Sapphique i-2 Read online

  She was in a hurry. She wanted to find Jared, but still she stared at it. It had been opened, and read. He had left it lying around. It couldn’t be a secret.

  Still she hesitated. She would have read anyone else’s letters without a scrap of remorse; in the Court everyone was a stranger, perhaps an enemy. They were part of the game. But Jared was her only friend. More than that. Her love for him was old and strong.

  So when she crossed the room and opened the letter she told herself that it didn’t matter, that he would only tell her about it anyway. They shared everything.

  It was from the Queen. Claudia read it, her eyes widening.

  My dear Master Jared, I write to you because I feel I need to make things clear between us. You and I have been enemies in the past; that really no longer need be the case. I know you are busy with your work of trying to reactivate the Portal. Claudia must be desperate to have news of her dear father. But I wonder f you might find time to wait on me? I will expect you in my private rooms, at seven.

  Sia, Regina.

  And in small letters underneath: We could be of great help to each other.

  Claudia frowned. She folded the note, jammed it back under the glass, and hurried out. The Queen was always plotting. But what did she want with Jared?

  He had to be at the Portal.

  As she grabbed a candle and shook it into life she tried not to feel so agitated. She opened the door in the panelling of the lavish corridor and pattered down the spiral staircase that led to the cellars, ducking cobwebs that regenerated themselves with irritating speed. The deep vaults were damp and chilly. Squeezing between the barrels and winecasks she hurried to the darkest corner where the high bronze doors reared to the roof and found to her horror that they were shut. The great snails that seemed to infest this place clung to the icy metal; their trails crisscrossed the damp surface.

  ‘Master!’ Claudia slammed her fist against the door.

  ‘Let me in!’ Silence.

  For a moment she knew for sure that he couldn’t, that he was lying unconscious, that the slow illness that had been consuming him for years had crumpled him in pam. Then another fear stabbed her even harder; that he had finally got the Portal to work and had trapped himself in Incarceron.

  The door sprang open with a click.

  She slipped in and stared.

  And then she laughed.

  On his hands and knees, trying to pick up hundreds and hundreds of glistening blue feathers, Jared glanced up at her irritably. ‘This is not funny, Claudia.’ She couldn’t stop. She was silly with relief. She sat down in the single chair and let the giggles rise to a sort of hysteria that left her wiping her eyes with the silk of her skirt. Jared leant back on his hands in the blue ocean of plumage and watched her. He wore a dark green shirt, the sleeves rolled up. His Sapient coat, flung over the chair, was buried in feathers. His long hair was tangled. But his smile, when it came, was rueful and real. ‘Well, all right. Perhaps it is.’ The room that had always been so pure and white looked as if a thousand kingfishers had been plucked in it. Feathers lay on the metal desk and coated the sleek silver shelves with their unknowable devices. The floor was ankle deep. Clouds of them rose and settled at every movement.

  ‘Be careful. I knocked a flask over trying to grab them.’

  ‘Why feathers?’ she managed to say at last.

  Jared sighed. ‘One feather. I picked it up from the lawn.

  Small. Organic. Perfect for experimentation.’ She stared at him. ‘One? Then...'

  ‘Yes, Claudia. I finally managed to get something to happen. But not the right thing.’ Amazed, she gazed around. The Portal was the way into Incarceron, but only her father knew its secrets and he had sabotaged it in his escape inside. He had sat in this very chair and disappeared, and she knew that he was lost somewhere within the miniaturized world that was the Prison. And since then nothing here had worked. Jared had spent months studying the controls of the desk, infuriating Finn with his care and delicate probing, but no switch or circuit had even lit.

  ‘What happened?’ She jumped up from the chair, suddenly afraid she might disappear.

  Jared pulled a blue feather from his hair. ‘I placed it on the chair. For the last few days I’ve been experimenting with replacing broken components with various substitutes; the last was an illicit plastic I acquired from a trader in the market.’ Claudia said immediately, ‘Did anyone see you?’

