The Prince of Lies (Night's Masque, #3)(126)

They fell silent. The serving girl returned with jacks of small ale and plates of bread and cold meat which she set down on the table, but no one made a move to help themselves. She sniffed and left them to it, muttering under her breath about ungrateful foreigners.

“Another thing bothers me more,” Coby said quietly. “Why did they take the other boy as well as Kit? Was he a guiser all along, or did they simply make a mistake? How did they find and assemble all these boys in the first place?”

“They plan for the long term, we know that,” Mal said. “They must have started this scheme a good twenty years ago, long before the skraylings began seriously suspecting what they were up to.”

“I don’t think Shawe’s apprentices are guisers,” Sandy said.

“Not guisers? But I saw–”

“You saw them call upon the power of the dreamlands, yes. But those boys do not have skrayling souls. They are human.”

“But how?”

“You don’t remember our traditions, do you? Of how the tjirzadheneth came to discover the dreamlands and be reborn.”

Mal shook his head.

“Many, many generations ago, the skraylings were just like humans: trapped in their own heads, their own dreams. Then our ancestors discovered qoheetsakhan and found they could use it to enhance their own dreams and even penetrate the dreams of others. Through practice and discipline they learnt to master their souls and even overcome death. Shawe is trying to do the same to humans.”

For a while no one spoke. The scale… the enormity of Shawe’s scheme was beyond anything that Mal had imagined. To make an army of humans with the power of skrayling adepts, able to live forever if they so wished, but only by stealing the bodies of the unborn…

“How do we stop this blasphemy?” Coby said.

Mal drew a deep breath.

“I think we have no choice but to return to the Tower.”

“What?”

“I was not certain until I heard Kit’s – I mean Kiiren’s – account, but now I’m sure of it.” He swept his gaze around the table, taking in their worried looks. “Jathekkil is afraid of Shawe and his dreamwalkers. Why else do you think he’s still holed up in the Tower, the greatest armoury in the realm?”

“My brother is right,” Sandy said. “Rivalry and dissension were ever the guisers’ weaknesess.”

Ned stared at them both.

“So you’re suggesting we walk into one enemy’s stronghold in order to escape another?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“And what then?”

Mal shrugged. “I haven’t worked out the details yet.”

“Oh good. I was afraid you had some kind of bold plan that would end in us all dying.”

“Gentlemen, please!” Coby cocked a head towards Kiiren, who was huddling against Sandy, eyes wide. “Mal’s right. We have to get back to London before Shawe finds us. We’re safer hidden among a countless multitude of souls than out here in the countryside.”

“What’s to stop the prince arresting us the moment we set foot inside the city?” Gabriel said.

“Simple. We don’t.”

“So we get a boat to Southwark?”

“No, we take refuge at Charing Cross with Lord Grey. Much as it pains me to say it, he’s the one person in London we can trust.”

He looked around the table, expecting objections, but no one would meet his eye.

“That’s settled, then.” He reached across the table to claim one of the jacks of ale. “Eat up and take whatever ease you can; I want to be off within the hour. It’s at least a two-day ride back to London.”



The distant curfew bell was ringing by the time they reached Clerkenwell, but the watch didn’t venture out this far, even though London’s suburbs were spreading north almost as rapidly as Southwark was spreading south. Skirting north to avoid Lincoln’s Inn, the only witnesses to their passage westward were the herds of solemn-eyed cattle watching from the shelter of oak trees and flicking their ears against the swarms of flies that rose from the damp grass. From St Giles-in-the-Field the riders turned south down St Martin’s Lane and buildings gradually closed in around them, cutting off the last light of evening. A few faint stars could now be seen overhead, distant and uncaring. Mal shivered despite the warm night and prayed to Saint Michael that he was not leading his family into a trap.

He bade the others wait in the shadows of the lane whilst he and Sandy crossed the Strand to the gates of Suffolk House. Though he had said he trusted Grey, in truth he knew not what reception they would get after all that had happened. The duke might not be a guiser, but where did his loyalties now lie?

The minutes ticked by with agonising slowness as he waited for someone to answer the door. He glanced down the street, alert for any sign of the watch or, worse still, a lord’s retainers with nothing better to do than harass loiterers. He was just thinking it better to give up and find a way across the river to Southwark when the wicket gate opened.

“Master Catlyn?” The porter looked surprised, even a little alarmed. “Two Master Catlyns?”

“This is my brother,” Mal replied. “May we come in? I need to see Lord Grey urgently.”

“Of course, sirs. This way.”