‘And I have lived in the palace for more than twenty years. You are scarcely older than that.’
‘My name is …’ he hesitated as if it was something he was reluctant to give away. ‘Rubin Kerr Guillaume.’
Guillaume was one of the seven noble Families. Fiorentina had met the Khans, brother and sister, and daughters of the Gaeta Family, but this was the first Guillaume she had encountered. She was interested in the Families and their chequered history, in spite of the fact that Rafe tried to discourage her interest, or perhaps because of it.
‘Why do you—’ she asked, but he put one finger to his lips.
She listened to the silence. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What can you hear?’
‘Running water,’ he said.
The sound was coming from up ahead, so they walked towards it, neither sure of what it signified. It was lighter here, as if they were coming to the end of a long tunnel, and as they hurried towards it, the light grew. Sunshine, thought Fiorentina. She remembered then that it was the Day of Summoning. Was it really only this morning, she thought, when I last saw my lord? Misery pinched at her heart.
The palace was a ruin here, and sunlight shone down through what had been the roof. Their path was blocked by piles of slates and timbers and stone. Dust was rising in clouds, as if the collapse had just happened. Rubin glanced at Fiorentina and she lifted her skirts and together they climbed over the debris. The floor had fallen in and there was a wide crack, as wide as a man could leap, partly spanned by roof debris.
They leaned forward to look over the edge. The sound of crashing waters rose from below, and with it a stench which caught in her throat.
‘The sewers,’ she said.
‘The Halls,’ Rubin said, with wonder.
She gazed at him, eyebrows raised, her hand over her mouth.
‘The people in the sewers call them the Halls,’ he explained.
‘People live down there?’
He nodded absently, thinking. The debris shifted a little under their feet and Fiorentina stepped back quickly, but he just adjusted his balance.
‘Why would they?’
‘Live down there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Some have no choice. The City is a terrible place for many of its people.’
Something caught his attention and he leaned forward, listening.
‘There’s someone down there,’ he said.
All she could hear was water, but she stepped up on the debris again and peered down. He was right, there were cries coming from the depths. Without hesitation Rubin scrambled part-way down into the hole, where he found a stone ledge, once part of the floor. He squinted downwards, then said, ‘I think I can get down there.’
He seemed oblivious to the smell. Each time Fiorentina looked into the pit she was left gagging weakly. She stepped back, suddenly fearing the noxious fumes would harm her child.
‘If you can climb down, then they can climb up,’ she offered reasonably.
‘Perhaps they are injured.’
‘Rubin,’ she told him, ‘remember your mission. You are to help me to safety, not be diverted by some hopeless task.’
He thought about it for a moment, then scrambled back to her side.
‘We need a rope,’ he said, looking around as if expecting to find a coil to hand.
Fiorentina sighed, then helped him search. But there was no rope to be found and they could waste no more time, so Rubin crawled down into the shaft again, willingly launching himself through a portal into a place he associated only with suffering and death.
The hole in the ground was negotiable, just. Where it was steep it was also narrow, so Rubin could span it with his lanky legs and arms and crawl down like a four-limbed spider. Where it widened out it shelved into precarious and crumbling perches. Thus he made his way into darkness, peering up from time to time, seeing Fiorentina’s head framed in the diminishing light.
The familiar smell became thicker as he descended. It was not like water or air. It was solid, as if you should be able to cut a hole in it to get relief. But there was no relief to be had and his thoughts darkened and he began to doubt he would ever get out again. Then he came to the rushing water and in the dim light filtering from above found four people marooned on a precarious perch above a swift river. They were two small children, a young woman and an older man. The children looked beyond fear, their faces white and drawn, eyes half-closed against the thin light. The woman’s wrist was bent at an unnatural angle and she held it gingerly, her face racked with pain.
Rubin looked up at the distant sunlight, weighing his own resources, then said to the bigger child, ‘You first.’
Guiding the boy’s foot-and handholds, and pushing from below, Rubin managed to get him up the shaft into Fiorentina’s waiting hands.
