Seeker

by Arwen Elys Dayton

  “Shinobu!” She was trying to yell, but her voice came out muted.

  Shinobu was there. He threw himself through the closing anomaly behind her. The black-and-white tendrils were now like a ragged river, carrying Shinobu with them into the darkness. Quin turned her head in time to see John, who had ripped off his mask and was still galloping toward them. His face was anguished as he looked at her through the diminishing doorway, his eyes not on her face now but on her chest.

  “Oh, God, no … Quin …” she heard him say.

  She looked down and saw a huge patch of red growing darkly across her shirt. She had been shot.

  Then the anomaly mended itself, closing out the world of the estate and leaving them in darkness.

  CHAPTER 21

  QUIN

  Quin fell from her horse and landed on nothing.

  Her mother was there with her, somewhere. Quin could feel Fiona’s arms groping to find Quin’s body.

  “I can’t see you … I can’t see you …” Her mother’s voice already sounded odd, an echo of her real voice, thin and stretched out.

  Quin couldn’t feel her chest, but she could tell the numbness would not last forever, and when it ended, she would be in agony. She was starting to shiver, and her breath came raggedly.

  “I’m shot,” she breathed. “Maybe it’s just as well …”

  “Shh, shh,” Fiona said.

  There was a confusion of arms and legs, as though ten people had come through the anomaly with them.

  “John might have killed you … It’s all ruined …”

  “Hush, Quin.” Fiona sounded far away, though Quin was pretty sure it was her mother’s hand on her stomach. “What’s ruined, girl? You’re here with me. We got away.”

  “I did bad things, Ma. So many. I can’t get rid of them.”

  “A clear picture of, where I came from, where I will go …” She heard Shinobu whispering the time chant. He was getting closer.

  Her own sense of time was changing. “How long …”

  “How long what?”

  “… have we been here?” Quin finished weakly.

  “I don’t know,” Fiona said from far away.

  A hand connected with Quin’s right arm, then another with her left. She could tell it was Shinobu, even in the darkness. There was something intelligent and sure about the way his hands moved as they traveled down her arms, taking the athame and lightning rod from her. She was getting so cold, and he felt warm.

  “I don’t know where to go,” she whispered.

  “I do,” Shinobu told her. He pulled her close to him. “Can you stay awake?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “Try. You have to try.”

  “It’s all wrecked,” she whispered.

  “It is,” he agreed.

  In the faint glow of the athame, she saw his hands moving over the dials, adjusting them to a new set of coordinates.

  The vibration engulfed her as Shinobu struck the stone dagger. Her eyes drifted shut.

  “Quin, please stay awake.” She felt him moving. “Fiona, you have to take her feet. Fiona!”

  Quin forced her eyelids open, saw the new anomaly, heard its hum. They were carrying her. There was fresh air on her face. The next time she opened her eyes, they were outside, in an open space somewhere, with bright sunlight on her skin.

  She was on the edge of consciousness. There were sirens, other voices, speaking a different language. Asian faces around her. Her chest was filled with a hot red ache that was overwhelming in intensity.

  Her eyes stayed closed for a long while. Then a quiet room with candles, and a small man with gray hair, slanted eyes, a bright face. The pain was starting to go away. How long had she been here? Minutes? Hours? Days? Maybe she wasn’t here at all; maybe she was still There. She could hear herself talking. Her eyes would not stay open.

  The small man was murmuring something to her. Quin was not sure she had heard him right. Her ears seemed to be stuffed with cotton. Even so, a feeling of happiness enveloped her, and then she was unconscious again.

  CHAPTER 22

  SHINOBU

  Shinobu waited until late at night, when the Bridge seemed most dead. He found his way through twisting corridors and dark stairwells. Eventually he was among the outer rafters, walking to the very edge like a gymnast on a balance beam.

  From there, he could see the harbor and the hundreds of thousands of city lights on either side of the Bridge, more lights than he had ever seen in one place. The ocean water was bright near shore, reflecting the glow from buildings so slender and high, they seemed like monstrous blades of grass, waving gently in the night. But here, under the Bridge, the water was dark.

  The image of his father was burned into his mind: Alistair with teeth gritted, face contorted in pain, covered in blood and scratches from beating his head against the ground. Again and again he felt Alistair thrusting the hilt of the knife into his open hand, trying, with his last trace of sanity, to help Shinobu. And Shinobu had done nothing for him.

  It was John’s fault. The attack was John’s fault. But could he blame John for hating Briac? Could he blame John for attacking them? He couldn’t. He might have done the same in John’s position. He too had dreamed of going after Briac.

  And he, Shinobu, was Alistair’s son. He could have given his father mercy when it mattered most, and he’d refused. That had been his own choice.

  He put a hand on a steel beam above him, bracing himself as he leaned out over the deep water running with the tide beneath the Bridge. He pulled out the lightning rod, concealed under his clothing, and flung it as far as he could into the depths. Then he leapt to another rafter and another, moving along the outer Bridge structure. When it appeared he’d reached the very center of the Bridge’s span, he took out the athame. He threw it in a high arc out into the night air, then watched as it curved down and hit the water, immediately disappearing from sight.

