Archive of Our Own

The classroom is quiet. 

It's the sort of classroom, Segundus thinks, that will always be quiet. No one would dare to giggle or chat with their neighbor in the middle of the lecture. The glare that would fall upon them would be far too wrathful.

Not, really, that it's a very interesting lecture. Segundus had been expecting something gripping, and he's been trying to think of nice things to say, but - well. The lecturer is clearly not enthusiastic about his work.

He's a small man with small blue eyes and small handwriting, which Segundus had witnessed upon the acceptance of his request to audit this class, and greying curly hair cut close to his scalp. He has a quiet, dry little voice, and somehow he makes everything as dull and dusty as he is.

This is Gilbert Norrell, the foremost expert on human psychic ability. He is not very impressive.

In the year 2371, John Segundus came to Earth with a mission.

He'd lived most of his life on Betazed, and he wasn't exactly delighted with the idea of leaving to come to a largely-unfamiliar planet. But it would be difficult to study his question any other way.

His question was this:

Why do human psychic abilities manifest so rarely in modern times?

He has, since then, found only one ally. Most people say that it's an inherent feature of humanity, and that Segundus, who is only half-human and by cultural experience really more Betazoid than anything else, just doesn't understand. In fact the first meeting of the Federation Psychic Research Institute, which met in York and was very venerable, had gone very badly. Everyone had said he simply hadn't done enough research. Only one very kind researcher, a Mr. Honeyfoot, had agreed with him.

After they'd struck up a friendship, they'd agreed to visit Starfleet Academy to speak to Lieutenant Commander Norrell.

Now the students are filing out with a shuffling gait that suggests the lecture has half-put them to sleep. Segundus can't blame them, really.

"Well," says Honeyfoot, as they watch Norrell shuffle his papers and clear up after class. "He can't refuse us. Our purpose is noble, isn't it? We are on the brink of war, and we need to protect ourselves."

"The Federation's not meant to be an organization for waging war," says Segundus, with a sigh. "We are meant to be one of peaceful exploration."

"Perhaps it won't come to that," says Honeyfoot. Segundus gives him a look of mingled gratitude and disbelief. Honeyfoot is one of the most optimistic people in Starfleet and somehow even his castles-in-the-air usually manage to lighten Segundus's heart.

They approach the lectern, and Norrell looks up, blinking his small blue eyes. There's a tall dark man behind him, looking very sarcastic and vaguely Vulcan; Segundus wonders if it's just an impression based on the impassiveness of his dark eyes or if it's true. He can't see the man's ears, his hair is too long.

"Childermass," Norrell begins, apparently addressing the man.

"You said they could audit the class," says apparently-Childermass. Both he and Norrell have Yorkshire accents as thick as Honeyfoot's, Segundus is mildly amused to note. It seems that the Institute's reputation is not in vain.

"Ah. Yes." Norrell puts down his bag. "I am Lieutenant Commander Norrell, and this is Yeoman Childermass. I take it you have questions?"

"Well," begins Honeyfoot, "You know that there is one great question in psychic research. Humans have been shown to have a great deal of latent talent. The Raven King, after all - anyone who could hold off the Eugenicists even in so small a part as Northern England must have had prodigious powers."

Norrell gives him a cool look. "I would not take the Raven King as my model for human psychic power," he says, taking up his bag again.

"You don't believe he was real?"

"I don't believe he used his powers appropriately. Oh, the cause was noble, but the execution was -" Norrell shrugs. "It can only be compared to pre-Reform Vulcan wars in brutality."

"They were brutal times," says Segundus softly, speaking for the first time. Norrell looks at him, really looks at him, also for the first time; Segundus has the sense of being assessed for a threat, as if Norrell sees everything in terms of what harm it will do him.

"They say that he went off into another dimension," says Honeyfoot. "They say he will return."

Norrell snorts. "Of course they do. History is full of legends of returning kings. But the time for kings has passed. This is a more civilized age. I would like to see such things promoted to their rightful status - as a tool of the Federation."

This reminds Segundus of his mission. "Sir," he says, "We had a question to ask you. You said you said you would see the status of psionic abilities restored. Tell me, if you would, your opinion on why the manifestation of psychic powers is so rare in humans in this age?"

Norrell smiles then, an inward sort of smile, and glances at Childermass, who raises his eyebrow and shrugs.

"I don't know the answer to that question," he says, shaking his head. "I am myself quite a competent telepath."

And with that, he leaves the classroom, leaving Honeyfoot and Segundus to gape after him.

-

"They'll want a demonstration, you know," says Childermass, as the door to Norrell's office closes behind him.

"I don't care," says Norrell, rather petulantly, he knows, but the mention of the Raven King has put him entirely out of temper. It always does. Being reminded of the Eugenics Wars in general is never a pleasant experience; Norrell is well aware that despite his particular talents he has always been the kind of person who lies crosswise with the world, the kind of person entirely inconvenient to the propagation of übermenschen. But then, so is Childermass. He takes momentary comfort from that thought.

"What was the good of telling them, if you're not planning on showing them?" asks Childermass, sitting down in the chair which Norrell reluctantly keeps for students and which is, at this point, more Childermass's than anyone else's. Norrell discourages visitors.

"I'm a scholar, not a performing monkey," says Norrell. "Your legs are acting up, I take it. I can tell by the way you're moving."

"You know I'm used to it. Don't change the subject."

"What exactly am I to demonstrate? That I can do a mind-meld? I can't."

"Next best thing."

"I'm not going to go probing around in someone's brain just to show them that I can," says Norrell, pulling a face. "It's - "

"Unrespectable?" says Childermass, with the faintest hint of laughter in his face.

"Unhygienic," says Norrell.

"So do something else. Your visions."

"I wish you wouldn't call them that. The term is so reminiscent of every misconception about psionics. Divination is impossible by practical means."

Childermass looks at him with that particularly dry look. "And without you showing people what it's really like, how will they know?"

Norrell sighs. He knows he's been defeated, but he's also not willing to give in without a bit more of a fight. "I just don't see what it has to be me."

"You know why. Because you're the one who's spent three decades researching this. You're the only one who can."

Norrell sighs again and rubs his temples. "I have a headache."

"Well. Go home, get some rest, and come back and show them later."

"No," says Norrell, "I want this to be over with. They'll be here any second. I didn't tell them my office number, but the directory has it."

There is a knock at the door.

Childermass smiles his long crooked smile. "Are you sure you can't predict the future?" he says.

-

"It's impossible," says Dr. Foxcastle flatly. "No human can perform feats of that magnitude. Not without significant artificial enhancement. Oh, we have our Miranda Jonses, but the Raven King was a legend."

"I don't think he was claiming to be affiliated with the Raven King," says Segundus. The memory of the visit is quite foggy, but he's certain on that.

"And why are you both so muddle-headed?" asks Foxcastle. "You are scientists, sirs!"

Segundus and Honeyfoot had been asking themselves this same question ever since they had returned. It's not quite so bad for Segundus, which suggests that Norrell has done something to affect their memories, something that wouldn't work as well on a half-Betazoid. What that something is, neither of them particularly want to consider.

"A challenge," says Foxcastle. "If he really does have some sort of mystical power - " he snorts derisively - "He had better show it and get it over with."

Segundus doesn't say what he's thinking, which is that he's pretty sure Norrell would be annoyed at having his abilities characterized as mystical. Foxcastle probably wouldn't take it well.

-

The sight of Norrell moving fifty statues in York Minster with merely the power of his mind is not something Segundus is ever going to forget.

He doesn't think any of them will.

-

"It's not that I won't use my powers in the war effort," says Norrell, some two weeks later after a series of disappointments. "I'm perfectly willing to use my powers in the war effort. The problem is that nobody will let me use my powers in the war effort."

"Have you actually spoken to anyone?" asks Childermass, folding his arms and leaning against the wall, his eyes keen and dark and disruptively perceptive.

"In a way. Not as such. "

"You didn't show them."

"Well..."

Childermass sighs. "You're never going to get anywhere like this, you know. You're doing it all wrong. You've got to do something to demonstrate precisely how strong your power is."

"I don't know what," mutters Norrell, biting the tips of his fingers. "Nobody listens to me, so what am I supposed to do? I told Admiral Pole that I would be willing to do anything he wanted in the way of remote viewing or psychometry, but did he listen? No."

"You could have moved more statues."

Norrell glares. "He would have called that a hoax. They already are, you know. They're saying I did it with a machine. Using the internet was a terrible mistake - that blog Segundus submitted the video to wasn't at all sympathetic. And don't tell me that nonsense about believers requiring no proof and skeptics accepting none. I am a scientist, Childermass."

"I know you are," says Childermass. He shakes his head. "You should really be going to more of the parties they throw. Why else did you move to headquarters full time for? You can't get anywhere if people don't know you."

"I hate parties."

"For your cause, sir. The one tonight. I told you about it."

Norrell, with badly-disguised ill will, shuffles off to get ready, which in his case mostly means putting on a new shirt and combing his hair. He make Childermass come with him, because regardless of how unsuitable it is to bring an enlisted yeoman as your plus one, he refuses to face this alone. Besides, Childermass's hair and clothing - which invariably just skirt this side of regulation with their untidiness - distract attention from Norrell.

All of his grand plans do him absolutely no good. The party is crowded and miserable and full of people and he becomes separated from Childermass in almost no time at all. He hides away in a corner near a bookshelf and picks up a manual of technical specs for the Constellation class of starships. It's not exactly his field, but any book will do right now.

For a while, this is comfortable, until two loud men traipse into his space. The first one is small, perhaps Norrell's height, and he has dark hair and eyes and light green skin - an Orion. The second one is Andorian and he's taller, close in height, Norrell thinks, to Childermass, though he has a very supercilious expression.

" - heard he can read the future and tell you what your destiny is!" says the first. "Perhaps he will do that for the next video!"

Norrell tsks to himself at this sort of charlatanry. Whoever this fellow is, he's exactly the sort that Norrell disapproves of. Exactly what contributes to the downfall of modern psychic powers, he thinks, his thoughts running along a well-worn track, and then -

"Nonsense, in my opinion," says the second man. "If you ask me the statues were clearly animated with a machine."

Norrell looks up sharply. "I beg your pardon?" he asks, shutting the book.

The second man raises his eyebrows at the temerity of an intruder making himself known in his conversation. Norrell notices that neither of them are Starfleet, or at least they're not in uniform. He's seen civilians get invited to this sort of party, but usually they're at least vaguely connected to the people throwing it. What these sort of men can have in common with a respectable officer of the fleet he doesn't know.

Finally, in a tone that suggests he can scarcely be bothered with answering Norrell's question, the second man says, "This psychic they've got. Haven't you kept up with the news?"

"I am not a psychic," says Norrell. Then, realizing that this might not be as perfectly clear as he was hoping, he adds, "I'm the one who moved the statues. And I'm not a psychic. Not in the traditional sense of that word."

The two men blink. Then the first one beams. "You're Lieutenant Commander Norrell! Why, I scarcely know what to do! I'm Christopher Drawlight, and this gentleman here - " he gestures at the tall man - "is Lasels."

Norrell finds this clearly Human name on an Orion very suspicious, but he doesn't comment. He doesn't keep up with trends.

Drawlight continues, "This is truly an honor, sir. I'd heard you scarcely leave your rooms."

"That is correct," says Norrell.

"Well, in that case, thank you for joining us. Er. That is to say, you weren't in your own video..."

"Yes?" says Norrell, scowling and being prepared to be accused of fraud again. If he's explained once, he's explained a thousand times: you don't have to be there to perform the kind of acts he's done.

"I thought you were rather taller and darker...with wild hair?"

Norrell's scowl eases back into a frown. "That's Childermass. My yeoman."

"Yeoman. Of course. Of course. Well. You certainly have a professorial air about you!" says Drawlight, brightly. "I imagine that might impress your public."

"My...what?" asks Norrell, distracted and somewhat bewildered by the ostensible professorial air. He's been told he isn't a very good teacher and he is quite content with that. He has always regarded himself as a researcher first.

"Your public. You have a lot of fans, you know, " says Drawlight, his voice dropping to a confidential hush. "You've made an impression with the statues. As a publicity stunt, it was masterful."

"Indeed," says Lasels. Norrell is not an expert at interpersonal communication, but he feels that this remark may have been sarcastic.

"It was not intended for a publicity stunt," says Norrell crossly. "I wanted to make a point."

"I think you made it," says Lasels. Again, he sounds amused more than serious, which disconcerts Norrell; generally, when people are laughing around him, they are laughing at him.

He says, "Well, if so, then it wasn't enough. Admiral Pole won't even see me."

"What do you want to see him for? He's a fine enough gentleman I suppose, but..."

"To help with the war effort, of course," says Norrell. "What else should I use my abilities for?"

Drawlight shrugs and looks over at Lasels. "Amusement?"

"This is a serious matter. I don't practice my powers to amuse. It's bad enough that human psychic research has such an aura of mysticism about it - it shouldn't, no more than Vulcan ones do. Less, possibly; the Vulcan position is a curious mix of logic and mysticism. I can't get Admiral Pole to take me seriously, and how will I help if I can't get anyone to listen?" Norrell is aware that he is talking about matters these two men have no real knowledge of, but he's far too annoyed to care. He has a vague sense of injury over the laughter and the scoffing, and he is determined to make someone as confused as he has recently been.

"Admiral Pole?" asks Drawlight. "Well! You're at least revenged. His marriage has fallen through, I believe - perhaps he'll be more humble now. Maybe you should go and see him again."

"What?" asks Norrell, furrowing his brow. "Marriage?"

"Didn't you hear? His stepdaughter-to-be died and now his fiance is calling off the wedding. Terrible, really - he's in desperate need of her influence with Bajor. She's a Bajoran ambassador, you know, quite powerful in the government, and for them to cooperate in the coming war effort we need all the connections we can get, don't we?" Drawlight tosses all this off carelessly, as if he doesn't really pay attention to gossip, although Norrell suspects this is a false impression.

"Dead? How long?"

"Just this afternoon, I understand. He was supposed to be at the party, but... Well, it would hardly be tasteful, would it?"

Norrell blinks.

Dead this afternoon.

And he could, he really could, use Admiral Pole's good will. What better way to get him to listen to him?

No. This is a bad idea - messing about with crossdimensional forces is bad, he's long since convinced himself of that. Generally there are uncomfortable bargains and all sorts of tricks involved. It's a terrible idea.

It's a terrible idea.

But...when else will he get someone to listen to him? Much less a man directly involved with the war? And if the stepdaughter is alive and the wedding goes through Admiral Pole's influence will be increased, if Drawlight is correct, and he can help Norrell even more....

"I cannot," he says aloud, firmly.

"What?" says Drawlight, startled.

"I know the procedures involved, but it would be terribly risk. I could be dealing in forces beyond my control." He rubs his hands together and shakes his head. "No, it's a foolish idea."

Drawlight's eyes widen. "Lieutenant Commander Norrell," he says, drawing out Norrell's name in a thrilled sort of way, "Do you mean to tell me you can bring the dead back to life?"

Lasels makes a snorting sound that Norrell suspects is yet more laughter. Stung, he says, "With sufficient resources and if it's done soon enough, perhaps."

"Well! In that case you must exercise your power for the good of Admiral Pole! Only think, sir, of how distraught he would be otherwise, and how much harm that might do to our strategy in the coming war!" Drawlight takes Norrell's hand - which makes him hideously uncomfortable, he's never liked having his hands touched without warning. "You wanted to help, after all."

"Yes," says Norrell uncertainly, and then again with more confidence, "Yes. Can you take me to him?"

"It would be my pleasure."

-

Admiral Pole looks grave and drawn; the lady, apparently a window by the name of Winntow, looks wholly distraught. She's a white woman of about his own age; beyond noticing that Norrell barely glances at her. Admiral Pole is his target. He is in deep discussion with a tall black Vulcan, who is very serious-looking and, Norrell is theoretically aware, very handsome. He thinks he recognizes him as Master Chief Petty Officer Nesh-kur Stefen, who is supposed to be Admiral Pole's right hand, and who had at their last meeting been responsible for telling Norrell that the rendezvous was not to take place at Admiral Pole's office, but his quarters.

It is clear that they are deep in discussion and not interested in talking to Norrell, so he gets permission from the mother and goes upstairs.

"I look forward to seeing what will be, I'm sure, a thrilling process - " Drawlight begins, Lasels trailing him, before Norrell shuts the door in both their faces. It's the sort of openly impolite thing that Childermass would probably tell him to avoid, but Childermass is still at the party. Norrell really hadn't thought this through very well. He ought to send a message to him, to tell him what's happening, but he figures he'll do it after.

Part of him is afraid Childermass will talk him out of it, if he's honest with himself, something he often tries to avoid being. But this is, after all, the opportunity. The thing that all the networking was supposed to result in. Turning it down would be a foolish notion.

He wishes his hands weren't shaking.

Norrell takes a deep breath and sits down in a chair next to bed. The dead girl - Emma, he thinks - looks terribly fragile and strangely shriveled. Is that what death is like? Why had they brought her back here? It can't have been long, hadn't Drawlight said something about that? But her hair already looks stiff to the touch, carved from wood instead of soft-spun, and her skin looks like marble.

No use philosophizing on the nature of death and how it changes the body. He could read a textbook for better information.

He closes his eyes, and he opens his mind.

He'd done this so often in his youth that it feels, in a way, like coming home. Everyone knows the Raven King is supposed to be in some alien dimension, someplace accessible only by thought, biding his time until he decides his kingdom needs him again. Norrell thinks now that the cyclical return feature of the legend was simply influence from Arthurian myth. One British king and another, and a kingdom at two points of need. But he hadn't always thought that.

For all the good it had done him at the time. He'd never gotten anything but echo.

But he knows the theory of contacting other species, more...concrete species. And he knows what they can do for you.

hello, say a voice in his mind.

