‘KILL THEM! THAT one is a Steward!’
‘A Steward? Simon will pay, handsomely.’
‘What is your order, Capitano Howell?’
‘Bring them here.’ The captain of Sinclair’s soldiers spoke a schoolboy’s Italian. He was young to be a captain, an Englishman of perhaps twenty-eight years, with a rigidly upright posture, straw-blond hair and pale eyes. He dressed in the uniform coat of an officer, with its double row of brass buttons. But the coat was black instead of red, as if Sinclair kept his own army. A man drawn from the upper classes, Will thought.
The men with him were mostly locals, by their looks and their way of talking. The little Italian Will spoke he’d picked up in snippets of dialect from Neapolitan sailors carousing the banks of the Thames, or the few Piedmontese washed up in London reminiscing about their long-lost glories in battles against Napoleon.
But he understood the musket muzzle in his face and the words, ‘Move and we shoot.’ Will counted at least fifty men, all armed. Too many to think of resisting, even as he was taken by one of the men in a hard grip.
Last time he had been captured by Simon’s men, Violet had rescued him.
It was hard not to think about that. He could imagine her saying, I went to all that trouble to get you through the gate only for you to get captured on the other side? He had to find a way to get back to her. Even as he tried to think, he felt the painful reality that this capture was taking them further away from the gate.
Cyprian was dragged forward. ‘We know what to do with Stewards.’ This was in heavily accented English. The local who spoke took hold of Cyprian’s chin roughly.
‘Let go of him.’
Near to collapse, James was holding himself up only with a hand on the trunk of a birch tree. His demand caused an outbreak of derisive laughter from the man holding Cyprian. He didn’t let go but instead gave Cyprian’s face an infuriating series of little open-handed taps, not quite slaps. With an amused look, Captain Howell looked down at James from his horse.
‘And who are you?’
‘I’m James St Clair.’ James could summon an astonishing amount of arrogance for someone who was about to fall over. ‘And if you don’t let them go, you’ll answer to Lord Crenshaw.’
A scornful sound from Captain Howell. ‘Lord Crenshaw?’
But one or two of the other men exchanged looks. Il premio di Simon, Will heard, alongside a few flickers of fear.
They didn’t know Simon was dead. The news hadn’t had time to reach them. Will and the others had arrived in an instant, but any messages sent from London were still travelling slowly across the Alps. Another wave of disorientation. Stepping through the gate was almost like stepping back in time, to a place where Simon was still alive and in power.
Captain Howell was neither cowed nor impressed. ‘Show your brand.’
‘If you know who I am, you know I don’t have one,’ said James.
‘How convenient,’ said Captain Howell. He was already gesturing to the man who’d held Cyprian. ‘Take him, Rosati.’
An older man with the dark hair and olive skin of the region, Rosati was hesitating. ‘If he really is Simon’s Prize—’ Rosati spoke in accented English.
‘He isn’t,’ Captain Howell said.
Rosati took James by the arm with a great deal of trepidation. When he didn’t immediately burst into flames, turn into a toad, or succumb to any magical malady whatsoever, Rosati seemed to swell in confidence, getting rougher in his treatment. ‘Move it!’
Hai ragione. È solo un ragazzo, Will heard behind him. The other locals seemed to grow in confidence too.
‘You’ll regret this,’ said James.
‘Will I?’ Howell seemed amused. ‘Ride ahead to the dig, and alert the overseer Sloane that we have prisoners.’ He spoke to Rosati, who pushed the enervated James into the wagon.
The dig. It sent its shiver down into Will as his hands were tied behind his back roughly. He felt it, that dark shape they had seen rising out of the mountain. There’s something in these hills.
‘I want a dozen men out to search the area. If you see anyone, if you see so much as a single bandit sniffing for treasure, I want to hear about it.’
Howell’s eyes scanned the dark as Will was thrown after James and Grace into the first of four supply wagons. He found himself sprawled among blocks of black marble.
‘Stewards! Where did they come from? We heard nothing from the scouts.’ Captain Howell’s crisp, upper-class accent outside.
