The Keepers (36 page)

“It'll be difficult,” Mrs. Hapsteade said, her usually steady voice laced with a thread of something new—worry, or fear. “Riven nests are treacherous places—hard to find, dangerous to enter, all but impossible to leave. Only one of us has been deep inside a nest and returned.”

“I can do it,” Chloe said.

“Perhaps you can, with help,” said Mr. Meister. “And indeed, we would have no hope of rescuing your father without the two of you, and your Tan'ji. But let me be plain, Chloe—I am willing to let the rescue attempt go forward partly because I do not want the Riven to have any claim over you. Over the Alvalaithen. I make no pretenses about this. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I asked you both already if you would join the Wardens—”

“Do you even still want us?” Horace asked. “After what happened?”

“You are strong-willed,” Mrs. Hapsteade said. “The both of you.”

Horace wasn't sure how true that was, at least where he himself was concerned, but he said, “You say that like it's a bad thing.”

Mr. Meister smiled thinly. “Far from it, though as you saw tonight it does have its costs. I will say it a final time, gently: what the two of you did is unacceptable. If you are to join us, you must never keep such things from us again. The Mordin. The malkund. This week the two of you veered down a path you should never have taken, but upon that path you did . . .
remarkable things. Foolish things, perhaps even disastrous, but remarkable. And at any rate, we Wardens by necessity are . . . let us say we are a fierce bunch. I expect the same from you. Indeed, I am more comforted by the existence of such obstinacy in you than I would be by its absence.”

“In other words,” Chloe said, peering up at him, “we're just the kind of hell-raisers you're looking for.”

 

 

 

“Y
OU SEEM DISTRACTED
,”
SAID
H
ORACE
'
S MOTHER, THE
faintest trace of worry on her brow.

“Just tired.” Horace threw all his attention at the chessboard, but clarity still wouldn't come. Black and tan figures, standing in a field. He saw how those figures could move, but he could not imagine what the new board would look like, could not hold the consequences in his head. At last he cut his bishop boldly across the board. Loki, curled beside them on the bed, watched with languid interest.

Almost immediately Horace saw that he'd made a mistake—he'd opened up a line between his mother's queen and his rook. His mother must've seen it right off, but she was taking her time, pretending not to notice.

“Oh, just do it,” Horace said. “Don't fake it.”

His mother sighed and swept the queen into his territory,
knocking the rook aside. “It hardly seems fair. Your head's just not here. It's like boxing an armless man.” She sat back and laid a hand on Loki's head, pulling a purr out of him. “Are you worried about Chloe?”

“Not really.” And he wasn't. Not exactly.

It was Friday, two days after the fire. Horace was expecting to hear from the Wardens any day now, letting him know that the plan to rescue Chloe's father was about to get under way. He felt strangely patient, waiting, but he hadn't spoken to Chloe since Wednesday night and he was sure Chloe didn't feel quite so calm. He hoped the Wardens knew what they were doing.

Much to his own regret, Horace had told his mother what had happened to Chloe's house. Not the whole story, of course, but the basics. She hadn't asked many questions, but answering them meant inventing lies. It wore him down.

“She's all right then?” his mother asked. “Where is she staying—with her aunt?”

“No, she's—” Horace stopped himself, uncertain how to carve out a line between truth and caution. But he could not see the harm in mentioning the academy. “There's this school downtown. Like a private school. She's staying there right now.”

“Who arranged that?”

“Mr. Meister, I guess,” he blurted without thinking. Horace stared at the chessboard, trying to keep his face flat, but his heart pounded hard. Why had he said that?

“Who is Mr. Meister?” his mother asked, her voice as light as air.

“Oh, he's just this old dude.” Horace scowled to himself. That wasn't going to do it.

His mother broke into laughter. Loki bolted from the bed, scattering the chess pieces.

“What's so funny?”

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. “I'm sorry. It just struck me funny.
Old dude
.”

Horace didn't see what was so funny about that. Mr. Meister
was
an old dude. “Anyway. He's a friend of the family, I guess.”

“I see,” his mother said, back to her calm and thoughtful self. “Well, if there's anything we can do, she just needs to ask.”

“You barely even know her,” Horace pointed out.

“The last time I checked, intimacy is not a prerequisite for compassion.” She began gathering the scattered chess pieces. “Besides, Horace,
you
know her. If she needed your help, wouldn't you offer it?”

“Of course, but she's my friend.”

She shrugged. “And you're my son,” she said, with such an easy air of finality that Horace had no answer. She began to reset the wrecked board. “Come on. One more game.”

“I can't.”

“Please? I'm asking nicely. So nicely. We haven't played in three weeks.”