It takes all of Norrell's self-control to suppress an extremely undignified noise. He opens his eyes and gasps aloud, because what's standing in front of him is -

Well. Not what he'd expected. He - it - they? Norrell settles on he for conveniences - is wearing a bright green sort of short tunic with leggings, the sort of dress you'd see on anyone in the street, but the tunic looks extraordinarily like it has been fashioned out of leaves. The hair is long and silver and fluffy as clouds, like the head of a thistle gone to down; the skin is moonlight-pale. The overall effect is very much like something out of a fairytale.

you summoned me, says the voice, sounding bored. was there a reason for that or did you only wish to goggle?

Norrell gapes. He can't help himself. The voice is still echoing inside his head alone - it's going straight to his mind without passing his ears. Directing thought in telepathy is quite difficult; doing it with this level of nuance is incredible.

The being sighs, and says, finally aloud, "Why have you summoned me here?"

"Summoned?" asks Norrell. Then he blinks. Yes, an old-fashioned word for this sort of calling but not inappropriate. "The young lady," he says.

The being - perhaps Thistledown - goes and looks at the bed. "She is dead," he pronounces loftily.

"I know that," says Norrell, frowning.

"So I take it you called me for reasons other than identifying time of death."

"Can - can you bring her back to life?"

Thistledown puts a finger on his lips and gazes for a moment at Norrell. It's a terribly disconcerting feeling, as if he's examining not just Norrell's exterior but his insides as well, all of his organs and his thoughts and his intentions.

"What will you give me?" he asks.

Norrell shrugs. He has no idea what could possibly be offered to an extradimensional being of power so immense - what couldn't he simply make himself.

Thistledown examines the girl's body for a moment, with the same thoughtful expression. Finally he says, "She is very beautiful and I could certainly use a little company. The continuum is very dull these days. Half of her life?"

-

Norrell goes down to the main floor with the sinking feeling that he's just made a terrible mistake. The words half a life is better than none are still echoing in his head, and it worries him, how Thistledown had thought it necessary to send that bit via telepathy.

But the girl is alive. She is calling for for her mother.

And that makes it all right, doesn't it?

-

At first Ema thinks the dreams are only dreams. It's an odd place, shifting and changing all the time, peculiarly blue-tinted, and it's an odd partner she's dancing with, silver and moonlight pale with hair like thistledown. But then she'd been brought back from the dead. Couldn't that cause odd dreams?

But slowly, slowly, her sleep gets less and less restful. Slowly she begins to ache in the mornings, and the sound of bells begins to claw down her back and make her shiver.

Her mother brushes the hair off her forehead and asks if she's okay, treats her like a little girl again. She would hate it if she wasn't so tired.

And then she tries to speak of it. Firstly to her mother, spitting out the words desperately, only for them to come back as garbled fairytale nonsense. Things about rugs and small creatures and Julius Caesar, whom she's admittedly read about before, but not in this kind of detail. Her mouth feels full of ticklish red rose petals, she can smell them when she talks.

She tries Admiral Pole next. Admiral Pole brings in the man who'd brought her back, and for a moment she has hope, but he looks at her with frightened eye and shakes his head.

Every night Ema goes back to the strange blue place. She's beginning to think of it as Lost-hope.

She's beginning to think she'll never really leave.

-

Norrell can't make it stop. He tries. But he can't make it stop.

Eventually he just stops thinking about it, and Admiral Pole accepts that this is the nature of rebirth. The girl's mother stops asking. Life goes on and he begins to settle down again; Childermass, mostly, stops giving him odd sideways glances.

The war is...almost certain now. They've found a spy on earth itself and that terrifies Norrell more than anything else. Could he have sensed it? Maybe if he'd been given the chance.

It's for the greater good, he tells himself, and he buries the memories of Winntow Ema screams when she learns how long she'll have to live like this.

It's for good. It's for good. It's for good.

He can almost quiet the panging of his conscience, that way. Almost.

-

The evening seems to start quite normally.

Stefen is, as usual, workin on his paperwork. There is a great deal of paperwork to be done at all times, but he is, fortunately, quite efficient at it. Stefen takes quiet pride in his efficiency, and so he does not mind.

Besides, it's relaxing. When everything has been done for the day and all is calm, an hour or two or three spent filling out forms has a soothing, meditative quality. But Stefen's control is excellent, and he never falls asleep.

This completely fails to explain the dreamlike quality of what occurs when he stops to stretch.

A chime goes off and he realizes he's being summoned. It's a room he's never seen before. All the same, it seems quite natural to him to go in and see who it is that needs him.

There is a person there. He has long silvery hair and is, Stefen notes without particular emotion, very beautiful. He doesn't quite look Human or Vulcan but Stefen isn't sure what he does look, except otherworldly.

The person turns to Stefen. "Hello," he says, "Have you come to help me?"

Stefen blinks. "With what may I help you?"

"I'm attending a reception tonight and I thought perhaps you could help me get dressed."

Once again Stefen blinks, but then the world resettles and everything suddenly seems normal. "Of course," he says.

There's shaving, and hairdressing, and clothing of course. Stefen knows how to do these things; Admiral Pole sometimes required help, and Stefen was once his yeoman. By the time he's finished the person with the silvery hair is smiling and nodding contentedly.

"Very good," he says. "But I do apologise. You must be a captain at least."

"Me, sir? I'm enlisted." Stefen begins to put away the dressing equipment.

"Enlisted! A man such as yourself? You're clearly very talented, and also - " Thistledown gives him a critical look - "Yes, and also most exceedingly beautiful. I can't imagine why you're not a captain at least. I suspect you'd be an excellent captain."

Stefen shrugs. "Admiral Pole trusts me with his business, and that is a considerable responsibility..."

"Ah!" says Thistledown. "He keeps you lowly because he doesn't want to lose your labor. Hmmph! I think that very mean of him."

Stefen opens his mouth to explain, but Thistledown shakes his head. "Here. Come to the reception I'm holding tonight for my newest guest."

"I cannot - " begins Stefen.

But Thistledown has ceased to listen and the room is different and suddenly there is music....

And this is when he is certain that he must have drifted off into a dream. There is no logic to this, the way the scene seems to flicker. Nor is there any logic to the party. Stefen has, in the course of his work at Starfleet Headquarters, been to many reception, but he has never seen aliens with dresses covered in tiny singing mouths, and he has never seen any of the colours around him, beautiful though they are.

Through the strange mists, he sees Ema. She is expressionless and there is a mask covering her eyes and her nose ridges, but Stefen knows her posture and the way her hair looks piled up on the back of her head.

But the lady he is dancing with - when had she asked him to dance? - has snatched him away without a word, and he cannot see her anymore.

Stefen sees Thistledown here and there. Every time, he's dancing with Ema, and every time he smiles at Stefen as if nothing makes him so happy as Stefen's own presence. Stefen does not quite know what he has done to earn this. He's not quite sure what he feels about it, either, because something is telling him that there are going to be consequences.

But this is a dream, isn't it? So it doesn't matter. None of it is going to carry over. It may not feel like a dream, but then Stefen has had vivid dreams before, and certainly the logic and sense of time is as fragmented as in a dream.

So, he tells himself, he need not worry about what the repercussions are going to be. At worst he will be tired tomorrow, and he certainly knows how to overcome that.

Nothing is going to linger, he tells himself. He ignores the fear in the back of his mind, which is not logical.

-

Norrell looks up from his desk and drops his pen on the floor.

An extremely disreputable-looking man with a thing hawklike face and an expression of ferocity is standing there, with his arms crossed.

Norrell, alarmed, taps his comm. "Security!" he says, and then to the man, "What on earth are you doing here?"

"Calling your minion before you even hear me out? Supposing I was a student?"

"I'm not teaching anymore, and I can assure you I'd remember if you were a student of mine! Go away; I'm working."

The man clears his throat. "I am Vinculus, and I have a message to deliver to you. I am a psychic - you may have heard of me - "

"Vinculus! I certainly have heard of you. - Childermass! - Get out of my office. You, sir, are a fraud." Norrell rises and begins to look around for a less-valuable book which he can defend himself with if necessary; he keeps the desk between himself and his intruder. "Out, I say!"

"Not until I have delivered my prophecy!"

"No one can predict the future! All prophecies are nonsense." Norrell crouches behind the desk. "Childermass! Security!"

Vinculus straightens his extremely untidy tunic and then begins to recite. "I reached out my hand - "

Norrell stops his ears, taps his comm again, and calls security.

"Two magicians shall appear in England - " Vinculus continues.

"Magicians!" says Norrell angrily. "Magicians! Stuff and nonsense! There is nothing magical at all about - two?"

"The first shall fear me - "

"No, explain yourself! What do you mean two?"

" - governed by thieves and murderers - "

Vinculus manages to finish the entire wretched prophecy before security comes and drags him out, followed by Childermass.

"Why on earth did it take you so long?" Norrell demands, still hiding himself behind the desk.

"The rascal put a signal damper just outside your office. I heard you yelling and thought I'd better fetch Security myself."

Norrell subsides mostly, aside from a few complaints and warnings as to the fates which befall neglectful yeomen and security personnel. He feels that he is owed this for all the trials he has been through today.

Childermass listens with one raised eyebrow and waits until Norrell is finished. Then he says, "What did he want?"

"To give some sort of foolish prophecy. I really cannot imagine the purpose of any of it. He talked of magicians."

"Hmm. I can't imagine you enjoyed that."

Norrell makes a scoffing sound. "Magic! Ridiculous nonsense. What I do is based on scientific principles."

"So I've often heard you say, sir." There's no hint of mockery in Childermass's voice, but Norrell knows sarcasm when he hears it.

"It's very important," he says. "But he said two."

"Two?"

"Aye. So did the - so did someone else." Norrell avoids Childermass's eyes and tries not to remember the being with the thistledown hair. "No sense to it."

"No, sir," says Childermass.

"Everyone knows I'm the only human psychic of my caliber in the world," says Norrell. Even to himself he doesn't sound completely convinced.

-

Jonathan Strange is having a much more interesting time in this class that he thought he would.

Part of it is that Segundus - who at thirty-two is just a few years older than Jonathan, which gives them a kinship - is a far more interesting lecturer than had been expected. Sure, he's sort of nervous, presumably because he's a guest, but once you get him interested in something, he's pretty good.

Segundus is here for only one semester, and so Jonathan had thought he had better take his class while the option was around. He'd heard there was another class on psionics, but that it was taught by possibly the most boring professor at Starfleet.

Jonathan is twenty-seven and one of the older people in the class. It took him a while to find his calling - in fact he doesn't think he has yet. Technically he's on command track, because the idea of being a captain is rather appealing, but he keeps getting diverted with unnecessary courses in obscure disciplines and then never taking another class on them. It's delayed graduation a fair bit, although he's close now.

He keeps expecting Arabella to scold him, but all she does is sigh gently and tell him that he must study what interests him. Joining Starfleet had been her idea, sort of. Or rather, she'd told him that he ought to have something to do with his time, and he'd agreed vaguely. Starfleet had been a leap of faith.

But now on the third week of the course he thinks all those leaps are finally paying off, because he's pretty sure he's a telepath.

He'd started off messing around with some directions in an old textbook - Norrell, he thinks, that's the author, it had been so boring he'd nearly fallen asleep - and he knows how stupid it sounds, but the thing is that he's tested it and he's figured out clairvoyance.

So after the lecture he waits until the cloud of students has finished packing up and approaches him.

"Sir," he says, not sure the best way to go about this, "I think I might be psychic."

Segundus's eyes go wide, and then he seems to get ahold of himself. "I beg your pardon?"

"It sounds stupid, I know, but can you test for that?"

Segundus takes a breath. "Can you start at the beginning, Mr Strange?"

So Jonathan does. He tells Segundus about the textbook, and the cards Arabella had tested him with, and the way he's already started to feel things differently - people's thoughts are a sort of whisper in his mind that he can't entirely suppress. Segundus calls in a colleague - a Benjamin Honeyfoot - and they discuss things quickly in low whispers behind the desk.

"Come with us," says Segundus.

-

They sit him down in an unused laboratory and run through all the standard tests. Then they run him through some nonstandard tests, such as putting Honeyfoot behind a screen and asking Jonathan what he's thinking about - the answer is a new paper he's writing, and Jonathan quotes the text back to him as far as he can make it out. It's far from perfect, because thoughts are sort of.....muffled and dim. He thinks he could clarify them if he knew how.

When they're done, Segundus sits down in front of him and looks very seriously at him. "That was extraordinary," he says.

"Thank you," says Jonathan. He's not sure this is the right response, but then, what is the right response? Besides, he's pretty impressed himself with it, even if he's not quite sure where all of this is coming from.

"I'm afraid," says Segundus rather carefully, "That neither myself nor my colleague are in a position to help you very much. I don't really have any proper psychic talent, just empathy. It's very common in Human-Betazoids, of course."

"Of course," says Jonathan, who did some attention to his xenobiology textbooks even if perhaps not as much as he should have.

"And I have none at all, of course," say Honeyfoot cheerfully. "I'm quite resigned to it. But you, sir! I don't know if there's been another human psychic of this particular type, aside of course from Lieutenant Commander Norrell."

Segundus makes a sort of subdued hum of agreement.

"Norrell?" says Jonathan, furrowing his brow. "Norrell...the boring one, isn't he?"

Honeyfoot let out a rather undignified snort. "I would not say that, exactly," says Segundus, in what is clearly a valiant attempt to salvage Norrell's reputation. "He's...certainly very scholarly. But, er, in any case..."

"We think it would be best for you to seek him out," says Honeyfoot.

"Ben," says Segundus in a sort of timidly contradictory way.

"Oh, yes. To be more precise, I think it would be best. John here isn't quite so sure. He's a little...territorial."

"Territorial?"

"He's shut down three people claiming to be psychics in the last two weeks alone," says Segundus. "In, ah, a very public way."

"But they were frauds, weren't they?" asks Jonathan.

"No-one's quite sure if they were or if their powers were just more limited and specific." Segundus shrugs. "I'm just a little worried that he might denounce you unreasonably."

"But there won't be any mind so like Mr Strange's on the whole planet. Nobody else has the talent or, really, as much of the interest - except the former York society of course."

"York society?"

"He shut that down too," says Segundus with uncharacteristic heat. "Made all of its members look like frauds, including Mr Honeyfoot here."

Mr Honeyfoot waves a hand. "But I'm sure for someone with practical talents it'll be fine. Talk to him, you'll see." He turned to address Segundus. "Don't you think that there's nobody better-suited to train an emerging telepath?"

"I suppose you're right," say Segundus. "Yes, it's not as though there's an abundance of teachers on the subject. I suppose you should go and find him."

"We'd offer to make the introductions, but he hates us," says Honeyfoot. "Or rather he hates our way of studying psionics. Hence the York society kerfuffle. Anyway, I think you'd be better off seeking him yourself."

"I'll take your word for it," says Jonathan.

-

Stefen walks to the grocers like he's in a dream.

It's technically not his duty; the admiral could send someone less senior out for it. But he likes Mrs Brandy, the purveyor of fresh non-synthetic foods to the area. She herself is a farmer in addition to distributing other people's produce, which gives them a bond, as Stefen has always found gardening both useful and comforting. Sometimes between packing up carrots for a banquet they get into discussions of planting and seasons and fertilizer, which he always finds satisfying.

She has a habit of pressing coffee and hot cocoa on him solicitously and of being concerned for his health. This is kind of her, even if it is unnecessary.

But this time, he takes no quiet enjoyment from the thought of the conversations they might have, nor of the day's bright sunshine. Everything feels muffled, scattered. And he is so, so tired. Every step feels labored, and his arms are too heavy to hold up. He wants to sleep, but it hasn't done him any good lately. He wants to meditate, but something is blocking him from reaching the peace that he so desperately needs.

With a sigh he knows is uncharacteristic, he opens the door to the grocers. It's a cheery, well-lit building with rustic wooden surfaces and bright, simple paintings and fixture. Here and there there are plants in pots, mostly herbs, which gives the store a faint sweet scent.

None of it makes any impact on his exhaustion. Everything filters through him as if through a dirty pane of glass. Why is he so tired? He's sure he slept last night. And he aches like he's been dancing. Stefen knows how to dance, of course; it is appropriate protocol and it's also good exercise. But he hasn't been dancing in a long time.

"Good morning, Chief Nesh-kur!" Mrs. Brandy gives him a bright smile as he walks in the door. She persists in addressing him by this title even though he has made it clear that it is unnecessary, and that it is perfectly acceptable to use his personal name with the title, as most Humans do. He believes that she uses it to denote respect, and this is something he appreciates very much.

He nods at her. Of course he has never been given to particularly strong displays of greeting or affection; that is neither in his nature as a Vulcan nor as an officer of Starfleet. But this one feels listless and half-hearted even to him, and she can tell, because her face falls.

"You look a little ill," she says, fussing around on the counter. "Perhaps I could get you something? Coffee?"

Stefen shakes his head. "I do not require coffee at this time," he says. The words feel heavy and robotic in his mouth. "But thank you," he adds.

"You look as if you're in pain. Are you sure I can't get anything for you?"

"I seem to have slept inharmoniously," says Stefen. "I'm sure I will be fine. Thank you."

"If you're sure. What may I do for you today?"

He hands her the list, and sits down in a nearby chair as she sends assistants out to fetch various things. Part of him wants to fall into meditation here and now, try to get his mind clear and right, but firstly this isn't the place and secondly it wouldn't do any good. This isn't the first time he's tried.

Finally when all of his groceries are bagged, Mrs. Brandy says, "Oh, Chief, I was wondering if there was something I could ask you about."

He stirs. "Yes, Mrs. Brandy?"

"I...well, this is going to sound very curious, but I found gold in the store today."

"Gold?" says Stefen, waking up a little.

"Curious, isn't it? Old-fashioned coins. I've never seen the like except in a museum. With you being so wise and knowledgeable, I thought perhaps you could help."

She brings out a large back and sets it on the counter. It is, indeed, full of gold coins. Stefen has never seen the like even in a museum - Vulcans had never used gold in this way - but he certainly recognizes them from photographs.

"Well," he says, "I'm afraid your best option is to engage a lawyer."

"A lawyer?"

