Incarceron Part 54

"I thought..."

"That I hated you?"

The Queen's giggle was girlish.

"I need you, Claudia! We can rule together, and you'll be so good at it! And your father will smile his grave smile. So."

Her small hands tapped Claudia's. "No more sad thoughts about Giles. He's in a better place, my dear."

Slowly, she nodded and stood, and the Queen stood too, with a rustle of silk.

"There's just one thing."

One hand on the door, Sia turned.

"Yes?"

"Jared Sapiens. My tutor. I ..."

"You won't need a tutor. I can teach you everything now."

"I want him to stay."

She said it firmly.

The Queen stared straight back.

"He's young for a Sapient. I don't know what your father was thinking of..."

"He will stay."

She made sure it was a statement, not a question.

The Queen's red lips twitched.

Her smile was pleasant.

"Whatever you say, my sweet. Whatever you want."

JARED PLACED the scanner on the door frame, opened the tiny cas.e.m.e.nt, and sat on the bed. The room was spa.r.s.e, as perhaps the Court thought a Sapient's cell should be, with wooden floorboards and dark paneling topped with trefoils and crude roses. It smelled of rushes and damp, and seemed bare enough, but he had already removed two small listening devices and there might be others. Still, he had to take the chance.

He took out the Key and held it, activating the speechlink. Nothing but darkness. He touched it again, concerned: The darkness grew to a wide circle but remained dark. Then, very faintly, he saw the edge of a crouching figure in it.

"We can't talk," it whispered. "Not now."

"Then listen."

Jared kept his voice low.

"This may help. A combination of two, four, three, one on the touch panel produces a dampening field. Any surveillance system will lose track of you, completely. You'll disappear from its scanners. Do you understand, that?"

"I'm not stupid."

Keiro's scornful whisper barely came through.

"Have you found Finn?"

Nothing. They'd switched off.

Jared linked his fingers and swore softly in the Sapient tongue. Outside the window, the voices of people rose up, some fiddlers in the distant gardens sc.r.a.ping a jig. There would be dancing tonight to welcome the bride of the Heir.

And yet if the old man Bartlett had been right, the real Heir was still alive, and Claudia was convinced it was this boy Finn. Jared shook his head, unfastening the collar of his coat with long fingers. She wanted it so much. His doubts would have to stay silent, because without this hope, she would have nothing. And after all, it was possible, just possible, that her instinct was right.

Wearily, he leaned back against the stiff bolster, took the medication pouch from his pocket, and prepared the dose. It was three grains stronger now, and had been for the last week, but the pain that lived deep in his body seemed still to grow slowly, like a living thing; he sometimes thought that it devoured the drug, that he was feeding its appet.i.te.

He applied the syringe, frowning. These were morbid and foolish ideas. But when he lay back and slept, he dreamed for a moment that an eye, scarlet as galaxies, had opened in the wall and looked at him.

FINN WAS desperate; he held the ring high.

"Take it and let us ..."

The Eye zoomed in, examined it closely. "Do you believe this object is of some value?"

"It contains a life. Trapped inside."

"How apposite. As all your lives are trapped inside me."

He was s.h.i.+vering. Surely if Keiro was listening, he would act now. If he was here.

Gildas understood. He must have, because he snapped loudly, "Take it! let us go."

"As I took Tribute from Sapphique? As I took this?" In the clotted hide of the Beast a glimmer of light opened; they saw a tiny frail bone, embedded deep.

Gildas murmured a prayer of awe. "How small it is!"

The Beast considered it. "And yet how much pain it cost Let me see this trapped life."

It slid the tendril closer. Finn gripped the ring in his fist, his sweat making it slippery. Then he opened his hand. At once, the Eye blinked. It widened, contracted, stared around. From the Beast's throat a whisper slid like oil, a puzzled, fascinated demand.

"How did you do that? Where are you?"