Dark Mist Rising (30 page)

‘On how much undiscovered talent his lordship was born with.' Mother Chilton's voice flickered at the edge of my mind: ‘
Caroline studied the soul arts but she has no
talent.'

Perb translated. Tarek said something I did not catch, but before Perb could translate I said, ‘My turn now. That was six questions I have answered.'

Perb looked surprised. ‘No, it was five.'

‘You asked if I am ill. That was a question.'

Perb scowled. Tarek demanded to know what I had said. Perb translated, and the Young Chieftain gave a sudden bark of laughter. His eyes shone with appre-ciation. Mine blinked with relief, but mixed with the relief was resentment.

Another ruler who valued my wit but who would kill me if I did not deliver more than wit. Like Queen Caroline. Was it always thus with those in power?

Perb said sourly, ‘Ask your six questions then.'

What answers would serve me best? I needed to understand Tarek's mind if I were to survive it. I said, ‘If the Young Chieftain wishes me to teach him, why did he have his lieutenant – the soldier who was once one of his singers – torture me in the village of Almsbury?' Even as Perb translated, it seems I could again feel the knotted cord around my temples, tightening until I screamed ...

Perb said, ‘That one has been dealt with.'

‘How—'

‘He exceeded orders. You will not see him again.'

I nodded. Perb's expression conveyed much more than those nine words. It was a warning of what would happen to me if I too disobeyed orders. I said, ‘Can I keep my two servants with me once we reach Tarek's queendom?'

Perb scowled. ‘It is a kingdom, not a queendom. By marrying your princess, Tarek has rescued your land from unnatural barbarity.'

‘Unnatural barbarity! Is it natural to marry a six-year-old?'

Perb said, without first translating for Tarek, ‘The princess will not be harmed. We are not savages,
antek
.'

‘
You
are not anything – neither a man of The Queendom nor of the savages. You're like a mule, neither horse nor donkey.'

‘I am paid well,' Perb said coolly, ‘which is more than you will be. You have already taken a dangerous liberty in bringing that boy from Witchland. I advise you to not take any more liberties.'

Jee. The savages thought Jee, who had slipped unnoticed through their guard to sneak into my caravan, was a product of my witchcraft. No wonder my soldier-keeper was so frightened of him, while the other soldiers tried so hard to pretend he did not exist. I stored away this nugget of fear (‘A witch child!') and arrogance. (‘There is no other way the child could have penetrated our lines.') It might eventually prove useful.

Tarek, his blue eyes darkening, demanded to know what we had said. Perb said that I had asked after the welfare of his new queen – neither a lie nor the truth – and also about the fate of my servants.

‘The fate of his servants depends upon his own teaching,' Tarek said.

Tom and Jee's lives depended on a task I could not perform. Both were hostages to my hopeless masque.

Perb said, ‘Ask your last three questions.'

But I was suddenly weary of the whole pointless ritual. I could not do this. My father would not rescue me in time. Tom and Jee and I would die, and the best I could hope for was that at least my father had been right about the savages' considering torture beneath their strange code of honour. But both Tarek and Perb stared at me, waiting, and I must ask something.

‘When will the instruction begin?'

‘Tomorrow.'

‘When will we reach the ... the kingdom?'

‘Two more twelve-days of travel.'

‘What is the most important value to his lordship?'

‘We do not use those titles. You will address him as Tarek son of Solek son of Taryn, if you must address him at all. And the most important value is discipline.'

Perb translated all this. Tarek listened, then looked directly at me. In my own language he said, ‘You go now.'

So he understood some of my words, just as I understood some of his. Had he grasped my insults to his people? If so, the understanding had not shown on his face.

Discipline.

Perb led me to the door, where my guard waited to conduct me to my last night of imprisonment in the bright yellow caravan.

We threaded our way through the cadres – so many soldiers! – until we reached the caravans. Here was more bustle. Men, both savage and from The Queendom, unloaded half-empty chests from wagons and sorted the contents into bundles which, I guessed, could be carried on foot. I had wondered how the little princess could walk so far on such rough terrain, and now I saw two objects being unloaded. Each consisted of two long poles with a platform mounted between. On each platform was a large chair surrounded by a curtained frame; at the moment the curtains were drawn aside. Four huge men, savages but not dressed as soldiers, picked up the ends of the pole, hefted them experimentally onto their shoulders and nodded. I had never seen such a conveyance before, but I was reassured that the princess would be carried over the mountains.

Then I saw her.

Beside the purple caravan Princess Stephanie – no, Queen Stephanie now, although I could not think of someone so small as a queen – sat hunched on a low stool beside a bright fire. She was crying. Two women crouched beside her. I could see the firelit face of the nurse who had rushed at the Young Chieftain's throne during the marriage ceremony. The nurse patted Stephanie reassuringly, then took her into her arms. The other woman, whose back was to me, shook her head.

The two seemed to be arguing. The other must have won, because the nurse, frowning, replaced the princess on her stool and the little girl straightened her back and tilted her face up at the second woman, who turned enough for me to recognize her.

Heedless of my guard, I rushed forward pell-mell, hurtling into the circle of firelight. Six men pulled knives. My guard shouted something and the men retreated, but not very far. I cried, ‘Lady Margaret!'

She blinked, then smiled. ‘Roger. I thought you dead.'

‘So did I.' I was absurdly glad to see her, this older woman who thought of me, all at the same time, as a saviour, a murderer, a deceiver, a witch and still and always Queen Caroline's fool. I was glad that such a practical, principled woman was the little princess's guardian.

The child looked up at me curiously; her nurse frowned.

