Кэтрин Фишер - Sapphique

And then it was a grey brightness and Claudia stood in it, and her father, and Auth. He reached out to her and tried to speak her name, but his lips were cold and numb as marble and his tongue too stiff to move.

‘Am I dead?’ he asked the Prison, but the question murmured through hills and corridors and down cobwebbed galleries centuries old, and he realized that he was the Prison, that all its dreams were his.

He was a whole world, and yet he was a tiny creature. He could breathe, his heart was beating strongly, his eyesight was clear. He fit as a great worry had fallen from him, a great weight from his back, and maybe it had, maybe that was his old 4fe.And inside him there were forests and oceans, high bridges over deep crevasses, spiral staircases down to the empty white cells where his illness had been born. He had journeyed through it, explored all its secrets, fallen into its darkness.

Only he knew the riddle’s answer, and the door that led Out.

Claudia heard it. In the silence the statue rippled and it spoke her name.

As she stared at it she stumbled back, but her father gripped her elbow. ‘I’ve taught you never to be afraid,’ he said quietly. ‘And besides, you know who this is.’ It came alive, even as she watched. His eyes opened and were green, that intelligent, curious gaze she knew so well.

The delicate face lost its ivory and was flushed with life. The long hair darkened and swung, the Sapient robe glimmered in iridescent greys. He spread his arms and the feathers shimmered like wings.

He stepped down from the pedestal and stood before her.

Claudia, he said. And then, ‘Claudia.’ Words choked in her throat.

But Rix was leaping in the roaring adulation of the crowd; he caught Attia’s hand and made her bow with him in the storm of applause that went on and on, the howls of joy, the screaming cries that greeted Sapphique as he returned to save his people.

Finn walked slowly to the screen and stared at it. It was no longer snowy, but clear and brilliant, and he could see a girl staring straight at him.

‘Claudia!’ he said.

She didn’t seem to hear him. Then he realized he was looking at her through someone else’s eyes, eyes that were very slightly blurred, as if the Prison’s gaze had tears in it.

Behind him, Keiro came close.

‘What in hell is going on in there?’ As if his words had triggered it, the sound snapped on, a burst of roaring and applause and howls of joy that made them wince.

Claudia reached out and took the Gloved hand. ‘Master,’ she said. ‘How have you come here? What have you done?’ He smiled his calm smile. ‘I think I have undertaken a new experiment, Claudia. My most ambitious research project yet.’

‘Don’t tease me.’ She clenched her fist on his scaled fingers.

‘I never betrayed you he said. ‘The Queen offered me forbidden knowledge. 1 don’t think this was what she meant.’

‘I never once thought you would betray me.’ She stared at the Glove. ‘These people all think you’re Sapphique. Tell them it’s not true.’

‘I am Sapphique.’ The noise that greeted his words was tremendous but he didn’t take his eyes off her. ‘He’s what they want, Claudia. And Incarceron and I will give them their safety.’ The dragon fingers curled round hers. ‘I feel so strange, Claudia. It’s as if you are all inside me, as if I’ve shed my skin and underneath is a new being, and I can see so much and I hear so many sounds and touch so many minds.

I am dreaming the dreams of the Prison, and they are so sad.’

‘But can you come back? Do you have to stay here for ever?’ Her dismay sounded weak, but she didn’t care, not even if her selfishness stood in the way of all Incarceron’s Prisoners. ‘I can’t do without you, Jared. I need you.’ He shook his head. ‘You will be Queen, and queens don’t have tutors.’ He reached out and put his arms round her and kissed her forehead. ‘But I’m not going anywhere.

You’ll carry me on your watchchain.’ He looked beyond her, at the Warden. ‘And from now on there will be freedom for us all.’ The Warden’s smile was narrow. ‘So, my old friend, you have found yourself a body after all’ Despite all your efforts, John Arlex.

‘But you haven’t Escaped.’ Jared shrugged, an odd, slightly alien movement. ‘Ah but I have. I’ve Escaped myself but I won’t be leaving. That is the paradox that is Sapphique.’ He made a small movement with his hand, and all the people gasped. Behind them, all around them, the walls lit and they saw the grey room of the Portal, its door crowded with watchers, and Finn and Keiro jerking back in surprise.

Jared turned. ‘Now we’re all together. Inside and Outside.’

‘Do you mean the Prisoners can Escape?’ Keiro snapped and Claudia realized they had heard everything.

Jared smiled. ‘Escape to what? To the ruin of the Realm?

We will make this their paradise, Keiro, just as it was supposed to be, just as the Sapienti always planned it. No one will need to Escape; I promise you that. But the door will be open, for those who wish to come and go.’ Claudia stepped back from him. She knew him so well, and yet he was different. As if his personality and another had intersected, two different voices fragmenting into one, like the black and white tiles on the floor of the hail, forming a new pattern, and that pattern was Sapphique. She glanced around, saw Rix transfixed, edging closer, Attia still and pale, staring up at Finn.

People murmured, echoing his words, passing them from one to another. She heard the promise reverberate through the Prison’s landscapes. But she felt desolate and sick, because once she had been the Warden’s daughter, and now she would be the Queen, and without Jared it would be another role to play, another part of the game.

Jared edged past her and walked down to meet the crowd.

They held out their hands and touched him, grasped the dragonglove, fell at his feet. One, a woman, sobbed, and he touched her gently, his hands round hers.

‘Don’t worry;’ the Warden said softly in Claudia’s ear.

‘I can’t help it. He’s not strong.’

‘Oh I think he is stronger than all of us.’

‘The Prison will corrupt him.’ Attia said it, and Claudia turned on her angrily. ‘No!’

‘It will. Incarceron is cruel, and your tutor is too gentle to control it. It will all go wrong just like it did before’ Attia was cold; she knew her words hurt but she still said them, and a bitter misery made her add, ‘And you and Finn won’t have much a kingdom either, by the looks of things.’ She looked up at Finn and he gazed back. ‘Come Out’ he said. ‘Both of you.’ Behind her Rix said, ‘Shall I open you a magic door, Attia?

And will I get my Apprentice back?’

‘No chance.’ Keiro flickered a blue glance at Finn. ‘The pay’s better out here.’ At the edge of the steps, Jared turned. ‘Well, Rix,’ he said.

‘Shall we see more of the Art Magicke? Make us a door, Rix.’ The sorcerer laughed. He took a small piece of chalk from his pocket and held it up, and the crowd stared. Then he bent over and drew with it on the marble floor where the statue had once stood. Carefully he drew the door of a dungeon, ancient and wooden, with a barred grille and a great keyhole and chains looped across it. On it he wrote SAPPHIQUE.

‘They all think you’re Sapphique’ he said to Jared, straightening. ‘But of course you’re not. I won’t tell them, you can trust me He came close to Attia and winked at her.