The lock eater, p.24
The Lock-Eater, page 24
“You hear anything about this?” the first guard asked.
“Not a peep,” said the second.
“I’m sorry, madam, but who did you say you spoke with?”
“Felidae Seagreen. The enchantress.”
In her panic, Mrs. Harbargain blurted the first name that came to mind—the one the gearling had used to steal Melanie away from Merrytrails. She barely understood what she was doing here, risking herself and the children. Not to mention Abraxas, who was stuffed unhappily into the picnic basket she now clutched to her.
Once Riquem had returned the girls to Merrytrails under gearling sentry, he disappeared with Melanie, offering no explanation about what would happen to her . . . or how to return the Hamleners to their homes. The children were devastated, and Harbargain had been sick with worry. She’d never felt so powerless to protect one of her girls. She’d written petitions to the king and prime minister, and even several to that horrid High Enchanter himself, begging for leniency on Melanie’s behalf. She’d also sent letters along to Hamlen, alerting Livia’s and Katzy’s parents to the girls’ whereabouts.
Then, a strange boy had arrived during the previous night’s storm—yet another mysterious midnight visitor. And he told the most incredible story.
* * *
• • •
When little Mariana announced that there was a boy at the window—no, not the door but the upstairs window, precisely where Melanie had let Abraxas out just a month ago—none of the girls believed her.
“Boys arrive through the front door, sweetheart,” Mrs. Harbargain had told her. “At least in this house they will.”
“Is he on a ladder?” Baruti asked, looking up from her book on grouille history. “Out in the storm?”
Little Mariana shook her head, her hair fluttering. “Not a ladder,” she said. “He’s FLYING!”
Katzy purred with laughter. She was assembling an old puzzle of the girls’ on the dining room table, her tail flicking with concentration. “Foundling prodigies and flying boys,” she muttered. “Seems this orphanage is full of fibbing kittens.”
Mariana huffed and crossed her arms. She decided not to tell the kassipoi about the puzzle’s three missing pieces.
Livia glanced over from the window, where she was in the process of anxiously darning every frayed or threadbare piece of fabric she could get her hands on. Shirts, socks, and nightgowns lay all around her, their holes patched in wild, mismatched colors.
Livia had grown especially somber since the horrors in the Zwarte Woud and Melanie’s arrest; she no longer peppered the foundlings with questions about their friend. Jane found she missed the flurry. The other girls’ funny and fervent memories had kept her feeling close to Melanie.
Jane sat with Livia now, marveling at the enchanted needles that worked their way through cloth as naturally as worms through soil. Apparently, the needles had been a gift from “Lady Porta.” Livia seemed to treasure them.
The tailor was adamant that Melanie had enchanted the needles herself. Whatever had happened on her journeys— whatever the rogue gearling, “Traveler,” had been to her—it was clear that Melanie had picked up a few tricks along the way. The girl that Jane had found in that strange, enchanted glade was deeply changed.
And in deep trouble.
Jane had no doubt that Riquem’s plans for her friend were dire. Mrs. Harbargain could write all the letters she liked; if they didn’t do something, she was sure they’d never hear from Melanie again.
“Is it possible you saw something that only looked like a boy?” Livia asked Mariana, glancing up from her work. She pulled a needle out from the corner of a homespun blanket, careful of its wriggling point. “Sometimes, if it’s dark and stormy, I imagine the mannequins in my family’s shop move when I turn my head. I’m still half convinced they talk about me behind my back.”
Mariana rolled her eyes. “I know the difference between real and pretend,” she said. “It was a flying boy.”
“Boys don’t fly,” Agatha muttered from her upside-down position on the sofa. Though her feet were pointed up in the air and her head toward the floor, Mrs. Harbargain apparently didn’t have the energy to reprimand her.
But when Sun-mi shrieked in surprise from the upstairs hallway shortly after, the girls all scrambled up to find the hall window wide open, and Sun-mi tending to a drenched and exhausted-looking boy on the landing.
