The Liar's key

TWENTY-EIGHT

True to his word Hennan wouldn’t tell me about the key. Every question I hissed at him about it met with silence. I exhausted myself quizzing him but the child kept his lips clamped tight and in the end I fell into a doze, unsure whether the sun was still shining outside or not.

• • •

I dreamed of a book, surely for the first time ever. I’ve long maintained that nothing of interest ever took place between the covers of a book, excepting the cardinal’s whisky and pornography of course, but here I was turning page after page in my dream. Even in my dream I didn’t want to read the thing, but some compulsion kept me going as if hunting for a particular page. I tried focusing on the writing but the letters carried no meaning, sliding this way and that like spiders who’ve forgotten how to master so many legs.

One more page, one more page, one more and then I saw it, a word like any other, buried amid its fellows but anchoring my eyes. Sageous. And as I said it the dream-witch’s face rose from the page, carrying the text with it so that the words lay across his skin, sinking in like tattoos. And his name-well that disappeared into the black slit of his mouth, now opening wider and wider to speak my own.

“Prince Jalan.”

“You!” I leapt to my feet, letting the book tumble to the floor. I stood in the room where I first met him, a guest bedroom in the Tall Castle, Crath City, Ancrath. “What the hell?”

“You’re dreaming, Prince Jalan.”

“I. . I knew that.” I brushed myself down and glanced around. It didn’t look like a dream. “Why are you here? Looking for Baraqel to skewer you again?” I didn’t like the man one bit and wanted him out of my head quickly.

“I don’t think either of your friends will trouble us tonight, Prince Jalan, light nor dark.” He touched a word on his left arm then another on his right as he spoke of light and darkness. “And I am here to see if anything can be salvaged. You were supposed to free the boy and then be led to the Norsemen. With so much gold at your disposal it shouldn’t have been beyond you to free them too. You could have hired an army with what you carried. Instead I find you locked with the child in a debtors’ cell.”

“I was. . supposed to?” I stared at the heathen trying to make sense of his gibberish. “The dreams?” I put a hand to my face. “You sent the dreams. I thought I was going mad!” All those nights haunted by Hennan’s fate. I knew that wasn’t like me. “You bastard!” I took a step toward him, then finding my legs would no longer listen to me, I stopped.

“It seems I over-estimated you, Prince Jalan.” Sageous shooed me back and my traitor legs obeyed. “A man who walks himself into a prison is unlikely to be able to walk himself out. I fear my employer will have to accept both your failure and his resulting losses.”

“Employer?”

“Kelem wishes you to free your companions from the custody of House Gold so that they may continue their journey and bring Loki’s key to him. I do not believe this will be possible however.”

“But Kelem owns the banking clans. .” Though now I said it I did recall talk of strife between them.

“The House Gold has its own ambitions and has grown close to other interests in recent years.”

“The Dead King!” It made sense now. Or at least it was moving in that direction. “The clockwork soldiers and the corpse flesh. .”

“Even so.” Sageous nodded.

“So the bank captured Snorri hoping to find Loki’s key? And when they get it they’ll give it to the Dead King.” That didn’t sound good.

“Perhaps, perhaps not. They have, as I said, their own ambitions. However, the key has yet to be found. Your Norsemen must know where it lies and so Kelem wished you to free them.”

“He could have asked!”

Sageous smiled as if we both knew the answer I would have given. He’d pointed me at Hennan, a gentle push that would normally be misconstrued as the nagging of a guilty conscience. It seemed important to Kelem that Snorri not feel pushed toward their encounter for fear of changing his mind. I took some small comfort in the fact that neither the dream-witch nor the door-mage seemed to understand either of us. Conscience would never compel me into harm’s way, and nothing would ever turn Snorri from his path, certainly not the fact that Kelem so badly wanted him to pursue it.

Sageous’s smile hung for a moment then fell away as if it had never been. “And to the purpose of my visit.” Sageous advanced on me, intimidating though he was the smaller man by more than a head. “Where is Loki’s key?” His eyes became drowning pools and terror washed over me. I fell into darkness screaming only the truth. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!

I woke sweat-soaked, screaming the words, Hennan shaking me and shouting for me to wake up.

• • •

After the dream-witch’s visit I resolved never to sleep again.

• • •

It took a day’s insistence and the privacy of another food riot to get Hennan to talk about the key. Once the food got into his system and he found a little energy the boy wanted to talk about everything under the sun, about Kara, about how Snorri got taken down, about what happened to Tuttugu. I wouldn’t listen. I had one question-where is the key? In the end the need to talk about something, even if it was the one thing he’d promised not to talk about, was what broke Hennan’s resolve.

“Kara hid it,” he said.

“Snorri wouldn’t trust her with the key.”

“He watched her do it.”

