I ran my fingers over the boxes until I found the most recent one, full of information about all the people Interworld Travel had hired in the past two years. I looked around. Arthur still wasn’t in sight, and no one else was around to tell me I was being foolish. I lifted the lid off the box and dug through it until my fingers hit on the file I was looking for: a thin brown folder marked Eberslee, L. There was only one slim packet of papers inside.
The air started to hum. When I looked up, the bees were swarming down the aisle toward me. I stuffed the papers in the back pocket of my pants and pushed the box of records away so fast I almost knocked it off the shelf. If the bees noticed, at least they didn’t mention it. LUCY! they said instead. COME!
I ran through the aisles after them. “Is it Arthur?” I asked them. “Is he all right?”
“I’m fine,” said Arthur, hurrying toward us with a bundle of pages tucked under his arm. “I heard all the buzzing. What’s happening?”
The bees hovered impatiently above us. HENRY TALLARD, they said. HE’S HERE.
10
When we reached the lobby of Interworld Travel, we found Henry Tallard standing at the information desk. His pants were mud-crusted and torn, his checked explorer’s shirt looked as if it had been singed, and he was speaking so loudly that I wondered if everyone across all eight worlds could hear him.
“Clara Bracknell!” he shouted at JEANNE. “Where is she? I need to speak with her immediately.”
JEANNE’s eyes were wide. “Calm down, please, Mr. Tallard,” she said. “You’re alarming the other patrons.” All around the lobby, tourists and diplomats and businesspeople in suits were clustered together, looking nervously at the most famous explorer in all the worlds. Someone even started snapping photographs.
“They should be alarmed!” said Tallard. “Aren’t you?” He waved his hand above his head, where the last remaining light on the sculpture of the worlds was flickering. “Now, tell me: Where is Clara Bracknell?”
He tried to walk past the information desk, but JEANNE stepped in front of him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tallard,” she said, “but I can’t let you do that. Do you have an appointment?”
“An appointment?” He was practically hollering now. “I’ve been chased through a field of poisonweed! Across five different rivers! Through the Great Southeastern Swamp and the fire pits of Pitfire! Well, I’ve had enough. If Mrs. Bracknell wants to talk to me, she can come down here and do it. I’ve got plenty of questions I’d like to ask her, too.”
“He wants to see Mrs. Bracknell?” Arthur whispered. “What’s he thinking?” We were standing on the staircase just past the information desk, not as far out of Tallard’s line of sight as I would have liked. In his tattered clothes, all bruised and scraped, with his fists waving at JEANNE, he didn’t look much like the explorer whose portrait had hung on my schoolroom wall, or even like the man we’d met back at the gatehouse. He looked dangerous.
“I’ve got no idea,” I whispered back. “Maybe that poisonweed he ran through sent him out of his mind.”
“Why are people just letting him stand there? Is he going to hurt anyone? Should we hide?” Arthur inched backward. “Maybe we should hide.”
Before we had a chance to do anything, though, a pack of travel officers in white uniforms and visored helmets burst through the revolving doors. Henry Tallard rolled his eyes as two of the officers seized his arms. “Well done,” he said to them. “You’ve tracked me down at last. You know, if you’d just waited here at Interworld Travel, you wouldn’t have had to waste all that energy running after me from one end of the world to the other.” He smirked. “Probably best not to think about it.”
One of the travel officers pushed up her visor and looked around at the gathered crowd. “The suspect is secured,” she announced. “We’ll be taking him across the bridge to the House of Governors directly. For your safety, please don’t approach the suspect or the Interworld Travel operations team.”
“Stand back,” I told Arthur under my breath. The travel officers were marching Henry Tallard toward the staircase—and right toward us. We pressed ourselves against the wall. Even the bees had gone silent. Tallard’s gaze skimmed over the top of my head, and for the first time in my life, I was relieved to be unnoticed.
Then he spotted Arthur.
“I’ve met you before.” Tallard stumbled to a stop and jutted his chin in Arthur’s direction. “You were at the end of the world.”
