Sapphique Read online

  “Because I’m not sure.” He turned. “I’m not sure, Master, who I am! How can I convince the Court when I’m not even convinced myself!”

  “You have to. Everything depends on you.” Jared’s green eyes were fixed on him. “Because if you are supplanted, if Claudia loses her inheritance, and I am …” He stopped.

  Finn saw his pale fingers fold together. “Well, there will be no one to care about the injustices of Incarceron. And you will never see Keiro again.”

  The door opened, and Claudia swept in. She looked hot and flustered; there was dust on her silk dress. She said, “He’s staying in Court. Would you believe it! She’s given him a suite of rooms in the Ivory Tower.”

  Neither of them answered. Feeling the tension in the room, she glanced at Jared, then took the blue velvet pouch out of her pocket and crossed the room with it.

  “Remember this, Master?”

  Undoing the drawstring, she tipped it up and a miniature painting slid out, a masterly work in its frame of gold and pearls, the back engraved with the crowned eagle.

  She gave it to Finn and he held it in both hands. It showed a boy smiling, his eyes dark in the sunlight. His gaze was shy, but direct and open.

  “Is it me?”

  “Don’t you recognize yourself?”

  When he answered, the pain in his voice shocked her.

  “No. Not anymore. That boy had never seen men killed for scraps of food, had never tormented an old woman to show where her few coins were hidden. He’d never wept in a cell with his mind torn away, never lain awake at night hearing the screams of children. He’s not me. He’s never been taunted by the Prison.”

  He thrust the image back at her and rolled up his sleeve. “Look at me, Claudia.”

  His arms were pocked with old scars and burns. She had no idea how he had gotten them. The mark of the Havaarna Eagle was faded and indistinct.

  She made her voice strong. “Well, he’s never seen the stars, then, not like you’ve seen them. This was you.” She held it alongside him, and Jared came to see.

  The resemblance was unquestionable. And yet she knew that the boy down there in the hall looked like this too, and without the haunted pallor Finn still had, without the thinness of face and that lost something in the eyes.

  Not wanting him to sense her doubt she said, “Jared and I found this in the cottage of an old man named Bartlett. He looked after you when you were small. He left a document, about how much he loved you, how he thought of you as his son.”

  Hopelessly, Finn shook his head.

  She went on fiercely. “I have paintings too, but this is better than all of them. I think you must have given it to him. He was the one who knew after the accident that the body wasn’t yours, that you were still alive.”

  “Where is he? Can we get him here?”

  She caught Jared’s eye and he said quietly, “Bartlett is dead, Finn.”

  “Because of me?”

  “He knew. They got to him.”

  Finn shrugged. “Then I’m sorry. But the only old man I loved was called Gildas. And he’s dead too.”

  Something crackled.

  The screen on the desk spat light. It flickered.

  Jared ran straight to it, Claudia close behind. “What was that? What happened?”

  “Some connection. Maybe …”

  He turned. Something had changed in the hum of the room. It seemed to draw back, to ratchet up the scale. With a screech Claudia ran and hauled Finn out of the chair with such a jerk that they both almost fell over. “It’s working! The Portal! But how!”

  “From Inside.” White with tension Jared watched the chair. They all stared at it, not knowing what to expect, who might come. Finn snatched out his sword.

  Light flashed, the blinding brilliance Jared remembered.

  And on the chair was a feather.

  It was as big as a man.

  THE FIRELOCK spat flame. It sliced through the ice under the feet of the Chain-gang and the creature howled, toppling and sliding down the collapsed floe. Its bodies tangled, grabbing at one another. Attia fired again, targeting the smashed plates of ice, yelling, “Come on!”

  Keiro struggled to get clear. He fought and bit and kicked with furious energy, but his feet too were slipping into the slush, and there was still a hand gripping his long coat. Then the fabric tore and for a moment he was free.

  He reached up and she leaned and grabbed him; he was heavy, but the terror of being pulled back and smothered made him scramble over the horse’s back behind her.

