‘Sbythageird meidburuchtts . . . varesh meither . . . I told the stupid ryglingim not to fight face to face. The disobedient –’ He uses a word that my grandmother would slap my face for using.
Ryn looks down, scuffs at the reeds with her foot. ‘We can go another way . . . can’t we?’
He turns on her. ‘Which way, you stupid little bitch? What do you know about it?’
My hand is still resting lightly on the hilt of my dagger. ‘Where are we supposed to be going?’
He snorts and rolls his eyes at the ceiling. ‘Oh, min feirgtt’es lyshe, the boy thinks he can help!’ He kicks the barricade; the sound of it resonates in the stone and makes my teeth buzz.
I can help, you stupid, ignorant swine – if you’ll let me . . . ‘If you tell me where you want to go.’
He scowls down at me, arms crossed over his chest. Then he heaves a great breath. ‘The octagonal room at the top of the high tower. Above the room that had all the coins in it.’
The High Treasury, above the Mint. I turn on my heel. ‘This way.’ I don’t look to see if they’re following me.
The quickest way to the Treasury goes through the dungeons, up a tiny secret staircase and through the Great Hall. But I don’t take them that way. It’s not that I don’t trust them. I’m Mereish; they’re Mereish; we’re on the same side . . . But weeks of knowing Columen, of playing shek or the traitor game every day, have left their mark. Knowing my way around, when they don’t, is the only advantage I have. Something tells me to hang on to it.
So I take them back round to the north, up and down an unnecessary staircase, and through the baths. I can hear them trailing me – Ryn’s light-footed sprint, Mathon’s heavy panting lollop – but I don’t give them time to catch up. At each doorway I wait until I can see one of them, then I start running again.
The baths are dry, mostly. The water-halls are blue and cold and silent, so that when my foot catches a broken tile and sends it spinning the sound echoes and echoes. The mosaics and statues and fountains have been torn down and smashed, and only a few lights are burning. As I pass one of the alcoves I catch a glimpse of a body, slumped on the slab as though he’s still waiting for a slave to come and rub him with oil.
I run along the pavement next to the pool, down a few steps into the next water-hall, along, across . . . As I run, there’s a part of my mind trying to remember what order they come in (tepidarium? frigidarium?) as though this is all a game.
The last pool is the shallowest. There’s a glass walkway just underneath the surface; I remember the first time I saw a slave cross it, carrying a tray of wine, and how Columen teased me. ‘Of course he was walking on water. What’s odd about that?’ He stared at me, pretending to frown. ‘You mean, Mereish people can’t walk on water?’ Then he started to laugh. I almost hit him. I remember that. I almost hit him.
The glass walkway is still intact – probably because there’s still water in the pool, and none of the Mereish fighters have realised it’s there. The water’s icy, though. It gets through the seams of my boots, and in a vain attempt to keep my feet as dry as possible I run faster than I should.
And I slip.
I feel my feet slide out from underneath me; there’s a long, horrible moment when I realise I’ve lost my footing, I’m irredeemably off-balance . . . I know I’m going to fall, but I flail at the air all the same, as though I can grab at the emptiness under my hands to save myself. No good. I’m falling, I’m falling – and desperately I throw myself sideways; I can imagine what that glass edge would do to a head, a face . . .
The water is so cold I hear myself cry out with the shock of it. It’s like – well, it’s like nothing else, water that’s so cold it doesn’t chill you gradually but bites right to the bone, as though it’s sucked out your marrow, wiped you out and rewritten you. It’s like another element: the twin and the opposite of fire. All the breath goes out of me. The pain, the shock – it’s like dying.
But after the first jolt of it my instincts take over. My arms are scrabbling for the side, and my feet find the bottom of the pool, and I’m standing up, only waist-deep – shaking, my teeth chattering, but alive. I start to laugh weakly. I wade to the side of the pool where the steps are, underneath one flickering blue-shaded lamp. Freezing locks of hair cling to my face and I try to wipe them away with a wet hand. For some reason, I’m swearing in Evgard: Oh, cunnus, cunnus, cunnus . . . I walk right into the step and stumble forward, hitting the heels of my hands on the tiled pavement. Then slowly, still muttering to myself in Evgard, I drag myself out of the pool and sit huddled on the steps, listening to the water running out of my clothes, shivering in great convulsive jerks. There’s no sound of Ryn or Mathon.
