Hugo fidgeted with his goblet. “We are not the only humans in Arcadia. When I entered the painting, I found that others were here already.”
“Who?”
“Scoundrels who hunt down fugitives in return for money. Bounty hunters from Spain, Holland, and Italy seeking il Corvo for Soranzo. And, of course, those who had come in search of the lost paintings.”
“And they’re still here?” asked Dean.
“Some have gone, possibly killed off by the creatures below, or perhaps just vanished. Others may still hunt the underpaintings, but I have not seen anyone for some time.” Hugo began counting on his fingers. “One notably greedy and deceitful character is Bashir, a pirate captain from the Barbary Coast who found out about the paintings from one of Soranzo’s spies. Then there is Lady Ishbel Blackhope, Sir Innes’s niece, who came here in 1600, claiming she had inherited Arcadia. She is determined to become its mistress and be rid of all the outsiders.”
“Is that why you stay here rather than hunting for Corvo and his paintings, to keep safe from those people?”
“Yes. I have nearly been killed by all of them.”
Sunni’s eyes widened.
“Luckily, while trying to escape them, I fell into a weak spot between the underpaintings that led me back to this one. The palace was empty, so I have remained here ever since, living as quietly as I can and hoping none of them turns up.” Hugo drained his goblet. “Anyone who comes between them and il Corvo’s lost paintings is fair game.”
“You say that almost as if it’s all right.”
“I do not mean it to sound that way. I am merely telling you what you will face once you leave the palace.”
“Do we have to go into the underpaintings?” Sunni twisted her hands in her lap.
“I have found no exit in this layer, so if you are determined to leave, you will have to search for it there.” Their host wiped a linen handkerchief across his forehead.
“I hope I have satisfied your curiosity,” he said. “I will show you the way back to the archway tomorrow. For all of our protection, I ask only one thing. Do not stray from here without me. You will be leaving the safety of the palace soon enough — and you may wish you never had.”
The palace was still, except for the hooting of an owl outside. Hugo had long since gone to his chamber, but Sunni and Dean sat alert on their beds.
“I still think we should ask Inko if he knows how to get out,” Dean said. “Now.”
“What’s the point? We’re going with Hugo in the morning.”
“What if Inko knows a way that doesn’t have any monsters and bounty hunters?”
Sunni shook her head.
“We’re only asking,” said Dean. “If Inko doesn’t know, we’ll go with Hugo. Yeah?”
“If we can find Inko,” Sunni said with a sigh, “then we might as well ask him, I suppose.”
“Where does he sleep?”
“No idea. He just seems to turn up when he’s needed.”
“Well, we need him now.” Dean pulled the hood up on his jacket.
Reluctantly Sunni put her backpack over her shoulder and followed him out of the bedchamber.
They tiptoed down the corridor. The Mars, Venus, and Jupiter Rooms were all still and dim, but when they passed the Saturn Chamber, the silent figure of Inko materialized in the doorway. He smiled at them, but his eyes were clouded with worry.
“We need to talk to you,” whispered Dean, pulling Inko into the Saturn Chamber. “Do you know how to get out of Arcadia? We want to go home.”
To their surprise, Inko nodded sadly.
“Now? Can we go there right now?”
The servant boy beckoned them to follow him. Dean almost whooped with glee and began hopping up and down until Sunni held him still by the sleeve of his jacket.
“But wait. Do we have to go down below?” Dean gulped. “Where the monsters are?”
Still somber, Inko shook his head and shuffled into the corridor with Sunni and Dean at his side, both grinning from ear to ear.
Inko stealthily unbarred the doors, and they scurried out of the palace into a dark avenue of trees. There was the slight hint of a crescent moon overhead, and the lake glimmered with only a faint rosiness.
“Is it far?” Sunni asked. But Inko put his finger to his lips and urged them on, deeper into the darkness.
She could barely make out any landmarks as they stumbled along, but she was quite sure they passed a chillingly familiar one in a grove to her left. The ruined arch. It seemed to glow under the shard of moonlight.
