Sapphique - Incarceron 02 Page 11

  'I think you do. From that barbarian, and from my evil stepmother. We should stand together, Claudia. We should watch each other's back, and think of the future.' He turned the crystal glass carefully. 'Because I will be King. And I will need a Queen I can trust.'

  Before she could answer a loud rapping came from the high end of the table. The majordomo was beating the floor with his staff. 'Your excellencies. Lords, Ladies, Masters. The Queen will speak.'

  The babel of chatter hushed. Claudia caught Finn's dark glare, fixed on her; she ignored it and looked at Sia. The Queen was standing, a white figure, her pale neck glistening with a diamond necklace that caught the flamelight in its rainbow brilliants. She said, 'Dear friends. Let me give you a toast.'

  Hands went to glasses. Down the table Claudia saw the peacock-bright coats of the men and the women's satins shimmer. Behind, in the shadows, rows of silent footmen waited.

  'To our two Claimants. To dear Giles She raised her glass archly to the Pretender, then turned to Finn. 'And dear Giles.'

  Finn glowered. Someone tittered a nervous laugh. In the moment of tension no one seemed to breathe.

  'Our two Princes. Tomorrow the investigation will begin into their stories.' Sia's voice was light; she smiled coyly. 'This . . . rather unfortunate ... situation will be resolved. The true Prince will be discovered, I do assure you. As for the other, the Impostor, I'm afraid he will pay dearly for the inconvenience and anxiety he has caused our Realm.' Her smile was icy now. 'He will be shamed and tortured. And then he will be executed.'

  Utter silence.

  Into it she said lightly, 'But with a sword, not an axe. As befits royalty.' She raised her glass. 'To Prince Giles of the Havaarna.'

  Everyone stood, in a rattle of chairs. 'Prince Giles,' they murmured.

  As she drank Claudia tried to hide her shock, tried to catch Finn's eye, but it was too late. He stood slowly, as if the long tension of the meal had broken, glaring across at the Pretender. His stillness made the buzz and chatter subside into quiet curiosity.

  'I am Giles,' he said,' and Queen Sia knows it. She knows my memory was lost in Incarceron. She knows I have no hope of answering any of the Council's questions.' The bitterness of his voice made Claudia's heart thump. She put down her glass hurriedly and said, 'Finn,' but he stormed on as if he hadn't heard her, his gaze hard on the courtiers.

  'What should I do, ladies and gentlemen? Do you want me to take a DNA test? I'll do it. But then, that wouldn't be Protocol, would it? That would be forbidden! The technology for that is hidden and only the Queen knows where. And she's not saying.'

  The guards at the door edged forwards. One drew his sword.

  If Finn saw he didn't care. 'There's only one way to solve this, the way of honour, the way we'd do it in Incarceron.'

  He pulled a glove from his pocket, a studded gauntlet, and before Claudia realized what it meant he had shoved the dishes aside and flung it between the candles and flowers. It struck the Pretender full in the face; a shocked murmur rippled down the table.

  'Fight me.' Finn's voice was thick with anger. 'I challenge you. Any weapons. Your choice. Fight me for the Realm.'

  Giles's face was white, his control icy. He said, 'I would be most happy to kill you, sir, at any hour and with any weapon I can find.'

  'Absolutely not.' The Queen's voice was sharp. 'There will be no duelling. I totally forbid it.'

  The two Claimants glared at each other, like reflections in a smoky mirror. From down the table Caspar's drawl rose. 'Oh let them, Mama. It would save so much bother.'

  Sia ignored him. 'There will be no duel, gentlemen. And the investigation will begin tomorrow' She held Finn with her ice-pale eyes. 'I will not be disobeyed.'

  He bowed, stiffly, and then thrust back his chair and stalked out, the guards moving hastily aside. Claudia stood but Giles said softly, 'Don't go, Claudia. He's nothing, and he knows it.'

  For a moment she paused. Then she sat. She told herself it was because Protocol forbade anyone leaving before the Queen, but Giles smiled at her, as if he knew something else. Furious, she fidgeted for twenty minutes, her fingers tapping her empty glass, and when finally the Queen rose and she could slip away, she raced up to his room and knocked on the door.

