The Amber Legacy (36 page)

‘
B
ut where are we going, Lady Amber?’ Jewel asked, as she passed the bundle of clothing to the silent men loading the wagon.

‘I don’t know any more than you do,’ Meg replied. She clutched Jon to her chest to shield him from the midnight chill. In her vest, Whisper shuffled for more comfort. A young man urged the women to climb aboard. The wagon lurched into motion and Meg listened to the steady clip-clop of the horses’ hooves on the courtyard pavers. She kept her hood close to her face as they passed through the torch-lit palace gates into the city. Because she hadn’t been outside the palace grounds since arriving, she was exhilarated at the prospect of seeing the wider world of Port of Joy.

‘Are you going home?’ Jewel asked, her voice low despite the noise of the wagon wheels rattling over the cobbles and dirt.

‘No,’ Meg told her. ‘The Queen is sending us somewhere safe.’ Jewel sat against the wagon side and fell silent, leaving Meg to wonder what the girl was making of the secret journey. She was curious to see where the Queen was sending them. Perhaps it was to a small refuge in the city that no one but the Queen and
her closest confidants knew. Or were they on their way out of the city into the neighbouring countryside?

The wagon crossed the river bridge, the name of which Meg couldn’t recall at first.
King’s Bridge
, she remembered, as the wagon veered into a dark street. No one was out at this time of night. The moon was in its first-quarter phase, but the sky sparkled with stars, and the lack of clouds explained the cold air. The wagon turned more corners and passed along several narrow lanes, so close to the buildings on either side that Meg felt she could touch them by reaching out. Baby Jon wriggled every time the wagon bumped over a harsh section of road, but he didn’t wake. Meg hadn’t considered what she would do if he started crying, apart from fill his mouth with her breast to soothe him, but she hoped he stayed asleep. The wagon turned again, and she realised that they were descending a steep slope. They were close to the sea because she could smell salt and hear waves. She hadn’t thought of the possibility of being put on a boat, and she was apprehensive at the idea of going on the ocean. The wagon creaked to a standstill and shook as the driver and his companion dismounted. The driver tapped Meg’s shoulder, whispering, ‘If your ladyship will follow me.’

‘Where are we?’ she whispered, as she climbed down with the driver’s assistance, but the man was silent. Leaving his companion with the wagon, he led Meg, carrying Jon, and Jewel following, along a short alley to a darkened door.

‘Knock,’ he instructed, and promptly left.

‘What about our clothes?’ Meg whispered, but the driver was out of earshot. She listened at the door, noticing the thin line of light along the doorjamb, before she passed her baby to Jewel, and knocked. Someone shuffled behind the door and a shadow blotted the doorjamb light.

‘Who’s there?’ a voice whispered.

How should I answer?
Meg wondered. ‘The Queen sent me,’ she finally said.

There was an unsettling moment of silence, before a bolt slid on the inside, and the door opened. Candle in hand was an elderly woman, her head wrapped in a black scarf. Her wrinkled face looked like a ploughed field, arguing that she was extremely old, but her erect carriage belied her apparent age. ‘Well? Come in,’ the woman urged.

They entered a small room, cluttered with ramshackle furniture and dirty tapestries. Multihued cats crouched among the detritus, staring angrily at the intruders, their eyes shining as they mirrored the candlelight. The stench of cat was overpowering. The woman petted a brindle tom, before indicating that Meg and Jewel should go through a low, narrow door. ‘What’s in there?’ Meg asked cautiously.

‘Don’t waste time with questions, girlie,’ the woman curtly answered. ‘You go through there.’

Meg turned the wooden handle and opened the door. At first there was darkness, until the old woman thrust her candle forward. ‘Take this. You won’t see anything without it.’

Meg took the candle and entered the room. It was small, and indescribable fragments of furniture and pots and fishing nets were piled against the walls. Movement in the shadows was revealed, when Meg lifted the candle, as a little dark-haired girl in ragged clothes. The girl shielded her eyes from the light and stepped forward, her hand held out.

‘Who are you?’ Meg asked, taking the girl’s tiny hand in her own.

‘Mouse,’ the little girl answered. ‘You’ll need a lantern, lady.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘A secret place. You’d better get a lantern.’

Meg cast a searching eye over the odd jumble of items, and spied a red lantern on the wall. She retrieved it, checking that Jewel was fine with baby Jon before she tried lighting it. The lantern was full of oil and lit easily. It spread an even glow through the tiny room. ‘Now where?’ she asked.

