The Red Queen (94 page)

To my surprise, Darga was waiting for me at the bottom, lying in a bit of shadow, red tongue lolling. He offered neither greeting nor explanation, but merely rose and fell in beside me as I made my way along the wall that surrounded Slavetown, reasoning that no one would see me there. I asked the Herder dog about Maruman and was not surprised to be told that the old cat had refused to come out with him when he had finally located the irascible old feline. I wished uselessly that he had simply waited for me and stayed with me instead of yet again roaming off and vanishing, but that was as foolish as wishing the wind would blow in only one direction. I sighed, reminding myself that Maruman warned me the very first time we met that he was not a tame cat. And I did not truly fear for Maruman. He had told me more than once and very sternly that he could take care of himself. So he could, save on those occasions when his mind grew clouded with madness, but such times had been far less frequent since he had last been healed by the Agyllians.

We came to the track leading from Redport to Quarry, but there was no one on it so we crossed it and then passed widely around the back of the domes towards the camp. In the gaps between the domes, I saw movement, but I did not linger and doubted anyone would see me. It was getting hotter, and even this early, the air was full of sun-shot dust and everything shimmered with heat. The clouds of the night had vanished without a trace, leaving a bright blue sky and a blazing sun. I realised I was tremendously thirsty and was thinking of nothing but water when Darga suddenly sent to me that we were being followed.

I whirled, only to see that the little goat Brunt was trotting and bouncing along behind us.

It proved impossible to send him back with or without coercion, for when I tried, his stubbornness was so great that it formed a natural shield and I found I could not coerce him either. When I asked why he wanted to go with me he said that I had bidden him follow and he had been waiting his whole life for me to come to lead him to freedom from humans. Darga sent with sombre amusement that he did not appear to be constrained in any way. If Brunt heard, he ignored this, but as we went on, his cheerful chatter about his life in Redport revealed that his Gadfian mistress had several goats and the slaveboy charged to lead the little flock out to the grassy slope often simply opened their enclosure and forgot to bring the goats in at night. This was dangerous, Brunt said earnestly, because there were creatures that liked to eat goats. I was somewhat alarmed to hear that, though I was not sure if this was true or something he had been threatened with. Perhaps he was referring to the beast in the chasm . . . 

Without warning, the ground shuddered and I froze until it stopped. We had not gone two steps before I heard the hideous cry of the Entina, much louder than it had been on any other occasion, and I realised with a shudder that I was probably closer to its lair, for it must be inside one of the domes. I asked Brunt about the beast, but he seemed to have trouble even understanding what I was asking. Then Gahltha beastspoke me and soon after came trotting towards me.

Brunt immediately charged him. Seeing the tiny creature rush into the hoofs of the enormous and startled black horse, I gasped, but I need not have feared for him. Gahltha merely stopped at once and bent his head to look at the goat, which rose on its hind legs and stabbed at the air with his sharp little forehoofs, but before I could warn Gahltha that the goat meant no harm, he gave a great snort, laughter shaking his thoughts as the tiny goat somersaulted in surprise. Undaunted, it charged again and this time Gahltha lowered his head and the great beast and the small sniffed delicately at one another.

Without warning, the goat uttered a long ululating bleat and then began to prance and leap and bound wildly all about Gahltha.

‘He has gone mad,’ Darga rumbled.

‘No,’ Gahltha beastspoke him complacently, ‘he is excited because he recognises me as the Daywatcher of beastlegend.’ The little creature was so wild with excitement that he butted the black horse in the leg. I half expected Gahltha to make some quelling remark, but he had clearly taken a fancy to the goat and when I mounted and he set off, he would not move at more than a slow walk for fear of stepping on the goat, which wove and bounced and gambolled between his legs. Finally, exasperated, I invited Brunt to ride with me so that we could go more quickly. I was half joking, expecting him or Gahltha to refuse, but Brunt accepted at once, and Gahltha was perfectly willing.

I climbed down and remounted, steadying the goat with one hand on Gahltha’s broad back, but instead of sitting down sensibly with his legs folded once I was seated, the odorous beast insisted on standing on Gahltha’s withers in front of me. I feared he would fall, but as well as being fearless and sure-footed, he had superb balance. Far from being offended to have the little beast trit-trotting on his back, Gahltha seemed vastly amused by the absurd picture we must make.