“Did they bury it somewhere?” I don’t know what I’d been anticipating, but the idea of the key in a box under four foot of soil, or jammed in some remote crevice on a cliff face, didn’t offer much hope. A thing like that wouldn’t stay hidden. The unborn felt its pull and it seemed as though the necromancers could track it too. If the only thing the Central Bank wanted wasn’t still there once I’d bargained our release for its exchange then we’d all leave the prison the same way and nobody would be happy but the pigs. And if I did find out where it was, Sageous would pick the fact from my mind the very next time I fell asleep. Kelem getting the key might be the lesser of two evils compared to the Dead King getting his claws on it, but it still seemed a pretty evil evil to me. The only hope would be to find out where it was and use that information to my advantage before I next fell asleep.

“Tell me they gave it to someone for safekeeping-someone we can trust.” I couldn’t think of anyone I could trust, but maybe Snorri had more friends and was less troubled by that particular problem.

“Snorri didn’t give it away,” Hennan said.

“Well where is it then?” I hissed, fending off an old man who’d stumbled past our guards after being elbowed in the face over the ownership of an apple core.

The boy scratched his head as if this were a difficult question.

“Hennan!” I tried to keep the exasperation from my voice.

He withdrew his hand and opened it. A small iron tablet lay in his palm, no bigger than the nail of my little finger, set with a single rune. Kara wore the same things in her hair, or had until she sewed the Hardassa’s ruin with them close to the Wheel of Osheim. Hennan must have had it hidden in the matted filth of his own hair.

“How will this help?” I didn’t say it wouldn’t-I’d seen marvels spring from such runes.

Hennan frowned, trying to remember the exact words. “Let the shadow of a key fall upon it and it will unlock the truth and reveal the lie.”

“It will. . what?” He’d forgotten the spell. All we had was garbled nonsense. The death of a small hope hurts more than an age of despair. That constant fear swelled again from the pit of my stomach and tears stung my eyes.

“It is the key.” Hennan kept his gaze on the rune. “But we can’t see it or use it until the charm’s taken off.”

It sounded like madness. “With a shadow?”

“Yes.”

“Of a key?”

“Yes.”

“Christ.” I lay back, shoulders to the roughness of the wall. “You think any of this lot have a key?” I leant to the side and grabbed the ankle of the old man who’d collapsed to the floor. “You! You got a key?” I started laughing, too loud, the kind of laughter that hurts your chest and isn’t but a hair from sobbing.

• • •

There’s one thing to be said for sitting in a cell with absolutely nothing to do but keep what’s yours and nurse your hunger-it gives you time. Time to think, time to plan. Obviously to give the lie to this nonsense Kara had spun Hennan, or possibly prove it true, we needed someone with a key. The only someone likely to come down into the bowels of the prison was our friend Racso. So all we needed to do was to get the shadow of Racso’s key to fall across it, and we’d have our opportunity when he next unlocked the cell.

Racso wouldn’t be back until he felt like selling the debtors food and water, probably another twelve hours or so. I sat back against the wall and invited Hennan to tell me just how Snorri had managed to get them all locked up.

“And how the hell did you find them?”

• • •

And Hennan told me. The food supplies he had taken from the Roma Hall kitchens ran out after two days. Hungry and tired, he had managed to get a ride with an old couple visiting relatives in Hemero. The pair of ancients appeared to be taking all their worldly possessions with them in their cart but found room for the boy atop the heap. Hennan’s part of the bargain was to fetch and carry water, gather kindling, take the horses to pasture, and carry out miscellaneous chores. To me it sounded as if the old folks had taken pity on a strangely pale beggar boy. In any event the arrangement got him safely to within ten miles of the Florentine border.

Back roads took Hennan across the invisible line between the two kingdoms at a point without any guards to turn him away. He arrived sunburned and hungry in Umbertide, exhausting the last of the provisions that his ageing benefactors had sent him off with. Getting into the city had been an adventure of sewers and climbing, Umbertide having enough street children of its own without the soldiers at its gates letting any more in.

It wasn’t until Hennan had nearly finished the tale of his getting into Umbertide that I realized what the real problem was. The understanding struck as a cold contraction of the stomach and a sudden reluctance to ask the questions that needed answers.

I forced the words out. “How long ago did you get taken?”

Hennan frowned in the candle light. “I don’t know. Everything feels like forever down here and there’s no days.”

“Guess.”

“A couple of days before you came?”

That sinking feeling became something more savage as if some great hand were trying to pull me through the cell floor. I thought he’d been in the cell the whole time I’d been in Umbertide. “But you’re so thin. .”

“I’ve been living off rubbish and sleeping in the streets for. . weeks. Snorri didn’t come by road. Not at first. They took a boat down the river-”

“The Seleen?” The cunning bastards. They hadn’t trusted me to keep quiet about the key and knew the Red Queen would come after them. They’d done what northmen do. Taken to sea.

