Spying is well and good, but in general I don’t have the patience for it, and what patience I do have is soon lost when it gets hot. I dug my fingers between the slats and wrenched the shutters open. The catch came free and skittered across the floor, fetching up against the polished leather of Marco’s shoe. I stepped in and closed the shutter behind me.
‘So sorry.’ I sketched the faintest of bows. ‘But I really wanted to see what you were up to.’
The modern staggered back, his face twisted halfway between murder and terror.
The trunk lay open at the centre of the room, the bed set on end and leaning against the door to make space. Inside, the sharkskin exterior gave over to metal, plasteek, and muted patterns of light beneath glass that reminded me of the hidden panel at the weapon vaults beneath Mount Honas.
‘Ah, the aberration.’ This Builder ghost spoke with none of Fexler’s warmth, dropping each word stillborn. He looked younger, maybe thirty, maybe forty, hard to tell in a picture drawn from shades of pale. His clothes too were different, many layers, close-tailored, buttons along the front, a breast pocket.
‘Aberration? I like that. I’ve been called many things, but you’re the first to use “aberration”. And what should I call you, ghost?’
‘Kill him!’ Marco hissed, his hat held to his chest like a talisman.
‘Well that’s no way to treat a friend.’ I gave Marco my smile, the one with edges, then looked to the data ghost. ‘Instead of that why don’t you tell me how it is that you need Marco here to drag you halfway across Maroc when you should be able to look out of a thousand hidden eyes, step out of all manner of hidden doors in scores of nations? And what do you want with Ibn Fayed?’
‘You may call me Michael.’ The ghost grinned, a smile selected from one of thousands stolen from the Michael made of flesh, a man now centuries old dust. A real smile but somehow wrong, as if sewn into position on a dead man’s face. ‘And I need to be carried because Ibn Fayed has a new faith – one that bids him seek out any trace of the Builders and erase it. Which of course answers your question about my business with him, Jorg.’
‘Well and good then. I too have business with the man. It’s just the getting there that is proving problematic. Perhaps you have some wonder of the ancients that will fly us all there like birds?’
Marco snorted, managing contempt. But the Builders had flown. I knew it from my father’s library.
‘Well?’ I asked. If this turn of events lay within the mathmagicians’ calculations then I may as well have admitted defeat – but given that I didn’t think it did fall within their plotting, I found renewed interest in crossing the desert to the court of Ibn Fayed with my two new friends.
‘I can do better than that, Jorg of Ancrath,’ Michael said. ‘We can go by ship.’
31
Sleep became a rare commodity after the arrival of our newest travelling companion. Day by day Gottering fell further behind us. On the fifth day, Captain Harran declared we would push on through the night to reach Honth by dawn. On that long and rumbling journey a moment of quiet visited and exhaustion dragged me down quicker than the mud of Cantanlona. Jolted by rutted miles, the occupants of Holland’s carriage exchanged partners periodically. I rolled open a sleep-burred eye at one such bump to see Osser Gant’s grey head cradled in the bishop’s lap. Another lurch took my head from Miana’s shoulder, another still put Katherine’s head on mine.
In the darkness of my dreaming Katherine’s skin burned against me, but we shared nothing save warmth. When she lifted me from my quiet nightmare of thorns and rain she gave no warning.
‘Katherine?’ I knew her touch. Perhaps my show and tell of childish woe hadn’t scared her from my dreams as well as hoped. Perhaps like me she merely thought how stupid I had been to let old Bishop Murillo capture me in the first place. I have the church to thank for teaching me that last lesson in reading the signs, in seeing the trap rise around you, in never lowering your guard. A lesson that has served me well.
‘Katherine?’
A dark hall. I moved through bars of moonlight behind shuttered windows. My head turned for me, my fingers trailed the wall without asking permission. Familiar. All of it familiar, the hall, the smell of the place, the roughness of the wall, and of course, the being trapped in another’s head. Steps down, a long and winding stair.
‘This is like that night at the Haunt – when the Pope’s man came calling,’ I said, though no lips moved to speak my words.
The end of the stair. I turned a corner. Familiar, but not the Haunt. More steps down. My hand – his hand – took an oil lamp from its niche.
‘Katherine!’ I made my silent voice louder, more demanding.
‘Ssh! You’ll wake him, you idiot.’ Her voice seemed to come from a deep place.
‘Wake who?’
‘Robart Hool of course! Your spy back at the Tall Castle.’
A door. Hool’s fingers on the black iron of its handle.
‘If he’s my spy why are you using him?’ Espionage was never my forte but I had been rather proud of having a man so high in the king’s guard on my payroll. Until now.
‘Sageous opened him up to true-dreams,’ Katherine said from her well. ‘He sleepwalks and the castle guard know not to wake him or there can be trouble. He’s good with a sword. I use him so I can watch over Sareth when I’m not there.’
‘And now—’
‘Ssh!’
‘But—’
‘Shut. Up.’
Hool moved through the doorway and along a corridor, shadows swinging around him.
