The Red Queen (111 page)

‘My father likes us to come here,’ said the younger boy pugnaciously, and now I saw Gretha’s look about him.

‘I am sure he does,’ I said calmly. ‘Indeed he has spoken of you to me.’

The boy’s eyes widened. Then he giggled and elbowed the other boy.

‘Of
both
his sons,’ I said, lest a new war break out. The bigger boy puffed up and put on a pompous air.

‘I am the elder so I am more important,’ he announced.

‘Neither of you is important,’ snapped Keely waspishly, taking each of them by the ear. They both howled in protest as she led them to the door through which they had come. ‘You are both halfblood slavesons and never forget it,’ she said, releasing them.

‘Yet our master loves you dearly, which is why you do not want to displease him,’ said Demet smoothly, kindly, and bade the boys go back into the compound. They obeyed resentfully, then all three women turned to me.

‘Why are you here?’ asked Cora. ‘Do you still seek Mad Matthias? Or your love? Rushton, you said was his name.’

I swallowed a rush of pain. ‘I seek the Red Queen,’ I said.

‘You said you had dreamed of her coming here, and suddenly there is a rumour that she will reveal herself this very night as the Red Queens of old,’ said Keely.

‘Perhaps it is more than a rumour, Keely. Red flags fly all over this city,’ Demet said softly.

‘Perhaps they are your doing,’ Keely accused me.

‘I think they
are
my doing,’ I admitted. ‘Instead of seeking out this Deenak, as you advised, I went to Maginder and Murrim and Rymer, for I wanted to tell them that I had come to Redport with the Red Queen, and it seemed to me that story would be of more interest to Redlanders than Landfolk.’

‘You said you were looking for your man and for Mad Matthias and they are Landborn, that’s why I sent you to Deenak,’ Keely said defensively. ‘And now you say you are looking for the Red Queen, though you told Maginder and the others that you had come to Redport with her.’

‘I did say that, and all of it is true,’ I told her. ‘When I came here, she was outside Redport waiting for me to bring back news of this place and of those loyal to her. I was seeking my friends to ask their help. But before I could find them and return, the Red Queen entered Redport herself. She found the one you call Mad Matthias and he sent a message to Maginder and the other Redland leaders that their queen had come. She means to reveal herself this night in the Infinity of Dragonstraat – that is what set the red flags flying.’

‘That is the rumour running like fire through the whole of Redport, yet it seems to me from what you say that none of the Redland leaders has set eyes on this dream queen of yours,’ Keely said shrewdly. ‘Is it not a ruse to force us to break our oath and rise to prevent the emissary taking the Quarry folk?’

‘But if Maginder and the others believe . . .’ Demet said to her.

‘
Seeing
is believing. Isn’t that what the oath says?’

‘Maybe it is,’ I snapped, weary of her suspicion, which I thought was more a habit than the truth of her heart. ‘But you will see nothing if you close your eyes tight.’

Keely flinched. ‘My eyes are open and what I see is a Landwoman with a dream that turned into a queen that no one has seen.’

I turned to Demet, who asked mildly, ‘Why have you come to us?’

‘Because you did not betray me,’ I said. ‘Because at dawn the Red Land
will
have its queen, but I need your help to reach her before she reveals herself.’

‘Why would the Red Queen want you with her, Landborn?’ Keely demanded.

‘Because we travelled a long hard road together to get here, and because we have been as sisters for many years,’ I said simply and without resentment, for I knew I could coerce them if I must. ‘And because your people cannot help her until she proclaims herself, because of your oath. But I can.’

Yet how well, I wondered, thinking of the Ekoni bristling with weapons and aggression, patrolling the infinity, the block preventing me from using my abilities properly, and Dragon revealing herself, all alone. I was suddenly vividly reminded of something I had seen through Matthew’s eyes, long ago: Dragon standing up to soldierguards and Herders, furious and defenceless. Yet surely the farseeker would never stand aside and allow her to be harmed.

Keely exchanged a glance with Demet, who said, ‘What can we do even if we wanted to help you? We are here alone, a pack of women and two unruly boys.’