"In case they are missing from someone. A lawyer would know what to do."

"Yes, I suppose so at that." Mrs. Brandy sighs. "Well, thank you. You always do give good advice. Will you stay for dinner? It's very simple, but it is vegetarian, and I can have some lovely Plomeek soup if you'd like?"

"You're very kind, but I must get these back to the Embassy," says Stefen. "Ambassador Winntow is holding a reception and Admiral Pole is cohosting."

"I can imagine what a fuss he must be making, newly married and all."

"Yes," says Stefen. He sighs.

He barely notices Mrs. Brandy's sad look as he leaves. It pierces him, but that's a distant thing beneath the fog. Strange that she can see the change in him, when so many believe Vulcans to be emotionless and would simply not see the difference.

When he walks out of the shop, Thistledown is there.

He blinks; the world seems to rearrange itself to accommodate this strangeness without bending at all, as if there's nothing extraordinary about his dream coming to life.

"Sir," he begins, hesitant. "I - "

"Don't you know me?" says Thistledown, frowning. "And I'd thought you the height of manners and grace. To forget a friend so easily, Stefen!"

"But I thought I dreamed you," Stefen whispers. He wonders if something has cracked him, if the strain has all been too much.

"Oh! Of course that's how it would look to you. The continuum is a very...lovely place, of course, but a bit beyond what your mortal mind can ken, etcetera. Of course we must make adjustments! Otherwise, you'd be stripped of all your senses and lying in a heap!" Thistledown sighs. "It's very unsightly at a party. And your sleeping mind is more flexible, so I generally steal you away at night when I can. Of course as you spend more time there it will be easier."

"But Ema - "

"Ah! Beautiful Ema!" Thistledown gazes into the distance in the manner of one remembering something particularly exceptional. "You two are the finest humanoids to grace my halls in a hundred years! No, far more than a hundred years! Do you know that I have never before had a Bajoran in my house? Vulcans, yes, one or two, but not very often. Most often before the time of Surak, of course. Much less summoning of me and my kind now. Of course your decorations were much better when I was consulted."

Stefen has never had a particular quarrel with the general scheme of decorations on Vulcan, any part of it that he has visited, but he is capable of keeping his opinions to himself.

Thistledown, robbed of either argument or agreement, makes a sort of bored humming noise. "Come, Stefen. There is another ball tonight. Go to sleep early and I'll bring you as soon as you do!"

"Sir," says Stefen politely, which is intentionally neither an agreement nor a defiance.

He doesn't think it'll matter. There's a growing suspicion within him that no matter what he says or does, his sleep won't be peaceful anymore.

-

Jonathan takes Arabella with him to the meeting, partly to show her that he's serious and partly because he feels as though he needs backup. Also, if it's a disaster, they can giggle about it later, which is always a great comfort.

They walk to Norrell's quarters hand in hand. "It's certainly not a very exciting place," says Arabella. "You'd think with a field that's so - " She pauses, as if searching for the right word.

"Romantic?" says Jonathan.

"Fantastic," says Arabella, giving him a good-humored look. "You'd think he'd have a more interesting home. Nice, of course, but not exciting. I thought he had a historic house?"

"Hurtfew? Apparently he only stays in it at weekends and holidays, the way I do with Ashfair. Anyway, all human-social scientists are deadly dull," says Jonathan. "Well, except for John Segundus. That's why I was going to do physics, but physicists are also deadly dull."

"Of course they are. I'm afraid it's going to be up to you to inject some excitement into your field, Jonathan. No one else has your particular...flair." There's a twinkle in her eyes that he knows well.

"Was that an insult?" Jonathan asks, beginning to pout. Arabella opens her mouth, but at this juncture they reach the room.

The door is open, so they venture inside. To Jonathan's astonishment, the entire open sitting area appears to be a library. There's shelving on every wall - clearly replicated after the move-in, because it doesn't particularly match - crammed full of books. In the middle of it is a small pale man with stooping shoulders and small weak blue-grey eyes that never quite meet Jonathan's, and a much taller one with light brown skin and dark eyes and hair. Both of them are human, but sitting in the corner there's a tiny Orion man and a tall Andorian one.

This is somewhat more people than Jonathan had expected to encounter, and he's not entirely sure which one is Norrell. The small human one looks of the right age to be a stuffy professor, but the Andorian could possibly be boring enough even if he is dressed to the height of fashion.

"Erm," he says, "I am Jonathan Strange."

The small human - ah, then he is Norrell - rises and gives a short stiff bow, a gesture so old-fashioned that Jonathan almost laughs. "And I am Lieutenant Commander Norrell," he says, neglecting to give a first name.

"Pleased to meet you," says Jonathan, thinking already that this will probably turn out to be a lie.

Norrell nods and sits back down. After a moment he says, gesturing at the other human, "This is my yeoman, Childermass. And these two - " at the aliens in the corner - "are Mr Lasels and Mr Drawlight."

"I see," says Jonathan, wondering what the two of them do. They're clearly not Starfleet, that's for damn sure; the haircuts and the way they dress are all wrong. What use has Norrell got for a couple of, well, dandies? For that matter, Childermass-the-yeoman doesn't have the body language one would expect in the presence of a superior officer. Jonathan's always been quite terrible at that himself, but he does recognize what it's supposed to look like. It's a strange menagerie Norrell's got here.

"Did Lt. Cdr. Norrell's exploits inspire you to try your own talents?" asks Lasels, sounding very unimpressed. "It's quite natural, really. The creation of spaceship illusions was lauded everywhere. The Dominion soldiers were quite taken in, and at such a distance. I'm sure you heard such things and wanted to try your own hand - perhaps some small talent... You may have read the new journal, here." Lasels hands it over.

"I hadn't heard of any of it," says Jonathan, not exactly in a neutral tone of voice, putting the journal down. He's not been unaffected by Lasels' patronizing. "I just read a textbook and decided I'd try it. I'm in John Segundus's course."

"Ah," says Lasels, sounding as though he's bitten something unpleasant. "The Betazoid."

"Half," says Jonathan. "Anyway, I was wondering if you could give me some tips. It's getting a bit..."

For the first time, Norrell looks at Jonathan instead of at his books or his feet.

He says, "Perhaps you would favor us with a demonstration?"

Jonathan stands for a moment, swaying slightly as he considers the possibilities. The journal is still sitting beside him and for all the weight of its dullness it's not too heavy, so he closes his eyes and concentrates.

Telekinesis is difficult still. He sees the object in his mind and he tugs at it, up, up, until he finally feels it catch, wobbling a little as it goes airborn. He opens his eyes to find it hovering in front of him. After a moment's consideration, on a mischievous impulse he floats it around the room until it's over the disposal receptacle, where he drops it.

"I'm so sorry," he says brightly, "I'm afraid I lost my control for a moment there."

Norrell doesn't seem to notice. He's staring at Jonathan with an open hunger in his eyes, the sort you get when you've finally found someone that both knows and loves your most obscure favorite book. In the background, Jonathan notices, Childermass is looking at him with raised eyebrows.

"That could very easily have been faked," says Lasels with a disdainful twist of his mouth. "An antigrav device and a remote - "

"It wasn't fake," says Norrell softly. "Could you not feel it?" He turns and looks at Childermass, and a slow smile is creeping over his face. "Did you feel it?"

Childermass nods.

"How do you do it, Mr Strange, if you've never been trained?" Norrell turns toward him again.

"It's like music," says Jonathan with a shrug. "You know what the next note has to be. I suppose you know how it works."

Norrell's little grey eyes look brighter than they have the rest of the meeting.

"I understand," he says.

-

Stefen is coming to realize that his supposition had been correct. His sleep isn't going to be peaceful anymore. He'd had a vague hope that it would, after all, turn out to have been another dream, or perhaps some complicated kind of hallucination, but every night he ends up here.

"I call it Lost-hope", Ema tells him one day while Thistledown is dancing with a cousin. He looks bored; he's danced most of the dances with either Ema or Stefen, and seems to prefer their company. Distantly, Stefen is pleased that he and Ema have the opportunity to speak to each other here at last.

"Appropriate," he says. "You certainly have a gift for naming."

"It's the shade of blue," she says. "It seems to sap all the life out of you."

"My opinion was that it was the music."

"Well, you're right. It's the music too."

"In fact, one might say that it is everything," Stefen suggests.

"Yes," says Ema, sighing.

Stefen sighs also. There is very little else to do. He feels weighed down by lassitude; in human fairy-tales he is given to understand that the Other World is a place of beauty and magnificence which the real world pales in comparison to. The victim wastes away, pining for the beauty of the place they have left.

But it's not like that here. Lost-hope is... It has the feeling of something very old which has now fallen into disrepair while the owners march remorselessly on, keeping up appearance. Like an ornate curtain with fraying ends, or a beautiful drawing room with a bare fireplace and dirty corners. When Stefen is away, he doesn't want to be back.

But it seems, somehow, to spread its shabbiness onto the real world. Once, he thinks, he'd had energy. He'd had the ability to become invested in things. But now he feels like he's seeing the backstage of everything, the untidy corners he'd been missing. There's no point to anything, because it's all got cracks in it.

He shakes his head. Ema notices.

"Cobwebs?" she asks.

He shrugs. "Merely reflecting on the situation."

"Grim enough." Ema reaches over and pats his shoulder briefly. Her touch is light enough not to disturb him, but he still gets a wisp of the same deep numbness he himself feels.

Somewhere, he thinks, he ought to have some sort of comforting words. Something from the precepts of Surak, which has always been such a comfort before.

Instead, he sighs again, and they sit together and wait for Thistledown to return.

-

Not at all to Jonathan's surprise, Norrell has a Plan.

The Plan has to be described in capital letters; mere lower case ones don't convey the depth of organization that has clearly gone into the Plan. Jonathan, whose general ability to study is limited to staring aimlessly at flashcards and reading whole books at a time, is amazed at this.

"Reading will be the first step," Norrell says briskly. "I suppose you haven't had much of a chance to read what's out there about human psychic powers."

"Well, I took a class."

"A class?"

"With John Segundus."

Norrell gives him a dubious look. "I see," he says. "And this class covered - ?"

"Well, primarily extrahuman, admittedly, but - "

"We'll begin with Lanchester," says Norrell, picking up his Padd and consulting a list.

Norrell has a striking number of physical books although most of them, Jonathan learns, are back in his house in Hurtfew, which Jonathan has little hope of ever being invited to.

Jonathan gets digital copies, of course; he's all right with that. The last three real books he was lent he ruined by spilling things on them. This way is easier.

Aside from a weeklong pile of reading that Norrell apparently expects him to finish in a day, there's a list of exercises, too. "These," he explains, "Will simultaneously temper and build up your powers. You'll increase your control, so the - " he waves - "the chaos won't be too bad. And you'll be able to do more."

Jonathan nods solemnly and takes a peek at the instructions he's been given. He suppresses a groan. Each and every one of them looks incredibly, mind-numbingly dull.

The other thing is that Norrell continues to be deeply odd about the Raven King. As far as Jonathan's concerned, he's the benchmark for human psychic abilities. But Norrell won't even allow mention of him most of the time.

"The image that we need to project," he says, "Is respectability."

Jonathan raises an eyebrow. "Respectability?"

"Yes. Psionics is a field ridden with psuedoscience and all sorts of nonsense. It is our job to clear the way and carve a path of clear, solid research, while, of course, doing our duty as Federation citizens. There is no room for the Raven King in that plan."

"There could be," says Jonathan, "If we learned more about - "

"We are scientists, not historians," says Norrell sharply, and that's the end of that.

Jonathan tells Arabella, "I think there's more to it than he's saying."

"Why do you think that?"

"The way he looks when he talks about it. All pinched."

Arabella purses her lips and takes a sip of tea. Jonathan snorts. "All right, then, more pinched. Have you ever seen Henry talking about that girl who kept turning him down? You know, he looks at once hangdog and sour."

"I know the look," says Arabella wryly. "You get it when you talk about Marianne."

"I do not." Jonathan frowns and takes a bit of his eggs. "I don't do any such thing."

Arabella waves. "You were saying?"

"What I was saying before you brought up this entirely inaccurate notion of Marianne was that he looks like he's had a rejection."

"You think he was in love with the Raven King? Hasn't he been dead for hundreds of years?"

"No. I'm pretty sure he's aromantic. But I think he used to admire him and doesn't anymore. Don't know why, though." Jonathan drums his fingers on the table. "It's ridiculous, really. I mean, The Raven King. It's like going to divinity school and being given the impression that God is largely irrelevant, isn't it?"

"This is your field, not mine," says Arabella with a shrug. "You would know."

The year winds on, bringing with it yet more dull exercises, but also proper war business that Jonathan enjoys. Norrell continues to be cagey and indirect, but Jonathan's learning something, and despite the incredible boringness of the books he's being given, they do contain quite a lot of helpful information.

Norrell isn't shy about telling people that Jonathan is doing well; he seems to have warmed to him, which is gratifying, although Jonathan himself can't say he's anything other than ambivalent and vaguely grateful for the assistance.

Still, Jonathan's confidence is growing and all he needs now is a new challenge to live up to.

-

"Absolutely not," says Norrell very firmly.

"I'm afraid - " Admiral Pole begins.

"His training's hardly started! You can't expect me to send him out there with the Dominion and the Cardassians and -"

"But a psychic on the ground, as it were - "

"There is no ground! There are only space stations! Anything could happen, sir!" Norrell, who hates space travel with every fiber of his being, shudders at the mere thought. "Loss of oxygen - gravity failure - he will be in ships or on stations the entire time!"

"I daresay there will be some planets."

"Not most of the time. And besides, we have far too much to do - "

"Excuse me," says Jonathan, clearing his throat.

Norrell and Admiral Pole both turn to look at him.

"Don't I get a say in this?" he asks.

Admiral Pole nods. "Well, go on, then."

Jonathan knows the two of them think just alike, so he thinks Pole knows what he's going to say.  Heartened, he says, "I am a Starfleet officer, sir. It's my duty to go where I'm wanted. Think of the opportunities! The motto of Starfleet, isn't it, is to seek out and explore new territories and new peoples."

"This is not exploration," says Norrell, "This is war."

"And we won't be able to explore if we don't win. It's my duty to serve my organization, Lieutenant Commander Norrell. Is that not why we were commissioned? To serve? To protect the people we love?"

A mistaken choice of words, Jonathan knows. Norrell snorts. "I have no truck with love, you know I don't. That's making decisions based on pure sentiment and I disagree with it."

Jonathan tries a new tactic. "But consider the publicity. We'll finally be able to make headway into changing people's positions on psionics. Modern scholarship for the modern age, I've heard you say. What better opportunity?"

"On the contrary, there's no better position to recall the outdated and brutish tactics of the Raven King."

"I would think brutish is a bit strong. They were harsh times, and he was no harsher than others. Less so than a great deal of them."

Norrell sighs. He looks as though he'd like a word with Jonathan alone, but Jonathan knows that he'll somehow manage to wrangle more objections. Better to stay here with Pole.

"I'll be perfectly safe," he says, "You'll see. It'll go wonderfully. The war will be over soon, and I'll have helped end it. Won't that be good for our reputations?" He hesitates, and then takes the plunge: "Won't that be terribly respectable?"

Norrell purses his lips and looks as though he's going to make some kind of objection, but Admiral Pole cuts in. "And in any case, sir, as much as we'd rather have your assistance, Strange is under the direct command of Starfleet and not of you. We can transfer him to the field whether you want him there or not. But I think we all know he would be better-equipped to deal with the challenges of war with your willing help."

This, Jonathan sees, was the right tactic; Norrell slumps and sighs again, though he still looks sour. "Very well," he says, wearily. "What must I do?"

The next two weeks are possibly the most exciting ones in Jonathan's career. He divides his time between proper military training and intensive psychic education with Norrell on defensive and offensive tactics. Arabella packs and lets him practice on her, and laughs when he accidentally shields himself so much that she's temporarily unable to see him.

This, he thinks, is exactly what he's been waiting for. A chance to prove himself.

-

"Strange!" says Admiral Wellington without preamble, briskly coming up to Jonathan across the Promenade. "There you are. I was looking for you."

"Yes, sir," says Jonathan, straightening himself up.

"I've got a bit of a mission for you."

Jonathan attempts to hide his excitement. "Yes, sir," he says again, straightening further. It had taken something like a month to get Wellington's attention. Jonathan had recommended all sorts of procedures and Wellington had sworn loudly, declaring that they didn't need a magician and that it was all a lot of nonsense. Jonathan had attempted to remind the admiral that he wasn't a magician, but he'd said it was all the same.

In the end, though, he'd managed to divine a clear path through an asteroid field with remove viewing and that had done the trick.

Wellington rubs his hands. "Do you know Grant?"

"Lieutenant Commander Grant?"

"Of course Lieutenant Commander Grant. What other Grant is there?"

"None, I suppose. What about him?"

"Been captured by the enemy. He's in with a lot of Cardassians, out on that asteriod - you know the one, I'm sure."

Jonathan does; there's an asteroid base, which had been neutral but is now occupied territory, several lightyears from the wormhole. Not too long to travel, he thinks, with a roundabout.

"Take a crew and go get him."

"Yes, sir."

Jonathan hurries off with a few preparations; his plan doesn't take very much, just one prop.

"What's in the coffin?" asks the Bajoran security guard when he arrives to find his escort waiting for him.

"Oh," says Jonathan carelessly, "a body."

They stop questioning him after this, which is his intention.

The journey takes a few hours; Jonathan spends it practicing, trying to figure out how best to pull off what he's thinking of. He's never controlled that many minds before, and he hasn't got a chance to practice, but, well, sink or swim.

They get in without incident; Strange advises that they split up, and he goes to the cells.

He engages in a busy few minutes of activity, and then, quietly, calls for transport back. From the runabout he calls abort mission; he can hear the grumbling, but ignores it. They'll thank him soon enough.

He and Grant are sitting in the runabout eating a snack and discussing the merits, or lack thereof, of Risa when the security personnel get back.

"Risa is awful," says Jonathan. "A girl I was in love with once took me there to perform a leaving ceremony without telling me first."

