CHAPTER XXXVII
Coby stood at the top of the steps, wondering how she was to get all these people out of the Tower. Fortunately the problem was solved for her by the arrival of a squad of militiamen. Coby pulled Kit back into the shadow of the great doors. The last thing she wanted was to be herded out of the castle with the rest of the courtiers.
“Come on, let’s go and check on our prisoner,” she said. “We don’t want some well-meaning warder letting him loose, not after all the trouble we’ve been to.”
She was half out of breath by the time they reached the little tower room, and half-expected Jathekkil to have vanished into thin air. But there he was, tied to the bedpost with the dark metal of a spirit-guard glinting dully at his throat.
“Come back to finish me off, have you?” he rasped.
“I could never kill a child,” Coby replied softly. She looked from one boy to the other. “But I suppose neither of you are children, are you?”
The usurper’s eyes widened in fear.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re quite safe with us.”
She went over to the door and unlocked it. After a moment’s consideration she slipped the heavy iron key into her pocket and returned to the bed, where she tore a strip from one of the sheets and gagged the young king and bound his ankles before untying him from the bedpost. He bucked in her arms as she scooped him up and threw him on the bed.
“One boy sounds much like another,” she said. “And my son looks a good deal like you. Everyone comments on it. If the yeomen warders come, I’m sure we can persuade them nothing is amiss.”
She closed the bed-curtains and opened a large cupboard. As she suspected, it was full of fine clothing, made for a boy of eight or nine years.
“Kit, why don’t you change out of those dirty things into something a bit nicer?”
As Mal watched, the door to Olivia’s chamber melted like wax into a tarry puddle on the floor. A young man of eighteen or so stood on the other side, tall and thin with skin pale as a shoot forced in darkness. Another of Shawe’s young sorcerers, no doubt. He seemed to look straight through Mal as if he wasn’t there. Beyond him, Mal could see someone lying on the floor, an arm clad in green silk flung wide, graceful hand limp as a flower. Olivia.
Mal drew his sword, and the youth finally appeared to notice him.
“Don’t like this, do you?” Mal said, pointing the steel blade towards him.
The youth raised his hands, and a chair thudded into the back of Mal’s knees. Mal stumbled and dropped the sword, and the youth pounced, turning into a great cat in mid-air. Mal rolled and retrieved his weapon. Sweet Christ! He had expected an attack on his mind, not his body. Still, if that’s what they wanted, he was more than happy to oblige.
He scrambled to his feet, sweeping the blade in an ever-changing series of arcs that wove a shield of steel between them. Let the creature get its magic through that! But he could not keep it up forever, and the sorcerer seemed to guess as much. He changed back into a human youth and withdrew, arms crossed, waiting. His enemy was no fencer, however; moments later he gave himself away by glancing over Mal’s shoulder. Mal edged round to see another boy, slightly younger, framed in the doorway. How many of them were there? Two dozen at least, or so Kiiren had said. He needed reinforcements.
Without taking his eyes off the two youths, he reached out with his mind and called to his brother. Green light flared behind him, and a moment later Sandy stepped through.
“Good work,” he murmured, stepping round Mal.
The light did not fade however, but shimmered between the pair of them, binding them together. Sandy moved sideways and the light stretched with him, becoming a wall that cut off the sorcerers’ escape route. After a moment the two youths retreated into the corner tower and the stone walls closed in as if a door had never been there. Mal released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding, and the green light died.
“How in God’s name are they doing that?” he said, to no one in particular.
“You mean shaping the fabric of the world as if it were the dreamlands?” his brother replied. “It appears to be a human talent, one we never suspected.”
Mal shook his head. “We can philosophise about this later. Since we’re too late to stop them coming through, all we can do now is–”
The magically sealed wall began to crumble into sand, and as it fell away Mal could make out not two but half a dozen young sorcerers behind it. He reached behind him and wrenched open the outer door of the Queen’s apartments, pulling Sandy after him.
Gabriel finally caught up with Ned at the edge of Tower Hill, after chasing his lover all the way from the Strand through the darkened streets of London’s northern suburbs.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he panted, grasping at Ned’s sleeve.
