The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (16 page)

“Tell me I’m not the only person who thinks it’s disgusting.”

That made her grin.  She reached out, slowly, then snatched
it all at once, a little wary bird grabbing a crumb.  She sniffed it
suspiciously, all the while eyeing me over the top of it.  I couldn’t tell if
she thought me terrifying or repulsive.  Maybe both.

Then she ate the whole thing in one bite, cramming it all
into her mouth as if I might steal it back from her.  I smiled when she hid her
mouth behind her hands, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk’s.

She swallowed and started to lick the sweetness from her
fingers, but thought better of it and wiped them on her trousers.

“Eee, that was gross,” she said.

“You ate it.”

“Can’t complain.”

I held out the rest to her.  Gad, if anyone in the Court
knew I was sharing food I’d already eaten from, they would probably faint.

Hayli scowled like a devil, then she swiped the dough from
my hand and choked it down.

“Why’d you help?” she asked when she’d finished.  “With the
lads?”

I shrugged.  “Didn’t seem like a fair fight.”

“You got Jig,” she said, eyes wide.  “Can’t believe you got
‘im.  Nobody gets a clean hit on Jig.”

“Friend of yours?”

She gave a great indignant huff.  “No.  Jig’s a cad.”

I smiled; I couldn’t imagine Samyr even thinking that word,
let alone using it.

Then her face softened, and she shrugged.  “Well, he’s not
terrible, sometimes.  He stood up for me…”  She flashed a cautious glance at
me.  “So he’s jake.  I guess.”

“Jake?” I echoed, skeptical.

“He’s swell,” she said, shrugging.  “
Jake
.”

“What about that other one?”

“Anuk?  He’s pretty swell too, ‘cept when he tries to steal
from me.”

“Steal…what you stole, I presume?”

Her eyes flashed to my face.  I thought she was about to
laugh, but then the smile paled into alarm.

“You won’t rat me out?” she whispered.  “I was dead
skapped!”

I jutted my lower lip, the way I’d discovered I could shrug
without actually shrugging.  “If I told on you, does that mean I’d have to
report myself for when I did the same thing?  Let’s see, there was the time
when I was twelve, and then again when I was fourteen…”

She laughed.  “That’s not true!”

I arched a brow.  “Oh, it’s true.”

“You’re leaving?” she asked abruptly.

I hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes.  My father thinks I
need to see more of the world.”

“I can’t imagine leaving Brinmark.”

“I can’t imagine staying,” I said, and I was only
half-joking.

Apparently she didn’t know what to think about that, because
she just scowled and stared across the plaza.  After a moment, though, she
perked up and pointed.

“Wait, isn’t that…”

I followed her gaze.  “Damn,” I said, and sighed.  “Yes,
that’s Zagger.  Coming to collect.”

Chapter 14 — Tarik

I sighed and leaned over my knees.  Half of me hoped Zagger
wouldn’t recognize me, but I knew better.  He could sniff me out in a crowd of
any size.  I could have sworn the man was half bloodhound.

It took less than a minute for him to spot me, and
immediately the anxious look on his face relaxed.  As he wandered my way I
darted a glance to my left, but Hayli had disappeared, improbably, in the space
between seeing Zagger and Zagger seeing me.  I swept a gaze around, ready to
call her a liar, until I spotted a crow in the shadows not far from where Hayli
had been sitting.  It watched me with a keen eye for a moment, and then it
exploded into the air with a flurry of wings and was gone.

Zagger claimed he had seen a bird just before he hit Hayli
with the motorcar.  That suddenly made sense.  Hayli was a shape-shifter. 
Interesting.

“Your Highness,” Zagger said, dropping onto the wall beside
me.  He pulled a slim flask from inside his coat and passed it to me.  “
Stravitz
.”

“You know what my father would do to you if he knew you were
giving me this stuff?” I asked, pulling off the cap.

“Probably the same thing he’d do to you if he knew you were
accepting it,” Zagger remarked, unfazed.

“Oh, he knows about that.  Thought it was funny.”

