Queen of the underworld

*Percia* The gates of Kronides Estate have spikes tall enough to discourage trespassers, burglars, and migrating birds with poor judgment. I stand beneath them with six kilos of annotated park plans wedged against my chest and tru to decide this is encouraging. People only build entrances like this when they have money, enemies, or a sincere dislike of visitors. Haden Kronides ticks off all three, according to every article Sam sent me last night. The wrought iron stretches between pillars of black stone. Twisted branches have been worked into the metal, complete with thorns the length of my fingers. Beyond them, an avenue of copper beeches climbs toward a mansion crouched against the grey Surrey sky. Sam leans out of the company van and photographs the nearest tree. "Phytophthora," he says. "Possibly bleeding canker too. Nice to know the trees are as cheerful as the architecture." "You can diagnose it from twelve metres away?" "I can suspect it from twelve metres away. Diagnosis requires samples, laboratory work, and a client prepared to hear that his majestic avenue is trying to die." I shift the plans before their corners cut through my jacket. "Mr Kronides is paying for honesty." "He's paying Vale and Briar. We're students on placement, which means we provide honesty at a discounted rate." The van door slides open behind him. Kim steps down without touching the muddy verge, an achievement that suggests either unusual balance or a private arrangement with gravity. Her blonde hair is secured in a high ponytail. Her work trousers fit better than anything with reinforced knees has a right to, and her reflective vest looks like it has somehow been tailored. She looks through the gates at the mansion. "That," she says, smoothing one cuff, "is a man's house." "It might be a very wealthy lesbian with a gothic phase," Sam says. "It belongs to Haden Kronides." "Yes, Kim. This is why I said might." She ignores him and checks her reflection in the van window. One thumbnail has chipped during the drive. She produces a tiny bottle of pale varnish from her pocket and repairs it with two exact strokes. I try not to judge. She can calculate planting quantities faster than our estimating software and once bullied a supplier into replacing four hundred diseased box plants without raising her voice. She also spent most of yesterday asking whether Kronides prefers blondes. My phone shows no signal. The gate intercom shows no interest in us. I press the call button again. Nothing. "We are expected," I say. Sam gets out with his camera hanging against his immaculate blue shirt. "That is exactly what every sacrifice says before the chanting begins." "We aren't being sacrificed." "You brought your best graph paper. Clearly this is ceremonial." I look down at the portfolio. The squared paper inside carries six months of work, revised after lectures, during café shifts, and once at three in the morning while Sam slept on my floor because he refused to leave me alone with instant coffee and a scale ruler. The company's senior designers produced the official concept. I corrected their drainage calculations, redrew the southern terraces, and proposed replacing a dead ornamental maze with a rain garden that would feed three connected habitats. My name appears in small print beneath the final sheet. Student landscape artist. The first word feels temporary. The second is the one I want someone important to notice. A gust catches my golden-brown hair and throws it across my face. I trap it into a knot while Kim watches the mansion's dark windows. "You heard he fired the last contractors?" she asks. "He terminated their contract," I say. "Because someone moved a statue." "Because they excavated through an eighteenth-century root system without permission." Kim's mouth curves. "You've researched him." "I researched the site." Sam lowers his camera. "She has read every planning application lodged against the estate since 1987. If Kronides buried a body with council approval, Percia knows the dimensions of the grave." "I like being prepared." "You like ambushing uncertainty in a dark alley." It does not deserve an answer, mostly because it is accurate. A movement near the pillar catches my attention. Something small flutters in the brambles outside the wall. I set my plans on the dry edge of the van and crouch. A young robin has caught one leg in a loop of plastic garden netting. It beats its wings when my shadow falls over it, breast flashing orange against dead leaves. "Easy," I murmur. "I know. Everything is dreadful." Sam comes closer, but I hold up a hand. He stops without arguing. The netting has twisted around the bird's