  'Finn. Finn, it's me.'

  If he was there he would not answer.

  Finally, she walked down the panelled corridor to the casement at its end and gazed out at the lawns, leaning her forehead on the cool glass. She wanted to storm and yell at him. What was he thinking of? How would fighting help! It was just the sort of stupid, arrogant thing Keiro would have done.

  But he wasn't Keiro.

  And biting her nail, she recognized, deep inside herself, the sickening doubt that had been growing in her mind for two months. That perhaps she had made a terrible mistake. That perhaps he wasn't Giles either.

  13

  He opened the window and looked out at the night. 'The world is an endless loop,' he said. 'A Mobius strip, a wheel in which we run. As you have discovered, who have travelled so far just to find yourself where you started from.'

  Sapphique went on stroking the blue cat. So you can't help me?'

  He shrugged. 'I didn't say that.'

  SAPPHIQUE AND THE DARK ENCHANTER

  The trackway undulated over the leaden sea.

  At first Keiro let the horse gallop, and whooped at the speed and the freedom, but that was dangerous, because the metal trackway was slippery, slushy water washing right over it. The mist hung close, so that Attia felt they were riding through cloud with only glimpses now and then of distant dark shapes, which might have been islands, or hills. Once, a jagged chasm gaped to one side.

  Finally the horse was so weary it could barely run. After nearly three hours Attia came back from drowsiness to realize that the sea was gone. Around them the mist was shredding, to reveal a jungle of spiny cacti and aloes, head high, the great leaves blade-sharp. A path ran straight into it, the plants at each side curled and crisp, smoking blackly, as if Incarceron had drilled this road only minutes ago.

  'It's not going to let us get lost, is it?' Keiro muttered.

  They dismounted and made an uncomfortable camp in the fringe of the forest. Gazing in, Attia smelt the scorched soil, saw the skeletons of leaves like cobwebs of fine metal. Though neither of them said anything, she saw Keiro eyeing the undergrowth uneasily, and as if the Prison mocked their fear it put the lights out, abruptly.

  There was little left to eat — some dried meat and a cheese that Attia sliced the mould from, and two apples stolen from Rix's stores for the horse. As she chewed, she said, 'You're crazier than Rix

  He looked at her. 'Am I?'

  'Keiro, you can't make deals with Incarceron! It will never let you Escape, and if we bring it the Glove . . .'

  'Not your problem.' He threw the apple core away, lay down and wrapped a blanket around him.

  'Of course it is.' She glared at his back, furiously. 'Keiro!'

  But he didn't answer, and she had to sit, nursing her anger, until the change in his light breathing told her he was asleep.

  They should have taken turns to keep watch. But she was too tired to care, and so they both slept at once, curled in musty blankets while the tethered horse snuffled hungrily.

  Attia dreamt of Sapphique. Some time in the night he came out of the forest and sat down next to her, stirring up the glowing ashes of the fire with a long stick, and she rolled over and stared at him. His long dark hair shadowed his face. The high collar of his robe was worn and frayed. He said, 'The light is going.'

  'What?'

  'Can't you feel it being used up? Fading away?' He glanced at her sideways. 'The light is slipping through our hands.'

  She glanced at the hand holding the charred stick. The right forefinger was missing, its stump seamed white with scars. She whispered, 'Where is it going, Master?'

  'Into the Prison's dreams.' He stirred the fire, and his face was narrow and strained. 'This is all my fault, At
tia. I showed Incarceron that there is a way Out.'

  'Tell me how.' Her voice was urgent; she shuffled up close to him. 'How you did it. How you Escaped.'

  'Every Prison has a crack.'

  'What crack?'

  He smiled. 'The tiniest, most secret way. So small the Prison does not even know it exists.'

  'But where is it? And does the Key open it, the Key the Warden has?'

  'The Key unlocks only the Portal.'

  She suddenly felt cold with fear, because he replicated before her, a whole line of him like images in a mirror, like the Chain-gang in its manacles of flesh.

  She shook her head, bewildered. 'We have your Glove. Keiro says —'

  'Don't put your hand into that of a beast.' His words whispered through the spiny undergrowth. 'Or you will be made to do its work. Keep my Glove safe for me, Attia.'

