Incarceron (Incarceron, Book 1) (18 page)

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The old man lay sprawled on the floor of the byre. It was quite obvious that his neck was broken. He lay on his back, arms flung out, one hand buried in the straw. His eyes were open.

The byre smelled of old dung. Flies buzzed endlessly and wasps came in and out through the open doorway; a small goat bleated outside.

Cold with awe and anger she said, "They killed him."

"We don't know that." Jared seemed to come to life all at once. He knelt by the old man, touched neck and wrist, ran the scanner over him.

"They killed him. He knew something about Giles, about the murder. They realized we were coming here!"

"Who could have realized?" He stood quickly, stepped back into the living room.

"Evian knew. My talk with him must have been bugged. Then there's Job. I asked him ..."

"Job's a child."

"He's scared of my father."

"Claudia, I'm scared of your father,"

She looked again at the small figure in the straw, letting her anger loose, clutching her arms around herself, "You can see the marks," she breathed.

Hand marks. Two bruises like the dark traces of thumbs, deep in the mottled flesh. "Someone big. Very strong."

Jared jerked open the cupboard in the dresser and pulled out plates. "Certainly he didn't fall."

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She turned.

He slammed the drawer, went to the chimney, and stared up. Then to her astonishment he climbed on one of the benches and reached into the darkness, groping blindly. Soot fell in showers.

"Master?"

"He lived at Court, Claudia. He must have been literate."

For a moment she didn't understand. Then she turned and gazed hurriedly around, found the bed, tipped the mattress up, tore open the lice-ridden straw.

Outside, a blackbird shrieked and flapped.

Claudia stared. "Are they coming back?"

"Maybe. Keep looking."

But as she moved her foot caught on a board that creaked, and when she knelt and pulled at it, it swung up on a pivot with the ease of constant use.

"Jared!"

It was the old man's store of treasures. A battered purse with some copper coins, a broken necklace with most of the stones pried out, two quills, a fold of parchment, and, carefully hidden right at the bottom, a blue velvet drawstring bag, small as her palm.

Jared took the parchment and riffled through it. "Looks like some sort of testament. I knew he would have written it down! If he'd been taught by Sapienti, it's only ..." He glanced over. She had opened the blue bag. Out of it she slid a small oval of

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gold, its back engraved with the crowned eagle. She turned it over.

A boy's face looked up at them, his smile shy and direct, his eyes brown.

Claudia smiled back at him, bitter. She looked up at her tutor. "It must be worth a fortune, but he never sold it. He must have loved him very much."

Gently he said, "Are you sure ...?"

"Oh yes, I'm sure. It's Giles."

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CHAINED,

HAND AND FOOT
.

186

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15

***

Sapphique rode out of the Tanglewood and saw the Fortress of Bronze. People were
streaming into its walls from all around.

"Come inside," they urged him. "Hurry! Before it attacks!"

He looked around. The world was metal and the sky was metal. The people were ants
on the plains of the Prison.

"Have you forgotten he said, "that you are already Inside?"

But they hurried past and said he was deranged.

--Legends of Sapphique

***

The storm had raged all night before dying away so abruptly that Finn had been woken at once by the silence. It seemed eerie after the wind, but at least it meant they could move now, before the Prison changed its mind. Keiro had scrambled outside and stretched, groaning with cramp. After a minute his voice had come back, unusually muted. "Look at this."

When Finn had pulled himself up, he had seen that the forest was bare. Every leaf, every thin metallic curl of foliage lay heaped in immense drifts.

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The trees had broken out into flower. Copper blossoms, scarlet and gold, glimmered up hill and down dale as far as he could see.

Behind him, Attia had laughed. "It's beautiful."

He had turned, surprised, realizing he saw it only as an obstacle. "Is it?"

"Oh yes. But you ... you're used to color. Coming from Outside"

"You believe me?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes. There's something different about you. You don't fit. And the name you called out in your sleep, this Claudia. You remember her?"

It was what he had told them. He looked up. "Listen, Attia, I need your help. It's just... I need sometimes to be alone. The Key ... it helps the visions. Sometimes I need to be away from Keiro and Gildas. Do you understand?"

She had nodded gravely, her bright eyes fixed on him. "I told you, I'm your servant. Just tell me when, Finn."

He had felt ashamed. Looking at his face, she had said nothing more.

Since then they had hurried through a landscape of jewel-bright color, between plantations of trees that had marched downhill, the forest floor broken and seamed with streams in strange insulated beds, riven with cracks. Insects Finn had never imagined crawled in great drifts of leaves that blocked the path; finding detours around these lost them hours. And

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high, in the bare branches jackdaws hopped and karked in flocks, following the travelers with beady curiosity till Gildas cursed them and waved a fist at them. Then, silently, they all flew away.

Keiro nodded. "So the Sapienti still have some magic after all."

Breathless, the old man glared at him. "I wish it worked on you."

Keiro grinned at Finn,

Finn allowed himself a smile. He felt lighter somehow, and as he trudged after Gildas down the aisles of the wood, he began to sense something that must be like happiness. The Escape had begun. The Comitatus was far behind; all that life of brutal infighting, of murder and lies and fear was over. Things would be different now. Sapphique would show him the way out.

Stepping over a tangle of root he almost felt like laughing aloud, but instead he put his hand inside his shirt and touched the Key.

He jerked his hand away at once.

It was warm.

He glanced at Keiro, pacing ahead. Then he turned. Attia was where she always walked. At his heels.

