The fog seemed to giggle. The hairy rat-snake things were back, and she thought maybe the giggling came from them. They didn’t seem to have any eyes—or, for that matter, mouths—just furry, unpleasantly sinuous bodies, and rather a lot of small pattering feet. Yes, she could definitely hear someone laughing—she opened her heavy eyes, not having realised they were closed, and looked at the dancers. She had trouble focusing her eyes on all the bright moving figures, but a couple near her turned and she saw Peony in Rowland’s arms; and then the laughter in her ears grew louder. Who was laughing? She shook her head, which only made it throb.
“What is it?” said Katriona; but Rosie’s lips refused to open, her jaws were clamped together. Slowly she stood up, and Katriona with her, still holding her hand. Now the fog seemed to be becoming visible in the Great Hall; there was a greyish sort of shadow cast by nothing in particular, hovering near the far end of the Hall, across the long room from where she now stood, near to where the merrel sat hidden among the rafters. The laughter seemed to come from that direction. Rosie was curious; she would go nearer, and look. It was good to feel as if she wanted to do something—anything—in the middle of this horrible sick foggy inertia.
She tried to pull her hand out of Katriona’s—she didn’t need Katriona—but Katriona wouldn’t let go. Very well, she would have to come, too. Rosie was now moving inexorably toward the strange greyish-black shadow that had no reason to hover where it did, still hearing—following—the laughter. It was odd that no one else seemed to hear it. She noticed several people looking at her as she made her single-minded way through the dancers, dragging poor stubborn Katriona behind her. But why was no one looking toward the end of the Hall, no one saying, Who is that laughing? Perhaps because the laughter was for her, Rosie. Perhaps—since she had heard it first when she was thinking about going home—perhaps it was going to tell her how to go home, how she could give up this dreadful princess business, and go home, and be Rosie again.
She had to walk slowly because she still felt light-headed and not quite steady, and because Katriona was gripping her hand so tightly, and because Hroc was pressed against her other side, almost as if he wished to prevent her from walking the way she was going. She thought some of the other dogs were coming with them; at least one of them, probably Sunflower, kept getting between her legs, getting its paws caught in the fancy lace of her underskirt. They must look like one of those children’s games, where you have to go somewhere while you all touch each other. But they wouldn’t stop her. As soon as she knew what the laugher knew, everything would be all right.
As she neared the shadow, she saw that the dancing had stopped; they were all facing the bodiless shadow. Oh, so they did see it. The music had also stopped, or at least she could no longer hear it through the laughter. It was so loud now Rosie’s ears were ringing with it; nonetheless she heard some commotion behind her, someone speaking: No, no, let me go, you don’t understand. It sounded like Peony’s voice.
The shadow was no longer bodiless. At first it was only as if a purple stain ran down it, as if some shaft of light had touched it from an unusual angle and produced this effect; but then the purple and the black and the grey began to wind themselves together and become a human shape. The human shape became a woman, tall and beautiful and terrible, as tall as Rosie, and her black-and-purple-and-cerise cloak fell round her in dangerous, shining folds.
“Well, my dear,” said the tall woman to Rosie, who was still moving like a sleepwalker toward her. “We meet at last. We did not meet before, did we? I may have seen a hand or a curl—your hair is remarkably curly, is it not?—above the sides of your crib on your name-day, but I do not feel that was a proper meeting, crudely barred as I was from coming close enough to look you in the face. Well! So this is what the princess looks like—a tall rawboned gawk. I always did think your mother was common. The boys take after their father. It is just as well that one of them will be king—if there is any kingdom left for them.” And she laughed.
It was taking Rosie an astonishing length of time merely to cross a few spans of floor. She thought it had something to do with Katriona, and she tried to turn her head and frown at her, but she could not; she could only go on staring at the tall woman in front of her. Very well; she did want to stare at her; she was fascinating. She was not polite—calling Rosie a gawk—but it was the truth. It was obvious this woman would have all the answers. Rosie wanted to talk to her. She wanted to ask her how she could go home again.
