by N. D. Wilson
“Keys,” Cyrus said quietly, and he looked down at his own toes. Rupert’s eyes were too uncomfortable to meet. “Skelton gave me his keys before he died. He told me to keep them safe.”
The big man breathed in slowly and turned his face up to the ceiling. “And have you?” he asked.
Cyrus was confused. “Have I what?”
“Kept the keys safe.”
Cyrus nodded. “Yeah. Well, I still have them.”
“And whom have you told?” Rupert asked. “Who else may know what you’re carrying?”
“Just Nolan,” Cyrus said. “He’s the only one.”
“And there were two keys?” Rupert’s eyes grew even darker.
“Yeah.” Cyrus nodded. “Normal-looking. Old, I guess. One is small and silver, one’s longer and gold, but the gold one was just to his truck.”
“Mother Mary.” Rupert breathed deep and shook his head. “Too many Skelton rumors prove to be true. No, Cyrus, the gold one was not just to his truck.” He became suddenly worried. “He placed these keys in your hand? He gave them to you? You did not take them?”
Cyrus nodded.
Greeves seemed relieved. “Then Skelton has already given you more than you can imagine.” He stepped toward Cyrus, blocking the ceiling lanterns with his shoulder. “With these two keys, was there anything else? Did Skelton speak to you about a tooth? Not a whole tooth. A shard? It would have been black. He might have called it a dragon’s tooth.”
Cyrus blinked. His neck was suddenly quite heavy.
“Reaper’s Blade? Resurrection Stone? Anything like that?”
Cyrus glanced at his sister. Her eyes were wide, nervous, waiting for his decision. He looked back up at Rupert, and then he shook his head.
“Skelton didn’t say anything.” He swallowed. It wasn’t really a lie. Skelton had been dead. Horace had done all the tooth talking.
Rupert’s brows slid slowly down, and his eyes disappeared in shadow.
“Are you going to take the keys from me?” Cyrus asked quickly.
Greeves blinked, and the shadows on his face slid away in surprise. “Take them? Is that what you think of me? Cyrus, I am not a bullying thief. And if I were, Solomon Keys protect themselves. If I did force them from you, those keys would be deadly for me. For any mortal. They do not take kindly to theft. And if you gave them to me freely, they could never be returned to you. They are ancient, they are powerful, and no man living can know or understand the charms woven into them.”
Cyrus burst out laughing.
Antigone, surprised, blinked daggers at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that, well, we’re talking about different keys. These are just regular old keys. They’re not ancient at all.”
“Where are they?” Rupert asked. He sat in the alcove across from Cyrus and leaned forward onto his knees. Seeing Cyrus hesitate, he quickly waved off his own question. “I understand your caution. The Order has not yet been kind to you. But when I am gone, test the keys and see if I am wrong. Soak them in water or try any lock you can find. Between one or the other of those keys, no door will remain closed to you.” He grew suddenly stern. “But use them honestly, Cyrus Smith. Solomon Keys have made thieves of many good men, and having made them thieves, it is never long before those keys unlock a door that leads only to death.”
Patricia adjusted herself invisibly on Cyrus’s neck. Her cool body tickled.
Cyrus swallowed, tucking his hands beneath his legs to keep them down. The big man’s dark eyes were still on him, reading Cyrus’s face.
Greeves began to stand. “I will leave you now.”
“No!” Antigone yelped. “No, no!” She stopped and collected herself. “Could you tell us more about our father first, about our family? Please. We didn’t even know that he had sisters. Did you know them?”
Greeves eased himself back down.
With nervous fingers, Antigone tucked her hair behind her ears. “And the guy with the tiny mustache said our dad got kicked out of this place. Why? What did he do?”
Patricia moved again, and Cyrus grabbed at her while Greeves watched his sister. For a moment, her silver body twisted in the air, and then she was gone, wrapped tightly around Cyrus’s hand. The keys rested in his palm. With his free hand, he scratched at his itching neck. Tiny blisters broke beneath his nails.
Rupert glanced at him and turned back to Antigone. “Your father was expelled, yes. And yes, I knew him. And I knew his sisters.”