Ana simply gaped when we rode up to the camp, but her astonishment was obviously pronounced enough to bring Dameon to his feet frowning and casting hither and thither in consternation. Calling to him that it was only me and my travelling circus of beasts, I dismounted and set the goat down. Brunt immediately began leaping and bounding about, to Ana’s laughing amazement. Rasial rose and stared at him but Gavyn gave a gurgling laugh.

I left Ana to explain to the empath what was happening, looking around for Swallow and finding him and Dragon absent. No doubt he had gone up to the dome to relieve her.

‘I am sorry I was so long,’ I told Ana after asking her for water and drinking deeply. ‘You must have worried, but I have learnt a great deal. Let’s get both Dragon and Swallow down so I don’t have to tell it twice.’

Ana’s smile faded into bleak solemnity. ‘Elspeth, I am so sorry, but she has gone. I should have told you at once –’

‘Who has gone?’ I interrupted, but I knew.

‘We did not know it until Swallow went up to relieve Dragon and found there was no one keeping watch.’

‘Please tell me she did not go into Redport!’

‘We don’t know,’ Dameon said gently, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘That is what Ana is trying to tell you. Dragon asked to have the watch after Swallow, and she went up on top of the dome. That is the last we saw of her.’

‘Sendari said nothing when I beastspoke him,’ I said.

‘He didn’t know then,’ Ana said. ‘None of the horses did because they were away grazing when we realised she was missing. Of course we had no way to summon them, and Rasial could not track her because Gavyn would have followed him.’

‘And Darga came after me,’ I sighed.

‘Sendari came this morning with word from you,’ Ana continued. ‘It was a great relief to know you had come out unscathed, but we had no way of reaching you and Sendari knew only that you had come from Redport in the north. He went looking for Gahltha because he could beastspeak you from afar, but Gahltha found you first.’

‘Ye gods,’ I muttered.

‘Swallow saw no sign of her on the plain when he went up and found her missing,’ Dameon said.

‘She could be concealed in one of the rifts,’ Ana said. ‘He said it was very hard to see properly because of the blowing dust and the clouds covering the moon.’

‘I’ll try farseeking her,’ I said, not that I would be able to reason with her, but at least I’d know where she was. I bade Ana summon Swallow down from his perch, wondering suddenly and with a slight surge of hope if
this
was why Maruman had stayed behind in Redport. He was very fond of Dragon and it might very well be that he had foreseen her entering Redport alone, and had decided to stay and watch over her.

I moved around the dome until I could see the whole of Redport. Keeping a wary eye on the dome beside me in case someone came out, I shaped a probe to Dragon’s mind and sent it spinning out, but it would not locate. I tried again and then again and once more, focusing each time in a different direction, but to no avail. I tried to find Matthew without success, and then on impulse, Maruman, remembering that he had been able to beastspeak me when I was outside the block, even though he was inside Redport, but I could not penetrate the static.

Gazing across the fissured plain separating me from Redport, I wondered with a mingling of exasperation and despair, what had possessed Dragon to come down from the dome and leave without telling anyone what she was doing. It could only be that she had feared they would prevent her leaving. But what had been so important that she would disregard my express request that she wait until I returned? I felt sick at the thought of her entering Redport and encountering a group of Ekoni. Men who would despoil a child would do it without compunction to a young woman.

Given what the others had said, Dragon had to have been in Redport for a number of hours. Was it possible that she should have escaped attention for that long, even if the Ekoni had not arrested her? Even if her clothes and manner and the fact that she was a lone woman had not drawn adverse attention, there was her face – its arresting beauty, quite aside from the fact that it was the face of the Red Queen in the frieze, which every person in Redport must have seen at one time or another. With luck, the first people to see her might be devout Redlanders like Demet and Keely, who would do all they could to keep her safe.

Returning to the camp, I did not have to tell Dameon I had failed to locate her. He felt it and looked grim. For once, he made no effort to comfort and soothe me. I was glad of it.

