Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (68 page)

Paetro stood by Duncan while the medics examined Cassandra. Doctor Horvak assisted the team, irritably brushing off concerns about his own health as he located a black bag full of surgical instruments and medicines. The girl started to come round and Duncan gently wiped the grime of the explosion off her face. ‘I told you that we’d be fine.’

‘Are we with our ancestors now?’ she whispered.

‘Still soundly in the mortal world,’ said Duncan.

‘I thought I might see my father again.’

‘We are all here to look after you,’ said the doctor. ‘Myself, Duncan and Paetro.’

‘I’ve decided to cancel your lessons for the rest of the day, lass’ said Paetro. ‘That’s something to be pleased about.’

‘This is the doctor’s chamber… are my books here?’

She sounded far more concussed than Duncan; he looked worriedly over at Doctor Horvak.

‘You need to rest. Your head glanced hard against a bench when you fell,’ pronounced Horvak. The doctor gave Cassandra an injection to help her sleep while they anxiously waited for a stretcher to carry her to the castle’s infirmary. Duncan found Apolleon looking at him in a peculiar way. Did he suspect Duncan had caught sight of something strange during the fight? That might not be a particularly safe situation for the Weylander. ‘Is Princess Helrena alive? We heard a blast.’

‘Such loyal
concern
from our plucky sky miner! Your mistress is unharmed. You heard the castle’s gunnery control system overloading,’ smiled Apolleon. ‘The hold’s security is far too tight for a bomb to be smuggled inside the gathering.’ He tossed something that resembled an open shell down to the floor. Duncan looked again. It was a little black brooch! ‘There was a roll of magnetic tape concealed inside it, designed to overload the defence generator. An inside job. My agents caught the woman responsible fleeing the central computer chamber. She serves as your young lady’s pilot, I believe.’

Paetro groaned. ‘Hesia! No? How can you be sure it was her?’

‘Oh, we will be
quite
sure,’ smiled Apolleon, coldly. ‘All we require is time.’

‘You must be mistaken,’ said Paetro, his face uncharacteristically pale and uncertain. ‘If Hesia wanted to betray the young Highness, all she needed to do was fake engine trouble and land her helo at an ambush site.’

Apolleon indicated the damage around them. ‘Can you conceive of a better way for Circae to undermine Princess Helrena than snatching her granddaughter under the noses of the house’s gathered allies? What a message to send. Stand against me and I can attack you without mercy anywhere and at any time. You are never safe. Ah, dear Circae. There is a woman who understands imperial politics.’

If Duncan hadn’t already been on his knees, he would have dropped to them.
Adella
. Adella was the one who had slipped Hesia the brooch, to silence the castle’s automated defences. She had been willing to sacrifice Cassandra and Duncan’s lives for her new master. Merely collateral damage as the assassins silenced every witness to their real mission… abducting Doctor Horvak. Duncan hadn’t believed his hatred for her could grow any deeper, but he was shocked to find that among the ruins of love, there were still depths left to plumb. He could have almost forgiven Adella’s treachery in throwing him to the wolves a second time. But for trying to kill Cassandra? Never.

‘It’s Baron Machus,’ rasped Duncan. ‘He’s the one who sabotaged the castle’s defences.’

‘And how do you know
that
?’ said Apolleon, the menace in his tone obvious.

‘I saw one of his entourage pass that brooch to Hesia. Hesia told me it had fallen from her uniform on the airfield where Baron Machus noticed it had come off.’

‘Ever the gallant.’ Apolleon jabbed a finger at his hoodsmen. ‘Locate the baron and his party and ensure they are detained!’

The agents sprinted away as ordered, returning five minutes later with a sense of foreboding that Duncan could detect even below the anonymity of their masks. Bowing to the head of the secret police they gave their report. When Apolleon turned back to Duncan, Paetro and Horvak, he appeared unexpectedly sunny. ‘So, as reliable as any confession. Baron Machus and his people were called away to “urgent business” at his fortress five minutes before the assault began.’

Paetro shook his head in fury. ‘The princess’s own cousin…’

‘Every family is unhappy in its own way,’ said the doctor, gravely.

‘A very distant cousin,’ said Apolleon, ‘with, it seems, quite extravagant ambitions. The cretin has finally over-reached himself.’