ankle. I slide two fingers around its body, feeling the frantic hammer of its heart, and cut the plastic with my secateurs. The robin grips my glove for one breath after I open my hand. Then it flies through the bars. It lands inside the estate on the branch of a blackthorn tree. White flowers cover the branch, although it is late October and the hedge around it is bare. I stare at the blossom. "Cultivar?" Sam asks quietly. "Confused," I say. The robin disappears deeper into the grounds. For a moment, the blackthorn's branches seem to shift after it without any help from the wind. Kim has walked to the far pillar. "There's a keypad here." "Don't start guessing," I tell her. "I wasn't going to." "You were looking at the keys for fingerprints." "That isn't guessing. That's research." She presses four digits. A red light blinks. Sam sighs. "Excellent. We've been rejected by a gate." The verge beneath us is a mess of compacted soil, tyre marks, and nettles silvered by exhaust. Near the gate's track, a violet has been crushed into the mud. Two leaves remain attached to a bent stem. I should leave it. We are late, the access code has not arrived, and no one will care about a common dog violet growing outside a billionaire's wall. I kneel anyway. The stem is pinched but not severed. I tease the soil loose with the tip of my pencil, lift the crown, and settle the roots back where a tyre has exposed them. My grandfather Andreas taught me to brace broken growth instead of forcing it straight. Damaged things remember pressure. They need support, not another pair of hands insisting they look unhurt. I press damp earth around the roots with my thumb. Warmth moves through my glove. It is slight, no more than the pulse of blood returning to cold fingers. The violet's leaves tremble. One uncurls against my knuckle, green deepening along its veins. I pull my hand back. A flower opens. Not slowly. Not in the ordinary, patient way a bud loosens beneath sunlight. Purple petals spread in the space between one breath and the next. Sam is checking the diseased beech through his camera lens. Kim is trying another code. Neither sees. I touch the flower again. It is cool and real. There are sensible explanations. The bud was already mature. My hand warmed it. Stress can cause irregular flowering, and this autumn has been absurdly mild. None of those explanations account for the new leaf pushing through the mud. I pluck the fallen outer petal before I can think better of it. It leaves a faint purple stain on my glove. I slide it between two sheets of squared design paper, near the revised drainage section. "What are you doing?" Sam asks. "Tying my boot." "Your boot is already tied." "I'm improving it." He studies me over the top of his camera. His humour softens around the edges, which is more dangerous than the jokes. "You all right?" "Thrilled. I've always wanted to begin my professional career by loitering outside locked premises." Before he can ask again, metal groans behind me. The gates are opening. Kim jumps back from the keypad. "I didn't touch anything." "An inspiring defence," Sam says. No mechanism is visible, though something beneath the gravel gives a heavy mechanical thud. The two halves swing inward. Their thorned shadows crawl across the drive and stop at my boots. Cold passes over my skin. The shadows lie at the wrong angle. The weak sun is behind us, but the iron pattern reaches away from the estate rather than towards it. I step sideways. The darkness seems to shifts with me. Then a cloud moves overhead and the shape dissolves into the general grey. I pick up my plans. "Motion sensor." "For what?" Sam asks. "Our collective loss of patience?" "Perhaps someone saw us from the house." I mumble. “Or on a camera.” Kim smiles at the windows. "I hope so." We drive through. The gates close before the back wheels have cleared them by more than a metre. The avenue is worse up close. Rust-coloured fluid stains several trunks, and lesions split the bark low to the ground. Sam makes a wounded noise and has me stop the van. He is out before I set the brake, photographing bark, crown thinning, drainage channels, and the pale fans of fungus under a fallen branch. His jokes vanish when trees are concerned. He circles the nearest beech with the tense concentration of a surgeon meeting a patient after somebody else has ignored the symptoms. "This didn't happen overnight," he says. "Look at the crown. Three seasons of decline, minimum. Whoever managed this place knew." "The preliminary survey only mentioned drought stress." "The preliminary survey is either rubbish or a lie." I glance toward the mansion. Curtains hang behind the windows, dark and