James Potter And The Morrigan Web (4 page)

“You’ll want to be careful, Mr. Potter,” he said meaningfully. “There’s a killer on the loose, assuming your father and Mr. Hardcastle have not yet found him.”

“I wouldn’t concern yourself, Mr. Blunt,” Quizling called back. “I am Mr. Worlick’s arbiter. Surely, if we encounter him, he will recognize that I am here to help him. We will not come to any harm.”

Blunt glanced up toward the cavern ceiling, as if stifling a roll of his eyes. James nodded.

“Thank you, sir,” he said as he climbed aboard the ghost ship. “We’ll be careful.”

A moment later, the ghost ship drifted silently away from the pier, drawing a thin wake on the glassy water. Blunt watched, his torch held aloft, as the ship glided toward the cavern mouth and the fog beyond. As the boat crept out into the open water, leaving the hulking tower behind, James turned and peered up at it. There was no longer a green glow atop Azkaban. Now, the beacon torch glowed red, for danger. Azkaban had been breached. A prisoner had escaped. Until Blunt had said something, it had not occurred to James that he might encounter the escaped madman before his Dad and Titus Hardcastle captured him again. He vowed to himself to be on high alert, keeping his wand clutched in his hand, buried in the deep pocket of his cloak.

Wind switched overhead, whistling morosely in the ghost ship’s old rigging. Choppy waves rolled beneath the hull, clapping at it and sending up clouds of cold spray. James peered ahead, anxious to be out of the fog, out of the reach of Azkaban’s old magic.

“You’re father and his friend,” Quizling said after a time. “They are quite good at what they do, aren’t they?”

James frowned at the man. “Well, yeah. My Dad’s head auror. Titus Hardcastle is his best man. How do you think they caught that horrible twit Worlick to begin with?”

Quizling nodded and shrugged noncommittally. “I suppose you are right. Still, their methods leave something to be desired, don’t you think? Allowing their fellows to be wounded and even killed, all just to apprehend a relatively harmless individual like Mr. Worlick. It all seems rather extreme, if you ask me.”

“Yeah,” James said, looking out over the grey waves. “Well, I don’t expect anybody did.”

Quizling smiled, then laughed lightly. “You think I am awful, don’t you?”

James didn’t answer. He studied the fog, waiting impatiently for it to clear up. It had been a lovely summer day before they had entered the North Sea’s mists. He hoped that it still would be. He hoped that the sun would be shining and his father and Titus Hardcastle would be waiting for them at the landward pier, with Worlick safely in custody.

“You don’t have to answer,” Quizling went on. “I can see it on your face, James. You think I am nearly as bad as the man I represent, Mr. Worlick. Let me ask you a question, though, my boy. Do you really think things are as black and white as your father makes them appear? I submit to you that they are not. I submit to you that even Mr. Worlick is not the villain that you wish to believe he is.”

James heartily wished the arbiter would just shut up. Without looking at him, he said, “I guess that’s for the Wizengamot to decide. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Some people would not believe that Mr. Worlick was a villain at all. Some, you may be surprised to know, would go so far as to call him... a hero.”

A cold shiver coursed down James’ back. He turned back toward Quizling. The man was smiling at him. It was a pleasant smile, faint, almost languid. James hadn’t seen Quizling smile even once up to that moment.

“I don’t know who those people are that’d think Worlick was a hero,” James said. “But I know what a hero is. My dad’s one.”

“Ah yes, the Great Harry Potter,” Quizling said, nodding and cinching his smile a bit wider. “It’s a shame, really, that he chose to be on the wrong side of history. He really is a very remarkable man. It is a shame to see him...
waste
his talents.”

James pulled his wand from his cloak. He didn’t mean to point it at Quizling, merely to show it to the man, to let him know that James took what he said very seriously. Quizling had been waiting for James to act, however. His hand flashed out as James produced his wand. Within a second, the wand had been wrenched deftly from James’ fist. Quizling held it up and smiled at it while James stood back, his eyes going wide.

