“The bear does not seem inclined to make the jump,” Abi said.
Riq looked up, grimacing. The Hystorian was right. The bear had stayed where it was, just watching them. They’d escaped. He dropped his head back down.
“You are injured,” Abi said.
“My shoulder,” Riq said.
“May I?” Abi knelt down beside him and gently felt Riq’s entire side, his arm, and then his shoulder.
Riq winced.
“It is dislocated,” Abi said. “But I can put it back.”
“Do it,” Riq said.
“It will hurt,” Abi said. “But then it will feel better.”
Riq lifted up his good arm and bit down hard on the sleeve of his coat. He closed his eyes, and he nodded.
Abi took Riq’s arm in a very firm grip, and then knelt on Riq’s shoulder. The pain burst white-hot, blinding. Riq felt like his whole side was twisting up in a spasm, then he felt a popping. And then the pain was gone. Abi released him.
“There,” he said.
“Th —” Riq’s voice came out a croak. “Thank you.”
“No,” Abi said. “Thank you. You didn’t let me go.”
Riq sat up, blinking, testing his shoulder. It was still incredibly tender, but he no longer felt the same stabbing pain. He staggered to his feet.
“Right,” he said. “Now, let’s go find the vizier.”
Abi led them from room to room, each time scouting a bit ahead for any sign of the palace guards. So far, they hadn’t seen anyone else. The place seemed deserted.
“I don’t get it,” Riq said. “Where is everybody?”
“I don’t know,” Abi said. “But the vizier will be with the caliph. The SQ is too close to victory to let him out of their sight now. They won’t risk anything going wrong.”
“So where is the caliph?” Riq asked.
Abi smiled, as if a realization had dawned on him. “Like the bear, he will go where he feels safe. Follow me.”
The Hystorian moved forward without any hesitation, and Riq fell in step with him. They took a few turns, and ended up in a familiar place, just a room away from the garden where they had met the caliph the first time.
“Are you serious?” Riq said. “He’s here? When the Mongols are about to take the city?”
Abi nodded. “He’ll have everyone in there with him. His family. His guards. But like the bear, he feels threatened and may charge.”
“So how do we get to the vizier?”
Abi’s wide smile returned. “We get the vizier to come to us. Just follow my lead.”
He lifted his head high and strode ahead. Riq did the same, and they entered the garden.
It looked just as it had days earlier, except more armed guards blocked their way. Lots more. They formed a wall around the caliph’s tent in the middle of the garden. As Riq stood there, a frightened-looking servant dashed up and spritzed him with that same rose water from before. Riq couldn’t believe it. This whole thing seemed insane.
“What is the meaning of —” The vizier trundled toward them from inside the ring of guards, but stopped short when he saw them. “How did — ?”
“The SQ is not the only organization with spies and allies,” Abi said. “Our forces are here, too. Some, even in this very garden.”
The vizier’s mouth opened, and he glanced over both shoulders.
“I just wanted to give you fair warning,” Abi said. “We’re coming for you.”
Abi turned around and walked away. Riq watched the vizier’s reaction turn from fear to anger. The SQ agent actually began to tremble.
“Come!” Abi called to Riq, and Riq followed after the Hystorian. “Walk calmly,” Abi whispered. “But be ready to run. In a moment, the vizier will recover from the surprise.”
A moment later, they heard the vizier shout behind them, “SEIZE THOSE TWO!”
“Now we run,” Abi said.
They sprinted forward, racing through the palace. Riq got completely disoriented, but Abi seemed to know exactly where he was going, so Riq just stuck closely to him. A backward glance revealed four guards and the vizier charging after them.
“Do you have a plan?” Riq asked, panting hard.
“I am making one,” Abi said. “For now, keep running.”
Riq decided he better start thinking about a plan of his own. There was no way they could handle four guards and the vizier, just the two of them.
They rounded a corner and skidded to a halt. It was a dead end. Abi frowned at the wall as if it were simply a fact he disagreed with. “This should not be here.”