  The fire crackled. Ashes shifted. He became his own shadow, and was gone.

  She must have slept again because it seemed hours later when the clink of metal woke her, and she sat up and saw Keiro saddling the horse. She wanted to tell him about the dream, but it was already hard to remember. Instead she yawned, and stared up at the Prison's distant ceiling.

  After a while she said, 'Do the lights seem different to you?'

  Keiro tugged the girth straps. 'Different how?' 'Weaker.'

  He glanced at her, then up. For a minute he was still. Then he went on loading the horse. 'Maybe.'

  'I'm sure they are.' Incarceron's lights were always powerful, but now there seemed a faint flicker to them. She said,'lf the Prison is really building a body for itself it must be using enormous reserves of power to do it. Draining energy from its systems. Maybe the Ice Wing isn't the only wing shut down. We haven't seen anyone since that creature back there. Where are they all?'

  Keiro stood back. 'Can't say I care.'

  'You should.'

  He shrugged. 'Rule of the Scum. Care for no one but your brother.' 'Sister

  'I told you, you're temporary.'

  Later, climbing up behind him on to the horse she said, 'What happens when we get to wherever Incarceron is taking us? Are you just going to hand over the Glove?'

  She felt Keiro's snort of laughter through his gaudy scarlet jerkin. 'Watch and learn, Iitt1e dog—slave.'

  'You haven't got a clue. Keiro, listen to me! We can't help it do this!'

  'Not even for a way Out?'

  'For you, maybe. But what about the others? What about everyone else?'

  Keiro urged the horse to a run. 'No one in this hell-hole has ever cared for me,' he said quietly.

  'Finn... '

  'Not even Finn. So why should I care for them? They're not me, Attia. They don't exist for me.'

  It was useless arguing with him. But as they rode into the dim undergrowth she let herself think of the terror of it, of the Prison shutting down, the lights going off and never coming back on, the cold spreading. Systems would seize up, foodslots shut down. Ice would form quickly and unstoppably, through whole wings, down corridors, over bridges. Chains would become masses of rust. Towns would freeze, the houses cold and deserted, the market stalls collapsed under howling snowdrifts. The air would turn to poison. And the people! There was no way to imagine them, the panic, the fear and loneliness, the trampling savagery such a collapse would unleash, the bloody struggle for survival. It would be the destruction of a world.

  The Prison would withdraw its mind, and leave its children to their fate.

  Around them, light faded to a green gloom. The path was cindery and silent, the horse's hooves muffled in the incinerated dust. Attia whispered, 'Do you believe that the Warden is in here?'

  'If so, things are not going smoothly for my princely brother.' He sounded preoccupied.

  'If he's still alive.'

  'I told you, Finn can bluff his way out of anything. Forget him.' Keiro peered into the gloom. 'We've got our own troubles.'

  She scowled. The way he talked about Finn annoyed her, his pretence of not caring, of not being hurt. Sometimes she wanted to scream her anxiety at him but that would be useless, would only draw the grin, the cool shrug. There was an armour round Keiro. He wore it flamboyantly and invisibly. It was as part of him as his dirty yellow hair, his hard blue eyes. Only once, when the Prison had cruelly shown them his imperfection, had she ever glimpsed through it. And she knew he would never forgive Incarceron for that, or for what he felt he was.

  The horse stopped.

  It whickered. Its ears flattened.

  Alert, Keiro said, 'See anything?'

  Great briars wreathed round them, barbed with spines. 'No,' she said.

  But she could hear something. A small sound, very far off, like a whisper from a nightmare.

  Keiro had heard it too. He turned, listening. 'A voice? What's it saying?'

  Faint, repeated over and over, a tiny breath of triple syllables.

  She kept very still. It seemed crazy, impossible. But. 'I think it's calling my name,' she said.

  'Attia! Attia, can you hear me?'

  Jared adjusted the output and tried again. He was hungry but the bread roll on the platter was hard and dry. Still, it was better than feasting upstairs with the Queen.

  Would she notice he wasn't there? He prayed not, and the anxiety made his fingers tremble on the controls.

