He looked back over his shoulder. Oni was staring at him, her hands clasped tightly together, and he felt a twinge of sorrow within his fear. Perhaps he would never see her again. He opened his mouth to say goodbye, but there was a sudden jerk and he was pulled inside. The faint humming became a rushing noise that grew louder and louder, until it hurt his eardrums, and the dim glow was now a pulsing flash that was so dazzlingly bright that he could see it even when he closed his eyes.
It was unbearable, and it seemed to go on for an eternity, a bruising assault on all his senses that drove every thought out of his head except the desire for it to stop. He lost all track of time. It could have been hours, or just a few moments; he had no way of telling.
But at last it did stop. No more rushing, no more flashing lights. At first the relief was overwhelming. He stayed very still, his eyes jammed shut, afraid that it might begin all over again.
Where was he?
It was still cool, but he wasn’t cold. His cheek was pressed hard against some kind of soft fabric, a carpet maybe. Very cautiously, he opened his eyes.
Right in front of his face stood a pair of polished black boots.
Pip scrambled to his feet. The movement made his head swim. He swayed and blinked, staring around in bewilderment. The black boots belonged to an assassin, who stepped back as he rose, but that was the least of Pip’s astonishment.
He was in a bedchamber, unlike any he had ever imagined. It blazed with light. Pip had never seen so many candles in one place. They burned in a crystal chandelier that hung from the ceiling and in huge candelabras placed about the room. The ceiling and walls were painted with pictures of fantastic animals – dragons and unicorns and griffins – framed by ornate gilt cornices. All the furniture seemed to be made of gold.
Pip turned in a full circle, his mouth open in astonishment. On a table with spindly gold legs was a golden platter piled high with purple plums, and a gold decanter surrounded by long-stemmed glasses. At one end of the room was an enormous bed with red and gold curtains of heavy brocade. The room was so big it made the bed look small.
The assassin wasn’t the only person there. Sitting against the opposite wall was El, on a chair with legs so spindly that they looked as if they would snap under the slightest pressure. Her hair was elaborately styled in ringlets and she was wearing the same dress that Princess Georgette had worn on the day that she came to Amina’s place.
“Pip!” she said, her face shining. “Are you come to rescue me?”
“I think so,” said Pip. “But who are all these people?”
“This is Heironomo Blaise,” said El chattily, gesturing towards the assassin. “He’s quite nice, really, you wouldn’t have thought so, would you? And that’s Harpin Shtum.” She waved her hand at a man dressed in a green velvet jacket with soiled lace at the cuffs, who bowed. Pip recognized him as a card-sharp he had seen around the Crosseyes. “I don’t know who the other person is. He just turned up when you did.”
Pip stared at the last person, a small, fair-haired boy. He was too thin, and under his eyes were huge shadows. He was dressed all in gold, from head to foot: golden jacket, golden waistcoat, golden breeches, golden buckles on his golden shoes. All the glitter somehow made him look smaller than he really was.
The boy was looking at Pip with a mixture of uncertainty and hauteur, his chin high. “Do you like my room?” he said. “I made it just for you.”
Clovis. Pip swallowed, trying to gather his thoughts. “You what?”
“It’s much nicer here now,” said El. “Before it was…” She trailed off, frowning. “How odd!” she said. “I can’t remember. It’s like we only just got here and also as if we’ve been here all the time having a party. Maybe it was always like this.”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Harpin Shtum. “Floating around in the dark, and all that sobbing…”
“Oh yes, that was so frightening! But it’s lovely now.” El looked at Clovis. “Did you make my dress? It’s so pretty.”
“This is my eternal kingdom,” said Clovis grandly. “My word is law.”
Pip glanced at the walls of the room. He was sure they were moving, like sheets rippling in a slight breeze. Everything seemed somehow not quite right: the plums were too purple, the gold too bright. He had a hollow feeling in his chest, as if he were in the middle of a dream that at any moment might turn nasty.
“You just made this up?”
