Incarceron Part 27

"Well, look, Attia. I don't want a servant. But ... you can come with us."

"She has no food. That means we have to feed her," Keiro said.

"Neither do you."

Finn nudged the pack of clothes.

"Or me, now."

"Then she shares your catch, brother. Not mine."

Gildas leaned back against one of the metal trees.

"Sleep," he said.

"We'll discuss it when the lights come on. But someone has to keep watch, so first it can be you, girl."

She nodded, and as Finn curled up uneasily in the blankets, he saw her slip into the shadows and vanish. Keiro yawned like a cat.

"She'll probably slit our throats," he muttered.

CLAUDIA SAID, "I said good night, Alys," and watched in her dressing table mirror as her nurse fussed over silk garments strewn on the floor.

"Look at this, Claudia, it's ruined with mud ..."

"Put it through the washing machine. I know you've got one somewhere."

Alys gave her a glare.

They both knew the endless archaic scrubbing and beating and starching of clothes was so wearing that the staff had secretly abandoned Protocol long ago. It was probably the same even at Court, Claudia thought.

As soon as the door was closed she jumped up and went over and locked it, turning the wrought-iron key and clicking on all the secrecy systems. Then she leaned her back against it and considered.

Jared had not been at supper. That didn't mean anything; he would have wanted to keep up the pretense, and he hated the Ear's stupidity.

For a moment she wondered if he really had been ill in the maze, and whether she should call him, but he had warned her to keep the minicom for emergencies, especially with the Warden in the house.

She tied the belt of her dressing gown and jumped on the bed, reaching up to grope in the canopy of the four-poster. Not there.

The house was quiet now.

Caspar had talked and drunk his way through supper; fourteen courses of fish and finches, capons and swan, eels and sweetmeats. He had talked loudly and peevishly about tournaments, his new horse, a castle he was having built on the coast, the sums he had lost at gambling. His new pa.s.sion seemed to be boar-hunting, or at least staying well back while his servants trussed a wounded boar for him to kill. He had described his spear, the kills he had made, the tusked heads that adorned the corridors of the Court.

And all the time he had drunk and refilled and his voice had grown more and more hectoring and slurred.

She had listened with a fixed smile and had teased him with odd, barbed questions that he had barely understood. And all the time her father had sat opposite and toyed with the stem of his winegla.s.s, turning it on the white cloth between his thin fingers, looking at her.

Now, as she jumped down and went over to the dressing table, searching through all the drawers, she remembered that cool look, how it appraised her sitting there, beside the fool she would have to marry.

It wasn't in any of the drawers.

Suddenly chilled, she went to the window and unlatched it, letting the cas.e.m.e.nt swing open, curling herself up in a miserable huddle on the cushions of the window seat.

If he loved her, how could he do this to her? Couldn't he see the misery it would be?

The summer evening was warm and smelled sweetly of stocks and honeysuckle and the hedge of musk-roses that curved around the moat. From far over the fields the bell of Hornsely church softly tolled twelve chimes.

She watched as a moth fluttered in and swooped recklessly around the flame of the candles; its shadow briefly huge on the ceiling.

Had there been a new edge in his smile? Had that stupid blurted question about her mother sharpened the danger?

Her mother had died. That's what Alys had said, but Alys hadn't been working here then, nor had any of the servants except Medlicote, her father's secretary, a man she rarely spoke to. But maybe she should.

Because that question had gone in like a knife, through the Warden's studied armor of grave smiles and cold Period decorum. She had stabbed him and he had felt it.

She smiled, her face hot. It had never happened before.

Could there be something strange about her mother's death? Illness was rife, but for the rich, illegal drugs could be found. Medicines too modern for this Era.

Her father was strict, but surely if he had loved his wife he would have done anything, however illegal, to save her. Could he have sacrificed his wife just because of Protocol? Or was it worse than that?

The moth scuttered on the ceiling. Leaning forward, she looked out of the window at the sky. The summer stars were bright. They lit the roofs and gables of the manor house with a faint, ghostly glimmer, an owl-light, reflecting the black and silver ripples of the moat.

Her father was implicated in Giles's death. Could he have killed before?

A touch on her cheek made her jump. The moth wings brushed her, whispered, "In the window seat" and were gone, fluttering out toward the faint light in Jared's tower.

Claudia grinned. She pushed herself up, groped under the cushions, and touched the cold edge of crystal.

Carefully, she pulled it out. The Key took the light of the stars and held it. It seemed to shine with a faint luminescence, and the eagle within it held a sliver of light in its beak.

Jared must have brought it here while everyone was at supper. She took the precaution of blowing the candles out and closing the window. Tugging the heavy quilt from her bed, she wrapped herself in it and propped the Key on her knees.

Then she touched it, rubbed it, breathed on it.

"Speak to me," she said.

FINN WAS so cold he barely had the energy even to shiver.

The metal forest was utterly black; the lantern threw only a tiny pool of light, on Keiro's sprawled hand, on the huddle that was Gildas.

The girl was a shadow under a tree; she made no sound and he wondered if she was even asleep.

He reached out cautiously for Keiro's pack. He would pull one of his oathbrother's fancy jackets over his own. Two, maybe, and if they split Keiro could put up with it.

Tugging the pack over, he put his hand in, and touched the Key. It was warm.

He lifted it out, very gently, and let his fingers close over it, so that the heat it was generating comforted his cramped fingers.

Quietly it said, "Speak to me."

Wide-eyed, Finn glanced at the others. No one moved. Carefully, his leather belt creaking in the stillness, he stood up and turned. He managed three steps before the rustling crunch of the metal leaves made Keiro mutter and turn over.

Behind the tree, Finn froze. He brought the Key up to his ear. It was silent. He touched it, all over, shook it.

Then he whispered to it, "Sapphique. Lord Sapphique. Is that you?"

CLAUDIA GASPED.

The answer had come so clearly. She looked wildly around for anything to record this on, saw nothing and cursed.

Then she said, "No! No. My name's Claudia. Who are you?"

"Quiet! They'll wake up."

"Who will?" There was a pause.