‘How many?’ she asked him as she dragged the boy to safety.
‘Three more,’ he replied, lowering himself back down.
The other child, a girl, was too small and too frightened to climb. Rubin squatted beside her on the narrow refuge but she squirmed away, trying to hide behind the woman’s skirts. The water, he saw with alarm, was creeping higher by the moment. He felt his strength leaching away as quickly.
‘There’s sunlight up there,’ he told the girl. ‘I’ll carry you up there, if you’ll help me. Don’t be frightened.’ But the child hid her face and whimpered with terror.
‘She’s never seen the sun, sir,’ the woman told him. ‘It’s that she’s frightened of, not you.’
But she persuaded the child to climb on Rubin’s back, her eyes squeezed shut. Fearing each moment that her small weight would topple him to certain death, he managed to struggle to the surface with her.
The woman, hardly more than a girl herself, was half-swooning with the anguish of her injured arm, but Rubin used his overshirt to make a sling and, when she felt able, he half-pushed, half-carried her up the crumbling side of the pit. At the top she slumped to the ground sobbing.
Without allowing himself to think, Rubin scrambled down for the final time.
The last survivor, a big brawny man with wild ginger hair in braids, had been watching silently throughout. Now he declared, ‘You should not have come back, laddie. My ankle’s banjaxed. I cannot climb and you’re not strong enough to carry me.’
‘We can try.’
‘I’ll not risk throwing you into the river after your valiant actions.’
Rubin sat down gratefully on the ledge and the big man sat beside him. His ankle was badly broken, canted to one side. It should have been agonizing yet the man seemed at peace.
‘What will you do?’ Rubin asked him.
The man pointed to a dark recess in the rock wall. ‘We came through there. I will return that way.’
Rubin doubted the big man could squeeze through such a narrow opening but he nodded. ‘I will throw a torch down to you,’ he said.
The man nodded, but both knew it would make little difference.
The wide river, fast and lively as an animal, now rushed past just beneath their feet. Rubin looked around but in the gloom he could see little.
‘They call it the Halls, laddie,’ the big man offered, watching his gaze. ‘Only the poor and desperate come down here.’
‘I know the Halls. But I have never seen a river like this.’
‘It is the great Menander,’ the man told him with satisfaction. ‘For centuries it has been hidden and confined, always seeking to break out from under layers of stone. Now it has burst its restraints. There must have been a great storm up above.’
‘There was indeed.’ A storm of sorts, Rubin thought. ‘The Red Palace is collapsing into ruin.’
‘Good.’ The man’s freckled face lit up. ‘Who builds a palace on top of a river?’ he asked scornfully. ‘The poor fools.’
Rubin asked him, ‘Do you have family, sir? Anyone I can tell?’
‘No, lad. Don’t worry about me. I’ll get out.’ He seemed unconcerned despite the pain he must ha
ve been suffering.
There was a high-pitched cry from above and the man said to him, ‘You’d best be getting back up there. Your sweetheart is calling.’
Rubin stood. He did not know how to say goodbye so he said nothing, merely nodded and started the climb back towards the light. His legs were shaking with effort, his hands numb and bruised. And his heart was filled with sorrow. He glanced down once and saw the pale blur of the man’s face looking up at him. But when he looked again moments later the man had gone and all he could see was racing water.
Regaining the surface, he gathered his breath for a moment, then picked up the little girl, took the boy’s hand in his and, with Fiorentina supporting the young woman, they all headed east through the broken palace, for Rubin was eager to put as much distance as possible between them and the battling armies at its heart.
It was nearly twilight by the time they reached the eastern walls. The palace appeared undamaged here; there was no evidence of flood or subsidence. The corridors and chambers were empty and silent but dust moved in the air as if recently disturbed. They came to high gates but, like the ones at the Redoubt, they were barred. Wearily Rubin looked around then led them through the nearest doorway. Across a courtyard and down some steps he found a small room with narrow beds, perhaps servants’ quarters. There was no one there. As the others sank gratefully on to the beds, Rubin searched further and found kitchens and a pump. He filled a jug with clean water and they all drank their fill then lay down.
