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Cat is seventeen. It’s a strange age to be.
Strange, and also lonely, because he’s still living in the Castle and the others aren’t. Janet and Julia are older than he is, and they’re having a nice time down at the university together; it’s as fun as Mummy said boarding school would be, Julia reports in one of her letters. Only better, because there’s beer. Which is just a joke to make him laugh, but still, they sound grown-up, both of them. Cat was surprised when Julia said, and Janet agreed, that they wouldn’t be Chant, at college; that they wanted to try out life not being Chrestomanci’s daughter, or his ward. They picked Argent at random off the family tree – it was Chrestomanci’s mother’s maiden name – and Cat knows there’s some kind of unhappy history attached to it, but Chrestomanci didn’t object. “It’s their name, too,” he said, “and I suppose someone ought to have a chance to redeem it.”
Plus it’s a joke, another one; Argent means silver.
So Janet and Julia are away, being different people, and it makes Cat feel strange; that they, and Roger apprenticing in London, are all leading a different, long-distant existence, while he’s still Cat Chant in Chrestomanci Castle where he’s always been.
And the Castle, too, is what it’s always been. Cat has lessons in the morning like always; in the afternoons he and Michael deal with business in the Related Worlds. In the evenings it’s dinner at the great table in the hall. Now Janet, Julia and Roger are gone, Cat eats in a long row of seats with the rest. After dinner, some of the castle enchanters go out: into the village for a drink, or on the train into London for a dance.
Cat doesn’t do that. He goes to bed at night in the room he’s always had, after one of the days he always has. Everything is just as it’s always been.
Everything one thing.
*
Cat’s been busy lately, with private tutoring from Chrestomanci in the morning and dragon-blood carrying in the afternoon. It’s artificial dragon’s blood, better, safer and more humane than the real stuff and––once Chrestomanci signs off on it–– legal. Cat’s been helping Michael synthesise it, over in 12D where the real dragons can observe and kvetch, and carrying it back across.
While Cat’s been doing that, Chrestomanci Castle has been playing host to a cross-world magical symposium, with witches, warlocks and enchanters visiting from almost everywhere. They’ve come with partners, siblings, secretaries and acolytes, personal physicians, newsletter subscribers and cats, and the Castle is full of people like a cushion full of fluff. Cat has to drop off the synthetic blood, change into clean clothes and and show his face in all the places that the future Chrestomanci ought to. He nods and tries to smile and when Chrestomanci drops him a lead into conversation he knows to pick it up. 12F want to trade in precious goods and Cat idly mentions the dragon’s blood, and a half dozen other things the Castle produces and wants to trade. Chrestomanci puts a hand on his shoulder before taking everyone off to negotiate.
But it’s getting late, and he’s had enough. Cat looks around the hall of richly-dressed guests—though no one in the all the worlds is as well dressed as Chrestomanci, he thinks idly—and lets his unsociable feet take him away from the party. Out he goes, towards a little door out into the grounds, crossing a long-overgrown garden path to an odd little turret beyond it. Up a flight of intact stone steps, to a circular room with no furniture and windows with no glass. Cat comes here when he’s overdone. When it’s too many people; too much noise.
Silence, for a while. Perfect silence. There's no shouting, squalling, bawling or farts. Cat sits cross-legged in the middle of the roomand breathes.
And then—a little snuffle. A whisper of fur.
Cat tries to say, what—and a tiger comes through the glass. It drops to the floor in a sine wave of orange and black. Deep, sleek fur whisks around Cat’s hips—like a domestic cat would twirl his ankles, he thinks dizzily—and then leaps back on to the window ledge. It turns and nods to Cat—so he’ll know it’s a person, not an animal, he realises.
And then it disappears.
Cat turns on the spot, the windows shifting through his gaze. The sheer wonder of it needs a moment to sink in. Every window must look out on somewhere, he decides. Not the grounds of Chrestomanci Castle: somewhere else. And if the tiger is indicative, then each such somewhere could be beautiful and sudden, and deeply strange.
