Prisoner of the Iron Tower (23 page)

“Help me.” Andrei closed his eyes, not knowing to what power he was praying, only that he could see no way to swim clear of the clean, cruel might of the metal-clad prow, churning the waves to foam.

Deep within him, he felt something stir. His heart twisted then cracked open within his breast. Stars exploded across his vision. A wordless cry burst from his mouth as a dark whirlwind enveloped him.

The warship ploughed on toward them, carving its foaming furrow through the waves. Andrei gave one last desperate tug at Kuzko’s waterlogged body, trying to lift him from its path.

And suddenly they were rising, water cascading from their sodden clothes, rising from the sea as the great ship’s prow hit the plank.

Andrei found himself hovering above the waves, clinging onto Kuzko’s dangling body.

“Make for land.”

Land. He cast around—and saw a flat grey shoreline beneath a rugged headline a mile or so away.

“I can’t; it’s too far—”

“Don’t fight me!”

The voice urged him onward.

Wingbeats echoed in his head, throbbed through his whole body. Dark wings bore him upward, onward across the sea. His dazed mind was dazzled with a sparkle of stars. Was he drowning—and dreaming with his last conscious thoughts before the sea took his life from him? Or had a dark angel swooped down to bear him and Kuzko to the Ways Beyond?

“So how is he?” Baltzar asked, sliding back the observation shutter in Twenty-One’s door and peering in.

“Worse,” Skar said bluntly.

Twenty-One lay unmoving on the bed.

“Since his last outburst, he’s lapsed into a stupor. Nothing seems to rouse him. It’s almost as if he’s given up the will to live.”

Baltzar frowned at the prisoner.

“And the infection?”

“The wounds are healing cleanly on the outside. But I fear the infection has gone deep and invaded his brain.”

Baltzar snapped the shutter closed.

“And what will we tell his imperial highness if he dies on us?”

“Would his imperial highness care?” said Skar with a shrug. “Plenty of prisoners die before their sentences are up. Prison air is not so wholesome. Diseases spread too rapidly for us to control.”

Baltzar had been biting his lip. He knew this prisoner was different from the rest, life sentence or no. He knew the Emperor was still interested in his progress. Had his medical experiments gone too far this time?

“He could have caught typhus,” Skar said.

“Yes,” Baltzar said, nodding. “An outbreak of typhus. Tell the other warders to avoid this part of the tower and tell them why. We can’t have a major outbreak on our hands. We’ll keep this one in quarantine. Then if the inevitable happens—”

“A lime burial to avoid the infection spreading.”

“A hygienic necessity.”

Two passengers on the deck of the Francian ship following close in the wake of the Tielen war fleet saw the little fishing boat crushed by the man-o’-war. As the captain dispatched a rescue party and the Francian sailors lowered a rowboat, the passengers watched from the rail of the upper deck.

“Jagu.” The woman clutched at her companion’s arm, pointing. “Look. What in God’s name is that?”

Jagu raised the eyeglass he had been using to observe the Tielen fleet and focused it on the wreck of the fishing boat.

“Whatever it is, it’s not of this world.” He passed her the glass.

“There were two men in the water. Now I see only one—and
that
abomination.”

The sailors were gaining on the wreckage now.

“The angelstone,” urged the woman. “Use the angelstone.”

Jagu pulled out a crystal pendant from inside his shirt and held it up high. The clear crystal muddied and turned black as ink.

“A warrior-daemon,” the woman whispered, “from the Realm of Shadows. This could be the one. If only Abbot Yephimy had not been so stubborn, we could have had Sergius’s Staff . . .”

“Turn back!” yelled Jagu to the rowers, but they were too far away to hear his voice.

“Twenty-One. Can you hear me?” Skar bent over the prisoner. There was no response. He lifted the man’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. When he found it, it was so faint and irregular it was hardly there. He looked so gaunt, his skin grey and pallid, his eyes sunken in their bruised sockets. Days of fever had exhausted him; his weakened body had no resources left to fight the infection in his brain.

