Red Queen's War: The Liar's Key Part 37

Unseen forces mount. My skin crawls with them, and I'm not even there. Down below the sapphires in the woman's hair seem to return more than the light of lanterns, sparkling with some inner fire, a vivid dance of blue across the blackness of her hair. She sets down her goblet, and looks up, half a smile on wine-dark lips as she meets the Silent Sister's gaze.

"Ah!" Garyus cries out in pain, limbs drawn tight to him. The Silent Sister opens her mouth as if to scream but, though the air seems to shake with it, there is no sound. I watch her face as she stands, her gaze still locked with the woman's. For a second I could swear there is steam rising from the Silent Sister's eyes . . . and still she won't break away. Her nails score the dark wood as some invisible pressure forces her back, and finally, like a branch snapping, she is flung back, reeling, arrested only by the wall behind her. She stands bent double, hands on thighs, pale hair about her face, drawing in shuddering breaths.

"What . . ." Garyus's voice is weak and croaky-more the voice I know. "What did you see?"

There is no answer. The silence stretches. I'm turning back to see what the woman is doing when suddenly the Silent Sister straightens up. Her hair parts and I see that one of her eyes is pearly blind, the other darkened beyond any memory of blue skies.

"Everything." The Silent Sister speaks it as though it is the last word she will ever utter.

"We need to do something." Alica, seeming a child for once, states the obvious. "Get me close enough and I'll stick a knife in her." The illusion evaporates.

"It won't be easy." Garyus doesn't raise his head. "-- saw enough before to poison her drink."

"And?" Alica turns back to observe the feast.

"The man slumped on the table beside her? He's dead. She swapped goblets."

I don't ask myself how the Silent Sister had known hours before which goblet to coat with venom, or where she'd obtained such a thing, silent and young as she is. She knew the same way the woman below knew to exchange with her neighbour. Both of them carry the same taint.

"Jesu." Alica leans against the banister, eyes hard. The woman hasn't moved: she picks a last sweetmeat from her plate as she talks to the man beside her-the one who's not dead. She laughs at whatever he just said. "So if not poison, then what?"

Garyus sighs, an unutterably weary sound, and lifts his head as though it weighs a man's weight. "The men I have around me-they're mine. I replaced Father's with hires of my own, expensive, but they're mercenaries of the highest quality, and their loyalty runs as deep as my pockets. We'll wait for her in the Sword Gallery and . . . she won't leave."

Alica raises an eyebrow at this piece of information. A moment later she hastens to the door and raps against it. A man in palace livery enters, pus.h.i.+ng a wheeled chair. He's a solid fellow, watchful, a thin white seam of scar below his right eye as if underscoring it. I'd like to say I would have spotted him as more than a flunky, but I don't know if that's true.

The Silent Sister helps Garyus into the chair and he waves to be wheeled out. He's weaker now, more twisted. It's more than exhaustion-his sister has spent his health to buy what she needed. A second hard-man waits in the chamber beyond amid the instruments too large to be taken away with the musicians, a harp, drums, long tubular bells. He helps carry the chair down the stairs. Any aristocracy who are staying at the king's pleasure will be housed in the guest wing, and to reach that from the royal banquet hall requires you walk the length of the Sword Gallery. If the woman is planning murder she must have been invited to stay the night, or else she is cutting things fine.

I wonder for a moment that neither of Garyus's men are armed-but of course he's unlikely to have permission to have his own hires wearing blades in the king's house, relative or not, especially not as a displaced heir. The mercenaries may be paid well enough to risk concealed knives, but they'd have to be d.a.m.n small to pa.s.s unnoticed. It seems unlikely that my great-grandfather or his sire are so lax as to not have regular inspections-certainly Grandmother has become very keen on them in later life. Still, the pair of them could strangle this woman with a cord swift enough.

We walk through the palace, Garyus trundled ahead, rattling in his chair, taking familiar pa.s.sages that have changed remarkably little in sixty years. Just before we reach the gallery Alica pauses, then the others, then me. The Silent Sister has stopped some way behind us, beside a black oak door. She's pointing.

