‘But once the memory of that crime was erased from our minds, we might as well have been. We can’t be punished for something we barely remember doing.’
‘Would it surprise you if I told you I agreed?’
‘I don’t know what to think any more. I just want to do what’s right - to find a way out of this mess. If that means surrendering ourselves to the Machine People, letting them decide whether to punish us or not, then maybe that’s what we’ll have to do.’
‘Given the present state of affairs, I would count on nothing where the Machine People are concerned.’
‘And Cadence and Cascade?’
Hesperus said, ‘I still don’t know why they were sent.’
When we had agreed on the necessary course of action, Hesperus and I followed the white corridors down to the ark’s door. We had already used the ark’s own surveillance devices to verify that no large machine had entered the bay since the loss of its atmosphere.
‘Why aren’t they here yet? I’m surprised they’re not waiting outside to ambush you.’
‘They’ll be here sooner or later. At the moment, they may be preoccupied with escaping the pursuit ships. But from now on you let no one aboard unless it’s me, using the code words we already agreed upon.’
‘Helleborine and Orache,’ I said, as if he might have forgotten.
Hesperus nodded. ‘Remember, Cadence and Cascade will find it a trivial matter to impersonate my appearance and usual manner of speaking. But they’ll be expecting me to act like Hesperus, not Valmik. If for some reason you don’t trust me, even if I use the code words, your last line of defence will be to listen out for Valmik. If you don’t hear him, you may assume I am not Hesperus after all.’
‘And then what should I do? If they’re outside, it won’t take them long to break in.’
‘I can’t tell you what you should do in those circumstances,’ Hesperus said. ‘That’s between you and your maker.’
‘You’re saying I should kill myself?’
‘I can think of at least one way in which the robots might have killed you already, if that was their intention.’
I wondered what his point was. ‘They gave it a damned good go when they emptied the bay.’
‘You survived, though. Their intention may have been to confine you to one place, one ship, rather than to kill you outright. I think they want something from you, Purslane: something in your head, I presume. Why else would they not have killed you already?’
I shuddered to think what it would mean to be interrogated by those lovely silver and white machines; the things they would do to me to get at what they wanted.
‘I don’t know anything,’ I said.
‘You may not. But it’s what they think that matters.’ He opened the door into the airlock, preparing to expose himself to the hard vacuum of the cargo bay.
‘How will you speak to me? You won’t be able to make a sound out there.’
‘The lock has a simple radio relay. You will hear my voice when it is necessary for me to speak to you. I’ll be silent until then - I don’t want to help Cadence and Cascade to track me.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘Depending on variables, one to two hours. I can’t be more precise than that.’
‘I should go instead of you. With a suit from the ark, and my knowledge of the bay—’
‘It would still take you longer. I can move like the wind when I must.’
I stroked my fingers down the muscular armour of his forearm. ‘Take care, Hesperus.’
‘I shall.’ After a moment he added, ‘I am relieved, Purslane. I thought you might hate me for what I had to tell you.’
‘I’ve never been one for shooting the messenger. You did what you had to.’
‘You took it well. Let us hope the rest of your species follows suit, shall we?’
The interior door closed on him. Through the glass partition I watched his gold skin darken to ash as he adjusted his coloration. I had never imagined him capable of such an effortless change, but there was now nothing about Hesperus that would have surprised me. The ash became a dark, hyphenated blur as he left the chamber at the speed of a bullet. Then the outer door closed and I was alone in the white ark, with only my fears for company.
That was when it dawned on me that I was the only living thing on my ship.
