Heriot Read online

  There, beside him at the stall was a child thief, a boy of about eleven, practising his art. Heriot stared. ‘I know that boy,’ he was thinking. ‘But how can I know him?’ The child stared into the air while lifting, with incredible speed and skill, orange after orange from a row of baskets, slipping them into the front of a baggy shirt. ‘Who is he?’ thought Heriot, searching his memory, but that particular face, though familiar, was nowhere to be found … and yet the certainty that he knew the boy strengthened.

  The boy caught his eye, hesitated and then smiled, a smile of such vitality and shared fellowship that Heriot, though he had paid for his own orange, was instantly won over. The child’s face was thin and bruised, but the smile was entirely joyous Even as Heriot marvelled, there came a shout from behind the baskets of fruit. The smile vanished. The boy spun around, weaving desperately out into the scrambling crowd, without waiting to see if, in fact, the cry had been directed at him. A moment later one of the Second Ring wardens pushed past Heriot in pursuit, and Heriot, worked on by that mysterious sympathy, first put out his foot to trip the warden, and then began to run too, though there was absolutely no necessity for him to get involved in someone else’s wild adventure.

  20

  Refusing to Bend

  Hagen was barren but always beautiful, a county of long winters and short, brilliant summers, of winds, lakes and stunted forests. In the north-east, the mountain Warning, its plume of smoke perpetually streaming, reared up between fans of rock where nothing would grow except pale medallions of lichen or small, tough shrubs. Yet, in the spring, whole slopes could be transformed overnight by a sudden flowering of silken poppies, delicate as tissue, but tough enough to survive the harsh winds. They survived because they knew how to bend. But the mountain, rather than the flower, was Linnet’s chosen sign – an unyielding cone with fire at its heart. All the same, bending of some sort became unexpectedly necessary.

  Until the expedition to the edge of the battlefield Linnet had always had her mother’s full attention, but suddenly all that warm concentration shifted and focused passionately on someone else … a child forming inside her. She acted as if she were trying to create a son through concentration … by some perfect act of will. She performed ancient rituals, and even invented spells, anxious not to miss out on any right magic, no matter how accidental, which might allow her to bear the Master the male heir he had always longed for. Her love for Linnet was still there, but became more and more distracted.

  Meanwhile traders, selling precious glass and woollen cloth, and buying hides, furs and fire opals, brought stories from Diamond … stories of Luce who had left the city to fight under the command of Carlyon the Hero on fretful borders in County Doro, of Betony Hoad’s perpetual arguments with his father, or even stories of Dysart, the younger Prince, the lesser one – the unexpected one.

  And suddenly it seemed, according to the gossip, as if Dysart himself had nothing better to do with his life than to fling it away. One morning he had been seen leaping and scrambling along the walls of Guard-on-the-Rock, dancing on edges hundreds of feet above the river. Cornered, at last, by the King’s guards, he had listened to Dr Feo’s appeals, laughed, and then flung himself, arms wide, into space, plunging eagerly towards death. But, incredibly, the river caught him, cradled him safely and swept him on to a wharf in the mazy, active port beyond the castle. There he had hauled himself out, still laughing and apparently joyous, to sit on stone steps, dripping and drying in the sun. But this was, perhaps, his last mad adventure. From then on, stories suggested, he had quietened down. Gossip also suggested he had become a friend of that weird, magical boy who had replaced the vanished Izachel at the King’s court, and become the Magician of Hoad. There was no way secrets could be kept from the King when his new Magician was sitting at his elbow, and the magical displays at the King’s banquets spread overwhelming enchantment over everyone who saw them in the King’s Hall.

  These stories of Guard-on-the-Rock, a castle she had never seen, distracted Linnet, particularly when her own home was filled with the sense of hard, cold waiting. The baby was born at last, and it was indeed a boy, but he died and Linnet’s mother died with him.

  Linnet imagined that, from now on, she and her father would stand back to back, facing outwards against both the Dannorad and Hoad, protecting Hagen and each other too. But her father was negotiating a new marriage before the end of the year, and his second wife, the daughter of a Dannorad duke, was the same shy girl Dysart had once pointed out to her.

