The Assassin Princess (Lamb & Castle Book 2) (19 page)

She half-listened as Sir Percival and Master Greyfell compared notes on the strange creatures they'd come across along the way: the prying clockwork dragonette; some terrible birds with wings like sabres; the melancholy lumbering giant that had fallen to earth. And, at length, they came back to the matter of the tireless golem gentlemen.

“I've seen four of them now,” said Master Greyfell. “The two on horseback, and two similar gentlemen in Iletia, who were fair-haired. I suspect they always operate in pairs, and moreover that one cannot live without his twin.”

“When you hurt one of them bad enough, they freeze, and the other one freezes too,” put in Harold. He didn’t like it to be forgotten that he'd battled the strange gentlemen himself, which was more than Sir Percival had done. But his comment proved controversial: Master Greyfell maintained that no such thing happened in
his
experience, and he didn't like to be defied by a common butcher's boy from a town of no repute.

“I've seen it myself,” said Sir Percival, in his apprentice's defence. But that reminds me…” He turned to Meg. “Do you remember, back in that teahouse near Springhaven, when we first saw those strange twins and overheard some of their conversation? One of them said something about a defective script. And just now they spoke of the likelihood of the construct being broken down if the prince learned of the flaws in its design…” Just for a moment, they'd
almost
sounded like they cared. “If we can capture one of them, perhaps we can lean on any natural impulse towards self-preservation that they may have,” suggested Percival. “If they're the pair from the teahouse, one of them
is
defective. And if they don't care for themselves at all, Master Greyfell and I suspect they may care more for their doubles. If we can gain their cooperation, there's a lot we might learn from them.”

Meg doubted this plan would bear fruit: she too had had time to think about the nature of the strange gentlemen. Though they took the shape of men, in spirit they were nothing more than hounds set to follow a trail, and she wouldn't be surprised to find that the souls inside those artificial bodies were those of real dogs. The golems' loyalty was written in stone, and whatever orders they had they would follow to the death… but they were scarcely imaginative, and might not suspect that Black Side and White Side would ever work together. Capturing one of them would likely prove to be the easier half of Percival's plan.

“Stand back!” shouted Master Greyfell, his voice ringing across the empty bowl of grey rock and yellow-green grass. Meg didn't need telling twice, and Sir Percival had already retreated to a more than safe distance, but Meg made sure to keep a close eye on Harold while Bryn set down his precious puzzle box in the grass and hobbled away from it to join the others. Then, apparently without a word or signal from Bryn, the sides of the puzzle box began to unfold. The pieces unfurled like a flower as seen through the eyes of a slow-minded dryad, but they didn't stop when they should have. Instead, the puzzle continued to unfold, growing larger and larger, until it was completely impossible that all that should have been inside a box no larger than a tea caddy. The low sun of an autumn morning shone on mahogany and bright brass, and the puzzle box grew to the size of a house: restlessly, continuously seeking its rightful shape. Just for a moment, Meg could have sworn she saw the thing flash through a shape that showed enormous ivory fangs, each as long as a man's leg. Just as she was trying to make up her mind if she'd seen what she thought she'd seen, and perhaps more importantly if anybody else had seen it, long dark planks curved up like great wings, and the unfolding mahogany and yellow monstrosity settled swan-like into the form of an elegant skyship.
Sharvesh
's sails unfurled in the sun like liquid gold running down from her yards.

“Isn't she the finest thing you've ever seen?” said Bryn. He'd lurched dizzily from landsick to a kind of lovesick, and Meg regarded him with new suspicion.
Sharvesh
was no ordinary skyship, not even by Argean standards.

What do you have here and
how
did you get hold of it?
Meg thought to herself. But “Very nice, dear,” was what she said aloud. “Comes in handy, I've no doubt.” A warship – a real one.
Sharvesh
, despite her current gaudy outfitting, had been made for manoeuvres completely impossible for any other skyship, and not even the Argeans could build a skyship that could fold itself up small enough to fit in your pocket. She'd have to find out where Bryn had got it from… But not just now. Leaving Percival and Harold behind as lookouts, she boarded the exotic skyship with Bryn and Master Greyfell. She noted with interest what the folded skyship had held and that they now retrieved: food, coils of rope, Master Greyfell's crossbow, all whole and unharmed. She doubted anything living could survive the dreadful, impossible folding and unfolding between the alien skyship's many forms.
Sharvesh
certainly showed no sign of mice, but then, her captain was to all intents and purposes an enormous cat, so Meg was ashamed to say she'd jumped to the wrong conclusion at first.