Rosati’s uneasy voice answered. ‘You don’t – you don’t think they found a way to open the gate? Sloane says—’
‘The gate is a myth,’ said Captain Howell. ‘Stewards are flesh and blood. They can’t appear out of thin air. Can you.’
There was an awful flesh sound of impact. Then another. Cyprian was thrown into the wagon a few minutes later, landing awkwardly, his hands tied behind his back. Even in the dim light inside the wagon, there was visible bruising on his face, which was wet from blood and spit. The fabric of his tunic was stained with blood, which had turned the star red. When he pushed up, his green eyes were fixed on James, full of anger, with something painful underneath.
‘Is this how you treated Marcus?’ said Cyprian.
James’s own eyes were hazy, but his lips parted, and Will immediately kicked him with his leg. ‘Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.’ And then: ‘Here. Wipe it off on my jacket.’ Cyprian looked humiliated but wiped the spittle off his face, an ungainly process when he couldn’t use his hands.
‘We need to get back to the gate and find Violet.’ Cyprian said it through a bruised jaw and split lip.
‘The overseer.’
James’s head rested against the black marble behind him; his words were little more than breath.
‘He’s a man called John Sloane. He’ll verify who I am. He knows me.’ He said it with his eyes closed. ‘I’ll get us out of this.’
Cyprian’s split lip curled as the wagon jerked and began to move. ‘Yes, selling yourself to Simon has proven so useful.’
James’s eyes opened, two lash-shaded slits. ‘You think you’re so—’
‘That’s enough, both of you,’ said Will. ‘Arguing won’t get us out of here.’
The wagon was moving downhill along that old mountain path, a bumpy ride full of shouts and the sound of horses’ hooves outside.
‘You know something about it.’ He turned his eyes to Grace, who had spoken of it at the Leap of Faith. ‘About where we are.’
‘The Sun Kingdom,’ said Grace. ‘It was the first of the four great kingdoms to fall.’ She spoke as the wagon rattled onward. ‘There are records in the Hall in Latin, transcriptions of oral histories from the region taken in Roman times when the Dark King was thousands of years dead. Finem Solis. Sun’s End. When the Sun Palace fell, a great darkness covered the land. They called that day—’
Undahar.
‘—the Eclipse.’
The words sank into him, and with them blossomed a terrible awareness of Sinclair’s dig, all those men delving deep into the dirt, seeking in the mountain for something that should not be found.
‘The seat of his power,’ said Grace. ‘He ruled from there, sending out his shadow armies to attack the other kingdoms. With the Sun King gone, it was given a new name—’
Undahar.
‘The Dark Palace,’ said Will.
Or thought he said it. He felt a strange shaking, as if the ground swelled and throbbed.
‘The Dark Palace?’ That was James.
Cyprian said, ‘What is it?’
Breathless laughter, edged with bitter irony and exhaustion. ‘Oh God,’ James said. ‘I died here. That was what Gauthier said. Don’t you remember?’
‘Will,’ he heard.
‘Rathorn killed the Betrayer on the steps of the Dark Palace. If that’s really what Sinclair’s digging up, we—’
‘Will!’
Grace’s hand was on his shoulder, shaking him. No, that wasn’t the source of the shaking. The ground wasn’t steady. He said, ‘There’s – something—’
A lurch to the left threw everyone sideways. Another. Screaming – it was the horses, with men shouting at them and at each other. ‘Stay where you are!’ Another careening jerk from the wagon.
‘What’s happening?’ he heard Grace say.
‘I don’t know,’ said Cyprian.
Were hailstones hitting the wagon? No, it was rocks, as if someone had tossed a handful of pebbles from above, dislodged because the mountain shook. Will could feel it, an unearthly percussion, deep; deep down in the dark. Something under them was cracking open—
‘Will?’ he heard distantly. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Stop,’ he said, or tried to say.
The earth rippled like a sheet, throwing the wagon upward, only to crash down again. And then explosions on either side of them, like the burst of cannons. Stone impacting on stone, all around them. The men were screaming, ‘Rockfall!’
