If they ever found out what she was—
‘Your father wants to kill you,’ Will had said. ‘Remember? He needs to kill a Lion so Tom can come into his power.’
‘I can handle my family,’ she’d said.
Can you? a voice in her mind had niggled back at her. But she’d squashed it down. She had a chance to help the Stewards, and she was going to do it.
A Lion doesn’t have to fight for the Dark, she thought. And I’ll prove that.
‘You’re the one who shouldn’t leave the Hall,’ she had said to Will. ‘It’s you Simon’s after.’ In her mind the three hounds of Simon’s crest were like the swarm of black dogs that had hunted Will across the marsh. Simon wanted Will badly and wouldn’t stop until he had him.
‘If Marcus tells Simon how to conjure a shadow,’ said Will, ‘it won’t matter where I am. Are you sure you can’t just tell them?’
Tell the Stewards. Tell Justice. I’m a Lion. Tom’s my brother. The boy who killed all your friends. Her stomach clenched.
‘I can’t. You know what they’d do to a Lion. They’d lock me up’ – at best – ‘and then we’d lose our chance to find out what Simon has done with Marcus.’
They quickly put on the white Steward uniforms she’d stolen and mounted the two Steward horses. Then they rode to the gate looking as much like Stewards as possible.
They had chosen dusk because the dim light would further disguise their faces. Stewards guarded the gate against entry; they didn’t police those who left the Hall. Even with these precautions, she still felt her pulse racing. As they approached the gate, a thousand worries rushed in. Had she worn the Steward whites correctly? Was she tall enough to pass as a Steward? Would Leda take a second look at her face? Would they somehow guess what she was?
Lion, Lion, Lion …
Leda, on duty, raised her hand from high above on the walls. Will raised a hand in reply. Violet sat up straight and did her best to adopt Cyprian’s haughty manner: the perfect Steward, shoulders square, back straight, chin up.
Then to her astonishment they were through; she felt that lurch of crossing the threshold of the gate, and they were suddenly out on the marshes, breathing the fresh, crisp air and looking out at the world.
There was no sign of Simon’s men on the ride, just the splashes and sounds of insects and birds, and the darkening light of dusk on the marshes.
A single glance behind her as they rode showed the broken arch on the marsh, that lonely image set against the sky. It was as if the entire Hall had disappeared, or been nothing more than a dream. If it weren’t for her clothes and the white horses, she might have thought she had imagined all of it.
No going back now.
Not wanting to look like ancient knights in London, they stopped before the river to change their clothes. Expecting to feel like herself again, Violet was startled at how scratchy and uncomfortable Tom’s cast-offs felt after the light fabric of the Steward tunic. She squirmed and frowned, like they didn’t fit. Then she and Will rubbed mud into the white coats of the Steward horses, a determined blotting. The Steward horses looked utterly affronted, but at least they looked a little more like horses and a little less like two radiant beams of light.
Crossing the Lea at an upstream bridge, Violet let herself begin to look forward to seeing London again. Alongside the nerves, she thought of all the things she had missed. The taste of hot chestnuts in a cone of paper, or a buttery baked potato bought to keep her hands warm. The bright laughter of a puppet show on a corner. The grand carriages and top hats spilling out around a theatre or hall.
And then she saw it on the horizon.
London was a shock, an ugly, clumped scar upon the land. The closer they got, the uglier it was. The countryside turned into torn earth and dirty, squalid houses, streets clogged with people, donkey carts, stagecoaches, trudging drovers, boys, thieves, idlers, and every sort of person that could be squeezed into its confines. It was an assault on the senses after the tranquillity of the Hall.
When they dismounted, her foot sank into vile, squelching muck. A moment later she found herself coughing. A thick, choking miasma hung over the houses, woodsmoke and the smells of people and sewage from the river. She wanted to press her forearm to her nose to block out the stench, bile rising. Had it always smelled like this? And the noise: the clamour was so loud, voices shouting, drivers yelling, a discordant clutter that was too much for the ears. She was jostled, people pushing her out of the way, their shoulders slamming into hers, as though she couldn’t quite find the right pace to keep up with everyone, instead at odds with them.