  ‘I was well cloaked, so I trust not.’ But they both knew that he had probably been followed.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It must have worked. Because there was a flash and a . . . shiver. But the feather did not disappear, nor did it miniaturize. It multiplied. They’re all perfectly identical.’ He looked round with a wan helplessness that suddenly struck Claudia; the smile went from her face. Quietly she said, ‘You mustn’t work yourself too hard, Master.’ He glanced up at her, his voice gentle. ‘I am aware of that.’

  ‘I know Finn is always prowling here, bothering you.’

  ‘You should call him Prince Giles.’ He stood, wincing slightly. ‘Soon to be King’ They looked at each other. Claudia nodded. Glancing round, she found a sack that held tools; she emptied them out and began to stuff the feathers in, handful by handful.

  Jared sat on the chair and leant forward. ‘Can Finn cope with such a pressure?’ he asked quietly.

  She paused. He saw how her hand stayed in the sack; when it came out she worked harder and faster.

  ‘He’ll have to. We brought him out of Incarceron to be King. We need him.’ She looked up. ‘It’s strange. All I cared about when this started was not marrying Caspar. And getting the better of my father. All my life I’ve plotted and planned, been obsessed with those things...’

  ‘And now you’ve achieved them you are not satisfied.’ He nodded. ‘Life is a series of stairs up which we climb, Claudia.

  You’ve read Zelon’s Philosophies. Your horizons have moved.’

  ‘Yes, but Master, I don’t know. .

  ‘You do.’ He reached out his delicate hand and gripped hers, stopping her. ‘What do you want of Finn, when he becomes King?’ For a long moment she was still, as if thinking. But she said exactly what he knew she would. ‘I want him to overturn the Protocol. Not the way the Steel Wolves want, by killing the Queen. I want to find a way peacefully, so we can start time again, live naturally without this stagnation, this stifling false history’

  ‘Is that possible? We have few reserves of energy.’

  ‘Yes and they’re all wasted on palaces for the rich, and keeping the sky blue, and trapping the poor and forgotten in a Prison run by a tyrannical machine.’ Savagely she swept up the last feathers and stood. ‘Master, my father is gone. I never thought it possible, but I feel like half of me is gone with him. But I am his successor, and if anyone is Warden of Incarceron now, it’s me. So I’m going to the Academy. I’m going to read the Esoterica.' She turned, not wanting to see the alarm on his face.

  Jared said nothing. He gathered up his coat and followed her out, and as they crossed the threshold of the door they both felt again that strange shift; as if the room straightened itself out behind them. Turning, Claudia stared at its white purity; the place that existed both here and at home, as her father’s study.

  Jared swung the gates closed and fastened the chains across. He clipped a small device to the bronze. ‘This is just a safeguard. Medlicote was down here this morning.’ Claudia was surprised. ‘My father’s secretary?’ Jared nodded, preoccupied.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He had a message for me. He took a good look round. I think he’s as curious as everyone else in the Court Claudia had always disliked the tall, silent man who worked for her father. But now she said, quietly.

  ‘What message?’ They had reached the stairs. She dumped the sack of feathers for some servant to clear; Jared stepped back with perfect Protocol to let her go first. For a moment, as she swished up under the cobwebs, a silver of fear came to he
r, a fear that he would lie, or evade her question. But his voice was normal. ‘A message from the Queen. I’m not sure what it’s about. She wants to meet with me.’ Claudia smiled sweetly into the dimness. ‘Well you should go. We need to know what she’s up to.’

  ‘I have to say I find her terrifying. But yes, you’re right.’ She waited for him at the top; as he emerged from the doorway he caught the frame and breathed in sharply for a moment, as if a spark of pain had stung him. Then he caught her eye and straightened. They walked along the panelled corridor in silence, turning into a long hallway lined with hundreds of blue and white vases each as high as a man, filled with ancient potpourri that mouldered mustily. Under their feet the wooden boards creaked.

  ‘The Esoterica are kept at the Academy,’ Jared said.

  ‘Then I’ll have to go there.’

  ‘You’ll need the Queen’s permission. And we both know she does not really want the Portal reopened.’

  ‘Master, I’ll go, whatever she says. And you’ll have to come with me, because I won’t understand any of what I find.’

