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

“I wanted to be with the others . . .” He kept his eyes on the apple in his hand, red with his blood where he’d bitten it.

“Yes, but you didn’t find them did you?” Snorri and the others were back in Vermillion enjoying my grandmother’s hospitality—the second time for Snorri. There was no way they could have beaten the Red March riders to the border and I’d seen the riders returning, so they must have been captured.

“I did find them.” So quiet I almost missed it.

“What? Where? I’ve been here weeks and not a whisper of them.”

“Kara’s here. In this prison.”

“She is not!” I couldn’t believe that. How could this place hold a völva? I imagined her watching from the bars of the cell opposite, one more grey face among the rest, and found I didn’t want to pursue the thought. “Where?”

“She’s serving at the front.” Hennan put the bread down, a hand clutching the distended ache of his belly. “She doesn’t know I’m here.”

“But you know she’s here?” I raised a sceptical brow.

“News travels front to back, not the other way. They say Lady Connagio has a heathen maid with white hair and white skin who can do charms that cure warts. Came in the same time as me.”

“God’s sake!” A thousand questions fought to exit my mouth at once, but the biggest one won. “Where’s the key?”

Hennan shuffled closer and spoke lower, the bread wars were coming to an end with the victors pitting wobbly teeth against the crusts and the losers licking wounds.

“Can’t talk about it. That’s what we’re in for.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

True to his word Hennan wouldn’t tell me about the key. Every question I hissed at him about it met with silence. I exhausted myself quizzing him but the child kept his lips clamped tight and in the end I fell into a doze, unsure whether the sun was still shining outside or not.

•   •   •

I dreamed of a book, surely for the first time ever. I’ve long maintained that nothing of interest ever took place between the covers of a book, excepting the cardinal’s whisky and pornography of course, but here I was turning page after page in my dream. Even in my dream I didn’t want to read the thing, but some compulsion kept me going as if hunting for a particular page. I tried focusing on the writing but the letters carried no meaning, sliding this way and that like spiders who’ve forgotten how to master so many legs.

One more page, one more page, one more and then I saw it, a word like any other, buried amid its fellows but anchoring my eyes. Sageous. And as I said it the dream-witch’s face rose from the page, carrying the text with it so that the words lay across his skin, sinking in like tattoos. And his name—well that disappeared into the black slit of his mouth, now opening wider and wider to speak my own.

“Prince Jalan.”

“You!” I leapt to my feet, letting the book tumble to the floor. I stood in the room where I first met him, a guest bedroom in the Tall Castle, Crath City, Ancrath. “What the hell?”

“You’re dreaming, Prince Jalan.”

“I . . . I knew that.” I brushed myself down and glanced around. It didn’t look like a dream. “Why are you here? Looking for Baraqel to skewer you again?” I didn’t like the man one bit and wanted him out of my head quickly.

“I don’t think either of your friends will trouble us tonight, Prince Jalan, light nor dark.” He touched a word on his left arm then another on his right as he spoke of light and darkness. “And I am here to see if anything can be salvaged. You were supposed to free the boy and then be led to the Norsemen. With so much gold at your disposal it shouldn’t have been beyond you to free them too. You could have hired an army with what you carried. Instead I find you locked with the child in a debtors’ cell.”

“I was . . . supposed to?” I stared at the heathen trying to make sense of his gibberish. “The dreams?” I put a hand to my face. “You sent the dreams. I thought I was going mad!” All those nights haunted by Hennan’s fate. I knew that wasn’t like me. “You bastard!” I took a step toward him, then finding my legs would no longer listen to me, I stopped.

“It seems I over-estimated you, Prince Jalan.” Sageous shooed me back and my traitor legs obeyed. “A man who walks himself into a prison is unlikely to be able to walk himself out. I fear my employer will have to accept both your failure and his resulting losses.”