For all his exhaustion, Rubin could not sleep, the plight of the ginger-haired man gnawing at him. Getting up again and exploring further, he discovered an elegant stairway leading up to a large chamber filled with carved furniture. It was empty, abandoned, like most of the palace they had journeyed through that day. Wide windows looked east and the Shield of Freedom was a black bulk against the darkening sky. Small lights twinkled welcomingly on its heights and as night closed in the mountain looked like a place of serenity and safety.
‘We should go there,’ Fiorentina said from behind him.
Rubin turned. Even after their gruelling day of fear and flight, her beauty was transcendent. With dirty smudges on her cheeks and eyes red with fatigue, she still looked like a goddess.
‘I was thinking that,’ he agreed. ‘But the City is perilous. It will be a hard journey.’
She surprised him by suggesting, ‘We could go underground. There are tunnels leading all the way to the Shield. With a good map you can get from palace to mountain and never see the sun. Or so my husband once told me.’ Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
Rubin shook his head. ‘The underground ways will be flooded and broken. You’ve had a taste of what it’s like.’
‘We need sanctuary, both of us, now the Vincerii are … gone,’ she said sadly.
‘Marcellus still lives,’ he answered.
She stared at him with huge, shining eyes. ‘Are you certain?’
‘No,’ he replied, thinking of an old horse swimming across a lake. ‘But it is my hope, and my belief.’
She shook her head. ‘Our only hope is to throw ourselves on Archange’s mercy.’
‘Archange?’ He frowned, remembering Marcellus’ words, that he must avoid the woman at all costs. ‘Why Archange?’
‘Because she will be empress now.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TEN DAYS PASSED and a wintry sun shone benevolently on the drying, dying City. The water slowly subsided, leaving the remaining buildings and the many corpses under a thin glaze of mud, leaching down through the re-formed strata under the City, carrying its freight of bodies out to the cleansing sea.
Far off the coast, beyond the enemy’s blockade of ships, beyond the little island of Tessera, lay a small boat, ostensibly a fishing boat, and before dawn on the eleventh day an old woman sat in the prow watching the east.
Low in the sky the moon was full and round as a ripe white peach. How long is it since I’ve seen a peach? the woman wondered. Smelled a peach, eaten a peach? She tried to summon the taste of one, and could recall the soft, furry skin, the slight give as you bit through it, the gush of juice in the mouth. But, try as she would, she could not remember the taste of the fruit.
The silvery moon created a pathway of light to the boat and she imagined she could climb over the gunwales, walk across the sea and climb the stairway …
‘Lady, it’s time.’
Giulia Rae Khan started from her reverie then groaned under her breath. Her body had stiffened, sitting for hours on the wooden chair lashed to the deck for her use. She levered herself to standing, feeling the familiar pain bite into her hands. The boat’s captain was looking at her expectantly.
‘Very well, Lorens,’ she told him. He spoke quietly to his crew.
They had been waiting off the coast for the pre-dawn, when it would be light enough for Lorens to navigate the treacherous waters to the south of the City, but still dark enough to sail unnoticed by the great ships of the enemy blockade. That was the plan, anyway. Giulia stared towards the fleet, peering, but she could see nothing apart from the great bulk of velvet black which was the land against the moonlit sky.
She brushed down her grimy peasant dress, and watched the crew go swiftly about their tasks, hauling on lines, getting the fishing boat ready for the final leg of their voyage. The black sail unfurled and the small breeze caught in it, billowing it out, and the Linnet moved through the water, heading south-east.
Giulia had been travelling for almost a year, first round the islands to the west, then ever on, seeking allies for the City’s fight against its enemies. She had been given only empty promises and trinkets presented as great gifts.
