She fell into a deep sleep almost straight away and dreamed that she was making wine. Since she had no idea how wine was made, the dream consisted of her gathering huge bunches of pale green grapes, translucent as glass, and throwing them into a gigantic silver ewer where they thundered in ever-decreasing circles until, through some process she never quite could see, they turned into bottles of wine. The sun was huge and round and sounded like rain, its golden light pouring down in cataracts of fluid light—
She woke up with a jump in the middle of the night, as a particularly loud thunderclap broke over the palace. It wasn’t the sun making that noise, it was the rain, pouring down in floods outside. The window shutters were rattling violently.
Lady Agathe, fast asleep in her chair, hadn’t stirred. The bedchamber was still stuffy and hot, so Georgette climbed out of bed and opened the window. A gust of wind tore the shutters from her hand, rushing into her chamber and throwing a gout of rain over her. Georgette gasped and blinked.
She leaned out and stared over the palace garden. It was almost invisible through the rain and darkness, except when jagged lightning threw harsh illuminations over the thrashing trees. She shivered, and reached out to catch the banging shutters. Finally, after a tussle, she managed to latch them again. By then her nightgown was soaked.
Lady Agathe was still fast asleep. That’s strange, thought Georgette. Surely all that noise would have woken her. And then, for no reason she could trace, she began to feel frightened. There was someone in the room watching her, she was sure… She squinted through the shadows, but could see nothing. For some reason that didn’t reassure her: the conviction kept growing. She stepped over to her writing table and, her hands trembling slightly, struck a flint to light a candle. In its yellow light the room seemed just as it should be. She breathed out. It was only her imagination. Nobody was here.
She was about to blow the candle out and climb back into bed when she saw a black cat sitting in the middle of the floor, gazing at her with emerald-green eyes. Somehow she hadn’t seen it before. Georgette laughed. “How did you get in here?” she said. “Lady Agathe will have a fit. She loathes cats…”
“Lady Agathe clearly has no taste,” said the cat. “And I should tell you that it was some business making my way through that storm.”
Georgette nearly dropped the candle. She stared, her mouth open.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” said the cat. “So you’d better get moving.”
“What?”
“If you want to leave the palace, that is. I’m told that’s what you want, and I have agreed, at considerable inconvenience to myself, to help you do it.”
Georgette pinched her arm, convinced that this must be an extension of her dream. But then, dreams could be real – she knew that now. She tried to gather her scattered thoughts. “Did Amina send you?”
“Missus Bemare to you, I should think.”
Georgette blinked.
“At the bottom of your bed there are some clothes. I suggest you put them on.” When Georgette still didn’t move, the cat growled softly. “Have you forgotten how to dress yourself?”
Georgette came out of her daze to find herself possessed with an unexpected hilarity. Why not do what the cat told her? And indeed, there were clothes at the end of the bed. Boy’s clothes. Linen undergarments, breeches, shirt, waistcoat, jacket, a pair of serviceable boots, a large cap. She glanced at Lady Agathe, still snoozing in her chair, and hurriedly dressed herself. Her hair was still in rags, twisted for morning ringlets, so she stuffed them under her cap. The cat watched her unblinkingly.
“Now,” it said, “follow me.”
“Are you magic?”
“That’s a very personal question.” The cat stretched. “You can ask questions later. As I have already told you, we don’t have a lot of time.”
“But I should call you something. I mean, you must have a name.”
“Day humans always pronounce it wrong. But you can call me Amiable.”
“Amiable?” Again the bubble of hilarity rose inside Georgette, but she suppressed it in case she offended her rescuer. Whatever else this cat was, it seemed more haughty than amiable. “Delighted to meet you, Amiable. I never imagined I might be rescued by a cat.”
“Don’t be discourteous; it’s unbecoming.” Amiable was already at the door, which against all protocol was standing open. The cat whisked out into the passage.
Georgette took a deep breath before she followed. This was too absurd to be true. But it felt real.