“Yes, they got a merchant to take them down the coast on his ship. Only they had problems and it took them a long time. They put in at some port on the Florentine coast and walked to Umbertide. I saw them coming through the Echo Gates. I used to sleep by there, up on a roof.”

“So you met up with them and. .”

“Soldiers took us a few hours later.”

“Soldiers?”

“Well, men in uniform anyway, with swords.”

“And what had you done?”

“Nothing. Kara got us a room and we’d gone to a tavern and Snorri got me something to eat. They were talking about how they would find Kelem once they reached his mines-Kara said they weren’t far off. And then the soldiers came. Snorri knocked some down and we barricaded ourselves into the room. And that’s when Kara convinced Snorri to let her hide the key. Snorri said. .” Hennan frowned again, as if trying to remember the exact words. “‘Hide it with the boy. He needs something to give them.’”

“Shit.” Not good. Not good at all.

“What? What’s wrong?” Hennan said, as if there weren’t already enough wrong for me to curse every time I opened my mouth.

“If they want the key they’ll be coming here soon enough.”

Hennan was all questions then, but for once I couldn’t think of any plausible lies and the truth was too ugly to share. When I thought that House Gold had held Snorri for weeks without coming to the debtors’ prison to question their other captives things had seemed less urgent. If they’ll wait three weeks then chances are they’ll wait another one, and another. My own questions spiralled in my skull, chased by inconvenient answers. Why would they capture Snorri if not for the key? What could be more dangerous in a city where locked vaults lay everywhere than a key that opened everything? Why would Snorri give the key to a child? Because when they came to question the boy Snorri needed to know Hennan had something to give them rather than be tortured for information he didn’t have. And the biggest question was how long-how long would the northmen hold out once the bankers stopped asking nicely and got out the hot irons? If it were me I’d be babbling out every secret I ever knew before they’d even got past harsh language. They’d had them three days. If they were asking questions the hard way then nobody could hold out much longer than that, not even Snorri.

Common sense said the bank was after the key and they’d be coming to my cell once they’d broken Snorri. Or, and the thought only increased my panic, once they’d broken Tuttugu, which would take far less time. Without the key I wasn’t ever getting out of this cell, except as a bag of bones destined for the back door. We needed to get out as soon as possible-now in fact. But until we had a key’s shadow we didn’t have a key, and without a key we could do nothing but hurry up and wait.

A whole day passed before Racso’s return-a day and a sleepless night in which each hour crawled and I sweated through every minute. I couldn’t imagine how either northman could be holding out so long under interrogation and each distant clunk of metal on metal had me sure that someone had come for Hennan. But in the end it was our jailer that came, with a new debtor in tow, fresh meat for the cells. Or rather a long-term debtor whose funds had finally run so low that she’d been judged ready for the final stop in her repayment plan. The gate should have been unlocked nearly a day earlier when a bag of bones named Artos Mantona died quietly in the middle of the floor, being too weak to keep his corner place. We shouted through the bars but if Racso heard he showed no inclination to remove the corpse, probably thinking a replacement would be along sooner or later and he’d kill two birds with one stone.

By the looks of some of the gaunt faces in the light of my flickering candle Artos might not be the only inmate waiting to be dragged away for the pigs by the time Racso deigned to unlock. One of the “heavies” I paid in apples to keep the starving masses off my back, a man bearing the unlikely name of Artemis Canoni, had taken a turn for the worse despite the improvement my arrival had wrought in his diet. I’d never seen a man go downhill so fast. He seemed to curl up about some hidden pain, growing smaller by the hour. Another fellow nursed a wet cough, not wet in the normal spluttery way, but in the ragged sound of his lungs and the bubbling corruption to be heard inside his straining chest. I kept away from him.

“Get back, you defaulting maggots!” Racso’s bellow always made me flinch, each utterance of it scoring the hate I had for him a little deeper. The debtors moved back from the bars as Racso’s baton rattled across them, the actual maggots stayed where they were, chewing on the ruins of Artos Mantona’s eyeballs with tiny mouths. “Back!”

Hennan and I stayed where we were, sitting around our candle, the latest in a line of them, now burned down to its last few inches. We’d positioned ourselves as close to the bars as we thought would be tolerated.

Behind Racso stood a middle-aged woman in grey rags, regarding us with horror. She looked gaunt rather than starved, and once among the other inmates she would seem almost healthy.

“Move that debtor beside the gate.” Racso nodded at Artos’s remains. “You there, stay close and roll him through.” He counted through his keys and approached the gate with the chunk of iron best suited to opening it. He held his lantern in the other hand, sending a confusion of shadows swinging this way and that, the pattern of the bars playing back and forth across the floor. I opened my hand to reveal the small rune in my palm, colder than it should be, heavier too.

