Windsinger

by A. F. E. Smith

  ‘The airship?’ Caraway took it. ‘You’re sure?’

  Raw hope cracked his voice. Penn exchanged another glance with Ree. If they were wrong – but they couldn’t be wrong. The mysterious man who owned the basement had done his best to prevent them escaping with this particular secret.

  ‘Sure as we can be, sir.’

  ‘Right, then.’ The information seemed to give Caraway new energy; he stopped leaning on Penn, standing with only the merest hint of a sway on his own two feet. ‘If that’s where they’ve gone, we have until dawn. Monster like that can’t fly at night. We’ll sneak on board, get the children back, and escape before the Parovians even notice we’re there.’

  ‘They will notice,’ Bryan said heavily. Meeting Caraway’s glare, he shook his head. ‘I’m not trying to throw obstacles in your path, lad. You know I’m on your side. But they will notice, and they will come after you, and you’ll be back to the reason you wanted it to be stealth in the first place: too few of you, and too many of them. That airship’s crawling with Parovians, and you can bet more of them are soldiers than we realised. You need –’

  He stopped abruptly, but Caraway finished the sentence for him. ‘Ayla.’

  They looked at each other; then the captain slammed his fist into his palm.

  ‘Damn it. You’re right. I don’t think we can do this without her. But if she leaves the Kardise border now …’

  Bryan frowned. ‘The evidence you sent with Sorrow –’

  ‘Is enough to show that a Mirrorvalese dissident group, and not Ayla herself, killed the ambassador,’ Caraway said. ‘It should have been enough to halt the war. But with Mirrorvale still apparently to blame, I don’t know that Ayla will have been able to swing Kardise opinion all the way back round to the possibility of peace.’

  ‘But now we know the mastermind behind the plot was Parovian, not Mirrorvalese,’ Ree said. ‘Surely that will make a difference.’

  ‘Yes,’ Caraway agreed. ‘If I had a way to prove it. But the connection between Parovia’s actions tonight and the activities of Free Arkannen is based purely on hearsay. Given that I’ll be sending a Helmsman to the border to call Ayla away in haste, any attempt to claim Parovian involvement in the ambassador’s murder will be viewed as desperation. The Kardise will have no reason to believe it, or to rush through the signing of a treaty. And without that, if Ayla leaves the battlefield …’

  ‘Does it have to be a Helmsman?’ Zander asked. He’d been standing in the shadows, silent – keeping out of Helm business – but now he stepped forward. ‘Or could I go?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes. I thought … you are right that it will be hard to convince the councillors. They will suspect a Mirrorvalese trick. But since I am my father’s son …’ His smile was a ghost of itself. ‘Besides, as you know, my father wants me back. So sending me would be a token of good faith on your part.’

  ‘Zander?’ Ree said in a small voice. ‘You are coming back, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘If me staying in Sol Kardis is what it will take to convince the councillors to sign the treaty and release Lady Ayla to go after her children, I have to do it.’ Zander turned pleading eyes on her. ‘Don’t I?’

  She hesitated only a moment, before nodding. ‘Yes. You do.’

  ‘Thank you, Zander,’ Caraway said softly. ‘We’ll need to find an airship and a pilot, assuming there’s anyone willing to fly in the middle of the night –’

  ‘Actually, an airship alone would be enough.’ Zander smiled rather sheepishly. ‘A councillor’s son doesn’t get to my age without knowing his way around the controls of a skyboat.’

  ‘All right. Use the courier ship. The one that would have set off at first light. Ree, go with him. Take horses if it’ll get you to the third ring faster. Soren is on guard down there tonight; tell him he’s released from that duty. Instead, he’s to take the duty roster and the address ledger and call up the off-duty Helmsmen from their homes.’ He paused for a moment’s thought. ‘One of them had better go straight to the Mallory farm and make sure Corus is safe – alert his guard. The rest’ll defend Darkhaven while we’re gone. In the meantime, you grab anyone you can from the fifth ring and get back here by the third chime. We need to reach the Windsinger before dawn.’

  ‘I could ring the warning bell,’ Ree said. ‘That would bring them up here –’ But Caraway was shaking his head.

