Wormwood Gate (8 page)

‘That is like him,' murmured the queen, as if she were speaking to herself. Julie glanced back at the horse-head guard, who was watching intently from the back of the room. When their eyes met, he shook his head slightly and looked away.

The queen turned around. ‘A knife of cold iron. Traditional, but the Lord of Shadows is a traditional man. His family motto is “What I have, I hold,” but it might as well be “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”'

She barked out a dry laugh at this, and Julie summoned a half-hearted, nervous-sounding giggle. The queen raised an eyebrow and smiled, and once more Julie had the uncomfortable feeling of being on the verge of becoming somebody's lunch.

‘And the weapon,' said the queen, striding over to the leather chair and seating herself in it without ever moving her eye away from Julie, ‘where is it being held? I know you didn't bring it with you, either of you, so don't bother lying and saying you lost it. If cold iron had been brought through the Wormwood Gate, I would know.'

‘The … the plan was … to have it forged when we arrived here.'

The queen leaned forward. ‘Forged? Are you asking me to believe that you, little puny thing, can swing a blacksmith's hammer? Your companion is made of sturdier stuff, but even she is no smith.'

‘No, I meant … someone else is meant to forge it. Someone from here.'

The queen's face went blank. ‘Someone … from here?'

‘Yes.'

‘A citizen of the City of the Three Castles?'

‘Yes.'

The queen's eye narrowed. ‘Who?'

‘Um …' Julie dropped her head, thinking frantically. She had learned a few names along the way – or, rather, not names, since people in this strange place didn't use their real names, but things-to-be-called. She could tell the queen it was The Lungs, except merhorses didn't have hands so they could hardly forge knives. She could tell her it was Jo Maxi, or Prawo Jazdy, or that other one whose name she couldn't pronounce. Or all three of them.
It would serve them right too
, she thought.
They were going to sell us out to the queen; why not let them have a taste of their own medicine?

She looked up at the queen, who was staring at her with a merciless eye. ‘I don't know,' she said.

The queen stood up and walked towards her, her eye boring into Julie's. ‘Are you sure?' she said in a sweet, wheedling voice. ‘There's no way you could tell me?'

‘Like I said,' said Julie, and she could hear the tremble in her own voice now, ‘I don't know. The Lord of Shadows didn't –'

The queen grabbed her hair by the crown and dragged her across the carpet to the window, ignoring her struggles and her shrieks of pain. She pushed her up against the window so that her left cheek was squashed against the glass.

‘Do you see?' she hissed in Julie's ear. ‘Do you see?'

‘I – I – wh-what?'

‘Do you see a city?'

‘I – yes?'

‘No, you're wrong. You see
my
city. Mine, do you hear me? Now look down. Straight down.'

She loosened her grip so that Julie could move her head a little. Julie did as she was instructed and looked down, only to see – a cage, was it? Yes, a cage, hanging from what looked like a flagpole sticking out from the side of the tower. It was big enough to hold a personbut contained only a bundle of rags.

The queen tapped the glass with her fingernails. It should have just made a clicking noise, but something must have been strange about the glass, because it chimed, as loud and clear as a church bell. The bundle of rags shifted and moved and, to Julie's horror, a single eye looked up from a bruised and emaciated face.

‘That is what happened to the last person to oppose me. Do you understand?' the queen said quietly.

‘I – I –'

‘She was one of three, as was I, until I decided she was too willing to appease the Queen of Crows – too weak and foolish to be allowed to rule. There would be no more of this is-was-will-be nonsense any more. I'd be the one. Me, alone! I am the natural ruler of the city. And so I am, and so I will be. I challenged her in single combat, and when I won the battle, she begged me for the release of death, and I refused. I wanted everyone to know what would happen if they defied me!'

She let go of Julie's head and walked away. Julie peeled her face away from the glass but kept staring down at the shrunken body that had once been a queen. The eye stared up blankly towards her, not seeming to see her or anything else.

