by Lian Tanner
Kreig grimaced with pain, then struggled up onto one elbow. ‘You are wrong,’ she whispered. ‘I do have a choice, and it is this: do what you will, but I will not betray Otte.’ And she fell back to the ground with her eyes closed and her lips set in a hard line.
The Grafine straightened, thinking quickly. The Harshman would come soon, and she must have Otte waiting for him. In the meantime, she needed to keep the nobles happy.
She gestured to the two soldiers who were still on their feet. ‘Bind and gag her,’ she ordered.
They hurried to do her bidding, and soon Krieg was trussed up like a chicken for the pot.
The Grafine cleared her throat, and those nearby, who had been watching her closely, fell silent. That silence spread, until there was not a sound in the Great Chamber except for the crackling of the flames in the fireplaces, and the muffled thump of a dog scratching itself.
The Grafine began to speak.
Sooli had been frightened since the moment she entered the Strong-hold. Everything about the place felt ugly and angry and warlike, and the loss of the raashk had only made it worse.
She wanted to run out the main gate after Lord Rump and never come back. But she could not. She was the Bayam of Saaf, and although she was too young for such a weighty responsibility, she must protect her people from the threat that the Harshman posed.
At least, she thought she was still Bayam. It was confusing, because the chicken was also Bayam, and far more powerful than Sooli could ever be. In her mind, she thought of the chicken as the great Bayam, and herself as the small one.
But she did not say this out loud. She did not want the other children thinking she was small.
As night fell, they left their hiding place in the Bear Tower and crept in desperate silence down the stairs and across the first bailey. They dared not go in the main door of the Keep, so Otte led them around the side to a smaller door, which was unguarded. Then they climbed as quickly as they could to the fourth floor.
They saw no one, but the rooms of the Keep echoed as Sooli tiptoed into them and sighed as she tiptoed out. Every whisper, every breath seemed to bounce back at her, as if the Strong-hold was dead and alive at the same time.
Her grip on the great Bayam tightened. ‘I hate this place,’ she whispered. ‘I could never live with so much stone.’
Otte said quietly, ‘I would not live anywhere else, curse or no curse. It is my home and I know every part of it. I know its history and its people, even if they do not know me. But I do not expect you to like it, Sooli.’
‘It’s the creeping around I don’t like,’ said Pummel. ‘If someone catches us, we’re dead.’
‘At this time of night everyone is at supper,’ whispered Otte. His pet mice sat on his shoulder, their noses twitching. ‘The Grafine’s room will be empty.’
‘It had better be,’ said Duckling.
Sooli bent down and studied the shining silver paths that told her who had passed here recently. They at least were familiar, when everything else was so horrible and strange. ‘There is no one ahead of us,’ she whispered. ‘No one awake, anyway. But I still do not like it.’
‘Can you feel the raashk?’ asked Pummel.
‘No. Can you?’
Pummel shook his head.
The Grafine’s room lay behind a heavy wooden door carved with two bears standing on their hind legs. Otte knocked, and when there was no answer, he pushed the door open.
Apart from the salt mines, Sooli had never lived anywhere but the Saaf settlement up at the Notch. There, the sparse little houses were made of wood, and perched so close to the edge of the escarpment that it was a wonder they did not blow off.
Every house had a gap under the eaves so the wind could come visiting whenever it wanted, and eagle feathers fastened to the roof, for the wind to play with. And when people hung out their washing, they always added a tiny scrap of cloth that wasn’t pegged too firmly, in the hope that the wind would carry it off and bring them a whole month of good fortune. It was a poor settlement, but Sooli loved it.
The room she walked into now could not have been more different. Fat candles burned low in wrought-iron holders on the walls. An ugly-looking chair stood in front of an enormous fireplace. There was a huge cupboard, a bed with posts at the corners and curtains all around it, and dark tapestries on the walls and windows.
But apart from all the furniture, which made Sooli feel so hemmed in that she could hardly breathe, the room was empty.
