The Harp and the Ravenvine

by Ted Sanders

  Joshua whacked at the weeds with his stick. “I think he’s nicer than that. I think he’s your friend.”

  “I hope so.”

  Joshua shot her a nervous look. “Can I . . . see it? I promise I won’t touch.”

  April understood immediately—her Tan’ji. Strangely, she found she wanted to show it to him. “Sure, okay.” She pulled back her hair. Joshua leaned in close to examine the vine, his hands behind his back. He let out a long, breathy sound of admiration.

  “How did you find it?” he said, clearly awed.

  Now Isabel did glance back at them, obviously interested in the question herself. April was reluctant to tell the story, but she didn’t want to leave this strange, sweet boy hanging. “I found it at a flea market, believe it or not,” she said. When Joshua looked confused, she explained. “It’s like a really big yard sale, where lots of people come and sell their stuff. Mostly junk.”

  Isabel stopped and turned. “You bought your instrument?” she asked dubiously, as if that were bad. And for some reason, her disapproving tone encouraged April to confess the whole story.

  “Actually, no. I would have, but I didn’t have any money left.”

  “They gave it to you?” Joshua asked.

  “Not . . . exactly,” April admitted.

  Isabel broke into girlish laughter, leaning back and clapping her hands together. “You stole it!” she cried. “You stole your own Tan’ji!”

  April blushed furiously, and her shame only deepened as Joshua’s eyes grew wide. “It just sort of happened,” she explained. “I was browsing through this tray of old junky jewelry marked a dollar. I don’t know why. I don’t even like jewelry. But then I saw the vine and I just—” She shrugged.

  “You had to have it,” said Isabel, an eager light stretched across her face.

  But no. That wasn’t right. Those words weren’t big enough for the sensation—the pure, certain knowledge that had rushed through April when she first set eyes on the vine. She shook her head. “More than that,” she said meaningfully. “It already belonged to me. I saw it, and I just . . . I knew absolutely that it was mine. It was mine before I even saw it.”

  Isabel wasn’t laughing anymore. She was staring at April with a furious intensity, nodding. She clutched the wicker ball. “You knew it. I knew it too. It was just like that for me.”

  “And so I . . . took the vine.” April swallowed and gave them both an apologetic look. “In fact, to tell the truth, I did have the money. I had like three dollars. But I just couldn’t make myself pay for something that already belonged to me.”

  “Damn right,” Isabel said. “And you shouldn’t.”

  Joshua was still looking at April with skeptical wonder, like she was something halfway between a criminal and a unicorn. “Stealing’s bad,” she told him. She found herself pointing a finger at him like a lecturing adult. “Don’t get me wrong. I never stole anything before this, and I never will again.” Then she stopped, remembering. “Well . . . that’s not totally true. Once when I was four I stole a roll of Scotch tape from the Farm and Fleet. But my mom caught me playing with it in the car, and she turned around and drove me back to the store, and made me go in and confess to the cashier, who was probably only sixteen or something. I remember I was crying, and my mom was crying, and then this poor cashier girl started crying, and it was actually pretty terrible. I was traumatized. I never stole anything again after that.” She looked up at them, shocked that the story had popped out of her like that. She hardly ever talked about her mom and dad, even with Derek. “Well, I never stole anything else until now, I mean,” she finished awkwardly.

  Isabel was still nodding. “We’re getting to know each other,” she said flatly. “This is good.” She turned and began walking again, April and Joshua following close behind.

  After a minute or two, Joshua poked April solemnly in the shoulder. “I would steal mine,” he said quietly. “If I had to.”

  “Your Tan’ji?”

  “Yes.”

  “You really think it’s out there somewhere?”

  “Yes. Someplace secret. Someplace safe. Like in a tower, or deep underground.”

  April recalled what Isabel had said about a secret place in the city. A fortress filled with people like them. Keepers?

  “Deep underground, huh?” April said to Joshua, playing along but feeling uncomfortable about it. “Sounds scary.”

  “I’m not scared,” Joshua said confidently. “I would go wherever I had to go. I would steal it if I had to.”