“Me?” Arthur looked around wildly, as though he hoped Tallard might be staring at someone else. I moved in front of him, not that it helped; he was at least a head taller than I was. But the bees moved, too. They rose up around us in a thick, buzzing cloud.
If Tallard was afraid of them, he didn’t show it. “Let them sting me if you’d like,” he said. His eyes were still locked on Arthur’s. “I’ve been through worse, and it won’t get me off your trail. I know what you’re up to. You’re not from this world, are you? Did she let you in?” He looked down at me as though I were something sticky he’d just found on the bottom of his shoe. “She thinks she’s got everyone fooled, but she doesn’t fool me.”
I froze. The swarm of bees around me grew louder, or maybe the buzzing was inside my own head now; either way, I could hardly hear myself think. Did Tallard know about my accident with Arthur? Was he here to tell Interworld Travel all about it? And why did it make him so furious? I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I knew I wanted to be anywhere else than on the receiving end of Henry Tallard’s stare. “I don’t have anyone fooled,” I said firmly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave us alone.”
The travel officers had finally muscled Tallard forward, but even they couldn’t keep him quiet. “What I’d really like to know,” he shouted back to Arthur as they dragged him away, “is how you smuggled in those gatecutters. I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you don’t seem brave enough for the job!”
“That’s enough,” snapped the travel officer in charge as she led him away around the curve of the staircase. There was a brilliant flash in the air above us, and the final light in the sculpture went dark.
It took Arthur a long time to unpeel himself from the wall.
“What was that all about?” he asked, sitting down on the stairs. He stared up at me, looking just as worried as he had when he’d fallen through the door at the end of the world and landed at my feet.
I sat down next to him. “I wish I knew.”
“Did Tallard say something about gatecutters?”
“I think so. It didn’t make much sense. Nothing he said made sense.” The bees had settled down, but the buzzing sensation I’d felt still hadn’t quite faded away. Was everyone staring at us? No, of course they weren’t. I shook my head and tried to calm my nerves. “Anyway, Interworld Travel’s got Tallard now. We don’t have to worry about him.”
“And I guess we won’t be needing these anymore.” Arthur patted the papers he’d carried out from the archives. He’d been clutching them the whole time Henry Tallard had been shouting, and the pages were wrinkled and damp. From the top sheet on the stack, a man’s face leered up at us.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Someone called . . . Crowbill Packard?” Arthur squinted at the name below the photograph. “He’s a criminal, I guess. They all are.” He fanned out the rest of the papers, revealing a whole prison’s worth of frightening faces. “I’d gotten as far as P when I heard the bees. I haven’t looked at the rest of these yet.”
He held out the papers to me, and I shuffled through them. “You were looking for Rosemary?”
“That was the idea. When you said she was a criminal, I realized we might be looking in the wrong place. Anyone can apply for a passport, right? But not just anyone has a file in a box marked Known Criminals.” Arthur shrugged. “I didn’t find Rosemary, though, and if Interworld Travel has Henry Tallard to talk to anyway, I guess we can stop looking for her.”
The known criminals scowled up at m
e. I scowled right back. “No,” I said. “We can’t stop yet. What if Tallard’s innocent?”
“Did he seem innocent to you just now? When he was shouting at us about the end of the world?” Arthur shook his head. “He’s got to be the one who’s been breaking the worldgates.”
“But the last gate broke just now, while he was standing right in front of us!”
“Then he’s . . . um . . . he’s got accomplices.”
“Exactly!” I said. “And Rosemary might be one of them. She lied to us, Arthur. She climbed out a window to escape from Interworld Travel. She’s definitely guilty of something.” When I reached the end of the pile of criminals without spotting Rosemary’s face, I turned back to Crowbill Packard and started looking through them again. “I told Mrs. Bracknell I’d find her. I promised I’d help.”
Arthur was quiet—the sort of quiet that lasts so long it fills the room. “You know, Lucy,” he said at last, “I’m not sure anyone actually wants our help.”
“What?” I said. “That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t they want it?”
