“Then you design a Game for that purpose!” the White Queen said. “Can you fix it so that the Troy Game can be destroyed? No? Can’t do it? Then take what I offer and accept it.”
She took a deep breath, visibly steadying herself. “The Troy Game is too powerful for you, and too powerful for me. But if I built right, and if you and Grace execute right, then we can trap it within this dark heart. If the Game is worked right then the Troy Game won’t be able to escape. I built a Game to contain a Game. It was all I could do.”
Jack felt Grace move slightly, and he looked at her.
“We’ll take it,” Grace said. “Thank you.”
Grace was right, Jack thought, nodding to his daughter as acknowledgement of his own appreciation. The White Queen had managed far more than anyone else.
“What I don’t understand,” Jack said, “is how this Game saves Grace. As I’m sure you know, she’s tied by hex to Catling, and—”
“When I began to build this Game, thousands of years ago,” said the White Queen, “I had no idea that one day Grace would exist, or that she would be tied to the Troy Game’s fate. Or that Catling would tie everything that Grace had touched—you, the land, the Faerie—to her fate. During the execution of the final Dance of the Flowers, the intricacies of my Game can break Catling’s hex tying everything Grace has touched to Grace’s and Catling’s shared fate, but it can’t do anything else. So the answer to your question, father-Jack, is that my Game doesn’t save Grace, although it will save the land, the Faerie, and you, and everything else and everyone else that Grace has touched—that part of Catling’s hex was always the far weaker part and it will shatter during the final working of my Game. But the hex Catling put on Grace…that is too powerful for either me or for my Game. It’s just one of those things. When Catling is trapped inside this dark heart…then so, too, will Grace be trapped.”
Jack felt his world fall away. “No! I—”
“If you want her saved, father-Jack, then you do it!”
“I don’t believe you,” Jack said. “It doesn’t make sense. Catling, and thus Grace, will be trapped inside your Game during the raising of the Flower Gate. Grace will be inside the dark heart.”
With Catling, but this Jack did not say. He couldn’t. The pain would have murdered him.
“And if Grace is inside the dark heart,” Jack continued, his voice growing firmer, “then the Game can’t be completed and Catling won’t be trapped. So there must be a way to prevent Catling’s hex dragging Grace inside the Game. There must. If Grace is to partner me to finish your Game, then she can’t be trapped inside with Catling.”
The White Queen shook her head, her eyes never leaving Jack’s face. “There is no reason why Grace can’t continue her part of the dance when she is inside the dark heart of the Game. She can still partner you. Your powers can still connect. She will only lose power once the Game is completed. Then no one can reach her.”
For one long, frightful moment, Jack could not believe, nor even comprehend, what the White Queen had said. The White Queen thought that Grace, once dragged into the dark heart of the Shadow Game with Catling, would continue to dance the enchantment that would trap her inside, with Catling, for eternity?
“Grace couldn’t possibly continue a dance which would trap her for eternity,” he said. “She can’t. No one could.”
“I am sure Grace will do the right thing,” the White Queen said. “If it is a choice between stopping the dance so she can escape, and thus allowing Catling to escape, or continuing the dance and making certain the world is free of the Troy Game’s malevolence, then I am sure she will continue the dance. Won’t you, Grace?”
Jack turned to Grace. She was staring at the White Queen, her face ashen, and Jack was appalled to see
once more in her eyes that terrible, haunted, lost look he’d seen when first he’d met her.
He slid an arm about Grace’s waist, holding her against him.
Was this his daughter’s revenge? This her repayment for his lack of care so many thousands of years ago?
“Then why sit with her at night for so many years?” he said to the White Queen over the top of Grace’s head. “Why grow with her? Why—”
“I watched Grace because I needed to be sure,” the White Queen said, very low, “that she was of strong enough character that she would continue to close the Game, even though she was trapped inside it. Imagine, father-Jack…I realised very early on that Grace would be your perfect partner, and thus the ideal Mistress to close out my Shadow Game with you. What you and she could do together…ah, the entrapment would be so powerful. But she was hexed to Catling! So I needed to sit with her, and watch what kind of woman she grew into, to make sure she would do what was right.”
“That’s why you asked me if I would die for Jack,” Grace said.
The White Queen inclined her head.
“And why you set the shadow and imps to frighten her,” Jack said, his tone wooden. “You needed to further test her courage.”
“And if I hadn’t had the right mettle?” Grace said. “If you’d doubted me?”
“Then I would have arranged that Noah,” said the White Queen, “or perhaps Ariadne, would do as father-Jack’s partner.”
“You manipulative little—” Jack began.
“Jack,” Grace said. “Don’t. Please.”
“ Why make Grace a part of this, if it will only condemn her?”
“If you regret not saving me, father-Jack, then redeem yourself by saving Grace.”
Grace pulled away from Jack’s tight embrace. “Jack, it is all right.”
“It is not all right! Not! Damn you…” Jack stopped, unable to continue, remembering yet again Boudicca’s words: I am here to deliver to you a warning. Be careful. Look out for the return swing of the sword, because it may take your head.
“Jack.”
Jack dragged his eyes back to Grace. Oh, gods, Grace…what had he done?
“Jack,” Grace said, her voice stronger and steadier than it had been. “We will manage. We will find a way.”
Jack could hardly bear it. Now she was trying to reassure him.
“Save her,” said the White Queen, “and you save me. We are both, in our own way, tied to the Troy Game. I by death, Grace by hex. Save us both, father-Jack.” She paused. “But be warned. Catling is using the power of the air raids as much as my Game does, or as much as you can. She is strengthening the power of the hex that binds her to Grace. It may be that nothing can save Grace from her fate, Jack. Be prepared for that.”
Jack was silent a very long time. He felt numbed, his mind unable to process even the most mundane of thoughts.
“This is the final tragedy,” said the White Queen. “Just this one, Jack. Solve this, and there will be no more. Solve this, and you can walk away.” And I with you.
Jack took a deep breath, shocked at how it shuddered in his throat. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to force his mind back into logical thought.
“If Grace…” he said, then tried again. “When Grace and I open this Game, will Catling know?”
The White Queen shook her head. “This Game has been tied into her so tightly and so intricately, and has been created as her shadow, that I doubt she will feel the commencement of my Game.” The White Queen gave a short laugh. “Your name for it is very appropriate; my Game shadows her every move, and she will feel little difference between it being potential, and being alive.”
“Define ‘I doubt’ and ‘little’,” said Jack.
“Pick a night like last night,” said the White Queen, “a great raid, and the slight murmur, the almost indiscernible shudder, that will go through her being as the new Game is opened, she will put down to the power of the raid. You may not like what I have done to make this possible, father-Jack, but it is the only way it will be possible. The war grants you both power and camouflage.”
“But once the Shadow Game starts to wind the Troy Game in, and entrap it,” said Grace, “then it will be aware.”
“Oh yes,” said the White Queen, “and then you will need to be very, very careful. The night that you close the Game will be the hardest night of your lives. The Troy Game will fight with everything it has…and that is a great deal of black power, indeed. Remember, Catling has been feeding, too.”