Cora added resentfully, ‘We cannot go out without a man, though the emissary is to be entertained with flame and music and dance in the Infinity of Dragonstraat. Nareem would not arrange an escort because he fears some violent display by the supporters of the Quarry warriors to be gifted to the emissary.’

I caught a look pass between the two Redland women that told me they had already decided to disobey Nareem. Doubtless they had arranged with Redland men to escort them when Cora and the household slept.

‘The women of the emissary are to fight one another,’ Cora went on sulkily. ‘It is a tradition among their people. The wife of the Prime spoke of the matter yesterday when Gretha and I were making adjustments to her gown. She said Shambala must be a very queer land, for there, people care about hiding their faces and their emotions but not their bodies. She does not approve of women fighting, but Nareem says the Chafiri are looking forward to the freakishness of it.’

‘Have you heard if Ariel is here?’ I asked.

‘How you do harp on that one,’ Keely sniped.

‘I have not heard he is here in Redport,’ Demet replied calmly. ‘It is said among the Chafiri that he is seeking the treasure he promised the emissary in some distant land. But you have not said yet what you want of us.’

I gathered my wits. ‘When I was here last, I saw in Nareem’s mind that Gretha would accompany his Gadfian mistress to the ball as part of her attending entourage.’

‘That is true,’ Keely said. ‘She was moaning about it this morning because she will be trapped the whole night in some poky little antechamber in the Great Hall waiting to oil her mistress’s arms or massage her neck while every other person in Redport will be celebrating a night without curfew and witnessing whatever spectacles occur.’

‘Not that we are going to be able to enjoy it, with no man to escort us,’ Cora pouted.

‘I wonder that you would wish to go and watch a celebration for this emissary who will carry off your own people as slaves,’ Demet said rather coldly to the younger Landwoman, who wilted.

‘What would you have of us?’ Keely reiterated.

‘I need to get into the Great Hall, for that is the only way I can see to get into the Infinity of Dragonstraat, and I cannot do that without help. I had hoped to accompany Gretha.’

‘You would never be admitted because you are not a Redlander,’ Cora said. ‘No foreign slave is permitted to serve any Chafiri, for they do not trust us. Especially tonight when the emissary will come there with his women before leading away the Quarry slaves, almost all of whom are foreign slaves. As are most of the women he will be offered,’ she added.

‘Not that anyone would know her as Landborn, so long as she was masked,’ Demet said almost casually.

Keely gave her a sharp look. ‘Would you have us help her?’ she demanded bluntly.

‘I know you have your doubts, but if our queen rises this night, as I dreamed last night she would, it might be as well for her sister to be with her, and for that sister to have some special power to aid her.’

Keely’s eyes widened and returned to me, and this time the suspicion had given way to something more ambiguous. ‘I will take you,’ she announced, decisively. ‘I have a man’s attire prepared, and a bowl of ash for a beard in case I am unmasked. I will turn myself into a man and escort you to the Great Hall. Demet, she will need a dress and something that has been forgotten, which she is to bring to Gretha. It must be something important.’

‘But what?’ Demet fretted when Keely had run out. Absently she rummaged in a pile of clothes and then handed me a simple voluminous shift of green sandsilk, saying it was loose enough for me to pull over my shirt and trews, if I rolled up the legs a bit, and not too fine for a slavewoman to wear.

‘The red cloak!’ Cora cried. ‘The one rejected by the Prime’s woman! It is magnificent and no one seeing it could doubt that it was created for tonight. Though you might have told me you meant to go out,’ she added reproachfully.

‘Yes,’ Demet said, and hastened away. She returned with the same great swathe of gauzy red that Nareem had brought out the last time I was here. Demet shook it out and for a moment we all gazed at it, exquisite in its extravagant cut and the way it caught and played with the light.

‘You can say it is for the wife of our Chafiri,’ Demet continued. ‘A gift ordered up by her friend the High Chafiri’s wife, to please the emissary because it is the colour worn in his land for important ceremonies. It was forgotten by Gretha in the haste of getting the other clothes ready.’

