I found the door that was crying out for my attention less than a minute later, unlocked it, and opened it, revealing what I thought might be the center of London and two figures standing on a sidewalk. Cars went past behind them, and after a moment a double-decker red bus rolled by, confirming my suspicion about it being London.
One of the people standing there was a beautiful woman, a little over six feet tall and strongly built, like someone who was used to regular intensive physical activity. Her golden hair was cut short, barely falling to the tops of her ears, and her eyes were the color of storm clouds. She wore blue jeans, a cream-colored Henley shirt, and a brown leather bomber jacket with matching knee-high leather boots. A sword - my study of British history told me it was a hand and a half longsword - hung at her left side, its well-worn leather grip bracketed by Celtic knot engravings and a slightly curved cruciform cross-guard.
Standing beside and slightly behind her was a boy who looked to be in his late teens, maybe five years younger than me at most, dressed similarly (though wearing trainers rather than boots). He had messy brown hair and bright amber eyes that looked far, far too old for his young face. A canvas messenger bag hung at his side - I saw the words ‘Bag of Holding’ inexpertly embroidered on its flap - and a very plain oak staff was held in his left hand. It took my brain a moment to acknowledge that his ears were delicately pointed.
“I’m terribly sorry to bother you,” the woman said in the thickest Midlands British accent I’d ever heard, though I thought there were hints of both Wales and Scotland in it, “I’m sure you need more time to get settled in…” She trailed off, her eyes moving over me before returning to my face. “Strewth. Must the women in your family always look nearly identical? It’s bloody unnerving. For a moment there, I thought you were your grandmother. Still, I like your fashion sense.”
The boy coughed. “Pot, kettle.”
Without looking around, she deftly lifted her left foot and brought her boot heel down on his toes. He yelped in surprised pain and hopped around behind her for a moment. “Bloody hell, woman!”
“My problem is entirely different,” she said calmly. Then smiled at me. “Terribly sorry to bother you, Guardian. I need to get to Edinburgh and I’m very pressed for time.”
“I’m sorry?” I said, bewildered.
Behind her, the boy kicked her left calf. She didn’t so much as flinch. “Manners, girl!” He said.
The woman grimaced. “Right, you have no idea who I am. My apologies.” She offered me her hand to shake. “Ariana Pendragon, Knight of the Sword.”
Years of having my manners trained to a fine point by Sister Sarah kicked in and I automatically shook her hand. “Caitlyn Reid,” I said, then added, “Guardian of the House.” It felt weirdly natural to identify myself that way. Then my brain caught up with my manners and I said, “Pendragon? Like…” I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask.
Ariana nodded. “My father.” Before my brain could even start processing that impossibility, she continued, “And this is my companion - “
The boy interrupted her by offering me his hand and saying. “Emrys Hawkins!” His smile was far too cheerfully innocent to be entirely real. Then his smile became genuine and he waved. “Hello, Sparkle!”
Sparkle, perched on my shoulder, giggled. “Hi Emrys!”
I stared at his hand, and this time my manners failed me entirely. “Emrys Hawkins,” I said dryly. “Bollocks.”
Wherever she was, I was quite certain that Sister Sarah had just fainted.
Ariana burst out laughing, pointing at the now pouting Emrys. “I…I told you, old man…You owe me five quid!”
He dug a fiver out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her, still pouting.
I stared at him. “Are you really - “
He interrupted me with an upraised hand before I could finish asking. “I am, but don’t use that name. Emrys is safer, and still really mine.”
“How…?” I couldn’t even begin to frame all of the questions bubbling through my head.
Ariana, back under control, looked at Ken. “Have you taught her nothing yet, Caretaker?”
He grimaced. “My early lessons have not been a smashing success, Lady Knight. We’re starting afresh today. And, in my defense, it’s been less than a week.”
“Good lord,” Ariana said, then sighed. “I’m terribly sorry, Lady Reid, but I am too pressed for time to answer more questions right now than however long it takes us to reach a door to Edinburgh. If you will be so kind. Lives are at stake.”
I glanced at Ken, who simply nodded, then I stepped back from the open door to give them room to enter. “Please, come in. Give me a moment and I’ll find a door to Edinburgh as close to this one as possible.”
Ariana entered, murmuring, “My sincerest thanks.”
Once Emrys - my brain refused to even identify him yet as who he had to be - entered as well, I closed and locked the door, then looked around. A nearby location popped into my mind and my body oriented on it. “This way. It’s very close. It this very urgent?”
“Terribly,” Ariana said. “We have maybe ten minutes. If that.”
“Our intel failed us for once,” Emrys said grimly. “We’re usually ahead of this sort of thing by a few days.”
I glanced at Ken again, and raised an eyebrow.
He shrugged a little. “It’s up to you. But I think it’s safe in this case. At the very least, I am certain that these two are quite capable of keeping secrets, and the Lady Knight’s business is saving lives.”