Skar stood up and gazed at his patient. That rattling, wheezing sound in the throat did not bode well at all.

Twenty-One was dying. He must alert Director Baltzar.

And then he thought he heard the prisoner whisper something through cracked, dry lips. At first it sounded like nothing more than a guttural sigh. But then he thought he heard a name, though it was no name he recognized. Probably nothing more than the last jumbled utterances of a fractured mind.

“Drakhaoul . . . help me . . .”

The black-winged daemon halted in midair as though listening. It shuddered.

Suddenly it let out a wailing cry, inhuman and desolate. Then it began to plummet toward the waves, losing its hold on its human burden.

“Does it sense us?” Jagu said. “Does it know we are near?”

For a moment daemon and man disappeared below the surface. Then a whirlpool began to churn the waves. The sailors shouted out and cursed, gripping the sides of the rowboat as it was thrown sideways, almost capsizing. And out of the spinning water, Jagu and Celestine saw a shadow rise, dark as smoke, and speed away, low across the waves.

Andrei hit the water. The force of the impact knocked the breath from his body.

Blackness.

And then he was being lifted by many hands, strong hands, and let down onto the wooden boards of a ship.

He dragged himself to his knees, retching up a lungful of briny water. He was freezing, drenched to the skin, shivering till his teeth clacked together—but somehow still alive.

His rescuers returned, carrying someone else. They laid their burden down beside him. Pushing his wet hair out of his eyes, he saw Kuzko lying next to him, inert, limp, unbreathing.

“Kuzko!” Andrei prized the old man’s mouth open and tried to blow his own warm breath into him. After a while, exhausted with the effort, he sat back on his heels and pressed on Kuzko’s still rib cage in the hope of forcing it into some semblance of movement. The old sailor’s head lolled back, mouth gaping.

“Come on, Kuzko!” Andrei laid his head against the damp chest, listening for a heartbeat. “Don’t desert me now, old man!”

It was no use. Somewhere between the sea and the ship, Kuzko’s spirit had fled its body. All his frantic efforts had been in vain.

Andrei laid Kuzko’s body down on the deck and with clumsy, numbed fingers, closed his eyes.

One of the sailors came up and wrapped a blanket around Andrei’s shoulders. Andrei’s heart felt as though drenched with a cold and bleak despair. Kuzko had saved him from the sea. Why had he not been able to save him in return? And how could he break the news to Irina? First the sea had taken her son, and now her husband.

He crouched down beside Kuzko’s still body and wept.

Shadow-wings, fast beating outside the Iron Tower . . .

“Who’s . . . there?”

Eyes glimmered in Gavril’s cell, blue as starlight. And something blacker than darkness itself reared up, towering above his bed.

“You called to me, Gavril Nagarian.”

“Dra—khaoul?” So many times he had dreamed this, and now he was so weak he could hardly whisper the words he wanted to say. He tried to lift one hand to welcome his banished daemon, but the effort was too great and his hand flopped back uselessly onto the bed.

“What have they done to you?”

“I—don’t know. So weak. So
wrong
—”

“You could not live with me—and now you cannot live without me.”

“Take me. Take me away from this terrible place.”

The Drakhaoul enfolded him—close, closer—until he was drowning in an ecstasy of shadows.

“Now you are mine again, Gavril. Now we act, we think, as one.”

His sight blurred, then cleared. He could see again.

“Where shall we go?”

“Home . . .” Gavril’s heart burned with a sudden longing. “My home.”

“To Azhkendir?”

“No . . . to Smarna.”

Skar was crossing the inner courtyard on his way to check on his dying patient when he saw the skies darken. Stormclouds were blowing toward them across the Iron Sea. A sudden cold wind whined about the asylum walls. Then blue lightning shivered across the sky and struck the Iron Tower.