“It’s for my friends,” said Clovis. “See how happy your sister is?”
“You promised you would take us back,” said Pip. “I want to go home. Don’t you, El?”
El smiled sunnily at him. “It’s so nice here, Pip,” she said. “Much nicer than Clarel.”
“See?” said Clovis. “Why would you want to go back there? It’s much better here.”
Pip ignored the Prince. “With an assassin?” He flung out his arm, his voice high with incredulity. “An actual assassin is in this room, and you want to stay here? I bet you my right hand that this is the man that tried to capture Oni.”
The assassin smiled wolfishly.
“I told you, Pip, he’s quite nice really,” said El.
“He’s nice?”
“He was an orphan like us, Pip. He didn’t have a choice.”
“But you and me, we didn’t become assassins.”
“We didn’t get put in the orphanage. That’s what the orphanages are for, so the Cardinal can get assassins. He’d whip them if they didn’t obey. Sometimes they were killed.”
Heironomo started and, to Pip’s surprise, blushed. Pip looked at him properly for the first time, and realized that the assassin wasn’t much older than El was.
“I didn’t tell you that,” the assassin said.
“Yes, you did,” said El, and went back to admiring her dress.
El didn’t seem like El. There was something odd about her eyes, as if she wasn’t really focusing on anything, as if she wasn’t quite there. Pip strode forward and shook her shoulders. “El, wake up. We got to get out of here. That’s the only thing that’s important right now.”
“But your sister doesn’t want to leave,” said Clovis, with a little smile of triumph.
“Yes, she does,” said Pip belligerently.
El looked up into Pip’s eyes, and blinked.
“Yes, I do want to go home. Oni’s not here. And I miss our place.” She smoothed out the lace on her sleeves. “I know this dress is really pretty, and it was really nice of you to make it for me, but maybe it’s time to go now.”
The walls began to shake. Harpin, looking worried, plucked at Pip’s sleeve. “Maybe, young sir, you shouldn’t…”
“Clovis,” said Pip, looking him right in the eye. “You promised. Were you planning to be a dirty traitor all along?”
Clovis went white. “You dare…”
“You said you wanted to be friends. No wonder people hate the royals. Whether you’re a prince or not, you’re just a low-bellied cockroach if you break your word.”
Pip just had time to see Clovis’s lip wobble before all the candles went dark. He heard El cry out in terror and the assassin cursing, but then their voices were drowned in a roaring that grew louder and louder. Above the roar, he could hear Clovis’s voice shrieking with rage. “I hate you!” he shouted. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
Inside Pip something snapped. He lost his temper, but not in the way he usually did. Perhaps as a reaction to Clovis’s loss of control, he felt himself become cold and calm. And absolutely furious.
“Yes, you hate everybody,” he said. He didn’t shout, he didn’t even know if Clovis could hear him. “You hate everybody and everything. And you know why? Because you’re a coward.”
The roaring stopped with disconcerting suddenness, leaving a silence so heavy Pip felt as if his ears were stuffed with wool.
“I’m not a coward,” said Clovis.
“Yes, you are.” Pip remembered what Oni had said before he went into the Rupture. “A coward i
s a person who bullies other people to do what they want, because they don’t have the courage to trust.” He took a deep breath. “You know what’s brave? Trusting your friends. That’s what someone with courage does. You’re just a snivelling, spoilt coward.”
He spat out the final word with all the force of his rage. It echoed in the darkness, each repetition a little louder than the last, becoming so loud that Pip covered his ears, and then it died slowly into silence.
“I’m not.” There was a sob in Clovis’s voice, and for a moment he sounded like an ordinary seven-year-old boy.
Pip took a deep breath. “Prove it.”
Chapter Thirty-six
AS SHE LEFT THE UNDERCROFT, AMINA SENT A scrawl to Oni to let her know she was on her way. Then, as an afterthought, she sent another forbidding her to make any attempt to rescue El. She knew her daughter well: of course that would be the first thing Oni would think of.
