The Assassin Princess (Lamb & Castle Book 2)

by J M Sanford

  “Hello there,” said Amelia timidly to the wyvern. “You remember me from Captain Dunnager’s skyship, don't you?” She still didn't know how much of human speech the wyverns understood. She remembered the way the eldest wyvern had listened with fascination to the fairy tale she’d told him, but had he really understood her words, or only been soothed by the sound of her voice? Amelia thought the tame wyvern must understand some language, because he stood still and patient enough while Meg rigged up a saddle of sorts. Meanwhile, Percival helped Amelia put on some of the White Queen's armour. Meg scoffed at the need for it (after all, Amelia had magic to defend herself with) but didn't forbid it outright. “If you're spotted inside the City, you'll be for the high jump, White Queen or not. Might as well have all the protection you can get, I s'pose.”

  High overhead, a grey skyline approached through the fog. Ilgrevnia, faster than her sisters and flying much lower, soon loomed close, her bulk blotting out the weak sun like a thundercloud.

  “Now,” said Meg, “you remember the spell for loosing knots, don't you dear?”

  Amelia nodded uneasily. It was a simple spell Meg had taught her some time ago, but she'd had little use for it.

  “Good girl.” Meg helped Amelia into the makeshift saddle, tucked her cloak tightly around her, and bound her wrists loosely in place. “We can't have you falling, now, can we? What with the wind and all, it can get damn cold flying too high, and very likely your fingers will go numb. Just speak the spell when you're ready to get off, and I'll be with you in no time at all.” Then Meg slapped the wyvern sharply on the flank, and the beast lurched skyward.

  Amelia squeezed her eyes tight shut in spite of herself. She felt as if she'd left her stomach behind on the ground, and was afraid for a moment she might be violently sick, but she knew no way of controlling the speeding wyvern. As the cold wind whipped past her, threatening to snatch her breath from her throat, she whispered, “please, slow down!” but the wyvern took no notice. Speed and stealth were the useful elements of this means of transportation – the comfort of the ride couldn't be taken into account. Amelia forced herself to open her eyes enough to see. The view was phenomenal but the bitterly cold wind blurred her eyes with tears almost straight away. The desolate rainy valley was an enormous grey and green bowl, the impossible rock of Ilgrevnia suspended in place above it. Amelia blinked back the tears, trying to orientate herself. Soon they'd shoot high above the City, past the high outer wall and its watchtowers, and if anyone should happen to be looking out of a window, Amelia didn't want to give them a chance to realise that this wyvern had a rider. She pressed herself flat against the creature's back as he steadied, riding the currents of the wind, and looked down on the Flying City. Ilgrevnia was not built of the same yellow stone as many of the other Flying Cities, but of grey granite. The architecture was just as grand, and she could imagine the buildings bright and clean in their glory days, the polished granite almost silver. Now, with the rain and mist and disrepair, Ilgrevnia looked a dark and forbidding place.

  Amelia clung close to the wyvern's neck, still afraid that someone in Ilgrevnia might see her at any moment and unceremoniously shoot her down. Invisibility was truly the most useful spell in her arsenal, but she couldn't focus, too dizzy from their rapid ascent. Nor could she do anything to muffle the wyvern's loud wingbeats as he began to descend, drawing close to the streets of Ilgrevnia. She was so afraid of being seen that she almost forgot to be afraid of the great height they were coming down from. As they landed, she spoke her knot-loosing spell, tumbling ungracefully down from the wyvern's back. The creature stood and folded his wings, looking around curiously while Amelia got to her feet. They stood in an overgrown courtyard, grand houses looming over them, three or four storeys tall. Amelia felt as if a vice had closed on her spine, just at the base of her skull: her head pounded and she stood a moment trying to accustom herself to the thinner atmosphere, the cool damp air on her forehead welcome and soothing. She made a mental note never to ride a wyvern again, if she could possibly avoid it, and to steer well clear of broomsticks, whatever Meg might say.

