The Assassin Princess (Lamb & Castle Book 2) (22 page)

Even as Morel spoke, the crow griffin was prancing up and down the workshop, snatching up first one shiny trinket in his beak, then dropping it to grab another, spoilt for choice as to what he should take. Having dropped the deadly Device into the well beneath the Orb, Sable knew it would be the end of this cache of strange and horrible delights, and his last chance to steal from the old Archmage's magical treasure trove.

“I thought crows were supposed to be clever,” said Amelia loudly, but Sable ignored her. She turned to Bessie instead. “You stupid, mean-spirited little…” Amelia couldn’t think of a word bad enough for what Bessie was. “We have to do something about that Device. At best the City will crash, and at worst…” the worst was beyond even an imagination well fed with fairy tales. “Don't you remember what happened with the Keystone? I can only imagine this will be at least a hundred times worse.”

Bessie frowned, looking suddenly uneasy and so young that Amelia didn't believe she was fourteen at all. “
Sharvesh
is magical. Bryn's skyship, that brought me here,” Bessie explained when she saw Amelia's look of confusion. “I should have thought of that before: they'll be waiting somewhere close by… I don't want to see them stranded out here!”

“Stranding might be the least of their troubles,” Amelia muttered. She looked at the size of the gap between the Orb and the edge of the hole, and then looked at the size of Bessie. “Look, I know you want to see Arch–” Amelia stopped herself just in time, “to see the prince destroyed, but if you don't fish that Device out of there right now, I'll… I'll turn you into a rat! For real, this time!” She grabbed Bessie by the arm and dragged her to the edge of the well. “Go on! Get in there and get that Device!” If they couldn't stop it, then at least they could move it from the Orb and put it somewhere it wouldn't run the risk of unravelling time, turning mountains upside down, or awakening sleeping oceans.

Amelia's threat might have been empty (she didn't know
how
to turn Bessie into a rat) but it didn't matter, as Bessie had a sudden attack of conscience at the thought of her companions in danger. She tried her hardest to retrieve the Device, but… “I can't,” she said at last, swiping at the tears of frustration brimming in her eyes. So close to the Orb, her hair stood on end, a fine dark cloud around her head. “I'm not stupid, you know. I knew better than to put the Device under the Orb – that was the wretched griffin's doing – and I can't reach it now without getting all the way into the hole. I might just about manage that, but then I'm not so sure I could get out again.”

Buckets of water stood beside the Orb, and the idea struck Amelia to fill up the well beneath, in hopes of floating the Device to a height where Bessie could reach it. But the Device didn't float, disappearing below the rising water level.

Amelia shook her head. “Let's leave it be, then.” If she was still in Ilgrevnia when the clock struck seven and the City fell from the sky, it would be a death sentence, and she wouldn't abandon Bessie to that fate either. If they didn't linger too long in the Archmage's workshop, they might have time to rescue Rose: Bessie had been able to sneak in to the prisoner's rooms easily enough before, so surely she could do it again. But before Amelia could broach this idea with Bessie, the door flew open and Scarlet dashed in, her long hair flying free of its pins, her face red.

She stood there panting for breath, staring a moment at the enormous clock on the wall before turning to the fugitives. “Master's about to find you gone from your cell,” she warned. “I'm sorry: there's nothing I could do. Mister Morel knows the workshop's open, too – I told him it was only Sable fooling around again, and I'd see to him.”

Bessie gave a haughty sniff, snottier than she would have liked after her bout of frustrated tearfulness. “Thank you, Scarlet,” she said, brusquely. This latest news didn't particularly worry her: if the prince's men had to search Ilgrevnia for the escaped prisoners, there was no reason for them to start with the workshop. “Why's that clock running backwards?” she asked, pointing at the clock that had grabbed Scarlet's attention. Amelia hadn't noticed at first, but the hands ran counter-clockwise, steadily and accurately measuring time backwards.

