The Keepers (49 page)

For a while . . . how long? . . . he kept himself tuned to the box. The box had been taken, yes—violated—and it might be lost to him forever, but this was not like the Nevren. The connection was still intact. He could point to the Fel'Daera's location precisely, moving with Dr. Jericho. The movement gave Horace an outlet, a gap through which he could imagine the world outside, imagine a trickle of fresh air—even if that air was foul. He clung desperately to the connection for what felt like days. Gradually, though, the box settled and went still, somewhere below.

Nothing changed for a very long time. Or maybe there was no such thing as time. No light, no easy breath. He was so thirsty. His chest felt like a knotted fist, clutching at a struggling swarm of blades. He told himself bones don't need water, withered lungs don't need air. Eventually, lying there very still in the dark, Horace began to imagine that he was traveling, just as the dragonfly was traveling now, through some lightless space outside of time, hurtling toward the future. He let this idea take root in him, like a steady black river flowing,
endless and unchanging. He tried to lose his sense of waiting, his knowledge that hours were passing. Instead he clung only to this moment suspended. When panic rose, boiling under his skin, Horace let it drown in the void. When doubts about the plan crept in—the perfection with which everything had to happen, the fact that he hadn't seen Chloe through the box—he told himself there was no plan, no expectation. When the thought came to him that he might remain trapped here forever, he let the black river flow over the very idea, drowning it. In this river, this traveling, there was no forever. Only this instant.

At last—an hour? a month?—the Fel'Daera began to move. It moved up from below, and overhead, and out. It left the nest, sliding swiftly away. Horace kept his breathing deep and slow, not letting hope bloom. Dr. Jericho was going out to meet Chloe. Of course he was. There was no need to hope because he
knew
. Horace tracked the box's movement as it was taken far out, as it came to a rest at last. He played the scene from the Fel'Daera in his head, hoping—believing—that it was coming to life even now: Dr. Jericho and Chloe in the ashes of her house.

If he was right, it must now be approaching two o'clock Sunday morning. He'd been imprisoned in the ash pit for twenty-two hours. It had felt timeless, endless, but now that he attached a number to it, a new guilt and worry struck him like ice against his heart—his mother. His father. He was missing. The note he'd written for them should have arrived,
but would they have seen it? The thought that they might be at the Mazzoleni Academy even now, searching for him, made him sick and weary and rootless.

A low, booming voice broke into his concentration, startling him so badly that he banged his knees into the grate overhead. Soot showered into his face. Horace yelped—a rusty croak—and then began to cry, hearing his own name, coming from everywhere. Gabriel, calling out to him. Horace opened his eyes, not into blackness but into the endless slate gray of the humour, invisible but blindingly bright.

“Horace,” said Gabriel again. “Are you all right?”

“Gabriel,” he croaked, not caring that Gabriel was seeing his tears. “You made it.”

Clanging at the door now, heavy and dull. “Let me get you out of here.”

“No, don't do that,” Horace heard himself say. “I have to stay. Chloe rescues me.” He had to believe it. He did believe it.

It took just a beat for Gabriel to understand. “This is what the Fel'Daera showed you. And the Fel'Daera itself—they've taken it from you.”

“Yes. I knew they would.”

“What about the Alvalaithen?”

Horace's tears doubled, running down the sides of his face. “It's gone. Or not gone, but . . .”

Gabriel's voice turned grave. “You severed the bond,” he said. “You sent the Alvalaithen through the box. That's the
real reason Chloe comes back—for the dragonfly.”

Not just the dragonfly
, Horace wanted to say.
Her father, me, the crucible
. But the reasons didn't matter. He bent an arm painfully and wiped the gritty wetness from his face. “She comes back,” he said firmly. “She's coming back soon—I can feel Dr. Jericho out there waiting for her. And when she returns, everything happens. We do what we came here to do.”

“I'm not judging you, Keeper.”

“Then help me.”

“Tell me what to do.”

“You'll have to distract Dr. Jericho, one last time. The dragonfly comes through at three thirteen, and he can't be anywhere near the boiler room. But by three thirty, you have to be down here. I saw you, protecting us from the crucible. We'll all be here—me and you, the crucible dog, Dr. Jericho, Chloe's father.”

“And Chloe.”

Horace gave a single resolute nod, willing himself to believe it. “Yes.”

Gabriel sighed deeply. He sounded exhausted. And no wonder—how had he managed to survive the day unscathed? “I will distract Dr. Jericho, and then I will come to you. And then we will get Chloe's father out of here.”

“Yes,” Horace said. “And—” A sprinkle of soot fell into his mouth. The boiler was trembling. And not just the boiler but the room, a vast rattling roar, growing louder.

The golem.

Horace cried out. The clamor rose all around and then was sliced by the sound of the humour being ripped away. A deafening impact rocked the boiler door, shaking the floor beneath him, dumping a snowfall of soot and ash. Gabriel's muffled shout was cut off abruptly. Silence, and then another slow roll of thunder, the dragging of a titan's chain.

Gabriel was taken. Wrong—all wrong. An impossible thing. As the golem poured into the hallway, taking whatever was left of Gabriel with it, Horace scrambled for answers, for a way that this new turning could still lead to the end he'd seen. But how could it? Everything was so precariously balanced, each piece so dependent upon the other—and without Gabriel the plan could not succeed. When the crucible arrived, he and Chloe stood no chance at all.

Horace lay there in the dark, his shock chilling slowly into despair. He reached out toward the box, waiting for it to move. Waiting for Dr. Jericho to turn back toward the nest. And for the first time in that long terrible day, Horace hoped that when the thin man did return, Chloe would not be with him.

