CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Back in the tree borne city of Wyld Fell, Trinket had been marched out of the tavern with six soldiers surrounding her, hemming her in like she was a dangerous monster.

Jane stood to watch her go, and she felt sick about having denied Trinket so easily, considering Trinket had saved her life just an hour earlier. But Jane had two goals: find Tom and find the Wyld Book of Secret's. She had to make decisions that best served these goals, and it seemed that the Governor could give her the help she needed.

‘Sit,’ the Governor said to Jane who was still on her feet, breathing hard like she had just run a sprint.

Jane wanted to get going to the palace and the King, but it seemed the Governor wanted to go through some more hoopla, so she sat.

The Governor sat opposite and leaned back in his chair like the boys did in primary school, with the front chair legs way up in the air.

‘You have done right in trusting me. I can get you an audience with the King. Trinket was always trouble. She put too much emphasis on her status as Princess and has been bratish about it.’

Mirroring the Governor, Jane leaned back in her chair. She didn’t answer and after a moment the Governor sighed and banged his chair back down on four legs and stood and brought his chair around the table so that it was inches from Jane’s knees. He sat with his short legs apart so that Jane’s legs were between his legs.

The Governor leaned forward so that his face was uncomfortably close to Jane’s face. His lips were an ugly red against the frog green backdrop of his skin.

‘Let’s talk for a moment before I take you to the King. Let’s talk as though I am just a School of Alchemy Governor, and you are just an interested student.’

The Governor spoke condescendingly, as though Jane was a remedial student.

‘Let's not talk. Let's just go and see the King, as agreed.’

‘It is interesting to me that you have such a desire to see the thrip King, considering he has been deemed unfit to rule by the Empire. His power and ability to help you have been taken away.’

The Governor put a hand on Jane's knee, and she felt a revulsion. She slapped his hand off her knee and said, 'I have been told that the King is the only one who can help me.'

The Governor held his hand up and stared at it, as though looking for an injury from Jane's slap.

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'Help you with what?' he asked.

‘That is not your business.’

Jane had a sense that it would not be prudent to mention the Wyld Book of Secrets, or the fact of Tom being Elion.

The Governor nodded slowly and although his face stayed marble smooth and green, his eyes showed the slightest hint of anger. He dropped his hand onto his own leg, and leaned in close to Jane.

‘I will take you to the King.’'

It was a twenty minute walk up to the palace. Jane walked behind the Governor, with two Empire soldiers walking ahead and two behind. The suspended paths were less crowded than before, although the city of Wyld Fell was still warm with sound: voices drifting out of windowless huts, crockery clinking, a violin playing.

The path to the Palace wound around the central tree, higher and higher through forks and turns and staircases. Beneath, the city of Wyld Fell became a bowl of flickering green and yellow light. Huts floated like balloons amidst the branches.

Finally the group entered an arbour of vines that ran along, tunnel like, for fifty feet. The air smelled of mint.

They came to a wall. On the other side of the wall the palace rose into the night. It moved with the tree, as though alive, and the lights from a hundred windows made yellow stripes on the dark leaves. A gate through the wall was protected by palace guards - thrip guards wearing chainmail, but holding no weapons. The guards' faces were grim, and their green eyes tired, and their green hair dishevelled and their uniforms limp.

Two soldiers approached the palace guards and one of them growled:

‘Salute his excellency the Governor.’

One of the guards spoke through a sneer, ‘He is the Governor of the School of Alchemy. What is that to salute?’

The other guard, suddenly alert to a hidden danger in not saluting, said, ‘The Empire rules are new to us.’

He took a step toward the Governor, which was a mistake. An Empire soldier lunged and seized the palace guard's hand and twisted it in such a way that the guard dropped to his knees. The soldier’s left hand went to the palace guard’s throat, and the guard opened his mouth but was unable to suck in air. The guard’s eyes bulged and he strained against the soldier's grip.

The second palace guard came to help his mate, only another soldier rushed at him. This palace guard lowered himself and used the momentum of the attacking soldier to flip the soldier over his hip, landing the attacking soldier on his back with his head banging hard against the boards of the walkway.

The two soldiers behind Jane drew their weapons.

‘No blood,’ said the Governor.

The first palace guard had gone limp. His eyes bulged and his tongue, purple and fat, protruded from his mouth. When the soldier finally released his grip the guard slumped with knees buckling. He took a breath that sounded like a whistle of air from a car tyre, and he raised himself up into a crawl position and coughed into the boards, his back rising and falling.

The Governor stepped around the wheezing guard. Jane followed carefully, catching the guards eyes on the way past.

They went through the gate and arrived at the palace.