His face was close to hers and she could see his scars – the scars she had caused. The fight went out of her and she allowed herself to be steered inside, away from the crowds that were already recovering from their fright.
Inside the palace she seemed to lose track of time. Too many similar corridors, the bright squares of daylight on marble floors. And then they were in a room together, alone. Noon sat on a bed and ran her hands over her face.
‘What happened?’
Tor was wearing the finest clothes she had ever seen him in, a long-sleeved robe of pale grey silk, tightened and shaped around his slim figure. The high collar was embroidered with black serpents, all twisted around each other, and there were smaller serpents at his cuffs too. His hair was shining, brushed back from his temples so that the scarred portion of his face was exposed, and he wore a silver earring in his unruined ear – a three-pronged leaf. She thought she had rarely seen him look more beautiful.
‘Mother Fast was there.’ Noon swallowed. ‘I thought she had died. I thought I’d killed her, just like everyone else, when I was eleven.’
Tor stared at her, and, afraid of what she might see in his face, she looked away.
‘What do you mean, everyone else? You killed everyone? Who?’
Noon looked down at her hands instead.
‘I was born to the plains folk a fell-witch. You’re supposed to be reported to the Winnowry straight away, but I hid it, and then my mother hid it. Not that it helped in the end. I’m a murderer, Tor. That’s the truth. I killed a lot of people – people I knew, who I loved and who loved me – and then I was put inside a prison for it. And then I escaped, because I didn’t want to die there, regardless of all the people I’d killed.’
For a long time, Tor said nothing. He went to a cabinet and retrieved a bottle and a glass, pouring wine and drinking it in silence. Noon found that she missed Vintage, except, of course, if Vintage was here, she would have learned the truth about her too.
‘Noon.’ Tor put the glass down, empty. ‘Noon, I don’t have time for this.’ He turned to her and he looked faintly exasperated. ‘We’re trying the Jure’lia fluid in less than an hour, and I can’t have any distractions. Hestillion won’t stand for it.’
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘I heard you. How is that woman here if you killed everyone?’
Noon blinked. It wasn’t the question she’d been expecting.
‘How should I know? She must have survived. Another tribe took her in and helped her to heal, I expect.’
‘Well,’ said Tor. ‘That’s unfortunate.’
Noon shook her head slightly. ‘Unfortunate?’
‘For her to be here now, in the middle of this. Never mind, it can be ignored for now, I think. People are too curious to see what will happen with Ygseril. We can continue as before, it’s no matter.’
‘No matter?’ Noon curled her hands into fists, the bones popping like a knot of wood on the fire. ‘That’s all right, then. I suppose, being a people so used to murdering to get what you need, my killings must seem like nothing to you.’
A flicker of anger crossed Tor’s face. ‘We’re back to bloodsuckers, are we?’
‘Isn’t that what you are? Isn’t that what I am to you – a handy vein?’
‘Noon –’ For a moment he looked stricken, and she remembered him on his knees inside the Behemoth wreck, how she had held him and kissed the top of his head. That same vulnerability was there in the set of his mouth and the cast of his eyes, but then she saw him visibly collect himself, pushing those feelings away. ‘I am sorry for your past, Noon, but this is the future of my people I’m talking about here. It requires all of my attention.’ With that, he went back to the door, turning to her just before he left. ‘I’ll let you know how it goes afterwards,’ he said simply. ‘Wish me luck.’
The door closed and, after a moment, Noon heard the rattle of a key turning and a lock tumbling into place. She stared at the spot where he’d been, a cold feeling settling over her like a shroud.
43
It was a slow process. All the time that Vintage worked, securing her own rope ladder to the soft cubes of greyish matter, she was all too aware that if she got this wrong – misjudged the length of the ladder or failed to secure it properly – then there was a good chance that she would die in this place, trapped inside the hidden chamber until she died of thirst or starvation. No one knew she was here, and no one would come looking for her. Not in time to save her life, anyway. And even worse – she could be trapped down there forever with the remains of her beloved Nanthema.
‘Some people might call that romantic,’ she muttered to herself as she gave her ties a final, experimental tug. ‘Such people want their heads examined, of course.’
There was no more putting it off. Checking once more that her pack was secure across her shoulders and that the ladder could take her weight, she began to climb slowly down, the travel lamp hanging from her belt. It banged against her hip, sending confused shadows into the chamber below. It was tempting to look down, to glance over her shoulder, but she kept her observations to a minimum so that the ladder wouldn’t twist about. Could she see the floor? Yes, and the ladder would be long enough. Bracing herself to take the impact on her knees, she dropped down carefully, staggering only slightly, and looked around. Down here, the soft nodules of light protruded from the place where the floor met the walls, so that everything was doused in a strange, dreamlike light – light that slid along the edge of the giant, jagged crystal.
‘Well. Goodness me.’
Rather than pink, this crystal was yellow, sickly and off-putting, like jaundice. On the floor by her feet, Vintage saw some shrivelled pieces of fibre and a few sticks of splintered wood – the remains of the ladder brought by her predecessor, of course. Her heart thumping painfully in her throat, Vintage approached the shining surface of the crystal, and just as it had inside the Behemoth on Esiah Godwort’s compound, the slick blankness of it vanished and instead she was looking at a vast, empty landscape, stretching from one horizon to another. It was like looking through a window at something entirely impossible.