Annoyed, he stopped. "I don't want a slave."

She stopped too. "Whatever you say." Her eyes watched him with that bruised look.

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He said, "There's a stream here, I can hear it. Tell the others I'm getting some water."

Without waiting, he strode off the path deep into a thicket of platinum thorns, then crouched among the undergrowth. Umbels of pliant wire rose around him, hollow reeds where microBeetles worked busily.

Hurriedly he took out the Key.

It was a risk. Keiro might come. But it was hot now in his fingers, and there were the familiar small blue lights deep in the crystal. "Claudia?" he whispered anxiously. "Can you hear me?

"Finn! At last!"

Her voice was so loud it made him swallow; he glanced around. "Quiet! Be quick please. They'll come looking for me."

"Who will?" She sounded fascinated.

"Keiro."

"Who's he?"

"My oathbrother ..."

"All right. Now listen. There's a small finger panel at the base of the Key. It's invisible but the surface is slightly raised. Can you find it?"

His fingers groped, leaving dirty smudges. "No," he said, flustered.

"Try! Do you think he has a different artifact?" The question wasn't for Finn. The other voice answered her, the one he remembered as Jared. "It's almost certainly

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identical. Finn, use your fingertips. Search the edge, the facets near the edge."

What did they think he was! He scrabbled, his hands sore.

"Finn!" Keiro's murmur was right behind him. He jumped up, shoving the Key back, gasped, "For God's sake! Can't I take a drink in peace?"

His brother's hand shoved him back down into the leaf drift. "Get down and shut up. We've got visitors."

CLAUDIA SAT back on her heels and swore with frustration. "He's gone! Why is he gone?"

Jared went to the window and gazed out at the utter chaos in the courtyard. "It's just as well. The Warden is coming up the steps."

"Did you hear the way he sounded? Again, it was so ... panicky."

"I know how he feels." Jared tugged a small pad from the pocket of his riding coat and thrust it at her. "This is the full draft of the old man's testament. Read it while we travel."

Doors slamming. Voices outside. Her father's. Caspar's.

"Delete it straight afterward, Claudia. I have a copy."

"We should do something. About the body."

"We weren't there, remember?"

He barely had the words out before the door opened. Claudia calmly slipped the pad down her dress.

"My dear." Her father came in and stood before her. She

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stood up to meet him. He wore his usual black frockcoat, the scarf at his neck silkily expensive, his boots the finest leather. But today he wore a small white flower in his buttonhole, as if to mark the occasion, and that was so unlike him she stared at it in surprise.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

She nodded. She was wearing a dark blue traveling dress and cloak, with a special pocket sewn into it for the Key.

"A great morning for the House of Arlex, Claudia. The beginning of a new life for you, for us all." His hair with its streak of silver was tied severely back, his eyes dark with satisfaction. He pulled on his gloves before he took her hand. She looked at him without smiling, and the old dead man in the straw was in her mind, his eyes open.

She smiled and dropped a curtsy. "I'm ready, sir."

He nodded. "I always knew you would be. I always knew you'd never let me down."

Like my mother did? she
wondered acidly. But she said nothing, and her father gave Jared the briefest nod and led her out. They swept into the great hall, over the lavender-strewn floor, down between the rows of fascinated servants, the Warden of Incarceron and his proud daughter, setting out for the marriage that would make her a queen. And on a signal from Ralph the staff cheered and applauded and threw sweet irises underfoot; they rang tiny silver bells in honor of the wedding they would never see.

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Jared walked behind, a satchel of books under one arm. He shook hands with the servants, and the maids moped over him, pushing tiny packets of sweetmeats at him, promising to keep the tower safe, not to touch any of his precious instruments, feed the fox cub and the birds.

As Claudia took her seat in the coach and looked back, she felt a rueful lump in the back of her throat. They would all miss Jared, his gentle ways, his fragile good looks, his willingness to dose their coughing children and advise their wayward sons. None of them seemed at all sorry to see
her
go.

But then whose fault was that? She had played the game. She was the mistress, the Warden's daughter.

Cold as ice. Hard as nails.

She raised her head and smiled across at Alys. "Four days' traveling. I intend to ride for at least half of it."

Her nurse frowned. "I doubt the Earl will. And he'll probably want you to sit in his coach for some of the time."

"Well, I'm not married to him yet. When I am, he'll soon find out it's what I want that counts." If they thought her hard, she would be hard. And yet, as the horses were mounted and the outriders gathered and the coaches began the slow turn to the gatehouse, all she wanted was to be staying here, in the house where she had lived since she was born, and she leaned out of the window and waved and called out all their names, her eyes stinging with sudden tears. "Ralph! Job! Mary-Ellen!"

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And they waved back, a storm of handkerchiefs and the white doves rising from the gables and the bees in the honey-suckle buzzing as the carriage rumbled over the wooden drawbridge. In the dark green waters of the moat she saw the house reflected, saw moorhens and swans arrow over it, and behind her in a great procession the wagons and coaches and riders and hounds and falconers of her entourage, of the household of the "warden of Incarceron, on the day his plans began to come to fruition.

Windblown, she threw herself back in the leather seat and blew hair from her eyes. Well, maybe.

***

THEY WEREmen and yet how could they be?

They were at least eight feet tall. They walked with an odd angular gait, stalking like herons, ignoring the vast drifts of sharp leaves, crunching straight through them.

Finn felt Keiro's hand grip so tight on his arm it hurt. Then his brother breathed a single syllable in his ear.