The doors at the end of the corridor slammed open again. The tread of many feet. I was frightened but I had to know. I moved to where I could almost see down the hall. Guards. Fellowdy, with Coultrie staggering along beside him. Coultrie looked terrible, both sick and furious. The keys that Capra had used earlier to lock me in now swung from Fellowdy’s fist. They marched to Prilkop’s cell. They were too close for me to see them as keys went into the locks and were turned. The door was opened. ‘Take him!’ Fellowdy ordered, and the soldiers I could see surged forward. They emerged, four men gripping one. In the corridor, another man knelt and let fall an armful of chains. Prilkop stood, an ox awaiting slaughter, as the shackles were fastened to his ankles. He did not resist as the guard stood and chained his wrists as well.
I was a coward. Not me, oh not me! I radiated the thought. I desperately hoped the serpent-spit magic had not faded from my system. With what Skill I could muster, I pushed it at them. Either it worked, or they had not been told to take me. Wolf Father distracted me.
Stop that. A way out is a way in!
Wolf Father’s growl was intense. I obeyed. Walls up. I moved away from the bars and huddled on my mattress. They would drag Prilkop away, to what end? To pain, Capra had promised him. To death? When I had made my decision last night, had I created this future for him? Was it my fault now?
Terrified and selfish, I covered my eyes and I prayed with no god in mind, Let them not take me. Let it not be me!
‘Hello, Bee!’ Coultrie was outside my cell, leaning on a guard’s arm. I gave a short shriek and I hated that it made him smile. He had renewed his white paste, but it was badly done. Stripes of his flesh showed through. He smiled at me, a loose-lipped, trembling smile. ‘Don’t think I don’t know! I do. You killed them and I will see that you pay. I will.’
‘Stop it,’ Fellowdy told him. ‘Vindeliar has magicked you. How often must I tell you that? We’ve caught the killer. When we take Prilkop down, you can see for yourself. It’s Beloved. The fool came back. He’d have good reason to kill Symphe. Dwalia was probably just an afterthought. Come on. We need to see Prilkop secured, and then go to see Capra at the healers’ chambers. Jessim said it was a short knife. Let’s hope it didn’t reach anything vital.’
They left. Prilkop walked among them, taking short steps as his chains clattered on the stone floor. Doors slammed again. I had begun to hate that noise. Quiet flowed back in. A lone voice from one of the other cells called out, ‘Guard? Guard?’
No one answered.
I sat shaking and weeping. It was too much. Someone had come to find me, to rescue me. And failed. And now Prilkop was gone. I had not realized what a comfort he was until he was snatched away. I felt so cold. I could not stop shaking.
‘Bee? Bee, bee, bee?’
The terrible little voice was back. It sounded the way I imagined a pecksie would sound. Not human.
‘Bee? Bee, bee, bee?’
It was coming closer. It made my name a random repetition. I heard a soft noise, like a shaken cloth, and a scratching. ‘Bee? Bee, bee, bee?’
I could not stand it. ‘Leave me alone!’ I shouted.
But instead, the voice came closer. ‘Bee? Bee?’ Now I could tell where it was coming from. It was right outside the perforated stone wall that threw shadows of seashells and flowers on my cell floor. Something blocked the light from one hole and made a scrabbling sound, like a rat in a wall. I was thankful the holes were small and the wall so thick. I did not think it could get at me. But as I stared at the wall in stricken horror, a sharp silver beak poked partly out from it. It moved, jabbing the air. ‘Bee?’ it queried. ‘Bee, bee, bee?’
I was imagining it. It couldn’t be real. I didn’t want to see it, but I couldn’t look away. The beak nudged and poked at air as if struggling to come through and get me. I forced myself to stand and then to move to where I had a better angle to see inside the wall-hole.
A bird’s head. A bright eye. I crouched down to see it better.
‘Bee?’
It changed. This had not happened often, and every time it did, it terrified me. The bird’s head radiated a corona of pathways. I found a word for it. A nexus. Like the one I had seen in the market with the blind beggar. This could not be good.
‘Go away,’ I begged in a shaking voice.
‘Per,’ it said in a whisper. ‘Tell Per. Found Bee.’
‘Per?’ I asked, hope stabbing me. ‘Perseverance?’ Hope was a different kind of terror. How could Per be near, so far from Withywoods? Was he truly alive? Had the beggar brought him? The bird shimmered, not before my eyes but in my mind. Closing my eyes didn’t help. I still didn’t open them. I asked a question knowing that the answer could destroy all my hope. ‘Is Per coming to help me? To rescue me?’
‘No. No. Shut. Gate shut. Closed. Closed, closed, closed!’
I sat back on my heels. This wasn’t real. Birds didn’t talk like that. Not in a way that made sense. Was I going mad? The shimmering was making me feel sick. ‘Go away,’ I begged it.
‘Closed, closed. Amber? Find Amber? Spark asks.’
It was saying nonsense phrases now. ‘Go away.’
A way out is a way in! Tell him that! A way out is a way in! Tell Per. Wolf Father was leaping in my mind, scrabbling at the walls I held so tight. Tell the bird that! He flung himself against walls I dared not lower.
The bird seemed to have wedged itself. It was trying to back out of the hole in the wall without much success. ‘A way out is a way in,’ I told it, with no sense of why that was important. It stopped struggling. Had it heard me? Was it trying to speak to me? A cat had spoken to me once, back in Withywoods. But that had been mind to mind, and somehow less surprising. This bird spoke human words with a crow’s beak. It was uncanny. Frightening. ‘Bird? Did you come with Per? Did he come with the beggar? They have taken the beggar to the dungeon. Was he supposed to rescue me? Talk to me, bird!’ My questions rattled out of me.
‘Way in not easy way out. In was easy. Out is hard,’ the crow complained. ‘Stuck.’
I drew a deep breath. Mastered my dizziness. ‘Is Per nearby?’ One question at a time.
‘No. Per can’t help. Stuck. No Per here. Stuck!’
Solve the bird’s problem and perhaps she would answer. ‘Do you want me to push you out?’
‘No!’ I heard more scrabbling sounds. Then, resignedly, ‘Yes.’
I reached into the hole. ‘Careful, careful!’ she warned me.
I touched her beak. She braced it against my hand, a hard peck. A push. It was like a lightning flash. Dragons. A red dragon would come. I jerked my hand back.
A way out is a way in. Where the waste goes out from the castle. Tell her!
She wasn’t stuck any more. She was backing away from me, taking the shimmering nexus of possibilities with her. ‘A way out is a way in! Where the waste goes out from the castle! Tell Per!’
I heard a wild fluttering of wings. ‘I think she’s gone,’ I said aloud.
Did she hear you?
‘I don’t know,’ I whispered. The wind blew and a single downy feather flew into my cell. I caught it. It was a gleaming red. ‘I don’t know.’
THIRTY-TWO
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