The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (21 page)

I wandered between the buildings until the alley spat me out
onto an empty, narrow street.  Gas lamps cast a weird greenish light on the
broken pavement, reflecting in forgotten puddles and off half-smashed panes of
glass in nearby storefronts.  Somewhere in another back alley a tin rubbish bin
lid crashed to the ground.  I expected a cat; I jumped and stared when a
half-naked child skitted across the street right in front of me.

I put my hands on my head and sucked in a long, thin
breath.  The cold made my lungs ache, but for just that moment, not of that
mattered.  This was my city, and I was terrified of it.  Terrified, because I
didn’t know it at all.

“Food dan’ come skipping down the street on its own,
y’know,” a tiny voice said, close by my elbow.

I spun around, only to find Zip standing there, in my hat,
fingers sticking out the holes in the bottoms of his pockets.  My heart took
off racing—
racing
, and it was just a kid talking to me.  I took a little
breath and steadied my nerves.  I was only acting.  Affecting an accent,
adopting a dialect…it was just theater.  I could do this.

“I heard in Brinmark it did,” I said.  “You saying I got
fibbed?”

I wondered if that meant what I thought it did.  Wondered if
people even said that down here.  But the kid just grinned, his mouth as full
of holes as his pockets.

“How’d you know I wanted chow?” I asked, giving him a little
scowl.

“You sure perked up when someone crashed the trash.”

That had a bit of poetry to it; I nodded appreciatively. 
“Think they left any scraps?”

“Nope.”

“How’d you get so sure?”

“‘Cause I ate it all,” he said, proud.

“But didn’t I just see…”

“Nah, that weren’t me.  You saw Bizzy.  Say, I’m Zip.  Got a
tag?”

Tag
, I thought.  The word gave me pause.  It wasn’t
even a name to these people.  It was both more and less than a name.

I frowned.  “Not as I’m like to tell.”

“
Ohhh
,” Zip said, as if that made all the sense in
the world.  Then he swung around, squinting into the lamplight.  “Well, you’d
see more luck down round Trip’s turf, just by the sweet shop.”

“Tell me that again, and pretend you’re talking to a stranger,”
I said.

“Right.  Gan away down to the next lamp, then take this
hand,” and he held up his right hand, “then that hand, this hand, and straight
on till you pass the sweet shop.  You’ll know it.”

I opened my mouth to ask him the name of the sweet shop, but
he’d said it twice as if I’d know what it meant.  So I just smiled and nodded.

“Thanks, Zip.”

“Yup,” he said, and scampered off into the shadows.

I had half a mind to call him back and tell him to take my
boots to his father, but suddenly I couldn’t fathom parting with them.  My feet
felt half-frozen as it was. 

Half-frozen. 

I’d seen the old man’s feet.  I didn’t know anything about
half-frozen
.

I buried the nagging guilt and set off to the south,
reciting Zip’s directions aloud as I went to keep from forgetting them.  My
stomach gurgled woefully.  That would be Tarik’s stomach, the one that kept
expecting pumpkin bisque and fine claret wine to appear out of thin air.

The wind tore through the narrow street, sending my cap
catapulting into the shadows.  I scrounged through half-rotted bits of
newspaper and broken bottles until my shaking hands found it again.  When the
rain started to fall, it took all my resolve not to sit down against the wall
and curse everything and everyone I’d ever known.

I’d never wanted to feel sorry for myself quite as much as
at that moment.  But at the same time, I’d never felt so much scorn for myself
either.  I knew I had no right to whine, when I’d just seen what real poverty
looked like.  That didn’t keep the same thought from tumbling through my mind,
though, over and over again: This was a mistake.

As the rain turned to sleet, I shifted my steps back to the
north, and found my way to the alley where I’d left Kor.  I shouldered my way
inside the abandoned building and sat back down in my corner, shaking
uncontrollably.  My hands felt thick and raw, stiff and numbed to
insensibility.  I shoved them under my armpits to try to warm them up, but
their icy skin only made me colder.

