Secret of the Giants' Staircase (8 page)

There was a lonely sound to that trailed-off sentence. Jesse knew every Youth Guard member could make a statement like that. It was sad, not being able to know for sure what your family was doing while you were gone.
Or, in my case, not knowing if my family is alive
.

“Shipbuilders are important,” Jesse said, breaking the silence, “
if
you live in District One, on the coast. But there's no sea near here. No lake, even, unless you count the tar pits or muddy ditches, and I doubt the Lidians did any sailing in
those
.”

“Maybe he was important because he was rich,” Owen said.

“But why would a shipbuilder come here, of all places, as far away from the sea as possible?” Jesse studied the statue.

“Maybe he wanted to build a miniature fleet for the sovereign's bathtub.”

“But he didn't just come,” Jesse continued. “He was ‘bidden.' Called. Why? And what are the walls that ‘push back the sand'?”

“You just won't stop, will you?” Owen muttered. He started to walk toward the staircase, and this time he didn't turn back. “Listen, Jesse, a lot has happened today. You almost died and all that. What say we get some sleep, eh?”

Reluctantly, Jesse turned away. He got the distinct impression that there was something important here.
We'll be back
, he thought. The three figures standing in front of the windows didn't answer, but he was sure they would approve.

The next morning, with the sun up and streaming through the windows, the old citadel didn't look nearly as frightening as it had the night before. The rugs were bright, with intricate patterns. The faded tapestries on the walls, the ones that weren't torn or burnt, showed cheery scenes of nobles, dancing around blossoming trees. The statues still looked stern, but not nearly as ominous.

It was almost hard for Jesse to believe this was the same city where people vanished, except for the fact that Silas, Parvel and Rae weren't with him anymore.

“I don't understand it,” Jesse said, pacing around the room. “How could people wander into the city at night and just…disappear?”

“It's haunted,” Owen said, like that was a perfectly reasonable explanation. If anything, a night of sleep had made him even more energetic. “Cursed, by the vanished Lidians and their missing treasure.” He grinned.

Jesse knew that grin. They were both from District One, where stories were prized and the storyteller with the most exciting tales could be the hero of the village.

“Tell me about the missing treasure,” Jesse prompted. Owen didn't need any more encouragement. He sat down in the middle of the room on the Lidian crest, and Jesse sat next to him.

“The giants from the mountains in the west attacked Lidia, put it under siege for three months before they finally gave up and broke down the city walls with brute force. Ripped them up with their bare hands.”

“No,” Jesse corrected. “I saw the damage to the wall around the tower. It looked like the work of a battering ram or catapult.”

“They ripped them up with their bare hands,” Owen repeated, crossing his arms. “But when they entered the city, there was no one there.”

“The people vanished?” Jesse asked. “That's not possible.”

“And guess what else?” Owen added, getting excited now. “Their treasure was gone too. Lidia was the richest city ever known to man. They said the sovereign had an entire room lined with gold wallpaper, stamped with designs and a map of the known world. That's why the giants attacked Lidia in the first place; only they didn't find anything in the city but abandoned buildings.”

“What happened to the giants?” Jesse asked.

Owen lowered his voice mysteriously. “No one knows. After the attack on Lidia, they were never heard from again. No ambushes on travelers through the mountains. No sign of migration to the northern forests. Most people think the giants took their families and disappeared into the swamp, never to be seen again.”

Never to be seen again
. The phrase repeated in Jesse's mind. “How do you know all this?” he asked.

“Barnaby told us. We searched the city twice, looking for any signs of the giants or some kind of message about what happened to them after the attack.” Owen shrugged. “Nothing, and no treasure either.” Jesse could tell that was what he had been looking for while the others searched for clues to the Giants' Staircase.

Jesse remembered what Parvel said, how nothing more was known of Lidian history after the attack. “And how did Barnaby know all this?”

“I don't know. He lives near here. I guess everyone around the swamps knows.”

Jesse stood up, stretching. “Well, I don't believe in curses or ghosts,” he said, “so we'll have to find a better explanation for why my squad disappeared.”

