Chapter Twenty-Five High Mountain Cradle #2
When the bread was all gone, he lay down and felt sorry for himself.
He could do that at the same time as wondering how to get out, and wondering most of all whether these barbarians would steal the alethiometer or just smash it to pieces.
But it was too cold to lie still for long, and presently he got up and inspected the door.
It was just a heavy cell door made of some much-scratched and graffitied dark wood. There was no handle on the inside, naturally, but no keyhole either. The open window was too high to look through, and the iron legs of the bed were set directly into the concrete floor.
Bonneville badly wanted the initiative back. He took the tin cup and bashed on the door with it, as hard as he could, over and over.
“Messieurs!” he called. “Soldats! Gentilhommes de la garde! Venez, s’il vous pla?t! Au secours!”
He spoke in French, because everybody understood it. The guards understood the bashing on the door even better, and after a minute or so they opened it suddenly, snatched away the cup, hit Bonneville smartly on the head with it, and went out again.
“Oh, mais non—messieurs! Venez! Venez! C’est important! Je suis ambassadeur de Genève! Diplomate! Immunité diplomatique!”
He heard heavy footsteps going away, and distant laughter. He kept on shouting, with no result at all except a sore throat to match his sore head.
Eventually he lay down and slept from pure disgust.
—
Prince Keshvād and Gulya met joyfully halfway up the mountain path, while Malcolm and Lyra and Asta hurried on towards the jetty.
Sometimes a turn in the path would let them see down to the shore, sometimes that view was hidden from them, but finally they came to a place that gave them a clear view of the jetty and the rocky shore, and there was no doubt about it: a boat, some kind of motor yacht a little larger than the fishing boat that had sunk, arrived from the sea and tied up to the jetty.
They could see it happen, but they were much too far away to shout and be heard.
Ionides and Leila were making their way towards it.
“What are they doing?” said Lyra.
“They’re leaving the boatman. Yusif. Look, he’s asking to be taken as well, and they’re saying no, you can’t come, you have to stay.”
“But…this is horrible. I can’t understand what’s happening.”
“Maybe Yusif can tell us.”
“Where are the witches?” Lyra scanned the sky, but saw no sign of them.
“Flown back towards Damāvand to tell them about Gulya killing Sorush. Probably. Though they might be watching the boat, I suppose.”
“I don’t think they’d feel that had much to do with them.”
“You’re probably right. I don’t know witches very well.”
Lyra felt as if her fear and doubt had physical form, like a bruise caused by a stone flung at her heart.
She pressed on down the path, with Malcolm watching to see she didn’t stumble, because her every limb seemed to be trembling, and soon they found the little rocky cove, with the jetty intact, and the mast of Yusif’s sunken boat still protruding from the water nearby.
The boatman was pacing up and down, clearly distraught. He saw them coming and hurried to speak.
Malcolm listened, and then calmly held up his hand. The boatman was speaking in a language Lyra didn’t recognize, and he was agitated, gesticulating passionately.
Malcolm said something in reply, and the boatman took a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his head.
Malcolm said something else, in a different language, Lyra thought, and the boatman nodded and replied.
“He says that Ionides and the woman went willingly,” Malcolm explained. “As if they knew the boat was coming.”
Yusif spoke again, and Malcolm gestured to say, “More slowly.”
Yusif nodded and said some more, and Malcolm listened closely, holding up his hand from time to time to clarify something, or to ask the boatman to slow down.
He did, and little by little the account became clearer.
Lyra understood that the boat had come straight in, as if those aboard knew exactly where to land; that it was larger and more powerful than his own boat, which now lay on the seabed; and that those on board, four men, he said, seemed to know the woman, who greeted them warmly and went on board without hesitation.
Furthermore, he said that Ionides didn’t seem to be known by them, but that they’d welcomed him as a companion of the woman, and that they all spoke easily together.
Finally, Yusif said that in his own opinion, the crew had some kind of official authority.
They wore uniforms, and their boat flew a flag with the emblem of a lamp on it.
He told Malcolm that they had pointed their guns at him, Yusif, but that the woman had spoken and persuaded them not to kill him.
Then they turned the boat around and made out to sea at full speed.
The whole account strained at the edges of Malcolm’s linguistic ability, and it took some time before they learned all Yusif could tell them.
