What was wrong with them all?

As she gazed out she saw they were dirty and sallow, their mouths and noses muffled and scarved against the cold, their eyes sunken with hunger. But that was nothing new. There seemed to be few old people, hardly any children. They stank of smoke and sweat and some sweet herbal tang. And they stood apart; they did not crowd together. Some sort of commotion caught her eye; to one side a woman swayed and fell. Those nearby stepped away. No one touched her, or bent over her. They left a space around her.

Maybe Rix had seen it too.

As he turned Attia caught a flash of panic under his make-up, but his voice was as smooth as ever.

‘You search for an Enchanter of power, a Sapient who will show you the way out of Incarceron. AU of you search for that!’ He swung on them, challenging, daring them to deny it.

‘I am that man! The way that Sapphique took lies through the Door of Death. I will take this girl through that door. And I will bring her back!’ She didn’t have to pretend. Her heart was thudding hard.

There was no roar from the crowd, but the silence was different now. It had become a threat, a force of such desire it scared her. As Rix led her to the couch she glanced out at the muffled faces and knew that this was no audience happy to be fooled. They wanted Escape like a starving man craves food. Rix was playing with fire here.

‘Pull out,’ she breathed.

‘Can’t.’ His lips barely moved. ‘Show must go on.’ Faces pressed forward to see. Someone fell, and was trampled. A soft ice-thaw dripped from the roof, on Rix’s make-up, on her hands gripping the couch, on the black glove. The crowd’s breath was a frosted contagion.

‘Death,’ he said. ‘We fear it. We would do anything to avoid it. And yet Death is a doorway that opens both ways.

Before your eyes, you will see the dead live!’ He drew the sword out of the air. It was real. It gleamed with ice as he held it up.

This time there was no rumble, no lightning from the roof.

Maybe Incarceron had seen the act too often. The crowd stared at the steel blade greedily. In the front row a man scratched endlessly, muttering under his breath.

Rix turned. He fastened the links around Attia’s hands.

‘We may have to leave fast. Be ready.’ The loops went round her neck and waist. They were false, she realized, and was glad.

He turned to the crowd and held up the sword. ‘Behold! I will release her. And I will bring her back!’ He’d switched it. It was fake too. She only had seconds to notice, before he plunged it into her heart.

This time there was no vision of Outside.

She lay rigid, unbreathing, feeling the blade retract, the cold damp of fake blood spread on her skin.

Rix was facing the Silent mob; now he turned, she sensed him come near, his warmth bending over her.

He tugged the sword away. ‘Now,’ he breathed.

She opened her eyes. She felt unsteady, but not like the first time. As he helped her stand and the blood shrivelled miraculously on her coat she felt a strange release; she took his hand and was shown to the crowd and she bowed and smiled in relief, forgetting for a moment that she was not supposed to be part of the act.

Rix bowed too, but quickly. And as her euphoria drained away, she saw why.

No one was applauding.

Hundreds of eyes were fixed on Rix. As if they waited for more.

Even he was thrown. He bowed again, lifted the black glove, stepped backwards on the creaking boards of the stage.

The crowd was agitated; someone shouted. A man shoved himself forward, a thin gangly man muffled up to the eyes; he tore himself out from the crowd and they saw he held one end of a thick chain. And a knife.

Rix swore briefly; out of the corner of her eye Attia saw the seven jugglers scurrying for weapons backstage.

The man climbed up on the boards. ‘So Sapphique’s Glove brings men back to life.’ Rix drew himself up. ‘Sir, I assure you...’

‘Then prove it again. Because we need it.’ He hauled on the chain, and a slave fell forward on to the boards, an iron collar around his neck, his skin raw with hideous sores. Whatever the disease was, it looked terrible.

‘Can you bring him back? I’ve already lost…’

‘He’s not dead,’ Rix said.

The slaveowner shrugged. Then quickly, before anyone could move, he cut the man’s throat. ‘He is now.’ Attia gasped; her hands over her mouth.

The red slash overflowed; the slave fell choking and writhing. All the crowd murmured. Rix did not move. For a moment Attia had the sense he was frozen with horror, but when he spoke his voice had not a tremor. ‘Put him on the couch.’

‘I’m not touching him. You touch him. You bring him back.’ The people were shouting. Now they were crying out and crawling up the sides of the stage, all around, closing in. ‘I’ve lost my children,’ one cried. ‘My son is dead,’ another screamed. Attia looked round, backing away, but there was nowhere to go. Rix grabbed her hand with his black-gloved fingers. ‘Hold tight,’ he hissed. Aloud he said, ‘Stand well back, sir.’ He raised his hand, clicked his fingers.

And the floor collapsed.

Attia fell through the trapdoor with a suddenness that knocked the breath out of her; crashed on a mat stuffed with horsehair.

‘Move!’ Rix yelled. He was already on his feet; hauling her up he ran, crouched under the planking of the stage.

The noise above them was a fury; running footsteps, shouts and wails, a clash of blades. Attia scrambled over the joists; there was a curtain at the back and Rix dived under it, tugging off wig and make-up, false nose, fake sword.

Gasping he whipped his coat off, turned it inside out and put it back on, tied it with string, became a bent, hunched beggar before her eyes.

‘They’re all bloody mad!’

‘What about me?’ she gasped.

‘Take your chance. Meet outside the gate, if you make it.’ And he was gone, hobbling into a snow tunnel.

For a moment she was too furious to move. But a head and shoulders came down the trapdoor behind her; she hissed with fear and ran.

Dodging into a side cavern she saw that the waggons were gone, their tracks deep in the snow. They hadn’t waited for the end. She scrambled after them, but there were too many people down that way, people surging out of the dome, some fleeing, some a mob smashing everything within reach.

She turned back, cursing. To have come all this way and even to have touched the Glove and then to lose it to a baying crowd!

And in her mind the red slash of the slave’s throat opened over and over.

The tunnel led out between the snow-domes. The settlement was in chaos; strange cries echoed, the sickly smoke burnt everywhere. She ducked into a quiet alley and ran down it, wishing desperately for her knife.

The snow here was thick, but hardpacked, as if from many feet. At the end of the lane was a large dark building; she ducked inside.

It was dim, and icy cold.

For a while she just crouched behind the door, breathing hard, waiting for pursuers. Distant shouts came to her. Her face against the frozen wood, she stared through a crack.

Nothing but darkness caine down the lane. .. And a light, falling snow.

Finally, she stood, stiff, brushing ice from her knees, and turned.

The first thing she saw was the Eye.

Incarceron gazed at her from the roof, its small curious scrutiny. And under it, on the ground, were the boxes.

She knew what they were as soon as she saw them.

A stack of coffins, hastily built, stinking of disinfectant.

Kindling was piled all around them.

She stopped breathing, flung her arm over nose and mouth, gave a wail of horror.

Plague!

It explained everything; the people falling, the cowed and muffled silence, the desperation for Rix’s magic to be real.

She stumbled out backwards, sobbing with dread, grabbing snow, scrubbing her hands, her face, her mouth and nose. Had she caught it? Had she breathed it in? Oh god, had she touched anyone?