Voices. Someone laughing, loud.
Instantly she leaped up, blew the lamps out. Jared seemed too dispirited to care. In the dark they waited, listening to the revelers' drunken shouts, a badly sung ballad fading away through the orchard. Claudia felt her heart thudding so loudly in the hush, it almost hurt. Faint bells chimed eleven in the clock towers and stables of the
Palace. In one hour her wedding day would dawn. She would not give up. Not yet.
"Now that we know about the Portal and what it does ... could you operate it?"
"Possibly. But there's no way back."
"I could try." She said it quickly. "Go in and look for him. What have I got here? A lifetime with Caspar ..."
"No." He sat up and faced her. "Can you even begin to imagine life in there? A hell of violence and brutality? And here-- if the wedding doesn't happen, the Steel Wolves will strike at once. There will be a terrible bloodshed." He reached over and took her hands. "I hope I've taught you always to face facts."
"Master--"
"You have to go through with the wedding. That's all that's left. There is no way back for
Giles."
She wanted to pull away, but he wouldn't let her. She hadn't known he was so strong.
"Giles is lost to us. Even if he's alive."
She slid her hands down and held his, tight with misery. "I don't know if I can," she whispered.
"I know. But you're brave."
"I'll be so alone. They're sending you away."
His fingers were cool. "I told you. You have far too much to learn." In the darkness he smiled his rare smile. "I'm going nowhere, Claudia."
THEY COULDN'Tdo it. The ship wouldn't hold steady, even with all of them hauling at the wheel. Her sails were rags, her rope trailed everywhere, her rails were smashed, and still she yawed and zigzagged, the anchor swinging and the bow oscillating toward the cube, away from it, above, below. "It's impossible," Keiro growled.
"No." Gildas seemed lit with joy. "We can do it. Keep strong." He gripped the wheel and stared ahead.
Suddenly the ship dropped. The headlights picked out the cube's opening; as they closed on it, Finn saw it was filmed across with a strange viscosity like the surface of a bubble.
Rainbows of iridescence glimmered on it.
"Giant snails," Keiro muttered. Even now he was able to joke, Finn thought.
Nearer, nearer. Now the ship was so close, they could see the reflection of her lights, swollen and distorted. So close that the bowsprit touched the film, indented it, pierced it so that it popped with soft abruptness, vanishing into a faint puff of sweet air.
Gradually, fighting the upstream, the ship slewed into the dark cube. The buffeting slowed.
Vast shadows overwhelmed the headlights.
Finn stared up at the square of blackness. As it opened as if to swallow him, he felt that he was very tiny, was an ant crawling into a fold of cloth, a picnic cloth laid on the grass far away and long ago, where a birthday cake with seven candles lay half eaten, and a little girl with brown curly hair was handing him a golden plate, so politely.
He smiled at her and took it.
The ship cracked. The mast splintered, toppled, wood showering around them. Attia fell against him, scrabbling after a crystal glitter that slid from his shirt. "Get the Key," she yelled.
But the ship hit the back of the cube and darkness crashed down on him. Like a finger crushing the ant. Like a main mast falling.
THE LOST PRINCE
29
Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams.
A wall at the worlds end. Behind it I await death. Because all our work has come to this.
-Lord Calliston's Diary
The morning of the wedding dawned hot and fine. Even the weather had been planned; the trees were in full blossom and the birds sang, the sky was a cloudless blue, the temperature perfect, the breeze gentle and sweetly scented.
From her window Claudia watched the sweating servants unloading the carriage-loads of gifts, saw even from up here the glint of diamonds, the dazzle of gold.
She put her chin on the stone sill, felt its gritty warmth. There was a nest just above, a swallow that dipped in and out regularly with beakfuls of flies. Invisible chicks cheeped urgently as the parents came and went.
She felt heavy-eyed and bone-weary. All night she had lain awake and looked up into the crimson hangings of the bed, listening to the silence of the room, her future hanging over her like a weighty curtain ready to fall. Her old life was finished--the freedom, the studying with Jared, the long rides and tree-climbing, the carelessness of doing as she liked. Today she would be Countess of Steen, would enter the war of scheming and treachery that was the life of the Palace. In an hour they would come to bathe her, do her hair, paint her nails, dress her like a doll.
She looked down.
There was a roof far below, the slope of some turret. For a dreamy moment she thought that if she tied all the sheets of the bedclothes together, she might let herself down, slowly, hand over hand till her bare feet touched the hot tiles. She might scramble down and steal a horse from the stables and ride away, escape just as she was, in her white nightdress, into the green forests on the far hills.
It was a warming thought. The girl who disappeared. The lost Princess. It made her smile.
But then a call from below jerked her back; she glanced down and saw Lord Evian, resplendent in blue and ermine, gazing up at her.
He called something; she was too high to hear what, but she smiled and nodded, and he bowed and walked away, his small heeled shoes clacking.
Watching him, she knew that all the Court was like him, that behind its perfumed and elaborate facade lurked a web of hatreds and secret murders, and her own part in that would begin very soon, and to survive it she must be as hard as they were. Finn could never be rescued. She had to accept that.
She got up, sending the swallow off in panic, and walked to the dressing table.
It was laden with flowers, tussy-mussies, nosegays, and bouquets. They had been arriving all morning, so that the room smelled exquisite and sickly. Behind her, on the bed, the white gown lay spread in its finery. She looked at herself.
All right. She would marry Caspar and become Queen. If there was a plot, she would be part of it. If there were killings, she would survive them. She would rule. No one would tell her what to do ever again.
She opened the dressing table drawer, took out the Key, and placed it on the tabletop. It glimmered, its crystal facets catching the sunlight, its eagle splendid.
But first she would have to tell Finn. Break it to him that there was no escape.
Tell him their engagement was over.