“It would be an idea not to move,” a voice said from the darkness. It sounded amused, and this annoyed Lune.
“Why not? Will you shoot me?”
“Oh,” the voice said, and now she felt sure it was the Aftman, or whatever he might be. “If I’d wanted to do that, now, I’d have done it some time ago. I took quite some trouble to bring you here.”
“And where is ‘here’?”
“I’ll show you.”
Light, dim and grey, began to creep into the room. Objects swam gradually from it: a table, spindly chairs. Lune found that she was lying on a black velvet chaise longue, trussed like a chicken for the pot, but when she looked down at her hands, she could see nothing that bound them. An experimental tug. No result. The room was grey, pallid drapes, a grey carpet. All monochrome, with one spot of colour: the egg, which rested on a small velvet cushion on the table, glowing with a faint crimson fire.
Across the room, the Aftman sat on a fragile armchair. His ornate weapon rested across his knees. He wore a belt with an ornate buckle, set with gleaming studs. Without the hood, and the lenses that had hid his eyes, he was revealed as young, a pale, gaunt face, all sinews. His eyes were silver grey. He looked as though he had been carved from shadow. Lune had never seen anyone like him before.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Arquelle. I am from a place called Courtrai.”
“Never heard of it,” Lune said. It was the truth, but it sounded like a put-down.
“That,” Arquelle said, “is no surprise. It’s in Belgium, not Free France.”
Lune waited for a further explanation, but none was forthcoming.
“So,” Arquelle went on. “You stole an egg. Very enterprising.”
He sounded as though he approved. Lune said nothing.
“But why should you do such a desperate thing?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“Humour me. I’m not from round here.”
“Power.”
His pale eyebrows rose. “For yourself?”
“Of course not. For all of us. The church seeks to keep the power of the eggs for itself, secretes them away, keeps them hidden in a holiness which is no use to anyone.”
“Use,” Arquelle mused. “And you would use it?”
“I know those who can. For the good of society, for the benefit of ordinary people.”
“You work for someone. A woman who calls herself Madame Bezile. She finds eggs, gathers them unto herself, and bestows them on the poor and the needy.” He said this with a mildly sarcastic lilt.
“If you know,” said Lune with contempt, “then why question me?”
“I wish to see if you believe in what you’re doing. I don’t know, you see. Do you have the interests of others at heart?’ He waved a long hand. “Young, idealistic, full of glorious notions?”
“I am not a fool.”
“Or simply a mercenary, a thief for hire, a cynic?’ Arquelle went on as if she had not spoken. He spoke as if musing, his gaze fixed upon the air.
“I am not that, either,” Lune said, hotly. “Madame Bezile took me in, when no one else would have me, when my mother was dying. I owe her a great debt.”
“Yet you know what she is?”
“She is my mistress,” Lune said, stubbornly, forcing down the long-held doubts. Bezile commanded more of her loyalty than Arquelle, after all.
“So, neither a thief nor a fool. The egg likes you, you know.”
Lune gaped at him. “The egg—what are you talking about?”
“Because,” Arquelle remarked, “if it did not, you’d be dead. Letting the fire out like that . . . Now come with me. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Lune found that she could rise. The invisible restraints had melted away. At once, she began to make plans: snatch the egg, and run—but the moment the thought entered her mind, a tightening about her wrists warned it away.
“Tedious, I know,” Arquelle said, although his back was to her. “But necessary until you’re able to make an informed decision.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a long black strap. “Here. Buckle this around your waist, and make sure it’s tight.”
Lune took the object warily. She could move her hands provided she kept thoughts of flight from her mind. “A belt?”
“More than a belt. Don’t fiddle with the buckle once it’s on, or you’ll bash your skull on the ceiling.”
It was the same as the one Arquelle already wore. She fastened it around her waist, flinching when the belt seemed to tighten of its own accord. It stopped just before it became uncomfortable.
Away from the grey, elegant room, the building was more typical of the city: ancient blocks of stone, a smell of the damp and the river. They walked past a wooden-shuttered window, through which orange light betrayed the coming of dawn. Lune only felt as if she had been unconscious for minutes, when in fact it must have been hours.
“I must get back to the Château.”
“In time,” Arquelle said.
He led her into what must have once been a stairwell, before the stairs crumbled to dust. Now it was a circular shaft, its windows shuttered. They stood on a creaking wooden platform with gaps in the floorboards. “Your belt is slaved to mine,” Arquelle said, touching one of the studs on his buckle. “If you need to know how it works, I’ll show you later. That’ll depend on the Captain’s view of your usefulness.”
The belts emitted a dual rising whine, a sound that quickly passed the threshold of audibility. Lune gasped as the floor dropped away from her feet. There was a feeling in her belly like falling, but instead of plummeting she was rising smoothly up. The cold stone walls slid by, the circular platform dropping away with increasing speed. Arquelle had his thumbs tucked into the belt, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. He was grinning.
The discharge pistol, the stunning weapon, the restraining mechanism—these were all old-world technologies, vanishingly rare. But Lune had heard of them. The belts were something else. These were functioning relics from an even earlier time, when men and women strode the skies like gods.
Things that no one was really sure had ever been real.
It was as if Arquelle had read her thoughts. “We use the belts sparingly. There’s only a finite charge in their power packs, about ten thousand ascents per unit, and they can’t be re-energised once they’re dead. You might say we’d be better off putting stairs back.”
“Why don’t you?”
“The Captain has many enemies. At least this way no one can get to him without going to some considerable bother.”
Lune hardly dared look down, but by the time they reached the wooden landing at the top of the shaft, it was clear that they’d come up the equivalent of ten or twelve stories in a normal building. The landing was semicircular; as they reached its level Arquelle touched another belt stud to make them slide sideways, until their feet were only a sole’s thickness off the flooring. He cut the power and Lune felt her weight return. She edged away from the drop.
“You can keep the belt on for now,” Arquelle said. “You wouldn’t get very far with it, even if you tried.”
He opened a heavy wooden door and she followed him into what she judged must be the very top of the building. It was a half-octagonal room, with doors leading off it into what must have been other parts of this garret. There were no windows as such, merely narrow, glass-filled slits. Through the nearest slit she made out the four iron stumps of the Old Tower, clawing at the dawn sky like four attenuated fingers.
Above her head was another level, a metal platform reached by a black spiral staircase, and above the platform was a circular window, facing all the quarters of the compass and surmounted by a dark-fretted iron ceiling.