City of Lies (20 page)

Sinew took a deep breath and began to walk toward the creature. As he did so, he found himself thinking of the children again. Something had changed. He could tell. They were no longer where they had been a moment ago.…

He shook himself, and concentrated on the music. He made it sing with longing, with a desire for rolling plains and fat, slow cattle. For the sun, hot and glistening, and the huffing of newborn cubs. For slommerkin heaven, just beyond the Dirty Gate.

The slommerkin hissed again and lashed out with its tusks. Sinew jumped back a step, but his fingers did not miss a note.

“Come,”
sang the music (twining in and out of the First Song).
“Come to sun-on-the-skin and food-in-the-belly. Come to gobble-gobble-liver-and-hearts. Come to eat-all-you-want.”

The slommerkin’s tiny eyes blinked. It sank back on its torn haunches and scratched itself thoughtfully. Then, with a shudder, it heaved itself to its feet and began to make its way toward the Dirty Gate.

Sinew followed, with Broo limping beside him. His fingers never paused in their task.
“Come! Come to roll-on-bones! Come to suck-at-marrow!”

The slommerkin moaned with hunger. The keeper and the brizzlehound drove it onward, through the Tench, through Lost Children and Dauntless, and across the perilous landscape of Knife Edge. Until at last they came to their destination.

The Dirty Gate lay deep inside the museum, in a long, narrow room with a stone floor and stone walls. There were no exhibits here, no display cases, just cold-hearted stone and, at the far end, the Gate itself, its massive iron strips twisted together like honeycomb.

The slommerkin paused halfway down the room, snuffing the air. Sinew peered past it and saw that the Dirty Gate was open, and that Herro Dan and Olga Ciavolga stood to one side of it, with a small fire burning at their feet.

He added a note of urgency to the song he played.
“Don’t stop! Don’t tarry! Liver-and-hearts! Marrow-bones!”

The slommerkin surged down the room. But just as it was about to step through the Gate, Sinew’s bleeding fingers slipped. A discord rang out.

The slommerkin hesitated. Its head swung from side to side. It turned around, its little eyes fixed on Herro Dan. It licked its pendulous lips.…

“No!” cried Olga Ciavolga, and she snatched a burning
stick from the fire and threw it, as straight as a spear. The slommerkin squealed with pain. It shuffled backward through the Dirty Gate, pawing at its nose. Quickly, the keepers threw themselves at the Gate and pushed it shut. Herro Dan shot the bolt; then he took a large key from his pocket and turned it in the lock.

With a groan of exhaustion, Sinew slid down the wall and laid his harp on the floor. Broo flopped beside him.

“Never met anyone who could throw like you can, lass,” said Herro Dan with a shaky laugh.

“Pfft, it was easy.” The old woman smiled, but her face was white. “Give me something hard to do next time.”

Broo raised his head from his paws. An enormous sigh escaped him. “Is there anything to eat? I am very hungry.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Olga Ciavolga, bending over him. “Of course you are hungry. And look at your poor shoulder! Come with me. I will sew you up and feed you. Sinew, you too. We must do something about your hands.”

Sinew nodded but did not move. “You and Broo go on ahead. I’ll follow when I’ve caught my breath.”

As Olga Ciavolga hurried away with the brizzlehound limping beside her, Herro Dan eased his old bones down to the floor. “That was well done, lad,” he said, patting Sinew on the arm.

Sinew yawned. “I have never in my life played so long and hard. I hope I never have to do such a thing again, but—”

“So do I, lad.”

“But when I was in the middle of it, I sort of
felt
the children.”

“What?
Where?
”

“I don’t know. But I think—I think something has happened to them. Something strange.” Sinew drew his torn fingers through the air above his harp, and a single bright note rang out. “Something
very
strange.”