Ariana and Emrys both looked confused.
I took a deep breath and concentrated on communicating a sense of urgency to the House. If these two had lives to save, and had less than ten minutes to do so, I would help them by giving them back as much of that time as I could.
The House approved. The wall beside us rippled like water and a door surfaced, becoming solid after only a few seconds.
“Oh my stars,” Emrys breathed.
“I’ve never seen a Guardian do that before,” Ariana said, sounding impressed.
“Neither had I,” Ken said. “I think she was able to the first time because she didn’t realize she shouldn’t be able to.”
Emrys nodded sagely. “Quite likely.”
I ignored them, unlocked the door, and opened it onto Edinburgh. I wasn’t precisely sure where, but I thought I could see part of Edinburgh Castle off to the right. “There you are. Edinburgh.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Emrys tipped an imaginary hat to me. “Pleasure meeting you, milady. We must talk shop once you’re settled in.” Then he went through the door without another word.
Ariana paused to shake my hand again. “Thank you, Guardian. We’ll come back another day, when there’s time to talk. For now, we’ve business. Farewell!” Then she was gone after her mentor.
Emrys…Merlin…wanted to talk shop with me. I felt a little bit light-headed.
I watched them hurry down the street and out of sight before closing the door and looking at Ken. “Explain,” I said flatly. “Now.”
Ken smiled wryly. “Even if I wanted to, I have only fragments of the truth about those two. Will you accept an abbreviated version for now?”
I considered that for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. I imagine they’re not your secrets to tell anyway, judging from what you said about them keeping secrets well.”
“Very true,” Ken said, then gestured. “Let’s head to the kitchen while we talk, shall we?”
Sparkle launched herself from my shoulder to fly ahead of us as we started off down the hall. “All right, brief me, please.”
Ken nodded. “That was indeed the daughter of Arthur Pendragon and Guinevere, and…Arthur’s mentor and adviser. It is, as Emrys indicated, best not to use his name when he’s around. His uncle, King Oberon of the Seelie Court, has it in for him.”
“Ah,” I said, and made a mental note - blast it all, I really needed a pocket notebook - to refresh my knowledge of the Fairy Courts in…
I stopped walking, put a hand to my forehead, and sighed.
“Caley?” Ken asked, concerned. I heard the buzz of Sparkle’s wings as she circled my head.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just caught myself about to think of the Sidhe in terms of fairy tales and folklore. I need to cement the reality of these things in my mind soon.” I lowered my hand and sighed. “It’s hard.”
“You have more than twenty years of grounded reality to shake off,” Ken said gently. “The world is much weirder than you ever realized, and it’ll take a bit of time to adjust to that. But I should start teaching you about the Sidhe in earnest soon. In the meantime, suffice it to say that Emrys’ uncle is a very powerful, very dangerous, and very capricious being who holds a great deal of hatred for his nephew.”
“Got it,” I said, and started walking again. “So, how is Ariana still alive after…how old is she?”
“Old,” Ken said. “Older than the House, I believe. The sword she carries - and before you ask I don’t think it’s Excalibur, but one of the others that have been mis-identified as Excalibur over the years - is cursed to bring immortal life to its bearer. I don’t know the specifics, or how she came into possession of it, but I know that she’s made excellent use of the curse by protecting vanilla mortals from supernatural predators.”
“That’s one way to make a curse work for you,” I said.
Ken nodded. “Indeed. As I understand it - it was before my time, just a generation or two after the House was built - she made a deal with your many-times great-grandmother to use the House’s doors should she ever need quick passage to another location. I don’t think she’s done it more than two dozen times since…as far as I can recall, I only saw her twice while your parents were alive, and three times in the fifty years before that.”
“All right,” I said thoughtfully. “That sounds like it could be a beneficial relationship to continue. If I ever find myself in need of help, would they come?”
“If they’re free,” Ken nodded. “They did that once to help deal with a pack of werewolves back in the 1830’s.”
A strange tension deep in the pit of my stomach that I hadn’t been consciously aware of broke and melted away. I realized it had been there since I’d decided to stay in the House, and discovered that I’d been worried about having no support structure beyond Ken (who couldn’t act beyond the confines of the house), Sparkle (whose abilities were still largely unknown to me), and the lawyers at Summers & Winters (whose aid in a crisis I had no way at all of judging, except to assume that they could throw vast sums of money at it).
As long as I didn’t mess up building some sort of friendship with Ariana and Emrys, I would have peers of a sort. I wasn’t completely alone.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” I said fervently. “You said there were only three or four people in the world who knew how to find the House’s doors. I just met two of them, so who are the others?”
