Dark Mist Rising (22 page)

She had turned herself into a shuffling helpless crone – how? And was the change for the moment only or for ever?

My mother, the blood fresh on her lavender gown ...

My sister, alive and mad in the Country of the Dead – ‘
You don't belong here, not like this. But soon.'

My father, the bastard who had deserted both his children ...

No. Stop. No. Think
.

I was seventeen. My father had left my mother and me before I could remember him, and had never returned. My sister had been born eleven years ago. So my father was not also hers. She was my half-sister, and different
hisafs
must have fathered us. I tore through my memory, searching for ... what? Some recollection of a man with my mother and my six-year-old self watching, observing, noticing anything at all ... There was no memory.

Who was he?

Was Tom dead?

How could the ‘rogue
hisafs
' harness the power of the Dead unto themselves? Could my sister really be used to aid in that unholy quest?

And when would the torture start?

Around and around my thoughts went, and the sun beat down, and the ale sloshed in its barrel, and dust rose up from the track and enveloped me in a dry, choking fog.

When the sun stood high in the sky, we stopped. I was given meat and bread, plus a long draught of water that was the sweetest thing I had ever drunk. After that, everyone ignored me. The savage sat apart and was served by the driver. Every line of the driver's body spoke his dislike of this duty, but it was clear who was in command here. When we resumed travel after the noon meal, one of the other soldiers of the Purple joined the driver on the wagon seat. I pretended to be asleep and listened to their low conversation.

‘Fucking prince, he thinks he is.'

‘Shut up. He will hear.'

‘He don't hear us here, ye idiot.'

‘They hear everything. Anyways,
he
will hear.'

‘He be asleep.'

I snored loudly.

‘What'd he do, anyways?'

‘Dunno. The Young Chieftain wants him, is all I know or care.'

‘Ye care only for the triple pay.'

‘By damn, I do. And ye, too. Samuel, when we reach Tidewell, will ye ... will ye stay with the army?'

A long pause. ‘Will ye?'

‘I asked ye first.'

Another pause, even longer. Then Samuel said, ‘I will desert if ye will. After we get our pay.'

‘A bargain? Seal it.'

I heard spitting and hand-slapping. Were these soldiers typical? Was most of the army of The Queendom held under savage command only by the promise of triple pay? I could easily believe that. So the Young Chieftain could hope to hold The Queendom by force only briefly.

Why would he even ... ?

I knew the answer. He was here to claim his six-year-old bride, his future hold on The Queendom. And to take his revenge on me for his father's death.

At nightfall we reached Tidewell, a poor fishing village somewhere on the coast. I slept on the floor of a cottage, its terrified owner having been roughly evicted. My ankle was chained to the bed occupied by a savage soldier. There were more savages here, entire cadres, and the princess's Purples were paid. The next morning they had gone.

The savage singer-turned-warrior never came near me. Not yet. Perhaps he did not trust himself.

For a few weeks we travelled south-west, our travel slowed by the cumbersome wagons and by many long halts. By the third day I knew, from the arc of the late-summer sun, where we were headed. Each night we stayed at a village or inn, and the folk of The Queendom were ousted from their beds and kitchens. But no one, as far as I could observe, was harmed or robbed, and the savage soldiers left the women alone. Even absent, the Young Chieftain kept the same strong discipline among his troops that his father had kept. If there were soldiers at the villages, they left with us at dawn the next day. And so the number of savages around my supply wagon grew, until they were a small army.

Now a boy, a younger singer with red dye on his face and twigs braided into his hair, stood in the bed of my wagon. The soldiers marched all day, tireless. The singer chanted, with equal tirelessness, the same song that I had heard three years ago, at The Queendom's first sight of the savage army under Lord Solek.

Now there were two groups of people with reason to kill me.

The soldiers patrolling the ramparts wore purple, but those guarding the bridges were all savages, dressed in their furs and feathers, their
guns
on their backs and their curved knives at their belts. We passed over the bridges, through the crowded cacophony of the city, and through a high wooden door into the quiet of the palace.

I tried to sit up on the wagon bed, but a savage soldier pushed me roughly down again. So all I saw of the palace was the sky above and the upper storeys of buildings. Gardens festooned some of the flat roofs, but no people appeared. I had no idea where I was among the vast, sprawling, exquisite courtyards of my memory. As Queen Caroline's fool, I had seen all of the palace – except the dungeons. Fear gripped me. Was that where we were headed now?

It was not. The wagon stopped and a savage hauled me, just as if I were a sack of grain, through a door. He dropped me on the floor. I hit my head and for a moment saw nothing but swirling colours. Then a woman cried, ‘Roger?'

My vision cleared. Bending over me was the broad, ruddy, utterly incredulous face of head laundress Joan Campford. She had recognized me despite my beard, my sunburn, my filth.

‘Clean it,' the savage said, the words barely under-standable through his thick accent. A flash of knife and my bonds were cut. A kick of his boot and I tumbled, numb from being so long bound, into the pool of the laundry where I had once worked. I flailed madly until I could stand, waist deep in soapy water, surrounded by soaking bed sheets.