Then, early in the year, empty-handed and close to giving up, they had turned the Linnet due north, to latitudes unknown to most seamen. They passed the Land of Mists, the haunt of demons and dragons, it was said, and men with two heads and women with tails for legs, where even stout sailors like Lorens would only tread under Giulia’s orders. And they came to a land of snow and ice, of harsh mountains rising steeply from narrow bays of the brightest blue. They arrived in late spring and were warmly welcomed by the old leader, who called himself a king but whose kingdom was just his grim fastness carved from granite and flanked by waterfalls, and thousands of leagues of frozen tundra, the haunt of silver bears and ice foxes.
The king, called Kern, had greeted them as old friends and they spent the shortening nights in his hall, honoured guests, offered the best of the meats at table and the plumpest maidens to warm their beds. Giulia found the old man starved of company and she entertained him with tales of their travels and of the City. As the nights started to lengthen again he asked her to stay, to become his queen. Queen, she thought contemptuously, of a thousand leagues of nothing; then she remembered the City as she had last seen it, alone in a self-made desert. She was a little tempted to stay, for the land was beautiful. The high grey mountains rang with the sound of running water in the spring as the snow-melt poured off in misty waterfalls, the rivers heaved with shining fish, the green hillsides echoed with the chatter of birds. But in winter her hands were a torment to her and the prospect of long days of ice made her yearn to be back in the warmth of the City, her City.
So she had thanked the old king and told him no and he had nodded sadly and bemoaned the fact that he was no longer virile and could not give her strong sons.
Long afterwards, when she was telling her brother about this, Marcus had guffawed and said, ‘He thought a bony old thing like you could still bear children?’
A little annoyed, she asked him, ‘Is my hair not lustrous, is my skin not as smooth as when I was thirty?’
‘Yes, my love,’ he confessed, ‘but your poor hands are those of a crone.’
The arthritis pained her in summer and was an agony in winter, and all their long-hoarded medicine could do little to aid her. She wondered, not for the first time, what would become of her in the long years ahead and was comforted by the pact she and Marcus h
ad made to end the other’s suffering when it came to it.
‘A nice, clean beheading,’ he said, with gruesome jollity, ‘that’ll cure anything.’
So the men of the Linnet had prepared to set sail for the south. Then, before they left, the old king surprised Giulia by presenting her with three chests full of gold coins, mined, he said, in the ice mountains to the east.
‘Then,’ she replied, ‘you are as wealthy as you are generous.’
‘Ay, we are a rich people,’ replied Kern. ‘We have plenty of gold, but it is useless to us for we have nothing to spend it on.’ He laughed and Giulia thought how much she liked the old man.
‘It is a handsome gift,’ she said.
‘It is not a gift,’ Kern replied sternly. ‘It is payment. We need horses. You have told me of the herds of young horses reared each year in your meadows. This will pay for three ships full of the animals.’
Now the gold lay in the depths of the fishing boat, under a shining blanket of silvery sea bream which would argue their innocence if they were stopped by the enemy. It would be enough to pay her brother’s mercenaries for a year longer. Enough, perhaps, to end the City’s siege.
If they could run the blockade.
The Blues’ blockade tactics varied, according to who was in charge of the fleet, and who captain of each ship. Sometimes they would let a single fishing boat sail by, unbothered by a few fishermen catching food for their table. Sometimes they would stop and board, and search the boat for reasons of received intelligence, or boredom, or whim. And occasionally they would stop and board, and kill everyone and throw them to the sea gods. The ten men on the Linnet were aged from sixteen to sixty and could pass for an extended fishing family, with Giulia as their matriarch. But in fact they were all soldiers faithful to Marcus Rae Khan, tough as boots, and they would all die hard before losing the gold or before any harm came to their lady.
A low whistle came from the bow. One of the men, with the eagle eyes of youth, had spotted the fleet. Giulia peered again. She could see nothing. But if she could not see the enemy ships, they certainly could not see her boat, dark on a dark sea. For a while Giulia forgot about the arthritis in her hands and hips as she felt the cool breeze comb through her hair. She sniffed the dark night. She thought she could smell the City, the City of blood she loved and hated, where her brother would be waiting impatiently for her, wondering what treasures, what words, she had brought him. She would be with him soon, with luck.
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