by Sue Tingey
I wondered whether I should tell him what had become of my mother, but decided there wasn’t any point: at best he’d feel guilty and at worst he’d feel nothing at all, and I’d rather live with the illusion that he’d once cared for her. If what Amaliel had said was true, she was probably just a pawn in another of his games – I hoped it wasn’t so but … There was something I did want to ask Baltheza, and I was wondering how to broach the subject when he brought it up himself.
‘I’m pleased you have taken to wearing your mother’s ring,’ he said.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I told him, lifting my hand and letting the torchlight play on the stone.
‘I had it specially made for her.’
‘Really?’
Topping up my goblet of wine and pouring one for himself, he said, ‘After Kayla was born, things were a little difficult between my wife Marla and Veronica, as you might imagine, and at one time I feared for your mother’s life.’
‘You thought Marla would—?’ I hesitated, not sure this was something I wanted to put into words.
Baltheza stared at me over the top of his goblet and I wondered if I had already gone too far, but then he smiled. ‘They might have been sisters but there was no love lost between them, and Marla was more than capable of that, so I had the ring made for Veronica as a modicum of protection. The stone is the finest drakon glass.’
‘Drakon glass?’
‘A very rare product of a drakon’s fire: legend has it that such stones have magical protective powers and can ward against poison and dark magic, amongst other things.’ He chuckled. ‘Perhaps if I’d had such a trinket made for myself, Amaliel wouldn’t have been so successful with poisoning me.’
I glanced down at my hand, thinking maybe the stone’s protective powers were more than a legend – and that maybe he really had cared for my mother after all.
As soon as it was polite, I excused myself – Baltheza had been far better company than I’d imagined, but his disquiet over the situation Jamie, Jinx and I found ourselves in made me suddenly anxious to return to my men. That Baltheza insisted two of his guards accompany me didn’t do anything to help my stress levels.
Twenty-Six
When I reached my room it was empty, which was strange – where was everyone? I couldn’t remember ever being totally alone while residing in the palace, and even though Baltheza was now saner than he had been and unlikely to have me assassinated, there was this whole new potential danger. Maybe Jinx and Jamie were next door with the rest of my guards?
I looked around, about to make for the door, when I spotted something on the pillow: a folded sheet of parchment. That was odd too – why would they leave me a note? Usually they left messages with one of the others.
I sat on the edge of the bed and read the message scrawled in large looping swirls of black ink:
Lucky, we have been called to Askala.
Will be back before you know it. J and J
It was short and to the point, and I was pretty sure neither Jamie nor Jinx had written it. Jamie wrote in small, neat script; the letters on this note were large and untidy. I could imagine that Jinx might write like this, but he would have addressed it to Lucinda. He hardly ever called me Lucky – and he certainly wouldn’t do so in a letter.
No, neither of them had written this note – and anyway, they wouldn’t have left me alone and unprotected; at the very least they’d have made sure one of my guards was here waiting for me, or more likely, all of them.
I had to find Shenanigans, Kerfuffle and Kubeck. I scrambled off of the bed and stalked across the room to my dressing room, already fiddling with the buttons down the back of my court dress as I went. The sooner I was out of this damned thing and back into my own clothes the better.
I stripped off the dress, sending several of the buttons pinging across the room, and reached for my jeans. As soon as I’d dressed, I hurried next door, but I hesitated outside my guards’ chamber, not sure whether I should knock or not. I’d just decided I should when I started to wonder why Kerfuffle wasn’t already opening the door – he usually knew when someone was outside before they’d even made their presence known.
I knocked: three short, sharp raps of the knuckles against the hard wood, and waited. There was no answer, so I knocked again and waited. Still no answer? Maybe they’d got bored with waiting – maybe they had gone to the inn … Or maybe something had happened to them.
My heart thumping, I slowly turned the ringed handle and pushed the door open.
All sorts of visions passed through my head before I had the courage to step inside: I imagined my guards all sprawled out across the floor, their throats cut. I saw them sitting in a circle around their platters, heads lolling forward as if asleep, but actually poisoned by the wine. If I’d waited any longer I’d have had my overactive imagination seeing even worse, so I stepped inside the room.
It was empty.
They were at the inn – they had to be.
‘Mistress Lucky?’ The voice behind me made me jump, but to my relief when I turned, Kubeck was standing in the doorway. ‘Sorry, did I alarm you?’ he asked, seeing my expression.
‘It’s all right. I just wondered where everyone was.’
He grinned. ‘Shenanigans and Kerfuffle are with their lady-loves at the inn and Pyrites is off hunting – and I have just returned from visiting my Uncle Davna to tell him the news of the Chief Corrector’s demise.’
‘Is he well?’
Kubeck waggled his hand from side to side. ‘He still mourns his son, but knowing the daemon who took Simion from him is no more has eased his pain.’
I gestured for him to follow me back to my own chamber. ‘Where are the Guardian and Deathbringer?’ he asked, looking around the empty room.
I crossed to the bed, picked up the note and passed it to him. ‘What do you make of that?’
As he read the message his forehead creased into a puzzled frown. ‘They wouldn’t just leave like this.’
