Sappique

by Catherine Fisher

  another answered at once, and then another, and suddenly the room was a hubbub of voices until Ralph’s reedy ‘God save Prince Giles’ had them roaring their approval.

  Finn smiled, wan.

  Claudia watched him, and when their eyes met she saw there was a triumph in him, quiet but proud.

  Keiro had been right, she thought. Finn could talk his way to a crown.

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  She turned. A footman was pushing his way through to her, white and wide-eyed. She crouched, and his voice, thin and terrified, silenced the hubbub.

  ‘They’re here, my lady. The Queen’s army is here.’

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  25

  Some say a vast pendulum swings in the heart of the Prison, or that there is a chamber there white-hot with energy, like the core of a star. For mys4f I think that if lncarceron has a heart it is icy, and nothing could survive there.

  LORD CALLISTON’S DIARY

  The tunnel narrowed rapidly. Soon Keiro was on hands and knees in the shallow water, struggling to keep the new torch alight. Behind her Attia heard Rix gasp as he crawled, the pack slung under his belly, the roof bruising his back. And was it her imagination, or was the air warmer?

  She said, ‘What if it gets too small?’

  ‘Stupid question,’ Keiro muttered. ‘We die. There’s no way back.’

  It was hotter. And choked with dust. She left it on her lips and skin. Crawling was painful; her knees and palms sore and cut. The tunnel had shrunk to a tube now, a red pulsing heat that they had to force their way through.

  Suddenly Rix stopped dead. ‘Volcano.’

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  Keiro twisted round. ‘What!’

  ‘Imagine. If the heart of the Prison is in fact a great magma chamber, sealed by terrible compression in the very centre of its being.’

  ‘Oh for god’s sake...’

  ‘And if we reach it, if it is pierced by even so much as a needle-point . . .’

  ‘Rix!’ Attia said fiercely. ‘This isn’t helping.’

  She heard him breathing hard. ‘But it may be true. What do we know? And yet we could know. We could understand all things at once.’

  She squirmed to look back. He was lying full length in the water. He had the Glove in his hand.

  ‘No!’ she hissed.

  He looked up and his face was lit with that sly delight she had come to dread. And then he was shouting, his voice deafening in the confined space.

  ‘I WILL PUT ON THE GLOVE. I WILL BECOME ALLKNOWING.’

  Keiro was beside her, knife in hand. ‘I’ll finish him this time. I swear I will.’

  ‘LIKE THE MAN IN THE GARDEN...’

  ‘What garden, Rix?’ she asked quietly. “What garden?’

  ‘The one in the Prison, somewhere. You know.’

  ‘I don’t.’ She had her hand round Keiro’s wrist, forcing him still. ‘Tell me.’

  Rix stroked the Glove. ‘There was a garden and a tree 340

  grew there with golden apples and if you ate one of them you knew everything. And then Sapphique climbed over the fence and killed the many-headed monster and picked the apple, because he wanted to know, you see, Attia. He wanted to know how to Escape.’

  ‘Right.’ She had wriggled back. She was close to his pocked face.

  ‘And a snake came out of the grass and it said, “Oh go on, eat the apple. I dare you.” And he stopped then with it to his mouth because he knew the snake was Incarceron.’

  Keiro groaned. ‘Let me...’

  ‘Put the Glove away, Rix. Or give it to me.’

  His fingers caressed its dark scales. ‘And because if he ate it he would know how small he was. How much of a nothing he was. He would see himself as a speck in the vastness of the Prison.’

  ‘So he didn’t eat it, right?’

  Rix stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘In the patchbook. He didn’t eat it.’

  There was silence. Something seemed to pass over Rix’s face; then he frowned crossly at her and tucked the Glove away inside his coat. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Attia. What patchbook? Why aren’t we getting on?’

  She watched him a moment, then shoved Keiro on with her foot. Muttering, he shuffled back. The moment was over, but it had been too close. Somehow, quickly, she had

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  to get the Glove from Rix before he went too far.

