The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

We emerge into a room maybe ten yards square. A silver-steel ring, three yards across, is set into the stone floor and rises to about waist height, the upper surface sloping toward us. Dim lights glow there, the pattern shifting slowly between three configurations. In the middle of the ring a strange blue star burns, without heat but with a light that captures the eye. It rests a man’s height above the stone, as unsupported as any other star. I find myself staring at the thing, losing all sense of passing time. They say time is the fire in which we burn. Now I know what time looks like when it burns.

•   •   •

Alica walks through me—an unpleasant sensation but one that breaks me free of the star’s entrancement. Without my grandmother’s intervention I doubt I would ever have looked away. I’m careful not to look at it again. I have no idea if moments have passed, or hours.

The lights on the slanted top of the steel wall that forms a ring below the star now shine with a brightness that owes nothing to fire. The patterns have become more complex, more numerous, and shorter lived. Alica moves quickly here and there, touching one light as it glows, then another. I become aware that we are not alone. The room has few shadows but what shadows there are seem to gather in the far corner. A woman stands there, clad in grey, her robe wrinkled around her. She is almost as tall as Alica, but with a slight stoop, and looks no more than thirty-five but her hair is grey, falling lank about her face. She lifts her gaze—and finds me.

“How?” Any further questions die upon my lips. The woman’s left eye has a pearly cast to it. She raises a pale finger to her lips as if to shush me. When she lowers her hand the slightest of smiles lies behind it.

“I’m ready,” says Alica. “Are the people in place? The soldiers assembled?”

There’s nobody here but me and her silent sister, and neither of us answer.

She raises her voice. “I said—”

“Optics indicate the stasis zone fully occupied.”

Surprise nearly tears me from the dream. There’s a ghost standing before my grandmother. It wasn’t there a moment ago. A pale, see-through, honest-to-God ghost. A damned odd-looking ghost it has to be said—its face like a Greek marble, statued perfection that couldn’t ever be mistaken for life.

Alica bows her head. “Begin the event.”

“I have explained that stasis is not possible. Extensive repairs would be required before the generators could provide a sufficient pulse of energy. Generators seven and three are functioning at thirty percent, the remainder at less than ten percent. A failed stasis will result in a quickening. All that might be achieved is a bubble of quick-time, and at a peak ratio of thirty to one.”

“And I have acknowledged this. You will run the reactors beyond failsafe.”

“You do not understand the consequences of such action. The generators will fail catastrophically. Estimates place the devastation radius at—”

“Even so, you will do it.” Alica keeps her gaze on the pulsing lights.

The ghost shows no expression, its tone unwavering. It seems even less human than Captain John at the keep door, and the palace guard practise hard at looking impassive.

“I am afraid User that as a Guest you do not have such authority. This algorithm will—”

“My sister has seen beyond you, Root. She has seen past the years, though the sight of it burned her eye. You are a dance of numbers, without soul. Cleverness without wit. You will do what I say.”

“User you may not—”

“Security override Alpha-six-gamma-phi-twelve-omega.”

“Compliance. Energy pulse in three minutes. Quick-time core ratio of thirty-two to one predicted.”

We wait while the ghost counts away the seconds. Summoned by some unseen signal, Contaph descends the stairs leading a mix of palace guards, common soldiers, knights, and even a lord or two. Many of them carry the filth and stink of battle with them. Hard men, warriors born.

“Fifteen.”

The chamber is packed and more men push down the stairs. Alica vaults the steel ring and stands on the other side looking out, the blue star just behind her head, making a silhouette of it.

“Clear the stairs!” Alica shouts, urgency in her tone now. “Clear the path to the gates.”

“Fourteen.”

The shout is echoed up the stairway and beyond.

“It’s already done, princess,” Contaph says. “As you instructed.”

“Eleven.”

“Contaph, you others there. Join me.”