The Silver Door

4 - The Tower

Thunderstruck, Rye turned quickly to Sonia. Her expression was a strange mixture of nervousness and defiance. Her hair hung in tangled rats’ tails around her face, and her clothes were little more than rags. The contrast between her and the elegant young woman standing stiffly by the harp was absurd, but Rye had no urge to smile.

He felt fearful, and deeply embarrassed. According to the kitchen workers, the Warden’s daughter led a lonely life. No doubt it had amused her to befriend an unruly Keep orphan who made a habit of scrambling through the chimney system and who could bring her gossip and news. But this did not mean that Sonia’s rough companions were welcome here, in her private space. And it certainly did not mean that she was willing to risk hiding them from her father. ‘Nocki, this is Rye,’ Sonia chattered, pulling Rye forward. ‘He was the volunteer who took me through the Wall. Behind him are Faene D’Or, and Rye’s brother Dirk, who we rescued on the other side.’

As Faene and Dirk scrambled up, pulling the sooty masks from their faces, their hostess pressed her lips together and curtseyed, very briefly, with a rustle of silken skirts.

‘Faene—Rye—Dirk—’ Sonia went on in a high voice, ‘this is Annocki, the Warden’s daughter.’

Dirk swore under his breath. Faene snatched off her cap and raised her chin before returning Annocki’s curtsey. No doubt she was telling herself that she was the daughter of chiefs of Fleet, and need not feel cowed by anyone, however she was dressed.

Annocki shook her head. ‘Oh, Sonia,’ she sighed. ‘What am I to do with you?’

And such was the rueful affection in her voice that Rye’s feelings did an abrupt somersault, and he felt a flicker of hope.

‘Just trust me, Nocki!’ Sonia said breathlessly. ‘I know this is hard for you, but there was nothing else to be done. We need food, and a place to sleep tonight. Then Faene will have to stay here in hiding, while Dirk, Rye and I go back—’

‘Sonia!’ Annocki cut in sharply.

Sonia fell silent, biting her lip. Rye met Dirk’s eyes, and quickly looked away again.

Annocki clasped her hands tightly, and took a deep breath.

‘Be still, Sonia, just for a moment,’ she went on in a calmer voice. ‘You have taken me completely by surprise. I have been very worried about you. I have hardly slept since you left. And now, suddenly, you come back, bringing three strangers with you, and—’

‘Indeed, we did not mean to intrude on your privacy, lady,’ Faene broke in, bright colour rising in her golden cheeks. ‘We had no idea Sonia was bringing us to you. Please do not trouble yourself—about me, at least. I am sure that Dirk can find me somewhere else to stay.’

Annocki blinked at her, clearly unable to believe that this well-spoken young woman was one of the crude, cruel barbarians she had been taught to fear.

Then suddenly she seemed to pull herself together. She moved quickly forward, and held out her hand to Faene.

‘Forgive me,’ she said, suddenly sounding far more human. ‘I did not mean to seem unwelcoming. My quarrel is only with Sonia, and I have become used to speaking to her very freely. We began as mistress and maid—’

‘Lady-in-waiting, if you please!’ Sonia protested.

Annocki sighed. ‘Lady-in-waiting, then. But that was a long time ago, and now we are like sisters despite the differences between us.’

‘Nocki has tried to civilise me, but I fear she has failed,’ Sonia said smugly.

‘So we have noticed,’ Dirk muttered.

Faene hesitated, then put out her own hand and allowed Annocki to take it.

‘I have known Sonia for days, not years,’ she said steadily, ‘but in that time she has been a true friend to me. I well understand what you have suffered, thinking you had lost her.’

‘I am sorry, Nocki—sorry you have been worried, I mean,’ Sonia put in. ‘But you knew I was determined to get through the Wall this time.’

‘Indeed.’ Annocki smiled wryly. ‘But I thought you would fail, as you have failed so often before. None of the other volunteers agreed to take you.’

‘No,’ Sonia said, with a resentful glance at Dirk, ‘but luckily Rye was different.’

‘Only because you blackmailed me,’ Rye retorted, feeling his face grow hot.

Sonia shrugged. ‘It had to be done. No one noticed that I was gone, did they, Nocki?’

Annocki shook her head. ‘As far as anyone knows, you have been here all along. I have tried my best to give that impression, and no one has challenged me.’

No one would dare, Rye thought, looking sideways at the young woman’s proud, closed face. Annocki was very tense, he could feel it, and she continually avoided her visitors’ eyes. He wondered uneasily how far she could be trusted.

Dirk was plainly wondering the same thing. He was looking warily around the room, very much on the alert.

Everyone jumped as there was a blare of trumpets from somewhere below. In a flash, Dirk had darted to the window and was looking down. Faene and Rye hurried to join him.

‘It is nothing—only the changing of the guard,’ Sonia said, raising her voice slightly as drums began to beat, making the panes of the window rattle. ‘It happens at this time every day.’

In the courtyard below, Keep soldiers were marching in a complicated pattern, the white feathers on their helmets bobbing. To one side, a small, plump figure in a plumed hat sat stiffly on a bored-looking black horse laden with red and gold trappings.

Rye fidgeted. He knew that if he had seen this fine spectacle a few days ago, when he first came to the Keep, he would have found it very impressive. He would have gazed at it in awe, as the citizens ringing the courtyard were doing at this moment.

But his time beyond the Wall had changed him, it seemed. All he felt now was a vague distaste. From above, the scene was almost comical. The soldiers looked like wind-up toys. The Warden looked like a doll stuffed with straw—a doll in a silly hat.

‘I had forgotten,’ Dirk muttered, his eyes hard as he stared down. ‘I saw this ceremony when I first came here. The soldiers train for it, I was told, every morning six days a week. By the Wall, why do they bother? They might as well be folk dancing for all the good it does for Weld.’