  Attia shoved the weapon under her arm, struggling with the reins. The horse was panicking; as it reared a great crack split the night. Glancing down Attia saw that all the ice was breaking up; from the crater she had made, black crevasses were zigzagging out. Icicles snapped off the waterfall, smashing in jagged heaps.

  The firelock was snatched from her. Keiro yelled, “Keep it still!” but the horse tossed its head in fear, its hooves clattering and sliding down the frozen slabs.

  The Chain-gang was struggling, half in meltwater. Some of its bodies lay under the others, its chains of sinew and skin iced with frost.

  Keiro raised the weapon.

  “NO!” Attia screamed. “We can get away.” And then, when he didn’t lower it, “They were men once!”

  “If they remember they’ll thank me.” Keiro’s voice was grim.

  The blast scorched them. He fired three, four, five times, coldly and efficiently, until the weapon sputtered and coughed and was useless. Then he threw it down into the charred crater.

  Attia’s hands were sore on the leather reins. She fought the horse to a standstill.

  In the eerie silence the faintest whisper of wind crusted the snow. She could not look down at the dead men; instead she gazed up at the distant roof and felt a shiver of wonder, because for a moment she thought she saw thousands of tiny points of shimmering light in that black firmament, as if the stars that Finn had told her of were there.

  Keiro said, “Let’s get out of this hellhole.”

  “How?” she muttered.

  The tundra was a web of crevasses. Under the broken ice, water was rising, an ocean of metallic gray. And the glistening specks were not stars, they were the outlying skeins of a silver fog, slowly circling down from Incarceron’s heights.

  The fog came down into their faces. It said, You should not have killed my creatures, halfman.

  CLAUDIA STARED at the huge central stalk of the feather, the great blue barbs linked stiffly with each other. Carefully she reached out and touched the fluffy plumes at the end. The feather was identical to the tiny one Jared had picked up from the lawn. But gross, swollen. Wholly wrong.

  Amazed, she whispered, “What does it mean?”

  An amused voice answered her. “It means, my dear, that I am returning your little gift.”

  For a moment she couldn’t move. Then she said, “Father?”

  Finn took her arm and turned her. She saw, appearing on the screen very slowly, pixel by pixel, the image of a man. As the picture completed itself she recognized him, the severity of his dark coat, the brushed perfection of his hair, tied elegantly back. The Warden of Incarceron, the man she still thought of as her father, was looking down at her.

  “Can you see me?” she gasped.

  There it was. His old, cold smile.

  “Of course I can see you, Claudia. I think you would be surprised what I can see.” His gray eyes turned to Jared. “Master Sapient, I congratulate you. I had thought the damage I had done to the Portal would be enough. It seems, as ever, that I underestimated you.”

  Claudia linked her hands in front of her. She straightened up, the way she always stood rigidly upright before him, as if she were a small child again, as if his clear gaze diminished her.

  “I return the materials of your experiment,” the Warden said drily. “As you can see, the problems of scale remain. I would advise you strongly, Jared, not to send anything living through the Portal. The results mig
ht be fatal to all of us.”

  Jared frowned. “But the feathers arrived there?”

  The Warden smiled and did not answer.

  Claudia couldn’t wait any longer. The words burst out of her. “Are you really in Incarceron?”

  “Where else?”

  “But where is it? You never told us!”

  A flicker of surprise crossed his face. He leaned back, and she saw he was in some dark place, because a glimmer like flamelight reflected briefly in his eyes. A soft pulsing sound came from somewhere in the darkness. “Didn’t I? Well I’m afraid, Claudia, that you must ask your precious tutor about that.”

  She glanced at Jared. He seemed embarrassed, not meeting her eyes.

  “Can you really not have told her, Master?” The mockery in her father’s voice was clear. “And I thought you had no secrets in your little partnership. Well, it seems you should be careful, Claudia. Power corrupts all men. Even Sapienti.”

  “Power?” she snapped.

  His hands opened elegantly, but before she could demand more Finn elbowed her aside.

