Кэтрин Фишер - Sapphique

‘Finn. please,’ she whispered.

‘You never believed me.’

‘I believe you now. Don’t shoot him.’ He smiled, his eyes dark under the black mask. His finger clicked the trigger steadily back.

Giles stumbled away.

‘Keep still,’ Finn growled.

‘Look.’ The Pretender spread his hands. ‘We can make a deal.’

‘Sia chose well. But you’re no prince.’

‘Let me go. I’ll tell them. Explain everything.’

‘Oh I don’t think so.’ The trigger trembled.

‘I swear . . .’

‘Too late,’ Finn said, and fired.

Giles crashed back on to the grass with a speed that made Claudia screech; she ran to him and knelt over him. Finn came up and stood gazing down. ‘I should have killed him,’ he said.

The bullet had struck the Pretender’s arm; it hung broken, and the impact had knocked him senseless. Claudia turned.

A great hubbub was rising from the lit grotto; dancers were running out tearing off their masks, unsheathing swords.

‘His coat,’ she hissed.

Finn hauled him up and they stripped the silk coat from him; Finn shrugged his own off and struggled into the other.

As he fitted the eagle mask over his face Claudia tugged the dark coat and mask on to the Pretender. ‘Keep the pistol,’ she hissed as the soldiers came racing up.

Finn grabbed her and held the pistol to her back as she swore and struggled.

The guard dropped to one knee. ‘Sire, the verdict has been given.’

‘What was it?’ Claudia gasped.

The guard ignored her. ‘You indeed are Prince Giles.’ Finn gave a harsh laugh that made Claudia stare at him. I know who I am.’ His breath came harsh from inside the eagle’s beak. ‘This Scum from the Prison is wounded. Take him and throw him in some cell. Where is the Queen?’

‘In the ballroom …’

‘Stand aside.’ Leading Claudia like a prisoner he stalked off towards the lights. Once out of earshot he muttered, ‘Where are the horses?’

‘At Shear’s Folly.’ He dropped her arm, threw the pistol into the grass, and took one look back at his lost, enchanted palace. Then he said, ‘Let’s go.’

Lightning flickered.

It blinked silently across the sky, lighting the underside of the ominous clouds, and Jared pulled the nervous horse to a halt.

He waited, counting the seconds. Finally, when the weight of tension seemed almost too heavy to bear, the rumble broke; it thundered across the sky above the Forest, as if a being of enormous anger raged over the treetops.

The night was close, sticky with humidity. The reins in his hands creaked, the soft leather greasy with sweat. He leant forward over the horse’s neck, breathing painfully, every bone in his body aching.

At first he had ridden recklessly, afraid of pursuit, turning off the road on to obscure forest tracks, anything that led west, towards the Wardenry. But now, after hours, the track had dwindled to this narrow foxtrail, the undergrowth so matted it brushed his knees and the horse’s flank, raising a rank smell of trampled weeds and the decay of centuries of leaves.

He was deep in the Forest, there was no way of seeing the stars, and though he wasn’t really lost — he always carried a small way-finder — there was no way on from here. The ground was broken with streams and slopes, the darkness intense. And the storm was coming.

Jared rubbed the horse’s mane. He would have to backtrack to the streatn. But he was so tired, and the pain that lived inside him had somehow come out and was wrapping itself around him; he couldn’t help thinking he was riding deeper into it, that its thorns were the Forest’s. He was thirsty and hot. He would go back to the stream, and drink.

The horse whickered as he coaxed it; its ears flickered as the thunder rumbled again. Jared let it find the way; he only realized that his eyes were closed when the reins slid from his fingers and the horse’s long neck dipped; there was a quiet slurp of water.

‘Good boy,’ he whispered.

Carefully, he slid down, holding on to the saddlebow. As soon as his feet met the ground he crumpled, as if he had no strength even to stand. Only clinging on kept him upright.

Ghostly umbels of hemlock rose all around, higher than his head, their perfume sickly. Jared breathed deeply; then he slid to his knees and felt in the darkness until his fingers touched water.

Icy cold, it flowed among stems and stones.

He cupped it and drank, and its cold made him cough, but it was better than wine. He drank more, splashing his face and hair and the back of his neck with its freezing shock.

Then he unrolled the syringe from his pack and injected the usual dose.

He had to sleep. There was fog in his mind, a numbness that scared him. He wound the Sapient coat around him and curled up in the scratchy, rustling nettles. But now he could not close his eyes.

It wasn’t the Forest he feared. It was the thought that he might die here, and never wake again. That the horse would wander away and the leaves of autumn cover him, that he would decay to bones and never be found. That Claudia would...

He told himself to stop. But the pain laughed at him. The pain was his dark twin now, sleeping with its arms tight about him.

With a shudder he sat up, pushing back wet hair. This was hysteria. He was quite certainly not about to die here. For one thing, he had information Finn and Claudia needed, about the door in the Prison’s heart, about the Glove. He intended to get it to them.

For another, his death was unlikely to be this easy.

Then he saw the star.

It was red, and small. It was watching him. He tried to stop shivering, and focus, but the glimmer was hard to see. Either his fever was causing him to hallucinate, or this was some marsh-gas, flickering above the ground. Grasping a branch, he scrambled to his knees.

The red Eye winked.

Jared reached up, caught the reins and dragged the horse from its grazing, towards the light.

He was burning, the darkness tugging him back, each step a clutch of pain, a shiver of sweat. Nettles stung him; he pushed through low branches, a cloud of metallic moths, a sky where a thousand stars slid and slithered. Under a vast oak he stopped, breathless. Before him was a clearing, with a fire burning there, and feeding it with kindling a thin, dark-haired man, flamelight playing over his face.

The man turned.

‘Come, Master Jared he said quietly. ‘Come to the fire.’ Jared crumpled, holding the oak bough, its ridged bark powdery under his nails.

Then the man’s arms were around him. ’I’ve got you,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve got you now.’ When Attia wanted to wake she found she couldn’t. Sleep lay heavy on her eyelids like stones. Her arms were behind her and for a moment she was back in the tiny box-bed in the cell her family had once called home, a cramped corridor where six families camped in ramshackle shelters of stolen wire and mesh.

She smelt the damp and tried to turn and something held her still.

She realized she was sitting upright, and a serpent was coiled round her wrists.

Instantly, her eyes snapped open.

Rix was squatting by the fire. He was folding a small wad of ket, and he blurred before her as he slipped it into his cheek and chewed.

She tugged. There was no snake; her hands were tied behind her and she leant against something warm and slumped. She realized it was Keiro. Rix had trussed them back to back.

‘Well, Attia.’ Rix’s voice was cold. ‘You look a little uncomfortable.’ The ropes were cutting her hands and ankles. Keiro’s weight was heavy on her shoulder. But she just smiled. ‘How did you get here, Rix? However did you find us?’ He spread his magician’s fingers. ‘For the Dark Enchanter nothing is impossible. The magic of the Glove drew me, through the miles of corridors and echoing galleries.’ He chewed the ket with red-stained teeth.