Windsinger

by A. F. E. Smith

  ‘Good,’ Gil said. ‘I will follow shortly, and I will be listening from the stairs.’ He sneered. ‘So do try not to say anything indiscreet.’

  Miles took the cup without another word, and walked out of the room full of dead men. Yet as he made his way towards the central square, another ray of light broke through the fog, this one dazzling in its hopefulness: this time, he might not have to choose. This time, he might be able to save Caraway’s life and Art’s. Because his flask full of spiced fruit punch – laced with the sleeping draught he’d been taking every night for weeks – was in his breast pocket.

  Once he had that, the rest of it came almost without thought. Glance over his shoulder to make sure Gil wasn’t in sight. Tip the poisoned water out of the cup. Refill the cup from the flask. There would still be traces of chanteuse in there, and he wasn’t sure exactly what effect they’d have when combined with the sleeping draught, but at least the mixture was no longer lethal.

  With the walls of the tower silent around him, he walked steadily across the central square. As expected, Caraway was at the lookout post above the main gate. Miles climbed the outer steps to join him. Caraway glanced back for the briefest of moments, to check he wasn’t an intruder, before returning his gaze to the darkening horizon.

  ‘Do you think she’s all right, Miles?’ he said softly. ‘Do you think Sorrow got there in time? I’m yet to receive any news, so I don’t know –’

  Miles nodded. ‘She has just as good a chance of surviving as we do.’ He held out the cup. ‘I brought you this. Spiced fruit. No alcohol.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Caraway took it, but he didn’t immediately drink. Instead, he curled his hands around it and smiled. ‘Actually, I wanted to thank you for much more than that. If it weren’t for the fact that Ayla has your collar with her, I’d probably be going crazy with fear round about now.’

  Choose your words carefully. Remember the unseen listener.

  ‘I assure you, I have been very happy to work with Lady Ayla these past years.’ Just for a moment, the knowledge of what Miles had left behind in the mess hall threatened to claw its way out of him. He fought it back and added, rather desperately, ‘And of course I am glad to have been of use.’

  ‘You’ve been a good friend,’ Caraway said. He glanced down at the cup in his hands, and Miles thought with relief that he was about to drink, but then he looked up again and asked, ‘Did you come from the mess hall? Did you see Vane? I need to speak to him about the night shift.’

  Desperate wheezing. Lips turning blue. Fighting for breath –

  ‘Yes, he was there,’ Miles said faintly. He could feel a scream building up in his throat; with an effort, he swallowed it and nodded at the cup. ‘You should drink that. They sent it over specially from the kitchens.’

  Caraway studied him for a moment, a slight frown between his brows. He knows. He knows something is wrong. Relief coursing through him that the decision had been taken out of his hands, that Caraway was going to be perceptive enough or paranoid enough to avert the disaster that was about to befall Darkhaven, Miles stood and waited for the blow. But then Caraway shrugged, raised his cup in salute, and drank the contents down.

  Sudden, irrational fear gripped Miles that somehow this draught would turn to poison as well. That he would have to watch Caraway die, just as he had most of Caraway’s men. But in fact, nothing happened to start with. Caraway placed the cup on the wall in front of him. He returned to his contemplation of the darkening horizon. Miles stood with him in silence, doubt and elation running through him in an endless loop.

  The dose was wrong. Too weak for a man who is a warrior rather than a scholar. He will stay awake. But then they will kill him, when they come. No. He will hold the tower against them. He will stop me.

  I wish he would stop me.

  ‘Miles,’ Caraway said faintly. ‘I don’t feel right.’

  Below them, on the hillside outside Darkhaven, Miles saw a torch spark in the night. The small airship had landed safely on the far side of the tower. The raiding party was on its way. In a moment, he would have to descend the steps and hand over the key that would admit them.

  Caraway had obviously spotted the light, too; he swayed forward, clutching at the wall in front of him to stop himself falling. ‘Do you see that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Miles backed away. ‘I – I am sorry, Tomas.’

