Incarceron Part 16

Finn felt himself fall for a thousand miles down the abyss before he crashed onto a ledge. Breathless, he raised his head. All around, darkness roared.

Beside him, leaning back against the rock, someone was sitting.

Finn said instantly, "The Key ..."

"At your side."

He groped for it in the rubble, felt its smooth heaviness.

Then he turned. A stranger sat there. He was young and had long dark hair. He wore a high-collared coat like a Sapients, but it was ragged and patched. He pointed to the rock face and said, "Look, in."

In the rock was a keyhole. Light shone through it. And Finn saw that the rock was a door, tiny and black, and in its transparency stars and galaxies were embedded.

"This is Time. This is what you must unlock," Sapphique said.

Finn tried to lift the Key, but it was so heavy he needed both hands, and even then it shook in his grasp.

"Help me," he gasped.

But the hole was closing, swiftly, and by the time he got the Key steady, there was nothing left but a pinhole of light.

"So many have tried," Sapphique whispered in his ear.

"Have died trying."

FOR A second Claudia was stock-still with despair.

Then she moved. She shoved the crystal key into her pocket, used Jared's disc to make a perfect holocopy of it nestled in the black velvet and slammed the drawer shut. Fingers hot with sweat she took out the box prepared just for this emergency and flipped out the ladybugs.

They flew, landing on the control panel and the floor.

Then she clicked the blue switch on the disc to red, swung, and aimed it at the door. Three of the laserlights fizzed and died. She slid through the gap they left, flinching from imaginary bolts of weaponry. The grille was a nightmare; the disc chuntered and clicked, and she howled at it in desperation, sure it would break down, run out of power, but slowly a white-hot hole melted in the metal as the atoms scrambled and reformed. In seconds she was through it, had the door open, was in the corridor.

It was silent.

Amazed, she listened. As the study door clicked shut behind her, the panic alarms were sliced off as if they rang in some other world. The house was peaceful. Doves cooed. And below, she heard voices.

She ran. Up the back stairs, right to the attics, then down a pa.s.sageway through the servants' garrets to the tiny storeroom at the end; it stank of wormwood and cloves. Diving in she groped hastily for the mechanism that opened the ancient priesthole, her fingernails sc.r.a.ping grime and spiderwebs and then, yes, there! The latch barely wide enough for her thumb.

As she jabbed it, the panel grated; she flung her weight on it, heaved it, swearing, and it shuddered open and she fell in. Once she had it shut and her back against it, she could breathe. Before her, the tunnel to Jared's tower ran into darkness.

FINN LAY crookedly on his bed.

He lay there a long while, gradually becoming aware of the noises of the Den outside, of someone running, of the clatter of dishes. Finally, groping with his hand, he found that a blanket had been laid carefully over him. His shoulders and neck ached; cold sweat chilled him. He rolled over and looked up at the filthy ceiling. Echoes of a long scream were ringing in his ears, the tingling of alarms and panicking, flas.h.i.+ng lights. For a sickening moment he had the sense that his vision had stretched into a long dark tunnel leading away from him, that he could step into it and grope his way toward the light.

Then Keiro said, "About time."

Blurred and distorted, his oathbrother came and sat on the bed. He made a face. "You look rough."

Finn's voice, when he tried it out, was hoa.r.s.e. "You don't"

Slowly he focused.

Keiro's mane of blond hair was tied back. He wore Sim's striped coat with far more panache than its owner ever had, a wide studded belt slung around his hips, a jeweled dagger strapped to it.

He spread his arms. "Suits me, don't you think?"

Finn didn't answer. A wave of anger and shame was rising somewhere in him; his mind squirmed away from it. If he let it in, it would drown him.

He croaked, "How long? How bad?"

"Two hours. You've missed the shareout. Again."

Carefully Finn sat up. The seizures left him dizzy and dry-mouthed.

Keiro said, "It was a bit more severe than usual. Convulsions. You jerked and struggled, but I held you down and Gildas made sure you didn't injure yourself. No one else took much notice; they were too busy gloating over the treasure. We carried you back."

Finn flushed with despair. The blackouts were impossible to predict, and Gildas knew of no cure, or so he said. Finn had no idea what happened after the hot, roaring darkness engulfed him, and he didn't want to know. It was a weakness and he was bitterly ashamed of it, even if the Comitatus held him in awe. Now he felt as if he had left his body and had come back to find it sore and empty, that he was aslant inside it.

"I didn't have them Outside. I'm sure of it."

Keiro shrugged. "Gildas is desperate to hear about your vision."

Finn looked up. "He can wait."

There was an awkward silence.

Into it he said, "Jormanric ordered her death?"

"Who else? It's the sort of thing that amuses him. And it's a warning to us."

Grim, Finn nodded. He swung his feet off the bed and stared down at his worn boots. "I'm going to kill him for that."

