The Wind Singer (7 page)

The children at the back of the class were quite close to the window. Perhaps they would help her. She tapped on the glass softly, just in case a teacher was nearby. The children didn’t move. She tapped more loudly, and then as loudly as she could, but they seemed to hear nothing. It began to strike her that there was something strange about them. They kept their heads so low to their books that she couldn’t see their faces, but their hands were unusually wrinkly. And their hair was grey, or white, or – she saw it now – some of them were bald. Now that she looked properly, she asked herself why she had thought they were children at all. And yet, they were the size of children, and the shape of children. And surely –

The door opened behind her. Kestrel turned round, her heart hammering. A scarlet-robed examiner entered, a middle-aged lady, and closed the door behind her. She held a file open in her hands, and she looked from the papers in it to Kestrel and back again. She had a friendly face.

‘Kestrel Hath?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Kestrel. ‘Ma’am.’

She spoke quietly, clasping her hands before her and lowering her gaze to the floor. She had decided, on the spur of the moment, to be a good girl.

The examiner looked at her in some perplexity.

‘What have you done, child?’

‘I was frightened,’ said Kestrel in a tiny voice. ‘I think I must have panicked.’

‘The Chief Examiner has referred you for Special Teaching.’ As she spoke, she glanced through the window at the silent class working in the room beyond, and shook her head. ‘It does seem a little extreme.’

Kestrel said nothing, but tried very hard to look sad and good.

‘Special Teaching, you know,’ said the lady examiner, ‘is for the most disruptive children. The ones that are entirely out of control. And it is so very, well, permanent.’

Kestrel went up to the lady examiner, and took her hand and held it trustingly, gazing up at her with big innocent eyes.

‘Do you have a little girl of your own, ma’am?’ she asked.

‘Yes, child. Yes, I do.’

‘Then I know you’ll do what’s best for me, ma’am. Just as you would for your own little girl.’

The lady examiner looked down at Kestrel, and gave a little sigh, and patted her hand.

‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘I think we should go and see the Chief Examiner, don’t you? Maybe there’s been a mistake.’

She turned to the handleless door and called,

‘Open, please!’

The door was opened by a warden on the far side, and the lady examiner and Kestrel, hand in hand, went out into the square.

Now that she wasn’t being carried, Kestrel could see that one side of the square was formed by the back wall of the Great Tower, which was the building at the centre of the Imperial Palace. This tower, the highest building in Aramanth, could be seen even from Orange District. This close, it seemed immensely tall, reaching up and up even higher than the city’s encircling walls.

As they crossed the square, a small door at the foot of the tower opened, and two white-robed men came sweeping out. Seeing the lady examiner holding Kestrel’s hand, the older of the two frowned and called out to them.

‘What is a child from Orange District doing here?’

The lady examiner explained. The man in white studied the file.

‘So the Chief Examiner ordered Special Teaching for the girl,’ he said sharply. ‘And you have taken it upon yourself to question his judgment.’

‘I think there may have been a mistake.’

‘Do you know anything about this case?’

‘Well, no,’ said the lady examiner, going rather pink. ‘It’s more a kind of feeling, really.’

‘A kind of feeling?’ The man’s voice was cutting with contempt. ‘You propose to make a decision that affects the rest of this child’s life on a kind of feeling?’

The rest of this child’s life
! A chill ran through Kestrel. She looked round for a way of escape. Behind her stood the Special Teaching building from which they had come. Ahead, the men in white.

‘I meant only to speak to the Chief Examiner, to make sure I understood his wishes.’

‘His wishes are written here. They are perfectly clear, are they not?’

‘Yes.’

Kestrel saw that the door into the tower had not closed all the way.

‘Do you suggest that when he made this order, and signed it, he didn’t know what he was doing?’

‘No.’

‘Then why do you not carry it out?’

‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’

Kestrel knew then that she had lost her one source of protection. The lady examiner turned distressed eyes on her, and said once again, this time to Kestrel,

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Kestrel, and gave the lady’s hand a little squeeze. ‘Thank you for trying.’