  She hadn't the faintest idea where in the City they'd come down. Every window she could see was broken. Some had been boarded up, but many more had simply been left – open holes into darkness, dripping with rainwater. Careful not to slip on the carpet of wet dead leaves, Amelia ventured past the rusty gates hanging from their hinges, out into the street. The wyvern hopped after her, his claws scrabbling on the cobblestones. Curls of red-brown ferns and the dead stems of foxgloves encroached on the abandoned streets, along with the little white flowers that had grown so abundantly on the ground below. A grey haze of fine rain blurred the distance, and the wind whined and grumbled around the grey stone buildings like some strange animal. Or at least, Amelia hoped it was only the wind…

  At the far end of the street, she could see wide steps leading up into the sky – perhaps a way up onto a promenade around the Walls, like other Flying Cities had.

  “Come on, then,” she whispered to the wyvern, and headed for the steps. It might make a good place to meet Meg as she came up.

  They were on the promenade before Amelia realised her mistake. Her intended meeting place was much too exposed, but by then it was almost too late: she heard a man shout from somewhere in the streets below. She froze guiltily, before realising that he hadn't been shouting at her. Something else was coming in to land in Ilgrevnia. Amelia ducked into a nook below the parapets, peering out. Her heart leapt: the white griffin! The sun, low in the sky now, came out from behind the clouds and caught the white wings in a blinding flash. The griffin touched down on the promenade in near silence, graceful and elegant, so unlike the thunderous landing of the wyvern. Amelia held her breath, thinking mousy invisible thoughts until she faded out of sight. Meg had said before it was no surprise a girl like Amelia should easily master a spell like that. Amelia, who'd heard plenty of backhanded compliments from her stepmother, thought she'd detected a pinch of grudging admiration in that comment, though.

  She watched the griffin, noting the sharpness of its iron-grey beak, the fierceness of its stony grey eyes, never blinking as they swept the maze of forgotten passageways and crumbling dead ends below the walkway. It was hauntingly beautiful, in its own way: its wings and its powerful hindquarters snow-white and barred with barely visible stripes of blue grey that shifted in the light, so that they seemed almost as fleeting as the ripples in a stream.

  Amelia's invisibility spell seemed to be holding up, although the white griffin was so close she was sure it must hear the thudding of her heart; it must turn and pounce on her at any moment…

  “Don't tell me you've lost them again!” the man shouted, and the white griffin's fox-like ears flicked about. “You won't be Master's golden boy much longer if you carry on like this, will you? Come on: they were seen coming down, so they've got to be around here somewhere.”

  The griffin turned to slink towards the sound of the voice, down towards the steps, barely making a sound even through the puddles. Amelia held tight to the wyvern, keeping them both unseen, but she could feel the tension building in his muscles as he fidgeted in her grasp. She stroked his neck, desperately trying to calm him. When he'd battled the white griffin before, he’d lost badly. Like any young male of any species, he'd jump at a second chance to prove himself.

  “Quiet now,” Amelia breathed. “I still need you to fetch Meg.”

  The wyvern arched his neck and hissed like a swan, startling the white griffin so that it sprang into the air. Composing itself, the griffin glared at the two of them, the fur along its back all standing up. Amelia stayed still as a statue, hoping against hope that the break in her concentration hadn't meant the end of her invisibility spell. But, still glaring furiously, the white griffin crouched on the walkway like a cat wanting to pounce, and began to pad carefully towards them on soft silent paws.

  Amelia dropped her invisibility spell. “Stay back,” she warned, her voice low and shaking,
but the fire spell coming together in her hands almost without her having to think about it. “Stay back, or my word you'll be sorry.”

  The white griffin did indeed stay back then, the reflection of the blue flames shining in its fierce eyes as it looked from Amelia to the hissing wyvern.

  Amelia edged back from the griffin. Then she fumbled and dropped the fireball onto the wet street, where it fizzled and went out. The griffin leapt, clashing mid-air with the eager wyvern. The wyvern had grown considerably since his previous near-fatal duel with the white griffin, and the two creatures wrestled and rolled down the promenade, screaming, biting, tearing. When they hit the rotting wooden railing of a viewing platform, it splintered, the two combatants spilling over into the sky.

  With a cry of dismay, Amelia rushed to the edge, almost sliding right off as well. The fierce wind pulled at her cloak as she clung to what remained of the ruined railings, and looked down into the grey abyss. The white griffin had broken free of the wyvern's grasp, and – seeing that it had met its match – fled from the City, soon lost in the mist. The wyvern pursued, intent on revenge, and Amelia had no way of going after it, not unless she could sprout wings. “No! Come back!” she shouted after it in vain, as white feathers swirled around her.