"That's not Risa's fault."

"I regard it as a personal slight. They don't have to have them. You ought to have to register beforehand."

"Blame your girl."

Jonathan sighs. "You know she ran off with a Ferengi who owned a moon? I mean, a moon! What sort of girl leaves you for a moon?"

"Aren't you married?"

"Now, yes."

At this point, the security personnel, who had been standing by and watching with their mouths open, all start asking questions at the same time.

Jonathan waves. "I made them, and you, think that they were seeing a dummy. While you were securing the area, I transported back. I knew you'd all make your own way all right as long as you didn't wait around trying to find me. The body, by the way, is now in the possession of the Cardassians. It's going to stop looking like Grant in about - " Jonathan pauses - "Twelve minutes, so I recommend we get out of here."

Grant laughs, and Jonathan finds out later that he tells the entire base the story.

His reputation goes up quite a bit after that.

-

"Ah, Merlin!" says Admiral Wellington cheerfully. Jonathan sighs silently to himself. He's asked the admiral a thousand times not to call him that - it would drive Norrell to distraction to be associated with a figure of magic - but he's used to it now, so he doesn't bother bringing it up again.

"Yes, sir."

"We need your help with some Maquis."

Jonathan frowns. "Maquis?"

"They stole a cloaking device and we need to find out where it's got to." He rubs his hands together. "I have great hopes for that device, and I'm not interested in watching all of them go to waste. See to it."

"How?" asks Jonathan.

"You're the psychic."

Jonathan sighs again, slightly more audibly, but still not enough to be evident. Getting on the admiral's bad side is never a good idea.

He tries. He really does try. He tries remote viewing - useless since he doesn't have a way to direct it - and psychometry - not much better. He tries everything he can think of, and is about to tell Wellington that he can't do it, when some dead Maquis soldiers come in. They've been brought because they were wounded and needed medical care and the Federation likes to be generous to its enemies, but they're dead before the evening is out.

It occurs to Jonathan that this means he has an option. He hates that he's gone far enough that it comes to him not five minutes after he hears.

No, he tells himself. It would be entirely against everything that Norrell has worked to establish and furthermore it would horrify any ethical telepath. It's something pre-Reform Vulcan in its brutality, a leftover from a time when the Raven King was desperate to keep his kingdom safe by any means necessary.

But then aren't they at any means necessary right now? Wellington won't complain. He has very little idea of the practicalities of psionics, and he doesn't want to know anymore. He'll only want results.

"Don't send out the corpses," he tells the tall skinny doctor seeing to them, a man whose name he can't remember, not when there's so much else happening. "Just...leave them for a while, will you?"

The doctor looks surprised, but shrugs. "As long as you take responsibility for them at some point. I don't want to have them in my freezer for the rest of the war."

"I'll either take them or tell you," say Jonathan, his heart sinking.

-

The funny thing is that it's not really a difficult procedure. It's...well, dead brains are easier to manipulate. But it has to be done quickly, before they fade.

It takes him thirty precious minutes to make up his mind.

"I need the bodies someplace where I can touch them," he says to the doctor. "Um. And probably some other people. I'll get them. Any space big enough for - I don't know, at least four."

The doctor rubs a hand across his neck; he looks as defeated as Jonathan feels. "We're short on privacy and beds right now, but I'll do my best."

"Thank you," says Jonathan, and goes to fetch Lieutenant Commander Grant and Admiral Wellington.

"I'll need you hear to listen to this," Jonathan explains, "Because I - I'm not sure what it's going to come out like." He swallows. "I mean - it could be rather disjointed and I'm not sure I'll remember any of this. I've never done this particular trick before."

"Are you sure it'll work?" asks Wellington.

Jonathan gives him a weak attempt at his usual smile. Grant is looking at him with something approaching concern, which is in and of itself worrying from someone who's usually such a brick wall.

Well. Better to get it over with.

The corpses - ugh - are laid out when they return. Jonathan approaches; the doctor has left, and he thinks maybe it's because he didn't want to see this. Jonathan would rather not see this, but unfortunately it's not the sort of thing you can do from a distance.

He becomes aware that he's holding his breath. Annoyed with himself, he lets it out in a whoosh that's far too obvious, and then winces because Wellington and Grant probably heard it.

Another steadier breath, then two. In, and out. He remembers the techniques Norrell's taught him for meditation, and he sits down and reaches within himself for calm. It really only helps a little, but that's enough for him to reach out -

Yes. There they are, still hanging around. He makes a face and touches each of their foreheads to establish a bridge, which makes his skin crawl. It's just flesh, he tells himself, but he knows it's not true and that makes it unhelpful.

And then he's ready. He closes his eyes and enters the first mind...

- discordant jumbled images of explosions, screaming, the smell of burning flesh - he tries and tries to stabilize it, tries to steer it, but that last moment just keeps playing over and over, and he sees another person die, on loop -

Jonathan gasps and lets go of the mind.

"Did you get it?" asks Wellington.

"Too far gone," says Jonathan. His voice feels hoarse, although he hasn't made noise - someone would have said. It couldn't have been more than a minute, so why does time feel stretched?

He moves onto the next corpse. Touching dead flesh isn't any more pleasant this time, but, rather to his own unease, he's beginning to get used to it. This time it's mostly just the woman's last thoughts, not her sensory impressions: her family back home, how much she'll miss them. Or Jonathan assumes it's her family. Certainly someone's wife and children.

He moves onto the third one.

Finally, something. This one must have died last; their mind feels more open, less like a hollow echo trapped running in a circle. He pushes a little, sends a sort of probe - cloaking device? - and gets a response.

Slowly, slowly, he teases out the location, which goes from the obvious 'somewhere in the demilitarized zone' to more specific memories of star charts and then -

He blinks, and opens his mouth, and the coordinates of the base spill out. It's exactly like that; he's not conscious of wanting to talk, they just roll off his tongue. Grant pulls out his PADD and notes them down with a quiet efficiency, and Wellington nods. "Good," he says, and marches out.

Jonathan can't blame him. He has places to be and can't spend too much time seeing to one psychic.

"You don't look well," says Grant, tucking the PADD back away.

"I - " says Jonathan, and then turns and throws up. He manages to get it into the trash receptacle so that the ship won't have to clean it away itself. Then, shaking, he goes as far away from the bodies as possible, sitting down against the wall. He can still feel the first mind looping in some corner of his head, frantically chasing itself around in an attempt to rewrite history. He can still see the second's family smiling forever, people she will never see again, and he wonders if this was worth it. Wellington seems happy enough but he -

It's fine. He's going to be fine. He can already feel nightmares forming like stormclouds behind his eyes, but he's going to be fine.

Grant is looking over at him. He says with uncommon gentleness, "Merlin? Are you alright?"

"I don't think so, yet," says Jonathan shakily. "It was, um, very intense. The memories...well, the ones left were the strongest and I couldn't navigate them the way I could a living person - it's - it's like being trapped in deep water and you're not sure what way is up."

"But you fought your way to the surface."

"It lingers," says Jonathan. His hands are trembling. He thinks that he ought to try and hide it, because Grant is a proper military man and not a hapless student drafted into a war he wasn't prepared for, but he can't seem to. "Like mud."

"Water and mud both." Grant claps him on the shoulder, only his hand stays there for a moment, and Jonathan doesn't realize until afterwards that it was meant to ground him. He'll find time to be grateful for that eventually.

"I think I need to lay down," Jonathan says.

"Yes, that seems like a good idea. I'll tell the Admiral you need time to recover yourself."

"Yes," says Jonathan. "Thank you."

-

There are nightmares. Of course there are. Oddly, though, something more intense mostly takes their place.

Jonathan thinks he might be having nightmares about the Battle of Betazed for the rest of his life. There was so much of the usual blood-screaming-burning flesh-explosions that it entirely drowned out that first mind, but beyond that there were the hopes he could feel, the way he couldn't seem to entirely turn of awareness of people's thoughts. He'd been using his abilities so much that he couldn't stop using them, and every single death felt like a candle going out, every lost hope like a pin in his limbs, which sounds small but there had been so many of them. His head felt like it had been shaken with needles and then screwed back on.

He'd been afraid for a while that he wouldn't be able to turn it off.

Eventually, though, after the battle is over, he manages to ease it off. Sleep helps, although he doesn't get a lot of it. He has people he needs to talk to. News to deliver.

-

Segundus's communicator chimes in the middle of the night. He flails awkwardly at the nightstand, but manages to get ahold of it and turn the screen on.

"Hello?" he says, his voice still thick with sleep, and then realizes he's talking to Jonathan. His traitorous heart flutters a little, but he clears his throat and says "Lieutenant Strange - Jonathan. How can I help you?"

Jonathan looks...bad. Segundus doesn't know if he's ever seen him look as bad as this. The shadows under his eyes look like bruises and his hair is wild, his face unshaven.

"Are you okay?" Segundus adds, because he is quite certain the answer is no.

Jonathan doesn't answer. He just says, "I'm sorry I woke you. I couldn't remember what time it would bet there. I wanted to be the first one to tell you before the news channels. Betazed has been taken."

Segundus's body suddenly feels like it's made of cold syrup - slow and unhelpfully fluid. He lays back against the bed and blinks.

Jonathan's voice continues from the communicator and Segundus pulls it over to watch as he continues. "I'm so sorry, John. We - we couldn't stop it in time. I thought I saw it happening and I told them, but they couldn't get there fast enough." Jonathan runs a hand through his hair and Segundus sees why it's so messy; he wonders when Jonathan last slept. "We couldn't do anything. We were too late. I'm so sorry."

Segundus thinks he ought to be crying, but he can't seem to feel anything. "It wasn't your fault," he says, although he knows his voice sounds distant. "I know all of you did your best."

"I know you wanted to go home," says Jonathan softly, looking as though he'd like to reach out through the screen and hug Segundus. Segundus wishes he could. His bed feels very cold and lonely right now and, inconvenient feelings aside, he wants someone to wrap their arms around him and tell him that it's going to be okay.

It's not going to be okay. But a lie would be nice.

"I wanted to," says Segundus. It is perhaps rather foolish a thing to say, but he can't think of anything else. After a moment he adds, "Thank you for telling me."

Jonathan nods. "I'm sorry, I have to go. The admiral wants me. We - we have strategy to plan. We're hoping to retake it."

Segundus gives him a very brief and wan smile. "I think it would be redundant of me to wish you luck. Considering. Take care of yourself, Jonathan."

Jonathan signs off with a smile that's just as sad as Segundus's.

It's not actually a very long wait until comforting lies materialize. As soon as Honeyfoot wakes up and sees the news he rushes over to Segundus's room. Mrs Honeyfoot comes along, and they bring with them a pie and two casseroles, as if this is a funeral. Perhaps it is, for all the people who died defending Segundus's home. For all the people on Betazed who weren't even in the fight but died anyway.

People filter in with well-wishes and condolences and various foodstuffs - Segundus wonders vaguely what it is about Humans that they always bring food on these sorts of occasions. But nevertheless he appreciates it.

Arabella Strange calls him, too, with a lack of time difference that doesn't make sense until he remembers she's returned to Shropshire while her husband's at war. He appreciates that too; he'd scarcely thought she'd remember him, much less think of him.

But what sticks in Segundus's mind, what he associates with the possibly-permanent loss of his own home, is shadows like bruises under Jonathan Strange's eyes.

-

They win, somehow.

Of course everyone discusses promoting Jonathan. His ascent from ensign to full lieutenant in the short space of time he'd been properly in Starfleet is widely-remarked on everywhere; an admiral is heard to say that a promotion all the way to lieutenant commander might even be in order, and if he can prove himself and take the command test - well. He can certainly think well in a crisis and isn't that what one wanted in a man on the track to captain?

The trouble is that nobody can think of a way to do this without promoting Norrell. And Norrell is impossible to promote. Apart from the fact that nobody wants to call him commander, the idea of putting him of a suitable rank to possibly command anything isn't worth contemplating. Norrell is, in general, a bit of a problem. He's found his niche and doesn't want to move from it.

So Jonathan, for the moment, stays a lieutenant. But his homecoming is joyous anyway. His first three days he spends practically barricaded in his room with Arabella, just catching up. He'd missed so much about her; her laugh, her way of poking him when he makes a point she doesn't agree with, that little skeptical eyebrow-raise she has when she doesn't believe something. They've sent comm messages of course, but it's not at all the same.

After that his leave is over and he has to deal with Norrell. That's probably going to go badly. News of the - well, Jonathan has been thinking of it as the necromantic mind meld - must have got out by now, and it's so exactly the kind of thing that Norrell hates that Jonathan is half-expecting to be dismissed. Or drummed out. Norrell has a lot of influence these days.

But in fact, when they meet over breakfast (at Norrell's house proper, Hurtfew, which is huge and impressive), Norrell can't take his eyes off him. He keeps smiling as if everything he wanted is right here in front of him.

It's a little bit unnerving, given his usual demeanor.

Jonathan tells him all about the new forms of psionics he'd used during the war.

"Pyrokinesis?" asks Norrell, leaning forward. "I had thought that was quite impossible."

"So did I. I still don't understand the theory - I think we'll have to do some experiments. It's like telepathy - or maybe more like telekinesis. Sort of halfway between nudging something's mind to do your will and moving it because it has no will of its own."

Norrell frowns. "Fire doesn't have a mind."

Jonathan shrugs. "I know. I can't explain it. As I said, we'll have to do some experiments."

At the prospect of science, Norrell brightens up again and begins to talk of his plans for detecting the strength of psychic auras, so as to be able to combat them more effectively. Jonathan thinks, with amusement, that if he's back to listening to Norrell lecture about science, he really must be home.

-

“Stefen, why are you not an officer?” says Thistledown suddenly.

“What?” says Stefen. His head feels strange and fuzzy but then it has for a very long time now. When did everything start feeling like cotton wool?

“Why are you not an officer?” repeats Thistledown impatiently. “Aren’t you qualified?”

“Despite the excellence of my education, I didn’t attend the Academy,” says Stefen.

“And why not?”

“I had no one within Starfleet to sponsor me. I have never had very many connections on the planet, and I thought it would be more expedient to sign up directly. Perhaps someday.”

“Hm!” says Thistledown. “No connections. I’ve heard them making excuses. They never do recognize a regal person - look, your beauty marks you clearly as extraordinary. I’m sure there must be another reason.”

Stefen shrugs. It’s not a very Vulcan gesture, but he feels sometimes as though all his Vulcan-ness, all his being and his self, has drained out through this ordeal. He’s just tired and hollow now.

"They scorn you for your skin colour, do they not?" says Thistledown. “I was here, you know, I’ve seen.”

Stefen says, "The institutional structures which contributed to systematic racism have been dismantled to a significant degree," but even as he says it he doesn't quite believe it. Poverty no longer exists on Earth, it's true, nor on any proper Federation planet, but... But hundreds and hundreds of years of subconscious and conscious bias don't fade that quickly, and he still sees the occasional sideways looks, hears the comments, has to hold himself stiff for fear of what will be said if he doesn't. It may be a tiny bit more obvious because he's Vulcan; he has the sense both that white Humans are not used to seeing black Vulcans, and that he's too many steps away from the prototype of normal. Tolerance for difference only goes so far, and he and people like him exceed that tolerance.

But regardless, he knows that there are reasons he'll probably never make officer, and that very few of them have to do with his professional qualities.

"But take this man, this Pole - he took you away from your home, did he not?"

"I was raised on Earth, but that was not the Admiral's doing. He was only a boy. And his father had me educated and gave me a home."

"Why did you not have one already?" Thistledown peers at him. "Why were you not on Vulcan?"

Stefen hesitates. "I was born on on Minkar II. Perhaps you've heard of the Turkana colony?"

"Ah, Turkana," says Thistledown wistfully. "A fascinating place. I gave advice to both the Coalition and the Alliance, you know - the affair was quite delightful."

"Indeed," says Stefen diplomatically, resisting the urge to point out that delightful is a strong term to use to use when war, murder, chaos, and lawlessness abound. "In any case, Minkar II was quite similar in that the colony failed and more unofficial authority took over. Such crimes against humanity as slavery abounded, a fact which I mention because I was born a slave. Admiral Pole's family had interests on Minkar II; his grandfather invested heavily in it, and in consequence his was one of the few families who could import or export. Some refugees escaped in his ship. Only I survived. And so, his father had me educated and raised here on Earth with his son."

"But he didn't try to stop the rest of it, did he?" says Thistledown.

Again Stefen is quiet. "No," he says, "He did not. And my name is not the one my Vulcan mother gave me. It is one he bestowed upon me."

"Hmmph!" says Thistledown. "Well, I dare say I could change that. I'm sure I could find your true name. It is merely a matter of locating the correct point in the space-time continuum."

With that, he vanishes, and Stefen looks around to find himself again the Admiral's house.

-

To be blunt, it had been an accident.

On the other hand, Jonathan thinks as he steps out into his and Arabella's rooms, many famous scientific discoveries had been. Serendipity is practically a recognized force in science today, and he's pretty sure nobody's going to penalize him just because he hadn't exactly meant to step through a hole in the world into a brand new place.

And had it, truly, been accidental? Or had he been called?

He'd been in the officer's lounge with Pole and Grant, playing billiards, an old Earth sport which Pole is very fond of. Jonathan's picked it up these days. And then some people from Nottinghamshire or Iowa or Manitoba or some other such inconsequential place - Jonathan hadn't been paying much attention - had stepped in and intruded on the game.

Well, of course, that was an insult that couldn't be borne, but beyond that, they'd claimed that Jonathan Strange had been teaching them psionics and Strange was quite certain that he hadn't been. Clues had indicated that it had been Drawlight - Norrell isn't going to happy about that - but Jonathan had been forced to prove his credentials.

Lately he's been wondering about the feasibility of walking through mirrors. This hadn't been that; on the other hand, he isn't sure what it was. He'd just turned and listened and felt and then -

And then he'd been somewhere new.

