The Book of Lies (24 page)

She gave a weary shrug. “Bea’s asleep and there’s nothing much I can do. I’d rather be out here with you than with…” She couldn’t seem to finish the sentence, as though she was afraid of the final words.

Marcel thought he knew what she meant. “I can’t watch Bea die either,” he agreed wretchedly.

“Bea?” Nicola responded, a little surprised. “She’s not going to die, Marcel. As soon as Remora comes back she’ll start to get better again.”

This was what Marcel wanted to hear, more than anything, and it lifted his spirits immediately. But he hadn’t forgotten Nicola’s unfinished sentence. She would rather be with him, her brother, than… than whom? The answer was not hard to guess.

“Do you think Eleanor will make a good queen?” he asked tentatively.

“A queen, yes. In a palace with lots of fine clothes and servants taking orders. I can see her with all that. Once it was just what I wanted too.”

“It’s what
she
wants more than anything,” Marcel declared, and if the Book of Lies had been sitting across his knees he was certain that its glow would have melted the rest of the snow around them.

“But is she the kind of mother you dreamed of, Marcel?” Nicola asked seriously.

He didn’t know how to answer. It had all happened so
quickly. He hadn’t had time to dream of anything. But Nicola had.

“I’ve asked her to help me braid my hair three times now,” Nicola went on. “Each time she makes an excuse. She has to meet with Zadenwolf or Starkey, and then yesterday afternoon, she said she had to pick some berries from the forest. How important can that be?”

“Brushing someone’s hair doesn’t sound very important either,” said Marcel, before he realised how unkind it would sound.

She rounded on him. “Boys! You’re just as bad as Fergus with his swords and his fighting. Don’t you see, Marcel? Brushing a girl’s hair is what a mother does, even a queen… if she loves her daughter. I wonder whether our mother loves anything, except the crown she wants to feel on her head.”

There, the word had been said. Love. It stirred Marcel more than he wanted it to. He had heard that word only recently, and on Eleanor’s own lips. “She told me that the ones you love can be the first to die,” he muttered miserably. “She was talking about Bea.”

The wind was growing stronger and the first drops of a new rainstorm warned them to find shelter. Brother and sister set off back towards their tent, shoulders hunched and heads down as the rain intensified. Soon Marcel was running, with eyes only for the ground ahead, trying to leap the larger puddles of melted snow, when he collided with a figure running blindly, like himself.

“Fergus! Watch where you’re going,” he cried in anger when he saw who it was.

There was no apology from Fergus. In fact, the boy cowered as though Marcel had punched him.

“What’s the matter? You’re as white as a ghost.”

“I found something,” he said faintly, barely able to look Marcel in the eye. “At least, I think I did.”

“What? What did you find?”

“I don’t want to say,” he muttered, then stood in a daze, letting water pour in a steady stream from his matted hair and down the sides of his face. “They’ll think I’m mad if I drag them out into this storm and it’s all a mistake.”

“What are you talking about?” Nicola cried impatiently.

Fergus came awake with a start. “Come with me, both of you. Then I’ll know.”

Tugged away with such force, Marcel could hardly refuse, and Nicola tagged along in bewilderment. Pulling up their hoods against the rain, they followed Fergus away from the camp. Despite their cloaks, they were already soaked to the skin and shivering when Fergus led them off a narrow trail and into the forest, about two hundred paces beyond the perimeter of the camp. “I was out in the forest patrolling with Zadenwolf’s men, but somehow I got lost. Had to find my own way back. I would never have seen it otherwise.”

Marcel still didn’t have clue what he was jabbering about. Finally, Fergus found the courage to push his way between two
small bushes before stopping again beside a third. “Here, this is what I found,” he breathed.

Snow had been heaped around and under the bush in a way that seemed unnatural, but the morning’s rain had softened it and it was dissolving steadily even as they stood there watching.

“What are we supposed to see?” asked Marcel, still puzzled.

