He turned his head, sighed, stretched out.
And touched something cold.
With a shiver of steel his sword was in his hand; he had leapt up, was alert, his heart thudding, a prickle of sweat on his neck.
Far off in the lighted palace a drift of music echoed.
The lawns were still empty. But there was something small and bright stuck in the grass just above where his head had been.
After a moment, listening intently, he bent down and picked it up. And as he stared at it, a shiver of fear made his hand shake.
It was a small steel knife, wickedly sharp, and its handle was a wolf, stretched thin, jaws open and savage.
Finn drew himself up and looked all around, his hand tight on the swordhilt.
But the night was silent.
The door gave at the third kick. Keiro dragged a cable of bramble away and ducked his head inside. His voice came back, muffled. ‘Corridor. Have you got the torch?’ She handed it to him.
He scraped in, and she waited, hearing only muffled movement. Then he said, ‘Come on.’ Attia crawled through, and stood up beside him. The interior was dark, and filthy. It had obviously been abandoned years ago, maybe centuries. A lumber of junk lay in heaps under cobwebs and grime.
Keiro shoved something aside and manoeuvred himself between a heaped desk and a broken cupboard. He wiped the dust off with his gloved hand and stared down at the litter of broken crockery ‘Just what we need: Attia listened. The corridor led into darkness, and nothing moved down there, but the voices. There were two of them now, and they faded oddly in and out of hearing.
Keiro had his sword ready. ‘Any trouble, we’re out of here.
One Chain-gang is enough for any lifetime.’ She nodded, and made to move past him, but he grabbed her and shoved her behind him. ‘Watch my back. That’s your job.’ Attia smiled sweetly. ‘And I love you too,’ she whispered.
They walked warily down the dim space. At the end a great door stood ajar, fixed immovably half open, and when she slipped through behind Keiro Attia saw why; furniture had been piled and heaped against it, as if in some last desperate attempt to keep it closed.
‘Something went on here. Look there.’ Keiro flashed the handlight at the floor. Dark stains marred the paving. Attia guessed it might once have been blood. She looked closer at the junk, then around, at the galleried hall. ‘It’s all toys,’ she whispered.
They stood in the wreckage of a sumptuous nursery. But the scale was all wrong. The doll’s house that she stared at was enormous, so that she could almost have crawled in, her head squashed against the ceiling of the kitchen, where plaster hams hung and a joint had fallen from its spit. The upstairs windows were too high to see into. Hoops and tops and balls and skittles were littered across the room’s centre; walking over to them she felt an amazing softness under her feet, and when she knelt and felt it it was carpet, black with grime.
Light grew. Keiro had found candles; he lit a few and stuck them around.
‘Look at this. A giant, or dwarves?’ The toys were bewildering. Most were too big, like the huge sword and ogre-sized helmet that hung from a hook.
Others were tiny; a scatter of building blocks no bigger than salt grains, books on a shelf that started as vast folios at one end and went down to minuscule locked volumes at the other. Keiro heaved open a wooden chest and swore to find it overflowing with dressing-up clothes of all sizes. Still, he rummaged in there and found a leather belt with gilt trappings. There was a pirate’ coat too, of scarlet leather.
Immediately he tugged off his own and put the new one on, strapping the belt tight around it. ‘Suit me?’
‘We’re wasting time.’ The voices had faded. Attia turned, trying to identify where the sound came from, edging between the vast rocking-horse and a row of dangling puppets that hung, broken-necked and tangle-limbed, on the wall, their small eyes watching her, red as Incarceron’s.
Beyond them were dolls. They lay tumbled, princesses with golden hair, whole armies of soldiers, dragons of felt and cambric with long, forked tails.Teddies and pandas and stuffed animals Attia had never seen lay in a heap as high as the ceiling.
She waded in and heaved them aside.
‘What are you doing?’ Keiro snapped.
‘Can’t you hear them?’ Two voices. Small and crackling. As if the bears spoke, the dolls conversed. Arms and legs and heads and blue glass eyes tumbled apart.
Under them was a small box, the lid inlaid with an ivory eagle.
The voices were coming from inside it.
For a long moment Claudia said nothing. Then she came close, picked up the watch and let the cube hang on its chain and turn so that it glittered in the light.
Finally she whispered, ‘How do you know?’
‘Your father told me.’ She nodded, and he saw the fascination in her eyes. ‘You hold a world in your hands. That’s what he said to me.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘I wanted to try some tests on it. None of them worked. I suppose I wanted to make sure he was telling the truth.’ The screen crackled. Jared looked at it absently. Claudia watched the cube turn. Was this really the hellish world she had entered, the Prison of a million prisoners? Was this where her father was?
‘Why would he lie? Jared?’ He wasn’t listening. He was at the controls, adjusting something, so that the hum in the room modulated. She felt a sudden nausea, as if the world had shifted, and she put the watch down hurriedly.
‘The frequency’s changed!’ Jared said. ‘Maybe . . . Attia’ Attia! Can you hear me?’ Only silence crackled. Then, to their astonishment, faint and far away, they heard music.
‘What is that?’ Claudia breathed.
But she knew what it was. It was the high, silly tinkle of a musical box.
Keiro held the box open. The tune seemed too loud; it filled the cluttered hail with an eerie, menacing jollity. But there was no mechanism, nothing to produce it. The box was wooden and completely empty but for a mirror inside its lid.
He turned it upside down and examined the underside.
‘Doesn’t seem possible.’
‘Give it to me.’ He glanced at her, then handed it over.
She held it tight, because she knew the voices lay here, behind the music. ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘It’s Attia.’
‘There was something Jared ran his delicate fingers over the controls, jabbing quickly. ‘There. There! Hear it?’ A crackle of words. So loud that Claudia winced, and he reduced the volume instantly.
‘It’s me. Its Attia.’
‘We’ve got her!’ Jared sounded hoarse with joy. ‘Attia, this is Jared! Jared Sapiens. Tell me if you can hear me.’ A minute of static. Then her voice, distorted, but intelligible. ‘Is it really you?’ Jared glanced at Claudia, but her face made his triumph die. She looked oddly stricken, as if the girl’s voice had brought back dark memories of the Prison.
Quietly he said, ‘Claudia and I are both here. Are you well, Attia? Are you safe?’ Crackle. Then another voice, sharp as acid. ‘Where’s Finn?’ Claudia breathed out, slowly. ‘Keiro?’
‘Who bloody else. Where is he, Claudia? Where’s the Prince? Are you there, oathbrother? Are you listening to me, because I’m going to break your filthy neck.’
‘He’s not here.’ Claudia moved closer to the screen. It was rippling frantically. Jared made a few adjustments. ‘There,’ he said quietly.
She saw Keiro.
He looked just the same. His hair was long and he’d tied it back; he wore some flashy coat with knives in his belt. There was a fierce anger in his eyes. He must be able to see her too, because instant scorn broke over his face. ‘Still in the silks and satins then.’ Behind him, she saw Attia, in the shadows of some cluttered room. Their