Pummel let out a huff of disappointment. ‘The raashk isn’t here.’
‘You haven’t even looked,’ whispered Duckling. ‘It might be hidden somewhere.’
‘I’d be able to feel it,’ said Pummel.
‘So would I,’ said Sooli. ‘The Grafine must have it in her pocket still.’
Otte picked up an unburned candlestick and lit it from one of the iron holders. ‘Then we must look for some sign of how she raised the Harshman. Although I do not know what it might be.’
‘Wait,’ said Duckling. She took her reed windmill from under her tunic, blew on it until the blades spun, and began to hum. When her breeze sprang up, she whispered, ‘Can you search the room? Look for anything to do with the Harshman. Go now. Seek!’
Sooli still felt the wrongness of it whenever Duckling or Pummel used their magic. The Wind’s Blessing and the raashk were supposed to be hers, and she yearned for them with a deep and powerful longing.
But she tried not to show it. It was not the other children’s fault that Sooli’s great-grandmother had died so suddenly, and that Sooli had not been by her side. It was not their fault that, in desperation, Great-Grandmother had passed some of her power to them, so it would not be lost.
And it was not their fault that the great Bayam – before she had once again forgotten who she was – had insisted that Duckling and Pummel keep the magic for now.
‘By right and by birth, those powers belong to you,’ she had said to Sooli. (Or rather, those words had appeared in Sooli’s mind when the chicken leaned against her.) ‘But where there is great peril, one child is more vulnerable than three. One stick can be broken, when three together will hold.’
It made sense. All of it made sense. Still, Sooli did not want to stand and wait for the breeze that should be hers.
She put the great Bayam down, whispering, ‘Do not stray.’ Then she lit another candle and wandered around the room inspecting the tapestries, which were covered from one end to the other in pictures.
When she realised what she was seeing, her face grew hot. ‘This is a lie,’ she whispered. ‘It shows my people running from the swords of the conquerors. It shows us begging for mercy. But we never ran. We never begged.’
‘It is just a story,’ said Otte. He was searching through the contents of a wooden chest, while his mice looked underneath it. ‘It does not matter.’
‘It does matter,’ replied Sooli. ‘Stories are important, they tell us our place in the world. And according to this, the Saaf are lower than dogs. I do not—’
She broke off, as a breeze lifted Duckling’s hair. Sooli heard the other girl whisper, ‘Did you find it?’
The answer must have been no, because Duckling’s shoulders slumped and she said, ‘Maybe Grandpa was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t the Grafine who raised the Harshman.’
‘Who else could it be?’ asked Pummel.
‘I do not know,’ said Otte, picking up his mice. ‘But we should not talk about it here. We must return to our hiding place before we are discovered.’
Sooli counted the floors as they went back down through the Keep. She had never liked being indoors for long, but her weeks in the salt mine had turned not-liking into loathing, and she was desperate to be outside again, even if it was only for a little while.
But as they crept towards the last staircase, Duckling whispered, ‘Otte, what are all these notices?’ She pointed to a piece of paper nailed to the door in front of them. ‘This is the third one we’ve passed.’
�
��I have never seen them before,’ replied Otte.
The great Bayam, still held securely in Sooli’s arms, eyed the string of letters as if they might be edible. Duckling took a candle from its wall bracket and brought it closer to the paper.
Her hand jerked in shock. Otte let out a cry that he quickly muffled. Pummel said, in a horrified voice, ‘No, they mustn’t!’
‘What is it?’ demanded Sooli.
Duckling read the words aloud. ‘Krieg, once Arms-mistress of this Strong-hold, is hereby sentenced to death as a traitor to the Faithful Throne. If the escaped prisoners do not surrender themselves, she will be executed in the Great Chamber at noon on the fourth day of Snark.’
‘The fourth day?’ breathed Pummel. ‘But that’s tomorrow. They’re going to execute her tomorrow!’
Duckling argued with Otte and Pummel all the way back to their hiding place. She didn’t want Krieg to be executed either, but she had too much sense to surrender.