Scarlet took a deep breath and for a moment looked as though she'd explain, but then thought better of it. Mad clock or no mad clock, time was running out. “Just one of the curious things Mister Morel's built for himself,” she said with a brittle kind of cheerfulness, as if speaking of anybody's grandfather and his whimsical ideas, instead of a dangerously powerful mage. “I don't pretend to know what that's for.”

No,
thought Amelia, new suspicions suddenly awakening,
although you might pretend
not
to know what it's for…
But there was something more important yet: she immediately told Scarlet what Sable had done.

Scarlet looked horrified to hear that the Device was trapped underneath the Orb – she rushed to the well and peered in, but if Bessie couldn't get to it then none of them could.

“Might Archmage Morel be able to do something about it?” asked Amelia.

Scarlet shook her head. “Oh no! If we tell Mister Morel what Sable's done, we might as well –
Sable, put that down!
You don't know where it's been!” The black griffin gave a muffled squawk around a beakful of tangled old rope, leather, bedraggled feathers and silver bells. Head held proudly high, eyes glittering with mischief, he dared his sister to take the prize from him. She strode over, seizing a portion of the thing herself, yanking hard on it, but in human form she wasn't nearly a match for the strength of the black griffin. He shook the thing in his terrible crow's beak, like a terrier play-fighting for a length of old rope – everything was a tremendous game for the black griffin. Scarlet went to throw the thing down in disgust, but found she couldn't let go of it. She sighed. “There, now you've done it.” Sable too found himself trapped in the strange snare, tearing at it with his beak as he tried in vain to pull his claws out of its tangles, pulling his sister off balance instead. Bessie managed to cut the living ropes from round Scarlet's wrists, almost succumbing to the trap herself, but she didn’t dare get close enough to Sable’s fierce beak and claws to free him.

Then the clock on the wall stopped ticking, and Scarlet stopped and stared at it again, her mouth open and her eyes wide. A moment later, the hands began to turn clockwise, faltering at first but soon picking up to a normal speed. “All right, time to go now,” she urged, shepherding the girls and the black griffin towards the door. “Quickly now, before Mister Morel comes back and finds us all here!” She ran off with Amelia and Bessie following, while Sable ran the other way, silver bells tinkling.

~

Scarlet swore she knew the quickest, safest way out of the palace, although it meant another trip through the dungeons, and out through the waterworks. Amelia thought she'd almost be glad to see the dark abandoned dungeons again, compared to the first leg of their escape, through the palace, with the golems alert now to the presence of the escaped prisoners. But first, there was the matter of the prince's other prisoner.

As might be expected, Bessie resisted Amelia's plan to rescue Rose before they saved themselves. “We don't have time,” Bessie protested. “We have to get as far away as we can before seven o'clock, remember?” She didn't stop walking, keeping up a respectable brisk pace despite her short stature, and Amelia struggled to keep up, soon out of breath.

“But it would be murder to leave her here, knowing what's going to happen!” said Amelia. Stripped of the magic that held it a thousand feet in the air, the countless tons of rock would remember their true nature, and Ilgrevnia would plummet to earth. “Scarlet, can you do anything to get that poor girl to safety?”

As a servant, Scarlet had a good chance of going anywhere within the palace walls undisturbed, so long as she looked busy enough on some errand or other. “I'll do my best,” she promised, looking dubious.

Then Bessie stopped so suddenly that Amelia almost tripped over her. “Shh!” Bessie hissed. “Somebody's about.”

Bessie must have keener ears than Amelia. The three girls crept along the corridor, all of them under cover of Amelia's trusty invisibility spell, and came out onto a balcony circling a marble-clad atrium that had seen better days. The enormous circular skylight had panes missing or cracked, and dead leaves tumbled through at this time of year. Amelia recognised this place: after their audience with Prince Archalthus, she and Bessie had passed through here on the way to their cell. The gentle murmuring of a fountain was interrupted by a group of footsteps ringing on polished stone, and a girl's voice, growing shrill with impatience. “But you said they would give me my crown! I'm sick of waiting to be queen!” The prince, his bride and their cohort, having discovered the cell with the rival Queens empty, had returned to the palace.

