They were to travel to the party with King Hoff and the rest of the royal family in a fleet of their sledges. Dacha and three other guards were waiting for them at the palace entrance. Four guards should be enough, Cass thought nervously.
The mansion was only a short sledge ride away. The house itself was set back behind a courtyard garden, like the grand houses in the Islands, and protected from the street by high walls. The courtyard was lit up with torches and every window in the house was filled with candles and oil lamps. It had started to snow again; big fat flakes that drifted gently down from the sky.
It was the first large public engagement that Cass had been to with Arden and she wasn’t quite prepared for all the fuss. The party was being held in a grand room at the back of the house and their route to the room was lined with people who bowed and curtsied to King Hoff and Arden. Once they entered the room, the king took Arden’s hand, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our dear friend Arden, formerly princess of our great allies Pinoa and now Queen Arden of Minaris.”
There was cheering and everyone rushed forwards to speak to Arden. Cass stood at her side and slightly behind – not near enough to hear conversations properly but close enough if Arden needed anything. Servants were circulating, carrying large silver platters of food and goblets of winter wine. Arden reached for one. Musicians played as they walked between the groups and jugglers and tricksters kept everyone entertained.
Arden greeted many people, but after a while they fell back and she became absorbed in an intense conversation with an elderly gentleman who she appeared to know very well. They spoke in low voices so Cass couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Arden had finished her winter wine and turned briefly to Cass, to hand her the glass. “Could you get me another, please, Cass?”
“Of course,” Cass replied but at that moment a serving girl appeared with four glasses arranged on her tray. She picked one off and handed it to the queen. It wasn’t customary for a servant to hand glasses to a queen and Cass was about to object. But Arden took it and began to drink, so Cass stepped back.
It was about ten minutes later that Cass noticed Arden swaying a little and her hand reaching up to her head. “Cass, could you fetch me a glass of water?” she said. Cass went straight to the kitchen, returning a few moments later.
“Thank you,” Arden replied, taking the cold glass immediately and drinking from it.
She’s very pale, Cass thought with concern. I hope she isn’t ill like Tiger.
“You don’t look well, Your Majesty. Come, let us sit down,” the elderly courtier said as he led her over to some seats.
Arden sat down gratefully. “My apologies. My other lady-in-waiting is unwell and I rather fear that I have caught her illness. I think I’ll return home. Let me just go and tell King Hoff, and Cass, will you arrange for a sledge?”
Cass nodded and rushed out of the room. She found Dacha hovering with the other guards.
“The queen is ill,” she told them. “Can one of you fetch a sledge?”
“Of course,” Dacha said, sounding concerned. “Can she walk? Does she need help?”
“You might want to come and take her arm and perhaps we should send for a doctor?” Cass was about to turn and go back in but Arden appeared on the arm of the elderly gentleman.
“Ah, Dacha,” she said. “Will you come with me to the sledge? And Cass, please could you try and find where they’ve put my furs?”
The servant girl in charge of furs was young and confused, so it took her a little while to find Arden’s cloak.
Cass looked for Arden in the hall. “She’s already gone, miss,” one of the servants told her. Cass looked out through the front door and saw her ahead with Dacha, clutching her stomach.
Oh dear! Cass thought. She pulled on her own fur hurriedly and rushed across the courtyard to join them, wrapping the fur around Arden’s shoulders. It was still snowing a little.
“Just in time,” Dacha said with a smile. “Here’s the sledge.” Cass followed his glance and assumed he was joking. It was a scruffy-looking closed sledge, driven by a couple of men with scarves pulled up over their faces against the cold.
But when it stopped and Dacha made as if to help Arden into it, Cass said, “Dacha, what are you doing? This isn’t a royal sledge.”
They both looked at her as if she were mad. “No, stop!” Cass cried. “It’s another enchantment!”
As she said it, a woman’s mocking voice spoke from the dark inside the sledge. “Hush, Cassandra! They can’t hear you,” and to Cass’s amazement, the world stopped. Literally.