Blitz, as the boy introduced himself, looked like the storm itself had carried him there. He said he was a friend of Melanie’s, and that he knew where Riquem had trapped her. And Blitz had even known the secret phrase—the one Harbargain had told only Melanie, to use in case she needed help.
“She says . . .” he panted, “to give her loaf to a brass axe.”
Well, it was close enough.
Blitz confirmed that Melanie was in trouble—big trouble. Somehow the red wizards had caged the girl who couldn’t be caged.
“But what can we do?” Sun-mi said, wrapping a blanket around the boy. “We’re foundlings! We don’t have spells or gearlings. We can’t magically open doors.”
“Yes, we can.”
The foundlings and Mrs. Harbargain all turned to regard Jane, who was standing at the end of the hall.
“Jane? What do you mean, sweetheart?” Harbargain said.
And so she told them what she meant.
Together with her friends, Jane spent the night concocting an irrational, unbelievable, completely absurd plan to rescue one girl from the grip of the most powerful wizard in the thaumacracy.
* * *
• • •
Which brought them to this moment.
The two guards looked at each other again.
“Seagreen, Seagreen . . . Does that name sound familiar to you?” the second asked the first.
The first guard pressed a finger to his lips. “Now that you mention it . . .” He shrugged. “Nope.”
“Sorry, madam. But no one gets in without a formal-like invite.”
Beside Mrs. Harbargain, little Mariana Porch began to cry. She wrapped her arms around the woman’s leg, her large black eyes flooding with tears.
“There, there, sweetheart,” Harbargain said softly. “It will be all right. Palaces aren’t for foundlings, I suppose. I’m sorry I got your hopes up.”
The second guard grimaced, taking in the weeping orphan.
“Foundlings, you said?”
“That’s right,” Harbargain replied with a resigned sigh. “On our very first trip to the castle. What a treat it would have been for these girls, who’ve made do with so little all their lives. But it can’t be helped. Best they understand the world will always be cruel to the likes of them.”
“This Seagreen lady. She said she’d meet you inside?”
Harbargain nodded. “She’s arrived fairly recently. A noble witch from . . . elsewhere. I suppose she didn’t know the proper procedure for visitors. Formal paperwork can be such a bother.”
The guard groaned. He turned and pulled the door open. “Oh, hurry up, then,” he muttered.
One by one, the girls filed inside. Mariana gave the guard a big, long hug as she did. They were followed by a single boy, strangely dressed, like some wandering hunter. When Mrs. Harbargain had finally made her way in amid a profusion of thank-yous and bless-yous, the guard closed the door and stood at attention once more.
“You’re a sap, you know that?” the first one said to him.
“I’m a foundling, is what I am,” the second replied.
* * *
• • •
Jane, Mrs. Harbargain, and the others ascended the castle floor by floor, taking one obstacle at a time, just as they’d planned. Here, Harbargain played the part of tour guide, instructing the girls about the palace and its history—all of it completely made up.
“And this, girls, is where Lord Sassafras wrote his famous ode to his love, Lady Marmalade.”
The foundlings all Oooh’d and Ahhh’d theatrically, Baruti diligently scribbling the nonsense into her notebook.
When confronted by the palace servants, Sun-mi Churchyard presented them with her homemade dumplings, garnished with a sprinkle of cricket legs. The staff were so pleased by the savory treats, they waved the foundlings on.
It was Jane herself who determined how to handle the palace’s absent-minded aldermages . . . by walking right past them. She found that when grown-ups were busy with their own preoccupations, sometimes the easiest way past them was just to leave them be.
Finding a disused door that unlocked from her side, she opened a passage for the rest of the girls to enter through—completely bypassing the wizards’ offices.
Katzy’s keen senses alerted the group to Adrianus, now freshly returned from Hamlen. She stalked the apprentice through the palace halls with feline grace, Livia following just behind. The Hamleners prepared to bind and gag the boy with a skein of yarn Mrs. Harbargain had lent Livia. Then they’d stuff him into whatever supply closet was handy—preferably a cramped one.