"What does she say?" Alica asks her brother.

"I . . ." He seems lost. "I can't hear her any more."

The message is clear enough without words, silent or otherwise. We go through and find ourselves in a tall but narrow chamber lined with cabinets, each fronted with thin sheets of Builder-gla.s.s, and each sporting a score or more of b.u.t.terflies, speared through with pins to keep them in place. In dusty legions they haunt the room, the brilliance of their wings muted through neglect, a dozen lost summers impaled behind gla.s.s. I've not been in here before, or if I have the insects have been removed.

"Did we miss her?" Alica ventures, pulling a small but wicked knife from the pleated folds of her cream skirts.

The Silent Sister shakes her head.

"Gwen! Is she safe?" Garyus tries to straighten in his chair, remembering their little sister. The one who Alica will put an arrow through from the walls of Ameroth Keep six years from now.

The Silent Sister nods, though there is a sadness in it, as if she now shares my knowledge.

Garyus turns his head with effort to look at the man beside him. "Grant, there's a woman that needs to be killed. She'll be coming down the Sword Gallery shortly. She's a threat to me and to my family. When the deed is done both of you will need to leave the palace and my service immediately. You'll be taking three hundred in crown gold with you."

Grant glances at the man behind Garyus. "Will she be alone?"

"There may be others with her, but no guards, n.o.body armed. The Lady s.h.i.+val is the only one who should die. The one with sapphires in her hair."

"Blue lady. Got it." Grant puts a hand to his chin. His fingers are blunt and scarred. "Three hundred? And you're sure, my lord? Killing in the palace is no small thing. Not an end to be pursued without certainty. Unless your sisters can hide you you'll be found at the scene."

Garyus tolerates the questioning-it's well meaning after all, if insolent. "I'm certain, Grant. Johan, is it a fair price?"

"It is, my lord." The other man, darker, older, inclines his head. His voice, soft and high, surprises me. "The money will reach us where?"

"Port Is.m.u.th. My factor there, Carls. Within two weeks."

We wait in silence then, amid the dead b.u.t.terflies, dry wings unmoving within their cases. Five minutes pa.s.s, ten . . . an hour?

The Silent Sister raises her hand. Grant and Johan go to the door, we follow them out, Alica pus.h.i.+ng Garyus along.

Double doors lead into the Sword Gallery and here I see a difference between the present day and the gallery of sixty years before. Grandmother has hung the length of the hall with oil portraits of swordmasters practising their art. Her father had his art in iron rather than oils, with a hundred and more swords lining the walls, each pointing to the ceiling, each different. Grant breaks a fine example free from its restraints, a long sword with a blade of black Turkman iron, and hands it to Johan. He takes another for himself, a shorter but heavier sword in Teuton steel, and advances toward the double doors at the far end.

The doors open a second before the two mercenaries reach them. And there she stands, Lady s.h.i.+val, behind her a maid in royal colours escorting her to her rooms. The lady seems entirely unsurprised to see two men advancing on her with blades drawn. Her smile, on a face just a few years shy of being matronly, is almost a mother's, reproachful but indulgent.

"Look at yourselves!" she admonishes, and lifts her hand revealing a small silver mirror.

Johan's advance is arrested as if he'd walked into something solid. He lifts his off hand, grappling with something I can't see. The muscles in his neck stand out, corded with the strain. To the left Grant finds himself similarly caught, horror crowding his face as he struggles, his sword hand trapped, his off hand trying to close on something. Lady s.h.i.+val walks between the pair, leaving the maid standing stunned in her wake.

"Should you children be up so late?" She leans forward slightly to address the trio.

Alica doesn't waste any time on small talk or threats, just springs forward, knife concealed at her side.

"No." The lady is faster, a tilt of her hand and her mirror is aimed at the child, stopping her as effectively as it stopped both mercenaries. "And that leaves Gholloth's twins . . ." She faces them: Garyus hunched in his chair, the Silent Sister beside him. She ignores the boy and meets his twin's gaze. "We've met already, dear." Again the motherly smile, though I see something harder behind it now. "Quite the stare you have there, young lady. But if you go looking in places we're not supposed to look . . . well, let's just say the future is very bright."

