Ambergate (33 page)

Too late. I stumbled out at the top, straight into the arms of a soldier.

He was alone, young, but armed; yet in the light from the lantern he carried he looked as alarmed by my sudden appearance
as I was by his. “Well, well,” he said. “Spying in the crypt. Better skip out swift, Miss, and tell no one what you’ve seen.”

I mumbled thanks and fled from him, through to the main body of the Cathedral, and immediately found myself in the middle
of a milling crowd.

At first I was relieved, for Erland would never find me now; but then I saw that something was horribly wrong. All around
me bewildered men and women were being bullied from their pews, dragged into the aisles: the ragged, the infirm, new mothers
with wailing infants, sniveling, frightened children, men with haggard faces. While I’d been below in the crypt, the soldiers
had returned—many more of them.

They came in their dark gray uniforms, with their rifles and coarse, brutal faces, their mouths covered by plague masks. Stepping
from the shadows, they chanted: “Out, out, out!”

Near me, a white-haired man was wrenched from his place. His weeping wife followed; behind them came a dark-haired girl, wringing
her hands.

“Becca!” I said. It was Becca of Madam Anora’s, in Poor-grass Kayes.

Her face lit up. “To find you here, Scuff!”

“And you!”

We clung to each other; the crowd had jammed in the aisles, unable to move. The middle-aged man and woman on either side of
her each clutched a handful of her shawl as if their lives depended on it.

“I came back to the Capital to find my parents, just as you said I should,” Becca said, trying to smile.

“And you did find them!” They looked kind and gentle and dreadfully frail.

“You said, ‘You are braver than you think,’ and so I was!” Becca said.

We hugged again and would have talked forever, but around us the crowd had begun to move again, pushing and jostling. Our
clinging hands broke apart, and she and her parents were hidden from me at once.

Then the first shot was fired.

Around me there were screams, hysterical cries, as the crowd panicked. The strongest shoved the weakest aside. An
old woman hobbled a step before someone’s elbow caught her. Her hand went up as if she were drowning, and she sank out of
sight.

Another shot was fired, then another. In the shadows, soldiers were firing up into the vaulted roof, peppering the ancient
stone with bullet holes. The ravens had long flown away. How long would it be before the soldiers were bored with that game,
and started shooting the crowd?

I was swept along in the flood—too light, too small to resist the terrible onward movement, as everyone surged toward the
doors. My hat was knocked off, my skirts dragged and torn. I had no breath to scream; I couldn’t even breathe.

I was thrust out into a world of light and heat. Like water bursting through a dam, people on all sides of me were forced
out by those behind them. Some lost their balance, stumbled over the others already outside, and fell heavily to the ground.

I staggered to a halt and collapsed onto the stones of the square. I was trembling violently.

The square was still filling up with those that had managed to escape from the Cathedral. The shots and screams were muffled
now. The sun beat down. When I looked up at last it was to stare straight into the lost eyes of a woman with blood streaming
down her face, before she was helped away by her sobbing children. Two soldiers carried out the crumpled body of a young girl,
no older than myself, and laid it on the
stone. Then another body—a child—its dead feet sticking out beneath the soldier’s arm.

I dragged myself away, to a bench beneath a tree on the far side of the square. Vaguely I wondered what had happened to Erland,
to Gobchick, to Becca and her parents.

I sat there with an empty head for a long time. Slowly, my trembling stopped.

The square was emptying at last. Wagons trundled through and removed the pile of bodies. Soldiers shouted in the distance.
Men and women and children led each other away from the scene of desolation. There were splashes of dark blood on the stone.

I rose shakily to my feet and began to walk away. I took the nearest street in the fan that would bring me out onto the Central
Parade. It was deserted. Word must have spread fast that there had been mayhem in the Cathedral: every surviving soul had
shut himself inside.

The sun was directly over my head. Was it only noon?

I was so surprised, I did not see a man slip from the doorway in front of me until it was too late.

It was Titus Molde. I did not recognize him immediately, for he wore a black, wide-brimmed hat low over his brow and was unshaven,
yellow bristles hiding his jaw.

