In the Land of the Red Queen

When their quest to destroy the weaponmachines takes them to the Red Land, Elspeth and Dameon cannot resist the chance to help Matthew, who has been sentenced to death… Elspeth/Dameon

The hard-beaten path of red earth coiled, making square alcoves around what might have been a windowless, sprawling inner building. A thick, stout wall rose on the other side, holding us inside the courtyard maze. The daubed stone used in these constructions was an earthenware colour, similar to the ground beneath us, and because of all the angular turns, I could only see a few steps in-front or behind us at any time.

All this sameness was making me dizzy.

I would have loved to send my mind out to check on the others, or just to soar away from this stifling monotony, but the taint in the walls was just as strong as Jow had warned it would be. I was not sure I would even be able to reach Dameon beside me if we had an urgent need for silent communication. He strode along, trying to look able-bodied, knowing that his milk-white eyes would instantly ruin our slave disguise if anyone looked too closely. People might tolerate, even desire a mute slave like Gilaine, but they would never purchase a blind one.

I tried to concentrate on the directions Jow had given us. If we had any hope of reaching Matthew, we must do it before sundown, when the overseers would transfer him to the heavily-guarded cage reserved for the Entina pit miners. I had hoped that I might be able to reach the mind of the Entina, even if we failed to spring Matthew from his cell in time, but Jow had only scowled and said "It's eaten Beastspeakers before."

There was something warming about the fact that Matthew had organised the Talented slaves into guilds, each with their specific tasks in their meagre resistance group. It was like a small graft of Obernewtyn had been carried across the waves and had flourished on this hot, distant shore. Tears pricked my eyes as I imagined a future where Talents and their practices would spread throughout all the inhabited lands. Dameon turned his head towards me, puzzled, and I realised that as with demon bands, the taint must not be as inhibiting for empaths.

"Homesick?" he asked.
I smiled. "Always."

I sobered at the sight of shadows beginning to gather in the deeper corners. We had to hurry. In truth, we had precious little time to detour from our quest, and the others had only agreed to it when they saw that Dameon and I would not be budged.

"What if the two are intertwined?" I had argued. "Saving Matthew might be integral in some way to finding the weaponmachines." I reminded them that it had been so before; in setting forth on Maryon's quests, I had often discovered signs or people I needed in order to walk the blackroad.
I held back the information that Atthis had once claimed to be behind many of Maryon's dual-purpose futuretellings, secretly directing my path from afar.

The others were right – it was indulgent that Dameon and I set our love for Matthew above the lives of every living creature – but it seemed so serendipitous that we arrived just when he had need of us, that we had to try. A cold, cruel part of myself knew that if we failed tonight, we would not have time to concoct another plan on the morrow. We would have no choice but to continue on to the Land of the White Lords and leave Matthew to his fate.

Dameon reached out to grasp my wrist. "Two men are coming. One is surly and proud, the other craven and agitated."

I gulped. An overseer! Slaves were allowed to come and go as they pleased outside of their work hours, but anyone loitering or moving about in suspicious groups would be investigated, and one look at Dameon would tell them we were not slaves.

"Quick!" I hissed. "Into the corner!" I half-dragged the bemused empath into the shade. Remembering Domick pretending that I was his consort in The Good Egg all those years ago, I put my back to the wall, wrenching Dameon closer to me.

"Put your arm around me!" Dameon gave me a quizzical smile, and extended his arm around my shoulder gracefully as though he was going to dance with me. I gave a sigh of irritation, thinking that I was silly to imagine that the gentle guildmaster would have any idea of what was required. I doubted he had a lecherous or fiery bone in his body.

His expression flickered for a moment.

Then he leaned in to me, his lips a finger's breadth from mine. As the overseer came around the corner, I forced myself to giggle in what I hoped was a flirtaceous way. Springing like a fangcat, Dameon grasped me by the hip and ran his hand smoothly down my thigh, wrapping my leg and my bunched skirts around him and burying his face in my neck. Mildly surprised, I ran my hands across his back and through his hair, trying to muss it up in a convincing fashion.