‘Then we’d all end up dead,’ she whispered, as they crept into the Bear Tower and up the first lot of stairs. ‘And no one left to stop the Harshman.’
The grafs and grafines were coming out from supper by then, and the children had already backtracked twice to avoid being caught. The Bayam chicken was silent in Sooli’s arms; Otte’s mice dozed in his sleeves.
‘Brun would not let the Grafine kill us,’ said Otte.
‘Brun mightn’t be able to stop her,’ said Duckling. She pointed to another of the dreadful notices, this one nailed to a window frame. ‘He hasn’t been able to stop this.’
There was a thumping sound below them, as if something heavy had fallen over the threshold of the Bear Tower. A man laughed. Several deep voices broke into drunken song. ‘I love an execution, a good old chop chop chop …’
‘Quick!’ hissed Duckling, and she and Pummel hoisted Otte between them and ran, with Sooli close behind.
They made it back to their rathole without being spotted. Duckling pulled the stone that closed them in, then leaned against the wall, panting. She could hear Sooli’s breath hissing between her teeth. She could hear the drunken grafs shouting at each other somewhere below them, and her own heartbeat thumping in her ears.
She fumbled for the candle they had left on the ledge at the back of the rathole. Her fingers were colder than she’d realised, and it took her an age to get a spark from the tinderbox. When she did, and the tiny flame reared up from the candle wick, they all sighed with relief.
They checked the walls to make sure there were no holes where light could escape and give away their hiding place. Then they sat, with their knees to their chins and their faces screwed up in worry.
‘We have to save her,’ whispered Otte, for the sixth or seventh time.
Duckling had no argument with that. She liked Arms-mistress Krieg. But she had no idea how to rescue her.
‘Tell you what,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll go and see if I can steal us some food. And I’ll see what I can find out about Krieg at the same time.’
She stood up and edged back past Sooli and the chicken. But as she went to haul open the stone door, she heard footsteps directly outside their hiding place.
She put a finger to her lips, to warn the others. Pummel moved to snuff the candle, but Duckling shook her head frantically. No! A snuffed candle smells, and that smell might give them away.
Whoever was out there seemed to be searching for something. Duckling could hear boxes being opened and shut, and something heavy being dragged across the floor.
Another lot of footsteps joined the first. A voice said, ‘Someone has been in here very recently. Might have been the escapees.’
‘This is the tower I would choose, if I was a fugitive,’ said a second voice. ‘It is furthest from the Keep, and has more unused rooms.’
Duckling felt as if a hand had reached past her ribs and seized her heart. Whoever was out there – and it sounded like two of the grafs – was searching for them.
She put her finger to her lips again, but it was not needed. The other three children sat as stiff as boards, hardly breathing. Even the chicken seemed aware of the danger.
‘But why try to find them now?’ continued the second voice. ‘We have not had an execution for weeks. Surely you do not want to stop it?’
The first man laughed quietly. ‘You think the Grafine will keep her word? You think she will let Krieg live? You should know better than that.’
‘So six beheadings instead of one? Ha, that would be something to see. I will help you search. No, I will fetch von Fine and von Biegel, and we will all help.’
‘Get a couple more while you are at it, and conceal them near the outside doors,’ called the first man, as one set of footsteps walked away. ‘In case the fugitives try to run. I do not wish to be cheated of our entertainment.’
With the other man gone, he continued his search, humming as he worked, and occasionally breaking off to say, ‘Are you here, my friends? Am I getting close?’
Duckling could hardly breathe. The sensible thing would be to go through the little tunnel at the back of the rathole now, and escape from the Bear Tower before the other men came to guard the outside doors. But she and her friends would not be able to get into the tunnel without making some noise. And if the searcher heard them …
Still, she could not sit there and do nothing. She turned back to the others and mimed crawling into the tunnel, then held up her hand. Wait.
They waited, like rabbits trapped in a burrow. The man shifted another box, scraping it loudly across the floor, and Duckling gestured, Go!