Without a moment's hesitation, Joan waded her stout personage into the pool beside me and handed me a lump of the rough yellow soap I knew so well. ‘Roger, lad, be ye all right? We all thought ye dead!'

‘Clean! Clean!' the savage soldier said.

‘Hold your piss-soaked tongue,' Joan said, but her back was to the soldier and her words were muttered. The next ones addressed me. ‘They all said ye be dead, lad, and such terrible things – that ye be a witch, that ye be a traitor, that ye ... Faughhh! He's naught but Roger the queen's fool, I said, and before that he was Roger the laundress, and the best worker I ever had!'

‘Clean! Clean!' The savage brandished his knife.

I stripped off my filthy tunic and, below the sudsy water and floating cloths, my boots and breeches and small clothes. The yellow soap stung, just as I remembered. I said to Joan, ‘Thank you.'

‘I told them, I did – I told them that I saw ye kill Lord Solek! With my own eyes I saw it! Ye led the ... the magic illusions that did the deed! Be ye now a prisoner then? The Young Chieftain holds the palace.'

‘I know,' I said, and ducked under the water to scrub my hair. Also to avoid any more talk. Joan had always been kind to me, in her rough way. She knew as well as I what must happen to me now. Had this been one of the washing areas built out over the river, I might have swum out under the palace walls, as I had once swum in under them. But this was an enclosed soaking pool, full of bed sheets, and there was no escape. When I surfaced, Joan knelt beside the pool, scrubbing my clothing. Her eyes watched me with sadness.

But hope survives in even the most desperate places. Why would the savages make me bathe if I were going to be killed? Did torturers have such delicate noses that my stink would offend them as they tore at my bones and blood and nerves?

When my guard judged me clean enough, he said, ‘Out! Out!' I came out. Joan followed and handed me a towel. I dressed again in my wet clothes. My little shaving knife was still in the inner pocket of one waterlogged boot, but it did me no good. The savage retied my arms behind my back. Then, because it was all I could say to her, I whispered to Joan, ‘Goodbye.'

Her eyes filled with tears as the savage led me away.

Through the laundry courtyard. Then the courtyard of the baths. Then courtyard after courtyard – I knew exactly where we were at any given moment. But where were the people? The courtyards, each becoming more elaborate as we left the servants' part of the palace and walked through that of the courtiers, were all empty. Not so much as a gardener or pageboy or carpenter was to be seen. Only a few savage soldiers patrolling the rooftops. The palace was the reverse of the Country of the Dead – all structures, no inhabitants – but just as silent. The only sound was my guard's boots, first on cobblestone and then on painted tiles, and the soft squish of my wet feet in my wet boots.

But then we came to the royal apartments, and I had my answer.

The massive carved doors to the throne room, three storeys tall, stood open. Inside the enormous room, torches and candles along the walls made twilight almost as bright as day. The nobility stood massed on both sides of the throne dais, just as I remembered from Queen Caroline's reign, but now they wore purple instead of green. Purple velvets, satins, brocades, silks. The gowns of the ladies were cut low over their breasts; the tunics of the courtiers were slashed over cloth of gold; the long robes of the elderly advisers were richly embroidered at hems and full sleeves. And all of them were utterly silent.

Along the left wall stood the servants of the palace, scrubbed and clad in whatever passed for their best. Cooks, gardeners, kitchen maids, carpenters, serving men, couriers, grooms, scrub women, ladies' maids. I recognized some of them. The faces of the few who recognized me went slack with shock.

Scattered among the silent crowd were soldiers dressed in purple but carrying
guns
. Before now I had seen soldiers of The Queendom serving the savage army, but never before had I seen them carrying
guns
. What did the people think of those who turned against their own folk?

But I already knew.

At the door to the vast room, the savage relinquished me to another, a captain in helmet and metal armbands, a short feathered cape over his sleeveless fur tunic. He seized my arm and pulled me forward. And so we walked that whole huge length of the hall, all eyes upon us: a captain of the conqueror and a traitor of the conquered, and not one person made a single sound.

I kept my eyes straight ahead. On the dais stood a sacrilege: not one but two thrones.

When we reached the dais, the captain pulled me to one side. A murmur rose behind me, so faint that it might have been a breeze ruffling the arras, rather than the mutterings I knew it to be. The savage kept tight hold of my arm. We all waited. Everyone apparently knew what we waited for. And now, with a sickening lurch of my belly, so did I.

The servants standing closest to the massive doors must have heard it first. Their gazes turned towards the courtyard outside, and those furthest away turned their heads and took on the expressions of people listening hard. Then all of us could hear it. For me, the throne room took on the aspect of a dream, something between memory and fresh experience. For I had seen this all before, three years ago, and to see it again was to believe for a moment that I was again Roger the fool, the boy who understood nothing instead of the man who understood too much.

A boy singer entered first. He wore red dye on his face and twigs in his hair. He could have been the singer from three years ago – except that particular singer had become a man and a soldier, and a dog from the Country of the Dead had torn into his throat and ripped out his eye. But even this voice, powerful enough to reach to the high vaulted ceiling and echo off the stone walls, was the same.