Cat spends a lot of time up in the turret after that, looking through the windows at the magic of other worlds. At one of them, he feels the wind from distant deserts; at another, he sees jungles dripping pink and blue. At another, he observes a set of parliamentary proceedings. Where that place is and what they’re debating, Cat doesn’t know, but the people sitting on the benches have horns. Cat has been to Parliament with Chrestomanci, and no one there has horns.
It takes a lot of thought and observation, but Cat figures it out. The tiger seems to have come from one world in particular, a hot and humid and jungly sort of a world. He calls it Tigeropolis, because his Latin is pretty good these days, and while there is text down there on those trunks and treehouses, he can’t read it. The tigers of Tigeropolis seem to be the only people who can make the leap into his turret room, which makes sense, from what he knows of cats. They leap and snarl and prowl, but they don’t seem to want to eat him. Cat leaves them quilts and bowls of water, and books, because they’re people. He’s sure a claw can turn a page.
It seems they can; the tigers take away the books. So that’s good—but Cat does wonder, after a few weeks of blissful afternoons up there, if he shouldn’t tell someone. Michael, or Chrestomanci perhaps. Nothing here is happening at random; each window must look out on a Related World, which means there’s interesting magic behind it and interesting people and things: but Cat knows what telling someone would mean. Investigations, enchanters, people walking around in his private space with measuring tapes and clipboards. He keeps his own counsel.
*
Everyone in Chrestomanci Castle is in a high state of excitement. Other enchanters in the Related Worlds, including Conrad, a friend of Chrestomanci’s and Millie’s from when they were young, have been saying in hushed tones that maybe it’s not the twelve Related Worlds.
“Or, it is the Related Worlds,” Millie says one day at breakfast. “It’s just… N+1, as Conrad used to say. Not twelve. Some other number.”
“If it isn’t twelve, then it has to be some other number,” Cat says, confused about this. He’s prodding unhappily at his eggs, not looking forward to morning lessons.
“The thing is, Cat,” Chrestomanci says, contemplative rather than scathing. “We tend to think we understand the Related Worlds. We all speak the same language––yes, thank you, beloved wife, your objections are noted.”
Something’s different about him, Cat thinks vaguely, but can’t put a finger on it, other than being so busy he has to educate Cat over breakfast.
Mille is laughing and rolling her eyes over her plate. “We don’t all speak the same language,” she says, stabbing a yolk with a fork. “That’s not how languages or how people work. I ought to know, Christopher! There’s some magic, that makes us all think we speak all the same languages and do the same things, because if we really do that’s ridiculous. We were able to invite people to the symposiusm through the post office! Other worlds, but they all have a post office!”
“It’s a theory,” Chrestomanci says, waving an airy crumpet. “In any case, Cat. We understand our own worlds. Which makes it so very confusing that there should be one we haven’t ever heard of before.”
“Oh,” Cat says.
“It’s a subset of ours,” says a government consultant enchanter at the table, before someone shouts over her that it’s actually part of 12B.
“No, it isn’t, it isn’t anything at all!” Michael says, from the other side of the table. “Or it’s a hoax. Or something, because we don’t—don’t you throw bacon at me!”
That’s to the government enchanter, who is enjoying the Castle catering very much. Cat shakes his head in confusion and looks over to Chrestomanci. “What do you think it is?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Chrestomanci says simply. “If it’s a sub-section of 12B, that is particularly alarming, but regardless, we need to find out. And conveniently enough—”
He stops, glances at Millie; Millie smiles back. Cat thinks again: something’s different here.
“Conveniently enough,” Millie says loudly, “we have been invited by the people of the new world to send an envoy to some great festival of theirs, there to learn about them as they learn about us. Christopher and I will be attending.”
“Is that safe?” Cat asks, a little startled to hear Christopher, not Chrestomanci. It’s a fair question: Chrestomanci may be a nine-lived enchanter but he has trouble with silver spoons.
“I don’t know,” Chrestomanci says again, then throws his hands up in annoyance. “How different from us can they be?”
