The Red Queen (91 page)

The younger woman gave a sobbing gasp and clutched at the arm of the older woman. ‘But you . . .’ the older woman began, only to stop when the other caught her shoulder.

‘You are not a Redlander,’ the younger woman said harshly. ‘How can you know of our queen?’

‘I dreamed of her,’ I said, deciding belatedly to be prudent. It was true enough. ‘Now, tell me all you can about Slavetown. Does the curfew operate there?’

All four women exchanged complex looks, and the two Redland women sat down again as Gretha said, ‘I do not see that any harm can come of telling her what she wishes to know.’

‘If it is true about the Red Queen . . .’ began the older Redland women softly.

‘She is not the first to dream of your Red Queen, Redlander or not, and I daresay she will not be the last,’ Gretha said impatiently. She looked at me. ‘You asked about the curfew. It does not operate within Slavetown because its gates are locked during the dark hours and there are no Ekoni within the wall at that time. The rest of the time the gate is guarded, though mostly only so the Gadfians can keep an eye on who is going in and out, and to ensure no weapons are brought in. The Knife and the Infinity of Hope and a number of the larger lanes are patrolled regularly in daylight, and there are occasionally raids of more obscure areas when the Ekoni decide the slaves might be amassing weapons. Anyone found with a weapon is sold or, if the offence is deemed severe enough, sent to the ilthum mine.’

‘She is no slave. Look at her wrist,’ said the younger Landwoman suddenly, pointing at my right wrist.

I noticed then that all of them had marks about their right wrist, and realised this must be how slaves were identified. I wondered what they would say if I told them that no matter what markings were made on my skin, my body would not suffer them to endure.

‘You’re right, I am not a slave,’ I said, since there was no use denying it. An idea came to me. ‘Surely you have heard of the four ships that came from the land to Redport?’

‘That is an old story,’ said the other Landwoman. ‘Four left the Land to come and attempt to treat with the slavemasters, more fool they. One was lost on the way and two came limping into the bay a year back, herded through the Talons by Salamander’s
Black Ship
. One was half burnt and sinking, my brother said. He works loading ore onto the ships at the Long Pier and saw it all. He said one was from Norseland and the other from the Land.’

‘The people aboard?’ I asked, my lips numb.

She shrugged. ‘Some were sold and others sent to Quarry. A few remained in Redport and some others were sent to Great Gadfia to be questioned. One was taken by Ariel.’

Hearing this, it was a moment before I could compose myself sufficiently to go on. ‘Do you know who that one was?’

Gretha gave me a look of pity and shook her head. ‘You called the Lord Ariel black-hearted, so you know what he is. If your friend was taken by him, then you must mourn, for he takes his pick of slaves and those he chooses are seldom seen again. Those that are seen, have been rendered mindless – his nulls he calls them; poor broken things.’

‘With luck he will never return,’ the young Landwoman said with feeling.

‘He is not here?’ My heart leapt.

‘He has been gone for many moons,’ Gretha answered.

‘And the white-faced lords? Are any here?’

‘Why do you care about them?’ the young Redland woman asked.

‘I care if my friends are to be given to them as slave warriors.’

Gretha said, ‘That is not certain, despite what Nareem believes. Perhaps the emissary will refuse to take them until the proper number have been amassed, since the white-faced emperor has granted the Chafiri more time.’ The other women stared at her in amazement and disbelief. ‘It is true,’ she told them. ‘Nareem told me today that is why the white-faced emissary came. To grant more time. That is why he is being indulged so.’

‘But why would the emperor agree to wait, after threatening to annihilate Redport in a rage because the bargain made with them was not honoured to the letter?’ the other Landwoman demanded.

‘It was the emperor’s brother who made those threats, because his gift would not be ready to be given as he had boasted,’ Gretha said. ‘Apparently the emperor is less impatient.’

Or maybe he has been offered a greater prize, I thought.

Gretha turned back to me. ‘But still you have not told us how you came here. Are you saying you came all that time ago with the four greatships, and somehow have not been enslaved?’

‘The other ship!’ the young Landwoman said suddenly. ‘One sank, two were taken by Salamander but one fled.’

‘And was caught and sunk by Gadfian greatships,’ the younger Redland woman said flatly.