A cascade; the air shook and rocks fell like celestial bodies, pulverising themselves as inside the wagon Will and the others were thrown back and forth across the blocks of black marble. ‘Stop.’ No one heard him over the screams and crashes from outside. ‘Stop!’ The whole mountain was shaking. A jolt sent him sprawling forward. A moment later a slab of granite sheared through the corner of the wagon, and he glimpsed the outside. He saw horses rearing, torches dropped and burning, men’s faces distorted with shouting as rocks fell like comets, like falling stars.
‘STOP!’ Silence followed the ringing command. He was curled over, gripping the ropes that bound his hands, panting.
The ground was still. The ground was still, but the power that had caused this … it waited, more sinister in its silence. You’re here, it seemed to say. And I am waiting for you. Will looked up just in time to see Howell flinging canvas over the splintered wagon top, blotting out his view.
Will turned immediately to the others. Fear clutched at him. Had they heard him? Had they heard—?
Clambering upright, the others seemed busy with their own confusion, the rockfall too loud to let his call be heard. ‘What was that?’ said Grace. ‘What was—?’
He could hear snatches of Italian from outside the wagon, calls to take up position and get things back on the road. It was terrible not to be able to see outside.
‘I can hear them out there. They don’t know what’s happening,’ said Grace.
‘It was an earthquake,’ said Will.
The surety in his voice was a mistake. He should sound as uncertain as the others. He wasn’t thinking straight, his head whirling. He curled his hands into fists, remembering his time on the docks hiding the scar on his hand. Don’t. Don’t let them see anything. But they didn’t seem to notice his slip, continuing to talk among themselves.
‘They may be common in this region,’ said Cyprian. ‘We should stay alert for aftershocks.’
There won’t be any. He didn’t say it aloud this time. The innate knowledge felt dangerous and wrong.
‘Hya!’ came the call from outside, and the wagon jerked into life.
It was slow progress down the mountain. They stopped and started multiple times, the road littered with rocks and branches that must be cleared. The underground thunderstorm had ended, but the sense that he was approaching something terrible grew stronger. I’m waiting for you, it seemed to whisper. And the sounds of digging that had first been a distant echo grew steadily louder, as metal tools hit rock over and over again. By the time the wagon stopped, it was a cacophony, surrounding them on all sides.
The doors were flung open. Will half expected to see a towering palace, dark and beautiful, singing its siren welcome. He was shocked to find himself instead in a claustrophobic, canvas-pinned tunnel. The sounds of digging added to it, as if they were entombed in stone underground, trying to mine their way out with picks that made little impact. The lamps that hung overhead were modern, and there were patches of scattered dirt and stone on the ground, where the earthquake had shaken it down from the roof of the tunnel.
‘The men are frightened. No one wants to let them inside,’ Rosati was saying to Captain Howell, speaking in a low voice under one of the lamps. ‘They blame the newcomers for what happened. They’re saying the earthquake is the work of the Stewards—’
‘Get Sloane. Tell him I have prisoners.’ Captain Howell peeled off his riding gloves.
A man of perhaps forty years arrived just as Will was pulled out of the wagon. John Sloane, thought Will. The overseer. In a stiff waistcoat, a dark blue, long-tailed jacket, a brushed-forward hairstyle, Sloane looked like an inhabitant of an officious English clerk’s office, not a torchlit tent encampment.
‘I don’t have time to deal with captured bandits, Captain,’ Sloane was saying with a wave of his hand as though his mind was elsewhere. ‘There are collapses and cave-ins all over the dig.’
‘These aren’t bandits,’ said Howell. ‘They’re Stewards. With a boy claiming to be James St Clair.’
‘St Clair! Have you had one of your turns? You think a wagon could hold that creature?’ Sloane made an expression of distaste. ‘I met him in London. He might have the face of a mistress, but he has the heart of a monster; he would tear your flesh off your bones if you so much as looked at him.’
‘Sloane,’ James said.
Emerging from the wagon, James looked every inch his usual self, except for his colour, paler than usual, and his hands, tied at the wrists in front of him. John Sloane blanched white, a frozen statue with his mouth open. He looked like a man faced with a nightmare.
James said, ‘I recall meeting you in London, too.’
‘Untie his hands. Untie his hands! Quickly!’ said Sloane.
