Arcanum (36 page)

He watched her closely, and it made her more nervous. She barely had the strength to tear the shirts down the seams. She found that she barely had the strength to stand. She wavered between knowing what she was doing, and not having the slightest clue.

She knelt back on the floor next to Felix and decided that if she was going to do this, she was going to do it well. She laid out the pieces of shirt beside her, and splashed some of the water into the bowl.

“You need to look up, my lord.”

“Felix,” he mumbled as she took hold of his chin to turn his head.

“I know. But you’re Prince Felix of Carinthia, and you need to be reminded of that.” She dipped a sleeve in the water and wrung it out so that it was wet but not dripping.

“I could command you to call me Felix.”

The water was cold on her fingers as she rubbed at his cheek. “You could, and I’d still add ‘my lord’ under my breath every single time. It wouldn’t do to be over-familiar.”

“Does that mean I have to call you Miss Morgenstern?” Rivulets of dirty water trickled down his neck. No matter: the shirt he was wearing would have to go. He ought to wash his hair, too, but she didn’t have enough water for that, and anyway, a good brush would see off most of the filth.

“My lord can call me whatever he wishes. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?” She lifted off the sling and, for want of anything better to do with it, tossed it into the heart of the fire. It smoked and charred for a moment, before burning with a dirty flame. “This shoulder: is it broken?”

“There’s a little bone that goes across here.” He traced the line with his left hand. “The signore called it the clavicula.”

“Collar-bone,” she said. “It’ll only set right if the arm is completely immobilised. Let me see.”

He couldn’t lift his arm up to get his shirt off, and she was going to cause him pain peeling it off him. So she sat behind him and ripped it off his back. She did warn him, but it was still shocking when the stitching tore, and they both covered their embarrassment by giggling.

Her laughter died in her throat. The boy’s body was a bruise that varied only in colour. Red weals marked where the armour had turned blows away, and they were everywhere. His sword-arm was purple and black.

“How did you live through this?”

“I don’t remember. It happened so fast.”

Sophia eased the sleeve off the right arm, and moved around to the front to feel the break. It was clean, which was one thing, and there wasn’t much swelling, but she could feel the ends move against each other when she pressed against them.

Felix winced, and said nothing.

“I know how to do this,” she said. “It might take one or two tries before I’m happy with it.” She needed to make bandages, and tie them together to make a long length. Somewhere in her travels, she’d come across a pair of good scissors, so she went to fetch those, and another couple of shirts which she proceeded to turn into strips.

“How do you know how to do this?” he asked.

“Because I learnt. We don’t do it any other way.”

“What do you mean?”

“By magic,” she said. “It’s not kosher.”

He looked at her quizzically, and she sighed.

“Jewish law—” she started, but he interrupted.

“Jewish law? I thought—”

“Then you thought wrong. Anyway, these are extra laws, on top of the Carinthian ones, that say how we’re to practise our religion. Food laws, mainly, and how to observe our festivals, but lots of other things too. We call it Halakha: things that are permitted are kosher, things that are not are treif. It can get complicated for the … people who aren’t Jews, but magic isn’t kosher. It doesn’t stop some, but we get by without, mostly.”

She started knotting together the strips she’d made. Felix wasn’t very big, so she wouldn’t need as many as for a full-grown adult.

“You do without magic? How?”

“By doing things differently. We’ve done it for thousands of years. Three thousand at least. We’re still here.” She caught his unasked question, and suddenly she realised what she had to do. It suddenly wasn’t about bandaging the prince’s shoulder. “Carinthia can learn. It’ll be hard at first, but it can be done. You can still rule a prosperous and peaceful country without the Order.”

Felix chewed at his lip. “The Order’s always been there. The stories, the battles: they’ve always been on our side.”

“I know those stories too.” Sophia took a chance, and hoped. “But do you know this one? I found something out today when I walked up Goat Mountain, all the way to the top, with Mr Thaler and the mayor.”

She took the bandage and started to coil it up while he stared at her with wide-eyed amazement.

“You were on Goat Mountain?”

