Incarceron Part 17

When the door closed behind him, neither of them spoke. Claudia sat, and Jared dumped the gla.s.s into a disposer and switched the monitor on for the tower stairs.

Together they watched the Warders dark angular figure pick a fastidious way through the mouse droppings and hanging webs.

Finally Jared said, "He knows."

"Of course he knows."

Claudia realized she was s.h.i.+vering; she pulled an old coat of Jared's around her shoulders. She had the jumpsuit on under her dress, her shoes were on the wrong feet, and her hair was scrunched back in a sweaty tangle.

"He came here just to show us that."

"He doesn't believe the ladybugs set the alarms off."

"I told you. The room has no windows. But he won't admit that I got the better of him, and he never will. So we play the game."

"But the Key ... to bring it away ..."

"He won't know if he just opens the drawer and looks at it. Only when he tries to pick it up. I can put the original back before then."

Jared wiped his face with one hand. He sat shakily. "A Sapient should not say this, but he terrifies me."

"Are you all right?"

He turned his dark eyes to her, and the fox cub jumped back down and pawed at his knee.

"Yes. But then you terrify me equally, Claudia. Why on earth did you steal it? Did you want him to know it was you?"

She frowned. Sometimes he was too acute. "Where is it?"

Jared looked at her a moment, then made a rueful face.

He took the lid from an earthenware crock and dipping a hook in, lifted the Key out of the formaldehyde. The acrid smell of the chemical filled the chamber; Claudia pulled the coat sleeve over her face.

"G.o.d. Wasn't there anywhere else?"

She had thrust it into his hand and had been too busy dressing to see where he put it.

Now he unwrapped it carefully from the protective seal and laid it on the gnarled, singed wood of the workbench. They stared down at it. It was beautiful. She could see that clearly, its facets catching the sunlight from the window in brilliant rainbow glints. Embedded in its heart the crowned eagle glared out proudly. But it seemed too fragile to turn in any lock, and its transparency showed no circuitry.

She said, "The pa.s.sword to open the drawer was Incarceron!'

Jared raised an eyebrow.

"So you thought..."

"It's obvious, isn't it? What else could such a key unlock? Nothing in this house has a key like that."

"We have no idea where Incarceron is. And if we did we couldn't use it."

She frowned. "I intend to find out."

For a moment Jared considered. Then, as she watched, he placed the Key on a small scale and weighed it accurately, took its ma.s.s and length, noting the results in his precise script.

"It's not gla.s.s. A crystal silicate. Also"-he adjusted the scale-"it has a very peculiar electromagnetic field. I would say its not a key in a strictly mechanical sense but some very complex technology, very pre-Era. It won't just unlock a prison door, Claudia."

She'd guessed that. She sat down again and said thoughtfully, "I used to be jealous of the Prison."

Astonished, he turned, and she laughed. "Yes. Really. When I was tiny and we were at Court. People flocked to see him-the Warden of Incarceron, the Guardian of the Inmates, Protector of the Realm. I didn't know what the words meant, but I hated them. I thought Incarceron was a person, another daughter, a secret spiteful twin. I hated her."

She picked up a pair of compa.s.ses from the table and opened them.

"When I found out it was a prison, I imagined him going down into the cellars here with a lantern and a huge key-a rusty, ancient key. There would be an enormous door, studded and nailed with the dried flesh of criminals."

Jared shook his head. "Too many gothic novels."

She balanced the compa.s.ses on one point and spun them.

"For a while I dreamed of the Prison, imagined the thieves and murderers deep under the house, banging on the doors, struggling to get out, and I used to wake up scared, thinking I could hear them coming for me. And then I realized it wasn't that simple."

She looked up. "That screen in the study. He must be able to monitor it from there."

Jared nodded and folded his arms.

"Incarceron, all the records say, was made and sealed. No one enters or leaves. Only the Warden oversees its progress. Only he knows its location. There is a theory, a very old one, that it lies underground, many miles below the earth's surface, a vast labyrinth. After the Years of Rage half the populations were removed there. A great injustice, Claudia."

She touched the Key lightly.