Normally Oni would have responded at once. When she didn’t answer, a cold dread began to spread in the pit of Amina’s stomach. Oni’s silence could mean that she was already in the midst of an attempt to rescue El and didn’t want to lie to her mother. Or it could mean that she hadn’t received the message.
Oni might have been taken by the Rupture. She might be dead. Plurabella shouldn’t have left those children alone with that monstrous Heart.
Missus Orphint’s house was only a short distance from the entrance to the Undercroft. There were no flambeaux in this part of town, and the streets were plunged into shadow. Amina briefly weighed the risks of her magic being sensed by a Spectre, and decided haste was the priority. She cast a small candle charm to light her way and hurried to Missus Orphint’s house, her fears crowding in her throat.
By the time she arrived at Missus Orphint’s front door, Amina was in a flat panic. She almost dropped the key as she tried to open the door, and then she turned it the wrong way, cursing as she jammed it into the lock, but at last the tumblers clicked over. She slammed the door behind her and stepped into the narrow hallway where a lamp burned on a small table, waiting for Missus Orphint to come home.
Amina heard Oni’s voice at the other end of the house. Relief rushed through her whole body, leaving her legs shaking. In its wake came a surge of anger. She had been almost sure that Oni was dead. How dare she not answer her message? How could she be so thoughtless? She would have known how worried her mother would be…
Amina gave herself a few moments. This wasn’t like her. In an emergency, she was the person who always kept her head. People turned to her because she was never flustered: she was the one who knew how to stop the bleeding, what to say to the newly bereaved, how to comfort the dying. The shock that everybody else felt in disaster happened later in private, when she had time to deal with it. What was wrong with her?
I guess it’s been a hard night, she thought.
She breathed in deeply through her nose and out again, emptying her mind of its jittering. And then she snapped out the candle spell, marched down the hallway and threw open the kitchen door.
She halted, blinking in surprise. The kitchen was more crowded than she’d expected, and everyone seemed to be in the middle of an argument. Oni was standing at the far wall, her eyes sparkling with indignation. Pip was next to her, his mouth set in a stubborn line. At the table El leaned forward on a chair, looking more pale than usual. Opposite El sat two men: one, clad in the black uniform of his trade, clearly an assassin. Oni had used a spell to bind the strangers; Amina could see the magical shackles from where she stood.
They were all too intent on their argument to notice Amina’s entrance. She cleared her throat. “What, by the grace of the good earth, is an assassin doing here?”
Oni’s face lit up. “Ma!”
“You had better tell me what’s been going on here, young lady.” Amina moved ominously into the kitchen. “How could an assassin get past Plurabella’s wards? Did you let him in?”
“Oh, no!” said El. “He came back from the other place, when Pip came to rescue me. He ended up rescuing everybody else by mistake, including Heironomo. And then Oni put a spell on him and now he’s really cross.”
Amina had a sudden absurd desire to laugh. She frowned to cover it and glanced across at the assassin. “You mean that this is the man who tried to capture Oni and was swallowed by the Rupture?”
“I keep telling them, he’s quite nice really,” said El.
Pip was clearly trying to keep his temper. “El, I know you like to think the best of people, but even you know that assassins…”
“I could see inside people, back in that place. I saw inside Heironomo.”
“He tried to arrest me,” said Oni.
The assassin looked nervously at Amina and licked his lips. He was very young. Amina reflected that assassins often didn’t last very long in the Cardinal’s service. He was always looking for new blood.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just … doing my job…”
“You’re sorry that you can’t go to the Cardinal and betray us all to the Spectres,” said Oni, tossing her head. “I know your sort.”
Amina looked at the other man. “And who is this?”
“Harpin Shtum, at your service, ma’am,” said Harpin unexpectedly. “A pleasure to see you, Missus Bemare, even in such peculiar circumstances.”
Amina regarded him narrowly. She thought he did look a little familiar, but she couldn’t place his face. But then, she met so many people…
She took a deep breath. “I think that you had better tell me everything that has been going on here,” she said. “And yes, leave the strangers tied up for the present. We really have no idea who they are.”
