Incarceron Part 12

Leaving them to it, Claudia hurried out.

She crossed the hall decorously holding her skirts, then raced up the curved oak staircase and dived through the concealed door on the landing, pa.s.sing instantly from contrived luxury into the chilly gray corridors of the servants' quarters, bare walls roped with wires and cables and powerpoints, small camera screens and sonic scanners.

The back stairs were stone; she pattered up and opened the quilted door, and stepped out into the luxurious, Era-perfect corridor. Two steps took her across to her own bedroom. The maids had already cleaned it. She double-locked the door, flipped on all the security blocks, and crossed to the window. Green and smooth, the lawns were beautiful in the summer sunshine.

The gardener's boy, Job, was wandering about with a sack and a spiked stick, stabbing stray leaves. She couldn't make out the tiny music implant in his ear, but his jerky movements and sudden struts made her grin. Though if the Warden saw him, he'd be sacked.

Turning, she slid back the drawer of her dressing table, took out the minicom, and activated it. It flashed on and showed her a distorted echo of her own face, grotesque in curved gla.s.s.

Startled, she said, "Master?"

A shadow. Two vast fingers and a thumb came down and lifted the alembic away. Then Jared sat down before the hidden receiver. "I'm here, Claudia."

"Is everything set? They ride out in a few minutes."

His thin face darkened. "I'm concerned about this. The disc may not work. We need trials ..."

"No time! I'm going in today. Right now."

He sighed. She knew he wanted to argue, but despite all their precautions, someone might be listening; it was dangerous to say too much. Instead he murmured, "Please be careful."

"As you've taught me, Master."

For a brief second she thought about the Warden's threat against him, but this wasn't the time.

"Start now," she said, and cut the link.

Her bedroom was dark mahogany; the great four-poster hung with red velvet, its tester embroidered with the black swan singing. Behind it was what looked like a small garderobe set into the wall, but as she walked through the illusion it became an en-suite bathroom with every luxury-there were limits even to the Warden's strictness on Protocol.

As she stood on the toilet seat and peeped out of the narrow window, sunlit dust swirled in motes about her. She could see the courtyard. Three horses were saddled; her father was standing by one, both gloved hands resting on the reins, and with a suppressed whoop of relief she saw that his secretary, the dark watchful man called Medlicote, was climbing onto the gray mare.

Behind, Lord Evian was being heaved into the saddle by two sweating stable hands.

Claudia wondered how much of his comic awkwardness was an act, and whether he'd been prepared for real horses rather than cyber-steeds.

Evian and her father were playing an elaborate and deadly game of manners and insults, irritation and etiquette. It bored her, but that was how things were at Court. The thought of a future lifetime of it turned her cold. To hide from it she jumped down, and tugged off the elaborate dress. Underneath she was wearing a dark jumpsuit.

For a moment she glanced at herself in the mirror. Clothes changed you.

Long ago, King Endor had known that. That was why he had stopped Time, imprisoned everyone in doublets and dresses, stiffed them in conformity and stiffness.

Now Claudia felt lithe and free. Dangerous, even. She stepped back up. They were riding through the gatehouse. Her father paused and glanced toward Jared's tower.

She smiled secretly. She knew what he could see. He could see her. Jared had perfected the holo-image in the long nights of sleeplessness.

When he had shown her herself, sitting, talking, laughing, reading in the window seat of the sunny tower, she had been fascinated and appalled. "That's not me!"

He'd smiled. "No one likes to see themselves from the outside."

She had seen a smug, pert creature, her face a mask of composure, every action considered, every speech rehea.r.s.ed. Superior and mocking. "Is that really how I am?"

Jared had shrugged. "It's an image, Claudia. Let's say its how you can appear."

Now, jumping down and running back into the bedroom, she watched the horses pace elegantly over the mown lawns, Evian talking, her father silent. Job had vanished, and the blue sky was mottled with high clouds. They'd be gone at least an hour.

She took the small disc from her pocket, tossed it, caught it, put it back.

Then she opened her bedroom door and peered out. The Long Gallery ran the length of the house. It was paneled in oak and lined with portraits, books in cabinets, blue vases on pedestals. Above each door the bust of a Roman emperor gazed sternly down from its bracket. Far down at the end sunlight made brilliant slanting lozenges across the wall, and a suit of armor guarded the top of the stairs like a rigid ghost.

She took a step, and the planks creaked. The boards were old, and she scowled, because there was no way to turn that off. There was nothing she could do about the busts either, but as she pa.s.sed each painting she touched the frame control and darkened them-after all, there were almost certainly cameras in some of them.

She held the disc gently in her hand; only once did it give a discreet bleep of warning, and she already knew about that, a crisscross of faint lines outside the study door, easily dissolved.