  ‘What?’ Caraway turned, clumsily, one elbow sweeping the cup from the wall to shatter at his feet. ‘No. Miles. You haven’t –’ His legs buckled beneath him, sending him lurching forward. Miles caught his forearms, and they stared at each other.

  ‘You bastard,’ Caraway whispered. He was clearly having difficulty focusing, but he pushed away from Miles and reached for his sword. He got it half out of the scabbard before it became too much for him; he let it go, falling heavily to his knees. ‘You complete bastard.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Miles said again. He slid his hand into the inner pocket of Caraway’s coat and fished out the key to the postern gate. Then, letting the captain slump forward on the cold stone, he turned and ran down the steps.

  Gil was waiting for him halfway. ‘It is done?’

  Miles nodded, heart racing. ‘Now tell me the command. The one for Art’s assassin.’

  ‘All in good time.’ The physician took the key, before moving over to the postern. Three men entered, one carrying a burning torch with the gas turned down to a mere flicker. Gil spoke to them softly. Then they headed across the square, and Gil returned to join Miles beside the massive main gates.

  Abruptly, Miles found that his numbness had lifted. He was shaking. He wanted to cry, or scream. But instead, he squared his shoulders and faced the physician head-on.

  ‘I do not understand,’ he said, in a voice that quavered only slightly. ‘Why so many deaths, just for this?’

  ‘So no-one can follow the raiding party, of course.’

  ‘Follow them?’ Miles echoed. ‘I did not think anyone was even supposed to know they had been here! They were to enter while the Helm slept, break into the treasury –’

  ‘Treasury?’ Gil snorted. ‘What would they be doing in there?’

  ‘Finding the secret of the Change. Removing the old and valuable documents, the ones I highlighted in my reports. The ones from the time of the first Changers, written in a language I could not translate. That is the point of the whole –’

  But Miles stopped, because Gil was laughing.

  ‘The secret of the Change does not lie in books,’ he said. ‘It lies in people.’

  ‘P-people?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Miles. Surely you knew the Enforcers would not go to all this trouble for a few books.’

  But he hadn’t known that. He valued books so highly, it hadn’t even occurred to him that others might not feel the same. And if the raiding party wasn’t here for the ancient knowledge contained in Darkhaven’s treasury –

  ‘Really, I cannot tell what to make of you,’ Gil said. ‘Everyone keeps telling me how clever you are – and indeed, you did well enough with the antidote. But the idea that we would send a country to war for the sake of some books …’

  ‘Then what?’ Miles demanded. ‘What are those men here for?’

  Gil smiled. ‘The children, of course.’

  For a moment, Miles wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. ‘The children?’

  ‘Yes.’ The physician sounded impatient now. ‘You told us yourself that you can learn no more from Ayla. But with three Changer children as subjects for our testing, we will soon uncover their secret.’

  ‘But –’ Every bit of horror and revulsion that Miles had felt at the deaths of the Helm came surging back in full force. It took a considerable effort to hold himself back from attacking the other man, and that only because he knew that if he was to have any chance of stopping this, it would have to be done with reason.

  ‘The children are still young,’ he said. ‘The youngest is only one. It will be more than eight years until the first of
them might possibly Change, and even then it is not guaranteed. I thought the secret was required more urgently than that.’

  ‘Again, your intelligence does not appear to be on display,’ Gil replied acidly. ‘You have learned all there is to learn from a grown Changer. Short of cutting her apart, there is little more to gain from her. But the young ones …’ He shrugged. ‘So many opportunities to learn from what they can do. Their blood alone may give up what we need. If not, Ayla may agree to share the secret as payment for her children’s safe return. Either way, we will supply His Majesty with what he has asked for.’ A pause, before he added, ‘It is a shame, really, that it was necessary to interfere with her reproductive capabilities. Still, too many children would have been difficult to manage, and I had to find a reason for the old physician to retire.’

  What? ‘But you saved her life.’

  ‘From a crisis of my own making, yes.’

  ‘Then the flaw that runs in the family …’

  ‘Oh, it is in the blood, sure enough. But Ayla was damnably healthy. I doubt she would have succumbed to it unless I had given her a little nudge.’