  ‘No. The Parovian force believe they’ve put Darkhaven out of action. I want them to keep thinking that.’

  Ree nodded. She looked at Zander. ‘You ready, Zander?’

  ‘Yes.’ He touched his fingertips to Caraway’s in farewell. Then he walked over to Penn and gave him a hug. ‘You and Ree take care of each other.’

  Not trusting himself to speak, Penn hugged him back. Without another word, Zander and Ree jogged off in the direction of the postern gate. Swallowing a lump in his throat that felt very much like tears, Penn turned his back on them and went to see if anyone in the mess hall was still alive.

  Miles was alive. That was the first thing. It hurt more than anything he’d felt before, but he was alive.

  He tried to open his eyes, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. It was too busy screaming, all over, silently. Fractured signals reached him in between the waves of pain: cooling stickiness beneath his hands – his own blood? Hard stone beneath him. The unintelligible murmur of voices –

  That was the second thing. He wasn’t alone.

  He concentrated on breathing, though his lungs protested with every rise and fall. Gradually the voices became clearer. Mirrorvalese accents, not Parovian – so he was probably still in Darkhaven. Which meant someone must have found him. But did they know – had they realised – the children –

  Once again, he tried to open his eyes, but he was a prisoner in his own body. Take it slowly, Miles. Just listen …

  ‘… all I could find in the fifth ring.’ He recognised that voice. Ree, one of the younger Helmsmen. The one who couldn’t shoot straight. ‘There must be more of us who were neither at the border with Lady Ayla nor here in Darkhaven when – when it happened, but I expect they’re either at home or elsewhere in the city. Soren has gone looking for them, like you said, and he’ll bring them up as soon as he can.’

  ‘Thank you, Ree,’ a man’s voice replied. This one was even more familiar. Captain Caraway. So I did keep him alive, at least.

  In the warm aftermath of relief, Miles managed to lift his eyelids a fraction, but light pierced his skull like a dagger and he squeezed them shut again. Orange light, it had been. A lamp. Still night-time, then. Even though Darkhaven had been locked up for the night, and Gil had thought himself safe until morning, Ree must have come up to the tower unexpectedly, discovered the situation and raised the alarm.

  ‘It will be enough,’ Caraway said. ‘It will have to be enough. A handful to go after the children, a handful more to stay here …’ Then, abruptly, his voice changed to something sharp and anxious. ‘Penn? Did you –’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ New footsteps sounded, approaching from further away. ‘They’re all dead.’

  Miles could hear how much it cost Penn to say those words with even a semblance of composure. Guilt poured through him, awakening another silent scream from his battered body. Then Penn added, ‘I did wake the physician before I went to the mess hall, just in case there was anything –’

  His voice cracked, and Gil spoke into the pause with the soft Mirrorvalese tones he usually affected. ‘We thought perhaps the effects of the poison might have varied. Perhaps some of the men might have survived. But sadly, it wasn’t so.’

  Now Miles lay still by choice rather than necessity, trying not to let his breathing show. Gil couldn’t have expected Caraway to be alive; he must be thinking on his feet, working out how this affected the overall plan. But it wasn’t an insuperable problem for him. Whereas the continued existence of Miles himself … as soon as Gil di
scovered that, he would have a single goal in mind: to put an end to it before Miles could reveal the truth. The only advantage Miles had was that Gil certainly wouldn’t expect him to have survived. The man was a physician, for the Sun Lord’s sake! He knew how to stab someone effectively. If Miles hadn’t been wearing the latest prototype of the collar he was developing for the Helm, he would have bled out a long time ago. Even with it, he’d be dead before morning unless he received medical attention.

  Just stay quiet, Miles. He thinks you are already dead. The others believe you unconscious. With any luck, you will gain enough time to –

  ‘I understand you have been poisoned too, Captain,’ Gil said. ‘Let me give you an antidote.’

  Flaming Luka. Without another thought, Miles lurched into a sitting position. ‘No, Tomas! You cannot trust him!’

  The movement forced a fresh gush of hot blood from his wounds, and the pain that belatedly gripped him was fierce enough to bring tears to his eyes. He wrapped his arms around himself and ducked his head, gritting his teeth to keep his moan unvoiced.