Somewhere beautiful, somewhere with statues of the Raven King, somewhere with twisted staircases and antique buildings and all sorts of things that shouldn't have been there. And he'd managed to concentrate, and pull and tug, until he found himself stepping out into his own living room. A struggle, yes, but one he can manage again, he's sure.

He has absolutely no idea how he did it. He has no idea how to do it again. He is desperately excited to try.

He steps out, much to his surprise, into a room occupied not only by Arabella but by Grant and Pole too.

"Hello," he says, stepping forward. Both of the men look like they've seen a ghost; Arabella looks, inexplicably, angry.

"Where on earth - " she begins.

"What are they doing here?" asks Jonathan, gesturing at Grant and Pole.

"They came to tell me they'd lost you."

"And now we'll be going," says Grant hastily. Pole flees after him, apparently anticipating the oncoming storm that is Arabella. Jonathan knows her well enough to know when there's a fight brewing.

Sure enough, she spins to look at him. "Jonathan Strange! I was terrified! Where were you?"

"I don't know," says Jonathan. "Fascinating, isn't it? I just stepped into a sort of hole in the world. Wish I knew how I'd done it, but I'm sure with a little research - "

"You'll what? Go walking in strange new lands every hour of the day while you're not working while I sit and worry about you?"

"But Arabella, it was astonishing! You should have seen it! It was clearly something to do with the Raven King!"

"I don't give a damn about the Raven King, Jonathan!" Arabella makes an exasperated gesture. "I'm concerned for your safety!"

"When I was in the war you were never concerned."

"When you were in the war I was worried sick. I understood that this was your duty, and therefore mine, but this is not the same thing at all. You have no idea where these paths lead."

"That's why I need to find out." says Jonathan impatiently. "This could be the most important discovery of modern psionics! Dimension-hopping - we used to think we needed machines for that, and if it comes to it what we have isn't very reliable, but this - "

"And what will Norrell think?"

"I'm not Norrell's property. You don't even like him."

"I can see he's got a sensible head on his shoulders."

"And I don't?"

Arabella gives him a Look, the sort of look that can only be expressed with a capital letter.

He frowns. "That's unfair, and you know it is. When have I ever taken any unnecessary risks?"

Arabella gives him another look.

The argument spirals, as they always do; the two of them don't do this often, but Jonathan knows the pattern well enough when they do. It ends with Jonathan promising not to go back until Arabella tells him he can, and her promising to say he can as soon as he can prove it's safe.

Secretly, he doesn't think it is safe, and is quite excited about the possibility of danger. But that's not the sort of thing you say to your wife when she's worried about you dying, he knows that.

Lessons with Norrell seem to drag after. He's aware of something he'd only known subconsciously before: that, after the war, this isn't enough of a challenge.

It all comes to a head in a single afternoon: Lasels is discussing the book that Portishead - another editor of Norrell's journal - has written, under heavy input from Lasels himself and from Norrell. Strange had ostensibly been helping with the book, but he considers it, ultimately, to focus on the wrong questions. What's the good of any of this formulating and theorizing? Now that he's stepped out of this world and into another, he knows that there's more. They shouldn't be bogging themselves down with restrictions, they should be learning!

He goes home to Arabella that night and says, "To whom do you think I'd write a scathing review, if I was going to?"

She raises her eyebrows. "On the subject of what? I think that would make a difference, wouldn't it?"

"Psionics. What else?"

"I thought perhaps this was about that restaurant you disliked so much the other week."

"Oh, that! No, I don't care about that anymore. I want to review Norrell's book."

Arabella frowns. "But you helped write it. Won't that be a conflict of interest?"

"I intend to do it down with complete thoroughness. I'm going to say it's the worst nonsense ever written and that no one should buy it."

"Jonathan!"

"Well, it's true. It's dreadful. The most fearful rot I've ever read. Full of dull, dull dry little factoids about psionics and all sorts of statistical nonsense. He's suppressing anything that's interesting." Jonathan drums his fingers on the table. "I can't do this anymore, Arabella. I haven't felt right carrying on with my education under his schema, not since I got back. The things I've seen..."

Arabella sighs. "I know. And I don't say you should stay with him. But writing a review of the book? What about Commander Portishead? He'll be devastated, you know how he respects you."

"I'll apologise very profusely the first chance I get."

Arabella gives him a look, the one that says he's done something just a bit off but she's relying on his own conscience to correct it for him. "I suppose you can't offer more than that. Incidentally, I think the Edinburgh Review takes the sort of thing you're probably going to write."

"Ah, yes. They do love controversy. I suppose I could always see if the Daily Mail would take it - you know they think that psionics are some sort of evil magic power."

"I don't think they'd listen to you, in that case."

"True. The Review it is." Jonathan rises from the table and bustles off to begin writing.

-

Norrell's quarters have been quiet for days. No one's been seen going in and out; his office is deserted. Few know this, but he's been in Hurtfew. Only Childermass and Lasels have seen him.

The man who steps off the transporter pad in the rather austere residence section is not quite the same one who left a week or so ago. He's paled, and there is sleeplessness shadowed under his eyes.

His advisors follow him to his quarters and then no farther. They know the purpose for his return and they know that he wants privacy for this.

Norrell quietly goes over to the replicator, and orders a pot of tea. He sets it on the coffee table, and then sits in a chair to wait.

It's not long before the door chimes; he's timed it well. He didn't want to come back here any sooner than he had to, and it seems that the strategy worked.

The door slides open, and Jonathan Strange enters.

He's looking well, which is perhaps no surprise; whether by his own design or his wife's or a combination Norrell doesn't know, but Jonathan always looks very well turned-out. Norrell himself doesn't care enough to follow fashions or wear anything that fits properly. Even his uniform is a size too big, and he has few other clothes that are presentable for public wear.

But Jonathan has chosen to come in civilian wear. That's a gesture, Norrell thinks, only he's not exactly sure what of.

Jonathan won't meet his eye. That's a gesture too. Norrell's no more certain of the meaning of it, either. All he knows is that he can't look away, because he knows that at the end of this meeting he might never see him again.

For several minutes, neither of them speaking.

Jonathan begins, "Sir, I know that you must be - "

"You think I'm angry," says Norrell, without entirely having planned it.

Jonathan blinks and looks uncertain.

"I'm not angry," says Norrell, with a sigh. "I know what you meant to do. Who else can understand what you wrote except me? The public? You wrote it so I would read it."

Jonathan looks surprised, and then shrugs.

"I know what you're looking for," says Norrell very quietly. "Don't you think I've ever looked myself? Do you think I've never reached out, trying to find something that wasn't there?"

"You called the Raven King?"

Norrell shakes his head, but it's not a no. He remembers being Jonathan's age and younger, being foolish. "Ten years," he says, sighing. "Ten years and I thought of nothing else. I wasted that time - I could know so much more."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Perhaps it was a mistake, but I didn't want you to make the error I did." Norrell carefully folds his hands in his lap and stares at his shoes. "I thought perhaps the attraction wouldn't be quite so magnetic...."

"But we can't abandon him. He's the founder of modern psionics!"

"He abandoned us," says Norrell sharply. "What else are we to do?"

"Why did you give up?" says Jonathan.

Norrell takes a deep breath. "After ten years, it seemed to be to be perfectly clear that he was no longer listening."

"But perhaps if the two of us - "

"No. We must purge modern psionics of his influence - that's the only way we'll be able to move forward."

"He's said to return, you know."

"Myths and fairytales."

"But the place I saw!" Jonathan leans forward, finally catching Norrell's eye. "They were in disrepair, but not a few hundred years' worth of disrepair. No one saw him die. What if?"

"It doesn't matter if he's dead or not." Norrell pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to collect his thoughts. "What matters is that he abandoned us. We have to rebuild without him, and we can't do that if we don't let him go." He looks up at Jonathan, hopeful. "We can't do it alone, either of us. The field of psionics can't survive a rift, not this early. For the good of our art, we need to stay together."

"But we're far too different," says  Jonathan.

Norrell shrugs. "In personality, perhaps, but we are scientists. All that we care about is our field - it's the beginning and the end of me and you both. Who will you talk to, if you go? No one understands the way I do, the way you do."

"I'm sorry, sir, but ever since I've come back, it doesn't seem right to me to stay on as a pupil. I've learned so much from my time in the war."

"Then don't. I'll ask for you to be promoted, if you like - I'm sure Admiral Pole could arrange it, he likes you. We'll be equals - partners in business and scholarship. I'll show you everything I never did, all the books that I haven't given you. Perhaps you're ready for them now." Norrell is startled to hear what he's saying, but knows he means it. "And you don't have to retract the article. Let it stand. We'll answer your questions. Together, we'll answer them."

Jonathan is staring at him as if he's grown a second head, and Norrell doesn't wonder at it. He himself doesn't know what's come over him, except that he's never really had a friend before, and can't stand the idea of losing the only one he has.

Finally, Jonathan shakes his head.

"I'm sorry, sir. I'm honored by your offer. It's very generous of you to compromise. But I think I need to go my own way."

Norrell closes his eyes, sits very, very still, and concentrates on his breathing. He half expects to hear Jonathan get up and go, but there's nothing. Finally, he feels a touch on his arm.

"Let's have tea," says Jonathan quietly. "You went to all the trouble."

Norrell rouses himself and gives Jonathan a wobbly sort of smile. There's no one else in this whole world, he thinks, that he'd bother to fake a smile for.

"All right," he says.

-

"Stefen," says Thistledown, looking up from the supper he's currently seated at. Stefen blinks; last he'd known, he'd been repairing a replicator. How had he got here? "Sit down and have some dinner."

"Sir," says Stefen, as politely as he can, and takes his seat. He looks about himself and resists the urge to raise an eyebrow. Nothing here is food he's ever seen before.

"All excellent, isn't it?"

"Is any of it vegetarian?" asks Stefen. "Most Vulcans have adopted vegetarianism by habit for ethical reasons. I myself do not even eat replicated meat."

"When did that happen?" asks Thistledown, tutting. "Surak again, I suppose! Oh! what a humourless sort of man he was. No fun at all in a party."

"So I have heard," says Stefen, who hasn't, but who can't think of anything more tactful to say. He's baffled by the mere idea of Surak at a party. It's such a strange mismatch of ideas, like expecting a star to come in for tea.

"Well, well," says Thistledown, and they flicker out of existence and into someplace Stefen doesn't know. "Help me, would you?"

Stefen, who has suddenly found himself in a pit of black mud, makes no reply, but merely attempts to struggle out.

"Where are you?" says Thistledown, annoyed. "Oh, what are you doing in there?"

"I cannot seem to extricate myself," says Stefen, with what he considers to be considerable restraint. "Perhaps you could help me?" Panic is flashing at the edges of his mind-training, but he concentrates on keeping calm, because Thistledown cares for nothing that is not beautiful and perfectly turned-out.

"Oh, very well," says Thistledown, snapping his fingers. Suddenly Stefen is on dry bank again.

"Thank you."

"Now, we need a piece of wood."

"Why wood? Where are we? What planet is this?"

"We're in Scotland." Thistledown taps his feet for a moment and then turns. "Ah. This way."

Stefen follows through the mud, struggling along and nearly falling into numerous other pools. As they walk, Thistledown hums: the music taste of heartbreak and sounds like the sky. Stefen can feel the universe opening itself, tilting its head to hear better. He thinks that if a sheep walked by, it would stop and listen. The effect is...not frightening, but eerie.

"There we are," says Thistledown with satisfaction. "Here she is. Dig, if you would."

Stefen looks around himself. "Did you bring any shovels, sir?"

"Oh no. I thought you would have."

"I was not aware that we were traveling somewhere."

With an irritated gesture, Thistledown materializes a single shovel, which looks wholly inadequate.

"What, may I ask, am I digging in search of?" asks Stefen.

"A piece of wood."

With this direction, he removes his coat, pillows his head on it, and goes to sleep.

It's a long way down in the wet black ground before Stefen's shovel thunks against something. He's covered to his waist in mud, and he's uncomfortably chilly in the foggy air. Thistledown sits up at the thunk.

"Ah," he says. "Pull it out."

Stefen takes another half-hour to extricate what turns out to be an immense black log. By the time he's done, the mud has spread up to his collar. He thinks, with resignation, that this uniform will never be clean again. He will have to put it in the waste receptacle as soon as he gets home.

"There she is," says Thistledown. "Very good. Incidentally, I suppose you're wondering what became of your name."

"I was not, in fact, sir."

Thistledown ignores this as he kneels down in front of the log. "I'm working on obtaining it, of course. But the correct point in space-time is proving difficult to locate. I've had to strip three people of their powers of thought thus far!"

Stefen recoils in horror, a physical reaction he's not even ashamed of, but Thistledown doesn't notice. "Of course I would strip far more for your sake, but generally it's far more efficient than this."

"Please, do not - I would rather not have my name than see people harmed in the finding of it."

"Ah, gentle Stefen," says Thistledown fondly, but makes no promises. He draws a hand over the log, dropping something onto it. Stefen does not observe what it is.

"There," he says. "It will need time to mature, I fancy. I shall take it to my house."

He gestures and with a sinking heart Stefen finds himself in Lost-hope in a clean suit, dancing once again, and he realizes he's been dreaming all this time, if dreaming is the right word for this nightmare state between waking and sleeping.

He wonders if he'll ever sleep peacefully again.

-

Jonathan takes a deep breath as he steps off the transport pad and into Shropshire.

"We're home," says Arabella, taking his hand.

He smiles, but doesn't say anything. It's a bit of a walk back to Ashfair, which has been in his family for ages and therefore doesn't have a transport pad of its own, despite its size. He doesn't mind, though. It's summer here in Shropshire and the trees are green. The air smells like fresh cut grass and new-mown hay - he'd forgotten what it was like here. There's a sheep in half the houses on the way.

Arabella waves at them, in high spirits, and he laughs and squeezes her hand.

Getting settled back in takes less time than Jonathan was expecting. The air is still sweet, and the house is still huge and rambling and awkwardly set-up and it still looks exactly like it did when he left.

They develop a routine. Every morning, they get up and have breakfast together. Then Jonathan goes into his study and, well, studies. He's decided to write a book.

"Lieutenant Commander Norrell won't like that," Arabella tells him when he brings up the idea though, Jonathan notices, not without considerable amusement.

"Lieutenant Commander Norrell doesn't like anything," says Jonathan. "Anyway, we have to set the record straight. You've seen what his was like. Can we go around letting people believe that this is a power confined to a gifted few?"

"Isn't it?"

"Ha." Jonathan drums his fingers on the table. "Well, we'll just see about that."

So since then, he's been reading everything he can get his hands on regarding the Raven King. Everything about the man's legend and legacy. He'd had a lot of trainees, Jonathan observed, although an awful lot of them burnt out. But then, that had been a very long time ago, back in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, before proper technology had been developed. In the modern era...

Jonathan wonders whether he should take pupils. It would be an awful lot of trouble, but on the other hand, there's strength in numbers, and Norrell will never have numbers.

Well, maybe when he's finished. He shelfs the idea for the moment until he's got further along in the book.

When Jonathan had been a boy, he'd spent ages outside the house, playing in the sunshine and cool green grass and so forth, at least when it had been sunny. He'd been out in drizzle, too, mucking about in the mud.

Somehow Jonathan had pictured himself returning home and going for long walks in the cool air, admiring the scenery, but instead he's been spending most of his time in his study. There's just so much to do for the book.

Sometimes Arabella comes and joins him with some reading or knitting or drawing - she's been drawing a lot more now that they're home, and he quite likes what she produces. It's not exactly professional, but he's of the opinion that professionalism is overrated, and so he's asked her to do some illustrations of that strange world he'd visited.

It's quite nice to settle down into domesticity after the war; Arabella's comforting presence in the background, the certain knowledge that the replicators aren't going to abruptly give out, and the comforting changeability of the weather are all beacons of familiarity. The nightmares start to fade.

There are only a few disturbances in their peace. A neighbor had come to tell Jonathan he'd seen Arabella walking among the hills, but Jonathan had dismissed that as a lot of nonsense. People are, he's learning, very apt to behave oddly around psychics. It's probably just jumpiness about Jonathan's career of choice.

He reads and writes and mutters and scribbles, and Arabella brings tea and sketches and knits. It's precisely what he's always pictured himself having.

All in all, he thinks, there could be no calmer, safer place in the country to be.

-

Segundus knows perfectly well that he has no psionic talent, but he still thinks that perhaps a school about the theory might be welcome. He has permission from the government of England, and he is finally happy at the thought of an occupation, before it all starts crashing down.

Naturally it starts with Childermass. Segundus thinks to himself that an awful lot of his problems have started with, or somehow involved, Childermass. Somehow that doesn't quell the tiny lurch he feels when he sees him. He wishes sometimes, he really does, that he wasn't so quick to fall into infatuation.

In this case the news is not good.

"You cannot do this," says Childermass, without preamble or greeting, climbing out of a skimmer and wincing slightly as he leans against the sides.

"I beg your pardon?" says Segundus, although his eyes are wide and he knows it's obvious he knows what Childermass is talking about.

"Your school. The time is not right, Mr Segundus."

"He sent you, didn't he."

"He doesn't know yet. It's best if he doesn't find out."

Segundus frowns. "Must you really do his bidding when he isn't even around to tell you to? Haven't you any agenda of your own?"

Childermass hmmms thoughtfully. "What makes you think this isn't my agenda?"

"It doesn't seem like you to restrict the creation or distribution of knowledge."

"Doesn't it," says Childermass, sounding amused. "I'm flattered that you think so highly of me."

"My opinion is still changeable. Why do you follow his plans so closely?"

"Why do you think?" Childermass sounds as if he's genuinely asking a question, rather than being sarcastic, which is a bit of a change.

"Is he your - " begins Segundus, not entirely sure how he even wants to phrase that question, although it's the first option that had come to mind. 'Boyfriend' sounds wholly ridiculous applied to a man of Norrell's age and dignity but on the other hand he doesn't want to presume marriage. Childermass is watching him with raised eyebrows and a slight smirk, as if he knows what Segundus is reaching for but refuses to rescue him.

