The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (74 page)

“We’ll deal with Kantian, don’t worry,” he said.  “Now go.”

I stared after Rivano as he slipped away down the steps. 
The door settled behind him with a heavy finality, leaving me standing all
alone in the cold. 

I didn’t really have any belongings to claim.  I was wearing
almost everything I owned.  But Shade was in there somewhere, his body one
great laceration, all on account of me.  I couldn’t stop thinking how he’d
pretended to be a traitor to save my life, when the irony of it all was that I
had
betrayed Kantian to Branigan, to save
his
.

Chapter 7 — Tarik

I was awake, but in darkness.  Darkness and a fleeting sense
of pain.  Confusion.  I’d been walking for so long on the shore of the midnight
sea, and now the waves were receding.  I could still hear them.  Hear the pulse
of the water…my pulse…the pulse of blood. 

I felt hands on my shoulders, holding me down or still, I
couldn’t say, but when I fought to sit up, they supported me.

“Coins,” I said.  My voice rasped, hoarse.  “Coins!”

“I’m here, Shade,” he said, his hand tightening on my left
shoulder.  “You jake, mate?”

I shook my head, but the shadows pressed around me, hard and
relentless.  My head splintered with a piercing ache, and somewhere deep in the
back of my mind, I heard the faint refrains of the song that had been haunting
my dreams for the last month.

“I can’t see,” I said.

I moved my hands over the rough fibers of a blanket, feeling
the sharp edge of a cot beneath me.  Slowly the song faded, drowning in a rush
of chattering voices coming from all around me.

“Give yourself a minute,” Anuk said.

“Where’s Hayli?”

Silence.  I twitched my head, trying to clear the blindness,
but nothing happened.

“Coins!  Where’s Hayli?”

“Jig, go see if you can find her.  Think she was talking to
Rivano.”

I felt Anuk’s hand tighten on my other arm.  “She was
talking to Rivano?  Up there, just now?”

“Yeah, why?”

The hand flew from my arm, and I listened to the sound of
his boots storming away, then Jig’s lighter tread following after.  I pressed
my hands against my eyes and slowly, slowly my vision brightened until I could
just make out Coins’s blurry form kneeling beside me.  Only one light was
burning in the barracks, so I couldn’t distinguish much else besides him.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I haven’t got the faintest,” Coins said.  He dropped his
voice to a whisper and said, “Look, you’ve got a contact in the palace, right?”

I just fixed a scowl in the place I assumed his face was.

“You were out after Rivano showed, weren’t you?”

I struggled to remember.  Rivano?  Somehow I thought I could
recall a dark, hazy figure standing behind Hayli, but nothing more.  It would
figure, my first time actually seeing Rivano, I had to be on the brink of
collapse.

“I wasn’t out,” I said.  “But I don’t remember any of it.”

“There’s been a fall-out.  Kantian and Rivano.  People are
taking sides…it’s getting ugly.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said.

I could see his face a little more clearly, now.  The corner
of his mouth twitched, almost like a wince.  “Does your contact ever give you
information, or does he just take it?”

I dropped my head in my hands.  “Sometimes he gives me
information.  Sometimes.  Listen, Coins, I was only supposed to find out about
the murders.  There are folks who think the Clan was behind them, so that’s
what I was supposed to learn.  That, and the assassination attempt.  I never
wanted any more than that.  I wasn’t giving information about—”

“Don’t talk, Shade,” he said, moving to sit on the cot
beside me.  “Told you once, I don’t care.  Here’s the thing.  I think Kantian’s
the one we need to be worried about, right?  He’s playing some game behind
Rivano’s back that I think Hayli found out about.”

“I have to talk to Hayli.”

“Except you can’t,” Anuk said.

I squinted through the shadows, just barely making out Anuk
and Jig’s silhouettes as they made their way toward us.

“Why not?”

“She’s ganned away,” Jig said.

“What d’you mean, gone?” Coins asked.  “That’s not like
Hayli.  That’s more like, well, you,” he added, punching my arm.

I winced and rubbed the spot, then absently reached back and
touched the shredded remains of my shirt.  The skin underneath stung, but it
was whole.  Touching it, though, sent a bolt of icy pain chasing through me,
and I snatched my hand away.

“Say that again.”

“She ain’t anywhere.  I looked everywhere.  Not the
barracks, not the mess, not the lounge…not even that nasty park she likes to
sit by.”

I pushed myself to my feet, swallowing bile.  “I have to find
her.”

“Shade, hold on a tick.  There’s something you need to
know,” Anuk said.  I stopped, glad to give myself a moment to find my balance,
and waved at him to continue.  “She has a mark.”

“So?” Jig asked.  “Ain’t that a magey thing to do?”

“Yeah, except…it’s clockwork.  Metal gears on the back of
her neck.  I saw it.  But she was scared to death of Rivano finding out about
it.  Except I think that now he has, and that’s why she’s gone.”

I stared at Anuk, speechless, cold horror prickling over
me.  All I could see was that metallic gleam of wheels and pinions marking
Kor’s spine, and the way he hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

We all jumped when Derrin stepped out of the shadows,
saying, “She got taken by the Science Ministry about a month back.”

“Derrin!  Where’ve you been?” Anuk cried.

“Off on a wild chase, that’s where,” Derrin said, carefully
rolling up the cuffs of his sleeves.  “Doesn’t matter, anyway.  You’re right, I
think Kantian’s playing two sides here, and Hayli had proof of it.  But Rivano
drove Hayli away because he thinks she’s been compromised.”

“By the Science Ministry?” I asked.  “What would they have
done to her?”

