The Dark Flight Down Read online

  Bedrich had closed his eyes, as if seeing the events all over again.

  “And the song was a beautiful song. Beautiful but sad. He came from a musical family. Many members of his family were gifted musically, but although they were noble, they were not wealthy. But there was something else. The present. I do not know where he came upon it, but the musician had brought with him a terrible thing, though at the time it was held to be marvelous and wonderful. The book.

  “And this was his present to the emperor. He was rewarded immediately with his weight in gold. And there was more to follow. As the book foretold things and they came to pass, the man and his family were rewarded with land, titles, money and more.

  “And more than this, the emperor even took a daughter of the family as his mistress. Sophia. This was deemed a great honor to the family. She was so beautiful, and clever, too. It was she who wrote that sad song.

  “And on the day . . . the day when . . .”

  Bedrich stopped. He seemed to have lost his way in the story.

  “Go on,” Boy said, gently.

  “It’s so long ago,” said Bedrich, but Boy could tell that this was not the reason he had stopped. “On that day. The book foretold that the emperor was indeed to father children! On that day, the man and his family were showered beyond all measure with things rich and golden. They were granted permission to build a church in their village, and the members of the family moved within court as if they were themselves royalty.”

  With a shock Boy realized that he was listening to something of which he knew a part.

  “Tell me,” he said, “what was the name of this family?”

  When Bedrich opened his mouth to answer, Boy already had the same word on his lips.

  “Beebe.”

  Boy felt his heart begin to race light and fast in his chest. He felt sick.

  “Beebe,” said Bedrich again. “For a while, what a great and beautiful family they were. So beautiful.”

  Suddenly footsteps sounded along the corridor outside the dungeon.

  “They’re coming to take you!” Boy whispered. “To let you out! You won’t forget about Willow, will you? And the book?”

  “I will have nothing to do with that book. I refuse.”

  “But it is my only chance. . . .”

  “If that is your only chance, you have no chance,” Bedrich said. “But I will find the girl. Willow.”

  The door began to rattle and creak open.

  “All right,” said Boy, “all right. But quick! Tell me what happened to the Beebes. What happened to the book’s prediction?”

  The jailer approached. This time two flunkeys accompanied him.

  “Tell me,” whispered Boy. “What happened?”

  Bedrich shook his head.

  “It was not to be,” he said. “The prediction was . . . awry. The Beebes were disgraced. The emperor blamed them for what had happened. Stripped them of almost everything. The book ruined them. It will ruin you too, if you let it.”

  The jailer was at the cells.

  “Getting friendly, are we?” he said, blankly. “That’s a shame. Time for you to go.”

  Bedrich stood up. Boy could feel the tension, the anxiety in him. After so long, to be nearly free was almost too much.

  But the jailer walked to Boy’s cell and stuck his key in that lock instead.

  “You,” he said. “You’re to go with these men. Any trouble and you’ll be back down here before you can breathe.”

  Boy didn’t move.

  “But what about me?” Bedrich said.

  The two men moved into Boy’s cell and started to walk him out of the dungeon.

  “Maxim’s coming to see to you,” the jailer said to Bedrich.

  “To set me free?” Bedrich cried, desperately. “He’s coming to set me free?”

  As he was taken away, Boy looked back at Bedrich.

  “Bedrich . . . ,” he began, but there was nothing to say, and he was roughly dragged forward.

  The door swung shut behind him, and he heard Bedrich call out to the jailer.

  “He’s going to let me out—isn’t he?”

  The echoes of his voice were cut short by the door clanging back into its iron frame.

  “Right,” said one of the men to Boy. “Upstairs with you. One stupid move and I’ll break your neck.”

  Bedrich sat down on the cold stone floor of the cell. His gilded cage had been taken from him, and the promise of release too. His head was so full of this misery that he didn’t even notice a small spyhole swinging shut in the ceiling just above his head.

  The Palace

  The Place of Treacherous Artifice

  1

  Boy was hurried through the dark and twisting corridors of the dungeons once more, so cramped in places that even he, with his skinny frame, was forced to hunch up. One of the men walked in front, the other behind, prodding him in the back if he showed any signs of dawdling.

  But Boy had no wish to dawdle. After one twist they came to a section of passage that Boy realized he knew. Just as in his dream, he was walking down the passage that went past the top of the steep and foul stairway down to nothingness. The smell rushed toward him, like a beast itself, assaulting his senses. He hesitated, and felt another shove in his back. Boy forced one foot after the other, and the opening to the passageway drew closer, until, holding his hand to his mouth and nose, he saw with relief that unlike in his dream, the iron gate across the opening was shut.

  His captors seemed to be hurrying too.

  “Is that—” he began, but was shoved again.

  He stood his ground, and turned to face the man behind him.

  “Is that where it lives?”

  The man seemed taken aback.

  “Is that where it lives?” Boy asked again.

  “You shouldn’t know anything about that,” the guard said. Boy failed to read the meaning in his voice. Was it fear? Or surprise? It certainly wasn’t anger. Boy had expected to be hit for his question, but no blow came.