Glimpsing over his shoulder, I gasped as I saw that the pair had stopped at the opening of the alcove and were watching us. Dameon took the sound as a cue and began ostentatiously kissing down the arch of my neck. My cheeks flushed as his breath tickled my skin. I had a wild notion that Dameon was actually enjoying himself, as though he had heard my thought earlier and was impishly setting out to prove me wrong. The pair watched us more out of sport than any official role, I thought, but it occurred to me that it might look odd that we did not kiss each other's mouths … I reached up and pulled his face down towards mine. Our lips met and I felt a fire rage through me which made me moan aloud. Cheeks burning, I wondered if Dameon had used his Talent to make me produce the noise.

Could empaths do that? I blinked as I found myself absurdly wondering if empath Talents could be applied to bedsports...

After a moment that seemed an embarrassing eternity, the overseer's lackey guffawed and the pair strode along. The moment they had rounded the corner, I wrested myself from Dameon's arms and staggered backward, not sure why I felt so affronted. The ruse had been my idea after all.

Dameon said nothing. He took a deep breath, and I thought I saw the ghost of a smile on his lips.

"Did they suspect anything?" I asked him tersely.
"I think we are safe." He answered gently. After a pause, he added "They certainly weren't looking at my eyes."

I felt the flush in my cheeks spread right to the tips of my ears.

"The sun is setting." I said pointedly, and stalked off ahead of him.

The shadows were stretching into long fingers by the time we reached the stairwell entrance. On either side of the archway were the peculiar trees which peppered the Red Land – long trunks that ended in bunches of hard, hairy globes of fruit and a small tuft of fringed leaves. Something about them reminded me of Sador.

"Follow me." I said over my shoulder. Inside, there was a long narrow corridor that stretched in both directions. Immediately ahead was a square hole in the earth with steps cut into it. There was no railing and no light.

I padded gingerly down the stairs, the dank coolness of the cellar taking the red out of my cheeks. There were old crates lined with some sort of husked straw mouldering in bunches about the place which made me think this had not always been a prisoner compound. Perhaps rumours of the Red Queen's return had inspired a spike in slave rebellion, and they had to adapt an older building.

I had reached a corridor with barred metal doors embedded in the rock. The overwhelmingly human musty smell told me this was the prison. I strode past several bolted doorways, trying to augment my appearance so that I appeared to be an overseer. Underground, the taint was weak, but I still lacked the energy to make myself appear as a man. I began to panic as I reached the second last door, and saw only a dark-skinned man with brawny shoulders bent over with his head in his hands. Hopefully Matthew was in the last room…

The man looked up.

Elspeth?

His mindvoice wavered as though he feared he was delusional. I pushed his probe out of my head with a gentle nudge and cupped a hand on the lock, pretending to fiddle with a key in the other whilst my probe detected how the lock worked. It was heavy, but very old and simple, and clicked in a matter of moments. The rusted metal door creaked noisily as I swung it open.

"Move!" I said sharply.

Matthew hung his head, and shuffled forward. I let him go in front of us and hoped it wouldn't be obvious to the other prisoners that he was leading the way. When we were back in the upper level of the compound, Matthew turned sharply and squeezed the air out of me with his embrace.

"I knew." He said fiercely. "I knew ye'd be here one day te rescue me."

My chest tightened and tears rolled down my cheeks, burdened by the knowledge that we had so very nearly not come. He had changed much from his time in the Red Land, he was as tanned and fit as we had seen in true-dreams, but his face was also gruff with the beginnings of a beard, and his face seemed longer and more serious.

"We're so glad to see you." I said, hardly able to draw myself away from him.

"We?" Matthew looked at me sharply. I turned.

There was no one behind me.

"Dameon was with me!" I hissed. A look of horror swelled in Matthew's eyes.
"When did ye last see him?"

I faltered. I had been deliberately not looking at Dameon since we had kissed in the courtyard.

"Oh Elspeth," Matthew said faintly, "how could ye, of all people, nowt keep a closer eye on him? It's not like he ken protect himself." I raged inwardly at my own childish impulse that had made me snub him. We hurriedly retraced my steps, but could find no sign of him.

"It doesn't make any sense." I said desperately. "He was just a few steps behind me. Why take Dameon, and not take me? And why has no one sounded an alarm?"

Matthew scratched at his newling beard, a mannerism unfamiliar to me. I felt my eyes tear, and realised it hurt me to think of all the little ways we both must have changed since we last saw each other.

"Ye have a point. This place should be crawlin' with overseers by now. Perhaps it was nowt an overseer that took him, but another slave?"

My shoulders slumped. "Then how will we find him?"

