Sappique Read online

  when they had been out hunting, or riding in the woods, she had had the feeling that he was on the brink of fleeing, of turning his horse’s head and galloping away into the woods of the Realm, away from the Court and the burden of being the Prince who had come back from the dead. He had

  wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.

  Beyond the cloister were the mews; on a sudden impulse Claudia ducked under the low archway into the dusty hail. She needed time to think and this was her favourite place in the crowded Court. Sunlight fell through a high window at the far end of the building; the air smelt of old straw and dust, and the birds.

  They sat, tethered to posts, all the noble hawks and falcons of the Court. Some wore tiny red hoods that covered their eyes; as they tossed their heads or preened small bells rang, a miniature plume rippled. Others stared at Claudia as she passed down the aisle between their enclosures, the great owls with their wide eyes twisting their necks soundlessly, the sparrowhawks with a fierce tawny gaze, the merlin sleepily. At the far end, tethered by Leather jesses, a great eagle glared arrogantly at her, its beak yellow and cruel as gold.

  She took a gauntlet down and pulled it on; tugging a fragment of meat from a hanging bag, she held it out. The eagle turned its head. For a moment it was as still as a statue, watching her intently. Then its beak snatched; it tore 62

  the sinewy flesh between its talons.

  ‘A true symbol of the Royal house.’

  Claudia jumped.

  Someone was standing in the shadows behind a stone screen. She could see his hand and arm in the slant of sunlight, where dust motes floated. For a moment she almost thought it was her father, and a stab of feeling she couldn’t guess at jerked her hand into a fist.

  Then she said, ‘Who is that?’

  A rustle of straw.

  She had no weapon. No one was here. She took one step back.

  The man came forward, slowly. The sunlight slashed on his tall, thin shape, his greasy hair hanging scraggily, the small half-moons of his glasses.

  She breathed out, angrily. Then she said, ‘Medlicote.’

  ‘Lady Claudia. I hope I didn’t startle you.’

  Her father’s secretary made a stiff bow and she dropped a brief cold curtsy. It struck her that though she had seen the man nearly every day of her life when her father was home, she had probably hardly ever spoken to him before.

  He was gaunt and had a slightly hunched look, as if the hours spent labouring over a desk had begun to bend him.

  ‘Not at all she lied. Then, hesitantly, ‘Actually, I’m glad to have the chance to speak to you. My father’s affairs...'

  ‘Are in perfect order.’ The interruption astounded her; she stared at him. He stepped closer. ‘Lady Claudia, forgive

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  my discourtesy, but we have little time. Perhaps you may recognize this.’

  He held out ink-stained fingers and dropped something small and cold into the gauntlet she wore. The slash of sunlight fell across it. She saw a small metal token; a running beast, its mouth open and snarling. She had never seen it before. But she knew what it meant.

  It was a steel wolf.

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  ‘I could breathe fire on you,’ the wirewolf growled.

  ‘Do it,’ said Sapphique. ‘Just don’t throw me into the water.’

  ‘I could gnaw your shadow away.’

  ‘That’s nothing, compared with the black water.’

  ‘I could crush your bones and sinews.’

  ‘I fear the terrible water more than you.’

  The wirewof flung him angrily into the lake.

  So he swam away, laughing.

  THE WIREWOLF RETURNS

  The Glove was too small.

  Horrified, Attia watched how the material stretched, how small tears opened at its seams. She glanced at Rix; his eyes were fixed in fascination on the Winglord’s fingers. And he was smiling.

  Attia breathed in; suddenly she understood. All that pleading for them not to touch the props — he had wanted this all along!

  She glanced at Quintus. The juggler held a red ball 65

  and a blue ball, alert. Behind, in the gloom, the troupe waited.

  Thar held up his hand. In the darkness the black glove was almost invisible, as if his limb had been severed at the wrist. He barked a harsh laugh. ’So now. If I snap my fingers do gold coins tumble from them? If I point at a man does he fall dead?’

  Before anyone could answer he had tried it, turning and jabbing his forefinger at one of the bulky men behind him. The thug’s face went white. ‘Why me, chief?’