Segundus finally settles on " - romantic partner?"

To his surprise, Childermass laughs. Not loudly, but it's definitely a laugh, and not a particularly scornful one. "No," he says, "Tactful way of putting it, but no, it's not like that. We're neither of us very inclined in romantic directions. And that's where you leapt when I asked why I do what he wants?"

Segundus say rather awkwardly, "It's just that you seem very familiar around each other." He makes a note to bury this inconvenient little crush as far as possible.

"We've worked together for over twenty years now."

"You've never wanted a promotion? Never thought about striking out on your own path?"

Childermass shrugs, with an enigmatic air. Segundus isn't sure how he makes even a shrug look like it's got a mystery behind it. "I'm where I want to be," he says.

Segundus gets the impression there's a bit more to the story than that but he's willing to let it go. Whatever unofficial, unromantic sort of relationship they have, it's clearly none of his business, and anyway not relevant to the issue at hand.

Instead he says, "But you have to go around telling people not to open schools."

"Wouldn't do it if I didn't think it was the right thing to do. Or rather let's say I wouldn't do it if I knew it was the wrong thing to do. It really isn't the opportune time, Mr. Segundus. Wait until everything has settled down from the war. Wait until Lieutenant Strange has established himself. There'll be two opinions on psionics soon enough, two vastly different ones, and then your school will be in demand."

Segundus looks at him; his eyes are so dark, and his face is so serious, and he has a stare you could get a bit lost in. He sighs. "I suppose I don't have a choice, do I? Not if all of Starfleet is against me."

"I'll make it up to you. An enlisted man I might be, but I have friends." Childermass rises and gives him a casual sort of salute. "If the right time comes due, I'll refer some business your way."

"I don't think Norrell would like that very much," says Segundus.

Childermass tils his head and looks at Segundus for a moment. "He's my superior officer and he's earned my loyalty and my trust, but he doesn't know everything that I do."

"Oh," says Segundus again, although he's not sure why. He's not sure what to follow this with, really. He has the sense that he's been given a secret, or perhaps a reprimand, and he's not sure which.

"Bide your time," says Childermass. "I have to get back to work."

And then he's gone.

-

It takes Segundus approximately a week to work up the nerve to do what Honeyfoot urges after Childermass's visit, which is write to Strange. He's never been the sort to put himself forward. But this is important, and after all Honeyfoot did say that Strange was looking for any excuse to take down Norrellite magic.

But the transmission gets there just a few days too late.

-

People aren't supposed to go missing in this day and age, not on Earth, where everything is safe and tracked and calm. Not here, where crime is lower than it's ever been in history. Not here, where the war never touched.

Never here.

Jonathan wonders whether he ought to have listened to that neighbor the first time, instead of waiting for the second time. He paces and paces and he goes out and combs the hills in the freezing cold weather, roaming up and down hills, calling Arabella's name.

It's not him that finds Arabella in the end; it's a group of other neighbors, laconic men in farming sort of clothes whose names Jonathan doesn't know. The way the place has mobilized really brings you back to the historical English spirit of something or other, Jonathan thinks. Hospitality? Brotherhood? Something English, anyway. Or perhaps it's Welsh, since half their neighbors are from across the border.

In any case, Arabella is wearing a black dress, which Jonathan is sure she's never worn before and which doesn't look like her style, and something's wrong. He can't put his finger on what it is.

"I'm cold," she says.

He stares at her. Water's dripping off her dress, and she ought not be that wet - not after having been fussed at by matrons and dried off. Nobody else is dripping.

He shakes himself and fetches her a sweater; she takes it with not a word. Then some more of the matrons hustle her off to her room, glaring at him.

It's not that he's not glad she's back, he just...can't shake the feeling that she's not. He stares at the pool of water; there are strange black things floating in it. Odd. At this time of year it's not as though there's much in the way of branches to step on, not really.

He drums his fingers on the side table, furrowing his brow. Has he read about this? Why would he have? No, his mind is just playing tricks on him. Stress. Definitely stress.

He goes into Arabella's room and takes her cold, cold hands. "What were you doing?" he whispers to her.

"Walking on the hills with my brothers and my sisters," she says. "And dreaming in the snow."

Alarmed, Jonathan says, "You haven't got any sisters, my love. Only just the one brother. What were you dreaming of?"

Arabella doesn't reply. Her hands don't warm; she shakes and doesn't speak except in tiny snatches, as if it's too much for her. The doctor who comes the next day shakes his head, looks confused.

"She's not ill, she's in perfect health," he says. "That is to say, her vitals are perfect." He shows Jonathan the tricorder readings as if Jonathan will be able to make anything of them. "You see that?"

Jonathan nods, not really up to a lecture about blood pressure.

"Perfect health," says the doctor again, shaking his head. "I really can't understand it. What did you say that her problem was?"

"She's cold all the time. Can't seem to warm her up - you can feel the air here, it's boiling, but no matter how many blankets we put on she still shivers. And she says she's got pain in her feet."

"Feet?"

Jonathan shrugs. "I don't know, legs, maybe. She says roots."

The doctor frowns. "Has she been delirious?"

Jonathan remembers the brothers and the sisters. "Maybe. She certainly has been saying things I don't understand."

"Well," says the doctor, "I'll give her a shot, shall I, and then we'll see how she's doing tomorrow."

Jonathan nods. He supposes there's not much else to do with cases like this, is there. Only Arabella's always been healthy and she's never been a case.

But the doctor doesn't get a chance to hand out any further prescriptions. With very little fanfare, Arabella dies the next day.

-

Ema stares out at the city. Stefen knows she's not seeing any of it.

"It didn't work," she says. "None of it worked."

"I know," says Stefen quietly. Very carefully, he rests a hand against her back for a moment. She blinks, and then shakes her head.

"It's different for us," she says. "We're used to it. I don't know what to do. She can't even leave."

"I know," says Stefen again.

"We were already damned."

"I tried to talk him out of it."

"I know you did. Unfortunately, it seems to me that he listens to neither emotions nor logic." She sighs. "Damn him and damn his parties and damn his entire kingdom. She's terrified, and I can't be there. At least we had each other even if we can't speak of it in waking life. We don't have to."

"That is some comfort," agrees Stefen. "Have you spoken to her while you are there?"

"Yes."

"At least she has your advice."

Ema hums. "We certainly could have used that, couldn't we. You figured him out faster, I think."

"I am trained to read people. You're very young; the skill takes time to acquire."

Ema shrugs. He knows that if they go into any more detail, one or both of them will feel the press of rose petals against their lips, the tickling choking sensation in the back of their throat.

She says, "I suppose it's convenient, having a longer life."

"In these particular circumstances, that is not so."

Ema closes her eyes. "No," she says quietly. "But then, who knows if it would stop on death."

"Whose death, is the question" says Stefen.

She raises an eyebrow. "In fairytales, enchantment often ends with the death of the enchanter."

"There is, I would say, no way to arrange for the death of the enchanter. He is only in his fifties, I believe. For a human in these modern times that means very little."

"Mm. Well, natural death isn't how enchantments usually end."

Stefen pauses. By nature, he is a pacifist; it is the way of Surak. On the other hand, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of one. Who knows who else might be - enchanted?

In the depths of his soul - in a place he doesn't want to admit exists - he hates Norrell as much as Ema does. For his own sake, for her sake, for the sake, even, of Mrs Strange. For the sake of everyone who has been caught in the crossfire of his rise. Strange is no better; he's done nothing to help them, not even asked. Perhaps he can't know, but the part of Stefen that feels these things is not concerned with logic. It is concerned with the pain that he feels, and the things that have been taken from him, and the ways that he and Ema have been hurt. It is the instinct of the trampled, crying for freedom.

He says, "I myself would have no wish to carry out such methods."

"And I wouldn't ask you to. Your position here is not secure. But you know where the phasers are kept?"

"I have a key," says Stefen.

Ema sits back in her chair. There's a new iron in the outline of her profile against the window. They speak no more, but they know, between the two of them, what must be done.

-

There are cobwebs in the corner of Childermass's mind.

He shakes his head. It's curious; his concentration is usually excellent, save for times when depression hits him badly. But he knows the yawning emptiness that comes with it, and this isn't that. He just feels...dreamy.

He continues dictating a communication to Admiral Arlington. "The psychic barriers Lieutenant Commander Norrell has erected should be acceptable for another - "

He hears something, sees a flash in the corner of his eye. He turns, ready to defend himself, but there's nothing.

This is...

Wrong. He's not jumpy, and he doesn't see things that aren't there.

"Acceptable for another two months," he continues, and then starts, because the landscape around him has changed. He's not in his small office just across from Norrell's anymore. He's in a vast grey moor, something like the ones he'd seen as a child but huge and empty and endless. There's something written on the sky and if he could only read it -

He reaches out, and finds himself reaching towards the regulation off-blue ceiling of the office.

No, this is definitely not correct. Something is wrong. He checks Norrell's office, but he's not there, which can't be right, because he's got to be somewhere projecting illusions. Childermass knows this feeling.

But this doesn't feel like Norrell's mind...

Puzzled, he goes out into the courtyard. Ah, there's Norrell now, walking back from a meeting. Lasels and Drawlight are on either side of them.

As Childermass watches, the grey moor comes back. It flickers in and out. He catches a glimpse of the sky again, a bright white-blue that's not at all like the overcast winter sky of the Here. He looks at Norrell again, and knows that something's very, very wrong.

He reaches out with his own mind, scanning for anomalies. There's one - and then it comes back and strikes him, twists the world to the moor and then back home. The force of it takes his breath away and he nearly falls over.

Childermass’s head is buzzing, fuzzy, and he can hear whispers at the edge of his ears. He thinks he’s drifting between two realities, like someone’s taking a ride on his mind and dragging him back to their own plane with the weight of their thoughts.

There’s one reality, and there’s the next.

On this plane, he notices, there's Ema Pole. But she's on the other one, too, isn't she? Here she's dressed in plain black, a woman's walking outfit, but on the other plane she's got some sort of elaborate dress on. He's never seen anything like it before.

In one reality, she holds a rose. In the other... In the other, in this one, in the one where she's twenty feet away from Norrell, she has a phaser.

It's set to kill.

Childermass doesn't know how he knows it; he's certainly not close enough to see the setting. But he can tell. He lurches forward, staggering his way towards her. He feels far colder than even the January chill can account for.

She turns and looks at him and he reaches out, grabs the phaser.

There's a noise, which seems wrong. Has Norrell been shot? Childermass realizes he's on the ground, and that his arm feels numb. Strange.

In the distance - it feels very far - there's yelling. Something about doctors and shock.

He sighs and, as simply as breathing, lets go of this world and falls into the next one.

Childermass sleeps. He hears his mother’s voice, switching seamlessly between Arabic and her Yorkshirey English the way she always did. Impatiently: you’ve got to wake up, Johnny, there’s work to be done. Yalla yalla, SaHu!  He tries to tell her he can’t, that he needs to sleep, but before he can she’s gone and he’s back in the Other Place. It feels exactly like that other plane he’d been drifting to.

In the dream he stands up, and there’s a bright red flash. He thinks some sort of creature has come and then gone, though where from and where to he doesn’t know. A fox?

He shakes his head, trying to clear the cobwebs, and drifts back into dreams....

-

When he wakes Norrell is there. This is something of a surprise. He’d half-expected him to be shot, too, or would be if he’d had time to think about it. It seems like he’s been making more mistakes than usual, so it wouldn’t be out of line with his luck lately.

“You were doing a scan,” says Norrell, the words sounding sour from his mouth. That’s gratitude for you, thinks Childermass. First words out of his mouth.

When Childermass doesn’t answer, Norrell says more impatiently, “Why were you doing a scan, and how did you learn? I can’t expect to maintain the standard of my work if I’m constantly sabotaged by my own personnel, and furthermore - ”

“You taught me,” says Childermass with labored patience. He can hear the fear around the edges of Norrell’s words, the sense of I could have lost you and then who would I have. He’s used to reading between the lines - it’s a consequence of spending so much time around someone autistic and chronically anxious and god knows what else in the particular fashion Norrell is. But there are limits, and right now he’s too tired not to have reached them the instant he woke up.

Norrell pauses. “I taught you? When?”

“Before, when you were teaching students, back at Starfleet academy. Badly,” says Childermass, because his wound really hurts.

Norrell doesn’t deny it. “Whyever did I do that?”

“You wanted me to be sure that none of your students had any sort of potential. As I recall, you had the intention of kicking them out if they were. And there were all the societies I got closed down, of course - had to be sure none of them were legitimate.”

“Oh,” says Norrell. The wind seems to be gone from his sails. “Well. Well. I hope this won’t incapacitate you too much.”

“I’ve been shot, sir,” says Childermass.

“Yes, I know, but I need your help - when you are rested,” says Norrell, then plows on. “You know Ema Pole?”

“The girl you raised from the dead?”

“That’s an unscientific way of putting it, but yes. She’s the one who shot you.”

“What?” Childermass struggles to sit up, and starts coughing; without asking, Norrell reaches over and pours him a glass of water from the carafe on the nightstand. Odd how familiar a gesture that seems from someone like Norrell. After he can breath again, he says, “I can’t imagine why she’d want to kill you. Dozens of other people, but...”

“The favors I’ve done her are well-known,” says Norrell, sitting down on Childermass’s bedside. His eyes don’t meet Childermass’s, but then, they often don’t.

“How did she get the phaser?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. You’d think Admiral Pole would regulate his possessions more closely, don’t you? But he says the box was locked and only his yeoman had access.” Norrell shrugs. “And what his yeoman could possibly have against me I have less idea than anything else. I don’t think I’ve said two words to the man.”

“Hmm,” says Childermass. “What is going to happen to Ema Pole?”

“That is what I have needed you for. I wanted her to be deported to a colony, but the admiral insists that is unnecessary. He wants to put her away someplace quiet.” Norrell sighs. “It’s only that someone will go and poke at her and see what led her to this. And supposing they find - ” He stops. “Well, supposing they talk?”

“I’ll take care of it,” says Childermass.

-

It's not a very long journey to York nowadays. Admiral Pole asks Stefen to go with Ema, anyway. He seems to feel that she needs a protector. Stefen wishes he could protect either of them from what's ailing them.

It's a pleasant ride; transport would be too jarring, says Admiral Pole, and Stefen doesn't argue because it'll give them time to prepare.

"Where is this place?" says Ema, her hands folded perfectly still in her lap.

"It's called Starecross Hall. It is, I believe, historic."

"I'm so tired of historic."

Stefen says, "Efforts to preserve the past have been markedly increased," though he knows that's not what she means. Lost-hope has the antiquated feel of a 19th century ballroom, most of the time.

She closes her eyes and leans back. "What are they? The men who will be caring for me."

"Their names are Mr Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot. I believe Mr Segundus is half Betazoid."

"No Bajorans, I suppose."

"No."

"No Vulcans either."

"There are few Vulcans on this part of the planet."

"I suppose that must be lonely for you."

"Vulcans do not experience loneliness."

Ema raises her eyebrow and shrugs. "This won't help, you know. He'll still find me."

"I know. It is more to prevent you being imprisoned than for your safety."

"Funny, isn't it. I'm already imprisoned. I suppose it doesn't matter where I am."

"You may find the country air invigorating. I have heard that it is healthful."

Ema snorts.

The house looks rather foreboding as they approach, but Stefen pays no mind to legends and fairy-tales, even though he's living one. It's just a house. It's in a bit of disrepair because it's just been bought and it's old. They have, in fact, fixed it up quite impressively in the time.

He shakes his head. "We're here, ma'am."

"Ma'am," says Ema, shaking her own head. "Well, shall we?"

"Can you get down yourself?"

"It's a little tall for me. Will you help me?"

He assents, taking her hand as they step down.

It's a nice enough house, with a nice enough pair of men running it. Segundus is small and dark-eyed and helpful; Honeyfoot is taller with a red face and a friendly manner. They have tea ready for Ema; it's Bajoran deka tea, too.

"Will you be staying? We could have some soup made up, or we could replicate a vegetarian meal," says Segundus.

"I should leave," says Stefen. "I did only come to see her settled."

"Ah, but she isn't yet," says Honeyfoot. "I'm sure she'd be more comfortable the first night knowing someone she's familiar with is here."

Stefen meets Ema's eyes. She looks so tired and fraile and young; he thinks to himself that no one could see her and want to hurt her.

They dream the same dream that night, as always. It makes no difference whether he's here or not; she would have seen him anyway.

"It's probably just as well," she says. "I know you said neither of them have powers, but supposing they do? Did you sense anything?"

"Not a thing. I believe they are safe."

"Well, I suppose I can trust your Vulcan senses," she says. "There's Arabella. He's dancing with her again, the pig."

"He certainly seems enamoured of her. The attraction of the new, I suspect. It will fade."

She sighs, and shakes her head. "I wish I could spare her. I wish I could have spared you. If it'd only been me... But he takes up everything he wants, doesn't he."

He reaches out, and touches her back for just a moment. She in return places her hand on his arm. For a moment, just for a brief moment, there is comfort.

-

Stefen decides on the way back that he will visit Ema regularly. It's best that she have regular contact with someone she knows, Admiral Pole says, but he won't visit her himself. Lady Pole would, perhaps, do so, had she not long since gone back to Bajor in the wake of her daughter's illness.

He's coming back from this trip, which he makes regularly in a skimmer so that he can stop along the way to run various errands for Admiral Pole, when his vehicle breaks down suddenly.

He's not far off the ground, fortunately, so the crash doesn't leave him too badly-off. When he comes back to his senses after the confusion and bumping, he crawls out and looks at the skimmer with some dismay.

There's no question about it: it's broken and there's no way he's going to be able to fix it. The smashed nose would certainly have been a dead giveaway if nothing else had been.

He takes a few moments to collect himself, and then starts walking. In this part of Yorkshire there's not much in the way of inns; it's all isolated homesteads that, he's sure, might not provide an entirely friendly reception if he walked up to their door.

Well. He is, at least, in reasonable physical shape. Walking will not harm him.