I stopped in alarm, my hand to my mouth. At the same time his hand landed heavily on my sleeve as if to detain me. “Oh, S-Sir,
it is you,” I stammered, confused, my poor heart beating thickly. “Why aren’t you with the other soldiers?”

He paused while still gripping my arm. He examined my face, too close, and I couldn’t draw away. I had forgotten the
brilliance of his eyes. “I am not on duty now,” he said. “But I wish to speak to you, Miss. I need to know when you will do
the deed. You remember our secret pact?”

I nodded, dumb.

“You have taken too long. It is the wedding tomorrow. Do it then, you understand? Do it then, or die yourself.”

I nodded again, and gave a little moan as he tightened his grip on my arm. With his other hand he swatted his head violently
as if to dislodge a clinging insect. “I shall be there, Miss, waiting, watching. And afterward—afterward we can be friends,
accomplices. I’m expecting great things of you.”

Behind him there was the sudden grinding of wheels over the cobbles, the ring of horses’ hooves.

With a curse Titus Molde dropped my arm and started around as a black coach came swaying down the street drawn by two horses,
the driver behind them in the uniform of the Palace security guards.

The door with its gold emblem of the Eagle opened while the coach was still moving. As it pulled up beside us, Nate’s curly
head stuck out and his hand reached down to me.

“Scuff! Get in!” I’d never heard him sound so fierce.

I’d thought my limbs wouldn’t obey after so many shocks, but somehow my hand clasped his, and he pulled me in beside him.
I was flung back against the black leather seat as the carriage careened off again, with a terrific jingle of harnesses and
clattering of hooves.

I’d not even had time to see what had happened to Titus Molde.

“Thank the Eagle I found you!” said Nate, white-faced, as
the coach steadied to a rumble. He still sounded furious. “Do you realize I’ve been looking for you all morning? I heard about
what happened in the Cathedral. You could have been killed! And all for a silly whim—insisting on going alone into the heart
of the Capital on such a day!”

“It was not a silly whim, Nate,” I said in a small voice. “I had to go.”

“I bribed Bernard the guard to drive. I didn’t think I’d ever find you otherwise!”

“I’ll pay you back when I can, Nate.”

“Oh, stuff that! And the danger you were in when I spotted you—that ruffian—anything could have happened!”

“It was the man you took me from,” I said meekly. “The soldier.”

“I didn’t have time to see his face. Anyway that man is no soldier, that’s nonsense.”

“He is, he is!” I stopped quickly for fear of further questions.

“What were you doing, anyway—seeing that vile creature again?” He sounded exasperated. “You’re nothing but a confounded nuisance,
Scuff. I don’t know why I ever rescued you in the first place!”

A lump of misery rose in my throat. Before I could help it, tears began to spill from my eyes, plopping onto the black leather.

I turned my head so he wouldn’t see. The tall houses with their crumbling façades were blurred, and soon I couldn’t see them
at all. I gave a huge gulp that he must have heard, for suddenly a white silk handkerchief was placed on my lap.

“I didn’t mean it, Scuff, you know,” said Nate’s voice awkwardly.

“I’m sorry,” I hiccuped. I struggled not to cry, but more and more tears poured from my eyes as if of their own doing.

I felt his arm go around my shoulders and draw me close. “Hush, my poor little Scuff, hush,” he murmured. He began to stroke
my hair and wet cheeks with his gentle fingertips. “It is the shock, my poor little girl, my little sparrow.”

That made me give a tiny smile in spite of myself.

After a while I whispered, “It is the pity of it all I weep for, Nate—the terrible pity. Those poor people in the Cathedral—how
could the soldiers be so cruel?” I shuddered against his arm. “And it was on the orders of the Lord Protector!”

“You have been through such things today,” he said softly. “What a brute I was to talk to you so!” He looked at me with kind,
wondering eyes. “You have even lost your hat! There, I knew you had no scars of any sort! You are quite perfect.”

“My hat!” I sat up in alarm.

He drew me back, with a sigh. “We shall find you another one, if that is what you want. Is it your face you wish to hide?
You have too many secrets, Scuff, too many from me and from others, perhaps. We must be honest with each other.”

