CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘COME IN,’ WAS the absent-minded call at his knock. Will pushed the door open.

Kettering’s office was the cluttered refuge of a historian, covered with books and artefacts. Three of its walls were excavated stone; the fourth was canvas, as was the ceiling. Kettering himself sat at a makeshift desk, a jeweler’s loupe to his eye, through which he was studying a fragment of a white marble statue, an ear with a curl of hair carved alongside it, the piece singed as if it had been in a fire.

‘I can come back,’ said Will, ‘if you’re busy with—’

‘Not at all, just a personal matter.’ Kettering put the white marble down on the table, where it sat like a paperweight. ‘You’re the boy here with James St. Clair, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ said Will.

Kettering was removing the loupe from his eye. He polished it briefly with a cloth before putting it down next to the marble. ‘Well then, how can I help you?’

‘I want to ask about the Dark King,’ said Will.

‘Ah,’ said Kettering, the single syllable spoken in a new voice. ‘Did St. Clair send you?’

‘You’re the expert,’ said Will. ‘You know more about him than anyone.’

‘What is it you want to know?’

Every part of the office was overbrimming. The floor was stacked with straining boxes. The stone walls were crammed with shelves spilling over with papers of all kinds. Chunks of white marble were piled on any remaining surfaces, an arm here, a head there. Kettering was Sinclair’s scholar of the ancient world, and he seemed to have stuffed half of it into this one room.

Will thought of everything he wanted to ask, the questions that gnawed at him. Who was Sarcean, really? What had caused his descent into darkness? Why had he turned on his friends?

Will met Kettering’s eyes.

‘What were his powers? How did he use them?’

Kettering sat back, as though Will had surprised him.

He regarded Will in that posture for a moment. Then, with a strange quirk of his lips, he rose from his seat.

‘Come,’ he said, and led Will to the shelves on the side of his room.

Rolls of paper, dozens of them, were stacked in cylinders. The paper was fine, almost transparent. Kettering searched with a finger. ‘Ah.’ He took a cylinder down and unrolled it on the table, opening his arms wide to spread it out.

It was a charcoal image with a blurred, ghostly quality. At its centre, dark-edged and frighteningly familiar, was the S.

Will almost jerked back from it, its power radiating out to him even in effigy. Kettering mistook his expression.

‘Don’t fear. It’s just a rubbing. You’re looking at the inside of a helm piece.’

Will could see its lenticular shape in the grey, grainy filament. It looked like a helmet he had seen once before.

‘We found it eight years ago. Our first real find, a single Dark Guard buried under barren earth in Calabria. He was riding alone, carrying a box. I believe he was killed before he reached his destination, and the box’s contents taken. All that was left was the box and a few pieces of his armour,’ said Kettering. ‘It was really just—’

‘Remnants,’ said Will.

‘That’s right.’

Three dark sentinels standing watch over Bowhill, their horses’ breath white in the cold air on the Dark Peak. Will had killed the helm’s wearer first, cutting him down as he quailed in recognition.

‘Control was one of two types of magic that Sarcean excelled in. There are stories of vast shadow armies bound to him,’ said Kettering. ‘Of hordes loyal to him overrunning all the Light’s strongholds.’

Will looked down at the curves of the S. He had thrown the helm into a fire in the Hall of the Stewards, melting it down into a sludge. This rubbing was an eerie ghost: the only part of that helm now left.

But maybe the real find at that dig had not been the armour, but the S carved into the helm. Will could imagine Simon’s excitement at finding it. Simon had loved playing at being the Dark King.

‘Simon used the design to make his brand,’ said Will.

Kettering nodded. ‘A crude copy. But effective.’

Casually. ‘You don’t have one.’ Will glanced up from the rubbing at Kettering.

‘Nor do you,’ said Kettering.

He was leaning back, watching Will. Was Will imagining the almost conspiratorial gleam in Kettering’s eyes, as though they understood each other? I’m hoping Sinclair will give me one, Will could have said, and didn’t.

‘You said control was one of two types of magic Sarcean specialised in,’ said Will. ‘What was the other?’

‘Death,’ said Kettering.

Will went cold. He saw Katherine’s face, chalk white and spidered with black veins. He saw the Stewards, torn apart in their own hall. He saw the vision the Shadow Kings had shown him, the sky black and the ground littered with bodies, miles and miles of the dead.

‘Death?’ he said.

But he’d known that, hadn’t he? He’d known the Dark King had killed anyone who stood in his way.

‘To kill people and bring them back?’ said Kettering. ‘No one else in the old world could do that. Even to make a shadow … is that not to triumph over death? To grant a kind of immortality?’

Will remembered the Shadow Kings, their ravening need to rend and kill, their sole driving force the need to conquer.

