Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (70 page)

Duncan cursed her under his breath. Who did Willow think she was, arriving here and making him feel like a traitor after all he had done for her? Maybe he should have let her sweat in the castle for a month or two as a slave? Then she might show a bit of gratitude for being raised to a citizen.

‘No, I like her,’ said Paetro. ‘Your sister has fire. Maybe the princess could petition the emperor to strip Machus of his title and make your sister a baroness instead!’

‘I suspect Willow’s going to be insufferable enough as a citizen,’ said Duncan.

‘Come away, lad. Lady Cassandra intends to visit Hesia before she’s transferred to the secret police’s tender mercies. I want to see what Hesia has to say for herself, first. I don’t want the young Highness any more upset over the attack than she already is.’

It was true; Cassandra had taken the betrayal by her personal helo pilot badly. And she wasn’t the only one who wanted answers. ‘I thought Princess Helrena would insist she interrogated Hesia first.’

‘The only thing Hesia has to tell us is
why
. And that won’t help us sleep better at night, not when we already know the
who
. The princess is happy to let the imperial torturers get their hands dirty.’

Except that Hesia would tell her interrogators about Adella’s involvement in the attack on the castle. It shouldn’t have mattered to him. Adella deserved everything Helrena was going to throw in the direction of her treacherous cousin. After Baron Machus lay dead, Adella would be without a master or a protector. She could be sent back to the sky mines for all that Duncan cared, along with a message that she’d betrayed the Weylanders’ escape attempt. ‘Cassandra wants to know why Hesia sold us out, even if her mother doesn’t.’

‘So do I,’ sighed Paetro. ‘But I have other reasons.’

He didn’t elaborate on them as they travelled inside the castle, down the deep, damp concrete passages that led to the hold’s bunkers. And its cells. They reminded Duncan of the slave pens back on the skel carrier. Hesia squatted in a cage on her own. Her face was badly bruised, purple marks and swellings everywhere. It appeared Apolleon’s hoodsmen hadn’t been over-gentle when they captured her sabotaging the castle’s gun control system

‘I wondered when you’d come,’ said Hesia.

‘And here I am,’ said the bodyguard. Paetro sat down on the edge of a bare table. The gaoler nodded to the pair of them, announcing he was going to leave for a couple of minutes to collect his lunch.

‘Cassandra wants to come and visit you, too,’ said Duncan. ‘She needs to know why you did it.’

‘She can wait until the imperial torturers have finished with me,’ said Hesia. ‘Then she can read their report and be sure.’

‘
I
want to know,’ said Paetro. ‘Imperial torturers be hanged! Aren’t I worth an honest answer; or has Circae bribed you too well to talk, even now that you’re captured and blown?’

‘My sister has bone cancer,’ said Hesia.

‘Your
sister
?’ said Paetro, incredulously.

‘Yes,’ said Hesia. ‘Aradela doesn’t have more than a couple of years left. And the only cure for it is in the hands of the imperial surgeons. A treatment reserved, like everything else, for the upper-celestial caste. Circae’s agents found out about her illness and approached me. Circae said if I brought down the defence grid during the gathering, she’d arrange for one of the surgeons to save Aradela’s life.’

‘You should have told me! Princess Helrena could have helped you, helped
her
.’

‘What, help the relation of a lowly helo pilot, someone who doesn’t even serve in the house? The low-caste daughter of a soldier and a freed slave? You know the imperial medical college is only allowed to operate on the celestial-upper caste. But Circae has something on one of the surgeons. She’ll force the cure out of them. What would the princess do? Petition her father to make Aradela a countess so she can get the care she needs? This was the only way.’

‘You betrayed your
house.
’

‘Family, house, empire, gods,’ said Hesia. ‘In that order. Who taught me that?’

‘You’re a damnable fool!’

Duncan raised his hand towards her, but she spurned his act of sympathy, pulling back away from the cage’s steel bars. He glanced over to the armoured lock-box on the wall that held the cell’s keys.
What would I have risked to save Willow if she was sick
?
As much as this?

Hesia turned her back on both of them, ‘I was raised that way. I’ll die, but she’ll live.’

‘You expect Circae to keep her word?’ said Duncan.

‘The old witch wouldn’t last long at court if she didn’t,’ said Hesia.