  The other guard had now noticed that Boy had stopped and rushed back to see what was going on.

  He grabbed Boy by the neck and dragged him into walking again. He turned to his friend.

  “Of all places, you want to stop here?” he said.

  As they moved out of the rough-hewn, damp stone underbelly of the palace and into the royal world proper, Boy was shocked to find that it was nighttime. Having been confined for days in darkness, longing for daylight, he had assumed that when he was freed from the twilight world, the sun would be shining.

  The palace seemed to be asleep; there was very little noise from anywhere, and they saw no one as they moved through lavish paneled corridors into ever more marvelous chambers.

  Boy stared about him.

  Never in his life had he seen such wealth, such casual displays of incredible finery at every turn. Portraits in oil hung in gilded frames. Faces peered back from the paintings, haughty figures swathed in fur robes and dripping with jewels. The floor Boy was walking on was marble; marble pillars struck from floor to the high vaulted ceiling. The walls between were paneled wood painted a pale, pale green, the details picked out with gold. Boy stared openmouthed at the carved wooden frieze above this paneling that ran the length of the room. Whole forests were depicted in high relief, trees and bushes, with animals peeping from behind, a bird pecking at a bunch of grapes, a swan gliding on a lake.

  And this was just one of the galleries down which they had passed.

  Boy faltered, unable to take in what he was seeing, but he was quickly moved on by yet another poke in his back.

  “Come on, boy. I want to get to bed.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Boy.

  “Up here,” one of them said, as they turned toward a massive stone staircase that swept up and around out of sight above their heads.

  Boy began to walk forward, but was stopped.

  “Not there!” the guard snapped. “Here.”

  He pulled a
section of the paneling away to expose a hidden staircase, tiny and twisting, that led up out of the hall.

  “Move!

  Boy rushed into the tight stairwell before they could hit him again. A hand pushed him as the guards hurried up behind him. He sped up, growing dizzy as the spiral staircase twisted up and up into the palace. It was getting darker with each turn, and Boy was guessing where his next footfall would be, when he stumbled out into a dazzlingly bright room.

  He blinked, heard the door click shut behind him and a key turn in a lock. When he looked around, there was no sign of the stairway from which he had emerged, nor, for that matter, was there any sign of the guards.

  He was alone.

  2

  The room was small, though still every bit as opulent as the rest of the palace. Boy could see closed doors leading off at every side, but on one wall a set of double doors lay tantalizingly open.

  Boy moved into the room beyond. In it he found a huge four-poster bed, with mattresses so deep their top was chest height from the floor. Swags of midnight blue and yellow velvet hung from the bed’s canopy. It looked incredibly inviting. Who was lucky enough to sleep in such a wonderful thing?

  He stepped toward it. Then he heard water splashing. Turning, he saw a small door leading out of the bedroom. Cautiously he pushed it open with his fingertips.

  The door swung lightly away from him.

  “Hello?” he ventured quietly.

  He took a step inside.

  A woman turned to face him.

  Boy was shocked to see she was blind, like his jailer. She was an old woman, and yet Boy could see that her blindness was from some awful accident, not due to her age. With disgust he wondered if many servants close to Frederick’s secrets were made blind.

  “Oh!” she said. “You’re here sooner than they told me. Your bath isn’t quite ready yet.”

  She carried on with her work. Boy took a step farther into the room. It was every bit as large as the bedroom, but in the center of it stood not a bed, but a large marble bath, carved to look like a porpoise breaking the surface of the sea. The bath itself was hollowed into its back.

  The woman was busy pouring buckets of water into the tub. She had two, one with cold and one with steaming hot water. When they were empty she took them to the side of the room, lifted a hatch and placed them on a shelf inside. She pulled a bell-rope beside the hatch, and immediately the shelf dropped from view. A minute or so later, the shelf rose back into view, jerking slowly to its former position. She hoisted the buckets off deftly, and Boy saw that once again they were full of water, one hot, one cold.

  He had never seen such sophistication. Bathing was something he did only very rarely. When he had lived on the streets he had only washed in summer, just to cool down, by running through one of the City’s cleaner fountains. At the Yellow House, Valerian had made him wash once a week, “whether you need to or not.” But this had meant a cold slosh of water in a basin, a thing as far removed from the elaborate display before him as was possible.

  “You—you must have the wrong idea . . . ,” Boy stammered. “You can’t mean me.”

  “This is your bath, these are your rooms,” said the woman. “Couple more buckets should do you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Boy said. “I’ve been in the dungeon. They had me locked up in the dungeon. This can’t be for me.”

  “The emperor wants to see you. You can’t appear before an emperor smelling like that.”

  She didn’t smile, or indeed betray any emotion, merely poured the last of her buckets into the vast bathtub.

  “The emperor?” asked Boy. “What does he want to see me for?”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  “Well, anyway, I don’t want to see him. If you’ll excuse me. I don’t mean to be rude . . .”