“Why would you even want to play again? You called me armless.”

“That was a metaphor. Don't take it personally.”

“Too late,” Horace said, shaking his head. “Okay . . . how about one game of blitz?”

“Seriously? You're on.”

Blitz chess was extremely fast chess, and Horace was generally terrible at it. You played it with the chess clock, with each player given five minutes to make their moves—five minutes
total
, for the entire game. If you ran out of time, you lost. Usually it was far too much pressure for Horace, for whom planning his moves was like moving earth—it took time to dig. But for some reason, that pressure sounded suddenly good to him: it left no room for the mind to wander.

His mother brought the chess clock back to the bed and began fussing with the timers. A chess clock had two clockfaces and two buttons, one for each player. You made your move while your clock was running, and then you hit your button. The button stopped your clock and started the other player's. Then, when their move was over, they hit their button, restarting your clock, and so on. When one player ran out of time, a little flag dropped, indicating defeat.

“How about a handicap?” his mother asked. “I'll take five minutes, and you can take eight.”

“You know I won't take that.” Horace did not take handicaps.

“And you know I won't give it to you. Just making sure
you're still in there somewhere.”

“Oh, I'm in there,” Horace said. Quiet laughter bubbled up between them.

They began to play. At first the moves came fast—not much to think about yet, so you made your move and hit the button as quickly as you could. Eight moves in, though, as pieces started to fall, Horace began to get cautious. Before long, he had barely ninety seconds left on his clock. His mother, meanwhile, had a full minute more.

And then suddenly his mother gave him an unbelievable gift. He saw it the moment she slapped her side of the clock.

Her queen was open.

Horace hooked his knight around and toppled the queen, hoping it wasn't a trap. He slapped the clock.

Very clearly, his mother said, “Oh, holy crap.” Horace's heart raced forward. She bent in, her brow furrowing. It took her thirty-two seconds to make her next move—an eternity, considering she now only had little more than a hundred seconds.

Horace played on fearlessly, taking the shortest turns possible—four seconds, six seconds, two. It became easy, natural. He could see lines of influence on the board shifting, the potential threat of the pieces, the convergence of those avenues of attack, the pockets of safety. Meanwhile, his mother took longer turns—eleven seconds, eight seconds, fifteen. His mother moved her king, slapped the clock, and Horace saw immediately that his mother's king could be cornered and
checkmated in two moves. He was going to win. He moved the piece and slapped the clock, heart beating wildly.

His mother looked at the board and then at Horace. “Oh my god. You beat me.”

Horace tried to roll the thought around in his brain—it felt weird, foreign, like a seed stuck in his teeth. His mother's clock was still running. Horace watched as the minute hand reached the very top and his mother's flag fell, indicating that she was out of time. Then he smiled. “Yeah, I did.”

His mother looked at him quizzically. “Do you know why?”

Horace wasn't sure he could describe how he felt. “I was . . . aware. Like connected.”

“Yes, you were in there. And you were confident. Feeling the rightness of your moves, not second-guessing.”

“I
was
feeling it. And I was seeing it.” Horace let his eyes run hungrily over the board. A wild burp of a laugh popped out of him. He swallowed it, keeping his face—which felt like it was about to burst—low and hidden. His mother gave her own smile and then began putting the little pieces back into their green velvet slots.

“Don't get used to this,” she said.

“Winning?”

“Me losing and not demanding a rematch.”

Horace grinned. “Next time.”

“Next time. I love you.”

“Love you.”

It wasn't even nine yet, but Horace felt happily exhausted. After the door closed behind his mother, he slid beneath the covers. He grabbed the chess clock and pressed the button on his mother's side, starting his own clock. He counted. At last his flag fell, swinging. Thirteen seconds. Not long at all. Thirteen seconds, the difference between winning and losing.

His door popped open. His father leaned into the room.

“I heard you won.”

“It was only blitz chess.”

“But you beat her.”

Again a grin he couldn't stop slid onto Horace's face. “Yeah.”

His father made a fist and raised it high. He bowed his head to Horace. He made the peace sign. He held the pose and backed his way wordlessly out of the room. Horace grinned in spite of himself.

When at last Horace flipped off the light and let himself sink toward sleep, it came quickly, rising up around pleasant thoughts of chess pieces positioning themselves alongside clockfaces and Chloe and the Box of Promises, and other things, too—the darkness of Vithra's Eye, full of swooping owls; the warmth of Beck's cab and the smell of ginkgo soup and the gleam of the oraculum and the dark shine of red ink. Everything folded, spinning, but interconnected and positioned just so, or so, or so.