In the screen on the desk the Warden’s face was fading.
‘Not only will I come to the coronation, Claudia,’ he said.
‘But I will expect an invitation to the wedding.’ And then the screen was dark, and it whispered in Jared’s voice, So will I.
There was no way down so they climbed up the remains of the stairs to the roof.
Finn took out the watch; he looked at the cube a long moment, then he gave it to Claudia. ‘You keep this.’ She let the silver cube lie on her palm. ‘Are they really there? Or have we never known where Incarceron is?’ But Finn had no answer, and holding the watch tight, she could only climb after him.
The damage to the house horrified her; she fingered hangings that fell to pieces and touched the holes in walls and windows uncomprehendingly. ‘It can’t be possible. How can we ever put all this together again.’
‘We can’t,’ Keiro said brutally. He led them up the stone steps, his voice echoing back. ‘If Incarceron is cruel, Finn, so are you. You show me a glimpse of paradise and then it’s gone.’ Finn glanced at Attia. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘To both of you.’ She shrugged. ‘As long as the stars haven’t gone.’ He stood aside for her on the final step. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They haven’t.’ She stepped out on to the stone battlements and stopped, and he saw it come into her face, the shock and the wonder he remembered for himself, and she gasped as she stared upwards.
The storm had swept the sky clear. Brilliant and fiery, the stars hung in their splendour, in their secret patterns, their distant nebulae, and Attia’s breath frosted as she gazed at them. Behind her Keiro’s eyes were wide; he stood still, transfixed by magic.
‘They exist. They really exist!’ The Realm was dark. The distant army of refugees huddled round campfires, flickers of flame. Beyond them the land rose in dim hills and the black fringes of forest, a realm without power, exposed to the night, all its finery as shrivelled and battered as the silk flag with its black swan that fluttered, shredded, over their heads.
‘We’ll never survive.’ Claudia shook her head. ‘We don’t know how to any more.’
‘Yes we do,’ Attia said.
Keiro pointed. ‘So do they’ And she saw, faint and far, the candlepoints of flame in the cottages of the poor, the hovels where the Prison’s wrath and fury had brought no change.
‘Those are the stars too,’ Finn said quietly.