The Frost Child (29 page)

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descending with a whistling sound. He shut his eyes. But there was no blow, just a loud concussion and a shout of pain from Headley. He looked up. Uel was leaning out of the side window of the Q-car with a magno crossbow in his hand. Mervyn was at the controls. Headley lay in the snow, the baton in pieces.

Headley scrambled to his feet and Uel pointed the crossbow at him. Owen knew that Uel wouldn't pull the trigger. The two boys, for all their expertise, hated to fight. Headley backed away, a snarl on his face, like a wolf deprived of his prey. His men looked as if they might try something, but Mervyn swung the Q-car and brought the guns to bear on them. Like Headley, they sullenly moved off.

When the men were far enough away for safety, Uel lowered the ladder for Owen.

"Hop in," he said. "We'll give you a lift."

Owen climbed the ladder one-handed, his shoulder numb. He was delighted to see the Raggie boys. And with Mervyn waving from the window so that they wouldn't be attacked by their own men, they steered for the Workhouse.

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Chapter 29

When the defenders saw Owen, they cheered wildly. They had won a battle and casualties were light. Owen scrambled down the ladder and was surrounded by Resisters. He broke away when he saw Cati and Wesley pushing through the crowd. Cati grabbed him, half happy, half furious.

"I thought you were dead, you were gone so long!"

"Where's Silkie?" Wesley looked worried.

"Take it easy, Wesley," Owen said. "She's doing a job for me."

"Dr. Diamond says to come as quickly as possible," Cati said. "He keeps muttering dark stuff about just having won a battle, not the war, and for us all not to go silly celebrating."

"He's right." Owen and Wesley looked at each other.

"Don't start," Cati said.

Rosie pushed through the crowd.

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"Camp traitor at your service, sir." She gave a mock salute.

"I can see there are more stories than mine." Owen grinned but wearily. "Let's go find the doctor--and some food. I'm starving."

They found the doctor in the kitchen, helping with the cooking while Contessa tended to the wounded. He kept getting in the cooks' way and insisting on fancy touches. They looked relieved when he spotted Owen and bounded towards him.

"Good man, good man," he cried. "What did you find?"

But Owen was looking past him to Martha, who was helping in the kitchen as well. She ran over. He could tell she was trying to be brave, but there was a tremor in her voice and tears in her eyes as she embraced him.

"You're back," she said, then as he winced, "You're hurt!"

"Only my shoulder--it'll be okay."

"Exactly what your father would have said." She smiled.

"We need to talk," the doctor said urgently. "The Harsh will not be so overconfident next time."

They all followed Dr. Diamond to the Skyward, which had stayed deep underground. Following the treachery of his lieutenant, Samual had abandoned his security. When they were all crowded in, Dr. Diamond put on the kettle.

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"Now, Owen, tell us what happened."

Owen opened his mouth to speak but halted when Pieta came in, her hand swathed in a heavy bandage.

"Don't let me stop you," she said coolly, sitting down. So Owen told them about the voyage of the
Wayfarer
. The pirates and Port Merforian. The song he had heard that had pointed him toward the Long Woman. About the Memorator, and his grandfather. Although he was uncomfortable doing it, and thought that Dr. Diamond noticed, he left out the part about seeing his father as a little boy. There was something, well,
private
about it. He would tell his mother later. It was right that she should know first.

"The book, Owen." The doctor leaned forward. "Did you find the book?"

"I knew I'd seen it in a box of books," Owen said. "I thought it must have been my dad's."

They sat in silence as Owen told them the story of the frost child who had imagined kings and queens of ice. He took the book from where it had been stowed inside his jacket. He showed them the illustrations. The colors in which the blond child had been drawn had faded almost to nothing. But the drawings of the ice kings and queens were sharp and fresh.

"The Harsh!" Cati exclaimed, and shivered.

"Is it possible?" Pieta asked. "Can a child imagine another world so the world starts to exist?"

"Who knows what happens in realms other than ours?" Dr. Diamond said. "After all, Owen has sailed a boat on time itself. He has visited a city in time. He has

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seen the Long Woman, who should be dead and is not. May I see the book for a second?"

The friends sat in silence as the doctor examined the book, the only sound the ticking of Dr. Diamond's five clocks. Then he spoke.

"Have you looked on the flyleaf of this book, Owen?"

"No."

"Then come here." The doctor pointed to a faint inscription on the flyleaf. Owen peered at it.

"It's in French," Dr. Diamond said.

He translated, "This book was made after research into the story of the frost child, by J.M. Gobillard."

"Gobillard!" Owen exclaimed.

"The man who had the shop in the Hadima courtyard!" Rosie said.

"He made the chest that could store the whirlwind of time!" Cati put in.

"And had my grandfather's maps in prison in Hadima," Owen said, and then, sadly, "and he died in the prison too."

"Yes." Dr. Diamond went on. "Did you ever wonder why the Harsh kept him in prison? He knew, or was close to knowing, the secret of their existence. They must have feared him. He made this book for a reason."

"But he can't tell us," Owen said. Owen had met

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Gobillard in the Harsh prison in Hadima, but the man had been killed during their escape.

Dr. Diamond turned the book over in his hand. The paper dust jacket came away. There was a picture underneath.

"The tapestry," Owen cried. "That was the picture on the tapestry."

"So it must have been Gobillard who owned the circletagram and notebook we found by the tapestry," the doctor mused. "He pieced the story together bit by bit. How did you get the book, Owen?"

"It was in the attic," Owen said. He had told no one that he had seen his father as a child in the Long Woman's Memorator, with the book under his arm.

