CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

IN THREE QUICK strides, Will had his arms around her in a tight hug, and Violet closed her eyes and felt him warm and real against her, alive as she had feared he wouldn’t be.

‘You found us,’ said Will, and she only hugged him tighter.

It was so good to see him. It was so good to see everyone. Violet finally drew back, wiped her eyes, and punched Will in the shoulder. His smile broke out; she’d missed it so much.

He had grown taller in the weeks they had been apart, and his tumble of dark hair was a little longer – just enough so as to be too long for its cut. But there was another change she couldn’t name, a difference in the way he was holding himself. It reminded her of the way he had looked taking charge after the slaughter in the Hall: as if he had the instincts of a leader, and wasn’t hiding them.

When she looked around, she saw Grace and Cyprian, and to her surprise, Cyprian also looked different. He was still handsome as carved marble, but the statue stiffness was gone, as if he was a little more of the world. Then he did something that she had never expected. He stepped in, following Will’s lead, and hugged her, so fiercely she felt oddly breathless.

‘Cyprian,’ she said in surprise, and she found herself hugging him back, and that surprised her too, as if they’d both changed without her realising it. She hadn’t ever thought he would put his arms around her willingly.

‘I did not doubt your strength,’ said Cyprian, with his usual straightforward honesty, ‘but you were in my thoughts often, and I am glad you are here.’

His cheeks were a little flushed. Violet tried not to think that Will and the others were looking at them. ‘As am I,’ Grace said, with a warm nod of greeting.

‘I can take you or leave you,’ drawled a voice, and she drew back to see James St Clair.

The differences in James made her more uneasy, still a young aristocrat in fancy clothes, but if you looked closer, he was a little rumpled, as if he’d been in the same jacket for more than a single luncheon. And was she mistaken, or did he look a little less guarded? No, not less guarded, but more … comfortable. His insouciant lean against the wall was exactly as she remembered, but he no longer looked like an outsider. His time with the others had made him one of them, and that disturbed her.

For a moment, all she could think of was Marcus’s words: He is not redeemable. He will kill us all if we do not kill him.

‘What happened?’ Will was saying. ‘Is it true you were held prisoner in Calais?’

Violet shook off her thoughts and slung her pack down onto a nearby chair. ‘There is something you all need to see.’

With James present, she kept Marcus’s journal back, and pulled out the sheaf of loose papers from her pack, illustrations and notations in French and Latin. The others recoiled in shock from what they saw.

He had a terrifying presence, even in effigy, as if he might step out of the picture into the world. He surmounted the darkness spewing from the mountain, unmistakably commanding it, a staff held aloft in his hands. Black shadow horns curled from his helm, and in it … Violet’s eyes fixed on the dark space where his eyes would be in the black helm. The artist had drawn only a black void. If he took the helm off, what would be the obliterating sight of his face?

‘It’s him,’ said James, sickly.

‘It’s not original,’ said Grace. ‘It’s been copied. Likely hundreds of times, since it was first drawn. We don’t know what errors may have been introduced into the image.’

‘It’s him,’ James said again.

That was even more frightening, for the Dark King to retain his power over James, even in a faded copy. She thought of Sinclair, the many-times-diluted version. Marcus’s words pushed back into her mind. James wants nothing more than to sit beside the Dark King on his throne. Was it Sinclair’s ancestry that had called to James? she wondered. Was he drawn by the Dark? Was that why he had sought Sinclair out after leaving the Hall?

‘I found out what Sinclair’s after.’ Violet spread out the papers further and told them what she had learned from them and from Leclerc. ‘I was held in Gauthier’s old family chateau, outside Calais. Gauthier’s family – they weren’t just obsessed with the Collar. There was something else they were searching for … the Dark King’s staff; they called it potestas tenebris.’

Grace said, ‘The power of the dark.’ And then, passing her finger over the illustration, ‘Or here, it’s potestas imperium, the power to command.’ She looked up at Violet. ‘The staff?’ In the drawing, dark lines connected the staff to the horde below.

Violet nodded. ‘The staff,’ she said. ‘It commands the armies, and it’s inside the palace. Under the throne. In a place called—’

‘The oubliette,’ said Will.

She looked up at him in surprise. The name had disturbed her, but it was even more disturbing seeing the others echoing Will’s expression of grim acknowledgement. ‘You’ve been there,’ she realised.

‘It used to be a prison,’ said Will. ‘Now it houses the Dark King’s army, ready to wake up.’

The few images of the army she had seen in Gauthier’s collection had been terrifying. She took a breath. ‘Well, the Gauthier family believed that this staff was held in the same place.’

‘And Sinclair knows this?’ said James.

Violet nodded.

‘Of course he knows,’ said Will. ‘He’s going to use the staff to raise the army. And command them, as though he were the Dark King.’

‘We can’t let him do that,’ said Violet. ‘They’ll possess the bodies of everyone in this country.’

