‘All right. Let’s get it over with.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Someone you think is important obviously told you I wanted to come here, and they told you too I was royal, called Claidissa or Claidis. You loathed the idea but couldn’t say No.’
‘That’s about right, yes.’
‘However,’ I said, ‘I’m not royal. Or if I am, only half, and anyway that may all be a lie. Let me tell you my story – oh, I’ll be really quick, don’t worry. It’s soon said. I grew up in a place called the House, which you may have heard of.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Then you may have an idea what it’s like there. Slaves, in the House, or in the City on the River, are rubbish. And I was just one step up from a slave, a maid-servant. Well, I left the House, helping a man called Nemian escape back to his City tower, the Wolf Tower. Heard of that too? Thought so. For some reason I still don’t properly grasp, they wanted me to take over control of the Tower Law. Only I wrecked the Law, destroyed it. Or, I hope I did – I meant to.’
I paused to see if that got any comment. It didn’t. I said, ‘I ran away from the City. I left with a Hulta leader, a chieftan, I suppose you’d say. We were going to be married. That was the life I had, and what I’d chosen. What I wanted.’
I had to hesitate again, to stop my voice going shaky. He didn’t interrupt. I said, ‘On the morning of my marriage, before the wedding, I was grabbed by three City men, pushed in one of their hot-air balloons, taken to the coast and thrown on a ship. Two of them – Yazkool, Hrald – brought me here. I thought originally I was supposed to be taken to the City, but now I’m not even sure of that. Yazkool and Hrald put me in that house across the gulf. Then you sent Grembilard and he brought me here, to the Rise. Which I’d never heard of, and which I’d never have wanted to come to if I had.’
He just sat there.
I cried out at him, ‘I’ve lost everything I wanted. Don’t you understand? I was happy. How would I want to be made a prisoner and forced to come here, all these trees, miles from – away from—’ I bit back the stream of words. But I’d clenched my fists, my hair felt standing-up and bristly as hedgehog quills.
The rain had ended. The high window was clearing to its pre-sunset spice shade.
‘You expect me to believe this?’ he said.
Yes, I did expect that. Why else had I made such a fuss? Trying to convince him.
‘Very dramatic, Lady Claidis, if rather overdone. You’re a good actress. They did warn me.’
I managed to speak level as a pavement.
‘Who warned you?’
‘I think you’d better see the letter. After all, it’s about you.’
As he went over to a carved cupboard in the far wall, and opened its doors (I couldn’t see inside), the owl-bird undid one eye the colour of the sky. Then the eye and the doors closed, and he was offering me a sheet of paper.
Looking at this paper now, it’s odd. It’s not like any paper I ever saw before – not, for example, like the paper in this book on which I’m writing, with my ink pencil. Thinner yet stronger. Very white.
And the writing is printed, like in a book.
Is this the ‘flying letter’ someone mentioned earlier? I should have asked him.
What it said – I’ll copy it down.
‘TO PRINCE VENARION YLLAR KASLEM-IDOROS’ (So that’s how it goes.)
‘WE TRUST YOU ARE IN GOOD HEALTH, AND PLEASANTLY OCCUPIED AMID YOUR LUXURIOUS JUNGLES.
‘IT HAS BECOME NECESSARY THAT WE ASK YOUR ASSISTANCE. WE MUST ACCORDINGLY INSTRUCT YOU TO ACCEPT, INTO YOUR PALACE, A YOUNG WOMAN OF THE TOWERS. YOU WILL KNOW HER AS THE LADY CLAIDIS STAR.
‘IT IS OUR SAD DUTY TO WARN YOU THAT SHE IS AN IMMATURE AND EXCITABLE CREATURE, GIVEN TO RAGES, TANTRUMS AND, SHALL WE SAY, TO INVENTING QUITE CONVINCING STORIES OF HER OWN LIFE. (SHE MAY EVEN DENY HER OWN NAME.)
‘WE ARE AWARE, THIS IS NOT THE MOST SUITABLE GUEST FOR YOU TO RECEIVE, WHEN, IN ANY CASE, YOU ARE MORE AT EASE WITH THE MECHANICALS. AND TOYS OF YOUR PALACE. UNFORTUNATELY WE MUST INSIST. THIS CLAIDIS STAR HAS CAUSED QUARRELS AND UPSETS IN SEVERAL PLACES, WITHIN THE CITY AND OUTSIDE IT. HER DEMANDS TO VISIT THE RISE, WHICH SHE DECLARES NEEDFUL FOR HER EDUCATION, CAN NO LONGER BE IGNORED.
‘OUR GRATITUDE TO YOU, PRINCE VENARION, WE HOPE WILL OFFSET, TO SOME EXTENT, THIS DISRUPTION TO YOUR PERSONAL ROUTINES.
‘WE REMAIN, GREATLY IN YOUR DEBT:—’
I should have questioned him. Denied it. I don’t know. There didn’t seem any point. I certainly should have demanded (the letter says I do that, after all) to know who they were that sent it.
Because I saw the signature, and it’s here, in front of me, but I was so destroyed by all of this, I just didn’t—
I mean, after I read this, he showed me to the door, which gave on the steps down to the gardens. He said, polite, ‘The rain’s stopped.’ And I just went out and he closed the door, and there I was with this paper, stumbling down the stairs (and trying not to cry and feeling ashamed because I think I did cry) – and desperate.
To say I lied, and to lie about me like that.
As if they knew me and I was one of them and they’d been so kind to me and I’d been an evil trouble-maker, and they’d had to send me here, where I insisted I wanted to go, before I did something even worse—
You see, I didn’t know what to do. Don’t.
So, I walked back across the gardens, and the sunset started and finished, then I got to the Rose Room somehow, even in its