PART SEVEN
R
elictus had been confined to our deepest dungeon for six years, but not in the conditions to which most of our prisoners were accustomed. He had been allotted two rooms, one to sleep in, another in which to eat and continue his studies. He was given a fire to warm himself, candles, paper, quills and ink, a small library of his own choosing. He was allowed wine and the kind of food normally served to the highest-ranking soldiers. Occasionally he was even allowed a visit from a courtesan. The only thing not permitted him was the ability to conjure. When he did not need to eat or drink, he wore a heavy mask that muffled his voice beyond the range required for spell-casting. When it was necessary to remove the mask so that he could be fed, his hands were bound together. Guards spooned food into his mouth and washed it down with wine, treating him with the servile respect they had been ordered to show. At all times another guard observed him from a few paces away, alert to the slightest trick. That guard carried a knife, ready to slit Relictus’s throat.
I visited him in the dungeon, for it was considered too hazardous to move him without good purpose. For my visit he was both masked and bound, facing me in a black chair that was itself bolted to the floor. A guard stood behind him, pressing a knife against his throat. I could see only his eyes, moving behind round holes in the leather and metal covering his face. They were the eyes of a young man, almost a boy.
‘I have a difficulty, Relictus. I believe I have shown you kindness. It is true that you were never exactly a prisoner, but when the nature of your talents became known to us, I was advised that the safest thing would be to cut out your tongue, sever your hands and burn out your eyes. I did none of these things, because I am a woman of kindness. I had no choice but to confine you, but I strove to do all that I could to ease the burden of your incarceration. I could not allow you to work magic, but I have allowed you luxuries forbidden to any other prisoner. I do not think you can argue that you have been treated unfairly, given the alternatives.’
Relictus nodded. I did not know whether that meant yes, he could well argue against my point, or whether he accepted the truth of what I had said.
‘As I mentioned, a difficulty has arisen. It will not have escaped your knowledge that Calidris - your former master - is now a prisoner of Count Mordax. To my regret, but not my surprise, he has turned against us. He has used magic to create an army of Ghost Soldiers, an army that grows in number by the day, while ours is steadily depleted and weakened.’
He nodded again, then turned his mask towards the paper and ink on his desk. This was the signal that he wished to write. One hand was unbound. The knife was pressed even tighter against the skin of his throat where it showed under the mask.
He wrote:
Tell me of these soldiers.
‘They are suits of armour, but empty. They travel on horses that are either dead or near death, but which move with astonishing speed and stealth.’
Have you captured one?
‘Only the armour, broken and in pieces. It seems that whatever spirit or phantasm is animating these shells escapes when the armour is pierced or pulled apart. Witnesses have spoken of red smoke issuing from the gaps.’
Bring me one that is still intact.
‘I do not know if that is possible.’
Divert all resources until it is accomplished. Nothing matters more.
‘Will you help us, Relictus?’
A grating noise came from the mask. I think it was laughter.
That night, or perhaps the night after, I was taken from my bed by infiltrators dressed in green. It was a measure of our loosening control that Count Mordax’s agents were able to get into the Palace of Clouds unchallenged, and to find their way to my quarters.
The infiltrators took me from the Palace to a bright white room where I was molested and questioned. They pushed needles into me and peered into my eyes with shining contraptions. They called me ‘Abigail’ and kept telling me I had been lost, wandering in a kind of green labyrinth that they called Palatial, but that I had been rescued just in time.
Fortunately I escaped from the infiltrators. I wandered bright hallways until - by some artifice of magic or deception - I found myself back in my quarters in the Palace of Clouds.
My relief was indescribable. I secured my windows and requested that a double detachment of guards be on duty from that point forward. Yet in the morning Daubenton was reluctant to speak of the matter, and I began to doubt whether it had actually happened. In any case, I had no shortage of other affairs to occupy my mind. The Ghost Soldiers were increasing in number, pushing into the Kingdom in silent battalions, their swift, pale horses stinking of decay. They had need of a living captain to guide them, but in every other respect they fought like demons. For every man of ours that fell, Calidris made two for Count Mordax. I cursed the day I had touched the blood-bound needle against my finger, thereby bringing this desolation upon us.
