The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (31 page)

At that Shade got a wicked, wild grin, his eyes all alight,
and I just knew he’d go exploring the place first chance he got.  It was the
most excited I’d ever seen him.  Part of me expected Jig had told him about the
haunting just to make him go in.  It was a mean thing some of the older Hole
rats did to the fish when they first arrived.  Derrin had done it to me when I
was seven, when he was still a kid with a rascally streak, and not the Derrin
who looked after the fish and kept us all in line. 

I shivered.  The memory still had the strength of a
yesterday.  Even now I could hear the whispers in the empty room.  The whir of
long-silent machines, the hiss of steam from broken boilers.  The drip of blood
without a body to bleed.  I’d got all of two steps in before the hair on my
neck stood straight on end and sent me screaming like a baby back to Derrin. 
If Shade wanted to go poking about, I wouldn’t stop him, but I’d laugh like
crazy if he got spooked.

He frowned at the sky.  “Right, so where’s everything else?”

“Why d’you need to know?” Jig asked, narrowing his eyes. 
“Div’n figure you’d be coming back.  Thought Derrin made it pretty clear you’re
not welcome.”

“Oh, bog off,” Shade snapped.

“Shut up, both of you,” I said.  “There’s still a chance he
can get in.  If…”  I studied Shade under my lashes.  “If you want it.”

“Think I should?” he asked, like the notion baffled him
somehow.

“What use would he be to us?” Jig asked, getting prickly.

Shade pushed away from the wall so he stood just inches from
Jig.  “Don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a mage.  So what do
you
think?”

“A’right, a’right, stop,” I said, because I could just see
the fangs coming out and I didn’t want to have to break them up.  “Would you
two grow up?”

They both looked a bit sheepish, but Shade just folded his
hands into his pockets with a shrug, and Jig turned away, swinging his arms to
stretch his shoulders. 

I let out my breath.  “
Thank
you.  So, look.  That
way is the Bricks,” I said and pointed down an alley behind Shade.  Then I
swung my hand left.  “That way heads north to the city center and the palace
district.  Dan’ gan that way unless you have to.  Just a bunch of stuffy snobs
and too many coppers.” 

“Good to know,” Shade said.

I nodded at the road that swept past the factory behind me. 
“The river’s that way, and…let’s see.  Keep gannin’ past the Bricks and you get
into real crooked territory.  You think the Bricks are bad?  You’ve never met
Kreef and his crew, or the sugar dealers who work for Trip.  That’s a bad lot. 
And then there’s Vanek Meed, who holes up on Front Street, and I think he’s got
to be the worst of them all.”

“Why, what does he do?”

“He’s got the real power down here.  Like a master at the
chessboard,” Jig said.  “Controlling all the pawns.”

“Who’re the pawns?” Shade asked, frowning.

“What are pawns?” I asked, because I’d never heard the word
at all.  It surprised me a bit that Shade had.

Jig ignored me.  He had a strange, brilliant look in his
eyes as he studied Shade, which got me feeling a mite uncomfortable.  “We’re
the pawns.  And down here, he’s the king.”

“I have no use for kings,” Shade said, voice low.  Then he
straightened up and said more loudly, “He sounds swell.  I’d like to meet him.”

“Wait, what?” Jig said.

I gaped at him.

“Come along if you like,” he said.  “Otherwise I’ll just…go
alone”

“They’ll kill you,” I whispered.  “You wouldn’t even reach
the front door.  You think just anyone can pop on in for a visit?  That
man…he’s got the ear of the Chief Inspector.  That’s where he gets his power. 
If he likes you, you’re safe.  If your enemies give him enough dough, you’re
not.  One word from him and the coppers come in and round you up and you’re off
to the mines.”

Shade’s eyes darkened, but the rest of his face stayed calm
as ever.  “Is the Hole safe from him?”

The clouds thickened, casting the street in shadow, and the
wind picked up.  I flinched, expecting rain, but none came.  Just the angry
gusts clawing my hair and batting our clothes.

