“Vermillion looks so small from here.”
The voice comes from beside me, a boy’s voice, though cracking with the rumours of the man to come. I turn, and flinch away. The child is deformed. A boy of maybe fourteen, his arms twisted into unnatural positions, straining and tight against his body, wrists bent at painful angles, hands clawed. His skull bulges out above his forehead as if overburdened with brain. . just like-
“What, Garyus?” A girl’s voice on my right.
“The city looks so small from up here, like I could hold it in the palm of my hand,” he says.
“It looks that way to me when I’m down there in the middle of it.”
I turn and it’s the Red Queen, just a girl, no more than eleven. Jaw set, staring out into the sun-bright distance.
Garyus seems unconcerned. “The world though, sister. . now that looks big wherever you stand.”
“I could conquer it,” says Alica, still staring out across the palace walls into the streets of Vermillion. “I could lead my armies from one end to the other.”
“When you’re older,” says Garyus with the superiority of a big brother, “you’ll understand how the world works. You don’t conquer it with the sword. Armies are the last thing you use, when the result is no longer at issue. Money is the lifeblood of Empire-”
“The empire is broken. It was broken before we were born. And merchants grub after gold-wars are won by soldiers. You’re just obsessed with money because Father gave you those hundred crowns and you bred them into more. You only care because-”
“Because I was born broken, yes.” Garyus’s smile seems genuine. “Broken like the empire. Even so, I’m correct. Money is the lifeblood of Empire, and of each part of it, and of any kingdom, or nation where there exists sufficient industry to arm and equip a military of consequence. Money is the blood of nations and a person who understands that, who controls that, controls the future. Let the blood out of any country and it will collapse soon enough.”
Both of them turn and look back into the room. I turn too, blinded for a moment by the change from the brightness of the day.
“I’m right. Tell her I’m right, — .” Garyus speaks a name but it slides past me as if it is deliberately evading my ears.
It’s Alica who replies though. “He’s not right. Wars decide, and when I’m queen I’ll lead my armies to Vyene and remake the empire.” Her scowl reminds me of the expression she will wear when she gazes out across Czar Keljon’s forces from the walls of Ameroth, less than ten years from this day.
I can see who Grandmother and Great-uncle Garyus are addressing now. A pale girl, painfully slim, hair lank and colourless, of similar age to Garyus. She’s not looking at them-she’s looking at me. Her eyes are startling, one green, one blue, both unreal shades that seem to have been taken from some alien place.
“Don’t be so sure you’ll be queen, little sister,” Garyus says, his tone light but hurt behind his smile. “When Father sees what I’ve made of his investment in me he’ll-”
“He just gave you the money to give you something to do up here,” Alica says, her scowl half-frown now as though the hard truth doesn’t taste as good on her tongue as she thought it might.
“Father knows that a king needs to rule his economy as much as his people. .” Garyus trails off and looks toward his twin. “I could be king. .”
The Silent Sister gives him an unreadable look, those strange eyes fixing him for the longest time. At last she gives a slight shake of her head and looks away. Garyus’s face stiffens in disappointment. He’s almost handsome beneath the deformity of his brow.
“I will be king.” He returns his stare to the city beyond the window. “You don’t see everything!”
The three of them stand in silence in the dimness of that tower room where only the shape of the window, sun-blazed upon the floor, seems alive. Something nags at me, somewhere I should be, something I should be doing.
“Wake up.”
I look around to see which of them said it, but they’re all three bound in their own thoughts.
“Wake up.”
I remember the dark street, the dead things creeping, the witch lying in the road.
“Wake. UP!”
I tried to wake, willing my eyes wide, trying with every ounce of my determination to spit the blood from my mouth and shake off the chains of Grandmother’s memories.
“Wake.” I opened my eyes and looked up at Hennan. “Up.” We both closed our mouths on the word. Panic had me on my feet in moments, reeling from one side of the alley to the other, reaching for the wall of a house to support me. Half of me still felt as though it were in that tower room. “How long?”