The palace at night was spooky, especially with the storm raging outside. Empty, echoing spaces stretched into shadow and tapestries billowed in stray draughts. Painted faces loomed out of the gloom when lightning flashes seared across the dark halls, making Georgette start. Despite the howling wind and thunder, no one was awake – not even the guards who were supposed to watch the doors. Everything was drowned in sleep.
All the lights were doused, but Amiable seemed to generate a sourceless illumination around her body that lit their path but threw no shadows. How strange, thought Georgette, that a black cat should be luminous. As she followed that fluid, silently padding form, Georgette thought about what she knew of witches. Very little, sadly. She had heard that witches could change their shapes, but she had never heard of talking cats, except in the children’s stories that Amina had told her so many years ago now. Was Amiable a witch in cat form, or a cat who could speak? A witch, probably; after all she was powerful enough to put a spell of sleep over a whole palace.
They walked through the cavernous, deserted kitchens, past the cold storerooms where carcasses of dead animals hung from iron hooks, past tottering piles of copper pots and pans, out through the back door, straight into the storm.
As soon as Georgette stepped out of the door she was blinded by the rain and soaked through. She might as well have walked into a waterfall. Amiable was a small, dimly lit blur in front of her feet, seemingly completely unbothered by the downpour. Georgette squared her shoulders and followed. The service gates were open, with no sign of guards. They slipped out into a back lane, down a tiny street, across the Royal Plaza, down a dark boulevard, and then into a tangle of streets that Georgette didn’t recognize.
For the next hour, Georgette grew colder and colder. The rain stopped, but the wind didn’t. A fingernail moon slipped out through the rags of clouds, but it just made the streets seem darker. Georgette kept her eyes fixed on Amiable, fearing she might lose her guide.
They reached one of the Five Rivers – Georgette had no idea which one – and followed the cobbled path that ran beside it. It was even colder here, where the wind swept along the surface of the water, and she began to shiver uncontrollably. Just as she started to feel that there would be no end to this journey they arrived at a pipe outlet that ran into the river. Amiable jumped inside and trotted along a slimy, brick-lined tunnel without looking to check if Georgette was behind her.
Georgette hesitated for a moment, but all she wanted to do by now was get out of the wind. She scrambled after Amiable, uncomfortably stooped against the low ceiling. She wondered if there were going to be rats. She didn’t like rats. She was very tired, and now she really did have a headache. And then she saw a faint yellow light spilling onto the bricks, and a sound like a roar of people talking that was becoming louder and louder. Shortly afterwards she was able to stand up, and then they turned a corner. Georgette gasped.
She blinked in the brightness, briefly forgetting how cold she was. They were in a large vaulted room like a cellar, lit with coloured lamps suspended from the ceiling. It was crowded with people of all shapes and sizes and hues.
As she looked more closely, she realized that not everyone here was human. She could see cats, dogs, a donkey, a couple of crows, a few figures she couldn’t identify at all. There was a delicious smell of things cooking, and in the corner someone was playing a lute. Georgette wasn’t sure, but she thought it was a dog.
Amiable spoke for the firs
t time since they had left the palace. “Welcome to the Undercroft, the home of the night people,” she said. “You’re a very privileged day human to be permitted here. I hope it’s worth it. For us, I mean.”
Georgette swept her gaze around the cellar again. Whatever this place was, there was more life in this one room than she had seen for years in the whole palace. She remembered her manners and straightened her shoulders. “I’m honoured,” she said. And she added, “I hope I don’t wake up.”
“Stop thinking that you’re dreaming,” said Amiable irritably. “It’s rude.”
Chapter Twenty-five
CARDINAL LAMIR HAD LONG BEEN SUSPICIOUS OF the housekeeper in the Old Palace. He was sure that Princess Georgette’s regrettable early inclinations to disobedience had come from this woman’s influence.