  April nodded, the boy’s words echoing her own undeniable need, the constant ache of the missing piece.

  Suddenly Isabel spoke, her voice solemn and sure. “It’ll be underground.”

  “How do you know?” asked Joshua.

  The woman shrugged and kept walking. “Because,” she said. “That’s where these things are.”

  “Mine wasn’t,” April pointed out.

  “His will be,” Isabel said flatly, then turned away.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Detour

  HORACE WATCHED THE CITY INCH BY SLOWLY AS THE CAB CREPT through rush-hour traffic, headed for the Mazzoleni Academy and the Warren beneath it. Chloe slouched beside him, fiddling with the Alvalaithen. She hooked the cord around her bottom lip, letting the dragonfly hang there like it had landed on her chin.

  They’d been discussing Horace’s mother, of course, not caring that their driver might be listening. Beck was a person you could trust. Plus, it wasn’t clear whether Beck could even talk. But Chloe wasn’t doing much talking either.

  “My mom said something about Falo heading west,” Horace said. “What do you think that means?”

  “Don’t know,” Chloe said with a shrug.

  “Do you think that’s where the Altari are?”

  “Don’t know,” she said again, and looked at the driver. “What about you, Beck? You seem like you’ve been around for a while. What do you know about all this?”

  The driver—bundled from head to toe as always, with nothing but eyes and fingertips showing—shrugged. Beck looked up at the mirror, bright eyes catching Horace’s, eyebrows lifting in what seemed like a gesture of apology. Horace had no idea what to make of that.

  Chloe let out a long, considering hum. “I respect your mysterious nature, Beck.”

  Beck nodded solemnly and flashed a thumbs-up.

  They lapsed into silence. The cab moved on. The downtown Chicago skyline slowly grew higher, the Sears Tower looming in the foreground. Such a big city, and so many strange dangers hidden below the surface—or walking around in plain sight, if you knew what to look for. Ever since Horace had gotten off that bus back in May, following the sign that led him to the House of Answers and, eventually, the Fel’Daera itself, the city had become a very different place for him.

  They passed into the tunnel under Ogilvie Center. Chloe spoke in the sudden darkness. “When she severed you, was it just like the Nevren?”

  Horace, who had been thinking about the mysterious Sil’falo Teneves, was confused for a moment. “My mom? Yeah, pretty much. But more sudden.”

  “You didn’t feel it coming.”

  “No,” said Horace.

  “Why wouldn’t the Wardens warn us about something like that?”

  “Well, it sounds like there aren’t very many Tuners. There are bigger things worth worrying about, I guess—although the cleaving she was talking about sounds pretty horrible.” He shivered a little, remembering the decapitated daisy.

  Inexplicably, Chloe waved this off as if it were no concern of hers. “But the severing. There’s no way to stop it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you think one Tuner could stop another?”

  “I don’t know, Chloe.”

  Chloe slipped a mint into her mouth and leaned her head against the window. In the glass, the reflected white of her eyes shone, and the gleam of the dragonfly, and the occasional flash of teeth. Something was bugging her, but Horace did
n’t understand what. Chloe was rarely afraid of anything. The cab crossed the river and made a left. There were nearly there.

  “So what do you think is going on at the Warren?” Horace asked.

  “Beats me,” Chloe said, as if it hardly mattered.

  “What did Mr. Meister say again?”

  “‘Something long asleep has awakened,’” she recited dully.

  “You don’t think that sounds like a big deal?”

  “I don’t know, Horace. How about we just wait and see?”

  He frowned at her, annoyed. “Two hours ago, I was the one in a funk. I guess it’s your turn now, for some reason.”

  “Yup. Times change. You of all people ought to know that.”

  Horace turned away, annoyed. But then at last he spotted the towering green doors of the Mazzoleni Academy half a block up. Beck began maneuvering the cab into an open spot at the curb.

  “Sorry, Horace,” Chloe said. “I just—”

  Unexpectedly, the cab’s engine roared, and they dove back into traffic. Horace toppled over almost into Chloe’s lap. Horns blared. He grabbed for the strap overhead, struggling for balance. On the cab’s meter in the front seat, the red readout under Extras switched from 0.00 to DET.