  Let the ocean take them and swallow the memory of those sparks. Let it swallow everything …

  He made his way back to the Bridge’s central road, and to the home of Master Tan. After moving up an outer staircase, he looked through the second-story window. Quin lay on a table in a candlelit room, her chest wrapped in a complicated bandage, acupuncture needles with burning herbs at their ends placed all over her body. He could see Fiona in another room beyond, asleep on a couch, bandages around her neck.

  Quin had been dead, he was sure of it. When they’d carried her onto the Bridge, she had not been breathing, and she had gone cold. Now her eyes were closed, but there was a flush to her cheeks. As he watched, she even appeared to be speaking.

  Master Tan was leaning over Quin’s head, saying something quietly. Shinobu pressed on the window with his hands, sliding the glass up a few inches so he could hear.

  “Child, child,” Master Tan was saying, his voice like the words in a fever dream, “there is no need for this.” One hand smoothed away the lines of worry creasing Quin’s forehead. “You may forget if you wish … all of it.”

  Quin tossed her head from side to side.

  “Forgetting is … as simple as deciding, as gentle as sinking into a warm bed,” Master Tan murmured. “Child, you have gone and come back. Reinvention is the gift I can offer.”

  Quin’s brow creased again above her closed eyes.

  “The choice can be as quick as a heartbeat, or as long as a life. You may leave all of it behind,” Master Tan whispered. “How do you choose?”

  A troubled expression crossed her face, and then, as Shinobu watched, Quin muttered something to Master Tan and her features relaxed. After a short time, it looked like she had fallen into a natural sleep.

  Was it possible? Could you wipe the chalk from the board and begin to draw anew? Shinobu pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to force out the vision of his father, head bloody, lying on the forest floor.

  That was Quin in there, his cousin. (Distant cousin! he had always wanted to point out.
) He should stay by her side. Maybe, when she finally recovered, she would see him the way he’d always seen her. After the night when they took their oath, he’d wanted to take her away, but he had not. Now there were too many unpleasant things he would have to remember every time he looked at her. And the truth was, he could no longer see himself the way he wanted Quin to see him. He had gone along on all of Briac’s assignments. He had abandoned his father. He wasn’t the man he was supposed to be.

  He would leave. Quin would heal here with Master Tan, and then she and Fiona would be free to disappear into the world somewhere far away, where no one, including Shinobu, would ever find them.

  “Goodbye, Quin.” He whispered the words, and then he ran back down the stairs.

  He walked quickly off the Bridge and out into the night in this new and strange city where his mother might be waiting for him, and where he hoped it was possible to begin life again.

  INTERLUDE

  OTHER TIMES AND PLACES

  CHAPTER 23

  JOHN

  John had fallen asleep on the small bed. He woke when he heard the crash. Someone was out in the living room, making a lot of noise. There was another crash a moment later, followed by several more, then a voice, cursing. It was the voice he had been waiting for. His mother was home!

  John swung his small legs off the bed and ran out into the other room. There she was, standing in the middle of the living room floor. A chest was overturned in front of her, with its wooden drawers pulled out and their contents spilled across the floor.

  He noticed these details only in passing, because there was something much more important—blood. Blood was everywhere. For a moment, he thought it was paint, but it didn’t look the way paint looked. It was more … real. His mother’s trousers were covered in it. There was a puddle of it below her on the floor, and large splashes on the papers that had fallen out of the drawers. Her light brown hair was tied back, and it too was streaked with red.

  “Mama!” he called, too frightened to get closer to her.

  Catherine stopped her frantic search of the drawers.

  “John …”

  She was so surprised to see him, she didn’t move for several seconds. She stared at him, her face drawn tightly about her mouth and eyes.

  John’s attention focused on the cut high on her left leg. Her pants were torn, and she’d tied a strip of cloth around the wound, but it was still bleeding. All over.

  “Sweetheart,” she said, “what are you doing here?”

  “I—I found this address. On something in your pocket at home.” He took a step toward her, then stopped. It seemed like she might be angry with him.

  She was moving again, searching through the papers strewn across the floor. Her fingers closed around a thick book, bound in leather. She stared at it, as if unsure, now that she had found it, what she planned to do with it.

  “I didn’t want you here,” she said, more to herself than to him. The words made John feel bad. He’d come to the apartment all by himself to surprise her.

  She was having a difficult time catching her breath. She staggered over to John, and went down on her knees so her blue eyes were level with his. Her hands took hold of his small shoulders, and the rich metallic smell of her blood was in his nose. It was terrifying. “You’re supposed to be on Traveler. Safe.”

  “I—wanted to see you. You were gone for so long. And you’re hurt.”

  He could tell that she wasn’t really listening to him. Instead her head was cocked to listen for something else, or maybe someone else. Or perhaps she was counting something inside her head.

  “They will be here soon. How much time? Can we make it?”

  Even at seven years old, John could tell that she was speaking to herself and didn’t expect him to answer. She tucked the leather book into the waistband of John’s trousers, then pushed herself up onto her feet.