‘We get to it before he does,’ said Will. ‘And we use it to stop the armies once and for all.’

‘You mean go back in there?’ said James. And then, ‘No one can use magic in the pit. We’d be on equal footing with Sinclair.’

‘All the more reason to get to it before he does.’

Will spoke with certainty, as if the matter was settled. He didn’t know what she knew. The terrible conundrum that the Gauthier family had wrestled with. The reason they’d never dug for the staff themselves.

The reason Sinclair had captured Marcus, and waited for him to turn.

Violet shook her head. ‘Only a creature of the Dark can go near it. Anyone else will be killed. It’s why the forces of Light didn’t destroy it when they killed the Dark King. They couldn’t get close.’

She knew Will remembered the corrosive power of a single drop of the Dark King’s blood, which had torn the Sealgair apart and rotted its sailors from the inside out. How much worse would be the source of his power?

‘The Stewards were forced to guard it,’ said Cyprian slowly. ‘They couldn’t get close enough to destroy it, so all they could do was watch it for generations. It was too dangerous to leave alone.’

‘Like the Cup,’ said Grace.

‘Like the Collar,’ said James, frowning.

‘And when the army woke, all they could do was sink the palace under the mountain, and hope that it would never be found. It’s what Nathaniel told us.’ Cyprian was frowning.

‘You can’t bury the past,’ said Will.

He was right. The past always seeped out into the present. She felt her own past press at her: a country she never let herself think about, a series of early memories that she didn’t want to face.

Violet said, ‘So … we need a Dark creature of our own.’

‘James,’ said Cyprian.

‘Oh, thanks ever so,’ said James.

‘No.’ Will stepped forward protectively. ‘He could die, I won’t risk it. He was of the Light before he served the Dark King.’ Violet recalled Will hovering solicitously over James back in the Hall. She opened her mouth to remark on it when Will said, ‘Besides, we need James to open the gate.’

‘What?’ James’s head whipped around.

‘The gate?’ said Violet.

‘We need to get the locals out of here. That hasn’t changed. We can’t let that army roll over these towns and take over their people. We have to evacuate the village. Not just the village. The dig as well. The surrounding countryside. The soldiers in that army will possess the first people they find.’

Evacuate the region? It didn’t seem possible. It would be a huge mobilisation, if they could even convince people that the dangers they warned about were real.

And beneath that lurked the other, darker thought. That includes us. The army could possess us as well.

‘Ettore,’ said Grace.

‘What?’ Violet turned to her.

‘He is a creature of the Dark,’ said Grace. ‘Or he hosts one. He has a shadow. He can get to the Dark King’s staff without it costing him his life.’

She said it with the calm of a janissarial pronouncement. She spoke not to Violet but to Will, as if they’d shared many such conversations in the weeks since they’d been here.

‘“Only with Ettore can you stop what is to come,”’ quoted Will.

‘I would theorise that his shadow makes him immune to the white death as well,’ Grace said.

‘Why is that?’ said Violet.

It was Will who answered. ‘Because a shadow possesses him already.’ Violet shivered at Will’s words. ‘At the very least, a Returner would have to fight his shadow to take him over.’ The image of a Returner battling a shadow for possession of a Steward was unnerving. Two parasites battling over a host.

‘We are not giving Ettore the power to command the Dark armies,’ said Cyprian, and for a moment Violet thought she saw a flash of distaste for the idea on Will’s face too. ‘He’s a mercenary and a drunk. He can’t be trusted.’

‘Didn’t the Elder Steward send us here to find him? Shouldn’t we trust her to lead us in our mission?’ said Grace.

When Violet looked back at Will, his expression was no longer readable. He’d adopted that easy, agreeable manner he sometimes had as he went along with others.

As if to say, You’re right, he said, ‘We talk to Ettore.’

‘No way,’ said Ettore. He put his feet up on the table.

Dark-haired, with an amused, cynical gleam in his eyes, Ettore sat outside on a barrel, swilling alcohol. He had enough stubble that it was almost a beard, and his hair looked like it hadn’t been cut in a year. He was dressed like one of the many bandits Violet had avoided along the mountain roads, in stained leathers and a grimy shirt, half-open on the heavy muscle of his torso, now relaxed in a sprawl. And when they told him what they knew, he just snorted.

Grace frowned, as if this wasn’t part of her plan. ‘What do you mean, “No way”?’

‘I mean no way am I going into that place to get you some Dark object that might kill me. Won’t happen.’

Learning that Ettore was the last surviving Steward, Violet had pictured him like an Italian version of Justice, but Ettore was nothing like that. As she watched, he lifted his flask again, swilled the drink around his mouth, then deliberately swallowed. The smell of spirits was strong enough to reach her six steps away. It said clearly: we’re done.

‘The Elder Steward sent us to you,’ said Cyprian. ‘She told us you’d have a part to play.’

‘The Elder Steward never did anything for me, kid.’ Ettore shrugged.