  ‘That will mean leaving Finn here on his own.’ She knew that. She had been thinking about that for days.

  ‘We’ll need to find a bodyguard for him.’ They had reached the Honeysuckle Court. The sweet scent of its tangling flowers was like a wave of summer, it made her feel happier. As they walked out into the maze of formal paths the evening sun lit the cloisters of twisted crystal and gold; tiny mosaic pieces glittered, and a few bees hummed in the clipped rosemary and lavender.

  Far off, the clock on the high tower began to chime a quarter to seven. Claudia frowned. ‘You’d better go. Sia doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’ Jared took out the watch from his pocket and checked it.

  Claudia said, ‘You always carry that now.’

  ‘Your father gave it to me. I think of myself as its guardian.’ The timepiece was digital and accurate. Inside its gold case it was purely non-Era, and that had always amazed her, because her father had been meticulous about detail. Gazing now at the fine silver chain, the tiny cube that hung from it, she wondered how the Warden was coping with the filth and poverty of the Prison. But then he knew it well enough. He had been there many times.

  Jared clicked the watch shut. He held it still a moment.

  Then, his voice very soft, he said, ‘Claudia, how did you know I was to meet the Queen at seven?’ She froze.

  For a moment she couldn’t say anything. Then she glanced at him. She knew her face was flushed.

  ‘I see,’ he said.

  ‘Master, I . . . I’m sorry. The note was lying there. I picked it up and read it.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry!’ She felt ashamed. And somewhere, annoyed at her slip.

  ‘I won’t say I’m not a little hurt,’ he said, buttoning his coat. Then he looked up and his green eyes were fixed on her. Urgently he said, ‘We must never doubt each other, Claudia. They will try to divide us, try to turn us against each other, you and me and Finn. Never let them do that.’

  ‘I never will.’ She was fierce. ‘Jared, are you angry with me?’

  ‘No.’ He smiled, ruefully. ‘I have long known you are your father’s daughter. Now, I’ll ask the Queen to let us ride to the Academy. Come to the tower later, and I’ll tell you all about it.’ She nodded, and watched him walk away, bowing as he passed two ladies-in-waiting who curtsied and watched his slim dark shape appreciatively. They turned, and saw Claudia. She fixed them with a cold stare; they hurried away.

  Jared was hers. But however much he tried to hide it, she knew she had hurt him.

  At the corner of the cloister Jared waved back at Claudia and turned into the archway. As soon as he was out of her sight, he stopped. Leaning his hand on the wall he took deep breaths. Before seeing the Queen he would need his medication. He took a handkerchief out and wiped his forehead, letting the sharp spasm subside, quietly counting the pulse rate under his finger.

  He should not be so upset. Claudia was right to be inquisitive. And after all, he had one secret even from her.

  He took out the watch and held it till the metal grew warm in his hand. For a moment back there, he had been about to tell her, until she had given herself away about the Queen.

  And what had stopped him? Why shouldn’t she know that he held between his fingers the tiny cube that was Incarceron, the place where her father, and Keiro, and Attia were imprisoned?

  He let it rest on his palm, remembering the Warden’s voice, mocking his horror. ‘You are like a god, Jared. You hold Incarceron in your hands.’ Beads of sweat smeared it; he wiped them away. He shut the watch up and plunged it in his pocket, and hurried to his room.

  Claudia stared gloomily at her feet. For a moment she had almost hated herself; now she told herself not to be stupid.

  She had to get back to Finn. The news of the proclamation would be hard for him. As she walked quickly through the cloister she sighed. Sometimes in these last few weeks, when they had been out hunting, or riding in the woods, she had had the feeling that he was on the brink of fleeing, of turning his horse’s head and galloping away into the woods of the Realm, away from the Court and the burden of being the Prince who had come back from the dead. He had wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.

  Beyond the cloister were the mews; on a sudden impulse Claudia ducked under the low archway into the dusty hail.

  She needed time to think and this was her favourite place in the crowded Court. Sunlight fell through a high window at the far end of the building; the air smelt of old straw and dust, and the birds.

