by C. R. Grey
Since Gwen and the Elder had come to Fairmount and revealed his true name—Trent Melore, the lost prince of Aldermere—Tremelo’s dreams had become sharper in focus, and dark memories emerged. Other memories he might have liked to see, happy ones of his childhood, he did not have. He couldn’t remember his father, King Melore. If he did, he might feel better prepared to lead an entire kingdom. No one had taught him how. At least, not that he could recall.
And now his sister, the one who had left him to die, was coming to Fairmount. Would he be able to hide his identity? Or would some imprint, something that lived in the dark of her memory as the fire lived in his, force a glimmer of recognition between them? It was best to stay away, though by hiding, he felt more like that small child than a king.
Fennel, sitting on the floor by his bed, sniffed the air.
“I know, I know,” he said. The boy, Bailey, needed him. He was in unspeakable danger, and neither of them was safe until Tremelo sussed out Viviana’s plans. Nothing else mattered so much, not his longing to piece together childhood memories, not even deciphering the Loon’s infuriatingly vague book of prophecies. A true ruler sees a false one in the mirror; a false ruler sees only themselves…the Child is both the reflection and the opposite of evil.
The prophecy spoke of Bailey—that much seemed clear—but the meaning escaped him. Puzzling over the book had to wait. He needed to concentrate on information now, not riddles. And though he hated putting his kin in danger, Fennel was brave and smart enough to stay hidden. He’d have to rely on her.
As if to respond, Fennel yipped eagerly.
Tremelo groaned and rose from the bed to boil water for a pot of coffee.
On the wooden shelf above his stove were two mugs, a tin of coffee, and an old photograph. He hadn’t looked at it for twelve years, not since he’d learned that the Velyn had been wiped out. But since meeting Eneas Fourclaw and his band, he’d unearthed it from his trunk. He glanced at it now: a young woman gazed out at him with a stony, fierce expression. Her stern but delicate face was framed by wild strawberry-blond hair. Elen.
He was certain she hadn’t survived the Jackal’s massacre. She would’ve found him otherwise, and Nature knows he’d looked for her relentlessly. When Eneas Fourclaw and the Velyn had reappeared in the autumn, Tremelo had almost allowed himself to hope that they might have known Elen Whitehill or her father. But Tremelo had not mustered the courage to ask, and Eneas and the rest were now gone.
His thoughts turned to the already swirling rumor about “bandits” in the woods. Of course, there were no bandits, but the Velyn, being blamed for Sucrette’s death. In the weeks since that rumor had begun circulating through the teachers’ quarters, Tremelo had kept his mouth shut. To set the record straight would put not only the students in danger, but the Velyn too.
“They’re not ready for the world to know they’re still alive,” he’d told Bailey after the first day of classes. “And if they were caught, they’d be blamed for what happened to Sucrette. They had no choice but to leave.” At least, that’s what he imagined their reasons were. The Velyn hadn’t spoken to him. They’d just disappeared. But that was just like them, the Velyn. They always seemed to vanish just when he wanted most to have them near. He wasn’t one of them—not like Bailey was—but still, he felt left behind. He could only imagine how lonely the news must have made Bailey.
The water boiled, and he poured it slowly over a paper filter heaped with strong, bitter coffee grounds.
He didn’t want to go back to sleep for fear of dreaming again. So many of his friends, and those he considered his family, were dead and gone. But Viviana was real, and she would arrive at the school—at his home—within the day. The little girl behind the door had become a woman blinded by power and greed. And somehow he was expected to stop her. He would need, he suspected, much more than a stout cup of coffee.
THE MORNING AIR WAS cold, and Viviana pulled the fox-fur collar of her winter coat closed. She waved to onlookers as she walked briskly along the platform. The copper spires of Parliament loomed behind her, glinting with frost.