He considered it a weakness of the old regime that they had employed people who were not of pure Clarelian blood. It didn’t matter how many generations southerners had lived in Clarel; as far as Cardinal Lamir was concerned, they remained foreign. Among his assassins were a few whose ancestry hailed from other countries in Continentia, but if they were to flourish in his employ, they needed to be trained from childhood, and even then they needed to be geniuses like Ariosto. He would never employ a southerner. As an educated man, the Cardinal knew that many of the techniques his assassins used had originally come from the south, but this merely proved that southerners were inherently treacherous.
And now there was a direct connection between the boy who had stolen the Stone Heart and this Bemare woman. “It’s disturbing, Ariosto,” he said.
“My men have brought her in,” Ariosto said. “At the very least, she will divulge information about her daughter and her associates. It seems that the young thief was seen about the Old Palace quite often.”
The Cardinal looked up sharply. “You should have gone yourself, Ariosto.”
“I had other tasks. King Oswald’s presence here has taken much of my time.”
“I instructed that this investigation takes priority over everything else.” The Cardinal’s nostrils pinched with rage. “We can afford no more carelessness.”
Ariosto considered reminding the Cardinal of King Oswald’s sense of self-importance, but thought better of it. The Cardinal already knew this, but wouldn’t accept it as an excuse.
“Did you confine the woman in the lower dungeon?”
Briefly, Ariosto looked startled. “No, I thought—”
“You didn’t think.” Again that repressed rage, that anxiety. “Did it never occur to you that this woman is very likely a witch?”
Ariosto knew Mistress Bemare. She showed none of the signs of witchcraft that he had learned in his training. He was slow to warm to any human being, but this woman had been kind to him once, a long time ago, and he hadn’t forgotten. For a moment, he felt a pang of sorrow that Mistress Bemare might be subjected to the attentions of the official torturers.
He was beginning to wonder if the Cardinal was becoming slightly unhinged. He repressed the thought at once; he knew that Lamir had an unsettling ability to read his mind.
“I’ll personally oversee the interrogation,” said the Cardinal. He waved his hand. “And be wary. Very wary. They have wiles, these witches, that you cannot imagine.”
Ariosto bowed and left Lamir’s office to carry out his instructions. Cardinal Lamir watched him leave. He hadn’t missed the flicker of scepticism that had crossed Ariosto’s face. Like everything else in the past few days, it struck him as a bad sign.
When Sibelius had tracked down the Stone Heart at a dealer in rare items in a shabby suburb on the outskirts of Clarel, the Cardinal had felt a glow of triumph. It was the final key to his plans. But since then, things had been going wrong. Small things, to be sure, but it was on such details that empires foundered. He had been so certain that witches had been totally suppressed in Clarel: there had been no signs of real witchcraft for more than a century.
If anyone knew the signs, he did.
Chapter Twenty-six
AMINA WAS WORRYING THAT SHE HAD FORGOTTEN to take the stew off the stove when the officials had come to arrest her. At the best, the fire would die down, and she would merely have a spoilt pot and a lot of smoke. At the worst, it would burn down the kitchen. Or even the Old Palace.
Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it would be a nuisance.
The two men who had arrested her were clearly assassins, though of a lowly rank, so she hadn’t been surprised to be taken to the offices in the Cardinal’s palace. But now she sat in the dungeons of the Office for Witchcraft Extermination, her arms and legs clamped to an uncomfortable metal chair. That was a bit surprising. No witch had made it this far for almost a hundred years.
Her protests of bewilderment and outrage, reinforced by a strong persuasion charm, had at first seemed to be working well. But then Milan Ariosto had entered the room where she was being questioned and ordered that she be taken to the dungeons. She remembered him from a long time ago, from before he had been swept up and tipped into one of Cardinal Lamir’s orphanages. She had followed his career with sadness: Ariosto was one of her failures. He didn’t seem to remember her, although he was careful not to meet her eyes.
Once in the dungeons she was handed over to an interrogator, a thin man with thin lips and even thinner hair. He had emotionlessly and painstakingly explained what the various torture devices did to various parts of the human body, and then left her by herself to contemplate her immediate future. A tallow candle in a dish provided illumination. Amina wrinkled her nose. It stank.