“We can’t let Kit go in there. Mal will kill me.”
“How do you know he went to the Tower? Lady Frances just said he was missing.”
“Where else would he go, eh? Besides, Mal needs us.”
“No, he doesn’t. He needs… I don’t know, an army. Or the skraylings. An army of skraylings, perhaps.”
“And where is he going to find one of those, eh? They’re gone. Forever. The guisers made sure of that.”
“So you’re going in their place?”
Ned shrugged helplessly. “I can’t just sit around and wait for my friends to die.”
Gabriel slipped his arm around his lover’s waist. “And I don’t want to see you die. It was bad enough the last time. Don’t put me through that again.”
Ned said nothing, only buried his head in the crook of Gabriel’s neck. They stood there for several minutes, Gabriel resting his cheek against Ned’s hair. Faint sounds drifted westwards on the night air: a dull thudding, and voices raised in panic. Gabriel watched the fortress over Ned’s shoulder, feeling the tension in his lover’s muscles and knowing he too was listening to the noises issuing from within. As Gabriel watched, the gates of the Byward Tower opened and a bedraggled column of people began making their way across the causeway to the landward gatehouse.
“What’s going on?” he said softly. “Are the guisers fleeing after all?”
Ned twisted in his arms.
“Something’s afoot. Come on!”
Before Gabriel could stop him Ned raced off down the hill towards the Tower. With a groan of resignation Gabriel set off after him.
Mal vaulted down the stairs outside the Queen’s apartments only to find his way blocked by the stream of courtiers being guided towards the Byward Tower by anxious-faced warders.
“Get them out of here, as fast as you can!” he yelled. “You! Fetch a squad of militiamen to guard Saint Thomas’s Tower.”
The warder he had addressed glared back at him.
“On whose authority?”
“The Duke of Suffolk’s.”
“Well I answer to the King, sirrah. The duke can mind his own business.” He went back to shepherding the dazed-looking nobles towards the gates.
“Mal!”
He turned to see Ned pushing through the throng towards him.
“What in God’s name are you two doing here? I told you to stay at Suffolk House.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s Kit–”
“Yes, he’s here, I know.” Mal sighed. “If you want to make yourself useful, go and fetch any militiamen you can round up. I need that building cordoned off, now.”
Ned grinned his acknowledgement and ran off.
“Can I help?” Gabriel asked.
“Get up into the Bloody Tower and prepare to lower the portcullis as soon as Ned gets back. We need to lure Shawe’s apprentices further into the castle and trap them there, so they can’t attack the rest of the city.”
Gabriel nodded in acknowledgement.
“They’ll walk straight through the portcullis, you do realise that?” Sandy said as they hurried through the gateway.
“Don’t be too sure,” Mal replied. “It’s bound and shod with iron; it might at least give them pause.”
They jogged up the slope to the green and turned right towards the low bulk of the keep’s gatehouse.
“Wait here for Ned to come through,” he told Sandy. “I’m going to check on the next line of defences.”
Without waiting for a reply he clapped his brother on the shoulder and set about exploring the coldharbour gate. A door at the foot of one of the two gatehouse towers opened onto a stair that led up to a guard room. No portcullis, but a double line of holes along the floor marked the passageway below, allowing defenders to drop stones or boiling water on attackers. Or, more promisingly in this instance, the steel-headed pikes and crossbow bolts stacked along one side of the guardroom. He picked up a couple of crossbows and quivers and raced back down to the innermost ward to bark orders at a group of militiamen who were half-heartedly restraining a couple of their colleagues.
“You can arrest these men for looting if they survive,” Mal told them. “Right now I want all of you manning the murder-holes in the gatehouse.”
He left them to it and returned to his brother just as Ned came panting up the slope. Mal thrust the crossbows and quivers at him, and Ned began cranking one of them with his good hand.
“Any sign of them yet?”
As if in answer, a scream came from the outer ward. Mal caught Sandy by the arm.
“Come on, we’re going to have to lure them in here.”