  “What’s happening?” Horace cried. “Beck, what are you doing?”

  “Detour,” said Chloe. She slithered out of her seat belt and got to her knees, peering out the back window. Horace twisted in his seat, following her gaze. At first he saw nothing, but then he spotted a towering figure on the sidewalk behind, just passing the steps of the academy.

  “Mordin,” Chloe said. She pointed suddenly. “And look, there’s another. And another. Three of them—a whole hunting pack.”

  Horace saw them all now, towering scarecrows that stood four feet taller than the pedestrians around them. Besides the one in front of the academy, there were two more across the street. Because the Mordin used mysterious Tan’ji to disguise their true appearance, no one on the sidewalk was paying any attention to them. But Horace and Chloe, being Tan’ji themselves, were much harder to fool. Apparently, so was Beck.

  Horace scrutinized the three Mordin as they drove away. To his relief, none of them were Dr. Jericho.

  Chloe turned to Beck. “Do they know we’re here?”

  In the front seat, the great bundled head shook back and forth. Beck’s hand went up and covered the rearview mirror momentarily.

  “They can’t see us,” said Chloe, interpreting.

  Beck gave another thumbs-up and swung the cab into a squealing left turn. The Mordin, and the academy, disappeared around the bend.

  “Why would they be there?” Horace asked. “Why would they happen to be there right when we arrived?”

  Chloe didn’t answer.

  Beck took two more right turns and then, to Horace’s great surprise, pulled up to the curb again and came to a halt. Horace reckoned that they were no more than two blocks from the academy and the roaming pack of Mordin.

  “Shouldn’t we keep moving?” he asked. “Get farther away?”

  Beck leaned into the passenger seat and pointed out the window, into the sky. Horace and Chloe both bent over and craned their necks to see. Outside, peeking over the top of a rounded stone wall, were the spindly, jumbled limbs of a ginkgo tree.

  “A cloister,” Horace said. One of the Wardens’ tiny safe havens. After Horace and Chloe’s escape from the golem at the House of Answers, Gabriel had escorted them through a series of tunnels, emerging at last into a cloister like this one. Tiny walled gardens, completely enclosed, cloisters were protected from the prying eyes of the Riven.

  “You want us to go there?” Chloe asked Beck.

  Beck nodded and held up a hand, flashing all five fingers.

  “Five? Five what?”

  Beck laid the index finger of one hand against the wrist of the other, then pointed at the cloister again.

  “Five minutes,” Chloe said. “Someone will come for us inside? Five minutes?”

  Two big nods, two big thumbs up.

  “Thanks, Beck,” Chloe said breathlessly, and before Horace could even absorb what was happening, she was out of the cab and onto the sidewalk.

  Horace slid out cautiously after Chloe, who was already weaving through pedestrians, passing beneath the outstretched branches of the ginkgo. They approached the cloister and began searching for the way in. A cloister had no outside doors, just a passkey—a hidden Tan’kindi that would allow the user to step straight through the wall to the safe courtyard inside. But they would need to find the passkey first, somewhere along the curving stone wall.

  They followed the snaking wall, searching, and came around to the backside. A large steelwork wall rose high behind them, too, so that they were in a kind of canyon, completely sheltered from view.

  “It’ll be here somewhere,” Chloe said, and a moment later she pointed. Just over her head, a paler kite-shaped rock was embedded in the dark stonework of the cloister wall. It was not the sort of thing a person would usually notice, but it was obvious to a Keeper’s trained eye.

  Chloe moved two steps down the wall from the rock. With the dragonfly, of course, she had no need of passkeys. In fact, she had been warned to steer clear of them. The reasons for this were unclear, but Horace imagined that the dragonfly, with its similar powers, might create some kind of interference with the passkeys. Chloe seemed endlessly irritated that passkeys even existed. “Go on ahead,” she growled. “I’ll come in behind you.”

