The Liar's Key

by Mark Lawrence

  The Silent Sister holds her open hand toward the mirror, blocking it from her view, and closes her fingers with slow purpose. She’s a yard short of touching it but the bright noise of breaking glass rings out and blood runs from the fist she’s made. The hole shrinks, closes, and is gone.

  “Remarkable,” the lady says. She takes a step forward. Her eyes are blue. I hadn’t seen it before. Deepest blue. A blue that bleeds into the whites and makes something inhuman of her. Another step forward and she holds out her hand toward the Silent Sister, clawed, palm forward. A blueness suffuses the light about her. “Impressive for one so young, but I don’t have time to be impressed, child.” Her lip trembles in a snarl. “Time to die.” And something that was coiled tight inside her is released so suddenly that the shock of it runs through the air, pulsing out, almost visible as a ripple.

  The Silent Sister reels back as if struck. Only her grip on Garyus’s chair keeps her upright. She struggles back to her position as though walking into a high wind, her mouth set in a grim line of effort.

  The Lady Blue raises her other hand and lets whatever venom is in her pour out onto the girl before her who falls to one knee with a noiseless gasp. The Lady Blue advances, my great-aunt bent and helpless before her.

  “Get back!” My shout goes unheard and I stand, impotent, wanting to run but having no place to hide in these blood memories.

  As the Lady Blue looms above her the Silent Sister reaches one hand up to clasp her brother’s arm just above the elbow. Garyus lolls his head toward her. “Do it.” Two words croaked out, thick with regret.

  The Lady Blue stoops, clawed hands closing toward the Silent Sister’s head from either side to deliver the coup de grace, but something stops her, as if the air has thickened. Garyus groans and twists in his chair, his body spasming as his twin draws power from him. They were born joined together these two, and though sharp steel cut them apart there is a bond there that remains unbroken. It seems what makes the Silent Sister stronger makes Garyus weaker, more broken, and given how this boy appears to me, decades later as an old man, it seems that whatever she takes cannot be returned.

  “Die.” The Lady Blue snarls it past gritted teeth but the Silent Sister, though bowed, continues to defy her as Garyus sacrifices his strength.

  “It’s only a reflection.” Alica pants the words out behind Lady Shival. “It is not my equal.”

  Whatever the child is wrestling with it appears to be getting weaker. The mercenaries are having a very different experience, each backed against the wall now, the edges of their swords being pushed inexorably toward their necks, though nobody’s there to wield the blades but them.

  Somewhere in the distance there’s screaming. I glance away from the contest of wills to see the maid has fled. It can only be moments before palace guards converge on the battle.

  The Silent Sister raises her head, slower than slow, her hair sweat-soaked, her neck trembling with effort, and on her face, as she meets the Lady Blue’s eyes, a grin that I know. Alica has her small knife raised now, her wrist white as if a hand were wrapping it, just as her free hand clasps empty air with a desperate intensity. With tiny steps, each the product of huge struggle, she is advancing on the Lady Blue’s back.

  Deeper shouts ring out, closer now, an alarm bell starts to clang further back in the palace.

  Cursing in a tongue I’ve not heard before, the Lady Blue breaks away, sprints along the Sword Gallery and vanishes between the two mercenaries, veering left past the double doors. As she passes them both Grant and Johan lose their battle and slide down the walls clutching their throats, blood drenching their chests.

  I stand, overwhelmed by a deep sense of relief, although I was never in danger. Alica’s already running, but in the wrong direction: she’s chasing the lady. The Silent Sister is on all fours, her head down, exhausted. Garyus flops in his chair, as broken as I ever knew him, his last vestiges of health sacrificed to his twin’s power, drawn along whatever fissure still connects them. His eyes, almost hidden in the shadow of his monstrous brow, find me, or seem to. I meet his gaze a moment, and a sorrow I can’t explain closes a cold hand in my guts. I know I’m not the man ever to make the kind of gesture this boy has made. My siblings, my father, Red March itself, all of them could go hang before I’d take the blow meant for someone else.