  Linnet refused to bend. No matter how her father threatened, Linnet would not sit sewing at her stepmother’s elbow, or listen meekly as the newcomer gave instructions in a soft but determined voice to the stewards of the castle … (My castle! Linnet would be thinking, Mine, not yours!) Shouting and swearing aloud, she would break away, run down stair after stair to the stable, saddle her horse and ride out across the tilted plains of the plateau, yelling at the sky, consumed by thrilling rage, until she was hidden by forests where the prevailing winds bent all growing things to the north, so that whole hillsides seemed to be paying some sort of deference to Hoad. Even with everything pointing the one way, it was still possible to get lost in the forests of Hagen. Paths were soon stippled out by layers of tiny, round leaves, or by a deep, cross-hatching of needles. Among the trees lay hundreds of small lakes gouged out by retreating glaciers, milky, blue-green eyes staring steadily upwards, or, depending on the season, dreaming under lids of ice.

  Linnet crouched, shivering and looking deeply into these eyes, waiting for a revelation that never came, until cold drove her home to her father’s rages and, sometimes, to a beating. But by then, disobedience seemed the only way to get his full attention. She was glad he found her difficult, and yelled back, reminding him that Hoad was not happy with a Dannorad marriage, particularly as there had been times over the last two hundred years when Hagen had struggled under false masters – all Dannorad men.

  And now, from time to time, alone in her room, Linnet studied herself in the glass, willing her freckles to fade or fall off, leaving her skin pale and pure, or wishing her hair might fall in golden waves rather than standing out around her face like a rusty bush. But her freckles and her hair persisted. It was her treacherous body that began changing. ‘Don’t change,’ she commanded her reflection. ‘You changed before I did,’ her reflection reminded her. ‘You’re the first traitor.’

  Standing in front of the polished glass, Linnet remembered Luce with his first and last unwilling smile; she remembered Carlyon of Doro, and then, abruptly and deliberately, she made herself think of Dysart. He leaped up obediently in her head every time she called him, arms outspread, offering to embrace the galloping horses, yet smiling sideways at her. Something inside her tightened then melted, and that strange, thrilling spasm dismayed yet fascinated her. She invoked him over and over again … turning and smiling … turning and smiling … a puppet of her will. Was he drawing power from his new friend, turning himself from a mad Prince to a clever one? Was he so obsessed with the Magician that he had forgotten her? Then she would shrug. It was all such a long time ago – years ago now – five years. She was seventeen … well, almost seventeen. And she was the heir to Hagen.

  But then one day, after yet another fight, her father looked at her mildly, speaking in a voice that was almost loving again.

  ‘Linnet, my dear girl, life is too difficult for us all. You need a new father, one who can do the right things for you.’

  ‘You’re the only father I can ever have,’ she said, far more frightened by his suddenly kind voice than she had ever been by his angry one.

  Her father’s reply was not a true one. It was a ceremonial formula.

  ‘The King is father to the children of Hoad. I’m sending you to Diamond. It’s time for you to go. You’re too rough, Linnet. Too wild! But in Diamond you’ll be one of the ladies who attend the old Queen … you’ll make friends … have the best tutors … you’ll have more chances to read the
re than you have here.’

  ‘You’ll learn to be a lady,’ said Shuba, Linnet’s stepmother, sewing in a corner. The Master glanced over at her, and Linnet suddenly understood that certain kinds of love could make every previous love irrelevant. She understood something else too.

  ‘Is it because you’ve married into the Dannorad?’ she blurted out. ‘Are you sending me there to make the King feel safer about you and her? I’ll be like a hostage, won’t I?’ Her father looked away, frowning. ‘There’s no point in arguing,’ he said. ‘You’ve made life impossible for us all. You know you have.’ Then he added, ‘Shuba is going to have a baby, and I don’t want her troubled.’

  ‘Hagen is mine,’ Linnet whispered. Her words could not have been heard on the other side of the room, but the Master read her expression.

  ‘I do want to have a son, yes!’ he exclaimed. ‘I want my land to have a true Master. Is that so terrible? As for you, dear girl, I want to protect you,’ he cried. ‘Women are destroyed by ruling!’ He looked into her eyes. ‘We’re going to Diamond,’ he said, ‘and that’s my final word.’