“Shouldn't we check in the city again?” Owen asked. “They could still be here. I could climb that huge tree in the middle of the town square.”

“No,” Jesse said immediately, picturing Owen falling to his death. “The branches are dead. Even if you could reach the lowest one, which you can't, it could break off under your weight.”

“Could at least try it,” Owen muttered, scuffing his shoe on the tile floor.

“Besides, I know they're not here,” Jesse said. He couldn't say exactly how he knew. It was a vague feeling of loss—the same he had the day after his parents disappeared. He gestured to the statues around the room. “These are the only residents of the city who can help us now.”

For a moment, Owen fell silent, looking back and forth between the three stone figures. “They don't seem to be telling us anything.”

“Yes,” Jesse said, kneeling down beside Hyram's pedestal. “Yes, they are. I know they are. I just can't figure out what it is.”

“Fine,” Owen sighed, flopping down on the tile floor and looking at the ceiling. “Tell me when you're done talking to the stone dead men. I'll be right here.”

Jesse ran his hands over the lines on Hyram's pedestal. “He was a scribe, a historian,” he muttered. “I wonder if he had any followers left at the time of the attack.” He raised his voice. “Owen, when you searched the city, did you find a library?”

“Not a single book,” Owen replied. He made a face. “Good thing, too, or Nero would have forced us to read every word, looking for some kind of hint about the giants and their staircase.”

“Probably destroyed,” Jesse muttered, although he couldn't imagine anyone destroying such a great treasure as a library. To him, it would be worth more than the gold-plated room Owen talked about.

Jesse moved around the room to Vincent the shipbuilder. “‘The walls that push back the sand.' What walls?” He thought a moment, then snapped his fingers, “the foundations!”

“Right, the foundations,” Owen echoed. “Obviously. Great. Now that we've got that figured out, can we find something to eat? I'm hungry.”

“Vincent probably laid the foundations of Lidia, pushing back the mud and sand of the swamp,” Jesse said, still excited. Then he frowned. “Although why would they would need a shipbuilder to do that instead of a stonemason?”

“Maybe he carved ships out of stone.”

“And maybe you don't know what you're talking about,” Jesse shot back, starting to lose patience with him.

“I know exactly what I'm talking about,” Owen insisted. “I just make it all up.”

Jesse rolled his eyes. He walked slowly over to the last statue, Jardos the sovereign. “Why call the city ‘the noble hill'?”

“Because it's on a hill,” Owen practically yelled. “How more obvious can it be?”

“But Jardos ruled the city, not the hill,” Jesse said. “Maybe it means something.”

“Maybe it means you're crazy.”

That was it. “Time to get something to eat,” Jesse said, walking toward the door. He couldn't tolerate Owen's complaints any longer.

Owen did a flip to spring to his feet. “About time,” he moaned, clutching his stomach.

Jesse turned around quickly, looking behind them. Nothing was moving. He could almost feel Jardos' piercing stone eyes watching him walk out of the tower.

“I know a great orchard near the market street,” Owen said, pulling on Jesse's arm. “I fell asleep there the last time we were in the city.”

“Well, you were clearly very useful to your squad.”

“I'm a growing boy,” Owen protested. “I need my rest.”

“Breakfast, then we search the city,” Jesse said. He checked the streets before letting Owen dart out. No one was there.

“Again?” Owen demanded. “I told you, we checked
everything
!”

“You were looking for a staircase, not…” Jesse's voice trailed off. What
would
they look for? “Not three missing people.”

“They vanished,” Owen said ominously. “The Swamp of the Vanished never gives anyone back.”

“Then we'll have to take them back,” Jesse said, fixing his face in determination.

“Why can't we just
leave
?” Owen whined. “I want to go home.”

“So do I,” Jesse said, “but if you go home, and
especially
if I go home, the king and his Riders will kill us.”

Owen stared at Jesse, wrinkling his freckled nose. “You're not joking after all, are you? You really mean it.”

Jesse nodded. “They know what we look like and where we live. In fact, there's a one-hundred-sceptre reward on my head.”

Owen gave a long whistle. “I'd turn you in for that much.”

