The Witch's Daughter (Lamb & Castle Book 1) (14 page)

“Meg! Come and look, quickly!”

Meg was at the porthole quick as a flash. She hissed, but then turned and grabbed Amelia by the shoulder, staring fierce and wild into her eyes. “Remember the spell for invisibility? I’m going to need your help for this.”

Just off the coast of Ilamira, something blinked out of existence. The change in the field had been just on the fringes of Bessie’s vision and she looked round a moment too late. “What was that?” she asked Bryn.

“What was what, Miss Castle?” He’d been busy preparing
Sharvesh
to take flight, so he likely hadn’t seen anything, but Bessie still wished she could read Argean expressions better. She’d asked Greyfell about the subject, but he’d confessed his ignorance: he only knew that Argeans who spent much time around humans eventually began to take on human expressions. Who could tell how much, though, in any given individual? Those round cat-like eyes often looked a little anxious, a little guilty. After Greyfell’s unfortunate first impression upon him, Bryn had never quite let his guard down around either of them. Understandable, really, but irritating nonetheless. Doubly so as Bessie quite liked the Argean when his natural enthusiasm bubbled over.

Yes, bubbles – that’s what it had been like.
“I…” It had been like a bubble popping in froth, out of the corner of her eye, where only its disappearance had drawn any notice to its existence or sudden non-existence at all. “There was something out there, just north-west of here. And now it isn’t.”

“That is the nature of things, Miss,” said Bryn, grinning and with that silly theatrical air he’d put on when they’d first toured his skyship. “Things come and go. Such is life.”

“No, I mean… It just vanished into thin air.”

Bryn shook his head, still infuriatingly amused by the conversation. “Young people have such imagination… You worry too much, Miss Castle, and spend too much time reading books. Why don’t you go back into the City for a while? Visit a shadow theatre, or a tea house, and relax.”

“No, I can’t. I don’t know when Master Greyfell will be back, and I can’t waste time on frivolities.”

His smile became fixed, poised somewhere between human friendliness and feline hostility. “Suit yourself, Miss,” he said.

“Thank you for your concern though, Bryn,” she added. “And keep an eye open for anything out of the ordinary, please.”

She returned her attention to her shopping bags. She had to admit a guilty thrill in the new experience of having money to spend as she saw fit. She’d been careful with it, of course, or at least as careful as one can expect a thirteen year old to be with sudden riches. The streets of Ilamira had tempted her terribly, and only the threat of Master Greyfell’s disapproval had curbed her desire for extravagance. With Greyfell still in the City, Bessie pored over her purchases. She’d mostly stuck to her plan of restocking essentials, but here and there she’d given in to the lure of exotic ingredients for spells she wanted to try one day. At the soul forge she’d bought a couple of small souls, making big plans for them on the spot. Elsewhere, she’d picked up a handful of spells that would allow her to fall from any height and land unhurt, along with some other odd one-use charms, and a very fine knife that disappeared neatly into a sheath in her boot. She’d drawn the line at something purported to be unicorn hair – any sensible person knew that unicorns had been extinct for thousands of years. The talkative and charming vendor might have had more chance of convincing her of the stuff’s validity if he hadn’t had a whole herd’s worth of it hanging from the ceiling of his shop. It had no practical use that she knew of, anyway.

Like Amelia, Bessie had spent much of her own journey thus far immersed in her textbooks. And, like Amelia, she found the fireball spell simple and appealing: most beginners in gesture magic did.
Unlike
Amelia, Bessie had taken to magic the first moment she’d been allowed to try it. She’d gamely struggled through the first term of her education with a set of conjuring rings borrowed from the Academy’s stock – they’d been battered and scratched and even lost a couple of minor jewels before Bessie ever set eyes on them. She’d made quite a few embarrassing misspellings and been the butt of more than a few jokes by girls from wealthier families (which is to say, virtually all of the girls at the Antwin Academy) but she’d excelled in potions and written spells, and at New Year’s, Master Greyfell had discretely presented her with a new set of conjuring rings. She wore them with pride whenever it was appropriate to do so, although the budding assassin in her wished the bracelets didn’t make so much noise. The rings, too, could draw more attention in public than she liked. At least she’d discovered she could cover the rings with her gloves and the bracelets with her sleeves with no ill effect when she had to. Some of the other girls at the Academy were brash and outrageous, keen for fame or notoriety, but Bessie found considerable advantages in being able to fade quietly into the crowd when she wished. In that respect, she wouldn’t miss
Sharvesh
when all this was over.

