She came out and crossed the cobbles. Evian stood immediately and made an ornate bow; Jared moved quietly to make a s.p.a.ce for her.
Caspar said crossly, "You"re always avoiding me, Claudia!"
"Of course not. Why on earth would I do that?"
She sat down and smiled. "How nice. All my friends together."
Caspar scowled. Jared shook his head slightly. Beside them Evian hid a smile with his lace-edged handkerchief. She wondered how he could sit there so coolly with the Earl, a boy he was plotting to have murdered. But then, he would probably protest that it wasn"t personal, that this was politics, nothing more. The game, always.
She turned to Jared. "I want you to travel with me now. I"m so bored! We can discuss Menessier"s Natural History of the Realm?"
"Why not me?" Caspar tossed a hunk of meat to the dogs and watched them fight over it. "I"m not boring."
His small eyes turned to her. "Am I?"
It was a challenge. "Indeed not, Your Grace." She smiled pleasantly. "And of course I"d love you to join us. Menessier has some excellent pa.s.sages on the fauna in the coniferous forests."
He stared at her in disgust. "Claudia, don"t try that wide-eyed innocent junk with me. I told you, I don"t care what you get up to. Anyway, I know all about it. Fax told me about last night."
She felt herself go pale, couldn"t look at Jared.
The dogs growled and fought. One brushed her skirt and she stamped at it.
Caspar stood up, smugly triumphant. He was wearing a garish collar of gold links and a frock coat of black velvet, and he kicked the dogs aside till they yelped.
"But I"m warning you, Claudia, you"d better be more discreet. My mothers not as open-minded as I am. If she found out, she"d be furious."
He grinned at Jared.
"Your clever tutor might find that his illness gets suddenly worse."
She was so angry, she almost leaped to her feet, but Jared"s light touch kept her sitting. They watched Caspar stride away across the inn-yard, avoiding the puddles and dung heaps in his expensive boots.
Finally Lord Evian took out his snuffbox. "Dear me," he said quietly. "Now that was a threat if ever I heard one."
Claudia met Jared"s eyes. They were dark and troubled. "Fax?" he said.
She shrugged, exasperated with herself. "He saw me coming out of your room last night."
His dismay showed.
"Claudia ..."
"I know. I know. It"s all my fault."
Evian sniffed the snuff delicately. "If I may be allowed to comment, that was a very unfortunate thing to happen."
"It"s not what you think."
I"m sure.
"No. Really. And you can drop the act. I"ve told Jared about... the Steel Wolves."
He glanced around quickly.
"Claudia, not aloud, please."
His voice lost its affectations. "I appreciate you trust your tutor, but-"
"Of course she should have told me."
Jared tapped the tabletop with his long fingers.
"Because the whole plot is foolish, utterly criminal, and almost certain to be betrayed. How could you even think about bringing her into it!"
"Because we can"t do it without her."
The fat man was calm, but a film of sweat glistened on his forehead.
"You above all, Master Sapient, understand what the iron decrees of the Havaarna have done to us. We are rich, some of us, and live well, but we are not free. We are chained hand and foot by Protocol, enslaved to a static, empty world where men and women can"t read, where the scientific advances of the ages are the preserve of the rich, where artists and poets are doomed to endless repet.i.tions and sterile reworkings of past masterpieces. Nothing is new. New does not exist. Nothing changes, nothing grows, evolves, develops. Time has stopped. Progress is forbidden."
He leaned forward. Claudia had never seen him so grave, so stripped of his effete disguise, and it chilled her, as if he were someone else entirely, an older, exhausted, desperate man.
"We are dying, Claudia. We must break open this cell we have bricked ourselves into, escape from this endless wheel we tread like rats. I have dedicated myself to freeing us. If it means my death, I don"t care, because even death will be a sort of freedom."
In the stillness the rooks cawed around the trees overhead. Horses in the stable yard were being harnessed, their feet stamping the cobbles.
Claudia licked dry lips. "Don"t do anything yet," she whispered. "I may have ... some information for you. But not yet."
She stood quickly, not wanting to say any more, not wanting to feel the raw anguish he had opened in her like a stab wound.
"The horses are ready. Let"s go."
THE STREETS were full of people, all silent.
Their silence terrified Finn; it was so intense, and the hungry way they looked at him made him stumble, the women and the scruffy children, the maimed, the old, the soldiers; cold, curious stares that he dared not meet, so that he looked down, at his feet, at the dirt on the road, anywhere but at them.
The only sound that rang in the steep streets was the steady tramp of the six guards around him, the crack of their iron-soled boots on the cobbles, and far above, circling like an omen, a single large bird screeching mournful cries among the clouds and echoing winds of Incarceron"s vault.
Then someone sang back, a single note of lament, and as if it was a signal, all the crowd picked it up and crooned it softly, their sorrow and their fear in one strange soft song.
He tried to make out the words, but only fragments came to him ... the silver thread that broke ... all down the endless halls of guilt and dreams ... and like a chorus the haunting, repeated phrase: his fingerbone the key, his blood the oil that smoothes the lock.
Turning a corner, Finn glanced back.
Gildas walked behind, alone.
The guards ignored him, but he walked firmly, his head high, and the peoples eyes moved wonderingly over the green of his Sapient coat. The old man looked grim and purposeful; he gave Finn a brief nod of encouragement. There was no sign of Keiro or Attia.