Next to the platform, usually reserved for first-class rigimotives, was the land train. Painted a bright cobalt blue and gilded with gold, it was impressively shiny, with a powerful front engine. Viviana was quite proud; the land train was a special commission for her own engineers, and a symbol of progress for her reign. Meant to use the rigi tracks, it was faster and more powerful than the rigimotive had ever been.
At the threshold of the train entrance, she bid farewell to the gathered crowd. “Thank you for seeing me off on my first tour of Aldermere! Like my father before me, I wish to see innovation again, and—”
“You’re nothing like your father! His throne doesn’t belong to you!” a red-faced woman shouted.
Viviana refused to be shaken. Another loyalist was nothing new—though they irked her every time. She was forced to employ her greatest skill: her ability to mask her malice behind a dazzling smile.
“No one could be the ruler that he was,” she said. “My father was a great king, and if I can accomplish only a part of what my father was able to do before his cruel death, then I will have succeeded.” She smiled again, waved, and turned to go.
As Viviana stepped into the train, she heard the muffled cries of the woman as her two ferrets, suddenly vicious, began biting at her arms and face. She stifled a laugh—she knew that it was risky to use her power in public, in front of her “less-aware” constituents, but sometimes she simply couldn’t help herself. Some citizens needed to learn their places—and Dominance could certainly help them do so.
She settled into one of the velvet booths in the train car and waited impatiently for her staff to board. Fairmount was her first stop on what she had dubbed her Goodwill Tour, during which citizens would proudly show off their schools, factories, and agriculture in the name of progress.
“A wonderful word,” Viviana murmured. “Progress.” So vague, yet it gave the people of Aldermere something to believe in.
As for her, Viviana was more interested in finding who’d killed Joan Sucrette than she was in entertaining a bunch of schoolchildren. Sucrette’s last message described a “Child of War,” a student at the school who was part of the Loon’s prophecy. Viviana was sure that this Child of War had been responsible, but she still did not know the Child’s identity. She reached into the pocket of her fur-trimmed coat and took out a note, delivered just the day before from Fairmount.
Position just as boring as expected, but things will pick up soon—I am on the trail, and have a list of students who may have been involved in Sucrette’s death. Looking forward to your arrival, my lady.
Viviana leaned back in her seat as the land train began to pull slowly away from the platform. All the players were in motion—though if she’d learned anything, it was that sometimes matters had to be taken into one’s own hands.
Mr. Clarke, the tinkerer, approached with blueprints under his arm.
“I thought we might take the travel time to go over the new plans for the Catalyst,” he said. “We have some information back from our testing facility in the Red Hills, outside of Mazelton. Silver has done well, but to increase conductivity, you might consider—”
Viviana cut him off with a wave.
“I defer to you, Clarke. Don’t bother me with the details. You take care of the tests and the tinkering—I’ll take care of the rest.”
Clarke bowed and left for the next car, where Viviana’s staff—a dresser and cook, as well as two messengers and a pair of wide-shouldered guards—would spend their journey.
She missed Joan. Joan Sucrette had been the only one in her complete confidence, who understood the true power of Dominance. These others—they were impressed by what amounted to mere parlor tricks. They did their jobs well enough, and they did seem to believe in her right to the throne, as well as her talent. But Joan had been different. She’d shared Viviana’s hunger, her drive to see the limits of the bond tested far
beyond what anyone had attempted before. Even clever Clarke, who completed each task he was given with utmost ingenuity, was urged on more by vanity than anything else. Well. It would not be too much longer before all of Aldermere would see what Dominance could truly accomplish—and then the kingdom would have no choice but to accept her as queen.
As the land train sped toward Fairmount Academy, Viviana watched as the city became smaller and smaller in her view. Small enough, she thought, to crush completely. Her dominion over the city was certain; her followers there were drunk on their own empowerment, but still under her complete control. She was traveling now to the one place that was still, to her, a mystery—but not for long.
