She pushed off the railing. “Little El, all grown up,” she said. “D’you remember me? I don’t think you would. Last time I saw you, Gwen was toting you away slung over her shoulder, howling, after you tried to use a compulsion on me. I kept wobbling and should stop, you said. You were all of four, I think.”
I didn’t remember her at all, but it certainly sounded like a thing that might have happened. I had in fact invented a compulsion spell round that age, all my own; Mum had been years training me out of flinging it at people.
And then I knew who she was. Yancy was the only name she used, and whenever a scruffier sort of wizard came to the commune looking for help, more often than not they said she’d sent them, with her respects. Once, I’d asked why, and Mum told me she’d helped her resolve a corruption of perception that had lodged itself too deep into her imagination. If that doesn’t tell you much, just avoid consuming too many alchemical substances in unreal spaces and it won’t happen to you.
I had no idea why Yancy was here, though; she wasn’t a London enclaver herself. The opposite, if anything. London enclave had managed to survive the Blitz by opening up loads of entrances all over the city, so even if more than one got bombed in a night, it wouldn’t mean the whole enclave went. After the war, they’d closed most of them up again, but Yancy and her crew had worked out various clever ways of prying and wedging them back open a bit, to get into those unreal spaces I’d mentioned: some sort of vague undefined pockets between the real world and the enclave. They’d camp out in one for months or even years at a time, enjoying the shelter from maleficaria and the convenience of access to the void, until the enclavers managed to find and boot them out, and then they’d scurry away and find another spot to wriggle in through.
So I suppose she did have an incentive to save London from being devoured by a maw-mouth, only why they’d have looked to her, I didn’t quite get. But they clearly had. She said to Sir Richard, “Right, that’s us sorted, too, then. I assume we’re allowed to throw the occasional party on the green, in your charming scheme?” she asked me, in high pleasure, and didn’t wait for an answer before giving another bray. “Nice to meet you, Galadriel Higgins.” She made it sound like a sly joke between us. “Let’s have a chat sometime.” With that, she gave a wriggle that shook all the rags and tatters, and by the time my eyes would focus again, she’d disappeared down one of the paths, although singing loudly enough—just a nonsense ro ma ro ma ma, gaga ooh la la bit from an old pop song over and over—that the waterfall had to get energetic to drown her out.
There was a lot of visible irritation in her wake, with sour looks at Sir Richard. I imagined he’d been the one who’d brought her into the mix, for whatever reason. He managed his own face better, or else he sincerely didn’t mind Yancy. He just gave a bit of a sigh and said to me, in wry tones, “You don’t object to reasonable visiting hours, I hope, or it’ll be nightly raves until seven o’clock in the morning.” He hadn’t been swapping looks with everyone else; he’d just shot a questioning one straight at Alfie, and evidently he’d got enough from that direction to reach the astonishing conclusion that what I wanted was what I’d asked for.
Martel was apparently having more difficulty swallowing the idea. He had gone from polite staring to flat-out staring, and the smile had gone. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to sit here and haggle over details with them; Alfie’s oath would do a better job of negotiating for me. “You asked, so I’ve told you,” I said shortly. “Do it or don’t.”
I took off the power-sharer—I’d like to say it wasn’t a wrench to give it up, but I’d be lying—and held it out to Alfie. He took it from me with another speaking look at his father that was loud enough for me to hear too: see, I told you so. Sir Richard watched the handover with his long face furrowing a bit. I assume his grandfather had negotiated his own deal with London’s council to get it, back in the 1890s, in exchange for the keys to the Scholomance. Probably a permanent council seat for the head of the family, too. Manchester enclave had poured the best part of their strength into getting the place built; London had still got a bargain.
And they’d got a bargain this time, too. They had their enclave; their vast oceans of power, storm-tossed or not; even their secret garden was still theirs. They’d only have to endure letting other people tramp through it once in a while, and even that would only help them settle their frothing mana stores at first: getting in a bunch of wizards to stare at and believe in all of the wondrous artifice would probably be just the thing to help stabilize the place. I stood up. “You won’t mind me having a walk before I go.”