Skar felt the shock as if it had pierced his body. He dropped to one knee, gasping.

Director Baltzar ran out into the courtyard. He gripped Skar by the shoulders, pulling him to his feet. “What in God’s name—” he shouted above the whine of the wind, pointing to the tower.

Skar looked up. Stormclouds, black and electric-blue, swirled about the top of the tower. Little crackles of energy lit the darkness. “A lightning ball?” he shouted back.

A sudden explosion rocked the tower. The iron bars burst asunder and stones rained down into the courtyard. Skar pushed the astonished Baltzar out of the way just as a huge block of masonry crashed down where they had been standing. Other warders hurried out into the yard, roused by the commotion.

Skar raised his eyes to gaze at the broken tower. For a moment he saw—or thought he saw—a great winged creature, darker than the rolling stormclouds, launch itself from the jagged top of the tower and go skimming off across the dark sea.

He blinked, rubbing his lightning-dazzled eyes.

The clouds were dispersing, blowing away as swiftly as they had come.

“The p-prisoner,” stammered Director Baltzar. “Twenty-One. No one could have survived a direct lightning strike.”

The tower stair was strewn with rubble. Twenty-One’s door had been blown off its hinges. Through the doorway they could see daylight and feel the fresh breeze off the sea.

Skar gingerly entered the room and found himself staring at the open sky through a great gaping hole blasted in the tower wall. All the roof tiles had gone and only a few broken beams remained overhead. Scorch marks blackened the stones. Wind whistled through the gap.

“Where is he, Skar?” asked Director Baltzar, gripping hold of the doorframe. His face was pale as gruel. “Where is our prisoner?”

The imperial barque lay at anchor on the River Gate quay; Eugene could see the New Rossiyan standard fluttering from her topmast. All was ready for the voyage to Tielen. And yet he still lingered here in his study, reluctant to leave for no good reason that he could explain to himself.

If we don’t sail soon, we’ll be late for Kari’s birthday celebrations.
But sending her birthday greetings through the Vox Aethyria would prove a poor substitute.
What kind of father am I?

If only there was some news from Smarna. If only he had been able to take command of the whole operation himself. It was not that he didn’t trust Janssen; it was just that he preferred to be with his troops, in the heart of the action. And then there was this odd sense of foreboding that had troubled him all day. Premonition, or seasoned soldier’s intuition? Whichever, it had never deceived him in the past.

“Highness.”

Eugene did not even turn from the window; he recognized Gustave’s voice.

“Yes, yes, they’re waiting for me. I’m on my way.”

“There’s some new intelligence just arrived. From Arnskammar.”

“Arnskammar?” Eugene spun abruptly around. “Let me see.”

It was a letter, sealed with the official seal of the Asylum Director. Eugene cracked open the seal and hastily scanned Director Baltzar’s neat handwriting:

To his imperial highness, Eugene, Emperor of New Rossiya.

It is with the utmost regret that I write to inform you of the demise of the prisoner known as Twenty-One. A terrible storm hit the coast and lightning made a direct strike on the Iron Tower in which the prisoner was confined.

Eugene lowered the paper slowly, not bothering to read the rest.

“Gavril Nagarian, dead?” he said softly. “Can this be true? Or is this some new piece of Azhkendi spirit-mischief, designed to deceive us?” He looked at Gustave, who stood patiently waiting for instructions.

“No one must know of this,” he said, “not until I have had it verified by independent investigators. Send a letter to Baltzar informing him that no one in the prison is to breathe a word of this on pain of death.”

Gustave bowed and hurried away.

But if what Baltzar writes is true, then I have lost the last surviving link to the Drakhaoul and its arcane origins. . . .

“I need verification,” he said aloud. “Proof that Nagarian is truly dead. Proof, if need be, from the Ways Beyond.”

