Incarceron

Seventy Sapienti volunteered to enter the Prison to minister to its inmates, and after them the entrance was sealed forever. They taught their wisdom to their successors. Even children know this."

Fi

"No one has entered since. We know about the Wombs too, though not where they are.

Incarceron is efficient; it was designed to be. It doesn't waste dead matter, but recycles everything. In those cells it grows new inmates. Perhaps animals too.

"But I remember things ... bits of things." Fi

81 cage bars as if to hold on to his belief, watching Keiro cross the floor of the hall far below, arms around two giggling girls.

Gildas's gaze followed his. "You don't. You dream Incarceron's mysteries. Your visions will show us how to Escape."

"No. I remember."

The old man looked exasperated. "Remember what?"

He felt foolish. "Well... a cake. With silver balls and seven candles. There were people.

And music ... lots of music ... He hadn't realized that until now. He was oddly pleased, until he caught the old man's eye.

"A cake. I suppose it may be a symbol. The number seven is important. The Sapienti know it as the sigil of Sapphique, because of the time when he met the renegade Beetle."

"I was there!"

"Everyone has memories, Fi

Fi

"One day I'll die from one," he said quietly.

"It is true few cell-born live to be old." Gildas's voice was harsh, but he looked away.

Buckling the ornate collar over his green robe he muttered, "The past is gone; whatever it was, it doesn't matter anymore. Put it out of your head or it will drive you to madness."

Fi

"Three." Gildas tugged the plaited end of his beard free irritably. He paused. "You're rare beings. I spent my life searching before I found you. A man rumored to be cell-born used to beg outside the Hall of Lepers, but when I finally coaxed him to speak I realized his mind had gone; he babbled about an egg that talked, a cat that faded out to just a smile.

Years later, after many rumors, I found another, a worker of the Civicry in the Ice Wing. She seemed normal enough; I tried to persuade her to speak to me of her visions. But she never would. One day I heard she had hanged herself."

Fi

"They told me she had gradually begun to believe a child followed her, an invisible child that clutched her skirts and called her, woke her at night. Its voice tormented her. She couldn't shut it out."

Fi

"I can't ..."

"You can. You're my prophet, Fi

Sapphique and seek the Outside. Every Sapient makes that journey. None have succeeded, but none have had a cell-born to guide them."

Fi

Gildas pushed past him and grasped the metal ladder. "Don't talk about this. Not even to

Keiro."

He climbed down and his eyes were on a level with Fi

Gildas glared up through the rungs. "I go where I want."

"He needs you. He rules the Wing because of you. On his own he—"

"He'll manage. He's good at fear and violence."

Gildas descended one rung, then pulled himself up, his small wizened face lit with sudden joy. "Can you imagine how it will be, Fi

For a moment Fi

Gildas laughed sourly. "Only in visions, fool boy. Only in dreams."

He clambered with surprising agility down the diagonal of lashed ladders. Fi

Escape.

It was a word that stung him like a wasp, a sharpness that pierced his mind, a longing that promised everything and meant nothing. The Sapienti taught that Sapphique had once found a way out, that he had Escaped. Fi

His feet hit the ground. Glimpsing the snake-green iridescence of Gildas's robe as the old man hurried out of the Den, Fi

The Maestra's crystal was what concerned him now.

And getting it was not going to be easy.

The Chasm of Ransom was only three halls away, and he crossed the dark empty spaces quickly, alert for spiders or the inbred shadowhawks that swooped high in the rafters.

Everyone else seemed to be there already. He heard the Comitatus before he came through the last archway; they were shouting and howling Insults across the abyss, their scorn ringing back from the smooth unclimbable slabs.

On the far side the Civicry waited, a line of shadows.

The Chasm was a jagged crack across the floor, a sheer face of black obsidian. If a stone was dropped down it, no sound ever came up. The Comitatus considered it bottomless; some even said that if you fell into its depths, you fell right through Incarceron into the molten heart of the earth, and certainly heat rose from it, a miasma that made the air shimmer. In the center, split off by whatever Prisonquake had formed the abyss, rose a needle-thin rock called the Spike, its flat platform cracked and worn. From each side a bridge of scorched metal rusted and dark with pig-grease led there. It was a neutral place that belonged to no one, a place for truces and parleys, of hesitant exchange among the hostile tribes of the Wing.

At the unfenced edge, from which he often had troublesome slaves thrown screaming down, Jormanric lounged on his throne, the Comitatus around him, the small dog-slave crouched at the end of its chain.

"Look at him," Keiro's voice whispered in Fi

"And as vain as you."

His oathbrother snorted. "At least I've got something to be vain about."

But Fi