THE STARS EXIST, ATTIA. FiNN SEES THEM.
‘Finn,’ she breathed.
SOON, SO WILL I. BEYOND SNOW AND STORM.
Something brushed her skin. She caught it; a small, soft object, it drifted down from the dark roof.
A blue feather.
And then they were falling all around, soft as laughter, a snow of tiny blue feathers, each identical, falling on the waggons and the warband and the road, a muffling, impossible storm, feathers hissing and crackling in the flames, snuffled away and trampled by the oxen, falling in eyes and on shoulders, on the canvas roofs, on the blades of axes, sticking in the clots of paint.
‘The Prison is doing this!’ Rix’s voice was a whisper of awe.
He caught her arm. ‘Quickly. Before—’ But it was too late.
With a roar the tempest came out of the dark and flattened him against her; she staggered, but he hauled her up. The wrath of Incarceron raged; a scream of hurricane that scoured the tunnel and smashed down the gates. The warband were scattered; as Rix dragged Attia away she saw how Thar crumpled, how the black glove shrivelled and split on his hand, dissolving to a network of holes, skeins of raw, bloody skin.
Then she was scrambling aboard; Rix yelled and whipped at the oxen and they were moving, rumbling on blindly through the blizzard. Attia covered her head with her arms as the feathers gusted at her, and above them she saw the thrown spheres of the jugglers light the eerie storm with green and red and purple.
It was hard going. The oxen were tough, but even they staggered with the force of the wind, putting their heads down and plodding on. Beside her, Attia heard a faint, windsnatched hysteria; glancing up she saw that Rix was laughing softly to himself, blue feathers snagged in his hair and clothes.
It was too hard to talk, but Attia managed a look back.
There was no sign of the Bandits. After twenty minutes the tunnel became lighter; the wagon came round a long bend and she saw light ahead, a jagged entrance through the feather—storm.
As they plodded towards it the storm died, as suddenly as it had come.
Slowly, Attia took her arms down and drew breath. At the tunnel entrance Rix said, ‘Anyone following?’ She tried to see. ‘No. Quintus and his brothers are at the back.’
‘Excellent. A few stunballs will stop pursuit.’ Her ears stung from the icy wind. Huddling her coat around her she picked feathers from her sleeves, spat out blue fluff. Then she said, appalled, ‘The Glove was destroyed!’ He shrugged. ‘What a pity.’ The deadpan words, the smug grin made her stare. Then she looked past him at the landscape.
It was a frozen world.
Below them the road ran down between great banks of ice, head high, and she could see that this whole Wing was an open tundra, abandoned and windswept, stretching far into the gloom of the Prison. There was a great moat blocking their way, with a bridge fortified with a portcullis of black metal worn thin by the abrasions of sleet. An entrance had been jaggedly cut through it; the ends of steel bars bent back.
Oily slush showed where traffic had passed, but to Attia the sudden cold seared like fear.
‘I’ve heard of this place she whispered. ‘This is the Ice Wing.’
‘How clever of you, sweetkin. So it is: As the oxen slipped and clattered down the slope she was silent. Then she said, ‘So it wasn’t the real Glove?’ Rix spat to one side. ‘Attia, if he’d opened any box or hidden compartment on this waggon he’d have found a glove. A small black glove. I never said it was Sapphique’s.
None of them are, in fact. Sapphique’s Glove is too close to my heart to be stolen.’
‘But . . . it burned him.’
‘Well, he was right about the acid. As for not being able to take it off, he was perfectly able to. But I made him believe he could not. That is magic, Attia. To take a man’s mind and twist it to believe the impossible.’ For a moment he concentrated on guiding the ox round a jutting girder. ‘Once he had let us go he would have believed the spell to be ended’ She watched him sideways. ‘And the writing?’ Rix’s eyes slid to hers. ‘I was going to ask you about that.’
‘Me?’
‘Even I can’t make an illiterate man write. The message was for you. Odd things have been happening, Attia, since we met you.’ She realized she was biting her nails. She wrapped her hands hastily in her sleeves. ‘It’s Finn. It must be Finn. He’s trying to speak to me. From Outside.’ Rix’s voice was quiet. ‘And you think the Glove will help?’
‘I don’t know! Perhaps . . . if you let me just see it...’ He stopped the waggon so abruptly that she almost fell off.
‘NO. It’s dangerous, Attia. Illusions are one thing, but this is a real object of power. Even I wouldn’t dare wear it.’
‘You’ve never even been tempted?’
‘Maybe. But I’m crazy not stupid.’
‘But you wear it in the act.’
‘Do I?’ he grinned.
‘You’re infuriating she said.
‘My life’s ambition. Now. This is where you get down.’ She stared round. ‘Here?’
‘The settlement is about two hours ahead. Remember, you don’t know us, we don’t know you.’ He fished in his pocket and put three brass coins into her hand.
‘Get yourself something to eat. And tonight, sweetkin, remember to tremble a bit more when I raise the sword.
Look scared stiff.’
‘I don’t need to act.’ She climbed down, then stopped, halfway. ‘How do I know that you’re not just dumping me here and heading on?’ Rix winked and whipped up the ox. ‘I wouldn’t dream of such a thing: She watched them all pass. The bear was hunched in misery, its cage floor blue with feathers. One of the jugglers waved at her, but no one else even put their heads out.
Slowly, the troupe rolled into the distance.
Attia tugged her pack on to her back and stamped life into her cold feet. She walked quickly at first, but the track was treacherous, a frozen metalway greasy with oil. As she descended into the plain the walls of ice slowly rose on each side; soon they were higher than her head, and as she picked her way past them she saw objects and dust embedded deep inside. A dead dog, its jaws wide. A Beetle. In one place, small round black stones and grit. In another, so deep among blue bubbles she could barely see it, the bones of a child.
It grew bitterly cold. Her breath began to cloud around her.
She hurried, because the waggons were already out of sight, and only by walking fast could she keep warm.
Finally, at the bottom of the slope, she reached the bridge.
It was stone, and it arched over the moat, but as she slipped along in the cart ruts she saw that the moat was frozen solid, and leaning over the side made her shadow darken its dirty surface. Debris was strewn across it. Chains led from the cutwaters, disappearing deep into the ice.
The portcullis, when she came to it, was black and ancient.
The ends of the bent bars glittered with icicles, and on the very top a solitary long-necked bird perched, white as snow.
For a moment she thought it was a carving, until suddenly it spread its wings and flew, with a mournful cark, high into the iron-grey sky.
Then she saw the Eyes.
There were two, one on each side of the iron gate. Tiny and red, they stared down at her. Icicles hung from them like frozen tears.