The Silent Sister makes no reply, just stares, one eye pearly blind, the other dark and unreadable.

"This whole thing." Lady s.h.i.+val waves her arm at the mercenaries, still struggling, grunting with effort, making quick readjustments of their feet. "It's very inconvenient. I have to move quickly now, so you'll forgive me if I don't stop to talk." She moves her mirror into the line that joins her eyes with the Silent Sister's. "It's a hole," she says. And it is. In place of the silver and reflections there's nothing but a dark and devouring hole, sucking in light and sound and air. I feel myself drawn forward, drawn in, the very essence of me bleeding from my skin and pulling away toward that awful void.

The Silent Sister holds her open hand toward the mirror, blocking it from her view, and closes her fingers with slow purpose. She's a yard short of touching it but the bright noise of breaking gla.s.s rings out and blood runs from the fist she's made. The hole shrinks, closes, and is gone.

"Remarkable," the lady says. She takes a step forward. Her eyes are blue. I hadn't seen it before. Deepest blue. A blue that bleeds into the whites and makes something inhuman of her. Another step forward and she holds out her hand toward the Silent Sister, clawed, palm forward. A blueness suffuses the light about her. "Impressive for one so young, but I don't have time to be impressed, child." Her lip trembles in a snarl. "Time to die." And something that was coiled tight inside her is released so suddenly that the shock of it runs through the air, pulsing out, almost visible as a ripple.

The Silent Sister reels back as if struck. Only her grip on Garyus's chair keeps her upright. She struggles back to her position as though walking into a high wind, her mouth set in a grim line of effort.

The Lady Blue raises her other hand and lets whatever venom is in her pour out onto the girl before her who falls to one knee with a noiseless gasp. The Lady Blue advances, my great-aunt bent and helpless before her.

"Get back!" My shout goes unheard and I stand, impotent, wanting to run but having no place to hide in these blood memories.

As the Lady Blue looms above her the Silent Sister reaches one hand up to clasp her brother's arm just above the elbow. Garyus lolls his head toward her. "Do it." Two words croaked out, thick with regret.

The Lady Blue stoops, clawed hands closing toward the Silent Sister's head from either side to deliver the coup de grace, but something stops her, as if the air has thickened. Garyus groans and twists in his chair, his body spasming as his twin draws power from him. They were born joined together these two, and though sharp steel cut them apart there is a bond there that remains unbroken. It seems what makes the Silent Sister stronger makes Garyus weaker, more broken, and given how this boy appears to me, decades later as an old man, it seems that whatever she takes cannot be returned.

"Die." The Lady Blue snarls it past gritted teeth but the Silent Sister, though bowed, continues to defy her as Garyus sacrifices his strength.

"It's only a reflection." Alica pants the words out behind Lady s.h.i.+val. "It is not my equal."

Whatever the child is wrestling with it appears to be getting weaker. The mercenaries are having a very different experience, each backed against the wall now, the edges of their swords being pushed inexorably toward their necks, though n.o.body's there to wield the blades but them.

Somewhere in the distance there's screaming. I glance away from the contest of wills to see the maid has fled. It can only be moments before palace guards converge on the battle.

The Silent Sister raises her head, slower than slow, her hair sweat-soaked, her neck trembling with effort, and on her face, as she meets the Lady Blue's eyes, a grin that I know. Alica has her small knife raised now, her wrist white as if a hand were wrapping it, just as her free hand clasps empty air with a desperate intensity. With tiny steps, each the product of huge struggle, she is advancing on the Lady Blue's back.

Deeper shouts ring out, closer now, an alarm bell starts to clang further back in the palace.

Cursing in a tongue I've not heard before, the Lady Blue breaks away, sprints along the Sword Gallery and vanishes between the two mercenaries, veering left past the double doors. As she pa.s.ses them both Grant and Johan lose their battle and slide down the walls clutching their throats, blood drenching their chests.

