Chronicles of the Invaders 1: Conquest (18 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

S
yl slept the sleep of the dead that night. She would have laughed in disbelief had anyone told her earlier that in the wake of the successful rescue of two human prisoners from the vaults—an act of treason that might well be punishable by death—she would rest deeply, but she did. She went to her bed exhausted and strangely exhilarated, with the memory of a kiss brushed softly on her lips.

She had been kissed before. The previous summer she had engaged in a brief, inquisitive romance with Harnur, one of her classmates, before Harnur’s father had been transferred to Bolivia—a transfer that might not have been entirely unconnected with Governor Andrus’s suspicion that Harnur had feelings for his beloved daughter. In truth, Syl had been more intrigued by the notion of being in love, and the highs and lows that might go with it, rather than holding any particular feelings for Harnur himself, who had been clumsy, self-absorbed, and a little too free with his hands for Syl’s liking. If her father had found out just how free he had been, Harnur’s own father might have found himself posted somewhere even worse than Bolivia: Kabul, for example, or Lagos.

Syl slept so soundly, in fact, that initially the banging at her door was incorporated into a dream of blood and water, the sounds becoming the beating of a great heart hidden beneath the earth, a heart that beat in time with the rhythms of her own. Only when the door burst open and lights shone in her face did she wake up. Vena advanced toward her bed, and Syl knew that she was lost.

•••

A quartet of Securitats stood outside Ani’s door. Their sergeant swiped his skeleton key through the electronic lock, but nothing happened. Instead, he was forced to resort to more old-fashioned methods. It took him three kicks to break the door down. By the time he succeeded, the window was open, and Ani was long gone.

•••

Alerted by the noise, Lord Andrus rushed to the corridor in time to see Syl escorted from her room, her hands cuffed behind her back, her feet bare against the cold stone. He wore his red dressing gown, and his hair was tousled. With him came two of the castle guards who always remained posted at his door, and behind them Syl saw Althea and Meia. Immediately she looked away from her father’s spymistress, afraid that even a lingering glance might reveal Meia’s involvement to Vena. This was about the prisoners’ escape. It had to be, even though Vena had remained entirely silent during Syl’s arrest. If Meia was still free, then the Securitats did not yet know of her part in what had occurred.

“Father!” cried Syl.

“What is the meaning of this?” said Lord Andrus. “Let my daughter go!”

But now more heavily armed Securitats had been summoned, and among them was Lord Consul Gradus. Syl noticed that he was fully dressed, even though the clock in her room read 4:15 a.m. when she had been dragged from her bed. He must have known in advance about her arrest; even Vena would not have dared to come for the governor’s daughter in the dead of night without the agreement of the Lord Consul. Meia had a blast pistol in her hand, and Lord Andrus’s guards carried blast rifles, but they were outnumbered, and the possibility of hitting Syl if they fired was too great to risk a gun battle.

“I’m afraid it won’t be possible to release your daughter just yet,” said Gradus. His hands were buried in the sleeves of his white robes. Only his head remained exposed. It was as though a great white slug were swallowing him, slowly consuming him from the legs up.

“Gradus, you overstep your authority here,” warned Andrus.

“I think not,” said Gradus. “I
am
the authority here, and your daughter is a traitor.”

Lord Andrus looked at Syl in disbelief. “What is this, Syl? What are they saying?”

Vena stepped forward. She held a plated millipede on the palm of her right hand. The tiny camera on its head looked like a dewdrop. She called up a screen, and Syl saw life-size flickering versions of herself and Ani, dressed in Securitat uniforms, standing at a cell door, then stepping back to allow Paul and Steven Kerr to emerge. The film lasted for only a few seconds, but it was enough to damn them.

As the images of Syl and Ani vanished, Vena smiled at Meia.

“Spies are not the only ones who find lurkers useful,” she said. She displayed the little arthropod for a second longer, than crushed it in her fist.

Meia did not reply, but the look on her face left no doubt that, like the unfortunate millipede, Vena would not survive long in Meia’s hands if the opportunity presented itself.

“Your daughter and her friend conspired in the escape of the terrorists,” said Gradus. “We are not yet certain of how they fooled the guards, but rest assured that we will find out.”

