The Stolen Child (48 page)

And then she realised that she was not alone.  S
tanding
beside her, Arsha reached out to take her hand.  
The girl looked
frightened, but
she held
her ground.

“I
wasn't sure
...” Rachael began, a guilty feeling twisting her stomach.  She couldn't seem to get the words out.

“Yes you
were
,” Justin said.  “I'll always come for you.  You know that.”

He spoke calmly, but as his eyes fixed on hers she saw the turmoil behind that gaze.  The uncertainty.  The hurt.  She had doubted him, and he knew it.

“I believe it.  I believe it now,”
s
he said, uncomfortable with the tacit admission.

“It's OK,”
h
e said, a little of his affected arrogance slipping away.  “I
shouldn't have left you
...”

“Just... Shut up,”
s
he said.  His eyes flickered towards the guardsmen now pushing their way through the crowd at the door.

“We should go,”
h
e said.

“Yeah.”

“And her?”
h
e nodded to Arsha.  Rachael turned to look her sister in the eye.

“It's your choice,”
s
he said, keeping her voice as level as she could.  To her astonishment, Arsha barely blinked.  The girl's eyes were cool and hard.

“I said I was coming with you.  No matter what,”
s
he said.  Still, Rachael couldn't help notice the way she avoided looking at Justin when she spoke.

“OK,” Justin said.  “Let's go.”

Glancing back, Rachael noticed Manindra and
Naveen
.  When the rest of the court fled, they had remained.  So too had the crew of the Triskelion.  Micah, Ilona, Abasi and Milima all watched them
from the tiered seats
.  Not one of them said a word, but Rachael got the feeling they were holding their tongues, waiting to see what
happened next
.  Even Maya had remained, lurking at the very back of the room,
Rukiya
standing before her with
her
blade held firmly in one hand.

Naveen also had his
sword drawn, and
was
edging forwards slowly.  
His
father stood back, with an expression that seemed almost awestruck.

Justin looked at
Naveen's towering form,
and just shook his head.

“Don't,”
h
e said.

Though she could see his hands trembling,
Justin's
eyes remained fixed and calm.  Watching the way he projected that cool demeanour, Rachael found herself achingly aware of how desperately she had missed him.

A clatter of heels against the marble alerted them to the guards breaking through into the chamber.  They had lightning ballistas cradled in their arms.  Taking advantage of the moment,
Naveen
advanced
a step
and Rachael saw that even Ilona half-raised a hand, as if to level the arc-gauntlet that she had been forced to leave behind.

Justin's reaction was immediate.  He stepped between the girls, a hand pushing each of them back a step.

“The podium,”
h
e said sharply.  She didn't have time to ask what he meant, as instantly he began to change.  A heartbeat later the giant raven dominated the chamber once more, claws gouging thin lines into the marble floor.

Turning to glance back, Rachael saw what he meant.  The magistrate's podium stood high above the courtroom floor.  From there they would be able to climb onto his back.  Taking Arsha's hand, she dashed up the steps as Justin moved towards the guards.

He let out another ear-splitting cry, and
as the guards staggered
he
swept his wings forward in flashing arcs of glistening black feathers.  Naveen darted forward with an angry roar.  Then the wing-tip caught him in the chest, hurling him across the chamber.  There was a painful sound as he struck the far wall and fell to the floor.  His sword clattered to the ground.  Micah was scrambling over the benches, unarmed but still making a beeline towards herself and Arsha.  It was strange how easily she expected his thoughtless heroism.  Still she felt a wave of relief when Ilona tackled him, pinning the man to a bench, clear of the fighting.

The other wing swept through the guardsmen, not striking any directly but flooring them all with the clap of air that followed hard in its wake.  Rachael felt a rush of excitement as she saw weapons knocked from hands.  One man kept his grip, and from a
prone
position
he
pointed the lightning ballista upwards to fire.  Justin simply reached down with his curved black beak and plucked the gun from the man's hands.  There was a snap, and two halves of the
weapon
fell to the ground.