  Over his head the screen was a stripped — down mass of wires and circuitry, cables rigged into and out of its connectors. The Portal was silent, apart from its usual hum. Jared had grown to like its silence. It soothed him, so that even the pain that pushed its jagged edge into his chest seemed blunted down here. Somewhere high above, the labyrinth of the Court teemed with intrigue, tower on tower, chamber within chamber, and beyond the stables and gardens lay the countryside of the Realm, wide and perfect in its beauty under the stars.

  He was a dark flaw in the heart of that beauty He felt the guilt of it, and it made him work with agitated concentration. Since the Queen's silken blackmail, her offer of the Academy's bidden lore, he had barely been able to sleep, lying awake in his narrow bed, or pacing the gardens so deep in hope and fear that it had taken hours for him to notice how closely she was having him followed.

  So, just before the banquet, he had sent her a brief note.

  I accept your offer. I leave for the Academy tomorrow at dawn. Jared Sapiens

  Every word had been a wound, a betrayal. That was why he was here now.

  Two men had followed him to the Sapients' Tower, he had made sure of that, but Protocol meant that they had not been able to enter. The Tower here at Court was a great stone keep full of the apartments of the Queen's Sapienti, and unlike his own at home at the Wardenry this was a model of Era, a maze of orreries and alchemical alembics and leatherbound books, a mockery of learning. But it was a true labyrinth, and in his first days here he had discovered passageways and covered vaults that led discreetly out to the stables, the kitchens, the laundry rooms, the stills. Losing the Queen's men had been almost too easy.

  But he had made sure. For weeks now the staircase down to the Portal had been guarded by his own devices. Half of the spiders that hung on plastic webs in the dirty cellars were his observers.

  'Attia. Attia. Can you hear me? This is Jared. Please answer.'

  This was his last chance. The Warden's appearance had shown him that the screen still worked. That artful flickering out had not fooled Jared — Claudia's father had switched off rather than answer Finn's question.

  At first he had thought of searching for Keiro, but Attia was safer. He had sampled the recordings of her voice, the images of her he and Claudia had seen through the Key; using the finding mechanism he had once seen the Warden use he had experimented for hours with the complicated imputs. Suddenly, when he had been almost ready to give up, the Portal had sparked and crackled into life. He hoped it was searching, pinpointing the girl in the vastness of the Prison, but it had been humming all night now and in his weariness he could no longer keep out the feeling that it wasn'
t really achieving anything at all.

  He drank the last of the water, then reached into his pocket and brought out the Warden's watch and put it on the desk. The tiny cube clicked on the metal surface.

  The Warden had told him that this cube was Incarceron.

  He spun it gently, with his little finger.

  So small.

  So mysterious.

  A prison you could hang on your watchchain.

  He had subjected it to every analysis he knew, and there were no readings. It had no density, no magnetic field, no whisper of power. No instrument he possessed had been able to penetrate its silvery silence. It was a cube of unknown composition, and inside it was another world.

  Or so the Warden had told him.

  It struck Jared now that they had only John Arlex's word for that. What if it had just been his last taunting legacy to his daughter? What if it had been a lie?

  Was that why he, Jared, hadn't told her yet?

  He had to do it now. She should know. The thought that she should also know about his arrangement with the Queen rose up at once and tormented him.

  He said, 'Attia, Attia. Answer me. Please.'

  But all that answered was a sharp beep in his pocket. He whipped out the scanner and swore softly. Maybe the watchers had got tired of snoring on the Tower doorstep and come looking for him.

  Someone was creeping through the cellars.

  * * *

  'We should stay on the path,' Keiro snapped down at her; she was staring intently into the undergrowth. 'I tell you I heard it. My name.'

  Keiro scowled and slid down from the horse. 'We can't ride in there.'

  'Then we crawl' She had crouched, was on hands and knees. In the green gloom a tangle of roots sprawled under the high leaves. 'Underneath. It has to be fairly close!'

  Keiro hesitated. 'If we turn aside the Prison will think we're double-crossing it.'

  'Since when were you scared of Incarceron?' She looked up at him and he stared back hard, because she always seemed to know just how to needle him. Then she said, 'Wait here. I'll go on my own,' and crawled in.