“Kor!” I hissed into the darkness.  My teeth started
chattering.

Kor was right.  I was pathetic.  I’d never thought of myself
as weak, but I’d been out of the comfort of my palace for a grand total of six
hours and I already wanted to give up everything and run back home.  And now
Kor had gone and disappeared, and he’d taken my greatcoat with him.  Gad.  He
probably just wanted the thing for himself.

I shuffled my feet on the floor and doubled tighter over my
knees, every muscle in my body aching from shivering.  No one in Brinmark’s
high society prayed, but right then, I found myself praying.

Chapter 2 — Hayli

Rivano was staring at me.

One minute I’d been dangling from Derrin’s arms, the next I
was in my bed, waking up with the Clan Master’s face not five inches from mine.

“That’s right,” he murmured, like he’d been talking for a
good long bit already.

A minute and I realized he had a hold on me, his hand tight
on my shoulder.  I blinked.  Tried to squirm free but got nowhere. 

“The worst is past,” Rivano said, sitting back and releasing
me.

“Worst of what?” I gasped.

He smiled, just.  “The fever.”

“What’d I have a fever for?  I never get sick,” I said.

“Likely from laying the gutter so long,” he said.  “I’m
surprised you didn’t end up sicker than you did.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.  “I Shifted.  And you told me not
to.  I div’n mean to.”

Five days
.  That’s what Derrin had said.  I’d been
missing for five days.  What had happened?

Rivano measured me, quiet and thinking.  He didn’t
look
skundered at me, but I knew better than figure that meant anything.

“Why did you?” he asked, soft.

I blushed.  “I…I dan’ na.  I was embarrassed.  I got nervous
about… about a boy.”

My face flared hotter than ever.  Why was I telling Clan
Master Rivano about my ridiculous fancy over Prince Tarik?  But he just smiled,
understanding warming the amber of his eyes.

“And then you ended up in the gutter a few days later? 
Typical Shifting sort of lag?”

The room went cold on me all sudden-like.  I hunched down
under my blanket.

“No,” I whispered.  “No, I woke up before that.”

He leaned forward.  “Hayli,” he said, and for some reason I
jumped, like he shouldn’t have known my name.  “What happened?  What’s got you
so unsettled?”

“They took me somewhere.  It hurt…it hurt so much…”

The warmth in his eyes hardened into worry.  His smile
turned to stone.  “What’s this?  What hurt?”  I couldn’t answer.  “Can you
remember where you went?  What did they do to you?”

I shook my head.  My whole body shook.  “I dan’ na what
happened!  I dan’ na!”

He left me babbling like an idiot.  I got to feeling that
somehow I’d done something terribly wrong, only I couldn’t figure what.  I lay
still a few minutes more, slumped under my thin blanket, shivering and fighting
back the burn of tears.

After a while I got so I could mostly forget about that
horrible white room with its white lights and white coats—or, at least I could
forget enough that it didn’t have me blubbering anymore.  I stretched my arms
out, careful, waiting for pain to tell me what had happened, but I felt
nothing.  So I hitched over to the edge of my bed and sat up, peering around at
the empty barracks.  Must’ve been midmorning, or mid-afternoon, or some time of
the day not close to a meal, or there’d have been kids swarming all over like
ants on sugar.

I couldn’t see Derrin anywhere about, so I buckled on my
boots and  scrammed from the Hole before he could find me again.

Brinmark had given up on snow and had got back to rain
again, cold and hard and endless.  I spotted a piece of ratty canvas someone
had pulled off a supply box and wrapped it around my shoulders.  It kept the
rain off.  Didn’t look like much, but I mostly didn’t care.  Being warm and dry
was so much more important than looking fine, no matter what Gem said.  I never
did understand why she fretted so much about what the high-streeters thought
when they saw her.  It didn’t mean a thing down here.

Not ten minutes out from the Hole, up at a corner of Chase
Street where fine folks liked to parade about, I found Pika huddled in the
hollow of a half-rotted crate.  She sat with her chin in her fists, watching
some stuffy looking lads on bicycles across the street.  I didn’t think she’d
missed me, but she kind of jumped when I slid under the shelter to join her.