motionless. "Document everything before we disturb the soil." Sam looks at me. "Obviously." I hear the injury in it a second too late. He has forgotten more about trees than I know. "For the client file," I add. "I'm not questioning you." "You're always questioning everyone." "Yes, but today I'm billing for it." That wins half a smile. We leave the van near a gravel service court. The park opens behind the mansion in a series of descending terraces, stripped beds, overgrown yews, and dry fountains stained black by rain. Bronze statues stand among the hedges with their faces turned toward the house. The official plans make the place look merely neglected. In person it feels interrupted. No birds sing here. That bothers me more than the locked gates. Kim walks to the edge of the first terrace and assesses the beds. "The quantities are wrong." I join her. "Which ones?" "All of them, if the border is this deep. They priced for one-point-two metres. This is almost two." She points toward the retaining wall. "And that stone is bowing. Put machinery near it and we'll be rebuilding the lower terrace as well." She is right. I make a note, annoyed the survey team missed something visible from space. "Good catch," I say. Kim glances at me as if checking for mockery. "I do occasionally look below a man's windows." "I'll alert the trade press." Her smile sharpens, but she turns back to the mansion. One hand adjusts the collar of her fitted polo shirt. "Do we know whether Mr Kronides is here?" "We know he approved the start date." "That wasn't my question." Sam emerges from beneath the beeches. "If you seduce him before we've get started on the actual new garden, I shall report you to the relevant professional body." Kim gives him a patient look. "Which body regulates seduction?" "I'll establish one." A door opens at the rear of the mansion. The three of us go quiet. An elderly woman in a charcoal dress crosses the terrace. Her silver hair is pinned at the nape of her neck, and her posture is so straight it makes my shoulders ache in sympathy. She wears no coat despite the cold. As she approaches, the clipped yews seem to darken behind her. "Miss Andreou?" she asks. Her voice is courteous, with an old-fashioned precision and a slight accent I cannot place. "That's me." "Mr Kronides requests your presence in the west library." Kim's brows rise. Sam looks from the woman to me. "I'm part of a team," I say. "Our project supervisor should be here within the hour." "Mr Kronides asked for only the person who amended the southern terraces." The plans grow heavier in my arms. Sam comes to my side. "She has work to begin, and if there's a meeting, one of us should probably come along. For notes. Accountability. Witness identification, if the sacrifice theory proves robust." The woman regards him without blinking. "Mr Kronides requested Miss Andreou alone." Every window above us reflects the pale sky except one. The glass in the west wing is black. I could tell her we will wait for our supervisor. That would be sensible. Professional, even. Nobody expects a student to walk alone into a reclusive billionaire's mansion because an unsmiling stranger appeared from it. But he noticed my revisions. I straighten the plans. "I'll go." Sam catches my eye. The question in his face is plain, stripped of humour. I answer before he can ask it. "Check the beeches. Photograph every lesion, and don't let anyone start excavation." "Percia." "It's a library, not an execution chamber." "You don't know that. Billionaires love multipurpose rooms." Kim steps closer, polished confidence returning. "I can come. Mr Kronides might appreciate meeting more of the design team." "He didn't ask for more of the team." The words come out harder than necessary. Kim's gaze flicks to mine, cool and knowing. I turn away before she can identify anything useful. The elderly woman waits at the top of the steps. Behind her, the open doorway reveals a marble hall with no lamps burning. Darkness fills it despite the white afternoon outside. I follow her. At the threshold, I look back. Sam stands beside the diseased trees with his camera held against his chest. Kim watches me from the terrace, one perfect blonde brow raised. Beyond them, the iron gates are hidden by distance and mist. Something brushes my ankle. I glance down. If I didn't know better I would say that the shadow of the open door has curved around my muddy boot like a hand. When I lift my foot, it lets go. "Miss Andreou?" the woman says. I tell myself old houses have strange light. I tell myself I am prepared, and preparation is nearly the same thing as safety if one is stubborn enough. Then I walk into the dark to meet Haden Kronides.