But unlike me, she was apparently unwilling to argue, because she rolled her eyes and said, “Whatever. I’m going down and opening a gateway out of here. Follow, or don’t.” And after a great inhalation, she disappeared under the surface. I caught a glimpse of red as her Converse trainers kicked, and then they too had descended past where I could see them.
I simmered.
“We could at least try,” Carson said gently.
“We don’t know what’s down there,” I muttered. Stupid, stupid excuse. Nothing had dragged us under yet; seemed doubtful by now that anything would.
Carson bit his lip.
“What?”
“London is down there.”
“Well, you best get going then, hadn’t you?”
He hesitated, torn. Then, with a last fleeting look, he took off his glasses, folding them into one hand, then sucked in a deep breath of his own, and disappeared beneath the surface. The last glimpse of him I had was his manbag trailing those terrible loafers.
I figured he’d pop back up after a moment. Limp rags tended to float, didn’t they? But he didn’t, and so I was alone, grimacing by myself atop a world-spanning ocean.
Just ten feet away. That’s how far London was.
I harrumphed, like a horse.
“Damn it!”
And, sucking it up, I willed the spear to return to its umbrella form. Clipping it onto my belt, I checked it was affixed, then inhaled, and dived.
Heidi was right: ten feet, that was all that was in it. Not enough height to stack me twice, nor even enough for two Heidis, one balancing on the other’s head.
A shimmering gateway was already open on the sea floor, which was dark and just as perfectly flat as I expected the sea had been before the three of us landed in it. The gateway’s edges were tinged blue, and wobbled as my arms worked to take me down, down.
Heidi waited, breath held. Carson had already gone through.
She jerked her head at me. Get a move on.
I wouldn’t just trust her instinct though, even if Carson had. Fingers fumbling as they continued to prune, I detached the compass from my belt.
I squinted at its face.
Sure enough, through a veil of blue, I saw the sign for the Embankment Underground station.
I swam through, not looking at Heidi as I passed. Probably had another thank you to prepare for on the other side. And oh, how I looked forward to it already.
Lights swirled around me. I held my breath in them; water would have passed through with me, and if I breathed now I’d inhale a lungful. A dim part of me hoped Carson did not make that mistake—
Then I was expelled in a fountain in a toilet stall.
Carson was up already. Sopping wet, he’d already replaced his glasses on his nose. He coughed, wringing his sweater out. Fat lot of good it did.
“Ugh.” I shoved up, bracing myself on the toilet roll holder. My bulging eyes glared at the toilet. “Did we just—?”
Then Heidi erupted from it in a final shower of wet, confirming to me that yes, we had indeed passed back into London via a public toilet.
I prayed with all my might that it had been clean when we came through, neither yellow nor bobbing with something floating and brown—
“Get out,” I ordered Carson. The words came warbled. Pretty sure I wasn’t far off chucking my guts up. “Go!”
He opened the door, and stepped out. I strode after him, Heidi following—
A line of sinks stood opposite. A middle-aged woman with curly, greying hair had perched at one. Bag on the counter, open and forgotten, she clasped a tube of lipstick. Her eyes had been down at her feet, mouth drawing down in disgust at the sudden deluge of water around her heels.
Now she caught sight of us in the mirror. Her mouth hung, words dead on her tongue beneath huge eyes.
“It’s out of order,” I said, as helpfully as I could before beating a hasty exit.
17
We huddled onto the station’s platform.
Carson mumbled, “People are, um, looking at us.”
Yeah, no surprises there. We were sopping wet from head to foot, a fat puddle extending from our feet—and not slowly, either. Onlookers shooting us confused eyes steadily moved farther away as our personal pool widened on the platform. In true British fashion, of course, not one person said a word.
On the plus side, the wet and the ebbing remains of adrenaline from the clash in Russell Square had livened me up good and proper.
When the train pulled up, the three of us were the only people to board at the doors we selected. The passengers clambering off gave us utterly baffled looks. One asked his partner, “Should we have brought an umbrella?” Another skidded as he stepped out, legs jack-knifing before he got them under control. The few remaining in the queue decided to try their luck elsewhere, and made their way to the door at the opposite end of the carriage.
Despite the midday rush, by sheer luck there were three empty seats next to each other.
We dropped into them, each with a squish.
Ugh. Should’ve spent ten minutes crouched under the hand-dryers. Wouldn’t have come even close to ridding us of the wet, but anything was better than sitting in slosh.
I’d taken the leftmost seat. Ten seconds after I sat, the man beside me let out a yelp. He looked down at the space between us, eyes bulging.
I followed his gaze.
I’d overflowed. Tan jeans now sported a much darker spot along the full length of his right thigh.
“Sorry,” I offered lamely.
He shot me a hard look, but didn’t say a word, rising and edging away from our latest pool, now growing in the aisle.
Beside Heidi, her neighbor seemed to be enduring it. Same as the passengers directly opposite. One woman lifted her bag before the advancing wave met it; the others remained stoic as the pool crept around their shoes.
When the doors closed and the train started into motion, Carson mumbled, “We should’ve found towels.”
“From where?” I breathed. “I know you haven’t been here long, but in the time that you have, have you ever seen a towel stand in a tube station?”