“At the top. At the White Tower.” She nodded. “They’ve been killing people, in secret, for years, if not for centuries. They’ve killed their own, I think that’s obvious, and Mr Thaler says they’ve been taking Carinthian children. To be honest, I don’t think they cared who it was. But there are bodies. Maybe hundreds: skeletons, skulls, thrown out with the waste. There are bits of bone everywhere. Have you ever been told that?”

“No.”

She slid her hands around his thin waist, wrapping it twice with the bandage to trap the loose end, then looping it up his back.

“Put your right hand on your left shoulder. Hold your elbow into your chest,” she instructed, and he meekly complied. She drew the bandage diagonally across his front, down the length of his arm and under his elbow, before looping it around his bicep and tying it off.

She sat back and inspected her work. It was, if anything, a little tight, though it would relax with time. Felix didn’t seem to notice any discomfort.

“There’s more to this new story,” she said. “We met a hexmaster at the White Tower – just the one, and I think he’s the only one left. I think all the others have either been killed or run away. From the state of him, he must have killed a few himself. He says he can bring the magic back. That’s what Mr Thaler, Master Messinger and the chamberlain are arguing about now.”

“Won’t bringing the magic back be a good thing, though? Everyone misses it, and we need it.”

She leant forward to cut away the excess bandage, and let the scissors fall to the floor. “You can’t do what the hexmaster wants, even if you believe him. Even if he can do what he claims.”

“I don’t understand,” he said plaintively.

“He wants to use your subjects for fuel.” She took the scraps of material and cast them at the fire. “That’s what he said. Fuel. One or two a day. Every day. Sacrifices.”

A noise in the corridor distracted her, and the door was flung open. A lean, angry man in fine clothes took one look and rushed at her. He moved extraordinarily quickly, taking hold of her hair in one fist, jerking her backwards to a half-standing position, and putting a dagger to her throat.

She barely had time to gasp, and when she did so, the point of the blade touched her neck.

“Let go of her,” said Felix. He put his good hand on the floor and pushed himself up. He really wasn’t very tall. He was half dressed and one arm was bandaged across his chest. But he was a prince. “Let go of her at once.”

Despite the direct order, the man didn’t relax his grip on her hair, or move the dagger aside. “Who is this woman? How did she get in here?”

Although both her hands were free, Sophia didn’t dare move. She might get one hand between his knife and her, but he was very strong and she didn’t want to die.

Having regained his colour previously, Felix was now shock-white again. He saw the scissors lying on the floor next to his feet, and he scooped them up, holding them in front of him in lieu of any other weapon. “Let. Her. Go.”

The man still didn’t obey. He clenched his fist tighter in her hair and pulled harder. It hurt. It hurt a lot. But she was transfixed by the boy-man in front of her, levelling a pair of closed scissors at the man’s face.

Felix danced forward. His movements were almost as quick as her assailant’s: he had a leg either side of Sophia’s in order to get close enough, but his footwork was assured. The point of the scissors trembled in front of the man’s right eye.

“Signore. You’re mistaken. She hasn’t hurt me, and I insist you let her go, at once.”

The man could have dropped her: sprung his hand and let her fall to the floor. Perhaps, with the threat of blindness an inch away and the prince clearly agitated, he decided that any sudden movements wouldn’t be wise. He lifted his knife hand high, and lowered Sophia to the ground, disentangling his fingers with exaggerated care.

As soon as she was free, she scrambled away and put a heavy chair between herself and the man.

“Apologies, my lord,” he was saying, “I am only ever concerned for your safety. That she has not mistreated you is both your luck and hers, not design.” He looked at her like a cat would regard a mouse. “From the back I thought it might be the witch Agana.”

There was a clump of her hair on the floor beside him, and when Sophia put her hand to her head, it came away wet. She almost picked up the chair and threw it at the man, this signore. Did she look like this witch from the front, too? He had had ample time to check. She pressed her fingers against her neck, and discovered a thin ribbon of blood running down to her collar.

The prince, though, seemed to accept the apology. He let his arm fall by his side, all the fight knocked out of him. “Why are you here, signore?”