F
risia, Crown Princess of Merne, slid the bent wire into the lock of her bedchamber door. This wasn’t the first time her bodyguards had locked her in at night. They said it was necessary to keep her safe from assassins. But Frisia had her own ways of getting out.…

One by one the pins inside the lock slid up and out of the way. The door cracked open. She listened for the sound of breathing and heard nothing—her bodyguards hadn’t yet arrived for duty. Good.

She strapped her sword over the boy’s tunic she habitually
wore, pulled on a fur robe and crept out into the silent corridor, closing the door behind her. The flagstones were cold, even through her shoes, and a wisp of winter fog had seeped through the walls.

Her hands were cold too. In fact, her whole body was freezing, as if she had just climbed out of an ice-bound river rather than a warm bed. She shivered and drew her robe closer. All around her, the upper floors of the castle slept.

Frisia hurried past Physician Hoff’s apartments, and past the family chapel, where two stone wolves stood guard. She kissed their noses for luck, as she had done ever since she was tall enough to reach them; then she turned the corner and let herself into the apartments that were reserved for the Margrave of Spit and his children.

She could hear movement in one of the bedchambers. She tapped on the door, feeling for the scrap of paper in her coin pocket. Despite the early hour, a maidservant opened the door almost straightaway. When she saw the princess, she bobbed a curtsy.

“I am here to see the young margrave,” said Frisia, stepping past her.

The maidservant bobbed again. “He’s looking better, Your Highness. He was very cold a while ago, but we put some more wood in the stove and he’s warmed up nicely. And the wound is clean.”

Harmut, the young margrave of Spit, was asleep in his
father’s four-poster bed, his head bandaged and the quilts piled to his chin. The stove in the corner of the room gave out a sultry heat.

Frisia peered down at her friend. The maidservant was right; he was looking a lot better. Still, head wounds could be dangerous things. Frisia’s great-uncle Rulf had ended his days a drooling idiot as the result of such a wound.

There was a creak from the four-poster and Harmut rolled onto his side. “Gold,” he mumbled.

“What?” said Frisia. She pushed her scabbard out of the way and sat down on the bed. “Harmut, are you awake?”

The boy’s eyes snapped open. “Frisia? What are you doing here?”

“Were you dreaming of gold?”

“Was I dreaming? I suppose I must have been. Everything was—strange.”

“There’ll be plenty of gold when we beat Graf von Nagel,” said Frisia. “According to our spies, his war chests are bursting. I’ll ask Father to let you have third choice of the treasure after him and me, if you like. That is if you’re still coming to Halt-Bern with us tomorrow.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Harmut moved again and winced. His fingers fumbled out from beneath the quilts and found the bandage. He blinked in confusion. “What’s wrong with my head?”

“You were—” Frisia broke off. Some of the fog had crept
into her mind, and for a second or two she had the oddest feeling, almost like a voice speaking inside her.…

(What am I doing here? A castle? What am I doing in a castle?)

Then the fog drew back a little and she said, “You were wounded during sword practice yesterday.”

“Who hit me?”

“I don’t know. We were fighting in a melee with Ser Wilm and my bodyguards. I heard a clang, and you fell”—
(in the water)
—“in the training yard.”

Why was she thinking about water? Why did she suddenly have this voice in her head?
(Cold water … Icy water, lapping at my throat…)

She shook herself. It was probably just nerves. She had been trained in the art of war since the day she learned to walk and had been in several minor battles, but this would be her first proper campaign.

“Are
you
still going to Halt-Bern?” said Harmut.

Frisia stared at him in astonishment. “Of course I am. Why would I stay behind?”

“I don’t know. I just thought—”

Frisia felt a surge of anger. “You thought
what
?” She jumped to her feet. “That I’d become a
coward
since you saw me last?”

“No. But I thought—I thought I remembered you saying
Never
 …” His voice trailed off.

“Nothing would stop me from going!” said Frisia fiercely. “I am the daughter of warriors and the granddaughter of warriors, and it is my
destiny
to see von Nagel beaten. And when he is dead and the crows have stripped the flesh from his carcass, I will bring his skull back to Merne. It will make a nice spittoon for Father.”

