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Santiago shook in disagreement. “NO DOG, Padre – dog run away! Crazy dog!”
“Could it be a stray?” the Abbot asked the Siguri chief.
“No, sir. A stray would have starved by the time it got up here. This dog has been regularly beaten; its master must be the stanger.”
Olga started to lead Carla back out.
The Abbot waved, the rack wheel turned, and Santiago cried out again in excruciating pain.
“Arrrrrrrrrrgggghhh!”
The cry stopped Carla in her tracks – at the very moment Finn’s scent finally rang a big bell in Yo-yo’s tiny brain – YAP!
Yo-yo whipped round. There! There was the good girl! There was the Finn smell!
YAP YAP YAP! YAP!
The Siguri chief, the Abbot, even Santiago, turned to look.
“It has the scent of its master!” said the chief.
Yo-yo was straining at the rope that held him, pointing only one way: at Carla, halted before the great door, ready to turn and declare herself.
“Let the dog go!” ordered the Abbot.
“No, Yo-yo! PLAY DEAD!” Finn yelled uselessly from Carla’s hair.
The Siguri holding Yo-yo released him and he sprang towards Carla like an accusing finger, all skew-whiff as the stew sloshed about the wire rack of his body, until … BANG!
The doors behind Carla burst open and in came the severed head of Baptiste, ravaged by bears and dangling from a Siguri gauntlet.
HOWWWLLL! – Yo-yo cowered back in fear.
CLANG! – Carla dropped her empty bucket in shock.
“Stupido!” cried the secretary, and slapped her so hard Finn had to cling on as she fell.
The Abbot was shaken. “Bring it closer!”
Baptiste’s head was marched up and dangled before him.
There was one lidless eye, the other was missing, as was the top quarter of his skull. A wafer edge of white bone stood proud of the blood and brain on what was left of his brow. His skin was ghostly, ghastly pale, and his black mouth gaped open. A section of collarbone dangled from ligaments at his neck. Here was the master. Here was the stranger.
The Abbot recognised him at once. “Oh, my dear boy …”
FIVE (#ulink_e0c7b20b-5ccc-5bb9-91b9-4ee1a37f1ac3)
Santiago was released and led back through the labyrinth, held between Carla and Olga like a broken bird, eyes tight shut, muttering some mad, grateful, polyglot incantation (“Fo me ca Maria – fo me ca Primo – fo me ca Jesu – fo me ca Master – fo me ca Dei”) while Yo-yo strained at the end of a rope just ahead, anxious to put as much distance as possible between himself and the severed head.
They arrived back in the library to exclamations in a dozen tongues. Carriers crowded round. Excited, Yo-yo began to yap, then – just like it would in the playground – a handbell broke up the scene – Ding-a-ling!
“Quiet! Do you want the Siguri back?” demanded the Primo.
Santiago limped over to him.
“What did you tell them?” the Primo asked.
Santiago recounted what had happened in a breathless, dramatic babble.
At the end of it, the Primo asked, astonished, “Baptiste?”
“His head – just his head,” Carla confirmed. “He dragged me here from Shanghai. When I got away from him, the bears got him.”
Santiago grunted confirmation. There was murmuring among the Carriers.
“They know him … They’re impressed,” Finn said at her ear. “Make the most of it!”
“I did what you asked,” Carla told the Primo. “I brought Santiago back. Now I must make contact with the outside. I must call for help.”
“There is no means. We are not meant to exist,” the Primo said. “There are no phones, no electric. Even fires do not burn by day. We are made to live as of old.”
Finn looked at the bells and the speaking tubes hanging around the dais and started to understand. This place was undetectable.
“There are NRP machines in the infirmary, but nothing else,” said the Primo.
“What are NRP machines?” asked Carla.
“Neuroretinal programming,” explained the Primo. “A probe is put through the eye into the brain, to program Tyros with expertise, strength, character.”
“That’s what made you blind …” Carla realised, appalled.
“The Master searches care institutions across the world for children of exceptional intelligence. I am from a local orphanage, but others are from the farthest corners of the earth. If we are suitable for NRP, we become Tyros and begin our training. If NRP fails, but we are still of use, we are put to work with the Carriers – local unwanted children,” the Primo said. “If we are not of use, we die.”
Finn felt Carla give a shiver.
“Your Master is a monster,” she said.
“We are here. Nowhere else,” said the Primo, dead simple.
At Carla’s ear Finn said, “These NRP machines must use computers of some kind, they must be connected to something?”