  21

  Through a Hole in the Wall

  IF THE WOLF IS NOT BEHIND YOU HE IS BESIDE YOU. Heriot read the painted words as he ran twisting wildly through the crowds of the Second Ring, who largely ignored him. The street boy turned as he ran, clenched his fist and shook it once in a gesture of triumph. His sharp features broke into that brilliant smile and, there among the indifferent, jostling crowd, he suddenly danced – danced a few steps with astonishing grace and elegance.

  ‘Well, what about that then,’ Heriot said rather blankly, continuing to stare at that familiar – that impossibly familiar – face, marked on its skin and around its eyes with the infections prevalent in the Third Ring. ‘Hey! Who are you? What’s your name?’

  ‘No name,’ the boy replied, shaking his filthy hair, which was, under the dirt, the colour of honey and butter melted together. ‘No name, no history.’

  ‘Come on, you’ve got a name,’ Heriot said. ‘Don’t get clever with me. I could read you like a book if I wanted to.’ He was astounded to hear himself adding this, like one child boasting to another.

  ‘Some can read,’ the boy agreed, looking interested. ‘Not me. Do you have one?’

  ‘One what?’ Heriot asked. ‘Oh, a name. Yes, I’ve got a name. Heriot.’ His occupant moved behind his eyes, unexpectedly insisting that the gift of his name was only half of what was needed.

  This is the one, the occupant was saying. This is the one. Over and over again. Heriot shook his head, trying to shift things into some more understandable order.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he insisted.

  ‘I’m called Rat, mostly,’ the child admitted, ‘but my name’s Cayley, which is my first name littled down. Before that it was grand and noble, all that, but it’s nothing but a stump now, shrunk to nothing. Just do this, do that, bring this, carry that, stand up for me, lie down for me. Give me! Get me!’ His voice sounded hoarse as if one of the city coughs had him in its grip. He laughed softly to himself, though nothing in his rapid babble sounded funny to Heriot. The boy looked desperately pale as if he were the victim of some shocking illness yet, for all that, he gave off such exuberance that there was no feeling of death in him. Around his neck was wound and rewound a man’s sash, once beautiful, now shredding away, its embroidered butterflies unravelling in threads of blue and scarlet and gold.

  ‘Where’s your home?’ Heriot asked, knowing as he asked that it was a stupid question. He was rewarded with the wild smile once more.

  ‘Home? Me? Everywhere! Nowhere!’ said Cayley, and laughed again. ‘No home for me, only hidey-holes!’

  ‘Where do you hide then?’ Heriot asked, determined to pin the boy down.

  ‘Wherever I tumble,’ Cayley said. ‘I flatten out and no one sees me. It’s all city land ’n’t it, and me –’ he flung his arms wide – ‘rats are the city, right? I know all the ways in and the ways out. I know its hidey-holes more than most. This city wants me dead, but me – burn it all up! I stay alive.’ He started to trot away, looked back and jerked his head. ‘Come on.’

  Heriot moved after him. It was impossible to be sure of the age of such a wolfish child, so battered, so desperately thin, but Heriot guessed he might be twelve or thirteen. His teeth were astonishingly good for a Third Ring child, which added to his predatory appearance; the irises of his weeping eyes were deep blue, set around in scarlet inflammation.

  ‘You going into the First Ring?’ he asked

  ‘I am,’ Heriot said.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ the boy announced. ‘You’re strange and I fancy strange company. And you feel like a sort of good luck,’ the boy said, ‘and me – I need good luck. Always I need it. Over and over again! If I don’t get it free, I have to steal it.’

  ‘They won’t let you through the gates … not unless you know the passwords,’ Heriot said.

  ‘Passwords!’ exclaimed the boy derisively. ‘Likely you have to know passwords. But me, I don’t need those. I’ve got my cleverness. All ways open up to me.’

  Heriot smiled, moving on. The boy came too, not so much walking beside him as dancing around him, singing a little under his breath. The stolen oranges bounced like impossible breasts under his dirty shirt.

  An evening bird sang somewhere. Just for a moment it was almost, thought Heriot, as if he were back in the country again. The gates between the Second and First Rings came into sight … a distant barrier at the end of the road they were on, but Cayley grabbed Heriot’s arm.