‘But Signore Sloane—’
‘I said untie his hands!’
The soldier nearest the door was fumbling with a knife, using it to cut the rope binding James’s wrists.
‘Mr St Clair. I’m so sorry. We had no message. No word that you were coming.’ Sloane was half bowing, half wringing his hands.
‘I can see that,’ said James, and he put his freed hand casually on the side of the wagon.
‘And – and where is Lord Crenshaw?’ Sloane’s eyes darted to the wagon, as though Simon might appear at any moment. He looked haunted.
‘Simon will be here in two weeks. To view your progress personally.’
‘We thought we were on schedule,’ said Sloane, babbling. ‘We sent word only last week; we’re close, we’ve uncovered several significant—’
‘Then you have nothing to fear,’ said James.
His single hand on the wagon was the only thing holding him up. Will’s stomach clenched, but Sloane was too terrified to notice.
Only Captain Howell looked sceptical, his eyes narrowing as they tracked over James. ‘Why haven’t we heard he’s coming? Why doesn’t he have luggage? Why is his companion dressed like a Steward?’
James’s blue eyes lifted to him.
‘Captain Howell, please! My apologies, Mr St Clair, my captain doesn’t know what he’s saying—’
‘That’s quite all right, Sloane,’ said James. ‘Your captain simply wants a demonstration.’
Captain Howell’s expression changed. His face turned red, then darkened. He opened his mouth, a rictus: nothing came out. His hands lifted to his neck. He choked, coughing, scrabbling at his neck, as if trying to prise away fingers that weren’t there.
Will felt himself flush, the slow, hot spread he felt every time James used his power, mixing confusingly with the throbbing in his head. Captain Howell was on the tips of his toes, as if hoisted. His face was now a violent purple, and his chokes were desperate, guttural. Will flung out an arm to stop Cyprian, restraining him with a hand on his shoulder.
‘He’s killing him,’ said Cyprian.
‘No,’ Will heard himself say. ‘It takes a long time to strangle someone.’
Sloane had also taken an abortive step forward. But he didn’t intervene, taking his cues from James, his eyes flitting from James to Howell and back again.
‘We’re tired from the road, and we’ve been inconvenienced by your men.’ James spoke to Sloane casually, his expression serene as behind him Howell was choking to death. ‘I expect you can show us to a room?’
‘O-of course,’ said Sloane, laughing nervously. ‘We sleep in tents, but we have restored several of the rooms of the citadel … If that suits you, of course?’
‘It suits me.’
James followed Sloane, Will and the others bringing up after him. Only when they had passed him was Howell finally released, dropping to his knees behind them, gasping in air desperately.
The dig in torchlight was a mess of tents, earthworks and planked walkways over trenches. Half-excavated stone structures rose out of the dark, bristling with scaffolding. In the trenches, pickaxes rose and fell in continuous rhythm.
Sloane escorted them across several of the walkways to a tent, one of many pitched in the easternmost stretch of the dig, part of a barracks where labourers slept on hard ground. Sloane waved his hand at them. ‘These are workers’ tents, for the menial class. Your men can sleep here.’
Will felt James’s hand come to rest on the back of his neck, fingers curling into his hair, a possessive gesture unmistakable in its meaning. ‘This one stays with me.’
Will flushed, blood hot in his cheeks. He had not shared a room with James before. There had been two rooms at the inn at Castleton. Staying with James was a terrible idea.
Sloane looked nervously from one to the other. ‘Yes, of course, Anharion.’
He took Will and James to one of the stone structures, where he stopped at a set of doors, pushing them open while servants entered to light lamps and put torches into the two upright sconces inside the doors.
‘These will be your – shared rooms.’
It was disturbing to see that their rooms had once been part of a building of the ancient citadel. Three steps down, a set of arches held by six pillars curling in unusual shapes, adorned with carvings he couldn’t quite make out. As servants set out clothing, blankets, water and cups, Will saw the room was kept warm by a fire of birch logs cut from the surrounding hills. Set along the far wall, the bed at least was reassuringly modern, an English four-poster with draped hangings and a headboard.