Pummel pushed Otte into the mouth of the tunnel, then Sooli and the chicken. But they were not even out of sight when the scraping ceased, and they all froze.
When the man made another noise, they moved. When he stopped, they stopped. And so it went, for what felt like a year of Duckling’s life. She and Pummel followed the other two into the tunnel, with Duckling carrying the candle, and were caught in a half crouch that made their legs cramp. And when they at last got out of that awkward position, they were caught in another.
Hot wax dripped onto Duckling’s hand. Her knees ached. But she dared not go faster. Sounds carried strangely in the towers. A shout might be muffled by the heavy stone; a whisper might be funnelled through the stairwells until it was heard quite clearly three floors away.
But at last they reached the end of the tunnel, and the second rathole that opened off it. Otte put his mouth close to Duckling’s ear and breathed, ‘We are right next to the stairs. We could slip out and make for the Hawk Tower. There is another hiding place there.’
Duckling nodded, and signed to Pummel and Sooli. The Bayam chicken’s eyes were bright in the candlelight, but she didn’t make a sound. Otte grasped the device that would move one of the stones aside …
And several sets of footsteps came tramping up the stairs towards them. Otte snatched his hands away, just as a voice said quietly, ‘Got the outside doors?’
Another voice replied, ‘Got them.’
The children stared at each other, white-eyed. In their caution, they had taken too long. And now they were trapped, and the hours to Arms-mistress Krieg’s execution were passing.
As the city of Berren woke and set about its business, Lord Rump came to the building that housed the Privy Council. He had bathed the night before, and stolen new clothes, including a very fine yellow silk waistcoat. Then he had spent the rest of the night eavesdropping on conversations in hostelries around the city.
He was now quite sure that it was the council who had stopped the food carts from entering the Strong-hold. What’s more, he knew the story they had spread to excuse their actions.
‘Cunning, very cunning,’ he murmured to himself as he straightened his cravat. ‘I could hardly have done better myself.’
He tucked his walking cane under his arm, smoothed back his hair and strolled up to the main door of the Council Chambers.
His name made the doorkeeper turn as pale as a mel
on and take several steps backwards. Rump beamed at the man and cried, ‘Are they expecting me? No? In that case, what a pleasant surprise I will be.’ And he marched straight past the doorkeeper and down the long, carpeted corridor, pocketing a crystal glass on the way.
But he did not go into the meeting room. Instead, he inspected the closed door, grimaced and took out the crystal glass. He pressed one end of the glass to the door and put his ear to the other end. He listened. He smiled.
‘Captain Rabid is here,’ he whispered. ‘Even better.’
He took a pair of leather gloves from his pocket and put them on. Then, working quickly and quietly, he unscrewed part of the collar of his walking cane. Inside it were five silver vials, each one only half the size of his little finger.
Lord Rump checked his gloves for holes, sorted through the vials and selected one of them. Its lid was grey; it contained a colourless liquid.
With great care, he unscrewed the lid and dabbed a small amount of the liquid onto the handle of his cane. Then he screwed the lid back on (checking it twice for leaks) and returned the vial to its hiding place.
‘Rump,’ he whispered, ‘you are as clever as a professor and as cunning as a sewer rat. Get this right and you will also be as rich as a privy councillor.’
With that, he tucked the cane under his arm again, threw open the meeting room door and strolled in.
Three of the four councillors were seated around a very fine wooden table. (Worth at least a thousand silver gloats, Rump estimated. But too hard to get out of the building without being seen.) The fourth, Councillor Triggs, was standing at one end of the table, arguing with a man in uniform.
‘My dear Captain Rabid,’ said Triggs. Then he broke off and stared at Rump. ‘You!’ he cried.
‘You!’ echoed Captain Rabid.
Rump gave them his most gracious smile. ‘I am deeply flattered to be recognised by such busy and important people. Mind you, the job of ambassador—’
But by then, Triggs had recovered from his surprise. ‘Rabid, arrest this man!’
