‘Halloo! Halloo, prince!’ yelled Jotto.
Grembilard made a kind of loud whooping noise. Treacle and the cats danced about.
I stood there like a total twit.
In the end, after an age, part of the lighted window opened.
A dark figure leaned out its head and shoulders.
‘Yes? Is that you, Grem?’
Something about his voice – I didn’t at once know what – made all the fine hair on my scalp and neck stand up.
A ‘City’ voice. A Wolf Tower voice.
Like Nemian’s.
Pale moths flickered between us and him, attracted to his light.
‘Shall we come up, prince?’ cried Jotto.
‘No.’ That was definite. ‘Wait. I’ll come down.’
As the window shut, Jotto whispered to Grembilard, ‘You don’t think he was – up there all the time? I mean, I thought he was still looking for her.’
Grembilard said nothing.
I wanted to move back into the deepest shadows, but I stayed where I was. It wasn’t Nemian, even if he’d sounded so like him.
No, he wasn’t Nemian.
A stair curved down the rock-tower, and he came down that. He was carrying another lamp, which lit him up in a peculiar way, from one side and below.
He just looked like what he was, a stranger.
Then, when he was only about ten steps up, he paused, and looked over at us all, angling the lamp.
I thought, He’s short-sighted or something.
He was peering at us.
And then, the way the light fell, suddenly it filled in his face properly, as if it hadn’t been completely there before.
He’s pale skinned and his hair, which is thick, falls to his shoulders, and is light brown and loosely curling. His eyes are black. That’s the same. I mean, that’s the same as the one he looks like. He looks like—
(I swallowed air the wrong way.
Jotto hit me on the back.
Treacle wriggled in a giggle without sound.)
Argul.
He looks like Argul.
No, he can’t, he can’t.
He does.
There was an eerie whining noise. I thought it was just something I was hearing. But Jotto waved up at this oval hoop with strings in a tree. A night breeze was passing, and made the strings ‘sing’, apparently. (It’s very unmusical.) Then a monkey screamed somewhere. Stopped. ‘The air-harps,’ smirked Jotto. ‘Clever, aren’t they.’
Then a nightingale started.
I burst out madly laughing. Jotto looked startled: Should he thump me on the back again?
He just stood ten steps up. And now the angle of the lamp was different, and he didn’t look like Argul, or not so much.
And the awful, horrible thing is – I wanted him to. Such a lot.
‘That’s late tonight,’ he said, as the huge Star rose.
We were sitting on chairs G and J had brought, in the clearing under the rock-tower. Apparently, this building doesn’t move, just as the gardens don’t.
Starlight shattered through the trees and hit the grass like shards of broken glass.
‘That Star is very large,’ I said.
‘Is it? Oh. Yes.’
He was uninterested. In the Star, in me, in everything. You could tell he was itching to get back into the tower, to be alone.
He’d sent the others off, in quite a friendly, relaxed way. When he turned to me, he was cool and distant.
The note he sent me read Until we meet. But it was now obvious he hadn’t wanted to meet me. Either that or I was the most ghastly disappointment.
So – what was all this about?
‘Prince Venari – er – Yill – er—’ I tried.
‘Call me Venn,’ he said shortly.
‘Prince Venn, why am I here?’
‘Oh why indeed,’ he said, off-hand, gazing away through the trees. ‘To be useful?’
‘That’s nice. In what way, and to whom?’ (What excellent grammar! Didn’t I dare not to speak properly, with royalty?)
‘To me, perhaps.’
‘I see. And how am I meant to do that?’
‘Well, Claidis,’ (Claidis, that was new) ‘frankly I’m not at all sure. But there. You’re doubtless a mine of information. You’re like a book from the library. I shall want to consult you, I expect. One day.’
‘About what?’
‘All the things you know.’
‘I don’t know anything.’
He flicked me a glance iced with distaste. ‘You’re too modest.’
‘I’m not modest, I’m telling you the truth. Who on earth do you think I am?’
He looked down his nose. He did it just as Argul does, when he’s being – Argul. But this was – Venn.
‘This is rather silly, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘No. Or if it is, that’s not my fault. Those men abducted me, dragged me here, and I want to know why, and saying I’m a mine of information is like saying – like saying Treacle is chatty.’
‘I find all this rather dull,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’
I sat there, and my mouth dropped open, so I shut my mouth and I thought, I feel as if I’m going nuts.
He just looked away through the trees. Then he glanced at the Star, which was now directly above. How fast it climbed – was it always so fast? Just tonight? – or had we just sat here that long?
Then: ‘I hope everything is comfortable for you, Claidis.’
‘Of course it isn’t!’ I screeched.
He got up.
He’s slightly taller than Argul, which of course makes him look too tall.
‘Perhaps we should talk tomorrow,’ he graciously said, ‘or in a few days’ time.’
‘Let’s talk now.’ I too got up. ‘All right. I’m your prisoner. But I—’
He gave this soft blank laugh. As if I’d told a boring joke but he must be polite.
‘Next month, then,’ he said.
The night breezes twittered and whined in the non-musical air-harp strings. Monkeys bawled. And three or four nightingales chirruped as if they had hiccups.
‘Wait,’ I said. And I heard Argul, oddly, in my voice, his authority. And it stopped this man a minute. (How old is he? A year or so older than Argul, probably. But he’s like a man much older, fifty, say. Set like cold cement.)
‘Wait for what, madam?’
‘Why are you calling me that? I’m a slave, aren’t I? You don’t say Madam to a slave. I was brought here and I don’t know a thing about anything