Once they had what they needed and all stood at a safe distance,
Sharvesh
folded neatly back into a puzzle box. Meg watched the transformation keenly, trying in vain to see how the trick was done; looking for clues as to
Sharvesh
's origins and the nature of the magic that ruled her. Meg's own snailcastletank was one of a kind, but that was no more than an oddity, a joke to many who saw it trundling across the countryside. The snailcastletank had been a gift from a friend, and it was no kind of weapon. She'd named it the White Queen's Warship to poke fun at the whole ridiculous contest as much as anything else. But the title had stuck, and so they'd had to drag poor Tallulah along with them into the fight, with a horrible shrinking spell on the innocent snail. After all the years that Meg had been hiding away, no braver than Amelia, she'd forgotten to take the dangers seriously.

She looked round to see Master Greyfell watching her. She swore he enjoyed inflicting the new mystery of the strange skyship on her and her curiosity. She had half a mind to show
him
some mysteries, and see how he liked it… But for now, Perce had come up with some far-fetched plan to capture a golem, and when it came to the art of war Perce always envisioned himself commanding vast armies that swept nations, so as usual she'd had to come up with the details of the plan herself. “Right then,” she said, and pointed to Master Greyfell's crossbow. “How far can you shoot that thing and hit a man?”

~

Master Greyfell hadn’t much liked Meg's plan, and neither had Sir Percival. Even against immortal inhuman enemies, honour drove them to fight by certain rules. Harold, much as he aspired to knighthood, found himself thinking this a bit daft, and scowled, wondering if he'd spent too much time with the witch. He and Sir Percival had set out to track down the twin gentlemen, armed with no more than their swords, and the lamb of the White Queen, shining white on his breastplate, felt like a bullseye painted across his heart as he looked up at the gravelly slopes of the valley they walked through. Meg could make herself invisible by magic. The Black Paladin had other methods of concealment…

“There they are,” said Sir Percival, lifting one gleaming gauntlet to point out the figures of two horsemen further down the valley, the horses bending their necks to drink from the stream. “Now I'll show you how to begin a
proper
duel.”

But the two dark-haired gentlemen had drawn from their previous painful experiences that there would be no honourable duel from the White Side, and the horses broke into a gallop, thundering across the turf as the dark riders unsheathed their swords. Without a word or a shout, they bore down on Percival and Harold, clearly meaning to strike their enemies dead without delay and be done with them once and for all. The first crack of unearthly lightning across the valley missed the golems entirely. Harold was slow to draw his own sword and instead threw himself flat to miss the blade sweeping towards his neck. He scrambled away from the hooves that flew like great hammers, clods of wet earth and grass flying in the wake of the horses. A second bolt of lightning flashed from the hillside, closer this time but still a miss. What was Meg
doing
? He heard a cry – the other horseman had knocked Percival down, though either the blow had been a clumsy one or it had glanced off the knight's plate armour. Now the horse reared, a warhorse trained to stomp infantrymen into the mud… and then it stopped, suddenly become a stone statue of a horse, fine grey-veined marble, a crossbow bolt buried deep in its thick arching neck. So, Master Greyfell had a good position on the hillside, even if Meg didn't… Percival scrabbled back across the muddy ground just in time as the golem horse came back to life, front hooves driving into the soft ground where he'd lain moments before. The two horsemen had driven Harold and Percival back onto muddier ground, soaked with the rain of the past few weeks and churned by the passage of cattle. Neither man nor beast had a steady footing here, and the horses had far more weight with which to concern themselves.