They came to a halt beside a huge wall of shrubs beneath a hill.
“Where is it, Inko — where’s the way out?” Sunni couldn’t contain her excitement. “How did Sir Innes do it?”
Inko shook his head from side to side. Sunni and Dean could barely make out his features. But then he sniffed, and they realized he was crying.
“What’s wrong?” Sunni soothed him. “Please, Inko, we need your help. You know the way. Please —”
Inko put his hands over his face and swayed from side to side.
“Why are you crying?” Dean said, alarmed.
They did not notice the rushing sound in the grass. Dean kicked at something tickling his ankle and, without warning, they struck. Curling, winding tendrils lassoed Sunni and Dean’s legs and wound around their torsos, lifting them both off the ground.
Dean was hung upside down, and with his stomach full, he soon began to retch. His red hat was yanked off, and he clawed at the sturdy vines that caged him.
“Dean?” Sunni’s voice was faint and a bit choked.
Dean could manage only a groan as he tried to stop himself from being sick.
From the corner of her eye, Sunni could see a blue light coming toward them. Its radiance brightened as it drew nearer. She could just make out Inko, his head bowed and his shoulders hunched in fear.
Holding the lantern aloft was a young man of about eighteen. His eyes gleamed as he surveyed Sunni and Dean, trapped like flies in the web of vines and branches. The lantern played on black hair that reached down to a stiff white collar. His clothing was like Sir Innes’s had been in his portraits: knee-length breeches, dark striped jacket, black stockings, and flat shoes.
An unnerving thrill ran through Sunni. Though the young man’s face was hard, as if it had been carved from marble, it was the most exquisite she had ever seen. His almond-shaped eyes were the color of amber; his olive skin was luminous over high cheekbones and a proud, firm jaw.
Her breath caught as he turned to look at her. Sunni was painfully aware of herself: a fourteen-year-old girl with messy hair, still wearing her school uniform, trussed up like a pig ready to be roasted over a fire.
The young man shifted his gaze to the miserable servant boy. His deep voice had a foreign accent. “Inko,” he said, “I congratulate you on the discovery of these trespassers.”
Sunni could hear Dean thrashing and cursing under his breath at the word trespassers.
The young man held the lantern up and addressed them. “Have you brought others with you?”
Sunni managed to squeak, “No, no, we came alone.”
The young man then shone the lamp straight into Inko’s face. “Do not let Fox-Farratt know where the trespassers are. If you do, you know what your fate will be. Now, go.”
Inko darted away into the night.
The young man’s eyes were on fire when he turned back to Sunni and Dean. “Take them up!” he shouted.
The tendrils and branches unraveled slightly, letting their captives roll forward, only to be caught by yet more vines and passed up to waiting branches that hooked under their armpits and knees. The pair were hauled up the hillside, over thickets and thorns that nicked their hands and faces.
For a moment Sunni faced backward and saw the blue lantern gliding behind them. The young man moved like a panther up a rough staircase of branches, his eyes focused on a point above them.
Farther up the hill, the branches pr
opelled them toward a tangle of thorny bushes in the rock face. They shut their eyes tightly and waited for their skin to be shredded. But instead, they landed on soft earth, and when they opened their eyes, they saw that the thorny tangle had parted to let them through into the mouth of a large cavern. The young man climbed in, hooking the lantern to a root that protruded from the ceiling. The mass of brambles closed behind him, and he stood over Sunni and Dean, who were now curled up in terror on the floor.
“I am Marin,” he announced. “And this is your prison.”
Angus slung his coat over his shoulder and tossed his hat into the air from time to time as he strode along. He surveyed the fields as if he were visiting a kingdom he had just inherited. It wouldn’t have surprised Blaise if Angus had turned to him and said, “Mine . . . all mine!”
Suddenly Blaise saw something lavender and striped hanging from a tree in the distance. Relief and elation surged through him.
“That’s Sunni’s scarf!” he shouted, charging through the trees to the foot of some rocky hills.