In the corners of her eyes she could see various soldiers and magicians and fairies moving in a strange, constrained way. They were trying to make the tall woman go away, thought Rosie wisely, she is spoiling the party, and they don’t want her answers. Well, I do.
If she could have spoken aloud, she would have told Katriona to let go of her; the hand Kat was holding was numb, it was very unpleasant, it felt as if it no longer belonged to her. Even the dogs were trying to push her away from the tall woman. But Rosie wanted to talk to the tall woman and, it seemed, the tall woman wanted to talk to Rosie.
The tall woman moved a little to one side, never taking her eyes off Rosie. Beside her stood . . . a spinning wheel. Rosie blinked, startled and distracted. A spinning wheel of all things! And in that moment of distraction Rosie half felt someone tear themselves loose from the binding Rosie was half aware the tall woman had laid on every person in the room, and run forward; but whoever it was, they stumbled and stopped, ran and staggered, as if the way forward was very difficult. Rosie felt a sort of sympathy for them, trammelled as she was herself by Katriona and the dogs.
“Yes, a spinning wheel,” the tall woman said. If she noticed someone trying to run toward her, she gave no sign. “A homely thing, is it not? Out of place in a grand room such as this one, in the middle of a grand ball. But I wanted a homely thing. You are a homely thing yourself, aren’t you, my dear? And I wanted you to feel comfortable—as you are not comfortable in your present surroundings, are you? Such a pity, about your upbringing. The worst of your drawbacks might have been tempered with the right upbringing. Even your mother might have passed on to you—certain domestic virtues.
“Come, my dear. Come and spin. Forgive me if I don’t demonstrate. It’s such an unassuming skill, it has slipped my mind. Indeed, you can show me. I shall find it very interesting. And then I shall owe you a favour—and you have a question to ask me, do you not? Come and spin, my dear, and then I will answer any question you care to put.”
Rosie was very close to the woman and the spinning wheel now. She couldn’t at the moment remember if she knew how to spin—she couldn’t remember having been taught, she couldn’t seem to remember the feeling of the wool turning in her hands, the hypnotic, endless roll of the wheel going nowhere, the spindle filling up with thread—but she had a queer desire to lay her hands on this wheel, as if she knew exactly what to do with it—or perhaps she was eager to try because she wanted so badly to ask the tall woman her question about how she could go home again.
She wanted to reach out her hand, but that was the hand Katriona clung to, and she could not get it free, so she went to stretch out her other hand, and found that she was still holding the little gargoyle spindle’s end. Her eyes went to the spindle on the tall woman’s wheel, and she frowned in puzzlement; it was strangely elongated and sharp, sharp as a poniard at its tip, nothing like the thick, round-tipped spindles she had always been used to. What a very strange shape for a spindle!
She remembered now that she did not know how to spin. Katriona had said that she didn’t need to know, that Rosie could do other things she and Aunt could not, but Rosie had guessed this meant she was sure to be as cack-handed at spinning as she was at sewing, and Katriona was trying to save her the humiliation. She felt humiliated now, remembering. And then she remembered offering to loan the gargoyle spindle end to Peony, to help her spinning, and Peony saying that if it was a charm, it belonged to their family, and it might have its feelings hurt or its usefulness spoilt
if it were loaned away. Rosie needed a charm now so that she could spin something for the tall woman, and then the tall woman would answer her question.
Slowly she drew the gargoyle out, and held it before her. “If—if you don’t mind,” she said, and her voice sounded thick and hollow in her ears, “I would rather use my own spindle; I’ve never seen one like yours, and I’m sure I shan’t be able to use it. . . .”
The rage and hatred in the woman’s face was so vivid and potent and suddenly there that Rosie took an involuntary step backward, tripping over a dog as she did so; and the break in her concentration was much sharper and more complete this time. Pernicia! Rosie thought suddenly. Dear fate, this is Pernicia ! And here I am wanting to ask her how to go home again!
