Foxe’s people or Captain Sverenson’s, not D13. Ask Uncle to call me urgently. Word of a Sayre.
Nicholas
The other, more hastily scrawled, said:
Send telegram TO MAGISTRIX WYVERLEY COL LEGE NICK FOUND BAD KINGDOM CREATURE DORRANCE HALL TELL ABHORSEN HELP
There was every possibility neither message would get through, Nick thought. It would all depend on what Dorrance and his minions thought they could get away with. And that depended on what they thought they could do to one Nicholas Sayre before he caused them too much trouble.
Nick shivered and went back inside. As he expected, when he asked to use a telephone, the footman referred him to the butler, who was very apologetic and bowed several times while regretting that the line was down and probably would not be fixed for several days, the telegraph company being notoriously slow in the country.
With that avenue cut off, Nick retreated to his room, ostensibly to dress for dinner. In practice he spent most of the time writing a report to his uncle and another telegram to the Magistrix at Wyverley College. He hid the report in the lining of his suitcase and went in search of a particular valet who he knew would be accompanying one of the guests he had seen arrive, the ageing dandy Hericourt Danjers. The permanent staff of Dorrance Hall would all really be Department Thirteen agents, or informants at the least, but it was much less likely the guests’ servants would be.
Danjers’s valet was famous among servants for his ability with shoe polish, champagne and a secret oil. So neither he nor anyone else in the belowstairs parlour was much surprised when the Chief Minister’s nephew sought him out with a pair of shoes in hand. The valet was a little more surprised to find a note inside the shoes asking him to go out to the village and secretly send a telegram, but as the note was wrapped around four double-guinea pieces, he was happy to do so. When he’d finished his duties, of course.
Back in his room, Nick dressed hastily. As he tied his bow tie, his hands moved automatically while he wondered what else he should be doing. All kinds of plans raced through his head, only to be abandoned as impractical, or foolish, or likely to make matters worse.
With his tie finally done, Nick went to his case and took out a large leather wallet. There were three things inside. Two were letters, both written neatly on thick, linen-rich handmade paper, but in markedly different hands.
The first letter was from Nick’s old friend Prince Sameth. It was concerned primarily with Sam’s current projects and was illustrated in the margins with small diagrams. Judging from the letter, Sam’s time was being spent almost entirely on the fabrication and enchantment of a replacement hand for Lirael, and the planning and design of a fishing hut on an island in the Ratterlin Delta. Sam did not explain why he wanted to build a fishing hut and Nick had not had a reply to his most recent letter seeking enlightenment. This was not unusual. Sam was an infrequent correspondent and there was no regular mail service of any kind between Ancelstierre and the Old Kingdom.
Nick didn’t bother to read Sam’s letter again. He put it aside, carefully unfolded the second letter and read it for the hundredth or two hundredth time, hoping that this time he would uncover some hidden meaning in the innocuous words.
This letter was from Lirael and it was quite short. The writing was so regular, so perfectly spaced and so free of ink splotches that Nick wondered if it had been copied from a rough version. If it had, what did that mean? Did Lirael always make fine copies of her letters? Or had she done it just for him?
Dear Nick,
I trust you are recovering well. I am much better,and Sam says my new hand will be ready soon.Ellimere has been teaching me to play tennis, a gamefrom your country, but I really do need two hands. I have also started to work with the Abhorsen. Sabriel, I mean, though I still find it hard to call her that. I still laugh when I remember you calling her “MrsAbhorsen, Ma’am Sir”. I was surprised by thatlaugh, amidst such sorrow and pain. It was a strangeday, wasn’t it? Waiting for everything to be discussed and sorted and explained just enough so we could all gohome, with the two of us lying side by side on ourstretchers with so much going on all around. You made it better for me, telling me about my friend theDisreputable Dog. I am very grateful for that. That is why I’m writing, really, and Sam said he was sending something so this could go in with it.
Be well.
Lirael, Abhorsen-in-Waiting and Remembrancer
Nick stared at the letter for several minutes after he finished reading it, then gently folded it and returned it to the wallet. He drew out the third thing, which had come in a package with the letters three weeks ago, though it had apparently left the Old Kingdom at least a month before that. It was a small, very plain dagger, the blade and hilt blued steel, with brass wire wound around the grip, the pommel just a big teardrop of metal.
Nick held it up to the light. He could see faint etched symbols upon the blade, but that was all they were. Faint etched symbols. Not living, moving Charter Marks, bright and flowing, all gold and sunshine. That’s what Charter-spelled swords normally looked like, Nick knew, the marks leaping and splashing across the metal.
Nick knew he ought to be comforted. If the Charter Marks on his dagger were still and dead, then the thing beneath the house should be as well. But he knew it wasn’t. He’d seen its eyes flicker.
There was a knock on the door. Nick hastily put the dagger back in its sheath.
“Yes!” he called. The sheathed dagger was still in his hand. For a moment he considered exchanging it for the slim .32 automatic pistol in his suitcase’s outer pocket. But he decided against it when the person at the door called out to him.
“Nicholas Sayre?”
It was a woman’s voice. A young woman’s voice, with the hint of a laugh in it. Not a servant. Perhaps one of the beautiful young women he’d seen arrive. Probably a not very successful actor or singer, the usual adornments of typical country-house parties.
“Yes. Who is it?”
“Tesrya. Don’t say you don’t remember me. Perhaps a glimpse will remind you. Let me in. I’ve got a bottle of champagne. I thought we might have a drink before dinner.”
Nick didn’t remember her, but that didn’t mean anything. He knew she would have singled him out from the seating plan for dinner, homing in on the surname Sayre. He supposed he should at least tell her to go away to her face. Courtesy to women, even fortune hunters, had been drummed into him all his life.
“Just one drink?”
Nick hesitated, then tucked the sheathed dagger down the inside of his trousers, at the hip. He held his foot against the door in case he needed to shut it in a hurry; then he turned the key and opened it a fraction.
He had the promised glimpse. Pale, melancholy eyes in a very white face, a forced smile from too-red lips. But there were also two hooded men there: one threw his shoulder against the door to keep it open. The other grabbed Nick by the hair and pushed a pad the size of a small pillow against his face.
Nick tried not to breathe as he threw himself backwards, losing some hair in the process, but the sickly-sweet smell of chloroform was already in his mouth and nose. The two men gave him no time to recover his balance. One pushed him back to the foot of the bed, while the other got his right arm in a wrestling hold. Nick struck out with his left, but his fist wouldn’t go where he wanted it to. His arm felt like a rubbery length of pipe, the elbow gone soft.
Nick
