Catherine Fisher - The Margrave-crow 4

Raffi. That was the thing she couldn’t grasp—why Raffi? Was it just a way to get to the Crow? What on earth could the Margrave want with a . . . She stopped, her mind cold. Wait a minute. Just wait a minute.

She remembered now. It had been the night after they’d used the Coronet of Flain—a night stop on that hurried journey out of Sekoi lands. Just the two of them. Raffi had been huddled by the fire, oddly quiet.

She’d said so, and he’d stirred the flames. For a long time he hadn’t even answered; when he did, his words were hesitant. “Carys, when we were all caught up in that vision, when the weather-net was mended, I thought . . . someone came and spoke to me.”

“Someone?” she’d asked. She’d been sewing a tear in her coat. She remembered how reluctant he’d been.

“The Margrave.” And then he’d reached over and caught her fingers, stopping her, blurting it all out. “He spoke to me! He told me that he was going to find me, to seek me out. Just me! He said he wanted me . . . for some sort of apprentice. That we were linked. I’m sure it was real. I’m sure of it! It’s terrifying me.”

She had stared at him. “Have you told Galen?”

“No.”

“You should. But Raffi, we all had strange, muddled visions. I know I did. I thought I was back in the Watch-house.” Had she told him that? She wasn’t sure. But she thought she’d convinced him the whole thing was a nightmare, that he’d let it worry him too much. They’d ended up laughing about it, and he’d never mentioned it again. But thinking back now, he’d still been a bit quiet, right up until the time she and the Sekoi left for Sarres.

Could it be true? She shivered, dragging her knees up in the straw and wrapping her arms around them. This was serious. If Scala wasn’t lying, then the Margrave really was searching for Raffi. And that complicated things.

There were two things she could do now, it seemed to her. The first was to refuse Scala’s offer. If she did that she’d end up on some work-gang and the plan would be finished. The second thing was to tell them where Raffi might be found—or at least make a convincing deal with them. It was what was needed. But it was dangerous. If she did it, she might never get out of this alive.

Footsteps.

She curled instantly; the door rattled, banged open, and Quist walked in. He looked down at her. “I know you’re awake. Come on; she wants her answer.”

He walked ahead down the corridor; brushing herself down, Carys followed, leaving a trail of wisps of straw. There were guards, but Quist waved them away. Opening a door to the outside, he bowed her through, mock polite.

“Have you known Scala long?” she asked, squeezing past him.

“Forget it. I’ve had the training too. You’ll get nothing from me.”

The were standing on a high gallery near the top of the keep. Watch flags flapped above them; the sudden fresh air made Carys feel giddy. It was a cool, bright day and the castle lay below her flooded with sunlight, swarming with workers. Lines of wagons were straggling out of the distant barbican; even from here she could hear the yells and whipcracks of the wagoners.

“Where are they going?”

He looked at her, as if weighing what to say. Then, as if it were no secret, he shrugged. “The Wall.”

“What wall?”

“You’ve been away too long, Watchspy. You’re out of touch.” His voice was morose, his fingers tapping restlessly on the smooth battlements. Then he turned, his dark hair lifting in the wind. “You know the Unfinished Lands are spreading.”

“Everyone knows that.”

He nodded. “The Watch has calculated that if the present rate of expansion continues, the Finished Lands will be halved in twenty years. We’ll be surrounded by chaos and each year it will close in on us. In fifty, maybe less, it will close over our heads. Farms, towns, villages, everything gone. No one will be left alive.”

Carys looked down at the bedlam of noise. “So the Watch is building a wall?”

“Not just any wall. A vast, immensely strong structure, from here to the Narrow Sea, as a start. Sixteen leagues. Eighty spans thick, of rubble and hardcore faced with the smoothest Alavian marble. Forty spans high with a parapet even higher. Towers every two leagues. Only one gate. No weak points.”

“You sound very proud of it.” She was silent, thinking of the immensity of the effort. “But will it work?”

“Nothing will be able to burrow under or scale it. We’ll wall in the Finished Lands. No pollution will come to them.” He saw her disbelief and laughed. “Come on. She hates to be kept waiting.”

The castellan’s room was warm in the sunlight that slanted from its windows; in the daylight Carys saw they were thickly glazed with the unbreakable Maker glass.

Scala had her hair loose. It brushed her small shoulders as she looked up from a file of papers. “Sleep well?”

Carys didn’t bother to answer. Instead she leaned on the desk with both hands and said, “I’ve made up my mind. These are my conditions. I want an assurance from you—countersigned from Maar—of my reinstatement and I want copies of it sent to every Watchhouse and Tower. I want a third of all rewards and promotions. Up front, I want two thousand marks, my own armed patrol, and a permanent suite of rooms in the Tower of Song.”

“I see.” Scala didn’t even blink. “Fairly extensive demands for a prisoner. And in return, what?”

Carys took a breath. It was a simple sentence, but it cost her a great effort to say it.

“In return I go with you to the Pits of Maar and together we inform the Margrave—face–to-face, if he exists—exactly where he can find this Raffael Morel.”

There was a long silence. Then Scala smiled. “It seems fair.”

“Oh, it is.” Carys sat in the nearest chair. She leaned back and blew hair out of her eyes, wondering what Scala really thought.

“We’ll leave as soon as possible.” The castellan looked at Quist. “Get things ready.”

He shrugged. “It’ll take three days.”

Carys thought of the spotty boy’s blurted secrets. “Make it two,” she said thoughtfully.

6

Are these the-ladders that lead to heaven?

Who has ever climbed to their top?

Poems of Anjar Kar

THE YOUNG WOMAN ROCKED the crying child. “I suppose you’ve come for the babies and the lame ones now,” she said savagely. “No one else is left! Who’s supposed to sow and harvest? Who’s supposed to milk the cows? Don’t you people have any sense?”

The Watchsergeant was hot and thirsty. The hut was dank. In one corner an old woman rocked, dribbling and mumbling to herself, spitting into the fire and then giggling with an odd, manic glee. It gave him the creeps. And the place stank—the pile of marset dung outside the door was huge and fresh. His stomach heaved. He took out a rag of handkerchief and pressed it over his nose.

“I’m not taking anyone, woman. It’s a search. There have been reports of bandits. A lot of them, gathering in the hills.”

“Bandits!” The woman snorted and waved her free arm. “Oh, yes. Here they are, look, hundreds of them. All crammed into this luxurious palace!”

The Watchman shrugged. It was true he could see the whole of the inside of the hut and had no desire to go farther in; it was sooty and smoke-blackened, with lumps of what might be meat hanging from the rafters. One cupboard, a hearth with a dull fire, two box beds. Not much else. The floor was trodden mud. A real hovel.

The old woman cackled and looked at him suddenly with the white of one eye. Her face was filthy, her long gray hair tangled. “Beware,” she said. “The owl and the kraken, the cold shadows of the moons.” She spat solemnly and the fire crackled. “Death is looking for you. He has long fingers.”