“Well,” said Lyra, “I’m going to give him a bit of money. It wasn’t his fault, and now he’s lost his boat as well.”
She had nearly come to the end of Farder Coram’s store of coins, and the one she gave Yusif might have been more than his boat was worth, or less, she couldn’t tell; but he thanked her, and bowed to them both, and set off to walk towards the lighthouse, where, he said, he could stay for the night.
For Lyra, the sight of Ionides calmly leaving with the forces of the Magisterium hit her like a heavy punch to her heart.
Leila…she hardly knew Leila; but he was a friend.
At least he hadn’t taken their rucksacks; hers and Malcolm’s were still where they’d been put.
Lyra felt dizzy, uncertain about her footing on these slippery rocks where the waves were still dashing their spray, uncertain about everything.
And then Gulya glided down to land on the shore.
She explained that Prince Keshvād had set off for the south, to tell the Queen and the rest of the gryphons the news that Sorush was dead and his captives were freed, and that untold quantities of gold were waiting to be taken.
Meanwhile, Gulya herself would fly Malcolm and Lyra and Asta to a safe place further along the coast, where she could guard them while they slept.
So they climbed on her back, and she took to the air with no effort at all, it seemed; and on a grassy headland a little further north, with the sea below them, and a grove of trees some way inland, and the vast snow-capped range of the Caucasus behind, Lyra and Malcolm climbed down again.
Gulya took to the air again, to enjoy the power of her new size, they thought.
Lyra stood and looked at everything. Her head was as full as her heart. The night was not cold, and the storm had blown itself out; the moon shone clearly over the headland, and laid a silver path on the sea. And there was Malcolm, taking off his coat.
“Lie down on this,” he said. “It’ll get cold later on.”
He spread it on the grass near some bushes in the moon-shadow of a rock the size of the fishing boat.
“What about you?”
“It’s a big coat.”
Asta had already taken possession of the middle.
“In a minute,” Lyra said, and wandered to the edge of the cliff, and scanned the sea; but there was no sign of the boat, or of the witches.
Her mind was full, and she was overpoweringly tired. She lay down on Malcolm’s coat and fell asleep at once.
—
Olivier Bonneville was dreaming about Leila Pervani, and she was flirting with him, and he was treating her scornfully, which his waking mind approved of; though he enjoyed it when she trailed her fingertips across his head.
Half awake, he tried to reawaken the feeling, and encountered the lump where the guard had rapped him with the tin mug.
He winced and sat up carefully. Oh, it was cold.
He draped the single blanket around his shoulders and stood up, careful where he put his feet.
“Alethiometer,” said his daemon, her wounded wing held awkwardly.
“I know, I know. I’m thinking of the best way…”
“Use it to tell their fortunes.”
He looked at her. It wasn’t a bad idea, at that. “And tell them…”
“Don’t think it out in detail,” she said. “Improvise when you get to it.”
“How’s that wing?”
“Bad still.”
“Bitch had some sort of weapon…”
“She had a small stick.”
“She kicked me in the kidneys.”
“No, she wasn’t fighting fairly at all.”
Bonneville gave her a sour look, and sat down again. “What we need to know,” he said, “is what angle these police or whatever they are—”
“Listen. They’re coming back.”
He heard voices from the corridor outside, but he couldn’t tell what they were saying, or even what language they were speaking. An older man and a younger one, that was all; and then a key rattled in the lock.
He stood up. “Que voulez-vous?” he said as they came in, and then, just in case, “What do you want?”
“We want to give you something to eat and drink, Mr. Bonneville,” said the older man, in English.
They were both in uniform, but the older man’s was smarter.
The younger man was the one who had knocked him on the head with the tin cup.
He was only a thug, and Bonneville would have kicked him in the balls at once, if he’d had any shoes, but the older man needed careful handling.
Bonneville could manage that too, he told himself.
“May I know why I have been arrested?” he said, in English so as to exclude the younger man from any exchange.
“Of course. You may be aware that an emergency situation has arisen, and the authorities have suspended the civil law for the time being. Our main task is to make sure that the general population is safe. You understand the necessity for that.”
“I don’t present any danger to the general population. I am an envoy from the President of the Magisterial Council in Geneva, and as such I have the immunity of any diplomat. I insist that you set me free at once.”