‘You have a shadow inside you,’ said Cyprian. ‘A dark force that will shorten your life. You made that sacrifice when you took your whites. Don’t you want it to mean something?’

Ettore looked at him, his mouth twisting. ‘Mean something? You think it means something? I drank from the Cup, you know what that means? It means I got screwed just like the rest of them. It means one day I’ll be a shadow, a hollow killer, a mindless servant of the Dark for eternity. Until then, I live my life. What little of it I have left.’

‘Then do it for your men,’ said Cyprian.

‘My men and I are going with pretty boy to get out by the gate.’ Ettore indicated James with his thumb.

‘The Leap of Faith,’ said Cyprian.

Violet wasn’t familiar with that name. Her attention stayed on Ettore. He was looking back at Cyprian, a strange, half-mocking look on his face. The two could not have been more different. She wondered if Ettore saw in Cyprian a past version of himself. At one time, he had to have believed, or he would never have drunk from the Cup.

‘Better faith in a gate than faith in the Stewards,’ said Ettore as Cyprian frowned.

‘We can’t force you to help us,’ said Will.

‘That’s right, you can’t,’ said Ettore, raising his flask in a little toast.

They left him drinking in the square, returning to the shade of the awning to try to find a way forward without him. ‘It is not like the Elder Steward to be mistaken,’ said Grace, as if she couldn’t understand it. ‘Perhaps Ettore has another role to play, one we don’t yet know.’

‘Or maybe he’s just a louse,’ Violet said.

‘You have grasped him at a glance,’ said Cyprian.

She looked over at Will. He had the same easy manner he’d had when he’d suggested speaking to Ettore – he did not look at all worried or dismayed by Ettore’s refusal to help them. He’d expected it, or something like it.

‘Nothing’s changed,’ said Will. ‘Our first task is to evacuate the mountain, and to stop Sinclair from reaching the palace. James, you’ll open the gate for those who are leaving, while we intercept Sinclair and stop him before he gets here.’

The cavern-like stone osteria was not unlike the cellar where she’d been kept under Gauthier’s mansion. It had the same arching ceiling, and even its own scattering of barrels. The trellis tables where locals sat and ate were empty, which felt like an oddly ominous portent. Soon the village would be empty. The region would be empty. One way or another.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Will. ‘I should have been there.’

‘I made it out,’ she told him, shaking her head. ‘I’m here.’

‘You came for me; I should’ve come for you.’ He had always been like that, she thought. As though he’d move heaven and earth to help her.

She said, ‘No need; escaping was easy.’ And threw him a grin.

Will answered her with a smile of his own, but there was something else briefly in his eyes.

Truthfully, she wanted to tell him how frightened she had been that she wouldn’t make it back in time. She wanted to tell him about Mrs Duval’s warning that she should stay and complete her training. She wanted to tell him about Marcus’s journal. She wanted to tell him what she had learned about her mother.

She missed their nights in the Steward Hall, sprawled on one another’s beds, swapping stories about their day.

He killed my family too. It wasn’t the right time, here on the eve of battle. She wasn’t even sure how much of it was true. There were parts of what Mrs Duval had told her – the parts about Tom, about her destiny – that she still didn’t want to believe. As for the rest, as for—

—her mother—

Her life before she had come to England had always been a space she’d kept carefully blank. Whenever anyone in her family had talked about India, she had scowled and stared down at her feet, or left the room. Now that blank space was coming alive with shifting flickers of unremembered memory and thick feelings that she didn’t know how to name.

Instead, she drew out Ekthalion.

Will’s eyes fixed on it. Forged to kill the Dark King, the sword had a disturbing presence. It had been cleansed of the Dark King’s blood, but it still radiated a deadly purpose. Violet felt the weight of it in her hands.

‘There’s more to Rassalon’s story than I’ve been told,’ she said. ‘Mrs Duval said he was a true Lion. The last true Lion. She said a true Lion could fight what’s under the mountain.’ Violet looked up at Will. ‘We know Rassalon’s shield can fight shadows. I think there’s a way for us to fight what’s under the mountain together, Lion and Lady. Me with the shield and you with this.’ She held the sword out to him.

Will’s eyes were very dark and wide, and just for a moment seemed to beg for mercy, a haunted expression she’d never seen on him before. But the expression shuttered. She saw him breathe in and out, a shaky breath, as if he was deciding something. Then he approached and drew his hand along Ekthalion’s silver length. He looked up at her.

‘You should keep the sword,’ he said.

‘I’m not the champion,’ she said.

‘Are you sure about that?’ he asked her with a wry smile.

‘There’s someone this is meant for,’ she said. ‘And that person’s not me.’

He just kept his gaze steady on her.

‘You’re the one I trust with it,’ said Will. ‘The one I know will do what’s right.’

She lifted Ekthalion and angled it in the light. It gleamed all the way along its silver length. ‘I just hope I never have to use it.’

‘Me too,’ said Will.