Rye glanced over his shoulder at Annocki. She was frowning, but whether this was because she resented Dirk’s criticism or because she agreed with it, he could not tell.

Turning back to the window, he raised his eyes and looked over the courtyard to the city beyond. The view was strangely pale, as if it had been painted with inks that were too watery. Stubby trees dotted the edges of flat, straight roads. Squat little houses lined the roads as far as the eye could see, with frequent sad gaps, like missing teeth, where skimmers had struck.

Rye suddenly understood how Sonia could have once mistaken a goat shelter for a house in the land beyond the golden Door. Looking down from this high tower, everything looked hunched, dull and small.

Everything except the Wall. A towering, brooding presence, the Wall rose into the hazy sky, dwarfing everything within it, spreading like giant wings from both sides of the Keep and disappearing into the distance. Close beside it, raw and ugly, ran the trench from which the clay for new bricks was dug.

Workers wearing bright yellow harnesses swarmed over the lower half of the Wall. The safety ropes netting the sheer clay surface trailed one minute and tightened the next as the men went about their work, mending and replacing, thickening and smoothing, busy and diligent as bees.

Rye saw Faene rub the pane in front of her with her sleeve. She could not understand why everything looked so dim. She thought the window was clouded. Dirk was glancing at her uneasily. Perhaps he, too, was seeing his home with new eyes, and wondering if Faene of Fleet would ever be truly happy shut away inside the Wall.

Very unsettled, Rye turned away. And it was then he realised that Sonia and Annocki were whispering furiously at one another behind his back.

‘Sonia, you ask too much!’ he heard Annocki hiss. ‘You cannot expect me to—’

‘Do not fuss, Nocki!’

‘Fuss? Sonia, you are impossible! Can you not consider my feelings for one moment? Put yourself in my position!’

And abruptly Rye remembered just what that position was. The Warden had promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to any volunteer who succeeded in saving Weld. Annocki was to have no choice in the matter. She was just part of the prize.

How she must have loathed seeing the volunteers streaming into the Keep when the Warden’s notices about the quest first went up all over the city. How she must have cringed to think that one of these men was to be her husband whether she liked it or not—and even if he did not want her.

She was no doubt sickened by the very sight of Rye and Dirk, let alone by the idea of helping them. And as for Faene, the barbarian beauty Dirk so plainly loved …

‘It will not be for long, Nocki!’ Sonia whispered. ‘Rye, Dirk and I will leave again in the morning, and with luck I will be back very soon, to give you the best of news, and the Warden the shock of his life!’

Annocki shook her head. Her eyes were bleak.

‘My good, brave friend, you are dreaming. If the Enemy sending the skimmers can be destroyed, surely it will be this Dirk, or someone like him, who will do it. Not you.’

Sonia lifted her chin. ‘It will be me,’ she said. ‘I know it seems strange, but somehow I feel even more certain of that now. Rye and Dirk will be my witnesses—and perhaps their brother, Sholto, too. The Warden will not be able to deny me.’

Her face seemed lit from within. Her eyes were glittering green.

And at that moment Rye realised at last what was driving Sonia to risk the perils of the world outside the Wall. It had nothing to do with gaining glory for herself. She was doing it for Annocki—to save Annocki from the selfish whims of the Warden once and for all.

‘Have faith, Nocki,’ Sonia urged. ‘Just a little longer.’

Annocki bowed her head. ‘I will try. But Sonia, I fear for you! And it is not just because the land of the barbarians is so dangerous. It is … Oh, I do not know how to explain it! You have been away only a few days, but I feel a change in you.’

‘A change?’ Sonia stared at her.

Annocki nodded. ‘I cannot put my finger on the difference. But you seem more … more alive, somehow.’ She shrugged in embarrassment. ‘It makes no sense.’

‘It does!’ Sonia seized her friend’s hands. ‘I feel more alive, Nocki. It is as if my blood has become richer, and is running faster through my veins. I thought I was imagining it, but if you sense it too …’

Annocki looked troubled. ‘I fear you thrive on danger, Sonia. And if that is so—’

‘No.’ Sonia shook her head. ‘It is the place! Everything is so big and bright! The sky is huge, and as blue as—as that!’

She pointed to a little blue pottery horse on Annocki’s worktable, and laughed as her friend looked disbelieving.

‘Truly!’ she insisted. ‘You can breathe out there, Nocki!’

‘You can die out there also, Sonia,’ Annocki said grimly.

Sonia paused, biting her lip. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But somehow … it is worth it.’

Much later, long after the diamond window had been closely shuttered, Rye lay on a mass of cushions with Dirk by his side, trying to will himself to sleep.

He had bathed luxuriously in a great tub with taps that gushed streams of steaming water. The cushions were soft beneath him. Most important of all, his stomach was pleasantly full. Annocki had eaten little, and Faene had refused food and gone early to bed, but he, Sonia and Dirk had picked the loaded dinner tray clean.

Sleep should have come easily, but Rye’s mind would not rest. As soon as they were alone Dirk had seized the chance to try to persuade him to stay in Weld on the morrow. Rye’s determination had not been shaken, but he hated disagreeing with Dirk. The argument had unsettled him.

And that was not all.

How fantastic and unreal the stories of their adventures beyond the golden Door had seemed, when told to the Warden’s daughter in this rich, closed room!

How confusing it was, to be back in Weld yet not to feel the old sense of home!

How hard it had been to hear his mother’s quiet voice at the door, when she came with the dinner tray, and not be able to call out to her, or see her face to face!

And most of all, how nightmarish it was to lie for the first time in days sweating and stifled in a hot, sealed room, listening to the hideous, flapping, scrabbling rush of skimmers flying in their thousands over the Wall of Weld.