  ‘Deal with him, first,’ he heard Caraway tell Gil. ‘I need you to keep him alive.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  He is going to kill me. Miles jerked his head up again to find Gil almost within arm’s reach. The man was dressed in bedclothes, for all the world as if he’d been sleeping, but he’d flung his coat on over the top. Miles wondered how he’d explained away the bloodstain on the sleeve. He must have expected to have the whole night to clean up, not – judging by the position of the moon in the sky – a mere handful of chimes.

  Their eyes met, and Miles began to babble.

  ‘He is one of them. One of us! He wants to keep me quiet. He tried to kill me.’ Then, as the physician knelt down beside him with a small bottle, ‘Tomas! Please! Your children. He is the only one who knows where they are. I swear –’

  ‘He is feverish,’ Gil spoke over him calmly. ‘You won’t get much sense out of him until I give him this dose. If you wish, Captain, I can take half of it myself.’ He laughed. ‘Prove it isn’t poison.’

  Miles understood. The draught wouldn’t kill him after all; that would raise too many questions. It would merely knock him out for a bell or two, long enough for morning to come and the children to be well on their way to Parovia. That was all that mattered to Gil. Suspicion would fall on the physician after the event, of course, but by then it would be too late.

  For the first time, Miles risked taking his eyes off Gil. If he could just find someone to listen to him, someone who might be willing to take his side – but of course there was no-one. The circle of light shed by the lamp revealed only a few faces: Gil to the right, with Penn standing at his shoulder, and Caraway to the left. Behind the captain were Ree and the men she’d presumably brought up from the fifth ring, perhaps three or four of them; hard to make out in the shadows. Darkhaven’s main gates loomed above them. They were still in the central square where Gil had stabbed him, and there was no-one else around.

  Which meant his only hope was the man he’d poisoned less than a bell ago.

  ‘Please.’ Miles fixed his gaze on Caraway’s face, willing him to accept it, but the captain wasn’t even looking at him. ‘If you want to find them –’

  ‘Can you hold him down for me, Penn?’ Gil spoke over him again, unstoppering the bottle. Penn moved into position behind Miles, his hands on Miles’s shoulders.

  ‘You are running out of time –’

  ‘When I give you the signal, tip his head back and hold his mouth open.’

  ‘Please, just trust me –’

  ‘Enough.’ Caraway said only that one word, but everyone else fell silent. Miles studied his face, barely daring to hope, but he was looking at Penn. And Penn …

  Penn’s hands were fast around Gil’s wrists, keeping him from moving.

  When Miles turned his head back in Caraway’s direction, finally the captain met his gaze.

  ‘Give me one good reason, Miles. One good reason why I should trust you.’

  Miles didn’t blink. ‘Because I have nothing left to lose.’

  Caraway laughed, but it was a harsh sound like metal grating against bone. ‘You think that makes you trustworthy? A man’ll say and do anything when his life is on the line.’

  ‘Just turn back his lapel.’ Was the physician arrogant enough to be wearing it still? Miles rather thought he was. ‘You will see the Enforcers’ token he carries. That will prove I am telling the truth.’

  At a nod from his captain, Penn let go of one of Gil’s wrists and lifted the lapel of his coat. Silver glinted in the lamplight, and Miles released a long-held breath. It was there. The Parovian crown. Surely Caraway would believe him now.

  Yet Gil’s free hand was already moving, snatching the bottle out of his other hand and lifting it to his lips. Penn caught his wrist again, wrenching it back down, but too late. The little bottle fell to the ground, spilling a final few drops of liquid across the stone; a dazed, stupid grin spread across the physician’s face.

  ‘Damn you, Gil.’ Caraway stumbled forward a couple of steps, but he was still unsteady on his feet. ‘Tell me what you’ve done with my children. Tell me!’

  Yet it was no use. Even as Caraway took another step towards him, Gil’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped against Penn. The bottle had contained something to knock him out, just as Miles had guessed. Not an ordinary sleeping draught; something far stronger. There’d be no waking him for some time … which meant no way he could give up his secrets.