Then she released the hand, and she ran.

She was through the tower door and pushing it shut behind her before they realised what was happening. There was a bolt on the inside, which she drew shut. Only then, heart beating fast, did she look to see where she was.

She was in a small lobby, with two doors, and a narrow curving flight of stairs. Both doors were locked. She heard voices shouting outside, and the outer door rattling as they tried to open it. Then she heard louder bangs, as they tried to break the bolt. Then she heard a voice call out,

‘You stay here. I’ll go round the other way.’

She had no choice: so she set off up the stairs.

Up and up she climbed, and the stairwell grew darker and darker. She thought she could hear doors opening and closing below, so she kept climbing as fast as she could. Up and up, round and round, and now there was light above. She came to a small barred window, set deep in the stonework of the tower. Through the window she could see the roofs of the palace, and a brief glimpse of the square where the statue of Emperor Creoth stood.

Still the stairs rose above her, so breathing hard now, her legs aching, she climbed on and on, and the light from the little window dwindled away below her. Strange distorted sounds came floating up from below, the clatter of running feet, the boom of voices. Up and up she climbed, slower now, wondering where the staircase led, and whether, when at last she reached the top, there would be another locked door.

A second window appeared. Exhausted, trembling, she allowed herself to rest a moment here, and looked out over the city. She could make out people passing in the streets, and the elegant shops and houses of Scarlet District. Then she heard a sound which was very like boots climbing the winding stairs below her, and fear gave her strength to get up and go on. Up and up, forcing her legs to push, half giddy with exhaustion, she followed the tightly winding staircase that seemed to have no end.
Clop, clop, clop
, went the noise of the boots below, carried up to her by the stone walls.
Not far now
, she said to herself, in time with her steps.
Not far now
,
not far now
. Though in truth she had no way of knowing how much farther she must climb.

And then, just when she knew she could go no further, she came out on to a tiny landing, and there before her was a door. Her hand shook as she reached out to try the handle.
Please
, she said inside her head.
Please don’t be locked
. She turned the handle, and felt the latch open. She pushed: but the door didn’t move. At once her fear, held at bay by this last hope, broke through and overwhelmed her. Bursting into bitter tears, she crumpled up in a ball at the foot of the door. There she hugged her knees and sobbed her heart out.

Clop, clop, clop
. The boots were coming up the stairs, getting nearer all the time. Kestrel rocked and sobbed, and wished she was dead.

Then she heard a new sound. Shuffling footsteps, close by. The slither of a bolt.

The door opened.

‘Come in,’ said an impatient voice. ‘Come in quickly.’

Kestrel looked up and saw a blotchy red face staring down at her: watery, protruding eyes, and a grizzly grey beard.

‘You’ve certainly taken your time,’ he said. ‘Come in, now you’re here.’

7

The Emperor weeps

T
he bearded man closed the door and bolted it after Kestrel, and then made a sign to her to stay quiet. On the far side they could hear quite clearly now the sound of the climbing boots. Then whoever it was reached the landing at the top, and came to a stop.

‘Well, boggle me!’ said a surprised voice. ‘She’s not here!’

They saw the door handle turn as he tried to open it. Then the sound of his voice shouting down the stairs.

‘She’s not here, you stupid pocksickers! I’ve climbed all these hogging stairs and she’s not hogging here!’

With that, he set off back down the long winding staircase, muttering as he went. The bearded man gave a soft chortle of pleasure.

‘Pocksicker!’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard that for years. How reassuring to know that the old oaths are still in use.’

Taking Kestrel’s hand, he led her into the light of one of the windows, so that he could see her better. She in her turn stared at him. His robes were blue, which astonished her. No one wore blue in Aramanth.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You’re not what I expected, I must say. But you’ll have to do.’

He then went to a table in the middle of the room, where there stood a glass bowl full of chocolate buttons, and ate three, one after the other. While he did this, Kestrel was gazing in wonder out of the window. The room must have been near the top of the tower, if not at the top itself, for it was higher than the city walls. In one direction, she could see over the land to the ocean; in the other, the desert plains lay before her, reaching all the way to the misty line of the northern mountains.

