‘And now we’re riding to Osheim with Loki’s key on the steward’s instructions.’ A silence followed my last words. I waited for judgment.
‘It is what it is.’ Grandmother sounded tired. I’d never seen her tired before.
‘I offer you the key, your highness.’ I went down on one knee and held the key up in both hands. The old desire to keep it had largely eroded since it became apparent that the key was my ticket to Osheim. ‘I’m sure it would unlock the Lady Blue’s tower for you.’
‘When I most wanted this … you gave it elsewhere.’ She leaned forward, a gnarled hand reaching. ‘You seemed to have strong opinions regarding my brother’s right to determine the fate of this key.’
I kept my mouth shut, knowing it would only dig me a deeper hole. The key felt icy across my palms – as if it might slip away any moment.
The queen’s fingers extended toward Loki’s gift, lie-dark and gleaming. ‘No.’ The hand became a fist. ‘Garyus deserves our trust … my faith. You will take this to Osheim and undo the Builders’ folly.’
A sigh escaped me and looking up I closed a hand about the key. ‘Send someone more suited to the task?’
Grandmother favoured me with a rare smile, albeit a grim one. ‘It was you who reminded me of my brother’s worth, Jalan. I wouldn’t support his plan only to gainsay his choice of champion.’
‘Champion?’ I widened my eyes at that, unable to entirely stamp out the burst of foolish pride rising through me.
‘Besides,’ she said. ‘You have the Northman with you. He seems capable.’
I begged for an escort north of course, but Grandmother insisted that Red March soldiers would draw more trouble than they averted while travelling through the fragments of empire. I countered that they could travel unmarked by uniform or device, but she repeated Garyus’s nonsense about small groups passing unchallenged where larger ones would draw notice. The actual surprise came when she turned down my offer to unlock the Lady Blue’s tower.
The Red Queen led me from her tent. ‘Mora Shival’s wall will not withstand my sister for much longer.’
It took me a moment to reconnect the Lady Blue with her name – I preferred to think of her as a title. A name made her too human. Once she was young, like me, like Kara. Thinking of her that way was uncomfortable. Time’s river would carry us on, twisting with each eddy of the current … and what might we turn into?
‘But … a twist of the key and…’ I mimed the opening of gates.
We stood alone, a rain-laced wind tugging our cloaks, a score of guards ten yards back, and before us the mirrored finger of the Lady Blue’s tower, aiming at heaven.
‘They say no wrong-mage has ever left the Wheel.’ The Red Queen kept her eyes on the mirror-wall as if seeking some meaning in the distortion there. ‘They are incorrect. Two have. Mora Shival was one of the two who escaped. She has a gate within her tower. A marriage of her arts and the science of the Builders. A fractal glass. Most of her mirror-doors are broken now, and those that survive will break when this wall is broken. The fractal glass, though, that one will survive and it leads to—’
‘Osheim.’
Grandmother inclined her head.
‘Wait. If she can run to Osheim why doesn’t she go there now? You’ve said yourself armies are no use there. The Wheel is a better defence than this wall of hers.’
‘The heart of the Wheel is hard to endure, even for a wrong-mage. The lady has been weakened of late. She has lost too many reflections to wait in Osheim without great risk. She would only run there if no other alternative presented – or at the end of things when little time remains to the world.
‘While we knock on her wall her attention is kept here, her strength employed to maintain her defences. You will have to find and destroy her exit in Osheim. That will be the time to fracture her barricades – when she has nowhere to run. No bolthole. That is when we shall hold her to account.’ The Red Queen’s jaw tightened as if she imagined that moment. ‘When you do it my sister will know, and we will act.’
‘You haven’t seen Osheim – it’s huge – how can I hope to find one mirror?’ As if turning off the Wheel’s engine wasn’t impossible enough, now I had a needle to find in a haystack five miles wide.
‘It will be at the heart of things. You’ll find it.’