Mouse giggled and tapped her foot on the wooden floor. ‘Under here.’ She pushed aside a fishing basket, revealing a pull ring in the floorboards. ‘Here’s the way in.’

Meg put the lantern on the floor and pulled on the brass ring, opening a trapdoor. Wooden steps descended sharply into darkness. ‘Where does this go?’

‘You have to go down,’ Mouse said, her face serious.

Meg glanced at Jewel, took up the lantern and began to climb down. She arrived in a square space furnished with a small, circular wooden table and three stools. Crude shelves cut into the walls held jars and utensils. A lantern hung from the ceiling on a metal hook. To her left was a small wooden door. Whisper’s head appeared out of her vest, and the rat dropped to the floor. ‘Curious?’ Meg asked. Whisper started searching the chamber. Meg waited for Jewel to descend with baby Jon securely wrapped in his shawl. ‘Is he still asleep?’ she asked. Jewel nodded. The trapdoor above swung shut.

‘Now where?’ Jewel asked nervously. ‘Do we stay here?’

‘I don’t know.’ Meg was disappointed at the possibility that the Queen was going to make them hide in such a dismal place. ‘But I’d better find out where this door goes.’ As she warily turned the handle and opened the door, Whisper darted past her feet and into the tunnel, to the edge of the lantern light. ‘Wait,’ Meg said. She unhooked the ceiling lantern and checked for oil.
She clicked the igniter, hearing the tiny flints sparking. At first the battered lantern was reluctant to ignite. She shook it to ensure there was oil on the wick, and tried again. This time it fired. ‘I’m going to check the tunnel,’ she told Jewel, as she replaced the lantern on its hook.

The tunnel was narrow and low, and Meg had to stoop as she followed the inquisitive rat. They travelled thirty paces before Whisper stopped.
Bad things
formed in Meg’s head, and Whisper scampered back to crouch behind her legs. Fear thrilling through her veins, Meg strained into the darkness to see or hear. She edged back a step, puzzled by Whisper’s reaction, and tried to create a feeling in the form of a question that the rat might understand.

Men things
, the rat replied.

In the same instant, a black shape emerged from the darkness. ‘This way, Lady Amber,’ Follower said.

Stifling a scream, Meg stammered, ‘I didn’t expect you.’

‘Her Majesty wouldn’t entrust this duty to just anyone,’ he replied. ‘But we must hurry. Where’s the baby?’

She glanced over her shoulder at the soft lantern light in the doorway. ‘He’s safe with Jewel.’

‘Bring them,’ Follower ordered. ‘Leave me your lantern.’

She gave him her lantern and retreated to the room. When she returned with Jewel and Jon in her wake, she was bemused by the tableau of Follower and Whisper staring at each other. Follower looked up, and said, ‘This way,’ and led them deeper into the tunnel.

They entered a large chamber that smelt of the sea, and Meg could hear waves crashing against rocks. As the lantern light spread across the crates and boxes stacked in the chamber, out of the shadows came a Seer—and
instantly she knew that the whole situation was wrong. His presence also registered in her head as a simple, urgent response from Whisper.
Bad man thing.
She didn’t recognise him. She turned to Follower, and asked, ‘Who’s this?’

‘Seer Truth,’ Follower replied, and he bowed towards the holy man.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ Truth asked, as he approached Meg.

She stared at the man’s salt-and-pepper beard and hair. His blue eyes sparkled with fierce energy in the lantern light. But there was something in his deep, resonant voice—and then she recognised him. ‘It was you.’

Truth smiled. ‘So you do remember? I knew you would.’

She edged back beside Jewel, ready to protect her son. ‘You tried to kill me,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘I did?’ he asked.

‘You called me an aberration. You said I had to be destroyed.’

Truth nodded. ‘Possibly I said those things. But you didn’t stay to hear what else I had to say.’ He looked down at her feet. ‘I see your familiar is still protecting you.’

She glanced down at Whisper, before she met his calm gaze. ‘Familiar?’

‘Animals possessed with demon spirits.’

‘Whisper’s not possessed by anything,’ she retorted. She noticed men moving through the chamber, carrying boxes towards an opening lit by torches. ‘What else is going on here?’

‘You’re going away,’ Follower said.

‘Thank you, Follower,’ Truth said perfunctorily. ‘You have work to do, I believe?’

Follower bowed again, and skulked away towards the workers.