Blaise was so busy untying the scarf, carefully folding it up, and stowing it in his bag that he jumped when Angus’s voice rasped in his ear like an enraged hornet, “Don’t you ever run off like that again. We hunt together — you got that?”
Blaise gaped at him, taken aback.
Angus dropped his hat and coat onto the ground and said mildly, “It looks like there’s an opening up there between those rocks. I’m going to have a look. Come on.” He ran his large hands over the rock surface as he walked along it toward the gap. Blaise followed at a distance, jolted by what had just happened.
Moments later, Angus waved a snippet of bright red wool. “I found this.”
“That could be from Dean’s hat.”
“Snagged it as he went through, I bet.” Angus shoved himself into the narrow opening in the rock face. “Bring my hat and coat, eh?”
What am I, your slave? Blaise snatched up Angus’s dusty clothes and sprinted to the cave opening. He heard the painter breathing in the darkness but could not see him until his black silhouette obscured the white doorway ahead.
“Hmm,” Angus purred, emerging into the white corridor Sunni and Dean had passed through. “What have we here?”
Blaise and Angus stepped carefully from the white corridor into the sunlit woods. For a few moments, they stood there, shocked into silence at the sight of this new, living world. Angus pounced on a butterfly darting past and cupped it in his hands. He let it fly off with a flourish and began laughing as if he had just gotten some big joke.
“What’s so funny?” Blaise gingerly stroked the leaf of a tree brushed by the breeze. Everything around him shimmered and released bursts of grassy fragrance.
“Not funny — amazing!” Angus started whirling around. “Yes, yes, yes, this is what it’s all about! The ancient Egyptians said it could be done with statues, but our friend the Raven took it one step further. Pure genius!”
“What are you talking about?”
“This.” Angus broke off a leaf and held it up in Blaise’s face. Milky sap dripped from its stem. “It’s alive. I reckon we’re inside a living underpainting. Celestial magic, natural magic, whatever you want to call it — the Raven worked out how to control it and create other worlds from his imagination.”
Blaise caught a droplet of sap and rubbed it between his fingers. “It — it seems real.”
“Ha! What do you make of it?”
“I’m blown away. How could anyone ever figure out how to do this?”
“Others tried, years and even centuries before Corvo. They left behind secret books that he got hold of and studied. He worked out his own formula — and it works!”
Angus jerked his thumb at the foggy edge of the woods, where they had entered the underpainting. “Those white walls back there, they must be a layer of gypsum and glue.”
“Gypsum — what’s that?”
“A kind of chalk. During the Renaissance, Venetian painters mixed it with glue made from animal skin, then used it to coat blank canvases before they started painting. It made a smooth, white surface to work on,” said Angus. “Corvo must have painted this world, brought it to life, and then somehow covered it over with gypsum so nothing could show through. Then he painted The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia on top. I wonder how he did it.”
Blaise crouched down on a patch of grass, still thunderstruck. The grass was cool and soft, springing back from his touch. He just wanted to lie down and wonder at Corvo’s clouds, watch the light sparkling in the trees.
“We should move on.” Angus rubbed his hands. “Who knows what else there is to see?”
“I just need a minute,” Blaise said, taking out his sketchbook and starting a rough drawing of the woods before him.
He glanced at Angus and thought he saw a flash of vexation before the painter said sweetly, “Of course.”
When Blaise stood up, his sketch finished, Angus asked, “Well, Christopher Columbus, which way do you think we should go?”
So now you’re asking me, Blaise thought. Half an hour ago you were telling me what to do. He pointed to a gap nearby in the foliage. “That might be a path.”
“Fair enough,” Angus replied. “We have a real sun here, and I reckon it’s about two o’clock. Hopefully we’ll pick up the trail before dark, if they left one.”
They bushwhacked through undergrowth, often losing the path only to join it again farther along. There was no sign of any humans, only birds and a few startled rabbits.
Blaise traipsed along, his eyes trained on the ground, until Angus stopped abruptly and pointed at a huge statue on a plinth. A stone archer, his teeth bared, aimed a gigantic bow and arrow directly at them.