Rupert’s eyes emptied, and he stared out of the hole at the Polygon’s plank pathways. His deep, accented voice rolled up quietly from his chest.
“We met when we were eight. I had just come from England for my first time. We often competed, as had our fathers and our grandfathers. We were rivals, but only until I realized that we were not.” Greeves almost smiled. “Lawrence was not unhappy if I beat him—not if the sun shone on the waves, and the wind was kissing the water. In mood, I was a shark, he was a dolphin. And the dolphin overpowered me.
“By the age of ten, we were brothers in soul. Our families contracted the same tutors, but as we could not both be the best of the Acolytes at everything, we chose to alternate victories. He at fencing, I at shooting, he at diving, I at flying, and so on. Our tutors would have been furious if they’d known.
“When my brother and Lawrence’s sisters disappeared, our bond grew even stronger. When his older brother was killed in the Congo, again we grew closer. My own parents died in a plane crash in Ethiopia. His parents died of slow grief, mourning his siblings. In a few short years, he was the beginning and end of my family, and I of his. Together, we became Journeymen and then Explorers. We walked the world searching out the deepest shadows, the darkest evils. Though we never spoke of it, I knew we were both searching for death.
“But then, more than twenty years ago, on the verge of rising to Keeper, we trekked into the mountain jungles of Guiana in northern Brazil. We barely escaped.”
Cyrus watched Rupert’s calloused hand reach for the open collar of his shirt and the tangled scars on his chest.
“But we did escape, and we returned to Ashtown with many strange things. The strangest of all was your mother.”
“What?” Cyrus sat up. “What do you mean?”
“Her name was Cataan—the name of her people. She became Katie to us, and bringing her back to Ashtown was a direct violation of modern Order policies. To make things worse, your father wanted to marry her. The Sages were amenable, but the Keepers absolutely refused to sanction the union. For the first time, your father and I grew apart. Lawrence defied the Order, and was befriended by other defiant elements as a result—Skelton became his confidant. He married Katie and lost everything. After centuries, the Smiths were gone from the Order. Until now.”
“You’re telling the truth?” Antigone asked. “This is real?”
“It is,” said Greeves.
“We knew Mom was Brazilian.” Antigone looked at her brother. “But I thought they met when she was a student.”
“Oh, she was a student. But she’s not Brazilian.” Rupert rose to his feet. “She is Cataan—one of the daughters of an ancient and forgotten people. Look at your hair. Look at your skin. They are her gifts to you.” He smiled and stepped toward the hole. “Good night.”
“Wait,” Antigone said. “Don’t just leave. Can’t you tell us the whole story?”
Greeves stopped, and for a moment, his pointed beard hung beneath a wide grin. “Good night,” he said again, and the smile was gone. “I have a hunt to join.”
Antigone jumped to her feet. “You said our dad had an older brother, too. What was his name?”
“Daniel,” Rupert said. “Your uncle’s name was Daniel.” Ducking his shorn head out the hole, Greeves disappeared. Planks rattled beneath his weight.
“Cyrus …” Antigone turned slowly to face her brother. Her eyes were wide.
“What do you want me to say?” Cyrus asked. “No wonder that kid in the hall called u
s primitives.”
“Should I douse the lights?” Rupert’s voice echoed through the hole.
“No!” Antigone sat back down and her legs began bouncing.
“Go ahead!” Cyrus yelled.
“Fine!” Antigone yelled. “Thanks for the blankets.”
The lights throughout the Polygon punched off. Only the little lanterns in the center of the small crypt remained, glowing dull orange.
The big door boomed shut.
Antigone stood and tucked a fresh pillow beneath Nolan’s sweat-soaked head. Then, grabbing Cyrus by the arm, she pulled him to his feet.
Together, wordless, minds chewing, they emptied two of the other alcoves as completely and as neatly as they could. Blankets were folded. Blankets were spread. Pillows were placed, and two new beds were born. With the piles of pillows from Greeves and Nolan, cold stone became comfortable. Antigone turned off two of Nolan’s three lanterns.
Out in the darkness, Whip Spiders roamed free, clicking as they crept, clattering as they fell from oiled walls. Beneath his blanket, Cyrus stared at the ceiling.
