Sister Of The South

16 - Shocks

When Lief and Doom returned to the kitchen, they found it in uproar. Manus had joined the party at the table, but he was not the cause of the excitement and distress. The cause was Kree.

After hearing the news that four Kin were on their way bearing the gems Lief had asked for, Jasmine had discovered that the old injury on Kree’s neck had reopened. Trying to clean the freshly-flowing blood away, she had found something lodged inside the wound.

‘It must have been buried deep, and gradually worked its way upward,’ she said. ‘No wonder the wound would not heal properly.’

She held the object out in the palm of her hand. It was a small grey glass bead. Red lines swirled within it.

Shuddering, Lief picked up the bead and threw it into the stove. It hissed, glowed briefly, then cracked and melted away.

‘So now it is clear how our enemies always knew where we were,’ Barda said heavily. ‘We were only safe when Kree was not with us. He was carrying the Shadow Lord’s eye, all along.’

Kree squawked loudly and indignantly.

‘Of course you did not know, Kree,’ Jasmine soothed. ‘The device must have been put into your neck when you were drugged that first time you came back to Del. Someone in the palace did it—someone …’

‘It was Paff,’ Lief said quietly.

‘Paff?’ exploded Barda.

‘Paff was the guardian of the south,’ Lief said. ‘But she will trouble us no more. The beast she sent to destroy us could withstand the power of the Belt, but she could not.’

The startled faces around the kitchen table grew sombre as the story of Paff’s death was told. Lief and Doom did not relish the telling. Both felt they had failed.

‘I wanted to spare her the horror of awakening,’ Doom said. ‘She had become a monster of wickedness, yet still I—I felt I understood how she had come to take the wrong path. She had lost everything. She was loved by no-one. Her misery had made her easy prey for the Shadow Lord.’

The corner of his mouth twisted in the familiar, mocking smile. ‘But Lief wanted her alive, to tell what she knew,’ he added. ‘For once, Lief was the ruthless one. But Paff outwitted him.’

‘Not for the first time,’ Lief said grimly. ‘She deceived me completely. The black slime attacked us in the chapel just after Gla-Thon came running to tell us that Paff had taken a turn for the worse. But still I did not understand. It was only when Jasmine spoke of trances, and I remembered how Paff had looked in her room just before the dawn attack, that I realised what she was.’

‘It was when I carried her out of the palace that I guessed it,’ said Doom. ‘She was as rigid as a stone statue. None of the other plague victims had been so.’

‘I confess, I tried desperately to believe it was not true,’ Lief muttered. ‘I could not bear the thought that I had left Josef helpless in Paff’s hands, to be kept drugged and confused, pumped for information and finally poisoned when she had no further use for him.’

‘You are not the only one who will carry that burden till death,’ muttered Ranesh.

‘I am most at fault,’ Doom said. ‘Plainly Paff was poisoning Josef’s mind against me for months. My impatience only made him fear and distrust me the more.’

‘And you were reading his letters before they were sent,’ Barda put in. ‘No doubt he suspected you were changing them, or not sending them at all.’

‘I think they were changed—at least one of them,’ Lief said quietly.

He pulled out the letter he had received from Josef on their way to the Isle of the Dead.

‘See here?’ he said, tapping the two small pages. Josef says he knows where we are going, but he fails to warn us of the danger lurking on Blood Lily Island. I could not understand that, but now I think I do.’

He held the pages out to Doom. ‘Am I right in thinking that Paff delivered this to you for sending?’ he asked.

‘Indeed she did,’ Doom frowned. ‘Josef took an age to write his note, and I was impatient. I shouted from the entrance hall, and a few moments later Paff came running like a scared rabbit. I scanned the note on my way to the bird room. It was confused and scrappy enough, but I certainly did not change it.’

‘No, but Paff did, on her way to you, I am sure of it,’ Lief said. ‘I think Josef scribbled on three pages of his little notebook. The second page contained the warnings that might have spared us much grief. Paff destroyed it, and tore off the right hand corners of the remaining pages, removing the page numbers, so we would not suspect.’

‘Ah, she was cunning,’ muttered Doom.

‘Why, you almost sound as if you admire her!’ growled Barda.

Doom grimaced. ‘If she had chosen to use her talents for good, she might have been a great asset to us,’ he said. ‘Lief and I found supplies of that yellow paper beneath her mattress, you know. She never stopped thinking and planning. I am sure that by the end she had convinced Josef that I was working secretly for the Enemy.’

‘I considered that myself, Doom,’ Jasmine said calmly.

‘Indeed?’ Doom said, raising an eyebrow. ‘And why was that?’

‘Lief said the guardian of the south was subtle, quick-thinking, and very clever,’ Jasmine answered, shrugging. ‘That sounded more like you than anyone else in the palace.’

‘Why, thank you,’ Doom said drily.

‘Also …’ Jasmine checked the points off on her fingers. ‘You have been in the Shadowlands. You are proud and ruthless. You mix with strange people. You are awake all hours of the night. You were one of the few to see Sharn the night she fell ill—’

‘Why, plainly Paff went to my room that first night and put poison in my lip balm while I was still downstairs!’ exclaimed Sharn, very shocked. ‘Doom was the one who realised the cream was poisoned, when he brought the royal emeralds and amethysts to my chamber. He was the one who saved me!’

‘And me,’ Zeean put in. ‘Jasmine, how could you think such a thing of your father?’

Jasmine shrugged again. ‘Doom is not an ordinary father,’ she said.

