‘You are mistaken,’ Will heard Launceston’s hushed voice. ‘You are indeed England’s greatest spy.’
Her eyes sparkling, Meg beamed. ‘You might well have ended this war we all thought would last for ever.’
Will held up a bloodstained hand, hardly daring to believed it himself. He looked round. Jenny and Grace were both smiling in disbelief, tears of relief glistening in their eyes. Jenny mouthed, ‘Thank you.’ He refused to consider why she was thanking him. There would be time for that conversation later.
Fury finally ignited in Deortha’s face. ‘Lies and deceit. I should have expected no better from a man.’
‘True,’ Will replied with a shrug. ‘We are worse than beasts in the field.’
‘Have you no honour?’
Placing a finger on his chin, Will feigned a moment of reflection. ‘Honour? What is honour? Does it buy me good sack in the Mermaid? I have saved my love and ended a war. I leave honour for better men than I. I am happy to remain a bastard.’
Deortha’s snarl echoed across the chamber until it was drowned by Mandraxas’s laughter. He stood, pushing away the tip of Will’s rapier with a slender finger. ‘So you refuse to kill. And yet on that hot night soon after I took from you the thing you valued most, I saw you slay an innocent man.’
Will felt the eyes of all there fall upon him. His breath caught in his chest as years of self-loathing bubbled up. Finally he nodded. ‘’Tis true, though I have never spoken of it to anyone.’ He glanced at Grace, noting the lines of worry in her face, and sighed. Bowing his head, he confessed, ‘When Jenny disappeared that afternoon, I barely held on to my wits. I searched every byway around Arden and in the depths of night came across a man struggling with Jenny beside a hedgerow. Blinded by fury, I leapt from my horse and beat him to death with my fists.’ His head flooded with the sensations of bones breaking under his knuckles and blood flowing over his fingers. He felt the weight in his heart that he had carried since that night.
‘But when he lay lifeless at my feet and I turned to embrace Jenny, I saw it was not her,’ he continued. ‘It was one of the silly village girls, known for her easy ways. The man was a footpad, so not a good man, and the girl was grateful that I had saved her from the fate he had intended.’ He swallowed. ‘But in truth, yes, I had killed an innocent man.’ He looked to Grace, expecting accusation or disgust, but he saw only pity. ‘That night when you came to me at the well I was washing the blood from my hands, though I could never clean the stains from my mortal soul. That night. . the course of my life changed. I learned that I am not a good man. And though I have tried to make amends for my crime, I know I never will.’
Grace ran to his side. ‘It is not true. You are a good man and you have proved it time and again.’
Mandraxas gave a cold laugh at the subtle blow he had struck. But as his amusement drained away, he pointed a threatening finger at Will. ‘You think yourself clever, but the schemes of mortals rarely turn out as planned. And I have nothing but time to take the prize.’ He glanced at Jenny, but turned away quickly so Will could not see his expression. Then he grasped the hilt of the knife in his thigh, and, with a grimace, slowly withdrew it. Tearing off a strip of cloth from the hem of his cloak, he began to bind the wound. Jenny hesitated, glancing at Will, and when he nodded she hurried to help the one who had been her consort for so long. The Fay King watched her as she tenderly tied the cloth round his thigh, but if he felt anything it did not show on his face. When she had finished, Mandraxas muttered something that Will could not hear, and then turned quickly and limped towards the stone steps leading out of the chamber of mirrors.
As if in a trance, Will watched him go, still barely believing that he had plucked some kind of victory from the direst of situations. Once the King moved into the penumbra beyond the circle of candlelight, he turned, beckoning the others to follow him. ‘Come, my friends, we must make haste,’ he said.
Yet barely had he taken a step when a sharp gasp brought him to a halt. He spun round to see Mandraxas staggering back down the steps, one hand clutched at his chest as blood fountained between his fingers. Will gaped in shock. The King half turned, his yearning gaze finding Jenny for one moment, and then he fell to the flagstones, dead. Jenny rushed to him with a cry of despair.
In his mirror, Deortha was smiling.
‘What is this treachery?’ Launceston said, menace curdling his voice.
