The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War #2)(96)

The Red Queen pursed her lips. I might almost think her impressed that I’d seen four separate unborn and yet stood before her with my insides on the inside.

“The creature you saw first was not newly returned but there to seed the event, one of two. Each unborn starts with a child killed in the womb. The longer that child stays in the deadlands the harder it is to birth into the living world, but the more it will be able to meet whatever potential lay in its blood. This was to be a very special unborn, perhaps the greatest of all of their kind. The two worst of the Dead King’s servants were there to ease this one into the world: the Unborn Prince and Captain. The passage is made less difficult by the death of a close relative. It is likely the relative they needed was among the audience. It was a rare chance to test my sister’s magics against the key figures in the ranks of those armed against us and to block the arrival of a powerful new servant for the Dead King.”

I swallowed, remembering again the eyes that had regarded me through the slit of a porcelain mask. Then, realizing that my role in the failure of the curse was a bad place to let the conversation rest, I carried on. “And the Unborn Prince escaped and tracked us north to stop—”

“The Unborn Prince went south,” Grandmother said. “The Unborn Captain to the north. They informed the Dead King of events, no doubt, and sent agents against you, but the prince went south, to Florence, where he works against us even now.”

“Ah.”

“When you broke her spell my sister glimpsed a possibility. The crack you put into her working allowed the two elder unborn to escape but she saw a way for the main investment of her power to be carried between two unusual men, and that the tides of chance would bear you to our foe in the north.”

“Tides of chance?” That wasn’t mere chance. I’ve bet on some long odds at the gambling table when drunk but I’ve never thrown the dice at quite so slim an opportunity.

“She may have moved some of the pieces into place. Hers is an art rather than a science, and even if she were not silent I doubt she could explain more than half of what she does. Her motives are unlikely to fit within words.”

“But once she interfered, once she acted on what she knew would happen to me . . . she could see no more.” I paraphrased Kara. “She reached into a clear pool to change the future and left it muddy.”

Grandmother cocked her head to the side at that, as if seeking a new angle to view me from. I’d seen her offer the same look in the still-smoking ruins of Ameroth Castle fifty years before.

“We felt the curse released. We felt the unborn ended. Out in the wilds they are weaker, away from people on which to feed . . . So tell me, did Snorri ver Snagason find what he sought after he’d laid his enemies low?”

I paused. Always a bad idea if you plan to lie. Did she know what the Dead King was hunting beneath the Bitter Ice? Did she know that we found it? The important thing was not to get myself into trouble . . . and trouble could come from being caught in a lie, but also from earning myself some kind of further task. “His family were all killed,” I said. True though perhaps not what she wanted to know. Snorri wasn’t seeking the key in any event—neither of us were.

The Silent Sister held out her hand again, closed about something. I held my breath and refused to meet her eyes. Slowly her fingers unfolded, revealing a long black key, Loki’s key.

“Ah, yes, he found that.” I didn’t feel safe enough to lie. A damned unpleasant feeling. They say that the truth will set you free, but I find it normally hems me into a corner. “Snorri has the key.” This time however an immediate sense of relief flooded me. I’d told them. It wasn’t my problem any more. Grandmother had armies, assassins, agents, cunning and fearless men and women who would sort things out.

“And?” the Red Queen prompted, her face tight. The Sister’s copy of Loki’s key faded to a stain across the whiteness of her palm.

“He’s taking it to a mage named Kelem, in his mines. Has some crazy idea to unlock a door the old man can show him . . . and . . . uh . . . get his family back.”

“What?” A boom of disbelief that had me scuttling backward so quickly I stepped on my cloak and went crashing down on my arse. As the reverberations echoed through the throne room I swear I heard a hiss issue from Silent Sister’s dark mouth. “Where . . .”

Grandmother rose from her throne, looking more terrible than Skilfar ever had. She seemed to be struggling with the question, struggling to draw in air and frame her outrage. “Where is Snorri ver Snagason now?”

“Uh . . .” I shuffled further back, not feeling it safe to get back on my feet. “H-he should be about twenty miles down the road to Florence. I left him outside Vermillion yesterday noon.”

Grandmother clasped her hand to her face, reaching for the arm of her throne with the other. “The key was on my doorstep? Why—”

She broke off her question and I didn’t feel it a good moment to volunteer that nobody had ever mentioned that she wanted the damn key.

“Marth.” The Red Queen lowered her hand and looked to the grey-haired woman to the right of her throne. “Organize a hundred riders. Send them out to bring the Norseman back here. He shouldn’t be hard to miss, about six foot eight, black hair and beard, pale-skinned. Is that right, boy?”

I’d been demoted to “boy” again. I picked myself up and dusted down my cloak. “Yes. He’s travelling with a fat ginger Viking and a blond v?lva from the Utter North.”