That was the plan, until the boy had suddenly snapped around.
“I know you’re there,” he said, glaring at the Hamleners. Katzy froze mid-crouch, while Livia brandished a knitting needle like a dagger.
“I never liked you,” Katzy said with a swish of her tail.
“I never cared if you did,” Adrianus scoffed, though his tan cheeks pinked a little. “You’re here for that girl, aren’t you? Lady Porta? Riquem says the top floor is off limits, but my new mentor saw him take her to the containment suite. He won’t tell anyone where he’s been or what happened to Parno.”
The boy stepped forward and the girls flinched. Livia raised her needle higher.
“Stay back!” she hissed, just as he said, “Let me help you.”
Both Hamleners stared in surprise.
“Help us?” Katzy finally asked. Her vertical pupils narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”
“I owe her,” the boy muttered. “Yes, I know what you think of me. You’ve made that perfectly clear. But Lady Porta saved me from . . .” Adrianus swallowed. “From whatever punishment Parno had in mind. My new mentor, Saanvi, is an idealistic fool, but at least she’s not a sadist. If I help Lady Porta now, we can call it even.”
Katzy remained skeptical. She didn’t take her eyes off the boy, and kept her posture tight, ready to pounce.
But Livia’s face softened. She glanced back down the hall, to where six foundlings, their matron, and a strange forest boy peeked around the corner.
“How can you help?” she asked, turning back.
“The containment suite muffles all kinds of spellwork, but there’s a way to dispel the antimagic wards. If you do, Lady Porta can use her magic again. I’ll tell you how, then my mentor and I will clear out the lower floors so you can escape. We’ll say there was a thaumaturgical accident.”
“You’re sure she’d aid us?”
Adrianus nodded impatiently. “Saanvi hates Riquem. Or she does now, anyway. I guess they used to be close, but Riquem changed after Zerend died. He demoted her and the other reformers who’d objected to the war against the Ley Coven—all his former friends.” The boy shrugged. “Whatever Riquem plans for Lady Porta, it isn’t good. Trust me, you’ll need my help. And I promise I will give it.”
“I still don’t like the aldermage kitten,” Katzy said. Her fur bristled with disdain. “But I believe what he says.”
Livia chewed her lip. She shook her head and lowered the needle. “Fine,” she said. “Tell us how to stop the wards. But if you’re lying, Adrianus, just know that we’ll find you—and any punishment of Parno’s will seem like a Night of Gold gift in comparison.”
When they reached the topmost floor, Baruti Harbor discovered how to open the lock to the tower. It was a complicated mechanical thing with four spinning dials instead of keyholes—each dial featuring a column of ten numbers, zero through nine. Only a single combination would spring the lock, and Baruti calculated that there were 9,999 different combinations available.
The correct combination was 1-2-3-4.
And Agatha Chickencoop, the steely actress, walked right up to the door of Zerend’s office.
Wizard and girl both stared at each other for a tick, confusion knotting Zerend’s stolen face.
“What—?” he said.
“I’ve reconsidered,” Agatha informed him. “Your gauntlet is tacky.”
“Stop right there!” Zerend exploded up from his desk just as the girl turned around, bolting in the direction she’d come from. He was out in a moment, but was shocked to see the shadow of a child already bounding down the tower stairs. How had she moved so quickly?
And why was his hair standing on end?
He took off after the intruder, screaming for the gearlings to apprehend her as he went.
When he was gone, a bulging tapestry on the far wall began to writhe. One by one, Mrs. Harbargain, the foundlings, and the Hamleners scurried out from behind the heavy weave, Agatha appearing last. Livia snatched a set of keys from the High Enchanter’s desk, while Helen Stables covertly pocketed a handsome horse statuette from one of the bookshelves. They pressed on, determined not to waste the head start Blitz had given them.