‘It was said so,’ Gretha said. ‘Yet even if some folk survived as was whispered for a time, how could they have come to Redport? There is nowhere to come to land but through the Talons.’

‘
Were
you aboard one of the four greatships?’ asked the younger Landwoman.

‘I was,’ I said, thinking, once I was, though long before that journey.

‘So, you escaped and somehow came to land, maybe using your Misfit abilities, and now you seek those captured from the ships?’ Gretha concluded. I said nothing and she nodded in satisfaction. ‘Well, as to what became of those taken captive, I have already told you. Deenak would know where to find the ones that dwell in Slavetown, if they live yet.’

‘How do I find this Deenak?’ I asked.

‘Go to the Infinity of Hope and ask for him,’ she said. ‘He is well known and new slaves are sent to him when they arrive, for they must be given somewhere to live. It will not seem odd or strange for you to ask around for the way to his residence.’

I might have coerced her to be sure she guided me well, but she had given me a name that I could check before I spoke it. If it were a trap it would not be hard to evade. But I did not think they were trying to trap or trick me. I turned to the two Redland women. ‘Who rules the Redlanders?’

‘None rules us since the Red Queen was betrayed and slain,’ the younger said, tonelessly.

I did not believe her, but I let it lie for the moment as Gretha pointed to the clothing I had coerced Nareem to have them fetch. ‘I m guessing you want some clothing that will serve you better than those,’ she said.

I nodded. Gretha spoke a soft word to Nareem. She looked startled when he went out and returned with a wondrous gauzy red cloak with a hood and a sumptuously long train. It was vast, transparent, beautiful and entirely impractical.

‘I was asking him what clothing we had that could be spared,’ she said, laughing a little. ‘That was made for the wife of the Prime for the masked ball, but the wilful mulik rejected it as being too ostentatious, and of course it cannot now be offered to any other Chafiri woman. But it is no use to you.’

I touched Nareem, who rose and went through the piles of clothes the two Redland women had brought in, selecting a few pieces and setting them before me. The four slavewomen watched him, bemused, Gretha with a slight frown.

He sat down again and she went through what he had chosen, smiling slightly. ‘Well, he has given you the sort of attire a valued slave would be given to wear by an indulgent High Chafiri master or mistress. Any Ekoni seeing you would think twice before harassing you. He has given you clothing enough for a man and a woman.’ She looked a question at me.

‘I think I had better look like a slave lad, else I will have to have Nareem escort me to Slavetown.’ I had no intention of going there directly, but it would not do any harm to have them think so.

I let them help me to dress in the masculine clothes, Gretha saying it was just as well Landmen did not affect beards. Once, when my arm brushed that of the younger Landwoman, I took the opportunity to get an impression of Slavetown from her, including the routes she knew well. I also learned that her name was Cora, while the older Redland woman was Demet and the younger, Keely.

Then Gretha glanced at the covered tray and gave me a wry look before suggesting we eat. As they set out the food, I remembered to ask the location of the Red Queen’s Palace.

‘It
was
on Rainbow Island but it is only a ruin now,’ Demet said.

‘A ruin,’ I echoed.

‘Mostly crumbling rocks scarce higher than your knee,’ Gretha added, passing me a plate and giving me a curious look. ‘A few courses of stone and a pretty bit of a tiled floor that was once a grand hall.’

‘It is said the Ekoni destroyed it looking for the queen’s sceptre when first they came,’ Demet continued. ‘The Prime was furious because the Betrayer had told them that the key to the Red Queen’s greatest treasure was her sceptre, and that without it, they would never truly conquer the Red Land.’

‘Only the Red Queen can wield it and command its power,’ said Keely.

‘You believe she will return?’ I asked, thinking of their intense reaction when I had said Dragon had come.

‘She will come, and not just in dreams. She will raise her sceptre and summon the dragon, dismaying the Gadfians and commanding us to rise against them,’ Demet said passionately.

Gretha stared at her incredulously for a moment, then she gave Nareem a look before turning to me. I was silent, somewhat amazed that the Redland woman had spoken of summoning a dragon.

