The Margrave by Catherine Fisher Read Free Book Online

the immensity of the effort. “But will it work?”
    “Nothing will be able to burrow under or scale it. We’ll wall in the Finished Lands. No pollution will come to them.” He saw her disbelief and laughed. “Come on. She hates to be kept waiting.”
    The castellan’s room was warm in the sunlight that slanted from its windows; in the daylight Carys saw they were thickly glazed with the unbreakable Maker glass.
    Scala had her hair loose. It brushed her small shoulders as she looked up from a file of papers. “Sleep well?”
    Carys didn’t bother to answer. Instead she leaned on the desk with both hands and said, “I’ve made up my mind. These are my conditions. I want an assurance from you—countersigned from Maar—of my reinstatement and I want copies of it sent to every Watchhouse and Tower. I want a third of all rewards and promotions. Up front, I want two thousand marks, my own armed patrol, and a permanent suite of rooms in the Tower of Song.”
    “I see.” Scala didn’t even blink. “Fairly extensive demands for a prisoner. And in return, what?”
    Carys took a breath. It was a simple sentence, but it cost her a great effort to say it.
    “In return I go with you to the Pits of Maar and together we inform the Margrave—face–to-face, if he exists—exactly where he can find this Raffael Morel.”
    There was a long silence. Then Scala smiled. “It seems fair.”
    “Oh, it is.” Carys sat in the nearest chair. She leaned back and blew hair out of her eyes, wondering what Scala really thought.
    “We’ll leave as soon as possible.” The castellan looked at Quist. “Get things ready.”
    He shrugged. “It’ll take three days.”
    Carys thought of the spotty boy’s blurted secrets. “Make it two,” she said thoughtfully.

6
    Are these the-ladders that lead to heaven?
Who has ever climbed to their top?
     
    Poems of Anjar Kar
    T HE YOUNG WOMAN ROCKED the crying child. “I suppose you’ve come for the babies and the lame ones now,” she said savagely. “No one else is left! Who’s supposed to sow and harvest? Who’s supposed to milk the cows? Don’t you people have any sense?”
    The Watchsergeant was hot and thirsty. The hut was dank. In one corner an old woman rocked, dribbling and mumbling to herself, spitting into the fire and then giggling with an odd, manic glee. It gave him the creeps. And the place stank—the pile of marset dung outside the door was huge and fresh. His stomach heaved. He took out a rag of handkerchief and pressed it over his nose.
    “I’m not taking anyone, woman. It’s a search. There have been reports of bandits. A lot of them, gathering in the hills.”
    “Bandits!” The woman snorted and waved her free arm. “Oh, yes. Here they are, look, hundreds of them. All crammed into this luxurious palace!”
    The Watchman shrugged. It was true he could see the whole of the inside of the hut and had no desire to go farther in; it was sooty and smoke-blackened, with lumps of what might be meat hanging from the rafters. One cupboard, a hearth with a dull fire, two box beds. Not much else. The floor was trodden mud. A real hovel.
    The old woman cackled and looked at him suddenly with the white of one eye. Her face was filthy, her long gray hair tangled. “Beware,” she said. “The owl and the kraken, the cold shadows of the moons.” She spat solemnly and the fire crackled. “Death is looking for you. He has long fingers.”
    “Don’t mind her,” the young woman snapped. “Her mind’s gone.”
    But the Watchman had had enough. He backed out, trying not to breathe the stink. “All right, but if you see anyone . . .”
    “I’ll stay in and bar the door.”
    The giggle from the dark corner chilled him. He walked quickly back to the horse, leaving the door to slam behind him. Job for one man, they’d said. No one had told him the place was a madhouse.
    After the Watchman had ridden away, the farmstead was silent for at least five minutes. Then the door burst