Keiro raised an elegant eyebrow. "Brother, why bother? You got what you wanted."

"I gave her my word. I told her she'd be safe."

Keiro watched him a moment, then said, "We're Sc.u.m, Finn. Our word means nothing. She knew that. She was a hostage; if they'd gotten hold of you, the Civicry would probably have done the same, so think no more about it. I've told you before, you brood over things too much. It makes you weak. There's no room for weakness in Incarceron. No mercy for a fatal flaw. Here it's kill or be killed."

He was staring straight ahead and there was an odd sourness in his voice that was new to Finn. But when he turned his smile was sharp.

"So. What's a key, then?" Finn's heart thumped. "The Key! Where is it?"

Keiro shook his head in mock wonder. "What would you do without me?" He held up his hand and Finn saw that the crystal was dangling from one hooked finger.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed at it, but Keiro jerked it away. "I said, what's a key?"

Finn licked paper-dry lips. "A key is a device that opens."

"Opens?"

"Unlocks."

Keiro was alert. "The Winglocks? Any door?"

"I don't know! I just... recognize it."

He reached out hastily and grabbed it, and this time, reluctantly, Keiro let it go. The artifact was heavy, woven of strange gla.s.sy filaments, and the holographic eagle in its heart glared at Finn majestically. He saw that it wore a fine collar shaped like a crown around its neck, and tugging back his sleeve he compared it with the fading blue marks in his skin.

Over his shoulder Keiro said, "It looks the same."

"It's identical."

"But it means nothing. In fact, if anything, it means you were born Inside."

"This didn't come from Inside."

Finn nursed it in both hands.

"Look at it. What material do we have like this? The workmans.h.i.+p ..."

"The Prison could have made it."

Finn said nothing.

But at that moment, just as if it had been listening, the Prison turned all the lights off.

WHEN THE Warden softly opened the observatory door the wall-screen was lit with images of the Havaarna Kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty, those effete generations whose social policies had led directly to the Years of Rage.

Jared was sitting on the desk, one foot propped on the back of Claudia's chair, the fox cub in his arms; she was leaning forward and reading from a pad in her hand.

"... Alexander the Sixth, Restorer of the Realm. Created the Contract of Duality. Closed all theatres and public forms of entertainment...Why did he do that?"

"Fear," Jared said dryly. "By that time any crowd of people was seen as a threat to order."

Claudia smiled, her throat dry. This is what her father must see; his daughter and her beloved tutor. Of course he would know perfectly well that they knew he was here.

"Ahem."

Claudia jumped; Jared looked around.

Their surprise was masterly. The Warden smiled a cold smile, as if he admired it.

"Sir?" Claudia stood up, her silk dress uncreasing.

"Are you back already? I thought you said one."

"That was indeed what I said. May I come in, Master?"

Jared said, "Of course," and the cub streaked from his hands and jumped up the bookshelves. "Were honored, Warden."

The Warden walked to the table littered with apparatus and touched an alembic.

"Your Era detail is a little ... eccentric, Jared. But the Sapienti are not so bound by Protocol, of course."

He lifted the delicate gla.s.sware and raised it so that his left eye, hugely magnified, gazed at them through it.

"The Sapienti do as they will. They invent, they experiment, they keep the mind of mankind active even in the tyranny of the past. Always searching for new sources of energy, new cures. Admirable. But tell me, how is my daughter progressing?"

Jared linked his frail fingers. Carefully he said, "Claudia is always a remarkable pupil."

"A scholar."

"Indeed."

"Intelligent and able?"

The Warden lowered the gla.s.s. His eyes were fixed on her; she looked up and gazed calmly back at him.

"I'm sure," Jared murmured, "that she'll be a success in everything she attempts."

"And she would attempt anything."

The Warden opened his fingers and the flask fell. It hit the corner of the desk and smashed, an explosion of gla.s.s slivers, sending a raven screeching out through the window.

Jared had leaped back; now he froze. Claudia stood behind him, quite still.

"I am so sorry!"

The Warden surveyed the wreckage calmly, then took out a handkerchief and wiped his fingers.

"The clumsiness of age, I'm afraid. I hope it didn't contain anything vital?"

Jared shook his head; Claudia caught the faintest glimmer of sweat on his forehead. She knew her own face was pale.

Her father said, "Claudia, you'll be pleased to know that Lord Evian and I have finalized the dowry arrangements. You had better begin gathering your trousseau, my dear."

At the door he paused.

Jared had crouched and was picking up the sharp, curved fragments of gla.s.s. Claudia did not move. She watched the Warden, and his look reminded her, for a moment, of her own reflection as she stared at it in the looking gla.s.s each morning.

He said, "I won't take lunch after all. I have a lot of work to do. In my study. We seem to have an insect problem."