The Queen's Necklace (67 page)

Raith described the situation briefly. “But if you mean to ask what is to happen to
you
, that is entirely your own decision. You are free to go wherever you will.”

“Does that include accompanying you on your journey north?”

“It does,” the Leveller replied, as he folded and sealed the letter, “if you are not heartily sick of my company by now—as I had rather assumed you were.”

“That is beside the point,” Luke answered coldly. “You say there may be some disaster brewing in Winterscar or Nordfjall, and I agree. It may even be that my home in Tarnburgh is the center of the trouble. If so, I may be needed there. I believe that by travelling with you, I will arrive much sooner than I might otherwise. You have a way of—removing all obstacles in your path.”

“As you say,” Raith answered calmly. He picked up his letter and rose from his seat. “And perhaps someday you may even forgive me for what has passed between us—forgive Captain Blackheart, too, for killing a man you so ardently wished to see dead.”

Luke glared up at him, far from mollified. “I suppose you will say that Lord Flinx is just as dead this way as if I had killed him myself.”

Raith paused with one hand on the brass door-knob, and considered a moment before he spoke. “I might say that, if I wished to annoy you.” He opened the door and stepped over the threshold. “As I do not wish to do anything of the sort, I think I must be content saying nothing at all.”

The next several days saw the departure of Sir Bastian, and the rest of the party roaming the docks in search of a vessel to carry
them north. This close to midsummer it ought to have been easy to book a passage, but it proved unexpectedly difficult to find a ship that was even heading in the right direction.

“There be no safe passage by Lichtenwald,” said one old salt, whom they met perched on a piling down by the water, carving a walking-stick out of the backbone of a shark. “There were a shipwreck near Zutlingen, all hands lost, and they do say a fleet of fishing boats went out from Ilben two month past and they never come back again.”

Wilrowan frowned at this ominous piece of information. The people of Lichtenwald were known to be cautious and discreet, and they never discussed the properties of their Jewel. Yet it was a fact known throughout the world that wood acquired a special buoyancy near the coast of Lichtenwald, and that the jagged off-shore rocks actually appeared to
repel
ships. A ship lost or wrecked in those waters could mean only one thing.

An ancient beldame boiling chowder in an iron pot outside a tavern provided Will's friends with equally unwelcome news. With bloody revolutions going on in Nordfjall and Kjellmark, another one brewing in Winterscar, those who believed there was money to be made, by selling weapons or hiring themselves out as mercenaries, were already on their way. “All other folk means t'stay clear. At least so long as t'Goblin Queen rules in Tarnburgh.”

Lili and Raith exchanged a glance.

“The Goblin Queen, is that what they call her?” Lili felt a shiver across her skin, as though there were something fateful in that name, as though it was solely to meet this creature—be she woman or Gobline—and to test her powers, whatever they might be, that Lili herself had been taught by the Specularii all of these years.

The question remained how to reach Tarnburgh and effect that meeting. Three long days of fruitless enquiry passed before the travellers finally met a wood-carver who gave them encouraging news.

“There be t'
Pagan Queen
just in from Finghyll and dropped
anchor out t'bay. By all accounts she'm sailing south.” As he spoke, he put the finishing touches on the outstretched wing of a harpie figurehead, which he was chiseling out of an immense block of white elm. “But that Captain Pyke—they do say he'll do anything for money, you pay him enough.”

There was a momentary brightening, followed by flat despair. Will, Raith, and Blaise held a hurried conference down on a windy stretch of shingle beach, where their party had gathered to exchange information. From this vantage point they could see the
Queen
herself, looking more leaky and disreputable than ever, as she rode the waves just within the mouth of the bay, where she had dropped anchor. For all that, she might have been a world away for all the good she seemed likely to do them. How could they possibly raise between them a sufficient sum to offer the sea captain? Their separate journeys had already lasted longer, had proved far more expensive than anyone anticipated when they first left home. They were already reduced to pawning some rings and other small valuables, along with selling the horses, in order to pay their passage. A bribe for Captain Pyke was an unforeseen expense. To make matters worse, they had only until the tide turned the following morning to accomplish all this. How were they to do it?