Having failed to give Grandmother the key, failed to get her to send someone else, and failed to have her send an army to protect me I only had one place left to run. ‘What if she’s right?’ I summoned up Kara’s arguments. ‘If we’re all lost anyway, what does it matter if the world burns today or tomorrow? Why shouldn’t the strongest, the cleverest, save themselves if they can save no one else? Have you considered joining her?’ I let the ‘and saving me’ go unsaid.
The slap didn’t come as much of a surprise. Not even the force of it, which sent me to the ground clutching my face.
‘We’re Kendeths, Jalan!’ She loomed over me. ‘We fight. We fight when hope is gone. We fight while there’s blood left in us.’ She dragged me to my feet as if I were a child rather than a man topping six foot. ‘We fight.’ Her eyes fixed on mine, hard as flint. ‘That woman killed my grandfather. She spilled his lifeblood in my house. She tried to kill me and in defending me my brother and sister were changed … twisted into what they are now.’ She lowered her voice, the anger fading, her grip on me still iron. ‘That woman has lived too long and she’ll sacrifice the tomorrows of a million to live herself lifetimes more. Yes, I want to save my city, my country, my people, and yes it’s worth my life, and yours to give them another year, or month, or day. But truly? In my secret heart, Jalan? What drives me is that I will not let that bitch win. She has raised her hand against me and mine. She will die by my own hands. There’s no life everlasting for that one. No new world. This is a war, boy. My war. I am the Red Queen – and I do not lose.’
She let me go and I sagged back on to my heels. I’d known what she would say. I’d known she was right too. Or at least more right than the Lady Blue. Old habits die hard, though, and I had to at least try every escape route.
‘If I see her in Osheim I’ll kill her with the sword that killed my mother.’ I had my own revenge to take, my own fire, and my own measure of the Red Queen’s blood.
‘See that you do.’ A rare smile on Grandmother’s lips.
I sighed and tightened my cloak about me. ‘Lucky I set off for Osheim with the key then. Or none of this would have worked.’
Grandmother turned her head, looking past me. I turned too and followed her gaze. The Silent Sister had been standing at my back, uncomfortably close. She met my glance with her strange stare, one eye blind white and full of mysteries, the other dark as any hole. ‘Luck? We save luck for the endgame,’ the Red Queen said. ‘You’re going to need every scrap of it for the Wheel. Nobody sees into that future, not a glimpse.’
‘I guess … I’ll be going then.’ Bad as Osheim sounded I really didn’t want to stand there between those two terrifying old women a moment longer. ‘And if … if it all works? What then?’
Grandmother made another of her rare smiles, as grim as the first. ‘The world will keep on turning. This ending will have been averted, or more likely delayed. The Gilden Guard will arrive within the month to take me to Congression and the Hundred will repeat the same arguments that have rumbled on since my grandfather’s day. Perhaps this time we really will elect a new emperor and mend this broken empire of ours.’
It took a moment to realize that the dry hissing beside me was the Silent Sister’s laughter. I took it as my cue to leave.
Snorri and Kara were waiting for me with the horses by the largest of several supply dumps. The boy was nowhere to be seen. I envied his freedom to wander away.
‘We’re going?’ Snorri raised his voice over the din all around us. Red March soldiers laboured in ant-like chains under the direction of roaring store-masters to break up and distribute the heaped stocks of food and equipment.
I nodded. ‘Me
et me on the main road, up by the big church. I just need a moment.’
‘What?’ Snorri cupped a hand to his ear but Kara was already pushing him away, her palm against his chest.
She looked back at me over her shoulder. ‘Don’t run off now!’
I didn’t reply but walked away wondering, and not for the first time, whether she could read my mind.
I wandered the ruins without direction, though remaining within the defensive perimeter. I’d no desire to explain myself to a vengeful Slovian mob. Grandmother had a strong position with a large number of seasoned troops but to hold this ground until I reached the Wheel of Osheim and sealed off the Lady Blue’s last escape would require tactical genius, not to mention all kinds of luck. Her only real hope was that King Lujan would mistake her purpose and hold his strength up at Julana thinking her to be readying an assault against his capital.