“Thanks. That's very comforting.”

But at least now Owen wasn't acting like this was all a grand adventure. A trace of seriousness had entered his blue eyes. “That long story you were telling me about?” he said. “Now's as good a time as any to hear it, eh?”

So, as they walked through the city to the orchard, Jesse told him, starting from the very beginning. It took a long time, because Owen interrupted after what seemed like every sentence.

“And here we were wandering around in a giant tar pit for a month,” he grumbled when Jesse had finished, taking a big bite out of the fruit he held. “You got to have all the fun.”

“I would be happy to have a little less ‘fun' if it means I'm not running for my life every day,” Jesse shot back. He had a neat pile of fruit stems next to him, but a look at the number of stems scattered around Owen's feet told him that he had eaten twice as many. “You're going to get sick, you know,” he said, even though he knew he sounded like Silas.

Owen was looking on the ground for something. “Any brilliant ideas to find those friends of yours? Because you're not leaving without them, and I'm not going into the swamp on my own.”

Jesse couldn't resist the urge to tease him. “What, are you afraid?”

“No,” Owen said, picking up a fruit. He squeezed it slightly, and Jesse could tell it was rotten. “I just don't like swamps.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Bet I can't hit that pot?”

“What pot?” Jesse asked, looking around.

“The one in the windowsill. Three stories up, to the right.”

Jesse looked where Owen was pointing. He could hardly see the pot. “I'll take that bet.”

With a mischievous little grin, Owen reached back and threw the rotten fruit so hard that Jesse barely saw it before it sent the pot clattering faintly inside the building.

“You lost,” Owen informed him, the mischievous grin creeping up again.

Jesse stood and began to pace. “Great. Wonderful. Good aim. Now, if you want to leave this city alive, help me think of what to do.” He paused. “No. Forget I said that. Let
me
think of what to do.”

Something in Owen seemed to sag, but then he shrugged. “Fine.”

If only one of the others were here with me
, Jesse thought.
They were always so good at making decisions. Coming up with a plan. I don't even know where to start.

And what if they're not even alive?

Jesse shook his head, dismissing the thought. Instead, he focused on Owen's story. “How did a city of four hundred people escape during a siege?”

“You know, for claiming you're not crazy, you sure talk to yourself a lot.”

It was Owen, of course. He had moved on from target practice to balancing on the orchard wall, teetering from side to side as he hopped on one foot.

“Get down from there,” Jesse said half-heartedly. Somehow, he didn't think Owen would fall.
Or if he did, he'd land on his feet.

“Don't worry, I won't fall,” Owen said. “Anyway, it's not very high. Once, I….”

Jesse didn't hear the rest of what he said. Instead, he focused on the history of Lidia, letting Owen chatter away in the background.

“Tunnels,” Jesse said suddenly.

“Newts,” Owen said. “Fenceposts. Rutabagas. Is this a game? Blurt out random words without explaining why?”

“No. Listen. Unless they knew how to fly, the Lidians had to use tunnels to get out of the city when the giants put it under siege,” Jesse explained.

Owen laughed. “I don't think that would work. You fell into the tar pit. You know what the ground here is like. They'd practically have to swim to get out of there.”

“Then who better than a shipbuilder, trained in keeping out water, to construct the tunnels?” Jesse said triumphantly. “What if the walls that pushed back the sand were real walls…walls with space in between?”

“Then there would be tunnels underneath the city. Why should I care?”

Jesse knew why he cared. If the Lidians had disappeared through the tunnels, there was a good chance that Parvel, Silas and Rae had too.

“That might be where the Lidians hid their treasure,” Jesse said, watching Owen carefully.

“I'll search this side of the city. You can go east,” Owen said cheerfully, jumping down from the wall.

“No,” Jesse said firmly. “We stay together. Understood?”

“Fine,” Owen said, sighing loudly, “if I have to.”

“I should be the one that's complaining. I have to listen to you and keep you from killing yourself.”

“But you're covered in dried tar,” Owen pointed out, “and you smell bad.”

Jesse just gritted his teeth.
By the end of today, the ruins of Lidia might just have a new ghost
.