“Allow me,” said Luke, breaking in. With the wind ruffling his dark hair and raising the skirts of his velvet coat, he drew out the wallet he carried in an inside pocket. For the last month, he and Tremeur, as the Leveller's prisoners, had been travelling at Raith's expense; the better part of the very large sum he had drawn before leaving Luden was still intact. “I believe that I have enough here to bribe a far greedier man than Captain Pyke.”

It was decided that Luke and Raith, being acquainted with the captain, would row out to the
Queen
in order to effect the negotiations. This they did successfully, securing a passage as far as Ottarsburg in Nordfjall, though at a considerable cost. The others were
pleased to notice that Lucius—having found a way to make himself useful—was in a slightly better temper for the next two hours.

At nightfall, they all went aboard with their baggage, paying two stout boatmen to row them out. The other passengers were just vacating their cabins under vigorous protest, having only just been informed that the ship would be heading north instead of south as planned. When the hubbub died down, the newcomers found that there was ample room to make themselves comfortable, even on a ship so lacking in amenities as the
Pagan Queen
.

Wilrowan went below almost immediately. He had been very quiet, even morose, all evening. Even Luke Guilian and his stinging remarks had failed to provoke a response. Among the rumors they had gathered on the docks there was a story that the Queen of Mountfalcon was dead, that Dionee had died miscarrying what would have been a fine boy, King Rodaric's heir.

“But we have heard so many improbable stories,” Lili said soothingly, when she joined him in their cabin. “And so many contradictory accounts. Wilrowan, they can't
all
be true, so why believe this one?”

“Because it
is
true, because I know it to be true,” Will said bleakly, throwing himself down on the lower bunk and shading his eyes with one hand. “I saw death in her face when I took my leave of her—though I tried to convince myself it wasn't so. The strain of these last few months—” He passed his palm over his eyes, dashing away the tears. “We may call it, perhaps, a merciful release, if what we have seen elsewhere has come to Mountfalcon, and Dionee holding herself to blame. But to those of us who remain behind—” He choked and could not continue.

Lili did not know what to say, she had no words of comfort to give him, for she had a similar heartache of her own. She had not yet given up hope that Nick might still be alive, that he had somehow been elsewhere when the Rouge-Croix was destroyed, but every day a small part of that hope died, and she came a little closer to believing that he was dead.

A
lone with Luke in the close confines of the next cabin, Tremeur prepared for bed while he paced. She was all too aware of his increasing coldness, had been growing daily more distressed by the dawning realization that some deep cause of bitterness lay between them. Now, as she put on her night-dress and slipped between the damp sheets of her narrow bunk, the fact that Luke took such care not to look at her filled her with such unbearable pain that she was finally impelled to speak out.

“Luke,” she said softly—barely audible over the creaking and the shuddering of the ship, “when we land in Ottarsburg, when the rest of you go on to Winterscar, would it not be better if I stayed behind?”

He stopped his restless pacing, caught off guard by this suggestion—which, to do him justice, had never occurred to him. “If you stayed behind? It may well be that we are going into danger, and if there was anywhere, anywhere safe for you to stay until I could come back for you—but what would become of you in Nordfjall, where you have no friends, where no one knows you?”

“I was thinking of you. You are going home, and who knows what trouble you may find when you get there? If you have the additional worry of explaining
me
, to your cousin the king and all the rest—”

He smiled a twisted smile. “I'm very much afraid that when we finally arrive, affairs in Winterscar will have reached such a crisis that explaining you—your unfortunate past, our questionable marriage—will be the very last thing that anyone cares about.” Shrugging out of his velvet coat, he pretended for a moment to be absorbed in a rent he discovered at the back. Then he shook it out, and hung it up on a peg by the door.

“I was thinking of you,” Tremeur said again, this time with a catch in her voice. “I will be an additional burden on you.”