Duncan could barely look at the head of the secret police in case his eyes betrayed what he had seen. This cruel nobleman carried far too many secrets. All the science of the world offered as tribute to the imperium. And what weird science had Apolleon plundered to transform himself into the deadly creature Duncan had glimpsed? Or had his mind been overcome by chemicals spilled across the laboratory? God knows, his head was throbbing hard enough. One thing at least was certain. Circae knew exactly what she was doing. She hadn’t been targeting her granddaughter; she had been seeking to disrupt whatever mysterious scheme the doctor was engaged in for Apolleon. But Duncan could hardly question Circae about the nature of that mysterious project. And as for Apolleon, the quicker the ruthless nobleman departed the castle, the safer Duncan and his friends would be.

FOURTEEN

A TRUE HEART’S WANT

Willow walked back to her barracks in a daze, passing through the maze of passages. She didn’t know which she should be more shocked at. The fact that one of the station’s slaves was the true heir to the throne of Weyland, or that when it had come to it, Carter Carnehan had been willing to sacrifice his life to save hers. The plotters had scattered back to their duties. Kerge returned to his repair bay. Only Carter walked with Willow. He had changed. The sky mines altered everyone, of course. Or perhaps the deaths and hardships just stripped away the lies and falsehoods people surrounded themselves with, revealing their true identity beneath their layers. That was a mining of sorts, too.

‘So you still don’t know who betrayed your escape,’ said Willow, if only to break the pensive silence between them.

‘I’m not sure I care anymore,’ said Carter. ‘I was so certain Owen and Anna sold us out. I would have brained the lot of them, and for what? What would I have achieved? Cracked the head of a man who should have worn the crown back home?’

‘Anyone could have betrayed you,’ said Willow. ‘Maybe one of the others trusted too easily. Talked to the wrong person or was noticed stealing supplies for the breakout.’

‘I led them to their deaths,’ said Carter. ‘Eshean, Noah and the others. I nearly got you and Kerge killed back there, too. We could have charged in and Anna could have gunned us down with that antique pistol, thinking that
we
were the turncoats.’

‘But we’re still alive,’ said Willow.

‘And so is Owen,’ said Carter. ‘I lost my two brothers to the plague. He lost his to his uncle’s treachery. And we’re both here as slaves, no way of ever getting home. Where’s the difference between us?’

‘There’s one difference. The Vandians don’t care who you or I were back home – daughter of a Landor or a pastor’s son. But if the empire ever finds out who Owen is, they’ll execute him immediately to protect their tame pretender.’

‘Give me time,’ said Carter. ‘Maybe I’ll get Owen and Anna killed in my next doomed escape scheme.’

‘Self-pity isn’t an attractive trait,’ said Willow. ‘You like fighting and you don’t give up.’

‘That’s just a polite way of saying I’m pig-headed and stubborn.’

‘It’s kept you alive,’ said Willow.

‘No,’ said Carter. ‘People do that.
You
do that.’

‘Now you sound like Owen.’

‘Whatever else I am, I’m not a king.’ He slowed Willow in the corridor and uncertainly pulled her towards him before kissing her. She nearly slapped him in surprise, before her displeasure melted away and she yielded. It was almost as she had imagined so many times over the years. ‘What was that for?’

‘I wanted to see if you really were mooning after a fool,’ said Carter.

‘And what’s your verdict?’

‘Well, I’ve certainly been a fool.’

‘That, I find hard to disagree with,’ said Willow.

‘It’s not because you thought we were going to die back there?’ asked Carter.

Carter sounded as though the answer might actually matter to him. Maybe he had changed more even than Willow had realised. ‘No, Carter Carnehan. I believe I know myself well enough to say I’ve been in love with you a little longer than that.’

Carter looked as though he was about to cry. It seemed to be a good evening for surprises. ‘Are you sure you’re the real Carter? You’re not some peculiar fire goblin who swapped bodies with him down by that volcano?’

‘I can’t protect you,’ said Carter. ‘I can’t save you from any of this. I don’t think I can bear knowing that. We’re trapped here until one of us ends up in the fever room, or dragged out broken from under a rock fall, or plummeting into the heavens from a shattered sky mine, or—’

‘Or something real in your life for once?’ smiled Willow. ‘Of all the things to be scared of – not the empire or their guns or their whips. Here, or at home, nobody ever knows how long they will have together.’