But Rosie had been spelled very powerfully, and she could not run away nor shake herself free. She could feel the fog squeezing her, and the rat-snakes wriggled and chittered. But her hands, for a moment, were her own, and she squeezed Katriona’s hand as the hand holding the gargoyle pressed it to her breast like a shield; and then the running, reeling footsteps she had heard off and on during Pernicia’s speech were directly behind her, and as Pernicia’s eyes turned briefly to this unwanted distraction, Peony half-ran past her, precarious as a drunk woman, her hand outstretched to grasp the dagger-like spindle—
—and Pernicia opened her mouth, and swept up her arms, to perform a curse that would blast Peony into dust, and hurl Rosie forward despite Katriona and the entire complement of Lord Pren’s kennels, to impale herself on the spike as if it were the spear it looked like—
—when from over Pernicia’s head a great white bulk moved, spreading its huge wings and giving the wild berserker shriek of the hunting merrel, which chills the blood of the oldest huntsmen, who know that it is too wise and too wary to stoop on a human being—
—and Pernicia, not having noticed the merrel, or perhaps not knowing that the creature who made that noise will not attack a human being, or that this one was chained on a short chain strong enough to hold it, faltered for just an instant—
—and Peony touched the point of the spindle, uttering a tiny cry as it pierced her forefinger, and the first bright drop of blood spilled out, and Peony lurched first to her knees, grasping at the frame of the wheel, and leaving a smear of blood as she fell to the floor—
—and then there was a great roaring, and the floor seemed to heave under Rosie’s feet, and she could feel neither the gargoyle in one hand nor Katriona’s hand in the other, nor all the dogs wound round her legs—
And then she knew no more.
Part Five
CHAPTER 20
She was still breathing with Peony.
Well, that was a good sign; it meant both of them were still alive. But it certainly wasn’t her own lungs that were pumping her breath in and out, and this made her, distantly, vaguely, a little apprehensive. She’d never felt quite so inert before, breathing with Peony. Perhaps she was just very tired. She was very tired. She lay enjoying the luxury of not even having to do her own breathing for a minute or two.
She couldn’t just now remember why she was so tired. She tried to cast her mind back, but it seemed as inert as the rest of her. This last season had been busier in the Gig than usual, it was true, because some kind of odd magical trouble had been making mischief for everyone . . . everyone . . . especially at Foggy Bottom. . . . Her memory made an incomplete lurch and recoil that juddered through her physical body. Almost she began breathing for herself again—almost she thought she heard a ragged, desperate voice mutter, “Come on, Rosie”—but then she flopped back into the queer passivity that held her. But she half remembered that it was early spring, not midwinter, that she had lost three months somehow. . . .
Breathing with Peony?
She gasped, and it was her own gasp, and with it she realised that there were fingers pinching her nose, and a mouth over her mouth, forcing air down her throat and then backing off to let her exhale; again; and again; and again; and that this had been going on for some time. When she gasped, the fingers slackened, and she heard a hoarse voice say, “Rosie?”
It was dark, or perhaps her eyes were too listless to see as her lungs had been too listless to breathe. She nonetheless sensed the solid bulk of the speaker’s body bending over her, and lips just brushed her cheek when they spoke her name. She would have liked to answer—she would have liked to say, “Who are you?”—but she could not. She went on breathing, jerkily, as if learning a new skill; and the arm that slid itself under her shoulders and raised her to a sitting position seemed a familiar arm, as the hair that tickled her cheek seemed familiar hair, and the smell of the breath and the skin of her rescuer was a familiar smell. Not Katriona. Not Aunt. Not Barder. Not Peony.
Narl.
“Narl?” she said in amazement; or she thought she said it, but her voice was little more responsive than her eyes or her heavy limbs.
She could feel him looking around—perhaps the darkness was not so dark to him—feel his alertness, his watchfulness, as he knelt beside her with his arm round her shoulders. She could not remember. Those missing three months; wearing dresses; breathing with Peony . . .
Ikor. Woodwold. The princess’ birthday party.
Pernicia.