Quizling’s smile evaporated. “I’m sorry, James. I need a wand, you see. I do hope you won’t mind.”

As James backed further away, he noticed that Quizling’s voice sounded different. It had grown higher, more nasally. Wind tore over the ghost ship and flapped the cloaks about both of their legs.

“You... you aren’t Quizling,” James said as realization flowed over him.

“Good for you,” the man declared, brandishing James’ wand. His face was changing now as well. Beneath the hood, the man’s brow bulged. The hairline pushed back and thinned. The prow nose shortened and flattened. The thin lips grew fat and piggish. Within seconds, the man standing before him had changed from Quizling to Worlick.

“You are impressed with my cunning,” Worlick said, “But you should not be. What is genius for you is mere everyday cleverness for me. I did indeed use a polyjuice potion to assume the appearance of my aribiter. Instead of immediately trading places with him, however, I Imperiused him, used his own wand to recreate my tattoo on his wrist, and sent him off to pretend to be me. I planned for him to lead your father and his lackey on a wild broom chase. Then, in the guise of poor, duped Mr Quizling, I was able to walk right out of my own prison cell, escorted by the warden himself. You may call it genius. I call it common problem-solving.”

“I call it cowardly sneakiness,” James spat, bumping up against the ship’s gunwale.

Quizling shrugged, advancing on him. “What is true of your father is also true of you, my boy,” he commented, looking at James over his own wand. “You, like your father, are on the wrong side of history. those you have vilified will soon rise to ultimate power. True balance will be achieved when wizarding blood finally eradicates the lesser species. When that time comes, not only will we have the
power
...” he fingered James’ wand, pointing it at him and cocking his head. “We have the will... to
use
it.”

James was completely at a loss. Worlick was about to kill him, and using his own wand. He cast about the ship for a weapon of some kind, but the deck was entirely empty. Then, inspiration struck.

“You may have the power,” James called out, standing up straight and thrusting out his chin, “But let me just ask you one thing before you use it.”

Worlick rolled his eyes in bemusement. “Ask away, boy.”

“Do you,” James asked, yanking open his black outer cloak and letting the wind tear it out of his grasp, “know how to swim?”

The cloak whipped away, lofting out over the waves like a kite. Immediately, a bell rang out. James glanced aside, toward the ghost ship’s wheel house. The tarnished brass bell that hung on its side clanged clearly, sounding its alarm. With a monstrous groan the ship began to pitch forward. Waves thrashed up over the bow as the ship nosed into the leaden water.

“You complete idiot!” Worlick shouted, his eyes locked on the waves as they consumed the ship before him. “You’ll kill us both!”

James didn’t answer. He bolted sideways, ducking toward the stern and behind the wheelhouse. The angle of the ghost ship’s deck grew steeper by the second as it sank, pushing forward into the depths. A warped ladder was bolted to the rear wall of the wheel house. James clambered up this and fell forward onto the wheel house’s flat roof.

Below, Worlick seemed to have forgotten about him. He clung to the ship’s gunwale for dear life, backing away toward the stern as the bow plunged deeper and deeper into the hungry waves.

Unexpectedly, a beam of golden warmth washed over James where he crouched. He looked up and was surprised to see sunlight sparkling on the waves. Seagulls circled over the water. Beyond them, still faint with distance, was the shore. James fancied he could see the landward pier. Perhaps he could swim to it.

The ghost ship rumbled as water poured into it, weighing it down. It was nearly half submerged now and sinking very fast. It lolled sideways, threatening to spill James off the side of the roof and into the water.

A noise suddenly filled the air. It was so wide and pervasive that at first James thought it was a peal of distant thunder. He looked around, still clinging to the ghost ship’s roof, and saw something that made his blood run cold.

