“It’s a good alibi,” she said. “Lord Sinistre knows you’re always off doing the hundred or so little tasks that he needs you to get done. Easy enough to slip out of the city and perform a few good deeds before bedtime.”
Aragon was astonished at the very thought of it. “Good deeds?”
Kassa threw the cloak around herself. She seemed taller, more muscular. “I am the Cloak who Walks in the Night,” she boomed.
“You look silly.”
She whirled the cloak off, becoming Kassa again. “I look silly? I wasn’t the one patrolling the streets, hero boy. I was the villainess messing up the Cloak’s precious city, and when I tore the cloak off him, who did I find underneath?”
We’re missing something, Aragon thought wildly. What happened last night?
I was reviewing the list of new poison tasters with Lord Sinistre, replied the Chamberlain. Then I walked down a corridor, then … suddenly we were in the park and you were in control, staring up at Lord Sinistre’s new girlfriend and remembering everything about who you were, who she was to you. And then…
“You stabbed me,” Aragon said aloud.
“You left me!” retorted Kassa.
He laughed at that. “For the life of me, I can’t remember why.”
Kassa’s expression hardened, but not before he saw the hurt in her eyes.
I always knew I’d end up hurting her. It never occurred to me that it might be accidental.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said stiffly. “I have some investigating to do.”
“I have work of my own,” he replied. Aragon had no objections to playing the ‘who can outfrost the other’ game. It gave him time to figure out what was going on. “If you don’t mind locating my clothes, I’ll be heading back to Drak.”
Kassa’s eyes gleamed. “I don’t think so, Silversword. I want to keep you exactly where you are for the time being.”
This was not a game he enjoyed. “How were you planning to keep me here, Kassa?” He swung his legs out from under the quilt, trousers or no trousers.
Kassa’s hand moved, and something sparkled through the air between them. Aragon yawned, overcome by a wave of lethargy. “A spell,” he whispered. “You swore you’d never use your magic on me again, Daggersharp. You promised.”
“We both made promises, Aragon,” said Kassa. “Very few of them were kept.” A swirl of pale grey passed over her face as she threw the cloak over herself. Her skirts swished as she headed for the door. “Sweet dreams, my hero.”
Aragon gave up, allowing his eyelids to droop closed as the enchanted sleep washed over him.
***
Clio awoke. Her mouth felt gritty and strange. She yawned, stretched, and almost rolled right off the roof. She became fully alert at the last moment and managed to grab hold of a passing chimney before she skidded off the shiny black tiles altogether. Gasping, she stared over the edge of the sloped roof. It was a long drop to the ground. The black, shiny ground that matched the black, shiny roof and the black, shiny chimney.
She was still in Drak.
Clio scrambled up the roof, trying to find somewhere stable (or at least unsloped) to steady herself while she gathered her thoughts. The roof flattened out near the top and she sat there for a moment, trying not to panic.
There was a groan. A tile slid off the side of the roof, shattering below. Sean McHagrty emerged from behind a gable. “What a night. It must have been bloody good, I can’t remember a thing and my head’s about to fall off.”
Clio’s own head was pounding, but she had more than that to worry about. “What are you—” she demanded. “No, forget that. What am I doing here?”
“Don’t ask me, babe. Looks like we shared a wild night on the tiles.” Sean chuckled, slapping the side of the roof. “Get it? Tiles.”
Clio wasn’t laughing. “How could we have fallen asleep on a rooftop? Why am I with you? What happened to Egg?”
“How would I know? Maybe he caught up with Uncle Silversword and Auntie Daggersharp. Gods, I feel bad. We need breakfast.”
“We need to get down from this roof,” said Clio. “How did we even get up here in the first place? I don’t see any ladders.”
“Got another stumper for you,” said Sean. He pointed across the other rooftops of Drak. They were high enough to have a view beyond the city, of the golden skybridge and the shambling towers of Cluft. “It’s morning over there. See the light?”
“So?”