Slowly the iciness fades. I’m still bitterly, hideously cold, but it’s an improvement. I stare at the blue light flickering on the water and try to make myself get up. But there’s something hypnotic about the movement of it, the way azure and cobalt and black melt in and out of each other like oil. There’s a tongue of pale blue that licks at a long column of darkness, tasting it, drawing back, reaching out again. I watch it, dreamily; raise my eyes to the statue that’s making the shadow . . .
But it’s not there. It’s in pieces, scattered over the other side of the pool. The shadow – there’s nothing to cast the shadow.
And with a horrible insinuating jerk, I realise. Another body. As I look, suddenly I can see the shape of it: a tall, slender man, an arm with a wide puffed-up sleeve that floats as if he’s waving, a pale hand with an odd contour, as though someone broke the fingers trying to get the rings off. A shock of hair that floats like a weed on the water and glints dark purplish-red in the light from the lamp. The edge of a face, bloated now, pallid. An open eye that catches the light: blank, glazed, the colour of autumn leaves . . .
No. Oh, lyshe, no, please, no . . .
Not Columen; not like this, not bloated and unburied and forgotten. I’m back in the pool, fighting the water to get to him, hardly feeling the cold. My feet slide uselessly on the bottom, and my hands are too cold to get a proper grip on his sleeve. Columen, please, I’m here, I’m sorry . . . I try to drag him, but he’s a dead weight. I’m gasping with the effort, with desperation, struggling to push him towards the steps. As I battle through the dark water his arms move in a parody of life. I can’t help splashing and his sleeves start to fill with water, pulling him down. One more step – one more. My lord, I hear myself say. My lord. His skull hits the edge of the step with a tiny, tactless thud.
I clamber on to the steps and drag him up by his shoulders. His hands are flung out at an awkward angle but I don’t care any more. I just want him out of the water. I just want him to start breathing again. I tug and tug at his clothes, trying to roll him over, as if I could bring him back to life. No, no, no . . . he can’t be dead. Not like this. He can’t be. Not Columen – anyone else, but not Columen. This can’t be Columen. It can’t be. Please, please . . . It must be someone else. I strain at his collar, desperately, and the body rolls over, reluctantly, like someone who doesn’t want to wake up. His head lolls to the side; a trickle of water runs out of his mouth. One eye is open; the other one is a wet pale mess of . . . it looks like it’s been chewed, then spat out again. His face is white and spongy and more obviously dead than anything I’ve ever seen.
But it isn’t Columen. It’s the Duke.
I pull back. All of a sudden I can feel air in my lungs, the cold waterlogged weight of my clothes, the sneaking tracks of drips down the back of my neck. It’s not Columen. It’s the Duke. The bloody, murdering, meidburuchtts Duke. I start to laugh, and then I can’t help myself. I’m sobbing and yelping and gurgling with laughter, like a kid. I might even be crying, but my face is too wet for me to notice. I stand up, feeling the shaking in my wrists as I push against the pavement, still giggling.
‘What the hell’s going on?’
Mathon. And Ryn. I don’t know where they sprang from. They weren’t here a moment ago. I try to
say, ‘It’s the Duke – I’ve found the Duke. Why don’t you negotiate with him?’ but the laughter wins halfway through the first word and I have to bend over, clutching my ribs.
For the first time Mathon doesn’t sound hacked off; now he sounds worried. ‘What’s the matter with him?’
Ryn’s staring at me. ‘I don’t know.’
‘The Duke – the Duke –’ I point one shaking hand at the Duke’s mashed, swollen face. Even that’s hard to do, I’m laughing so much.
Ryn looks down at the body and back at me, trying to make sense of it. ‘What happened? We thought – we heard you scream, and fall into the water – was there an ambush? We waited –’
‘No – I fell –’ But that’s funny, too; I fell into the water, and it was only up to my waist! I try to fight another wave of hilarity, but it’s no use.