“I came to find my lord and prince, to request his presence at a meeting of grave importance where the future of the palatinate may be decided.”

Felix glanced at Sophia, then back at the signore. “I have to go,” he said.

“My lord should at least consider putting on a shirt,” she replied. What was she saying? She was bleeding from the head, the neck, and she was asking the half-naked Prince of Carinthia to put on some clothes. She wiped her hand on her skirt, and turned her back on them to look in the chests for something that might fit him without looking ludicrously huge.

She wondered as she searched whether she’d get that dagger between the shoulder-blades. She shuddered, and carried on regardless. Eventually, she found a suitable shirt that had ties which she could use to take in any excess.

Aware that the signore was staring at her all the while, she stepped behind Felix and asked him to raise his good arm. She dropped the shirt over his head, feeding his hand up the sleeve until it popped out the other end, then pulled the rest of it down over his bandages. She tied bows where she could, and even turned him around so she could lace his collar.

The signore’s face was full of rage. He hated her. Yet after Felix had stammered his thanks and looked up at her looking down, when he turned back around, the man’s snarl had vanished.

“We are in the solar, my lord. If you please.” He gestured to the door, his hand still threaded with strands of her hair that glittered like web.

“I do have to go,” said Felix.

“Of course, my lord.” She dipped into a curtsey, and stayed with her head bowed until he left.

Then it was just her and the signore.

“I know who you are,” he said.

“Then you lied to Felix.” She moved to stand back behind the chair. “You lied to your prince.”

The man shrugged off the accusation. “That idiot librarian thinks you have something useful to contribute to our discussions. You do not. You will not be heard.”

Sophia was about to tell him that it was too late, that she’d already given her testimony about Eckhardt to the one person who genuinely mattered, when she decided that saying so wouldn’t be a good idea. She was facing the sort of man who would kill her out of spite – not today, perhaps, but tomorrow, or the next day – and he’d make it look accidental so as not to arouse suspicion.

She had to rely on Felix not blurting it all out, of course. Her life was in the hands of a grief-stricken twelve-year-old boy.

“As you wish,” she said, and he seemed satisfied that he had cowed her.

“Wait here. Someone will escort you to the Wagon Gate.” The signore didn’t even bother facing her as he carried on speaking on his way to the door. “Stay away from the prince, Miss Morgenstern.”

It was just her, now. She didn’t know how much time she had before a guard came to throw her out. She did know that she had to make the most of what she had.

Looking for likely bandage cloth had revealed a writing set. Ink, pen, cut squares of parchment. She raced to it, opened the box, and took it over to the fire, where there was most light.

She crouched down, and started to scratch out her words.

Thaler was too close to the fire, and he was sweating. He recognised that his seat had been offered to him quite deliberately to discomfort him. Messinger was in hardly a better position.

Things had started off well: Trommler had been in charge then, and Thaler realised that he’d met a kindred spirit, a man with a book under his arm. He’d listened gravely – there seemed to be no other demeanour that suited him – and nodded slowly as he gave them permission to proceed to the next part of their story.

The change had come with the entry of the Italian sword-master, Allegretti, from a door at the far end of the solar. He’d insisted they sit rather than stand. He’d insisted they drink, while surreptitiously abstaining himself. He’d made small talk, enquiring after their health, the state of the weather, the general disposition of the library and the town; anything but the most important matter of Eckhardt and his offer.

It had grown too much, and Messinger, already highly agitated, had blown like an over-heated kettle. Thaler, in his attempts to reason with both the mayor and the sword-master, had become roused himself, and it had taken all Trommler’s skill to calm them down.

Thaler didn’t even know why Allegretti was there. He appeared to have invited himself and excluded everyone else. He wasn’t the prince, and it was the prince they needed to see. Yes, the boy had only twelve years under his belt, but it was obvious that Carinthia couldn’t accept the demands of a deranged murderer, no matter what riches he proffered in return.

Yet Allegretti couldn’t see that. He kept on accepting their points, only to completely overturn them with his next “But if…”