drowned.
‘Claudia?’ The Pretender was beside her. ‘I see your brutish escort just stormed off.’ She took the fan from her sleeve and flicked it open. ‘We had a slight disagreement, that’s all.’ Giles’s mask was an eagle’s face, beautifully made with real feathers, its beak hooked and proud. As with everything he did, it was designed to reinforce his image as Prince-in-waiting. It gave him a strangeness, as masks always do. But his eyes were smiling.
‘A lovers’ tiff?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Then allow me to escort you in.’ He offered her his arm, and after a moment she took it. ‘And don’t worry about Finn, Claudia. Finn is history.’ Together, they walked across the lawns to the ball.
Attia fell.
She fell like Sapphique had fallen. A terrible, flapping, tumbling fall, arms splayed out, with no breath, no sight, no hearing. She fell through a roaring vortex, into a mouth, down a throat that swallowed her. Her clothes and hair, her very skin, rippled and seemed to be torn away so that she was nothing but a screaming soul plunging headlong into the abyss.
But then Attia knew that the world was impossible, that it was a creature that mocked her. Because the air thickened and nets of cloud formed under her — dense springy clouds that tumbled her from one to another — and somewhere there was laughter that might have been Keiro’s and might have been the Prison’s, as if she couldn’t tell them apart now.
In a flicker between gasps she saw the world re-form; the hall floor convulsed, split, rolled away. A river erupted under the viaduct, a black torrent that rose up to meet her so fast that she had hardly snatched a breath before she had plunged into it, deep, deep into a darkness of frothing bubbles.
A membrane of water webbed her wide mouth. And then her head burst out, gasping, and the torrent was slowing, drifting her under dark girders, into caves, into a dim underworld. Dead Beetles were washed along beside her; the stream was a conduit of rust, red as blood, channelled between steep metal sides, its surface greasy and bobbing with debris, stinking, the outfall of a world. As if it was the aorta of some great being, sick with bacteria, never to be healed.
The conduit tipped her over a weir and left her, sprawled, on a gritty shore, where Keiro was crouched on hands and knees, retching into the black sand.
Wet, cold, unbelievably battered, she tried to sit up, but couldn’t. And yet his choked voice was a rasp of triumph.
‘It needs us, Attia! We’ve won. We’ve beaten it’ She didn’t answer.
She was watching the Eye.
The Shell grotto was well named.
A vast cavern, its walls and pendulous roof gleamed with mother-of-pearl and crystal; each shell arranged in patterns that whorled and spiralled. False stalactites, hand-adorned with a million minute crystals, hung from the ceiling.
It was a glassy, dazzling spectacle.
Claudia danced with Giles, with men with foxfaces and knights’ helms, with highwaymen and harlequins. She felt icily calm, and had no idea where Finn was, but perhaps he could see her. She hoped he could. She chatted, fluttered the fan, made eyes at everyone through the slanted holes of the mask, and told herself she was enjoying it. When the chimes of the clock formed of a million tiny periwinkles struck eleven, she sipped iced tea from rosy glasses and nibbled on the cakes and cool sorbets handed out by serving-girls dressed as nymphs.
And then she saw them.
They wore masks, but she knew they were the Privy Council. A sudden influx of loud, brilliantly dressed men, some in long robes, their voices dry and parched from debate, harsh with relief.
She edged to the nearest, safe behind her mask. ‘Sire. Have the Council come to a verdict?’ The man winked behind his owlface, and toasted her with a glass. ‘We certainly have, my pretty kitten He came close, his breath foul. ‘Meet me behind the pavilion and I might even tell you what it was.’ She bowed, flicked the fan, and backed away.
Stupid, simpering fools. But this changed everything! The Queen wouldn’t wait for tomorrow; suddenly Claudia realized they had been tricked, that the announcement would be made here, tonight, and the loser arrested on the spot.
Outside, on the dark lawns beside the lake, Finn stood with his back to the distant Grotto and ignored the silky voice.
Hut it spoke again, and he felt it like a knife between his shoulder blades.
‘They’ve reached the verdict. We both know what it will be.’ The eagleface was reflected, hideously swollen, in the glass he held. He said, ‘Then let’s finish it now. Right here.’ The lawns were deserted, the lake a ripple of boats and torches.
Giles laughed, a low amusement. ‘You know I accept.’ Finn nodded. A great relief surged up in him. He threw down the wineglass, turned and drew his sword.
But Giles was beckoning to a servant who came from the shadows with a small leather case.
‘Oh no Giles said softly. ‘After all, you were the one who challenged me. That means by all the rules of honour I get to choose the weapons.’ He flipped the lid open.
Starlight gleamed on two long, ivory-handled pistols.
Forcing her way through the crowd Claudia searched the glittering room, was snatched into the dance and squirmed out of it, ducked under curtains into kissing couples, dodged troupes of strolling minstrels. The ball became a nightmare of grotesque faces, but where was Finn?
Suddenly, near the arched entrance a jester in cap and bells sprang out in front of her. ‘Oh Claudia, is that you? I insist you dance with me. Most of these women are complete clod—hoppers.’
‘Caspar! Have you seen Finn?’ The jester’s painted lips curled in a smile. They came close to her ear and whispered, ‘Yes. But I’ll only tell you where he is if you dance with me.’
‘Caspar, don’t be an idiot …’
‘It’s the only way you’ll find him.’
‘I haven’t got time …’ But he had caught her hands and dragged her into the gavotte, a great stately square of couples pacing and joining hands to the music, their masks forming crazy partnerships of devil and cockerel, goddess and hawk.
‘Caspar!’ She hauled him out and pinned him against the glittering wall. ‘Tell me where he is now or you get my knee where it hurts. I mean it!’ He scowled, waving the bells crossly. ‘You’re a total bore about him. Forget him.’ His eyes went sly. ‘Because my dear mama’s explained it all to me. You see, when the Pretender is chosen then Finn is dead and after a few weeks we expose the other one as a fake too and so I get the throne.’
‘So he is a fake?’
‘Of course he is.’ She stared at him so hard he said, ‘You look really strange.
Don’t tell me you didn’t know.’
‘Did you know that when Finn dies I do?’ He was silent. Then, ‘My mother wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t let her.’
‘She’ll eat you alive, Caspar. Now where is Finn?’ The jester’s face had lost its mirth. ‘He’s with the other one.
They’ve gone out by the lake.’ For a second she stared at him and felt nothing but cold fear.
Then she ran.
Finn stood in the darkness and watched the muzzle of the pistol as it rose. Giles held it at arm’s length, ten paces away across the dark lawn. He held it steady, and the hole that the bullet would fire from was a perfect circle of blackness, the dark eye of death.
Finn stared into it.
He would not flinch.
He wouldn’t move.
Every muscle was so tense he felt he would break, that he had become wooden, that the shot would fracture him into pieces.
But he would not move.