Arthur shrugged. “I have seven older brothers and a father who hasn’t got time for any of us. I’m used to being inconvenient. It feels a lot like this.” He waved his arms, almost whacking a travel officer who was pushing her way past us up the stairs. “Mrs. Bracknell hasn’t been down to the archives to see us once, and Thomas keeps sending you away—”
“Because they’re busy. That’s why they need us!” I was flipping through the photographs so quickly now that the pages sighed under my fingers, each one sounding a little more disappointed than the last. “Anyway, it’s my job to help Interworld Travel. You’re welcome to leave if you’d like, but I’m going to stay right here and . . . Oh!”
I blinked at the criminal’s face on the page in front of me. For a second, I’d thought it was Rosemary. It wasn’t, of course; the person in the photograph was a man old enough to be my father. But he had wild, curly hair, and instead of scowling at the camera, he wore a mischievous grin. “Leon Silos,” I read. “Smuggler of otherworld goods, currently in prison.”
“Silos?” Arthur took the paper, first holding it at arm’s length, then bringing it right up to his nose. “Didn’t you find a Rosemary Silos?”
I nodded. “She’s the one who got her passport when she was just a baby. She’d be thirteen years old now.”
“And you think she’s the one we’re looking for?”
“I think she could be.” I got to my feet and took a few steps up the staircase, toward Thomas’s office. Then I stopped. All the travel officers would be busy with Henry Tallard; if we barged in, it really would be inconvenient. “Come on,” I said to Arthur, turning around. “We’re going to show Interworld Travel just how helpful we can be.”
11
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Arthur asked as we stepped out of the revolving doors. “Didn’t Thomas tell you not to leave the building?”
“He told me not to leave alone,” I said, “and I’m not alone! Besides, we’re not going far.” According to her passport application, Rosemary Silos lived in Centerbury, only a short walk from the Interworld Travel building. “We’ll be back before anyone notices we’re not up to our elbows in archive files.”
“What if Rosemary’s moved?” asked Arthur. “Or—oh no—what if she hasn’t moved, and she’s not alone, and the house is full of criminals?”
I hadn’t exactly thought of this. “We’ll be careful,” I promised him. “We won’t go inside unless we’re sure it’s safe. We don’t even have to talk to Rosemary; we only need to know if we’ve found the right girl. And we’ve got the bees for protection.” At that particular moment, they were so happy to be out in the fresh air that they might have hummed past a whole band of smugglers without a second thought, but the Gatekeeper had always trusted them, so I did, too.
We walked along the main road past the House of Governors, the wide brick library, and the city’s green promenade. Then the road turned a corner and deposited us in a shadowy, cramped neighborhood where skinny houses were packed together like teeth. The streets here were all knotted in tangles of pavement, turning back on themselves, looping in endless circles, and coming to sudden halts in front of dim alleys or high stone walls. I’d thought I’d known where I was going, but after six wrong turns in a row, I’d lost sight of the Interworld Travel building behind me, and I could hardly tell which way was up. Even the bees sounded agitated. “Can you figure out the way to Rosemary’s?” I asked them. “Or at least the way back to the city center?”
SORRY, they said, moving uncertainly. LOST.
Arthur groaned. “I thought magical bees didn’t have those kinds of problems.”
As we turned onto a narrow street, the sun slipped behind a cloud and the wind picked up, blowing along my spine and making me shiver. I wished I’d thought to wear something warmer. “For worlds’ sake, Rosemary,” I said, “where are you?”
I hadn’t noticed the man sweeping his front path, but as soon as I spoke, he noticed me. He raised his head from his work and peered at us. “Are you looking for my Rosie?” he called out.
Arthur and I stopped in our tracks.
“You must be.” The man put his broom over his shoulder and started walking toward us. He had wild, curly hair and a mischievous grin. “Nonsensical girl. She never told me she had friends! I’m Mr. Silos, Rosie’s pa.”
“Smuggler of otherworld goods,” Arthur whispered to me. “Currently not in prison.”