She knew that leaving prisoners alone with the tools of torture was a standard process. Often prisoners confessed before the torturers got down to business, out of sheer terror; not that it necessarily prevented them being tortured anyway.
These tools had all been used on living, breathing people for the sole purpose of causing them pain. The king called it “justice”. This, thought Amina, is why witches don’t trust kings. Or cardinals. Or anyone at all whose idea of justice starts with the pain of another human being.
She was trying not to worry about Oni, because there was no point. Oni, like all the children of witches, knew where the safe houses were. Amina had to trust that Oni would remember what she had been taught, and wouldn’t let her fear get the better of her. In normal circumstances that would be comfort enough, but now that the Heart was released from its bonds, anything might happen.
The Heart had found Pip. She hoped that was a good thing, but she couldn’t be sure. It was bad magic, even if a witch had made it for the best of purposes. In any case, what happened to the Heart was, for now, out of Amina’s hands and there was no point in worrying about it. She hoped that someone would remember about Georgette. It was crucial she was taken away from King Oswald.
Her role now was to be the respectable royal housekeeper that she had appeared to be for her whole life. Since before her great-grandmother’s time, the oldest Bemare daughter had been housekeeper of the Old Palace. That hadn’t changed even when the King of Clarel became a Spectre. Once the royal housekeeper had been a position of high status, like the palace itself. Not any more.
In any case, when the antennae of the state began to quiver with suspicion, innocence or guilt became irrelevant. As far as witchcraft was concerned, being arrested was in itself a proof of guilt. But witches had their own means of dealing with the law. Right now Amina wasn’t frightened for herself, but she was worried. If the torturer followed through on his threats, she would have to use magic.
So much of the teaching of magic was all about not doing it. The more powerful magic was, the less you should use it. Only in the last resort, her mother had told her. And maybe not even then.
She had no doubt that she was being observed from some unseen spyhole, and thought that for the moment she should play along. It was important that she acted as any normal non-witch person would. She called for help, and then, when there was no answer, began to sob noisily. Then s
he started praying out loud. Then she whimpered for a long time.
After an hour of this, she began to get very bored. Perhaps they meant to leave her here all night. Perhaps, she thought, she might get away with falling asleep. It would pass the time. Because she was unable to move, she was increasingly uncomfortable.
Amina sobbed a bit more, and then twisted around in the chair, trying to find a more comfortable position. There wasn’t one. She relaxed all her muscles and let herself doze, as if she were exhausted. She needed to be rested for whatever was coming.
Some time later, in the darkest, coldest watches of the night, the dungeon door opened. By then the tallow candle had burned itself out, and she had been in complete darkness for about an hour.
Four men entered, all of them dressed in deepest black so their faces and hands stood out white against the shadows. Two were guards who carried pitch torches that they fixed to brackets on the wall. The sudden dazzle and smoke made Amina’s eyes smart. The third was the torturer she had seen earlier.
The fourth man was Cardinal Lamir himself.
The hairs rose on the back of Amina’s neck. This was serious. Maybe it was a case for last resorts, after all.
“Mistress Bemare,” said the Cardinal, smiling thinly, “I must apologize for the discomfort of your accommodation. Sadly, it is sometimes necessary.”
Amina stared back at him. “I beg you, sir, to release me,” she said. “I have been most unjustly imprisoned, and I don’t understand why. I have duties, sir, and responsibilities…”
“It has come to our attention that you practise witchcraft.”
Amina looked shocked. “No, sir! How can that be so? I have never in my life…”
Lamir signed to one of the guards, who rolled some objects out of a small bag onto the tray of torture implements. The muffling candles, curse it. A selection of cooking spices. A little paring knife. An old doll of Oni’s that Amina had kept long after Oni outgrew it, as a memento. They had obviously made a thorough search of her rooms. Perhaps someone had taken the stew off the fire.
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