"I can help you there." Martha spoke for the first time. "Your father told me it arrived in the post when he was a child. He thought it was a present. He loved that book and talked about it often. He meant to give it to Owen when he grew up, but when he died I ... I forgot ..." She stopped. Owen took her hand. It was not her fault that she had spent much of his childhood lost in forgetfulness.

"Look!" Dr. Diamond exclaimed. Scrawled across the cover in pencil, the letters almost faded to nothing, was a single sentence.

"'Quand ce livre sera détruit
,'
"
the doctor read,
"'l'enfant et ses créations seront également-tués
' When the book is destroyed, the child and his creations will also be killed."

They looked at the book in silence.

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"I think," the doctor said thoughtfully, "that the Harsh were after Gobillard. This message was written in great haste. He concealed it under the dust jacket and got someone to send it to Owen's grandfather, who thought it was a gift for his child and gave it to Owen's father."

Owen thought of the Memorator, how his grandfather had been looking for something that was under his nose the whole time.

"Then Gobillard was imprisoned by the Harsh," Martha said, "and kept a prisoner for many years."

"Why didn't Gobillard just tell Owen about the book when they met in prison?" Cati said impatiently.

"You are not thinking about the message," Dr. Diamond said sternly. "It is an instruction to kill a child. Would Gobillard have sent another child to do that? When it comes to it, which of us here now will destroy the book, knowing that a child will die?"

"But the Workhouse will be safe. The world will be free of the Harsh," Wesley said. They sat without speaking, each wrapped in his or her own thoughts.

"We can't tell Samual about this," the scientist said finally. "He will certainly destroy the book, whether we want him to or not."

"We should sleep on it," Martha said. "The young people must get some rest. Will there be another attack tonight, Doctor?"

"I don't think so. And you're right about sleep."

Owen didn't object. The pain in his shoulder was getting worse. He grimaced as he rose. Contessa was beside

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him straightaway. She made him lift his shirt so that she could see his shoulder. The skin had turned black and yellow. Contessa reached into her pocket and took out the Yeati's ring. She ran it swiftly over his shoulder.

"We should keep the ring for the seriously injured," Owen said, feeling a healing warmth.

"Your shoulder won't use much of the ring's power," Contessa said, "and we need the Navigator fit and well."

He was important to the Workhouse, perhaps their best hope. Owen sighed inwardly. He hadn't asked for this much responsibility.

Rosie, Wesley, and Cati walked back to the Den with him. As usual, Cati had raided the Workhouse kitchen, but the best she could charm out of them was some hard biscuit. It was better than nothing, and not bad at all with the hot tea that Owen made. At first they talked about the siege. But then their talk turned to other times they had spent together, and soon they were laughing and teasing each other, almost oblivious to the war outside.

And yet once the others left, responsibility settled on Owen again. More and more he knew what Cati felt, that grinding sense of duty. He lay down, but he could not sleep for a long time. And when he did he tossed and turned, dreaming that he pursued a shadow, a shadow that remained just out of reach.

Owen woke in the chill dawn and went down to the forward posts. Rutgar was glad to see him, but his men were nervous. The Albions had been active during the night,

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and several soldiers had narrowly avoided being stabbed or abducted. There was graffiti scrawled on the stones on the opposite bank of the river to show how close they had come.

"I don't like it," Rutgar said, rubbing his beard. Owen looked out at the smoke rising from the cooking fires of the attackers, and behind that at the ominous white mist that betokened the presence of the Harsh. Today would be another long battle. And the day after that, if they lasted. He
had
to find a way of disposing of the book without harming the frost child.

Both of them were right about the fight that day. Ice lances rained on the forward positions. The Q-cars fired at the Workhouse from a safe distance. They were obviously aiming for the mirrors. Although Cati and Rosie and Wesley tried to keep them moving so that they presented a bad target, by the afternoon they were dented and battered, and some had fallen from their ropes. A sneak party of Albions came up the frozen river and managed to get among Rutgar's men. Several Resisters were stabbed with poison knives. The Yeati's ring called them back from the point of no return, but still they hovered between life and death. Samual reluctantly gave the order to pull the soldiers back to the Workhouse. They were too few to defend the outer perimeter. Minutes after they had got the last Resister safely in the Workhouse, the Specials and the Albions swarmed across the river, whooping and crowing. A few Resisters aimed shots at them, but Rutgar stopped them.

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"Save your ammunition. You'll need it."

After that there was only sporadic shooting. As night set in Owen found himself wandering alone through the Workhouse, avoiding the others. Something was gnawing at him, a thought that was just out of reach. If he stayed on his own, it might come to him. As he paced he realized just how few they were. There were a huge number of wounded who had been moved to the upper floors for safety, and those who were not too badly injured had been patched up and sent back to the battlements. Owen went onto the roof so that no one would see him. He spotted a shape moving beyond the river, and imagined he saw the gleam of huge teeth--Johnston. He'd been absent from the fight the previous two days. What was he up to now?

Owen's head hurt with thinking. What had happened to Silkie? Had her mission been a success? He missed her quick hands and ready smile. He worried that the Den might at this minute be swarming with Albions, although he doubted it. No one had ever entered the Den unless he wanted them to.

He stayed on the roof until he was frozen, then went to find his mother. She was in her room. Her face was pale with exhaustion. An unfinished meal sat on the table and in one corner stood the ingress.
It's good
, Owen thought,
that it's hidden away here, unknown to anyone
. He didn't know if Johnston or the Harsh could use it, and he didn't want to find out.

"Hello." Martha smiled.