BAILEY LAY WIDE AWAKE in his bed, feeling terrified and anxious for Viviana’s imminent arrival. If it were up to him, he’d be preparing to fight Viviana and her Dominae. But Tremelo was keeping secrets, and the Velyn had retreated farther into the Peaks.
All that week, in classes and at meals, his mind had drifted to thoughts of the Velyn. He’d had so much to ask them—about himself and his bond and maybe even his real family. But they were gone. He thought about the map he’d found that fall, which charted their yearly route on the Unreachable Road in the mountains, and wondered if he’d ever be able to join them on that journey.
Pulled out of his thoughts, Bailey snapped his eyes open. The map—Sucrette had been studying it in a small, secret room in the library before Bailey had found it. What else might be in there?
He sat up in bed, and saw that Hal was also awake, reading.
“Uh-oh,” said Hal.
“What?”
“You’re awake long before homeroom,” Hal answered. “And you have that ‘I’m about to do something risky’ look.”
Bailey swung his feet out from under the covers and began dressing.
“Gwen said something to me last week, about Sucrette leaving messages for Viviana,” he said. “And I didn’t even think—we never searched the bookbinding room in the library. We know Sucrette used that room. What if she left something in there? Viviana’s going to be here in just a few hours!”
A few minutes later, the two boys passed the dining hall, where the custodial staff was finishing their morning rounds. Bert rode on Bailey’s shoulder as they entered the library and slipped past a pair of technicians adjusting a burned-out electro-current bulb in the atrium. Then they hurried up the echoing stairs to the hidden repairs room.
“Why do you suppose this room has a hidden entrance?” Hal asked as Bailey ran his fingers over the camouflaged wood to find the seam. “It’s just full of old books.”
“Maybe that wasn’t always the case,” Bailey said. “Some of the rarest books in the kingdom are here at Fairmount. Tremelo may like to hide his things in plain sight, but think about all the projects that got started here during the Age of Invention—like the rigimotive! Some of this may have been top secret stuff.”
“So, if we don’t find anything of Sucrette’s, we could get rich off of some old coot’s plans for a flying bus,” Hal said.
“That’s the spirit,” said Bailey. He found the seam in the wood and pushed the door open.
The room looked just as he remembered it—dusty and cobwebbed, with a table in the center where a map noting the Velyn’s migration once lay. The map was gone now; Tremelo had taken it for safekeeping. Bailey felt a familiar tingling on the skin of his arms as he recalled the moment he made the connection—that he was a descendant of the Velyn.
Books were piled everywhere, crumbling into disrepair, and seemed to have been waiting for their time to be restored for many years.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding. Nature knows what’s stashed in here,” Hal said, eyeing the shelves. “What’s with the floor?” he then asked, taking a step into the center of the room.
Bailey looked down. He didn’t notice anything unordinary—except the dust.
“What do you mean?”
Hal stomped his foot down on one of the floorboards.
“It’s not very sturdy.” He bent down to tap on the floor with his knuckles. “Do you hear an echo?” he asked.
“No,” said Bailey, “but you do.…” Of course Hal would be able to sense something was off better than he or Tremelo could—it was his sensitivity to sound, like a bat’s. Bailey stood behind Hal as he continued to tap different spots on the floor.
“Right here,” Hal said, pointing to a spot just underneath the large repairing table. “There’s a hollow space under the floor.”
Bailey got down on his hands and knees next to Hal, who ran his right palm against the grain of the floorboard. He pressed down hard on the end of a worn-looking board, and like a seesaw, the opposite end lifted up. Bailey let out a low whistle.
The hole underneath the floorboard was dark, but Bailey saw the shadowy outline of an object, about as big as his History textbook. He reached underneath all the way up to his shoulder.
“Careful,” Hal said. “You don’t know what’s crawling down there.”
Bailey felt around for the object. Finally, his fingers came in contact with cool metal. He grasped the object and pulled it into the light.