“Ages!” Hennan looked up at me, face dirty and etched with worry. He’d rescued the lantern from my tumble, though it looked pretty battered.
I glanced up at the sky-still velvet and dusted with stars. “Couldn’t have been more than an hour?” Kara’s spell could have had me on my back for a week. Had she planned it that way? Perhaps I was growing less susceptible. “Two hours?”
Hennan shrugged.
“Come on.” And I snatched the lantern before leading off. The voices of Garyus and the Red Queen followed me, sounding somewhere deep behind my imagination.
I hurried along, taking turnings at random, unhooding the lantern only when some or other obstacle presented itself-the damaged hood leaked enough illumination the rest of the time to stop me running into walls. I kept my eyes on the patch of light before me-whenever I glanced at the dark I saw the lines of Garyus’s room written across it. He seemed less damaged back then but surely he knew no king so crooked as he ever sat upon a throne. Still, children hope in ways adults find hard to imagine. They carry their dreams before them, fragile, in both arms, waiting for the world to trip them.
I ran, trailing other people’s lives and dreams, and each time I slowed they caught up, surging around me to fill the night so that I had to wade through the images, through scents, memories of a touch, struggling all the while not to be dragged down beneath them and cast into one of those endless sleeps that had plagued my journey south.
In time the visions lessened and we came to broader streets where the occasional person still came and went despite the hour. The morning couldn’t be very far away and I felt I could ward off the memories that my blood had sparked, at least until I had to sleep-what dreams might come then I couldn’t say. Sageous would have to fight Kara’s magic if he wanted a place on stage. I pulled Hennan to the side of the road and sat with my back against the wall, slumped.
“We’ll wait for dawn.” I didn’t say what we’d do at dawn. Run away probably, but at least it sounded like a plan.
• • •
I could have taken Hennan’s twenty doubles off him. The fact that it was my gold in the first place only made it an easier thing to justify. I could have taken the boy’s money, left Kara senseless in the alley, bought a horse and ridden for the hills. I should have done that. I should have taken him by the ankles and shaken my florins out of him. Instead dawn found me staring across the width of Patrician Street at the high bronze doors of the Frauds’ Tower, and the silvered steel bulk of the clockwork soldier standing guard before it.
Morning made its slow advance down the street. I’m sure a tutor once told me that day breaks at a thousand miles an hour, but it always seems to creep when I’m watching. The high points on the soldier’s armour caught the first light and seemed to burn with it.
“There. I told you. Nothing we can do.” I took Hennan’s shoulder and pulled him back into the shadows of the side street. He shot me a sour look. He still hadn’t forgiven me for taking him by the ankles and trying to shake my florins out of him. I’d failed on two counts. Firstly, he’d proved heavier than I’d imagined and I got very little shaking done, and most of that with his head on the ground. Secondly, he’d had the foresight to hide all the gold. He’d probably stashed it when I fell into the vision-sleep. I explained to him how terribly mistrustful this was and how it wasn’t only an insult to my royal person but by extension to the whole of Red March. The little bastard just clamped his mouth shut and ignored all reason. Some people might say I only had myself to blame, what with teaching him to cheat at cards, advising him to always take the money, and sharing with him my policy on disposable friends. It’s not the kind of education that builds trust in the tutor. Of course I’d say to those people, “shut the hell up,” and also that it was Snorri’s fault for filling the boy’s head with nonsense about never abandoning a comrade and for making that ridiculous last stand with Hennan’s grandfather back in Osheim. In any event the boy’d hidden the money and I was hardly going to twist his arm until he told me where he’d put it. Well. . I did twist his arm, but not far enough to get him to tell me where my gold was. Hennan had turned out to be tougher than I’d expected and whilst I might twist his arm, I didn’t want to break it. Or at least not unless I was sure it’d get me my answer. And of that I wasn’t sure.