“Cy,” Antigone said quietly. “We’re not from California.” She rolled up onto her side, facing her brother across the room. “We’re from here.”
Cyrus felt anger surge through him, but he clamped his mouth shut. He wanted to be tired. He didn’t want to think.
“Cyrus? Seriously, two aunts, an uncle, grandparents? This is where we’re supposed to be.”
Cyrus forced his jaw to relax. “Night, Tigs,” he said, and he turned his face to the wall.
“Cyrus, you are not going to sleep right now, and you are going to talk about this. This isn’t a math test that you won’t show me, or an English paper that—for some absurd reason—you feel the need to sink in a creek.”
Nolan snored. Cyrus heard Antigone sit back up. A shoe bounced off Cyrus’s shoulder blades. He didn’t move.
“Will you sit up and stop acting like you do at school, please? This is me, not some grief counselor. All this stuff … Cy, it changes who we are.”
Cyrus pressed his forehead against the stone and let the cold tighten his skin. “No, it doesn’t, Tigs. I am who I am. I’m not changing, and I’m not talking about it.”
His sister sputtered and her blankets rustled. She was giving up.
“You shouldn’t have lied to Greeves about the tooth. Do you even want it? What good’s it going to do?”
She was right. Why did he need the tooth? For a trade? No. He’d passed on that already. Did he want to raise the dead? No. Yes. But he didn’t know how he would even start. His father had been lost at sea. Beneath his blanket, he gripped the keys against his wrist. The metal sheath was warm. He clicked it open and closed his hand around the tooth. A cold current shot up through his arm. Frozen bone.
“I’ll tell him,” he said quietly. “Okay?”
“When?”
Cyrus inhaled slowly. “Tomorrow. Next time I see him. Good enough?”
“Tonight would have been better.”
“Want me to go after him now?”
“Yeah.” Antigone exhaled and began to yawn. “You do that. Fix everything. In the dark. With spiders.”
She was relaxing. Her breathing evened out, blending with Nolan’s.
“Night, Tigs.”
“Night, Cy. Russell.”
“Tigger.”
He waited for the counter, but it didn’t come. Antigone groaned softly. The crippled clock counted off five minutes, and then ten. Cyrus listened to its beat mingle with Nolan’s painful moanings and his sister’s muddled whispers. He listened to the click of spider whips and distant echoes through the stone. He slept. And he woke. And he slept again. He turned and he rolled and he tangled his feet in his blankets.
Dan was gone. Gone. And he, Cyrus, was doing nothing.
He sat up, swinging his bare feet down to the tassels of a Turkish rug.
In the dim orange light, he could see that Antigone was still. Nolan was stirring. Cyrus held his breath and waited. The boy’s red welts had almost disappeared, replaced with empty blisters of scaly skin. Cyrus unwound Patricia from his wrist, and she looked at him with bright emerald eyes. In the low light, her silver body actually glowed. He stroked her head with his thumb, and she slid forward, rubbing her whole body against it.
He eased the key ring down to her tail. Solomon Keys dropped into his hand.
twelve
BURIAL
CYRUS DUCKED OUT of the door. Inching along the shadowy planks, he stopped at the showers. The faint glow from Nolan’s lantern barely reached his feet, giving him just enough light to see what he was doing. Gripping the three charms and the key ring tight, he stuck the shafts of the two keys into the nearest falling stream of water. He could see nothing in the splashing, but his arm grew suddenly heavy. Breathing hard, he slid back from the edge and looked at the keys in his hand.
Greeves hadn’t lied.
One gold, one silver, but shaped like no keys he had ever seen, and heavier than they had any right to be. The gold one had a hollow triangle at its head, a square in its center, and a circle at its end. Smooth teeth lined its shaft on every side. The silver one was thin and bent like an elongated and slightly corkscrewing crescent moon. Some kind of writing, shaped like Arabic, had been etched into its surface, but Cyrus wasn’t going back to the light for a closer look.
Dropping the heavy keys into his pocket, he made his way into the deep blackness of the Polygon.
