Moonlight and Ashes Page 9

  ‘Didn’t you hear me, girl? Empty your pockets,’ said the Mancer roughly, and I realised with a start that they were all waiting for me, for the other girl must have already done as she was told. I rummaged feverishly in my pockets, pulling out their meagre contents: my old mittens, a twist of coloured paper, an apple core and the stub of a pencil. In my agitation I dropped the pencil and had to scrabble for it under the impatient glare of the Mancers and the guards. I put the pencil in the bowl with the other things, trying hard not to stare at what lay there amongst the nest of other people’s belongings. A locket – a small, green, enamelled heart-shaped locket. It looked exactly like mine, the one Maria had given me, the one I’d lost at the ball . . .

  My head whirled. How had my locket got there? But wait. Wait. How did I even know it was mine? How many of those cheap little lockets had been sold, I told myself, wildly. You could buy them at any fair. And the night-fair had just been held. There was sure to have been a stall selling that kind of thing. Someone could have bought one and then been arrested by the Mancers. No, it couldn’t be mine.

  Through the doorway was yet another door, wooden this time, then a grille gate, which was unlocked by a large warder who loomed out of the gloom with a bunch of keys. He’d clearly emerged from having his dinner, for the napkin with which he’d just wiped his mouth hung out of his pocket. As we passed the open door to his quarters, a little boy stuck his head out and looked at us briefly before being called back in by a woman’s voice. He was a small, fair child of about seven, with bright, pitiless eyes. His glance was the same kind an ordinary small boy might give a fascinating insect.

  We walked on, through another grille, and finally down a corridor lined, at regular intervals, by cell doors. Everything was neat and clean, with none of the noise and stink of the police station cells, but there was a feeling here that almost made me look back on that cell with nostalgia. For you knew there were people here, behind those thick metal doors; but there wasn’t a sound. Not even a whisper. It was quiet as a graveyard, but not as peaceful for it was a place where the very air seemed to breathe living despair.

  We descended a winding stone staircase which twisted into darkness, and down another corridor, where the old Mancer stopped. He gestured for the warder to unlock the door and waved us in.

  The cell was small and damp but it was empty at least. There was straw strewn on the stone floor and a couple of grey blankets and a bucket in one corner. Air came in through a small, barred window high above our heads, and though that air was a little stale, it was better than that suffocating compartment in the carriage, which was what I’d feared these cells might be more like. For some reason I had the impression that this wasn’t the kind of cell you’d put a really dangerous person in, which made my heart lift a little, and that impression was confirmed by the elderly Mancer’s words to us as he left the cell. ‘You’ll be fetched first thing tomorrow morning,’ he had said, and then he went out without looking back. The door was slammed shut and locked behind him, and we were alone at last.

  I looked over at the other girl. She was sitting in the same dejected position she had been in at the holding cell – her knees drawn up to her chin with her head resting on them. She looked as though she’d given up already.

  I hadn’t, though. No way was I just going to meekly give up and go like a lamb to the slaughter. I paced around the cell looking for any way to escape. I tried the door and, of course, found it to be thoroughly locked and immovable. I looked up at the narrow window high above us and thought if I could somehow take a flying leap up to it, I might be able to – what, exactly? Turn myself into a snake and slither out through the narrow bars? Or a bird and fly out of the window? I rapped on the thick walls, only succeeding in scraping my knuckles. I lifted up the straw to look for a grate in the floor underneath, finding nothing but the tightly packed flagstones with not a chink between them.

  It was as I was replacing the straw that the other girl spoke for the first time.

  ‘I take for you.’ Her voice was low, a little raspy, with a strong foreign intonation.

  I started and turned around to find her looking at me, her green eyes quite unreadable. Weakly, I said, ‘What did you say?’

  She shrugged and held out a hand, in which something small and green and heart-shaped glittered. I stared, unable to believe my eyes. I stammered, ‘Wh– what? How?’

  ‘I see in your eyes you like this. So I take when they not watching,’ she said, flashing a little smile.

