Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 52

“Just a fairly strong stasis,” I said.

“Consider it unfixed,” Zinka said, and went away.

The door snapped shut and Maree got down to work. Rob flinched, gasped and took his head off his hands in order to grip the trouser-press so that his fingers turned grey-white. Will and Nick flinched too and both hastily went to sit on my bed, where they could not see exactly what Maree was doing. They stayed there more or less the entire time, only moving reluctantly when Maree commanded one of them to bring me the saucer with the ligatures, or the stuff in the cups. The first time Will sat down again, he sprang up almost instantly. “Oh help,” he said. “I clean forgot them!” and felt carefully in the pockets of his large rough jacket. He brought out two yellow fluffy handfuls that cheeped faintly. “Orphan quack chicks,” he explained. “I meant to leave them at home.”

“Biscuits over by the kettles,” I said, holding the saucer out to Maree.

Nick and Will fed the chicks crumbs on my duvet. At least this gave Rob something to watch. I wondered how he could bear it without screaming. I said to Maree, “This looks worse than your aunt’s jumper.”

She said, busy with little tiny stitchings, “Yes, I thought she’d cut her breast off for a moment.” Then we both came-to a little and said simultaneously, “Sorry, Nick.”

“Why?” said Nick. “I thought it was hideous too. I don’t have to like it just because she’s my mother, do I?”

Rob gave a throaty yell.

?

??Fetch him some more whisky, Nick,” Maree said. “And talk if you can, Rob. It’ll take your mind off this. Talk about this dead Emperor. I want to know.”

So Rob talked. He leant on the trouser-press, with his face periodically twisted in pain, talking, talking. No doubt the whisky helped him to babble, but I think he was also a naturally garrulous person. I could rather easily imagine him in happier times cantering around with his friends and chattering until those friends told him, “Oh do shut up, Rob!” And it was curiously memorable, that young husky voice talking on and on as Maree worked and, every so often, breaking into a squawk when Maree dragged another piece of his hide into place.

Much of what Rob said was well known to me, if not to the other three, but not all of it. I remember him saying, “The Emperor has three grades of wives, you know. It used to be just two, True Wives and High Ladies, and they all lived with the Emperor in the Imperial Palace, but this Emperor – I mean, he’s dead now, I keep forgetting – Timos the Ninth, had a third grade just called Consorts and he didn’t regard them as important enough to live with him. Knarros says that this Emperor has – had – a passion for grading everything. He graded the High Ladies and left gaps in the grading, in case he got new ones who ranked higher than the ones he had already. He never filled rank eight, but he had a nine and a ten. Of course he graded all the children he had by them too. Knarros has charge of that scheme, but he doesn’t have charge of children of lower grades. If he had, he said he’d never have let that one who was executed write to his mother like that. But Consorts’ children were always farmed out to people in quite humble circumstances a long way away from Iforion…”

So, I thought, this was why the Emperor had so casually executed young Timotheo. He was the son of a mere Consort. Expendable. And he might have been a nuisance later, since he was technically the eldest. I found myself remembering that varnished courtroom and young Timotheo’s incredulity when they pronounced the sentence of death on him. I missed quite a bit of what Rob said next, and I am not sure how he got on to the subject of the colony on Thalangia.

“Knarros is my uncle,” he was saying, when I could attend. “That’s why I’m here – me and Kris, we’re both his nephews. We’re the only ones who are allowed out. There’s very strict security. Kris and I spend half the year there and half with the rest of our family, and we’re not supposed to talk about Knarros when we’re outside. I shouldn’t really be saying this – aagh! – but the Emperor’s dead, so I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Anyway, as I was saying, Knarros has charge of the children of the True Wives and knows how they’re graded and what their real names are, and how to identify them when the time comes. The children themselves have no idea who they are, of course.”

It was not easy to interrupt Rob now he was talking. I tried to at this point. If Rob himself knew which Imperial child was which – and it sounded as if he might – it would make my task that much easier. But he talked through my attempt to interrupt him and Maree was the one who broke into his talk, frowning, while she took another threaded needle from me.

“What a crazy idea!” she said. “A kid’s got to be an Emperor and he’s no idea even who he is, and not the least idea what it takes to govern a country, and he’s never even been outside this colony of yours. It makes no sense! Does your uncle educate the heir in statecraft at least?”

“No of course not,” said Rob. “That wouldn’t be safe. As he is, he’s safe. And the Empire’s safe from the sons trying to overthrow their father, or unscrupulous people using the sons to—”

“Piffle,” Maree said. “Piffle and propaganda. Nick, didn’t someone try that here? The Ottoman Empire, or one of those?”

“That’s right,” Nick confirmed from my bed, studiously not looking Maree’s way. “And it didn’t work. I can’t remember which Empire it was either, but I do know they shut all the heirs away in a sort of palace-prison. And when they let the new Sultan out, he hadn’t a clue, and he was scared of everything. They were dreadful weak rulers.”

I sighed. So I went and let the new ruler out and this was how the Empire fell to pieces. As was Intended. I was fairly sure Nick and Maree had got their facts right. I seemed to recall something of the kind too.

“Knarros has trained them all in the right kind of ethics,” Rob protested. “And blood will out. The new Emperor is no coward and he’s no one’s fool, you’ll see.”

“Do you know which he is?” I managed to ask at last.

“No. Only Knarros knows that,” Rob replied. “I wash – was shpeaking generally.” His head slumped down on his arms. “Ish – is it going to take mush – much longer?”

“Nearly done,” said Maree.

This sudden collapse of Rob’s was understandable, and probably genuine, but I was fairly sure he was letting it happen because he thought he had said more than he ought to have done. I did not pester him. I would be seeing Knarros myself soon enough.

Rob remained with his face in his arms until Maree tied off the last stitch and said, “There. Done.” Then it was clear that Rob was truly in a state of collapse. It took all four of us to support him on his sliding, folding legs over to my bed, where we laid him carefully down on his good side. Luckily it was a large bed. He filled most of it.

Maree leant over him to say, “How about your top half? I think you’ve got a cracked rib there, but I can’t do much for that.”

Rob muttered something we took to mean that he would be more comfortable with his shirt off. It was a sleeveless blue jerkin with no fastenings. We managed to ease it off over his head. He muttered again, anxiously.

“You’re all stitched up,” Maree said, leaning over him again. “There was no skin missing, so I could match it all together almost perfectly. With luck, it really won’t show very much when the stitches come out.”

“I hope it won’t,” Will said. “He’s such a beautiful kid.” This was true. With his shirt off and a gold medallion with the Empire crest on it glinting against his brown neck, Rob was practically perfect. Even with dark smudges of pain and shock under the one eye we could see now his head was on my pillow, even with one side of his horse-body laced with stitching and grey with powder, he was beautiful. The young human torso flowed like a harmony into the shapely horse-body.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
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