Once Cyrus had managed to open the door and hop barefoot over the flooded threshold, he had enough nervous energy to rush the stairs, skipping slippery steps as he went. The hallway above was dimly lit, and he found his way quickly back into the big blue-glowing room beneath the water maze. From there, rather than trying to retrace Mrs. Eldridge’s route, he headed for the iron spiral stairs he’d seen earlier, cobwebbed into a dark corner. His bare feet scuffed through heavy dust on the cold stone floor and found the metal stairs. The treads were rough with rust blisters, and Cyrus climbed slowly, his heart pounding against his molars.
He wound his way above the thick glass ceiling and into a tall shaft. Two of the walls were glass, with views into the maze, and the higher Cyrus climbed, the more terrifying the maze became. It was as tall as it had been wide—a full cube—with underwater tunnels tangled in an impossible three-dimensional knot of drowning potential.
Cyrus reached the top and stepped out into a high-ceilinged room with a single dangling light in its center, glowing like the moon. The floor was tiled around the edges, but the entire center was glass, sealing the water maze in all but two small open hatches in opposite corners—an entrance and an exit, with a whole lot of wet death in between.
Cyrus moved toward the closer one, trying to imagine what it would be like to drop in and swim into total confusion. The water rippled slightly at his feet, and his chest tightened. What would it feel like to have panicked lungs fill with water? His father knew.
Something moved beneath the glass. A quick shadow. And then water erupted at Cyrus’s feet, and arms slapped at the tiled edge. Cyrus yelled, jumped backward, slipped, and sat down. Puddles raced toward him, and he scrambled up onto his feet.
Gasping, Diana Boone pulled herself up out of the maze and rolled onto her back. She was wearing a black suit with leggings that reached her ankles, but her tan arms and freckled shoulders were bare. The stitches were gone from the gash at the base of her neck. Spitting to the side, she reached up and pulled her hair loose from its ponytail.
“You okay?” Cyrus asked.
Startled, Diana twisted around, and then sat up. Still panting, she smiled and nodded. “What are you doing here?”
Cyrus shrugged. “Just looking around.”
Diana stood up and began wringing her hair out over her shoulder. “Well, be careful. Rupe has beefed up security. Acolytes are supposed to be in quarters, but especially you.”
“What? Why?”
Diana’s eyes widened. “You have to
know. Rupe called a big meeting, Keepers and Explorers together.” She paused, and her voice softened. “He said that Phoenix is after you and that he already has your older brother. I’m really sorry.”
Cyrus swallowed and then nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say.
Diana stepped toward him. “Rupe even tried to put us on gun-ready—sidearms at all times. He thinks Maxi might try to drop in. Cecil put a stop to that, but a lot of people will still be carrying. I would if I were you. And not just because of Maxi. Some of the Keepers are possum-scared and some are hornet-mad. They’d throw anyone overboard if it kept Phoenix away.”
She rubbed her wound, thinking. “Keep a special eye on the guardsmen and groundskeepers. They’re all working off demotions or debts—by far the surliest.” She looked at Cyrus’s bare feet in the puddle she’d made, and then back up at his face. “I need to go, and so should you. I’m in on a few flights tonight.”
Cyrus watched Diana collect a small bundle of clothes along with a large, holstered revolver. She looked back at him when she reached a swinging locker room door.
“You’re not heading back to your room, are you?”
Cyrus shook his head.
Diana laughed. “You really are a Smith. You know, my dad knew yours. I’ve heard the stories.”
The door swung, and Diana Boone was gone.
Cyrus looked around. The room held what looked like another locker room door and then two big wooden doors set into arches on opposite ends. He hurried for the closer one and tugged it open on quiet hinges. Stone stairs led straight up, and he jogged them quickly while the door closed behind him. At the top, he followed a hallway around two corners and then paused. He’d reached a covered stone sky bridge lined with windows on both sides. Out one side, he could see the great lawn, the lit fountain, and a small group of men moving around with rifles. Out the other side, a half-moon hung between jutting statues on the high roofline of the main building, a chewed pearl stuck in some monstrous jaw.
Cyrus hurried across the bridge and banged into a locked door hidden in shadow.
“Darn it.” He turned around. Back to the water maze? The heavy keys were pressing against his hip. Digging them out quickly, he faced the door.
