To make the small room even more crowded, there were piles of books under the racks. Nearly all orange-spined Penguin paperbacks, as far as Susan could see, arranged alphabetically by author in piles of six or seven. They looked fairly new, but obviously read, some with ordinary bookmarks poking out, and one—The King’s War 1641–1647 by C. V. Wedgwood—was on the bed and kept open with a clothes-peg about halfway through.
Merlin was nowhere to be seen, at least until a door previously hidden from view swung open, pushing a rack aside to reveal a very small bathroom, with a shower cubicle perhaps two-thirds of the size necessary for an adult human to stand up, and no bath. Merlin stood in the doorway, in black leather pants, frilled white shirt, and a burgundy leather waistcoat. He had also acquired a large moustache, a drooping thing that looked like a hairy blond slug stuck under his nose.
“I am ready!” he declared. “Susan, help yourself if you want to get changed into something else.”
“I like this boiler suit,” said Susan.
Vivien grimaced. “Merlin, that moustache . . . really . . .”
Merlin stroked his new addition.
“Good, isn’t it? A friend from the D’Oyly Carte gave it to me with a bunch of other stuff when they shut down last year. This was the Major-General’s from The Pirates of Penzance.”
Susan nodded, relieved that he hadn’t grown it in a matter of minutes. He had talked about being “shape-shiftery” and she’d thought this might be an example.
Merlin cleared his throat and began to sing in a powerful baritone:
I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral—
Vivien leaped upon him and put her hands to his throat. The siblings swayed to and fro, sending clothing racks scudding on their casters, until Merlin managed to weakly get out, “Enough! Okay, I won’t sing.”
“Good,” replied Vivien. “Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”
But Susan didn’t move. She shut the door behind her and leaned back on it.
“Why do I have to keep doing this? I’m not going anywhere and I’m particularly not buying anybody lunch until you tell me why you didn’t want any of the other booksellers to know what your grandmother said about my ancestry,” she said firmly. “I’m clearly deep in an absolute sea of shit and I want to know what direction to swim in to get out of it.”
“I think the adjective should be with shit, not sea. It should be a sea of absolute shit—” started Vivien.
“Answer the question!”
Merlin blinked and raised his eyebrows. Vivien frowned.
“She needs to know,” said Merlin to his sister.
“I know! Look, Susan, according to Grandmother, you’re not entirely an ordinary mortal.”
“Go on.”
“I think Merlin has explained to you that the mythic landscape is layered, and usually quite local. Entities and environments are generally confined to a particular geographic area and often also to particular times of day or night, phases of the moon, that sort of thing. Even weather, as with the things that come out after rain, or only when it snows. And they are bound by custom and lore to behave in certain ways, to do certain things, and of course these days are mostly dormant anyway.
“But above these local entities, which number in the tens of thousands, there are around nine hundred or so greater beings, who can command all the lesser ones within far larger bounds, which might be geographic, seasonal, temporal, or defined in other ways. Again, they’re generally dormant, but the potential is there. Perhaps most important, if they are somehow awoken, they have the power to bind new vassals to their service, magically ensuring near-absolute loyalty. We call them Old Ones, or the Ancient Sovereigns, or sometimes High Kings or High Queens of Faerie.”
“Like Oberon and Titania?” asked Susan.
“Shakespeare knew too much,” muttered Merlin.
“Well, sort of; there are two such Ancient Sovereigns who have been called by those names, though they are not as depicted in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their power is immense, over a large part of what we now call England, but only within the bounds of a single day, the summer solstice. And those two have not risen to the present world for at least six or seven hundred years.”
“But what have Ancient Sovereigns got to do with me?”
“Your father must be one,” replied Vivien bluntly.
Susan’s mouth fell open, and did not close.
“Quite a number of mythic entities can take mortal form, and wander in the world, albeit in a generally reduced, more vulnerable form,” added Merlin hurriedly, noting Susan was temporarily unable to speak. “When in mortal shape it is possible for them to have children with ordinary people. According to Grandmother—who is very rarely wrong—you’re one of these children.”
Susan exhaled slowly, suddenly aware she’d been holding her breath, and also shut her eyes and her mouth while she counted to three before continuing.
“And this is a problem because . . .”
“It doesn’t happen often, and usually the parent isn’t a significant entity, so we don’t worry about it,” said Vivien. “But if they are significant . . . you see, the most powerful of the Old Ones can bind practically anyone or anything, of the Old World or the New. Including us. The St. Jacques, the left- and right-handed booksellers.”
“So a child of an Ancient Sovereign is big, bad news,” said Merlin.
“And in the past our general policy when one of these children is discovered was to . . . um . . . execute them,” said Vivien.
Merlin bent down and picked up his yak-hair bag. His left hand rested on the top, and Susan was acutely aware of the revolver inside, and the weapons he doubtless had elsewhere on his person.
Chapter Ten
A most humble bookman of