“So, honeybunch, it isn’t morning here. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
He was right, damn him. It wasn’t just Clio’s heavy eyelids that made it seem so dark around here. The stars were still sparkling in a twilight sky above them. The moon was full and high. On the far side of the sky-bridge, the twilight was sharply cut off by a blaze of morning sunshine.
It was morning in Cluft and evening in Drak.
Chapter 8 — A Compelling Proposal
The Chamberlain was asleep, completely knocked out by Kassa’s lethargy spell. This was a good thing, because Aragon was awake. Even with the spell dragging on his body and brain, part of him was alert and himself. More himself than he had been in a long time.
Half a year, Sherrie said. I’ve been trapped in that damn city for six moons, bowing and scraping to the whims of that posturing idiot of a Lordling. Look out, world. Aragon Silversword is back and he’s going to make some changes around here. For a start, he’s going to open his eyes.
Painfully, Aragon prised his eyelids apart. Kassa’s room was a chaotic blur. He willed himself to get past the restrictions of the spell, to stay awake for as long as he possibly could. Kassa must not be allowed to get away with this. Who knew what kind of trouble she was up to while he snuggled under her blankets?
He managed to raise himself up on his elbows. By the light, he guessed it was late morning. Singespitter was no longer on the balcony. Kassa was gone, too. Aragon was alone — except for the vision that stood beside the window.
She was a wispy figure of a girl with soft, coppery clouds of hair floating around her shoulders. She smelled of perfumed smoke and something else — a familiar scent. Her eyes were red with tears, but she was not crying. She looked at Aragon and attempted to smile.
“Ah,” he said softly. “Hallucinations now. Thank you, Kassa Daggersharp. Exactly what I needed.”
The resistance left him and he fell flat on the bed. The sleeping spell took over his body again, though his mind stayed alert for longer. Of all possible hallucinations his subconscious could have summoned up for him, why that one? Why now?
It was all too much. Aragon slept again.
***
Clio kept knocking on the door. Her knuckles were beginning to hurt. “Don’t you have a key?”
“It must have fallen out of my pocket while we were rolling around on the rooftops,” Sean said, still attempting humour.
Clio wasn’t in the mood for it. She banged on the door with her palm open, trying to spare her knuckles. “Egg, let us in! We’ve got something to tell you.”
One of the neighbouring doors opened and a bleary-looking young man with mad spiky hair put his head out into the corridor. He was wearing mismatched pyjamas. “Babe, keep down the noise. It’s really early.”
“It’s nearly noon,” said Clio impatiently.
The young man looked at her as if she was insane. He didn’t quite focus. “Are you students or not?”
“Hey,” said Sean. “Your room is connected to ours by the wash chamber, right?”
The other student grinned. “And you must be Sean McHagrty. One of your girlfriends put a letter under our door by mistake. Very hot stuff.”
“Need to get through this way,” said Sean.
“Whatever,” said the student. He looked hopefully at Clio. “Do you write letters?”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” said Clio. She followed Sean through the wash chamber to the room he shared with Egg.
“Didn’t you hear us knocking?” Sean was
saying to Egg, pawing through his clothes in search of something clean. “I have a Profit lecture that started twenty minutes ago.”
“There aren’t any Profit lectures today,” Egg said.
“Well, okay,” said Sean. “But I have a lunch date with an amazing redhead, which is almost the same thing.” He sniffed a shirt hopefully and held it out to Clio. “How fresh would you say this is? Six out of ten?”
“Get out of here, Sean,” she said tiredly.
“Are we forgetting the part where this is my room?”
Clio was busy looking at Egg, who was busy pretending nothing was wrong.
Sean realised he was being ignored. “Fine. I’m having a bath. No peeking.”
“I’ll try to restrain myself,” said Clio.
The wash chamber door closed behind Sean. Clio joined Egg at the window. “What’s wrong?”
“You two,” he said.