~

Greyfell returned sooner than expected. “Did you speak to the Archmage?” she asked him, as she guiltily shoved some of her more frivolous purchases back into the bags.

Greyfell, keen-eyed as ever, tactfully made no comment on Bessie’s obvious shopping spree. “He has no interest in any of this, Elizabeth. I warned you that a man of his standing might not even deign to bargain with us.”

“We can’t afford him? Can we afford
any
of the Archmages, then?”

“The highest tiers of mages live mostly in their own little worlds, I’m afraid. They can’t be bought in the same way as mere mortals can. It’s not that their price is too high, but more that they operate using a different currency altogether.”

Bessie thought she understood: she’d heard the same of the very best assassins. Few formally trained assassins ever wanted for material wealth, coming as they so often did from well-bred and prosperous families. A client had to be able to offer a real challenge, intellectual or otherwise. Each commission had to be an opportunity to increase the assassin’s reputation amongst his peers towards the legendary. “I still don’t understand why I can’t be my own Mage,” she muttered. Immediately she wished she’d held her tongue: Master Greyfell looked shocked at such a notion.

“The rules of the contest dictate –”

“Yes, I know the rules,” Bessie sighed. She knew the rules by heart, but that didn’t mean she
understood
them. She didn’t understand why the candidate White Queen should get to make the first move, while Bessie had been stuck waiting, preparing, hoping that she would have time enough to gain an advantage. She closed her eyes, wishing herself back in her potions class. That had been her favourite subject. When she opened her eyes again, she found Greyfell still watching her as if she were some unpredictable wild animal. “Sorry,” she said. “Mages just seem so hard to come by.”

“We will hire a suitable Mage before we reach the temple,” he assured her.

Bessie didn’t particularly want his reassurances. She
wanted
to secure a Mage for her Side. She
wanted
to reach the temple safely ahead of the White Queen, take her prize and –

Greyfell’s froze like a hunting hound catching a faint scent on the breeze: head raised, nostrils flared. “Did you hear that?”

Bessie hadn’t heard anything unusual above the constant background noise of the busy dock, but instinctively she looked to Bryn. He too had frozen, his listening all the more obvious because his large and sensitive ears had fanned out to ridiculous proportions, flicking this way and that. Bessie held very still, resisting the urge to close her eyes and focus on her ears, and carefully unpicked every sound around her, searching for the one that shouldn’t be:

Men shouting as they wrestled with heavy kegs on board the ‘ship docked beside
Sharvesh
.

The creak of strained ropes, the heavy flap of canvas in the breeze.

The cries of street vendors advertising hot soup, fried shrimp, nuts and dates.

Old men gossiping about some fracas on Main Street.

What had happened on Main Street? She’d been shopping there; she might have missed the excitement by minutes. And then, before she could say anything, another sound caught her attention:

Somewhere nearby, underneath the ship, a sound faintly reminiscent of crickets on a summer night, but somehow metallic.

Silently Bryn dropped to all fours, stalking across the boards towards the railings. Bessie couldn’t suppress a cold shiver at the sight: the amiable and silly-looking figure she’d grown fond of transformed in a heartbeat into a graceful, lethal hunter, nothing like human. And then something shot up, past the railings, a blinding flash of sunlight on metal. Bryn leapt clear ten feet in the air, not a pounce but an escape. When he came down he crouched, growling low, muscles trembling, as the thing hovered in the air, high above their heads.

“Compose yourself, man,” Greyfell rebuked the skysailor, quietly.

“Greyfell, what is that?” Bessie asked, following the Master’s lead and keeping her own voice calm and quiet. She’d mistaken the thing for a projectile at first, but as it hovered above them, out of range of even the Argean, she realised it had the shape of some kind of bird. She’d seen enough dragonettes zipping around Iletia to know this wasn’t one of them. It gleamed too smoothly, neither as glittering nor as iridescent as a real live dragonette. On impulse, she curled her fist lightly and crooked one arm out high in front of her, as she’d seen men do with their dragonette messengers. Evidently this thing, whatever it might be, was both clever enough to recognise the signal and foolish enough to respond indiscriminately to it. It flitted down towards her, tiny claws outstretched. Bessie bit her lip, hoping that the thin leather of her glove would be enough to protect her hand. The dragonette weighed more than she’d expected, but gripped its perch gently, so that Bessie felt no more than a pinprick of its talons. “Well, aren’t you pretty,” she said, softly. “But aside from that, what are you?”

