Merlin shook his head.
“We’ll call from the closest phone. We have to warn them, and there’s almost certainly still a police alert out for Vivien and me. Normally, Merrihew would be the one to sort out any problem with the Home Office. She wouldn’t have had time to do anything this time, of course. Or perhaps the inclination. Come on.”
They laid the bodies out in a neat row. Merlin hesitated for a moment, then stripped off three anoraks, taking one for himself and handing the others to Vivien and Susan. He looked at the cultists’ boots for another few long seconds, before shaking his head regretfully.
“An anorak is one thing, but socks and boots from a dead person . . . we’ll have to try and get something in the village. I will take one of these handy shotgun bags, though, for the sword. Don’t want to frighten the locals any more than is absolutely necessary.”
They also collected the cultists’ weapons and put them in the back of the Range Rover, and Merlin locked it and went over and locked the second car, where its occupants still sat, unseeing.
“No need to tempt any passersby with guns, particularly kids,” he said as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the green Range Rover. Vivien got in the back, nudging Susan to the front passenger seat with a kindly shove. “We’ll get some local police up here as soon as possible. Though it seems your dad is keeping everyone away for now; I don’t know how long that will last.”
“Until the fog lifts,” replied Susan automatically. She simply knew things now, within the borders of her father’s realm, at least. “About two and a half hours.”
Merlin looked at her and started the car.
“Anything else we need to know?”
“The Black Bull does a good bacon sandwich,” replied Susan. “And there’s a phone box outside.”
The Grandmother had warned Thurston, who had taken the news of Merrihew’s private dealings on behalf of the St. Jacques with a malevolent Ancient Sovereign very badly, far worse than the news of her actual death.
“Apparently, he handed the phone to Cousin Sam and went and made a kind of pyramid out of Dickens and Trollope second or later editions—he didn’t disturb the firsts—climbed in, and has refused to talk or come out,” said Vivien. “Anyway, Great-Aunt Evangeline is coming in from Wooten to take over the right-handed and . . . Cousin Una has taken charge of the left-handed and she’s briefed Inspector Greene. The police have dropped the alert for us and Greene has organized a helicopter from RAF Catterick to pick us up and take us back to London.”
“What about Holly . . . I mean Southaw?” asked Susan, through a mouthful of bacon sandwich. The roast beef sandwich she’d eaten atop the mountain had been delicious, particularly once salted, but it had barely touched the sides of her hunger.
“No sightings as yet, and nothing bad has happened. Everyone’s on full alert. Helen and Zoë are cross-indexing everything we have on Southaw. Una has sent out teams to ask the usual suspects what they know and she’s going to ask Grandmother as well. Greene has got an alert out for Holly, in case he can come back in that shape, and she’s organizing police watches at all our locations, under the guise of an IRA threat, in case Southaw has his gangs attack.”
“An IRA threat against bookshops?”
“Important customers of the bookshops,” said Vivien. “It even makes sense. Half the House of Lords buy books at the New Bookshop to begin with. I’m not sure how Greene is explaining Wooten and Thorn Hall and the Birmingham workshop and so on, but they must be secondary targets. Southaw has definitely extended his demesne, but his historical locus is somewhere in Barnet—Helen and Zoë are looking into that—and most of his vassals and servants will most likely be concentrated in or around North London.”
“You need anything else, love?” asked the cheerful woman who’d greeted them at the Black Bull as if they were royalty visiting not very incognito. It only took a moment for Merlin and Vivien to realize this was all directed at Susan, another aspect of her inheritance. It took Susan herself a little longer to work out what was going on.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Staple,” replied Susan. She’d known the woman’s name immediately, as she did everyone else’s who lived in the village, which she found rather unnerving. Not that there were very many people about; the fog was still sitting all the way to the lake, and it seemed every tourist already in Coniston or the environs had decided to stay indoors, and even the locals were inclined not to be out and about.
This was all definitely due to Susan’s dad. It had even been difficult to get a pair of constables from the Ambleside police station to come out to guard the bodies in the car park until Greene could organize a proper cleanup crew. They were both locals and clearly felt a strong desire to stay away from the Old Man of Coniston, a side effect of him banishing Southaw. The Old One’s “Go!” and “Get thee gone” had a lingering effect on more than the mountain’s rival.
“I just realized I must have lost my job,” said Susan, looking at the almost empty pint in front of her and thinking about collecting glasses. “Damn. And I don’t even know what day it is. Is it Tuesday?”
“Wednesday,” said Vivien. “We lost two days in Silvermere.”
“I was only there for about an hour at the most,” said Susan.
Merlin muttered something inaudible but disparaging.
“I liked the Twice-Crowned Swan,” said Susan. She sighed. “I suppose now is not the time to be worrying about having a job or not.”
“You might be able to get it back. You know, once you can tell us where the Copper Cauldron is, you can probably stay out of . . . well . . . what Greene would call the weird shit.”
“What? Go back to Milner Square and pick up where I left off, as if nothing’s happened? Sit down for a cuppa with Mrs. L and chat about the weather?”
Merlin and Vivien exchanged an awkward glance.
“What?”
“We realized you don’t know,” said Merlin. “Mrs. London was killed by that Cauldron-Born.”
“Oh,” said Susan. “Oh . . . poor Mrs. L. I wonder who’s going to look after Mister Nimbus.”
They sat quietly for several minutes. Susan was remembering Mrs. London’s cups of tea and small kindnesses, and the others were thinking of her, too.
Merlin was the first to break the silence, tapping his feet together in the slippers Mrs. Staple had provided for him and Vivien. Susan had been surprised to see neither bookseller’s feet were badly cut, only scratched, but Merlin had shrugged it off with an offhand comment that it took things like Raud Alfar arrows to really do them harm.
“Stop that,” said Vivien. “It’s annoying.”
“It helps me think,” said Merlin. He stopped tapping his feet and began to click his teeth instead.
“You’re doing that on purpose to annoy me,” said Vivien.
“What? I’m thinking!” replied Merlin. But he stopped the clicking.
“How do you booksellers deal with an Ancient Sovereign, by the way?” asked Susan, after another minute of silence. “Since cutting their mortal heads off clearly doesn’t work.”
Merlin looked at Vivien.