A figure stepped out of the shadows from the foot of the stairs, holding a blade that dripped gore. It was Strangewayes. The red-headed spy looked across at his companions with a cold face and said, ‘The only treachery here is yours. And now there is an end to it.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
‘Oh, Tobias, what have you done?’ grace cried with a sob, running to where Jenny knelt by Mandraxas’s lifeless body.
Strangewayes stepped over the King and swaggered towards the guttering candles. He pointed his rapier towards Will. ‘You, sirrah, should not have ignored me when there was an opportunity to prevent this outcome,’ he said in an icy voice. ‘Too long have you placed Grace’s life at risk with your reckless behaviour. But no more.’ He beckoned to Grace to join him. ‘Come — I will take you away from here.’
Dismay spreading across her face, the young woman shook her head slowly, taking a step back.
‘Come to me,’ Strangewayes snapped. ‘I am here to make you safe.’
‘No, Tobias, not safe,’ she said in a small voice, ‘for you have doomed us all.’
Stung, Strangewayes glared at Will. ‘She is still under your spell, I see, but soon she will learn.’
‘You know not what you have done,’ Will began, his voice hushed. He shook his head, appalled, then let the words drain away. ‘We thought you dead.’
‘You wished me so.’
‘Never, Tobias-’
‘I have saved Grace. From you.’ The young man’s gaze skittered towards Deortha, and in the look that the two exchanged Will glimpsed the truth. It must have happened when Strangewayes was taken prisoner at the fortress gates. The scheming sorcerer had seen an opportunity to use the pitiful spy in case Will should fail to kill Mandraxas. He cursed himself for a fool. If only he had heeded the click of the door opening into that chamber before Carpenter’s attack.
‘Whatever the conjurer has promised you, it is a lie-’ he began.
‘Quiet,’ Strangewayes roared. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a trembling hand. Will saw only a boy, reeling from events far beyond his ability to deal with them. ‘The King is dead,’ the red-headed spy said to Deortha. ‘I have done all you wished. Now let me take Grace away from here.’
In the strange mirror, they saw the sorcerer steeple his fingers, thin lips twitching. ‘Ah, but the terms of our agreement have been breached.’
Strangewayes gaped. ‘What is this trickery?’
‘Unless you reached another deal with this devil,’ Will said, ‘the agreement was free passage if I killed the King. I did not.’
‘You fool,’ Carpenter roared suddenly, turning his hopelessness into rage. Pushing Launceston to one side, he snatched out his rapier. ‘We were free. And now you. . you. . have doomed your girl as surely as if you wielded the dagger yourself.’
‘No,’ Strangewayes croaked, his face pale with disbelief. ‘I saved her.’ He looked to Grace for support, for her to confirm that what he said was true, but found only dismay and disillusion. He sagged, his rapier loose in his hand. A last drop of the King’s blood fell from the tip, colouring the stone slab.
‘The traitor has been deposed.’ In a triumphant tone, Deortha addressed the other Fay in their ethereal mirrors. ‘Though the passing of a brother is a time of sorrow for the High Family, now we may achieve what we have desired for so long, the return of our true Queen. Let our vengeance rain down on the world of men. Bring fire, and blood. Cleanse this world of the corruption of man, and bring our Queen home.’
One by one the mirrors misted as the Fay of the High Family departed unt
il only Deortha remained. Will felt chilled. Only horrors beyond imagining lay ahead. Realizing what he had done, Strangewayes dropped his rapier with a clatter. He held Grace’s gaze for a moment, perhaps hoping for forgiveness, and when he saw none he turned and ran into the shadows.
‘Tobias, come with us,’ Grace called after him, but Will caught her arm.
‘You cannot save him, and you will only condemn yourself,’ he said, wincing at the hurt he saw in her face. But she stifled her grief and nodded, allowing herself one last glance into the gloom as she went to her quietly sobbing sister where she knelt beside Mandraxas’s body.
From his mirror, Deortha levelled his gaze at Will. The spy saw no triumph there, no contempt, not even superiority, only the icy satisfaction of a long-gestating plan finally come to fruition. Breaking the stare, Will looked from Meg to Launceston and Carpenter and nodded. The silent communication was more than enough and his three colleagues went in search of the door out of the chamber.