‘A conceit, but’ – Sloane smiled – ‘perhaps He slept here.’
Will felt James stiffen, but all he did was say, ‘Leave us.’
‘Of course.’ Sloane bowed and left.
The instant the door closed, James collapsed. Will, ready for it, caught his weight and manoeuvred him over to the bed. James’s condition was worse, far worse than it had been in the Hall.
Will pushed back the covers and laid James down on the mattress, quickly taking out the flask containing the waters of Oridhes. James’s lips parted and his throat worked when Will tilted the flask, and after long seconds, James’s eyes opened slightly, a glimmer of blue under gold lashes. He was breathing easier, looking back at Will with hazy attention.
‘I told you I’d get us inside,’ said James.
‘And you did,’ said Will.
Sitting on the bed alongside him, Will gazed down at James, his shirt and cravat in disarray, his perfect hair tumbling out of its shape in strands that seemed to invite the brush of a finger.
His relief that James would recover almost spilled out into words. You did it, he wanted to say to him. For me. I’m grateful. There was a deeper part of him that was pleased in ways that he shouldn’t be at how far James had pushed himself. For me, it also whispered. You drained yourself. You gave me everything you had.
‘Your Lion is alive,’ said James. ‘Sinclair wouldn’t have sent Mrs Duval if he just meant to kill her.’
James was trying to reassure him – half-dead, and still trying to prove himself. Had the Dark King ever seen him like this? Did James even know he was doing it?
But Violet was gone and no reassurance could bridge that aching distance. He couldn’t forget that the gate had vomited him out here with James, locking him off from both Violet and Elizabeth, as if separating him from those most likely to keep him in the light.
‘Just rest,’ said Will. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’
He stood up, picking up a cushion and a blanket and tossing them onto the long seat nearby, planning to sleep on it. When he turned back, James was watching him from the room’s only bed.
‘Shy?’ said James.
Will put a hand on the back of the long seat. ‘I’ll sleep here.’
‘He won’t kill you just for lying down next to me,’ said James.
‘Who won’t?’
‘You know who,’ said James. ‘My jealous master.’
He wasn’t talking about Sinclair. He was talking about another figure whose shadow extended out from the distant past.
‘I think he might very well kill someone for that.’ The words just came out.
‘Then stay where you are.’
Mordant blue beneath his lashes. Will stopped, a breath in and out. Then he deliberately stripped off his jacket and waistcoat, so that he was down to shirt and breeches.
He came to the opposite side of the bed. An expanse larger than his room in the lodging house in London: there was no danger that they would touch each other.
‘He never slept here,’ said Will. And again he heard himself: too certain. He wasn’t being careful.
‘I know,’ said James.
Hard to breathe around those words. If James had been Cyprian or Violet, he would have helped him out of his jacket and boots. He didn’t, wondering if that gave him away. Or perhaps no one was casual with James, who likely didn’t faint into men’s arms often. Or invite them into his bed.
‘This wasn’t the Dark Palace. They’re digging in the wrong place,’ James said.
Will toed off his own boots. He didn’t say that he knew it too, that he could feel it. James’s words had taken on the tongue-loosened quality of one in a fever dream, or on the edge of sleep. Will drew in a breath. Then, because James had made it a challenge, Will laid himself down next to James on the bed.
He felt James shift, heard his sharp intake of air.
Will said, ‘Don’t make me move back to the long seat, I’m comfortable.’
James’s voice was breathless with shocked wonderment. ‘Even when I see it, I don’t believe it.’
‘What?’ Will turned his head to find James’s blue eyes on him.
‘You’re the only one who’s not afraid of him.’
Quietly. As though James didn’t understand it. As though he didn’t understand Will. It was the last thing James murmured as his lashes lowered and his breathing evened out. His sleep was one of utter exhaustion.
Will rolled onto his back, forearm thrown across his temple, staring up at the old stone ceiling. And because there was no one left awake to hear, Will allowed himself to say it.
‘You’re wrong.’
The soft admission went unheard in the dark. His head throbbed; the mountain lay with its warren of empty undiscovered rooms and corridors silent and unwalked.
‘I’m terrified.’