“The prisoners can't have gone very far, Mistress. You know the only escape from Ilgrevnia's a drop of a thousand feet.”

“
Those prisoners are our guests!”
roared a third voice, echoing around the high chamber. Amelia didn't dare peek over the balcony, and didn't need to. She already knew that voice belonged to Prince Archalthus. The entire atrium fell deathly quiet, interrupted only by the continuous low burble of the fountain, and the laboured breath of the furious dragon prince as he fought to rein in his temper. “Thanks to you,” he growled, “our
guests
have decided to shun our company most rudely and
may it be noted,
” he added, his voice climbing erratically, louder and wilder, “
that you have yet to offer any explanation as to how they entered Ilgrevnia in the first place, Commander!
”

Amelia kept far back from the twirling cast-iron railings of the balcony, shrinking against the wall despite her improved grasp of the invisibility spell. That voice had made her shiver even when it had been calm and smooth as honey. Dragon or no dragon, temper or no temper, wanted or not, Archalthus was her destined White King. He was so close, and Amelia still had the crown, hidden all this time from Bessie… The two of them had been destined for rivalry since long before birth, but even after what had happened in the Archmage's workshop, the thought of betraying her now filled Amelia with a shame that sank its teeth in and refused to let go. Bessie
had
been trying to do the unselfish thing, after all…

“I'll send men to the docks at once, Master. We'll prepare the flamethrowers. Whatever brought them here will have to land to take them back, and there's only so many places those two can hide in the meantime. They'll be… uh. They'll be
enjoying your hospitality
again soon enough, Master.”

“They
won't!
” Archalthus shouted. “I need only my beloved and the Crown. One of those two ungrateful ill-mannered creatures knows where the Crown is hidden. Find out which one, and retrieve it by whatever means necessary.”

“
Thank you
, Master.” The Commander was just visible from Amelia's vantage point, his silver pocket watch open and ready to give orders. “And then?”

“And then I do not wish to see either of them ever again!” This last ominous instruction echoed up through the cold white chamber, making Rose clap her hands and laugh in gleeful excitement. “Find Scarlet, as well,” the prince added. “Rose must be fitted for her wedding gown.”

Further shouts of delight from the bride-to-be drowned out anything useful Amelia might have heard of Commander Breaker's orders to the golems. She heard fleeting snatches of sentences: something about an aerial search with a griffin; the awakening of all dormant golems; Archmage Morel's name; more talk of flamethrowers – was there any way she could think to warn the wyvern to stay clear of Ilgrevnia's borders, should it return? But she heard more than that: Archalthus and Rose were both talking excitedly of the necessary preparations for the imminent wedding: not only Rose's dress, but the Prince's own attire for the big day; the feast to be held in honour of the newlyweds; what jewels would complement the Dragon Queen's crown…

Amelia could only sink against the wall, breathless and weak in her horror. The prince was planning the perfect wedding, to somebody else, and
she
had ruined it by absconding with the crown!

Somebody tugged on Amelia's sleeve. “We might have to double back,” Bessie whispered, her voice in Amelia's ear quieter than a breeze through spring leaves. In the atrium below, Prince Archalthus and his giddy bride were returning to more opulent surroundings, but Commander Breaker and two impassive blond men in smart dark clothing stood between the escaped prisoners and the stairwell that led down into the labyrinth. Amelia retreated from the balcony and back into the corridor, Bessie close behind her.

“Oh! I've just had a thought!” Scarlet whispered. “Stay here, I'm going to run and fetch something for you!” She was gone, running towards the balcony, before either Amelia or Bessie could ask her what.

“Wait!” Bessie whispered, loud as she dared. Whatever Scarlet had thought of, surely it couldn't be as important as Ilgrevnia's impending destruction. Bessie darted after her, but hesitated to leave the shadows.

Scarlet ran out onto the balcony, headlong into Commander Breaker coming the other way.

“Easy there, Ginger,” he said, steadying her. “You seen two girls anywhere about the palace? One with long blonde braids and a dim look on her face, and the other a raggedy little sparrow bit in a grey pinafore.”