Arden and Dacha froze like statues in their positions, the snowflakes were suspended in mid-air. It was proper magic – not just illusion – but real, powerful magic and Cass needed a moment to take it in. Nothing, absolutely nothing, moved. There was no sound at all except for a thud as the men jumped down. One was Wern, and despite the scarf Cass knew instantly that the other was Zirt.
“No!” she cried, leaping in front of Arden. “You shall not take her.”
Zirt laughed at her. “You just don’t get it, kitten, do you? It’s not the queen we want, it’s you!”
And Cass was so surprised that she almost didn’t resist as he grabbed her arms like she was a doll. He swiftly gagged her then trussed her up with ropes, shoving her into the back of the sledge, before they slid away into the night.
Outraged and seething with fury, Cass would have screamed at the woman who sat opposite her in the closed sledge if she hadn’t had a gag in her mouth. For despite the gloom in the coach, despite the fact that she was so altered from the girl who Cass had known four years before in the Square of Seas, she instantly recognized the woman. It was Lin’s sister, Nym. Her face, which had once been slightly plump, was now angular and her long black hair that had always just hung down her back was now piled up in an elaborate style. Her simple clothes had been replaced by a fur coat and jewels to rival Arden’s. But her eyes remained the same – as cold and curious as a cat’s.
Cass remembered her conversation with Lin about Nym before she left Minaris. Well, Nym most certainly wasn’t in the Farthest Lands. She was causing trouble much closer to home. But what in the world could Nym want with me? Cass wondered furiously. Why would she have bothered to hire the Sins to capture me? And how could I not have realized that Zirt and Wern were chasing me all along? Cass berated herself. She remembered Zirt in the Islands always picking her to fight with, and then in the forest Wern had let Arden go. It was her they wanted. But why?
“Little Cassandra, all grown up,” Nym said in a mocking tone, as if they were old friends who had unexpectedly bumped into each other. “I have you at last. You’ve led us a merry dance, first across the Islands and now up here. It’s been quite the business – Zirt having to join the pirates to lure you to him, and then chasing you with that fool Arden. You’ve earned him a good deal of gold. By the way, did you like my snowstorm in the forest? And I hope you didn’t mind me teasing you a little on the journey,” and she began to sing in a childish voice. “Oh, I’m the Queen of Minaris…”
She stopped and laughed. “Of course, we had to make you think that it was the queen we were after, we didn’t want you getting too suspicious. Now, let’s see what you have in your pockets.” She came over, sat next to Cass and frisked her pockets, pulling out her knife.
“I think I’d better take that,” she remarked. Nym took Cass’s hands and pulled off Lin’s ring. She paused, considering it for a moment. “A present from my dear sister, I see,” she said. “Well, I don’t want her to be able to track you.” She threw it out of the window. Then she grabbed Cass’s citizen necklace – her Minarian fish – from around her neck. “This had better go too.”
The sledge careered down the slippery lanes of the frozen city and only stopped when the way ahead of them was blocked at the city gates. Nym paused in her scrutiny of Cass and bowed her head, shutting her eyes just for a moment as if in prayer. The
world froze again and their sledge made its way around the other sledges and out of the gates without any difficulty. Once they were on the causeway, Cass watched as out of the window the world came back to life. Where would they be headed? Back to the Forest of Thunt perhaps? Or to the port at Pinoa?
“If you are expecting to be rescued, you’ll have a long wait,” Nym said, as if she could read her mind. “The sledge is still enchanted, I’m afraid, so no one will see you in here. And back at the mansion, everyone’s memory of what occurred is very hazy – did you go to fetch a doctor? Or have you made your own way to the palace? Besides, they are all quite properly much more worried over poor Arden,” Nym said with pretend concern. “You,” she added spitefully, “are only a lady-in-waiting, Cass. No one is going to send an army to look for you.”
Cass knew that Nym was right. However she put the words out of her head and instead focused on testing the ropes that were binding her wrists and ankles. But they were tight and solid. Cass swore like a Minarian docker in her head.