But I heeded Relictus’s request. Against the wishes of Daubenton and Cirlus, I ordered that men and resources be redirected towards that single goal of capturing a Ghost Soldier with its armour intact. It was, I suppose, a kind of necessary madness. We lost villages and towns as our armies were redeployed from protection duties. Knowing that these orders had originated from me, my name became a curse to those who lost homes, possessions and loved ones. But I remained resolute.
And then came the day when we caught a Ghost Soldier.
It had fallen from its horse into a cushion of hay - the armour remaining intact. My men cornered it. It fought for a while, but with diminishing intent, becoming docile the further away its captain rode, until at last it submitted. My men confined it in a sack and brought it on a wagon to the Palace of Clouds. Later it was bound to a wooden rack and taken to Relictus.
He examined it with great care, over many days. Meanwhile the Ghost Soldiers continued their incursions, steadily eroding the Kingdom’s frontiers. The green men took me from my bedchamber on another occasion, but again I escaped their wicked enchantments and returned to my rooms. More guards were posted. I mentioned nothing to Daubenton, for - with my strange utterances and flashes of memory - I had already given him reason enough to doubt my faculties. Besides, I had begun to suspect that the green infiltrators were men of my own household, their white room a secret chamber somewhere in the Palace of Clouds. How else to explain the ease with which they took me, and the ease with which I returned to my rooms? It was far from clear that Daubenton was innocent in the matter.
Twelve days after the Ghost Soldier was brought to his dungeon, Relictus called for me. With guards at my side I descended the spiralling stone steps to his rooms.
The Ghost Soldier was still bound to the rack, but its armoured head moved to follow me as I entered. Relictus was still masked, but his hands were unbound. He wore a white smock, dirty with grease. His hair hung in lank coils over the eyeholes of the mask. He muttered something from behind the mask, thrusting his hands forward to one of the guards.
‘Bind him,’ I said. ‘He wishes to speak directly.’
‘There is a risk, milady,’ Cirlus warned.
‘And I have given an order. Bind him and remove the mask.’
Relictus’s face was still that of a young man, but it was wild with ambition and power-lust. A guard stood behind him with a knife, the blade pressed against his adam’s apple.
‘Progress?’ I asked.
‘I believe so, milady.’
‘Tell me.’
‘The magic is unquestionably from Calidris’s hand - I would know it anywhere. Inside the armour is a being called a false soul. We often spoke of the spells necessary to conjure such entities and set them abroad in the world. It is subtle, treacherous work - beyond the reach of most adepts. Even for Calidris, the conjuring of a false soul was a painful, protracted exercise. He showed me how to do it once, as a demonstration of his own powers - he placed a false soul in an hourglass, and we watched as it moved sand around. Then he vowed that he would never do such a thing again, and made me swear that I would never even attempt it. A false soul is a kind of living magic that, once set in motion, has an existence independent of its creator. As such, it is more dangerous than a spell that is cast to effect a single outcome, and which then ceases to have currency.’
‘But now Calidris is making many false souls. Is that possible?’
‘If the Ghost Soldiers are real, then you have your answer. I can only speculate that Calidris has exercised his talents to find a way to make ten false souls, or a hundred, as easily as he made one. He sometimes spoke of the methods by which a single spell might be multiplied, by an arrangement of levers and speaking tubes.’ He looked at the racked figure, which was regarding us both with the pointed metal beak of its visor. The eye slits were glass, I had been told. Examination of the armour of dead Ghost Soldiers had revealed an uncommon artistry in the fashion in which they were jointed and sealed, to keep that red smoke inside. ‘May I release it from the rack?’ Relictus asked. ‘I believe you will find it very interesting. You will come to no harm; it is quite docile.’
‘Docile?’ I repeated, for that was not what I had been expecting, given the ferocity with which the Ghost Soldiers were decimating our regiments.
‘I guarantee it.’
I nodded to the guards. Relictus was masked again. Still with the knife to his neck, his hands were freed so that he could untie the armoured figure. As the guards moved to bind him again, Relictus tapped the mask and mumbled something.