The Master of Misrule (16 page)

Cat prepared to ask for the third time. She could tell his power of speech was fading; his face was nearly all animal.
Although she was light-headed with fear, she tried to keep her voice as cool and clear as the High Priestess’s voice of prophecy. “Asterion,” she commanded. “Tell me the falsehood.”

And out of the beast’s mouth, a human voice spoke.

“The false … the falsehood … is the last.
The—the Empress holds the answer to what you seek
.”

Of course.

Of course that would be the lie. Just another Arcanum cheat, Cat thought savagely. Another false hope, another dead end.

But she didn’t have time to dwell on her defeat.

As Asterion gave a last terrible groan, the horns of a bull sprang from his head—long, curving and cruel. A Minotaur was born.

Cat fled. Those chains wouldn’t hold him for much longer. She couldn’t see the way back through the pillars to an upward ramp and so took the nearest one, which led down again. This next level was even hotter, darker and more cramped, and its yellow arrows pointed in every direction. It’s a labyrinth, she thought despairingly. The floor here was stained with something dark and sticky; she didn’t think it was oil.

What had been the trick to Flora’s maze?
Every turn is left.…
There were no corners here, though—only a forest of crookedly parked vehicles and concrete posts, and arrows that pointed everywhere and nowhere. She had no clue, let alone a thread, to guide her. But unlike an ordinary player
in this move, Cat didn’t have to search for the threshold out of here. She could raise her own, and get straight back to Temple House. She must throw her die and—

But a clanking, crashing sound followed by a bellow announced that the Minotaur had broken his chains. His rage seemed to shake the ceiling. He was coming for her. In her panic, she decided that even the few moments she would need to roll the die, raise the wheel and toss the coin would take too long. She had to find some kind of refuge first. Or get into one of the cars, try her hand at joyriding … But the few doors she checked were all locked.

Cat ran through the pillars in a frenzied imitation of the High Priestess’s zigzagging dance from before. The roars of the beast had a disorientating echo: the noise bounced off the walls and ceiling and posts so that she had no real idea of how close the creature was. She was moving so haphazardly, and so fast, that she nearly slammed into a wall before skidding to a stop. But her whimper of terror changed to weak laughter when she realized the dead end was actually a car lift.

Slowly, creakily, the door began to raise itself from the floor. It was separate to the lift itself, which was a hydraulic platform on chained gears. She flung herself onto the platform, repeatedly jabbing the buttons to close the door and send the lift up. Slowly, creakily, the door began to close … and came to a screeching halt a quarter of the way down. The door had jammed. The lift, however, began to rise. “Oh God,” Cat moaned aloud. “Please, please hurry.” It was moving up inch by torturous inch.

She could see the Minotaur now. He was perhaps fifteen feet away, and standing beneath one of the few working lights. Under the fizz and flicker of its fluorescent tube, the curve of his horns jutted upward in silhouette, almost high enough to touch the ceiling. From the neck down, his body was still a man’s, but the bulk of straining muscle was too grotesquely exaggerated to look human. He pawed his foot on the ground and lowered his head, ready for the final charge.

Cat took out the Ace of Cups and tore it in two.

A jet of water erupted from the floor just outside the lift and surged across the room. The lift continued to inch upward. Cat crouched on its floor, only a couple of feet off the ground, and watched as the water gushed forth in ever greater quantities—her own personal geyser bursting through the concrete. It was a brown, oily torrent that foamed angrily against the pillars and thrashed all round the beast, who was bawling with shock as well as rage. The water rose with astonishing speed. Her last view before the lift climbed to the next story was of the Minotaur’s horns tilting to one side as he floundered in the flood.

F
LORA RECOILED AS THE FIRST
snowflake fell on her cheek. Snow had ceased to be picturesque ever since the midwinter’s night she had found Grace lying in the park, and after her experiences in the Eight of Swords, even the thought of it made her skin crawl. But if she was going to be the next Queen of Cups, she couldn’t allow herself to be put off by a little bad weather.

The card she had taken from Odile was the Five of Pentacles. Its move began outside a church, below a stained-glass window that glowed with rainbow warmth. A choir was singing inside, very high and sweet. Flora’s first impression was that she was in front of an Arcanum version of St. Bernadine’s, but the more she gazed at the walls, the higher they seemed to tower, so that their scale increased to that of a great cathedral.

The illustration on the card was almost exactly like the scene in front of her, right down to the two ragged figures who had just appeared from behind a funeral monument. As the beggars approached, Flora backed away, holding the Ace of Wands for reassurance. The die in her pocket was a comfort, too. She reminded herself that she could create a threshold and escape to Temple House whenever she wanted. But the beggars ignored her, limping painfully toward the entrance at the west end of the building.

Flora walked after them. The doors opened onto a cavernous hall—the cathedral’s nave—lined on either side with an arcade of clustered columns, built of the same sooty stone as the exterior. They soared up to the roof and branched out into a dizzying tracery of ribbed vaults. The spaces in between the columns were full of leaping shadows cast by ranks of candles wavering in the draft.

Despite the fact that the architecture was unmistakably that of a cathedral, she couldn’t see any religious apparatus or imagery. The circular window over the west doors was in the design of Fortune’s Wheel, while the high arched windows along the aisles were filled with stained-glass illustrations of triumph cards. Both the woodwork and the stone bore intricate carvings of pentacles, swords, cups and wands.

Although Flora had slipped through the open doors quietly enough, the moment she was inside, they slammed shut with a crash. The choir abruptly ceased singing and the entire congregation turned to look at her. All the pews were
filled with people as ragged and starved-looking as the pair she had followed in. It was unnerving to be the focus of their silent stares, alone and exposed in that great space.

