he mood in the camp had turned to silent terror. Ned hadn’t spoken to Lucy about the voice. There was no need. Every one of the gathered fair-folk had heard it and they all knew what it meant.
Ned and Lucy said their goodnights to his parents and headed towards their tent. They’d been given separate bunks under the same canvas. George, Rocky and Abi the Beard would be outside keeping a watchful eye for intruders, and beyond them were the Tortellini brothers, Monsieur Couteau and a combined force from the Longhorns and the Dragons.
There was no snow now in their part of Siberia, but heavy rains, and the constant pounding of feet had turned their encampment into a muddy, rock-strewn mire. Everywhere they looked they saw the same thing – men and women, magic or otherwise, huddled around fires, trying to stay warm. Some were singing, others arm in arm, a few telling stories in hushed whispers to pass the time or to ease their listeners’ troubled hearts. Those that hadn’t seen it with their own eyes had all heard about the riders and the forest, had all glared at the wood knowing what it had become.
Ned and Lucy’s tent was at the encampment’s rear and high up on a hill to give George and the others a clear view of anyone approaching from the fortress. A little way up its steep slope they slowed in the mud and Ned spotted a man huddled under a decidedly battered top hat. He had a thick blanket wrapped round his shoulders and was sitting on a box of munitions, staring at the campsite below.
“Lucy, look …”
“Bene’s been sitting there all evening. Hasn’t spoken a word to anyone,” frowned Lucy.
As far as the eye could see, there were tents and fires with terrified men, women and creatures bunched around their flames. They had all come because Benissimo had begged them to. He should have been out there amongst them, rousing their spirits, thanking them even, or at least sitting at a table with Mr Fox and the Viceroy, who’d been shut away for hours going over last-minute plans.
“I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing!” said Lucy.
But Ned knew only too well. Benissimo had known since the beginning what was coming and had sworn Ned to secrecy about the brothers’ curse, how they were linked to the Darkening King. He wouldn’t betray his trust, but he could still let Lucy know at least a part of it, the only part that really mattered.
“You know, I don’t get to say this often, but for a Farseer you’re being a bit blind.”
Lucy scowled. “I should probably punch you for that, but I’m too tired.”
Gorrn shifted in the mud uneasily.
“Oh, Lucy, don’t you get it? He’s saying goodbye.”
“To who?”
“To all of them. To the Hidden, to us, to everyone he’s spent a lifetime trying to protect.”
And even in the thin orange light that came up from the campfires, Lucy could see the sadness on the Ringmaster’s face.
“Some of them will make it – we might even make it, Ned!”
But she still hadn’t understood what he was trying to say.
“If we get into the fortress, and it’s a big if, what do you think will happen?”
Lucy looked confused. “Well, we have to find and kill the Darkening King …”
Ned sighed. “And who do you think is going to try and stop us?”
Lucy looked to Benissimo and she realised what he was trying to say. “Barbarossa! His brother, the curse … Of course! I’ve been so focused on the stone and your powers coming back that I forgot.”
“Some of the Hidden will make it, and some of Fox’s men too, but Bene won’t, Lucy. He’s not coming back. If we succeed, he dies.”
Ned’s throat and mouth dried up and he could feel his eyes welling. When he looked at Benissimo, under his drenched top hat, he didn’t see a Ringmaster but the loneliest man alive, completely and resolutely determined to save his people no matter the cost – even if he had to pay with his life.
“There’s got to be another way, Ned! We could capture Barbarossa, lock him up – anything but that! I’m going over there right now.”
Ned put a hand on her shoulder. “There’s no other way, Lucy, we both know it and so does Bene. If you really care about him, let him have his goodbye in peace.”
Against everything she knew or thought she knew, Lucy followed Ned up the hill in silence, passing by the most selfless man that either of them had ever known, and headed sadly back up to their tent.
As they stepped inside, it came as a surprise to both of them that there was another man sitting within its canvas walls. He was eating a fresh golden-green apple, savouring its sweetness and the crunch of its flesh. On his head sat a bowler hat with three black feathers, and resting in his lap was a meat cleaver.
“Hello, Ned,” said Barbarossa. “Hello, Lucy. I hope you don’t mind me dropping in unannounced?”