“Primo, these machines, are they computers? Do they have electricity?”
“They are connected by wire to the Caverns, but no Carrier can go there.”
Finn’s ears pricked up.
“What caverns?” asked Carla.
“Beneath us. Great halls within the mountain.”
“What is in them?”
“We cannot know. But flying machines go there at night sometimes.”
“Flying machines?” said Carla.
“We have to get out and tell someone about this,” insisted Finn. “We have to get off this rock!”
“In the morning, I have to leave, I have to get help,” Carla told the Primo.
“You will never make it. First you have to escape the Siguri, then the peasants – who all depend on the Protectorate – then the elements themselves.”
“Santiago gets out,” said Carla. “How else did he find me?”
“They know Santiago will never leave. He was the unwanted runt of some peasant girl. As a babe he was left to die in the snow, but an old crone heard his cries, rescued him from wolves and nursed him back to health. Later, when she was dying, she brought him here. He knows nothing else.”
“I got dragged across half the world by a mad Tyro – I’ll make it,” said Carla.
The Primo, not used to being challenged, tilted his perfect chin and turned his blind eyes on her. She felt as if they were staring through her.
“For every runaway the Siguri catch, they let the Tyros kill another five Carriers for sport. To set an example.”
Finn sank back against Carla’s scalp, challenge fading in the face of such cruelty. A lump rose in Carla’s throat.
“Baptiste was the worst,” the Primo added, more conciliatory. “We are grateful he is dead. He would have killed me, but the tutors stopped him.”
“Why?”
“They need me. For the Carriers to be effective slaves, they must be led,” he said simply.
Carla looked around at the ragged Carrier kids. They were all shapes and sizes, all colours, all abilities and disabilities. They certainly needed someone.
“This place is like an evil fairy tale,” Finn said in Carla’s hair.
“We’ve got to help them,” Carla insisted. “Primo, if I can get one message to the authorities, important people – and soldiers – will come, will stop this.”
The Primo silently considered the matter and Carla stared at his face and wondered what it must be like to be without sight in such a place, a darkness within darkness, and yet be so strong.
“Nothing can be done before the spring melt.”
“Before spring?!”
“Follow Olga. Tomorrow we will make you a Carrier. Live as she lives, do as she does. As long as you work hard, you will be safe.”
FEBRUARY 20 03:17 (GMT+2). Hull of the Shieldmaiden, Mediterranean Sea
Kaparis did not by nature sleep.
He seethed.
Usually Heywood would knock him out with a powerful sedative, but Kaparis had refused, wishing instead to pickle himself in fury and self-pity. He considered that he had got everything he had in life through application, imagination and sheer hard work. But never once had he had any luck – despite having inherited his vast wealth, good looks, charm and a brain the size of a small planet.
It wasn’t fair. Other people got lucky all the time, while he had to slog his guts out. Or at least other people’s guts, which was frankly messy.
Nothing was fair …
Then Heywood interrupted his musings and said, “Sir? The Abbot is on the line.”
“At this hour?”
Moments later, coloured bars of data danced on his life-support monitor, like nymphs in spring, and Kaparis ordered: “Bring me the head of Baptiste!”
On the screen above him, the Abbot presented the gory remains of the Tyro’s head on a cushion, like some precious jewelled thing.
“We retrieved it from a bear den on the Kalamatov Ridge!”
“HAAAHH!” Kaparis laughed, baring his teeth like a hyped primate.
“And where is she? Are you keeping her back as a surprise? Oh, I can barely stand it!”
“Who, Master?”
“THE SALAZAR GIRL!” Kaparis roared.
The Abbot was clueless.
“Three of them disappeared in China,” he explained to the Abbot, as if to a fool. “Baptiste, Carla Salazar, and, very likely, Infinity Drake. If Baptiste walked all that way, do you think for one moment he would have left them behind?”
“We carried out an extensive search, Master …”
“RUBBISH!”
Fools. Morons. Scum. Could they not FOR ONCE match the scale of his intellect? He gurgled with rage, unable to speak a moment, as the Abbot whimpered …
“We scoured the mountain! We can assure you he was quite alone. All we found was a dog …”
Kaparis almost suffered a seizure.
A dog?
A dog?
A dog with a supernatural sense of smell that had successfully traced its 9mm master before? A dog idiot enough and faithful enough to follow that scent for three thousand miles?
“Get me a picture of Infinity Drake’s dog!” snapped Kaparis.
An image flashed up on the screen array. Yo-yo. A vision of joyous furry idiocy.