He trudges onward for a few hours before a skimmer flies in low, stops beside him. "All right?" says the man driving it, in a broad Yorkshire voice.

Stefen considers this question. "No," he says.

"Ah, right," says the man laconically. "Need a ride somewhere? I'm going to Doncaster. I'll take thee if tha likes."

"Taking me to the nearest transport station would be fine," says Stefen.

"Doncaster won't be far." The man jerks his head at his large, overburdened skimmer; he must be delivering goods. "Come on, then."

Stefen comes. It's a short ride, but the carter talks.

"Picked up a man," he says, "Blue all over."

"Like an Andorian?"

"Aye, an Andorian, only not one. No antenna. Brown hair." The carter shrugs. "Thought he'd be good company, but he's fallen asleep."

Stefen glances at the back of the skimmer. There's a faint snoring issuing.

"Ah," he says.

"Tell me about Vulcan. Didn't know there was black Vulcans."

Stefen, used to this, does not react. "We have as much diversity of physical appearance as other species," he says.

"Ah," says the carter. "Well."

He shares some food with Stefen - there's a pie which Stefen can't eat because it's got meat in, and a cheese which he can, and some sort of strange carbonated nonalcoholic beverage which he has observed that many Humans seem to enjoy. It's growing dark when they reach Doncaster.

"Thank you," says Stefen. "I appreciate it."

The man nods. "I hope you can get yourself home soon."

"Thank you."

As he leaves, there's a noise, which he discovers is the sleeping passenger. The man is tall, nearly as tall as Stefen, and he does not, in fact, look blue as an Andorian. He's tattooed all over with strange symbols in blue ink.

"Hello," says Stefen, observing the correct polite forms.

"Ha!" says the man, tugging at his tunic until it's something approaching straight.

Stefen isn't quite sure how to respond to this.

"I've been waiting to deliver a message to you," says the man. "Vinculus is my name." He sweeps a grand bow. "Never been in the presence of a king before."

"You are mistaken. I am not royalty."

"Yet," says the man. "Destined to rule, you are. Written on my skin." He rolls up a grubby sleeve and shows the tattoos off.

"I can't read them."

"Nor can I, but I've seen 'em read. Well, they say you'll be king, that's all. I don't suppose you know where you'll be king of?"

"No."

"Pity, I was hoping you could tell me." The man peers at him and then, unceremoniously, turns around.

"I've delivered my last message," he says, to the world at large more than to Stefen, "And I've got appointments to keep."

With that, he disappears into the darkening dusk.

-

Vinegia is all right, Jonathan supposes, as places to get your research done go. It's not technically a remote outpost in that it's, in fact, a thriving colony with lots of shopping and all that, but Jonathan hasn't noticed most of it. He's been too busy trying to get back to the King's Roads.

Occasionally he goes and has dinner with some friends - the Greysteels, practically the only English people in this place. Most of the humans are Italian and Jonathan's Italian is quite limited. One might almost say nonexistent. Of course, some people speak Federation Standard and so does he but it's not the same.

Arabella's been dead for six months. Jonathan has written a book, offered to get Childermass transferred, attempted to take students, and retreated to to the farthest reaches of the Alpha quadrant, where even at high warp it would take a couple of weeks for anyone from Earth to reach him.

To be precise, he's not going to go on the King's Roads. He's promised Arabella not to go on the King's Roads. No, what he's going to do is call someone to go on the King's Roads for him and tell him all about it. He's very pleased with it; it's nice and neat.

There's only one hitch thus far, which is that he's been having a lot of trouble calling anyone.

He knows they exist, the beings from other planes. He's read about them in Norrell's books - ones that he wasn't supposed to have, but managed to sneak a peek at anyway. It's just that they won't come.

But he's come to a decision: he's decided that chemical alteration of his mindset will be necessary. Those who are somewhat out of touch with reality are often more in touch with the metaphyiscal, aren't they? Hence, producing a chemical compound  that mimics the effects of madness will just about do the trick.

He's been in his lab all week. He's not sure when he last ate, but then, he's sure he has eaten. He'd have noticed otherwise. He's drank a fair bit, but that's normal when someone's grieving, isn't it? He rubs his head, feeling the wildness of his hair, and wonders when he last remembered to wash it.

Well. Well, this is for science. And it doesn't matter how he looks, does it.

With a sigh, he gives himself a hypospray full of the compound.

The lights and sounds and colours are quite extraordinary. He thinks he sees pineapples grow out of people's mouths, and he can't quite say why it's so horrible. There are candle-flames in people's heads, and the most frightening thing is that he knows how easy it is to blow them out.

The second time, he halves the dosage. He spends the entire night crying. He's not entirely sure why. When he comes to, he can't remember his reasons for crying - or rather, they don't seem like reasons that he'd normally cry.

Finally, he halves the dosage again, and he sets up a slow-release antidote that will activate half an hour after he takes the compound.

The feeling is - strange. Ha, he thinks as the thought floats through his mind. A Strange feeling. He feels perfectly calm, collected, as he hasn't in months. He turns and sees some instructions written on a piece of paper.

"Hmmm," he says.

The instructions say that he should sit down and call out, so he does.

When he finally opens his eyes - he thinks he might have fallen asleep - there's a being with shining, silvery hair like thistledown staring at him.

He jumps, and looks around himself. The compound is rapidly leaving his blood, and he's not quite sure what to do.

"Well!" he says brightly. "Hello! Hello there."

"Hello," says the being, cautiously.

"I'm Jonathan Strange."

"I see. You called me?"

"Yes, indeed, I certainly did, didn't I!" There's a long pause. Jonathan straightens himself up. "Is it true that you and your, ah, people have had dealings with mine in the past?"

Thistledown raises his eyebrow. "Certainly, if by that you mean humans." He sounds as though he is not quite certain this is what Jonathan is.

"Very good," says Jonathan. "Excellent. Have you, yourself, ever considered such a deal?"

"I have made them before. You yourself are fully human?"

"Oh yes."

"No Vulcan, Betazoid, or any such thing in you?"

"No. Not that I know of."

"Hmm." Thistledown taps his fingers against his elbow. "My goodness. Such a powerful psychic is certainly rare among humans."

This Jonathan smiles at. "Indeed," he says. "I have been told so. You said you'd made deals before?"

"Yes."

"I would enjoy the opportunity to work with you."

"Certainly," says Thistledown. "I shall bring you a token. What would you like?"

"This would be in the nature of a binding agreement?"

"I suppose so, yes."

Jonathan resists the urge to dance in glee and nods. "In that case, can you bring me my wife?"

Thistledown stares at him. "Your wife?"

"Yes. I've heard that you fellows often have the power of life and death at your fingertips. I thought - "

"How long as your wife been dead?"

A shadow falls over Jonathan's heart. "Six months."

"Then I cannot." Thistledown smiles thinly. "However, any number of riches, gold, jewels - "

Jonathan tsks. "I'm not very interested in that sort of thing. Can you bring me something from the last person you dealt with? A book, or something of that nature?" He thinks perhaps that he could learn a little bit about how these things work with someone else's previous experience.

But to his shock, the being stares at him some more, tilts his head, and says, "That is quite impossible."

"Impossible?"

"I'm afraid so."

And with that, Thistledown disappears.

Strange stares in astonishment and outrage. With a sudden gesture, he grabs the hypospray and depresses the rest of the compound into his arm.

The world changes hardly at all, but there's a thin trail where the being has left. He follows it, with the feeling of being on a great adventure again at last.

-

"Stefen!" says Thistledown, appearing suddenly beside Stefen. Their surroundings shift and then they're in Lost-hope, somehow. "He's come for me! He's going to attack my very stronghold!"

"Your stronghold, sir?"

"My own sanctuary! How on earth he found out I don't know!" Thistledown shakes his head. "Whatever shall I do?"

"Perhaps you could be merciful," says Stefen. "Perhaps he does not mean to harm you. We have seen the man - that is, you have taken me to see him."

"Indeed, I have. What was your impression?"

"That he was lonely, and full of unwanted solitude. Some people," he says, "Some people whose lives are full of such things, they find themselves unable to break out of the darkness which surrounds them." He rubs a hand down his face, a most unVulcan gesture, but he no longer remembers his Vulcanness; it's lost beneath the haze. "Perhaps, sir, you might see."

Thistledown stares at him. "I do see," he says. "I see very well. You are to be commended, Stefen."

"Am I, sir?" Stefen's heart flutters wildly in his chest.

"Yes. I know exactly what to do."

-

The trail ends somewhere in an old-fashioned castle, after a long journey through the King's Roads. Jonathan's had to wade through a dark shallow fast-running river and his shoes are terribly wet, but he's in fine spirits.

There seems to be some sort of ball going on inside the castle - surprisingly easy to get in, he muses as he tramples into the room. No guards? Hmmm.

He sees a Vulcan who he believes to be Admiral Pole's yeoman. The man looks at him levelly and says, "You should not be here. Don't you know he hates you?"

"Who hates me?" says Jonathan, but the man has been swept away.

Jonathan watches the dancers for a few minutes, trying to take stock of the situation. With a twinge, he realizes that one is small and dark-haired, just like -

It can't be, but he knows her way of moving. He hisses in sharply.

"Arabella?" he asks, starting foward. "My love, is that you?"

"Jonathan!" The woman turns and heads towards him. "Look, Ema dear, it's Jonathan!"

Ema, who Jonathan realizes with a shock is Lady Pole, turns and raises an eyebrow. "Have you come to help us?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Come to free us! From this - this prison!"

"Not as such, but if you could please give me a moment alone with my wife -"

"Jonathan, you must go. You'll be hurt if you stay."

"Hurt by who?"

"I told you," says Ema scornfully. "He hasn't come to rescue us. There's no - "

There's a sudden thunderclap; everything vanishes, including Arabella. Jonathan reaches out a hand as she goes, but can't catch hold of her.

"So," says Thistledown, stalking along the ballroom floor. "You've come to invade my own home, have you?"

"I didn't mean - you have my wife! That was my wife!"

"You have never loved her as you should. But that is not the point. The point is the solitude that you have invaded and the privacy you have destroyed. I have conceived of a just punishment for that."

Jonathan opens his mouth to protest, to cast a spell, to do anything except stand here, but before he can, there's a whirlwind and a darkness.

He doesn't know anymore for a while, after that.

-

Norrell sits at his desk and stares at his correspondence. The news since Strange's sudden disappearance and reappearance has not been good.

"I've heard that there's a sort of cloud of night," says Lasels, picking up a letter. "Like deep space. Not acceptable, in these enlightened modern times."

Childermass gives him a scornful glance. Norrell notices, but is too distracted to interfere in what's promising to be another fight.

He says, "I've read of it, but I thought it was only legends. I didn't think it could really - " He stops. "Well. What are we to do?"

"He sent word that he was coming."

"I have to go to Hurtfew," says Norrell suddenly. "I need my books. My real books, all of them."

Childermass gives him a sidelong glance and then looks at Lasels. "I thought you meant to send someone to confront him."

"We did," says Lasels. "You needn't worry."

"Drawlight? Do you think you can trust him?"

Lasels shrugs. "Well, we'll wait for his message and then we'll go to Hurtfew. I should get a transmission very soon now. It's two weeks there and back by the ship I sent him. I suppose we could set out now and hope for news on the journey."

Norrell shakes his head. "We'll wait. I don't want to start out and then have to turn around." There's far too much luggage to go back to Hurtfew by transport; they'll have to take a skimmer.

Lasels gets the video transmission soon, and transports out to the spaceport to meet Drawlight. He promises to return within the day.

"Do you trust him?" says Childermass, when he's gone.

"I place great reliance on him," says Norrell.

"To the extent of leaving him as your only contact with Strange?"

Norrell drops his eyes. "He is my only advisor now."

"You still have me," says Childermass.

Norrell stares at him, and doesn't quite know what to say. Childermass had once been his sole source of advice; but he feels that something has shifted between them. Lasels has, perhaps, made himself indispensable, and there is no one else, and Norrell could not bear to lose either of them. And Childermass has always been here, no matter what.

Childermass looks into his eyes and must see something there. He shakes his head, and turns away.

Lasels returns in a state of high excitement a few hours later, carrying news from Drawlight. All Strange has said is, "I am coming."

"Well then," says Childermass, "I suppose we're going," and that is all that needs to be said.

The party starts for Hurtfew within the hour.

-

Thistledown seems listless after cursing the psychic. He keeps taking Stefen to strange places and different planets and pacing. "I don't know if it's enough," he says. "We really can't say, can we? Supposing he decides to take revenge?"

Out on the lonely hills of someplace in northern Wales, Stefen says, "I'm sure he's quite occupied enough."

"Hm!" says Thistledown. "No, I really think I ought to kill him."

"Sir, please - "

"It's the best way. A curse is all very well - a curse can be far worse than death - but his powers are not yet gone. I need him to die. Ah! I shall ask the west wind to bring me to him."

"The west wind?" Stefen asks, but before the words are all the way out, Thistledown has spread his hands and gazed up at the sky and, suddenly, they are elsewhere.

It lacks the fizzy jolting of their usual transportation, and doesn't tingle the way a transporter beam does. Stefen wonders precisely what happened there; all he could feel was a wind, and then they were here. He looks around himself. Yorkshire, again, if he's not mistaken. How many times had he ever been to Yorkshire before this adventure had begun?

There's a man on the moor, but it's not the man either of them expected. It's - Vinculus, if Stefen recalls correctly.

"Hello," he says, with far more insolence than people generally manage when someone appears in front of them. "Late, aren't you? I've been waiting for hours. Chilly out here."

"Ha!" says Thistledown. "I wonder why this man is my enemy? He looks raggedy, doesn't he?"

Vinculus raises and bows, sweepingly and mockingly, to Thistledown. "Fairy, aren't you?"

Thistledown presses his lips together. "Your foolish folktales again, I see. Perhaps that's why. Well, I have to kill someone."

"Sir, please," says Stefen desperately. He can't bear to see more people die - he can't bear to watch Thistledown destroy more lives with no thought for the consequences. They'd gone back and seen a fox hunt; he remembers the way that had stuck, the way Thistledown had laughed when Stefen had begged him to save it. Laughed, and said, "My dear tenderhearted Stefen," and done nothing else at all.

"Please," he says again. "If you don't know what he did to you, perhaps you needn't kill him."

"Oh, no. He's certainly done something. Well, best get on with it. An excellent tree here for the purpose, I see." Thistledown twirls a finger lazily, and a rope falls out, forming into a noose.

"Tch!" says Vinculus. "Inefficiency! Can't even tie the rope yourself."

Thistledown makes an irritated noise. "Are you not going to beg for mercy."

"Nope. You can try what you like, fairy. I think you'll find I'm very hard to kill."

"It looks a simple matter to me. Stefen, string him up."

Stefen shakes his head. He can't - he won't do this, no matter what happens to him because of his refusal. Vah mau vah tor-yehat ri stau, he thinks: as far as possible do not kill.

"Oh, very well," says Thistledown, with a flash of irritation, and the rope lashes out, takes Vinculus around the neck. He seems strangely unresisting.

Stefen looks away. Then he looks back, because if he can't save this man, he doesn't want him to die watched only by someone who thinks of him as bearing the same weight in the universe as a fly. There are some things he can still do. Very few things. But that doesn't mean he won't do them.

It's over quite quickly. Vinculus doesn't seem very worried about any of it; he goes quietly, doesn't kick. Thistledown doesn't even stop to cut him down.

"Now," he says, "I suppose we ought to go find and kill the psychic, hadn't we?"

Stefen wipes the tears from his eyes discreetly, and gets to his feet. He wonders if he can stop it this time.

-

Hurtfew doesn't change much, for which Norrell is vaguely grateful. There's a comforting sameness about the river and the moors and the grey sky and the house itself, which can't be altered on account of its historical value. He's a caretaker as much as he's an owner.

The house has its usual complement of staff; Lucas greets them at the door and takes their coats, though technically it's not his job. Norrell gives him a brief nod, and they all go in to dinner.

It seems odd to be eating when at any moment they could be broken in upon by Strange, which he says, picking nervously at his food.

"How soon can it be?" says Lasels. "Surely he must have set out after Drawlight, and Drawlight only got in today."

"We may not be dealing with the typical rules of time and space," says Norrell absently. "He may arrive now, or he may arrive last Tuesday and discover he's wrong and go hopping through time."

"Hopping through time?" says Lasels, raising his white eyebrows.

Norrell shrugs. "We don't know what powers he's acquired with his, ah, escort. There are tales..."

"Only folktales, surely."

"Folktales can tell you more than you'd expect," says Childermass, speaking for the first time since they've arrived. He seems occupied, on edge; he's been chafing Lasels about the message Drawlight is supposed to have sent, and why he stayed at the spaceport.

Lasels raises an eyebrow. "Oh, indeed? About what, the superstitions of long-dead peasants?"

Childermass's hackles go up. Norrell, who has known him long enough to know that expression, says hastily, "Folklore often preserves the seeds of true events. I have had much cause to examine folklore for information about psionic powers. In any case, that is not the point. The point is that we must be prepared."

"And what shall we be prepared for? Will you fight him?"

"Fight?" Norrell looks at Lasels with horror. "I should not like it to come to that."

"It will," says Lasels.

They don't say anymore about it until they're all in the library. Childermass is doing something with his Tarot cards - which Norrell thinks are nonsense, but Childermass says they help him focus his mind on a problem.

Finally, Childermass looks up at Lasels, who is peeling an orange with a knife and tutting over the quality of the fresh fruit here.

"What happened to Christopher Drawlight?" he says.

"Oh, are we going over that again?" says Lasels. "I told you he was going back home."

"Well, I have some friends in the Orion system. I could send a message, I'm sure."

"There's no need for that. Don't you believe me? Don't your little cards say I'm telling the truth?"

"The cards," says Childermass with perfect equanimity, "say that you are a liar, and that Drawlight is dead. Shot, I would think, knowing you."

Lasels steps forward. "I've half a mind to teach you a lesson," he says, his voice going low and calm, the way it only ever does when he's fearfully angry. Norrell tenses, drawing his shoulders inward.