‘He only gave a shadow life,’ Will said.

‘But his favourites were Reborn,’ said Kettering, after a little nod to say, You do know your history. ‘I didn’t believe it until I saw him, but there is no doubt that James is Anharion.’ He spoke like a jeweller authenticating a gemstone, as if he might pick up the loupe again at any moment and regard James with it. ‘You only have to look at him, to witness what he can do.’

Reborn. Brought back to life by the Dark King. Sarcean had been more powerful in death than Will was in life, with abilities beyond Will’s understanding. Controlling armies, controlling life, controlling …

‘But if St Clair sent you, surely you really came to learn about the Collar.’

Everything stopped. Will felt all his attention focus the way it had the first time he had seen the Collar.

Kettering leaned back, watching him.

‘It was lost, wasn’t it?’ Will heard himself say.

That was a lie. He’d held it. He could almost feel its weight in his hands.

‘It was lost,’ agreed Kettering. ‘But if it wants to be found, it will be. These objects have their own agenda. Like blind things seeking in the dark.’

Will remembered how it had felt when he had picked it up, his whole body almost swaying towards James as the Collar tried to get to his neck.

‘He should take care. Once it goes on, it doesn’t come off. Whoever puts that thing around his neck controls him forever.’

Will had to hope it was safe. No one knew what James had done with it after Will had given it back to him. James had never said, and Will certainly hadn’t asked him.

‘Why did the Dark King make it for him?’ Will asked why because he refused to ask how.

Kettering raised his brows. ‘I could guess … For the power. For the pleasure of control. But I think the answer is probably far simpler.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘He wanted him,’ said Kettering. ‘So he made sure that he’d have him.’

Will went hot, then cold, the glimpsed plans of his former self always dark, glittering and implacable. ‘If the Dark King was so powerful, how was he defeated?’

‘No one knows,’ said Kettering. ‘But of course …’

‘Of course?’

‘He wasn’t really defeated,’ Kettering said. ‘Was he?’

Will felt something turn over in his stomach. ‘He was killed by the Lady.’

It was the one thing he was sure of: that at least once, the Dark King had been beaten. He looked up at Kettering only to find the man’s eyes speculative.

‘But what is death,’ said Kettering, ‘to one who can return?’

‘What did you find out?’

James spoke as he entered the room, already taking off his cravat, sliding it from around his neck and dropping it on the long seat, where it slithered, arm to floor.

It bared the long, pale stem of his neck. Even in a dusty dig in the middle of nowhere, James had the look of a hothouse orchid, grown to be plucked at the right time.

Will tried not to think of his missing crimson adornment, the choker taken from a dead throat. What is death, Kettering had said, to one who can return?

‘Cyprian and Grace are leaving for Ettore’s village,’ said Will determinedly. ‘Scheggino – the locals say it’s not far, half a day on horseback. They’ll ride out at first light.’

‘While you and I stay and play at lordling and servant.’ James tossed Will his jacket as he said it.

‘We need to find out what’s in that palace.’

Having no experience as a valet, Will had no idea what to do with the jacket once he caught it, and just laid it over the back of the long seat. When he looked up, James’s mocking blue eyes were on him.

‘This should be fun. I get to tell the boy hero what to do.’

Didn’t you feel what I felt in the palace? Will bit down on the words. Being here with James, so close to the past, felt dangerous. He feared what it would mean to stay here for too long. But walking away would mean abandoning the Dark Palace to Sinclair.

He told himself that he’d spent days on the road alone with James travelling back to the Hall. He could manage a few days alone with him now.

‘I haven’t learned much,’ said Will, keeping his tone casual. ‘The labourers are drawn from the scattered hill towns. They’ve been told they’re digging up classical buildings for an English lord with an interest in history. None of them know what Sinclair’s really digging for. But they know something.’ Grace had been right about that. ‘They fear the mountain.’

And they wouldn’t say why. Faces had shuttered, dark eyes turning hostile at mention of the mountain, followed by stubborn silence.

‘And Kettering? I saw you leaving his tent.’

Will didn’t change the relaxed posture of his limbs. ‘He thinks you’re here looking for the Collar.’

James went still. Since the night in Gauthier’s cottage, they hadn’t really spoken of the Collar.

‘You’ve been quite industrious, haven’t you,’ said James.

Will didn’t answer. After hauling crate with the stevedores on the docks for months, it had been almost too easy for Will to step back into that role: the unassuming boy just helping out, and if you found yourself talking to him about life on the dig, it was just because he was there, and not because he asked any obvious questions.