Forcing herself to look away, despite the giddy rush she felt at seeing Justin so thoroughly demolishing the
grey
coated guardsmen, Rachael clambered up the podium, hauling a dumbstruck Arsha with her.  As they clambered onto the
Lord Inquisitor's
desk, she glanced back and saw that the
old man
had not left the room
after
all.  Below the back edge of the raised dais he was huddled against the wall, a frightened look in his eyes.  It almost seemed impossible that it could be same man who had commanded the entire chamber into hushed silence with every word.  Now Rachael saw the way his skin sagged around his eyes, the way his wrinkled hands shook.  He looked up and met her gaze.  She wanted to turn away, ashamed of seeing him like this.  She wanted to say something
cruel
.  Something comforting.  Something proud.  There were no words that could encompass everything she was feeling.  She turned to look at Justin, as he swept his wings back once more and ruffled his feathers, the gesture making her think of the way he would flick his hair back.

A guard made to scramble for his gun.  The clack of claws against marble seemed to send a clear enough message.  The chamber belonged to Justin.  He turned his head back and forth, sweeping his gaze about the benches, daring someone to answer his challenge.  
T
he room seemed to hold its breath.  Micah had ceased struggling, though Ilona still kept his arm pinned behind back, her eyes watching Justin cautiously.  Abasi and Milima watched with the same cautious expressions.  Only Manindra seemed curiously unafraid.  In his eyes she saw only a burning hunger.  He seemed not even to have noticed that
his
son lay in a crumpled heap at the back of the chamber.

Then Maya stepped forwards.  
As she pulled her white scarf back, Rachael saw a sadness in her expression
.  Her bodyguard was already dashing forward to interpose herself between Justin and the young woman.

When Maya spoke, the world seemed to ring like a bell.  Rachael staggered, nearly falling off the podium.  She saw Justin shaking his head, as if trying to stop the sound from
hammering
in his ears.

Again Maya opened her mouth, but no words came out.  Or at least no words that she could hear.  She knew somehow that the woman had spoken, but the words seemed as if they would not fit inside her head.  Again there was something that went beyond sound, making the whole
world
shake.  Her stomach churned and her head swam.  Everything seemed to be moving slowly, as if the air had turned to syrup.

Again Maya's mouth opened, the soundless words forming.  Blood red tears were tracking down the woman's face.  Rachael heard Justin's shriek of pain, slicing through the ringing echoes in her head.  Black smoke boiled off of his body, and he seemed to flicker
like an old television
.  Like he was there and not,
at the same time
.  
For the briefest of instants,
instead of the vast form of the raven there
was
only a boy, on his knees,
screaming
in pain.

Then the raven lunged, curved beak darting forward.  In the blink of an eye
Rukiya
was there, pushing Maya away.  Rachael saw blood as Justin's beak closed around the woman's leg.  He flicked his head up, tossing
Rukiya
aside like a doll.  Sprawled on the floor, Maya looked up at him
with
eyes wide in terror as Justin drew back his head to strike again.

Rachael felt her mouth moving, felt more than heard herself shouting at Justin to stop.  For a moment, he hesitated.  Then Maya's lips moved.  This time she did not speak the words.  
S
he shouted them, at the top of her lungs.  Rachael's head swam, and she fel
t herself falling, tumbling down from the podium onto the cold floor of the chamber
.  When her head stopped swimming, the raven was gone.  Justin lay on his side, curled into a tight little ball of pain, his black coat spilling out around him.
Hazily, she noticed that the floor was still covered in brightly coloured shards of glass.
 

She looked up to see Maya standing over her, swaying unsteadily.  The woman fell to her knees, drops of blood falling from her chin.  She felt the woman's hand cradling the back of her neck, lifting her head a little.  Enough for them to look each other in the eyes.
 