Soldiers guarded the ends of the pews. They wore black combat uniforms and balaclavas and carried guns. As Flora began her first faltering steps down the nave, four of the soldiers broke away from their positions to form an escort. Hemmed in from behind and at the sides, she had no choice but to keep going.

They came to a halt when they reached the transept—the aisle that cut across the nave to give the building the shape of a cross. Its mosaic floor was in the design of a pentacle, a five-pointed star within a circle, and hooded figures in scarlet robes were seated on each of the star’s points. A bronze reading stand had been set in the middle. Across the transept, the eastern end of the building—where one would expect the choir stalls and altar to be—was cut off by a wooden screen, guarded by more gunmen.

One of the soldiers behind Flora gave her a shove, so that she stumbled forward to stand inside the star. The robed figure opposite raised his head to examine her. His own face remained overshadowed by the hood.

“We are the Five of Pentacles, the Game’s High Order of Inquisitors,” he announced in a dry, papery voice. “You have been brought before us to prove yourself a True Player, and a champion worthy of the Arcanum.”

“And how do I do that?”

“Each of the Five of Pentacles has a question for you,” the man replied. “Answer all five correctly, and the Inquisition
will be satisfied. One wrong answer, and the Trial by Inquiry will be followed by the Trial by Ordeal. If you prevail there, you may still prove yourself a True Player and win the move. If not …”

“Yes?”

“Your Game will be over, and with it all your hopes of reward.”

Flora decided against asking what the ordeal entailed, and what kind of state she might be in at the end of it. She knew that nothing could be worse than the Eight of Swords and its maze of briars. If she could survive that, she told herself grimly, she could survive anything.

“Very well,” she said. She produced the Five of Pentacles playing card, and handed it to the robed figure on her right. “Then I’m ready to take your trial.”

As if on cue, the choir began to sing again. They must have been hidden in one of the chapels off the transept, for she never saw them. But their voices rang out angelically, in a cascade of golden notes.
“Cursus Fortune,”
they sang,
“variatur in more lune: crescit, decrescit et eodem sistere nescit.…”

Flora went to take her place behind the reading stand, so that she was facing the congregation. The lectern was a larger version of the one at St. Bernadine’s. She gripped its cool, polished sides and felt a little calmer.

In spite of everything, it seemed she could almost be taking part in some kind of mad game show. The scarlet robes of the Inquisitors were theatrical as well as threatening, and the people in the pews looked as raptly attentive as
any studio audience. Flora decided to imagine that the church was filled with people she knew. Tilly, Georgia, Charlie and the rest of her crowd were lined up in the front rows, cheering her on. Her parents were watching proudly from the back. Cat and Blaine and Toby were close by, too, crossing their fingers for her. The thought of them warmed her, a little.

Proceedings began with one of the soldiers striking a gong. Once its shivering ring had died away, the hooded figure immediately to Flora’s left began the cross-examination. He spoke in exactly the same parched voice as the first Inquisitor.

“Hear and consider your first question. Who is your ruler in the Game?”

She took a deep, steadying breath. The question wasn’t as straightforward as it might appear. She was playing this move on behalf of Odile, the Queen of Cups, but since Misrule had overthrown the reign of the courts, he was the only Game Master with any power. There was also the fact that she was technically still a chancer, and chancers weren’t supposed to come under the rule of anybody at all. But then she thought of the choir’s song, and felt a new certainty. “Lady Fortune,” she replied.

The ragged audience gave a sigh of relief. All five Inquisitors slowly nodded. “Your answer is accepted,” pronounced the one who had asked the question.

Boiiing! went the gong. Flora supplied imaginary cheers from her imaginary support team.

Now it was the turn of the second man along. “In
a Game ruled by Fortune, how do Fate and Luck work upon a player?”

This was something Flora had thought about before, and struggled with. She took her time to prepare her answer.

“Out of all the cards I might have played, Fate dealt me this one. Luck, however, will help determine how difficult or easy I find it to win. And … um … there’s also the matter of Free Will.”

At this, the congregation rustled and murmured, so that the soldiers had to strike their rifle butts on the floor to command silence. The Inquisitors, meanwhile, exchanged looks. “Free Will?” repeated the second of the five.

“Yes,” Flora said firmly, although she was quaking inside. “I play the Game out of my own Free Will, just as I choose to answer your questions as I see fit. So Fate imposes necessity on a player, Luck provides her with the opportunity for victory or defeat and Free Will decides if and how that opportunity is taken.”

As soon as she’d finished, she began to think that she had made a stupid—and dangerous—mistake. Far better to let her original answer stand by itself than to complicate it with unnecessary philosophizing.… The hooded heads turned to each other, their dry lips moving in silent conferral.

Eventually, the second Inquisitor spoke again. “Your answer is accepted.”

The gong was struck, and the third question asked.

“What was the Hanged Man’s first name?”

Ooh, I don’t know … Harry? said Flora to herself,
barely managing to stifle a snort of hysterical laughter. It took a minute or so to compose herself. “The Mas—” she began, and stopped herself just in time. The Hanged Man might be the Master of Misrule now, but that was not what his card used to be called. She had suddenly remembered what Cat had said outside Temple House after they’d seen Misrule in the mirrors, and the nearness of her miss set her trembling. “The Traitor,” she answered.

The five heads nodded. “Your answer is accepted.” Again, the gong rang. Again, the audience sighed in murmuring relief. Three down, two to go.

“In a game of dice with the Magician,” said the fourth Inquisitor, “what would be the odds of you throwing a winning six?”

Flora remembered her meeting with the Magician, with his crooked grin and showman’s patter, and smiled. “Zero,” she said. “Because he’d have loaded the die.”