I ducked into the roofless shell of a building to get out of the fine rain, blown on a cold autumn wind in such a way that it coats your face and fills your eyes. Standing beneath the arch of the entrance I pondered my options and discovered them to be limited. Somehow I’d found myself headed for the north once more, still bound to the Viking, and by chains I understood no better than the first time. I’d almost been dragged into Hell by the singular force of Snorri’s good opinion of me, though it had taken the force of his arm to get me in there in the end. Now, somehow, the good opinions of many people – from the queen of Red March to that of a heathen child – were driving me into a hell on earth. Quite how so many people had sunk their hooks beneath my armour I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I didn’t like it one bit. The Jalan who had jumped from Lisa DeVeer’s balcony would have run and kept on running. Had a single year truly wrought that much change upon me?
Something drew my gaze into the sooty interior of the house. It had been a grand affair once. I started to identify objects among the clutter of black on black. The shattered bust of some family saint or elder, the jagged hulls of broken vases. I peered more closely – a sword broken into pieces as if it too had been ceramic. I moved the fragments with my boot, noting the bright edges. Stepping forward and leaning down for a better look, I saw that even the surviving pieces of wood, fallen roof timbers, flame-blackened and acrid in the rain, were jagged-edged as if they also had shattered, the breaks ignoring the grain. I stood up, making a slow rotation. Everything around me lay in sharp-edged pieces beneath its black coating, as if the whole room had splintered like glass beneath a single blow.
A framed picture leaned against the wall by the door arch through which I’d entered. The only whole thing in the place. I walked to it, reaching a finger to wipe a clean spot. The soot fell away the instant my fingertip made contact. Not just a patch beneath my touch, but every part of it, flowing down like a piece of black silk sliding from a polished table. And beneath it … a man’s face, but not a portrait, my own, staring back at me in surprise from the smooth and unblemished surface of a large mirror.
‘Hello, Jalan.’ I said it. I saw my lips move around the words. But it wasn’t my voice.
‘Get away from me!’ Those were my words, and yet my reflection’s mouth stayed closed. It watched me with eyes that were not my own. I tried to turn away but that stare held me.
‘I’m not your enemy, Jalan. You want to escape. I want to help you escape. You’re a piece on the Red Queen’s board and she keeps pushing you into danger whatever you do. I can help you play your own game.’
‘You’re my enemy,’ I said, though she was right about the escaping part. ‘Your hands are red with the blood of my family and my friends. Too much of it to be forgiven.’
She smiled, her mouth more hers than mine now, curved as I remembered it from Grandmother’s youth. ‘We show our weakness most when we look upon ourselves, Jalan. I’ve watched you watch yourself. I’ve heard the secrets spoken to your reflection – the doubts – the truths, each confession. We all knew you would be special. You or your sister. And we watched you, but while the Silent Sister studied the paths that might lead you through all your tomorrows, I made a study of the man, took his measure. A coward can forgive himself anything given the right excuse, Jalan. Believe me when I say that the sting of any treachery, whether to the living or to your dead, will last only a moment compared to the joys waiting for you. The freedom to do as you want, unconstrained by troublesome morality, unbound by that nagging voice of conscience which others have imposed upon you, infected you with.’
‘Lies,’ I said.
‘The Wheel is turning, Jalan. It can’t be stopped. The change can’t be stopped. Everything we know will end. The decision is not how to fight it but how to survive it. I’ve watched you and you, Jalan Kendeth, are, above all else, a survivor.’
‘Lies,’ I repeated, but the worst of it was not that she was almost certainly right about the Wheel being unstoppable. The worst of it was that she was right about me. I could walk away. I could betray any trust to save my own skin. Oh it would hurt, and yes I would curse myself and mope … but after? I didn’t think it would break me – not as it would break Snorri if he could ever do such a thing. I didn’t run that deep. I wasn’t made of the same stuff. Snorri was the truth. No give in him. Inflexible. Hold or break, nothing in between. And me? Prince Jalan was a lie I told myself, mutable, adaptable, lasting … a survivor. ‘How can anyone survive the end of everything?’
