wrong.’ Before he could explode she hurried on. ‘If we give the Prison this Glove it will carry out its crazy plan of Escape. Everyone here will die. I don’t think I can do that, Keiro. I just don’t think I can.’ He was staring at her, with that cold, intent look that always scared her.
She backed off. ‘Maybe I should just take the Glove and go.
Leave you here.’ She got to the door before his whisper came, icy with threat. ‘That would make you just the same as Finn. A liar. A traitor. You wouldn’t do that to me, Attia.’ She didn’t look back.
‘Tell us once more about the day you remember. The day of the hunt.’ The Shadow Lord loomed over him, eyes hard.
Finn stood in the empty centre of the room. He wanted to pace about. Instead he said, ‘I was riding. . .‘
‘Alone?’
‘No . . . there must have been others. At first.’
‘Which others?’ He rubbed his face. ‘I don’t know. I’ve tried to think, over and over, but …’
‘You were fifteen.’
‘Sixteen. I was sixteen.’ They were trying to trick him.
‘The horse was chestnut?’
‘Grey: He stared, angry, towards the Queen. She sat, eyes half closed, a small dog on her lap. Her fingers stroked it rhythmically.
‘The horse jumped he said. ‘I told you, I felt a sort of sting in my leg. I fell off.’
‘With your courtiers around you.’
‘No I was alone.’
‘You just said . . .’
‘I know! Perhaps I got lost!’ He shook his head. The warning prickle moved behind his eyes. ‘Perhaps I took the wrong path. I don’t remember!’ He had to stay calm. To be alert. The Pretender lounged on the bench, listening with bored impatience.
The Shadow Lord came closer. His eyes were black and level. ‘The truth is that you invented this. There was no ambush. You are not Giles. You are the Scum of Incarceron.’
‘I am Prince Giles.’ But his voice sounded weak. He heard his own doubt.
‘You are a Prisoner. You have stolen. Haven’t you?’
‘Yes. But you don’t understand. In the Prison. . .’
‘You have killed.’
‘No. Never killed.’
‘Indeed?’ The Inquisitor drew back like a snake. ‘Not even the woman called the Maestra?’ Finn’s head shot up. ‘How do you know about the Maestra?’ There was a movement of unease round the room. Some of the Council murmured to each other. The Pretender sat up.
‘How we know is not important. She fell, didn’t she, inside the Prison, down a great abyss, because the bridge on which she stood had been sabotaged. You were responsible.’
‘No!’ He was shouting now, eye to eye with the man. The Inquisitor did not back off.
‘Yes. You stole a device for Escape from her. Your words are a mass of lies. You claim visions. You claim to have spoken with ghosts.’
‘I didn’t kill her!’ He grabbed for his sword but it wasn’t there. ‘I was a Prisoner, yes, because the Warden drugged me and put me in that hell. He took away my memory. I am Giles!’
‘Incarceron is not a hell. It is a great experiment.’
‘It’s hell. I should know’
‘Liar.’
‘No...’
‘You are a liar. You have always been a liar! Haven’t you?
Haven’t you?’
‘No. I don’t know!’ He couldn’t bear it. His throat was ashes, the blurring of the impending seizure tormenting him. If it happened here he was finished.
He became aware of movement, dragged his head up. The Sun Lord was standing, beckoning for a chair to be brought, and the Shadow Lord had gone back to his seat.
‘Please, sire. Be seated. Be calm.’ The man’s hair was silver, his words sweet with concern. ‘Bring water, here.’ A footman brought a tray. A cool goblet was pressed into Finn’s hand and he drank, trying not to spill it. He was shaking, his sight blurred by spots and itches. Then he sat, gripping the padded arms of the chair. Sweat was soaking his back. The eyes of the Council were fixed on him; he dared not look at their disbelief. The Queen’s fingers fondled the silky fur of her dog. She was watching calmly.
‘So,’ the Sun Lord mused. ‘You say the Warden imprisoned you?’
‘It must have been him.’ The man smiled kindly. Finn tensed. The kind ones were always the most deadly.
‘But. . . if the Warden was responsible, he could not have acted alone. Not with the abduction of a royal prince. Do you claim that the Privy Council were involved?’
‘No.’
‘The Sapienti?’ He shrugged, wearily. ‘Someone with knowledge of drugs must have been.’
‘So you accuse the Sapienti?’
‘I don’t accuse. . .’
‘And the Queen?’ The room was silent. Sullen, Finn clenched his fists. He was staring right into disaster and he knew it. But he didn’t care.
‘She must have known.’ No one moved. The Queen’s hand was still. The Sun Lord shook his head sadly. ‘We need to be absolutely clear, sire.
Do you accuse the Queen of your abduction? Of your imprisonment?’ Finn didn’t look up. His voice was dark with miser because they had trapped him into this, and Claudia would despise him for his stupidity.
But he still said it.
‘Yes. I accuse the Queen.’
‘Look over there.’ Rho stood on the viaduct and pointed.
Narrowing her eyes, Attia strained to see across the dimness of the hail. Birds were flying towards her, dark flocks of them. Their wings creaked; in a second they were all around her and she ducked with a gasp under the cloud of plummage and beaks. Then they were streaming far into the east.
‘Birds, bats, people.’ Rho turned, her eye of gold shining. ‘We have to live, Attia, like everyone else, but we don’t steal, or kill. We work for a higher purpose. When the Unsapient asks for things he needs, we get them. In the last three months we’ve sent him—’
‘How?’
‘What?’ Attia caught the girl by the wrist. ‘How? How does this. . .
Unsapient tell you what he wants?’ Rho pulled away and stared. ‘He speaks to us.’ A shiver of the world interrupted her. Far below a scream arose; cries of terror. Instantly Attia fell flat, grabbing the rusted girders; another ripple of movement went right through her body, her very fingernails. Next to her a rivet snapped; ivy slithered over the edge.
They waited until the Prisonquake ended, Rho on hands and knees beside her, both of them breathless with fear. As soon as she could speak Attia said, ‘Let’s get back down.
Please.’ Through the hole the complex of the Nest hung apparently undisturbed.
‘The quakes are getting worse.’ Rho scrambled in the ivy tunnel.
‘How does he speak to you? Please, Rho, I really need to know.’
‘Down here. I’ll show you.’ They hurried through the room of feathers. Three of the other women were there, cooking stew in a great cauldron, one mopping spills that had slopped out in the shiver. The smell of meat made Attia swallow in appreciation. Then Rho ducked under a doorway into a small rounded place, a bubble of a room. It contained nothing but an Eye.
Attia stopped dead.
The small red glimmer swivelled to look at her. For a moment she stood there, remembering Finn’s tale of how he had woken in a cell containing nothing but this, the silent, curious gaze of Incarceron.
Then slowly, she came and stood below it. ‘I thought you said the Unsapient.’
