The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (14 page)

“I thought those new laws were supposed to make it so we
dan’ exist anymore,” I said, trying to recall the back-and-forth articles the
Herald had printed some months ago.

“Yeah,” Derrin said, with a harsh laugh.  “Maybe by starving
us all out and replacing us with steam automatons.  Problem solved.”

“Automatons?”

“Ah, it’s just rumor, really.  Coins says there’s talk of
making metal workers who don’t get tired and don’t need to get paid or fed.  I
think it’s a lot of fancy.”

“Metal people,” I scoffed.

“They’ve already made metal horses,” he said, and that
silenced me, because I’d thought of the motorcars as metal horses too.  A
minute and Derrin tossed his head back and said, “Be interesting to see what
happens tonight.”

“You ever been to a gala?” I asked.

“Once.  Why?  D’you want to go tonight?”

My mouth dropped open.  “Yes!” I cried.  “I mean, this
morning was so awful, but…”  I fiddled with the edge of my waistcoat.  “I do
want to see what happens.”

The corner of his mouth tugged into something like a smile. 
“Well?  Maybe we should pay a visit.”

“But Derrin!  It’s a royal gala.  We’re…”

“It’s a public event.  They don’t keep you out of the Medemy
Fair, do they?”

I grinned.  “Not yet.”

So a little over half an hour later we stood in the huge
plaza, hemmed in by an oddly quiet crowd.  The whole place gleamed and
glittered, pocked with fires and street lamps and banners waving in the cold
wind, and snowflakes shining like falling stars in all the brightness.  The
only people making any noise were the musicians making a ruckus up around the
dais, and the mummers and acrobats and freaks clustered around the
purple-striped tents—mostly mages who couldn’t make it any other way but to let
people gawp at their gifts.

I couldn’t see Tarik anywhere.  Some official-looking blokes
wandered around the stage, and guards roamed all through the plaza.  We’d had
to squirrel through a maze of suspicion just to get in, and even then just
barely.  Folks who looked twice at us now edged clear of us—I was used to
that—but the guards who looked twice kept looking.  I wasn’t used to that.

All those eyes wouldn’t do any good, though, if the Ghost
came back.  If he wanted Tarik’s life, he’d just take it.  And not one of those
guards would be able to do a thing about it.

I shivered and hung close by Derrin, terrified of a Ghost
appearing beside me, terrified of the tide of bodies sweeping me away.

“Maybe the Prince won’t even show,” Derrin said after a
bit.  “Selfish bastard.  Doesn’t know what it means to rule, does he?”

“He’s just a kid…” I started.

“A kid!” Derrin laughed.  “He’s a man now.  Time for him to
grow up and act like it.”

I frowned and crossed my arms, shivering in the snow.  For a
while we stood side by side, watching the people churning about us.  I’d never
seen so many fine coats on so many fine dandies in my life.  The girls were all
done up in their best, too, with their furs and garish hats and lips painted
cherry red, probably hoping they’d get noticed by the Prince.  I’d always
laughed at those girls before, but not now.  I secretly hoped the same.

At least the girls got the dandies’ attention.  I listened
to a group of gangly lads making comments, whistling at some doll or other and
trying (and failing) to act suave, while the girls just laughed and shot them
coy looks.  My stomach squirmed, my fingers fidgeting on the ratty edges of my
sleeves.  My own rags had always been a shield—besides being heaps more
comfortable than velvet dresses and beaded heels—but suddenly…suddenly I
wondered what it would feel like to be admired. 

It didn’t matter anyway.  Nobody looked twice at street
rats.  Even lovely Gem knew that, for all her prancing and parading.

A lone trumpeter sounded a fanfare and I forgot my
self-pity, and the girls forgot the flirting lads, because Prince Tarik
suddenly appeared, moving up to the podium.  They’d got a microphone all set up
for him—a huge shiny contraption of a thing so that everyone in the plaza could
hear him.  The things were spanking new.  I’d only seen one used once, at the
Fair last spring when the King had opened the festival.