Will hurried to the two sisters. ‘Jenny, I am sorry. Truly I am,’ he said, his voice gentle. She looked at him. Her face was unreadable — pale, tear-stained. ‘And for you, Grace. But we must all grieve later.’ He swept his left arm out to direct them to the end of the chamber. Grace ran ahead, but Jenny turned back and pressed her lips close to Will’s ear. ‘I remember. .’ she breathed, and paused. ‘I remember a kiss. Under the great oak on an autumn evening when the leaves were turning gold. Our first kiss.’ And in her eyes he saw the Jenny he knew. She hurried after her sister before he could respond.
Carpenter and Launceston waited either side of a low, arched door. In a tunnel beyond, Meg had found and lit a torch and was beckoning to Grace and Jenny to join her. Will saw unease in the Irish woman’s stare. So close to victory they had been, and now they could all feel the winter chill of impending doom enveloping them, he thought bitterly.
He turned to Carpenter, but before he could speak the other man snapped, ‘No pity. For now, I have my own wits about me.’
‘Good. Then it is like old times, John.’ Will touched his torn cheek before clapping a friendly hand on Carpenter’s shoulder. He flashed a searching glance at Launceston, who gave a curt nod of reassurance. Ahead, the golden glow of Meg’s torch washed across the glistening stone walls, and the three men plunged into the gloom in pursuit.
As they scrambled along the low-ceilinged tunnel, they could hear the dull tolling of the alarm bell reverberating ever more clearly, each throb seeming to match the beat of their hearts. Torchlight flickered across faces struggling to contain hopelessness and dread.
‘Why run when those bastards know which path we take?’ Carpenter growled. ‘They will never let us leave. We are already dead.’
‘It is the only way out of here,’ Will replied. ‘And we died a long time ago — the moment we set foot in this cursed place. Every breath we take now is a boon.’ Visions of Unseelie Court galleons sweeping out from the New World flooded his mind, each one filled with more horror than any man could bear.
‘And if we escape,’ Carpenter continued bitterly as if he could read Will’s mind, ‘what do we escape to? An England made Hell? Better we die here.’
Will stopped suddenly, catching the other man’s arm as he turned. ‘Is this the John Carpenter who fought his way out of Muscovy alone, after I had abandoned him to a fate worse than death? In all our time in service to the Queen, we have never given up, though we faced overwhelming odds. Even if all the Unseelie Court and their night-terrors snap at our heels, we fight on, until the last drop of blood flows from our bodies and our rapiers fall from our dying hands.’
At first Carpenter would not meet Will’s eyes. But then he nodded in apology. ‘Aye, Will, let us die as we have lived. For the Queen, for England. Let those pale bastards come and we shall see how many I send to Hell afore me.’
Will nodded in approval. As he turned to continue along the cramped tunnel, Meg called back, ‘I see light ahead.’
Moments later, they stepped out on to a wide stone balcony protruding from a sheer cliff face towering above their heads. Will saw it was a lush garden of some kind, with creepers, shrubs and blooms in sickeningly unnatural blues, blacks and purples clustering around the low enclosing wall. He forced his way through the vegetation to the edge and peered over. A series of further gardens cascaded down the cliff into the mist far below. In the distance, he could just discern a black basalt tower thrusting up from the dense forest with a glowing orb on top of it. It could only be the Tower of the Moon, the beacon that kept open the way between worlds.
As he turned back, he saw the others looking up to the sky. It could have been on fire. Flames rolled out across the arc of the heavens, the horizon burning a deep shade of crimson. Silhouetted against it, Manoa, the Unseelie Court’s City of Gold, seemed to transform. Will blinked, attempting to comprehend what he was seeing. For a moment, the fortress appeared to be surrounded by massive, circling, grinding rings of iron. Was this the true form of that foul place, he wondered, as the Fay hid their own ghastly appearance behind illusions of beauty?
All life is illusion, Dee had said. If that was so, what could they truly believe?
As the tolling of the bell boomed out into the burning sky, shapes flooded out of the fortress and began to descend the cliff. Realization dawned on Will, and he yelled, ‘The Hunters are coming. We must flee. Now.’
Yet even as they raced to the edge of the balcony and searched for a way down, another noise tore through the hot, still air. Will frowned, trying to place the origin of that teeth-jarring whistle. And then he had it: it was the sound made by the black stone Mandraxas had whirled around his head in order to summon those flesh-eating predators, the Spree-birds.