They ran down to the gate under the Bloody Tower. A dozen youths in the livery of Anglesey Priory stood along the wall-walk, staring down at them.
“Here we are,” Mal yelled up at them. “We’re the ones you seek.”
As one the sorcerers jumped, floating down to the ground as gently as autumn leaves. Mal recalled moving like that in the dreamlands; Sandy was right, they were shaping reality around them as easily as a dream.
He backed into the gateway, not too fast lest they lose interest. They closed in, moving as one. Mal glanced at Sandy out of the corner of his eye. Like hounds picking up the scent at last the sorcerers charged forward. Mal turned and ran.
“Now, Gabriel!”
The rattle of the Bloody Tower’s portcullis mechanism filled the night air. Not a moment too soon. Two of the young sorcerers were crushed under the iron spikes but the rest ran up the slope, howling. Mal turned and drew his sword. They had to keep them here, away from the fleeing courtiers but away from Kit and Coby as well.
The tallest of the sorcerers stretched out his arms and clapped his hands together before him. The torches on either side of the portcullis flared, setting fire to the ancient wooden timbers. Outlined against the flames, he began to advance up the slope towards Mal. A crossbow quarrel zipped past Mal’s ear, only to burst into flame as it flew. The steel head fell to the cobbles a few feet short of its target. The stink of burnt feathers hung in the air for a moment before it was drowned out by the smoke now billowing from the portcullis.
“Fall back to the coldharbour gate!” Mal yelled over the roar of the flames.
He held his position until Ned and Gabriel were behind him, then backed towards the gates where the militiamen hopefully waited around the murder-holes. Burning the shafts wouldn’t make a difference if the missiles came from above.
Kiiren let the human woman, Hendricks, finish buttoning the unfamiliar clothes, then he shrugged her off and went over to the bed.
“What are you doing, lambkin?” she asked, coming towards him.
“Watch the door.” When she hesitated, he recalled the best way to appeal to her. “Please, Mamma?”
She nodded and went to stand guard. Kiiren pulled back the curtain.
Jathekkil glared up at him and wriggled backwards across the bed.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Kiiren said truthfully. “I just want to talk.”
He climbed onto the bed and loosened the gag, pulling it down over Jathekkil’s chin, then removed the prince’s spirit-guard.
Jathekkil spat fibres from his mouth. “I don’t have anything to say to you, traitor.”
Kiiren shook his head in pity.
“You have been human too long, Jathekkil. It does not suit your temperament.”
“You always were a sanctimonious little prick, Outspeaker.”
“Insults? Is that all you have learned from your time here?”
“You have no idea what the humans are like, do you?”
“I have studied–”
“Study. Ha!” Jathekkil licked his lips, warming to his subject. “Just wait until you’ve lived a lifetime or two among them. You’ll see. They’ll never stop, you know, these Christians. They want our gold and gemstones, and all our clever devices that bring light in the darkness and cold in the heat of summer. They want our lands and those of our human allies in the New World. They will not rest until they have it all.”
“You have misjudged them–”
“No, it is you who misjudge. You are too soft-hearted, Outspeaker. You see the good in everyone. Well I see the evil, and the evil is stronger.”
Kiiren retied the gag, replaced the spirit-guard and climbed off the bed.
“What was all that about?” Hendricks asked.
It was a moment before Kiiren realised he and Jathekkil had been talking in Vinlandic.
“Nothing, Mamma. Just idle boasting.”
He went over to the window and looked out, but from here all he could see were the barracks ranged along the north wall, and a scatter of new houses on the slopes above the Tower. He sank down on the window seat with a sigh.
What if Jathekkil were right, and all his efforts at diplomacy were for naught? No, he could not give in to despair, not now. His amayi still needed him. And one day they would both go home. That he had sworn, a lifetime ago when he first came to England. There was still the small problem of Erishen’s shattered soul, but they would work that out. Perhaps if they could capture Shawe, his alchemy would show them how.
Imbued with new purpose, he jumped down from the window seat. “Mamma, we need to capture one of the boys from the school. Alive, if we can.”