  It must have happened when I dropped the pencil, I thought. She must have been very fast because I’d noticed nothing. Some thief, indeed! ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You kind to me. I want to repay.’

  I took the locket and slipped it in my pocket. I said, ‘You’re different. From before, I mean.’

  She smiled. ‘I think if they think I am meek and scared, they not watch me too much.’

  I smiled back. ‘Good plan. Pity you forgot about it in the police cell.’

  She shrugged. ‘Make no difference. They come get me anyway. And I too hungry,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but if you hadn’t done that –’

  ‘I know. You not here,’ she said, her green eyes shooting me a sharp glance. ‘I am sorry. This also why I want repay.’

  I made up my mind and put out a hand. ‘I’m Selena. And you are?’

  ‘I am called Olga,’ she answered promptly, shaking my hand. ‘Olga of the family Ironheart.’

  An unusual name – obviously foreign. I wanted to ask why the Mancers had taken her, but she forestalled me by saying, with a sideways glance, ‘You hear of garwaf?’

  ‘I don’t under–’ I began, then gasped as I realised what she’d said. Her pronunciation was unfamiliar but I’d seen that word before in one of my mother’s old books. I could see the actual line swimming in front of my eyes: Garwaf: an old term for a werewolf.

  ‘You – you can’t be . . .’ I whispered.

  It wasn’t possible, it just wasn’t. Werewolves and other shapeshifters had been extinct in the Faustine Empire for more than a hundred years since the defeat of the Grey Widow. They still existed in other countries, of course, especially Ruvenya, but even there I’d heard they weren’t exactly thick on the ground. They lived isolated from ordinary people and kept to themselves except in rare circumstances. They had very few children. And they most certainly couldn’t get visas to enter the empire. I could not even remember hearing any rumours of werewolves entering our lands within my lifetime.

  All these thoughts flashed in my head as I stared at Olga Ironheart – at the sharp green eyes, the tangled black hair, the long nails and scrawny body, and remembered the flash of sharp white teeth when she’d smiled. I knew in an instant that the impossible had happened and that I was shut up in a Mancer cell with a werewolf – with a hungry werewolf.

  She read my expression at once and said, sounding hurt, ‘You mistake, Selena. Family Ironheart never eat people and never, ever hurt friend.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean, that is, I . . . it’s just a shock,’ I said lamely. ‘I never expected ever to meet – I mean, I know nothing really about your people. Only the little I’ve read in books. I thought your people weren’t allowed to come here?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not allowed does not mean not possible. They cannot guard whole border always.’ She paused. ‘Family Ironheart from Ruvenya, you see. But long, long, long ago my great, great, great grandmother, when she young, she come from here. She flee your country when great killing going on. My great, great, great grandfather – he find her in forest near border. She nearly dead, he nurse her until she well and then they marry. You see?’

  ‘I do.’ It must have been after the Grey Widow’s rebellion, I thought, with a strange flutter of the heart. Oh, Olga Ironheart, you and I share more than you know! But I could not tell her – dared
not tell her – that in my veins flowed the blood of the moon-sisters, who were outlaws like the garwafs, but in a worse situation, for werewolves had always existed in all kinds of places, while moon-sisters were indigenous to Ashbergia and had never settled elsewhere. And even though Olga had entered the country illegally, her government might help her if they found out where she was. But if the Mancers discovered the truth about me, nobody would help me. I’d be branded a traitor merely by virtue of my blood, and be made to disappear.

  I said quietly, ‘Ashberg’s a dangerous place for someone like you. You were bound to get caught.’

  She shrugged. ‘I did not think this would happen. I slip in unnoticed. And I have money. Plan to be careful. But my money, it all stolen in hotel and I am starving and take food from shop – and then am arrested. I think at first police not know truth about me. But somehow Mancers find out.’

  ‘But why did you come in the first place?’

  ‘I am curious to see this country, home of my long-ago grandmother.’