Just then we heard voices up the corridor. "This way." He said, and ducked out of an opening the size of a small window. It was on dusk outside and I was surprised to see the gentle wink of open fires at even intervals along the outer wall. Matthew led the way across a raised wall and then a rooftop, surefooted as a cat. I began wildly trying to coerce minds away from noticing us, but to my surprise, not a soul in the labyrinthine courtyards looked up. I tried to swallow my jittery nerves and concentrate on my balancing act, when Matthew leapt down and landed softly in the sand.

We were near an outer gate, but we had entered from the northern port. This gate was inland and faced south to the desert dunes. I turned to ask Matthew what we were doing here, when he went down a side alley, almost disappearing in the darkness. I hurried after him, and almost screamed aloud as a hand reached out and pulled me sideways into a doorway.

"Elspeth! It is good to see you, it has been so long." It was dark, but I knew that mindvoice. Gilaine.
"I am glad of it too." I sent. "But I bring bad news." I recounted everything that had happened since we had spoken to Jow. Gilaine glimpsed an unguarded recollection of my awkward encounter with Dameon, and I felt her lips curve into her a gentle smile. But her face fell as I explained Dameon's silent disappearance. She faresent Matthew, who was setting up a curious shuttered lamp on a table behind her, but I could hear her because she was still holding my hand.

"Salamander was at the port today – Jow saw him not long after Elspeth came through."
Matthew cursed. "Tha' settles it then. He's got Dameon. That's why he dinna raise the alarm." He startled us by suddenly punching his fist into the wall of the hovel. He braced himself on a forearm and leaned against the cool daubed wall. "This is too much."

I was alarmed at his reaction, but being a slave for years must make one hate slavers all the more.
"He might not have Dameon." I reassured him. "Surely Salamander's not the only one…"
Matthew raised up a hand. "You know what he's like, Elspeth. The minute he recognised Dameon, he'd have been rubbing his perfect golden paws together…"

Recognised him? I staggered back, and had to sit down on a rough stool to keep from fainting.

He meant Ariel.

"Ariel is Salamander?" I could scarcely breathe.
Matthew cocked his head like a sparrow. "Ye dinna know?" It was all I could do to shake my head, but it all made terrible sense. It was a theory we had skirted before: Salamander's raids had begun about the time Ariel had started travelling for the Herders. And they had shared a habitation on Norse Island. I knew Ariel had come to the Red Lands for the same reason I had; he would delight in any way he could get to me. Perhaps he already knew I was here…

I clutched at one last chance that Matthew could be wrong. He hated Ariel with a violent passion and might simply be willing to attribute slavery to him as one more evil.
"Daffyd said Salamander was dark-skinned, like a Sadorian." Or a Gadfian, I thought privately. "You can't find one much paler than Ariel." Gilaine's mind burst with so many stirred memories at the mention of Daffyd's name I almost dropped her hand.

Matthew shook his head. "The other slavers are dark, but he goes about cloaked to th' eyes, so you wouldna ken what colour he was. But the slave maids he hand-picks to wait on him whisper that he's as pale as the new moon." An angry flicker behind Matthew's shield told me that these slaves were ill-used by Ariel in the same way he had treated the shadows on Herder Isle. My heart sank.

" But what of the testimony of Daffyd's witness?"

Matthew thought for a moment "Who's to say but he maun dye his skin as we do when we pretend to be halfbreeds? When he first began, perhaps he feared bein' discovered, and so used the dye. But now, with his stronghold at th' palace, he's relaxed. Probably chummin' up to the White Lords so he goes about paler now…"

I gasped as a much more profound thought occurred to me:

I needed Dameon to reach the weaponmachines! If Ariel had Dameon, I had failed in my quest.

Doubling over, I slid off the stool and wretched my guts up on the floor of the hovel. Gilaine gently rested a hand on my back, but I would not be consoled. I began to sob so hard that Matthew tried to stifle the sound with a bearhug, lest we be discovered.

"Dinna worry, Elspethelf." Matthew sent to me, as though he was trying to quieten a babe "with you here, we'll be able to rescue Dameon." His deep-seated belief in me just made me cry all the harder, until I was croaking hysterically over and over, "The Hy'raka! He's won!"

Just then, a metallic bell clanged a deep note, which reverberated off the walls. Then another peal, then another. Gilaine and Matthew looked at each other in dismay.

Gillane's hand was poised on my shoulder still so I heard the thought:

That means they've caught a talented Misfit!