The Liar's Key

The gates to the outside world towered above me, thick slabs of dry timber, iron studded, a heavy locking mechanism in the middle. I shoved in the key with an ecstasy of fumbling, turned it and pushed through with a strength born of desperation. Hennan shot through the narrow gap seconds later, a white figure hard on his heels, lime powder smoking its trail. Together we slammed the gate and Loki’s key locked it just as the first body hammered into the timbers.

THIRTY

“Keep running!” I grabbed Hennan’s hand and dragged him across the street that ran behind the prison. We took the first alleyway that presented itself. Dark alleys might be dangerous places but when you’re on the run from a debtors’ prison in a banking town, with dead inmates anxious to eat the soft parts of you, even the worst alley in Christendom is the frying pan not the fire.

The narrow passages shadowed the moon as effectively as the sun, and save for the odd chink of lamplight escaping from the buildings we ran near blind. At each corner I imagined some beggar’s corpse might be standing there in the darkness, with arms wide-stretched and a hungry grin. Turn after turn proved me wrong: it was Hennan who stopped me, not some dead man hunting the key.

The boy’s strength gave out within just a few minutes, at first he only needed a moment here and there to catch his breath, but the stops got longer and soon it was a choice of carry, drag, abandon, or stop. I felt pretty tired myself, so we stopped, hunkering down in a gated archway leading into somebody’s walled garden. I could only hope that the dead saw no better without light than the living, and that the gate at our backs would at least stop attack from that direction.

“We just have to get past the city gates and head north. They might send riders up the Roma Road so we’ll need to take another route. The border could be a problem . . . but that’s days away.” I paused to haul in some much-needed air. “It’d be a damn sight easier if we had some money.” I allowed myself a moment’s silence to remember my lovely gold, variously thrown, scattered, and stolen in that blasted prison. My eyes prickled with the injustice of it all. I’d had a king’s ransom in that case and even when they took that I had enough tied about my person to ransom his favourite dog . . . I may even have shed a manly tear in the privacy of that darkness.

“We need to get Snorri and the others first,” Hennan said.

“Kara will be fine: she probably got out in the rioting. Besides, she’s a witch, I’m surprised she hasn’t used her magic and escaped already. In fact . . .” In fact I was suddenly hit by the realization that her being in the debtors’ prison at all was pretty odd. Wouldn’t they be keen to put her to the question as well?

“We’ve got to get them out.” Hennan’s voice came insistent through the dark. “We can’t leave them in there to die!”

“Well, yes, of course I want to rescue Snorri and Tuttugu, Hennan, it’s just . . .” It’s just I don’t want to at all because we’ll be captured or killed. “There’s no way of doing it. Not with only one man. Not even if that man’s a prince. No, what we need to do is get back to Vermillion as fast as possible and then send help.”

“Send . . . help?” He might be just a kid but he wasn’t buying it.

“Yes. I’ll tell the Red Queen and—”

“They can’t wait that long! They need us to get them out now!”

“They’ll have to wait. I don’t even know where they are for Christ’s sake!” I did, though. They’d be in the Frauds’ Tower. The grimmest of all Umbertide’s prisons, a squat grey tower wherein all the plots and ploys used outside bank-law to steal money were unravelled and undone, using a variety of variously sharp or hot or crushing implements to ensure a thorough solution. Those who stole money inside bank-law of course were very well rewarded, and known as bankers. In Umbertide the fraudster got a rawer deal than the murderer, and murderers were laid beneath a wide plank called “the door” upon which rocks were piled one at a time until the criminal was judged to be dead.

I’d been lucky not to go straight to the Tower myself, and probably it would have been just a matter of time before I was transferred there once the full scope of my tax and tariff evasions became clear. Or perhaps my family connections had kept me out. Either way heading there now seemed like the worst idea ever.

“I’m not going without them.” Hennan, his voice steely with determination.

“The world doesn’t work like that, Hennan.” I tried for a fatherly tone, firm but fair. Not that I really had much to go on by way of experience. “You can’t always do something just because it’s the right thing to do. You’ve got to be sensible about these matters. Think them through.”