‘It won’t matter,’ said Paetro, annoyed almost beyond words, gripping the bars of the cell so tight his hands turned white. ‘When Apolleon’s torturers have finished with you, they’ll know why you betrayed the mistress. Do you think Apolleon will let Circae keep her word? He’ll arrange an unpleasant accident for Aradela to send a warning about the cost of betrayal. Aradela’ll end up raped and strangled, or with a blade in her back during a city riot. That’s all you’ve achieved for her. A quick nasty death rather than a long, slow one.’

‘I wasn’t
intending
to get caught,’ retorted Hesia. ‘Leave me your knife and I’ll end matters honourably. I’ll make sure I never reach the secret police alive.’

‘Aradela,’ groaned Paetro. ‘Why, why did it have to be her? She should have told me.’

And then it hit Duncan.
The low-caste daughter of a soldier and a freed slave.
Hesia’s sister. But Paetro’s
daughter
. And now he was going to lose both of his children at the same time.

Paetro’s hand went to the dagger hanging from his belt. Then he shook his head. ‘My duty, lass, to the house. To hand you over to Apolleon’s people.’

‘Leave me your knife!’ she begged.

‘It’s too late for that,’ said Paetro. ‘You’ve made your choice and now you must live with the consequences.’

They went into the passage outside to wait for the gaoler to return with his food.

‘Paetro—’ said Duncan.

He raised his hand as he strode away, brooking no argument. ‘There’s nothing more to be said. The young Highness isn’t to be allowed down here. We’ll tell Lady Cassandra she sold us out for money. It’s better she grows up hating Hesia than feeling pity for her.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Aye, of course I am,’ said Paetro. ‘I wish to the gods
I
still believed she’d betrayed us for the money.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Duncan.

‘And a helo stick is meant to be a solid, safe job,’ said Paetro. ‘The legion does the dying while the pilots do the flying. That’s the saying.’

Duncan could still hear Hesia begging and shouting for a knife, but at least they didn’t have to look at her anymore. When the gaoler returned, he was late, breathless, flustered and empty-handed.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Duncan.

‘Damnedest thing,’ said the gaoler. ‘A patrol’s caught a gang of vagrants in the gardens. Must have wandered in during the attack while the defences went down.’

‘Vagrants?’ said Paetro. ‘The guards were meant to be searching for murdisto.’

‘Well, this lot are no assassins,’ he laughed. ‘Tinkers and travellers more like. They were found blotto, drunk out of their gourds and totally passed out. They’d made a camp in the centre of the Stone Garden, set a fire in the centre and nearly burnt the place down!’

‘There’ll be hell to pay for the guards on the ramparts,’ said Paetro. ‘And the sector police in the district, too. If they can’t even keep a gang of drunken beggars out.’

‘Peace, Paetro, our boys
were
shooting towards the sea and the sky at the time, rifles and no radar,’ said the gaoler. He moved against the wall as the patrol came marching down the stairs, flanking the captured vagrants.

Paetro muttered something about that being the point of an effective diversion, but Duncan had stopped listening to his friend. Among the vagrants was someone he recognised. Someone who shouldn’t be within a million miles of the Castle of Snakes: Jacob Carnehan, the pastor of Northhaven! He looked a state, his clothes dirty and travel-worn, his face gaunt and ill-shaven. But he had undergone a more fundamental change than that; the soft contented glow the man had carried around like a halo was gone. In its place was something sharp and dangerous, the still calm replaced by a barely suppressed fury. Jacob Carnehan didn’t look like a vagrant. He looked like a madman escaped from an asylum, his veins filled with brimstone and a wrath that had addled his mind.

‘Landor!’ cried Jacob. ‘Duncan Landor!’ The pastor sounded groggy, as though he had been drinking. But as far as Duncan knew the churchman was teetotal. And that was the least bizarre part about his near miraculous appearance here.

The soldiers didn’t stop. They shoved the prisoners along the corridor and into the holding chamber. There was a gask among them; an old white-bearded man who fairly deserved the label of tramp, and a pilot in the uniform of the Rodalian Skyguard. Had the Rodalian flown them here? It wasn’t possible, was it? Too great a distance lay between the empire and Weyland. It should have taken decades for them to reach the capital, even if they rarely touched down to refuel.

‘How does that tinker know you?’ said Paetro.

