Some figures stood their ground before him. With relief he saw a tall shrouded shape among them that could only be Fern. As Carnelian came to a halt the Lepers pressed in so close he was breathing their rankness. Their low menacing grumble beat around him.
‘Make space,’ cried a voice he recognized as Lily’s. Fern strode in a circle round Carnelian, shoving the Lepers back. ‘Give them space. Space, I say.’
As Poppy let go of his hand, Carnelian glanced down. Her face was set in an expression he could not read. He raised his eyes. For a moment he considered asking Lily for a private meeting, but he was only too aware of the dangerous temper of the crowd. What he had come to say he did not want to be heard by Aurum’s Lesser Chosen commanders or, even worse, Aurum himself, but he calculated that his voice would most likely be smothered by the Leper mob. And he did not believe that the Lepers would betray him even to the auxiliaries, never mind the other Masters.
His silence seemed to be heating them into anger. Voices began shouting questions from the back of the crowd. Others took these up until the noise swelled into a baying in which he could detect, in many voices layered one upon the other, the demand: ‘Give him to us.’
Carnelian raised his hands for silence, but their storm continued to build around him. The homunculus pushed against him. Carnelian too feared for their lives. For a moment he considered removing his mask whose cold, arrogant expression could not but be provoking them.
Then Poppy moved in front of him and her treble carried above the hubbub. ‘Let him speak.’ First Lily’s husky voice joined hers, then Fern’s booming tones, and slowly the noise abated.
Carnelian turned in a circle so that they could see he was addressing them all. ‘You shall have him.’
They answered him with thunderous cries and a stamping rhythm. He raised his hands again and this time they fell silent. ‘But if I attempt to give him to you now, you will have to fight for him against the auxiliaries and the dragons.’
Spears sprang into the air about him as they roared their rage. Once again the homunculus pressed in close. Carnelian looked round, sure that at any moment they would fall on him. Beyond natural fear he felt the first stirrings of panic that he had misjudged the situation.
Fern came to his side, and Lily and a figure that had to be Krow. With Poppy, they formed a shield around him, facing the mob, bellowing at them until, raggedly, the Lepers again fell silent.
‘Will you hear me out?’ Carnelian said. He gazed out over their heads, anxious to gauge whether the auxiliaries or the Marula or, worse, the dragons were making any move to intervene, but the dust the Lepers were raising in their agitation had shut the rest of the world out behind a hazy wall. He focused his attention on the front rank of the crowd. ‘Will you hear me out?’ he repeated.
He waited until nods in the front ranks spread out into the crowd. ‘Listen then,’ he said, using the strength there was in his Master’s voice. ‘If what I am about to say fails to persuade you otherwise, I’ll give your enemy to you now as was promised.’
Fern and the others moved away from him, turning to face him so that they could listen too. Carnelian gave Poppy a little shove. She glanced up angrily, but went to stand by Krow.
‘As you now know, your enemy is here. He came to join his strength to the Master’s. He came to fight with the Master against one more terrible even than either of them.’
A murmur soughed across the Lepers like a breeze over fernland.
‘He who is your enemy is also mine, for he tortured my uncle to death.’ He gave time for that to pass among them and registered Poppy’s puzzlement. ‘But he who comes against us is more dangerous still. He’s the consort of the Master’s mother and it is she whom you should fear more than any other. She it was who betrayed her own son and would have murdered him, as she did her daughter, if he hadn’t escaped with me out of the Mountain. More than this, it is she who sent your enemy to your valleys.’
As this news passed back through the crowd, Carnelian felt unhappy that he was bending the truth. He had worked this out in his cell. Even when he had imagined he would be talking only to Lily and a few others, he had already half decided he would not attempt to explain who the Wise were, nor the part they had played. Neither was he minded to attempt an explanation of the politics of Osrakum. Gazing at his friends, he knew he was deceiving them. As the Lepers fell silent again, Carnelian drew strength from what he knew was no lie. Jaspar and Ykoriana were at least as dangerous as Aurum and Osidian; and to tip the balance there was the fact that, in the current circumstances, he had some power over the latter two.
‘If you take your enemy now and return to your valleys, the Master’s mother will not forget you. She’ll not forget the secret way you showed us up to Qunoth.’
He glanced at Lily, fully aware that had been her gift to him. ‘What she’ll not forget nor forgive is that you’ve come up to the Guarded Land in arms. Worse, you’ve taken the part of the son she hates. Your enemy, Aurum, attacked you for his amusement; she’ll do so seeking to exterminate you utterly.’
He waited for his words to reach them all and then waited even longer to allow their threat to penetrate each stomach.
‘I didn’t come here to frighten you, but to give you hope. I’ve extracted from the Master an oath that, should you choose to help us fight his mother and her minion, and should we be victorious, you shall be pardoned.’
He looked at Fern, then Poppy, then Krow. ‘As will be all those who’ve risen in rebellion.’ He had hoped for more of a reaction, at least from his friends. The Lepers standing round him had their heads bowed and so he could not see their faces, but he felt that, there too, his words had awoken precious little hope. Almost he stumbled into making stronger promises – that the world would be changed; that they would play a part in freeing many others from the tyranny of the Masters – but he knew that would be going too far. Even what he had promised he could not be certain of delivering. ‘Choose to fight with us and there is a good chance you will gain the peace to rebuild your lives.’
Still they besieged him with their silence. He wished Lily could see his face. ‘You were prepared to fight for revenge against your enemy. Will you not fight to secure a future for yourselves?’
Lily freed her face with its blood-red eyes from its shrouds. ‘You speak to us of Masters we do not know, of threats that lie beyond the horizon. You make promises we’ve no way of knowing you can fulfil. What do you expect, Master?’
Fern raised his head and fixed Carnelian with a baleful gaze. ‘And are you so certain we can win this battle?’
Carnelian regarded him through the slits in his mask. It had come to the point when what he now had to reveal would fall upon Fern more heavily than any other. ‘I’m less than certain.’
As din erupted around him, he kept his gaze on Fern, whose face was screwed up with incomprehension. Carnelian spoke knowing he had run out of options. ‘Even now the Master communes with his god. He believes he’ll be guided by him onto a path to victory. I’ll not lie to you. I’ve no faith in his god and thus little hope he’ll find what he seeks.’
Fern’s look of pain threatened to break Carnelian’s heart. The wound the massacre had cut in Fern, so deeply it had almost destroyed him, was being reopened.
‘And you expect us to put our trust in that!’ Poppy glared at him, her face ashen.
Carnelian composed himself. This was no time for him to give way to their pain, nor his. ‘I didn’t come here expecting you to do this thing from faith nor out of trust. In surety of the risk you will take in waiting, I’ll give you control of your enemy, of the Master and of myself.’