  “Where’s Keiro? What’s happening to him?”

  The Warden said coldly, “How should I know?”

  “When you were Blaize you had a tower full of books! The Prison’s records of everyone. You could find him …”

  “Do you really care?” The Warden leaned forward. “Well then, I’ll tell you. At this moment he is fighting for his life with a monstrous creature of many heads.”

  Catching Finn’s shocked stillness, he laughed. “And you’re not there to watch his back. That must hurt. But this is where he belongs. This is Keiro’s world, without friendship, without love. And you, Prisoner, belong here too.”

  The screen flickered and spat.

  “Father …” Claudia said quickly.

  “So you still call me that?”

  “What else can I call you?” She stepped forward. “You’re the only father I know.”

  For a moment he gazed at her, and she noticed in the disintegrating image that his hair was a little grayer than it had been, his face more lined. Then he said quietly, “I am a Prisoner too now, Claudia.”

  “You can Escape. You have the Keys …”

  “Had.” He shrugged. “Incarceron has taken them.”

  The image was rippling. Desperately she said, “But why?”

  “The Prison is consumed with desire. Sapphique began it, because when he wore the Glove, he and the Prison became one mind. He infected it.”

  “With a disease?”

  “A desire. And desire can be a disease, Claudia.” He was watching her, his face shivering and dissolving and re-forming. “You are to blame too, for describing it all so well. And so Incarceron burns with longing. For all its thousand eyes there is one thing it has never seen, and it will do anything to see.”

  “What?” she breathed, already knowing.

  “Outside,” he whispered.

  For a moment no one spoke. Then Finn leaned forward. “What about me? Am I Giles? Did you put me in the Prison? Tell me!”

  The Warden smiled at him.

  Then the screen went blank.

  11

  There is a growing terror in speaking with the Prison. My secrets seem small and pitiful. My dreams seem foolish. I begin to fear it can see even into my mind.

  —Lord Calliston’s Diary

  The fog slid between them. It was icy. A mist of millions of droplets. Attia felt it chill her skin, condense on her lips.

  “Remember me, Attia?” it whispered.

  She scowled. “I remember.”

  “Ride,” Keiro muttered.

  She urged the horse on gently. But it slithered and the ground tilted, and she knew Incarceron had them trapped here, because the temperature was rising fast and the whole Wing was melting around them.

  Keiro must have felt it too. He snapped, “Leave us alone. Go and torture some other inmates.”

  “I know you, halfman.” The voice was close, in their ears, against their cheeks. “You are part of me, my atoms beat in your heart, itch in your skin. I should kill you now. I should melt the ice and let you drown here.”

  Suddenly Attia slid down from the horse. She stared up into the gray night. “But you won’t. You’ve been watching me all the time. You wrote that message on the wall!”

  “That I would see the stars? Yes, I used the fool’s hand. Because I will see them, Attia, and you will help me.”

  Light was gathering. It showed her that through the fog two great red Eyes were being lowered on cables. They gleamed like rubies, one so close to Keiro, its hot glare scorched him. He slid down hastily, close behind her.

  “I have spent centuries longing to Escape, but who can escape themselves? The Warden tries to tell me it won’t work, but my plan had only one flaw and you have solved that.”

  “What do you mean, the Warden?” Keiro snapped. “He’s out there with his precious daughter and her Prince.”

  The Prison laughed. Its amusement was a rumble that split the ice; floes splashed into the rising sea of meltwater. The berg they were standing on tipped; lumps fell from its edge.

  The fog opened a cavernous mouth. “I see you don’t know. The Warden is Inside now, and forever, because both the Keys are mine. I have used their energy to build my body.”

  The ice was unsteady. Attia grabbed the horse. “Your body?” she whispered.

  “In which I will Escape.”

  Keiro said, “That’s not possible.”

  They both knew somehow that they had to keep it talking, that one whim of the Prison’s fickle cruelty could tip them into the icy water, that it could open ducts that would sweep them away, deep into the endless drains and tunnels of its metallic heart.