Tarik moved toward it, all calm and proud.  He wasn’t like
Jig though.  Jig was arrogant, and wanted to be admired, but Tarik was just
there in some way that made you admire him whether you much wanted to or not. 
No wonder half the city was in love with him.  I think even the folks who
disapproved of his mischief secretly adored him. 

But tonight he wasn’t smiling, not like in his pictures.  He
wore his face like a mask.  I don’t know quite what I thought I’d see—fear,
fury, sadness—but I didn’t see aught at all.  Just a boy, slim in his dark
coat, staring at the crowd.  His head was bare, not just without a crown (which
he never wore) but without even a hat.  I couldn’t imagine how he didn’t
freeze.

He stepped up to the microphone, and just like that the
crowd burst out in a birthday madrigal.  Derrin had told me it would happen,
because that’s what they did every year.  You’d never know it the way Tarik
took it.  He just stood there, wide-eyed, as the chaos of voices chased through
the song, until the last patters of applause faded away.

He ducked his head with something like a bashful smile, then
glanced over his shoulder.  Zagger stood behind him, staring straight ahead,
but somehow I thought Tarik seemed a bit steadier when he turned around.  It
kind of surprised me that he’d be the one Tarik would look at.

“Thank you,” Tarik said, that low, smooth voice circling the
plaza and quieting everyone at once.  “Thank you.”  A little rough edge snagged
his words.  “I’m grateful for this…for all that you’ve done.”

I couldn’t tell if he was fitsy, but I kept willing him not
to be.  He looked so lost up there, standing all alone with the snow in his
hair.

He cleared his throat and said, “Most of you already know
that my father was shot this morning.”

A murmur in the crowd suggested that some folks still
didn’t. 

“But he is alive, and his physician tells me he will
recover.”  His gaze flinched aside, and I found I was holding my breath.  “I
also know that this morning I…I may have frightened some of you.  I saw the man
who had shot my father, and…I didn’t think before I acted.”  He gave us a
bitter smile and added, “Some of you will likely say that’s just keeping in
character for me, I’m sure.  But I am sorry for that, and hope you will forgive
me.”

Derrin stared, stunned.  I suppose he never thought he’d
hear the prince apologize to anyone, let alone everyone.

“My family will be departing for Lamanstal early this year. 
And I will be leaving as well.”  He hesitated, then he bent toward the
microphone, eyes blazing, and added,  “But I assure all of you that the person
responsible for this will be brought to justice.  I
promise
you.”

Zagger shifted his weight.  He must have made a noise or
something, because Tarik straightened up with a sad little smile.

“Thank you again,” he said.  “Please, enjoy the gala.”

And without even waiting for any applause, he spun away and disappeared. 
A few moments of quiet lingered, while folks thought over what he’d said, and
how quick he’d shot off at the end, but then no one seemed to think much more
about it after that.  The music started again.  The jugglers with their flaming
batons went on juggling, and a fire-eater roared a red inferno over the heads
of an unsuspecting crowd.  And laughter and shouts and fireworks and every kind
of noise swelled up to fill the void Tarik had left behind.

“Want some food, Hayli?” Derrin asked.

I scowled, irked that he’d be as quick to forget Tarik as
everyone else, when he should have been philosophizing about the speech with
me. 

“I want to wander a bit,” I said.  “See you back?”

His eyes glinted at me, catching the light of a flaming
wand.  “Be careful.”  He paused before turning away.  “I thought I saw Jig and
Anuk here a minute ago.  Catch them up if you like.”

I gave him a look and wandered off into the throng.  Anuk
was a hellion and I liked him, but I couldn’t see Jig without feeling
guilty—and annoyed too, on top of it all.  When I spotted them through a sea of
revelers, I turned and ducked into the crowd.  No one shouted my name, no one
grabbed me from behind.  I got clear and sat on a low wall edging the plaza,
watching the party-goers enjoy the festivities.  Light and laughter sparkled
all around me, like they were one and the same, and sparks fluttered in the
dark through a white gleam of snow.