Harold gripped the hilt of his sword tightly in both hands, but even as he readied himself, a second bolt thudded home in the chest of the second horse, which halted as if baulking at a jump, throwing its rider over its head and into the mud. With a ripple and a shiver, stone turned back to muscle and horsehair. Meanwhile the other horse had stumbled forward into a patch of thorns and white flowers, sending glowing yellow seeds billowing up around it. The seeds caught burr-like in the horse's coat, where they grew to bright wires of light that danced around horse and rider, wriggling across the horse's flanks, catching and tangling in its mane where they writhed and bit, flailing and snapping their tails. Alive and stung, the golem horse tossed its head, snorting and prancing back from this unexpected attack, heedless of its rider's commands. The stench of burning horsehair hung in the air, mixed with scorched stone. No matter how the horse turned and twisted, leapt and bucked, the incandescent worms plagued it, two dozen of them at least. All its rider could do was to hang on as his horse, driven mad by the worms of light, galloped away.

The second horse was picking its way through the marshy ground to rescue its own rider, but before it could reach him, Meg came hurrying down the hillside, skidding on the scree, fists balled as she began to mutter a spell – low, droning, heavy.

Harold didn't want the remaining golem to guess the source of the lightning without thunder and the vicious wormlights. “Oi, you!” he shouted at the unhorsed twin, “I remember you!” From Ilamira, where the strange gentlemen had been ready to dismiss him as a worthless distraction. And all around the strange gentleman, the mud began to bubble and heave…

Ignoring the witch, the gentleman lunged towards Harold, ungainly as he sank up to his knees in churned black mud that grew wetter and more treacherous instant by instant. “The White Paladin. Yes, of course. We must be rid of you.” The mud sucked his shoes at every laboured step, and he'd lost his sword, but by the fire of determination in his black eyes, he'd take some satisfaction in killing Harold with his bare hands.

“Get hold of him!” shouted Meg. “Get hold of him and let's get him away from here before the other one comes back!”

Unarmed and up to his knees in mud, the golem seemed no stronger than a man, and his inbuilt defence against blades and projectiles was of little use when all Harold intended was to peacefully restrain him. Harold wrestled the golem under control easily enough, and tied his hands behind his back. Master Greyfell and Sir Percival had harder work pulling Harold and the captive golem free of the mud, while Meg sat on the grass and watched, still breathless from her own exertion.

“You are the White Paladin,” the golem said again to Harold. “Where is the White Queen?” he demanded, and then proved himself to be one of a pair they'd met before: a hint of alarm crept into his expression as he recognised Meg. “The snail mistress!”

“That's the White Mage, thank you very much,” said Meg. “Look at the state of you,” she laughed. The golem's fancy clothes were covered in black mud and bits of grass.

“Meg, where were you?” Sir Percival demanded.

“Don't fuss,” she said, her face reddening again. “You're still in one piece, aren't you?” Her gaze turned to the mired horse, which stood still, half-submerged in the mud and showing none of the panic or fear that a living creature would have. Either it didn't understand its fate, or it understood too well and was resigned to it. Meg's smile vanished at the sight. She approached it as if she wished she could offer the poor beast some comfort, but she was sensible enough not to get mired in the mud herself. “Knew those horses were golems, did you?” she asked Master Greyfell, sharply. She might not be as tender-hearted as her daughter, but she didn't stand for needless cruelty.

Master Greyfell's face showed no emotion. “The horse was the larger target,” he said, simply. Whether the horse had been a real horse, or even a talking horse, or just another stone creature, the only difference it made to him was a matter of strategy. He refrained from commenting on Meg's appalling marksmanship, but of course… Meg had been trying not to hit the horses before she knew exactly what they were.

“The larger target,” Meg muttered, looking suddenly ferocious. She punched Master Greyfell hard in the arm, much to his surprise. “I s’pose my snails were the larger target, back at that pebbly beach?”

Greyfell evaded the second punch – a lady may slap a gentleman in the face if he has done something dishonourable, but ladies’ etiquette books rarely mention punching. “Madam! Restrain yourself. We hoped to slow the progress of your Warship. They were only snails.”

Meg hissed and turned her back on him. “Well, Perce,” she said. “We've caught one of these wretched golems, like you wanted. Now what?”