“They’ve been taking mages for months now.  I don’t know
what for, except the ones who come back are different somehow.  I think they
play with their minds.  Given the right influences, they can make mages do
anything, it seems.”

“
Keyed!
” Coins cried.  “Those boffins can do all
kinds of messed up things to people’s minds, right?  Make them do things,
respond to code phrases, that sort of business.  Not sure how they make it
work, but that’s what folks call it.  Keyed.  If they’re doing that to mages…
Stars
.”

I let out my breath in a hiss.  Hayli had been right—the
Ministry
was
targeting mages.  And she’d been one of their experiments. 
Hayli…and Kor.  If they’d been keyed the way Coins was suggesting, I couldn’t
even imagine what they were doing.  What information they might get and who
they might give it to… What a nightmare.  I’d been trusting information to Kor
all along under the assumption that I could trust him.  I couldn’t imagine that
Trabin knew Kor had been compromised.

I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose.  For a
few minutes I didn’t move, then I became aware of the silence around me and
lifted my head.  All of them were watching me.  Even Derrin.  They ringed
around me, curious, maybe expectant.

“What are you all looking at me for?” I asked, dropping my
hands.

Derrin said, “What do we do?”

I straightened up and met his gaze, but he didn’t even
blink.  He really meant it.  They were looking to me, after all I’d done, after
all the chaos I’d caused.  I wondered what had ever made them so foolish.

“We’ve got to find Hayli,” I said.  “But…even if we can’t
find her, I think I know what’s going on.  Kantian’s been feeding you lot
anarchist fairy tales, hasn’t he?  He’s been trying to stir you up, turn you
into a proper rebel band, wanting to overthrow the King and his Ministers. 
I’ve heard you lot talking about it.”

They exchanged glances, and Anuk said, “Yeah.  You never
seemed to keen on the notion, did you?”

“No offense, but there’s just a handful of you.  You want to
change how things work around here?  You need to look elsewhere.  There’s a
bigger battle coming, and I think Kantian’s completely out of his depth.  He
has no notion what he’s doing, but he’s going to get a lot of people killed if
he keeps trying to co-opt Rivano’s work.”

Derrin’s brows drew together, but he didn’t say anything. 
He watched me so curiously, though, that I got a little nervous.  Had I given
myself away?  Years of training in political thought had taken their toll on
me; I knew I didn’t think about things the way other kids my age did.

Anuk must have noticed his expression too, because he
frowned and said, “Fairly savvy, that.”

“My father was in politics,” I said blandly.

“In Istia?” Derrin asked.

I nodded.  “Look, that’s not important.  Focus.  What would
Kantian be doing?  He’s got to know that he can’t wage a war against the King
with a handful of skitters.  No offense to you lot.  I think Kantian’s the one
who wanted the Bricks turned out and dependent on the Hole, not Rivano.  And I
think he might even go so far as to get the mages feeling threatened, so that
they’ll side with him.  He’s even gone so far as to talk to someone at the
Science Ministry.  But he has no idea what powers he’s messing with.”  I
smiled, a cold, spiteful kind of thing.  “He’s utterly out of his league.”

“So what are you going to do about him?” Anuk asked.

I got to my feet, letting out my breath in a silent laugh. 
“Stars, I don’t give a damn about Kantian.  Let him play his game.  He’s not
important.”

“But Hayli—”

“I think Hayli stumbled on something bigger than Kantian. 
This business with the Science Ministry…that’s got me more worried than some
petty crook.  What are they planning?  I need more information.  I’m going to
see what a friend of mine knows.  See if he’s heard any rumors about the Clan
or the city mages.”

“What friend?” Derrin asked.

Coins swallowed and met my gaze.

“His name is Dreyden Kor,” I said.

“Dreyden!  You daft idiot, you’ve been talking to Dreyden?”
Derrin cried, staring at me aghast.

I smiled.  “I think I probably know more about him than you
do.”

“You’re new here.  You can’t possibly know.  He’s…”

“A double agent?” I asked.  “Two-faced?  Playing both
sides?  Yeah.  I knew that.”

His jaw dropped.  “You knew that and you still thought him a
trustworthy source of information?”

I held Coins’s gaze briefly, willing him to keep his mouth
shut.  It must have worked, because he didn’t so much as swallow.

“I have my reasons,” I told Derrin.  “But listen.  You
should try to find out what you can from your own sources.  Anuk and Jig, can
you two sound out the other kids here, see how many of them are really loyal to
Kantian?  Coins, maybe you should go to the Bricks.  Find out if they’re
willing to stand with Rivano against him.”  I took a few steps backwards,
pointing at the lot of them.  “Because there
is
a war coming.  Believe
me.  Folks just need to be sure they’re on the right side.”

I didn’t wait to see their agreement.  Derrin would see to
it that they did their jobs.  I had my own to do.

Chapter 8 — Hayli

I wandered the streets a while, feeling strangely alone—more
alone than I’d felt since the day my nanny had left me to fend for myself.  I’d
never had much to hold on to, but all of a sudden I found myself without even
that little scrap of something, and I was just floundering in the dark.  Some
little corner of my heart wondered if Shade would try to come after me, the way
I’d gone after him.  But I couldn’t get my hopes up.  Even if he cared,
everything was falling apart in the city, and if I knew aught about him, I knew
he’d want to be right in the middle of it all.  He wouldn’t have time to hunt
for me.

When I’d got tired of being stranded in the rain, I made my
way toward the only other place I knew about…the only other place someone like
me might get a decent welcome.  Still, standing there in the cold dark, staring
up at the Bricks’ building, my stomach squirmed and my heart turned tail on me,
until I’d almost made up my mind to run away.  Just before I could escape,
though, the door crept open and Zip’s shaggy head poked out.