After a while, Nym grew tired of inspecting Cass and closed her eyes. Cass was unsure if she actually slept, but she knew that there was little chance of sleeping herself she was so wound up. She gazed out at the inky night-time landscape and tried to calmly and logically work out why Nym would want to capture her. For her fighting skills? But that made no sense – there were plenty of skilled fighters in the world, why pick her? Was it something to do with the Company, or to do with Lin?
Eventually, exhausted by the thoughts bumping around her mind, Cass fell into a half sleep, only to be woken by the sledge stopping. The sky was lightening and Nym was gone. Cass looked out of the window. They appeared to be in a farmyard, but where it was, she had no idea. She struggled briefly with the knotted rope around her wrists to no avail, and then she saw Nym striding back towards the carriage, looking entirely out of place in the muddy yard in her ostentatious furs.
She carried a cup of water in her hand, which she put on the floor while she loosened Cass’s gag. She then held the cup to her lips and let Cass drink.
When she had finished, Cass spluttered, “Why have you done this? What do you want with me? Where are we going?”
“I thought you would be full of annoying questions. You were always a most tiresome child,” Nym said with a sigh. “I’m sorry but I can’t be bothered to answer them now.”
She put the gag back over Cass’s mouth, ignoring her protests. “There, that’s better,” Nym announced. “All you need to know is that we’ll be off again in a moment once they’ve changed the horses. Then we will reach the border by nightfall.”
Which border? Cass speculated desperately. The Minarian one? No, that would be too far away. The Pinoan one was much more likely and then on to a ship. That would chime with Lin’s theory that her sister was involved with the Magical Uprising in the Farthest Lands.
But then as Cass looked out of the window, she began to doubt her hunch. They seemed to be heading up into the mountains, and there weren’t any mountains between Pinoa and Bunderland. Cass tried to remember her geography. The only mountains were to the north and east of Bunderland leading either to the Northern Wastes or to Veraklia. Both of these could be possible but why? Why would Nym be living in either of these places? Then Cass remembered with a sharp jolt something Dacha had said, when they were out together in Danske – that the Veraklian queen, Vegna, was using a magician. Could that be where Nym had been? At the Veraklian court?
Cass didn’t have to wait long to have her hunch confirmed. They passed a milestone in the road, which said, ‘Veraklia seventy miles’. Well, I suppose at least I know now, Cass thought to herself, trying to dampen down some of the furious frustration that she felt. And perhaps, she thought, her spirits lifting slightly, Idaliz might still be there.
By the position of the sun, which shone for most of the day, Cass judged that they were heading fairly consistently east. They had kept to the main road and had passed through several villages and one large town, which Cass guessed was Van. Although the buildings and people looked unmistakably Bundish, the landscape changed as they came into the mountains proper. The broad valleys were shrinking and sharpening and the road was steadily climbing. The trees were changing to what Cass guessed were pinelets, which she had only seen before in pictures, and she caught glimpses of the mountain peaks beyond.
So if we were to cross the border tonight, Cass thought, picturing the map on the wall of her old classroom at Mrs Papworth’s Academy, where would we then be headed? Presumably to the capital, Iz? Cass recalled it was known as the City of the Birds as it was so high up in the mountains. From memory Cass figured it would only be a day’s ride or so from the border.
But before that they had to cross the border. How would Nym manage that? Would she freeze time again? The answer came soon enough, and when it did, it was nothing that she ever could have imagined.
Suddenly they veered off the main road, and rode along a track until they reached the yard of a derelict house, protected from views of the road by a line of conifers. Nym slunk out of the sledge and had a discussion with the men, just out of Cass’s earshot. The horses were unbridled from the sledge and saddled up. Then Zirt undid the ropes around Cass’s ankles and grabbed her by the arm.
“You’re coming with me,” he said, pulling her out of the sledge and shoving her up on to a large bay horse. He got up behind her and put one arm tightly around her waist, making Cass’s skin crawl. She tried to focus on the others to distract herself.