‘I keep remembering how she had looked, so beautiful and striking, blazing with righteous wrath as she stood up to Herders in Sutrium when those two children were to be taken from their mother,’ I said.

‘Yet Dragon is not a child any longer,’ the empath said gently.

He was right, of course, but somehow I did not doubt that her temper would be as fierce as ever, especially if she witnessed something she saw as an injustice being done to one of those Redlanders she regarded as her people. If she could conjure visions, she would be able to defend herself and others with them, but would her powers work within Redport? There was no way to be sure, for blocks affected different Talents differently.

‘Mornir is not a pup. She is packleader of her people,’ Rasial sent.

I turned to see the white dog lying in a narrow slice of shade cast by the nearest dome. Gavyn was squatting beside her in the sunlight, building an uneven tower of stones, which Brunt was regarding intently. Even as I watched, he trotted forward and climbed up onto them. Gavyn crowed and began to build another tower. I had been afraid the boy might take it into his head to wander into the settlement, but Rasial had said she would ensure he did not. Whether Gavyn simply had no interest in the settlement, or she had kept him in check, I was relieved that the lad at least had not wandered away foraging, as was his wont.

‘I know she is not a pup,’ I beastspoke her ruefully, and then it struck me that Dameon and the dog had touched on the heart of the matter.
Dragon was no longer a child.
She was a young woman
and
a queen and here was her kingdom and her people. I had asked her to wait and no doubt she meant to do as I asked, but looking down on Redport, perhaps she been unable to resist its lure.

And though young, she was far from a fool. We had spoken enough of her coming to Redport for her to be very aware of the danger of showing her face to the wrong people – she would have taken some effort to conceal it. She had been wearing scanty clothes but she would have realised swiftly that they were not sufficient and she could have stolen something more appropriate or at least a voluminous overdress such as Riyad had worn. Nor was she a wild child to use her powers without thought of the broader consequences. If nothing else, the time in Habitat would have taught her self-discipline as well as restraint. If she used her Talents, it would be carefully. If she found she could not use them, she would not panic. She would have the wit to try to see if they would work with physical contact. Of course the real strength of her coercive Talent was that she could enthral a great number of people at the one time.

I wondered again what had made her decide to go into Redport and where she would have gone in the settlement. Of course it would depend on why she went in the first place. Whatever had taken her there with such dispatch must have seemed urgent and important to her. If something had driven her to go to her people and announce herself as their queen, she would have sought out Redlanders. If slaves like Nareem’s had found and hidden Dragon in a goat shed until dawn, they would then have smuggled her to someone with authority among the Redlanders. There would have been little danger moving her about the settlement now that curfew had ended, so long as no one saw her face clearly. From what Riyad and Nareem’s slaves had told me, she would be safe enough from harassment because the Ekoni concentrated their random outbursts of violence on foreign slaves, and fortunately, aside from the unusual pallor of her skin, Dragon had all of the features of a Redlander. At worst, she would be taken for a halfbreed.

I had no idea where the leaders of the Redlanders lived but Demet had all but said as we ate that the members of the secret council dwelt within Slavetown. It had seemed contrary that slaves with the freedom to live outside Slavetown should choose to live within it, and I had said as much. It had been Gretha who said a wall meant to keep slaves in was also a wall that kept the Ekoni out, at least during the night. So, if Dragon had been found by Redlanders, they would take her to Slavetown, and if they were wise, they would wait until late in the day and bring her there just before the curfew bells rang. That way, no matter how the people within Slavetown reacted, no one could report her until dawn, when the gate opened.

‘I will have to go back in after her,’ I said, when Ana returned with Swallow.

‘I will go with you as your escort,’ the gypsy said at once, and I agreed.

Swallow questioned me about Redport, and I told them some of what I had discovered, but it was a disjointed account, for I was badly distracted. ‘What would happen if Dragon was taken prisoner outside curfew?’ the gypsy finally asked. ‘Where would the Ekoni take her?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The main barracks are in the south of the settlement, and there are tidal cells, and then there are smaller barracks inside every compound, though maybe household Ekoni do not patrol the streets.’