  But as she gripped the slimy filth and pulled herself after Keiro she felt his boots ahead and he wasn’t moving. She looked up and saw the torchlight glowing on the end of the tunnel.

  It was a rounded vault of corbelled stone, and a single gargoyle leered down at them with its tongue impudently out. The water was pouring from its mouth, a green slime down the walls.

  ‘That’s it? The end?’ She almost dropped her forehead down into the water. ‘We can’t even turn!’

  ‘End of the tunnel. Not quite the end of the line.’ Keiro had wriggled over on his back and was looking up, his hair dripping. ‘Look.’

  In the roof immediately above him was a shaft. It was circular and around it were letters, strange sigils in some language Attia didn’t know.

  ‘Sapient letters.’ Keiro flinched as the sparks from the torch fell towards his face. ‘Gildas used to use them all the time. And look at that.’

  An eagle. Her heart leapt as she saw the sign that Finn wore on his wrist, its wings wide, a crown around its neck. Down through the centre of the hole, its final links just drifting above Keiro’s hand, hung a chain ladder. As they watched, it shuddered gently, in the vibrations from above. Rix’s voice was calm in the darkness behind her. ‘Well climb it, Apprentice.’

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  * * *

  There was no stable.

  Jared stood in the centre of the clearing and looked blearily around.

  No stable, no feathers. Only, on the floor of the clearing, a scorched circle, that might once have been the blackened scar of a fire. He walked round it. The bracken was deep and curled in the dawn light; spiderwebs, looking like cradles of wool meshed with dew, filled every crack between stem and stalk.

  He sucked his dry lips, then ran his hand over his forehead, behind his neck.

  He must have been here one, perhaps two days, rolled in that blanket, delirious, the horse snuffling and cropping leaves and wandering aimlessly nearby.

  His clothes were sodden with damp and sweat, his hair lank, his hands bitten by insects, and he still couldn’t stop shivering. But he felt as if some door had opened inside him, some bridge had been crossed.

  Walking back to the horse, he took out his medication pouch and crouched, considering the dose. Then he injected the fine needle into his vein, feeling the sharp prick that always set his teeth on edge. He withdrew it, cleaned it and put it away. Then he took his own pulse, wiped a

  handkerchief in the dew and washed his face and smiled at a sudden memory of one of the maids at home asking him if dew was really good for her complexion.

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  It was certainly fresh and cold.

  He took the horse’s reins in hand, and climbed up on to its back.

  He could not have survived such a fever without warmth. Without water. He should be parched with thirst, and he wasn’t. And yet no one had been here.

  As he urged the horse to a gallop he thought about the power of vision; whether Sapphique had been an aspect of his own mind, or a real being. None of it was that simple. There were whole shelves of texts back in the Library discussing the powers of the visionary imagination, of memory and dreams.

  Jared smiled wanly to the trees of the wood.

  For him it had happened. That was what mattered.

  He rode hard. By midday he was in the lands of the Wardenry, tired, but surprising himself by his endurance. At a farm he climbed down a little stiffly and was given milk and cheese by the farmer, a stout, perspiring man who seemed on edge, his glance always wandering to the horizon. When Jared offered money the man pressed it back at him.

  ‘No
, Master. A Sapient once treated my wife for free and I’ve never forgotten that. But a word of advice. Flurry on now, wherever you’re bound. There’s trouble brewing here

  ‘Trouble?’ Jared looked at him.

  ‘I’ve heard the Lady Claudia is condemned. And that lad

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  with her, the one who claims to be the Prince.’

  ‘He is the Prince.’

  The farmer pulled a face. ‘Whatever you say, Master. High politics are not for me. But this I do know; the Queen has an army on the march, and they’re maybe at the Wardenry itself by now. I had three outlying barns fired by them yesterday, and sheep snatched. Thieving scum.’

  Jared stared at him in cold terror. Grabbing the horse he said, ‘I would be grateful, sir, if you hadn’t seen me. You understand?’

  The farmer nodded. ‘In these hard times, Master, only the silent are wise.’

