She shook her head, bewildered. ‘We have your Glove. Keiro says—’
‘Don’t put your hand into that of a beast.’ His words whispered through the spiny undergrowth. ‘Or you will be made to do its work. Keep my Glove safe for me, Attia.’ The fire crackled. Ashes shifted. He became his own shadow, and was gone.
She must have slept again because it seemed hours later when the clink of metal woke her, and she sat up and saw Keiro saddling the horse. She wanted to tell him about the dream, but it was already hard to remember. Instead she yawned, and stared up at the Prison’s distant ceiling.
After a while she said, ‘Do the lights seem different to you?’ Keiro tugged the girth straps. ‘Different how?’
‘Weaker.’ He glanced at her, then up. For a minute he was still. Then he went on loading the horse. ‘Maybe.’
‘I’m sure they are.’ Incarceron’s lights were always powerful, but now there seemed a faint flicker to them. She said,’lf the Prison is really building a body for itself it must be using enormous reserves of power to do it. Draining energy from its systems. Maybe the Ice Wing isn’t the only wing shut down. We haven’t seen anyone since that creature back there. Where are they all?’ Keiro stood back. ‘Can’t say I care.’
‘You should.’ He shrugged. ‘Rule of the Scum. Care for no one but your brother.’
‘Sister
‘I told you, you’re temporary.’ Later, climbing up behind him on to the horse she said, ‘What happens when we get to wherever Incarceron is taking us? Are you just going to hand over the Glove?’ She felt Keiro’s snort of laughter through his gaudy scarlet jerkin. ‘Watch and learn, Iitt1e dog—slave.’
‘You haven’t got a clue. Keiro, listen to me! We can’t help it do this!’
‘Not even for a way Out?’
‘For you, maybe. But what about the others? What about everyone else?’ Keiro urged the horse to a run. ‘No one in this hell-hole has ever cared for me,’ he said quietly.
‘Finn...’
‘Not even Finn. So why should I care for them? They’re not me, Attia. They don’t exist for me.’ It was useless arguing with him. But as they rode into the dim undergrowth she let herself think of the terror of it, of the Prison shutting down, the lights going off and never coming back on, the cold spreading. Systems would seize up, foodslots shut down. Ice would form quickly and unstoppably, through whole wings, down corridors, over bridges. Chains would become masses of rust. Towns would freeze, the houses cold and deserted, the market stalls collapsed under howling snowdrifts. The air would turn to poison. And the people! There was no way to imagine them, the panic, the fear and loneliness, the trampling savagery such a collapse would unleash, the bloody struggle for survival. It would be the destruction of a world.
The Prison would withdraw its mind, and leave its children to their fate.
Around them, light faded to a green gloom. The path was cindery and silent, the horse’s hooves muffled in the incinerated dust. Attia whispered, ‘Do you believe that the Warden is in here?’
‘If so, things are not going smoothly for my princely brother.’ He sounded preoccupied.
‘If he’s still alive.’
‘I told you, Finn can bluff his way out of anything. Forget him.’ Keiro peered into the gloom. ‘We’ve got our own troubles.’ She scowled. The way he talked about Finn annoyed her, his pretence of not caring, of not being hurt. Sometimes she wanted to scream her anxiety at him but that would be useless, would only draw the grin, the cool shrug. There was an armour round Keiro. He wore it flamboyantly and invisibly. It was as part of him as his dirty yellow hair, his hard blue eyes. Only once, when the Prison had cruelly shown them his imperfection, had she ever glimpsed through it. And she knew he would never forgive Incarceron for that, or for what he felt he was.
The horse stopped.
It whickered. Its ears flattened.
Alert, Keiro said, ‘See anything?’ Great briars wreathed round them, barbed with spines.
‘No,’ she said.
But she could hear something. A small sound, very far off, like a whisper from a nightmare.
Keiro had heard it too. He turned, listening. ‘A voice? What’s it saying?’ Faint, repeated over and over, a tiny breath of triple syllables.
She kept very still. It seemed crazy, impossible. But.
‘I think it’s calling my name,’ she said.
‘Attia! Attia, can you hear me?’ Jared adjusted the output and tried again. He was hungry but the bread roll on the platter was hard and dry. Still, it was better than feasting upstairs with the Queen.
Would she notice he wasn’t there? He prayed not, and the anxiety made his fingers tremble on the controls.
Over his head the screen was a stripped—down mass of wires and circuitry, cables rigged into and out of its connectors. The Portal was silent, apart from its usual hum.
Jared had grown to like its silence. It soothed him, so that even the pain that pushed its jagged edge into his chest seemed blunted down here. Somewhere high above, the labyrinth of the Court teemed with intrigue, tower on tower, chamber within chamber, and beyond the stables and gardens lay the countryside of the Realm, wide and perfect in its beauty under the stars.
He was a dark flaw in the heart of that beauty He felt the guilt of it, and it made him work with agitated concentration.
Since the Queen’s silken blackmail, her offer of the Academy’s bidden lore, he had barely been able to sleep, lying awake in his narrow bed, or pacing the gardens so deep in hope and fear that it had taken hours for him to notice how closely she was having him followed.
So, just before the banquet, he had sent her a brief note.
I accept your offer. I leave for the Academy tomorrow at dawn.
Jared Sapiens Every word had been a wound, a betrayal. That was why he was here now.
Two men had followed him to the Sapients’ Tower, he had made sure of that, but Protocol meant that they had not been able to enter. The Tower here at Court was a great stone keep full of the apartments of the Queen’s Sapienti, and unlike his own at home at the Wardenry this was a model of Era, a maze of orreries and alchemical alembics and leatherbound books, a mockery of learning. But it was a true labyrinth, and in his first days here he had discovered passageways and covered vaults that led discreetly out to the stables, the kitchens, the laundry rooms, the stills. Losing the Queen’s men had been almost too easy.
But he had made sure. For weeks now the staircase down to the Portal had been guarded by his own devices. Half of the spiders that hung on plastic webs in the dirty cellars were his observers.
‘Attia. Attia. Can you hear me? This is Jared. Please answer.’ This was his last chance. The Warden’s appearance had shown him that the screen still worked. That artful flickering out had not fooled Jared — Claudia’s father had switched off rather than answer Finn’s question.
At first he had thought of searching for Keiro, but Attia was safer. He had sampled the recordings of her voice, the images of her he and Claudia had seen through the Key; using the finding mechanism he had once seen the Warden use he had experimented for hours with the complicated imputs. Suddenly, when he had been almost ready to give up, the Portal had sparked and crackled into life. He hoped it was searching, pinpointing the girl in the vastness of the Prison, but it had been humming all night now and in his weariness he could no longer keep out the feeling that it wasn’t really achieving anything at all.
He drank the last of the water, then reached into his pocket and brought out the Warden’s watch and put it on the desk.
The tiny cube clicked on the metal surface.
The Warden had told him that this cube was Incarceron.
He spun it gently, with his little finger.
So small.
So mysterious.
A prison you could hang on your watchchain.
He had subjected it to every analysis he knew, and there were no readings. It had no density, no magnetic field, no whisper of power. No instrument he possessed had been able to penetrate its silvery silence. It was a cube of unknown composition, and inside it was another world.
Or so the Warden had told him.