CHAPTER
19

Andrei stands on the observation deck of the
Sirin,
telescope in hand, scanning the calm, moonsilvered sea for enemy warships.

Out of nowhere, a wind comes spearing across the sea and smacks into the ship, setting the waves violently churning.

The night sky boils black with stormclouds.

“All hands on deck!” Andrei bellows, straining his voice to be heard above the roaring of the storm.

The warship bucks and rolls, caught in a maelstrom of wind and wild-whipped tide.

The deck fills with crewmen, hauling on ropes, shinning up masts, frantically trying to furl the sails.

Andrei fights his way toward the quartermaster at the wheel, pulling himself, hand over hand, up the tip-tilting deck.

“Hold her steady, man. Steady! Or we’ll hit the rocks.”

“It’s no use, Commander—”

The prow smashes into the rocks.

Timbers splinter, metal buckles. Ice-cold spray and fragments of shattered timbers rain down on the terrified crew.

“Abandon ship! Abandon ship!”

Scrambling across the deck toward the rail, Andrei is flung off balance. The ship heaves. Water gushes in.

“She’s going down!”

He’s sliding now, sliding helplessly down the slippery deck, down toward the icy sea.

“Must save my crew. Must make sure they’re safe.”

He makes a grab at the rail, clinging on with one hand.

“Commander! Jump! Jump!”

A groaning sound fills his ears, the groaning of the hull as it grinds against the rocks.

“She’s going down, Commander! Save yourself!”

She’s sinking fast, too fast for him to reach the boats.

The wind slams the sinking ship into the rocks again. Towering waves crash down, drenching him, cold and bitter with the taint of salt. Gasping at the chill of the water, he flings off his heavy uniform coat, sabre and belt, and pitches into the black vortex of water. . . .

“Andrei?”

“Drowning . . . I’m drowning!” He flailed wildly, fighting the deadly pull of the ravening sea.

A hand caught hold of his. “You’re safe now.” The calm voice penetrated the roar of the storm, the creaking of his shattered ship.

Andrei sat bolt upright and found he was staring into a pair of gold-lashed eyes. Soft daylight lit the little cabin and the simple bunk on which he had been sleeping.

“I—I’m so sorry. I was dreaming.”

“It must have been quite some dream,” his companion said, gently releasing his hand.

He nodded, still staring into her soft blue eyes. “I know you. You sang in Mirom last winter. Celestine—”

“De Joyeuse. I’m flattered you remember me.”

“Celestial in voice as well as in name,” he said. “How could I forget?”

“The daemon-creature that attacked you,” she said, ignoring the compliment. “That would be enough to give anyone nightmares.”

“That was not what I was dreaming about. My ship went down in the Straits some months ago. The old man, Kuzko, rescued me. And now—” Andrei choked at the memory. “Now he’s dead.”

“You don’t talk like a common sailor, Andrei.” She was looking at him curiously.

He felt himself suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to unburden himself and tell her everything.

“Where are you bound?” he asked.

“Why, to Swanholm, to sing for Princess Karila’s birthday at the request of the Emperor’s wife, Astasia.”

“Astasia,” he repeated. At last he saw a way to make himself known to his sister. And he felt dangerously close to tears. “Demoiselle de Joyeuse,” he began in the Francian tongue, “may I confide in you?”

“The captain has just informed me we’ll reach Haeven by morning.” Jagu ducked down as he entered the little cabin to avoid hitting his head. He set down a bottle of red wine on the table and proceeded to pour with a steady hand. “So we’ve a day or two in hand before we’re expected at Swanholm.” He handed Celestine and Andrei a glass of wine and lifted his own in a toast. “To your miraculous survival, my Lord Andrei.”

“Miraculous?” Andrei took a sip of the wine and nodded his appreciation: It was dry, yet enriched with just enough musky sweetness to soften the back of the palate. “If you hadn’t sent out your men to the rescue—”

“I was thinking more of the creature that plucked the old man from the waves,” Jagu said.