Zagger laughed.  “Really,” he said, then stared at his
hands.  “I know you’ll tell what I need to do when the time comes, Your
Highness, but…I heard a rumor you won’t be coming to Lamanstal with the
household.  Is it true?  When you said you were leaving, did you mean you were
going somewhere else?”

I sighed and handed the flask back to him.  Some strangely
insistent voice in my head kept begging me to tell him everything.  I’d never
forgiven myself for keeping secrets—
that
secret—from him my entire
life.  But more than anything I dreaded what he would think of me if he learned
the truth.  He wasn’t nobility but he’d been raised on nobles’ sentiments, and
despising Jixies fairly well topped that list.

And I realized with some surprise that, of all the people in
my life who didn’t already know what I was, it was his opinion that I valued
the most.

“Your Highness?”

“Sorry,” I said, shaking myself out of my silence.  “That’s
right.  I’m not going.”

“Does this have anything to do with that bald idiot who’s
been hanging around?”

His scowl made me smile inside, but I just shot him a dark
look and said, “Yes, actually.”

Then I couldn’t say anything at all.  Guilt or shame
spirited away my voice, and I stared out across the plaza at the party-goers
and all the chaos.  This was such a nightmare. 

Zagger shifted his weight.

“Your knuckles are bleeding,” he remarked.

I examined them apathetically and shrugged.  “Not as much as
the other kid’s face.”

He snorted.  “Not very sporting to get in a fight on your
birthday.”

“But it’s my tradition, didn’t you hear?”

“What was it this time?”

“Don’t be jealous you weren’t here to get involved,” I
said.  “Just a fight between kids.”  I hesitated, then eyed Zag sidelong and
added, “It was that Jixy kid from yesterday.”

“You punched the girl?”

“Stars, no,” I said, laughing.  “What do you think I am?”

He smiled, briefly.  “Your Highness, I wanted to ask you
something.  Don’t know it’s my place though.”

This was it; I just knew this was the moment it would all
come out, and my whole body tensed and shuddered. 

“Go ahead,” I said, closing my eyes.  “Ask away.”

“That’s very open of you,” he said.  “It’s just…I keep
wondering what made you think that she was a Jixy.  She just looked like any
old street rat, besides turning up out of nowhere.  Was that it?”

“No,” I said.  My hands tingled; I’d been clutching them too
tight.  Every confession died on my lips, and the silence ate minutes between
us.  Finally I sighed and said, “You would hate me, Zagger, if you knew
everything there was to know about me.”

He looked disturbed but he tried a smile, saying, “I doubt
it, Your Highness.  I was there when you were fifteen, remember?”

“Don’t remind me.”

“I mean, what secret could you possibly have kept from me
for seventeen years?  It’s not as though you’re a Jixy or something.”

Ice exploded through my veins, tugging every bit of warmth
out through the hole in my heart.  I must have looked stricken, because Zagger
froze, face blanching, and stared at me.

“No,” he said.  “No.”

“My parents are the only other people who know,” I said,
hating how my voice crept out in a whisper.  “Stars, Zag, I always wished that
you knew.” 

And I wanted to say ten other things, but none of them made
it past the burn of shame in my throat.  I couldn’t even make a smart comment
to hide behind.

Zagger just kept staring at me.  I glanced at him once and
saw the war in his mind written all over his face.  And I turned aside.  I
couldn’t face him.  More than anything I wanted to get up and walk away, but I
couldn’t even do that.  Sitting there wasn’t courage; I was a coward.

“What…what kind of Jixy?” he asked, surprising me.  As if it
mattered what breed of monster I was.

“I can change my appearance,” I said.  “Make myself look
like someone else.”

“You do that a lot?”

“No, never.  My father found out when I was five.  He…told
me never to use it again.  Until last night.”

Zagger pulled off his hat to scrub his hand over his
close-cropped hair.  “Damn.  I wish you’d just told me.”

“I needed you, Zagger,” I said, hoarse suddenly.  “Needed
your friendship, your help.  I can’t imagine I would have survived fifteen
without you there to keep pulling me back from the edge.”

