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

“What the hell?”

“How can—”

“There’s no one out there . . .”

And then someone said it. “Artos?” The corpse that had been left sprawled just beyond the gate.

“Maybe he wasn’t dead.”

“He was dead. I checked him. He was my friend.”

“Maggots were eating his eyes.”

“Of course he was dea—” A second dull thud of meat against bars cut the conversation off.

“Oh shit.”

“Sweet Jesu!”

“Artos? Is that you?”

The darkness seethed with possibilities—none of them good.

“It is Artos, isn’t it?” Hennan’s voice, closer to me than I’d imagined. I flinched.

“Yes.”

“And he is dead, isn’t he?” A small hand seeking mine.

“Yes.” In my left hand I held the key, removed from its hiding place, the witch’s spell undone . . . Loki’s key ready for use once more, and once more free to draw the attention of any foul thing that might be seeking it.

The thud of meat on iron came again. I imagined what I couldn’t see. Artos, staggering back from the impact on dead legs, face still crawling, ready to lunge forward once more, answering the call of what I held in my hand.

“Don’t worry.” I used my bluff hero-of-the-pass voice, loud enough for everyone but aiming the message at just one pair of ears. “Don’t worry. He’s out there, and we’re in here. If he couldn’t manage to get through those bars in all the months they held him trapped on this side, he’s not going to manage to get back through them before Racso’s next visit, now is he?”

I’d barely got the words out before Mr. Cough drew in another gurgling breath as if he were drowning in whatever filth was filling his lungs. On cue, after that chilling breath rattled into Mr. Cough, my former bodyguard Artemis Canoni loosed a soft cry of agony from his corner of the cell. Neither Hennan nor I said it, but from the sudden tension in his hand I think we came to the understanding in the same moment. Artos might be trapped out there—but if Mr. Cough or Artemis Canoni were to meet their maker within the next ten hours or so before Racso came back . . . the Dead King would have a new corpse to play with, and this time we’d be trapped in the cell with whatever he chose to stand back up again. Suddenly my concern for my fellow inmates reached new heights.

“Give that man with the cough some room, dammit! Don’t crowd him. Someone give him some water—there’s a copper in it for the man that does. And Artemis—where’s my faithful Artemis got to? Water for him too. And here’s a crust to dip into it.”

It took a bit of organizing but I did my best for them. Not that I had much faith in the curative powers of stale water and staler bread. Our friend outside kept bumping against the bars, and our friends inside kept muttering about why he might be doing it, but in the end with nothing to see and nothing to be done about it, we settled back into an uneasy quiet.

The truth about sheer terror is that even for a world-class coward like me it’s unsustainable. When the dreaded thing doesn’t happen hour after hour it becomes something that whilst still terrible allows a little room around the edges through which other thoughts may slip. Thoughts came. Thoughts that seeded suspicions into the blindness of the cell. Suspicions, watered by darkness, growing, slowly but relentlessly. The Red Queen’s war lay at the midst of my troubles. Her elder sister had sent me to the distant north to find the key I now held. And what was I doing in Umbertide? The Silent Sister’s twin had sent me here. It had seemed a mercy at the time, an escape from the dangers at home . . . but was it? Red March mortgaged to the banks of Florence, a power struggle between House Gold and others against Kelem, the Broken Empire’s unofficial master of coin, the Dead King sticking his bony fingers into the pie . . . the last staging post for Snorri before heading into the hills bearing Loki’s key to seek the door-mage out . . . and young Prince Jalan thrust into the middle of it all by a man I’d come to understand more fully in Umbertide than I ever had in the palace—a man the traders here considered Red March’s unofficial master of coin. I thought of Garyus slumped in his bed, looking two steps from death as he sent me on my way with the only kind words I heard on my return. I thought of him lying there and tried to square that image with the new ones being built behind my eyes. With a start I realized I was holding Loki’s key tight to my chest. I lowered my hand, wondering if its lies were bleeding into me even now.