It wasn’t all he wished to discuss—not by half—yet courtesy compelled him to reply, “If you have no further need of me.”
“I have not.” Miss Flora curtsied. “Good day, sir.”
Wren bowed to her in turn and showed himself out.
~
Rochester Castle had far fewer defences than most castles Shrike had encountered in the fae realms. No archers stood ready on its battlements. No enchanted statues recited riddles to ensnare the unwary traveller. The gardens between the gate and the keep held neither brambles nor thorns nor a single poisonous petal, nor did the ivy crawling over the walls wraps its tendrils ‘round Shrike’s limbs. Not even a token labyrinth lay within.
All the better for Shrike.
While a few mortals stared at his passing as he strode through Rochester’s streets, none moved to prevent him from entering the castle gate, crossing its garden, and reaching the keep.
The ruined state of the castle likewise proved no barrier to him.
Shrike might have flown to his perch in the north-west tower, had the passage through the path of iron not left him muddled. As such, he went by foot. The wooden floors and rafters of the keep had long ago crumbled into dust. The stone spiral staircases within the walls looked as if they would soon follow, but for the moment they held strong beneath Shrike’s boots. He had oft climbed far more treacherous cliff-faces in pursuit of his quarry.
And when he at last ascended to the top of the north-west tower, he could see clear over the castle walls and the sundry houses of Rochester to the bridge spanning the River Medway.
On this bridge he trained his eye.
Before he and Wren had parted, less than an hour hence, he had asked Wren what sort of horses drew the carriage bearing Felix away from Staple Inn, so he might watch for them and thus mark Felix’s arrival. Wren confessed he hadn’t thought to commit the horses to memory before the carriage left Staple Inn, but upon racking his recollections, he supposed one of them had a white blaze down its nose. Furthermore, he added, Mr Grigsby or Tolhurst would likely be riding alongside the coachman outside of the carriage itself.
Shrike felt confident he could spot a horse’s blaze from a clear mile off, and had said so, which provoked a smile from Wren.
Then Wren had gone off to the academy, and now Shrike stood alone in the castle tower.
According to Wren’s estimation, it would take six or seven hours for the carriage to travel from London to Rochester. It’d started out late, around eleven, and would therefore probably arrive well into the evening. Most of the intervening hours had already burned away in turning over Tolhurst’s rooms. The sun had passed its zenith long ago, and its gentle decline towards the western horizon began to turn the sky’s hue from pale grey to faint heather as dusk drew on.
Many unremarkable coaches and wagons rattled over the River Medway in the meantime. Shrike, who’d waited for weeks in far less hospitable circumstances for far more dangerous prey, nevertheless clenched his jaw as he watched the bridge. His own hide wasn’t in peril. Something nearer and dearer to his own heart lay at stake. And as minutes passed with no relief in sight, he found his patience rapidly waning. Every wrong carriage rolling across the bridge seemed to rattle its wheel-rims against the nerves of his teeth.
Then, like a silver fox darting out of the underbrush to race through fallen crimson leaves, a drop of white appeared at the north-western end of the bridge.
Shrike surged upright. The horse with a blaze, just as Wren had described, drew a carriage along the straight line of the bridge. No coursing hare or leaping hart moved in so predictable a pattern. Nor did any forest offer so clear a shot as Shrike now had from the castle tower. If Nell had stood from this very vantage point, she could have shot the horses dead—four arrows, one clean through the eye of each beast—and seized the coach, taking its passengers hostage to ransom back Wren’s manuscripts.
But Shrike didn’t carry his longbow in the mortal realm. He had only his blades, which would do little from this distance. Nor did he think Wren wished him to spill blood, or to do anything else which might draw more eyes than his garb already had.
And so he watched and waited as the white-blaze horse and its fellows drew the carriage on.
At length they alighted on the south-eastern bank and entered Rochester proper. When it vanished between the houses, Shrike began his descent from the tower. Even with the ache of iron in his bones he climbed with greater agility than the carriage-wheels rolled. Mere minutes found him striding once again across the castle garden and outside its walls. He slipped through the streets to an alcove between two particular houses where he could flatten himself into the shadows whilst watching Cemetery Gate.
The coach had halted beneath the gatehouse arch. The round figure of Mr Grigsby appeared in conversation with the coachman. From behind the open door of the coach came Tolhurst, who reached back in from whence he’d come to retrieve his nephew. Felix looked less frail than Shrike had seen him last, though no better tempered. He leaned heavily on his uncle’s arm and shuffled into the gatehouse. Mr Grigsby followed soon after. The coachman flicked the reins, and the coach lurched off down the street again.
Shrike might not have had his bow to hand, but he could made do with his blades. Felix, weak to begin with and weaker still after his ordeal with the huldra, would hardly pose a threat. Tolhurst was of bulkier build, but Shrike doubted he was any better-trained than his nephew in the art of combat. Still, some harm might come to Mr Grigsby in the attempt, which would distress Wren. And the whole incident would prove difficult to explain to mortal satisfaction.
And so, rather than mount an attack on Cemetery Gate, and against his better judgment, Shrike withdrew to the cathedral.
Shrike didn’t visit mortal temples often. Most of what he knew of them came from Larkin’s tales of the world he’d left behind. As such, he found Rochester Cathedral fit his expectations. It was one of the peaked and pointed sort, with windows like spearheads and filigree like a thousand daggers, rather than domes supported by ribbed columns. The only rounded arch, to his eye, sat over the westward entrance. Rows on rows of carved figures filled this arch, with still more flanking the doorway. Shrike recognized an ox, a lion, and an eagle among them, though the more numerous mortals represented remained strangers to him.
Passing through them, Shrike entered a grand hall with a vaulted ceiling high above. Stained glass windows and alcoved statues depicted still more figures of worship, none of which Shrike could name, nor did he care to. He cared only for the mortal flesh-and-blood man who awaited him.
Wren appeared very much like his namesake, so small and solemn in the enormous hall, standing in his severe garb with his hands folded behind his back and his eyes fixed above. He took no notice of Shrike’s approach. Not even when Shrike halted beside him to follow his gaze to the face carved in the joint where six of the ceiling’s ribs crossed.
It was the first familiar thing—besides Wren—that Shrike had seen since he entered the cathedral. Centuries had worn smooth the finer details of the carving, but he could not mistake the vines pouring forth from its gaping maw. The green man. An aspect of the Oak King, and yet another reminder of his own destiny as decreed by the Queen of the Court of the Silver Wheel.
Shrike cleared his throat.
Wren leapt and whirled.