A watery grey cyclone was spinning toward the sinking ship. It licked across the surface of the waves, leaving a foamy scarred wake behind it. It bore down on the ghost ship, dwarfing it under its writhing shadow. Wind and mist beat off the waterspout, stinging James’ eyes. He feared that the cyclone would capture the ghost ship into itself, wrench it utterly from the waves and smash it to pieces within its terrible throat. Instead, the waterspout curled around the ship, turning it like a cork, and then began to slow. The spinning cyclone fell apart, raining water onto James and pattering the waves as if with a torrential rain. When the mist of the cyclone blew away, a woman stood in its place. James saw her standing amidst the waves, and his throat constricted into speechlessness.

“Greetings, James!” the woman called up to him. “I see you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of a pickle, haven’t you?”

It was Judith, the Lady of the Lake. She smiled at him and shook her head, tossing her long red hair. She didn’t even appear wet.

“I’d love to lend you a hand, but I am in a bit of a hurry. Thank you for accompanying Mr. Worlick this far. I suspect we will meet again soon enough.”

The ghost ship let out a tortured groan. Water gurgled up over the roof of the wheelhouse, but the Lady of the Lake only laughed. She reached forward, and her arms became watery tentacles. They twined out over the waves, toward Worlick where he clung to the ghost ship’s upraised stern. A moment later, with a gurgling scream, the man was engulfed in Judith’s awful embrace. She pulled him back to her, and turned as if to leave. As she did, the cyclone sprang up again around her, whipping the sea into a frenzy and lashing cold, misty winds over James. He ducked, felt the ghost ship drop away beneath him, and found himself plunged into the cold darkness of the North Sea.

Seconds later he thrashed to the surface, wandless, soaked, and completely lost. The cyclone was gone, as was the Lady of the Lake and her quarry, Ratimir Worlick.

James cursed aloud and smacked the water with his fists.

After a minute, for lack of any other course of action, he turned, lay flat in the water, and began to swim toward the shore. He wasn’t even halfway there before his father and Titus Hardcastle found him on their brooms. By then, the sun was going down, a bank of low clouds had sprung up, and it had turned into a thoroughly, unabashedly horrid day.

New Amsterdam was not entirely empty, despite appearances, and neither was The shot sounded so small in the cramped alley. It could have been a length of hickory wood being snapped in half, or a brick falling flat into a puddle. The sound of it—a flat
pop
, with no echo—barely registered in William’s thoughts until the man across from him lowered and dropped his cane, then collapsed to his knees. The look on the horrible old man’s face was not surprise, but affronted confusion. He opened his mouth, drew a shallow, halting breath. Before he could speak, however, his eyes went blank. He fell forward onto the brick pavement, dead.

Some distance behind him, the pistol still raised in her tiny fist, was a young woman. Her face was deathly pale, but composed. “For Fredericka,” she said faintly, speaking to the dead man. “From her fiancé, William. And from me, her sister. Helen.”

A ribbon of smoke snaked from the pistol’s black eye. Jerkily, Helen lowered it.

William had been sure he’d been about to die, to join his beloved Fredericka in the afterlife, and had been ready to welcome that new reality. Now, instead, Fredericka’s murderer lay dead among the trash, felled by a single unexpected gunshot. The villain, Magnussen, may have been powerful—he may even have had unearthly, mystical powers—but he hadn’t been powerful enough to stop an unseen bullet from knocking him clean into the next life. And whatever judgments awaited him there.

William approached the dead man, barely able to believe it was over. Helen joined him a moment later, shakily, the pistol stowed in the pocket of her apron.

Three young men appeared in the mouth of the alley, following Helen. William saw them, and for one brief moment he considered running away, taking Helen with him. After all, the alley had become the scene of a murder. They could both go to Hempstead prison for the rest of their lives. Still, something about the young men told William that they were not exactly surprised by what had happened, nor that they planning to whistle for a copper and scream bloody murder.

Faintly, Helen said, “These three say he stole something from them. They followed him here, hoping to get it back. They won’t turn us in, I don’t think. They just want their goods back.”

William glanced up at them. The boy in the lead nodded seriously. He had unruly dark hair and looked to be about fourteen. Behind him was a bigger boy with a look of strained solemnity on his squarish face. The third was blonde, thin and wide eyed, staring down at the corpse.