Catherine Fisher
SAPPFIQUE
The Art Magicke
1
Sapphique, they say, was not the same after his Fall. His mind was bruised. He plunged into despair, the depths of the Prison.
He crawled into the Tunnels of Madness. He sought dark places, and dangerous men.
The alleyway was so narrow that Attia could lean against one wall and kick the other.
She waited in the dimness, listening, her breath condensing on glistening bricks. A flicker of flames around the corner sent red ripples down the walls.
The shouts were louder now, the unmistakeable roar of an excited crowd. She heard howls of delight, sudden gales of laughter. Whistles and stamping. Applause.
Licking a fallen drip of condensation from her lips she tasted its salty grit, knowing she had to face them. She had come too far, searched too long, to back out now. It was useless feeling small, and scared. Not if she ever wanted to Escape. She straightened, edged to the end of the alley, and peered out.
Hundreds of people were crammed into the small torchlit square. They were squeezed together, their backs to her, the stench of sweat and bodies overpowering. Behind the mob a few old women stood craning to see. Halfmen crouched in shadows. Boys climbed on each other’s shoulders, scrambling up on to the rooftops of squalid houses. Stalls of gaudy canvas sold hot food, the pungency of onions and spitting grease making her swallow with hunger.
The Prison was interested too. Just above her, under the eaves of filthy straw, one of its tiny red Eyes spied curiously on the scene.
A howl of delight from the crowd made Attia set her shoulders; she stepped out deliberately. Dogs fought over scraps; she edged round them, past a shadowy doorway.
Someone slipped out behind her; she turned, her knife already in her hand.
‘Don’t even try.’ The cutpurse stepped back, fingers spread, grinning. He was thin and filthy and had few teeth.
‘No problem, darling. My mistake.’ She watched him slide into the crowd.
‘It would have been,’ she muttered. Then she sheathed her knife and barged in after him.
Forcing a way through was tough. The people were tightly packed and eager to see whatever was going on up front; they groaned, laughed, gasped in unison. Ragged children crawled under everyone’s feet, getting kicked and stepped on. Attia pushed and swore, slipped into gaps, ducked under elbows. Being small had its uses. And she needed to get to the front. She needed to see him.
Winded and bruised, she squirmed between two huge men and found air.
It was acrid with smoke. Firebrands crackled all around; before her, an area of mud had been roped off.
Crouched in it, all alone, was a bear.
Attia stared.
The bear’s black fur was scabby, its eyes small and savage.
A chain clanked around its neck, and, well back in the shadows, a bearkeeper held the end, a bald man with long moustaches, his skin glistening with sweat. Slung at his side was a drum; he beat it rhythmically and gave a sharp tug on the chain.
Slowly, the bear rose to its hindlegs, and danced. Taller than a man, lumbering awkwardly, it circled, its muzzled mouth dripping saliva, its chains leaving bloody trails in its pelt.
Attia scowled. She knew just how it felt.
She put her hand up to her own neck, where the welts and bruises of the chain she had once worn were faded to faint marks.
Like that bear, she had been a manacled thing. If it hadn’t been for Finn she still would be. Or, more likely, dead by now.
His name was a bruise in itself. It hurt her to think of his treachery.
The drum beat louder. The bear capered, its clumsy dragging at the chain making the crowd roar. Attia watched grim—faced. Then, behind it, she saw the poster. It was plastered on the damp wall, the same poster that had been pasted tip all over the village, everywhere she had looked.
Ragged and wet, peeling at the corners, it invited gaudily.
Attia shook her head in dismay. After searching for two months through corridors and empty wings, villages and cities, swampy plains and networks of white cells, for a Sapient, for a cell-born, for anyone who would know about Sapphique, all she’d found was a tacky sideshow in a back alley.
The crowd clapped and stamped. She was shoved aside; when she’d pushed her way back she saw the bear had turned to face its handler; he was hauling it down, alarmed, prodding it away into the darkness with a long pole. The men around her roared with scorn.
‘Try dancing with it yourself next time,’ one of them yelled.
A woman giggled.
Voices from the back rose, calling for more, something new, something different, sounding impatient and scathing.
Slow handclaps began. Then they faded, to silence.
In the empty space among the torches a figure was standing.
He came from nowhere, materializing into solidity from shadows and flamelight. He was tall, and wore a black coat that glistened strangely with hundreds of tiny sparkles; as he raised his arms wide the sleeves fell open. The collar of the coat was high around his neck; in the gloom he looked young, with dark long hair.
No one spoke. Attia felt the crowd shock into stillness.