A little mew of fear escaped her, and she shivered, despite the unmerited bliss of Narl’s arms round her. He put his lips to her ear and said, “We are all right for a little while. We’ll need to move soon, but right now you go on remembering how to breathe for yourself. I can carry you awhile if it comes to that. Although neither of us would enjoy it much”—there was a ghost of a laugh—“and before that, we have to have decided where we’re going.”
It took her several more breaths to knit together enough strength to ask a question: “Where are we?”
“We’re still in the Great Hall. You’re where you fell after you asked to use your own spindle”—the ghost of the laugh again—“and Peony and the merrel interfered just in time.”
“What are you doing here?”
There was a pause so brief Rosie wasn’t sure there had been a pause at all. “Watching out for my horse-leech, of course. My business has been a lot duller, these last three months.”
Rosie remembered Barder saying, “The joke is that Narl won’t take a stranger’s horse, because he’d have to tell ’em what the fee is.” “I didn’t see you,” she said.
“No.”
A typical Narl answer. Rosie knew herself to be smiling, and felt a little better. She could almost stand up. Not quite.
“Why is it so dark?”
“The lights all blew out—and the fires—after Peony touched the spindle and the floor leaped up. It’ll be dawn soon.”
“The floor leaped?”
“Yes. It seemed to want to be rid of Pernicia.”
At least it seemed quiet and floorlike now. Rosie concentrated on breathing again, waiting for dawn, and trying to force some vigour back into her limbs. She could feel her hands and forearms lying over her lap, limp as sleeping puppies; and her feet flopped at the ends of her legs, as if they had no idea what they were for. She could hear no sound but her own breathing, and Narl’s, and a faint purring, echoing noise itself rather like breathing, which seemed to come from all round them. She almost thought she imagined it. Then she thought she didn’t. She considered the rustly silence.
“Where—where is everyone else?” she said at last, fearfully.
“Oh, they’re here too,” he said matter-of-factly. “They’re just all asleep.”
“Asleep?” said Rosie. “Like I was asleep?”
“They’re breathing,” he said.
Sleep is the sister to death. “Is Peony breathing?”
This time there was definitely a silence before he answered. “Rosie, I—I don’t know. Pernicia grabbed her as the floor curled up round her—round Pernicia, and then threw her as a hand might throw a ball. She took Peony with her. Then the doors slammed shut and everything went dark.”
/> Rosie put her hands over her face, and leaned against Narl’s shoulder, and one arm curved round her and the other hand stroked a gentle path from the crown of her head to her shoulder blades, again and then again. She thought wretchedly of the many nights she’d lain awake thinking of just such tenderness and such an embrace, and now, when it came—“Rosie, love,” said Narl. “We’re going after her. Just wait for it to get a little light, so we can see what we’re doing.”
Rosie blearily opened her eyes, and peered over Narl’s shoulder. Were not solid black shapes beginning to differentiate themselves from the grey of what was merely air?
As if in answer to her thought, Narl said, “There should be more light; I can feel that the sun’s over the horizon.”
Rosie’s eyes were idly focused on a bit of darkness that had gone a strangely ragged grey. She supposed she must be looking at a tapestry on a wall with a curiously contrasty and dramatic pattern; funny that she couldn’t remember any such; but it might have been something new, from the arrival of the royal party. Or could some splash of Pernicia’s magic have washed up a wall and changed the colours of a tapestry?
Rosie blinked, and frowned. Narl was facing the wrong direction. “Narl—look over here.”
Narl cautiously let her go, and turned round. She propped herself on her hands and resisted the impulse to collapse full-length on the floor again. They both looked farther along the wall she was facing, and found more large ragged grey rectangles at regular intervals. Narl slowly climbed to his feet, and leaned down and pulled Rosie to hers; and she found that she could stand.
Still slowly, Narl steadying her, they moved among the huddled dark shapes that Rosie could half recognise as human bodies, a glint or sheen giving away that they were all dressed in their finest party clothes. It was an eerie landscape, something out of a fairy tale; magic was never as comprehensive as this, not in real life.