  ‘Scared, Mart?’

  ‘I just don’t like it, that’s all.’

  ‘More fool you .’ Thar swung back and stared at Rix contemptuously. ‘I’ve seen better props under a waggon wheel. You must be some showman to make anyone believe in this junky

  Rix nodded. ‘So I am. The greatest showman in Incarceron.’

  He raised his hand.

  lnstantly, Thar’s scorn flicked off; he glanced down at his gloved fingers.

  Then he howled in agony.

  Attia jumped. The echo of the cry rang in the tunnel; the Winglord was yelping and clutching the glove. ‘Get it off me!

  It’s burning me!’

  ‘How very unfortunate,’ Rix murmured.

  Thar’s face was red with fury. ‘Kill him,’ he roared. 66

  His men moved but Rix said, ‘Do that and you’ll never get it off.’ He folded his arms, his thin face unmoved. If it was a performance, Attia thought, it was masterly. Slowly, so no one noticed, she slipped over into the driver’s seat. Thar was swearing, tearing desperately at the Glove.

  ‘Acid! It’s eating into my skin!’

  ‘If you will misuse the things of Sapphique, what can you expect?’ There was an edge in Rix’s voice that made Attia glance at him. The gap-toothed grin was gone; he had that hard look of obsession that had alarmed her before. Behind her the juggler, Quintus, made a nervous click with his tongue.

  ‘Kill the others then!’ Thar was gasping now.

  ‘No one will be hurt.’ Rix fixed the gang with a level stare.

  ‘You will allow us to pass, right out of the Dice hills, and then I take the spell off. Any treachery; and the anger of Sapphique will burn him for all eternity.’

  Their eyes flickered at each other.

  ‘Do it,’ Thar howled.

  It was a moment of danger. Attia knew that everything depended on the fear the Bandits had of their leader. If one of them ignored him or killed him or took command, Rix was finished. But they looked cowed, and uneasy. First one, then the rest, shuffled back.

  Rix jerked his head.

  ‘Move,’ Quintus hissed.

  Attia grabbed the reins.

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  ‘Wait!’ Thar screamed. His gloved fingers twitched, as if electric sparks were jerking through them. ‘Stop it. Stop it doing that.’

  ‘I’m not making it do anything,’ Rix said, interested. The black fingers clutched, convulsed. The halfman lurched forward, snatched a brush from the bucket of gilt paint hanging under the waggon. Gold drips splatted the tunnel floor.

  ‘What now?’ Quintus muttered.

  Thar staggered to the wall. With a huge splashing movement, his gloved hand drew five shining letters on the curved metal.

  ATTIA.

  Everyone stared in astonishment. Rix looked at her. Then he swung to Thar. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m not doing it!’ The man was almost choking with terror and fury. ‘The filthy glove is alive!’

  ‘You can write?’

  ‘Of course I can’t write. I don’t know what it says!’

  Attia was breathless with awe. She scrambled down from the waggon and ran to the wall. The letters dripped and ran, long spindly streaks of gold.

  ‘What?’ she gasped. ‘What next?’

  With a jerk, as if it dragged him, Thar’s hand whipp
ed the brush up and wrote.

  THE STARS EXIST, ATTIA. FiNN SEES THEM.

  ‘Finn,’ she breathed.

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  SOON, SO WILL I. BEYOND SNOW AND STORM.

  Something brushed her skin. She caught it; a small, soft object, it drifted down from the dark roof.

  A blue feather.

  And then they were falling all around, soft as laughter, a snow of tiny blue feathers, each identical, falling on the waggons and the warband and the road, a muffling,

  impossible storm, feathers hissing and crackling in the flames, snuffled away and trampled by the oxen, falling in eyes and on shoulders, on the canvas roofs, on the blades of axes, sticking in the clots of paint.

  ‘The Prison is doing this!’ Rix’s voice was a whisper of awe. He caught her arm. ‘Quickly. Before—’

  But it was too late.