“This,” said Fergus, and pulling the foliage of the bush back a little he revealed something pale and pinkish-brown protruding from the snow. It was a hand, its fingers outstretched and frozen, like a grasping claw.

Nicola gasped in horror and took a step backwards. As for Fergus, his courage was returning now that he had company. He fell on to his knees in the melting snow and began to scoop it away, exposing the wrist and then the forearm. Marcel knelt beside him and together they worked towards the shoulder. “A dress,” said Fergus when he saw the cut of the clothing. “It’s a woman.”

A few more handfuls and finally a face was staring up at them, the eyes open even though they would never see again. Fear and a dreadful pain were frozen in the creased skin of the forehead and around the mouth. With a shock they realised that they knew this face – not well, not as a friend, but they knew her, and the true horror of what they had found suddenly overwhelmed them.

They turned aside to let Nicola see. “Remora!” she exclaimed, on the verge of tears. “The poor woman.”

“Who will save Bea now?” Marcel asked, then felt ashamed of himself. Bea was still breathing but Remora was already dead.

“Look at her lips!” cried Nicola suddenly. “They’re blue! She must have been caught out in the snow and frozen to death.”

“A wise old elf-woman like Remora?” said Marcel. “No, I can’t believe it. What if it was one of Pelham’s soldiers?” He looked around nervously. “There could be more…”

“No, it couldn’t be Pelham’s men,” said Fergus, interrupting. “Zadenwolf’s soldiers have searched the forest around here for miles. No one’s seen a thing.”

Marcel looked again at those lips, unnaturally blue, and a terrible thought came into his mind. “Remember how Pelham murdered his Queen?” he asked the others. “Her lips turned
bright blue.
Remora’s been poisoned!”

“Poison!” Nicola breathed.

“You know what this means, don’t you? It must have been someone in the camp. We have a traitor in our ranks,” said Fergus, touching the handle of his sword where it brushed against his left shoulder.

“A murderer, you mean,” seethed Nicola.

Marcel inspected Remora’s body more closely. The initial shock was fading a little and his eyes began to notice how she had been buried. “She’s under the snow,” he murmured.

“You’re right,” Fergus agreed. “Whoever killed her must have piled snow on to her body, to hide it. If the rain hadn’t melted it from around her hand I would never have seen it.”

“But there hasn’t been any snow since last night,” Marcel pointed out with a frown.

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Nicola. “Remora only left our tent this morning. Mother said so.”

Fergus was taking a closer look now as well. “See how hard the snow is around her face? No, your mother must be wrong. Remora was killed during the night some time, when the snow was still falling.”

“But she wouldn’t have gone out in the dark to look for the things she needed,” Marcel objected. He was becoming uncomfortable with the things they were talking about and the suspicions they seemed to lead to.

“Marcel,” Nicola said cautiously, with an edge to her voice that he didn’t like at all, “Remora had plenty of potions and ointments. I saw them in the bag she brought with her. She didn’t need any more, not when she arrived here only yesterday.”

It was clear now what they were suggesting, though neither of them could say it out loud. That job fell to Fergus. “Are you saying your mother lied to you on purpose? But if she did that, then she must have known what happened to Remora…” It came to him suddenly, what was in the minds of his two cousins. “You can’t think she’s the murderer, your own mother?”

Could Eleanor have killed Remora? Marcel dared ask himself. What were those berries he had caught her hiding?

“I don’t understand,” confessed Nicola in despair. “Why would anyone want to kill Remora? She was here to save Bea’s life!”

Bea! Marcel’s head shot up. “What did you say?” But he had heard well enough. Ever since they’d uncovered Remora’s face, wild ideas had been spinning and swirling around inside his head, too terrifying to make sense. But with those simple words from Nicola he was beginning to guess the truth. And what a monstrous thing it was.

He felt tears behind his eyes, hot and heavy, like the breath in his throat. He forced them back with a painful gulp and pushed out words instead. “She was warning me this morning. The people you love might be first. She already knows Bea is going to die.”