‘For me, it might not be that long,’ said Carter. His eyes were red and wide, as though he was about to confess to a terrible crime. ‘I don’t know about fire goblins on the surface, but I saw some things during the escape attempt. Mad, impossible things – a labyrinth where time moves slower; with a portal of fire, discarded angels’ wings, and water and short-swords that seemed to appear when you will them into being. And ever since I was found on the slopes I’ve slowly been going mad, my head filled with visions and nonsense. Vandia’s past, the nations that have fought and died to seize control of the stratovolcano. It’s like all of the world’s been packed inside my head and is wrestling to get out. All the souls of the millions of slaves who’ve died out here in the sky mines. There are so many bones across the plains, and I’ve been adding to them every day, rolling the corpses of our dead into the sky.’

‘Your mask was damaged and your filters exhausted during the escape; that’s all,’ said Willow. ‘There are tunnellers who end up in the fever rooms like that; they’ve breathed in a little too much volcano gas.’

‘What happened on the surface was real,’ said Carter. ‘And the sights I see in my visions seem real too when I’m experiencing them, as real as you standing here.’

Willow kissed him again. ‘Well, I’m probably the mad one to feel like this about you. So there it is… we deserve each other.’ In truth, she never thought she could feel so happy. If she could travel back to the cells of the skels’ slave carrier and tell herself she might one day feel like this, she wouldn’t have believed the words coming from her own lips. The sky mines and the imperium and their internecine struggles, they could go to the devil for all that Willow Landor cared. She had everything she needed right here.

‘I don’t deserve you,’ said Carter. ‘But maybe I will, one day.’

‘And what day would that be?’

‘The day after we escape,’ said Carter.

‘How?’ asked Willow, fighting to keep the scepticism from her voice. They passed through the station’s main tunnels. Workers moved about, stowing equipment and heading for the canteen chambers and their barracks. She lowered her voice so that only Carter could hear. ‘You heard what Owen said. Nobody has ever flown out of the dead zone on a transporter, no matter how much extra fuel you load onto it.’

‘My plan didn’t just involve a transporter flight,’ said Carter, his old reckless confidence seeming to return. ‘And I was thinking too small, before. I should have taken everybody. Seized the radio-room, smashed the equipment and to hell with any snitches. The empire can’t chase everybody at once!’

‘Please tell me that you’re seeing things now,’ said Willow. What rash plans rushed through his mind?
Maybe he is slowly going mad?

‘I’m seeing the way things can be. All I have to do is get Owen and his knitting circle on our side.’

She glanced around the corridor, watching the slaves walk past them; every one of the workers potentially the informer who had wrecked the first escape attempt.
Maybe
. ‘You need to be careful.’

‘I’m taking you with me,’ said Carter. ‘That’s why I failed the first time. My plan wasn’t honourable.’

‘Honour is a poor shield against an empire’s bullets,’ warned Willow. Someone called out along the passage and she turned as she realised it was her name being shouted. By Thomas Gale, the head of the station. He came down the corridor towards her and Carter, but it was the company of Vandian soldiers behind the old man that caught her attention. Her heart missed a beat. What if they were here to punish Carter again? Maybe some officious imperial bureaucrat had judged the number of strikes taken during the slave’s flogging too lenient and increased them. It was obvious Carter was still wracked with pain and turning feverish at times; he believed the gibberish he had just told her. How could Carter possibly survive a second whipping?

‘He’s too weak!’ she cried, practically throwing herself at the station coordinator.

‘Who’s too weak?’ asked Gale.

‘Carter,’ said Willow.

Gale seemed to notice the man behind her for the first time and his face creased into a snort. ‘Good, maybe he’ll make a little less trouble for the rest of us in future. But I haven’t come on fever room duties; it’s you I’m looking for.’ The closest soldier stepped forward with a small steel machine and scanned the tattoo on her arm. ‘This is the one!’

Willow gasped as two of them seized her and started to drag her along the corridor. Carter shouted something and tried to stop them, but one of the men slammed a rifle butt into his gut, felling him. It was all happening too fast.

Carter tried to get up. ‘What are you doing?’

The soldier with a rifle forced him back down. ‘Obeying orders, slave. Not questioning them.’

‘Where are you taking her?’

‘How would I know?’ snarled the soldier. ‘This station is behind on its quotas. She your sweetmeat, is she? Maybe she’s going to be fed into a smelter to encourage the rest of you to get off your lazy arses and swing the lead.’

Carter leapt for the soldier, but one of the guard’s friends drew his pistol and cracked its handle across his face. Willow winced at the cruel sound of the impact. He went down to the ground again and looked like he would stay there.