I'll help you
, Julie thought. Her hands were pressed against the glass in any case, so the queen couldn't see that she was raising one of them to swear an oath.
I'll help you somehow. I'll … I'll find a way to kill you so you can come back different. I swear it!

She hadn't said the words out loud, but she could feel them affecting her, a tightness gripping first her head, then the rest of her body, just as when she had sworn to leave the City with a better ruler than it had had when she arrived. The blank eye suddenly focused in sharply on hers, and the emaciated face bobbed up and down in a nod.

Oh, crap
, Julie thought.
I've got to stop doing that. This is going to make life difficult
.

She turned around, panting slightly, and leaned back against the glass. The queen was seated in the leather chair again, staring impassively at her. ‘Have you reconsidered? Do you remember who was to forge this knife for you?'

‘I – I was supposed to meet with Molly Red – she knew who it was. I wasn't told. Like I said, the Lord of Shadows only tells his servants what he wants them to know.'

‘Molly Red, eh? And when were you to meet that traitor?'

‘I … soon after we arrived. But, but, the time for the meeting's long gone now! I don't know where she is. She's … she's probably double-crossed us.'

The queen smiled, a satisfied sort of smile; Julie was half-expecting her to start licking her lips. ‘Once a traitor, always a traitor. He shouldn't have trusted her. Not after she betrayed me. Of course, she was his servant before she was mine …' Her eye went distant, and she bit her lip. It was an odd gesture, one that didn't fit the queen's normal posturing at all. ‘I had thought that perhaps … Ah, but no. No, that is irrelevant.' Her eye snapped into focus again. ‘And was Molly Red to aid you in coming close enough to harm me?'

‘Em. No. No, that part we were – I was supposed to figure that out for myself. Perhaps … I thought I'd try corrupting some of your guards.'

The queen laughed. ‘And a fine time you would have of it, since my guards are incorruptible! Isn't that right, guard?'

The horse-head guard bowed low and said, ‘Of course, Your Majesty. Incorruptible and …
fearless
.'

There was a strange emphasis in the way he said ‘fearless', and Julie felt her pulse leaping in her throat. She didn't dare look at the guard, with the queen still facing her, but when the queen swivelled her chair around and strolled over to a drinks cabinet in a corner of the room, Julie risked sending him a questioning glance.

The guard nodded – very slightly, but enough that she was sure she hadn't misunderstood.

‘What an incompetent attempt!' the queen said, laughing a little as she poured herself a brightly coloured drink. ‘What must the Lord of Shadows be … thinking …' Her voice trailed off and she pivoted smoothly on her heels, still holding the glass and the bottle, one in each hand. She stared at Julie with a blank expression for a moment that stretched out like chewing gum. Julie did her best to look gormless and uninformed. The queen tilted her head to one side, narrowed her eye, then shook her head with a chuckle and returned to her drink. ‘No, not you. If he has another plan – and if I know the Lord of Shadows at all, he has more than one – you are not part of it. Not wise enough. Not clever enough. Not strong enough.'

Julie wanted to protest, but there was too much at stake. ‘Now that I've told you what I know,' she said in as humble a tone as she could manage, ‘what will you do?'

The queen carried her drink to the chair and arranged herself in it so that one of her legs was hanging over one arm; to a casual glance the pose would look artless and lazy, but Julie could see that the queen could leap up from it in an eye-blink and go on the attack.

‘What shall I do?' the queen murmured, as if to herself. ‘What shall I do with a wayward spy, a failed assassin, an incompetent servant of my enemy? Why, whatever shall I do? So many uses I could put you to.' She giggled – a light, sweet sound that made Julie shiver, coming out of that cruel mouth. ‘So many ways I could punish you.'

When Julie was in primary school, her class had done a project on earthworms. Most of the class had been very dutiful in keeping and caring for their designated earthworms, but there had been a few boys and one or two girls who had taken pleasure in pricking them with pins, cutting them in two, tossing them about, leaving them exposed to air so that they dried out and died. It was the squirming they liked most. The more the worms moved, the more they looked like they were in pain, the more these children liked it.

