Voices in the Dark by Catherine Banner Page A

Rigel. Nothing that relates to my life at all.’
    ‘Rigel who was head of the secret service? Rigel who disappeared?’
    ‘Yes.’
    He studied the first page of the story. ‘I can’t make it out,’ he said. ‘My eyesight failed young, I’m afraid, and I can’t read in this dark.’
    ‘Then I’ll read it to you,’ I said. Talking was better than sitting there in silence, listening to the wind howling and shuddering at the walls. He nodded, and I picked up the stack of papers and began.
    ‘Once, many years ago,’ the lord Rigel began, ‘there was a boy who wanted more than anything to study magic.’
    ‘Where are we going, Papa?’ said Juliette. She was huddled opposite him on the carriage seat, wrapped in his overcoat with only her face showing.
    ‘Shh,’ said Rigel. ‘Just listen to the story.’
    Juliette rested her face against the misted pane of the window. Outside, dawn held off a while longer, andthe countryside was outlined in dismal grey. A light snow drifted across the moorland. ‘When will we come back?’ said Juliette. ‘Will it be soon?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    A streak of dust lay across her face from the carriage window, and he reached across and brushed it away. His heart ached sometimes to look at her. She was still so small; her hand on his was no weight at all.
    ‘Go on with the story,’ she said.
    ‘This boy was born in Angel in the south,’ said Rigel. ‘His mother was a poor woman. She used to go out cleaning for wealthy people and washing the steps of their houses. She had worked for the great Markov family and other rich families. In the icy weather, she came back with her hands bleeding. It was hard, Juliette, very hard.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Juliette. ‘It must have been. And what about his father?’
    ‘Well, the boy’s father was a mystery,’ said Rigel. ‘A soldier who had come and gone without leaving even a name. The boy – Richard, I will call him – at first he did not think much about his father. But as Richard grew up, it became clear he had powers. He could perform strange feats that no one understood. He could guess what his mother was thinking without asking her, and he dreamed once about the future and saw himself in a cold northern city where people fought in the streets, and once he saw himself as a rich man in a tall white house. These dreams began to unnerve his mother. She believed that her son had been born into a family with powers, without either of them knowing it. Richard used to ask her again and again to tell him about his father.’
    ‘Did she know much about him?’ said Juliette.
    Rigel turned to glance out the window, at the snow falling on the bleak moorland and the lights of the harbour ahead. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It was a cause of shame to her. She talked very little about him. But I always wondered, when I was growing up.’
    ‘Richard always wondered,’ Juliette corrected him.
    ‘Are you cold, Juliette?’ he said, reaching forward to grip her hands. ‘You are. Perhaps we should stop at an inn for half an hour.’
    ‘No. I’m not cold. Papa, where are we going?’
    ‘Let me go on with the story.’
    ‘I don’t want a story,’ said Juliette.
    Rigel had been going to continue anyway, but her next question took the words away from him. ‘Is Mother going to be there?’
    He had been planning to carry on the story over the miles of bleak moorland, spinning it out according to the length of the journey. He had been going to tell her about his mother’s death when he was still a young boy, and his troubles under Lucien’s government, and how he finally studied magic. But he could not tell it now. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, she’s not going to be there. You know that.’
    ‘Papa?’ said Juliette. ‘Do you still work for Mr Aldebaran?’
    ‘Yes, angel. He is going to come and see us off.’
    ‘Then why is he sending us away?’
    ‘He isn’t, Juliette. I was the one who suggested it.’
    ‘I don’t want to go