“I will do it,” Snorri said. We both ignored him.
Garyus kept his gaze on me. “The rest of the point is that you’re not just going there to put the key in a safe place—you’re going there to use it. The Wheel is the source of our problems and the key is the one thing that might stop it. You’re going there to turn the Wheel back. If you fail then the key will be in a place that is dangerous to reach and impossible to escape from, but if you succeed then the world won’t split open, you’ll be able to return, and we will all live whatever lives were laid out for us.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. The old man was mad. Someone would need to replace him as steward and then we could all sit tight until the Red Queen came back to save us. If she was still alive.
“Yes.” Snorri didn’t sound like he needed any convincing. “We should leave today.” We both ignored him.
“Great-uncle.” I tried for a sympathetic voice. “The Wheel of Osheim . . . it’s not an actual wheel, you know? It’s a tunnel deep underground that runs in a circle miles wide. It can’t be ‘turned’.”
“It’s a machine. That’s what Kara told me,” Snorri said. “It’s a machine that changed the world a thousand years ago and is still changing it. It was started—so it can be stopped.”
“Interesting,” I said, by which I meant “shut the fuck up.” Why the hell Snorri was so keen to rush off to Osheim I had no idea. I stroked my chin as if contemplating his words and tried not to sound too tetchy. “Tunnel, machine, whatever, it’s huge and we can’t turn it back.”
“You could turn it off though,” Garyus said. “If you had the right key.”
TWENTY-TWO
And so I found myself down at the river docks about to flee Vermillion by boat with a Viking once again. Same Viking, different boat.
I had argued long and hard that I should at least take a crack squad of troops, by which I meant a small army . . . or, if it were up to me, a large one. Garyus pointed out that any infantry would slow me down and were needed at the walls. The horde of dead men wandering the embers of the outer city still posed a substantial threat and there was no certain knowing that the Dead King would not return his attention to them or send another lichkin or unborn to focus their efforts.
“A fast horse will serve you better than two hundred men, and the queen took what little cavalry remains to us to Slov with her. Any riders we have left in Vermillion are needed as swift reserves to react to possible incursions.”
Garyus had directed that we should begin our journey by following the line of Grandmother’s advance into Slov. The trail of destruction should allow for relatively unhindered passage. He had had no word of his sister and reports of her death appeared to be wishful thinking on Uncle Hertet’s part. With any luck Grandmother would already have levelled the Lady Blue’s stronghold and killed the witch with her bare hands.
This of course led me to suggest that I then deliver the key into the Red Queen’s hands and let her see to its future, whether that lay in the Wheel of Osheim or around her neck. If it were to be the Wheel she would surely do a better job of it than me.
Garyus had contradicted me again. “You have qualities she lacks, Jalan. Necessary ones. You will run away. You will lie and cheat. My sister is more likely to fight and die. The only sure way this key is getting to Osheim is in the hands of someone as flexible and resourceful as you.”
Garyus’s talk of his sister had returned my thoughts to my own. In Hell Marco had revealed that the holiest of items might separate an unborn into the child’s soul and the lichkin that rode it. But Father’s seal was gone, his holy stone too, and a search of the Inner Palace had turned up nothing more holy than a gold cross blessed by the cardinal. I took it anyway. It was made of gold! But truth be told I suspected that being blessed by my father would probably have rendered it less holy rather than more.
All of which left me standing on a cold and misty riverbank thinking that if I really were flexible and resourceful I would have found a way out of this. It also left me clutching the side of my face.
“I think she loosened one of my teeth.” I probed with my tongue. “You look fine to me,” Snorri said, his gaze on the water. I’d had a guard bring Micha to me in one of the palace’s waiting rooms. She had come with Nia bawling in her arms, wearing the wornthrough look of a new parent overlayered with the long horror of the night. “Jalan?” She had been surprised to see me.
“Sit down, Micha.” I nodded to the couch opposite, an overstuffed confection from some Florentine master.
“What is it? It’s Darin! Tell me!” She stood, rooted to her mark, even Nia’s howls fading away to underscore the moment.
The words dried up in my mouth and I desperately wanted to be able to play deaf again. “He was very brave,” I said. I had plenty more I planned to say. I knew how I was going to declaim it, words regarding my brother’s heroism, words of comfort, words of encouragement for the future. But when it came to saying them to her—all I had were those four.
She had crumpled then, folded and gone to the floor, Nia still safe and silent in her arms. I had expected rage, questions, denials, but her grief just reached up and took her voice.
I had Alphons, from my father’s guard, lead her away to the ballroom where a number of soldiers watched over a growing collection of survivors from around the palace. Next I sent for Lisa. She walked in white-faced, cold-eyed, proud, as if I were the invader and she my captive.
I tried to deflect her toward the couch but she kept on coming until we stood almost nose to nose. My instinct has always been to deliver bad news at a distance and be ready to run.
“Two teeth, I think.”
“What?”
I took the fingers out of my mouth and repeated myself more clearly.
“Two teeth, I think.” I should have stuck with my instincts. Being honest and compassionate just gets you slapped so hard your teeth rattle. I didn’t even say Barras was dead, just that I’d lost sight of him in the battle and it didn’t look good . . .
“There’s the boat.” Snorri pointed to a darker patch of mist.
The blur resolved itself as it drew closer to the shore. A flat-bellied riverboat of the sort used to ferry livestock and goods across the Seleen or a short way up or downstream. Currently it held my stallion, Murder, and three other horses chosen for their endurance, the pair not immediately intended for riding laden with provisions and a tent.
Two boatmen leapt ashore and pulled the craft into the shallows so Snorri and I could board. The plan was to take us downstream beyond any danger from the city’s besiegers and put us on some safe stretch of riverbank so we could follow my grandmother’s trail to Slov. From there our path would take us through Zagre, north into the kingdom of Charland, and eventually back to Osheim.
Strangely, despite all the terror and the hopeless nature of our journey, the actual being on the move part felt pretty good. I’d missed Snorri. Not that I’d ever go as far as showing it. And now he was back and the world was slipping past us, I thought of Kara and the boy again. We’d spent so long travelling together as a four that being a two once more seemed to make their absence more palpable. As if it should be the v?lva’s hand on the tiller, and Hennan messing about with the ropes.
I joined Snorri in the prow as the boatmen pushed us back out into the current with long poles. “I told you the Wheel draws everyone back in the end.” That was how Nanna Willow had it. The Wheel would pull you in. Quick or slow, but in the end you’d come, thinking it was your idea, full of good reasons for it. And here we were, hundreds of miles away, full of good reasons, and aimed for the Wheel.
“Maybe so.” Snorri nodded. “Some things can’t be avoided.”