Andrei set his glass down. “You saw it, then?”

“What was it, Andrei?” said Celestine, gazing earnestly at him.

“It healed me. Whether it was a spirit that haunted the place where I was shipwrecked, or it sought me out for some purpose of its own, I don’t know. All I know is it healed my body and restored my mind.”

“It healed you?” echoed Celestine, glancing at Jagu. “Did it ever reveal its purpose to you?”

“Not on Lapwing Spar, no. But in Mirom it spoke to me. It said, ‘You were born to rule. But it is too soon.’ ”

“Born to rule,” said Celestine thoughtfully. “And then it abandoned you?”

“I don’t know why. For a moment I thought I heard a distant voice crying out for help.” Andrei gulped down his wine, trying to block out the memory of those last chaotic moments when he thought he was drowning again. “But it might have been Kuzko.” His voice faltered and Jagu refilled his glass. “Where was Eugene’s war fleet going in such a hurry?”

“We asked ourselves the same question,” said Jagu, his pale face stern. “Who knows where Eugene’s ambitions will lead him next. . . .”

“Our countries have always been allies, Andrei,” Celestine said in Francian. “Your command of our language is excellent. We understand each other well, do we not? You have been deprived of your right to rule Muscobar by this new regime. Yet your family also claims descent from the Emperor Artamon. Had matters gone otherwise, you could be emperor of all Rossiya.”

As soon as he had heard her speak the words aloud, Andrei knew they were true. The spirit that had healed him had also awoken that ambition simmering deep within him. He had as much a right to rule all five princedoms as Eugene of Tielen.

“I could be emperor,” he said slowly. “But how? I have no country, no name, no troops at my disposal. The Muscobite army and navy have been absorbed into Eugene’s forces.”

He saw Celestine and Jagu consult each other with another glance. Then Celestine turned to him and said, “We believe our master, King Enguerrand, would be very interested in meeting you.”

The old covered market in Colchise had become a temporary hospital for the casualties injured in the clash with the Tielen garrison.

Elysia returned to help bathe and bandage the walking wounded. Many were students, but there were older townspeople as well who had joined the fight.

“Would you like some tea?”

Elysia straightened up from the gashed temple she was bandaging and shook a stray lock from her eyes. It was the student girl with auburn hair. She smiled.

“Thank you, I’d love some. And so would my patient here.” He was the baker’s apprentice from Vine Alley, a good-hearted boy with unruly black curls. “What’s happening at the citadel?” Elysia took the mug of tea gratefully and drank. Her back was stiff with bending over her charges, and from the slight throbbing over one eye, she could sense a headache looming. “It’s gone very quiet out there.”

“Still a stalemate,” said the girl. “The Tielens have retreated and barricaded themselves in. They’re refusing to talk terms unless we surrender. They’re in for a long wait!”

“And your brother?” Elysia laid a hand on her shoulder. “How is he?”

“Miran?” The girl’s fierce expression faded and Elysia saw fear in her eyes. “Still fighting. I—I hope.”

“RaÏsa!” A man with hair the same rich red-brown as the girl’s came pushing through the throng toward them. “Miran’s asking for you.”

The girl gave Elysia a look that betrayed so much hope that her heart bled for her. She squeezed the girl’s hand. “It’ll be all right,” she said, praying that it would be.

“Coming, Iovan!” called RaÏsa, and hurried away.

“That young hothead Iovan Korneli is out for blood.”

Elysia turned to see Lukan behind her, slowly shaking his head. “How so?”

“He’s got a grudge against the Tielens. Seems some Tielen merchant cheated his father in a business venture some years ago. The old man lost all his money and had to sell the family home. Or that’s the way Iovan tells it. Now that Miran’s been shot, he’s out for revenge.”

“Lukan, is there any civilized way to stop this? Before Eugene loses all patience and sends his armies to crush us into submission?”