“S
TILL ALIVE
,”
SAID
C
HLOE
,
GAZING STEADILY UP INTO
D
R
. Jericho's grinning face. “Sorry about that.”

“No apologies necessary—you are well. And now here you are, home at last.”

Chloe looked at the ruin of her house all around them. “Yes, here I am. Were you expecting me?”

“I was expecting the possibility.” Dr. Jericho reached out and tugged lightly at the empty cord around Chloe's neck. She didn't flinch, even as his hideous finger grazed her skin. “You've lost a friend, I believe.”

Dimly, it came to Chloe that she'd planned for none of this. She'd given no thought to what she was going to say or do. She felt no panic, though—just the burn of the grulna making her bold, making her strong, carving out a place for her and her alone in the world. A lie came to her as easily as
breath. “It's not lost. It was taken from me.”

“Is that so? By whom, I wonder.”

“The neighborhood watch. You know.”

“Ah . . . the Wardens.”

“Is that what they call themselves?”

Dr. Jericho considered her for a moment longer. Abruptly he straightened and snapped his gaze across the street toward the train yard. Chloe understood. The box. Horace. Dr. Jericho was sensing the Fel'Daera from the night before. She rode her steely calm like a boat through rapids, pretending not to notice. She was beyond that fear, outside it. But maybe . . . maybe there was no reason to pretend. Abruptly she remembered Horace telling her to speak the truth as much as possible. She stayed with that thought, drifting in its current.

“Rather unfortunate about your house,” Dr. Jericho said after a moment, turning back to her. “Did the Wardens do this, too?”

He was on to her, testing her. “No. You did.”

The thin man spread his arms and laughed, a tinkling, grating trill. “No secrets between friends, then. Yes, a bit too much zeal on my part, perhaps. But you've been a long frustration for me. And now here we are at last, face-to-face, but without the one conversation piece that really matters. Whatever will we talk about?”

“We could talk about my father.”

“And why would we do that?”

“Or we could talk about Horace instead.”

“I don't believe I've had the pleasure.”

“He's the Keeper of the Fel'Daera. You're holding him and my father prisoner, back at the nest.”

“Horace, Keeper of the Fel'Daera. How fitting. And you say I have him?”

“You do. He was here yesterday. Watching this moment right now. You just felt him.” She pointed over into the train yard. “He saw me talking to you. He watched you take me back to the nest—”

“Goodness, what a notion.”

“—and he followed us there. That's how he found the nest in the first place. He's a prisoner there, right?”

Chloe spoke calmly, untroubled by the tightrope she walked. One wrong word—one step too deep into the truth—could pull everything to pieces, yet she could hardly feel the nerves that should have been jangling. As she waited, two more Mordin began moving in from the shadows. She found herself sneering at them.

Dr. Jericho spoke, his voice like wire. “What gives you the idea that we have this . . . Horace?”

The truth was no longer enough. Chloe shifted gears smoothly. “The Wardens know you captured Horace last night. They blamed me, because of what Horace saw.” She gestured back and forth between herself and the thin man. “This moment that's happening right now, I mean. This conversation. They asked me why I planned to meet with you. They accused me of being a spy. A traitor. They took the . . .
dragonfly. Funny—I wouldn't be here now if they hadn't.” The other Mordin came up close and stood on either side. They too reeked of brimstone. Chloe had the fleeting illusion that her house was on fire again, that she was in it. She squeezed her eyes shut, brief and hard, blinking away the memories.

Dr. Jericho hummed. “Yes, amusing. Tell me, how did they manage to take your plaything from you, given your power? I ask only as a matter of professional curiosity.”

The real Chloe—
but
I
am
Chloe
, part of her objected—would never have revealed such a thing. “They found a way,” she said. “I can't imagine why I'd share it with you.”

A thin, toothy smile. “Nor can I. And you're here now, after all, because . . . ?”

“I want to see my father. And who knows? While I'm at it, I might try to figure out who my friends really are.” She examined her hands. Was that too much?

Dr. Jericho laughed. “And why should your friendship matter to me now, without the dragonfly?”

“Because,” Chloe said, pointing in the general direction of the Mazzoleni Academy and the Warren, “the dragonfly is several miles that way, three hundred feet underground. It's with them. In their stronghold. And I know the way in.”

Dr. Jericho straightened. He and the other Mordin began speaking in their strange, slashing language. They kept glancing down at Chloe.

“Come,” Dr. Jericho said to her at last. “We will go to the
nest now. As the Fel'Daera so wisely foretold.”

Chloe followed, her feet moving of their own accord. Crunchy ash gave way to soft grass. As they slid across the lawn, Dr. Jericho reached out to her, offering her an open palm. “Will you take my hand, my dear?”

Without a word, Chloe reached up. Dr. Jericho's massive hand swallowed her arm nearly to the elbow, his flesh as smooth as plastic.

As they walked, Dr. Jericho glanced back now and again. “Your friend. I feel him watching us from the past. Very clever, I must say. Imagine—I'm leading him to the nest this very moment. He's quite resourceful.”

“Wouldn't you be too, if you could see the future?”

“An excellent point. Let me rephrase: quite resourceful, for a Tinker.”

They crossed the bridge over the tracks and proceeded along the exact route Chloe remembered from the night before. She tried not to look around for Neptune, even though she knew the Warden was out there somewhere, watching and following. But that didn't matter. Chloe was alone. She clung to the one thing that did matter: very likely, she had not fooled the Mordin. She'd stick to her story until it was long dead, but until then she had to assume he didn't believe a word.

They were nearing the scrap yard next to the nest when a scalding pain tore through her gut. She doubled over, stumbling. Dr. Jericho's hand tightened on her arm. “Are you quite all right?”