“He and Rivano have an understanding, I’ve heard,” Jig
said.  “For now.”

“Does the Hole have any enemies?”

“Besides the Bricks?”  I laughed.  “Well, I suppose most
folks who aren’t us dan’ like us for one reason or another.  That dan’ make
them enemies, really.  Just not friends.”

That got me thinking about what Pika had said about Shade. 
I liked to think that me and him could be friends, but he was so…
closed
. 
Even now, as we talked, his eyes moved constantly, fixing on everything but
me.  I could tell Jig was a bit antsy.  Maybe he didn’t trust Shade, or maybe
he just had no patience to stand around and talk.  He bounced on his toes, the
wind scattering his hair into his eyes until he batted it back—twice.  He’d
never wear a hat unless it was one he could use as a weapon.

“Look, what’re we doing out here?” he asked.

“All those folks underground,” Shade said.  “Where do they
all get food?”

“That what you wanted to know?  Not my business,” Jig said.

“Isn’t it, though?” Shade asked. 

He fixed such a strange look on Jig that Jig got a bit
twitchy, and that made me want to smile.  Jig was an arrogant cad, mostly, and
I got the sense Shade had just questioned what kind of a man he was, without
ever spelling it out, and without even raising his voice.  And watching Jig
squirm under that cold stare had to be the best thing I’d seen in ages.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jig muttered, when he
finally chased down his voice.

Shade didn’t answer.  A minute and he gave a faint kind of
smile, and turned to me.  I jumped.  I couldn’t help it, because he still had that
ice-hard gleam in his eyes that I thought he’d only meant for Jig.

“If I say the word
supplier
, does that mean a jot to
either of you?”

“Nope,” I said.  “Should it?”

He tipped his head back, jaw tight.

“Why won’t you just tell us what you’re after?” I asked.

“Not sure I even know, myself,” he said.  “I need to find
who the Bricks’ supplier is, but I don’t even know what that means.”

My mouth fell open.  I remembered overhearing Derrin and
Kantian talking once, when they’d met out on the west side of the Hole and
hadn’t seen me sitting on the wall.  Kantian had asked Derrin to get the
supplier’s name, though I didn’t hear any reason why, and now Derrin had given
a job to Shade. 

“Derrin?” I asked.

Shade finally glanced at me again, his lips tightening in a
half-hidden smile.  “Smart girl,” he murmured.

“Well,” I said, quick, “Coolie won’t tell you.  Not ever.”

“Figured that already.”  He sighed and kicked the wall. 
“Suppose I dragged you out here for nothing.  I don’t even know how to start
looking.”

I expected Jig to make a smart comment, but he just nodded
and said, “I’d tell you if I knew.  Honest.  But I dan’.”

“Well.  See you around,” Shade said, and just like that he
turned to go.

“Hey, Shade!” I shouted.  “Why do you keep
doing
that?  Lamming off like that all the time?”

“Can’t stay,” he said with a phantom smile, and then he was
gone.

Chapter 11 — Tarik

Now that I knew where I was, I knew exactly what I had to do
next.  It took over half an hour, since I got woefully lost not once, but twice,
but finally I arrived outside the palace gates.  Only a token guard stood at
post.  This was the time of year when the palace grounds were open to the whole
city for visits and formal tours, since the royal family was gone and the
Assembly was out of session.  Some of the Ministers and their families liked to
stay in Brinmark over the holidays, and an army of secretaries and advisors and
paper-pushers could never be persuaded to leave, but the place still felt
eerily quiet.

Inside the palace, a red-headed woman in a smart green suit
and felt hat stood with a small group of warmly-clad visitors, some of them
carrying strangers’ guides with well-worn leather binding.  As I stepped into
the grand entry, she was just finishing an explanation of the palace’s history.

“And these days it is the official residence of Geyn’s son
Trabin, our current monarch, along with his wife, Queen Elanar and their son
Tarik.  Elanar is the eldest daughter of the Grand Duke of Tulay.  The marriage
was part of an alliance between our two nations at the beginning of the Island
Wars.”