  “Come,” she said, taking one of his hands. “I can’t get you home, but I can get you close. Find a policeman. Tell him who your grandfather is. You need to keep the book safe—Maggie will know where to hide it.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked her, pulling at her hand, trying to get her to look at him. “We should go to a doctor, shouldn’t we?”

  Catherine was taking something from inside her jacket that looked like a dagger but was made out of stone. She began to turn the stone dials of the handgrip. Then she paused, squinting as if it was hard to see, even though the dagger was right in front of her.

  “Can I do something?” John asked.

  She looked down at the gash in her left thigh. A new puddle had formed near John’s shoes. He noticed then that there was no blood by the apartment’s door. The mess started and ended in the middle of the room.

  Catherine lost her balance and fell hard onto one knee.

  “No, no, no,” she muttered. She put her hands on John’s shoulders, tried to push herself up that way, but her legs would no longer obey. Her strength had deserted her. John felt panic overtaking him, unsure how to help.

  “I can’t take you,” she whispered eventually. “I could risk it for myself, but I can’t risk leaving you There.”

  Hot tears were leaking out of his eyes. They fell onto the floor near the edge of the blood. “Please, Mother, could we go to a doctor? They have bandages and things. They could fix your leg.”

  She had collapsed into a sitting position. She seemed hardly able to keep her eyes open. She slid nearer, brushed his hair out of his face with her messy hands, and leaned close.

  “I have only a few minutes. They’ll figure out where to follow me. It won’t take them very long.”

  She buried her head in her hands, trying to think.

  “Take the book over there,” she told him, pointing to a cabinet against one wall. “Look in the cupboard.”

  With shaking hands, John removed the leather book from his waistband and crossed the room. In the bottom of the cupboard was a safe whose metal door stood open.

  “Put it inside and shut the door. The red button locks it. He’ll be looking for it … Gives me something to bargain with …” She was fading.

  John did as she’d said, locking the book inside the safe. He turned back to his mother. She was panting for breath. “I need you to do … exactly as I say. Quickly. Can you do that?”

  He nodded mutely.

  “Good boy. In that bench … there’s a door. I can’t touch it, or I’ll leave blood … You go open it. Wait—your shoes.” She examined his shoes, which were miraculously free of blood. “Good. Go open it.”

  John walked to the long bench at the side of the living room and lifted the heavy panel that formed the seat. The space underneath was coffin-shaped, containing some odds and ends—a few pillows, a few tools, a blanket.

  “You want me to go in here?” John asked.

  “Not there … Underneath. Another door. You can feel … a tiny lever. It slides if you push it.”

  John felt around the bottom of the space. His small fingers located the hidden lever. He pushed it, and the bottom of the coffin slid back several inches into the wall.

  “Leave the things on top, if you can,” she said.

  He climbed into the seat, then squeezed his way through the bottom door. There was another space beneath, big enough to hold an adult.

  “Slide it shut now,” Catherine said.

  John pushed the pillows and other items to one side so they wouldn’t be caught by the closing door. Then he ducked down and pulled the panel shut above him. He’d been worried it would leave him in darkness, but he found he could still see. There were small slots cut in the base of the bench, and through these he was able to look out into the living room.

  His mother was lying on the floor several feet away. Her eyes were open but looked blank. Her chest heaved up and down, and after a few moments she closed her eyes, gathering her strength, and scooted herself a little closer to him. He could see her face through the slots.

  “There’s a lever behind y
ou,” she said. “It will shut the seat.”

  John turned and felt along the wall. His fingers closed around a flat piece of metal, which he pushed down. There was a bang above him as the heavy seat swung shut.

  Catherine took up the stone dagger from the floor and positioned it so John had a good view. She was breathing strangely now, like the air wouldn’t go all the way into her.

  “Mother, can you please go to the doctor?” he asked. He was crying again, though he was trying to stop. “I’ll stay here, if that’s what you want.”

  “I need you to listen to me very carefully.” A pause to breathe. “Do you see this dagger?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “It’s called an athame. Say it … so you remember it. ‘ATH-uh-may.’ ”

  “ ‘ATH-uh-may,’ ” he whispered.

  “This is your birthright, John. It’s been in our family for … hundreds … maybe a thousand …” She stopped, trying to get her breath. It took a few moments.

  “Maybe you can tell me after the doctor,” he suggested. There was quite a lot more blood on the floor around Catherine than there had been before he’d climbed into the hiding place. He moved closer to the slots in the wood of the bench and his foot bumped against something. Reaching down, John felt smooth, cool metal. There was a helmet of some kind on the floor of the hiding place. He pushed it aside so he could crouch as close as possible to the openings in the bench.

  “We are an ancient family. Been betrayed … killed … robbed …” She stopped again. “No time, dammit … Maggie will have to tell you.” She tilted the stone dagger toward him. “This was stolen, was gone for a century … I got it back.” She extended the athame closer to him. “Do you see this?” She pointed to the pommel. There was a tiny animal carved into the stone.