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

“How will this help?” I didn’t say it wouldn’t—I’d seen marvels spring from such runes.

Hennan frowned, trying to remember the exact words. “Let the shadow of a key fall upon it and it will unlock the truth and reveal the lie.”

“It will . . . what?” He’d forgotten the spell. All we had was garbled nonsense. The death of a small hope hurts more than an age of despair. That constant fear swelled again from the pit of my stomach and tears stung my eyes.

“It is the key.” Hennan kept his gaze on the rune. “But we can’t see it or use it until the charm’s taken off.”

It sounded like madness. “With a shadow?”

“Yes.”

“Of a key?”

“Yes.”

“Christ.” I lay back, shoulders to the roughness of the wall. “You think any of this lot have a key?” I leant to the side and grabbed the ankle of the old man who’d collapsed to the floor. “You! You got a key?” I started laughing, too loud, the kind of laughter that hurts your chest and isn’t but a hair from sobbing.

•   •   •

There’s one thing to be said for sitting in a cell with absolutely nothing to do but keep what’s yours and nurse your hunger—it gives you time. Time to think, time to plan. Obviously to give the lie to this nonsense Kara had spun Hennan, or possibly prove it true, we needed someone with a key. The only someone likely to come down into the bowels of the prison was our friend Racso. So all we needed to do was to get the shadow of Racso’s key to fall across it, and we’d have our opportunity when he next unlocked the cell.

Racso wouldn’t be back until he felt like selling the debtors food and water, probably another twelve hours or so. I sat back against the wall and invited Hennan to tell me just how Snorri had managed to get them all locked up.

“And how the hell did you find them?”

•   •   •

And Hennan told me. The food supplies he had taken from the Roma Hall kitchens ran out after two days. Hungry and tired, he had managed to get a ride with an old couple visiting relatives in Hemero. The pair of ancients appeared to be taking all their worldly possessions with them in their cart but found room for the boy atop the heap. Hennan’s part of the bargain was to fetch and carry water, gather kindling, take the horses to pasture, and carry out miscellaneous chores. To me it sounded as if the old folks had taken pity on a strangely pale beggar boy. In any event the arrangement got him safely to within ten miles of the Florentine border.

Back roads took Hennan across the invisible line between the two kingdoms at a point without any guards to turn him away. He arrived sunburned and hungry in Umbertide, exhausting the last of the provisions that his ageing benefactors had sent him off with. Getting into the city had been an adventure of sewers and climbing, Umbertide having enough street children of its own without the soldiers at its gates letting any more in.

It wasn’t until Hennan had nearly finished the tale of his getting into Umbertide that I realized what the real problem was. The understanding struck as a cold contraction of the stomach and a sudden reluctance to ask the questions that needed answers.

I forced the words out. “How long ago did you get taken?”

Hennan frowned in the candle light. “I don’t know. Everything feels like forever down here and there’s no days.”

“Guess.”

“A couple of days before you came?”

That sinking feeling became something more savage as if some great hand were trying to pull me through the cell floor. I thought he’d been in the cell the whole time I’d been in Umbertide. “But you’re so thin . . .”

“I’ve been living off rubbish and sleeping in the streets for . . . weeks. Snorri didn’t come by road. Not at first. They took a boat down the river—”

“The Seleen?” The cunning bastards. They hadn’t trusted me to keep quiet about the key and knew the Red Queen would come after them. They’d done what northmen do. Taken to sea.

“Yes, they got a merchant to take them down the coast on his ship. Only they had problems and it took them a long time. They put in at some port on the Florentine coast and walked to Umbertide. I saw them coming through the Echo Gates. I used to sleep by there, up on a roof.”

“So you met up with them and . . .”

“Soldiers took us a few hours later.”

“Soldiers?”

“Well, men in uniform anyway, with swords.”