Millie cackles with delight, and all the adults around the table laugh and share glances. Cat stares glumly at his plate, not sure why. On his way out of the dining room he grabs a plate of leftover bacon. His tigers at least aren’t impossible to understand.
*
A few nights later Cat is up late, hunting for a snack to take up to the turret with him, when Michael catches hold of him at the foot of the hall stairs. “Can you go up and give this to Chrestomanci and Millie?” he says, holding out a small, fabric-covered box. “I forgot to catch them after dinner.”
Cat is thrown for a moment—he’d expected Michael to tell him to go to bed, not give him an errand that will keep him up even later—but that’s all right. He’s happy to help. He takes the box from Michael and heads upstairs. On the top floor landing, he’s overcome by a feeling of nostalgia, mixed with sharp unfamiliarity. He’s been up here lots of times before—Chrestomanci and Millie have lived in this set of rooms since long before Cat came to the Castle, and he has nice memories of Christmases and birthdays up here, summer nights under these skylights letting in a glorious swirl of stars. But it’s been a long time since he ploughed his feet through this thick carpet, in little-boy pyjamas with socks dragging off the ends of his toes.
“Come in!” Millie calls, at Cat’s knock. Cat steps inside to the familiar smell of dust and Millie’s Asheth incense, and goes straight through to the living room like he’d never been away.
All is not well there. Chrestomanci is sitting on a low sofa, that his father sent from Japan years ago— Cat thinks it’s called a futon, with elaborate decorations in bronze thread;. It’s very comfortable but Chrestomanci looks like he wants to collapse face-first onto the rug. Millie follows Cat in and sits down next to Chrestomanci, reaching over to push his hair above his ears.
“You’re not getting out of this,” she says, in an odd, teasing tone that makes Cat feel a little odd. “Cat, my dear, if that box is what I think it is, you’re right on time. Go and put the kettle on, would you? We’ll have a bit of a nightcap.”
Cat hands over the box Michael gave him and follows orders. He sets the kettle to boil, remembering that the government have been saying they should try and use more electricity in the Castle and less magic, and notes that for all Chrestomanci and Millie are among the most powerful people in twelve worlds, it looks ordinary in here. They don’t cook properly, leaving that to the Castle kitchens, but their little domain is full of normal debris like discarded teabags and stained mugs. When Cat goes back into the living room Millie is holding something up so it catches the light. It’s a bronze torque, like ones Cat has seen in the other worlds, including Asheth’s where Millie came from. This one has discs of metal threaded along it, with close engraving on each.
“Now, tell me what this would mean in N+1,” Millie says to Chrestomanci, and places it around his neck.
“You tell me,” he says, annoyed but not in a Chrestomanci sort of way; he sounds like a schoolboy deprived of jam. Millie laughs and points to one of the engraved discs.
“This one says you like women,” she says. “The next one says you’re formally partnered.”
“That’s not exactly what it says,” Chrestomanci grumbles. Cat has no idea what’s going on. Chrestomanci’s head is still dipped forward as though this is the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to him.
“That you’re not seeking others,” Millie says about the next disc, sounding sleek and amused as Cat’s tigers. “And that you’re a man. Mostly. Is that right?”
Chrestomanci mutters under his breath.
“Now read mine, you’re going to have to at the reception,” Millie says, smacking him gently. “Apparently it’s a very good way of keeping track of people’s allegiances, and we’re there to be diplomats.”
She pulls a second bronze torque out of the box Cat brought it up and holds it out to Chrestomanci. There’s a brief silence, deep and textured. Cat thinks they’ve both forgotten he’s there. But Millie turns to him after a moment with a laugh. “You’ll have to learn how to read these too, Cat,” she says. “That is, if Christopher and I make a good impression on the N+1 people, and they invite us back. You’ll come along and meet them too.”
Cat doesn’t have time to be alarmed by that very alarming thought before Chrestomanci takes the second torque from Millie’s hand. “You like women and men,” he says to Millie, brisk and clear. "You’re partnered and not looking. You’re a woman all of the time, and very good at it.”
