Law of the Wolf Tower: The Claidi Journals Book 1 by Tanith Lee (black authors fiction txt) 📕

room in the Maids’ Hall, and say Jizania had only just sent me away. Dengwi and Pattoo had the night duty with Jade Leaf, so even she couldn’t complain. She couldn’t anyway. The Old Ladies were so powerful.

Jizania had told me she would say she had kept me in her apartment to serve tea – she only ever had ‘teas’ never breakfasts or dinners. Then she’d dozed off – ‘Naturally, old women always doze off,’ said Jizania with a tiger’s smile. I had then stolen all the keys and run away.

She would have to say that. They would think her careless and a fool, but clear of the crime of setting Nemian free.

She had added though, that next day, tomorrow, if there was no uproar – that is, if he hadn’t escaped because I hadn’t let him out – she would say nothing at all.

But I could picture what she’d think of me, Claidi the cowardly spineless creep.

Looking back on this now, I mean now it’s too late, since I did do it and there’s no going back, my nerves seem pointless.

Let me describe how the Garden looked though. I want to put it down, because I’ll never see it again, will I. And the joke is, it was partly mine. If what Jizania said about my mother was true.

The trees rested like soft dark blue clouds, and tapering pale dark towers, asleep. The lawns were like grey velvet. Black shadows tabled across. Here and there, a rim of silver, moon on water. One fountain I could see ceaselessly curving over and over, a stream of liquid spangles—

Somewhere a bird sang a brief little silvery song. They often do on warm nights. And from the river a hippo grunted.

Then a lion roared. They didn’t mean anything by it, roaring. Just exercising their lungs. But loud.

Above, all the stars. Would they be different over the Waste?

Perhaps it wasn’t really fear I felt. After all, perhaps leaving this place I hated, and which had been so boring and vicious and frankly dangerous for me, I was sad.

When I’d left Jizania, I’d hidden, as you know, and written in this book. I already had all the keys, and the wine for the Guards at the Pavilion, and some things Jizania had told me to get from the Maids’ Hall. These included my strongest shoes, which I put on. I’d put everything else in a little bread sack from the kitchens. (Another theft. Several actually. I was even stealing Nemian from them, in a way.)

She’d said I should start at midnight. The clock high up on the House sang out its thin strokes, the only hour it sounds any more.

And I came down to the Garden, and went along towards the Pavilion of Black Marble, approaching from the Upper Shrubberies.

(Jizania had said, it wouldn’t do for me to go straight down from her rooms, the way we had earlier. I thought she was sensibly not involving herself any further. But now I wonder if she gave me a last chance to look around, to feel my nerves and my strange regret, to be sure.)

However, as I was walking through the hibiscus shrubs, I met a lion.

We both stopped and gaped at each other. It seemed as surprised as I was.

I wasn’t sure what to do. It was a lion. Of course, I’d seen them out before, but on leads. Anyway, this one was perfectly friendly, or should I say indifferent. It shook its head and padded by, creamy in moonlight, and smelling of the white hibiscus flowers.

When I’d gone on a bit further, though, I looked over from a break in the bushes, and on the Vine Terraces that run down there, lamped by the moon, two other lions (lionesses) were playing together, rolling over and crushing the vines and the fat grapes, so the air reeked of juice.

On the night Nemian was to escape, the lions had also escaped. If necessary, this would make a splendid diversion.

A coincidence? No, I thought not. Jizania had sent someone else on another errand … Hadn’t she said she had keys to each lock in the House and Garden – that would include the lions’ enclosure.

Doubtless this feat would also be blamed on Claidi. It occurred to me, my name might live on in history here!

Then I could see the wall of the courtyard and the Pavilion cupola over the top.

Well, I felt sick. But somehow I kept walking, and found I’d knocked on the door in the wall. So there was no time to throw up.

One of the Guards spoke harshly through the door.

‘Yes? What do you want?’

‘To bring you wine, respected Guard.’

‘Oh. Wine, eh.’

Someone sounded pleased now. Then another one said, ‘Who sent it?’

‘Her Oldness, Princess Jizania.’

The door was opened, and I pattered through, looking suitably timid and modest.

There were five of them, sitting on benches under a lantern on a pole. They’d been playing cards. Behind them the Pavilion bulked, not a light showing.

I gave them the two large wine bottles, and handed them the two kitchen cups, all I could carry. They didn’t seem worried. One of them took a handy undoing-thing out of a pouch and uncorked the bottles.

They passed them around, taking huge sloshing gulps, which was glorious. Jizania had drugged both bottles, I’d seen her do it, inserting a long needle through the corks and letting in some herbal stuff, drip by patient drip.

It didn’t work instantly, unfortunately.

‘What’s in that bundle?’

‘Some things the princess sent for the prisoner.’

‘What things? What does he want with things? We’ll be stringing him up tomorrow, hopefully.’

‘Or we’ll behead him,’ added a particularly jolly one, ‘off with that goldy head.’

‘Too right, Jovis.’

‘Too goldy,’ Jovis agreed with himself, thoughtfully.

I remembered, it was his cannon that had brought down the balloon.

‘Here,’ said Jovis to me, ‘come and sit on my knee, girlie.’

‘No, thank you,’ I replied politely.

They all laughed, and one kindly explained, ‘No, he’s not asking you, he’s telling you.’

This sort of thing had happened now