ax and Lurch and a couple of minders alone in the forward cabin. They came in low over the south-west of England, in a clear blue morning. Ax looked down through the window beside him at a place that looked like Narnia. Such a golden green, such enchantment of light and shadow, it couldn’t be real, it could only be a cutscene from a fantasy game. Oh my God, there’s Silbury Hill. There’s
Avebury
. He was gripped by an emotion that had no problem co-existing with his terrible grief and fear, so it couldn’t be joy. But it was something.

He realised that the plane had stopped losing height.

‘What’s happening?’

Lurch had just woken up. ‘I’ll find out.’

She had a throat mic. He couldn’t make out the murmur of her questions, or anything of the replies. Apparently Lurch had some difficulty herself. She left her seat and came back after an agonising five minutes.

‘We can’t land.’

‘We can’t land at Heathrow? Well…where then?’

‘No. We can’t land. New update, it wouldn’t be safe. It could be disastrous.’

‘
Shit.
’

She was saying that if he landed in England it would be Fiorinda’s death warrant. The bastards would be pushed into finishing the job.

‘Have we enough fuel to get us to Paris?’

‘Just about. We can reach Alain de Corlay now. Do you want to talk to him?’

‘Yeah. I’ll talk to Alain.’

They landed at Charles de Gaulle. Ax was taken at once to a gravelly urban campsite on the outskirts of Paris, where a fair-sized contingent of the barmy army was quartered, under the command of one of Richard Kent’s staff officers. Richard had stayed in Yorkshire. It must have been staggering for the barmies to see Ax alive. He didn’t feel a thing. He walked round, seeing all these faces bewildered by amazement, so gripped by fear for her that the last year had collapsed into nothing. He talked to people he knew as if he’d last met them a week ago. He knew he was freaking them out, but he couldn’t help it.

The tale of what had happened in England beggared belief…yet he had seen it. That morning at Dupont Circle, when Fiorinda called him on the bi-loc, she’d asked him a question about Fergal Kearney. His mind (maybe chip-driven) had leapt into overdrive, snatching a new picture, a whole
gestalt
shift, from clues like that garbled bar-story he’d heard in Amsterdam. He’d
seen
that Fergal was an enemy agent: he’d even known who had to be running the bastard. He’d known his darling was in terrible danger, from a vindictive devil who had already once destroyed her—

Maybe it was just as well he’d known, and been tormented by that vision, all the time he was helpless. Or else he’d be a gibbering basketcase now.

The rest of the barmies, plus assorted civilian emigrés were at Alain’s place in Brittany. The Chosen were there, and his mother. Marlon Williams; and Mary. The Powerbabes, Roxane; the members of DARK, Anne-Marie and Smelly Hugh, and all the children. Anne-Marie’s family had had to leave, because of AM’s magic. The Babes, DARK and Rox had got themselves into dangerous trouble and had had to be moved out. The rest of his friends were still in England.

The Heads had recently returned there to organise a jailbreak. They were waiting for the word to go ahead.

From Suresnes they went to an old brownstone building, on the Isle de St Louis, long occupied by Alain and his crew. A council of war was convened in a first-floor room with swooping chandeliers, a football-pitch of polished oval table; windows overlooking a courtyard where chestnut trees towered. There were barmy army staff officers and netheads, French government suits, and significant French Counterculturals, including Alain and his musclebound girlfriend Tamagotchi. Alain wore his Ferrari jumpsuit, Tam was a tin-foil Courreges space person; adding a glimmer of rockstar lightness to the proceedings. Sayyid Mohammad Zayid was there, with an entourage of English Islamic soldiers. Richard Kent, at Easton Friars, was with them on a video screen.

Until this morning they’d still hoped that Ax’s return would work miracles. Richard had been due to be at Heathrow with enough force, disguised as military honours, to protect Ax if things went sour. It was clear now that Benny had never intended to let Ax land. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose by allowing Ax Preston back on English soil. So they were back to the cat and mouse game: Preminder warning them he couldn’t guarantee Fiorinda’s safety, using the threat of her death ‘by mob violence’ to hold off the invasion that he knew was being prepared.

Benny, who had seized the initiative when Fergal Kearney died, claimed to speak for the Second Chamber Group, the acting government: but he might not be the leader. It was thought that there was someone else in the background.

They talked about the invasion. The ‘Free English Army’ had been gathering for months, sneaking over to France in small parties, partly financed by Allie’s ransom fund. They had weapons, ammo, sea transport. No air power, but there would be a first wave of parachutists, dropped from borrowed helicopters. There was resistance on the ground, waiting to join them. They believed popular feeling was on their side. But the Celtics were organised too, and the other nations of Britain neutral at best. Wales, Scotland and Ireland, though they acknowledged Ax’s claim, still recognised the Second Chamber Group as England’s legal government.

Ax felt himself going into an
Ax Preston
routine, and let it carry him. Details, difficulties… Which cities can we count on, what about the regions, what fuel and power sources will we control?
I have been here before
, he kept thinking. The barmies had been ebullient, convinced it would be a walkover now that Ax was back. He must keep them that way: but the people round this table were not so optimistic, and rightly so. This was not a good situation,
not
a walkover. He worked hard at making everyone believe he was still Ax Preston, and wondered (his mind wandering) when should he break it to his backers that he didn’t give a flying fuck? Not now. Get Fiorinda out of jail first.

When everything had been said he gave them a speech he’d been thinking out on the plane, because he’d known there was a very good chance that he’d end up here, rather than on the tarmac at Heathrow. Short and positive. It seemed to go down okay. He dealt with a blur of congratulations, the flesh-pressers, and went into an adjoining room with Mohammad and Alain, Lurch and Tam.

It was a quiet salon, decorated in brown and gold. Someone had given him a letter from Fiorinda, written before she was formally arrested, and smuggled out of Rivermead. He read it, put it in the inside pocket of his jacket and walked over to a mirror on the wall, to hide the tears. So Elsie’s dead. My little cat; I won’t see her again. The face in the mirror stared like an old friend who knew you when, and you don’t want to meet him because you don’t want to be reminded.

‘You look the same as you always did,’ said Alain. ‘The astonishing Mr Preston. My God. A year chained up in the jungle, and ten days later he’s planning the first invasion of England since the Conquest.’

‘Better without the beard,’ said Ax.

I have been here before. What did Verlaine say, a long time ago? Time is a helix. Time is a kaleidoscope: the pieces remain the same, only the pattern shifts. He remembered sitting in a hotel room with Sage on the night of the Armistice Concert after the Islamic campaign. When he had vowed he would die before he played the game of soldiers again—and here he was, back from the dead.

Be careful what you swear to God.

This was the ops room. A work table spread with desktop hardware, maps, documents, phones, recconnaissance images. They sat around it and entered a different atmosphere: the world of the Floods Conference, where the fate of England was part of a much larger problem. A world that had recently become very, very strange. He wondered how Mohammad came to be at home here.

But there was so much he didn’t know.

‘We can speak freely,’ said Alain. ‘We are secure as we know how, in here.’

‘So let’s talk,’ said Ax. ‘Bring me up to speed.’

‘After David died,’ began Mohammad, ‘and Fergal revealed his true colours, Fiorinda dealt with the situation her own way. She spoke to me in such terms, eventually, that I had to accept what she was doing. But I had George Merrick onto me, and Richard; and Alain here. We started making plans—’

‘Fiorinda was keeping the peace,’ said Lurch, to Ax. ‘
By any means necessary
. She was saving lives.’

‘She ’as immolated herself for your fucking Utopia, Ax,’ said Tamagotchi.

Ax wanted to slap them both. How dared they think they had to defend her?