  Simple as that, yet utterly reckless, I thought. How could she think she’d pass unnoticed? But then she was Ruvenyan and werewolves were not outlawed there; she mustn’t have fully realised what danger she was really in. ‘The Mancers,’ I said, ‘I’m sure they have ways of finding out if a shapeshifter is in the country illegally.’

  She nodded. ‘I know this now. And I very careful but, well, once it is full moon and I go to hills and . . .’ She broke off, looking a bit embarrassed, and I suddenly remembered hearing a wolf howling that moonlit night I’d planted the hazel tree. How strange if that had been Olga in her wolf-shape roaming the hills behind the city!

  ‘Oh my God!’ I exclaimed, as another image burst in on me – something also from that night.

  ‘What is it?’ Olga said anxiously, as I feverishly fumbled for the locket in my pocket. Please, please let it be mine. If it was indeed mine, then there would be . . . With trembling fingers, I sprang open the catch of the locket and only just stopped myself from giving a cry of delight – for in it lay the hazel leaf. It looked just as fresh and green as the minute I had placed it in the locket, when I’d found it in my hair, after that vivid ‘dream’ I’d had of dancing in the moonlight!

  ‘Olga, we’re saved! We’re saved!’ I said wildly. ‘Oh, we’re saved!’

  She looked at me as though I were mad.

  ‘It’s not what it seems,’ I gabbled. ‘It’s from a magic tree which grants wishes . . .’

  Olga’s eyes widened. ‘Wishes? Magic? You are witch?’

  ‘It’s not like that. It’s . . . Look, I’ll explain later, it’ll take too much time otherwise. Anyway, what matters is that the leaf can turn into something else – something we want.’

  ‘We want get out,’ she said promptly. ‘So you can wish for prison key, yes?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said hesitantly. ‘But I’m not sure if –’

  ‘You try,’ she said bossily. ‘You ask for escape from here. Not to forget me, please.’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’ I held the leaf and closed my eyes. Come on, dear hazel tree, I thought desperately. Please help me, just this last time, please. Make the leaf turn into a master key or a flying carpet or sticks of dynamite or anything that will get us out of here!

  Nothing happened at first and then quite suddenly I felt the leaf give a little skip and become heavier. I opened my eyes and there in my hand was not a key but a top – one of those little toys you set spinning. It was shiny and green and new but there was no getting around it; it was a top and about as much use at opening locked doors and helping us out through barred windows as, well, a leaf.

  The disappointment was crushing. I really had expected a miraculous escape. Instead I’d been given one of the hazel tree’s little jokes, like the handkerchief it had given me that first time. Only this was much more serious, for metaphorically speaking I was in very hot water and I would be boiled alive come morning when the Mancers came to fetch us for the interrogation. I looked at Olga and, throwing the top on the straw, said, bleakly, ‘I am so sorry.’

  Olga shot me a look. Then she picked up the top and stood looking at it, examining it closely. She said, ‘Maybe if you spin, wish comes true?’

  I shrugged. ‘I doubt it, useless thing.’

  But she set it spinning anyway. It spun better than any top I’d ever seen, flashing brightly so that your eye was drawn to it. At its fastest, it began to whistle so musically that it sounded like a tune. Then suddenly a flap on its side opened and out popped a little yellow toy bird on a spring. I held my breath, my palms prickling with excitement – but then the little bird popped back in, the flap closed, the whistling stopped, the top slowed down, down, down and then stopped completely.

  Olga and I looked at each other. ‘So that’s no good either,’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘Me, I do not know magic. It is you who is witch –’

  ‘I am not a witch!’ I said crossly. ‘I have no idea how to make magic work. It does just as it wants and I . . . Wait a moment.’ I had been angrily scuffing my shoes at the place where the top had been spinning when my eye had been caught by something – a crack through which I could see a chink of light . . .