But the stakes now were higher. The boy who had entered Simon’s warehouse on the docks seemed like another person. Naive, unknowing, still trying to fight Simon through ordinary means. Sabotage seemed like such a childlike attack, as if he could unravel Sinclair’s empire rope by rope.

‘That palace was the Dark King’s stronghold,’ said Will. ‘What could it hold, that Sinclair wants it so badly? Badly enough to spend his whole fortune looking for it? Digging for years out here without any sign of success?’

James didn’t answer, but after a moment he spoke in a troubled voice.

‘They won’t tell me anything,’ he admitted, as if this, more than anything else, bothered him. ‘I’m supposed to be Simon’s delegate, but it’s all prevarications, or sudden silences when I enter a tent. What is it they’re keeping from me?’ James was frowning. ‘I asked Sloane when he planned to send a team back inside the palace. He said he needed advice from Sinclair. I told him that would take weeks, and that I’d authorise any expedition. He waved me off. He said he took orders only from the Earl.’

Will straightened, staring at him.

‘Who sends it?’ Then at James’s quizzical look: ‘Sloane’s request for advice?’

‘Why does it matter?’

‘We should intercept the letter.’

Will was already picking up James’s cravat and tossing it back to him. He watched as James quickly wound the cravat around his neck, then began the tie, crossing the two ends of fabric over each other.

The truth was he had more than one reason for wanting to go back out. It wasn’t just the letter. He didn’t know how it would be to lie down next to James again and close his eyes for another nightful of dreams.

‘Come on.’ He pushed James towards the door. ‘We need to learn as much as we can.’

Outside, the sounds of the dig were louder, the site itself scattered with points of light and flame, fire torches illuminating the digging trenches and blotting out the night sky overhead.

But—

‘No, Signore,’ said the quartermaster. ‘It is true Signore Sloane delivers me his post. But I do not believe there is anything scheduled tonight, or tomorrow, or for any day this week.’

‘That’s odd,’ said James slowly, when they were back outside the quartermaster’s tent. ‘Sloane said he was contacting Sinclair tonight.’

‘Is he lying? Putting you off?’

‘Why would he?’ said James. And then, ‘Where are you going?’

‘To check his tent.’

To steal the letter went unspoken. James gave him a newly interested look. ‘You’re sort of a sneak, aren’t you.’ James’s voice sounded pleased, as though he’d discovered a secret. ‘Does my paragon little brother know that about you?’

The answer was no, and James certainly knew it. Cyprian with his straightforward way of doing things would hate skulking around in the night. Elizabeth hadn’t liked it either. Sneak had been her word for him. She hadn’t said it with James’s unfolding delight.

It was dangerous to show this part of himself in front of others. Even if James seemed to like it. He wouldn’t like it, if he saw all of it.

‘Sloane’s still in his tent,’ said Will as they approached.

There were lamps lit inside, despite the hour. Was John Sloane still working? They could hardly rummage through the man’s things while he was sitting at his desk. Perhaps he was writing his letter at this very moment. They would need to wait him out, but an indefinite wait outside where they could be seen loitering wasn’t wise.

Will said, ‘Maybe you can use your power to pull Sloane’s letter out to us.’

‘I can’t. I have to be looking at it.’ James stopped, realising he had just given something away. ‘You really are a sneak.’

That word again. ‘I spent my life on the run,’ said Will. ‘I’m used to getting things done without drawing attention.’

‘People just tell you things,’ said James.

‘I’m not trying to trick you,’ said Will. ‘We’re on the same side.’

‘Only because I’ve joined your—’ Will put a finger to his lips.

James went quiet, and then he heard what Will had heard: voices. By silent mutual agreement, he and James shared a look, then moved to stand right beside the thin canvas.

‘… pleased to report that we have broken through into the main palace.’ The overseer John Sloane was speaking as if reporting to a superior. ‘A fortuitous earthquake. It happened the night St Clair arrived.’

‘St Clair?’ answered a cultured voice in the rounded, upper-class tones of King George’s court. James went utterly still, the colour draining from his face. ‘Do you mean to say that James St Clair is there in Umbria with you?’

‘He arrived Thursday evening,’ Sloane was saying. ‘He was travelling with an English boy and two Stewards. Is that not as you planned, my lord?’

My lord, thought Will. He felt his stomach pitch. It can’t be. But a single look at James’s stark white face told him it was.

‘How?’ James’s hand closed on his upper arm, gripping him tight. ‘How can he be here?’

He couldn’t. He was in London. He was the general who never came out from behind enemy lines, protected and untouchable. He was the recluse, the Earl who dispensed his lackeys to do his work, rarely seen despite the power his empire allowed him to wield in the capitals of the world.

Will’s heartbeat sped up. ‘Are you sure it’s him?’