  With a roar the tempest came out of the dark and flattened him against her; she staggered, but he hauled her up. The wrath of Incarceron raged; a scream of hurricane that scoured the tunnel and smashed down the gates. The

  warband were scattered; as Rix dragged Attia away she saw how Thar crumpled, how the black glove shrivelled and split on his hand, dissolving to a network of holes, skeins of raw, bloody skin.

  Then she was scrambling aboard; Rix yelled and whipped at the oxen and they were moving, rumbling on blindly through the blizzard. Attia covered her head with her arms as the feathers gusted at her, and above them she saw the thrown spheres of the jugglers light the

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  eerie storm with green and red and purple.

  It was hard going. The oxen were tough, but even they staggered with the force of the wind, putting their heads down and plodding on. Beside her, Attia heard a faint, windsnatched hysteria; glancing up she saw that Rix was laughing softly to himself, blue feathers snagged in his hair and clothes.

  It was too hard to talk, but Attia managed a look back. There was no sign of the Bandits. After twenty minutes the tunnel became lighter; the wagon came round a long bend and she saw light ahead, a jagged entrance through the feather—storm.

  As they plodded towards it the storm died, as suddenly as it had come.

  Slowly, Attia took her arms down and drew breath. At the tunnel entrance Rix said, ‘Anyone following?’

  She tried to see. ‘No. Quintus and his brothers are at the back.’

  ‘Excellent. A few stunballs will stop pursuit.’

  Her ears stung from the icy wind. Huddling her coat around her she picked feathers from her sleeves, spat out blue fluff. Then she said, appalled, ‘The Glove was

  destroyed!’

  He shrugged. ‘What a pity.’

  The deadpan words, the smug grin made her stare. Then she looked past him at the landscape.

  It was a frozen world.

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  Below them the road ran down between great banks of ice, head high, and she could see that this whole Wing was an open tundra, abandoned and windswept, stretching far into the gloom of the Prison. There was a great moat blocking their way, with a bridge fortified with a portcullis of black metal worn thin by the abrasions of sleet. An entrance had been jaggedly cut through it; the ends of steel bars bent back. Oily slush showed where traffic had passed, but to Attia the sudden cold seared like fear.

  ‘I’ve heard of this place she whispered. ‘This is the Ice Wing.’

  ‘How clever of you, sweetkin. So it is:

  As the oxen slipped and clattered down the slope she was silent. Then she said, ‘So it wasn’t the real Glove?’

  Rix spat to one side. ‘Attia, if he’d opened any box or hidden compartment on this waggon he’d have found a

  glove. A small black glove. I never said it was Sapphique’s. None of them are, in fact. Sapphique’s Glove is too close to my heart to be stolen.’

  ‘But . . . it burned him.’

  ‘Well, he was right about the acid. As for not being able to take it off, he was perfectly able to. But I made him believe he could not. That is magic, Attia. To take a man’s mind and twist it to believe the impossible.’ For a moment he concentrated on guiding the ox round a jutting girder. ‘Once he had let us go he would have believed the spell to be ended’

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  She watched him sideways. ‘And the writing?’

  Rix’s eyes slid to hers. ‘I was going to ask you about that.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Even I can’t make an illiterate man write. The message was for you. Odd things have been happening, Attia, since we met you.’

  She realized she was biting her nails. She wrapped her hands hastily in her sleeves. ‘It’s Finn. It must be Finn. He’s trying to speak to me. From Outside.’

  Rix’s voice was quiet. ‘And you think the Glove will help?’

  ‘I don’t know! Perhaps . . . if you let me just see it...’

  He stopped the waggon so abruptly that she almost fell off.

  ‘NO. It’s dangerous, Attia. Illusions are one thing, but this is a real object of power. Even I wouldn’t dare wear it.’

  ‘You’ve never even been tempted?’

  ‘Maybe. But I’m crazy not stupid.’

  ‘But you wear it in the act.’

  ‘Do I?’ he grinned.

  ‘You’re infuriating she said.

  ‘My life’s ambition. Now. This is where you get down.’

  She stared round. ‘Here?’