  “You would say that.” Incarceron’s voice was rich with contempt. “You who cannot leave here because of your imperfections. But Sapphique’s dream of the stars is mine now, and there is a way. A secret way, a way no one expects. I am building myself a body. Like a man’s but greater, a winged creature. It will be tall and beautiful and perfect. Its eyes will be of emerald and it will walk and run and fly, and in it I will put all my personality and power and leave the Prison an empty shell. You have the final piece that I need to complete it.”

  “Do we?”

  “You know you do. I have sought my son’s lost Glove for centuries; it has been kept secret, even from me.” It laughed, amused. “But that fool Rix found it. And you have it here.”

  Keiro gave Attia a stare of alarm. The ice platform was floating now, and on each side the fog swirled so thickly, they could see nothing of the tundra. She felt that the Prison had indeed swallowed them, that they were traveling deep inside its vast belly, like the man in the whale in Rix’s patchbook.

  Rix. His words flared in her memory. The Art Magicke is the art of illusion.

  Waves lifted under the thinning ice. Far off in the fog she saw the links of a vast chain, hanging down. They were being washed toward it. Rapidly she said, “You want it?”

  “It will be my right hand.”

  Keiro’s eyes were blue and bright. She saw at once what he was planning. He said, “You’ll never get it.”

  “My son, I could kill you now and take it …”

  The Glove was in Keiro’s hands. “Not before I put it on. Not before I know everything about you.”

  “No.”

  “Watch me.”

  “NO!” Lightning flickered. The fog poured in, over the horse, hiding them from each other. Attia gripped Keiro’s elbow, felt his heat through the coat.

  “Perhaps it’s time we made a few conditions then.” Keiro was invisible, but his voice was steely. “I have the Glove. I could wear it. I could tear it apart in seconds. But if you want it, I could bring it to you.”

  The Prison was silent.

  She felt Keiro shrug. “It’s up to you. It seems to me this is the only thing in this Hell you can’t control. The Glove was Sapphique’s. It has strange power. Spare our lives and sho
w us the way, and it’s yours. Otherwise I put it on. And what will that make me?”

  She could see him now. The fog retreated, drew back. In a moment of horror she realized that they were alone on a berg of ice in a wide sea of water, a greasy metallic ocean. It stretched as far as she could see in every direction, and the two Eyes of the Prison slid into it and stared up at her thoughtfully through its slow, turgid ripples.

  “Your arrogance is surprising.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice,” Keiro said.

  “You cannot know what the Glove does.”

  “You don’t know what I know.” He stared down, defiant. “There are no little red Eyes in my brain, tyrant.”

  Lights came on. High in the roof Attia glimpsed walkways and suspended roads, a whole Wing miles above them, where tiny dots that must be people clustered and looked down.

  “Ah, but what if there are, halfman? What if I see even there?”

  Keiro laughed. It was hollow, but if the Prison had just named his own darkest dread, he covered it well. “You don’t scare me. Men made you, men can unmake you.”

  “Indeed.” The voice was dry and angry. “Then very well, we will make a deal. Bring me the Glove and I will reward you with Escape. But should you ever attempt to put it on I will burn you and it to a cinder. I will have no rivals.”

  The chain hung before them. It was huge and heavy and it fell into the sea with a splash, the molten water sending up a thick spray that Attia could taste on her lips. As the metal rattled down, they saw that a transitway was dragged behind it, a track that unrolled on the sea’s heaving surface, vanishing into the remnants of mist.

  Keiro hauled himself back onto the horse, but before he could ride Attia said, “Don’t even think about leaving me here.”

  “I don’t need you. I’ve got the Glove now.”

  “You need an oathbrother.”

  “I’ve got one of those too.”

  “Yes,” she said sourly. “But he’s busy.”

  Keiro stared down at her. His hair was long and damp; it gleamed in the light. His eyes were cold and calculating; for a moment she knew he would ride away. And then he leaned down and hauled her up.