  I scraped the bits of straw off the place to reveal the flagstones underneath. So far, so normal – but there, on top of one of the flagstones exactly where the sharp point of the top had spun, was a hole bored into the stone. It was about the size of a keyhole and there was light coming through it from beneath. I put my eye to it. I was looking down into a cell identical to this one. There was a man sitting on the straw, his head in his hands.

  Behind me, Olga said, ‘What you see?’

  I told her and she waved me away to have a look for herself. ‘Who is he?’

  I shrugged. ‘A fellow prisoner. Can’t see him properly.’

  ‘He wear nice clothes,’ she said, looking through the peephole again. ‘He not poor like me and you.’

  ‘So what? He’s still in a Mancer prison. So he’s in trouble just like us.’

  ‘Ah, wait – he turns now, I see his face. He is young man. Black hair. Grey eyes. He look very sad and very angry.’

  ‘Let me see,’ I said. I put my eye to the peephole and looked straight down into the startled grey gaze of Maximilian von Gildenstein.

  If he was startled to see a disembodied eye suddenly staring at him through a hole in the ceiling, then I was utterly shocked by the sight of him. I felt as though I were dreaming. Why on earth was the son of one of the most important men in the empire – a member of the Mancer Council, at that – locked up in a Mancer prison? Surely they couldn’t suspect him of anti-empire activities or being an illegal wizard! The whole thing was quite unbelievable. Surely Count Otto could not know what had happened, because what kind of father would deliver his only child into the clutches of the Mancers? And if the Mancers had done it behind his back, what could it mean? Then a shocking thought struck me – what if Count Otto himself had also been arrested?

  My thoughts fled as Max called up anxiously, ‘Who’s there? Please, who’s there?’

  ‘Friends. Oh, Max, are you all right?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m –’ And then he broke off and said in quite a different tone, ‘How the hell do you know my name?’

  I swallowed, aware of Olga listening. I wanted to lie but somehow I couldn’t. ‘I’m – I’ve met you. Once. You probably won’t remem–’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, interrupting me. ‘I know that voice. Of course I remember. It’s you, Camille. Oh my God, I’d so hoped –’

  ‘Hoped what?’ I said, and I could feel my heart thudding painfully for reasons I didn’t quite understand. I clutched the locket in my pocket, thinking wildly that he must have picked it up the night of the ball and kept it with him. That’s why it had been in the bowl.

&nbs
p; He said, quietly, ‘I hoped they hadn’t found you.’

  I looked up at Olga. Her eyebrows were raised and I made a sign to her meaning, I’ll explain later, and turned back to Max. I said, gently, ‘Max, why did they arrest you?’

  He was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Better you don’t know. It’s . . . too dangerous.’

  ‘Was it anything to do with what happened that night with me and the Prince? Please tell me, yes or no?’

  ‘No,’ he said, a little too quickly. But I let it pass for the moment. I said, ‘Was it . . . was it your father who had you arrested and brought here?’

  ‘My father? Oh no, no, he doesn’t even know it’s happened,’ he said firmly, and this time it had the ring of truth.

  ‘Then who –’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said. But I knew – he must have been arrested on the Prince’s orders, no-one else would have had the authority.

  ‘If your father doesn’t know,’ I said, ‘then you must get word to him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The warders – bribe them, threaten them, whatever you have to do.’

  ‘It won’t work,’ he said. A shadow crossed his face. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What I do understand,’ I said crossly, ‘is that you’re just sitting there waiting for the Mancers to . . . to do whatever they’re going to do to you. You’re giving in without a fight. I thought more of you than that.’

  Colour rushed into his face. ‘And what about you, Mademoiselle St Clair, if that is in fact your real name? If I am not mistaken you too are stuck in a Mancer cell with no hope of escape.’ His voice hardened. ‘Or are you so chirpy because you know that the people you work for will get you out?’

  I was struck dumb. ‘What the devil is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘For God’s sake! You appear out of nowhere, giving a name identical to that of a fictional spy. No-one knows anything about you, and when the border records are examined, no-one answering your description has entered the country from Champaine or anywhere else.’