He looks up, his eyes black and brilliant, and whatever passes between them is so deep and private that Cat seriously considers making a run for it. But Millie taps him on the arm, amused with a cast of seriousness.
“What about you, Cat?” she asks. “These torques are things we’ve got to wear at the reception in the new world. The little discs are for setting out people’s identities, who they love and who they are. You’ll have to wear one too, when you start coming along.”
Cat puts aside his instinctive panic and thinks. It must be a strange world, that has everything on display. “Can you say you don’t know?” he asks.
Millie gives him a little smile. “You can say you don’t know but that you’re working on it.”
Cat smiles back, not sure what he thinks about that yet. He goes back to the kitchen to the fetch the tea, but Mille yells after him that it should be cocoa, and Chrestomanci yells after her that they should put something in it. “You, too, Cat, of course,” he says grumpily when Cat brings in the tray. The cocoa with whisky in it is an odd combination, but it’s nice, and when he finally gets to bed Cat sleeps well.
*
There’s more dragon work to be done over in 12D, and Michael asks Cat if he’ll come along again. When the two of them get back laden with bottles, they’re just in time to see Chrestomanci and Millie depart for the new world. A pentangle portal has been set up in the front hall to transport them, and magic fizzes around it in green and blue sparks.
Cat can’t help but look upwards in awe. Chrestomanci and Millie, walking down the steps, both look magnificent; Millie is wearing a tailored suit with flares at the ankles, that makes her tall and elegant, and Chrestomanci seems like an enchanter from a different time, in a high embroidered collar and gorgeous layers of skirts. Millie is walking ahead of him, leading him into the portal, and Cat has a sudden feeling that that’s deliberate; that some things about the new world of 12n+1 that are very different from anything he knows. Before they take the last step into the pentangle, they both notice Cat.
“Keep the home fires burning, Cat, will you,” Chrestomanci says lazily, and Millie blows Cat a kiss before the portal shuts. Cat is still smiling as the light fades away.
“They’re back in five days,” Michael says, rubbing his hands together. “In the meantime we go back to work.”
Cat nods. He wonders what it’s like, at this strange festival that no one in this world knows anything about. In that place Chrestomanci won’t have the benefit of his reputation; people won’t just look at him and be terrified. He’ll just be a human being, with human vulnerabilities, like a wife who teases him mercilessly.
Still. Cat can’t imagine anyone meeting Chrestomanci and Millie and not being terrified. “Back to work,” he says, to Michael.
It isn’t all work. On day two at breakfast, while Cat is eating a banana and not thinking of much, Janet walks through the front door and shouts, “Surprise!”
Cat jumps, drops the banana and runs to hug her, while everyone else at the table smiles and laughs; it’s reading week at the University, and they all knew. “Come, let’s get reaquainted,” Janet says, and they do. She and Cat walk around the Castle grounds in the winter sun, and Janet tells stories of college life, about this tutor she loves and that one that she hates and a third one Julia has a crush on. Cat listens and wishes he had some story to offer in return, some funny thing that’s happened at the Castle while she’s been gone, but everything he thinks of seems childish, even the tigers. He resolves that on her next visit, he’ll have something to tell.
On day four Cat and Michael bring the first ten litres of synthetic dragon’s blood into the world. Everyone claps them on the back and congratulates them and Michael orders champagne with dinner. “You can handle the next run alone, can’t you, Cat,” he says, clinking his glass, and Cat is pretty sure that he can. It’s a complicated thing, synthesising the blood and negotiating with the dragons, the makers, the other enchanters, and the couriers. But he can.
That night he goes up to see his tigers, still a bit fizzy from the champagne. There’s a beautiful view of stars through one of the otherworldly windows, and he enjoys the view of constellations he couldn’t otherwise see. Afterwards, he goes to bed. That's not right, that he couldn't otherwise see those stars, he realises as he’s about to fall asleep. They’re just the stars of the other worlds, that he’ll always see. On day five, Chrestomanci doesn’t come back.