‘I didn’t think so either.’
‘Just after you left for dinner with Lord Baltheza they told us quite plainly that we should ensure you’re never left unattended until we’ve solved the puzzle of your attempted murder.’
‘And yet they’ve gone,’ I said.
He handed me back the note. ‘You think this is a forgery?’
I looked back down at the over-the-top, untidy scrawl. ‘Yes,’ I said and dropped the note back on the bed. ‘How far is this Askala place?’
‘Pyrites could probably get us there in a few hours.’
‘Too long,’ I said. ‘I think we’d better find the others.’
‘With your leave, I’ll go and get some weapons,’ Kubeck said. ‘I’ll be but a moment.’
Weapons would be good.
He added, ‘But I suggest you lock the door until I return.’ And with a little bow of the head he hurried off.
I followed him across the room to do as he’d suggested; I had been so sure that now Amaliel was gone I’d be safe in the palace, but if my guards were worried, I should be too. I turned the key in the lock and as an afterthought drew the bolts at the bottom and top of the door.
‘My, my, my,’ a voice said, ‘you are taking your security seriously.’
I spun around to see a woman I had never seen before standing in the doorway to my bathroom. For a moment I was dumbstruck – was there a secret passage leading into my bathroom? Then I remembered the figure pushing me down beneath the bathwater, the figure I was now pretty sure had been Philip. So there must be a secret passageway.
As the woman stepped into my chamber, alarm bells immediately started going off in my head. This woman was dangerous; I was sure of it.
She was almost completely black – not chocolate, not ebony, but the blackest black you could possibly imagine; almost like a picture in negative. Her black hair fell in waves which disappeared under her cloak, beneath which she was wearing close-fitting leather body armour that on anyone else would have probably lo
oked ridiculous; on her it was both incredibly sexy and very commanding.
The two horns that peeked out just above her hairline were glossy, twisted points that could have been carved out of coal. Her skin was like normal everyday skin, but totally dark, like she’d been dipped in matt black paint. Her lips were black, her eyebrows were black and when she smiled at me I could see her teeth and even the inside of her mouth were black. The only parts of her that weren’t were her eyes, and even they had not a hint of white. They were burnished copper orbs with vertical slits for pupils like a cat’s.
‘How …?’
‘I have been sent by the Guardian to escort you to Askala,’ she said.
‘Why didn’t he come himself?’
‘He is otherwise engaged,’ she said.
There was a knock on the door and I heard Kubeck call to me. I turned – and the woman was suddenly between me and the door. I took a step back, amazed by her speed.
‘I wouldn’t answer that if I were you.’
‘Why ever not? Kubeck is one of my guards.’
‘James said I was to tell you to trust no one, not even your guards. He believes one of those close to you is in collusion with the enemy.’
‘Right. And why on earth should I trust you? I don’t even know you.’
‘I was told you would probably be difficult,’ she said, grabbing hold of my arm.
‘Let go of me,’ I snapped, but when I tried to shrug her off her leather-clad fingers tightened, digging painfully into my upper arm.
‘Mistress Lucky!’ I heard Kubeck call through the door as the mystery woman dragged me struggling and kicking towards the black hole that had once been my bathroom.
‘Do behave,’ she said as I grabbed hold of the doorframe with my free hand.
‘Help!’ I screamed as she wacked me across the knuckles with the hilt of a dagger that had appeared in her fist, then she pulled me through the portal and I was in pitch-blackness and falling.
We stopped briefly, almost as if we were in an elevator or turning a corner, before falling again, and when we eventually arrived at our destination, although I was furious at the way I’d been treated, I also began to feel a little foolish. We had landed in a pink and gold marble courtyard surrounded on all four sides by a building that looked very much like a temple – if I’d ever wondered how Askala would look, this probably would have been it.
The woman let go of my arm. ‘This way,’ she said, and I had little alternative but to follow her. She walked ahead to a white-and gold-painted door leading into a long wide corridor of more pink and gold marble. To our left, long open windows overlooked a lantern-lit gardens. At any other time I would have wanted to stop and look, but I had only one thing on my mind: making sure my two men were safe and well.
At the end of the corridor we went through a large hall of yet more pink and gold marble with tall marble pillars flanking the windows and doorways. Carved marble tiles, the only decoration, bordered the floor and ceiling.
‘Almost there,’ the woman said as we stopped outside yet another door and she rapped firmly, three times.
‘Come in,’ a female voice called and the woman opened the door and gestured that I should enter first.
I heard the door close behind me, and when I looked back the woman was gone.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, other than the room would be of pink and gold marble; at least I wasn’t disappointed in that. At the far end of the chamber was a woman dressed in white, standing by a large picture window with her back towards me. After a couple of moments she turned to greet me and somehow I wasn’t at all surprised to recognise her: the woman I’d seen with Jamie – the Keeper.
‘Welcome, Soulseer,’ she said. ‘I am delighted to meet you at last.’
‘Really? Then why the heavy-handed approach? You could have just sent me an invitation to come and visit.’
She laughed. ‘And where would the fun have been in that?’