Keely nodded, having returned clad in men’s trews and a split tunic. She handed a bowl to Cora and bade the Landwoman give her a beard. Cora set about her task with sparkling eyes, her sulk forgotten.

‘If anyone asks, I will be Nareem’s son and you shall be his halfblood daughter,’ Keely told me. ‘No one will know any better.’

Demet carefully folded and wrapped the red cape, then she produced two masks, saying that she had made them for the night.

I told her I had my own mask. ‘But I thank you for your help, all of you, for myself and for Dragon, from the bottom of my heart. That is her name, your Red Queen.’

‘Dragon,’ Demet echoed wonderingly. ‘My mother said that is what people called the last Red Queen. The Dragon Queen.’

‘It seems to me you have done this before,’ Keely said, looking at me. I was startled to see that her eyes were bright with relish and anticipation. She saw my expression and laughed softly.

‘Do you believe the Red Queen will rise tonight?’ I asked her.

‘I do not know, but after being tame for so long, I find I am ready to be wild,’ she said. She fastened on her mask and bade me do the same.

It was very dark now, and I wondered if there were clouds covering the moon. There must be, for it was not yet darkmoon. The mask made it hard to see well, though both of us carried lanterns Cora had pressed into our hands. I was carrying the folded cloak under one arm, praying it would serve to get me where I needed to go.

‘Look,’ Keely said in a voice she had deliberately deepened, for there were people moving about us. Most carried lanterns but I saw two men and a woman carrying lightballs that looked exactly like the lightball Cassy had carried in my most recent Beforetime dream. They must have come from the emissary. ‘
Look
,’ Keely repeated impatiently, and I realised she was staring ahead of us some way, to where the vast Infinity of Dragonstraat glowed with light. There was a great press of people in the streets between us and the infinity, but we were on higher ground, having deliberately come around wide to the south, so we could see over the heads of people to the open space where a double continuous row of lit torches now stood in metal brackets all about the infinity, a wall of fire within the barricades set up between the buildings.

‘We are not far from the scythe that will bring us to the entrance of the Great Hall,’ Keely said, her voice slightly muffled by the mask. ‘That is the closest the Great Hall comes to the outer edge of the infinity. There are barriers there, but they will be left open to allow the guests to arrive. That is the way it was done when a new Chafiri arrived to be welcomed by the Gadfians. Of course it will be guarded.’ For the first time she sounded uncertain.

‘Do not be afraid,’ I said. ‘I can coerce anyone who gives us trouble, so long as I can touch them.’

We moved about the infinity, and for the first time, I saw the Great Hall from the side. It was only one level high but long-sided, its roof flat. In place of windows, the length of the wall was a lattice of sculpted stone beasts, many of which I had seen before only in Beforetime books, for thousands of kinds of animals and birds had perished forever in the Great White. There was a blank wall behind the lattice, but there must be recesses for the beasts were lit from behind as well as by torches set all along the side of the wall, and the shiftiness of the light made them seem to quiver with life. It was an extraordinary sight, but I could not see the frieze of the first Red Queen.

‘It is around the other side,’ Keeley said, and I remembered my dream of Matthew looking up at the carving soon after he had come to the Red Land as a slave. He had been hauling stones in a basket across what I had then taken for an open square, when he had glanced up and the blood had drained from his face. That had been the moment when he had understood that the raggedy little girl we had found in the Beforetime ruins in Westland – the same despised urchin who had adored him and trailed after him until he had struck out cruelly at her – must be related to the Red Queen, and that she must be the queen her people were waiting for, that they might rise and overthrow the slavemasters who occupied their land. How it must have delighted his heart to find himself in a tale about a lost princess.

I imagined Dragon standing before that same enormous carving, proclaiming herself the Red Queen, and my heart lifted, for surely seeing her stunning likeness to the first Red Queen her people would know at once that she was the one they had waited for, even if she lacked the sceptre and would be unable in that moment to coerce dragons.

‘You had better speak for us,’ I said, as we approached the barrier to the back of the Great Hall.