Barely had the thought come to him before a black cloud swept out of the fortress. It circled for one moment and then swooped down. The air was torn by the thunder of a multitude of wings, and a shrieking as if Hell had given up its lost souls.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The seething, roiling mass blotted out the fiery sky above Manoa. Like a tropical storm the Spree-birds swirled, their shrill shrieks tearing across the treetops. Will glanced from the avian predators to the Hunters swarming down the cliff face, like angry ants spilling out of a disturbed nest. He breathed in the acrid stink of burning and heard Grace’s whispered prayer caught on the wind. Taut faces turned towards him; only Launceston seemed unruffled.
But then, when all hope seemed to have departed, he felt a surprising calm descend upon him. He ran back to the dense vegetation edging the spacious stone balcony, ignoring all the sounds of Hell, the cries of the blood-crazed birds and the grim tolling of the bell and the grinding of revolving iron, and studied the strange blooms and dry, thorny bushes.
‘Our steel will be of no use against those birds.’ Meg’s voice was ragged. The others stood beside her. ‘And we cannot outrun them. They will have the flesh from our bones in no time.’
‘We could hide in the tunnel,’ Grace ventured.
‘Of what use is that?’ Carpenter turned his back to them, watching the skies as the black cloud wheeled above them. ‘They will come for us soon enough. No, better to make our stand here, and die like men.’
‘We are not finished yet, John,’ Will said as he plunged into the vegetation and bounded on to the stone wall edging the balcony. Balancing on his precarious perch, he snatched up a handful of trailing creeper and pulled hard, testing its strength. With a satisfied nod, he said, ‘Quick, now. Take these and climb down to the garden below. If fortune is with us, we can make our way down to the ground.’ They thought it a futile gesture, he saw in their faces, but they trusted him enough to comply.
Grasping a vine, Carpenter went first, seemingly uncaring if it snapped and he plunged to his death. Meg handed Will her brand and blew him a kiss as she followed with Launceston beside her. Grace and Jenny looked down at the three spies suspended in the gulf above the next balcony and then exchanged a reassuring smile. Will bowed, holding
Jenny’s gaze for one moment before the two sisters disappeared from view.
A shadow engulfed the balcony.
The shrieks of the Spree-birds rang in his ears, and he knew if he looked up he would see their skull-heads and cruel beaks still stained with the blood of Sanburne and his men. Will thrust the torch into the vegetation and the tinder-dry bushes caught alight. The thrashing of wings stirred his hair as the vermilion flames roared up. He grabbed a vine and threw himself back over the low enclosure.
Only then did he look up. A wall of fire raced around the edge of the balcony. Black smoke billowed into the dense flock of birds so that it seemed like night. As Will had hoped, the heat drove the vicious creatures back. They screeched around in circles above the balcony, frustrated that their prey had been denied them. He squinted, peering through the cloud at the Hunters still far behind, climbing down the sheer cliff.
Some of the flock spotted Will lowering himself down the creeper and swooped past the crackling bushes and shrubs. Coiling the vine round one arm, he wrenched out his rapier and lashed the air. A burst of black feathers and a spray of blood trailed in the sweep of his blade. The skull-headed birds wheeled around him, searching for an opening. As he ripped through two more, the other Spree-birds swept in. Beaks like fine Spanish steel stabbed into his flesh, staining his undershirt brown with his blood. Pain seared through him, but still he struck out.
The creeper jerked in his grasp, and when he glanced up he saw flames licking at the top of it. A moment later, the vine snapped. Will hurtled down, slamming into the hard, dry soil of the garden below. Winded, he watched the Spree-birds circle before swooping down towards him.
Flashing steel glinted in the ruddy light above him. Carpenter, Launceston and Red Meg hacked and slashed, blood and feathers spraying across the vegetation. Will scrambled to his feet and looked up at the chaos overhead. Driven back by the heat and confused by the billowing black smoke, most of the Spree-birds had turned on the Hunters, tearing them apart as they crawled down the cliff face. But it was only a momentary respite, Will knew. There were too many of the Fay stalkers, and they were too relentless, too brutal.
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