Nym was already on horseback, looking confident but wary, glancing around her in the woods as if she was half expecting an attack. Wern had his back to Cass, fiddling with his saddle and adjusting the stirrups, before he mounted his horse. Once he was on they set off, taking a steep path that wound up through the pine forests until their way was blocked by a blank stretch of the Invincible Wall.
Cass had never seen the wall before and had to admit that it was incredibly impressive. It was made of bricks and was about fifteen metres high with a castellated top. She knew from her lessons that it was thick enough for five men to walk along it side by side and that it was often patrolled.
But I wonder why we’ve come here? Cass thought, looking at the blank expanse of bricks. She had expected to be taken to a fort or a gate with some means of crossing.
They stopped a little way back from the wall and Cass watched curiously as Nym nudged her horse nearer. Then she too halted, a couple of metres away. There was a sense of anticipation from the others and Cass felt herself sit up a little higher to see what Nym would do.
It started with a loud scraping noise. What’s that? Cass looked around. And then she saw that hundreds of bricks that made up the section of wall in front of them were beginning to loosen. Cass watched, her eyes wide with wonder, as the bricks flew out of the wall one by one and bobbed, suspended in the air like a swarm of angry bees until there was a gap wide enough for them to ride through.
Nym gave a self-satisfied glance back at them. “Shall we go?”
Cass kept her face as blank as she could, determined not to show Nym how amazed she was.
“I’d better repair the damage or the queen will be furious with me,” Nym said with a smirk when they had ridden through. She clicked her fingers and the bricks all flew back in place, as if they had never been moved. The men laughed sycophantically and Cass thought, She may be paying them but they’re still in awe of her.
They followed a path back to the road, riding hard for the rest of the day and only stopping a couple of times briefly to change horses at shabby inns. At every point, Cass was alert to any means of escape, but there was never a moment when Zirt, Wern or Nym took their eyes off her. She also knew that even if she were to get away from them, staying hidden would be very difficult. Not only was she still wearing her lavish lady-in-waiting furs, she also had a look that came from having enough to eat and a relatively comfortable life, which set her apart from the rest of the population. And although the sigh
t of a gagged girl attracted people’s eyes, they looked away immediately, as they had obviously learned to do.
Only a couple of metres of wall may have separated Veraklia and Bunderland, but Cass felt as if she had entered a different world. Gone were the tidy Bundish farms, with cosy cottages and herds of quacking geese charging around pretty farmyards. Instead everywhere Cass looked was either ruined or hopelessly neglected.
Cass had imagined Veraklia would be like the red district, the area of Minaris where most of the Veraklian immigrants lived. It was one of Cass’s favourite places – always brimming with life and colour. The buildings were painted with murals in vibrant pinks, greens and blues and the women dressed in similarly garish colours, their hair bound up in headscarves. There were food stalls on every street selling bowls of steaming, spicy noodles and toffee cakes, and multi-coloured kites flew from the rooftops, for the Veraklians all had what they called “skylust” – an obsession with everything to do with the sky. But the Veraklia that Cass found herself in was entirely different.
Some of the old farmhouses had the faded ghosts of the beautiful paintings that used to cover them and you could see the remnants of their greentiled roofs, but these had mostly been replaced by a motley collection of old bits of timber. There were few animals around and those that Cass could see looked painfully thin. The Veraklians themselves looked little better – shivering in the bitter cold in old patched clothes, their faces pinched and haggard. Cass saw children with their feet bound in rags instead of shoes, working like adults. The poverty felt hopeless and oppressive.
When they passed through a couple of towns, she was shocked by the open sewers and piles of rubbish. The buildings were plastered in posters with slogans like ‘Death to the Bundish!’, ‘Watch Your Neighbours!’ and ‘Foreign Spies are Everywhere!’. The last one made Cass shudder. Let Idaliz be safe, she prayed.
The Conspiracy of Magic Page 7