It looked like a typewriter, with a full set of letters embossed on the delicate keys but no place to put a piece of paper. Shaking it slightly, Bailey could hear the rattle of small bits of machinery inside the contraption’s main compartment. On top of the machine was a metal dais that supported a kind of lever, with two buttons at one end, and a fine point at the other.
“What is it?” Bailey asked.
Hal crouched closer. His mouth hung slightly open as he peered at the thing.
“I haven’t the tiniest idea,” Hal said.
“What would happen if—” Bailey reached out to tap one of the keys. Hal sucked in his breath.
Nothing happened. The key barely moved under the pressure of Bailey’s finger, and every other part of the machine stayed completely still.
“It’s broken,” said Hal.
“Maybe,” said Bailey, turning the machine around to look at it from every angle. “Tremelo might know what it is.”
Hal stood and walked to the small, round window, from which the boys could see the Fairmount clock tower.
“Homeroom will be starting soon,” Hal said. “If we’re going to keep searching for anything of Sucrette’s, we’d better hurry.”
Bailey lifted the heavy machine off the ground and tucked it under his arm. “We don’t need to,” he said. “I think we already found it.”
Together, they closed the solid wooden door of the repairing room behind them, and set off for the Applied Sciences building. The path leading there was already crowded with students. Bailey hid the machine under his coat, and walked closely behind Hal until they reached their homeroom classroom.
Tremelo was already in his office. Bailey wondered, upon seeing the dark circles under his eyes, whether the teacher had been up all night, the same as he had.
“We have a surprise for you, sir,” said Hal.
Bailey set it down carefully on Tremelo’s desk and explained where they’d found it.
“It’s a pretty thing,” he said, peering at the machine, and tapping its sides with a wrench. “Though I’ll be an ant’s uncle if I know what it’s for.”
The door to Tremelo’s classroom opened, and all three of them jumped to attention.
It was Tori and Phi, arriving for homeroom. They set their bags on their desks and peered through the open office door at them.
“It’s a party, is it? I guess we weren’t invited,” Tori said.
“Bailey and I found something in the secret room of the library,” Hal blurted out.
The girls entered the office and looked at the box.
“So, what does it do?” Phi asked.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Bailey said.
Tremelo, who’d silently been running his hands over the sides of the machine, carefully pressed down on one of the keys. Everyone held their breath.
As before, nothing happened.
Tremelo sat back and shook his head.
“I’ll have to take it apart,” he said. “See what’s inside.”
Tori sighed and leaned her elbow on the desk. Bailey noticed something move under her sleeve, and when she shook her wrist to let it free, he saw that it was a tiny green snake—just a baby, no bigger around than a twig. It slithered toward the machine.
“Tori, your kin, see that it doesn’t—” Tremelo mumbled, but not before the snake found a hole in the side of the machine, like a coin slot, and crept in. “Wonderful,” Tremelo said, throwing up his hands. “It’s a reptile house. We’ve figured it out.”
Suddenly, all four humans heard a click, and the whir of small metal parts stirring into action.
“Oh, ants!” said Tori. “Don’t let it get hurt!”
They leaned in closer, and Tori gasped when the machine let off a rapid-fire series of clicks. Thankfully, the snake emerged out the other side of the wooden base of the machine, unharmed, and looking several shades darker.
“There’s something on it,” Bailey said as he ran a finger down the snake’s scaly back. It came up black. “It’s ink!”
“We need a piece of paper!” said Tori. She picked up a sheet of notes from Tremelo’s desk and ripped a slim piece from the top.
“Phi, close the office, will you?” asked Tremelo. Outside, the sounds of students milling around in the halls before class had become louder. Phi shut the office door with a thud.
Tori handed the paper over the desk to Hal, who fed it through the same slot the snake had used to enter the machine.
The same clicks and metal whirring tapped out from the inside of the gadget, and the paper curled out the other side of the machine with finely printed words on it. Some letters were missing, but they could make out:
