The Hidden Coronet by Catherine Fisher
The door to the top room was open; breathless she walked straight in.
Talk stopped.
All the men sprawled about the room turned to stare at her. Each of them wore the black uniform of the Watch, and they smelled of beer and sweat.
Carys turned like lightning.
The man behind the door had already kicked it shut.
He grinned, showing black gaps between rotting teeth.
“Well!” he leered. “And who’s this then?”
The Circling
22
Obedience to seniority of rank will be complete and unquestioning.
Insubordination is not tolerated.
Rule of the Watch
NO ONE SAID ANYTHING.
Strange oily rain cascaded in sheets from the clifftop beyond the overhang. The Sekoi folded its long fingers and waited.
It was Raffi who exploded. “She wouldn’t! She’d never have gone back to them!”
“She’s never left,” the Sekoi said calmly. “The wanted list is an age-old ruse.” It flicked an anxious glance at Galen. “I’m sorry. I know you thought . . .”
“She rescued Galen from the Watch! And Sarres! She loves Sarres! She’d never betray it.” Raffi leaped up. He couldn’t bear this. “And she’s not even here to argue for herself. How could you leave her in some dream? She’ll die!”
“She won’t.” The creature grimaced. “And I left her because I will not risk taking her to the Circling.”
Raffi gave a hiss of disgust. He walked to the edge of the overhang and stared angrily out into the crashing rain.
Still Galen had not spoken. He looked bleak.
Solon said hesitantly, “Of course I did not know her as well as you. She always seemed . . . astute.”
“As sharp as a needle,” Marco muttered. “I always suspected there was no way out of the Watch.” He folded his arms. “Still. At least now you know it wasn’t me.”
Galen ignored him.
“It is Sarres I mourn most.” Solon rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. “The Watch riding in there . . .”
“They won’t.” Galen’s voice was harsh, but Raffi was relieved to hear it. Thunder rumbled over the wood below, a long crumpling roar, startlingly loud.
“But . . .”
“They won’t. Sarres is not a place but a state of belief. No one can find it without faith.”
“I did,” Marco observed, sucking a tattooed knuckle.
Galen didn’t bother to answer. He got up and went over to Raffi and stood behind him, looking out into the storm.
“It’s not true,” Raffi whispered. “We’d have known.”
“Not if the Margrave controlled her,” Galen said bleakly. “She may not even have known herself.”
Raffi turned, horrified. “Some sort of mind-link?”
“It must be. We didn’t know. And the Margrave has the power of Kest in him. Who knows what sort of abilities he has. She left no messages, talked to no one. How else could she have done it, Raffi?”
“It wasn’t her.” Stubborn, Raffi turned back to the rain.
He wouldn’t let himself think that it was.
CARYS STARED DOWN AT the grinning face. She knew at once that if she showed the slightest fear she was finished.
“Get on your feet when you address me,” she snarled.
The Watchman didn’t move. His grin flickered, then widened. “The girlie’s got a temper! Why should I?”
“Because soon I’ll have you hanging by your thumbs in Maar for blowing the biggest undercover operation since Tasceron!” She whirled around. “Who’s in charge?”
A gray-haired man took a bite from a marsh-pear. “I am. And—”
“Shut up and listen. I need a horse and I need it now.” She tugged the insignia off her neck and tossed it to him; he had to scramble up to catch it. “Carys Arrin. Five forty-seven Marn Mountain. Priority Bulletin twenty-six/page nine hundred, dated two weeks ago. Remember it?”
Something changed in his face. “I might.”
She walked right up to him, furious. “You should. You’re the patrol that’s been following us. Right?”
He nodded slowly. “But you’re on the list. You’re supposed to be—”
“Flainsteeth, do I have to spell it out?” she hissed. “I’m in Harn’s group posing as a renegade agent. How else do you think the information’s getting out!”
He glanced over her shoulder. She heard the others getting hurriedly up and felt suddenly exhilarated. She was enjoying this, she realized. At last it was something she knew how to handle.
She snatched the insignia back from his hand. “I need to get back to them before they get to the Coronet.” Pushing past him, she helped herself from the Watch rations on the table, shoving food into her pockets.
“Where are they headed?” he asked, too casually. Carys laughed, scornful. “And you think I’m telling you! My orders are to report straight to Maar. No one else.”
“Told you that would be it,” one of the others muttered.
She turned on him. “What?”
“How Maar knew so fast. We couldn’t work it out. Thought it might be the fur-face, doing some kind of mind-talk. Those beasts have all sorts of tricks.” He looked at her curiously. “How do you do it?”
“That’s my secret. What are your orders?”
“Follow Harn’s group, but stay well back,” the sergeant said. “And neutralize this place.” He looked at her, and his scrutiny was hard and uncertain. “So why aren’t you still with them?”
“The Sekoi suspected me. I had to deal with it.” She prayed they hadn’t come across the creature, but the Watchsergeant just nodded.
“At Arreto there were only the keepers. But won’t they . . .”
“Not if I catch up to them.” She turned abruptly and marched straight to the door. “I want the best horse. And get this scum out of the way.”
The black-toothed man spread his hands. “No hard feelings,” he said with a grin.
Carys looked at him narrowly. “What’s your number?” she said, cold.
His face went white. “Six oh four. Sor Lake.”
She nodded. “I’ll remember that.”
At the bottom of the stairs the fog was thicker, but when they brought the horse she climbed on and turned it quickly. “They were well gone when you got here?”
The Watchsergeant nodded. “Tracks go west. Into Sekoi country.”
She nodded. Without a word she urged the horse on and galloped into the fog.
Five minutes later, hands shaking, she had to stop. For a moment weariness washed over her, a shuddering relief that drained her of all energy, so that she crouched low and breathed deep, dragging the sour smog into the back of her throat.
Then she pushed the hair off her face and listened.
Behind her, glass was being smashed.
Pane after pane of it.
RAFFI HAD NEVER BEEN SO DEEP into Sekoi country. He trudged wearily after Galen, watching the keeper’s stick stab the sodden red soil. The weather deteriorated now with astonishing speed; crashing rain drifting into an acid, stinging snow, then into squalls of howling wind with bizarre airborne showers of small, brown toad-like creatures that he had never seen before. A while ago a flash flood had roared down the valley, sweeping broken trees and even boulders along in its torrent. Now the night was dry and icy and there was a faint tang of fog in his throat.
There were no birds, few animals. Everything was hiding. He had never sensed a land so cowed.
They walked, silent; Galen was too morose or too deep in prayer to speak and whenever Marco ventured some comment he ignored it.
“And everything I say just makes things worse,” Solon had muttered mournfully during a pause to drink. He flexed his scarred fingers, pouring water over the dirt on them and rubbing it anxiously. “I am deeply sorry about Carys, Raffi. It must be hard for you. You were good friends.”
Raffi looked sick. “It wasn’t her.”
Behind them, Marco laughed. “You talked to me.”
“And you to me, old friend.” Solon turned, passing the water flask. “In the end we have to trust each other. That’s the only thing that will outwit them.” He put his hand up to the awen-beads that were gone, his fingers searching for them absently. “Dear God, what dark times those were. What horrors we endured . . .”
Marco lowered the flask. “Don’t,” he said sharply. “Stop thinking of it.” He caught Solon’s wrist and pulled it down. “It’s over. All over.”
For a moment they looked at each other. Raffi glimpsed a shared despair, a sudden pitful of shame and terror that he jerked back from, embarrassed and hot.
“It’ll never happen again,” Marco said firmly.
“My son.” Solon put both his hands on the other man’s shoulders. “We both know very well that it might. If they capture us, we will pay for our escape.”
Now, watching Solon climb wearily out of the trees, Raffi wondered where Carys was, in what fog of nightmare. And under it all ran his old terror of the Watch, the clang of the prison door, the agony of tiny worms burrowing into the flesh . . . he shuddered, so that Galen turned.
“Raffi?” he said. “Come and see this.”
Raffi walked up to the brow of the hill, and stared down.
23
“In fact, we have no rulers as such. The Council of Seven are called the Karamax; each member is chosen by its tribe. They stay aloof from the Starmen. We find an air of mystery can be useful to baffle the curious. We have worked hard to make the Watch take no account of us. ”
Words of a Sekoi Karamax.
Recorded by Kallebran.
BELOW THEM LAY AN ENORMOUS CAMP. It was vast; a town pitched in a hollow, made of thousands of tents and pavilions and awnings and rickety booths, all shapes and colors, the small red fires brilliant in the cloudy glimmer of four moons.
The Sekoi stopped and folded its arms.
“There must be millions here!” Solon stared down in consternation. “Surely all your tribes? This is like a migration.”
“Almost all.” The slits in the creature’s eyes were black and narrow. It turned. “Now listen to me, keepers. I’ve brought you here because the Watch must be shaken off and because my people may know something to help our search. I cannot promise that, but it may be.” It smiled complacently. “So I will do all the speaking here. You, Galen, would be far too impatient. And your sense-lines, I think, will not help you.”
They knew that already. Of all the great host in front of them, Raffi had not the ghost of a feeling. The sense-lines told him the land was empty. It was a terrible deception. It made him feel blind.
Galen nodded, tying his black hair back. “You know best. But we should hurry.”
They scrambled down among the outlying booths. Sekoi of all colors wandered out to stare at them, tall and starved-looking in the flame light and shadows, the silken gaudy fabrics of their tents flapping in the wind. As they threaded deeper into the vast encampment, Raffi wondered where the children were. You never saw any. The Sekoi hid them as carefully as their gold.
Awnings rose above them now; great rippling hangings of precious satins brilliantly colored, gold and turquoise and purple. In front of each tent was a tall pole, painted with stripes and odd angular signs that might be letters, running downwards. Bells hung here and there, chiming softly as the wind stirred them. Above all there were the owls, hundreds of them; gray owls and long-eared, ice-owls and three-toed—even ink-owls, perched everywhere, on tent pegs, on wooden rails, or just swooping in out of the dark, silent as moths under the tassels and silks.
The Sekoi walked ahead and Galen followed, nearly as tall, his dark coat making him a gaunt shadow among the fires. The camp smelled of trodden grass and smoke. It was crowded but strangely quiet. Solon looked around at the watching faces in avid curiosity, but Marco seemed oddly intimidated; he carried his crossbow, even unloaded, as if it were some comfort.
“Are you sure this isn’t some sort of trap?” he muttered, glancing back.
Solon smiled kindly at him. “Nervous, my son?”
“Holiness, I’m scared stiff. There are thousands of them.”
“They want nothing from us.”
“Gold.” Marco nursed the bow. “They’d do anything for gold. Mind you”—he grinned at Raffi—“so would I.”
Raffi didn’t smile. “So how much will you get for the Coronet?” he asked sourly.
Marco stared, his grin fading. After a moment he said, “That was hard, Raffi. You’re getting like your master.”
Raffi felt a flicker of shame. Until he remembered Carys. “She’s not the spy,” he said sullenly. “So who’s left?”
The bald man had no time to retort. They had come to an enormous pavilion, the biggest structure in the maze of silks by far. It was made of some deep crimson fabric, and all its sides hung in elaborate folded shapes, rising to three high pinnacles where owls perched silent under rippling pennants.
The Sekoi turned. “Leave everything outside. Especially that bow.”
Galen tossed the stick and pack down. Raffi did the same. Marco looked distinctly rebellious.
“Come on, old friend,” Solon murmured. “No one will threaten us.”
“You’d better be right.” Marco dumped the bow ungraciously. “This lot scare me more than the Watch.”
