She swung up on to the seat and sat beside the Enchanter.
‘Welcome to the troupe: he said. ‘Tonight’s triumph is in a village two hours away, through the tunnels. A rat- haunted heap, but I hear they have a good stash of silver. You can get down well before we reach it. Remember, Attia, my sweetkin. You must never be seen with us. You do not know us.’ She looked at him. In the harsh glare of the lights he had none of the youth of his stage disguise. His skin was pocked with boils, his coppery hair lank and greasy. Half his teeth were gone, probably in some fight. But his hands were powerful and delicate on the reins. A magician’s dexterous fingers.
‘What do I call you?’ she muttered.
He grinned. 'Men like me change their names like coats.
I’ve been Silentio the Silent Seer, and Alixia the One-eyed Witch of Demonia. One year I was the Wandering Felon, the next, the Elastic Outlaw of the Ash Wing. The Enchanter is a new direction. Confers a certain dignity, I feel.’ He flicked the reins; the ox plodded patiently round a hole in the metallic track.
‘You must have a real name’
‘Must I?’ He grinned at her. ‘Like Attia? Call that real?’ Annoyed, she dumped her bundle of possessions at her feet. ‘Real enough.’
‘Call me Ishmael he said and then laughed, a sudden throaty bark that startled her.
‘What?’
‘From a patchbook I once read. About a man obsessed with a great white rabbit. He chases it down a hole and it eats him and he’s in its belly for forty days.’ He gazed out at the featureless plain of tilted metal, its few spiny shrubs. ‘Guess my name. Riddle me my name, Attia mine.’ She scowled, silent.
‘Is my name Adrax, or Malevin, or Korrestan? Is it Torn Tat Tot or Rumpelstiltsker? Is it—’
‘Forget it,’ she said. There was a crazy glint in his eye now; he was staring at her in a way that she didn’t like. To her alarm he leapt up and yelled out, ‘Is it Wild Edric who rides upon the wind?’ The ox strode on, unbothered. One of the seven identical jugglers ran alongside. ‘All right, Rix?’ The magician blinked. As if he had lost balance he sat down heavily. ‘Now you’ve told her. And it’s Master Rix to you, fumblefingers.’ The man shrugged and glanced at Attia. Discreetly he tapped his forehead, rolled his eyes and walked on.
She frowned. She had thought he was high on ket, but maybe she’d got herself mixed up with a lunatic. There were plenty of those in Incarceron. Half-brained or broken cell-
borns. The thought made her think of Finn, and she bit her lip. But whatever this Rix was, there was something about him. Did he really have Sapphique’s Glove, or was it just some stage-prop? And if he did, how was she going to steal it?
He was silent now, gloomy all at once. His moods seemed to change swiftly. She didn’t speak either, staring out at the grim landscape of the Prison.
In this Wing the light was a muted, fiery glow, as if something burnt just out of sight. The roof here was too high to see, but as the waggons rumbled down the track they swerved around the end of a vast chain hanging down; she gazed up, but its top was lost in rusty wisps of cloud.
She had once sailed up there, in a silver ship, with friends, with a Key. But like Sapphique, she had fallen low.
Ahead, a range of hills rose up, their shapes odd and jagged.
‘What are those?’ she said.
Rix shrugged. ‘Those are the Dice. There’s no way over them. The road goes under.' He glanced at her, sidelong. ‘So what brings an ex-slave to our little group?’
‘I told you. I need to eat.’ She bit her nail and said, ‘And I’m curious. I’d like to learn a few tricks.’ He nodded. ‘You and everyone else. But my secrets die with me, sister. Magician’s Pledge.
‘You won’t teach me?’
‘Only the Apprentice gets my secrets.’ She wasn’t that interested, but she needed to find out about the Glove. ‘That’s your son?’ His bark of laughter made her jump. ‘Son! I probably have a few of those around the Prison! No. Each magician teaches his life’s work to one person, their Apprentice. And that person comes once in a lifetime. It could be you. It could be anyone.’ He leant closer, and winked. ‘And I know them only by what they say.’
‘You mean, like a password?’ He swayed back, in exaggerated respect. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. A word, a phrase, that only I know. That my old master taught to me. One day, I will hear someone speak it. And that someone will be the one I teach
‘And pass your props on to?’ she said quietly.
His eyes slid to her. He jerked the reins; the ox bellowed, hauled to a clumsy standstill.
Attia’s hand shot to her knife.
Rix turned to her. Ignoring the shouts of the waggoners behind he watched her with sharp, suspicious eyes. ‘So that’s it,’ he said. ‘You want my Glove’ She shrugged. ‘If it was the real one...'.
‘Oh it’s real.’ She snorted. ‘Sure. And Sapphique gave it to you.’
‘Your scorn is meant to draw out my story’ He flicked the reins, and the ox lumbered on. ‘Well I’ll tell you, because I want to. It’s no secret. Three years ago, I was in a wing of the Prison known as the Tunnels of Madness.’
‘They exist?’
‘They exist, but you wouldn’t want to go there. Deep in one I met an old woman. She was sick, dying by the roadside. I gave her a cup of water. In return, she told me that when she was a girl, she had seen Sapphique. He had appeared to her in a vision, when she slept in a strange tilted room. He had knelt beside her, and taken from his right hand the Glove, and slid it under her fingers. Keep this safe for me until I return, he said.’
‘She was mad,’ Attia said quietly. ‘Everyone who goes there goes mad.’ Rix laughed his harsh bark. ‘Just so! I myself have never been quite the same. And I didn’t believe her. But she drew from her rags a Glove, and closed my fingers over it. ‘I have hidden it for a lifetime,’ she whispered, ‘and the Prison hunts for it, I know. You are a great magician. It will be safe with you.’ Attia wondered how much was true. Not the last sentence, for sure. ‘And you’ve kept it safe.’
‘Many have tried to steal it.’ His eyes flicked sideways. ‘No one has succeeded.’ He obviously had suspicions. She smiled, and went on the attack. ‘Last night, in that so-called act of yours. Where did you get that stuff about Finn?’
‘You told me, sweetkin.’
‘I told you I’d been a slave and that Finn. . . rescued me.
But what you said about betrayal. About love. Where did you get that?’
‘Ah.’ He made his fingers into a quick elaborate steeple.
‘I read your mind.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘You saw. The man, the sobbing woman
‘Oh I saw!’ She let a rich disgust enter her voice. ‘Tricking them with that junk! He is safe in the peace of Incarceron. How can you live with yourself?’
‘The woman wanted to hear it. And you do both love and hate this Finn’ The gleam was back in his eye. Then his face fell. ‘But the rumble of thunder! I admit that astonished me.
That has never happened before. Is Incarceron watching you, Attia? Is it interested in you?’
‘It’s watching us all,’ she growled.
From behind, a shrill voice screeched, ‘Speed up, Rix!’ The head of a giantess was peering from the starry cloth.
‘And that vision of a tiny keyhole?’ Attia had to know.
‘What keyhole?’
‘You said you could see Outside. The stars, you said, and a great palace.’