  ‘This way,’ he cried. ‘Sideways! I know where to go.’

  Heriot hesitated, then turned sideways and followed obediently, increasingly fascinated by this dancing, smiling ruin of a child. Walking through the Second Ring he felt unconsciously sure he could glide into any of the heads bobbing past him on those crowded streets. He had always been unconsciously sure he could invade their thoughts and dreams any time he wanted. But he could feel the boy Cayley was somehow defended against his powers, and, paradoxically, this tempted him to try an invasion. He half-tried, and came up against a barrier of a kind he had never encountered. Until then every mind he had tested had opened to him to some extent. Every head had its secrets and, though Heriot shrank from intruding on secrets, he knew they were there. But this child presented him with blank obstruction.

  By now they were up against a section of the city wall that divided the First Ring from the Second. He’ll have to stop now, thought Heriot, yet the boy slid in under the ivy that grew over this part of the wall, just as if he were slipping behind a familiar curtain. Heriot hesitated, then felt his way in after him.

  At first he could see nothing in the dark green dusk but twisting stems and the undersides of crowding leaves. Then, as he became used to what dim light there was, he made out a dark oblong, put out a hand to touch it and found he was touching nothing but space.

  ‘I’ll never get through,’ he said, speaking to the vanishing head and shoulders of Cayley.

  ‘Try,’ said Cayley, his voice coming back in a muffled command. ‘Breathe in! Pull yourself down into yourself.’

  Heriot tried, angling his wide shoulders. He breathed in. Pushing himself, half-sideways, into this narrow slot he inched his way forward, stopped to gasp, then wriggled on yet again. Slowly, slowly he groped his way into yet another curtain of ivy, dived down under it, twisting as he dived, and broke out into the evening, only to find himself, once more, rolling on the grass in one of the sprawling outposts of the orchard he had left hours earlier, with the towers of Guard-on-the-Rock looking down at him through the branches of apple trees.

  Heriot scrambled to his feet.

  ‘This way!’ said Cayley. ‘Slink along!’ So they slunk through trees, which were reaching out to the breeze and beginning an illusory dance of their own. The trunks seemed to change places, curving their branching arms towards the sky. Cayley, trotting a little ahead, was so flecked with afternoon light he
sometimes seemed to break up and vanish into the dappling of the very last sunlight and advancing shade, flashing in and out of existence.

  Suddenly the mazes of this arboreal dance fell apart, revealing nothing more sinister than an old gardener’s cottage, falling into disrepair, three rooms of plaster bricks, packed earth and stone built up around a timber frame, grass growing tall against walls which had once been white. Heriot had sometimes seen it there during his wandering in the orchard, but he had never really thought about it as a place that might be lived in.

  ‘I sleep out here sometimes,’ Cayley said. ‘I’m the rat of the Third Ring out there, but then, as well, I’m the King’s neighbour. Hello, Mr Your Majesty!’ He waved at the Tower of the Lion, visible though the leaves and branches of apple trees.

  Then, bending down by the door at the back he struggled to remove two blocks of plaster and compressed soil, and wriggled through the space, turning to fit them back in behind him. A moment later the front door opened grudgingly.

  ‘I bolt it up, see,’ Cayley said as proudly as any lord showing off a new estate. ‘Mine these days.’ Heriot entered a dim, dusty little room lit by whatever daylight seeped through the sheets of oiled linen stretched over the windows, and through a hole in the roof. As he looked around him, thinking of his own room in Guard-on-the-Rock, he felt an idea forming.

  I was happy here, said his occupant, I will be – I am – I was … happy here. But Heriot already knew it had no recognisable sense of past or future. He leaned his back against the wall, and slid slowly down to sit on the floor, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his palms. He could live here himself. He could belong to the King, yet have solitary, stolen times among the apple trees, times when the history of Guard-on-the-Rock and of its Lords, Princes and Kings wasn’t a necessary part of the air he breathed. Perhaps he could find his way back to being a total self, rather than a mere aspect of the King’s power. He watched Cayley take a long-stemmed pipe from a ledge, then take a flint from beside it and strike it against some stone half-buried in the floor beneath them.