And at first no one panics. There's a rule, in the Castle, that no one is to say Chrestomanci's name when he's a long way away in case they accidentally bring him back. But Cat has the most powerful magic in the castle, and he says Chrestomanci’s name and it doesn’t bring him back.
"It could be for all manner of reasons," Michael says. "Once it was the desserts. Some place where they put silver leaf on their food and no one told him before he took a bite.”
Cat isn’t reassured. He’s thinking about stories he’s read, about the child Christopher Chant being bound by silver, and every insane thing that's happened since while Chrestomanci has been holding a fork.
On day six, the various government enchanters go and knock on the door of N+1. Or something; Cat isn’t sure what they do exactly but it’s diplomacy, rather than magic, pressure not force. There must be something they want in return, Bernard says, and he’s the economist; they can’t just take Chrestomanci and not want to give him back. “At least, not after they’ve met him,” he adds, and Michael snorts and Cat’s heart pounds. He understands it’s a joke, and why, at times like this, people joke.
On day seven, Cat gets up and goes down to breakfast. But he doesn’t get that far. In the main hall of Chrestomanci Castle, where the portal was set up that took Chrestomanci and Millie to the new world, are Michael, Janet, Bernard, Miss Bessemer and a dozen government enchanters. They stare up at him in a broad circle, their eyes like steady points of light. Cat opens his mouth and no sound comes out.
“Cat,” Michael says. “We need you.”
Cat runs. He skids through the crowd, towards the front door and out into the grounds. It’s a shatteringly cold day, and he wonders if he can let it claim him, go on running till he disappears into Chrestomanci’s garden, or disappears entirely. Because the alternative—he stops running, as the whole blast of the thought hits him. Because the alternative is Chrestomanci gone, and all those people looking at him, as though he, Cat Chant knows how to bring him back. Just because he has nine lives, which don’t mean anything really, and which Cat doesn’t have most of, any more. The lives are overrated. Chrestomanci himself only has two.
Chrestomanci only has two. And he’s in a strange world, and he can't come back.
Cat turns around, fear settling in his chest. “I can’t help you get Chrestomanci back,” he says, to Michael and Janet, who are waiting for him on the front steps. “I’m just—“
“Just what?” Michael asks.
“A child,” Cat says, not mentioning the nine lives, because here it is, the truth of it. Cat might be Chrestomanci one day, but Chrestomanci is a man in the prime of his life, and Cat is a seventeen-year-old boy who sleeps in his childhood room. Janet, Julia and Roger are older; they grew up and they got to go to university, and they went away. Cat is just what he always was.
Michael and Janet are staring at him, their mouths open.
“What?” Cat says, realising he said all of that out loud. “What is it?”
Janet steps forwards and puts a hand on your arm. “I never knew you wanted to go to the university,” she says gently. “What did you want to study?”
“Well, nothing,” Cat says, confused. “I didn’t really. I’ve got to stay here and learn to be Chrestomanci.”
“That’s why you didn’t go, though,” Janet says. “Because you have to be Chrestomanci. Not because you’re not grown up. You’ve just had to do all your growing up here.”
“Cat,” Michael says, gentle but shocked. “You’re not a child! You’re a grown man! Why would you—I don’t understand why you would think—what we should have—”
He trails off, and suddenly it's quiet. The Castle grounds are covered with dew-frost; the birds are settled on the boughs. Everything is quiet, and still.
Cat stands still, too, absorbs that winter stillness, tries to think. He’s not a child, just because he didn’t leave the Castle. It’s a big thought. When he lifts his head, the other two are both looking directly at him.
“Cat,” Michael says very softly. “Remember when I asked you to take something up to Chrestomanci and Millie the other day?”
“Yes,” Cat says. He remembers. Chrestomanci and Millie invited him in. They laughed and flirted with each other in front of him. Michael trusted him with the box. Chrestomanci and Millie trusted him with themselves.
“And then there's everything you do here, Cat,” Janet says. “Michael was telling me some of it. The dragon’s blood synthesis, and the import operation.”