There were not so many people here, because the majority of the guests had entered and the watchers had obviously moved away to find positions that would give them an unobstructed view of the infinity. There was a wide entrance, through which the closed and open chariots now lined up in ranks must have passed to disgorge their passengers. But there was also a gate where slaves and lesser folk were lined up.

‘They will be waiting to get in and serve their masters and mistresses,’ Keely said softly, but still keeping her voice pitched low. ‘They will have tokens from them, but you will have to coerce us in.’

‘Wait!’ I cried, and reached through a slit in the side of my tunic to the pocket in my trews. I felt for the token I had taken from the man I had coerced when I was with Murrim and Maya.

Keeley’s eyes widened and for a moment all of her suspicions returned. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘I stole it,’ I told her. ‘Will it serve?’

She shook her head and suddenly grinned. ‘It will serve beautifully, though the man who lost it would have been whipped for failing to return it.’

‘I think he filched it from his mistress,’ I said.

‘Well, it will get you in, but not me, although that will not matter. I would only escort you there anyway, if you were really bringing a forgotten thing to Gretha for our master.’

Two Ekoni guarded the gate we were approaching, and there were more lined up inside the barricade, illuminated in the leaping flame-light cast by the torches. I noticed there were still people arriving through the wider gate on foot – Gadfians, masked and clad in magnificent clothing, predominantly red or black or grey, though the great majority of masks were white and strangely sombre. Each walking party was accompanied by a bevy of slaves burdened with baskets and bundles.

As we approached the front of the queue, I told Keely softly that she must do something to draw attention to herself so that I could make contact with at least one Ekoni and coerce him, in order to have an ally if something went wrong.

‘Ekoni,’ Keely said gruffly, when it was our turn, ‘this foolish slavewoman forgot to include an important cloak in the bundle that my father, Saba Nareem, delivered this night to the wife of our High Chafiri master. It would not matter save that it is a gift to her from the wife of the Prime. I would have this slavewoman take it to the slavewoman Gretha who tends our master’s mistress. I have given her a token from my master.’ It was smoothly said and she must have thought it out as we walked. The Ekoni scrutinised Keely closely, and no wonder, for she was small and slight, and in the daylight no one would take her for a man. The other Ekoni had turned away to answer some query, and I took advantage of the moment to push forward and open the bundle, revealing the costly red gauze with its fine delicate stitching, partly as proof of her story, partly as a distraction and partly because it allowed me to brush the hand of the Ekoni. I slipped into his mind and coerced him to think that Keely was small because he was a stripling and full of boyish dignity and pride, then I tweaked the memory of the man so that he thought of his own youth and how often he had been sent on errands that mortified him.

‘All right lad, you wait and she can go in,’ he said tolerantly.

Keely obeyed and I guessed she would slip away as soon as she got the chance and return to her home so that she could lead Demet and maybe Cora to the infinity to await the rising of the Red Queen.

I edged through the people making their way up the broad steps that ran round the whole of the Great Hall, and attached myself to a huddle of slavewomen following a High Chafiri and his wife. When he stopped to speak with another Chafiri, I followed his wife into a side chamber. The room was enormous and full of groups of slaves fussing about their mistresses. It did not take me long to find Gretha who, like all of the slave women, wore no mask. I had removed mine and she saw me at the same moment, and gaped in astonishment.

‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered.

Rather than trying to explain I drew her to sit on a bench and asked where her mistress was.

‘She has gone in already,’ Gretha said. ‘But what are you doing here? And how did you . . .?’ She stopped, her eyes falling to the green dress as I shrugged off the enveloping cloak I had taken from Riyad’s husband. ‘You have been to the house? My son . . .’

‘Both boys are fine,’ I assured her. Rather than wasting time on words, I unwrapped the gauze gown, and under its folds, closed a hand around her wrist. Her astonishment increased as I simply poured into her mind the memory of all that had happened since I had knocked at Nareem’s door. Apologising to her inwardly, I coerced her to want to help me. ‘The Redlander Queen is truly here?
Here?
’

I nodded. ‘She is or she will come here ere midnight, for this is the only way she could enter the infinity, what with the guards and barricades. If she can establish herself as the Red Queen this night, with so many watching, the Redlanders will rise and overthrow the Gadfian slavemasters.

