Jormanric heaved himself up to his knees, head down, groaning over his shattered arm, swaying.
From the corner of his eye Finn saw a commotion in the crowd; the dog-creature was being hauled out. He squirmed toward it as it was kicked and cursed, but even as he got there one of its tormentors fell, doubled up by a blow from Gildas's staff. 'I'll deal with this,' the Sapient roared. 'Stop them before someone dies!'
Finn swung back, in time to see Keiro kick Jormanric full in the face.
The Winglord still clung to his sword, but another callous blow to the head laid him out; he crashed spread- eagle, a pool of blood at nose and mouth.
The crowd was silent.
Keiro flung his head back and screamed with triumph.
Finn stared. His oathbrother was transformed. His eyes were bright, his hair sweat-dark and slicked to his scalp, his hands streaked with blood. He seemed taller, glowing with a sleek and concentrated energy that scorched away all weariness; he raised his head and stared around at them all, a raw, blind unrecognizable stare, seeing nothing, challenging everything.
Then, deliberately, he turned back, put the point of his blade to the vein in Jormanric's neck, and pushed.
'Keiro,' Finns voice was sharp. 'Don't.'
Keiro's eyes swung to him. For a moment it seemed as if he had to struggle to recognize who had spoken. Then he said hoarsely, 'He's finished. I'm Winglord now.'
'Don't kill him. You don't want his pitiful little kingdom.' Finn held his gaze steadily. 'You never did. Outside, that's what you want. Nowhere else is big enough for us.'
Down the shaft, as if in answer, a warm breeze drifted.
For a moment Keiro stared at Finn, then at Jormanric. 'Give this up?'
'For more. For everything.'
'A lot to ask, brother.' Looking down, he lifted the sword blade away, slowly. The Winglord took a deep ragged breath. And then with one vicious jerk Keiro stabbed the sword down into Jormanric's open palm.
The Winglord howled and flailed. Pinned to the ground he convulsed with agony and wrath, but Keiro knelt and began to tug the liferings from his fingers, the thick skull-faced bands.
'Leave them!' Gildas's yell came from behind them. 'The Prison!'
Finn looked up. Lights exploded on around him, flared red. A thousand Eyes winked open. Alarms broke out into a terrible ululating scream.
It was a Lockdown.
The Comitatus split, pushed, fragmented into a panicking mob, and as the wall slots slid open and light cannon flashed, they were fleeing, Jormanric's bleeding agony ignored.
Finn hauled Keiro away. 'Forget them!'
Keiro shook his head, shoved three rings inside his jerkin. 'Go! Go!'
A croak from behind. 'Did you think I killed the woman, Finn?'
Finn turned.
Jormanric squirmed in pain. He spat the words like venom. 'Not true. Ask your brother.
Your stinking, treacherous brother. Ask him why she died.'
Laserfire flickered like steel rods between them. For a second Finn couldn't move; then
Keiro was back, yanking him down. Sprawled on the filthy floor they crawled toward the shaft. The corridor was a sparking grid of energy; efficiently Incarceron restored order, slammed down grilles and doors, emitted a hiss of foul-smelling yellow gas into the enclosed tunnels.
'Where is he?'
'There.' Finn saw Gildas scrambling over bodies; he was dragging the dog-slave, its chains swaying and tripping him. Snatching the sword from Keiro, Finn pulled the creature toward him and hacked at the rusty manacles. The sharp blade severed them instantly. He looked up and saw brown eyes, bright in the ragged bindings around the face.
'Leave it! It's diseased.' Keiro shouldered past, flinched at a burst of fire that seared the roof, and jumped for the ladder. In seconds he was racing up the darkness of the shaft.
'He's right,' Gildas said heavily. 'It will slow us.'
Finn hesitated. In the uproar and crashing alarms and falling steel he looked back and the eyes of the leprous slave watched him. But it was the Maestra's eyes he saw, her voice that spoke inside his mind.
I will never dare show kindness to a stranger again.
Instantly he stooped, hauled the creature onto his back, and climbed.
Keiro was clattering above, Gildas a wheezing mutter below. As he dragged himself up the rungs, Finn was soon breathless with the weight on his back; the creatures muffled paws gripped him tight, its heels dug into his stomach. He slowed; after thirty rungs he had to stop, breathless, arms like lead. He clung on, gasping.
In his ear, a voice whispered, 'Let me go. I can climb.'
Astonished, he felt the creature crawl from him, skitter onto the ladder, and scramble up in the dark. Below, Gildas thumped his foot. 'Get on! Quickly!'
Dust billowed up the shaft, and the eerie hiss of gas. He hauled himself on, higher and higher until the muscles in his calves and thighs were weak, his shoulders aching with grabbing upward and raising his own weight.
And then without warning he was in wider space, half falling onto the transitway, Keiro yanking him out. They hoisted Gildas up, and speechless, stared down. Stabs of light flickered far below. Red alarms rang; tendrils of gas made Finn cough. Through watering eyes he saw a panel shoot sideways across the shaft, sealing it with a clang. And then, silence.
THEY DIDN'Tspeak. Gildas took the creature's hand and Finn stumbled behind with
Keiro, because now the climb and the fight were taking their toll, and Keiro was suddenly exhausted, his cuts dripping a telltale trail of blood on the metallic walkways. They hurried without stopping through the labyrinth of tunnels, past doorways with Civicry markings, barred entrances, squeezing through a portcullis with vast, useless squares. And always they were listening, because if the Civicry found them, they would stand no chance. Finn found himself sweating at each turn of the passage, at each distant clang or echoing whisper, straining his ears at shadows and a scurrying Beetle, sweeping a small chamber in endless circles.
After an hour, limping with weariness, Gildas led them into a passageway that became a sloping gallery lit by rows of alert Eyes, and at its top, far up in the dark, he stopped and slid down against a tiny locked door.
Finn helped Keiro to sit and collapsed beside him. The dog-creature was a huddle on the floor. For a moment the narrow space was racked with painful breathing. Then Gildas roused himself.
'The Key,' he croaked. 'Before they find us.' Finn took it out. There was a single crack in the door, hexagonal, ringed with speckles of quartz. He put the Key in the lock and turned it.
11
As for poor Caspar, I pity those who have to put up with him. But you are ambitious and we are bound together now. Your daughter will be Queen and my son King. The price is paid. If you fail me, you know what I will do.
'Why here?' Claudia trailed after him, between the hedges. 'Obviously,' Jared murmured, 'because no one else can find the way through.'
Nor could she. The yew maze was ancient and complex, the thick hedges impenetrable.
Once when she was small, she had been lost in here for a whole long summers day, wandering and sobbing with anger, and the nurse and Ralph had organized a search and been almost hysterical with panic before she'd been found sleeping under the astrolabe in the central glade. She didn't remember getting there, but sometimes