Yes, Cat thinks. He works on the import operation. He helps administer the Related Worlds. He doesn’t go to lessons, like a child. He has private tutoring from Chrestomanci, the nine-lived enchanter whom he will succeed some day. Chrestomanci, a strange, powerful creature, with a messy kitchen and a laughing wife: who gave Cat whisky in his cup, and said, keep our fires burning.
“Michael,” Cat says. “I know what we can do.”
*
He does feel a moment of shame, when they get to the turret. It’s clear from the chocolate wrappers and blankets that this has been a child’s secret den. That it’s been secret when it shouldn’t. But Cat is steady when he explains it. That turret was probably built in the time of Benjamin Allworthy, two Chrestomancis ago, and forgotten since; that the windows look out onto the other worlds in the same way as in Chrestomanci’s garden, but with a different magic, one of a long-ago kind.
“The important thing is the windows,” Cat says to Michael, anxious that he should understand. “They change in number. So if there is a new world and that’s where Chrestomanci has gone, there should be a window for it here.”
And there is, of course. The world is a new one between 12B and 12C, and the other enchanters identify it quickly, look through at a vision of silvery steel spires. They make notes and have fights and figure out how they’re going to bring Chrestomanci and Millie back.
Cat helps where he can. When the new magic has been devised, Michael and all the others decide they’re going to have to go down to the main hall again, and set up the pentangle portal there. Cat lingers a moment after they’ve all gone. While he stands there, a a tiger drops through one of the other windows. It’s as beautiful, sleek and glorious as ever. Cat smiles. He runs a hand through its gleaming fur and places a kiss on its head. It means so much to him.
Then he runs downstairs, after the other Castle enchanters. They need his help.
*
A week later, Chrestomanci is walking along the path around his garden and saying: “Tigers.”
“Tigers,” Cat says, his feet stirring bundles of autumn leaves. “Nothing else comes through. Otherwise we’d have pulled you through the window rather than setting up the portal again.”
“Ah,” Chrestomanci says, looking as though he’s imagining being hauled head first through a castle window. “I see. Tigers move easily between things. Like you, Cat. It was a good piece of work.”
“It was everyone, not just me.” Cat shrugs awkwardly. “What happened in that world? N+1, or 12B and a half, or whatever.”
Chrestomanci has written down the story of what happened for all the various formal reports, but he hasn’t told it aloud to anyone that Cat knows. Here, in the pale afternoon, Chrestomanci shrugs and pushes his coat hood back over his shoulders. “It’s a world of sharp edges," he says, after a moment. "All bright steel and winter light.”
“Sharp edges,” Cat says, turning that over. They’re moving from autumn to winter within the garden, and he he feels the sudden tang of frost.
“Edges, rules, and chains,” Chrestomanci says. “And silver leashes.”
“What about your torques?” Cat asks. “The ones Michael had made for you, that were all about who you fancied, and things like that. Was everyone wearing them?”
“Yes.” Chrestomanci smiles a little. “Terribly exposing, don’t you think? And misunderstandings ensued regardless. I suspect they didn’t quite realise my aversion to silver is not a pretty affectation. Not a game. To bind me with silver is to bind me.”
“Ah,” Cat says, not sure he understands that. “So they played games with you but but they were real games?”
“A good way to describe diplomacy, I think,” Chrestomanci says. “And magic.”
And some things about growing up, Cat decides. He’s not sure how it goes for him, who he is. But he’s got work to do, and people to tell. That’ll do.
“Will I have to go there too some day?” he asks. He can cope with that, he thinks. It sounds strange and a little awful, and he won’t get everything right, but even Chrestomanci doesn’t always get everything right.
“Only if you see fit,” Chrestomanci says. Another tiny smile. “You’re your own man, I believe. More so than I am, certainly.”
Cat laughs. “You mean Millie tells you what to do.”
“Something like that,” Chrestomanci says, with something obscure in his tone, another thing that Cat doesn’t understand. But Cat's not all the way grown up, he knows. There’s a great deal left to understand.
It’s becoming spring, in the garden. Blossoms rich and sweet piled on the path. They keep on going.