“Zut alors!” Angus exclaimed. “Wouldn’t fancy meeting him in the flesh.”
Suddenly Angus hauled Blaise down with him to crouch behind some shrubs. They peered out through the leaves as a boy in an embroidered vest hurried around from the back of the plinth, carrying a basket of food.
“Let’s go talk to him,” whispered Blaise. Angus held up one hand for him to be silent.
As the boy disappeared from sight, Angus dragged Blaise to his feet, and they set off to follow the boy, edging past the plinth and into a sculpture garden.
The boy bustled past a winged woman and a sphinx, completely covered with ivy except for one eye. Beyond the trees and statues lay a shining expanse of water, tinted tangerine by the afternoon sun. The boy skirted the shore, making for the grand entrance to a palace, glinting gold at the far end of the lake.
By the time Blaise and Angus burst from the sculpture garden into the sunshine, the boy was inside the palace.
They stopped to catch their breath at the lakeside, and the naiads swam over to have a look at them, churning up the surface in lacy ripples.
“Unreal!” exclaimed Blaise, staring at the naiads in amazement.
“I like this place more and more,” said Angus as he watched them.
Blaise rolled his eyes.
“We’re getting warm now.” Angus’s eyes glittered as he shifted his gaze toward the palace. “I can feel it.”
It was the sound of groaning that woke Sunni. As she looked around, her spirits sank. She was at the foot of an ancient tree trunk, one of several that grew into the cavern, with roots covering the walls like veins. She tried to stretch, but the vines that were still wound around her arms and ankles would not let her. Her skin was red and raw beneath them.
Across from her, similarly restrained, was Dean, his head lolling onto his chest. He groaned again in his sleep.
The previous night, after Marin had secured them, he had sat down upon an intricately shaped chair and watched them, without a word, until the blue lantern light died and he became a fading specter in the gloom.
Now enough daylight filtered in through the lattice of brambles and vines covering the entrance for Sunni to see their prison. Around the dirt walls, branches formed structures almost like benches. In one
alcove, Sunni noticed a sort of desk supported by a thick wooden trunk. On it were a few sheets of paper and scattered charcoal sticks, a bottle of ink, and some quill pens. A number of drawings had been hung above the desk, speared on a blackthorn branch.
Sunni’s eyes moved along the wall. The thronelike chair where Marin had been sitting was empty.
Next to it was a screen of twisted vines from which came a rustling sound. Someone was moving. Sunni quickly closed her eyes and feigned sleep. She heard a thump and then something that sounded like the opening and closing of a zipper. Opening her eyes to the tiniest slits, she could see Marin kneeling on the floor, moving the zipper on her backpack back and forth in wonder. At last he unzipped the bag and started pulling out her belongings, placing each one on the ground after he had examined it.
Sunni watched Marin empty her wallet, staring at her plastic library card and money, bill by bill, coin by coin. He turned her phone over and over, running his fingers across its shiny surface before putting it down. Part of her was outraged that he was touching her things. But an unfamiliar, shivery part deep inside her was entranced. He’s looking at my stuff, and it feels like he’s looking at me.
Marin studied everything, even her sparkly comb and a pot of pink lip gloss. He seemed to delight in her pencil case, laying out all the pencils and erasers, and turning the sharpener first one way and then the other in his hand.
He leafed through her sketchbook, pausing on one or two pages. But it was the second book in Sunni’s bag that made him gasp. He scrambled to his feet and turned it over to look at the binding, feeling its shiny jacket. When he sat down on his chair and carefully opened the book, Sunni caught a glimpse of its cover. She had completely forgotten she had it with her: Mr. Bell’s book, The Mysterious World of Fausto Corvo.
Marin spread the book open on his lap, transfixed by the photos of Corvo’s paintings.
Suddenly Dean stirred and swore as he tried to stretch out his legs. Marin snapped the book shut.
“Water,” croaked Dean.
The Blackhope Enigma Page 8
