Sapphique

As they walked arm in arm along the terrace the crowding courtiers bowed and murmured. Fans fluttered. Eyes watched through the faces of demons, wolves, mermaids, storks.

‘Sapphique’s Glove,’ Fi

Down the steps the flowerbeds were curves of twiit flowers. Beyond the formal gardens she could already see lit trails of lanterns over the lawns leading to the elaborate pi

‘How could he have it?’

‘Who cares? If it’s real, it might do anything! Unless it’s some scam he’s playing.’

‘No.’ She watched the crowd, thronging under the lanterns.

‘Attia mentioned a glove. And then she stopped, very suddenly. As if Keiro wouldn’t let her say any more.’

‘Because it’s real!’ Fi

‘I don’t care! Gildas would have been so horrified. He never trusted Keiro.’

‘But you do.’

‘I’ve told you. Always. How did he get hold of it? How is he going to use it?’ She gazed at the hundreds of courtiers, a mass of peacock dresses, gleaming satin coats, elaborate wigs of piled flaxen hair, They streamed into the pavilions and the grotto, their chatter loud and endless.

‘Perhaps this Glove was the power source Jared noticed.’

‘Yes!’ He leant against the urn, getting moss on his coat.

Behind the mask his eyes were bright with hope. Claudia felt only unease.

‘Fi

‘You never know what Keiro will do.’

‘But would he do that? Would he give the Prison the means of destroying everyone in there, just so that he might Escape too?’ She had moved to stand right in front of him; he had to look at her.

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure His voice was low and furious. ‘I know Keiro.’

‘You just said …’

‘Well … he wouldn’t do that.’ She shook her head, suddenly losing patience with his stupid, blind loyalty. ‘I don’t believe you. I think you’re afraid he will do it. I’m certain that Attia’s terrified of it. And you heard what my father said. Nothing — no one — must come through the Portal.’

‘Your father! He’s no more your father than I am.’

‘Shut up!’

‘And since when did you do what he says?’ Hot with anger, they faced each other, darkmask to catface.

‘I do what I want!’

‘But you’d believe him before Keiro?’

‘Yes,’ she spat. ‘I would. And before you, too:.’ For a second there was a hurt shock in his eyes; then they were cold. ‘You’d kill Keiro?’

‘If the Prison was using him. If I had to.’ He was very still. Then he hissed, ‘I thought you were different, Claudia. But you’re just as false and cruel and stupid as the rest of them.’ He walked into the crowd, shoved two men aside and, ignoring their protests, barged into the grotto.

Claudia stared after him, every muscle scorched with wrath. How dare he talk to her like that! If he wasn’t Giles he was just some Scum of the Prison, and she, despite facts, was the Warden’s daughter.

She gripped her hands, controlling the rage. It took a deep breath to get her heartbeat down; she wanted to yell and smash things, but instead she had to plaster on the smile and wait here till midnight.

And what then?

After this, would Fi

A ripple passed through the crowd, a flurry of elaborate courtesies, and she saw Sia pass, in a diaphanous gown of flimsy white, her wig a towering construction of woven hair in which an armada of tiny gilt ships tossed and drowned.

‘Claudia?’ The Pretender was beside her. ‘I see your brutish escort just stormed off.’ She took the fan from her sleeve and flicked it open. ‘We had a slight disagreement, that’s all.’ Giles’s mask was an eagle’s face, beautifully made with real feathers, its beak hooked and proud. As with everything he did, it was designed to reinforce his image as Prince-in-waiting. It gave him a strangeness, as masks always do. But his eyes were smiling.

‘A lovers’ tiff?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Then allow me to escort you in.’ He offered her his arm, and after a moment she took it. ‘And don’t worry about Fi

Attia fell.

She fell like Sapphique had fallen. A terrible, flapping, tumbling fall, arms splayed out, with no breath, no sight, no hearing. She fell through a roaring vortex, into a mouth, down a throat that swallowed her. Her clothes and hair, her very skin, rippled and seemed to be torn away so that she was nothing but a screaming soul plunging headlong into the abyss.

But then Attia knew that the world was impossible, that it was a creature that mocked her. Because the air thickened and nets of cloud formed under her — dense springy clouds that tumbled her from one to another — and somewhere there was laughter that might have been Keiro’s and might have been the Prison’s, as if she couldn’t tell them apart now.

In a flicker between gasps she saw the world re-form; the hall floor convulsed, split, rolled away. A river erupted under the viaduct, a black torrent that rose up to meet her so fast that she had hardly snatched a breath before she had plunged into it, deep, deep into a darkness of frothing bubbles.

A membrane of water webbed her wide mouth. And then her head burst out, gasping, and the torrent was slowing, drifting her under dark girders, into caves, into a dim underworld. Dead Beetles were washed along beside her; the stream was a conduit of rust, red as blood, cha

The conduit tipped her over a weir and left her, sprawled, on a gritty shore, where Keiro was crouched on hands and knees, retching into the black sand.

Wet, cold, unbelievably battered, she tried to sit up, but couldn’t. And yet his choked voice was a rasp of triumph.

‘It needs us, Attia! We’ve won. We’ve beaten it’ She didn’t answer.

She was watching the Eye.

The Shell grotto was well named.

A vast cavern, its walls and pendulous roof gleamed with mother-of-pearl and crystal; each shell arranged in patterns that whorled and spiralled. False stalactites, hand-adorned with a million minute crystals, hung from the ceiling.

It was a glassy, dazzling spectacle.

Claudia danced with Giles, with men with foxfaces and knights’ helms, with highwaymen and harlequins. She felt icily calm, and had no idea where Fi

And then she saw them.

They wore masks, but she knew they were the Privy Council. A sudden influx of loud, brilliantly dressed men, some in long robes, their voices dry and parched from debate, harsh with relief.

She edged to the nearest, safe behind her mask. ‘Sire. Have the Council come to a verdict?’ The man winked behind his owlface, and toasted her with a glass. ‘We certainly have, my pretty kitten He came close, his breath foul. ‘Meet me behind the pavilion and I might even tell you what it was.’ She bowed, flicked the fan, and backed away.