“Hayli!” she squealed, and hugged my arm.  “You’re better!”

“Better and better,” I said, trying best I could to push
away the snaky tendrils of fear inside me.  I nodded at the dandies.  “What’s
the story?”

She smirked.  “Nothing interesting.  But the boy with the
spectacles is
dreamy!
”

I eyed the boy.  He couldn’t have been more than thirteen,
with great big spectacles that made him look a bit like an owl.  Even the way
he had his shoulders scrunched up in the rain got me imagining feathers
sprouting from his head.

“Tosh,” I said.  “He’s too old for you.”

She pouted and wriggled a little further under the crate.

“Well, they
were
gossiping about the Prince.”

I froze.  “What’d they say?”

“Said he got in the spits on his
birthday
, and was so
disgraced his family sent him off to Meritac instead of letting him gan away to
Lamanstal with them.”

I was just glad Pika was still ogling the boy with the
bicycle, so she didn’t notice how red my face got.

“He already meant to gan away,” I whispered.  “That wasn’t…I
mean…”

She laughed.  Somehow I imagined my almost-mistake didn’t
surprise her a bit.

“You’re wicked,” I said.  “Did Jig or Anuk say aught about
it…?”

She made a dramatic face and buried her head on my arm. 
“Oh, I heard all about it.  Hayli!  The Prince
rescued
you.”

“I almost had to rescue
him
,” I retorted, hot.  “Anuk
near took his head off!  Bet he never expected that.”

We both laughed, and Pika let go of my arm.  “Wish I’d seen
that,” she sighed.  “It would make such a story!”

“That’s just because you’re a silly thing.”

For a few minutes we huddled there under the crate, watching
the boys.  I didn’t hear a bit of what they said, though.  Pika’s words kept
chasing about through my head, till I’d gone and made myself silly as her.  I
blushed.  It was ridiculous to think about it, anyway.  He was the Prince.  And
even if he spoke to me kinder than most…and smiled that smile…

Stars, Hayli, wake up
.

I shook myself, rattling the silliness out of my head. 

“See you, Pika,” I said.  “I’m ganna gan about.”

“What’ll Derrin say?”

I shrugged.  “Dan’ think he’s bothering right now.” 

“All open,” Pika said, quoting the motto of all the Hole
rats who played urchins on the streets—keep your eyes and ears and hands open,
always.

I slipped back into the rain and jogged down into the
nearest alley, where I could be alone and have a good quiet think.  The bitty
little dutiful part of my mind nagged me to go back and face Derrin, but I
couldn’t.  Not yet.  I still felt funny, like my brain had got too big for its
case, and the thought of being in the Hole made my stomach turn odd on me.

So I wandered through the alleys, ignoring the rain and the
cold and listening for folks who might be talking.  At least I could follow
Pika’s example and be useful that way.  But no one was out.  At least…

I turned onto a wide back street, littered with smeared newsprint
and rotted boxes, and stopped, because there on the stoop of an abandoned old
shop sat a boy. 

He had his face tipped back, eyes closed and face pale as
stone, and for half a second I got all panicky that he might be dead.  Maybe he
was just swacked.  He wore a fine set of rags—black trousers and a black
waistcoat, faded a bit to grey around the edges.  Nothing to get green about,
but I did want his boots bad.

I edged closer to him.  Somewhere along the way my hand
found the knot I’d made in my canvas wrap and tugged it free.  Instantly the
rain attacked me, but I didn’t have a mind to do a thing about it.

When I’d almost reached him I stopped, because my nerves had
gone fitsy and I couldn’t stir my legs again.  The boy wasn’t any as I’d ever
seen around the Hole, and I knew all the kids there by sight at least.  He
wasn’t one of the toughs from the local mobs, either.  I’d never seen him at
all in my life.  The city was full of strangers, but they were my strangers. 
This boy wasn’t.  And somehow that thought had me all giddy with excitement and
a tad bit of fear.