  Boy turned to leave. The woman made no effort to stop him, but he ran from the bathroom back through the bedroom. Choosing a door at random, he burst from the room, and ran straight into a guard who was almost larger than the doorway. Boy bounced off, and landed on his backside.

  The guard, who barely seemed to have noticed, turned and looked down at Boy menacingly.

  “Sorry,” said Boy, “wrong door.”

  He got up, and shut himself back into his magnificent prison.

  The old servant was waiting for him.

  “The other doors are exactly the same,” she said. “Have a bath. Go to bed. In the morning you’re to go before the emperor.”

  “And food?” asked Boy. “Can I have something to eat? I’ve only had—”

  “It’s on its way. But bath first. You could smell better, that’s for sure. Take your clothes off.”

  Boy gave up. He started to pull his shirt off, and the woman left the room. He shook his head. She was kinder than the old blind man but nonetheless she was just as much his jailer.

  As soon as Boy was naked he stepped into the water. It was very hot, and he had to lower himself slowly into the tub, bit by bit. He thought he had never felt water so hot. He got as far as putting his legs in, and noticed they were turning pink from the heat. Eventually he got all of himself into the bath, and lay back. He watched the steam rising all around him, and felt his eyelids begin to droop.

  In another few seconds, he was asleep.

  When he woke, he felt terrible. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, but the water was still warm, so it couldn’t have been too long.

  “Your food’s here,” said a voice.

  He jerked upright to see the old serving woman sitting on a chair at the far side of the room.

  “You better eat it and get to bed,” she said. “What’s this, by the way?”

  Boy saw what she was holding in her hands; his lockpick, the old metal tendon.

  “I found it in your clothes,” she said, needlessly. “I was going to throw it away, but then I thought maybe it’s something valuable, or important. Is it important?”

  Boy struggled for an answer.

  “Yes,” he said. “Well, no. It’s only important to me. It’s . . . a lucky charm. Had it for years.”

  The woman considered this. A frown crossed her face.

  “I’m not supposed to . . . ,” she began. “But I don’t see it can do any harm. You can keep it.”

  And with that she left the room. A moment later she came back carrying a large towel and a nightshirt.

  Boy grabbed the towel and pulled it around him.

  They moved into the bedroom, where a table had been laid so that it was overflowing with delightful, delicate things to eat. Once again Boy was amazed, having never seen such things in all his life.

  “Don’t eat too quickly,” the woman said, but Boy ignored her. He sat down and began to devour everything he could, not even stopping to ask what some of it was.

  The serving woman sat quietly on a chair, half a smile flickering across her face all the time, listening to Boy eat.

  “My!” she said, when he began to slow down. “You were hungry, weren’t you.”

  For a moment, Boy felt like shouting at her. How stupid was she not to know the kind of slop he’d been given to eat for days? Of course he was hungry.

  “Are you going to hang around while I do everything?” he asked, instead.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Only it’s been a while since we’ve had anyone up here in the Winter Rooms.”

  Boy wondered who “we” was.

  “And your guests?” Boy asked. “Are they always prisoners? Like me?”

  “Don’t say that. We try to make things as good as we can for our guests while they’re here. . . .”

  She trailed off, then stood to go.

  “Eat up and go to sleep,” she said.

  Boy looked at the bed. It was so tall there was a little ladder to take him up onto it.

  He slipped under the sheets, but something was not right. As he had had trouble adjusting to the comfortable yet small bed in Kepler’s house after the rotten cot he’d had at Valerian’s, he c
ould not feel comfortable in this enormous bed.

  He got up, and standing on the bed, pulled at the swags of velvet and drew them together like curtains, so that he was enclosed on all sides. It was immediately a dark and much smaller space, and feeling more at home, Boy shut his eyes, thoughts of Valerian drifting through his mind as he made his way down to sleep.

  Despite the late, late hour, not everyone in the palace was asleep. The old serving woman made her way wearily to her own modest room on the floor above the one where Boy was dozing. In the kitchens in the North Wing, servants were still scrubbing and scraping at pots, and farther down into the palace’s guts, a tall figure robed in red made his way back from the dungeons. Once again there had been difficult work to be done down there, and there was more ahead.

  3

  Boy was pulled from his bed by a hand at his throat before he was even awake. He fell to the ground and lay spluttering on the thick, soft carpet that surrounded the massive four-poster.

  “No more lying!” Maxim shouted down at him.

  Boy didn’t even have time to think, let alone answer, before Maxim snatched him up from the floor and flung him across the room. Fortunately almost all of the bedroom floor was covered by one plush rug or another, and he was not hurt.

  Now at some distance from Maxim, he had time to think before another blow came.

  “Wait!” Boy cried. “What are you talking about? I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

  Maxim stopped halfway across the room.

  “Then let me remind you,” he said. He ran one hand over the top of his smooth head. “You recall our last conversation?”

  Boy frowned.

  “You were asking me—”

  “About a book,” Maxim spat. “About the book. Yes?”

  Now Boy panicked. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said. He needed to lie consistently if he was going to bluff his way out of this.