‘What will happen to the Gadfians?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps she will offer them to the emissary as slaves in place of the Landfolk,’ I said, thinking this would be an expedient and elegant solution to the problem of the Gadfians as captives. The Redlanders would certainly eschew keeping them as slaves, but could not risk allowing them to sail back to New Gadfia. I saw the look on Gretha’s face and remembered that no coercion would hold firm while the block was active. ‘I do not think harm will come to men like Nareem or any of the Gadfian halfbloods who have done no harm to Redlanders. But tell me, how is it inside the hall? Will I be able to get through it and into the infinity easily?’

‘Not until midnight when the main doors open, and everyone goes out for the festivities and displays. When do you think she will do it?’

‘I would have thought before the people in here go out, for she would be very visible being all alone in that great space. Otherwise she will be lost to sight.’

‘Maybe she is out there already, pretending to be an Ekoni.’

‘She is very small and slight and I do not think anyone would take her for a lad, let alone a man. Yet Matthew – Mad Matthias – will surely be with her. He would never pass for an Ekoni, though he could coerce anyone he can touch into seeing him as anything he wishes.’ I thought of the dreaming glimpse I had of Dragon, clad in red and reaching out her hand to me, smiling eagerly. ‘I think she is here somewhere.’

‘It will not be easy to find her here, for there are many guests and all of them are masked,’ Gretha said. ‘And you will not be permitted to enter, as a servant.’

‘I have a token,’ I said, showing her.

‘That will not do, here. No personal servants are permitted into the hall because the Chafiri fear for the safety of the emissary. They are waited on by Gadfian attendants this night.’ She looked down at the red cloak I had laid in her arms and frowned, stroking the cloth absently. ‘The only way to get into the hall without being stopped, will be to go through the Great Hall as a guest. You will have to wear this. You would never get away with it in normal circumstances, but tonight, you can wear a mask. But not that one you came in – it is too plain and ill made.’

There were smaller chambers and she led me to one and helped me into a plain shift and then the red gauze cloak. She went away and returned not with a mask but with a basket and bade me sit and swiftly pinned and plaited my hair so that at a glance it would look like the complex towering confections affected by Chafiri women. She fretted at my lack of hair jewellery before deciding that the plainness could be seen as an affectation. Then she smeared red and gold colour from a little pot over the cat mask until it looked like a spill of flame, trimming it to increase the effect. She fitted it onto my face and then dabbed colour around it onto my bare skin and lastly onto my lips. Finally she dusted my neck and arms and hands with a glittering red powder.

‘Will I pass?’ I asked, resisting the urge to wipe the paint from my lips.

‘You actually look rather wonderful,’ Gretha said.

I cared nothing for that; all that concerned me was that the clothes and mask and paint would render me invisible in a vast hall filled with women and men in exotic flowing clothes and masks. Only a few had painted faces, but Gretha had insisted it was necessary because otherwise my skin about the mask would look too pale.

No one paid me any attention upon re-entering the side chamber, but when I made my way across the room, I sensed eyes following me. I felt dangerously exposed but I stiffened my back and lifted my chin haughtily, telling myself that it was only the striking red cloak and the mask and paint they saw, not me. Heart beating fast, I moved out of the smaller chamber into the large main chamber that must give the Great Hall its name, and was relieved to find myself quickly enveloped by a multitude of extravagantly clad men and women. I had supposed the women would be subdued, but here it seemed they were allowed to speak and laugh and talk openly and animatedly to men and to one another. It suggested that Gadfian culture might not be as uniformly oppressive as it appeared to outsiders. I was far less noticeable now, but as I moved back and forth across the chamber, always working my way forward, searching for Dragon’s slight form, several men cast bold and offensively explicit glances at me. This reminded me that Gretha had warned me to move quickly so that no one would have time to notice that I was alone, since all of the Chafiri women were accompanied by men.