“It’s here,” Riq said. “Let’s go.” They ran back, retracing their footsteps, and entered into a long, narrow room, coming face-to-face with the vizier and his guards.
“If you have so many behind you” — the vizier wheezed as he spoke — “then why do you run?” He turned to the guards. “Take them.”
But just then, something growled behind the guards, low and menacing. They all turned to look at the same time, and between them, Riq saw a tiger. It was huge. Twice as big as the bear had been. Its whole face lifted in a snarl, exposing its fangs, and it held its body low to the ground, stalking forward, ready to pounce.
“RUN!” one of the guards shouted, and the four of them flew right past Riq and Abi, almost knocking them down.
The vizier stood paralyzed. The tiger roared, sounding as loud to Riq as an entire Mongol army.
“We should run, too,” Abi said, and Riq agreed.
They shot down a different hallway than the guards had gone, and heard the vizier behind them. “Wait for me!”
A few yards ahead, they came to a staircase. Riq took it four steps at a time, and they came up onto another balcony. This one was narrow, with no railing, and overlooked a small courtyard. The frightened screams of the vizier and the roaring of the tiger echoed behind them. Riq looked around, and noticed a tapestry hanging from the wall. It gave him an idea, and he ripped it down.
“Take the other end!” he said to Abi.
Together, they stretched it across the door. Riq heard footsteps on the stairs.
“When they hit it, you let go,” Riq said.
Abi shifted on his feet and nodded.
Riq was pretty sure this was going to hurt his shoulder like nothing else.
The vizier’s footsteps and screaming reached the top of the staircase, and the tapestry exploded outward. Abi let go of his end, and the vizier careened forward, arms pinwheeling, to the very edge of the balcony. The tiger leapt out of the stairwell right behind him, seemed to notice the ledge, and slipped on its feet. But the momentum of its weight carried it along the floor. It scrambled, paws and claws splayed, but went over the side with a roar.
The vizier, still teetering, grabbed the tapestry as he fell, and Riq cried out at the pain in his shoulder. But it wasn’t as bad as before. It wasn’t dislocated.
The vizier clung to the tapestry as the beast, which had apparently landed just fine, paced around the courtyard below.
“I’m telling you right now!” Riq shouted down to the vizier. “I’ve been lifting Abi all day, and I can’t hold you forever!”
“Please!” the vizier shouted. “Don’t drop me!”
“Where is the device you took from us?” Riq asked.
“I have it! It is here!”
“Hand it up!” Riq said.
“Are you mad?” The vizier’s voice completely broke. “I would have to let go!”
“Only with one hand!” Riq said.
The vizier let out a pathetic sob. “I can’t.”
The muscles in Riq’s arms started to quiver. He had been telling the truth: He couldn’t hold on much longer. But he wasn’t really planning to feed the guy to the tiger either. He just hoped the vizier would give in before Riq had to pull him up.
The tiger roared again below them, eyeing the vizier’s dangling feet. The animal actually made a leap for him, but missed, and the vizier screamed.
“He might jum
p higher next time!” Riq shouted.
“All right!” the vizier shrieked. He let go of the tapestry with one hand, hanging by the other, reached into his robes, and pulled out the Ring. Riq nodded to Abi, and the Hystorian came forward, reached down, and took the Ring from the vizier’s hand. As soon as the vizier had let go of the device, he clamped both hands back on the tapestry.
“Thank you!” Riq said. He looked at Abi. “Help me lift him up.”
Together, they hauled the tapestry onto the balcony, along with the very frightened vizier. The man kissed the ground and then stood up. Riq watched him, wary.
“It would seem the Hystorians have some scruples,” the vizier said. “I, on the other hand, do not.”
He lunged for the Ring, still in Abi’s hands, and the two of them fought over it along the narrow balcony. Riq panicked. Damaging the SQuare was one thing, but they could not break the Ring. He jumped into the tug-of-war, and worked on loosening the vizier’s hands.