I had to force myself not to scowl at her; she was one of the good guys, after all – right? I fought back my bad humour and tried to relax. ‘Where are Jamie and Jinx?’
‘You’ll see them shortly. I just wanted to get to know you – to find out if everything that’s being said about you is true.’
‘Like what?’
She strolled over to a small table, picked up a golden decanter and poured red wine into two gold goblets. She handed me one before returning to stand by the window. I joined her.
The window looked out over a sheer drop, with clouds lapping around the mountain face a hundred feet below; it gave the illusion that we were surrounded by a steaming ocean, which immediately brought to mind images of Jamie, Jinx and Pyrites at play in the lake; a happy time that felt like a lifetime ago.
She gazed at me over the rim of her goblet as I took a sip of the wine and looked back at the clouds resting in the purple moonlit sky.
‘You’re not at all what I imagined.’
I gave a humourless laugh. ‘What you see is what you get.’
‘There are some who say you are a fraud.’
‘A fraud of what?’
‘That you cannot possibly be the Soulseer of legend.’
‘I’ve never heard the legend, so I wouldn’t know.’
‘James believes you are the Soulseer.’
‘And what does Jinx say?’
‘Ah, the Deathbringer.’ Her lips curled into a feline smile. ‘He is still not quite himself, but if nothing else is true, he would still rather die than see any harm come to you.’
She gestured that I move closer to the window, but I was as close as I wanted to be; even with the mountainside below obscured by clouds, the drop was too deep for my liking.
‘When I need to think I stand here and look out across the sky. It helps me clear my mind.’
‘It is beautiful.’
‘Like being in what humans call Heaven?’
‘I guess.’
She linked her arm through mine and drew me so close to the window that my knees were touching the wall and my hip the window ledge and I felt the first flicker of real fear. I tried to pull away from her, but her arm was wedging mine tightly against her body.
‘I sometimes wonder what it would be like to dive down into the clouds,’ she said. ‘They look like they go on for ever and ever.’
I took a step back and yanked my arm from hers, spilling some of my wine down the front of my white T-shirt. ‘What do you want, other than to scare the crap out of me?’
‘You are immortal – why should you fear me?’
‘I’m pretty sure even an immortal wouldn’t survive a head-dive out of your window,’ I pointed out, ‘and anyway, I’m half-human.’
‘If you truly are the Soulseer, you are as immortal as the Guardian and Deathbringer.’
‘Why does it matter so much to everyone?’ I asked, suddenly irritated. ‘I see the dead – big deal. I always have, and I suspect I always will.’
‘But you don’t just see the dead, do you? You can open the door to the hereafter.’
‘Only to let the dead move on.’
She stared at me for a moment. ‘Let me get you some more wine,’ she said, taking my goblet and strolling over to the small table to top up our drinks. I used the opportunity to move away from the window. I felt all goose-bumpy, and when I looked down at my arms I noticed a couple of gold threads hanging from the sleeve of my T-shirt.
Gold thread? That meant something. I tried to remember, but before it came to me the Keeper interrupted by holding out my replenished goblet, and the thought was gone.
I didn’t really want it, but I took it from her anyway, too late realising the trembling of my hand was more than a little obvious.
‘You’re a woman of passion,’ she said.
I didn’t reply. I was finding it hard to think straight.
‘And you care very passionately about both the Guardian and Deathbringer, do you not?’
‘Yes.’ My voice was not much more t
han a whisper as my irritation drained away, to be replaced by a bone-weary lethargy.
‘How much do you care? Would you do anything to save them if they were in danger?’
‘Yes.’
She took hold of my chin and lifted my head so I was looking directly into her eyes, until they were all I could see.
‘Would you die to save them?’
‘Hmm.’
‘You would?’
‘Hmm.’
She put her arm around my shoulders and guided me back to the window. I stumbled, and she held me upright. What was the matter with me that I felt so exhausted?
‘Doesn’t it look beautiful?’ She gestured down at the clouds. ‘It would be so quick, so easy – you wouldn’t feel a thing, and you’d die knowing you had freed your lovers.’
‘Freed them from what?’ I said, or at least, I think I did; I was beginning to feel very odd indeed.
‘All you have to do is climb out onto the ledge and jump,’ she said, and somehow I was standing on the window ledge with the Keeper by my side.
‘Giddy,’ I said, and could feel myself swaying. ‘So giddy.’
‘Why don’t you beat your wings and fly?’ she suggested.
Wings? Was I an angel now? I felt her palm on the small of my back. Something was wrong. I knew something was wrong. I turned to face her and she smiled.
‘Goodbye, Soulseer,’ she said, and she pushed me.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I teetered on the brink – if she had had any sense at all, she would have pushed me really hard, but she hadn’t, and as I began to fall, I did what any normal person would do: I grabbed out for the nearest object – and that was the Keeper.
I clung onto her wrist for grim death as my feet skidded from under me and I hung out above the void. She tried to prise my fingers loose, but that was her undoing, because I was at least thinking clearly enough to be certain that if I was going, she was coming with me. She staggered, then almost righted herself – until the weight of my body pitched her forward, and with a shriek she plunged over the side and we were both falling.