  I run, though whether to get clear of Garyus’s scrutiny or to follow Alica I don’t know.

  • • •

  The Lady Blue’s path through the palace is littered with guardsmen struggling against reflections that only they can see. It’s late at night and apart from the guards the palace is deserted. In truth the palace is largely deserted at any time of the day. Palaces are an exercise in show—too many rooms and too few people to enjoy them. A king can’t afford to let his relatives get too close and so the Inner Palace is nothing but luxurious chambers enjoyed by no one and unseen save by the cleaners who dust and the archivists who ensure that the dust is all they remove.

  We pass more struggling guards. The dangerous men will be wherever the king is. Not in his throne room, not at this hour, but they won’t be walking the corridors, guarding vases and rugs, they’ll be close to the man who matters.

  I catch up with Alica, though it takes some doing. I’ve run these corridors myself—well mostly corridors further away, the Red Queen isn’t that fond of her grandchildren, but on occasions as a child I’ve scampered down these halls. But, stranger or not, the Lady Blue is ahead of us both. She’ll need luck, however, and lots of it. This wasn’t her plan, this is desperation, or anger, or both, and it’s being made up on the spot.

  As I run alongside Alica I try to remember what I’ve been told about my great-great-grandfather’s death. I draw a blank. I never gave a damn about any of the dead ones, unless it was to file away some impressive fact about my lineage that might give me an edge in pissing contests against visiting nobility. Surely I’d have remembered if he’d been brutally murdered in the palace by some crazed witch though? One of them died hunting . . . pretty sure. And another of “a surfeit of ale.” I always found that one amusing.

  Although Alica looks grim, and there’s murder afoot, I can’t help feeling the worst is over. After all I never knew either of the elder Gholloths, One and Two as the historians call them, and I’ve had my whole life to come to terms with the fact that they were both dead. And frankly five minutes would have been more than enough for that. We’ll find the Lady Blue has killed him, or we won’t, but either way she’s run off and I’m feeling far more relaxed than I was when confronted with her back in the Sword Gallery. Not that I was in any danger there either . . . All in all I’m relaxing into these memories quite happily and—I glance back over my shoulder. I’m sure I heard a dog bark. I shrug and catch up with Alica as she turns a corner and starts up a flight of stairs. There it is again. The baying of a hound. Surely none of the mutts from the banquet hall have been allowed to run loose in the palace. Again, and closer. Intolerable! Mongrels from the hall prowling the corridors of power! A sudden tremor puts me off my stride. Earthquake? The whole place seems to be shaking.

  “Slap him!” A woman’s voice.

  “Get him up!” A boy’s.

  I open my eyes, confused but still outraged about the dog, and a large hand smacks me across the cheek.

  “What the!” I clutched my face.

  “Hounds, Jal!” Snorri let go of me and I sunk to my knees. The ground dusty, the night dark, the stars many, and strewn in such profusion they made a milky band across the heavens.

  “Dogs?” I heard them now, baying in the distance, but not distant enough.

  “They’re tracking us down. After the key still.” Snorri helped me up again. “Sure you want to keep it?”

  “Of course.” I pulled myself up to my full height and puffed out my chest. “I don’t scare that easily, old friend.” I slapped him on the shoulder with as much ma
nly vigour as I could muster. “You’re forgetting who stormed Fraud Tower unarmed!”

  Snorri grinned. “Come on, we’ll lead them higher up, see if we can’t find a climb they won’t manage.” He turned and led off.

  I followed before the darkness had a chance to swallow him entirely, Kara and Hennan flanking me. Damned if I was going to give up the key now! I’d need something to give them if they caught me. And besides, even if I gave the key to Snorri and ran off in another direction the bastards would still hunt me down. These were bankers we were talking about, and I owed taxes. They’d hunt me to the ends of the earth!

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Snorri led us immediately to the river. A fact I discovered by losing my boot in unexpected and sucking mud.