I stand, overwhelmed by a deep sense of relief, although I was never in danger. Alica's already running, but in the wrong direction: she's chasing the lady. The Silent Sister is on all fours, her head down, exhausted. Garyus flops in his chair, as broken as I ever knew him, his last vestiges of health sacrificed to his twin's power, drawn along whatever fissure still connects them. His eyes, almost hidden in the shadow of his monstrous brow, find me, or seem to. I meet his gaze a moment, and a sorrow I can't explain closes a cold hand in my guts. I know I'm not the man ever to make the kind of gesture this boy has made. My siblings, my father, Red March itself, all of them could go hang before I'd take the blow meant for someone else.

I run, though whether to get clear of Garyus's scrutiny or to follow Alica I don't know.

The Lady Blue's path through the palace is littered with guardsmen struggling against reflections that only they can see. It's late at night and apart from the guards the palace is deserted. In truth the palace is largely deserted at any time of the day. Palaces are an exercise in show-too many rooms and too few people to enjoy them. A king can't afford to let his relatives get too close and so the Inner Palace is nothing but luxurious chambers enjoyed by no one and unseen save by the cleaners who dust and the archivists who ensure that the dust is all they remove.

We pa.s.s more struggling guards. The dangerous men will be wherever the king is. Not in his throne room, not at this hour, but they won't be walking the corridors, guarding vases and rugs, they'll be close to the man who matters.

I catch up with Alica, though it takes some doing. I've run these corridors myself-well mostly corridors further away, the Red Queen isn't that fond of her grandchildren, but on occasions as a child I've scampered down these halls. But, stranger or not, the Lady Blue is ahead of us both. She'll need luck, however, and lots of it. This wasn't her plan, this is desperation, or anger, or both, and it's being made up on the spot.

As I run alongside Alica I try to remember what I've been told about my great-great-grandfather's death. I draw a blank. I never gave a d.a.m.n about any of the dead ones, unless it was to file away some impressive fact about my lineage that might give me an edge in p.i.s.sing contests against visiting n.o.bility. Surely I'd have remembered if he'd been brutally murdered in the palace by some crazed witch though? One of them died hunting . . . pretty sure. And another of "a surfeit of ale." I always found that one amusing.

Although Alica looks grim, and there's murder afoot, I can't help feeling the worst is over. After all I never knew either of the elder Gholloths, One and Two as the historians call them, and I've had my whole life to come to terms with the fact that they were both dead. And frankly five minutes would have been more than enough for that. We'll find the Lady Blue has killed him, or we won't, but either way she's run off and I'm feeling far more relaxed than I was when confronted with her back in the Sword Gallery. Not that I was in any danger there either . . . All in all I'm relaxing into these memories quite happily and-I glance back over my shoulder. I'm sure I heard a dog bark. I shrug and catch up with Alica as she turns a corner and starts up a flight of stairs. There it is again. The baying of a hound. Surely none of the mutts from the banquet hall have been allowed to run loose in the palace. Again, and closer. Intolerable! Mongrels from the hall prowling the corridors of power! A sudden tremor puts me off my stride. Earthquake? The whole place seems to be shaking.

"Slap him!" A woman's voice.

"Get him up!" A boy's.

I open my eyes, confused but still outraged about the dog, and a large hand smacks me across the cheek.

"What the!" I clutched my face.

"Hounds, Jal!" Snorri let go of me and I sunk to my knees. The ground dusty, the night dark, the stars many, and strewn in such profusion they made a milky band across the heavens.

"Dogs?" I heard them now, baying in the distance, but not distant enough.

"They're tracking us down. After the key still." Snorri helped me up again. "Sure you want to keep it?"

"Of course." I pulled myself up to my full height and puffed out my chest. "I don't scare that easily, old friend." I slapped him on the shoulder with as much manly vigour as I could muster. "You're forgetting who stormed Fraud Tower unarmed!"

Snorri grinned. "Come on, we'll lead them higher up, see if we can't find a climb they won't manage." He turned and led off.