  He was utterly without mercy. If Miles had only known it this time yesterday, he would never have put anything into the kegs without testing it first. Yet the betrayal he’d thought he was committing had seemed so vast, the idea that it could be masking a vaster one hadn’t even crossed his mind. The man in front of him was willing to murder huge numbers of people, send countries to war with each other, put a pregnant woman’s life at risk and steal children from their beds – all to obtain the secret of the Change. And Miles had unwittingly helped him with most of it. What in Luka’s name have I done?

  ‘I know Ayla,’ he said. ‘And she will not sit still in Darkhaven while you threaten her and her family. As soon as she finds out what has happened, she will go after them.’

  ‘But she will not find out in time, will she? There is no-one left to tell her. And if she does …’ Gil smiled. ‘Maybe we are prepared for that possibility, too.’

  There is me. If I can just get a message to Art … But Miles already knew that wouldn’t happen. Gil had told him far too much to allow him to walk free.

  ‘The command,’ he said, without much hope. ‘For Art’s assassin. Please …’

  ‘Patience, Miles.’

  Both of them turned as the three men re-emerged on the far side of the square. Each of them carried a small, wrapped figure over his shoulder. The children were still and quiet, limp dolls with lolling heads. Dead? No, that would make no sense. Drugged.

  Miles found himself remembering all the noisy breakfasts he’d shared with the children, over the years. Marlon, gesturing with both hands as he described something. Katya stirring her porridge and humming tunelessly to herself, while tiny Wyrenne shrieked and banged on the table. He had already done far more than he could ever hope to be forgiven for, but this …

  ‘Stop.’ His voice came out inaudible. Cursing himself for a coward, he cleared his throat and tried again. ‘Stop! Gil, please … they are only children.’

  ‘What difference does it make? You are already a murderer.’

  ‘No!’ The denial was automatic. He caught himself in time. ‘No, that was your doing.’

  ‘Come now, Miles. I may have poisoned the Helm, but your friend Caraway’s blood is on your head.’

  That is one thing I do not have to bear. Miles shook his head. ‘Caraway is, was, a soldier. He accepted his life was at risk. But the children –’

  ‘Not children. Nightshades.’

  ‘Children,’ Miles insisted. ‘And they are too young to survive being taken away from their home and family. The littlest one –’

  ‘Is least likely to be of use to us as she grows up. You have already told us of the possible link between the Nightshade phenotype and the Nightshade gift. If the baby is not a Changer, she will yield little in the way of test results, so it does not matter so much if she fails to thrive.’

  Nausea clutched at Miles’s throat. ‘You have lived with these children,’ he said hoarsely. ‘You have tended to them for more than a year. How can you talk about them as if they are no more than animals?’

  ‘They are constructs of alchemy. You are a man of science; you must have dissected a creature or two in your time. No point getting sentimental about it now.’

  ‘No.’ Miles shook his head. ‘No, no, no.’ As the raiding party and their burdens approached the postern gate, one of the secrets he had been keeping all this time came spilling out of him. ‘The Nightshade blood is not enough!’

  Gil’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  Miles hesitated – but better to reveal the truth than to let the children be taken.

  ‘The Changer gift is a result of two things,’ he said. ‘The alchemy in the Nightshade blood, and the alchemy in Arkannen itself. Without Darkhaven, you can cut those children open as much as you like –’ his voice caught in his throat; he forced himself through it – ‘but you will never be able to create a Changer. Never.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I swear, it is the truth.’

  ‘You have known this all along? And yet you did not think to tell us?’

  Seeing the fury in his face, Miles flinched; yet only for a moment. Then he lifted his chin. ‘If I have my way, Parovia will never discover the secret of the Change.’

  Gil stabbed him.

  Miles tried to evade the blow as it fell, so it caught him in the thigh, yet still the force of the impact drove him to his knees. Pain spread through him in a shocking wave, like an alchemical explosion, turning his blood to fire. He struggled to stand, but his legs were weak and he only scrabbled uselessly at the ground. I have to get up. I have to –

  ‘You are the worst kind of traitor,’ Gil spat. ‘Hoping to play two sides off against each other, and ending up despised by both.’