“I meant on the street or something.”
“Sure. We should’ve headed up and found the local seaside shop, maybe picked up a couple of buckets and spades while we’re at it.”
“But there’s no beach near Lon—oh.”
I did my best not to roll my eyes. If I started, I might never stop.
We were quiet until the next station, just three minutes up the line.
Half of our carriage were up on their feet the moment the platform came into view. Almost all, I noticed, were passengers in our direct vicinity. The woman opposite clutched her bag in her arms like a rugby player barreling across a pitch. Two seats down, a middle-aged businessman with sallow skin and tired, weary eyes rose, then slipped and fell heavily into his seat again. I winced, ready to apologize, but he righted himself and made his way to the doors without even a glance.
A handful of new passengers climbed aboard. Most, however, stepped in and saw two women and a man looking like drowned rats in the seats opposite, not to mention the watery bay that seemed to have devoured half of the carriage’s floor, and they climbed straight off to find a seat elsewhere.
With most of our neighbors gone, Heidi extricated herself, dropping into a seat opposite.
Her anime-character hair was flat to her cheeks. I took a moment’s pleasure in enjoying it before remembering that I probably looked about the same.
When the train started up again, Heidi asked, keeping her voice low and measured, “So where are we going now?”
My nostrils flared. “We?” What was it with hangers-on this past couple of days? “The only place we are going, me and Carson, is back to Russell Square so I can drop him off.”
“But those guys …” he started in a whine.
“Don’t worry,” I griped. “I doubt they’re hanging around, hoping we pop up again. They’re probably halfway across London b
y now.”
“But what if—?”
“But nothing.” I rounded on him, teeth gritted. “We had this talk earlier, Carson. I’m finished babysitting.”
“Harsh,” Heidi muttered.
“None of your business, is it?” I countered.
“I’m just saying. You don’t need to be insulting.”
“How am I insulting?”
“By calling it ‘babysitting’. He’s not a kid. He looks older than you.”
“I really do, don’t I?” Carson mumbled.
I ignored him, still on Heidi. “Not that I particularly care about what you think, but I’ve been dragging homeboy over London for close to twenty-four hours now.” Not quite true, with that lost time in the fairytale square, but that wasn’t for her to know. “In that time, we’ve been set upon by the Order of Apdau three times, had to escape into an abandoned building, been arrested and escaped the station, had to climb a tree made of glass to avoid being eaten by a creepy blind wolf thing that I’m pretty sure could speak English, and taken the world’s biggest bath, courtesy of you. I haven’t slept, haven’t eaten, and haven’t had a moment’s peace without Yankee Doodle here yammering away at me.”
The guilty little fragment of me would feel bad for this later. But now I’d started, fatigue mingled with anger had stripped away my social graces and I couldn’t stop, whether Carson was perched immediately beside me or not.
“He is an albatross around my neck that I don’t need, and which I never asked for.”
Heidi’s eyebrows had drawn right down her face. She frowned, and I was reminded of one of my primary school teachers, who had overheard me telling Suzie Bates that she couldn’t play with me and my friends because she had a nose like a parrot’s beak.
“What a wonderfully charming girl you are,” Heidi bit off.
“Butt out.”
“No, I won’t.” She leaned forward, across the aisle, hard eyes on mine. Again, I had a flash of a teacher doing the same, a different one this time over a separate infraction. “I’ll grant that I don’t know much of your story so far, Mira—”
“Then don’t comment on it.”
“—but the Order of Apdau are looking for you. Not Carson, here; you, Mira Brand.”
I pursed my lips. “Whatever.”
Heidi’s eyes flashed. “Sure. Blame him. It’s all his fault, of course. Not for one second could trouble possibly be attributed to famous Mira Brand.” The word ‘famous’ rolled off her tongue with all the sarcasm in the world.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the one going around causing problems. Starting things with orcish hordes?”
Alain Borrick’s smarmy leer flashed in my head. It was replaced with a flash of falling, then the awkward clash with Burbondrer.
“How do you know—?”
“Word travels.” Heidi reclined. One leg crossed over the other. “I get that you’ve got a lot to live up to, but could you maybe consider handling yourself a bit better? You don’t get glory for infuriating people and starting fights.”
I bristled. Whether she realized it or not, she’d cut far, far too close to the nerve. I wanted to kick back with some barbs of my own—but what did I really have? The best I could call her was a know-it-all. And anyway, if not for her, Carson and I might still be in Russell Square, possibly in pieces.
As much as it turned my stomach to admit it … I owed her.
The train pulled into the next station. A few last passengers exited the carriage. They were replaced in equal number, though these new ones also took seats at the farthest end of the carriage.
I quieted, grateful for the interruption.
When our journey resumed, I got back to the most important matter at hand.
“We’re going back to Russell Square,” I told Carson, “and you are going to say goodbye, properly this time, short and sweet. And then we’re going to go our separate ways, and God willing, never see each other again. Got it?”
He licked his lips, bottom then top.
“I could help …”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“I’m sure he could,” said Heidi.
I pretended like she hadn’t spoken. Which was difficult.