  “What is it with Norsemen and boats?” Now Snorri stepped to the side I could see the water, revealed where ripples returned the starlight.

  “No boat.” Snorri strode down the long gentle bank.

  I pulled my boot out of the mud. I appeared to have stepped into a small tributary stream. “I’m not swimming!”

  “Could you lead the dogs away for us then?” Snorri called back over his shoulder. Ahead of him Kara and Hennan were already wading into the current. Damned if I knew where the boy learned to swim up in the Wheel of Osheim.

  Cursing I followed, hopping as I tried to get my boot back on. The hounds sounded close one minute, distant the next. “Is it true that thing about water spoiling the scent?”

  “Don’t know.” Snorri strode in, pausing a moment as the water reached his hips. “I’m just hoping they can’t get across, or won’t want to.”

  I’ve never seen a dog that didn’t like to throw itself in a river. Perhaps Norse dogs are different. After all, for half the year doing that would just get them a bruised head.

  “Damnation it’s cold!” I’ve yet to meet a warm river, no matter how fierce the day.

  We set off swimming, or in my case, thrashing at the water and attempting to move forward rather than down. Edris’s long sword, now scabbarded at my hip, kept trying to drown me, pointing toward the riverbed and heaving in that direction as if it were made of lead rather than steel. Why I’d not bought a new blade in Umbertide I couldn’t say, save that this weapon, already stained with my family’s blood and my own, was my only link with the bastard who murdered them, and perhaps it might one day lead me to him again. In any event, swimming with a sword is to be even less recommended than regular swimming. Quite how Snorri stayed afloat with an axe across his back and a short sword at his hip I didn’t know. Kara too must be struggling under the weight of Gungnir. I’d held that spear and it felt far heavier than any spear should.

  The Umber was a wide and placid river at that point in its course but even so the current took over soon enough and carried me ten yards closer to the sea for each yard I managed to struggle toward the opposite bank. Somewhere in the dark the others were making quicker and quieter progress. I’d seen them for a while by the whiteness of the broken water in the starlight, but before long I fought my battle alone, unable to see either bank and imagining the river to have swollen into some estuary so wide-mouthed that I might be swept to sea before finding land again.

  When my hand struck something solid I panicked and swallowed an uncomfortably large amount of river whilst trying to inhale the rest. Fortunately the water around me proved to be little more than two feet deep and I splashed my way out to lie exhausted on the mud.

  “Quick, get up!” Kara, tugging at my shirt.

  “What?” I struggled to all fours. “How did you find me so fast?”

  “We’ve been walking along the bank following the noise.” Hennan, somewhere in the dark.

  “Probably covered half a mile.” Snorri, close at hand, hefting me to my feet. “Kara didn’t think you were going to make it.”

  • • •

  We walked on through the night, making what sense we could of the rising contours highlighted by the stars, avoiding the ink-dark valleys where possible. The warm air and exercise dried me off quick enough and fear kept me from feeling the lost sleep, my ears straining against the night sounds, always dreading the distant voice of the hounds.

  I can’t say how many times I stumbled in the gloom—enough to twist my ankle into complaint. I fell several times, my hands raw with cuts and lost skin, coarse grit bedded in both palms.

  I saw the others as dark shapes, no detail but enough to see Snorri hunched around the pain of his wound, hugging his side.

  First light showed grey then pink above the Romero Hills in whose hollows the Crptipa Mine nestled. I heard the hounds again before the sun cleared the horizon. At first they seemed part of my imagination but Snorri stopped and looked back along our path. He straightened with a wince and put an arm around Hennan.

  “We fought a Fenris wolf. A few Florentine dogs shouldn’t prove much challenge.” The shadow hid his face.

  “Let’s move.” I strode on. Hunting dogs work together: half a dozen can bring down any opponent. And there would be men following. “It can’t be much further now.” I needed it not to be much further but what I need and what the world gives are often at odds.