‘Will,’ said James. ‘It’s Sinclair.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s Sinclair. I know his voice.’

The Earl of Sinclair, right inside that tent.

Was he fresh from London, peeling off his gloves? Ready to take possession of whatever lay inside the palace?

In all his months working on the docks, Will had never seen Sinclair. But he had imagined confronting him. He had imagined walking into his office in some dock warehouse. You killed my mother. In the earliest days, it had been a boyish accusation that Will had simply hurled at him. Will had never thought about what he would say next. But then, slow, steady, implacable, he had started to work against Sinclair in earnest. He had something to say to him now. You killed my mother? I killed your son.

I’m here at your dig and I’m going to end your empire.

Sinclair said, ‘James has betrayed us. He now works against us. We captured his other accomplices in the Hall. The young girl escaped. The janissary is dead. The Lion remains our prisoner, and is on a ship to Calais.’

Violet’s alive, thought Will. She’s alive. She’s on a ship. The relief he felt at that was tempered by the stomach-twisting thought of Sarah. It made his veins burn with anger that Sinclair so casually spoke of the death of one of the last of the Stewards.

‘My lord … James St Clair is a traitor? He is working against us?’ said Sloane.

‘Little Jamie is making a bid for freedom, but that is not a state he’s built for,’ Sinclair said. ‘He is a dog who has slipped the leash, but will soon return home.’ James stiffened, and Will put a hand on his arm instinctively. ‘It is the boy with him who is dangerous. Will Kempen. He can’t learn what we seek. Tell him nothing. And above all, keep him away from the palace.’

Did Sinclair know Will had killed Simon? At least hunting Will would keep him away from the Lady’s true descendant: Elizabeth. Sinclair gave the order, James had told him in the cells of the Hall. Sinclair killed your mother.

Will found suddenly that he needed to see him. He needed to see the face of the man who had ordered his mother’s death. But when he moved to a gap in the canvas, all he could see was the back of Sinclair’s head, and it was oddly wrong, with thick blond hair and broad shoulders clothed in an officer’s uniform, wearing a familiar new neckcloth—

‘My lord, shall I simply have them killed?’ said Sloane.

‘No. Keep up pretences. My ship arrives in two weeks. I will handle them personally.’

As Sinclair spoke, he turned into the light. Will felt the same disorienting wrongness that he had experienced when the gate opened on water.

The man speaking was not Sinclair but Sloane’s captain, Howell.

Sloane’s hands were clutched obsequiously. ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said with a little bow.

He said it to Howell.

The wrongness grew. The sight in front of Will fought with plain facts and common sense. Howell couldn’t be Sinclair. Howell was a young military captain of perhaps twenty-eight years. He couldn’t be the fifty-nine-year-old Earl of Sinclair, even in disguise.

Howell said in Sinclair’s voice, ‘And keep them out of the palace.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Sloane.

‘We’ll speak again,’ said Howell.

And Will knew, with sudden awful insight, what was happening.

He pushed James back out of sight as Captain Howell swayed and said hazily in his own voice, ‘Mr Sloane? I think I’ve had one of my turns.’

Will kept pushing James back and away, far from the tent, as Sloane tried to coax Captain Howell to sit down.

‘I don’t understand,’ said James. ‘That was Sinclair. The way he spoke. The things he said … How can Sinclair and Captain Howell be the same person?’

James was staring at him, a haunted, bewildered look on his face. He really didn’t know.

‘You’ve never seen him do that before?’ said Will.

‘Do what?’ James looked at him. ‘What is it?’

Will forced himself to speak steadily. He was trying not to think of the dig around him, all the men in all the tunnels excavating the past in the endless dark.

He tried not to think of the eyes of those men, turning to stare at him.

‘In the Hall, Leda told us that the Dark King could look out of the eyes of men branded with the S. Look out of their eyes, speak with their voice, even control them.’

‘You mean—’

‘That was Sinclair, controlling Howell’s body.’

James’s jaw set, then he turned away, clutching his own wrist.

Simon had tried to brand James, over and over. James’s healing abilities had erased the brand each time. Will stepped in and gripped James hard by the shoulder, forcing James to meet his eyes as that possessiveness reared up inside him.

‘It didn’t take,’ said Will.

‘He wanted it to,’ said James.

There was no answer to that except the one he couldn’t say. He doesn’t have you. Anger surged at Sinclair and his crude attempts at control. At whatever he was trying to wrench up out of the ground here. At his plans, always one step ahead of Will’s own. I have you. He didn’t say that either.

‘He knows we’re here,’ said Will. And then, ‘Half the men here have a brand.’

‘You mean Sinclair could be anywhere,’ said James.

‘Or anyone,’ said Will.