The clockwork dragonette cocked its head to stare at her with one beady jewel eye, and said nothing.

“A pet?” Bryn guessed. “If somebody is looking for it, they may be very generous in their gratitude.”

“No, it’s all metal. Looks alive, but isn’t.” Bessie glanced at Greyfell, “right?”

“A reasonable assessment. Elizabeth, I have heard of such things before…”

The clockwork dragonette had been following the conversation, its head jerking from one speaker to the next, bright and alert. Bryn might have been right – there was always the possibility that this was no more than the expensive toy of some idle prince. Still, Bessie doubted she had that kind of luck.

“I think I know what you’re thinking,” she said to Greyfell. “It’s some kind of listening device, isn’t it?”
Damn the White Side: it simply wasn’t fair for them to have such technology at their disposal
. “We don’t know how much it might have heard. We’ll have to –”

The dragonette squawked and kicked away from her hand, out of reach before she or Greyfell could grab it. In an effort to redeem himself, Bryn bounded after it, but it darted overboard before he could catch it.

Bessie dashed to the railings to see the tiny golden figure already diminishing to a single speck of glitter in the wide blue sky. “Damn!”

“Language, Miss Castle!”

Bessie growled and slumped against the railings, not caring much for etiquette at such a time. How could she have been so stupid! Of
course
such a cleverly made device wouldn’t simply listen; of
course
it would be able to act on what it heard… And she’d let it just slip out of her grasp.

“Shall I follow?” asked Bryn, bristling and fair vibrating with eagerness as he stared intently in the direction the clockwork dragonette had disappeared.

Bessie shook her head. “No, we know where the White Side are headed for. We just have to get there first.”

The
Storm Chaser
cut through the sky, swift and apparently indefatigable. Amelia could only imagine how hard it worked the Captain’s soul to fly night and day. Her conscience still prodded her to visit him frequently and keep him company, and he had become so very quiet, not at all the bright vivacious man she remembered from the beginning of their voyage aboard the
Storm Chaser
.

“I’m sorry we didn’t manage to get you a new soul,” she said. “Are you sure you’ll be all right? I’m so afraid you’re going to make yourself ill.”

“I’m holding up. But like my Granddad always said: if man was meant to fly, he’d have been born with wings. Not a skysailing man, my Granddad. Never wanted me to fly.”

Amelia thought of the grand skyship, the expense of a soul to buoy it up. “This isn’t a family business, then?”

“Now you’re dead wrong there. My Grandma was a wild girl in her day – a pirate, so they’ll tell you – and the
Storm Chaser
was hers before she was mine. Sailed all about the world before she met Granddad. Seen the Great Snows and the Siren Islands to the south. She didn’t half have some stories. That’s why Granddad knew he couldn’t keep my feet on the ground: flying’s in my blood. Lucky for you it is, and all.”

“I’m so sorry. We can spare some time to look for another soul, I’m sure –”

“I’ll be well enough,” said the Captain. “Madam Meg says there’s not far to go now. Just this last push into the Stacks.”

“Stacks?”

“One of the greatest natural wonders of our world! Great pillars of rock carved out by the elements. Canyons deep as oceans. Nature’s labyrinth, beyond anything a man could design or build. Something I’ve always wanted to see, and now to see it from such a view as the soulchamber of my own ‘ship! And
you,
” he boomed, all of a sudden the whole chamber reverberating to the sound of his voice, “are sitting down here in the dark workings, missing all that fine pretty scenery! Get up in the sunshine, woman!”

~

Out on the deck, a summer shower had recently wet the boards, so that the bright sunshine made them gleam almost too bright to look at. Amelia went straight to the bow, curious to see these natural wonders the Captain spoke of, and found Meg there, her face turned to the wind, eyes closed and her jumble of fair curls rain-damp and whipped back around her shoulders. In spite of everything, she looked almost serene, and Amelia gladly joined her. On the railings, gemstone droplets of rain lingered.
What did rain smell like, anyway?
Amelia took a moment, observed the subtleties of the scent in the air. Like warm dust coming to life, lingering in the air after the rain had fallen, and sweet grass.