She glanced around the kitchen. Everybody looked exhausted.
“And then we’d all better get some sleep. It’s been a hard night, and right now I can’t see that today is going to be any better.”
Oni laughed, with a little sob. “Oh, Ma, that is such a you thing to say!” She ran up to Amina and threw her arms around her neck and hid her face in her shoulder, hugging her as tightly as she could.
“I’m sorry I didn’t write you back,” Oni whispered, her voice muffled. “I knew you’d worry. But I didn’t know what to say…”
Amina felt the last of her anger drain out of her. “I’m just glad you’re not dead.” She breathed in the smell of Oni’s hair, a faint scent of rosemary and sweat. “So glad.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
WHEN LADY AGATHE DREW BACK THE BROCADE curtains on the Princess’s bed and discovered it empty, she let out a shriek and ran to the Duchess in the dressing room, who was preparing the Princess’s wardrobe. “Don’t be ridiculous,” said the Duchess, shaking out a skirt. “Of course she’s here.”
“But, ma’am, she’s nowhere to be seen,” wailed Lady Agathe. “I looked everywhere in the chamber, and under her bed… And her nightdress on the floor, like she just dropped it there…”
At that the Duchess came to see for herself, followed by the rest of Georgette’s ladies-in-waiting. It was true: there was no sign of the Princess anywhere, in her bedchamber or anywhere else in the royal rooms. The Duchess said some unladylike words under her breath.
“Where could she be?” said one of the younger ladies. “Maybe she climbed out of the window again?”
“It’s not unlikely,” said the Duchess coldly. “Even though she pretended to be as sweet as pie, she was always abominably disobedient.”
“But, ma’am, it’s three floors up,” said another lady doubtfully. They all looked at the window, which had been opened to let in the morning sun, sparkling and clean after the overnight tempest. There were no useful vines or trees that would have aided any erring princess bent on fleeing the palace, and even if Georgette had succeeded in climbing down three floors, she would have landed in an enclosed garden in the centre of the palace. After some early adventures, Princess Georgette’s chambers had been chosen with particular care to foil any thoughts of escape.
&nbs
p; “Why would she do that, and her just betrothed?” Lady Agathe clasped her hands together. “And how could she get past the guards?”
“I shall have something to say about your dereliction of duty later, Agathe,” said the Duchess. “But first, we must find her.”
Lady Agathe paled. As the lady-in-waiting charged that night with ensuring Princess Georgette’s safety, she would be the first one blamed for the disappearance.
“Maybe she got up earlier,” said another lady, “and was hungry or something, so went to the kitchen. I mean, she’s done that before.”
“And nobody saw her?” said the Duchess. “Not a guard? Not a servant? Have you checked?”
A half-hour later, they had ascertained that the guards who stood all night outside the royal chambers had seen nothing. Nor had any servants. Some guards reported feeling cramps and headaches in the night watches, and one said he was sure he had been put under some kind of spell. None of the Princess’s clothes were missing, nor any of her possessions. She had simply vanished into thin air.
By now all the ladies were in a panic. A couple of them, like Lady Agathe, were genuinely fond of Georgette, and were worried about what had happened to her; but all of them were most worried about what might happen to them.
“Witchcraft,” said one of the ladies at last. “It must be witches.”
“Witches!” cried another, who prided herself on her sensitive nature, and swooned. Everybody rushed to revive her with smelling salts except Lady Agathe, who was looking thoughtful.
“It’s the only explanation,” she said. “I was cast into an enchanted sleep by some foul magic…”
The Duchess didn’t believe in witches, although she never said so aloud. She had always considered that a belief in magic was base and vulgar superstition and besides, she had never seen a witch with her own eyes. But she did believe sincerely in the punishments that would come her way when she had to tell King Axel that his only daughter – the jewel of his kingdom, and the seal of his alliance with the kingdom of Awemt – had gone missing.
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