  He was afraid now He rode more carefully, taking field paths and bridleways, keeping to deep lanes between high hedges. In one place, crossing a road, he saw the tracks of hooves and waggons; deep ruts of wheels dragging some heavy ironware. He rubbed the horse’s coarse inane.

  Where was Claudia? What had happened at Court?

  By late afternoon he came up a track into a small copse of beeches on a hilltop. The trees were quiet, their leaves brushed only by a faint breeze, full of the tiny whistlings of invisible birds.

  Jared climbed down, and stood for a moment letting the ache ease in his back and legs. Then he tied up the horse and walked cautiously through the bronze leaf-litter, ankle—

  deep in its rustling crispness.

  Under the beeches nothing grew; he moved from tree to 345

  tree, awkwardly, but only a fox confronted him.

  ‘Master Fox,’ Jared muttered.

  The fox paused a second. Then it turned and trotted away. Reassured, he moved to the edge of the trees and crouched behind a broad trunk. Carefully, he peered round it. An army was encamped on the broad hillside. All around the ancient house of the Wardenry there were tents and waggons and the glint of armour. Squadrons of cavalry rode in arrogant display; a mass of soldiers were digging a great trench in the wide lawns.

  Jared drew in a breath of dismay.

  He could see more men arriving down the lanes; pikemen led by drummers and a fife-player, the reedy whistle audible even up here. Flags fluttered everywhere, and to the left, tinder a brilliant standard of the white rose, a great pavilion was being raised by sweating men.

  The Queen’s tent.

  He looked at the house. The windows were shuttered, the drawbridge tightly raised. On the roof of the gatehouse metal glinted; he thought there were men up there, and perhaps the light cannon that were kept there had been prepared and moved up to the battlements. His own tower had someone on its parapet.

  He breathed out and turned, sitting knees up in the dead leaves.

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  This was a disaster. There was no way the Wardenry could withstand any sort of sustained attack. Its walls were thick but it was a fortified manor and not a castle.

  Claudia must simply be playing for time. She must be planning to use the Portal.

  The thought made him agitated; he stood and paced. She had no idea of the dangers of that device! He had to get inside before she tried anything so foolish.

  The horse whickered.

  He froze, hearing the tread behind him, the footsteps through the rustling leaves.

  And then the voice, lightly mocking. ‘Well, Master Jared. Aren’t you supposed to be dead?’

  ‘How many?’ Finn asked.

  Claudia had a visor that magnified things. She was staring through it now, counting. ‘Seven. Eight. I’m not sure what’s on that contraption to the left of the Queen’s tent

  ‘It barely matters.’ Captain Soames, a grey, stocky man, sounded gloomy. ‘Eight pieces of ordnance could shell us all to pieces.’

  ‘What do we have?’ Finn asked quietly.

  ‘Two cannon, my lord. One authentic Era, the other a mishmash of base metal — it will likely explode if we try to fire it. Crossbows, arquebuses, pikemen, archers. Ten men with muskets. About eighty cavalry’

  ‘I’ve known worse odds,’ Finn said, thinking of a 347

  few ambushes the Comitatus had tried.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Claudia said acidly. ‘And what were the casualties like?’

  He shrugged. ‘In the Prison, no one counted.’

  Below them, a trumpet rang out, once, twice, three times. With a great grinding of gears, the drawbridge began to creak down.

  Captain Soames went to the circular stair. ‘Steady there. And be prepared to pull it up if I give the order.’

  Claudia lowered the visor. ‘They’re looking. No one’s making any moves.’

  ‘The Queen hasn’t arrived. A man who came in last night says she and the Council are making a royal progress to show off the Pretender; they’re in Mayfleld, and will be here in hours.’

  With a thud, the drawbridge was down. The flock of black swans on the moat skidded noisily down to the weedy end and flapped.

  Claudia leant over the battlements.

  The women walked out slowly, with bundles on their backs. Some carried children. Older girls walked hand in hand with their brothers and sisters. They turned, waving at the windows. Behind, on a great wain pulled by the biggest carthorse, the older servants that were leaving sat stoically, rocking with the bumps on the wooden bridge.