The
Storm Chaser
flew surprisingly low, doubtless so that the Captain could conserve his energy. They skimmed no more than forty feet above the endless plains of tawny grass, the wind whipping it like waves on the sea so that it hissed and whispered, the sound surrounding them, faint but persistent as rumours. Amelia shaded her eyes to gaze out at the horizon, and in the soft haze of the sunny day could just about make out what might be the dark strip of a cliff-side far ahead. As Amelia had guessed, Meg had summoned up some wind spirits, who danced half-visible around the
Storm Chaser
. Leaping and diving like silvery fish, they had fiercely joyous faces, baring their teeth in broad grins. They seemed to like the game of buoying up the skyship
amongst them. Amelia waved to one of them, but it either didn’t see her or didn’t care to converse with mere mortals.

“Where did they come from?” she asked Meg. “I never saw anything like them back in Springhaven.” She was beginning to wonder if she’d just never looked closely enough before; if perhaps she might have spent too much time with her nose in a book after all.

“Oh, they don’t much care for the crowded places,” said Meg. “Never seen ‘em in towns or villages. We’re in their country now.”

Amelia looked down at the boundless waves of grass, the endless undulations of it, like a language she didn’t speak and couldn’t learn. She couldn’t see a town or village anywhere around. A handful of brown and white horses galloped through the high tawny grass, and for a moment she thought she saw human figures on their backs. A heartbeat later she wondered… “Meg? Are those centaurs?”

Meg leaned out precariously over the railings, as if the extra inches would help her make out the distant shapes. Amelia clutched at her arm.

“No need to grab at me, dear,” Meg muttered. “As to your question: they might be. Centaurs do like their peace and quiet, by all accounts.”

Amelia keenly wished that they had the time to stop and investigate, but even as she watched, the herd turned and headed away from the
Storm Chaser.
“Captain Dunnager said what we’re looking for is in the Stacks.”

“Oh, yes. Won’t be long now, my girl,” said Meg.

Amelia’s chest tightened. It felt like such a long time ago that she’d left the safety of the tower behind her, but she’d never yet thought that her final destination might now be closer than her home. “What’s going to happen when we get there?”

Meg had been evasive on this subject from the beginning. “I don’t know for sure,” she admitted, finally. “The Queen’s prize lies in a temple in the land of dragons –”

“
Dragons
? Actual, real dragons?” Amelia hoped the name might be metaphorical, but her experience so far suggested otherwise. The wyverns were bad enough – at least Captain Dunnager had
them
half-domesticated.

“Yes,
‘actual, real dragons’
,” said Meg, annoyed at being interrupted. “There’s a chance we won’t run into any, after all these years, but you’ll have to be ready for anything. You have your magic on your side though. And me.”

~

By the following morning, the great dark cliff face loomed high as a mountain in the
Storm Chaser’
s path, stretching out on either side as far as the eye could see. The wind spirits had gone: either bored of their game, or Meg had dismissed them before they could dash the
Storm Chaser
against the cliff face. Amelia, sheltered as she might have been in Springhaven, had seen a shipwreck before. A skyship’s magic might bear it aloft, but grander ships commanded by great admirals had been wrecked on lesser rocks than this cliff. She knew that much.

Meg had ordered Amelia to practice all the spells she could, over and over, and study those she couldn’t safely practice on board, but Amelia couldn’t keep away from the towering horror of the enormous stone wall. While the others ate lunch, Amelia had no appetite, and instead stood at the bow like a worried blonde figurehead. They had ascended to a more usual flying height, or perhaps even higher – Amelia found it so hard to tell, looking down on the homogeneous green-brown of the plains. The cliff top was still far above their heads. After the grassy plains, with nothing but clear blue sky all around, the cliff face grew to engulf everything. Overnight, they’d come close enough to see the bands of dark and light in the stone, smudged with green that must be clinging foliage. Dark cracks, deep and wide, ran from the top of the cliff down to its base. None of them looked quite wide enough for the
Storm Chaser
to navigate, and so she climbed higher, as Amelia tried to guess what might be on the other side of this impossibly huge wall. She imagined for a moment that there might be nothing at all on the other side; that they had reached the edge of the world and that any skyship sailing over and beyond the wall would lose itself in a wilderness of empty sky. She’d heard of the edges of the world before, in stories, and once the idea had rooted itself in her mind, there was no digging it out, no matter how she reasoned. Soon the
Storm Chaser
would rise above the level of the cliff top, and then she would see…

“Amelia!” Meg scolded, making her jump. “Stop gawping and get back to your spellbook!”

Amelia stomped off back to the cabin.