And there it was. As good as a betrayal. I’d asked the Lady Blue to plant a seed of hope in me. My reflection looked like both of us now – a mixture – her age on my bones, her words on my lips.
‘There are ways known to those with power. True power that rests in the mind rather than in titles or lands or the command of great armies. I will bring those who serve me through the conjunction of the spheres and into a new world. But they have to be close at the last moment. Close enough to touch.’
‘All I have to do is come through your wall and join you in that tower, eh?’ It had been a faint hope at best, but I hadn’t expected it to sour so quickly.
‘There is another way. For a man with Loki’s key.’
‘I’m listening.’ My hand found the key.
‘The heart of the Wheel is the centre of the storm. When the worlds shatter like mirrors and all the pieces come sliding down, anyone standing at the heart of the Wheel will pass through without harm.’ My reflection held little of me now, just my eyes staring from an old woman’s face.
‘I’m told it’s not a place anyone would choose to wait.’
‘The engines of the Wheel continue to change the world. The Wheel continues to turn but that was never the Builders’ intention. The engines were built to turn it so far and no more, to hold it in place, to give a little magic to each Builder and change their world from one set thing into another. The fact the Wheel kept turning, ever so slowly, was a mistake, an unforeseen event. It’s us that turn the Wheel when we use the power it gives us, and the engines at Osheim help us to turn it considerably faster than we could on our own.
‘Their war ended their interest in the matter, and a thousand years turned a little mistake that might have been corrected into a big one that cannot.’ The Lady Blue watched me from the mirror, no hint of my face there now. She looked old, though not as ancient as Grandmother and her sister. Her face however, held far less vitality – the skin stretched tight across her bones, paper thin, her eyes clouded. ‘Some think the key might be used to disable the Wheel’s engines and that doing so might slow the inevitable conjunction. It’s possible, though unlikely, and such a waste … the key destroyed to buy a handful of months, a few years at best. Better by far to turn it the other way – put those engines into overdrive, spin the Wheel as the Builders once did and bring about the end in moments. The man who did it would be assured a place in the new order of things and a clean, sharp transition would make it easier for those skilled among us to survive the change and bring through with them not just a few followers but dozens, scores, maybe hundreds.’
‘You sent Edris Dean to kill my mother.’ I held to the anger – at least that felt clean and uncomplicated.
‘It wasn’t an act of malice, Jalan. It was about survival. You know in your heart that when it comes down to burn or don’t burn, you would choose to save yourself over others. That’s honesty. That’s the truth at the core of what we are. You need to—’
Something whizzed past my ear and the world exploded.
I opened my eyes an indeterminate amount of time later and discovered the world less exploded than I had imagined it would be, albeit decidedly odd-looking, as if the entire house had fallen on its side. It took a moment to work out that I was the one who had fallen over.
Some tugging and grunting indicated that someone was attempting to get me back into a sitting position, although they were doing a piss-poor job of it.
‘I’m all right.’
I sat up and drew a hand over my face, turning to find Hennan frowning at me. A glance down at my palm revealed it scarlet. ‘Shit! I’m not all right! I’m bleeding to death!’ I staggered to my feet. Glittering shards of mirror lay all around, crunching under my boots.
‘You’ve got a cut below your eye,’ Hennan said. ‘A piece of it must have caught you when I threw the rock.’
‘Threw?’
‘The mirror was doing something to you. It was all blue – like the sky gone wrong. I threw a rock at it.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well.’ I glanced about. Just me and Hennan in the blackened shell of a merchant’s house. ‘Good. Let’s go.’
26
I let Snorri and Kara navigate us out of Blujen’s garden lands and on into northern Slov. Snorri’s instinct for the outdoors seemed as keen among the woods and fields of the central kingdoms as it had amid the icy rocks of Norseheim. Kara also proved her worth, casting her runestones wherever the road offered us choices and selecting the path of least resistance.