  Caraway swore. Leaning on Ree’s shoulder, he stared wild-eyed around the circle as though at a loss for what to do next. But then his gaze settled on Miles, and decision returned to his face.

  ‘Is there anything you can do to bring him out of it?’

  ‘No.’ Miles really wished there had been. At least that way he would have been able to prove his good faith. ‘Or rather … I could perhaps analyse the drops left in that bottle and come up with an antidote, but it would take more time than you have. I am sorry, Tomas.’

  Caraway looked at him in silence for a moment longer. Then, turning his head, he said, ‘Art?’

  Relief and fear hit Miles in quick succession, leaving him breathless.

  Art is here.

  He knows what I am.

  He didn’t want to watch as Art left his place in the shadows by the gate, behind the Helmsmen, and came forward into the light. He didn’t want to see the expression on Art’s face. Yet he couldn’t help himself. He huddled on the ground and waited, motionless except for his trembling hands, until Art stood directly in front of him – and all the while, he couldn’t look away. He saw the new lines in Art’s face. He saw the hurt and the bitter disappointment. And his heart seemed to slow to nothing in his chest.

  ‘Are you sure you’re happy to do this?’ Caraway asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Art’s gaze never left Miles’s face.

  ‘All right. Then we’ll go and prepare ourselves.’ Caraway touched Art’s shoulder, briefly, before moving away in the direction of one of the doors that connected the tower to the central square. His steps were slow and uneven, and Ree remained at his side to support him; yet even so, a single sharp whistle sent the rest of the Helmsmen scurrying in his wake, two of them carrying the physician’s recumbent body between them.

  ‘Tomas!’ Miles called after him, turning away from Art with considerable effort. The captain stopped walking and glanced back over his shoulder.

  ‘Yes?’ His tone was not encouraging.

  ‘T-try eating something. It will help with the after-effects.’

  Caraway hesitated, frowning, as though he were trying to decide which of several stinging retorts to give. But in the end he simply nodded, before he and the Helmsmen disappeared through the door.

  Miles was left alone with Art.

  Tentatively, he looked up once more. He didn’t even know what Art had been asked to do, he realised. Interrogate him? Torture him? Kill h
im? The people you loved made the best weapons against you – he’d learned that already. But had Caraway?

  Either way, the important thing was to offer Art some kind of apology, however inadequate, before it was all over.

  ‘Art?’ he whispered hoarsely.

  ‘Shut up, Miles.’

  ‘But I –’

  ‘I said shut up. I’ll ask the questions when I’m ready. In the meantime, there’s not one damn thing you can say to me that I wanna hear.’

  He wasn’t looking at Miles any more – he was staring into the middle distance as though preparing himself for an unpleasant task – and somehow, that was worse even than the intensity of his previous stare.

  At least it is not torture. Or death. Yet that provided Miles with no consolation at all. He was going to have to tell Art everything he had done; faced with that prospect, he thought death would almost certainly have been the better option.

  He gritted his teeth and waited in silence. Finally, Art cleared his throat, folded his arms and met Miles’s gaze once more, his face wiped clean of all expression.

  ‘How did they get in here?’

  ‘Airship.’ It hurt to talk, but Miles pushed himself through it. ‘A small one can land on the hill outside the tower. The Enforcers have known that since the mercenary, Sorrow, crashed here three years ago.’

  ‘Because you told them.’ Art’s voice was flat, but Miles flinched all the same.

  ‘I th-thought the information would be of no use,’ he said, stumbling over his words, ‘because surely Captain Caraway would do something to prevent it happening again. But he never did. There is only space for a two-seater, after all. Hardly an invasion. And the Helm would see it coming long before it was a threat. But the Parovian pilot was trained in night-flying and precision landing …’

  He was talking too much. He dug his nails into his palms, forcing the flow of information to slow.

  ‘Three men came in through the postern gate and took the children out the same way. It would have been terribly dangerous, flying a two-seater airship with six passengers at night. They must have landed as soon as they were beyond the walls of the city, transferred the children into some other conveyance … they will be heading for the border. But how they plan to cross, I do not know. I promise.’