"Yes. But none of this helps me. I needed some proof of the murder, not..."

A flicker. A dissolving of light. She jerked her finger away.

"Amazing!" Jared breathed.

A fingerprint of darkness remained there in the crystal, a circular black opening, like an eye.

Inside it, far off, they saw two glimmers of moving light, tiny as stars.

9.

You are my father, Incarceron.

I was born from your pain.

Bones of steel; circuits for veins.

My heart a vault of iron.

-Songs of Sapphique ***

Keiro lifted his lantern.

"Where are you, Wise One?"

Gildas had not been in his sleeping cage or anywhere in the main chamber, where the Comitatus had defiantly lit flares in every brazier and were celebrating their victory with raucous song and boasting. It had taken a few clouts of Keiro's fist among the slaves to find someone who had seen the old man, heading for the hovels. Now they had tracked him down to a small cell; he was bandaging a suppurating sore on a slave-child's leg, his mother holding a feeble candle and waiting anxiously.

"I'm here."

Gildas glared around. "Bring that lantern closer. I can't see a thing."

Finn came in and saw the light glimmer on the boy, noticing how sickly he looked.

"Cheer up," he said gruffly.

The boy smiled, terrified.

"If you'd only touch him, sir," the mother murmured.

Finn turned. She might once have been pretty; now she was haggard and thin.

"The touch of a Sta.r.s.eer cures, they say."

"Superst.i.tious b.l.o.o.d.y nonsense," Gildas snorted, tying the knot, but Finn did it anyway, putting his fingers lightly to the boy's hot forehead.

"Not so different to yours, Wise One," Keiro said silkily.

Gildas straightened, wiped his fingers on his coat, and ignored the taunt.

"Well, that's the best I can do. The wound needs to drain. Keep it clean."

As they followed him out he growled, "Always more infections, more disease. We need antibiotics, not gold and tinware."

Finn knew him in this mood; the dark gloom that kept him sometimes for days in his cage, reading, sleeping, speaking to no one. The Maestra's death would be tormenting the old man.

So, abruptly he said, "I saw Sapphique."

"What!" Gildas stopped dead.

Even Keiro looked interested.

"He said-"

"Wait." The Sapient looked around hastily. "In here."

It was a dark archway and it led to one of the vast chains that hung in loops from the Den roof. Gildas put his foot in the links and climbed until the darkness hid him; when Finn clambered after him he found the old man on a narrow shelf high in the wall, shoving ancient birdmuck and nests aside.

"I'm not sitting in that," Keiro said.

"Stand then." Gildas took the lantern from Finn and propped it on the chain. "Now. Tell me everything. Each word, exactly."

Finn put his feet over the edge and looked down.

"It was a place like this, high up. He was there with me, and I had the Key."

"That crystal? He called it a key?" Gildas looked stunned; he rubbed his stubbly white chin. "That is a Sapient word, Finn, a magic word. A device for unlocking."

"I know what a key is."

His voice was angry; he tried to be calm.

"Sapphique told me to use it to unlock Time; there was a keyhole in some black, s.h.i.+ning rock, but the Key was so heavy I couldn't manage it. I felt... devastated."

The old man gripped Finns wrist, a hard, fierce grip. "What did he look like?"

"Young. Long dark hair. Like the stories."

"And the door?"

"Very small. The rock had light inside, like stars."

Keiro propped himself elegantly against the wall. "Strange dreams, brother."

"Not dreams."

Gildas released him; the old man looked incredulous with joy.

"I know that door. It has never been opened. It lies about a mile from here, up in Civicry land."

He rubbed his face with both hands and said, "Where is this Key?"

Finn hesitated. He had strung it on an old piece of string around his neck, but that had been too heavy, so now it was belted inside his s.h.i.+rt. Reluctantly, he tugged it out.

The Sapient took it reverently. His small hands with their raised veins explored it; he brought it close to his eyes and gazed at the eagle.

"This is what I've been waiting for!'

His voice was choked with emotion.

"The sign from Sapphique."

He looked up. "It decides everything. We leave at once, tonight, before Jormanric gets to know what this thing is. Sudden and swift, Finn, we begin our Escape."