  Finn counted twenty-two. ‘Is Ralph going?’

  Claudia laughed. ‘I ordered him to. He said, ‘Yes, my 348

  lady. And what will you be requiring for dinner tonight?”

  He thinks this place would fall down without him.’

  ‘He, like all of us, serves the Warden,’ Captain Soames said.

  ‘No disrespect to you, my lady, but the Warden is our master. If he’s not here, we guard his house.’

  Claudia frowned. ‘My father doesn’t deserve any of you.’

  But she said it so quietly only Finn heard her.

  When Soames had gone to supervise the drawbridge being raised Finn stood beside her, watching the girls trudge down into the Queen’s camp.

  ‘They’ll be questioned. Who’s here, our plans.’

  ‘I know. But I won’t be responsible for their deaths.’

  ‘You think it will come to that?’

  She glanced at him. ‘We have to set up talks. Play for time. Work on the Portal’

  Finn nodded. She walked past him to the stairs and said over her shoulder, ‘Come on. You shouldn’t stand up here. One arrow from that camp and it would be all over.’

  He looked at her, and just as she got to the stairs he said,

  ‘You do believe me, Claudia, don’t you? I need you to believe that I remember.’

  ‘Of course I believe you,’ she said. ‘Now come on.’

  But she had her back to him, and she didn’t turn around.

  ‘It’s dark. Hold that torch higher.’

  Keiro’s voice came impatiently down the shaft; the echoes made it hollow and strange. Attia stretched up as

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  high as she could, but the torchlight showed her nothing of him. Below her Rix shouted, ‘What can you see?’

  ‘I can’t see anything. I’m going on.’

  Scrapes and clangs. Muttered swearing that the shaft took and whispered to itself. Worried, Attia called, ‘Be careful.’

  He didn’t bother to answer. The ladder twisted and jerked as she struggled to hold it still; Rix came and hauled on it with all his weight, and it was easier. She said, ‘Listen, Rix. While we’re alone. You have to listen to me. Keiro will steal the Glove from you. Why not pull a stunt on him?’

  He smiled, sly. ‘You mean give it to you, and carry a fake one? Oh my poor Attia. Is this the limit of your cunning? A child could do better.’

  She glared at him. ‘At least I won’t give it to the Prison. At least I won’t kill us all.’

  He win
ked. ‘Incarceron is my father, Attia. I am born of its cells. It will not betray me.’

  Disgusted, she gripped the ladder.

  And realized it was still.

  ‘Keiro?’

  They waited, hearing the thud-thud, thud-thud, of the Prison’s heart.

  ‘Keiro? Answer me.’

  The ladder swung easily now. No one was on it.

  ‘Keiro!’

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  There was a sound but it was muffled and far away. Hastily she shoved the torch into Rix’s hands. ‘He’s found something. I’m going up.’

  As she hauled herself up the first slippery rungs he said, ‘If it’s trouble, say the word “problem”. I’ll understand.’

  She stared at his pock-marked face, his gap-toothed grin. Then she swung down and put her face close to his. ‘Just how crazy are you, Rix? A lot, or not at all? Because I’m beginning to be very unsure.’

  He arched one eyebrow. ’I am the Dark Enchanter, Attia. I am unknowable.’

  The ladder wriggled and slid under her as if it was alive. She turned and climbed quickly, soon breathless, hauling her weight up. Her hands slid on the mud Keiro’s boots had left; the heat grew as she went up, a murky sulphurous stench that reminded her uneasily of Rix’s idea of the magma chamber.

  Her arms ached. Each step now was an effort and the torch, far below, was no more than a spark in the darkness. She hauled herself up one more rung and hung, giddily.

  And then she realized there was no shaft wall in front of her, but a faintly lit space.

  And a pair of boots.

  They were black, rather battered, with a silver buckle on one and broken stitching on the other. And whoever wore them was bending down, because his shadow was

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  over her and he was saying, ’How very pleasant to meet you again, Attia.’

  And he reached down and grabbed her chin and jerked her face up and she saw his cold smile.