  Footsteps rang on the stone steps: she'd forgotten all about the man in the streets below. Now he stood there, sword in hand, a familiar figure in a blue uniform. He stared at the white lamb on Amelia's breastplate, and grinned horribly as he recognised the White Queen. She willed herself invisible, taking a small measure of amusement from his surprise at her disappearance, and then she glanced up and down the walkway. No place to hide there, but the stairway leading down was as wide as the street. If she could hold her concentration long enough then she could sneak right past him and be well away, into the maze of back streets and alleyways. Her head was thundering, her heart still leaping since her near miss on the edge of the viewing platform. Barely breathing, she tiptoed down a couple of steps, and was pleased to see that he was still scanning the length of the promenade for any sign of her. She edged past him, close to the wall, moving slowly and carefully so that she might not be betrayed by the slightest jingle of a bracelet. She was a ghost, a thought on the breeze, less than a shadow… She was past him, and broke into a run, splashing through the puddles.

  “Oi!” he shouted, running after her, but she ducked into a side street and into the empty doorway of an abandoned shop. Stealthily she climbed the stairs and, still concentrating hard on being invisible, she peered past the jagged edges of a grime-coated broken window, looking down into the street.

  The guardsman stood there, casting about for the vanished girl, looking increasingly panicked to have lost such apparently easy prey. He pulled out something like a silver pocket watch and flipped it open. “All right, lads: looks like we've lost the Black Queen's ship for the time being, but the White Queen's in the City now.” He paused. “No. No I don't want to disturb His Highness before we have the girls, not this time. Find them and bring them to me.” He paused, sharp eyes darting from doorway to doorway, alleyway to alleyway. “Yes, I'm sure His Highness will be very interested to see her again. And I wouldn't want to be in her shoes then.”

  8: A WITCH WITHOUT A BROOMSTICK

  Awaiting the return of the tame wyvern, Meg and the others had taken shelter in a rough cave: a wide split in the hillside, overhung with dying, dripping bracken, and only slightly less damp than the drizzling open air. Suspecting that the wyvern had somehow been delayed, but ignorant of the full extent of her daughter's trouble in Ilgrevnia, Meg sat and mulled over how else she might re-join Amelia. Harold stood at the mouth of the cave, whistling loudly for the wyvern until he was alarmingly red in the face.

  “Stop that noise!” Meg snapped. “We've a perfectly good hidey hole here for the time being, and who knows what you'll bring running if you carry on like that.”

  “But what about Amelia?” Harold protested. “She's all by herself up there.” He'd watched in quiet envy as Amelia went off on the wyvern, and had been hoping to persuade Meg to let him ride the beast up to Ilgrevnia next.

  “We'll get to her soon enough. Quiet now, boy, and let me think.” With a snap of her fingers, she lit a fire to chase back the shadows and warm herself. The flames burned fiercer than she meant them to, betraying her irritation – she'd instructed the wyvern to come back to her as soon as Amelia had dismounted, and she'd thought it tame enough to respond to such simple commands.

  “Make yourself at home, why not?” Harold muttered, with a resentful glance at the two heavy suitcases he and Percival had carried into the shelter of the cave. “Have a cup of tea and some cake.”

  “Look, boy,” said Meg, sharply. “There's no point us getting soaked to the bone outdoors while I figure out this mess. I'm not counting on stopping here forever, but you don't want to see me with a cold,” – nobody wanted a witch sneezing mid-spell, after all – “and it's always good to have some supplies tucked away somewhere close by.” She searched her voluminous bag for something that might occupy her idle hands while she thought. “Should've brought a broom,” she muttered to herself. “Don't get this kind of trouble with a good old-fashioned broom.” If only she'd brought her old broom, she'd have been up there in a flash…

  “Ilgrevnia isn't set to leave this place for another fortnight, Meg,” Percival reminded her. “Amelia's a shrewd enough young woman to stay out of trouble until we can find another way up.”

  “Look!” Harold shouted, “Up there!”

  Meg hurried to join him at the mouth of the cave. A skyship had emerged from the clouds above Ilgrevnia, its sails pale and colourless in the fading light. Nevertheless, Meg thought she recognised the sleek good lines of the Argean skyship Sharvesh – the Black Queen had caught up with them. A jet of fire flashed forth from the City Walls, but the skyship had already passed clear out of range. A second jet followed the first, orange flame spearing into the twilight. Dragon's fire? The wyvern? Or some man-made device? At a distance, Meg couldn't tell. The skyship picked up its pace, disappearing back into the clouds.