‘Are you hurt?’
I manage to shake my head. Ryn takes a breath that’s half relieved, half wary. She looks down at the body of the Duke, then back up at me. ‘Argent – are you crying?’
It sets me off again. ‘No, you silly shepperling, I’m laughing –’ but I can’t speak clearly.
Ryn frowns. Then her face goes blank, as if she’s made a conscious effort to clear it. ‘We’d better go.’ She turns to me. ‘Which way?’
I point; it’s easier than trying to say, ‘Straight on.’
Mathon gives me a long, heavy look. Then he grabs Ryn’s shoulder and spins her round. ‘Let’s go.’ And he strides off, still with his hand clenched in her collar, as though he knows where he’s going.
I don’t want to go with them. I feel sick from laughing so much. I want to find somewhere to sit on my own, where I can get warm. But they need me to show them where to go, and they’re Mereish, and orders is orders, as Columen would say, in a mock Flatlands accent. And they might kill me, if I leave them now. So I don’t have a choice. I run after them and overtake them without a word.
The steps up to the Treasury are longer and steeper than I remembered. When I get to the top, finally, and the guard challenges me, it’s as much as I can do to gasp, ‘Mathon – s’coming in a minute.’ The guard looks me up and down. I can see him wondering who I am, but I look Mereish, and everyone’s wearing Evgard clothes. I slump against the wall, thankful that at least I’m warm now, and wait for Mathon and Ryn. I try not to look round too much, because I don’t want the guard to get jumpy, but I stare at the wall opposite and let my peripheral vision do the work. This guard; another by the door; the sound of a third in the antechamber. All heavily armed. Two locks on the door; both bars in place. And the High Treasury itself is the securest place in the castle, except for the oubliettes: at the top of the tallest tower, with no windows, and walls that look like chain mail from the number of metal loops set into them.
Mathon reaches the top, sweating, and walks past me without waiting for Ryn. He glances at the guard and jerks his head towards the door. ‘Let me in. I want to talk to them.’ He gives me a hard, level stare. ‘You – come with me. And no talking to the prisoners, all right? Not unless I tell you to.’ Then he looks back at Ryn, who’s just got to the top of the stairs. ‘You – stay outside.’
The Ryn I know would bristle and say, ‘What? I don’t want to stay outside.’ But she doesn’t. She just nods. She looks exhausted: pale, breathing quickly, swaying. I watch her, willing her to meet my eyes; if I were nearer I’d take her hand. But when she does look up she looks away again quickly, as if I make her uneasy.
‘Come on. Jump to it.’ I thought Mathon was talking to me, but the guard leaps into action, fumbling hurriedly at the bars on the door. Suddenly I don’t want to watch. If Columen and Iaspis are behind that door – or if they’re not . . . I don’t know which is worse.
The guard isn’t efficient, or quick; he’s nervous, and he keeps putting the wrong key in the lock, or trying to turn it the wrong way, or trying to pull the handle before he’s taken the bars off. But all the same the door opens sooner than I’d like. And the third guard, the one in the antechamber, knows what he’s doing, so the second door swings open before we’ve even got to it. Then it shuts behind us.
The air is dark, and bitter, and thick with smoke. At first I can hardly see anything – only shapes in the middle of the room and the dull gleam of torchlight on metal. Then, as my eyes get used to the flickering, unreliable light, I realise I’m staring straight into Columen’s eyes.
Once, when my father was feverish, he called me by the wrong name. I’d brought him a bowl of water, sweetened with hartwort-root, and as I stood beside his bed he sat up and reached for me so eagerly I spilt half of it on my shirt. ‘Evnyss,’ he said croakily, but with a kind of absolute, disbelieving joy in his voice. ‘Ev . . .’
‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s me, Thatha. It’s me, Argent.’ For a moment he looked around, as if I’d stolen something and hidden it from him. Then he sank back on to his pillows. He wouldn’t touch the water; just waited silently until I left. I remember the look on his face: disgusted, tired, haunted . . . as though I had decided not to be Evnyss, as though I’d decided not to be the brother he thought I was. I hoped never to see that expression on my father’s face again, and I never have. But it’s there on Columen’s, so precisely the same that I can’t bear it.
