"Let us play a little game," I said slowly, thinking as I spoke. "If you win, I'll grant you a wish. Anything you like."
"And if I lose?"
"Let's not worry about that now."
"What game."
"I have three questions, but I'm not going to ask them all at once. I'll work them into a conversation. All you have to do is answer the questions correctly and you win."
She thought for a moment, seeming to come to the correct conclusion that she really didn't have a choice and nodded.
"Then we'll begin. You would like to know what I have the people digging?"
She nodded again.
"It has to do with the boy you mentioned, Evan Burl." I wiped my finger on the table in front of me, feigning like I was if looking for dust, but I watched her carefully when I said the name. It was a bit of a trick since I didn't exactly phrase it like a question, but it was the first test. She looked confident and clearly not afraid of the boy. That was not so good for Hagnus. If she really knew about Burl, she must know what he was destined to become. I couldn't imagine little Hagnus not being afraid of that. One point against Hagnus.
"I've been looking for Evan Burl for a very long time. He has something valuable."
"Why aren't you just asking me where he is—"
"Not yet," I snapped, then added more quietly, "We'll save that for later." She looked like she wanted to argue, but wisely, didn't. I continued. "I hadn't made any progress in a very long time, not until I discovered El Qir. It just so happens that this rotten little cesspool is built on top of one of the most valuable plots of land in the world."
"The pavilion. It's a mine."
Well at least she wasn't stupid. Filthy. But not stupid.
"The people of El Qir are now helping me extract a rare mineral from the earth." I pulled off my chancellor's ring and showed it to her. "If I can find enough to make a ring like this, I can use it to find Evan Burl. That much of this material would be worth more than a dozen cities. And all this time, it's just been sitting under the ground, waiting."
"Why do you want Evan so badly?"
"He has something that belongs to me..." I paused to check my pocket watch, and looked over it at her when I said the next words. "A spider."
Technically, this too was not a question, but it made the perfect test for Hagnus. Anyone who knew about Evan Burl, must also know about the spider. Unfortunately for Hagnus, she didn't flinch; it was obvious she had no idea what I was talking about. She now had two points against her. Only one more to go and her bones would be mine. My heart began to beat even faster.
"Do you know what I'm making with the materials I pull from the mine?" I said, my final test.
She thought for a moment, her eyes cold. "What does it matter?"
I sighed. She was just stalling, she had no idea. That was three points against Hagnus. I stood and, out of reflex, she squirmed into the corner of the chair furthest from me.
"Just let me tell you," she said.
"There's no way for me to know if you're right." I stepped closer and held out my hand, invisible fingers extending around her neck.
"But—" She said, then gasped.
"If you really knew where he was, you would know why I can't make a mistake. That is why I can't trust you."
She threw her hands to her neck, but there was nothing for her to grab.
"Wait—" she said. But I didn't. I was squeezing hard enough now. It was only a matter of time.
Wriggling, her neck fixed in place, she reached her hand into a pocket. "Look!" she managed to say as she pulled a small scrap of paper out. I summoned it, with a crackle of paper in the wind, it flew into my hand.
"What is this?" I looked at the paper, then turned it upside down.
Evan Burl's Falling
31:23:40.825
30:21:13.863
3/27/961 22:49
She gasped again.
"Is this a trick?" I checked my pocket watch; just over 24 hours until the time written on the paper.
"No... I swear."
Her face was turning purple and I loosened my grip.
"Where did you get this?"
She gurgles something, but I couldn't understand her. I released her and she fell to the floor. It didn't matter. It was indisputable that the parchment was genuine. No one could have come up with such an audacious idea, except Terillium himself. He was brash, I had to give him that.
I stared at the paper, dumbfounded at my stupidity for missing it all those years.
He hid the boy right under my own nose.
Evan Burl was at Daemanhur Castle.
Now we would make a rubric to take us there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Evan
Thursday
10:05 pm
24 hours, 44 minutes until the Falling
I didn't know how to tell Henri the truth. And how was I going to save her with just a day before I transformed into whatever fate awaited me? What if she died before I could figure it out? Who would take care of the younger girls after I left? Roxhill was the next oldest, but she was only twelve.
I couldn't decide what to do, so I kept digging. I was slowing down and Henri had noticed, but I couldn't concentrate on my work. After a few minutes of going back and forth in my mind, I had nearly decided the right thing to do was to tell her. It was then that I realized another dread had been growing inside me. At first I assumed it was the thought of getting closer to the gravebox—which if my theory about the rubric was wrong would contain Pearl's fifteen-hour-dead body—or just the fear of getting caught, but I soon discovered it wasn't either. It was the nightmare from earlier that day, and not just fragments this time.
The vision began to play through my head as clear as if it were playing in front of my eyes.
A long wooden crate was leaving the castle in a rickety old cart. I stared down at it, like I was riding in the cart. Slowly the lid lifted off and I saw Pearl lying face up with her dead eyes staring straight at me. Her shirt was torn, revealing a bright red rash that covered most of her neck and arms. At the base of her neck, right where the pendant tattoo I'd given her was supposed to be, was instead a tattoo of a large spider.