  Gasping, Miles looked up, but the physician’s face was hidden by the shadow of his hood; once again he was the nameless messenger in the dark.

  ‘Still,’ Gil added, ‘you serve your purpose. They will need someone to blame. And better you than me.’

  Bending down, he thrust his knife into Miles’s stomach and back out again in one quick movement. Miles cried out, clutching at the wound with shaking hands. His own blood was hot and sticky on his fingers, and he could smell it, and the pain was everywhere. Everywhere.

  He was going to die.

  ‘Art,’ he whispered, and Gil scoffed at him.

  ‘There is no assassin, Miles. I really have no interest in whether the man lives or dies. Though it might have been kinder to kill him, given what he will soon discover about you.’

  ‘And Mara?’

  The physician made an impatient noise. ‘Your family is already dead. They were killed before you even left Parovia.’

  ‘But the letters –’

  ‘Yes. I daresay writing those gave some junior clerk a moment’s relief from the tedium of her usual duties.’ He shook his head. ‘What purpose would there have been in spending time and resources on giving your family a new life, with all the risk that one day they might slip through our net? Come on, Miles! Do you not think they would have asked questions? Do you not think they would have tried to find you?’

  A third burst of pain ripped through Miles as the knife blade cut him open again, but this time he barely felt it. Tears leaked from his eyes. He couldn’t see Gil clearly any more; the man was just a shape in a haze of grey.

  ‘No. Everything you have done, every act of betrayal you have committed since you first arrived in Mirrorvale, was for no more than ghosts.’ Gil laughed. ‘Think on that as you breathe your last.’

  Something cold and hard was pressed into Miles’s palm, and reflexively he tightened his fingers around it. Then the physician’s footsteps moved away. Gritting his teeth against the constant, agonising pain, Miles put all his strength into trying to move. I have to warn Art. I have to warn Ayla.

  But the world slipped away from
him, and everything turned black.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Ree had been floating somewhere between waking and dreaming, in a half-hallucinatory state where nothing made a great deal of sense and nothing seemed to matter. Yet gradually, piece by piece, reality was beginning to remake itself.

  She was lying facedown on something hard.

  Her head ached.

  Her lungs ached.

  Someone had tried to … poison her?

  The basement. She had been in the basement with Penn. And someone had poisoned them and locked them in and –

  Penn had told her to breathe through the ventilation block. She remembered that now, quite vividly: his hand on her back, pushing her down. Without Penn, she might be dead.

  But Penn himself hadn’t got any fresh air at all …

  ‘Penn?’ she said. It came out as a croak through her parched throat. ‘Penn? Are you all right?’

  In answer, she heard a groan. It wasn’t much, but it was at least enough to know he was alive.

  Ree put her mouth against the ventilation block and sucked in several more deep breaths, enough to make her dizzy. Then, slowly, she risked pushing herself up to a sitting position. The gas lamp still burned, though with a smaller and bluer flame. The air was hazy. Penn lay slumped against the wall nearby.

  ‘Penn!’ She shook him. His eyes flickered open.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he mumbled, before his eyelids drooped shut again. She tugged on his arm until she’d got him into a lying position, then rolled him over so that his face almost touched the ventilation block. That should help, a little.

  She looked around the room. The air seemed to have cleared, a bit. It wasn’t as if the basement were completely airtight. But unless she got Penn out, the poison might still finish him off. And if it didn’t, they’d both soon die anyway, with no water or food.

  She went back to the door, but she already knew it was useless. The poisoner had deliberately broken the key off in the lock. And the door itself was solid wood, with thick metal hinges. No way she could get that thing open.

  The other possibility was the hatch in the ceiling. She walked over to stand underneath it, peering upwards. Perhaps the poisoner had forgotten it – the cobwebs suggested it hadn’t been used in a long time. But the latch was a simple wooden thing, so if she could only reach it, she might be able to open it.