But Andrus was not listening. He had eyes only for his daughter.

“Syl, is this true?”

Syl tried to answer, but she could not. Instead, to her shame, she began to cry, and she could not stop the tears from coming even as she was led away.

•••

Ani flitted through the castle courtyard, moving from shadow to shadow. She had felt the Securitats coming. She had dreamed them, and then the dream became real. Luckily, she was practiced at slipping from her bedroom unnoticed, and had become adept at using a knotted rope to climb from the first-floor window to the ground. When she heard the door burst open, she was already halfway to St. Margaret’s Chapel, and by the time the alarm was raised, she was lifting the flagstone behind the altar and lowering herself into the tunnel. There had been no time to find a flashlight, and so she was in total darkness as she started to make her way, by memory and touch, back to the one Illyri who might be able to help her: Meia. She already knew that it was too late to warn Syl. It seemed to Ani that revealing to Meia the extent of her gift had somehow increased its potency, for she had been subduing it before in order to keep it a secret from others. Now she sensed Syl’s anguish, but there was nothing she could do for her, not yet. Later, perhaps, but her own priority was to stay out of the clutches of the Securitats, and find the spymistress.

As the darkness pressed in upon her, Ani thought that she had never liked Meia, had never trusted her because she could never sense her thoughts. Meia just always smelled of trouble and deceit.

All things considered, Ani concluded, she had probably been right.

•••

Syl was not taken to the Vaults, or to the Securitats’ interrogation rooms, or to any of the places usually reserved for prisoners. Instead, she found herself in Syrene’s chambers once again, this time alone. The light was dim and the air was strangely scented, an aroma at once familiar yet completely alien, an inherited memory given form. An enormous vase of flowers, the likes of which she had never seen before, stood on a polished oak table, their curling, tangled heads glowing softly in the moonlight, their outsize stamens drooping with thick, wet, heady pollen.

“Are they not beautiful?” said a silken voice, and there was a movement from the shadows at the back of the room. Syl had not heard Syrene enter, and the door had remained closed. Perhaps Meia was not the only one with knowledge of the castle’s secret ways, but Syl suspected that Syrene had no need of tunnels in order to move without being seen. She recalled the image of the ghost of the Red Witch standing over her, and her temples tingled unpleasantly at the memory.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think they’re beautiful at all.”

“They are called avatis blossoms,” said Syrene. “I grew them on the journey to Earth. They are of Illyr, just as you are. I felt that I needed a reminder of my home on this alien world. Perhaps, had you been surrounded by similar tokens, you might not have found yourself in this unfortunate situation. It strikes me that your father has fallen too much in love with this planet. It is he who has made a traitor of you. He planted a seed in your heart, and from it grew treachery.”

“No,” said Syl. “That’s not true.”

Syrene advanced. She raised a hand, as though to stroke the avatis. Instantly the heads of the flowers closed, and a puff of foul-smelling gas erupted from its leaves.

“It’s a defense mechanism,” said Syrene. “All species have one. The avatis is trying to protect itself, even though it’s already dying. It was dying from the moment it was cut and placed in this vase.”

She turned to face Syl.

“Your father too is dying. He was dying from the instant he fell in love with this planet. Away from the soil of Illyr, his influence and power have slowly waned, even though he did not realize it. Now his own daughter has dealt him the fatal blow.”

Syl’s cheeks burned. She lowered her eyes. There was a truth in what Syrene was saying, a terrible, humiliating truth. Syl had fatally undermined her father by committing an act of treason, even though she had believed it to be the right thing to do.

“My husband believes that your father planned the humans’ escape, and somehow contrived to have you do his dirty work,” said Syrene. “Is this true?”

“No,” said Syl. She breathed deeply. She would not cry again. She had cried enough that night.

“But you’re just a child! You could not have planned this venture alone.”

“I did.”

“Aided by your friend Ani.”

“It was my idea. I forced her to do it.”

“Really? From what I hear of your friend, I doubt that she could be forced to do anything she did not want to. But somebody aided you. Who gassed the guards?”

“We did.”