~

She studied all afternoon, until her stomach growled in spite of her having more important matters to attend to. She looked up from her spellbook, her eyes dry and itchy from the long hours poring over the arcane texts. The light in the cabin had been growing steadily dimmer, with Amelia scarcely noticing it. The cabin would have been quite dark if not for the fire sprite Stupid illuminating it from his cage.

“Oh, poor thing,” she murmured.

The fire sprite fizzled and sputtered oddly, his sickly colour quite impossible to describe, and certainly nothing Amelia had ever seen before from him. Having had time to cool off, she did regret caging the poor little fire sprite. But if she let him out now, what kind of message would that give him? And what kind of trouble might he get into next, free to roam again? No, he’d have to stay there for the time being. She thought his malaise might have more to do with the altitude to which they had climbed at a startling rate. During one of her chats with the Captain, she had recently learned that this was the cause of her own occasional headaches and nausea. Meg and Percival seemed quite unconcerned by such troubles, although she’d seen Harold looking quite peaky around lunchtime, and he hadn’t eaten as heartily as usual. She hadn’t asked him about it, afraid of offending his manly pride. Putting away her spell book, she fetched the last stale bread roll and a pot of jam, and went to see how they were progressing up the cliff.

As soon as she put her head up above the level of the deck, the expanse of twilight sky shocked her: a deep ink wash of blue, the first glimmer of stars scattered in it. She stared for a moment, and looked all around to make sure they hadn’t changed course without her noticing. But no, they must have surpassed the wall. Below the
Storm Chaser
, instead of dry brown grassland, she found barren rock. The world was such an unimaginably big place, out of the villages and hamlets of home. Clouds bordered the expanse of rock in a world without a clear horizon. To look at the sky, the
Storm Chaser
only crawled along. To look down, the ground flashed past at a terrible pace, the skyship’s stern skimming over the rocks by the grace of a mere few feet, in some places. By the fading light, Amelia could make out what looked like dark rivers in the landscape, which when she looked more closely turned out not to be rivers at all, but deep cuts in the rock, leading down into who knew what. The leaves of clinging plants fluttered in capricious and playful winds, losing colour in the twilight, and across the wide emptiness of the landscape, Amelia could just about pick out a few small, stunted trees growing from what meagre sustenance the landscape provided. In the cracks, swallows darted to and from their hidden nests, looping back and forth and piping to one another as the great bulk of the
Storm Chaser
swept implacably through them on its course. Meg and Percival stood at the helm, gravely discussing the stars, apparently not noticing Amelia. She considered asking them what progress they’d made, how soon they might reach their destination, but decided against it. She sensed somehow that they had already drawn closer than she would like – to have it confirmed would only ruin the tranquillity of the evening. Instead, she crept back to bed.

~

Amelia slept restlessly and awoke in darkness. It must be the small hours of the morning, and she pulled the covers over her head in hopes of snatching at least a little more sleep, but couldn’t. Meg’s bunk looked as if it hadn’t yet been slept in, and she could just about hear muffled voices overhead. Putting on her coat over her nightgown, Amelia crept up onto the deck.

As she came up into the cool and still night air, she guessed what had woken her: after days of constant flight, the
Storm
Chaser had finally come to a halt. In its path stood an enormous spire, bleak and isolated, blocking out a jagged swathe of stars. A cold wind had got up, and despite the time of year, Amelia shivered a little and pulled her coat tighter around herself. Meg and Percival still stood where she’d left them hours ago, examining the fading stars of dawn by some device Amelia had never seen before.

“Well, this is the place,” said Meg. “Damned if I can see the temple anywhere.”

I don’t understand either,” said Percival. “The stories tell of a jade temple set in acres of beautiful scented gardens. Grounds so vast they had to be tended by an army of gardeners, keeping every bloom pristine, moment by moment. Maintaining it in a state of absolute perfection, worthy of the arrival of the Queen, whenever she should come.”

“So they said. Amelia, don’t creep about in the shadows like that.”

Amelia came forward, looking out over the immensity of the view. The earlier unnatural flatness of the land had turned into a stepped, uneven surface, still alien to her. The ravines opened wider, their unfathomable depths like black water in the scant moonlight. It was from one of these ravines that the enormous jagged column reared into the night sky. Other, smaller peaks stood all around, none of them even a tenth of the size of the biggest one. “So, we’re here?” she asked, feeling more timid than she had in a long time.

“We
should
be,” said Meg, scowling at the moonlit wasteland.

“The tales are old, Ma’am,” came Captain Dunnager’s voice, emanating from the boards under their feet. “Could it be the ravages of time have knocked the temple down?”