‘But it’s so big!’ she said.

‘Oh, it’s big all right. Bigger than you can see from here, even.’

Kestrel looked down at the city below, laid out in its districts, the scarlet and the white, her own orange streets, the maroon and the grey, all circled by the massive city walls. For the first time, it struck her that this was an odd arrangement.

‘Why do we have to have walls?’

‘Why indeed?’ said the bearded man. ‘Why do we have to have districts in different colours?Why do we have to have examinations, and ratings? Why do we have to strive harder, and reach higher, and make tomorrow better than today?’

Kestrel stared at him. He was speaking thoughts she supposed only she had ever had.

‘For love of my Emperor,’ she said in the words of the Oath of Dedication. ‘And for the glory of Aramanth.’

The bearded man gave a soft chuckle.

‘Ha!’ he said. ‘I’m your Emperor.’

And he ate three more chocolate buttons.

‘You?’

‘Yes, I know, it must seem implausible. But I am Creoth the Sixth, Emperor of Aramanth. And you are the person I’ve been waiting for all these years.’

‘Me?’

‘Well, I didn’t know it would be you. To be honest, I had assumed it would be a strapping young man. Someone brave and strong, you know, given what has to be done. But it turns out to be you.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Kestrel. ‘I wasn’t looking for you. I didn’t even know you existed. I was running away.’

‘Don’t be foolish. It must be you. No one else has ever found me. They keep me shut away here so no one will ever find me.’

‘You’re not shut away. You opened the door yourself.’

‘That’s another matter entirely. The point is, here you are.’

He was clearly put out at being contradicted, so Kestrel said nothing more, and he went on eating chocolate buttons. He seemed to be unaware that he was eating them, and altogether unaware that it would have been polite to offer her some. She wasn’t sure if she believed that he was the Emperor, but as she looked about her she saw that the room was furnished in a very grand manner indeed. On one side was an ornate bed with curtains round it, like a tent. On the other was a beautifully carved writing desk, flanked by bookcases filled with handsome volumes. There was the round table, where the glass bowl stood, and some deep leather armchairs, and a great high-sided bath; and soft rugs on the floor, and embroidered drapes at the windows. The windows that ran all round the room were deeply recessed, and between each set was a door. Eight windows, eight doors. One was the door she had entered by. Two others stood open, and she could see that they led into cupboards. That left five. Surely one out of five would lead her out of the tower again.

The bearded man now moved away from the bowl of chocolate buttons, and went to his writing desk. Here he started opening the little drawers, one by one, clearly searching for something.

‘Please, sir,’ said Kestrel. ‘Can I go home now?’

‘Go home? What are you talking about? Of course you can’t go home. You have to go to the Halls of the Morah, and fetch it back.’

‘Fetch what back?’

‘I have the directions here somewhere. Yes, here it is.’

He drew out a paper scroll, dusty and yellow with age, and unrolled it.

‘It should have been me, of course.’

He sighed as he looked at it.

‘There, now. All perfectly clear, I think.’

Kestrel looked at the scroll he held out before her. The paper was cracked and faded, but it was recognisably a map. She could make out the line of the ocean, and a little drawing that was clearly meant to be Aramanth itself. There was a marked trail, that led from Aramanth across plains to a line of pictured mountains. Here and there on the map, and most of all where the trail ended, there were scribbled markings, clusters of symbols that seemed to be words written in letters that were unfamiliar to her.

She looked up, bewildered.

‘Don’t gape at me, girl,’ said the Emperor. ‘If you don’t understand, just ask.’

‘I don’t understand anything.’

‘Nonsense! It’s all perfectly simple. Here we are, you see.’

He pointed to Aramanth on the map.

‘This is the way you must go. You see?’

His finger traced the track north from Aramanth. ‘You have to follow the road, or you’ll miss the bridge. It’s the only way, do you see?’

His finger was pointing to a jagged line that crossed the map from side to side. It had a name, in spidery lettering, but like the rest of the writing, it meant nothing to her.