Gretha said, ‘I hope you meant it when you said you can make Nareem forget all that is said here and now, for the safety of the Redlanders rests on the belief of the Gadfians that they are pacified. Nareem would not harm a mouse, but there are many Gadfians who are not like him.’ She gave the Redland woman a sharp look. ‘If they heard you speak as you have done, Demet, you would be sold away in an eyeblink.’ Without waiting for a response, she turned to me once more. ‘Be careful what you say, whatever you have dreamed, for though the Gadfians think of the dragonfolk as pacified, in their hearts they are fanatics waiting for their dead queen to return to lead them in throwing off their Gadfian oppressors, and to provoke their longing is to rouse a madness that can burn you. I will never understand why they did not simply fight when she was first seized!’

‘Why do the Gadfians call Redlanders dragonfolk? Is it because of the tiled dragon in the open area between the two towers?’ I asked, looking at Demet, but it was the younger Redlander who answered.

‘You speak of the Infinity of Dragonstraat,’ said Keely. ‘But that dragon is only a reminder of the fire dragon that will take flight when the Red Queen comes to the two towers with her sceptre.’ She cast a dark look at Nareem, which earned her a slap from Gretha.

‘He did not kill your precious Red Queen,’ Gretha said sharply. ‘He was not born when she was slain. And remember that it was one of her people –
your
people – who betrayed her in the first place. And it was your folk who did not have the courage to rise up and stop them.’

‘It is not cowardice that stays our hand,’ Demet told her with quiet dignity. ‘The queen knew what would come and made those she trusted swear to do nothing until she returned.’

I wondered if it was true that the Red Queen had known in advance of her impending betrayal and death, and if, as I was beginning to suspect, she had refused to let her people battle the slavemasters because of something Cassy and Hannah had told the first Red Queen. I was somewhat bewildered now, too, for what did she mean by saying Nareem had not been born when the Red Queen had been betrayed. And what of their talk of raising dragons, for there never had been any such creature in the world? I knew from the teknoguilders that it was an imaginary beast dreamed up by the Beforetimers who had delighted in such strange and pointless fantasies. Dragon had earned her name from the terrifying visions of dragons she had coerced, which I had thought she had seen in a Beforetime map book, but which I now felt came from the tiled dragon in the Infinity of Dragonstraat.

Only now did it occur to me that Dragon’s mother might have been a coercer, as well as a beastspeaker, and that she might have coerced visions for her people, which Dragon had years later remembered and emulated.

‘What none of you has ever explained properly is
why
she would tell her people not to fight,’ Gretha was saying to the Redland women, with the air of one returning to an old argument.

Before the others could respond, I interrupted them. ‘You say that the emissary from the . . . from Shambala stays with the Prime Chafiri when he visits, but his women remain aboard his ship?’

Gretha nodded, then added, ‘He is not here now. He came ashore for the fire festival a few days past – it is an old Redland custom he seems to have heard about somehow, and it is said he asked to see it because he had heard of its magnificence. That night he stayed in the Prime’s compound, but he is aboard his greatship now and will not come ashore again, Nareem says, until the masked ball.’ She nodded absently towards the gorgeous red cloak.

‘That was not the true Dragon Parade that he saw,’ Demet said suddenly. ‘Nor did the days of plenty follow as they once did. As to the masked ball, that will only be a pale shadow of the true ball, when the Red Queen came to the Infinity of Dragonstraat in her chariot, clad in red and drawn by six red-dyed muliki. Then there was music and dancing in the infinity and all the surrounding streets until dawn, when the Red Queen would emerge and cross Dragonstraat to stand between the two towers. There she would unmask herself and, thus revealed, she would hold up her sceptre and raise the dragon. Then would the fire races throughout Redport come to life.’

Gretha looked at her with fond exasperation. ‘To hear her talk you would think she had seen it herself,’ she told me tartly.

I was about to say that she might have done, but Gretha went on, ‘It would be a good time to seek out your friends, if that is what you are thinking. There will be a lot of pomp and ceremony as the emissary is to bring his own women to the ball and instead of the Red Queen raising her sceptre, he will be presented with many magnificent gifts and treasures to take back to his emperor, in thanks for their grace in allowing more time to fulfil the bargain made with his brother. I know all about it because Nareem was asked this very day to create a special gown for the emperor’s sisterwife. He is to have a cask of gold leaf for its delivery. Then the slave warriors will be marched from Quarry to the Long Pier and carried away. So the Chafiri hope, but the emissary has not yet accepted their offer nor spoken of when he will depart.’