‘I was wondering …’ he said instead. ‘Did anything come of our conversation the other day? The name in your notebook?’
Caraway’s expression cleared. ‘It did. In fact, that’s what I came to tell you. This morning, at first light, an agent set off for the Kardise border with fresh evidence concerning the ambassador’s murder. We hope it will mean an end to the war and a new chance at the treaty.’
‘But Captain, that’s … why didn’t you tell me sooner? That’s wonderful!’
‘It’s good news,’ Caraway agreed. ‘But, Zander … do you remember, back when this first started, I told you about the condition your father had placed on any agreement?’
Dull realisation fell into place. ‘That I should return to Sol Kardis.’
‘I don’t know if it will still hold,’ Caraway said. ‘But if it does … Ayla would have spoken to you about it, had the process ever got that far. It was one area where she and Tolino differed. And since she’s not here …’
‘I understand.’
‘I’m not asking you to leave. It might never come to that anyway. But I thought I should let you know that Sol Kardis might make such a demand.’
‘And if they do?’ Zander asked quietly. ‘Will you have me shipped out on the first skyboat you can find?’
‘That’s up to you.’
‘But –’
‘Ayla was adamant we don’t treat people that way without cause. If you had committed a crime against Sol Kardis and they wanted you back to mete out their own justice, we would deport you. But we won’t allow a single man to hold an entire peace treaty hostage in order to control his grown son.’
Zander was silent, guilt and gratitude tumbling over themselves inside him.
‘That’s what Lady Ayla thinks,’ he said finally. ‘But what do you think? What would you do, if you were me?’
Caraway returned his level gaze. ‘I don’t know, Zander. That’s the honest truth. I don’t like the idea of your father using the treaty as a weapon against you. I don’t know what the other Kardise councillors were thinking, letting him do it. Maybe they’ll see sense second time around. But if they don’t …’ He lifted a shoulder. ‘I’m not sure I’d be able to live with the knowledge that I had the opportunity to secure peace between two countries and didn’t take it. No matter the personal cost to me.’
‘I understand.’
‘Which isn’t to say I’d think any worse of you if you refused,’ Caraway added hastily. ‘But you did ask for my opinion.’
‘Yes.’ Zander couldn’t bring himself to say any more than that. And clearly the captain realised there was little more to be gained from the conversation; though his expression was regretful, he stood up, gave Zander a nod, and headed for the door. Yet when he reached it, he turned.
‘It might not happen,’ he said again. ‘I’m sure Ayla will do everything she can to avoid it. I just … I wanted to warn you. Just in case.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m sorry, Zander.’
‘I know.’
Then the door closed, and Zander was left alone.
TWENTY-THREE
They met in the middle of the plain: Ayla and her bodyguards, a single Kardise councillor and his. And Naeve Sorrow. Beside them, a pale flag fluttered in the breeze. As long as that flag flew, there would be no more fighting.
Sorrow wasn’t really sure why Ayla had asked her to stay. The key evidence would be Tarran’s confession, not an awkwardly delivered account from someone the Kardise would almost certainly consider an unreliable witness. Yet there had seemed little point in refusing. In a way, Sorrow thought, she ought to be flattered. It wasn’t every sellsword who’d been invited to attend the most important diplomatic event in recent Mirrorvalese history. Shame the event itself would be no more than a load of dull chitchat. Political conversation was all the same: circuitous nonsense that was more about scoring points off a rival than actually getting things done.
‘Don Mellor,’ Ayla greeted her counterpart when they were still a little distance apart.
‘Lady Ayla.’
‘We come unarmed,’ Ayla said in Kardise. Sorrow could attest to the truth of that; it was only with the greatest of reluctance that she’d agreed to leave all her own weaponry behind. All the same, she’d concealed a knife in her boot. She wasn’t willing to go completely unarmed anywhere, even to a peace talk. ‘May I approach?’
‘We are also unarmed,’ Mellor said. ‘But before we start, I would ask you please to take off your collar.’
‘That isn’t a weapon,’ Ayla protested.
‘It makes you stronger. With it, you could Change and kill us all, and we’d have no way to stop you.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless you’ve brought a pistol to this supposedly unarmed discussion, I could do that anyway.’
‘That is why we would rather you were as close to human as possible, Lady Ayla. You have the power to destroy us all. You cannot leave that behind. But it is only fair that you should be vulnerable like the rest of us.’
Ayla hesitated. Then she took off her collar, dropped it in the grass beside her, and strode forward into the space between the two parties. Mellor left the safety of his own guards and came to meet her. An arm’s length apart, they stopped and regarded each other warily.
‘You claim to have evidence that proves you didn’t kill Don Tolino,’ Mellor said. ‘You still want peace? Even after we have killed so many of your men?’
His tone suggested weakness on her part. A test, Sorrow thought. But to her credit, Ayla lifted her chin and matched him blow for blow.
‘And even after I killed so many of yours. That question cuts both ways, Don Mellor. I hope I have proven to you that I will do whatever it takes to defend my people. But I cannot believe this war is in either of our countries’ interests.’
He inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘Let me hear your evidence.’
So Ayla showed him Tarran’s confession. She called Sorrow forward to tell her story, which Sorrow managed to do without making too much of a fool of herself. And finally, Mellor nodded.
‘All right. It is enough to extend the truce, for now. I will take it back to the other councillors and see what they say. But, Lady Ayla … you should know that an end to the war will not necessarily mean peace. Even if what you say is true, Tolino was murdered by Mirrorvalese patriots on Mirrorvalese soil. So though you might not have killed him, your country still did.’
‘I understand,’ Ayla said. ‘But I assure you, no-one who kills an innocent man for the sake of manufacturing a war would ever be considered a Mirrorvalese patriot.’
She gave him a Kardise bow. And as she straightened, something caught Sorrow’s eye. A movement, up on the distant hillside. A glint of light –
Not even a rifle can fire that far, she thought.
And then, You don’t owe her anything.
Yet her body was already in motion, hurtling across the gap between herself and Ayla. They collided hard enough to knock both of them to the ground. The crack of the gun echoed in Sorrow’s ears. Too late. Was she too late?
But then pain flared up from her guts, white-hot and vicious. It tipped her over onto her side, to curl in on herself like an animal seeking refuge. The earth was red. Her hands were red. Why was everything red?
You’ve been shot, you stupid woman, she told herself. And before she could think of a suitable retort, she blacked out.
Ayla sat up, dazed. Beside her, one of her Helmsmen was already tending to Sorrow. The other positioned himself between her and the far-off hillside where the bullet had come from, and said, ‘Lady Ayla.’
He was holding out her collar. She took it from him with shaking fingers and fumbled it back into place. He offered her a hand, which she clutched gratefully, using him for support until her legs felt strong enough to hold her. On their side of the plain, Mellor and his guards watched her in silence, their eyes wide and terrified. They expected her to kill them, Ayla realised. And she
could do it. A couple of days ago, perhaps she would have. It would be easy enough to Change and run them through –
‘I came here in good faith,’ she said in her own language, staying calm with an effort, though she couldn’t keep the ice from her voice. ‘Am I to assume, then, that we are to recommence the war?’
‘Lady Ayla …’ Mellor looked increasingly frightened as she approached him, and answered in the same tongue. ‘I assure you, this wasn’t our doing. I will have men sent out to look for –’
‘You’re saying it was a coincidence?’ Ayla snapped. ‘That you asked me to remove my collar, and then …’
‘Not a coincidence.’ Sweat stood out on the man’s brow. ‘There are some things we do not speak of, but I can only say again that the Kardise government was not behind this.’
‘The Brotherhood, then?’ Ayla heard the stifled gasps of the councillor’s guards, but she waved them aside. The time for tact was long gone. ‘Your Brotherhood have tried repeatedly to kill me, Don Mellor. Forgive me if I grow a little tired of preserving their secrets.’
Without waiting for a reply, she turned her back on him and strode to Sorrow’s side. The sellsword remained unconscious, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
‘Will she live?’ Ayla asked the Helmsman putting pressure on the wound. He glanced up without removing his hands; the tightness around his eyes told her everything she needed to know.
‘I hope so.’
‘Do everything you can,’ Ayla said. ‘She took that bullet on my behalf. I won’t have her dying for the privilege.’
The Helmsman nodded. Ayla turned back to Mellor.
‘We will leave the flag here,’ she said. ‘You go away and talk to the councillors. But be careful, Don Mellor. If I am to be held responsible for my patriotic countrymen, then you must also be held responsible for yours.’
The address on the calling-card that Lewis had given Ree – 12a Crucible Lane, Obsidian Quarter – turned out to be the basement of an ordinary, rather shabby-looking house. Ree and Penn tried knocking on the door, but got no answer, so they stood outside and watched it for a little while. Obsidian was the Alchemists’ Quarter, which meant not only alchemists but apothecaries and even physicians lived there. Certainly a good place to find all the ingredients needed to brew up a new antidote to a deadly poison.
‘We should go in,’ Ree said. ‘We haven’t seen anyone come or go from the entire house the whole time we’ve been here.’
‘But if there’s no-one home –’ Even as Penn said it, he realised what Ree was suggesting. ‘You mean break in? But the Helm can’t just – I mean, we should at least get a warrant from the Watch before –’
‘We’re at war, Penn. We have to be unscrupulous. I’ll just say I found the door open.’
Before he could object further, she’d crossed the street and descended the external steps to the basement apartment. With a strong feeling that he’d live to regret it, Penn followed.
‘Zander should never have taught you how to pick locks,’ he muttered. ‘He’s created a monster.’
‘Nonsense.’ Ree’s voice was a little too bright, her actions a little too hasty. She’d been like this ever since he’d found the marriage contract in Derrick Tarran’s office: as though she could see her life coming to an end, and it made her reckless. ‘Ah! There we go.’