Stephanie said, ‘Who are you?' Her voice was thin, high and fearful. She wore not the purple she was entitled to, but a grey gown of sturdy weave, well made but without ornamentation. Lady Margaret and the nurse wore the same.

I knelt. ‘I am Roger Kilbourne, Your Grace. I ... I served your mother.'

‘Oh.' She looked away, without expression. I could not tell if she remembered her mother, now two and a half years dead. Certainly she did not resemble that fiery and sensual queen, neither in temperament nor beauty.

The nurse said, ‘Your Grace, it's time you were in bed.'

To me Stephanie said, ‘This is my last night in the caravan. Tomorrow I shall have to walk, and it will be very tiring.'

‘No, Your Grace,' I said, ‘you will not have to walk. I have seen your ... your conveyance. It is a chair with little curtains all around it, and you will be carried in it very high and secret, and you can pretend you are an invisible bird.'

‘Really?' For the first time she smiled. Her eyes, red-rimmed from crying, lit up, and I saw that she had her own charm. Not her mother's passion nor her grandmother's dignity, but a gentle and childish sweetness.

‘Nana, Lady Margaret, did you hear that? Roger says I shall not have to walk! And I can be an invisible bird!'

‘A good notion,' Lady Margaret said. ‘And now to bed, Your Grace.'

Stephanie obeyed, rising from her stool. Graciously she raised her little hand to me. ‘You may rise, Roger. I like you.'

‘I am Your Grace's servant.'

‘But I don't like
them
,' Stephanie said, pointing to the poisonously green caravan. ‘They're bad.'

Three girls climbed down from the green caravan. Although they wore more clothes, I recognized the three half-naked savage girls who had ‘attended' the princess at her marriage. Now they laughed and chattered to each other, but I was too far away to catch the words. The savages' customs were strange, and I did not know what these girls were, although I knew what Tom Jenkins would have considered them to be. But surely not even savages would have whores attend a queen-to-be at her wedding? They must be something else, but I had no idea what.

The nurse said, ‘Come along now, lambie.'

‘Goodnight, Lady Margaret. Goodnight, Roger,' the child said. She was led away by the nurse. My guard, who still never touched me, motioned for the sixth or seventh time for me to follow him. I ignored the gesture and said quietly to Lady Margaret, ‘The princess is well?'

‘She has nightmares. Sometimes they seem like more than just dreams.'

My blood froze.

‘What is it, Roger? Do you know something about these nightmares? Are you
causing
them?'

‘No.' But I guessed who was. Was that possible? ‘
Caroline studied the soul arts but had no talent
,' Mother Chilton had once told me, ‘
but her grandmother did
.' Did that mean that Stephanie had possibly inherited ...

No. I was being fanciful. No one's dreams but mine, a
hisaf
, were invaded by anyone from that other realm. ‘
Eleven years dead–
'

I watched Stephanie mount the step to her caravan, followed by the nurse. In the doorway she turned and waved at me and at Lady Margaret, perhaps a last attempt to delay bedtime. Children used as weapons in war: the princess, my mad sister, the giggling half-budded girls by the other caravan. At least my own unborn child, who was never far from my thoughts, was not being so used. He or she was safe with Maggie in The Queendom.

‘
Klef! Klef!
' my guard insisted; finally he was worked up enough to lay a hand on my arm and pull me forward. The hand felt like iron closing on my soul. I was taken away.

‘Roger, help Her Grace,' Lady Margaret said urgently. But then she had no idea how little I could help myself.

As the guard closed the door of the caravan behind me, Tom let out a whoop. ‘You're back then. Nobody hurt you?'

‘No, no. I'm fine.' I was not fine.

‘Where did they take you? Look, there's ale, not just that piss-pot wine. Are we going to start walking tomorrow, like you said? By damn, I wish George was here to help us with the you-know-what. George is the man we need. Where did they take you, Peter?'

‘To see the Young Chieftain.'

Silence. Tom paused with a tankard of ale halfway to his lips. Jee, always quiet, somehow went quieter, like a mouse within scent of a cat. Finally Tom whispered, ‘Did you—'

‘I had nothing with me.' Tom would never learn dis-cretion. How did we know who would hear if he mentioned the mythical poison?

‘No, of course not. But ain't you ... you
are
going back?'

‘Yes. Listen, Tom, Jee. I am to give instruction every day to the Young Chieftain, about how to bring soldiers back from the dead, which—'

Tom snorted. ‘That nonsense again!'

Jee gazed at me without blinking.

‘—which of course I cannot teach him to do.' That would mean one thing to Tom, another to Jee. ‘But if I pretend to do so, it will—'

‘Say no more!' Tom said. He winked, and said more. ‘That will give you the chance to ... but say no more!'

‘
You
say no more. I mean it, Tom.'

‘Yes.' He beamed at me, made happy by our supposed plot to poison Tarek. ‘What do you want me to do?'

I dropped my voice to a whisper. ‘I want you to do nothing, Tom. Keep those knives sheathed, fight with neither savages nor traitors to The Queendom, say nothing to anyone. Nothing at all. Can you do that?'

His face fell. ‘Nothing?'

‘Nothing. Only walk.'

Tom brightened again. ‘Well, at least we'll be walking again, instead of being cooped like chickens in this rolling pen. And who knows? George and his rebellion might—'

‘
Tom!'

He nodded, smiled, and pantomimed using a key to lock his mouth.

Jee said, ‘Did ye see the princess?'

It was rare for him to ask anything, and still rarer in that wistful tone. But Jee was only a few years older than Stephanie. What images of royalty, about as far removed as possible from the lives Jee had led in the Unclaimed Lands and in Applebridge, filled his boyish mind? A princess, captured and prisoner only fifty feet away. Where I saw a pathetic child, Jee might see unimaginable glamour.