‘Follower is a good servant of Jarudha, but he forgets his station on occasion.’

‘What did he mean by that?’ Meg asked.

‘You already know,’ Truth replied. ‘The Queen has sent you away for your safety.’

‘You
work for the Queen?’

He smiled wryly. ‘I serve Jarudha.’

‘And Diamond?’

‘Fool,’ Truth calmly replied. ‘He serves the Queen.’

‘Then why did you attack me at Broadfields?’ she asked, her uneasiness increasing in his presence.

‘I didn’t attack you.’

‘You had me kidnapped.’

‘Yes, I did. I wanted to know who this girl was who’d killed Marchlord Overbrook,’ he explained.

‘But I was under the Queen’s protection.’

‘I serve Jarudha, not the Queen,’ he reiterated. ‘I think you already know enough about the
political
situation.’

‘That I’m a woman?’

‘In part.’

‘What else?’

A man came jogging across the chamber towards the Seer, bowing as he arrived. ‘Your Eminence, the tide is turning.’

‘Thank you,’ Truth replied, and turned back to Meg as the sailor withdrew. ‘There’s a great deal you don’t know,’ he said, ‘and there’s no longer any time for you to learn it. But you will have plenty of time to come to terms with everything where you’re going.’

‘Where are we going?’ As she asked the question, she was aware of movement behind her. She turned at the same instant as she heard
Run!
echo in her head, but arms were wrapped around her, pinning her arms tight. Jewel screamed, but as Meg turned her head she was enveloped in suffocating darkness, rough fabric scraping her cheeks. Her struggle was futile.

‘Don’t fight it, Amber,’ Truth’s deep voice warned beyond the hood. ‘You don’t have a choice.’

Magic
, she decided.

‘The Conduit,’ she heard Truth say. Hands pawed at her vest, inside her tunic, across and between her breasts, and the necklet was wrenched from her neck. She screamed inside the stifling hood. ‘You won’t need this where you are going,’ Truth said, when she’d stopped struggling. She felt a hand firmly grasp her jaw through the hood. ‘Perhaps one day you’ll understand why all this happened. It might even make you happy, if you live to see it.’ Then she was released. ‘Take care, Amber. Or perhaps it should just be plain Meg Farmer again. Make what you can of your new life. Be grateful that Jarudha has shown you some mercy.’

Endless, sickening motion—rise and fall, rise and fall. On her knees, she retched into the wooden pail, but her stomach was long empty and nothing came but spasms. She coughed, wiped her mouth and collapsed sideways onto the wooden planks as they tilted towards her. Eyes open, she was in semi-darkness, dull patches of sunlight slanting through cracks in the decking dancing along the planks and ribs of the ship’s hull. She was dying—she had to be to feel like she did. Water spilled across her hands and trickled under her tunic. She was sodden, but she couldn’t rise. Her strength had been vomited away into the pail and across the bilge. Everything was in seesawing motion and all she could do was keep begging it all to end. Something small and black stared at her from the shadows.

She was knee-deep and naked in grey water in a cavern of light. Encircling her were a host of men in Seer robes, a wall of blue that hurt her eyes. Suspended above her
was a baby in blue swaddling cloth, and above the baby floated a sphere of white light. Instinctively she reached for her amber crystal but it wasn’t around her neck, and she was so overcome with sorrow that the light above her dimmed to a dull yellow. It brightened again, and when she looked up she saw the baby’s tiny hand manipulating the light, a bangle of amber around his wrist.

The light was gone and the world was still. Water lapped gently against the invisible hull. The planks creaked. A small warm weight pressed against her side. She reached down to pet the rat, but as her fingers brushed the fur, boots scraped on the decking overhead, wood groaned and iron clanked, and the rat bolted. Lantern light flowed down the steps and glittered on the dark bilge brine. ‘Wake-up time!’ a voice announced, and men descended the steps, bringing the light.

‘Fuck me!’ a man declared. ‘Smells like shit in here.’

‘Trip a bit rough for you, eh, girlie?’ another man asked, as he bent over her.

‘Go empty that pail, for Jarudha’s sake!’ another voice ordered.

Shapes moved around her, while her eyes were adjusting to the bright intrusion. ‘Come on, girlie,’ a sailor said, and arms lifted Meg to her feet.

‘Pretty little bitch, eh?’

‘Much as I hate telling you this, mate, keep your paws off. His Holiness will have your balls for rissoles if you touch her.’