“Come, come. And you disabled the main surveillance system, too?”

“Yes.”

“I should like to know how you did that. If we were to take you to the control room, perhaps you could show us.”

“No,” said Syl. “I won’t. It’s a secret.”

“Oh! A secret? Of course.”

Syrene went to the drinks cabinet by the window. Among the bottles of whisky and wine now rested a number of curved decanters of liquids in various hues of amber that seemed lit from within. Syl had seen such bottles before. They contained Illyri cremos, a drink made from berries grown on Taleth, a distant moon of the Illyr system. It grew darker as it aged, and some of these bottles contained cremos that was very dark, and thus very old, and very valuable. Even Syl’s father—an Illyri so in love with Earth and its treasures that he owned vineyards of his own in France and Spain—prized cremos.

Syrene poured two glasses from the darkest of the bottles, and handed one to Syl.

“No, thank you.”

“Drink it,” said Syrene. “Don’t be ignorant, child. You could fill this glass with diamonds from Earth, and it would not be worth as much as the liquid that it now contains.”

Syl took the glass. As she raised it to her lips, she smelled cloves, cinnamon, and hints of plum and cherry, but she did not share this with Syrene. She did not think the Red Witch would find it amusing that the only points of reference she could find for the delicate scent of fine cremos were entirely terrestrial in origin. She sipped the drink. It tasted like she imagined sunset might: a deep, red, beautiful summer sunset.

“Sit,” said Syrene.

Syl did as she was told. Once more she faced the Red Witch across this table.

“Vena wants you to be handed over to her for interrogation,” said Syrene. “Marshal Sedulus feels the same way. I don’t think you’d enjoy their company very much.”

“No,” Syl admitted.

“I wouldn’t like it very much either,” said Syrene. “Did you know that Vena was rejected by the Sisterhood? A streak of cruelty that we found unappealing manifested itself during her novitiate. Cruelty is always a sign of weakness, and the Sisterhood has no time for weakness. You, on the other hand, are not cruel, and not weak. Tell me truly: why did you free those boys?”

“Because I did not want to see them die,” said Syl.

“Even though they had committed an atrocity?”

“They did not do it.”

“How do you know?”

“They told me so.”

“Before or after you rescued them?”

“After.”

“And you believed them? Why?”

“Because they had no reason to lie, not then.”

Syrene nodded. “Clever girl, and merciful. But innocent or guilty, Sedulus and Vena wanted them dead. Sedulus wishes to be unleashed on humanity. He thinks that by killing and tormenting, he will bend mankind to his will. Vena is his puppet, and she dances at his bidding. They are grotesquely alike. In the plans for the hanging, it had to be explained to Vena why it was important to know the height and weight of the person to be killed in order to calculate the length of rope required to break the neck. Vena could not understand why those boys should not have simply been left to strangle slowly.”

“But you wanted them to die too,” said Syl. “You and your husband.”

“Because it would serve our ends.”

“Which are?”

“Which are none of your business, but there is a difference between putting someone to death and making him suffer. Death can be painful, or relatively painless. I prefer the painless option. I am not cruel.”

The thought flashed through Syl’s head before she could stop it—
Oh, but you are cruel, and crueler than a thug like Vena could ever be, because you’re intelligent, and calculating. Vena is cruel because she’s flawed deep inside, but you’re cruel because you choose to be—
and she saw it mirrored on Syrene’s face, and the Archmage smiled at the truth of it.

“Tell me,” said Syrene, “how did you fool those guards into releasing the humans into your care?”

“We bluffed them.”

Syrene waved a hand in dismissal, as though the lie were little more than an insect to be swatted away.

“They claimed—or at least the three left alive claimed—that Vena herself came and took them away,” said Syrene. “They looked at you and your friend, and they saw Vena and a sergeant. That’s not bluffing, but something much deeper. That’s a gift, and you do not have it, because I’ve looked inside you.”

There was a lie there: Syl was certain of it. Syrene had indeed
tried
to look inside her, but she had blocked her. Meia had taught her well. Now, as she listened to Syrene, she began to build her wall again, hiding her secrets from the Red Witch’s prying intelligence.