Claudia glanced back down the corridor. Far off in the house a door banged, a servant called. Up here in the m.u.f.fled luxury of the past, the air was fragrant with juniper and rosemary, pomanders of crisp lavender in the laundry cupboard.

The study door was recessed in shadow. It was black, and looked like ebony; a bare panel, except for the swan. Huge and malevolent, the bird stared down at her, neck stretched in spitting defiance, wings wide. Its tiny eye glinted as though it were a diamond or dark opal.

More likely a spyhole, she thought.

Tense, she lifted Jared's disc and held it carefully to the door; it clamped itself on with a tiny metallic click. The device hummed. A small whine emerged from it, changing tone and pitch frequently, as if it chased the intricate combination of the lock up and down the scales of sound.

Jared had gone into patient explanations as to how it worked, but she hadn't really been listening.

Impatient, she fidgeted. Then froze. Footsteps were running up the stairs, lightly pattering.

Perhaps one of the maids, despite orders.

Claudia flattened herself into the alcove, cursing silently, barely breathing. Just behind her ear, the disc gave a soft, satisfied snap. At once she turned, had the door open, and was inside in seconds, one arm whipping back out to s.n.a.t.c.h the disc. When the maid hurried by with the pile of linen, the study door was as dark and grimly locked as ever.

Slowly, Claudia withdrew her eye from the spyhole and breathed out in relief.

Then she stiffened, her shoulders tight with tension. A curious, dreadful certainty swept over her that the room behind her was not empty, that her father was standing at her back, close enough to touch, his smile bitter. That the horseman she had seen leave had been his own holo-image, that he had outguessed her as he always did.

She made herself turn. The room was empty. But it was not what she'd expected. For a start it was too big. It was totally non-Era.

And it was tilted.

At least she thought so for a moment, because the first steps she took into its s.p.a.ce were strangely unsteady, as if the floor sloped, or the perspective of the bare gray walls rose to odd angles. Something blurred and clicked; then the room seemed to gently even out, become normal, except for the warmth and the sweet faint scent and a low hum she couldn't quite identify. The ceiling was high and vaulted. Sleek silver devices lined the walls, each winking with small red lights. A narrow illumination strip lit only the area directly below it, revealing a solitary desk, a neatly aligned metal chair. The rest of the room was empty. The only thing marring the perfect floor was a tiny speck of black. She bent down and examined it. A sc.r.a.p of metal, dropped from some device.

Astonished, still not quite sure she was alone, Claudia gazed around.

Where were the windows? There should be two-both orieled cas.e.m.e.nts. You could see them from outside, and through them a white pargeted ceiling and some bookshelves. Often she'd wondered about climbing up the ivy to get in.

From outside, the room had looked normal. Not this humming, tilted box too big for its s.p.a.ce.

She paced forward, gripping Jared's disc tightly, but it registered no warnings.

Reaching the desk, she touched its smooth, featureless surface and a screen rose up silently with no visible controls. She searched, but there was nothing, so she a.s.sumed it was voice-operated.

"Begin," she said quietly. Nothing happened.

"Go. Start. Commence. Initiate."

The screen stayed blank. Only the room hummed.

There must be a pa.s.sword. She leaned down, placed both hands on the desk.

There was only one word she could think of, so she said it. "Incarceron."

No image. But under the fingers of her left hand a drawer rolled smoothly open.

Inside, on a bed of black velvet, lay a single key. It was intricate, a spun web of crystal. Embedded in the heart of it was a crowned eagle; the royal insignia of the Havaarna Dynasty.

Bending closer, she looked at its sharp facets that glittered so brilliantly. Was it diamond? Gla.s.s? Drawn by its heavy beauty she bent so close her breath misted on its frostiness, her shadow blocking the overhead light so that the rainbow glints went out.

Might it be the key to Incarceron itself?

She wanted to lift it. But first she ran Jared's disc cautiously over its surface. Nothing. She glanced around once. Everything was quiet. So she picked up the key.

The room crashed.

Alarms howled; rays of laserfire shot up from the floor, ringing her in a cage of red light.

A metal grille slammed over the door; hidden lights burst on and she stood frozen in the uproar in terror, her heart slamming in her chest, and in that instant the disc jabbed a pepperpoint of red pain urgently into her thumb. She glanced down at it.

Jared's message was breathless with terror.

He's coming back! Get out, Claudia! Get out!

7.

Once Sapphique came to the end of a tunnel and looked down on a vast hall.

Its floor was a poisoned pool of venom. Corrosive steams rose from it.

Across the darkness stretched a taut wire, and on the far side a doorway was visible, with light beyond it.