The man wrenched and pulled, and Riq pried the vizier’s fingers away one at a time, until the last came free. When that happened, the vizier stumbled backward, and this time, there wasn’t a tapestry to hold on to. Riq watched, helpless, as the man fell wide-eyed over the ledge. Screams and roaring followed, but Riq tried not to listen, and he definitely didn’t want to look.
He and Abi left the balcony and descended the staircase. Neither of them spoke as they made their way back through the palace, toward the House of Wisdom.
He had completed his part of the mission, and gotten the Infinity Ring back. He only hoped Sera and Dak were okay. The Break now rested on them.
SERA HAD no idea how they were supposed to do this. It wasn’t hard to know where they needed to go. The sounds of the battle waging at the wall gave them the direction. But once the Mongols breached the city, how would Dak and Sera get close to Hulagu? Especially with Guo Kan there. They needed some kind of disguise.
“Hulagu had epilepsy,” Dak said.
“Hmm.” Sometimes, Sera found it hard to fake interest in Dak’s random trivia. “I don’t really see how that fact is particularly useful right now.”
“It might be,” Dak said. “One of my facts just got us out of that prison cell.”
Sera didn’t have the energy to argue with him. “Fine, Dak. Fine.”
They walked down empty streets that had been completely choked with people and camels only a few days before. It seemed like everyone had either fled the city or were hiding inside their houses.
“What’s been bothering you?” Dak asked.
“What do you mean?” Sera asked.
“Come on, dude. You know what I mean.”
They’d been friends forever. Of course Dak would know that something was wrong. A heaviness fell over Sera and she took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll tell you.” She stopped in the street and turned to face him. “But this is a secret between you and me, understand?”
“What level of security clearance?” He chuckled. “Remember? Like when we used to —”
“I’m serious, Dak.”
He tipped his head downward, looking at the ground. “Sorry. Okay.” Then he looked back up, his smile gone. “What is it?”
Sera paused another moment to make sure he wasn’t about to crack another joke. “I saw the Cataclysm during a warp.”
Dak’s eyebrows lifted. “What do you mean? Like, you saw it, saw it?”
“Yes, it was real.” Sera closed her eyes, trying to push away the images rising up in her memory. “I was there.”
“How?”
“It was when I warped away with Ilsa. I hadn’t meant to, but I went to the future.”
“Wow.” Dak shook his head. “I don’t know what to say. That’s . . . big. Why didn’t you say anything until now?”
“Because it was bad. Really, really bad. We may have fixed a bunch of Breaks, but the world is still going to be destroyed. As much as we’ve managed to get right, it isn’t nearly enough. I guess I just didn’t want to burden you guys with that.”
Dak nodded, frowning a little. “But there’s something else, isn’t there?”
Sera ran her fingers through her hair. “Yes. There’s something else.” She felt her throat tightening just thinking about what she was going to say. Saying it made it real. But she wasn’t going to cry. No tears. “I saw my parents.”
“Your . . . they’re alive?”
“Yes,” Sera said. No tears. “No. They died in the Cataclysm.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think something we did saved them, one of the Breaks we fixed. But it’s not enough. If I want to really save them, I have to stop the Cataclysm.”
“You mean we have to stop the Cataclysm,” Dak said. “We’re in this together.”
Sera inhaled sharply. “I know.”
Dak smiled at her, and for a moment it felt like they were back home in their tree. Back before they knew anything about Hystorians or Breaks. Back before all of this started.
“Hey!” he said. “I just thought of something. Your parents might be there in the present. Right now. That means you might get to see them when we go back to get a new SQuare!”
That did it. Sera couldn’t stop the tears after that. She cried, and Dak apologized, but it wasn’t his fault. Sera had already had that same thought many, many times. It made her so happy she almost couldn’t stand it. It was too much. Dak put his arms around her and pulled her into a tight hug that lasted a couple of moments, just the right amount of time, before he let her go.