  “Perfect,” Percival muttered. “Now we have the Black Side’s marauding archers to watch out for, as well as everything else.”

  “Enough of that,” said Meg. “You know Flying Cities: what did you make of the flame? Some sort of defence?”

  “Not a standard defence, but I wouldn't rule it out. In days gone by, many of the Flying Cities had a flight of wyverns and riders, making the docks a safer place… or at least, in theory…”

  As Percival launched into a full-blown history lesson, Meg stopped listening. Let him talk, if it took his mind off more alarming matters for a while, and it would give the boy something else to occupy his mind, too. She didn't like to think that their wyvern companion might have been caught out by some flamethrower, even without Amelia on his back. And if Meg and Percival hadn't fully considered Ilgrevnia's defences, what chance did Amelia have, up there by herself… “Where's that necklace?” she demanded of Harold. “The one she gave you with a lock of her hair. Don't gawp at me like that, boy. I'm a witch: I know all; I see all.” They'd stopped in a prosperous merchant town far back along the way, and Amelia had wanted a gift for her Paladin.

  Reluctantly, Harold took off the locket and surrendered it to Meg. “Wait! What are you doin’ that for?” he protested when she prised the glass away from the twist of smooth golden hair:

  “Stop fussing!” said Meg, handing the empty locket back to him, “Amelia's got plenty more of this. I reckon she'd shave her head bald if you asked her to.” She set about searching for a pool somewhere out of the rain, where she then crouched over the dark water, grumbling and trying to ignore Harold's resentful eyes on her. She'd never quite got the hang of this spell, and didn't use it if she could avoid it. “Come on then, magic mirror,” she muttered, “show us where she is.”

  Harold stared glumly at the empty locket. “She said she might marry the White King.”

&n
bsp; Meg ignored him.

  “Leave her to it, lad,” said Percival. “You might as well get some rest while you can. Meg, dare I suggest you do the same presently?”

  “You'd better dare not,” said Meg, not even glancing up from her makeshift dark mirror. Snatched, bleary images of desolate rain-sodden streets floated up into the glassy surface of the water, but she couldn't see the briefest glimpse of Amelia's golden braids in the gloom.

  Then the ground shook, and the image in the still water scattered into shivering circles, making Meg swear. Harold jumped up at once, running to the mouth of the cave, and Percival followed more cautiously. “Meg?” he called, “The earth quaked. Come out of the cave now, in case there are any further tremors.”

  Meg shook her head, staying stubbornly at the side of the pool. That had been no earthquake: something had fallen to earth, close by. And if it had any sense, it would come no closer to her.

  ~

  Just inside the shelter of the cave, Harold sat with Stupid's cage on his knees, feeding bits of dead grass to the sizzling fire sprite. Night had fallen some time ago. Hours into her efforts to locate Amelia, Meg had taken a break and dozed off, and Sir Percival had settled down to think or to sleep. Either way he stood still and silent as if the armour was empty, the moonlight shining in and gleaming on plate metal. Harold's eyelids were just beginning to droop, when he heard the thump of hoofbeats and the shouts of men. In the distance, war drums sounded. He froze.

  Meg had jumped up at the noise, and Harold looked to her for orders, but it had never been clearer that the witch had no idea what to do. By the stark light of the moon, her face looked pale and fearful. “Perce?” she whispered.

  Beside her, the suit of armour stirred, reaching out one gauntlet to gently take her hand. “Here.”

  The hoofbeats came closer, thundering right past the cave without stopping. If the riders had seen Harold, they hadn't cared. Meg shook herself off and crawled to the mouth of the cave, careful not to stray too far from the safety of the shadows. Those had been no war drums they'd heard, but the ponderous steps of feet the size of rowboats, and now, by the light of the moon, a huge and terrible figure loped across the moor. At a rough guess it stood twenty feet high, vaguely man-shaped, if not in the proportions of a man: a beast carved from rock and barely pretending to be a living creature. Bull-necked, with huge fists and a hide like rock, the thing had been made for destruction. In the moonlight it was the colour of lead.