"If you can, feel free to try," says Childermass, shuffling his cards and putting them away in his pocket.

Lasels takes another step forward and then, quick as a snake, pins Childermass against a wall and braces the knife against his cheek. In horror, Norrell takes a step forward himself, but before he can do anything, Lasels draws a thin line with the knife down Childermass's face.

Then he releases him.

Childermass nods at him, and lets the wound bleed. They stand there in tableaux for a moment, and then Lasels turns away to Norrell, still frozen on the floor.

"Well," he says, "I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, but it seems that it must. It's him or me. You'll have to choose."

Norrell can't move, can't even speak, for half a moment. He stops to think about the possibilities, the places this could end. He needs them both. He knows he does. But if Childermass stays, then Lasels will never come back. If Lasels stays, Childermass will be free of him until he's in a better temper and then when - if - they survive, he'll be able to go and find him and bring him back.

And there's Strange, of course. Lasels thinks that Childermass has sympathies for Strange. What if that's true? Norrell can't risk Childermass - whom Norrell knows, even if he refuses to admit to himself, is a psychic of not inconsiderable power himself - side with Strange.

He clears his throat.

"You must go," he says to Childermass.

Childermass gives him a brief, sharp smile and bows. "Goodbye, Lieutenant Commander Norrell. You've made the wrong choice, sir. As usual."

He turns to Lasels. "Keep in mind, would you, that you're in the North. You can talk of folktales all you like, but they may be more real than you're prepared for, up here."

With that, he leaves.

"Well rid of him," says Lasels. "He would only have betrayed you at the last minute."

Norrell closes his eyes for a moment, and then takes a deep breath. "Well, it is done," he says half to himself. "Now we must prepare for Strange, I suppose. I don't want to be caught unawares."

"I see. I suppose you'll need fortifications?"

"I saw to those. It's defense once he arrives that most worries me."

"What do we - "

There's a thunderclap, which Norrell feels is terribly dramatic. Typical of Strange, he thinks, remembering some of the more impressive feats he'd managed in the war, and then remembers that he's not supposed to miss him. As he is trying to reorient himself, darkness descends over Hurtfew. Though it's not nighttime, Norrell can see the stars outside the library window, twinkling brightly in a velvet sea of blackness.

"He's here," says Norrell. He presses his lips shut, closes his eyes, and clutches the book he's holding. For all the good it will do him, which is liable to be none. "He's here."

-

Though Stefen doesn't see it, the man who died will not stay dead. A figure dressed in black comes upon John Childermass trying to take his corpse to Starecross, and, with some amusement and not a little fondness, brings the man back to life.

Childermass is not to remember any of this, except that the man he found lying dead is now alive with no explanation. Vinculus knew it all in advance, and is resigned to it.

Childermass, his face still bleeding a little, and Vinculus, his voice hoarse from a hanging, share a bottle of claret, and life goes on, even if not quite as expected.

-

Lasels rushes out as soon as he hears Jonathan, much to Norrell's dismay. By the time he follows, Lasels is gone and everything's - different. Or, rather, it's the same, but he's being manipulated.

He knows the technique. He'd taught it to Jonathan himself.

Well, certainly he's improved upon it. Norrell rubs his hands nervously and closes his eyes. Trusting his instincts, he walks straight through a wall that he knows shouldn't be there.

The illusion breaks. He's down the corridor from the library, where Strange must be. With a cautious movement, he approaches and listens.

There is a sound. It's not as sinister as he expected. It's the sound of someone exclaiming in exasperation over a book.

Norrell, quite unconsciously, moves closer to the door. It's such an ordinary sound, and so comforting - so associated with long evenings in the library with Jonathan.

He summons up his courage, and enters.

Jonathan is, as might be surmised from the noise, standing bent over a large book and muttering. Norrell thinks he hasn't noticed, until he suddenly speaks out loud.

"Fairy kidnappings," he says. "A common legend. Supposed to have stopped when we grew civilized and so forth, but there have always been mysterious disappearance." He taps the book. "Twenty-four in York alone in 2031, did you know?"

"Yes," says Norrell, though the specific facts he didn't have memorized. "I looked into it once. Before."

"When you were still trying to reach the Raven King."

"Yes."

Jonathan sighs. "Well. I suppose there's nothing for it, then." He finally settles his gaze on Norrell.

"Why aren't you angry?" asks Norrell, a little desperately. He hadn't expected any of this - he'd prepared justifications, and excuses, and all sorts of other things, but he's not been given a chance to use any of them. "You ought to be angry. I had your book destroyed! I allowed your name to be slandered! I've been your enemy!"

"Why am I not angry?" says Jonathan, thoughtfully. He sounds as if the question hadn't occurred to him. "I suppose I simply haven't thought to be yet. I've been many things lately and very few of them myself. Should I be angry? I suppose I will be, when I have time."

"What do you want of me?"

"Your help, of course. I need to reach the Raven King. My wife, you see, has been kidnapped."

"Mrs Strange? I thought she died."

"Yes, so did I." There's a hint, for a moment, of the anger Jonathan hadn't had. "But it seems that she's only been taken. By the alien."

Norrell starts guiltily. "What alien?"

"You know what I mean. Don't bother denying it."

"Oh, very well," says Norrell. "Well, we can't kill him. Certainly not by ourselves."

"Hence why we must summon the Raven King."

"We can't do that! Don't you think I've tried? He's dead. He was a man, and he is dead, like any other man."

"But I've seen his roads. They're well-maintained, you know." Jonathan rubs his hands. "He's not dead, and there's two of us now. Twice as hard to ignore."

"This is a foolish plan."

"Can you think of anything else?"

Norrell snorts. "Just because I can't doesn't mean it's advisable."

"Come on. If you're so certain you can't summon him, then what's the harm in trying?"

Norrell glares. "For one thing, what can we use as his name?"

"John Uskglass, of course."

"Which shows how completely unprepared you are. That's not his real name. He was forced to change it frequently to keep abreast of his enemies - you know what the Eugenics Wars were like. We don't know what he was actually called. Probably it's been lost to history."

Jonathan drums his fingers on the tabletop. "Well, supposing we called him the King?"

Norrell considers this. "There's a pear tree in my gardens that was grown from pips the King himself threw away. I suppose if we used that as a focus..."

"Excellent!" says Jonathan. "That sounds perfect."

"I will go and fetch a branch for us to use," says Norrell.

It's peaceful, even in the cold and the darkness; for the first time in a long time, Norrell finds himself enjoying a walk.

That is, until Jonathan appears next to him, looking irritated.

"I thought you were going to stay in the library."

"I was going to, but I got yanked here."

"I assume it was the alien who did this to you?"

"Yes."

Norrell tuts. "He must have specified "the English psychic" or perhaps even "the human psychic" and now we're both stuck. Very careless."

Jonathan waves a hand. "I suppose we'll have to deal with that later. Have you got the branch?"

"Yes."

They trudge back to the house in silence. Norrell lights a candle, a practice he'd been in the habit of as a youth and which he still associates with these attempts. Then, without speaking, they hold hands and reach out.

It does feel different, this time. Norrell can feel Jonathan beside him, not just physically but in his mind as well.

There's a raven feather in his mind's eye. It grows slowly, slowly, until suddenly, it takes up everything, and -

A chorus of screeching and feathers makes him snap his eyes open. His books have turned to ravens. He covers his head as they swoop, scratching, and then disappear.

"What," says Jonathan.

"Well," says Norrell, "We have his attention, I think we can say."

-

They don't agree, of course, on the best way to get him to free Arabella.

"We should just let him loose," Jonathan says. "We can explain the situation to him - "

"Do you think he'd listen? No. Besides, he may not have the power."

"Do you think?"

"What we can do," says Norrell, and explains. There'd been a tale once, about John Uskglass and his connection to the land. A tale that it had been bestowed on him in the form of contracts and that they were still standing.

"So we ask the land, and empower him to do it," says Jonathan.

Norrell smiles for the first time in weeks, despite himself. "Yes."

"What do we call him, then? The Nameless One?"

Norrell frowns. "We ought not fall into the alien's error. There could be more than one."

"I can't imagine that. Everyone has a name."

"Hmm," says Norrell. "I suppose that's sensible."

Once again, they take each others' hands.

-

Thistledown doesn't ask the west wind this time. He just tilts his head thoughtfully and starts walking.

"Where are we going, sir?"

"To find the magicians. Both of them, I fancy. I can hear them. They're up to no good."

Stefen follows, but something's going wrong. There's something whispering at his ears - an edge of power tugging at the corners of his mind. He stops, and he listens.

It's a question, he realizes, and what Thistledown had been talking about with the west wind clicks neatly into place. It's a contract, he realizes. An accord. Or it will be, depending on what he says.

He opens his mouth, and he says, "Yes."

The sky speaks to him, and it asks him the same question.

"Yes," he says.

The trees, the brook beside them, the grass under his feet. Yes, he says. Yes. Yes. He hears the song of the sky and the way the trees talk to each other. He seems to have opened a new set of eyes and gained a new set of ears. Everything around him is painfully, painfully alive. And all of it is leaning towards him, listening.

And the whole of Yorkshire, the whole of the North, is curled just beneath his throat, waiting on his word. He could destroy all of it, wipe out all of the people who've said thoughtless or hurtful or awful things to him.

But he remembers. Vah mau vah tor-yehat ri stau. He is a Vulcan and a follower of Surak, and he will not lose himself.

He turns and looks at Thistledown, and he knows that, in this one specific case, it's not quite possible. For Ema, for Mrs Strange, and even for himself, it is not possible to avoid it. There cannot be peace.

He speaks a word to the trees, and to the river, and to the stones. Thistledown is pulled into the water by the roots of one tree, and Stefen watches him.

"I know you meant to be kind," he says.

A voice in his head says, i could have told you your true name.

"I don't need it," he says. "I know who I am. I know who I've always been. I didn't need you to tell me."

The stones come in and crash down, and in Stefen's mind, there's a spark that goes out. He mourns for the loss of life, briefly, in the approved way, before he remembers.

As it goes, the pane of glass that's been between him and the world shatters. He looks around, and everything feels brighter, softer, more complete. When he breathes, the air has a taste and a scent, crisp and cold. He thinks he smells snow on the air.

Is this was he was missing, all those years? He can feel his own heart beating in his chest. He breathes again deeply, trying to wash the memory of Thistledown's last words out of his mind. But it's true; he knows who he is.

"The name isn't important," he says, half to himself and half to the world. It's retreating now, as though it's realized it made a mistake. He's not the person it was looking for. But it's all right; it would, he thinks, be a little frightening to have all that power all the time. It is not a part of him, and it has served its purpose.

There's a  door on the world. It seems to have opened itself while he was otherwise occupied - or maybe Thistledown did it, in preparation for battle or in an attempt to escape. He is, either way, quite certain of what he needs to do.

-

Ema Winntow - and she vows that she'll never be Pole again for as long as she lives - wakes up. John Segundus is hovering over her, looking concerned.

"He's dead," she says immediately. "Who was it I heard calling?"

"Calling?"

"I was trying to come out," she explains, "And I heard a call."

"That was me," says Segundus, rather shyly. "I - well, I just sort of extended a hand to you. You seemed to need it, I thought."

"I thought you had no talent in that area."

"Ah. Well. It seems I was mistaken - I am sorry. Will Mrs Strange be all right?"

"I showed her the way," says Ema. "She'll be fine. I don't know where she will end up, but a path was made for her, and I saw that it was a safe one. We'll check on her as soon as we're back. Quickly, sir, quickly!" She stands up, throws the covers back imperiously, and strides out of the house.

"Where are we going?"

"To find Stefen! It was him who freed us, I know it was, and we need to find him. We don't know what price he may have paid."

They rush out over the moors. Ema knows where she's going, although she couldn't explain why. But there seems to be a sense in her, a tugging that tells her where she needs to be.

She runs faster.

-

Nesh-kur Stefen takes a deep breath, and walks out of the world. He knows what judgement awaits him should he return. As he walks, he sheds his rank, his title, his name. He's no longer a part of Starfleet, nor of a world that wouldn't accept him. He's no longer chained to the alien being who snatched him away at night in his sleep.

He is free.

Ema watches him disappear, and knows that she won't see him anymore, except perhaps in dreams. At least she'd got here in time to see him go. That's some comfort.

Segundus reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder, comforting her.

"Where has he gone?" he asks.

"Where he's needed, and where he needs to be, I suppose," says Ema.

With Ema already planning a storm of angry letters, they go back to the house.

-

Far, far away, on a distant planet that it will take her a long time to get home from, Arabella Strange falls, disoriented, into the real world. There's a young girl there with a shawl to wrap her in.

"Is this Earth?" she mumbles, looking around.

"No," says Flora Greysteel, very softly. "But I am to take you there when you're ready."

-

This is not where the story ends.

Distantly, Arabella Strange can hear noises. She frowns as she draws closer, watches a cloud of darkness descend over Vinegia. She's been here for a few weeks now, waiting, although she's not sure for what.

She thinks she knows now.

Jonathan is standing in the center of the square, looking around himself the way he always did. There's the usual wry twist to his mouth, the ironic tilt to the eyebrows. She catches her breath, and moves forward.

When he sees her he smiles warmly. "Bell. You did notice."

"It's hard to avoid screams of horror and an enormous pillar of darkness, Jonathan."

"I suppose it is, isn't it? It looks like a piece of space come down to roost. Incredibly inconvenient when we're here, but then, we won't be here for long."

"Won't you?" she asks, softly.

"I'm afraid not. We built a device, you see, and it allows us to shift phase and be in this dimension for short periods of time. But they are really very short. A few minutes at most. And we can't use it too much, because we're not sure what the long term effects are."

"Norrell must love that."

Strange makes a face, half smile and half frown. "It's not his favorite thing I've ever invented."

"You?"

"Well, us, but he disapproved of it, so I think it counts as mine."

She laughs. "Will you be safe?"

"We'll travel. I don't know about safe. That's the advantage of this thing - it looks incredibly impressive when you're in the Q continuum. Even darker, even more stars. Something about it seems to fade in the real world - well, our world." Jonathan sighs. "There's so much to discover, Arabella!"

"I thought Norrell hated traveling, though."

Again that face. Arabella thinks she's beginning to see fondness in it. "Yes, well, he made his objections known. Hence why we chose a house to go along with it."

"I'll miss you," says Arabella.

"And I you," says Jonathan.

Arabella doesn't ask to come with him, and Jonathan doesn't request it. They kiss once, and then he takes her hand.

He is holding it when he disappears, and after he goes, she slowly lets it drop.

-

This is not where the story ends.

John Childermass is sitting in Hurtfew, sorting through the things Norrell has left behind and wondering what ought to be done with them, when the lights flicker and burn out. He sits up, and turns.

"Hello," says Norrell a little awkwardly.

Childermass tilts his head. "Come back, have you?"

"Not on a permanent basis. I thought you might be in the house. In fact, to be precise, I probed the mental landscape and found you here. I thought I should warn you."

"Of?"

"We're taking it away. In two days, I believe - that should give you time to get everything out."

Childermass sighs to himself, because it's really not enough time, but then, this is typical for Norrell. He always asks the impossible, and Childermass always somehow manages to achieve it.

"And what are you doing with it?" he says.

"We're going traveling, and I thought we ought to have decent accomodations. It's a dreadful business, trawling around alien dimensions with nothing to sleep on or eat from. Not that we get hungry, but..."

"Principle of the thing," says Childermass. He knows the importance of Norrell's routines.

Norrell nods. "I believe it is possible that I owe you an apology."

"Oh, you believe that, do you?"

Norrell flinches. "I know it was a foolish mistake - "

"You could say that. How long have I known you, sir?"

"Twenty-seven years now."

Childermass nods. "And you trusted Lasels over me."

"It...was not my finest hour. I was worried, and I thought you might..." Norrell trails off. "Well. What's done is done. I wanted you to know that I have recommended you a place at the academy. Teaching."

Childermass raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Mr Strange brought it to my attention that psychic powers might develop in more people and said that it would be wise to ensure someone trustworthy would be able to guide them. I...thought no one could be more suited than you." Norrell looks away. "You know my methods."

"That I do."

There's an awkward pause. Norrell looks around himself, as if trying to think about anything except Childermass, and the space between them, and how they used to trust each other.

"You didn't actually apologise," says Childermass.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You said you owed me one, but didn't give it me."

Norrell makes a face. "You are one of the most contrary men I've ever met."

"Do you owe it to me or don't you?"

"Oh, very well! I'm sorry. It was a mistake. There. Does that please you?"

Childermass doesn't answer. Instead, he says, "You'll look after yourself, of course, and won't let Strange drag you into anything you're unprepared for."

"Naturally I will. And you'll take care in your new post - I expect you will have enemies."

"You know me, sir," says Childermass, with a crooked grin.

Norrell gives him a sad, small smile, and then he disappears.

Childermass sits for a while, and then, because he's a practical person, he gets on with his work, and he doesn't think about things that could have been.

-

This is where the story ends: with two men in Starfleet uniforms cautiously exiting a large old house of a type you don't see anymore. The house is surrounded by a strange blackness, but as the men follow a winding road which somehow doesn't seem to have been there before, it follows them, leaving the building standing in bright sunlight.

They are arguing as they go. They don't look especially unhappy.

This is how the story ends: with a tall Vulcan in simple dark clothes vanishing into the air. He looks around and finds himself....somewhere. He doesn't quite know where it is, but he knows what it needs.

"This kingdom is full of disorder and illogic," he says, his voice carrying strangely for all its softness. "But in time and with effort, I will make it new again."

This is where the story ends: with two women embracing each other, relieved to be alive, and a small man hovering on the side, looking concerned but pleased. A taller man off to the edge watches, as if he knows what they will need. A rather scribbly-looking sort of fellow with scraggly hair and an expression that could best  be categorized as a leer is elbowing him. All of them, though you can't see it, are thinking of the future.

This is how the story ends: With the promise of future friendship. With a future. Not with tragedy, but with hope.