  Taking another quick look around to make sure no one had followed them, Horace stepped up to the stone. He put his fingers against it and felt them slide inside it like it was liquid. Within, he found the passkey itself—a small, chunky object not much bigger than a marble. He gripped it between his fingertips and stepped into the wall, closing his eyes. He felt a cold tingle as his body passed into the stone. The passkey rotated with him, and then he was through. He made sure he was free of the wall before removing his fingers last.

  Off to one side, Chloe emerged through the wall herself, the wings of the dragonfly an almost invisible blur. She threw a surly glance at the kite-shaped stone that hid the passkey, and then the Alvalaithen went still.

  Inside the cloister, almost all the sounds of traffic and construction and humanity dropped miraculously away. The afternoon sun somehow found its way between buildings and cast dappled shadows through the ginkgo tree. Horace took a deep breath, one hand and half his thoughts resting lightly on the Fel’Daera. This cloister was as peaceful a place as one could find in the city. Peaceful, and safe.

  Like the last cloister they’d been in, this one had an odd assortment of chunky stones embedded in the brick floor in the shape of a circle. In the center was a flat black stone in the shape of a large bird. It was a leestone, a Tan’kindi that ensured that the cloister could not be detected by unwanted visitors—especially the Riven. The Wardens used leestones to protect all their sanctuaries. Horace even had one in his house, a statue of a turtle with a raven in its back. This one here in the cloister looked like a raven too, but it had white on its belly and wings.

  “What kind of bird is that supposed to be?” Horace asked.

  Chloe considered it. “Penguin,” she said.

  “Very funny.”

  “What? I’m not a bird expert.”

  Horace looked at the stone again, wondering how it worked. “Why birds, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Birds are old. They’re the dinosaurs that survived, which seems respectable. They have complicated cultures, actually. And they’re smart, too—especially the corvids.”

  Horace stared at her blankly.

  “You know,” she said. “Crows and ravens and jays, stuff like that.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a bird expert.”

  “I’m not, but . . . you’re the science guy. You’ve heard that crows are smart.”

  “I have, but I never heard the word ‘corvids’ before.”

  “Well,” Chloe said
, shrugging, “I read a lot. You know that.” She scratched at one of her new scars. “What time is it? Has it been five minutes yet?”

  “Not quite.” Horace wasn’t wearing a watch, but of course he didn’t need to. He knew without thinking that it was six thirty-three, and that four minutes and thirty-seven seconds had passed since they exited the cab. Keeping track of time had always been his talent, a very useful skill for the Keeper of the Fel’Daera. And ever since the Find, he’d been getting better and better.

  At four minutes and forty-six seconds, a loud metallic screech made them both jump. A set of heavy cellar doors embedded in the ground were being pushed open from below. A moment later, a dark figure strode up out of the opening, a long staff at his side. The new arrival cocked his head, listening.

  “Gabriel!” Horace called.

  The teenager turned toward them, his milky white eyes gleaming brightly against his dark skin. He was breathing deeply and smoothly, as if he’d been running but was too polite to show it. “Keepers,” he said formally, and then his voice grew slightly warmer. He smiled. “Horace. And Chloe. Good to see you.”

  Chloe was not particularly talented at hellos—or good-byes, for that matter—and Horace half expected her to make an awkward joke about a blind person saying “Good to see you.” But instead she only frowned critically at Gabriel and said, “You look taller.”

  “I think I’d have noticed,” Gabriel said, hefting his Tan’ji, the Staff of Obro. He prodded its silver-clawed tip against the ground.

  The last time the three of them had been together, they had pulled off the daring rescue of Chloe’s father from the nest. Without Gabriel’s bravery and endurance—and the incomparable power of his Tan’ji—Horace and Chloe would never have escaped. Two or three times that night, they had eluded capture in the humour, the featureless gray fog Gabriel could release from the Staff of Obro. Everyone trapped in the humour was rendered utterly blind, and half deaf. Everyone but Gabriel, that is. The humour gave Gabriel an incredible awareness of his immediate surroundings, an awareness that went far beyond sight. The humour was so sensitive that Gabriel had once used it to read the dates on coins in Horace’s pocket. Meanwhile Horace hadn’t been able to see his own nose. The humour was ideal for hiding and fleeing from the Riven, with Gabriel as guide.