* * *
• • •
Which brings us back to Melanie.
She was lying on the carpet again, staring up at the ceiling and very much not imagining that her friends were currently storming the palace to rescue her, when she heard a commotion outside. Voices were raised in alarm—voices she recognized.
“This one demands you halt!” The gearling’s metallic voice echoed through the heavy door.
“Maow!”
“Abraxas, no!” Mrs. Harbargain wailed.
Melanie leaped to her feet, rushing to the door. “Mrs. Harbargain?” she called. “Mrs. Harbargain!” Melanie began pounding against the wood. “Let me out!”
She heard a frantic jingle of keys, then the familiar sound of a lock turning. Only this time, someone else was doing the unlocking.
The door swung open, and Melanie stood face-to-face with Livia. The girl wasn’t wearing her usual lively patterns. In fact, Melanie recognized the simple dress as Baruti’s. But the sight of her still managed to stupefy Melanie, just as it had the morning of their first meeting.
Melanie’s mouth fell open. “You . . .” she said thickly. “You’re not . . .”
“I think the cat may be in trouble,” Livia said, pointing down the hall.
Melanie turned to see her gearling sentry several yards down the corridor, swiping at a blur of gray as it clawed its way across the automaton’s back. Farther down, Mrs. Harbargain and the other girls from Merrytrails were all shouting.
“Oh! The ward!” Livia turned to a portrait at the end of the hall, of a stately woman waving the thaumacracy’s three-eyed flag triumphantly. Livia lifted an enormous needle (had she been knitting on the way here?) and stabbed it into the flag’s bright red eye.
The world shifted. A rush of something sent Melanie sprawling to her knees. The hallway dilated, then exploded into streams of light and color. Ahead, she saw Abraxas illuminate like a toverlicht, a core of light igniting within the cat.
That brilliant core extended down as a lustrous thread—through the castle, through the city and the stone beneath it—until it connected to . . .
Ah, something that was not quite a voice but very like one whispered in her ear. There you are, young Hexe of the South. Welcome to the Ley Coven.
Melanie glanced down at her own chest. A core burned within her too, though several times as brightly as Abraxas. It connected her to the same immense thing she’d felt when she touched the Lotus Gate’s lock—a presence so colossal as to be unfathomable. She sensed it shift, and a ponderous gaze fell upon her. She was so miniscule beneath its scrutiny.
The ley.
Traveler had once said it was alive, or something close to it. But he couldn’t have known . . . It seemed almost to be many lives, many minds, all working in tandem.
And then, for just a moment, Melanie was somewhere else.
She sat at a large wooden table with eight place settings, one made up just for her. Melanie was dimly aware of other figures at the table, eyes that were far away, yet also deceptively close. The diners were made of mist, and they watched Melanie from the north, east, and west, northeast and northwest, southeast and southwest.
All were there to greet their newest member.
The bowl in front of Melanie no longer contained a dense knot of vegetation. That, Melanie knew, was long gone. But in its place, a single sproutling twisted upward, spring green and covered in dew. A purple-blue flower glistened atop the sprig, barely more than a bud. Melanie didn’t have to guess at the blossom.
Periwinkle, she thought sadly.
So noisy in this city, the voice that was not a voice said. Come back to the forest. We’ll speak more. There’s work to do.
My friends, Melanie told the voice. I have to help them.
Then help them, the ley replied.
You aren’t angry with me? It’s my fault that Ein is dead. Her glade was destroyed because of me.
Could the ley laugh? It seemed to. Melanie knew so little of what it actually was.
All things are destroyed in time, it said without saying. And the new grows over the old. Ein made her choices and you will make yours, each according to your natures. I won’t define you, Hexe of the South. Even that name is yours to set aside. I just ask that you don’t hate your predecessor too much. She was very tangled . . . and very lonely.
Or do, it added. That too is your choice. But it’s still too noisy here. Good-bye now, Melanie Gate.