  ‘The settlement is about two hours ahead. Remember, you don’t know us, we don’t know you.’ He fished in his pocket and put three brass coins into her hand.

  ‘Get yourself something to eat. And tonight, sweetkin,

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  remember to tremble a bit more when I raise the sword. Look scared stiff.’

  ‘I don’t need to act.’ She climbed down, then stopped, halfway. ‘How do I know that you’re not just dumping me here and heading on?’

  Rix winked and whipped up the ox. ‘I wouldn’t dream of such a thing:

  She watched them all pass. The bear was hunched in misery, its cage floor blue with feathers. One of the jugglers waved at her, but no one else even put their heads out. Slowly, the troupe rolled into the distance.

  Attia tugged her pack on to her back and stamped life into her cold feet. She walked quickly at first, but the track was treacherous, a frozen metalway greasy with oil. As she descended into the plain the walls of ice slowly rose on each side; soon they were higher than her head, and as she picked her way past them she saw objects and dust embedded deep inside. A dead dog, its jaws wide. A Beetle. In one place, small round black stones and grit. In another, so deep among blue bubbles she could barely see it, the bones of a child. It grew bitterly cold. Her breath began to cloud around her. She hurried, because the waggons were already out of sight, and only by walking fast could she keep warm.

  Finally, at the bottom of the slope, she reached the bridge. It was stone, and it arched over the moat, but as she slipped along in the cart ruts she saw that the moat was

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  frozen solid, and leaning over the side made her shadow darken its dirty surface. Debris was strewn across it. Chains led from the cutwaters, disappearing deep into the ice. The portcullis, when she came to it, was black and ancient. The ends of the bent bars glittered with icicles, and on the very top a solitary long-necked bird perched, white as snow. For a moment she thought it was a carving, until suddenly it spread its wings and flew, with a mournful cark, high into the iron-grey sky.

  Then she saw the Eyes.

  There were two, one on each side of the iron gate. Tiny and red, they stared down at her. Icicles hung from them like frozen tears.

  Attia stopped, breathless, holding her side.

  She stared up. ‘I know you’re watching me. Was it you that sent the message?’

  Silence. Only the low cold whisper of snow.

  ‘What did you mean, that you would see the stars soon?

  You’re the Prison. How can you see Outside?’

  The Eyes were steady points o
f fire. Did she imagine that one had winked?

  She waited until she was too cold to stand there any longer. Then she climbed through the gap in the portcullis and trudged on.

  Incarceron was cruel, they all knew that. Claudia had said that it wasn’t meant to be, that the Sapienti had nude the Prison as a great experiment, a place of light and

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  warmth and safety. Attia laughed aloud, bitterly. If so, it had failed. The Prison kept it own council. It rearranged its landscapes and struck down troublemakers with laserfire, if it felt like it. Or it let its inmates fight and prey on each other and laughed to see them struggle. It knew nothing of mercy. And only Sapphique — and Finn — had ever Escaped it. She stopped and raised her head. ‘I suppose that makes you angry,’ she said. ‘I suppose that makes you jealous, doesn’t it?’

  There was no answer. Instead the snow became real. It fell gently and relentlessly, and she shouldered her pack and walked wearily through it, a noiseless cold that chilled her fingers and toes, chapped her lips and cheeks, made her breath a frosted cloud that did not disperse.

  Her coat was threadbare, her gloves had holes. She cursed Rix as she stumbled in frozen potholes, tripped over broken mesh.

  The track was covered already, the ruts of the waggons hidden. A pile of ox-dung was a frozen mound.

  But when she looked up, her lips blue with cold, she saw the settlement.

  It seemed to be a collection of low round mounds, as white as their surroundings. They rose out of the tundra, all but invisible except for the smoke escaping from vents and chimneys. Tall poles soared above them; she saw a man at the top of each, as if they were lookouts.

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  The track branched off and she saw how the troupe’s waggons had crushed snow here, how wisps of straw and a few feathers had fallen at the turn. Walking cautiously on she peered round the ice wall and saw that the road ended in a barrier of wood. On one side of it a plump woman sat knitting before a brazier of hot coals.