Finding himself embarrassed for an answer, for once in his life, Luke stood silent, slowly unfastening the six silver buttons on his satin-twill waistcoat. He had been hoping—he did not quite know how—that she had not and would not guess any of the things he was thinking or feeling. He wished that he might explain to her
why
he felt as he did, that he might reassure her it was no fault of hers that he, who prided himself on his originality, should turn out to be such a petty, conventional man. But every time he had thought about speaking, the words caught in his throat, and he realized that the confusion in his own mind was still too great. If he could not justify his feelings to himself, then how could he possibly hope to explain them to her? Sitting down on the edge of her bunk, he pulled off his top-boots, one after the other, placing them very carefully side by side on the floor.

“Why should you think so?” he said at last.

She made a wide gesture with her hands. “These past weeks, the weeks ahead—perhaps it is selfish to even think so, when we see so much misery around us—but you have to admit it has been exciting—truly a marvelous adventure. Far better than anything we imagined when we were back in Luden. You ought to be enjoying it more than you are, and the reason you
can't
must have something to do with me.”

Luke turned to face her with a defeated sigh. “It
is
an adventure,
but it doesn't seem to be
my
adventure. It belongs to men like Captain Blackheart and Blaise Trefallon. I'm only a spectator. I always thought that if the opportunity arose, I would play a far more dashing role, but the truth is—I'm woefully inadequate. Worse still, while I was gadding about the world searching out imaginary plots, that woman my cousin Jarred has married was hatching her monstrous schemes back home—where I
ought
to have been, where I might have proved useful.” He took one of Tremeur's hands in both of his, applied a light, reassuring pressure. “Now how, may I ask, are
you
to blame for any of that?”

Yet he did blame her and they both knew it. He felt that all of his folly, all of his pretensions, were mercilessly exposed. Unfortunately, the woman he loved had been there to see it all. That might be a small sin, compared to certain other sins in her past, but oddly enough it was the one that he found it the hardest to forgive.

At daybreak, the ship set sail; a strong wind sent her scudding north. The days grew longer and longer, the nights were hardly nights at all. They expected to reach Winterscar at the midpoint of the year, at the height of summer.

The
Queen
hugged the coast for much of the journey. Only when they reached Kjellmark would they tack westward across the Mare Frigorium. In the meantime, the wind from the shore too often brought the scent of burning, and great black smokes and other signs of disaster could be seen in most of the settlements as they sailed on past.

One bright morning, Lili met Raith strolling on the upper deck. After an exchange of courtesies, she fell into step beside him. “I wonder,” she said, “if I might ask you some questions? If I am too curious, please tell me so at once, but I must say, sir, that I find you something of a puzzle.”

Raith smiled down at her. “You mean to ask, no doubt, about the anomaly of an Anti-Demonist magician.”

Lili shook her head. “No. That is unusual, of course, but there is something else. Something I can't help regarding as even more mysterious.” Her brown velvet cloak was whipping around in the wind, but the day was fine, and she felt little need of it.

“You see, I thought that I recognized you that first day, when you stepped forward to claim the Rijxlander Jewel. I asked Sir Bastian, and he said that you
were
the one who guided me through the underground maze when I was initiated. But he also told me things that I found—entirely remarkable. I hope you will forgive him, and not feel that he has betrayed your confidence, but he thought it might be necessary for me to know these things, considering the dangers we may very well face together in the near future.”

“Of course,” said Raith, as calm as ever, as though the matter of which they were speaking were of very little account—and not likely to result in his execution anywhere in the world, if the truth became known. “That was very wise of him. Then as to the question you hesitate to ask me: perhaps you wish to know how a—person like myself ever came to align himself on the side of good?”

“Not precisely that. Sir Bastian tells me there are undoubtedly hundreds, perhaps even thousands of your people alive in the world, most of them living the most blameless lives. Even if he had
not
told me that, it would be impossible for me to believe that any race of beings could be entirely given over to evil. No, what I wish to ask is how anyone—be he Man or Goblin—could dedicate himself to a cause which is so clearly in conflict with the best interests of his own kind.”