She was mildly surprised at that. “There is no anything about me and Sean McHagrty. Is this because we stayed out all night, because you will never believe what happened…”
“I know what happened,” said Egg. “You were possessed by the spirit of Dream Girl, and McHagrty was possessed by the spirit of Invisiblo the Mystery Man, and the two of you spent the whole night running around Drak, fighting crime and righting wrongs while wearing a variety of nifty superhero costumes.”
Clio took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, obviously you have a better idea than I do about what happened to me last night. It really spoils my ‘I woke up on the rooftops with no memory’ anecdote, by the way.”
Egg said nothing.
“And why are you upset, exactly?”
“You’re going to think I’m being all stupid and whiny.”
“Only if you whine stupidly.”
“I’m fed up, that’s all. These are my stories, and everyone else is more involved than I am. Why do I never get to be the hero?”
“There’s still time.”
“Yeah,” he said, not sounding convinced.
“At least you’re not the villain,” Clio teased, only to see Egg’s half-smile vanish entirely.
“Are you sure?” he said.
***
It was easy to enter the palace of Drak without anyone noticing. The Cloak was a pale grey shadow, tall and silent as the grave. Occasionally he passed a servant polishing the stair rail or a group of servants hurrying from one room to another, but they never noticed him. It was as if he didn’t exist.
Or, quite possibly, he was such a familiar presence that no one gave him a second glance.
The Cloak went from corridor to corridor, staircase to staircase, looking for one particular room in this polished maze of a palace. Finally, he found it. This was the place where justice would be served. A place of evil that must be banished … hang on, since when had he cared about justice? Come to think of it, since when had he been a ‘he’?
Kassa pushed off the hood of the pale grey cloak and took a deep breath. For a while there, she really had believed she was another person. No wonder Aragon was confused if he was lending out his body to a fictional character on a regular basis. Assuming the Cloak was a fictional character.
She slid the hood back over her hair and face. She really wanted to know what the Cloak thought about the swirly vortex that Lord Sinistre kept in a room just along the corridor. If the Cloak was a hero and he thought the vortex was evil, did that mean it was evil? How did Kassa know the Cloak was a hero, anyway? She didn’t think much of the raw material he had chosen to work with — Aragon was not the heroic type.
That wasn’t fair. Aragon Silversword had indeed played the hero, if reluctantly, whenever she needed him to. And — damn, she’d missed having him around.
Can we keep our thoughts off boys for one evening, Daggersharp? Kassa had more important things to think about right now. She — he was the Cloak who Walks in the Night, Bringer and Maker of Justice. Villains beware.
The Cloak pushed open the door and stepped into the room. His shadowy eyes burned beneath the hood as he looked upon the spiralling vortex of darkness. What powers did it have? What evils did it conceal? How would be he able to restrain himself from throwing himself through the vortex just to see what it did?
Something hard and sharp snapped around the Cloak’s throat. He staggered back, put his hand to his throat and briefly felt cold metal there before it burned hot against his fingers.
“Interesting,” said Lord Sinistre. He moved around the Cloak, standing now between him and the vortex. “I knew someone had disturbed this room recently. I did not expect you.”
***
At lunch time, Egg found Clio on a low brick wall in the square of student residence. She was staring dubiously at some sandwiches that could only have come from the Seaweed Room.
“Ah,” said Egg, joining her. “Fish surprise comes in sandwiches, I see.”
“It might be fish,” said Clio. “Some of it is purple, which concerns me. What have you got?”
Egg unwrapped his own greasy parcel, revealing a slice of meat pie. The brown minced-string filling oozed out of a flaky cardboard crust. “It looked a lot more appetising when I bought it. Maybe we should stop eating altogether.”
“Where would be the fun in that?” said Clio with her mouth full. She made a face. “Ooh. Anchovy.”
“Good anchovy or bad anchovy?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” She swallowed quickly. “You seem cheerful.”
“I am,” said Egg. “It occurred to me that if some of us have to run around Drak in superhero costumes, I’m kind of glad it’s not me.”