I force myself to look away. I notice the grime and stains on his shirt, the long rip across one shoulder. In the smoke his skin looks darker than I remember, and much, much darker than the drowned, bloated flesh of his father’s face. There’s a deep red slash across his forehead. One hand, purple at the wrist as though someone disarmed him by slamming it on the edge of something, is poised above a game of trecho. I even make myself glance down at the game, but it’s not like shek, you can’t tell who’s winning.
I don’t know how long we’ve been standing there silently. It seems like an eternity. Columen raises an eyebrow. Then, with an insolence I can’t help admiring, he turns to Iaspis. ‘Your move.’
Iaspis is looking at us, with a look on her face that slides down the back of my throat like a splinter of ice, it’s so pitifully, stubbornly proud. It’s only when Columen taps the back of her hand that she looks down at the board. She moves a piece swiftly, then looks back at us.
Mathon clears his throat. ‘Right, you lot.’ Suddenly I realise there are more people in the room: Columen’s cousins, the two older boys, Teres and Latus, the girl, and the little boy. They’ve got chairs, too, another table, even a few cushions. With a sick kind of shame I realise they’re chained to the wall; and so are Columen and Iaspis.
Mathon turns to me. ‘Translate, idiot!’
‘What? All you said was –’ He gives an impatient jerk of the head, so I swallow and say carefully to the wall, ‘My lords and ladies . . .’
Columen freezes. Then he starts to tap his king on the trecho board.
Mathon says, ‘Which one of you is the Duke?’
‘The Duke? But the Duke’s dead.’ I say it more loudly than I mean to. ‘I told you – the body I found –’
Mathon turns on me. ‘I know that! But there must be an heir, right? And these are the castle kids. So one of these must be Duke now. Which one?’
The castle kids . . . perhaps he doesn’t realise that Columen was his father’s second-in-command. He must think of him as just an incompetent, arrogant child; the way I used to think of the Evgard children, before I saw what Columen could do.
‘Go on. Ask. You’re suppose to be translating, shudfargtte.’
Columen knows all the Mereish swear words now – I know he does, that was the only Mereish lesson I ever gave him – but he doesn’t look up. And I don’t want him to. I’m scared that, if he meets my eyes, I won’t be able to speak at all. I clear my throat. ‘He wants to know who the heir to the dukedom is.’
Columen doesn’t respond; surprisingly, it’s Teres that speaks. ‘Why don’t you tell him yourself, son-of-a-whore?’
Mathon says, ‘Him, is it?’ He jerks his head to one of the guards, who starts
to move towards Teres.
Teres stares at the guard, as though he doesn’t understand what’s going on; then he looks at me defiantly. ‘You scared to say anything, traitor-boy? Why don’t you –’
Columen looks round sharply. ‘Shut up.’
‘But the little bastard knows –’
‘I said shut up.’ And Teres subsides, still glaring at me. Columen puts his king carefully back on the trecho board. ‘Tell your captain it’s me.’
I do what I’m told. ‘It’s him, Mathon. The tall one with red hair.’
‘Right.’ Mathon clicks his fingers impatiently at the guard. ‘Not him,’ he says, as though he knew it all along. ‘The one who looks like a girl.’ He stands in front of Columen and knocks over the trecho pieces with a casual, deliberate hand. ‘Stand up.’
Columen’s eyes are on the ruined game; he follows a piece with his gaze as it rolls gently to the edge of the table and falls on to the floor. Then, very slowly, he looks up at Mathon; then, very slowly, at me. There’s an expression of distant enquiry in his eyes.
‘He said, stand up. Please,’ I add, but Columen isn’t fooled. He stands up. He’s almost as tall as Mathon.
Mathon beckons to the guards; they shepherd Columen out from behind the table, and stand either side of him, holding his arms. I see him flinch at their touch – out of distaste, I think, more than fear – then master himself.
‘So. If you’re the heir, who’s next in line after you?’ Mathon shoots a glance at me. ‘Tell him to point at them.’
The Traitor Game Page 20