Galen glared at him darkly. “Maybe you should stay outside.” It was the first time he had spoken to Marco since the observatory.
The bald man shook his head. “Oh no. You don’t lose me that easily.”
The Sekoi gave an impatient mew. “We’re late. This way.”
It led them inside.
The first thing that struck Raffi was the scent. It was so sweet, a delicious sweetness of honey or sugared cakes. They walked on luxurious woven rugs and soft carpets that silenced their tread. Around them the walls and high ceiling rippled crimson. Small lamps sputtered on bronze stands; on a rail in the very center of the room an ancient gray owl slumbered, one eye slitted to watch them come.
“No one here,” Marco whispered.
“Yes there is.” The Sekoi said something to the owl in the Tongue. It hooted, long and low, and with a speed that startled Raffi, its wings opened and it swooped soundlessly out through an opening in the roof.
“Sit down,” the Sekoi said graciously.
There were cushions, thick and glossy. Solon sank among them in relief. “What luxury. And what happens now?”
“Food.” The Sekoi winked at Raffi. “We’re a hospitable race.”
When it came it was fruit, as he’d known it would be, but huge bowls of it, carried by an immensely strong Sekoi with pure white fur, its eyes amber and curious. Raffi was too hungry to wait; he ate berries and apples and the delicious soft flesh of the mavros eagerly, and drank the pale sherbet waters with Solon, debating about which was the best. Galen picked at the fruit, watching Marco, who said nothing and prowled uneasily.
Until the Karamax walked in.
There were seven of them, all tall and all masked. The masks were elaborate, covering the upper half of the face, made of satin and adorned with bizarre slashes of gold, with feathers and strange painted symbols. The eyes of the creatures behind them were amber and gold.
Galen went to move but the Sekoi glared at him and stood up, a tall, elegant figure. It began to speak urgently in the Tongue, its long fingers gesturing, and the seven Karamax sat on the cushions listening, their eyes flickering to the Starmen.
It bothered Raffi that he could feel nothing of them. He had grown to depend
The story took a long time. Finally the Sekoi fell silent.
The Karamax gazed at each other. Then the tallest, a red-furred creature dressed in yellow and blue, stood up. Its voice was female, and it spoke so they could all understand. “We have relived this tale with interest. We welcome you, keepers, and share our sorrows for your losses. Your enemies are our enemies. However, I fear there is little we can do except give you shelter. This relic our friend speaks of is unknown to us and we have no interest in such devices. The Makers’ power we acknowledge freely, but they are not our Makers . . .”
Galen leaped up, irritated. “Are you sure?” His voice was bitter with disappointment.
The Sekoi waved him back, alarmed. The Karamax seemed to stiffen.
“We have had this argument before,” the red-furred one said gently. “The Makers . . .”
Galen waved impatiently. “Not that! Are you sure you know nothing of the Coronet? Surely, in one of your many stories . . .”
“Nothing.”
Solon was on his feet too. “This is bitterly disappointing for us.”
“I know it. And for us too the weather is a cause of much disquiet,” the Karamax said smoothly, “but . . .” It stopped.
Outside the door-curtain loud voices were raised, one insistent, others angry. Suddenly the curtain was twitched aside, and two huge Sekoi marched in. Between them, struggling and furious, was a girl with soaked hair, the red dye almost washed out of it.
“Carys!” Raffi leaped up in delight.
The Sekoi gave a snarl of wrath. “You!”
“Yes, me!” She grinned at it, triumphant. “I told you no cage would hold me. I suppose they’ve already given you their excuses, Galen? Tried to fob you off with a pack of lies?”
He came forward and caught her arm. “What are you talking about, Carys?”
She laughed, scornful, shaking free of the sentinels. “Don’t you see? The Coronet is gold, isn’t it? Gold! So they’ve got it. It’s part of their Great Hoard, Galen, probably the most precious part. The Sekoi have the Coronet. They’ve had it for centuries.”