  They sat, tethered to posts, all the noble hawks and falcons of the Court. Some wore tiny red hoods that covered their eyes; as they tossed their heads or preened small bells rang, a miniature plume rippled. Others stared at Claudia as she passed down the aisle between their enclosures, the great owls with their wide eyes twisting their necks soundlessly, the sparrowhawks with a fierce tawny gaze, the merlin sleepily. At the far end, tethered by Leather jesses, a great eagle glared arrogantly at her, its beak yellow and cruel as gold.

  She took a gauntlet down and pulled it on; tugging a fragment of meat from a hanging bag, she held it out. The eagle turned its head. For a moment it was as still as a statue, watching her intently. Then its beak snatched; it tore the sinewy flesh between its talons.

  ‘A true symbol of the Royal house.’ Claudia jumped.

  Someone was standing in the shadows behind a stone screen. She could see his hand and arm in the slant of sunlight, where dust motes floated. For a moment she almost thought it was her father, and a stab of feeling she couldn’t guess at jerked her hand into a fist.

  Then she said, ‘Who is that?’ A rustle of straw.

  She had no weapon. No one was here. She took one step back.

  The man came forward, slowly. The sunlight slashed on his tall, thin shape, his greasy hair hanging scraggily, the small half-moons of his glasses.

  She breathed out, angrily. Then she said, ‘Medlicote.’

  ‘Lady Claudia. I hope I didn’t startle you.’ Her father’s secretary made a stiff bow and she dropped a brief cold curtsy. It struck her that though she had seen the man nearly every day of her life when her father was home, she had probably hardly ever spoken to him before.

  He was gaunt and had a slightly hunched look, as if the hours spent labouring over a desk had begun to bend him.

  ‘Not at all she lied. Then, hesitantly, ‘Actually, I’m glad to have the chance to speak to you. My father’s affairs...'

  ‘Are in perfect order.’ The interruption astounded her; she stared at him. He stepped closer. ‘Lady Claudia, forgive my discourtesy, but we have little time. Perhaps you may recognize this.’ He held out ink-stained fingers and dropped something small and cold into the gauntlet she wore. The slash of sunlight fell across it. She saw a small metal token; a running beast, its mouth open and snarling. She had never seen it before. But she knew what it meant.

  It wa
s a steel wolf.

  5

  ‘I could breathe fire on you,’ the wirewolf growled.

  ‘Do it,’ said Sapphique. ‘Just don’t throw me into the water.’

  ‘I could gnaw your shadow away.’

  ‘That’s nothing, compared with the black water.’

  ‘I could crush your bones and sinews.’

  ‘I fear the terrible water more than you.’ The wirewof flung him angrily into the lake.

  So he swam away, laughing.

  THE WIREWOLF RETURNS

  The Glove was too small.

  Horrified, Attia watched how the material stretched, how small tears opened at its seams. She glanced at Rix; his eyes were fixed in fascination on the Winglord’s fingers.

  And he was smiling.

  Attia breathed in; suddenly she understood. All that pleading for them not to touch the props — he had wanted this all along!

  She glanced at Quintus. The juggler held a red ball and a blue ball, alert. Behind, in the gloom, the troupe waited.

  Thar held up his hand. In the darkness the black glove was almost invisible, as if his limb had been severed at the wrist.

  He barked a harsh laugh. ’So now. If I snap my fingers do gold coins tumble from them? If I point at a man does he fall dead?’ Before anyone could answer he had tried it, turning and jabbing his forefinger at one of the bulky men behind him.

  The thug’s face went white. ‘Why me, chief?’

  ‘Scared, Mart?’

  ‘I just don’t like it, that’s all.’

  ‘More fool you .’ Thar swung back and stared at Rix contemptuously. ‘I’ve seen better props under a waggon wheel. You must be some showman to make anyone believe in this junky Rix nodded. ‘So I am. The greatest showman in Incarceron.’ He raised his hand. lnstantly, Thar’s scorn flicked off; he glanced down at his gloved fingers.

  Then he howled in agony.

  Attia jumped. The echo of the cry rang in the tunnel; the Winglord was yelping and clutching the glove. ‘Get it off me!