‘What should I do, ladies and gentlemen? Do you want me to take a DNA test? I’ll do it. But then, that wouldn’t be Protocol, would it? That would be forbidden! The technology for that is hidden and only the Queen knows where. And she’s not saying.’ The guards at the door edged forwards. One drew his sword.
If Finn saw he didn’t care. ‘There’s only one way to solve this, the way of honour, the way we’d do it in Incarceron.’ He pulled a glove from his pocket, a studded gauntlet, and before Claudia realized what it meant he had shoved the dishes aside and flung it between the candles and flowers. It struck the Pretender full in the face; a shocked murmur rippled down the table.
‘Fight me.’ Finn’s voice was thick with anger. ‘I challenge you. Any weapons. Your choice. Fight me for the Realm.’ Giles’s face was white, his control icy. He said, ‘I would be most happy to kill you, sir, at any hour and with any weapon I can find.’
‘Absolutely not.’ The Queen’s voice was sharp. ‘There will be no duelling. I totally forbid it.’ The two Claimants glared at each other, like reflections in a smoky mirror. From down the table Caspar’s drawl rose. ‘Oh let them, Mama. It would save so much bother.’ Sia ignored him. ‘There will be no duel, gentlemen. And the investigation will begin tomorrow’ She held Finn with her ice-pale eyes. ‘I will not be disobeyed.’ He bowed, stiffly, and then thrust back his chair and stalked out, the guards moving hastily aside. Claudia stood but Giles said softly, ‘Don’t go, Claudia. He’s nothing, and he knows it.’ For a moment she paused. Then she sat. She told herself it was because Protocol forbade anyone leaving before the Queen, but Giles smiled at her, as if he knew something else.
Furious, she fidgeted for twenty minutes, her fingers tapping her empty glass, and when finally the Queen rose and she could slip away, she raced up to his room and knocked on the door.
‘Finn. Finn, it’s me.’ If he was there he would not answer.
Finally, she walked down the panelled corridor to the casement at its end and gazed out at the lawns, leaning her forehead on the cool glass. She wanted to storm and yell at him. What was he thinking of? How would fighting help! It was just the sort of stupid, arrogant thing Keiro would have done.
But he wasn’t Keiro.
And biting her nail, she recognized, deep inside herself, the sickening doubt that had been growing in her mind for two months. That perhaps she had made a terrible mistake. That perhaps he wasn’t Giles either.
12
He opened the window and looked out at the night. ‘The world is an endless loop,’ he said. ‘A Möbius strip, a wheel in which we run.
As you have discovered, who have travelled so far just to find yourself where you started from.’ Sapphique went on stroking the blue cat. So you can’t help me?’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t say that.’
The trackway undulated over the leaden sea.
At first Keiro let the horse gallop, and whooped at the speed and the freedom, but that was dangerous, because the metal trackway was slippery, slushy water washing right over it. The mist hung close, so that Attia felt they were riding through cloud with only glimpses now and then of distant dark shapes, which might have been islands, or hills.
Once, a jagged chasm gaped to one side.
Finally the horse was so weary it could barely run. After nearly three hours Attia came back from drowsiness to realize that the sea was gone. Around them the mist was shredding, to reveal a jungle of spiny cacti and aloes, head high, the great leaves blade-sharp. A path ran straight into it, the plants at each side curled and crisp, smoking blackly, as if Incarceron had drilled this road only minutes ago.
‘It’s not going to let us get lost, is it?’ Keiro muttered.
They dismounted and made an uncomfortable camp in the fringe of the forest. Gazing in, Attia smelt the scorched soil, saw the skeletons of leaves like cobwebs of fine metal.
Though neither of them said anything, she saw Keiro eyeing the undergrowth uneasily, and as if the Prison mocked their fear it put the lights out, abruptly.
There was little left to eat — some dried meat and a cheese that Attia sliced the mould from, and two apples stolen from Rix’s stores for the horse. As she chewed, she said, ‘You’re crazier than Rix He looked at her. ‘Am I?’
‘Keiro, you can’t make deals with Incarceron! It will never let you Escape, and if we bring it the Glove . . .‘
‘Not your problem.’ He threw the apple core away, lay down and wrapped a blanket around him.
‘Of course it is.’ She glared at his back, furiously. ‘Keiro!’ But he didn’t answer, and she had to sit, nursing her anger, until the change in his light breathing told her he was asleep.
They should have taken turns to keep watch. But she was too tired to care, and so they both slept at once, curled in musty blankets while the tethered horse snuffled hungrily.
Attia dreamt of Sapphique. Some time in the night he came out of the forest and sat down next to her, stirring up the glowing ashes of the fire with a long stick, and she rolled over and stared at him. His long dark hair shadowed his face. The high collar of his robe was worn and frayed. He said, ‘The light is going.’
‘What?’
‘Can’t you feel it being used up? Fading away?’ He glanced at her sideways. ‘The light is slipping through our hands.’ She glanced at the hand holding the charred stick. The right forefinger was missing, its stump seamed white with scars.
She whispered, ‘Where is it going, Master?’
‘Into the Prison’s dreams.’ He stirred the fire, and his face was narrow and strained. ‘This is all my fault, Attia. I showed Incarceron that there is a way Out.’
‘Tell me how.’ Her voice was urgent; she shuffled up close to him. ‘How you did it. How you Escaped.’
‘Every Prison has a crack.’
‘What crack?’ He smiled. ‘The tiniest, most secret way. So small the Prison does not even know it exists.’
‘But where is it? And does the Key open it, the Key the Warden has?’
‘The Key unlocks only the Portal.’ She suddenly felt cold with fear, because he replicated before her, a whole line of him like images in a mirror, like the Chain-gang in its manacles of flesh.
She shook her head, bewildered. ‘We have your Glove. Keiro says—’
‘Don’t put your hand into that of a beast.’ His words whispered through the spiny undergrowth. ‘Or you will be made to do its work. Keep my Glove safe for me, Attia.’ The fire crackled. Ashes shifted. He became his own shadow, and was gone.
She must have slept again because it seemed hours later when the clink of metal woke her, and she sat up and saw Keiro saddling the horse. She wanted to tell him about the dream, but it was already hard to remember. Instead she yawned, and stared up at the Prison’s distant ceiling.
After a while she said, ‘Do the lights seem different to you?’ Keiro tugged the girth straps. ‘Different how?’
‘Weaker.’ He glanced at her, then up. For a minute he was still. Then he went on loading the horse. ‘Maybe.’
‘I’m sure they are.’ Incarceron’s lights were always powerful, but now there seemed a faint flicker to them. She said,’lf the Prison is really building a body for itself it must be using enormous reserves of power to do it. Draining energy from its systems. Maybe the Ice Wing isn’t the only wing shut down. We haven’t seen anyone since that creature back there. Where are they all?’ Keiro stood back. ‘Can’t say I care.’
‘You should.’ He shrugged. ‘Rule of the Scum. Care for no one but your brother.’
‘Sister
‘I told you, you’re temporary.’ Later, climbing up behind him on to the horse she said, ‘What happens when we get to wherever Incarceron is taking us? Are you just going to hand over the Glove?’ She felt Keiro’s snort of laughter through his gaudy scarlet jerkin. ‘Watch and learn, Iitt1e dog—slave.’