“When those Apdau guys came for us, I got a couple of good hits in,” Carson said.
I gritted my teeth. Fine. But I wouldn’t concede. Most people probably got a few good punches in when their lives were on the line. All Carson’s manbag-swinging proved was that his flight response could, on occasion, be overridden by the fight response.
“I could help you on your quest—” he began again.
“Tell me what you’d do if you crossed paths with a black-eyed howler.”
Carson paused. His eyebrows drew in, imprinting the shadow of a comma between them. “A what?”
“A black-eyed howler. What would you do?”
“I, err …” His gaze drifted to Heidi as though she was a lifeline.
I snapped my fingers in front of him, got him to refocus.
“Black-eyed howler! What would you do, Carson?”
“I would, um … I would …” He cleared his throat, swallowed; it clicked. “I don’t know what one of those is.”
“Exactly.” Straightening in my seat, I grumbled, “You’re about as much good to me as the morons in Geordie Shore.”
In the corner of my eye, Carson’s face flashed in confusion. “Do you mean Jersey Shore?”
“See?” I said to Heidi. “No good to me. I’m better off doing what I’ve always done, and going it alone—for my sake, and his.”
“Going it alone where?” Heidi asked.
“None of your business.”
“No, go on. Enlighten me.”
Carson said, “You said you were looking for—”
“Quiet.” I silenced him with a hand: stop. Like a warden guiding traffic around a busy car park.
Heidi said, “Come on. I’m curious, all right? Plus I saved your arse back there. The least you can do is entertain me.”
No. Not going to happen.
But … she was right. She had saved us.
And maybe I wanted to brag. Prove a point, and all that; show her that much as she had rescued me and Carson, I was more than capable. That this Brand was more than meeting the bar everyone else seemed to think I was jumping for.
Plus, with the hair plastered to her face, her drowned-rat look helped take out a bit of her sting, too.
Carson opened his mouth again.
I cut him off before he could begin. These was my quest, damn it. The geek wasn’t going to tell it for me.
“I’m after the Chalice Gloria.”
Heidi waited, as if there were more—and then her face broke with disbelieving laughter.
“What’s funny?”
“You—” she pointed “—are looking for the Cup of Glory?”
“What’s so funny about that?”
“That’s crazy, even for a Brand.”
“What does she mean—?” Carson started in my ear.
I was talking over him already. “How is that crazy? I’m a Seeker, just like I figure you must be, with your bracelet there. I seek things, and so I’m seeking this.”
Heidi let out another short staccato laugh.
My blood started to boil.
“Yeah, well, good luck with that,” she said. She shook her head. “Cup of Glory. Oh my days.”
“I don’t understand,” Carson muttered. He was looking between us again like he was following a ball batted back and forth.
“The Chalice Gloria, Cup of Glory, is like the Holy Grail for treasure seekers,” Heidi explained to him. “And it’s been lost for … how many years now, Mira?” She didn’t wait for me to answer before continuing to Carson, “It’s a pointless exercise, is what I’m getting at. Others have tried and failed.” Glancing at me, she added, “I guess now there’s another one to add to the list.”
“Hey, I found Decidian’s Spear all right
, didn’t I? Step one of the process, done.” I unclipped the umbrella and brandished it. “You want to tell Carson how long that was lost for, up until yesterday?”
Heidi’s gaze slipped over it. Her mouth opened, ready to bite off some retort. But I had her; she’d seen it with her own eyes in Russell Square.
When she met my eyes again, there was a begrudging kind of respect in them.
“Well done,” she said, slow. “But the Cup of Glory—that’s a whole other ball game. You need two keys—”
“And I’ve got one,” I pointed out, tapping the umbrella.
“That’s not the point. Feruiduin’s Cutlass is just as lost, and if the stories are true, you’ll need both to get to the Chalice.”
“What, and you think I just got lucky in finding this thing? Seekers spent whole lifetimes looking for Decidian’s Spear. It took a seventeen-year-old girl in London’s West End to find it again on an April afternoon. I know what I’m doing. I found the spear, and I will find the cutlass too, and claim the Chalice Gloria as my own.”
Heidi quieted.
Finally, after a long pause, she said, “You know where to find Feruiduin’s Cutlass then, do you?”
“Yes,” I said with more than a touch of Heidi’s own sniffiness, “I do.”
She seemed to assess for a moment—and then a bemused, lopsided grin split her face. “Well, now this I have to see.”
“No—” I started.
But: “Me too,” said Carson over us both. “Just one question, though. What exactly does this Chalice Gloria look like?”
18
London, the Strand; currently dawdling like creeps just outside the Tortilla restaurant.
Strangely wet creeps.
I ignored the latest glance fired our way, this from a lone young man exiting Tortilla. His steps slowed for just a moment as his eyes swept down.
Move along. Just move along.
“You wanna remember to use that next time,” he called, and pointed at the umbrella at my belt. Then he was off, smirking over his shoulder.
“Thanks for that,” I muttered.
“We look stupid,” said Carson. “Can’t we just go through?”
“It’s lunchtime,” I retorted. “You see all these people out here? I cut through now, we’ll be seen.”
The World Beneath (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 1) Page 11