I lay against Nate’s arm and could not speak. I longed so much to unburden myself, but I’d risk losing his loyal friendship
and endanger him most horribly. Then I thought of something certain to distract him. I whispered, “You will not
believe me, but I saw the Amber Gate this very morning. The stories are true!”

He sat up at that, detaching me gently from him. He gave a quick glance to check that the windows were safely shut, and looked
at me gravely. “I know. It is in the Cathedral crypt, which has been blocked over a hundred years.”

“You know?”

“Remember, my father was Keeper of the Keys. So was his father before him. He knew many secrets of the Capital. He said that
the city once took its name from the Gate, its sacred heart.
Ambergate
.”

“And he—you—told no one?” I was incredulous.

“I’ve lived with the secret since my father’s death. He always said that on the day Porter Grouted found the Gate he would
plan to destroy it—melt it down for his own coffers. And my father was right.” Nate’s face was somber. “Grouted has read his
own meaning into the mystical ceiling, and that’s why Miss Leah must marry his son. The Gate and the Ceiling—the two greatest
treasures of the Capital—and Grouted plans to use them both for his own ends! One hears many things as a Boy Musician. Servants
of the Protector are not expected to have ears.” He paused, and his eyes met mine with his clear, direct gaze. “But you know
all this, don’t you, Scuff? You are like the Messenger, are you not?”

I shook my head earnestly. “I told you the truth the other night at the supper dance. But you know about the Messenger?”

He nodded. “My father knew. Father had turned against the Protector by then. He was upset by the way the Protector treated
the fool, Gobchick, throwing him out into the streets homeless when he grew too old to serve his purpose.” He hesitated and
gazed at me sadly. “If you are not like the Messenger, who are you, Scuff? Why are you in such fear of discovery that you
must hide half your pretty face? You are not going to tell me, are you?”

“I can’t, Nate.” We were moving smoothly along the Parade between the Eagles, toward the Palace of the Protectorate. I stared
out at the pairs of marble eyes and they stared back at me pitilessly—the girl with no name. “I don’t even know who I am myself.”

And yet—and yet. I remembered suddenly that for a strange moment that day it had seemed Gobchick was about to tell me.

That night the temperature scarcely dropped, and the moon seemed to boil in the sky. It turned a deep copper red for nigh
on three hours. I knew it to be the reflection cast up into the sky from the Capital—all the blood that had been shed that
day. It was too hot to sleep, and I was too apprehensive. Yet I didn’t crawl into the tiny wig closet for comfort; tomorrow
I’d not be able to hide any longer and I must start by being brave now.

Late the next afternoon, I began to ready myself for the wedding ceremony. I’d washed in the blue-patterned bowl on the washstand
and dressed myself in the green silk I’d worn at the supper dance, when a knock sounded at my door and Nate poked his head
around.

“Oh, Nate,” I said, for I’d not pinned my hair up yet, “is it time to go already?”

He was still in his everyday jacket and breeches and seemed flustered. “Miss Leah wishes to see you, apparently. She asked
for you particularly. I hope she doesn’t object to something in our music.”

“I know what it is, Nate,” I said, laying the tortoiseshell comb by the box. “It isn’t that, I assure you.”
She’s going to beg for my help again!
I thought furiously.

“Be back here in plenty of time,” he said. “We must get to the Cathedral before the Ministration arrives. Our coach is already
waiting in the courtyard.”

“I don’t intend to be long,” I said. I rolled my hair and coiled it at the nape of my neck, since there wasn’t time to pin
it up properly. I took up the new hat that Nate had ordered for me and was about to put it on when he stopped me. He was staring
at me oddly.

“It’s strange, Scuff, but all of a sudden you look so familiar. Your hair done that way, your eyes—I’ve seen you before, I
know it!”

“Why, you’ve known me all of several weeks now,” I said, half laughing, arranging the hat on my head and pulling the veil
down over my eyes. “Of course I look familiar!”

Then I had to push past him, for it seemed as if he’d never shift from staring stone-struck in the doorway.

“I could not leave for the Cathedral without seeing you,” said Miss Leah. She gestured impatiently at her personal maid. “Go!
I’ve no need of you now.” The young girl tiptoed nervously from the bedchamber, glancing at me from the corner of her eye
as I stood in the doorway, waiting for Miss Leah to speak further.