‘If Dragon so resembles the Red Queen, I doubt she would be treated as an ordinary prisoner,’ Dameon said. ‘She would surely be brought with all haste to these High Chafiri, and maybe even to the Prime High Chafiri, if I have the term right.’

‘The Prime is one Chafiri, so it would be the Prime Chafiri,’ I said.

‘Would they hurt her before bringing her to their masters?’ Swallow asked.

‘If what I saw in the mind of one Gadfian woman was true, I see no reason to doubt it. And a whipping would be the least of what they would do to her.’ I told them of the stoning I had glimpsed in Riyad’s mind and also of the cruel punishment she had asked her bondmate to mete out to her unlucky house slaves.

Ana looked sick and Dameon paled, probably as much from her reaction as his own, and I regretted being so graphic, but Swallow scowled and continued to question me about what I had learned until I grew calmer and more coherent. The others listened with interest to my account of the two households I had entered, and reacted with puzzlement and surprise at my description of the two towers either end of the Infinity of Dragonstraat. But what excited them all was my suggestion that the ruins north of the settlement might be Eden. Ana especially wanted to ride back to the rift on Sendari or Gahltha to get the golator but I said it was bad enough to have one member of our company at large, her fate unknown, without risking another, especially when there was no certainty that the ruins I had seen
were
Eden. Besides all else, what would the golator show? God had mated it to Kelver Rhonin’s wrist golator, as far as I understood, and the Beforetimer had perished generations ago. Even if he had come here and died in the midst of the ruins, his golator must be long gone.

‘But if there were ship fish being held captive at this place, was it not certainly Eden?’ Ana asked.

‘I never dreamed anything about live beasts being taken captive at Eden,’ I said. ‘It was where beasts in cryopods were stored.’

‘There must have been more to it than that,’ Ana insisted.

‘Maybe, but that is an old puzzle and can wait.’ I glanced up then, and calculated that it was midmorning.

‘I know you are anxious about Dragon but we can’t cross the plain right now,’ Swallow said. ‘There is not a breath of wind and we would be immediately visible to anyone looking out of the settlement. We could try to enter from the north, but maybe there is a better way. Even as you were told, there has been a lot of movement from Redport to the mines since dawn. I might pass for a miner, but you would not. However, I cannot imagine that the people collecting food from the dome farms would need to be very strong. You could be one of these. We will wait until a few hoppers have gone across and then we will set off. I have been inside this dome to harvest some food, and there are empty hoppers near the door. You and I could take one, load it up and simply wheel it into Redport.’

‘I don’t see how food can possibly grow inside a dome,’ I said suddenly. ‘How can crops thrive without sunshine and rain?’

‘If a forest can grow in subterranean Oldhaven, a crop can grow in a dome,’ Ana said. ‘No doubt they have some light devices gifted to them by the people from the land of the white-faced lords.’

‘You should sleep for a while before you go anywhere, if you want to be of use to Dragon,’ Dameon said, and I knew he had sensed my weariness.

‘I could employ a coercive net and we could go back to the settlement the way I came out,’ I said.

Swallow frowned. ‘Darius once told me that coercive nets demand a great deal of energy and that the Misfit employing them is always depleted for a time.’ He gave me a sidelong look. ‘I know you are not like other people, Elspeth, and that your body heals itself, but you have said yourself that this drains your strength. It seems wiser to me to take a couple of hours to recover naturally. Then we will go into the settlement.’

His idea was that we push our hopper into the tunnel, abandon it and make our way up to the streets.

‘The tunnel may be guarded by Ekoni,’ I said.

‘I think we can manage to slip through their fingers.’ He gave me the rakish smile I remembered from the first time I had met him, and it reminded me that he had lived a dangerous double life for some years in the Land, being sometimes the pureblood prince of the Twentyfamilies, and other times Swallow the renegade who protected and fought for halfbreed gypsies like his sister.

I sighed. ‘All right.’

‘You had better have something to eat. I will heat the stew we had for firstmeal,’ Ana said. Swallow relit the tiny pit fire they had built inside the depression as Ana waited with the pot of food. Darga nudged her leg and gave a soft insistent growl and she smiled and tipped some of the contents of the pot onto a plate for him. Then her face lit up.