—I realized I'd seen that spider once before... but where? Could it be the same spider from Terillium's letter?—
Suddenly Pearl sat up, screaming. She scratched until her skin bled. Then she looked up at me and started yelling. "Take it back! I don't want it anymore!" I reached out for her, hoping I could stop her from hurting herself, but as I leaned forward she disappeared and I fell into the gravebox.
The lid closed on top of me and I fought to get out, but it was shut too tight. Immediately, panic set in. I couldn't see. I couldn't even breathe.
Slowly I became aware there was something else in the box with me. I was on my side and held out my hand to touch whatever it was. I felt something smooth and cold like dead flesh. Lightning flashed through a crack in the crate, and I saw what I was touching.
It was Henri's face, drained of blood, and covered in a bright red rash. Her eyes popped open and she whispered, "Murderer."
Pulled back to reality when my shovel struck wood with a thud, I realized I had been digging while the vision played through my mind. I tried to shake off the skin-crawling feeling that ran through me. As I shuddered, the candle flickered twice and died in a cloud of smoke. We were left in darkness.
Even without light, I could feel Henri staring at me, waiting for me, as if she knew I was hiding something from her.
I opened my mouth to tell her about the affliktion, but realized now that we had found the grave box, it wasn't the right time. It felt terrible hiding something like that from her, but there wasn't time to tell her properly.
And Pearl was still alive, just a few feet from us. I could feel the blood pumpery rubric pounding softly inside my pocket. The connection was getting stronger now that we were so close. Who knew how much longer Pearl would survive if we waited any longer.
> We felt with our hands in the rain and darkness, clearing off enough mud to find the edge of the gravebox. For a few moments, I had forgotten all about the pain in my arm from Pearl's bite, but it came back to me in a rush now. I found I could barely use that arm anymore. I pushed the shovel under the gravebox lid and pried awkwardly with my one good arm. I felt the lid move and heard the creak of rusty nails.
Off in the distance, light flickered. An oil lantern bobbed through the tall grass. Shadows flashed across the tree limbs above us. Then voices.
"Hide!" I whispered to Henri.
She climbed out of the hole and darted behind the balizia's gnarled trunk. I peeked over the mound of dirt we had just created and saw two shadows about thirty feet away. There was no time for me to get out too. I crouched as low as I could so my head was below the top of the dirt pile.
I heard arguing. The rain was deafening—thunder clapped in the distance. Eavesdropping should have been impossible. Yet, I found when I strained my ears, I could make out the conversation.
"I thought that was the plan," said the first voice. I realized it belonged to Yesler.
"It was the plan, just not this soon," said the second voice—Mazol. But where was Ballard? He was never far when those two were around.
"Do you have any idea how much danger we're in?" Mazol said. "If the one behind all the Fallings comes to check up on them someday and finds they're dead..."
He left the sentence unfinished, then added, "We have to be careful about timing."
"It's been years," Yesler said. "No one is coming." Thunder rolled again as the rain fell even harder. The storm was getting worse.
"It will never be too long—not for this guy."
"Let's be done with it then and run."
"How far do you think we'd get in those jungles, penniless and alone? We need to get that order done first so we can hire some protection."
"So we get the order done with the rest of the kids and then we finish them."
"If we can make it that long."
"Even with the shortage of kids, it'll only take, what, a few more days?"
"Yes, but there's the gimp we have to deal with now."
Mazol's shadow turned like he was about to walk towards me. I prepared to run, but Yesler asked him another question and Mazol turned away from me.
"What's he got to do with it?" Yesler said. I noticed they each had shovels in their hands.
"Terillium is concerned with the boy's well being," Mazol said.
"How would he know if we killed him off and ran?"
"Haven't you been listening? This isn't the kind of guy who you try and screw. He'd know." A thunder clap rang out again, shaking the ground. I could barely hear what they were saying now, especially with the growing thunder. But I pushed myself to clear away every sound but their voices.
"How?" Yesler said.
There was a long pause.
"What?" Yesler said. "Come on, really. Magic?"
"Don't say it so loud you idiot. Someone could be listening."
"Doesn't it seem a little, you know, childish to believe in all that? I mean, do you really believe in magic?"
"It's not called magic you imbecile. It's called...," Mazol paused and then spoke quietly, "...sapience. And yes, of course I believe in it."
"You're a fool, Mazol. You're the—"
But Yesler didn't finish his sentence. I heard Mazol hit him with something, probably his walking stick. "Careful, or I'll throw you back in the ditch where I found you five years ago."
They were quiet for a moment. I imagined Yesler was rubbing his head. Then he said, "sapience huh. You're saying that's how the gimp could lift that barrel?"
"How else?"
"It was just some stupid trick. The gimp's always pulling something. He's just messing with our heads."
"Why've you been so scared of him then?"
"I'm not scared. And I don't believe in magic."
"Do you believe your own eyes? What do you think kept the fallings alive when they fell from the sky? What do you think kills them?"
I held my breath, waiting to hear Mazol reveal something about the affliktion.