  “We should split up.” The baying sounded closer by the moment and, as always when things come to the sharp end, my thoughts turned to how I could win free. Hennan was slowing us down, no doubt about that. The fear wasn’t so deep in me that I was ready to leave the boy, but going our separate ways seemed a good alternative. He wouldn’t be slowing me down any more, and yet I wouldn’t be abandoning him—there was an equal or better chance the pursuit would follow me, and that, with the benefit of the doubt, could even be construed as saving him! “If we split up they can’t follow us all . . .”

  “What’s that?” Kara ignored me and instead pointed ahead.

  The land had risen beneath us, becoming barren and drier as we climbed into the hills. With little more than a general direction to head in, and a blurred memory of some maps I’d perused in the House Gold archives, it had seemed that our chances of finding the particular hole in the ground we sought depended upon meeting some local to guide us. Unfortunately the Romero Hills appeared to be entirely devoid of locals, probably because the place was rather less hospitable than the surface of the moon.

  “A trail.” Snorri lowered his hand from shielding his eyes, the grim line of his mouth twitching toward something less sombre, just for a moment.

  “And there’s only one place to go out here!” I started forward with renewed energy, wetting cracked and dry lips and wishing I’d managed to drink a little more of the Umber while struggling through it.

  Something about the acoustics of the valley made it seem as if the hounds were on our heels at each moment, though by the time the trail had taken us to the far side there were still no signs of pursuit on the slopes down which we’d come.

  “Not much of a trail.” Snorri grunted and pushed Hennan up the incline. “Shouldn’t we have met some traffic?”

  “Umbertide imports most of its salt up the Umber River, you would have followed its banks to the city after you docked at Port Tresto.”

  Kara turned around at that. “I heard the Crptipa Mine is one of the largest—”

  “It’s huge—it just doesn’t produce any salt worth a damn,” I said. “It’s got Kelem in residence. Apparently he doesn’t like company, and since the place preserves him, he’s not likely to be going any time soon.”

  We carried on another few paces before Snorri commented again. “But these tracks would be washed away in a few years if they weren’t used.”

  “There’s a small operation, working around the entrance chambers.” I lifted my head and pointed. “There, look!” The rise revealed a scattering of shacks, storage sheds, stables and several carts, all clustered around a black and yawning hole in the base of a rock-face where the valley became suddenly steep.

 
We picked up the pace and jogged up the dusty road, burdened by exhaustion. Falling behind, I turned and saw, emerging from the dry gullies on the far side of the valley, the foremost of the hounds, tiny in the distance but fearsome even so.

  I’d moved from last to first by the time we stumbled gasping into the clearing ringed by the buildings before the mine entrance. I stood there, hands on knees, hauling in a dry breath, my shirt sticking to my ribs. I heard rather than saw Snorri unlimber his axe behind me. A moment later the ringing of an alarm went up, someone spinning a stick against the inside of one of those iron bars bent into a triangle that they use to call men to sup.

  “E-easy.” I straightened up, reaching out to lay a hand on the thickness of Snorri’s arm. He didn’t look up to a battle in any case, dark lines beneath his eyes, sweat on his face, still bent around the agony of the salt-edged slash in his side. Miners from the night shift began to stumble out of one of the dormitory huts, rubbing the sleep from their eyes, yawns cracking their jaws. A couple more awake than the rest took hold of long-handled hammers from a stack beside the door.

  Kara stepped forward. “We just need to visit Kelem. There’s no need for trouble.”

  The miners stared at her as if she were some strange creature unearthed from the salt. The men might be paler than typical Florentines, labouring all day deep in the salt caves, but Kara’s skin was like snow, preserved from the sun by one of the witch’s unguents.

  The foreman among them found his wits at last, just as I was about to chivvy him along. It could only be a matter of minutes before the hounds caught up and barks turned into bites. “Can’t do that ma’am. Kelem’s got his own ways. No one goes down less he sends his servant for them.” He watched us with eyes narrowed against the brightness, a shrewd look on his gaunt face, tight-fleshed as though the salt had sucked all but the last drops of moisture from him.