“Dear Elysia, such talk might be judged treasonable!” Even though he spoke lightly, she detected a grim note underlying his words. “Can you imagine Iovan Korneli and his friends agreeing to a civilized solution? It’s a stalemate.”

Andrei gazed out across the Straits from the long jetty at Haeven. The salty wind had dropped, but a fresh breeze still tousled his hair.

The sun was setting and had half-sunk beneath the low clouds, illuminating the western horizon with a vivid dazzle of stormy gold.

So much had happened, he could not yet take it all in. The Francians had treated him with kindness and understanding; they had even listened to his concerns about Irina and had made him a loan of money to send to her by a trusted courier. And what had surprised him the most was that they had accepted him without once questioning his story. He had no papers to prove his identity, not even an unusual birthmark. He could be an impostor, a pretender to the Orlov dynasty, plotting to dupe the Francian government.

“Andrei.”

He looked around and saw Celestine de Joyeuse approaching, a lavender gossamer shawl wrapped about her throat against the evening damp. The soft shade made her blue eyes appear even more luminous in the twilight. She smiled at him.

“What a dramatic sunset,” she said. “Does such a sky herald more stormy weather to come?”

Storms in the Straits. He remembered the terrible tempest that had sunk the
Sirin
. There had been no warning that night, not even a sunset such as this. “No,” he said. “The weather can prove fickle off these shores, even for the most experienced sailor.”

“I have news for you from King Enguerrand.” She handed him a sealed letter.

He broke the seal and stared at the strange dashes and symbols, perplexed. “Is this some new Francian alphabet? It means nothing to me.”

Celestine let out a soft laugh. “It is encrypted. Jagu has the codes to decipher the encryption at the tavern.” She slipped her hand beneath his arm. “Let’s go back now before I catch a chill out here and spoil my voice.”

To our royal cousin, Andrei Orlov of Muscobar, from Enguerrand of Francia:

We are most heartily relieved to hear of your miraculous rescue. Please rest assured that news of your survival will not be revealed until you judge the time is right to do so.

We extend the hand of friendship to you and assure you of a warm welcome at our royal court. We also have new intelligence of events that took place toward the end of last year, which will both disturb and intrigue you.

Our representative in New Rossiya, Ambassador d’Abrissard, will soon arrive in Haeven. He has some proposals to make, which we believe will be to our mutual benefit. . . .

Andrei was rowed out through a brisk dawn breeze to meet with Fabien d’Abrissard on board ship.

“Eugene’s agents are everywhere,” the ambassador said as he welcomed Andrei into his paneled stateroom in the stern. “Here, at least, we are on Francian territory. Coffee to warm you this chilly morning?”

“Thank you.” The square windowpanes afforded a view over the Straits: an expanse of rain-grey sea and pale clouds.

The ambassador clicked his fingers and his secretary poured Andrei coffee in a delicate white and gold cup. After living so long in a poor fisherman’s cottage, Andrei had grown unused to such refinements and he handled the flimsy china nervously.

“And our guest might appreciate a dash of brandy.” Had Abrissard seen his hands tremble? The ambassador’s expression gave nothing away; although his lips smiled at Andrei, his manner was cool and detached. The secretary added a measure of brandy to Andrei’s cup and discreetly withdrew, closing the door softly behind him. For a moment the only sound was the lapping of the water against the ship as it rocked gently at anchor.

“Were you aware that the power behind Eugene’s empire is one Kaspar Linnaius, a renegade scientist wanted for crimes in Francia?” Abrissard asked.

Andrei shook his head.

“We have reason to believe that this same Kaspar Linnaius was responsible for the sinking of your ship.”

“Sinking the
Sirin
? But how? She went down in a storm.”

“A storm that came out of nowhere on a calm night?”

“Why, yes—”

“A similar event occurred some years ago in the reign of Prince Karl, when the Francian fleet was wrecked by a disastrous storm.”