“You think I would’ve hated you for being what you are?” he
asked, eyes widening.  “You didn’t tell me because you thought I’d turn on
you?”

I narrowed a long, hard look at him.  “In what world
wouldn’t you have hated me?”

“This one,” he said.  “I’ve spent the last seventeen years
of my life keeping you safe.  I wish you’d have believed that I would never let
myself hurt you either.”

I couldn’t say anything to that.  I bent my head and stared
at my hands, and hoped he couldn’t see the grief I hid under the brim of my
hat.

“So that means…your mother…”

I spun toward him, eyes blazing.  “You forget about that
part of it, all right?  Don’t even think of her like that.”

He lifted his hands.  “Didn’t I just tell you…?  Well, look,
there’s Kor.  How charming.  I suppose
he
knows already?”

“My father’s doing, not mine,” I said, sour, watching the
thunderstorm of a human being beating a path through the crowd, revelers
scattering like leaves as he passed. 

“Your father…?”  He studied me curiously, then shook his
head in disbelief and said, “He told
that
man?”

“He wants me to try to get an in with the Rivanic cult, so,
he hired Kor to turn me into a tramp.”

Zag’s brows shot up.  “Really!  That could be dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Well,” he said, and hesitated, watching Kor.  “Anyone’s
welcome to be a follower of Rivano, but they don’t let just anyone into the
cult.  I’ve heard stories.  People they let get a little too close, then decide
they don’t like the looks of ‘em, so they take them for a ride.  Police
sometimes talk about finding bodies, or what’s left of them.  Just be careful. 
The closer you get, the more suspicious they are.”

I thought of those five murders, bodies unidentifiable. 
“You’re sure those were victims of the Clan?”

He shrugged.  “That’s the rumor anyway.”

“How is it you seem to know more about the Clan than my
father and Minister Farro?”

He snorted.  “What makes you think they don’t know it?”

I couldn’t think of a thing to say to that.

“This is madness,” he said after a moment.  “It’s a madness
project.  Just…be careful.”

I hesitated, clasping and unclasping my hands.  “Honestly,
Zag, I’m scared to death.”

He made a little noise like a cough.  “You’re not a coward,
Your Highness,” he said, but the way he said it made me wonder what he really
meant.  “You just need to learn to accept who you are.”

“Who I am?” I echoed.  “What would that be, the Crown Prince
or a damn Jixy?”

“Yes.”

I groaned, but Zag kept studying me with such a deep
uneasiness that my stomach turned cold.

“Zag.  What’s wrong?”

“It’s just…why would he do that?”

“My father?”

He nodded, but when I just frowned at him he swore and
leveled the flask at me.  “You’re the Crown Prince, Your Highness!  You’re his
heir.  I don’t understand.  What if…”

“What if I got killed?” I asked, mirthless, a little savage
smile tugging on my lips.  I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it.  “Would it be
such a tragedy for Cavnal?  My infernal cousin Horm is already salivating over
the crown.  Maybe I should just let him have it.  He’d fit, at least.”

“Don’t you start,” Zagger growled, but then Kor joined us,
killing the conversation. 

He slapped Zagger on the back, smirking at me in my pathetic
attempt at a disguise.

“Zagger!  Pleasure to see you.  I’m glad the prince isn’t
around,” he said, loudly.  “Told me to steer clear until tomorrow.”

“Don’t pretend you’re happy to see me,” Zagger said, dangerous. 
“Sit down if you’re going to stay.  You’re blocking my view.”

Kor tipped his hat and dropped onto the wall beside me,
pulling a long cigar from his jacket pocket.  “Lend me a light?”

I never carried a matchbox, but I found my ferrosteel
lighter and sat for a minute twirling it in my fingers, lighting it a few times
to watch the spark.  Then I shrugged and stuffed it back in my pocket.

“Sorry.  I don’t like the smell.”

He swore and Zagger stiffened like an attack dog, but at a
glance from me he kept his peace.  Kor resigned himself to chewing on the thing
unlit.