Harmut sniffed. “Ha! Bold words.”

“And they’ll be matched by bold deeds.”

The two of them glowered at each other. Frisia had been intending to show him the paper in her coin pocket, but now she changed her mind.

“Harmut?” said a voice from the doorway. A small dark-haired girl in a nightgown blinked sleepily at them. “Are you better?”

“Hello, Uschi,” said Frisia. “I’m afraid your brother has lost some of his sense.”

“I’ve got enough left to fight von Nagel,” muttered Harmut.

Another maidservant appeared behind Uschi, fluttering her hands anxiously. “The young margravine should not be visiting people in her nightwear.”

“It’s not
people
,” said Uschi. “It’s my
brother.
” She dodged the hands of the maidservant and sat down on Harmut’s bed. “I’m glad you’re awake. I wanted to ask you about the voyage to Halt-Bern. Do you think I should take my second-best bow as well as my best one? I don’t want—”

Harmut fell back onto his pillow with a groan. “How many
times do I have to tell you, Usch? You’re not going. You’re too little.”

“Harmut doesn’t think
anyone
else should go,” said Frisia nastily. “He wants to beat von Nagel all by himself and come home a big hero.”

“That’s not what I said,” muttered Harmut. “I just thought—” He closed his eyes. “My head hurts.”

The first maidservant bustled to his bedside. “The young margrave should try to sleep a little more,” she said, straightening the covers.

Frisia pulled a face and walked out of the room. Uschi followed, saying, “What are you doing now? Where are you going? Can I come with you?”

“You’ll have to get dressed first.”

“Wait here,” said Uschi. “Don’t go without me.” And she disappeared into her bedchamber.

Frisia leaned against the wall, kicking at the heavy tapestry with the heel of her shoe. How
dare
Harmut say such things to her? What could possibly stop her from going to Halt-Bern? It was her
destiny.…

The word echoed in her mind—almost as if she had been in this position before, in another time and place.
Knowing
that she had been born for something important. Only the last time—was it possible?—she had turned her back on it.

She was glad when Uschi came out, dressed in tunic and
hose, with a dagger in her belt. Frisia took the scrap of paper from her pocket and flattened it out. “Look at this. Someone pushed it under my door a little while ago.”

Uschi wrinkled her forehead. “It looks like mouse scratchings. What’s it supposed to be?”

“It’s a drawing of the dungeons, I think. See, that’s the passage, and there are the cells. Shall we go and find out what it’s about?”

The two girls hurried down the main staircase to the Memorial Hall of Frisia’s great grandfather, Ferdrek III. From there, they slipped through the concealed door that led to the kitchens and saucing rooms. The lower floors of the castle had been awake for some time, and the smell of bacon and pickled herring wafted out to meet them.

As they passed from the saucing rooms into the cellars, Frisia loosened her sword in its scabbard. Immediately, deep inside her, she felt the rising snarl of the royal wolf-sark—the battle madness that flared up whenever a king or queen or princess of Merne unsheathed a weapon.

She pushed it back down. She did not think there was any real danger here. The sword was just for caution.

“Do Kord and Smutz know you’re down here?” whispered Uschi. “Did you show them the note?”

“Of course not. They’d just say it was a ruse to get me out of my room. They’d want to come with me.”

“Well, I suppose that’s what bodyguards are for.”

Frisia pulled a face in the darkness. “I can look after myself.”

“And besides, you’ve got me,” whispered Uschi.

In the far wall of the cellar, the iron door that led to the dungeon stood ajar. Frisia could see a faint glow through the gap. “Who’s there?” she called softly. “Show yourself.”

No one appeared, but she heard a whisper, “Don’t
you
go. What if she’s not alone? What if she’s brought
them
with her?”

“
We’ll
go,
we’ll
tell her,” said another voice.

“He’s not listening,” said a third voice. “Wilm, dearie, why won’t you
listen
to us?”