I won't be your worm
, Julie thought as the queen's eye watched her and the edges of her mouth slipped downwards.
I gave you what you wanted, but I won't be your worm!

The queen abruptly shifted her body in the chair so that she was sitting upright and tossed back her drink in one swallow. ‘Very well,' she said, slamming the glass down on the table next to the chair. ‘How loyal are you to the Lord of Shadows?'

‘I'm not really loyal to him at all,' said Julie, quite pleased to be able to tell the truth.

‘And your companion?'

‘It's the same for her. We're … you could say we sort of fell into this. We don't really care what happens to the Lord of Shadows or his plans.'

‘Excellent,' said the queen, steepling her fingers, and the word and the gesture together reminded Julie so much of Mr Burns from
The Simpsons
that she had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing. ‘In that case,' the queen went on, ‘you won't object to working against him. Will you?' Julie shook her head. ‘Marvellous. Then I give you the following task: find Molly Red. Find out her plan. Find out whether she is still working for the Lord of Shadows; if she's not, find out who she is working for. Find these things out, and tell what you have learned to me or one of my loyal servants – and if you're not sure if the servant is loyal, assume he is not. Do you understand?'

Julie nodded. ‘And … what if I can't? Molly Red's pretty cunning. I might not be able to find her.'

‘You will find her. Or she'll find you. She has a way of knowing when she's being sought, which is why some people have great trouble finding her, but she's curious enough that she'll want to know why you're looking for her. Seek her with audacity, with persistence, with care, with diligence, and she will make herself known to you.'

‘I understand,' said Julie, ‘but what if I fail?'

The queen smiled. Julie was beginning to hate the sight of the queen's smile. ‘Your “companion” … I think you'd be sorry if anything
unpleasant
were to happen to her. Am I correct?'

Julie gasped and immediately cursed her foolishness; the queen's smile had broadened, and her eye was glittering with mirth. ‘Of course I am,' the queen went on. ‘I pride myself on my judgement of character. Yes, you and your … companion … you did claim that she knew nothing of your original mission; it would be foolish, then, to involve her in this new one. Don't you agree?' The smile vanished. ‘She stays in the cells until you return with accurate intelligence about Molly Red. After one moonrise with no information, I'll stop feeding her. After three, I'll release rats into her cell. Very
hungry
rats. Do you understand?'

‘Yes!' Julie cried, no longer bothering to pretend she didn't care.

‘Very well,' said the queen. She snapped her fingers. ‘Guard! Escort this spy to the exit, and inform the Seagull Patrol and the Dog Patrols to watch out for her. She is working for me, but she is not to be trusted.'

The horse-head guard bowed, although the queen couldn't see him from where she was sitting, and marched over to where Julie was standing. He made a face which Julie thought might have been apologetic – on a horse's face, it was hard to tell – and lifted her up over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.

Julie was too worn out to protest. She lay passively on his shoulder as he carried her through the queen's chamber, along the short corridor, and down the spiral staircase, until they were at a point that she thought was about halfway between the queen's floor and the ground, when he set her down carefully on a step.

‘Are you going to help me?' she said before he could speak.

‘I'd rather not,' he said with a sigh, ‘because no matter how many sandwiches short of a picnic your woman upstairs might be, she's still the queen, and she'll go through me for a shortcut if she finds out.'

‘But you want to, don't you? You want to be fearless.'

The guard looked away. ‘We're none of us happy with head-the-ball in charge of the city,' he muttered. ‘She's knocking down houses and building new ones twice as big and ten times as ugly, and us guards are run ragged just trying to keep up with the patrols.' He looked at her. ‘You were telling the truth the first time, weren't you? Yous two did come to the City by accident.'

‘Yes,' said Julie. ‘But that doesn't mean I don't want to help. I want to go home, but … I want to make things better first.'

‘Will you swear to it?'

‘I already have,' said Julie. ‘I swore I wouldn't leave the City until it had a better ruler than it had when I arrived, and I swore I'd help the old queen – the Queen-that-was, is that what you call her? The one in the cage – that I'd find a way to kill her so she could come back –'