“Very comforting,” said Clio. “How nice for you not to be running around strange cities in peculiarly tight-fitting clothes or waking up on rooftops with a whole night’s memory wiped from your brain.”
“Did I say a little glad? I mean really, really glad.” Egg set the slice of pie aside and brought a folio out of the bag he had slung over his shoulder. “I thought you might like to look at these.”
Clio put down her last sandwich, and wiped her fingers carefully on the paper wrapping before accepting the folio. “Dream Girl?”
“Dream Girl.”
Clio flicked through the inked sketches. She picked one out. “She does look like me, under the mask and silly wig. Similar build, even the chin looks a little the same.”
“I drew that one six months ago,” said Egg.
“I hope that doesn’t mean I’m a figment of your imagination.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Is all this happening because I wrote it, or did I write it because it was going to happen? Either way, there’s something odd going on.”
“Odd things happen in Mocklore all the time,” said Clio. “Kassa’s lectures have made that perfectly clear.”
“But how much power do I have over it? What if I drew something bad — villain bad — and it came true?”
Clio’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. “This is not a time for experimentation. You shouldn’t be drawing anything!”
“I know,” he said helplessly. “It’s difficult, though. I’m used to scribbling all the time, little pictures in the margins of my notescrolls, doodles on scraps of parchment. Once I drew a whole story on the back of my arm because there wasn’t any paper handy.”
“Maybe your pens are cursed,” suggested Clio. “Or the ink, maybe it’s in the ink. You’d better not touch any writing implements until this is all over.”
“How am I supposed to take lecture notes?”
“With any luck you won’t need them. Drak will swallow up Mocklore and turn us all into velvet-clad lackeys of Lord Sinistre long before we have to worry about exams.”
“That’s what you call lucky?”
“I’m really bad at exams.” Clio looked through the pictures again. “I’m serious, Egg. No reading or writing. What if you write down something Kassa says in one of her lectures and it comes true? We’d have magical catastrophes up to our necks.” She lifted out o
ne sketch and showed it to him.
Egg couldn’t help smiling. It was a recent sketch, the one Clio had asked for: a portrait of her with her hair tied up in curlers and ribbons, swamped by a grandmotherly nightgown.
“At least this one isn’t Dream Girl,” Clio laughed.
Egg picked up his piece of pie again, not particularly hungry. “It is now.”
Clio stopped laughing.
***
“Whom were you expecting?” asked the Cloak.
“That’s not important,” said Lord Sinistre. He was looking particularly lordly today, in a midnight blue suit made of shimmering velvet. His boots were high and black, the heels clacking as he paced around his prisoner. He wore a dramatic crown on his head, a black tower of intricate spikes and blood-coloured rubies. A single, over-sized pearl topped the highest spire of the crown, bright white. It looked out of place, making the whole thing faintly ridiculous. “You are what is important now, Mr Cloak. You disrupted my party, spoiled a perfectly good demonic spell. You have been running around my city terrifying people. Now you have entered my palace without permission and found your way to the only room which is forbidden. What am I to do with you?”
The Cloak stared at the Lordling of Drak. “I knew you were a villain!”
“I am the ruler of this city, and you have broken into my palace,” said Lord Sinistre. “Are you sure you know which of us is the villain?”
***
After sending Egg away to fetch them some dessert, Clio flipped through the drawings he had given her. Dream Girl saving the day, fighting crime, walking in and out of reality, kissing Invisiblo the Mystery Man… She stared at that picture for quite a while.
“Hey.”
Clio looked up and saw Sean McHagrty loping towards her. “I thought you had a date with an amazing redhead,” she said.
“I was twenty minutes late and she didn’t stick around to wait for me.”
“Astonishing,” said Clio. What did all those girls see in him anyway? He was vaguely good-looking, but nothing out of the ordinary. He wasn’t very tall and his face was kind of narrow, like a weasel. Not that weasels were all that unattractive. They were kind of cute. Not that Sean McHagrty was cute. Okay, his eyes were very blue, but that wasn’t anything special…
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