Though every part of him wanted to fight his own suspicions, Marcel made himself say it out loud. “That’s why she killed Remora. So that Remora couldn’t save Bea. She
wants
Bea to die.”

The ideas whirling around each other grew wilder. “Fergus, when Bea was wounded, did Zadenwolf’s men find anything out there in the forest? Any trace at all?”

“I told you. Nothing, not even a footprint. But there must have been someone. Starkey saw a man in red running away through the trees…”

Fergus didn’t finish what he was saying. His eyes widened in shock until he had to blink away the rivers of rainwater that streamed down from his sodden hood. “You don’t think there
was
anyone running away, do you? You think Starkey was lying. But Starkey couldn’t have fired that arrow. He was there, with the others, when it happened.”

“Hector,” said Nicola instantly. “And there’s only one man he takes his orders from.” She had been following the trail of suspicions even more closely than Fergus, it seemed.

“I can’t work it out,” Fergus moaned in frustration. “First you think your own mother poisoned Remora and now you accuse Starkey of having Bea shot. Which one is the traitor?”

But Marcel already had an answer for his cousin. “It must be both of them. Mother couldn’t have dragged Remora’s body into the forest by herself. She would have needed a man to help her.”

It was all too much for Fergus. “No, Marcel, this is madness! Starkey tries to kill Bea with an arrow. Your mother kills Remora, so that Bea will die too. Why would they want her dead? She’s just a little girl.”

“A little
elf
-girl, Fergus. She’s King Long Beard’s granddaughter. Don’t you remember the vow he made? If she dies, he’ll take revenge against Pelham. And if the elves go to war…”

“Then so will Zadenwolf,” whispered Fergus, understanding at last. He too had begun to feel the horror of such a hideous crime like a weight he couldn’t throw off.

“Your own mother…” he said, staring at first one, then the other, but when he couldn’t find words to follow he turned away, afraid to look into their faces any longer.

Marcel looked down at the lifeless body still half-buried beneath the snow. “They’ve killed Remora. Now they’re sitting back until that wound kills Bea as well.”

The rain fell more heavily than ever now, tumbling straight down on the three children, cascading over their foreheads and cheeks and making watery beards on their chins.

Fergus made a sudden decision. “We have to tell my father all this. He can make Starkey and Eleanor testify in front of the Book…”

“No, Fergus,” Marcel replied softly. “I don’t need Lord Alwyn’s magic book to be sure. People can hide themselves from you and pretend they’re a different kind of person but in the end it gets too much for them and they show their real faces.”

He looked over at Nicola, her cloak so drenched with rain that it stuck to her skin. “Ask her,” he urged Fergus, nearly shouting now. “Ask Nicola what she thinks. We know what Eleanor’s really like, both of us, and if she was your mother, you’d know too.”

“He’s right, Fergus. Even before this I didn’t want to be near her any more.”

“Then it’s up to my father. Once he knows what they’ve done, he’ll make sure those two murderers get what they deserve.”

Damon? Marcel wasn’t so sure about that, and Fergus wasn’t really the best judge of his own father’s character. He had fallen under the man’s spell from the moment the magical door to that prison had opened.

“I don’t know, Fergus. Maybe we should keep this a secret until we know more.”

Fergus’s voice developed a hard edge. “You don’t trust my father, do you?”

What could he say? No, he didn’t trust Damon, not as much as he needed to. If they ran to him now and poured out their story it would sound wild and ridiculous, and even if Damon was an honest man, he might not believe it. If he wasn’t honest, if he was part of the plan to kill Bea… then all hope was gone.

There in the middle of the waterlogged forest, with the rain beating down relentlessly around them, Marcel couldn’t tell Fergus any of this. He needed time to make his own plan, and to gain that time he would have to delay his cousin. “This is all happening too fast,” he said, feeling his head whirling. “We have to talk, Nicola and I. Eleanor’s our mother, after all, and we’re about to accuse her of murder.”

Fergus showed signs of wavering. “But we’re still going to my father, right? You do trust him.”