I couldn’t imagine a scene more splendid.  It was wild and
brilliant and overflowing with joy, making me forget for once the cold and the
gnaw of hunger in my belly.

Still, some nagging thought kept beating at my mind, or at
my heart, tugging me away from the happiness of the gala.  I couldn’t figure
out what it was—just a vague unhappiness chasing my thoughts wherever they
went.

And then I remembered.  Tarik was leaving.

I laughed out loud at myself, because I’d picked a dafty
thing to get sore over.  As if I’d ever have seen him again anyway.  As if he
even remembered me.  As if anything.

Chapter 13 — Tarik

I passed an hour that felt like a lifetime in the palace
ballroom, amid a swirl of doting courtiers and flatterers.  Even with the
terrace doors thrown open to the chilly night, the mass of bodies in the room
made me dizzyingly hot.  I was drowning in a sea of pale gauze and diamonds,
stiff dress tails and starched sleeves, footmen and servers and musicians and a
hundred other people whose faces I could never recall, let alone their names.

My head throbbed as though I’d drunk too much, but when a
footman offered me a glass of fizz, I drank it without tasting it.  Face after
face bobbed past me, plastered with smiles that I knew they didn’t feel.  I’d
given up on smiling long since, except the rare moment when I felt my mother’s
gaze fixed hawk-like on me from the head of the room. 

Finally I handed the footman my empty glass and slipped into
the crowd.  They parted around me as though I moved within a glass cage, never
giving me more than a passing glance to see if I was looking at them.  I was
untouchable—they couldn’t approach me unless I gave them permission, which I
rarely did if I could help it.  It had given me a dreadful reputation for
arrogance, but I rather didn’t mind.  It was a convenient mask for my
insecurity…and my indifference. 

I’d discovered long ago that, as long as I kept moving, no
one really took notice of me.  So nobody spotted me slipping away from the
ballroom tonight, not even Griff or Samyr.  Three of the Court Ministers’ sons
flocked around Griff, talking flying or some such, while Samyr and two other
girls listened in rapt and baffled silence around them. 

Somehow I was almost glad that they didn’t notice me. 
Tomorrow I would leave all this world of silk and champagne, and yet this last
taste of it had turned strangely sour in my heart.

After all, I couldn’t really pretend I belonged here.  I’d
pretended all my life, and the lie was killing me.

I slipped down to the coatroom and wrapped myself up in a
plain black coat, ruffled my hair out of its pristine plaster and shoved a
newsboy cap over my head—the kind of hat I liked to buy because it was the sort
of thing no member of the nobility would ever admit to owning, let alone be caught
wearing.  Then, when Pont was distracted by some late-arriving guest, I slipped
out and headed back down to the plaza.

The walk took a good twenty minutes, with the streets
turning to slush in the cold and fresh-falling snow.  The guards at the mouth of
the plaza checked my pockets but not my face, and let me through without so
much as a word.  I bought a beer from a tavern tent, where they only checked
the money in my hands, and for a while I sat on the low stone wall that circled
the plaza, a holly bush’s spiny leaves pricking my back, the light from a
streetlamp shining in my eyes.

For a while I watched the Jixies who traded their talents
for coin by the tents across the plaza, half curious, half afraid I would see
one disappear before everyone’s eyes.  A knot of guards kept a rigid watch on
their stunts, restricting them mostly to simple tricks that needed no real
magic. 

I’d nearly finished my beer when a commotion by a nearby
tent caught my eye.  I expected to see some slumdog nabbed trying to steal food
from the vendors, but instead I saw the Jixy girl from the motorcar accident,
locked in a verbal spar with two bigger boys.  I pulled up my knees, wrapping
my arms around them to watch.

“I said bog off!” the girl shouted.  She had her hands
balled up, but her elbows hung close to her sides, protectively.  “You want a
scene?”

“Hayli,” the bigger boy said, holding out his hands.  The
other kid smirked behind him.  “C’mon, just this once?”