"I thought the———kills 'em." A clap of thunder split Yesler's sentence in half and I didn't hear it all. Mazol said something in response, but I couldn't hear it either. I imagined he said spider. The spider could kill them.
For a moment, I crouched there, hoping Mazol would repeat whatever he said. But I knew I couldn't count on it—I had been listening too long anyway. I looked behind me at the gravebox, not knowing how much more time I would have to save Pearl. This could be my last chance.
I found the shovel and crawled over to the small wooden box.
"But that's not what happened with Pearl," Yesler said.
"Something got to her first."
"Or someone."
"It doesn't matter. We were going to do her anyways."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was like they knew I was listening and were lying to throw me off their course. But that couldn't be.
If Mazol wasn't behind Pearl getting the affliktion, that meant there were two ways to catch it. My uncle, and something else. My chances of saving Henri and the others just went from highly unlikely to nearly impossible.
"So what are we going to do with the gimp?" Yesler said. "If he's, you know, what you say he is."
I pushed the shovel's head under the lid of the gravebox and tensed my shoulders in hope that the sound of the downpour and thunder was enough to keep them from hearing the creak of the nails.
"I haven't decided yet," Mazol said. Was his voice getting louder? Or was he getting closer? I didn't bother to look behind me to see. "Ballard pulled the cage out. He's bringing it here for Pearl, just in case."
The lid lifted about a half inch and I shoved the head in further. As I put my weight on the handle, I felt something in my pocket getting warm. I tried to ignore it, but soon it was so scalding hot my leg felt like it was about to be burned. I reached inside and found the leather sack of rubrics. But as soon as I pulled it out of my pocket, my fingers were burned and I dropped it into the mud at my feet. The water around the the bag began to bubble and steam. It was making a lot of noise and I stomped at it, trying to bury it further into the mud.
"What was that?" Mazol said. I saw him shining his light in my direction.
Yesler ignored him and asked, "You're not actually thinking about taking him with us are you?"
"I told you, I'm not sure," Mazol said, seeming to decide he hadn't heard anything after all. "If he causes much more trouble, we may have to put him down." I pushed the rubric deep into the mud and the frothing water slowed down.
"I'd rather stay here with a hundred of these worthless Fallings than spend another day with that gimp." I heard Yesler spit on the ground.
Suddenly, the skull pendent and necklace appeared. I watched, eyes wide and unblinking, as it passed through the wood of the gravebox and floated on top, like sand through a strainer. Bubbles and steam rose around my foot even stronger than before as the necklace moved through the air. It was like the leather bag of rubrics was calling to it.
"That's not an option." Mazol said, "This is our only chance to kill them off."
I lifted my foot and the bag rose out of the water. The necklace slid inside like a snake into a hole. I reached my hand out so it was under the bag and caught it just as it dropped. It was cool and dry and clean—like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I peeked inside and found the necklace curled up with the rubrics.
"So we're gonna take the gimp with us and what?" Yesler said. "Just wait around, working our butts off and starving to death until—"
"Yes," Mazol said, cutting Yesler off. He must have been getting closer. It felt like he was in the hole with me. "That's exactly what we're going to do. We have what's left from the last chest. It should be enough to last."
"But aren't you afraid of the gimp, if he's what you say he is."
"No. I c
an handle him."
"You lost the book though."
"The gimp stole it from me. "
I grinned, remembering how I'd slipped the book inside my boot while Mazol was standing not five feet from me. I began working on the gravebox lid again.
"How are you going to find out if Terillium wants to kill him, then." Yesler spit on the ground again.
"We need that book. Maybe I'll let you torture it out of him, beat the gimp until he squeals."
Yesler grunted in approval. "And if you get the message, you'll do him?"
"Terillium made sure I would be able to kill him if things went bad. As long as we don't wait much longer."
"Did you ever stop to think about how all this is the gimp's fault?" Yesler said.
Mazol was silent.
"And you're all right with that?" Yesler asked. "I mean, if it weren't for the gimp, all those Fallings would still be alive, and we'd be making a lot more money."
My head felt suddenly light. How could it be my fault? It didn't make sense. But that's what Pearl said too. She called me a murderer. She told me to take it back, like I'd given her something dangerous. Even Henri in my vision seemed to think it was my fault. They couldn't all be wrong, could they? I pushed down on the shovel again and the lid creaked another half inch.
"Just make sure you don't do any of them until I tell you to. And keep your mouth shut about all this. Even from Ballard."
There was another silence and I wondered if it meant Yesler had already used the weapon again. I immediately thought of Henri and I put it all together. Yesler had given Henri the affliktion to get to me. He didn't care what Mazol told him, Yesler was going to find a way to make sure I suffered.
Slowly I realized they weren't talking anymore. I looked in their direction and saw Ballard approaching behind them, pulling a cart—something large covered in a canvas tarp riding in it. When Ballard reached Yesler and Mazol, the three of them turned and walked straight towards me. I stooped down just as a flash of light from their lantern passed where my face once was.
I threw my chest on the shovel handle, but it was too late. I was found just as the lid creaked one last time.
Evan Burl and the Falling Page 19