“We’re going to save them,” he said. “And we’re going to save my parents, too. We’re going to save the whole world.”
Sera cleared her throat and wiped the tears from her cheeks on her sleeve. “Right. That’s what we’re going to do. So let’s do it.”
Dak looked around. “I think the Persian Tower is that way.” He pointed down the road. “That’s where Hulagu will come into the city.”
“Then that’s where we should go,” Sera said.
They set off down the street, the sounds of the battle echoing around them, sounding closer to Sera with every step. They did pass other people occasionally in the street, but the strangers avoided them and hurried by.
A short while later, they came to an intersection towered over by another of the large archways. As they drew closer to it, they saw a man pacing back and forth beneath it, and they soon recognized him. It was Farid, the rug merchant who’d helped them escape the Market Inspector.
When he saw them, he lifted his hands toward them. “Little pirashki! Is it you?”
“It’s us, Farid,” Sera said. “What are you — ?”
“Oh, I had almost given up hope! The man and the woman said you would come, but then you didn’t come, and I began to doubt my memory of their instructions. I feared I had been waiting in the wrong place!”
“A man and woman?” A chill raced down Dak’s back.
“Yes,” Farid said. “Two days ago they came to me and gave me ten whole dinar — ten! — and told me to wait here for you. They said you would be coming this way, and I was to give you shelter.”
Sera gasped. “Dak, your parents.”
“I know,” Dak said. “They were here.”
“So come, little pirashki, come.” Farid led them away from the archway. “We will go somewhere safe to wait until this is all over.”
But they didn’t have time. They couldn’t wait until it was over. “Farid,” Sera said, “we appreciate —”
“Your concern for us,” Dak said, butting in. He leaned in close to Sera and whispered, “We have to trust my parents. Okay?”
Sera thought about it and agreed. Of course they had to trust Dak’s parents. So they followed Farid down several streets that twisted and turned, narrowed and widened, until they came to a modest-looking building.
“My home,” he said. He unlocked the door and ushered them inside.
The
room was dim, but Sera’s eyes quickly adjusted. They were in a kind of entryway, and Farid led them across it to another door, which opened onto a small, square courtyard. Plants grew in large pots in all the corners, and each of the four walls had a doorway. Staircases climbed up the walls to doorways on the second story. For as many rooms as the home had, it seemed to Sera that there should be more people there.
“Do you have a family, Farid?” Sera asked.
He nodded, noticeably calmer since they had gotten off the street. “Yes, I do. But I sent them away from the city the moment I learned the Mongols were coming.”
“Why didn’t you leave with them?” Dak asked.
“I could not leave my home or my rugs,” Farid said. “Besides, I’m sure the city will survive. The caliph knows best, and Baghdad’s walls are strong. The Mongols will give up this siege and move on.”
“Um,” Dak said. “We sure hope so. But it might be smart to prepare for the worst, just in case.”
“I am prepared. I have food and water to last me. Are you hungry?”
Actually, Sera was feeling pretty hungry after a few days of eating nothing but the food they’d been given in their prison cell. “Yes, I think we’re both hungry.”
“What would you like?” Farid asked. “Nothing is cooked, but I have breads, olives, fruit, cheeses —”
“Cheeses?” The excitement in Dak’s voice made Sera smile.
“Yes,” Farid said. “Come, we will eat, and then you will rest.”
Farid’s food was delicious, and his hospitality and friendliness put Sera at ease. She was almost able to forget they were basically sitting in the middle of a war zone. Sera didn’t know what she and Dak were supposed to be doing there, or how long they should stay, but she decided to wait a little while to see what developed.
Dak had no trouble settling in. Aside from the cheeses, Sera thought being here probably made him feel closer to his parents, because he was where they had wanted him to be.
As dusk arrived, and Farid lit a few oil lamps, Sera decided that she and Dak should at least spend the night. If their purpose in being here wasn’t obvious by the next day, they could leave and get back to figuring out how to fix the Break on their own.
Cave of Wonders Page 10