“Come on, dammit.” A desperate mutter as I chased shadows, trying to catch them in my hand. There wasn’t any blasted shadow that looked like a key, just random blurs and the sweeping shadow of the bars.

“What you got there, yer worship?” Racso helped the woman in with a kindly shove between the shoulder blades. “Something to trade?” The old wreck he’d detailed to move Artos struggled to roll him through the gap. The rotten stink that went up made him retch over the body as he rolled it. “Something good?”

I stood up, holding my palm out toward him. The movement came too fast and, ever suspicious, he slammed the gate, turning the key in the lock. A few seconds earlier and Artos’s dead legs would have kept the gate from closing, but the old man had pushed them through just in time. What I would have done then I’m not sure. Certainly pitting my skull against Racso’s baton did not appeal. He looked to have the sullen strength possessed by many fat men with slab-like arms. Not a showy, muscular strength, just the killing kind.

“Easy, emperor! Nothing sudden. Nothing sudden!” He squinted at my hand as he withdrew the key. “Don’t look like much.”

“Take a closer look!” I stepped forward and he stepped back, lantern waving, key jutting at me as if to ward off attack. I’d tried too hard though, unnerved him, let the need show.

“You want to settle yourself, emperor, take it easy. Don’t let this place get to you. A little fasting will calm you down.” He turned away, evidently not taking food orders today.

I punched the bars in frustration. It didn’t help. Another night would see me falling asleep and spilling all my new secrets to Sageous.

“Wait!” Hennan’s high voice. “A silver crown. Crown argent of Red March!” He nudged me in the ribs, hard. Racso swivelled with considerable grace, pirouetting on a heel.

“Silver? I don’t think so. I’d’ve smelled out a silver.” He tapped his nose.

Hennan nudged me again and with great reluctance I drew one of the three silvers from the depths of my pocket, not the promised crown argent but a silver florin from the Central Bank’s own mint. A hungry gasp went up on all sides.

“Shut it!” Racso banged the bars, scowling at the inmates before returning his gaze to the florin. “Silver is it?” A peculiar greed stole over his face as if the coin were a pudding he were about to devour. “And what is it you’d be wanting, yer lordship? Meat? A good joint on the bone? Beef? A jug o’ gravy with it?”

“Just hold your lantern like so.” Hennan mimed the action. “And the door key, like so.” He held the one hand before the other. “And let the shadow fall onto Jalan’s palm.”

Racso frowned, his hands moving to obey even as he considered his objections. “Witchcraft is it? Some heathen thing of yours, boy?” He unclasped the key hoop on his belt and worked the largest of them free.

“He says it will bring us luck.” I shrugged, joining in. “Damned if I’m not tired enough of this place to want a bit of that. The key symbolizes freedom.”

“You following the north gods now, yer lordship?” Racso picked absently at his nose with the hand holding the key. “Don’t hardly seem Christian.”

“Just taking a gamble, Racso, just a gamble. I’ve been praying hard to Jesu and the Father since I got here and it hasn’t done a bit of good. Me the son of a cardinal and all! Thought I’d spread my bets.”

And just like that Racso held out the door-key, his lantern behind it, close enough and still enough for the shadow to fall on the floor. As Hennan surmised, everything’s for sale at the right price, and you won’t find many shadows that will earn you a silver florin.

I reached out with the rune at the middle of my palm and caught the shadow from the air, closing my hand about it. In one moment fingers closed about empty space and in the next they held Loki’s key, as cold, heavy, and solid as a lie.

In the same instant I tossed the florin between the bars and a hundred pairs of eyes followed its ringing progress. Racso scampered after it, dropping the door-key on the floor, beyond arm’s reach though that didn’t stop half a dozen of my cellmates stretching for it.

He tracked the coin down and stamped on it to halt its progress. “Now that weren’t right, debtor.” He called the ones closest to dying debtor, as if it excused everything happening to them. “Ain’t right to send a man running after a coin like he’s a street beggar. Not even for a silver.” He straightened, bit the coin, and crossed back toward us, the florin in his meaty fist. He barked a laugh at the arms withdrawing between the bars. “Take more’n a key to get out of Central Prison. I could open all eight of these gates and wouldn’t none of you maggots get halfway out. You’d need all these here.” He patted the ring at his hip, making the keys hooked upon it jangle. “And a sword-son to get past the guard. There’s close on a dozen standing between you lot and freedom.” He frowned over the arithmetic. “Six or seven anyway.”

Racso looked down at the coin in his palm, his face almost lit with the glow of it. “Easy money.” He laughed and slapped his belly, shadows swinging. “I’ll be back for the debtor.” He toed Artos’s corpse. “Got me some spending to do.” And off he walked, whistling his song of cool breezes and open fields.

I sat in my island of light, the candle flame guttering around its wick, Loki’s key in my hand, and in the thickness of the shadow on all sides desperate men muttered about silver coins.