I followed before the darkness had a chance to swallow him entirely, Kara and Hennan flanking me. d.a.m.ned if I was going to give up the key now! I'd need something to give them if they caught me. And besides, even if I gave the key to Snorri and ran off in another direction the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would still hunt me down. These were bankers we were talking about, and I owed taxes. They'd hunt me to the ends of the earth!

THIRTY-FOUR.

Snorri led us immediately to the river. A fact I discovered by losing my boot in unexpected and sucking mud.

"What is it with Nors.e.m.e.n and boats?" Now Snorri stepped to the side I could see the water, revealed where ripples returned the starlight.

"No boat." Snorri strode down the long gentle bank.

I pulled my boot out of the mud. I appeared to have stepped into a small tributary stream. "I'm not swimming!"

"Could you lead the dogs away for us then?" Snorri called back over his shoulder. Ahead of him Kara and Hennan were already wading into the current. d.a.m.ned if I knew where the boy learned to swim up in the Wheel of Osheim.

Cursing I followed, hopping as I tried to get my boot back on. The hounds sounded close one minute, distant the next. "Is it true that thing about water spoiling the scent?"

"Don't know." Snorri strode in, pausing a moment as the water reached his hips. "I'm just hoping they can't get across, or won't want to."

I've never seen a dog that didn't like to throw itself in a river. Perhaps Norse dogs are different. After all, for half the year doing that would just get them a bruised head.

"d.a.m.nation it's cold!" I've yet to meet a warm river, no matter how fierce the day.

We set off swimming, or in my case, thras.h.i.+ng at the water and attempting to move forward rather than down. Edris's long sword, now scabbarded at my hip, kept trying to drown me, pointing toward the riverbed and heaving in that direction as if it were made of lead rather than steel. Why I'd not bought a new blade in Umbertide I couldn't say, save that this weapon, already stained with my family's blood and my own, was my only link with the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who murdered them, and perhaps it might one day lead me to him again. In any event, swimming with a sword is to be even less recommended than regular swimming. Quite how Snorri stayed afloat with an axe across his back and a short sword at his hip I didn't know. Kara too must be struggling under the weight of Gungnir. I'd held that spear and it felt far heavier than any spear should.

The Umber was a wide and placid river at that point in its course but even so the current took over soon enough and carried me ten yards closer to the sea for each yard I managed to struggle toward the opposite bank. Somewhere in the dark the others were making quicker and quieter progress. I'd seen them for a while by the whiteness of the broken water in the starlight, but before long I fought my battle alone, unable to see either bank and imagining the river to have swollen into some estuary so wide-mouthed that I might be swept to sea before finding land again.

When my hand struck something solid I panicked and swallowed an uncomfortably large amount of river whilst trying to inhale the rest. Fortunately the water around me proved to be little more than two feet deep and I splashed my way out to lie exhausted on the mud.

"Quick, get up!" Kara, tugging at my s.h.i.+rt.

"What?" I struggled to all fours. "How did you find me so fast?"

"We've been walking along the bank following the noise." Hennan, somewhere in the dark.

"Probably covered half a mile." Snorri, close at hand, hefting me to my feet. "Kara didn't think you were going to make it."

We walked on through the night, making what sense we could of the rising contours highlighted by the stars, avoiding the ink-dark valleys where possible. The warm air and exercise dried me off quick enough and fear kept me from feeling the lost sleep, my ears straining against the night sounds, always dreading the distant voice of the hounds.

I can't say how many times I stumbled in the gloom-enough to twist my ankle into complaint. I fell several times, my hands raw with cuts and lost skin, coa.r.s.e grit bedded in both palms.

I saw the others as dark shapes, no detail but enough to see Snorri hunched around the pain of his wound, hugging his side.

First light showed grey then pink above the Romero Hills in whose hollows the Crptipa Mine nestled. I heard the hounds again before the sun cleared the horizon. At first they seemed part of my imagination but Snorri stopped and looked back along our path. He straightened with a wince and put an arm around Hennan.

"We fought a Fenris wolf. A few Florentine dogs shouldn't prove much challenge." The shadow hid his face.