“...
B
ecause I saw what would happen if I didn't.”  The woman gasped, her voice barely more than a whisper.  “And I couldn't imagine anything that could be worse.  
I'm sorry, Rachael.  I'm so sorry.
”

She heard the words, but they seemed like something distant, like a conversation overheard.  Just a fading echo.  
It seemed as if all the sound had been sucked out of the world.  
She wanted to
lash out at the woman, punch her, kick her, spit on that delicate face.  But it was all so pointless.  All her rage seemed to float around her, empty and useless.  Her arms and legs felt numb.  Her chest seemed to have a weight pressing down on it.
 

She saw the guards gathering
up
their weapons, saw them close in
from all sides
.  
Maya was lifted to her feet, carried away by men with nervous expressions.  
She saw
the
men coming to take herself and Arsha.  She didn't fight.  She couldn't.  Her legs didn't seem to work any more.  One of the men
hauled her to her feet and began to drag her away
.  
S
he couldn't tear her eyes away from Justin's face, that look of agony turning to shame.  She saw tears forming in his eyes as his hands clenched tight, knuckles showing white.  Then they passed through the doors, out into the streets, and everything seemed to pass in a blur.

She remembered the tower, hovering above them, seeming to sway and bend, until she realised it was the tears blurring her vision.  She remembered clean white hallways of frosted glass.  Stairways cut into the substance of the tower, leading them upwards.  A room, a bed.
 

She passed in and out of consciousness.  Doctors came and went, testing her, injecting her, and scratching notes on white paper.  Strange devices flickered and hummed.  Whispered conversations as more notes were made.  Then another injection, and she faded out again.

Eyes finally crept open on a small room that seemed to have been hollowed out from the milky green glass of the tower.  It was hard to make the shape of it come into focus.  The angles all
seemed to be slightly wrong.  She was surrounded by crisp white linens.  The bed, like the small night-stand, were carved from some kind of ghostly pale wood.
 

Slowly, she got to her feet.  Her clothes had been left folded on a chair by the door.  She felt stiff, and sore, like she'd been lying in bed for days.
 

A simple curtain covered the doorway.  Pulling it aside, Rachael stepped through into another hauntingly sterile room.  A large window seemed to blend into the walls around it, as if the glass had simply been worn thin in that spot.  White lace curtains framed the window on either side.  Four chairs had been arranged around a small table.  The furnishings were simple, all of them carved of the same sale pale white wood.  Across the room from her stood a second doorway, just like the one she had come through.
 

Standing at the window, Rachael looked down into the streets below.  The sun shone down from a clear blue sky, and for a moment the lifeless city seemed almost beautiful.  Though they were higher than the tallest buildings around them, she could still make out the people and the carriages clearly.  She wondered if one of them would be carrying the crew of the Triskelion back to the ship.  She decided that by now they were probably already gone.
 

She looked down at her hands, and saw that they were shaking.  In the silence, she heard the soft shuffling of bare feet on the smooth floor.  Rachael looked up as Arsha slipped past the curtain that covered her door.  For a moment the girl paused, surprised.
 

Neither of them said a word.  There was a scraping sound as
Arsha pulled a chair away from the small table and fell into it.  Rachael turned to face the window again, watching the carriages drift through the streets.
 

“
Do you think they'd bring us something to eat?  If we asked?”
 

Arsha's voice was hoarse and thin, barely a whisper.
 

“
Maybe,” Rachael said.
 

From the corner of her eye she could see the way that Arsha stared at the blank tabletop.  
The girl
seemed to have been hollowed out, like a perfectly carved model of herself.

“So, what now?” Arsha said, at last.

Rachael blinked in surprise.

“What now?” Arsha repeated, with a helpless shrug.

“What do you mean, 'what now?'  Like I'm supposed to know?”

Arsha shrugged.  The movement was so tiny that Rachael almost missed it.
 

“
You're the one who's good at this stuff,” she whispered.  “Not me.”