‘I’ve known worse odds,’ Finn said, thinking of a few ambushes the Comitatus had tried.
‘I’m sure,’ Claudia said acidly. ‘And what were the casualties like?’ He shrugged. ‘In the Prison, no one counted.’ Below them, a trumpet rang out, once, twice, three times.
With a great grinding of gears, the drawbridge began to creak down.
Captain Soames went to the circular stair. ‘Steady there.
And be prepared to pull it up if I give the order.’ Claudia lowered the visor. ‘They’re looking. No one’s making any moves.’
‘The Queen hasn’t arrived. A man who came in last night says she and the Council are making a royal progress to show off the Pretender; they’re in Mayfleld, and will be here in hours.’ With a thud, the drawbridge was down. The flock of black swans on the moat skidded noisily down to the weedy end and flapped.
Claudia leant over the battlements.
The women walked out slowly, with bundles on their backs. Some carried children. Older girls walked hand in hand with their brothers and sisters. They turned, waving at the windows. Behind, on a great wain pulled by the biggest carthorse, the older servants that were leaving sat stoically, rocking with the bumps on the wooden bridge.
Finn counted twenty-two. ‘Is Ralph going?’ Claudia laughed. ‘I ordered him to. He said, ‘Yes, my lady. And what will you be requiring for dinner tonight?”
He thinks this place would fall down without him.’
‘He, like all of us, serves the Warden,’ Captain Soames said.
‘No disrespect to you, my lady, but the Warden is our master. If he’s not here, we guard his house.’ Claudia frowned. ‘My father doesn’t deserve any of you.’ But she said it so quietly only Finn heard her.
When Soames had gone to supervise the drawbridge being raised Finn stood beside her, watching the girls trudge down into the Queen’s camp.
‘They’ll be questioned. Who’s here, our plans.’
‘I know. But I won’t be responsible for their deaths.’
‘You think it will come to that?’ She glanced at him. ‘We have to set up talks. Play for time.
Work on the Portal’ Finn nodded. She walked past him to the stairs and said over her shoulder, ‘Come on. You shouldn’t stand up here.
One arrow from that camp and it would be all over.’ He looked at her, and just as she got to the stairs he said, ‘You do believe me, Claudia, don’t you? I need you to believe that I remember.’
‘Of course I believe you,’ she said. ‘Now come on.’ But she had her back to him, and she didn’t turn around.
‘It’s dark. Hold that torch higher.’ Keiro’s voice came impatiently down the shaft; the echoes made it hollow and strange. Attia stretched up as high as she could, but the torchlight showed her nothing of him. Below her Rix shouted, ‘What can you see?’
‘I can’t see anything. I’m going on.’ Scrapes and clangs. Muttered swearing that the shaft took and whispered to itself. Worried, Attia called, ‘Be careful.’ He didn’t bother to answer. The ladder twisted and jerked as she struggled to hold it still; Rix came and hauled on it with all his weight, and it was easier. She said, ‘Listen, Rix.
While we’re alone. You have to listen to me. Keiro will steal the Glove from you. Why not pull a stunt on him?’ He smiled, sly. ‘You mean give it to you, and carry a fake one? Oh my poor Attia. Is this the limit of your cunning? A child could do better.’ She glared at him. ‘At least I won’t give it to the Prison. At least I won’t kill us all.’ He winked. ‘Incarceron is my father, Attia. I am born of its cells. It will not betray me.’ Disgusted, she gripped the ladder.
And realized it was still.
‘Keiro?’ They waited, hearing the thud-thud, thud-thud, of the Prison’s heart.
‘Keiro? Answer me.’ The ladder swung easily now. No one was on it.
‘Keiro!’ There was a sound but it was muffled and far away.
Hastily she shoved the torch into Rix’s hands. ‘He’s found something. I’m going up.’ As she hauled herself up the first slippery rungs he said, ‘If it’s trouble, say the word “problem”. I’ll understand.’ She stared at his pock-marked face, his gap-toothed grin.
Then she swung down and put her face close to his. ‘Just how crazy are you, Rix? A lot, or not at all? Because I’m beginning to be very unsure.’ He arched one eyebrow. ’I am the Dark Enchanter, Attia.
I am unknowable.’ The ladder wriggled and slid under her as if it was alive.
She turned and climbed quickly, soon breathless, hauling her weight up. Her hands slid on the mud Keiro’s boots had left; the heat grew as she went up, a murky sulphurous stench that reminded her uneasily of Rix’s idea of the magma chamber.
Her arms ached. Each step now was an effort and the torch, far below, was no more than a spark in the darkness. She hauled herself up one more rung and hung, giddily.
And then she realized there was no shaft wall in front of her, but a faintly lit space.
And a pair of boots.
They were black, rather battered, with a silver buckle on one and broken stitching on the other. And whoever wore them was bending down, because his shadow was over her and he was saying, ’How very pleasant to meet you again, Attia.’ And he reached down and grabbed her chin and jerked her face up and she saw his cold smile.
26
Watch, be silent, act only when the moment is right.
The study door looked exactly the same; black as ebony, the black swan spitting defiance down at them, its eye bright as diamond.
‘This opened it once before.’ Claudia waited impatiently as the disc hummed. Behind her, Finn stood in the long corridor, gazing down at the vases and suits of armour.
‘A bit better than the Court cellars,’ he said. ‘But are you sure it will be the same Portal? How can it be?’ The disc clicked. ‘Don’t ask me.’ She reached up and snapped it off. ‘Jared had a theory it was some halfway point between here and the Prison
‘Meaning we lose size in there?’
‘I don’t know.’ The door lock chuntered, she turned the handle, and it opened.
When he followed her in through the dizzying threshold Finn stared around. Then he nodded. ‘Amazing.’ The Portal was the room he had grown to know in the Palace. All Jared’s contraptions and wires still trailed from the controls; the huge feather lay curled in a corner, drifting as the breeze took it. The room hummed in its tilted silence, its solitary desk and chair enigmatic as ever.
Claudia crossed the floor and said, ‘Incarceron.’ A small drawer rolled open. Inside he saw a black cushion with an empty key-shape in it. ‘This is where I stole the Key.
It seems so long ago. I was so scared that day! So. Where do we start?’ He shrugged. ‘You’re the one who had Jared for a tutor.’
‘He worked too fast to explain everything to me.’
‘Well, there must be notes. Diagrams. .
‘There are.’ Piled on the desk were pages of writing in Jared’s spidery script; a book of drawings, lists of equations.
Claudia picked one up and sighed. ‘We’d better start. This could take all night.’ He didn’t answer so she looked up and saw his face. She stood quickly. ‘Finn.’ He was pale; there was a tinge of blue around his lips. She grabbed him and made him sit on the floor, kicking circuits aside. ‘Be calm. Breathe slowly. Have you got any of those pills Jared made up?’ He shook his head, feeling the prickling agony invade and darken his sight, feeling the shame and sheer anger flood him. ‘I’ll be fine he heard himself mumble. ‘I’ll be fine.’ He preferred darkness. He put his hands over his eyes and sat there, against the grey wall, numb, breathing, counting.
After a while Claudia went; there was shouting, running feet. A cup was pressed into his hand. ‘Water: she said. Then, ‘Ralph will stay with you. I have to go. The Queen has come.’ He wanted to stand but couldn’t. He wanted her to stay but she was gone.