‘He’s from home,’ said Duncan, trying to rediscover his voice. ‘From… Weyland…’

‘Too old to have been taken as slave for the sky mines, I reckon,’ said Paetro. ‘Have the skels been raiding for the other houses? Selling our wastage on the sly?’

‘I really don’t know.’

‘Do you think he came looking for you?’

‘Let’s find out,’ said Duncan.

They went back into the cell block. Old man Carnehan was being pushed into a cage next to Hesia, the other prisoners already tossed inside. Duncan could hardly believe the pastor was here. It had been an age since he’d had a reminder of home, by something as concrete as this, a new face. A reminder that Duncan had once possessed a life far removed from slave and citizen of the imperium. He no longer felt homesick for Northhaven. He could barely even remember it now.

Paetro strode up to the patrol’s sergeant. ‘Any clues how this lot got here?’

The sergeant pointed to the men’s personal possessions, travel bags and a walking staff and gun belts hanging from hooks on the wall. ‘Travellers with a merchant caravan, maybe? They were carrying basic revolving chamber pistols, barbarian trading currency and everything you’d need for a life on the road… fire-starters, bed rolls, snares and fishing hooks. That prickly-looking twisted fellow has a hand-held computer which is unusually advanced. Thought it might be an artillery fire control, but it only has mathematical functions as far as I can see.’

‘What are you going to do with them?’ asked Duncan.

‘Find out how they jumped the wall, what drunken route they weaved through the minefield, and then give them a few good stripes for their cheek,’ said the sergeant. ‘Fifty lashes apiece should send their caravan master the message that a house’s hold isn’t a free camp site. Teach them to keep a tighter leash on their scroats.’

Duncan walked over to the cage. Jacob Carnehan clung to the bars like a wild animal, his eyes filled with an icy madness that Duncan didn’t think any human could hold. ‘Where are they, where’re the others?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Carter and the people the raiders took?’

‘They’re not here,’ said Duncan. ‘Just myself and Willow, you remember, my sister?’

‘Where’s
Carter
?’ He said it like a man dying of thirst in the desert mouthing the word
water
.

‘They’re working in the sky mines,’ said Duncan. ‘The empire has a giant volcano where metals and ores are still pumped out from the world’s deep heart. There are mining stations and stakes tethered above it on antigravity stones. Everyone from Northhaven is serving there.’

‘Serving?’ snarled Jacob. ‘How much choice do they have in that?’

Paetro pulled Duncan back a step. ‘Careful there, lad. You’re close enough for him to snap your neck.’

‘He’s a pastor,’ said Duncan. ‘He’s not dangerous, I promise you. What in the world are you doing here, Father Carnehan – inside the empire? How did you even find me?’

The gask came forward to the bars. ‘We are an expedition of mercy, manling. Funded by the town and the people of the great forest to track down everyone seized by the slavers. We have money to purchase those taken, to buy them back from their new owners.’

‘You,’ said Duncan, still stunned by the shock of seeing Weylanders in the castle. ‘You’re Kerge’s father?’

‘I am!’ said the gask. ‘I have come for him!’

‘Your people are owned by the mistress of this house,’ said Paetro. ‘And you’ve come a long way for nothing, my quill-skinned friend. Because their labour means a lot more to her fortunes than a camping pack filled with exotic trading coins.’

‘Your father sent us, boy,’ said the pastor, his hand reaching out pleadingly to Duncan. ‘Check the stamp on those coins. It’s Benner Landor’s money we’ve brought to buy our people back with!’

‘How did you get here,’ demanded Paetro. ‘
Here
and the empire?’

‘We started out flying on merchant carriers. On one of the ships we met this old rascal who had dealings with the skels, scouting soft targets for the raiders. The old coot told us all slaves taken by the skels eventually ended up in Vandia. A few months later we came across a guild library in the wilds,’ said Jacob. ‘The library had plans for a craft powered by rockets, one that could travel faster and further than anything we thought possible. We spent most of the Landor fortune building it. But the ship ran out of fuel and crashed on the empire’s borders. The rest of the way we travelled using Khow’s homing sense. But the damn gask’s led us to the wrong Weylanders!’

‘His nose’s led you to the wrong country,’ said Paetro, uneasily. ‘The imperium takes slaves from a respectable distance so it never has to deal with strays, rescue missions and expeditionary forces. You’re the first who’ve made it this far. And I reckon you’ll be the last too.’