Finn lay in the long grass looking up at the stars.
Through the dark blades the distant brilliance of their light brought him a sort of comfort. He had come here with the hot jealousy of the banquet still burning in him, but the silence of the night and the beauty of the stars were easing it away.
He shuffled his arm behind his head, feeling the prickle of grass down his neck.
They were so far away. In Incarceron he had dreamt of them, his symbol of Escape; now he realized they were still that, that he was still imprisoned. Perhaps he always would be. Perhaps it would be best just to disappear, to ride away into the Forest and not come back. It would mean abandoning Keiro, and Attia.
Claudia wouldn’t care. He moved uncomfortably as he thought it, but the thought stayed. She wouldn’t. She’d end up marrying this Pretender and being Queen, as she’d always meant to be.
Why not?
Why not just go?
Where, though? And how would he feel riding through the endless Protocol of this stifled world and dreaming every night of Keiro in the metallic, livid hell of Incarceron, not knowing if he was alive or dead, maimed or insane, killing or already dead?
He rolled over, curling up. Princes were supposed to sleep in golden beds with damask canopies, but the Palace was a nest of enemies, he couldn’t breathe there. The familiar prickle behind his eyes had gone, but the dryness in his throat warned him that the fit had been near. He had to be careful. He had to have more control.
And yet the angry moment of the challenge was dear to him. He relished it, over and again, seeing the Pretender jerking aside, the slap of redness on his face. He’d lost his cool then, and Finn smiled in the dark, his cheek resting on the damp grass.
He rolled swiftly and sat up. The wide lawns were grey in the starlight. Beyond the lake the woods of the estate raised black heads against the sky. The gardens smelt of roses and honeysuckle, sweet in the warm summer air.
He lay back again, staring up.
The moon, a ruined hollow, hung like a ghost in the east.
Jared had told him that it had been attacked in the Years of Rage, that now the ocean tides were altered, that the fixed orbit had changed the world.
And after that they had stopped all change altogether.
When he was King, he would change things. People would be free to do or say what they wanted. The poor wouldn’t have to slave on great estates for the rich. And he would find Incarceron, he would release them all.. . But then, he was going to run away.
He stared up at the white stars.
Finn Starseer doesn’t run. He could almost hear Keiro’s sarcasm.
He turned his head, sighed, stretched out.
And touched something cold.
With a shiver of steel his sword was in his hand; he had leapt up, was alert, his heart thudding, a prickle of sweat on his neck.
Far off in the lighted palace a drift of music echoed.
The lawns were still empty. But there was something small and bright stuck in the grass just above where his head had been.
After a moment, listening intently, he bent down and picked it up. And as he stared at it, a shiver of fear made his hand shake.
It was a small steel knife, wickedly sharp, and its handle was a wolf, stretched thin, jaws open and savage.
Finn drew himself up and looked all around, his hand tight on the swordhilt.
But the night was silent.
The door gave at the third kick. Keiro dragged a cable of bramble away and ducked his head inside. His voice came back, muffled. ‘Corridor. Have you got the torch?’ She handed it to him.
He scraped in, and she waited, hearing only muffled movement. Then he said, ‘Come on.’ Attia crawled through, and stood up beside him. The interior was dark, and filthy. It had obviously been abandoned years ago, maybe centuries. A lumber of junk lay in heaps under cobwebs and grime.
Keiro shoved something aside and manoeuvred himself between a heaped desk and a broken cupboard. He wiped the dust off with his gloved hand and stared down at the litter of broken crockery ‘Just what we need: Attia listened. The corridor led into darkness, and nothing moved down there, but the voices. There were two of them now, and they faded oddly in and out of hearing.
Keiro had his sword ready. ‘Any trouble, we’re out of here.
One Chain-gang is enough for any lifetime.’ She nodded, and made to move past him, but he grabbed her and shoved her behind him. ‘Watch my back. That’s your job.’ Attia smiled sweetly. ‘And I love you too,’ she whispered.
They walked warily down the dim space. At the end a great door stood ajar, fixed immovably half open, and when she slipped through behind Keiro Attia saw why; furniture had been piled and heaped against it, as if in some last desperate attempt to keep it closed.
‘Something went on here. Look there.’ Keiro flashed the handlight at the floor. Dark stains marred the paving. Attia guessed it might once have been blood. She looked closer at the junk, then around, at the galleried hall. ‘It’s all toys,’ she whispered.
They stood in the wreckage of a sumptuous nursery. But the scale was all wrong. The doll’s house that she stared at was enormous, so that she could almost have crawled in, her head squashed against the ceiling of the kitchen, where plaster hams hung and a joint had fallen from its spit. The upstairs windows were too high to see into. Hoops and tops and balls and skittles were littered across the room’s centre; walking over to them she felt an amazing softness under her feet, and when she knelt and felt it it was carpet, black with grime.
Light grew. Keiro had found candles; he lit a few and stuck them around.
‘Look at this. A giant, or dwarves?’ The toys were bewildering. Most were too big, like the huge sword and ogre-sized helmet that hung from a hook.
Others were tiny; a scatter of building blocks no bigger than salt grains, books on a shelf that started as vast folios at one end and went down to minuscule locked volumes at the other. Keiro heaved open a wooden chest and swore to find it overflowing with dressing-up clothes of all sizes. Still, he rummaged in there and found a leather belt with gilt trappings. There was a pirate’ coat too, of scarlet leather.
Immediately he tugged off his own and put the new one on, strapping the belt tight around it. ‘Suit me?’
‘We’re wasting time.’ The voices had faded. Attia turned, trying to identify where the sound came from, edging between the vast rocking-horse and a row of dangling puppets that hung, broken-necked and tangle-limbed, on the wall, their small eyes watching her, red as Incarceron’s.
Beyond them were dolls. They lay tumbled, princesses with golden hair, whole armies of soldiers, dragons of felt and cambric with long, forked tails.Teddies and pandas and stuffed animals Attia had never seen lay in a heap as high as the ceiling.
She waded in and heaved them aside.
‘What are you doing?’ Keiro snapped.
‘Can’t you hear them?’ Two voices. Small and crackling. As if the bears spoke, the dolls conversed. Arms and legs and heads and blue glass eyes tumbled apart.
Under them was a small box, the lid inlaid with an ivory eagle.
The voices were coming from inside it.
For a long moment Claudia said nothing. Then she came close, picked up the watch and let the cube hang on its chain and turn so that it glittered in the light.
Finally she whispered, ‘How do you know?’
‘Your father told me.’ She nodded, and he saw the fascination in her eyes. ‘You hold a world in your hands. That’s what he said to me.’