She caught sight of me and her forehead puckered with a
frown.

“Please excuse me a moment,” she told her audience, and
marched over to me, her heeled boots snapping on the marble.  “I’m sorry, young
man, but this is a private tour.”  Her eyes raked over me, me in my filthy
clothes, with my black eye and tattoo.  “I’m afraid you will have to leave the
premises.”

“The palace is open to the public,” I said, and smiled. 
“I’m not here for a tour.”

Her lips tightened.  I knew what she was thinking, because I
would have thought it too, as Tarik, watching a street rat idling in the
entrance of my palace.  She thought I was here to rob the place.  Funny, I
might have considered robbing the kitchen, if it weren’t that stealing from
myself seemed so…odd.

The woman craned her neck to peer past my shoulder, trying
to catch someone’s attention.  The guard, of course—not the Royal Guard who
stood in strict silence at the outer gate, but the member of the watch who kept
a sentry post just outside the palace doors.  After a moment she lifted her
hand in a wave.  I sighed and shoved my hands in my pockets, and listened to
the tap of his boots as he strode toward us.

“Sir, I have guests to attend to, and this young man refuses
to leave.  I rather think…” Her voice trailed faintly and she gave a meaningful
nod toward me, adding in a half-whisper as if I couldn’t hear, “…he doesn’t
belong
.”

“What’s this,” the guard said, studying me through a
glower.  “What’s your game, lad?”

The woman took that as her cue and swept back to her
visitors.

“I’m here to see someone,” I said.

My heart felt a little funny.  I knew this man.  I’d seen
him nearly every day of my life for the past five years.  Somehow I’d never
imagined how much it would hurt to be stared at as though I were a criminal by
the very people who had once sworn to protect me.

“That’s what they all say,” he said, with a little huff of a
laugh.

“His name is Kor.”

That sobered him up, turning his contempt to interest. 
“What’s that?  Who’re you here for?”

“That’s all I know.”  I shrugged.  “Said his name was Kor. 
He told me I’d find him here.”

For a long while he just frowned at me, and I tried not to
meet his gaze too defiantly.

“All right,” he said, tense and uncertain.  “Come with me. 
I believe he’s here at the moment.  No funny business, though, or I’ll put you
in cuffs.”

About halfway across the grand entrance I remembered that I
was Shade, not Prince Tarik, so I made a show of staring up and around at the
white marble pilasters and crystal chandeliers with their glowing electrical
bulbs as though I’d never seen the like.  I also played the wicked trick of
hesitating just a moment too long beside a display case housing some of my
great-grandfather’s fine silver, earning a dangerous glare from the guard. 

He led me around toward the South Ward, where most of my
father’s staff had their offices and conference chambers.  A few red-robed and
coiffured officials stood conferring in the broad hallway near one of the
meeting rooms, brandishing sheaves of papers at each other like weapons.  One
of them peered down his bulbous nose at me as we passed, putting a hitch in
their argument, and then I barely heard him mutter to one of the others,

“Filthy Jixy.”

I stopped and turned to glare at them, but the guard gripped
my arm and propelled me forward.

“Come along.”

He brought me to a board room, painted white and gold
instead of paneled in wood like so many of the other rooms.  It was empty, but
through the glass balcony doors I caught sight of Kor standing out in the wind
with a few other men, pointing out toward the city as they talked.  For some
reason I frowned a little when I saw him.  Maybe because he seemed so at home,
deliberating with my father’s staff, when I’d been so convinced he belonged in
the underground like me.

Like me.

I shook my head and followed the guard.  At the door of the
balcony he stopped and waited to be acknowledged, barring my way so I couldn’t
interrupt the men’s conference.  A few minutes dragged by, and I took to
wandering around the board room, plucking items off of the credenzas to examine
and stopping in front of a mirror to evaluate my battered face, until the guard
finally shot me a stern look.