Sapphique - Incarceron 02 (39 page)

After a moment Finn said, 'I understand.'

Another rumble. Keiro sa
id, 'Tell me that's not cannon-
fire.'

'A whole regiment of it,' Caspar said, smug.

Finn pushed him away and turned to Keiro. 'Look. We're beseiged. There's an army out there and we're outgunned and outmanned. Things are not good. I'm afraid you haven't come into some paradise. You've come into a battle.' Keiro had always been an expert at taking things in his stride. Now he looked curiously up the sumptuous corridor. 'In that case, brother, I'm exactly what you need.'

Claudia felt as if she had been broken apart and reassembled, badly, piece by piece. As if she had been forced through some barrier of mesh, a matrix of collapsing dimensions.

She was standing on a great bare floor of black and white tiles.

Facing her father.

He seemed utterly dismayed. 'No!' he breathed. And then, almost like a cry of pain.
'No!'

The floor rippled. She steadied herself, arms out, and then breathed in, and the stink of the Prison overwhelmed her, the stench of endlessly recycled air and human fear. She gasped, and put both hands over her face.

The Warden came towards her. For a moment she thought he would take her hands in his cold fingers, print her cheek with his icy kiss. Instead he said, 'This shouldn't have happened. How could this happen!'

'You tell me.' She glanced round, saw Attia staring at her, and a tall ragged man who seemed utterly astounded, his hands knotted and his eyes deep hollows of awe.

'Magic,' he breathed. 'The true Art.'

It was Attia who said, 'Keiro's vanished. He vanished and you appeared. Does that mean he's Outside?'

'How am I supposed to know?'

'You have to know!' Attia yelled. 'He has the Glove!'

The floor rippled, a wave of cracking tiles.

'No time now for this.' The Warden pulled out a firelock and gave it to Claudia. 'Take this. Protect yourself against whatever the Prison sends.'

She held the weapon limply, but then she saw that behind them the whole vast space was flooding with clouds that swirled and blackened and sparked lightning. One flash cracked into the floor beside the Warden. He swung round, staring up. 'Listen to me, Incarceron' This is not our fault!'

Then whose fault is it?
The voice of the Prison seethed with fury. Its words were crackled and raw, dissolving into hisses of static.
You told him to do it. You betrayed me.

The Warden said coldly, 'Not at all. It may look that way, but you and —'

Why should I not burn you all into ash?

'Because you would damage your delicately-made creation.' The Warden stepped close to the statue; Claudia stared up at it in awe as he pul
led her after him. 'I think you
are too astute to do that.' He smiled. 'It seems to me, Incarceron, that things have changed now between us. For years you have done what you wanted, ruled as you liked. You controlled yourself. I was Warden only in name. Now the one thing you want is beyond your grasp.'

Claudia felt Attia jump up on the step behind her. 'Listen to him,' the girl whispered. 'This is all about him and his power.'

The Prison laughed, a sinister chuckle.
You think so?

John Arlex shrugged. He looked at Claudia. 'I know so. The Glove has been taken Outside. It will be returned to you only by my orders.'

Your orders? Indeed?

'My orders, as Clanlord of the Steel Wolves.'

He was bluffing, Claudia thought. She said aloud, 'Do you remember me, Prison?'

I remember you. You were mine and you are mine again. But now, unless I have my Glove, I will close down the lights and the air and the heat. I will leave millions to suffocate in darkness.

You will not the Warden said evenly, 'or you will never have the Glove.' He spoke as if to a child, with a clear severity. 'Instead, you show me the secret door that Sapphique used.'

So that you and your so-called daughter can release yourselves, and leave me trapped here?
The voice was clotted with sparks.
Never.

The Prison convulsed. Cla
udia staggered and fell against
Rix. He grabbed her arm, grinning. 'My father's anger,' he whispered.
I will destroy you all now.

The black squares of the floor rolled back and were holes. Out of them rose cables with open mouths of venom. They kinked and curled like snakes of power, cracking and spitting.

'Up the steps.' The Warden climbed quickly to the feet of the winged man, Rix shoving Claudia after him. Attia came last, glancing round.

White vivid shocks split the darkness.

'It won't harm the statue: the Warden murmured.

Attia glared. 'You can't be sure ...'

High in the roof, a great rumble silenced her. The clouds were storm-black. Tiny hard pellets of snow were falling from them. In seconds the temperature was below zero and dropping fast, and Rix's breath steamed as he breathed out. 'It won't have to damage it. It'll just freeze us here to its feet: And each of the tiny flakes whispered as it fell, in millionfold anger.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

The first shot had just been a warning. The ball had sailed right over the roof and crashed somewhere in the woods beyond. But Finn knew the next one would smash through; as he ran up the last stair and out on to the battlements he saw through the acrid smoke the Queen's artillerymen adjusting the angles of the five great cannon they had ranged across the lawns. Behind him, Keiro gasped.

Finn turned. His oathbrother stood transfixed, gazing out at the pale dawn sky slashed with gold and scarlet. The sun was rising. It hung like a great red globe above the beechwoods, and rooks rose in clouds to meet it from the branches.

The long shadow of the house stretched over lawns and gardens, and on the moat light glimmered on the ripples the swans made as they woke.

Keiro walked to the battlements and gripped the stonework, as if to make sure it was all real. He gazed for a long moment on the perfection of the morning, at the scarlet and gold pennants flapping over the Queen's pavilions, the lavender hedges, the roses, the bees that hummed in the honeysuckle flowers under his hands.