‘Very true,’ said Doom. ‘And you are no ordinary daughter, I am happy to say. If I had been in your place, I would have thought exactly as you did. We are more alike than we realised, it seems.’

He grinned broadly, and Jasmine’s tired face broke into an answering smile.

Zeean and Sharn both shook their heads, clearly bewildered by this strange example of family loyalty.

Gers slammed his fist upon the table. ‘Why do we sit here jabbering when there is a feast to be had?’ he shouted. ‘We are all here now, and my belly is growling!’

Ranesh grinned, and swung a large cloth bundle onto the table.

‘Hardly a feast,’ Marilen said, as the cloth was untied to reveal packets, jars and nets of glowing fruit. ‘More a taste of what is to come. I could only bring what I could carry.’

As Gers, Gla-Thon and Lindal began tearing open the nets and packets, Barda grinned at Lief and Doom’s startled faces. ‘A trading ship has come, it seems,’ he said.

‘Just the first of many, the sailors said,’ Marilen said happily. ‘They said that the Bone Point Light has been noticed by all who sail the sea to our west, which they call the silver sea. Soon there will be food in plenty—enough, I am sure, to see the whole land through the winter.’

‘Marilen was already on her way here when I left to fetch her,’ Ranesh said, meeting Lief’s eyes. ‘We met not far from Del. She had been missing me, it seems.’

He spoke lightly, but Lief’s heart warmed for him.

All is well, Lief told himself, as with shouts of delight everyone around him fell upon the delicious fruits, cheeses, dried fish, flat bread and little spiced cakes heaped upon the table. My feelings of foreboding were caused by exhaustion and fear, nothing more.

But still he could not relax. His nerves were tight as bow strings.

‘Father tried to persuade me to change my mind, but I knew my place was here,’ Marilen was chattering on. ‘So I put on a garment that Sharn had left in Tora, picked up what food I could carry, and came.’

‘If only you were Lindal’s size,’ bellowed Gers, with his mouth full. ‘You could have carried five times as much!’

Everyone laughed. Ebony and Kree looked up from the shred of fish they were sharing and screeched. Even Filli, happily nibbling fruit peel, added his tiny voice to the general din.

All is well, Lief repeated to himself fiercely. It is over.

But he knew it was not. And as he bent his head unwillingly, he saw that the Belt knew it, too. The topaz was still shining like a golden star. But the ruby and the emerald were as pale and dull as roadside stones.

There was another burst of laughter around the table. Dazedly, Lief raised his head. He saw that Barda was ruefully displaying his wooden puzzle box, still locked despite the little rods sticking out from three of its carved sides.

‘Plainly there is another lock on the fourth side!’ cried Manus, holding out his hand. ‘The trick is in the carving. Let me try it.’

‘No, let me!’ shrieked Zerry. ‘Bess of the Masked Ones had many such puzzles. I could do it!’

‘Oh, no,’ growled Barda. ‘This box will open for me, or not at all!’

Disdainfully he poked the box with his finger. His jaw dropped as with a tiny click, the fourth rod slid outward.

The lid of the box burst open. Out shot a laughing clown face, bouncing on a spring.

Barda yelled and dropped the box. Everyone shrieked in shock, then began to laugh helplessly.

The jack-in-the-box lay on its side on the table, its grinning head nodding foolishly, its tinny clockwork laughter running down.

Lief’s skin crawled.

‘Why, I spent hours on that foolish thing!’ cried Barda in disgust. ‘And for what? To have the life scared out of me.’

He tried to stuff the clown back into the box, but it would not go, and neither would the rods slide back in place. Clearly this was a puzzle that could be done one time only.

‘Barda! Throw it in the fire!’ Lief heard himself shouting harshly. His heart was beating like a drum.

‘With pleasure,’ Barda snorted, and tossed the box into the stove. It caught and burned merrily, quickly collapsing into ash.

What is wrong with me? Lief thought desperately. Why would a harmless toy terrify me so?

‘Oh, that was a fine trick indeed!’ gasped Manus, tears of mirth streaming down his cheeks. ‘The rods hold the lid in place, with the clown pressed down beneath it. One rod removed—nothing. Two rods, three rods removed—still nothing. But when the last rod is removed—bang! Ah, Barda, if you had seen your face!’

He collapsed in fresh gales of laughter, echoed by the whole company.

Lief felt as if he was suffocating. He stood up abruptly and went outside. He sat down on the bench beside the back door and took a few deep breaths of cold fresh air.

The door opened again and Ranesh came out.

‘I understand how you feel, Lief,’ Ranesh said soberly. ‘After all that has happened, it seems callous to be merry. But Josef would have rejoiced to hear us laugh.’

Lief’s mind was filled once again with the memory of the frail old man bent over his desk, muttering as he studied the plan of the chapel. And again he had the feeling that something about the memory was wrong, or that there was something about it he did not understand.

Why do I keep fretting over this? he asked himself angrily. What more is there to understand? Josef guessed that the Sister of the South was beneath the chapel. He was horrified, and tried to contact me, to tell me. The night he died, he was studying the plan of the chapel to make absolutely sure—

And suddenly Lief’s stomach seemed to turn over as he realised that what he had just thought simply could not be true.

Josef could not have been studying the chapel plan the night he died, because the very next day, the plan was in its proper place, in a heavy box high in the storeroom.

Josef could not possibly have replaced the plan in that box. He could hardly walk, let alone stretch up to a high shelf. And if he had asked Paff to return the chapel plan for him, she would certainly have destroyed it.

But if Josef had not been studying the plan, what had he been doing?