She eased open the door. The basement turned out to be a single room, with a high ceiling and no windows – clearly intended as a storage space, rather than a separate apartment. There was even a hatch in the ceiling, through which the occupants of the house above had once accessed the basement. Penn had expected distillery equipment, yet instead he saw only a bench covered in papers.
‘No-one could possibly live here,’ he said. ‘Or brew an antidote, either. This must just be the address the mysterious man gave Tarran in case Tarran needed to contact him.’
‘I suppose so.’ Ree looked disappointed. ‘Still, now we’re here, we might as well take a look around.’
A single oil lamp hung from the ceiling above the bench. Penn lit it; then Ree closed the front door, calling up a curl of cold air from somewhere else entirely. A draught? Penn glanced around the walls and spotted a ventilation block in the corner furthest from the door. That made him breathe a bit easier. He really didn’t like the idea of a room with no windows.
Ree joined him at the bench, and together they began to look through the papers. They soon found that most of them were completely incomprehensible, written in a kind of shorthand interspersed with symbols. Alchemists’ notation? A secret code? Impossible to tell. Yet at the bottom of the pile lay some large, thin sheets of paper that were rather different. They clearly belonged together, a set of five: each showed a long, pointed oval divided into sections and marked with different words in both a foreign language and Mirrorvalese.
‘What is this?’ Ree muttered. ‘Plans, but of what?’
They frowned down at them together. Then, hit by a sudden bolt of enlightenment, Penn said, ‘The Windsinger.’
‘What?’
‘The Parovian airship. You know, the one that’s moored over at Redmire. See, it’s definitely an airship – here are the engines, the gas chambers, the rudder at the tail. But airships aren’t usually built with rooms inside them, so …’
‘The Windsinger,’ Ree said slowly. ‘Why would Free Arkannen have the plans for that? It has nothing to do with the war between Mirrorvale and Sol Kardis.’
‘No.’ Penn kept frowning at the papers. There was a connection there somewhere. Had to be. ‘I’m not very good at this kind of thing, but if Free Arkannen have plans of the Windsinger … I think we have to assume that there’s more to what they’re planning than what they’ve already done.’
Ree nodded. ‘D’you think they’re going to sabotage the airship? Make it look like an act sanctioned by Darkhaven, and throw us into conflict with Parovia as well as Sol Kardis?’
‘Maybe.’ It was a clever deduction, and the sort of thing Ree always leaped to far quicker than he did. Her brain made connections at a speed he could only dream about. Yet for all that, something was nagging at him – and after a moment, he realised what. ‘Only thing is, these plans … they’re top secret. The Windsinger is new technology; the Parovians wouldn’t share any more information than they had to. So …’
‘So for a Mirrorvalese dissident group to have the plans, they must have stolen them.’ Ree shrugged. ‘Well, couldn’t they?’
‘It’s possible,’ Penn said doubtfully. ‘But I think there would have been a huge outcry from Parovia. No … it seems more likely that Parovia gave them the plans.’
‘In which case, the group is a front for Parovian interference, not Mirrorvalese at all.’ Ree looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe not sabotage, then. If Parovia wanted outright war with Mirrorvale, there’d be far easier ways to achieve that than building a technologically advanced airship just so it could be destroyed. So if the Windsinger isn’t a target, maybe it’s a weapon …’ She scanned the plans again. Then, in an altered tone of voice, she said, ‘You did say it was a passenger ship, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. Largest in the world.’
‘Then it wouldn’t carry cargo?’
‘I don’t know,’ Penn said. ‘Usually it’s one or the other. Cargo ships have a different design from passenger ships. But maybe with a ship this big, they decided it could handle both.’
‘Oh. It’s just, there’s a label here that says Cargo. I thought maybe if Parovia did engineer the conflict between us and Sol Kardis, it was so they could smuggle something out of the country while we were otherwise distracted …’
Penn looked where her finger was tapping one of the plans. Sure enough, a space in the very lowest level of the airship was labelled Cargo. Nothing odd about that: if there was going to be such a thing as a combined passenger and cargo ship, that’s where he’d expect the goods to be stowed. And yet …
‘It’s an odd sort of cargo hold,’ he said, pulse quickening.
‘There’s no loading hatch in the wall. No way in except a single internal door. They can’t be intending to carry anything heavy or bulky. Yet there’s a window marked on here, look. What kind of cargo needs daylight but no easy way to get it on or off the airship?’
They were silent for a while. Then Ree said, in a voice that shook slightly, ‘Maybe a live one.’
‘You think –’
‘I don’t know. But we should take these to Captain Caraway as soon as possible.’
The sudden smashing of glass made them both look up. A broken flask lay on the floor, something faintly green curling out of it like smoke. And at the door –
A man’s arm, disappearing from view as the door closed behind him.
‘Stop!’ Penn ran for the door, dimly aware that Ree had snatched up the plans of the Windsinger and stuffed them into her pocket before following. Yet he was too late. He heard the clunk of the key turning, followed by a loud snap –
‘He’s broken it off in the lock,’ Ree said, after a short time with her lockpicks. ‘I can’t get the door open.’
Windsinger Page 28