'Amazing,' he breathed. 'Totally amazing.'

'You haven't seen anything yet,' Finn muttered. 'When the sun gets high, it'll dazzle you. And at night ...' He stopped. 'Go inside. Ralph, get him some hot water, the best clothes

Keiro shook his head. 'Tempting, brother, but not yet. First we deal with this enemy Queen.'

Medlicote came up behind them, a little breathless, and behind him the soldiers pushed Caspar, red in the face and furious.

'Finn, get these ropes off me. I insist!'

Finn nodded and the nearest guard sliced the knot swiftly. Caspar made a great show of rubbing his chafed wrists, staring haughtily around at everyone except Keiro, whose eyes he seemed too terrified to meet.

Captain Soames stared at him in disbelief. 'Isn't that . . . ?'

'That's a miracle.' Finn said. 'Now. Can we get their attention before they blast us to pieces?'

The flag was raised; it flapped loudly. In the Queen's camp a few men pointed; someone ran into the large tent. No one came out.

The guns were a row of dark muzzles. 'If they fire ...' Medlicote said nervously. Keiro said, 'Someone's coming.'

A courtier was galloping towards them on a grey horse. He spoke to the artillerymen as he passed, then galloped cautiously over the lawns to the edge of the moat.

'You wish to surrender the Prisoner?' he called up.

'Shut up and listen to me.' Finn leant over. 'Tell the Queen if she fires on us she kills her son. Understand?'

He grabbed Caspar and hauled him to the battlements. The courtier stared up in horror, his horse prancing under him. 'The Earl? But
..’

Keiro stepped up to Caspar, one arm around his shoulders. 'Here he is! With both ears, both eyes and both hands. Unless you'd like some proof to take the Queen?'

'No!'
the man gasped.

'Shame Keiro had a knife carelessly against Caspar's cheek. 'But I suggest you tell the Queen that he's in my hands now and I'm not like the rest of you. I'm not playing any games.'

He tightened his grip and Caspar stifled a gasp.

Finn said, 'No.'

Keiro smiled his most charming smile. 'Run along now.'

The courtier turned his horse and raced for the tents. Clods of earth were flung up by the hooves. As he passed he yelled urgently at the men by the cannons; they backed away, obviously puzzled.

Keiro turned. He pushed the point of the knife very slightly into Caspar's white skin. A small red spot swelled with blood.

'A little souvenir he whispered.

'Leave him.' Finn came and tugged Caspar away and pushed the half-fainting Earl at Captain Soames. 'Put him somewhere safe and have a man stay with him. Food and water. Anything he needs.'

As they took the boy away he turned on Keiro angrily. 'This is not the Prison!'

'So you keep telling me.'

'You don't need to be so savage.'

Keiro shrugged. 'Too late. This is me, Finn. This is what the Prison has made me. Not like all this, no: He waved at the manor house. 'This pretty world, those toy soldiers. I'm real. And I'm free. Free to do whatever I want.'

He headed for the stairs.

'Where are you going?'

'That bath, brother. Those clothes.'

Finn nodded to Ralph. 'Find him some.'

Seeing the consternation in the old man's face, he turned away.

He had forgotten. In three months he had forgotten the wildness in Keiro, his arrogance, his utter wilfulness. How he had always been scared of what Keiro would do.

A woman's scream of fury jerked his head up. It cut the morning like a knife, and it came from the Queen's pavilion.

Well, at least that was one message that had gone home.

31

As the Beast I took your finger. As the Dragon I give you
my
hand.

Now you have crawled and clambered into my heart. I can't see you any more. Are you still here?

MIRROR OF DREAMS TO SAPPHIQUE

The very air was freezing.

Huddled at the feet of the winged Sapphique, Attia could not stop shivering. Knees up, arms wrapped round herself, she suffered the numbing agony of cold. Her shoulders were white, her arms, her back. Snow made the miserable heap that was Rix into an albino wizard, his straggly hair glistening with half-melted slush. 'We'll die,' he croaked.

'No.' The Warden had not stopped pacing. His footsteps made a complete circle about the base of the statue. 'No. This is a bluff. The Prison is computing a solution. I know how its mind works. It's
trying out every plot and plan
can devise, and in the meantime it hopes to force us to give it the Glove.'

'But you can't!' Rix groaned.

'Do you think I can't speak to the Outside?'

Claudia was standing right behind him. She said, 'Can you? Or are you bluffing too? Is this part of the game you've spent your life playing?'

Her father stopped and turned to her. Pinched with cold, his face was deathly pale against the high dark collar. 'You still hate me then?'

'I don't hate you. But I can't forgive you.'

He smiled. 'For rescuing you from a life in hell? For giving you everything you could ever want — money, education, great estates? Betrothal to a prince?'

He always did this to her. Made her feel foolish and ungrateful. But still she said, 'All that yes. But you never really loved me.'

'How do you know?' His face was close to hers.

'I would have known. I would have felt... '

'Ah, but I play games, remember?' His eyes were clear and grey. 'With the Queen. With the Prison. It has taught me to be careful what I show to the world He took a slow breath, the snow catching on his narrow beard. 'Perhaps I loved you more than you knew. But if we come to accusations, Claudia, I might say this. You love only Jared.'