‘Leave him alone! He’s done nothing!’ Willow shouted at Gale.

‘Everyone’s done something, my dear,’ he smiled apologetically, indicating this was all outside his control. Which, in truth, it probably was.

Willow struggled, trying to look back towards Carter.
No, no, this isn’t happening
.
Not now
. She just managed a glimpse of Carter, collapsed on the bare stone floor of the passage, one of the guards giving him a sound kicking in his ribs for daring to intervene in their business. Then she was dragged up the stairs towards the surface. This wasn’t how it was meant to end! She had waited most of her life for this moment, to be with Carter, and now it was stolen from her. The moment belonged to the imperium; her body and life, the empire’s possessions.

It was warm inside the castle infirmary, a constant temperature, but Cassandra’s hand felt cold to Duncan. Her eyes fluttered open. ‘You’re still here?’

‘I am,’ said Duncan.

‘I asked one of the nurses to collect something from my rooms. A gift for you. Reach under the pillow.’

Duncan did, finding the cold steel of a heavy circular medallion. ‘Is this a campaign medal? Paetro had something similar. In fact, he has quite a few.’

‘This was gift to me from my father, before he left the last time. You wear it over your chest. It’s for luck.’

‘If I take it, where will your luck come from?’

‘My luck sent you to me,’ Cassandra smiled. ‘So I suppose I don’t need it anymore.’ She drifted back into a shallow sleep. Duncan sensed Cassandra’s mother standing in the infirmary’s doorway before he saw her, a brooding silent presence behind the respirator’s hiss next to the bed.

‘How is she?’ asked Princess Helrena.

‘Doctor Horvak believes she will be fine.’

‘Perhaps you were right, Duncan of Weyland. I should have sold my holdings and fled as far as the money would take us.’

‘No. I was wrong. If your enemies can reach inside your castle with all its defences and soldiers, then they would come for you and Cassandra anywhere you ran.’

‘Circae might forget, given enough time and fresh distractions. When you live in the heart of the imperium there is always another enemy stalking you, a more immediate threat to deal with.’

Duncan noticed that the princess’s clothes had brown powder burns. ‘You were in the fight?’

‘Five companies of assassins landed in addition to the cadre that attacked you. Three were diversions, two tried to assault my allies at the gathering. We are still sweeping the castle and grounds. Give a murdisto an inch of shadow and they can hide in it for days, as still as a stone. I wouldn’t wish to greet one of them in a week’s time when I am resting in my bath.’

‘Find them all and kill them,’ said Duncan, the venom in his voice surprising him even as he spoke the words.

‘Apolleon says you fought like a tiger to save my daughter. The doctor tells me he saw you dispatch two assassins with an electrical cable. You were not trained to face murdisto, you were not even armed.’

‘It was my duty.’

‘I might accept that from Paetro, but not from you.’ She leant in to kiss him. It wasn’t like before. There was none of the passion, but little of the cruelty either. If a kiss could be said to be sad, then this was such a caress. ‘Cassandra is all I have in the world. All I have left of what once mattered most to me. When you saved her from abduction in the sky mines, you were protecting your life and all of your countrymen on the station. But this time you shielded her when you could have run, when you had every excuse to take flight.’

‘I’m fairly sure that makes me a fool,’ said Duncan.

‘Then perhaps I am, also.’ Helrena passed him a small silver tube.

‘What is this?’

‘Your second gift of the day. It contains your papers of freedom. You are now listed on the imperium’s rolls as a citizen. There is a second set inside for your sister, in the sky mines. A ship has already picked her up from the station and is flying her here.’

‘Willow!’ Duncan was stunned to silence. He was free, and so was Willow? He could hardly believe this wasn’t a dream. Perhaps he was actually inside the infirmary, wounded and made feverish by the assassins, and this was the result? But it wasn’t imagined. He knew reality, and this felt like the most real thing that had happened to him since the skels turned up to raid the town for slaves. He had his freedom and so did Willow!

‘I hope you will stay here with us,’ said Helrena. ‘To help protect Cassandra. We can find a position on the staff for you sister, too. If you really wish, you can wait for a ship to head out in the direction of your homeland. That may take six months and I would not recommend staying in the capital outside of my house’s protection. Circae is quite vindictive. She will certainly hear of your part in the castle’s defence and seek to pay you back for it. She’d order your sister garrotted in front of you just to revel in your pain.’