“One of them is the lead agent of a U.N. sanctioned organization called the Supernatural Defense Agency, an American named Gabriel O’Connell.” Ken frowned a little. “He visited your father once after your mother died, but I can’t remember why. The other is an Australian woman whose name I appear to have had blanked out by your father. I know she’s out there, but…that’s all I can remember.” He grimaced a little.
I watched him. “Those blank spots in your memory are uncomfortable.”
He nodded a bit. “When I brush up against them, yes. Especially when I run into one by accident like that. They are, after all, pieces of myself that I don’t have access to. I am…diminished, I suppose.” He sighed. “But never mind, I’m sure the information will be there if it’s ever necessary.”
I stopped abruptly and opened a door on our right without thinking about it, revealing the kitchen. “Lunch?” I asked.
Ken smiled and chuckled. “Lunch.”
“Yay!” Sparkle cheered.
After lunch, Ken directed me to find a room he called ‘the armory’, and in a few minutes I was standing in a room with walls of rough cut stone. Every inch of wall space was covered by racks of weapons ranging from Bronze Age to late Victorian, but without a firearm in sight. There were swords of every shape and size, polearms and spears, axes, war hammers, maces, and things I was completely unfamiliar with. I sensed no magic from any of them, but they were well-preserved and (even to my inexpert eye) obviously well-made.
They all had one thing in common…a plain, unadorned seriousness that made the atmosphere of the room feel heavy. These were not novelty collectibles, these were weapons.
Ken looked me up and down before drifting over to a rack of rapiers and similar slim blades. “Let’s see,” he said. “You studied sabre, you said, but I think a straight blade will be more practical…”
I followed him. “I won’t argue. In fencing, it really just means that I learned to use both the tip and edge to score points.”
“Mmm,” he looked at the blades on the rack and nodded. “I think we have something here that will suit you.” He pulled down a sheathed sword and offered it to me.
It was just shy of a meter long from tip to pommel, its hilt wrapped in braided black wire. The rest of the pommel and double loop hilt was also black, and completely undecorated. I wrapped my fingers around the hilt and drew it out.
The blade made up most of the sword’s length, and was - to my surprise - only slightly tapered from base to tip and had a double edge. “I’ve never seen a smallsword with a double edge before. I thought they were thrusting weapons.”
Ken nodded. “This design was popular briefly in the late 1700’s. Very versatile, light and good for both dueling and close-quarters fighting, thrusting and cutting.”
“And you want me to learn to use this why, again?”
Ken sighed as I tested the weight and balance of the blade like I knew what I was doing. I didn’t, exactly, but it moved easily enough.
“Magic,” Ken said after considering his answer carefully, “will be your primary defense and offense if you’re threatened. In spite of that, it’s wise to maintain a good fitness level, and learning to use that will certainly qualify as exercise. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, there are a number of beings in the supernatural community who consider swordplay an honorable art and dueling to be the best way to settle disputes.”
I shifted uneasily.
Ken smiled a little. “Not necessarily to the death. These aren’t wasteful beings. Most of them. At any rate, sooner or later some event will come up where going armed would be both wise and respectful, and they’ll be able to tell if you know how to use the sword you’re carrying.”
“I see.” I didn’t see. Frankly, it sounded terrifying. But this was the reality of the world I’d chosen for myself. I could have gone back to school and become a teacher. This was the path I’d set myself on, and I was determined to walk it to the best of my ability. If that meant learning to fight with a sword, so be it.
Maybe I could get Ariana to give me lessons. That was an interesting thought. I could probably learn things about the supernatural world from her and Emrys that even Ken wouldn’t know.
“And finally,” Ken said, “I’m going to teach you how to enchant it for improved durability and sharpness. Eventually. Consider it part of your lessons…if you’re very familiar with it and its use, enchanting it will be easier. I’ll be teaching you a bit of staff fighting for the same reason.”
I sensed bruises and sore muscles in my future. Oh dear.
Sparkle landed on my shoulder and whispered, “It’s okay, Caley. I know you can do this.”
I smiled once again at her unshakable faith in me.
“For today, however,” Ken said, “I just wanted to find a sword that feels good to you. How did I do?”
I swung the blade a couple of times, then took up an en-garde position and tried a couple of practice thrusts and cuts. “It feels pretty good, actually,” I said. “Not too big for me, and the weight isn’t really more than I’m used to.”
Ken nodded. “Excellent. We’ll put it away in your bedroom, you can take a shower, and we can retire to your father’s study.”
I sighed. It was going to be a long afternoon.
Ken turned his eyes on Sparkle. “As for you, little miss…”
Sparkle stiffened on my shoulder. “Me?”
“Oh yes,” Ken said with a smirk. “You are going to spend as much of this afternoon as possible human-sized. You need to work on your stamina.”
Sparkle groaned and I felt her flop down full-length on my shoulder.
I smiled in spite of myself. At least I wouldn’t be suffering alone.