“What’s that?” Mr. Silos tilted his head. Then, before I knew quite what was happening, he was laughing and shaking hands with us both. “Come in and see Rosie before it starts to rain. And bring those bees with you. I hate to get on the wrong side of any animal with a stinger and an opinion.”
Mr. Silos didn’t give us much of a choice. He showed us up the stairs of a gray-painted house and into a narrow hallway. A chandelier flickered uncertainly above us; ahead of us was a closed door. Mr. Silos walked down the hall and gave the door a few good hard knocks. “Rosie?” he called.
“Should we leave?” Arthur whispered to me. “Right away, while his back is turned?”
I shook my head. Where would we go? Even if we could find our way back to Interworld Travel, I’d have to drag myself up to Thomas’s office and tell him I hadn’t been able to find Rosemary. If she was on the other side of that door, I wanted to know about it. “We’ll be fine,” I told Arthur.
“Even though Mr. Silos has a gun in his back pocket?”
I hadn’t noticed that. It was an otherworld model, small and sleek, and it made my stomach turn cartwheels. I started inching backward down the hall.
Then Rosemary stuck her head out the door.
“I still haven’t found the powdered lightning, Pa, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said. “I think the jar might have rolled behind those Rembrandts I brought back from East, but—Oh, worlds!” Rosemary stared at me, Arthur, and the bees. Then she slammed the door. Even from halfway down the hall, I could hear a series of locks clicking into place.
“She’s been a little difficult lately,” Mr. Silos said to us. Then he raised his voice and called through the door. “You can stop working, Rosie. Your friends are here to see you.”
“They’re not friends, Pa.” Rosemary’s voice was muffled but furious. “They’re from Interworld Travel.”
Mr. Silos turned back to look at me and Arthur, studying us as if we were exhibits behind glass at a museum. His right hand crept toward his gun. “They’re children.”
“They’re the ones I told you about, don’t you remember? Lucy and Arthur. The ones who are useless.”
“Ah, you’re right; that sounds familiar. Well, they’ve managed to get themselves here, so maybe they’re not as useless as you thought.” There was still a laugh in Mr. Silos’s voice, but it wasn’t quite so kind anymore. “You’re travel officers, then?” he asked us.
“No,” I said. “I work at the end of the world,
and Arthur’s a friend of mine. An Easterner.”
“A prince!” said Arthur.
Behind the door, Rosemary snorted.
“And you’re a smuggler,” I called to her, “aren’t you?”
Rosemary didn’t answer. The fingers on Mr. Silos’s right hand twitched.
“We’re not dangerous,” Arthur said quickly. “We just have some questions about the worldgates.”
“The ones that have closed?” Mr. Silos raised an eyebrow.
“They’ve all closed,” I told him.
His other eyebrow went up, too. “And you want Rosie to tell you all about it.”
“I’m not talking to you!” Rosemary called. “You’re wasting your time!”
“Hmm,” said Mr. Silos. “Why don’t we make a deal? Rosie will tell you what she knows about the worldgates—”
“Oh, Pa!”
“—if you’ll answer a few of our questions in return. What do you think?”
I looked sideways at Arthur. He nodded.
“All right,” I said, “but the bees stay with us.”
A grin slid back across Mr. Silos’s face. “Fair enough.”
When Rosemary finally opened the locks on the door, Mr. Silos led us through it into a windowless sitting room hung with lanterns. The room smelled of smoke and spices, and it was filled with what could only be described as stuff. Wooden crates of all sizes lined the walls, hulked in corners, and surrounded a squat old sofa. They overflowed with otherworld goods: tins of preserved fish from North, tubes of repair-all glue from South, packets of bitter Northwestern karoa beans, and jars of fine-grained Southwestern sand. Books were piled everywhere, some titled in alphabets I’d never seen before. There were other objects, too: carved stone figurines of humans and animals, bolts of colorful fabric, jugs and bottles and beakers and tins. Even the bees hummed in wonder.
“Look at all this stuff, Lucy!” Arthur rapped his knuckles on one of the crates. According to the words stamped on its lid, it was full of something called Florida grapefruit.
The Door at the End of the World Page 7
